Nafai stood his watch as he always did, by conversing with the Oversoul. It was easier now than it had been at first, back when he and Issib had practically forced the Oversoul to talk to them. Now he would form thoughts carefully in his mind, almost as if he were speaking them, and then, almost without trying, he could feel the Oversoul’s answers come to him. They came as if they were Nafai’s own thoughts, of course, so that at times he still had trouble distinguishing between the Oversoul’s actual ideas and the ideas that came from his own mind; to be sure, he often asked the same question again, and the Oversoul, since it was a computer and therefore never felt a sense of hurry, willingly repeated as often as he liked.
Tonight, because he was on watch, he first asked the Oversoul if any danger was near.
(A coyote, tracking the scent of a hare.)
No, I meant danger to us, said Nafai silently.
(The same bandits I told you about before. But they keep heating noises in the night, and now they’re hiding in a cave, trembling.)
You enjoy doing this to them, don’t you? asked Nafai.
(No, but I sense your delight. This is what you call a game, isn’t it?)
More like what we call a trick. Or a joke.
(And you love the fact that only you know that I am doing this.)
Luet knows.
(Of course.)
Any other danger?
(Elemak is plotting your death.)
What, a knife in the back?
(He is full of confidence. He believes he can do it openly, with the consent of all. Even your mother.)
And how will he do it? Blast me with his pulse and pretend it’s an accident? Can he frighten my camel into throwing me from a cliff?
(His plan is more subtle than that. It has to do with marriage laws. Rasa and Shedemei realized today that marriages must be made permanent, and Rasa has now persuaded Elemak.)
Good. That will work much better than if the idea had come from Luet and me.
(But it did come from you and Luet.)
But only we and you are aware of that, and no one else will guess. They’ll see the sensibleness of the law. And besides, I had to do something to stop Eiadh from trying to start something with me. I find it disgusting that it’s only since I killed Gaballufix and refused to be Moozh’s puppet that she finds me interesting. I think I was much nicer before … before all this started.
(You were a boy then.)
I’m still a boy.
(I know. That’s one of our problems. Worse yet, you’re a boy who’s not very good at deception, Nafai.)
But you’re a whiz at it.
(You can’t lead these people by relying on me to plant your ideas in their minds. On the voyage from Harmony to Earth I won’t have the same power to reach into their minds that I have here. You will have to learn how to speak with them directly. Teach them to look to you for decisions.)
Elya and Meb will never be willing to accept my lead.
(Then they are expendable.)
Like Gaballufix? I’ll never do that again, Oversoul. You can be sure of that—I killed once for you, but never again, never, never, don’t even make me think of it, no!
(I hear you. I understand you.)
No, you don’t understand. You never felt the blood on your hands. You never felt the sword cut through the flesh and hack apart the cartilage between the vertebrae. You never heard his last gasping breaths through the bloody gap in his throat.
(Through your eyes I saw, through your arms I felt, through your ears I heard.)
You never felt the… that terrible irrevocability. That there’s no turning back. That he’s gone, and no matter how terrible a man he was, I had no right to cut him off like that…
(You had the right because I gave it to you, and I had the right because humankind built me in order to protect the entire species, and the death of that man was necessary for the preservation of humanity on this world.)
Yes, I know, again and again you tell me.
(Again and again you reject the truth and insist on remaining in this meaningless agony of guilt.)
I ended the life of a helpless drunken man. There was no glory in that act. There was no decency. There was no cleverness or wisdom. I was not a good man when I did that.
(You were my hands, Nafai. What I needed to do, you did for me.)
They were my own hands, Oversoul. I could have said no. As I say no now, when you hint of my killing Elemak and Mebbekew. It will not happen. I will take no more lives for you.
(I’ll keep that in mind as I make my plans for the future. But you can establish leadership. You must. Your father is too old and tired, and he relies on Elemak too much. He’ll give in to your brother far too often, again and again he’ll surrender to him, until he has no will left at all.)
So it’s better that he surrenders to me?
(You won’t make him surrender anything. You’ll always lead through him, with great respect for him. If you lead, your father will remain a proud and powerful man. I’ve told you this. Now stand up and take your place.)
Not yet. This is not the time for me to challenge Elemak. We need him to lead us through the desert.
(And I tell you that he has no such qualms. At this very moment, even though he’s making love to Eiadh, he is picturing you tied up and abandoned in the desert, where you’ll soon discover, Nafai, that while I can influence bandits I can’t do a thing about the beasts and birds of prey, the insects that think of anything that doesn’t walk or fly or slither away as their next meal. They don’t listen to me, they simply act out what their genes require them to do, and you will die, and what will I do then without you?)
Does he mean to act now, before we get to Father’s camp?
(At last you’re listening.)
What is his plan, then?
(I don’t know. He never thinks of it plainly. I’m searching as best I can, but it’s hard. I can’t just ransack a human’s memories, you know. He fears his own murderous heart so much that he won’t let himself think of his whole plan openly.)
Perhaps when he’s not distracted by lovemaking.
(Distracted? He’s even doing this for your benefit. He thinks that you still want Eiadh, so he’s hoping you notice the movement in the tent, and the noises she’s making.)
It only makes me long for my watch to end, so I can go back to Luet.
(He can’t conceive of a man not desiring the woman he desires.)
I did. I fancied that Eiadh was exactly what I needed and wanted. But I understood nothing then. Luet believes she’s already pregnant. Luet and I can talk about everything. We’ve only been married for a few days, yet she understands my heart even better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she thinks them. Does Elemak imagine that I could desire a mere woman, when Luet is my wife?
(He knows that Eiadh is attracted to you. He remembers that you were once attracted to her. He also knows that I have chosen you to lead. He’s mad with jealousy. He hungers for your death. It consumes him so that even the act of making love to her is a kind of murder in his heart.)
Don’t you realize that this is the most terrible thing of all? If there’s anything I want in my life, it’s for Elemak to love me and respect me. What did I do, to turn him away!
(You refused to let him own your will.)
Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do.
(To Elemak, if he doesn’t control you, you either don’t exist or you’re his enemy. For many years you didn’t exist. Then he noticed you, and you weren’t as easy to manipulate or intimidate as Mebbekew, and so you became a rival.)
Is it really that simple?
(I glossed over the hard parts.)
His tent isn’t bouncing. Does that mean he’s coming out soon?
(He’s getting dressed. He’s thinking of you. So is Eiadh.)
At least she doesn’t want to kill me.
(If she ever got what she’s wishing for, it would end the same, with you dead.)
Don’t tell Luet that Elemak is planning to kill me.
(I’ll tell Luet everything, exactly as I tell you. I don’t lie to the humans who serve my cause.)
You lie to us whenever you think it’s necessary. And I don’t want you to lie to her, anyway—I just don’t want her to worry.
(I do want her to worry, since you refuse to. I think sometimes you want to die.)
You can relieve your mind on that score. I like being alive and intend to continue.
(I think sometimes you look forward to death, because you think that you deserve to die for having killed Gaballufix.)
Here he comes.
(Notice how he makes sure you smell his hands.)
Nafai didn’t appreciate the Oversoul’s calling attention to that—he might not have noticed, otherwise. But, truth to tell, that was unlikely, because Elemak made a point of putting both hands on his shoulders, and even of brushing his fingers across Nafai’s cheek as he said, “So you did stay awake. Maybe you’ll amount to something in the desert after all.”
“You didn’t leave me on watch all that long,” Nafai answered.
The womanly smell was plain enough. It was vaguely disgusting that Elemak would use his intimacy with his own wife this way. It was as if she had become nothing to him. A tool. Not a wife at all, but just a thing that he owned.
But if the Oversoul was right, then that was how Elemak experienced love—as ownership.
“Did you see anything?” asked Elemak.
“Darkness,” said Nafai. He did not tell Elemak about the bandits only a few hundred meters away. First, it would only make him furious that Nafai was getting information from the Oversoul. And second, it would humiliate him that he chose as his campsite a place where bandits could conceal themselves so close. He would probably insist on searching for them, which would mean battle and bloodshed, or waking everybody up and moving on, which would be pointless, since the Oversoul was having no trouble keeping this spineless group of cutpurses under control.
“If you ever looked up, you’d notice there are stars,” said Elemak.
Elemak was baiting him, of course, and Nafai knew that he should just ignore him, but he was filled with anger already, knowing that Elemak was plotting to kill him and yet still pretended to be his brother, knowing that Elemak had just made love to his wife in order to try to make Nafai suffer from jealousy. So Nafai could not contain himself. He flung a hand upward. “And that one is Sol, the Sun. Barely visible, but you can always find it if you know where to look. That’s where we’re going.”
