The Ships of Earth - Orson Scott Card, ebook
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The Ships Of Earth – Homecoming 03
Orson Scott Card
PROLOGUE
The master computer of the planet Harmony was full of hope at last. The chosen human beings had been
drawn together and removed from the city of Basilica. Now they were embarked on the first of two
journeys. This one would take them through the desert, through the Valley of Fires, to the southern tip of
the island once called Vusadka, to a place where no human being had set foot for forty million years. The
second journey would be from that place across a thousand light-years to the home planet of the human
species, Earth, abandoned forty million years ago and ready now for human beings to return.
Not just any human beings. These human beings. The ones born, after a million generations of guided
evolution, with the strongest ability to communicate with the master computer, mind to mind, memory to
memory. However, in encouraging people with this power to mate and therefore enhance it in their
offspring, the master computer had not made any attempt to choose only the nicest or most obedient, or
even the most intelligent or skillful. That was not within the purview of the computer's program. People
could be more difficult or less difficult, more or less dangerous, more or less useful, but the master
computer had not been programmed to show preference for decency or wit.
The master computer had been set in place by the first settlers on the planet Harmony for one purpose
only-to preserve the human species by restraining it from the technologies that allowed wars and empires
to spread so far that they could destroy a planets ability to sustain human life, as had occurred on Earth.
As long as men could fight only with hand weapons and could travel only on horseback, the world could
endure, while the humans on it would remain free to be as good or evil as they chose.
Since that original programming, however, the master computer's hold on humanity had weakened.
Some people were able to communicate with the master computer more clearly than anyone had ever
imagined would be possible. Others, however, had only the weakest of connections. The result was that
new weapons and new methods of transportation were beginning to enter the world, and while it might
yet be thousands or tens of thousands of years before the end, the end would still come. And the master
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 computer of Harmony had no idea of how to reverse the process.
This made it urgent enough for the master computer to attempt to return to Earth, where the Keeper of
Earth could introduce new programming. But in recent months the master computer and some of its
human allies discovered that the Keeper of Earth was already, somehow, introducing change. Different
people had dreamed clear and powerful dreams of creatures that had never existed on Harmony, and the
master computer itself discovered subtle alterations in its own programming. It should have been
impossible for the Keeper of Earth to influence events so far away… and yet that entity which had
dispatched the original refugee ships forty million years before was the only imaginable source of these
changes.
How or why the Keeper of Earth was doing this, the master computer of the planet Harmony could not
begin to guess. It only knew that forty million years had not been kind to its own systems, and it needed
replenishment. It only knew that whatever the Keeper of Earth asked for, the master computer of
Harmony would try to supply. It asked now for a group of human beings to recolonize the Earth.
So the master computer chose sixteen people from the population of Basilica. Many were kin to each
other; all had unusual ability to communicate with the master computer. However, they were not all
terribly bright, and not all were particularly trustworthy or kind. Many of them had strong dislikes or
resentments toward others, and while some of them were committed to the master computer's cause,
some were just as committed to thwarting it. The whole enterprise might fail at any time, if the darker
impulses of the humans could not be curbed. Civilization was always fragile, even when strong social
forces inhibited individual passions; now, cut off from the larger world, would they be able to forge a
new, smaller, harmonious society? Or would the expedition be destroyed from the beginning?
The master computer had to plan and act as if the expedition would survive, would succeed. In a certain
place the master computer triggered a sequence of events. Machinery that had long been silent began to
hum. Robots that had long been in stasis were awakened and set to work, searching for machines that
needed repair. They had waited a long, long time, and even in a stasis field they could not last forever.
