Earthborn

They watched as Akmaro walked away from the clearing, into the trees lining the banks of the Tsidorek. "I don't know what to hope for," Motiak said.

"It's not our business to hope now," said Shedemei. "Akmaro and Chebeya finally found the courage to face what they had to face. Now I need to get back to the city and see whether I can do the same in my own small way."

They all knew better than to ask her what it was that she intended to do.

"I'll go with you," said Pabul.

"No," said Shedemei sharply. "Stay here. Akmaro will need you. Chebeya will need you. I don't need you." She was not to be disobeyed. She set off down the road, not even taking a waterjar with her.

"Will she be all right?" asked Motiak. "Should I have some of my spies keep an eye on her?"

"She'll be fine," said Chebeya. "I don't think she wants company. Or observers, either."

It was dark when the launch flew silently above the water of the Tsi-dorek and stopped to rest in the air a single step away from the riv-erbank. Shedemei took that step and entered the small craft-small compared to the Basilica., that is; huge compared to any other vehicle on Earth. Once she was secure inside, the launch took off without any command from her; the Oversoul knew what was needed, and took her to a garden she maintained in a hidden valley high above the settled land of Darakemba. As she traveled, the Oversoul spoke to her.

<You were the one who urged me to interfere with Monush all those years ago. Now you refuse to let me interfere with Akma.>

"That's right."

<I could block him.>

"You couldn't block Nafai and Issib back on Harmony when you had your full powers. Akma has a powerful will; he would resist you. I think he'd probably enjoy it."

<Akmaro is tearing himself apart with this. The kingdom is shattered. You have all my power at your disposal and you do nothing.>

"It's not my plan that matters now," said Shedemei. "It never was. We were as proud and as stupid as Akma was, back when we tried to provoke the Keeper by interfering with Monush's rescue. What we didn't understand is that the Keeper lets us interfere and tries to work around us. We really can't affect her. She wants this society, this nation of Darakemba to succeed. But if the people choose to ignore her and make something ugly out of their chance at something beautiful, well, so be it. She'll find somebody else."

<What about Harmony? What about my mission here?>

"Maybe the Keeper is waiting to see what these children of Harmony decide, right here, right now, before she can give you the instructions you came for."

<So she doesn't care about these people, really. She only cares about them if they fit in with her plan.>

"She cares about them, yes. But she sees the whole picture, the sweep of time. To save a dozen or a thousand or a million people now, at the cost of the happiness of billions of lives over millions of years-she won't do it. She takes the long view."

<So Akmaro is wasting his time.>

"I don't know. How can I know? We were wasting our time by trying to thwart her. But if Chebeya's right-and how can I tell how much truth a raveler knows?-if she's right, then the Keeper can be influenced, not by rebels but by her most loyal friends. So Akmaro may have been blocking her just as Chebeya said, and the things he's telling the Keeper now-maybe the logjam will be broken."

<And then I'll be told what to do?>

"Either that or not. How can I know?"

<You think something's going to happen, or you wouldn't have called for me to send the launch.>

"I think that it's possible that when it comes time to break the impasse, the Keeper may have use for me."

<And how will you know?>

"Someone will have a dream. That's how the Keeper works. You'll see the dream, you'll tell me, and we'll figure out if there's something in it that the Keeper wants me to do."

<Maybe the dream will come to you.>

"I haven't had a true dream since I saw myself as a gardener in the sky. That came true long ago, and I don't expect to have another dream."

<You can't lie to me, Shedemei. I feel your hopes whether you give voice to them or not.>

"Yes, well, I'd like to think the Keeper had something to say to me, of course. I'm as vain as the next person."

<Then hurry up and sleep, so you can dream. >

"It doesn't work that way. I'm not tired yet."

She left the launch and wandered in the cold night air in her garden, routinely noticing the growth of the plants, the relative preponderance of one species over another, the amount of brachiation, the size of the foliage. The Oversoul entered her observations into the ship's computer as notes. They had long since stopped commenting on the irony that a computer program designed to govern a world was now acting as scribe for a lone biologist.

The Oversoul began to talk to her. <I've been searching for the Keeper, for some place that she could be. I've been searching for the means she uses to send dreams to the minds of humans, angels, and diggers. Whatever the Keeper does, I can't find it.>

"Didn't you notice that about four hundred years ago?"

<Yes, and then I waited.>

"Forty million years you waited on Harmony, and now you're impatient?"

<I was busy on Harmony. I was needed. >

"You were running things, you mean. If something was planned, it was because you were doing the planning. And then people started having dreams that didn't come from you. Made you a little uneasy, didn't it?"

<It was harder to perform my calculations of probabilities.>

"That's how it is for us all the time."

<I have compassion algorithms designed into me. I don't have to to identify with you in order to empathize. That's a biological thing.>

"Whatever the Keeper does, she does it faster than light, she does it no matter how far away a person is. It suggests such enormous power. Such knowledge, such... wisdom. And yet she is so delicate, intervening so little, really. Giving us such freedom. Respecting our choices. Listening to us. Listening to needs and desires we don't even know we have."

<I think that whatever she is, she isn't like me. She's not a computer.>

"Organic, then? With very powerful tools?"

<Organic? Who knows. Maybe she's simply unconstructed, how's that? Like a human, like a digger, like an angel. She grew, she made herself out of her experiences, the way you did and do. So she wasn't just programmed to design the shape of the history of life, she was charged with it.>

"Or perhaps she found it and loved it and decided she wanted to help. On her own, unassigned, unrequested."

<It's a wonder she doesn't get bored. I speak from experience when I say that human history is astonishingly repetitive. Every individual is unique, but not all the differences are both significant and interesting.>

"Now you're a critic."

<Someone has to be an audience for the play you people are always improvising. All of you trying for the center stage. All of you trying to get the audience to notice you, to declare you the star, so that when you die, the curtain will come down and the fehow will end. But it never does. No one was ever the star after all.>

"That's the difference between life and art, of course. Life has no frames, no curtains, no beginnings and no endings."

<Which should imply that it has no meaning. >

"I mean my own life. I mean what I do. And the Keeper gives a meaning to the larger scene. That's enough meaning for me. I don't need to have somebody make an epic out of my life. I lived. Strange things happened. Now and then I made a little difference in other people's lives. You know what? It may be that the thing I'm proudest of in all my life is restoring the brain of that damaged little boy in Bodika."