“Are we?” asked Elemak.
“It’s the only reason the Oversoul brought us out of Basilica,” said Nafai.
“Maybe the Oversoul won’t necessarily get his way,” said Elemak. “He’s just a computer, after all—you said so yourself.”
Nafai almost answered again, some snide comment to the effect that if the Oversoul was “just” a computer then Elemak himself was “just” a hairless baboon. Six months ago Nafai would have said it, and Elemak would have thrown him against a wall or knocked him down with a blow. But Nafai had learned a little since then, and so he held his tongue.
Luet was waiting for him in the tent. She had probably been dozing—she had worked hard since they started laying camp, and unlike the lazy ones she would be up early again in the morning. But she greeted him wordlessly with open eyes and a smile that warmed him in spite of the chill that Elemak had put in his heart.
Nafai undressed quickly and gathered her to him under the blankets. “You’re warm,” he said.
“I think the technical term is hot,” she answered.
“Elemak is planning to kill me,” he whispered.
“I wish the Oversoul would just stop him,” she whispered.
“I don’t think it can. I think Elemak’s will is too strong for the Oversoul to make him change his mind once he’s set on doing something.” He didn’t tell her that the Oversoul had hinted that somewhere along the line Nafai might have to kill his brother. Since Nafai had no intention of ever doing it, there was no reason to put the idea in Luet’s mind. He would be ashamed to say it anyway, for fear she would then think he might consider such a thing.
“Hushidh thinks she senses Elemak bonding more closely with the ones who want to turn back—Kokor and Sevet, Vas and Obring, Meb and Dol. They’re forming a sort of community now, and separating almost completely from the rest of us.”
“Shedemei?”
“She wants to turn back, but there’s no bond between her and the others.”
“So only you and I and Hushidh and Mother want to go on into the desert.”
“And Eiadh. She wants to go wherever you go.”
They both laughed, but Nafai understood that Luet needed reassurance that Eiadh’s desire for him was not reciprocated. So he reassured her thoroughly, and then they slept.
In the morning, with the camels packed, Elemak called them together. “A couple of things,” he said. “First, Rasa and Shedemei have proposed it and I agree with them completely. While we’re living in the desert, we can’t afford to have the kind of sexual freedom we had in Basilica. It would only cause rancor and disloyalty, and that’s a death sentence for a caravan. So as long as we remain in the desert—and that includes at Father’s camp, and anywhere else that our population consists of just us and the three who are waiting for us—this is the law: There’ll be no sleeping with anyone except your own husband or wife, and all marriages as they presently stand are permanent.”
Immediately there was a gasp of shock from several; Luet looked around and saw that it was the predictable ones—Kokor and Obring and Mebbekew—who were most upset.
“You have no right to make a decision like that,” said Vas mildly. “We’re all Basilicans, and we live under Basilican law.”
“When we’re in Basilica we live under Basilican law,” said Elemak. “But when you’re in the desert you live under desert law, and desert law has it that the word of the caravan leader is final. I’ll listen to any ideas until I have to make a decision, but once the decision is made any resistance is mutiny, do you understand me?”
“No one tells me who I must sleep with and who I may not” said Kokor.
Elemak walked up to her and faced her; she looked so frail compared to the sheer mass of Elemak’s tall, well-muscled body. “And I tell you that in the desert, I won’t have anyone creeping from tent to tent. It will lead to murder one way or another, and so instead of letting you improvise the dying, I’ll let you know right now: If anyone is caught in a position that even looks like you’re getting sexually involved with someone you aren’t married to, I will personally kill the woman on the spot.”
“The woman!” cried Kokor.
“We need the men to help load the camels,” said Elemak. “Besides, the idea shouldn’t seem strange to you, Koya, since you made exactly the same decision the last time you decided that somebody should die for the crime of adultery.”
Luet could see how both Kokor and her sister Sevet immediately touched their throats—for it was in the throat that Kokor had struck Sevet, nearly killing her and leaving her almost voiceless ever since. While Kokor’s husband, Obring, who had been bouncing away just as merrily when Kokor found the two of them, was unscathed. It was viciously unkind and exactly appropriate for Elemak to remind them all of that event, because it completely silenced any kind of opposition to the new law from three of the four people most likely to oppose it: Kokor, Sevet, and Obring had nothing to say at all.
“You don’t have the right to decide this,” said Mebbekew. He was, of course, the fourth—but Luet knew that Elemak would have no trouble bringing him into line. He never did, with Meb.
“I not only have the right,” said Elemak, “I have the duty.
This is a law necessary for the survival of our little company in the desert, and so it will be obeyed or I will enforce the only penalty that I cam enforce here, so many kilometers from civilization. If you can’t grasp this idea, then I’m sure Lady Rasa can explain it to you.”
He turned and faced Rasa, in a silent demand that she back him up. She did not disappoint him. “I tried and tried all night to think of another way to handle this,” she said, “but we can’t live without this law, and as Elya says, in the desert the only penalty that means anything at all is ... what he said. But not killing outright!” she said, clearly hating the whole idea of it. “Only binding and leaving a person.”
“Only?”said Elemak disdainfully. “It’s by far the crueler death.”
“It leaves her in the hands of the Oversoul,” Rasa said. “Perhaps to be rescued.”
“You should pray not,” said Elemak. “The animals are kinder than any rescuers she’d find out here.”
“A lawbreaker is to be bound and abandoned, not killed!” Rasa insisted.
Luet thought: She fears it will be a daughter of hers who will first break this law. As for Elemak’s rule that having only the woman die will better restrain the man, he has it backward. Few men think of consequences when they’re filled with desire, but a woman can put off her own desires if a man she loves would be at risk.
“As the lady wishes,” said Elemak. “The law of the desert leaves the choice up to the leader of the caravan. I would normally choose a quick, clean death by pulse, but let us hope that no such choice ever has to be made.” He looked around at the whole group, turning to include in his gaze the ones who were behind him. “I don’t ask for your consent in this,” he said. “I simply tell you that this is the way it will be. So now raise your hand if you understand the law we will live by.”
They all raised their hands, though clearly some were furious.
No, not quite all. “Meb,” said Elemak. “Raise your hand. You’re embarrassing your dear wife Dol. She’s no doubt beginning to wonder who is the woman here whose love you consider so desirable that you would cause an imperfectly virtuous lady’s certain death by pursuing it.”
Now Meb raised his hand.
“Good,” said Elemak. “And now for the other matter. We have a decision to make,” he said.
The sun had not yet risen, so it was still bitterly cold—especially for the ones who had done very little of the work of striking the tents and loading the camels. So it might have been just the cold that made Mebbekew’s voice tremble when he said, “I thought you were making all the decisions now.”
“I make all the decisions that have to do with keeping us alive and moving,” said Elemak. “But I don’t fancy myself some kind of tyrant. The decisions that don’t have to do with survival belong to the whole group, not to me. We can’t survive unless we all stay together, so I’ll tolerate no divisions among us. At the same time, I don’t recall a point where anybody actually decided where it was we were going.”
“We’re going back to Father and Issib,” said Nafai immediately. “You know they’re counting on us to return.”
“They have plenty of water as long as they stay put. They need someone to go and fetch them sometime in the next few months—they’ve got years of supplies, for that matter,” said Elemak. “So let’s not turn this into a life and death matter unless we have to. If the majority wants to go on until we reach Volemak in the desert, fine. That’s where we’ll all go.”
“We can’t go back to Basilica,” said Luet. “My father made that very clear.” Her father, of course, was Moozh, the great general of the Gorayni, though she had not known that until a few days ago. But by reminding the others of this newfound family connection, she hoped to make her words carry more weight. She wasn’t skilled at persuasion; she had always simply told the truth, and because the women of Basilica knew her to be the waterseer, her words were taken seriously. It was a new thing, talking to a group that included men. But she knew that asserting one’s family status was one of the ways people got their way in Basilica, and so she tried it now.
“Yes,” said Kokor, “your tender loving father who tried to marry his own daughter and then threw us all out of the city when he couldn’t.”
“That’s not the way it happened,” said Luet.
Hushidh touched Luet’s hand to still her. “Don’t try,” Hushidh whispered softly. “Koya’s better at it than you are.”
No one else heard Hushidh’s words, but when Luet fell silent they understood the effect of what she said, and Kokor smirked.
“Luet is right enough that we probably can’t go back to Basilica,” said Elemak, “at least not right away—I think that was the message we were meant to understand from the fact that he sent an escort of soldiers to make sure we got safely away from the city.”