It would take several years to determine just how much work would be needed, and how it should or
even could be done. But there was no hurry. If the journey took time, then perhaps the people could use
that time to make peace with each other. There was no hurry; or rather, no hurry that would be
detectable to human beings. To the master computer, accomplishing a task within ten years was a
breathless pace, while to humans it could seem unbearably long. For though the master computer could
detect the passage of milliseconds, it had memories of forty million years of life on Harmony so far, and
on that scale, compared to the normal human lifespan, ten years was as brief a span of time as five
minutes. The master computer would use those years well and productively, and hoped the people could
manage to do the same. If they were wise, it would be a time in which they could create their families,
bear and begin to raise many children, and develop into a community worthy to return to the Keeper of
Earth. However, that would be no easy achievement, and at the moment all the master computer could
really hope for was to keep them all alive.
ONE-THE LAW OF THE DESERT
Shedemei was a scientist, not a desert traveler. She had no great need for city comforts-she was as
content sleeping on a floor or table as on a bed-but she resented having been dragged away from her
laboratory, from her work, from all that gave her life meaning. She had never agreed to join this half-mad
expedition. Yet here she was, atop a camel in the dry heat of the desert wind, rocking back and forth as
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 she watched the backside of the camel in front of her sway in another rhythm. It made her faintly sick, the
heat and the motion. It gave her a headache.
Several times she almost turned back. She could find the way well enough; all she had to do was get
close enough to Basilica and her computer would link up with the city and show her the rest of the way
home. Alone, she'd make much better time-perhaps she could even be back before nightfall. And they
would surely let her into the city-she wasn't kin by blood or marriage to anyone else in this group. The
only reason she had been exiled with them was because she had arranged for the dryboxes full of seeds
and embryos that would reestablish some semblance of the old flora and fauna on Earth. She had done a
favor for her old teacher, that's all-they could hardly force her into exile for that.
Yet that cargo was the reason she did not turn back. Who else would understand how to revive the
myriad species carried on these camels? Who else would know which ones needed to go first, to
establish themselves before later species came that would have to feed on them?
It's not fair, thought Shedemei for the thousandth time. I'm the only one in this party who can begin to do
this task-but for me, it's not a challenge at all. It's not science, it's agriculture. I'm here, not because the
task the Oversoul has chosen me for is so demanding, but because all the others are so deeply ignorant
of it.
"You look angry and miserable."
Shedemei turned to see that it was Rasa who had brought her camel up beside Shedemei's on the wide
stony path. Rasa, her teacher-almost her mother. But not really her mother, not by blood, not by right.
"Yes," said Shedemei.
"At me?" asked Rasa.
"Partly you," said Shedemei. "You maneuvered us all into this. I have no connection with any of these
people, except through you."
"We all have the same connection," said Rasa. "The Oversoul sent you a dream, didn't she?"
"I didn't ask for it."
"Which of us did?" said Rasa. "No, I do understand what you mean, Shedya. The others all made
choices that got them into this. Nafai and Luet and Hushidh and I have come willingly ... more or less.
And Elemak and Meb, not to mention my daughters, bless their nasty little hearts, are here because they
made some stupid and vile decisions. The others are here because they have marriage contracts, though
for some of them it's merely compounding the original mistake to come along.
But you, Shedemei, all that brings you here is your dream. And your loyalty to me."
The Oversoul had sent her a dream of floating through the air, scattering seeds and watching them grow,
turning a desert land into forest and meadow, filled with greenery, abounding with animals. Shedemei
looked around at the bleak desert landscape, seeing the few thorny plants that clung to life here and
there, knowing that a few lizards lived on the few insects that found water enough to survive. "This is not
my dream," said Shedemei.
"But you came," said Rasa. "Partly for the dream, and partly out of love for me."
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 "There's no hope of succeeding, you know," said Shedemei. "These aren't colonizers here. Only Elemak
has the skill to survive."
"He's the one who's most experienced in desert travel. Nyef and Meb are doing well enough, for their
part. And the rest of us will learn."
Shedemei fell silent, not wanting to argue.
"I hate it when you back away from a quarrel like that," said Rasa.
"I don't like conflict," said Shedemei.
