The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page B

cleverly and your version of things accounts for everything you know about it, just as neatly as Luet’s version does.”
    Nafai was ready to help him draw the correct conclusion. “Then the rule of simplicity requires you to—”
    “The rule of your father requires you to hold your tongue, Nafai. What you’re both forgetting is that there’s a fundamental difference between you and me.”
    Father leaned toward Nafai.
    “
I
saw the fire.”
    He leaned back again.
    “Luet didn’t tell me what to think or feel at the time. And her questions helped me remember—helped
me
remember—the way it really happened. Instead of the way I was already changing it to fit my preconceptions. She
knew
that it would be strange—in exactly the ways that it was strange. Of course, I can’t convince you.”
    “No,” said Nafai. “You can only convince yourself.”
    “In the end, Nafai, oneself is the only person anyone can convince.”
    The battle was lost if Father was already making up aphorisms. Nafai sat back to wait for it all to end. He took consolation from the fact that it had been, after all, merely a dream. It’s not as if it was going to change his life or anything.
    Father wasn’t done yet. “Do you know what I actually wanted to do, when I felt such urgency to get to the city? I wanted to warn people—to follow the old ways, to go back to the laws of the Oversoul, or this place would burn.”
    “What place?” asked Luet, her intensity back again.
    “This place. Basilica. The city. That’s what I saw burning.”
    Again Father fell silent, looking into her burning eyes.
    “Not the city,” he said at last. “The city was only the picture that my mind supplied, wasn’t it? Not the city. The whole world. All of Harmony, burning.”
    Rasa gasped. “Earth,” she whispered.
    “Oh, please,” Nafai said. So Mother was going to connect Father’s vision with that old story about the home planet that was burned by the Oversoul to punish humanity for whatever nastiness the current storyteller wanted to preach against. The all-purpose coercive myth: If you don’t do what I say—I mean, what the
Oversoul
says—then the
whole world
will
burn.
    “
I
haven’t seen the fire itself,” said Luet, ignoring Nafai. “Maybe I’m not even seeing the same thing.”
    “What
have
you seen?” asked Father. Nafai cringed at how respectful he was being toward this girl.
    “I saw the Deep Lake of Basilica, crusted over with blood and ashes.”
    Nafai waited for her to finish. But she just sat there.
    “That’s it? That’s all?” Nafai stood up, preparing to walk out. “This is great, hearing the two of you comparevisions.
I
saw a city on fire. Well,
I
saw a scum-covered lake.’
    Luet stood up and faced him. No, faced him down—which was ridiculous, since he was almost half a meter taller than her.
    “You’re only arguing against me,” she said hotly, “because you don’t want to believe what I told you about Eiadh.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” said Nafai.
    “You had a vision about Eiadh?” asked Rasa.
    “What does Eiadh have to do with
Nyef
?” asked Issib.
    Nafai hated her for mentioning it again, in front of his family. “You can make up whatever you want about other people, but you’d better leave
me
out of it.”
    “Enough,” said Father. “We’re done.”
    Rasa looked at him in surprise. “Are you dismissing me in my own house?”
    “I’m dismissing my sons.”
    “You have authority over
your
sons, of course.” Mother was smiling, but Nafai knew from her soft speech that she was seriously annoyed. “However, I see no one here in
my
house but
my
students.”
    Father nodded, accepting the rebuke, then stood to leave. “Then I’m dismissing myself—I may do
that,
I hope.”
    “You may always leave, my adored mate, as long as you promise to come back to me.”
    His answer was to kiss her cheek.
    “What are you going to do?” she asked.
    “What the Oversoul told me to do.”
    “And what