“I’m so tired of hearing how none of us can get back to Basilica,” said Mebbekew, “when it’s only those who embarrassed him in front of everybody.” He was pointing at Hushidh and Luet and Nafai.
“Do shut up, Meb,” said Elemak with genial contempt. “I don’t want us to be standing here talking when the sun comes up. We’re in exactly the kind of country that bandits like to hole up in, and if there are some hiding from the darkness in caves nearby, they’re bound to come out by daylight.”
Luet wondered if in fact Elemak had picked up some intimation of the bandits that the Oversoul had been controlling. Perhaps Elemak knew all along that such men were only brave in the sunlight, and hid at night. Besides, it was possible that Elemak was receiving the Oversoul’s messages subliminally, not realizing where the thoughts and ideas were coming from. After all, Elemak was as much a result of the Oversoul’s secret breeding program as any of the rest of them were, and he had received a dream not long ago. If only Elemak would simply admit that he could communicate with the Oversoul and follow her plans willingly—it would uncomplicate everything. As it was, she and Hushidh had been working on plans to try to thwart Elemak in whatever it was he was planning to do.
“Even though we really can’t go back to Basilica immediately,” Elemak went on, “that doesn’t mean we have to go join Father at once. There are many other cities that would take in a caravan of strangers, if only because Shedemei has an extremely valuable cargo of embryos and seeds.”
“They’re not for sale,” said Shedemei. Her voice was harsh enough, her answer abrupt enough, that everyone knew she had no intention of arguing about it.
“Not even to save our lives?” said Elemak sweetly. “But never mind—I don’t propose selling them anyway. They’re only valuable when they come along with the knowledge that Shedya has in her head. What matters is that they will let us in if they know that, far from being a band of penniless wanderers recently expelled from Basilica by General Moozh of the Gorayni, we are instead accompanying the famous geneticist Shedemei, who is moving her laboratory away from strife-torn Basilica to some peaceful city that will guarantee her a place to do her work without disturbance.”
“Perfect,” said Vas. “There’s not a City of the Plain that would refuse us entry on those terms.”
“They’d offer us money, in fact,” said Obring.
“They’d offer me money, you mean,” said Shedemei. But clearly she was flattered—she hadn’t really thought of the fact that her presence would convey a certain amount of prestige on any city she settled in. Luet could see that Elemak’s flattery was having its effect.
(He’s going to put it to a vote.) The Oversoul spoke in Luet’s mind.
That much is obvious by now, said Luet. What is his plan?
(When Nafai opposes the decision to return to the city, it will be mutiny.)
Then he must not oppose.
(Then my work would be thwarted.)
Then control the vote.
(Whose vote should I change? Which of them would Elemak believe if he suddenly voted to go on?)
Then don’t let the vote happen.
(I have no such influence with Elemak.)
Then tell Nafai not to oppose!
(He must oppose, or there will be no voyage to Earth.)
“No!” cried Luet.
Everyone looked at her. “No what?” asked Elemak.
“No vote,” she said. “There will be no vote.”
“Ah yes,” said Elemak. “We have another freedom-lover here who realizes that she doesn’t approve of democracy after all, when she thinks the vote will go against her.”
“Who said anything about voting?” asked Dol, who was never terribly sharp about what was going on around her.
“I vote we go back to civilization,” said Obring. “Otherwise we’re slaves to marriage—and to Elemak, for that matter!”
“But I said nothing about putting things to a vote,” said Elemak. “I said only that we must make a decision about where to go. A vote might be interesting, but I won’t be bound by it. It’s your counsel that I need, not your governance.”
So they counseled him, eloquently—or tried to. But if anyone even began to advance an argument that someone else had already stated, Elemak would silence them at once. “I’ve already heard that. Anything new to add?” As a result, the discussion didn’t last very long at all. Sooner than Luet would have thought possible, Elemak asked, “Anything else?” and no one answered.
He waited, looked around at them. The sun was coming over the tops of the distant mountains now, and his eyes and hair glowed with reflected light. This is his finest moment, thought Luet. This is what he has planned for—a whole community, including his father’s wife, including his brother Nafai, including the waterseer and the raveler of Basilica, including his own bride, all waiting for the decision that will change their lives. Or end them.
“Thank you for your wise counsel,” said Elemak gravely. “It seems to me that we don’t have to choose one way or another. Those who want to return to civilization may, and soon enough those who want to go on into the desert on this errand for the Oversoul may do so as well. We can call it a rescue of my father or we can call it the beginning of a voyage to Earth—that’s not at issue now. What matters is that all can be satisfied. We’ll go south a little way and then come over the mountains and down into the Cities of the Plain. There we can leave those who can’t bear to live under the harsh law of the desert, and I can take the stronger ones with me.”
“Thanks so much!” said Mebbekew.
“I don’t care what he calls me, as long as I have my freedom,” said Kokor.
“Fools,” said Nafai. “Don’t you see that he’s only pretend-
“What did you say?” said Elemak.
“He intended to take us back to civilization all along,” said Nafai.
“Don’t, Nafai,” said Luet, for she knew what was coming next.
“Listen to your brideling, Brother,” said Elemak. His voice was deceptively mild.
“I will listen to the Oversoul,” said Nafai. “The only reason we’re alive right now is because the Oversoul has been influencing a band of robbers to stay holed up in their cave not three hundred meters away. The Oversoul can lead us perfectly well across the desert, with or without Elemak and his stupid desert law. It’s a game for boys that he’s playing—who can make the boldest threats—”
“Not threats,” said Elemak. “Laws that every desert traveler knows.”
“If we trust in the Oversoul we will be perfectly safe on this journey. If we trust in Elemak we’ll return to the Plain and be destroyed in the wars that are coming.”
“Trust in the Oversoul,” said Meb with a sneer. “What you mean is do whatever you say.”
“Elemak knows that the Oversoul is real enough—he had a dream that led us back to the city to marry our wives, didn’t he?”
Elemak only laughed. “Babble on, Nafai.”
“It’s as Elemak said. This isn’t a matter for democracy. It’s a matter for each of us to decide. Go on with the journey as the Oversoul has directed, and we’ll take the greatest voyage in forty million years and inherit a world for us and our children. Or go back to the city where you can betray your spouse as some of you are already planning. As for me and Luet, we will never go back to the city.”
“Enough,” said Elemak. “Not another word or you’re dead this instant.” A pulse was in his hand. Luet had not noticed he was carrying it, but she knew what it meant. This was exactly what Elemak had been waiting for. He had set it up very carefully, and now he could kill Nafai and no one would dare condemn him for it. “I know the desert and you don’t,” said Elemak. “There are no bandits where you claim there are, or we’d already be dead. If that’s what passes for wisdom in your fevered little brain, Brother, then anyone who stayed with you would surely be doomed. But no one will stay with you, because I’m not about to let this group split up. That would mean certain death for anyone who went with you.”
“A lie,” said Nafai.
“Please, speak again so I can kill you as the mutineer you are.”
“Hold your tongue, Nafai, for my sake!” said Luet.
“You’ve all heard him, haven’t you?” said Elemak. “He has proclaimed rebellion against my authority and attempted to lead a group away to their destruction. That’s mutiny, which is far more serious than adultery, and the penalty is death. You are all witnesses. There’s not one of you but would have to confess it in court, should it ever come to that.”
“Please,” said Luet. “Let him be, and he’ll say no more.”
“Is that true, Nafai?” asked Elemak.
“If you continue to head back to the city,” said Nafai, “the Oversoul will have no reason to restrain the bandits any further, and you will all be killed.”
“You see?” said Elemak. “Even now he tries to frighten us with these fantasies of nonexistent bandits.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing all along,” said Shedemei. “Making us do what you want for fear of bandits finding us.”
Elemak turned to her. “I never claimed they were a few meters away, hiding in a cave, only that there was a chance that some would come upon us. I’ve said nothing but the truth to you—but this boy thinks you’re such fools that you’ll believe his obvious lies.”
“Believe what you like,” said Nafai. “You’ll see the proof soon enough.”
“Mutiny,” said Elemak, “and all of you—even his own mother—will be my witnesses that I had no choice, because he would not desist in his rebellion. If he were not my own brother, I wouldn’t have waited this long. He’d be dead already.”
“And if you didn’t carry genes that the Oversoul regards as precious ones,” said Nafai, “Gaballufix would have killed you when you failed to lead Father into his trap.”