"But you always back off at exactly the moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what
she needs to hear."
"I don't know what other people need to hear."
"Say what you had on your mind a moment ago," said Rasa. "Tell me why you think our expedition is
doomed to failure."
"Basilica," said Shedemei.
"We've left the city. It can't possibly harm us now."
"Basilica will harm us in a thousand ways. It will always be our memory of a gentle, easier life. We'll
always be torn with longing to go back."
"It's not homesickness that worries you, though, surely," said Rasa.
"We carry half the city with us," said Shedemei. "All the diseases of the city, but none of its strengths.
We have the custom of leisure, but none of the wealth and property that made it possible. We have
become used to indulging too many of our appetites, which can never be indulged in a tiny colony like
ours will be."
"People have left the city and gone colonizing before."
"Those who want to adapt will adapt, I know," said Shedemei. "But how many want to? How many
have the will to set aside their own desires, to sacrifice for the good of us all? I don't even have that
degree of commitment. I'm more furious with every kilometer we move farther away from my work."
"Well, then, we're fortunate," said Rasa. "Nobody else here had any work worth mentioning. And those
who did have lost everything so they couldn't go back anyway."
"Meb's work is waiting for him there," said Shedemei.
Rasa looked baffled for a moment. "I'm not aware that Meb had any work, unless you mean his sad little
career as an actor."
"I meant his lifelong project of coupling with every female in Basilica who wasn't actually blood kin of
his, or unspeakably ugly, or dead."
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 "Oh," said Rasa, smiling wanly. "That work."
"And he's not the only one," said Shedemei.
"Oh, I know," said Rasa. "You're too kind to say it, but my own daughters are no doubt longing to take
up where they left off on their own versions of that project."
"I don't mean to offend you," said Shedemei.
"I'm not offended. I know my daughters far too well. They have too much of their father in them for me
not to know what to expect from them. But tell me, Shedya, which of these men do you honestly expect
them to find attractive?"
"After a few weeks or a few days, all the men will start looking good to them."
Rasa laughed lightly. "I daresay you're right, my dear. But all the men in our little party are married and
you can bet that their wives will be looking out to make sure no one intrudes in their territory."
Shedemei shook her head. "Rasa, you're making a false assumption. Just because you have chosen to
stay married to the same man, renewing him year after year since-well, since you gave birth to Nafai-that
doesn't mean that any of the other women here are going to feel that possessive and protective of their
husbands."
"You think not?" said Rasa. "My darling daughter Kokor almost killed her sister Sevet because she was
sleeping with Kokor's husband Obring."
"So… Obring won't try to sleep with Sevet again. That doesn't stop him from trying for Luet, for
instance."
"Luet!" said Rasa. "She's a wonderful girl, Shedya, but she's not beautiful in the way that a man like
Obring looks for, and she's also very young, and she's plainly in love with Nafai, and most important of
all, she's the waterseer of Basilica and Obring would be scared to death to approach her."
Shedemei shook her head. Didn't Rasa see that all these arguments would fade to unimportance with the
passage of time? Didn't she understand that people like Obring and Meb, Kokor and Sevet lived for the
hunt, and cared very little who the quarry might be?
"And if you think Obring might try for Eiadh, I'd laugh out loud," said Rasa. "Oh, yes, he might wish, but
Eiadh is a girl who loves and admires only strength in a man, and that is one virtue that Obring will never
have. No, I think Obring will be quite faithful to Kokor."
"Rasa, my dear teacher and friend," said Shedemei, "before this month is out Obring will even have tried
to seduce me."
Rasa looked at Shedemei with a startlement she could not conceal. "Oh, now," she said. "You're not his
-"
"His type is whatever woman hasn't told him no recently," said Shedemei. "And I warn you-if there's one
thing our group is too small to endure, it's sexual tension. If we were like baboons, and our females were
only sexually attractive a few times between pregnancies, we could have the kind of improvised
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