Earthborn Page 0,137

the city, and then they must walk, they and all their families, along the road toward the border. At stations along the way, we'll have a safe place for them to camp, and food for them to eat, and they will be treated with kindness and courtesy-but in the morning they will rise and eat and be on their way, ever closer to the border. And at the end, they will be given enough to walk on for another week, to find a place within the lands of the Elemaki, where they belong. Let them do their labor there! Let them preserve the precious 'culture' that certain people prize so much-but not in Darakemba! Not in Darakemba!"

As he no doubt planned, the audience took up the chant; it was only with difficulty that he quieted them again so he could finish. The speech did not go on much longer after that-only long enough for him to rhapsodize again about the beauty of the ancient ways of the Nafari and the Darakembi, about how loving and inclusive tke Assembly of the Ancient Ways would be, and how only among the Ancient, as they would call themselves, could true justice and kindness be found, for diggers as well as angels and humans. They screamed their approval, chanted his name, cried out their love for him.

He doesn't have mine, Shedemei answered silently.

And how will it sound to the earth people?

Motiak will stop it, won't he?

Doesn't he see that to take away their livelihood and drive them from their homes so they can survive at all is every bit as cruel, in the long run?

The Keeper doesn't work like that. He wants people to follow him because they love his way.

And they were back to plotting murder as quickly as they could.

"Let's go home, Shedemei," said one of the students.

"He was so wonderful," said one of the others, shaking her head ruefully. "Too bad that everything he said was pure shit."

Shedemei immediately reproved her coarse wording, but then laughed and hugged her. The students of her school might have been caught up in the moment, but they had been truly educated and not just schooled-they were able to hear something they had never before, analyze it, and decide for themselves that it was worthless, dangerous, vile... .

Maybe her student had used the only possible word for it.

When they got home to the school it was after dark. The girls rushed in to tell the others what had been said at the meeting. Shedemei spent those first few minutes going to the teachers who happened to be earth people. She explained about Akma's strategy of boycotting diggers to compel them to leave. "Your place here is safe," she said. "And I will stop charging tuition for all our students, so their parents can spare more to hire diggers and help those they cannot hire. We will'do all we can."

She didn't pass into the courtyard until the students who had heard the speech were telling about Akma's statements about the diggers. They had good recall; some of it they reported word for word. Ed-hadeya was one of those who had not gone; as she told Shedemei, she didn't know if she would be able to control herself, and besides, she had to prove that one of Motiak's children, at least, had not lost all decency. Now, though, as she heard Akma's statements about inferior digger intelligence, about their unfitness for civilized society, she did lose control. "He knew Voozhum! Not as well as my brothers, but he knew her! He knows that