“Accusing me does nothing but compound your crime,” said Elemak. “Say good-bye to your mother and your wife—from where you are, and no nearer!”
“Elemak, you can’t mean this,” said Rasa.
“You yourself agreed with me, Rasa, that our survival depends on obedience to the law of the desert, and what the penalty had to be.”
“I see that you maliciously—”
“Careful, Lady Rasa. I’ll do what must be done, even if it includes leaving you to your death as well.”
“Don’t worry, Mother,” said Nafai. “The Oversoul is with us, and Elemak is helpless.”
Luet began to catch a glimmer of what Nafai was doing. He seemed quite calm—unbelievably calm. Therefore he must be quite sure that the Oversoul would be able to protect him after all. He must have a plan of his own, and so Luet would do best to be silent and let it unfold, no matter how frightened she was.
It would be nice if you would share the plan with me, though, she said to the Oversoul.
(Plan?) answered the Oversoul.
Luet’s hands began to tremble.
“We’ll see how helpless you are,” said Elemak. “Mebbekew, take a length of packing cord—the light line, and a good length, several meters—and tie his hands. Use the cinching knot, so it binds tight, and don’t worry about cutting off the circulation in his hands.”
“You see?” said Nafai. “He has to kill a bound man.”
Don’t! cried Luet in her heart. Don’t provoke him into shooting you! If you let him tie you, then you have a chance.
Elemak glanced at Mebbekew, at which Meb took a few steps to one of the waiting camels and came back with a cord.
As he was tying Nafai’s hands behind his back, twining the cords around and around his wrists, Hushidh stepped forward.
“Stay where you are,” said Elemak. “I’m binding him and abandoning him out of respect for Lady Rasa, but I’ll be just as happy to give him the pulse and have done with it.”
Hushidh stayed where she was; she had what she wanted anyway, which was the group’s attention. “Elemak planned this all along,” said Hushidh to the others, “because he wanted to kill Nafai. He knew that if he decided to turn back, Nafai would have no choice but to oppose him. He set it up to provide him with a legal excuse for murder.”
Elemak’s eye twitched. Luet could see the rage building out of control in him. What are you doing, Hushidh, my sister! Don’t talk him into killing my husband as we stand here!
“Why would Elya do that?” said Eiadh. “You’re saying my Elemak is a murderer, and he’s not!”
“Eiadh, you poor dear,” said Hushidh. “Elemak wants Nafai dead because he knows that if you had the choice today, you’d leave him and choose Nafai.”
“A lie!” cried Elemak. “Don’t answer her, Eiadh! Say nothing!”
“Because he can’t bear to hear the truth,” said Hushidh. “He’ll hear it in your voice.”
Now Luet understood. Hushidh was using her talent from the Oversoul, just as she did when Rashgallivak stood in the foyer of Rasa’s house, planning to use his soldiers to kidnap Rasa’s daughters. Hushidh was saying the words that would destroy the loyalty of Elemak’s followers, that would remove all support from him. She was unbinding them, and if she could just say a few more sentences, she would succeed.
Unfortunately, Luet wasn’t the only one who realized this. “Silence her!” said Sevet. Her voice was harsh and husky, for she had not yet recovered well from the injury Kokor gave her. But she could speak well enough to be heard, and the very painfulness of her voice brought her all the more attention. “Don’t let Hushidh speak. She’s a raveler, and if she says enough she can turn everyone against everybody else. I saw her do it to Rashgallivak’s men, and she can do it now, if you let her.”
“Sevet is right,” said Elemak. “Not another word from you, Hushidh, or I’ll kill him.”
Almost she opened her mouth to speak again, Luet could see it. But something—perhaps the Oversoul—restrained her. She turned and stepped back to where she had stood before, on the far side of Rasa and Shedemei. It was the last hope gone, as far as Luet could see. The Oversoul could make weak-willed people stupid or afraid for a short while, but she hadn’t the strength to stop a man determined on murder. She hadn’t the strength to make the bandits turn suddenly kind in their dealings with Nafai, should they find him. She certainly couldn’t keep the animals of the desert from finding him and devouring him. Hushidh’s ploy had been the last possibility, and it was gone.
No, I will not despair, thought Luet. Perhaps if we abandon him here I can slip away from the party and come back and untie him. Or perhaps I can kill Elemak in his sleep and…
No, no. She hadn’t murder in her, and she knew it. Not even if the Oversoul commanded it, as she had commanded Nafai to kill Gaballufix. She couldn’t do it even then. Nor would she be able to slip away and help Nafai in time. It was over. There was no hope.
“He’s tied,” said Mebbekew.
“Let me check the knot,” said Elemak.
“Do you think I don’t know how to tie it?” asked Mebbekew.
“This computer they worship supposedly has the power to make people stupider than usual,” said Elemak. “Isn’t that right, Nafai?”
Nafai said nothing. Luet was proud of him for that, but still frightened for him. For she knew that the Oversoul’s power was very great over a long period of time, but very slight at any one moment.
Elemak was now standing close behind Nafai, with the pulse pointed at his back. “Kneel down, little brother.”
Nafai didn’t kneel, but as if by reflex Meb began to.
“Not you, fool. Nyef.”
“The condemned man,” said Nafai.
“Yes, you, little brother. Kneel.”
“If you’re going to use the pulse, I prefer to die standing up.”
“Don’t make such a show of this,” said Elemak. “I want your hands tied to your ankles, so kneel down.”
Slowly, carefully, Nafai sank to one knee, then to both.
“Sit on your heels,” said Elemak. “Or near them. Yes. Now, Meb, pass the ends of the rope down between his ankles, bring them up and over his legs, and tie them together—in front of his wrists—yes, like that, where his fingers can’t possibly reach them. Very good. Can you feel anything in your hands, Nafai?”
“Only the throbbing of my blood, trying to get past the ropes around my wrists.”
“Strings, not ropes, Nafai, but they might as well be steel.”
“You’re not cutting off my blood, Elemak, you’re cutting off your own,” said Nafai. “For your blood will be unknown on Earth, while my blood will live on for a thousand generations.”
“Enough,” said Elemak.
“I’ll say what I like now,” said Nafai, “since you’ve already determined to kill me—what difference will it make now, for me to say the truth? Should I be afraid that you’ll kick me or spit on me, when I already stare death in the face?”
“If you’re trying to provoke me into shooting you, it won’t work. I promised Lady Rasa, and I’ll keep my word.”
But Luet could see that Nafai’s words were having an effect. The tension in the whole group was rising higher and higher, and it was clear that in everyone’s eyes the showdown between them was yet to come, even when Elemak thought he had already won.
“We’ll get on our camels now,” said Elemak. “And no one will turn back to try to save this mutineer, or whoever tries will share his fate.”
If Luet had not been sure that Nafai and the Oversoul must have some kind of plan, she would have insisted then on dying beside her husband. But she knew him well enough, even after only these few days, to know that Nafai felt no fear at all right now. And while he was a brave young man, she knew that if he truly believed he was going to die, she at least would be able to sense his fear. His mother must feel the same way, too, Luet realized, because she was not protesting, either. Instead they both waited and watched as the little play unfolded.
Elemak and Mebbekew started to walk away from Nafai. Then Mebbekew turned, put his foot on Nafai’s shoulder, and pushed him over sideways to lie in the sand. With his hands tied to his ankles, he could do nothing to cushion his fall. But now Luet could see behind him, could see clearly that instead of being tied tightly, the strings were only loosely gathered.
So that was what the game was. The Oversoul was doing all she could to influence Mebbekew and Elemak to see tightly bound ropes where in fact the strands were only loops. She normally did not have the power to make them stupid—or at least not enough to make Elemak so unobservant. But between Hushidh and Nafai, with their dangerous, infuriating talk, they had managed to make Elemak so angry that the Oversoul had more power to confuse him. Indeed, there must be others who could see that Nafai was not firmly tied, though fortunately those in the best position to see were also those least likely to point it out—Lady Rasa, Hushidh, and Shedemei. As for the others, with the Oversoul’s help they no doubt saw what they expected to see, what Elemak and Mebbekew had led them to expect to see.
“Yes,” said Lady Rasa. “Let’s go to the camels.” She strode boldly toward the waiting animals. Luet and Hushidh followed her. The others also turned and moved.
All except Eiadh. She stood motionless, looking at Nafai. The others, standing beside their kneeling camels, could not help but turn and watch as Elemak walked up to her, put his hand on her back. “I know this hurts your tender heart, Edhya,” said Elemak. “But a leader must sometimes act harshly, for the good of all.”
She did not even glance at him. “I never thought a man could face death with such perfect calm,” she said.
Wonderful, Luet said silently to the Oversoul. You’re making her love Nafai all the more? How helpful of you, to guarantee that we’ll never have peace, even if Nafai gets out of this alive.
(Have a little trust, will you? I can’t do everything at once. Which would you rather have, Eiadh out of love with your husband, or your husband alive and the caravan headed toward Volemak?)
I trust you. I just wish you wouldn’t cut it so close.
“Hear me!” cried Nafai.
“Pleading will get you nowhere now,” said Elemak. “Or do you want to make one last speech of mutiny?”
“He wasn’t speaking to us,” said Eiadh. “He was speaking to her. To the Oversoul.”
“Oversoul, because I have put my trust in you, deliver me from the murdering hands of my brothers! Give me the strength to burst these cords that bind my hands!”
How did it look to the others? Luet could only guess. What she saw was Nafai easily pulling one hand, then the other out of the cords, then clambering without much grace to his feet. But the others surely saw what they feared most—Nafai tearing the cords apart with his hands, then springing to his feet with majesty and danger gathering about him. No doubt the Over-soul was focusing all her influence on the others, sparing none for those who already accepted her purpose. Luet, Hushidh, and Lady Rasa were seeing the facts of what happened. The others were no doubt seeing something, not factual, but filled with truth: that Nafai had the power of the Oversoul with him, that he was the chosen one, the true leader.
“You will not turn those camels toward any city known to humankind!” cried Nafai. His voice was tense and harsh-sounding as he strained to be heard across the broad expanse between him and the farthest camels, where Vas had been helping Sevet to mount. “This mutiny of yours against the Oversoul has ended, Elemak. Only the Oversoul is more merciful than you. The Oversoul will let you live—but only as long as you vow never again to lay one hand upon me. Only as long as you promise to fulfil the journey we began—to join with Father, and then to voyage onward to the world that the Oversoul has prepared for us!”
“What kind of trick is this!” cried Elemak.
“The only trick is the one you used to fool yourself,” said Nafai. “You thought that by binding me with cords you could also bind the Oversoul, but you were wrong. You could have led this expedition if you had been obedient and wise, but you were filled with your own lust for power and your own envy, and so you have nothing left now but to obey the Oversoul or die.”
“Don’t threaten me!” cried Elemak. “I have the pulse, you fool, and I’ve passed a sentence of death on you!”
“Kill him!” shouted Mebbekew. “Kill him now, or you’ll regret it forever!”
“So brave of you,” said Hushidh, “to urge your brother to do what you would never have the heart for yourself, little Meb.” Her voice had such sting to it that he stepped back as if he had been slapped.
But Elemak did not step back. Instead he strode forward, holding the pulse. Luet could see that he was terrified—he absolutely believed that Nafai had done something miraculous by breaking free so easily from his bonds—yet terrified or not, he was determined to kill his youngest brother, and the Over-soul could not possibly stop him. It hadn’t the power to turn Elemak away from his firm purpose.
“Elya, no!” The cry was from Eiadh. She ran forward, clutched at him, plucked at the sleeve that held the pulse. “For my sake,” she said. “If you touch him, Elya, the Oversoul will kill you, don’t you know that? It’s the law of the desert—what you yourself said. Mutiny is death! Don’t rebel against the Oversoul.”
“This isn’t the Oversoul,” Elemak said. His voice trembled with fear and uncertainty, though—and no doubt the Oversoul was seizing on every scrap of doubt in his heart, magnifying it as Eiadh pled with him. “This is my arrogant little brother.”
“It should have been you,” said Nafai. “You should have been the one who made the others go along with the Oversoul’s plan. The Oversoul would never have chosen me, if you had only been willing to obey.”
“Listen to me, “ said Eiadh. “Not to him. You’re the one who is the father of the child within me—how do you know I don’t have a child within me? If you hurt him, if you disobey him, then you’ll die, and my child will be fatherless!”
At first Luet feared that Elemak would interpret Eiadh’s pleading for Nafai’s life as yet another proof that his wife loved Nafai more than him. But no. Her pleading was that he must save his own life by not harming Nafai. Therefore he could only take it as proof that she loved him, for it was his life she was trying to save.
Vas had also come back to Elemak, and now laid a hand on his other shoulder. “Elya, don’t kill him. We won’t go back to the city—none of us will, none of us!” He turned back to face the others. “Will we! We’re all content to go on to join Volemak, aren’t we!”
“We’ve seen the power of the Oversold,” said Eiadh. “None of us would have asked to return to the city if we had understood. Please, we all agree. Our purpose is one now, no division among us. Please, Elemak. Don’t make me a widow over this. I’m your wife forever, if you turn away from killing him. But what am I if you rebel against the Oversoul and die?”
“You’re still our travel leader,” said Lady Rasa. “Nothing changes that. Only the destination, and you said yourself that the destination wasn’t yours to choose alone. Now we see that the choice belongs to none of us, but only to the Oversoul.”
Eiadh wept, and the tears were hot and real. “Oh, Elya, my husband, why do you hate me so much that you want to die!”
Luet could almost have predicted what would happen next. Dol, seeing how affecting Eiadh’s tears were, could not bear to have her performance hold the center of everyone’s attention. So she now clung to her husband, and wailed loudly—with very real-seeming tears indeed—that he, too, must refrain from harming Nafai. As if Mebbekew would ever have dared to act alone! As if her tears would ever have moved him! Luet would have laughed aloud, if she hadn’t been so aware of the fact that Nafai’s life depended now on how Elemak reacted to all the wailing.
She could almost see the change happening on his face. His determination to kill Nafai, which had not yielded to the influence of the Oversoul, now melted before the pleas of his wife. And as that will to murder faded, the Oversoul had more and more opportunity to seize upon and magnify his fears. So from being a dangerous killer, in only a few moments he turned into a trembling wreck of a man, appalled at what he had almost done. He looked down at the pulse in his hands and shuddered, then threw it away from him. It landed at Luet’s feet.
“Oh, Nafai, my brother, what was I doing!” Elemak cried.
Mebbekew was even more abject. He flung himself belly-down on the ground. “Forgive me, Nafai! Forgive me for tying you up like an animal—don’t let the Oversoul kill me!”
You’re overdoing this, Luet said silently to the Oversoul. They’re going to be deeply humiliated when they remember how they acted, no matter whether they figure out it was you making cowards of them or not.
(What, do you think I have some kind of fine control over this? I can shout fear at them, and they don’t hear me and they don’t hear me and then suddenly they hear me and collapse like this. I think I’m doing pretty well, for not having done this before.)
I’m just suggesting that you lighten up on them a little. The job is done.
“Elemak, Mebbekew, of course I forgive you,” said Nafai. “What does it matter what happens to me? It’s the Oversoul whose forgiveness matters, not mine.”
“Kneel to the Oversoul,” said Eiadh, urgently pulling Elemak downward. “Kneel and beg for forgiveness, please. Don’t you see that your life is in danger?”
Elemak turned to her, and spoke almost calmly, despite the fear that Luet knew was gnawing at him. “And do you care so much whether I live or die?”
“You’re my life,” said Eiadh. “Haven’t we all sworn an oath to stay married forever?”
As a matter of fact, they hadn’t, thought Luet. All they had done was listen to Elemak’s edict and raise their hands to show they understood. But she prudently said nothing.
Elemak sank to his knees. “Oversoul,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’ll go where you want me to go.”
“Me too,” said Mebbekew. “Count me in.” He didn’t raise his head from the sand.
“As long as Eiadh is mine,” said Elemak, “I’m content, whether I’m in the desert or the city, on Harmony or on Earth.”
“Oh, Elya!” cried Eiadh. She flung her arms around him and wept into his shoulder.
Luet bent over and picked up the pulse from the sand at her feet. It wouldn’t do to risk losing a precious weapon. Who knew when they might need it for hunting?
Nafai walked over to her. It meant more than Luet could say, that he came first to her, his wife of only a few days, rather than to his mother. He embraced her, and she held him. She could feel his trembling. He had been afraid, despite his confidence in the Oversoul. And it had been a near thing, too.
“Did you know how it would all come out?” she whispered.
“The Oversoul wasn’t sure it could bring off the rope thing,” he murmured back to her. “Especially when he actually walked up to inspect the knot.”
“He had to do that, if he was going to believe it was miraculous when you broke free.”
“You know what I was thinking, when I was kneeling there with the pulse at my head, saying those things that were goading him to kill me? I was thinking—I’ll never know what our baby looks like.”
“And now you will.”
He pulled away from her, then reached out and took the pulse out of her hand.
Hushidh stepped close and put her hand on the pulse. “Nyef,’ she said, “if you hold that, there’s no hope of healing.”
“What if I give it back to him?”
Hushidh nodded. “The best thing,” she said.
No one understood better than Hushidh the Raveler what bound and unbound people. Nafai at once strode to Elemak and held out the pulse to him. “Please,” he said. “I don’t even know how to use this. We need you to lead us back to Father’s camp.”
Elemak paused just a moment before taking the pulse. Luet knew that he hated receiving it from Nafai’s hand. But at the same time he also knew that Nafai didn’t have to give it to him. That Nafai didn’t have to give him back his place of leadership. And he needed that place, needed it so much that he would even take it from Nafai.
“Glad to,” said Elemak. He took the pulse.
“Oh, thank you, Nafai,” said Eiadh.
Luet felt a stab of fear through her heart. Does Elemak hear it in her voice? Can he see it in her face? How she looks with such awe at Nafai? She’s a woman who loves only strength and courage and power—it is the alpha male in the tribe who attracts her. And in her eyes, Nafai is clearly that most desirable of men. She was the best actress of all today, thought Luet. She was the one who was able to convince Elemak of her love for him, in order to save the man she really loved. I can’t help but admire her for that, thought Luet. She’s really something.
Those thoughts of admiration were themselves lies, though, and Luet could not long fool herself. Beautiful Eiadh is still in love with my husband, and even though his love for me is strong right now, there’ll come a day when the primate male in him overcomes the civilized man, and he’ll look at Eiadh with desire, and she’ll see it and in that moment I will surely lose him.
She shook the jealous thought from her, and walked with Lady Rasa, who was trembling with relief, in order to help her clamber onto her camel. “I thought he was dead,” said Rasa softly, clinging to Luet’s hand. “I thought I had lost him.”
“So did I, for a few moments there,” said Luet.
“I can tell you this,” said Lady Rasa. “Elemak would have died before nightfall, if he had gone through with it.”
“I was plotting his death in my own heart, too,” said Luet.
“That’s how close we are to animals. Did you ever dream of such a thing? That we would be ready to do murder all so suddenly?”
“Just like baboons, protecting the troop,” said Luet.
“I think it’s rather a grand discovery, don’t you?”
Luet grinned at her and squeezed her hand. “Let’s not tell anybody, though,” she said. “It would make the men so nervous, to know how dangerous we really are.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” said Rasa. “The Oversoul was stronger than I thought possible. It’s all over and done with now.”
But as Luet walked back to find her own camel, she knew it was not finished. It had only been postponed. The day would come again when there would be a struggle for power. And next time there was no guarantee that the Oversoul would be able to bring off such a sweet little trick. If Elemak had once decided to fire off the pulse, it would have been over; next time he might realize that, and not let himself be sidetracked by something so foolish as Lady Rasa’s plea that he only tie Nafai up and abandon him. It was that close, such a near thing. And at the end, Luet knew that Elemak’s hatred for Nafai was stronger than ever, even though for a time at least he would deny it, would pretend even to himself that his hate was gone. You can fool the others, Elemak, but I’ll be watching you. And if anything happens to my husband, you can be sure of it, you’d better kill me too. You’d better be sure I’m dead, and even then, if I can find a way, I’ll come back and wreak some vengeance on you from the grave.
“You’re trembling, Lutya,” said Hushidh.
“Am I?” Perhaps that was why she was having so much trouble making certain of the cinch on her camel’s saddle.
“Like a dragonfly’s wing.”
“It was a very emotional thing,” said Luet. “I suppose that I’m still upset.”
“Still jealous of Eiadh, that’s what you are,” said Hushidh.
“Not even a speck,” said Luet. “He loves me absolutely and completely.”
“Yes, he does,” said Hushidh. “But still I see such rage in you toward Eiadh.”
Luet knew that she did, yes, feel some jealousy toward Eiadh. But Hushidh had called it rage, and that was a far stronger feeling than she had been aware of in herself. “I’m not angry because she loves Nafai,” said Luet, “truly I’m not.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Hushidh. “Or rather, I see that now. No, I think you’re angry at her and jealous of her because she was able to save your husband’s life, when you couldn’t do it.”
Yes, thought Luet. That was it. And now that Hushidh had named it, she could feel the agonizing frustration of it wash through her, and hot tears of rage and shame flooded out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “There,” said Hushidh, holding her. “It’s good to let it out. It’s good.”
“That’s nice,” said Luet. “Because apparently I’m going to cry like a ninny whether it’s good to let it out or not, so it might as well be good.”
She was still crying when Nafai came back to find her and help her on her beast. “You’re the last one,” said Nafai.
“I think I just needed to feel you touch me one more time,” she said. “To be sure you were alive.”
“Still breathing,” he said. “Are you going to cry like that for long? Because all that moisture on your face is bound to attract flies.”
“Whatever happened to those bandits?” she said, wiping her tears with her sleeve.
“The Oversoul managed to put them to sleep just before it started getting serious about influencing the others. They’ll wake up in a couple of hours. Why did you think about them?”
“I was just thinking how stupid we would all have felt, if they had come running up and hacked us all to pieces while we stood there bickering about whether or not to kill you.”
“Yes,” said Nafai. “I know what you mean. To face death, that’s nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.”
She laughed and held his hand for just a moment. Just another moment, and then another long, long moment.
“They’re waiting for us,” said Nafai. “And the bandits will wake up eventually.”
So she let go of him, and as soon as he headed toward his own camel, hers lurched to its feet and she rose high above the desert floor. It was like riding atop an unsteady tower in an earthquake, and she didn’t usually like it. But today it felt as lovely as she had ever imagined it might be to sit upon a throne. For there, on the camel before her, sat Nafai, her husband. Even if it had not been Luet herself who saved him, what of it? It was enough that he was alive, and he was still in love with her.
They came down into Volemak’s camp in the evening. They had traveled longer than usual that day, because they were close; yet still there was all the evening work to do, for Volemak had not known they were coming that night, and there were no extra tents pitched, and Zdorab had already washed up from the supper he prepared for himself and Volemak and Issib. The evening work went slower than usual, because they felt safer, and because, having arrived, it seemed so unfair to have as much work to do as during the journey.
Hushidh stayed as close to Luet and Nafai as she could. She caught glimpses of Issib now and then as he floated somewhere on his chair. There was nothing surprising to her about his appearance—she had known him for years, since he was Lady Rasa’s oldest son and had studied at Rasa’s house as long as Hushidh had been there herself. But she had always thought of him as the crippled one, and paid him little mind. Then, back in Basilica, as she came to realize that she was going out onto the desert with Nafai and Luet, it came clear to her—for she could always see the connections between people—that in the pairings of male and female in the Oversoul’s expedition, she would end up with Issib. The Oversoul wanted his genes to go on, and hers as well, and for good or ill they would be making that effort together.
It had been a hard thing to accept. Especially on the wedding night, as Luet and Nafai, Elemak and Eiadh, Mebbekew and Dolya all were married by Lady Rasa and then went, two by two, to their bridal beds, Hushidh could hardly bear the rage and fear and bitter disappointment in her heart, that she could not have the kind of love that her sister Luet had.
In answer, the Oversoul—or so she had thought at first—sent her a dream that night. In it she saw herself linked with Issib; she saw him flying and flew with him; she understood from that that his body did not express his true nature, and that she would find that marriage with him was not something that would grind her down but rather would lift her up. And she saw herself bearing children with him, saw herself standing in the door of a desert tent with him, watching their children play, and she saw that in that future scene she would love him, would be bound with him by gold and silver threads tying them back through generations, and leading them also forward into the future, year by year, child by child, generation by generation. There were other parts of the dream, some of them terrifying, but she clung to the comfort of it all these days. As she had stood with General Moozh, forced to marry the conqueror of Basilica, she had thought about the dream and knew that she would not really end up with him, and sure enough, the Oversoul brought Hushidh’s and Luet’s mother, the woman named Thirsty, who named them as her daughters—with Moozh as their father. No marriage then, and within hours they were in the desert, on their way to join Volemak in the desert.
But since then she had had time to think—time to remember her fears. Of course she tried not to, tried instead to cling to the comfort of the dream, or to Nafai’s reassurances, for he had told her that Issib was very bright and funny, a man of good company, which of course she had never had much chance to see at school.
Yet despite the dream, despite Nafai, her old impressions, the ones she had held for so many years, remained. All the way through the desert she kept seeing the almost macabre way his arms and legs used to move in the city, where he could wear lifts under his clothing, so that he always seemed to be bouncing through the air like gamboling ghost, or like a—what was it that Kokor had once called him?—like a rabbit under water. How they had laughed! And now, how disloyal she felt, although it had been Issib’s own sister who made the joke. Hushidh could not have guessed that someday the cripple, the ghost, the underwater rabbit would be her husband. The old fear and strangeness remained as an undercurrent, despite all her attempts to reassure herself.
Until now, seeing him, she realized that she was not afraid of him. The dream had given her too much hope. No, she was afraid of what he would think of her— an even older and darker fear. Did Issib know yet what Aunt Rasa and the Oversoul had planned for him? Was he already eyeing her as she worked at tent-pitching, sizing her up? No doubt that if he was, he would be bitterly disappointed. She could imagine him thinking, Of course the cripple gets the plain one, the one too tall, the sour-faced one whose body has never caused a man to take a second glance. The studious one, who has no gift for causing anyone to laugh, except sometimes her younger sister Luet (ah, so bright! but she belongs to Nafai). He must be thinking: I’ll have to make the best of it, because I’m a cripple and have no choice. Just as I’m thinking, I’ll have to make do with the cripple, because no other man would have me.
How many marriages have begun with such feelings as these? Were any of them ever happy, in the end?
She delayed as long as she could, lingering over supper—which was better than anything they had eaten while traveling. Zdorab and Volemak had found wild greens and roots in this valley and simmered them down into a stew, so much better than handfuls of raisins and jerky, and the bread was fresh and leavened, instead of the crackers and hard biscuits they had made do with while traveling. Soon it would be better still, for Volemak had planted a garden here, and within a few weeks there would be melons and squashes, carrots and onions and radishes.
Everyone was tired and awkward with each other through supper. The memory of Nafai’s near-execution still lingered in their minds, all the more embarrassing to them now that they had returned to Volemak and could see how easily he held command over all of them, being a man of true leadership, so much more powerful than Elemak’s swaggering, bullying style. It made them all dread some kind of accounting with the old man, for how many of them, except perhaps Eiadh—and of course Nafai himself—were truly proud of how they acted? So, good as the food was, no one but Hushidh had much desire to stay and chat. There were no fond reminiscences of the journey, no amusing tales to recount to those who had waited here for them. As quickly as the supper was cleared away, the couples went to their tents.
They went so suddenly that despite her anxiousness to avoid exactly this moment, Hushidh returned from the stream with the last of the pots she had washed to find that only Shedemei remained of the women, and only Zdorab and Issib of the men. There was already a dreadful silence, for Shedemei had no gift of chat, and both Zdorab and Issib seemed painfully shy. How hard for all of us, thought Hushidh. We know we are the leftovers of the group, thrown together only because we weren’t wanted by anyone but the Oversoul. And some of us not even by her, for poor Zdorab was here only because Nafai had extracted an oath from him instead of killing him at the gate of Basilica, on the night Nafai cut off Gaballufix’s head.
“What a miserable group you are,” said Volemak.
Hushidh looked over in relief to see Volemak and Rasa returning to the cookfire. They must have realized that something needed to be said—introductions needed to be made, at least, between Shedya and the librarian, who had never even met.
“I was entering my husband’s tent,” said Rasa, “thinking how good it was to be back with him, when suddenly I realized how much I missed my traveling companions, Shuya and Shedya, and then I remembered that I had failed in my duty as lady of this house.”
“House?” said Issib.
“The walls may be stone and the roof may be sky, but this is my house, a place of refuge for my daughters and safety for my sons,” said Rasa.
“ Ourhouse,” said Volemak gently.
“Indeed—I spoke of it as my house only because of the old habits of Basilica, where the houses belonged only to women.” Rasa lifted her husband’s hand to her lips and kissed it and smiled at him.
“Out here,” said Volemak, “the houses belong to the Over-soul, but he is renting this one to us at a very reasonable fee: When we leave here, the baboons downstream of us get to keep the garden.”
“Hushidh, Shedemei, I believe you know my son Issib,” said Rasa.
“Ourson,” said Volemak, as gently as before. “And this is Zdorab, who was once Gaballufix’s archivist, but now serves our way station as gardener, librarian, and cook.”
“Miserable at all three, I fear,” said Zdorab.
Rasa smiled. “Volya tells me that both Issib and Zdorab have explored the Index while they’ve been waiting here. And I know both of my dear nieces, Shuya and Shedya, will have profound interest in what they’ve found there.”
“The Index of the Oversoul is the pathway into all the memory of Earth,” said Volemak. “And since Earth is where we are going, it’s just as important for us to study in that great library as it is for us to do the work that keeps our bodies alive in this desert.”
“You know we’ll do our duty,” said Shedemei.
Hushidh knew that she was not referring to studies alone.
“Oh, hang the courteous obliquities,” said Lady Rasa. “You all know that you’re the unmarried ones, and that everybody has to marry if this is going to work at all, and that leaves only the four of you. I know that there’s no particular reason why you shouldn’t at least have the freedom to sort things out among yourselves, but I’ll tell you that because of age and experience I rather imagined that it would be Hushidh who ended up with Issib and Shedemei who ended up with Zdorab. It doesn’t have to be that way, but I think it would be helpful if you at least explored the possibilities.”
“The Lady Rasa speaks about experience,” said Zdorab, “but I must point out that I am a man of no experience whatsoever when it comes to women, and I fear that I will offend with every word I say.”
Shedemei gave one hoot of derisive laughter.
“What Shedemei meant, with her simple eloquence,” said Rasa, “is that she cannot conceive of your having less experience of women than she has of men. She, too, is quite certain of her ability to offend you with every word, which is why she chose to respond to you without using any.”
The absurdity of the whole situation combined with Shedemei’s gracelessness and Zdorab’s awkward courtesy was too much for Hushidh. She burst out laughing, and soon the othersj oined in.
“There’s no hurry,” said Volemak. “Take your time to become acquainted.”
“I’d rather just get it over with,” said Shedemei.
“Marriage is not something you get over with,” said Rasa. “It’s something you begin. So as Volemak was saying, take your time. When you’re ready, come to either me or my husband, and we can arrange new tent assignments, along with the appropriate ceremonies.”
“And if we’re never ready?” asked Issib.
“None of us will live long enough to see never,” said Volemak. “And for the present, it will be enough if you try to know and like each other.”
That was it, except for a few pleasant words about the supper Zdorab had prepared. They quickly divided, and Hushidh followed Shedemei to the tent they would share for now.
“Well, that was reassuring,” said Shedemei.
It took a moment for Hushidh to realize that Shedya was being ironic; it always did. “ I’mnot much reassured,” Hushidh answered.
“Oh, you didn’t think it was sweet of them to let us take our time about deciding whether to do the inevitable? Rather like giving a condemned murderer the lever of the gallows trap and telling him, ‘Whenever you’re ready.’“
It was a surprise to realize that Shedemei seemed far angrier about this than Hushidh was. But then, Shedemei was not a willing participant in the journey, the way Hushidh had been. Shedemei had not thought of herself as belonging to the Over-soul, not the way Hushidh had ever since she realized she was a raveler, or Luet, ever since she discovered she was a waterseer. So of course everything seemed out of kilter to her; all her plans were in disarray.
Hushidh thought to help her by saying, “Zdorab is as much a captive on this journey as you are—he never asked for this, and you at least had your dream.” But she saw at once—for Hushidh always saw the connections between people—that her words, far from giving comfort, were driving a wedge between her and Shedemei, and so she fell silent.
Fell silent and suffered, for she well remembered that it was Issib who had asked, What if we’re never ready? That was a terrible thing to hear your future husband say, a terrible thing, for it meant that he did not think he could ever love her.
Then a thought came abruptly into her mind: What if Issib said that, not because he thought he could never desire her, but because he was certain that she could never be ready to marry him? Now that she thought about it, she was certain that was what he meant, for she knew Issib to be a kind young man who was not likely to say something that he thought might hurt someone else. She suddenly found a floodgate of memory opened inside her mind, and saw all the images she had of Issib. He was quiet, and bore his infirmity without complaint. He had great courage, in his own way, and his mind was bright indeed—he had always been quick in class, the times they had been together, and his ideas were never the obvious ones, but always showed him thinking a step or two beyond the immediate question.
His body may be limited, she thought, but his mind is at least a match for mine. And plain as I am, I can’t possibly be as worried about my own body as he is about his. Nafai may have assured me that Issib is physically capable of fathering children, but that doesn’t mean he has any notion of lovemaking—indeed, he’s probably terrified that I will be disgusted by him, or at least frustrated at how little he imagines he can give me in the way of pleasure. I am not the one who needs reassurance, he is, and it would only be destructive if I entered into our courtship with the idea that he must somehow reassure my self-doubting heart. No, I must make him confident of my acceptance of him, if we’re to build a friendship and a marriage.
This insight filled Hushidh with such great relief that she almost wept with the joy of it. Only then did she realize that ideas that came to her so suddenly, with such great clarity, might not be her ideas at all. Indeed, she noticed now that she had been imagining a picture of Issib’s body as it appeared to him, only it hadn’t been imagination at all, had it? The Oversoul had shown her the thoughts and fears inside Issib’s mind.
As so many times before, Hushidh wished she had the same easy communication with the Oversoul that Luet and Nafai had. Occasionally the Oversoul was able to put thoughts as words inside her mind, as always happened with them, but it was never a comfortable dialogue for her, never easy for her to sort out which were her own thoughts and which were the Oversoul’s. So she had to make do with her gift of raveling, and then sometimes these clear insights that always felt like her own ideas when they came, and only afterward seemed to be too clear to be anything but visions from the Oversoul.
Still, she was certain that what she had seen was, not her imagination, but the truth: The Oversoul had shown her what she needed to see, if she was to get past her own fears.
Thank you, she thought, as clearly as she could, though she had no way of knowing if the Oversoul heard her thoughts, or was even listening at the moment. I needed to see through his eyes, at least for a moment.
Another thought came to her: Is he also seeing through my eyes at this moment? It disturbed her, to think thatI ssib might be seeing her body as she saw it, complete with her fears and dissatisfactions.
No, fair is fair. If he is to have confidence in himself, and if he is to be a kind husband to me, he must know that I am as fearful and uncertain as he is. So do, if you haven’t already, do show him who I am, help him to see that even though I am no beauty, I’m still a woman, I still long to love, to be loved, to make a family with a man who is bound into my heart and I into his as tightly as Rasa and Volemak are woven through each other’s souls. Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self that we will become together.
To Hushidh’s surprise, she was sleepy now—she had feared that she’d get no sleep at all tonight. And from Shedemei’s slow and heavy breathing, she must already be asleep.
I hope you showed her what she needed to see, too, Oversoul. I only wonder how other men and women manage to love each other when they don’t have your help to show them what is in the other’s heart.
Rasa woke up angry, and it took her a while to figure out why. At first she thought it was because when Volemak had joined her in bed last night he offered her no more than an affectionate embrace, as if her long fast did not deserve to be broken with a feast of love. He was not blind; he knew that she was angry, and he explained, “You’re wearier than you think, after such a journey. There’d be little pleasure in it for either of us.” His very calmness had made her angry beyond reason, and she curled up to sleep apart from his arms; but this morning she knew that her pique last night had been clear proof that he was right. She had been too tired for anything but sleep, like a fussy little child.
Almost no light got into the tent from outside. It could be high noon or even later, and from the stiffness of her body and the lack of a wind outside the tent, she could well have slept late into the morning. Still, to lie abed was delicious; no need to rise in a hurry, eat a scant breakfast in the predawn light, strike the tents, pack the beasts and be underway by sunrise. The journey was over; she had come home to her husband.
With that thought she realized why she had come awake this morning with so much anger in her. Coming home was not supposed to be to a tent, even one with double walls that stayed fairly cool through the day. And it was not she who ought to come home to him, but rather her husband who should come home to her. That’s how it had always been. The house had been hers, which she had kept ready for him, and offered to him as a gift of shade in the summer, shelter in the storm, refuge from the tumult of the city. Instead he was the one who had prepared this place, and the more comfortable it was the angrier it made her, for in this place she would have no idea how to prepare anything. She was helpless, a child, a student, and her husband would be her teacher and her guardian.
No one had directed her in her own affairs since she first came into her own house, which she had done young, using money she inherited from her mother to buy the house that her great-grandmother had made famous, then as a music conservatory; Rasa had made it still more famous as a school, and from that foundation she had risen to prominence in the City of Women, surrounded by students and admirers and envious competitors—and now here she was in the desert where she did not even know how to cook a meal or how toileting was handled in a semi-permanent encampment like this. No doubt it would be Elemak who explained it to her, in his oh-so-offhanded way, the elaborate pretense that he was telling you what you already knew—which would have been gracious except that there was always the undertone of studiedness that made it plain that both you and he knew that you did not already know and in fact you depended on him to teach you how to pee properly.
Elemak. She remembered that terrible morning when he stood there with a pulse pointed at Nafai’s head and thought: I must tell Volemak. He must be warned about the murder in Elemak’s heart.
Except that the Oversoul had clearly shown that murder would not be tolerated, and Elemak and Mebbekew both had begged forgiveness. The whole issue of going back to Basilica was closed now, surely. Why bring it up again? What would Volemak do about it now, anyway? Either he’d repudiate Elemak, which would make the young man useless through the rest of the journey, or Volemak would uphold him in his right to make such a vile decision, in which case there’d be no living with Elemak from then on, and Nafai would shrink to nothing in this company. Elemak would never let Nafai rise to his natural position of leadership. That would be unbearable, for Rasa knew that of her own children, only Nafai was suited to lead well, for only he of the men of his generation had both the wit to make wise decisions and the close communication with the Oversoul to make informed ones.
Of course, Luet was every bit as well qualified, but they were now in a primitive, nomadic setting, and it was almost inevitable that males would take the lead. Rasa hadn’t needed Shedemei’s instruction about primate community formation to know that in a wandering tribe, the males ruled. Soon enough the women would all be pregnant, and then they would turn inward; when the children were born, their circle would enlarge only enough to include the little ones. Food and safety and teaching would be their concern then, in such a fearful, hostile place as the desert. There would be neither reason nor possibility of challenging the leadership of men here.
Except that if the leader were a man like Nafai, he would be compassionate to the women and listen to good counsel. While Elemak would be what he had already shown himself to be—a jealous tyrant, slow to listen to advice and quick to twist things to his own advantage, unfair and conniving…
I can’t let myself hate him. Elemak is a man of many fine gifts. Much like his half-brother, Gaballufix, who was once my husband. I loved Gabya for those gifts; but, alas, he passed few of them to our daughters, Sevet and Kokor. Instead they got his self-centeredness, his inability to bridle his hunger to possess everything that seemed even faintly desirable. And I see that in Elemak also, and so I hate and fear him as I came to hate and fear Gaballufix.
If only the Oversoul had been just the teeniest bit fussier about whom she brought along on this journey.
Then Rasa stopped in the middle of dressing herself and realized: I’m thinking of how selfish and controlling Elemak is, and yet I’m angry this morning because I’m not the one in charge here. Who is the controlling one! Perhaps if I had been deprived of real control as long as Elemak has, I’d be just as desperate to get it and keep it.
But she knew that she would not. Rasa had never undercut her mother as long as she lived, and Elemak had already acted to thwart his father several times—to the point of almost killing Volemak’s youngest son.
I must tell Volya what Elemak did, so that Volemak can make his decisions based on complete information. I would be a bad wife indeed if I didn’t give my husband good counsel, including telling him everything I know. He has always done the same for me.
Rasa pushed aside the flap and stepped into the air trap, which was much hotter than the inside of the tent. Then, after closing the flap behind her, she parted the outer curtain and stepped out into the blazing sun. She felt herself immediately drenched in sweat.
“Lady Rasa!” cried Dol in delight.
“Dolya,” said Rasa. What, had Dol been waiting for Rasa to emerge? There was nothing productive for her to do? Rasa could not resist giving her a little dig. “Working hard?”
“Oh, no, though I might as well be, with this hot sun.”
Well, at least Dol wasn’t a hypocrite…
“I volunteered to wait for you to come out of the tent, since Wetchik wouldn’t let anybody waken you, not even for breakfast.”
It occurred to Rasa that she was a little hungry.
“And Wetchik said that when you woke up you’d be starving, so I’m to take you to the kitchen tent. We keep everything locked up so the baboons don’t ever find it, or Elemak says we’d have no peace. They can’t ever learn to find food from us, or they’d probably follow us farther into the desert and then die.”
So Dolya did absorb information from other people’s conversation. It was so hard to remember sometimes that she was quite a bright girl. It was the cuteness thing she did that made it almost impossible to give her credit for having any wit.
“Well?” asked Dol.
“Well what?”
“You haven’t said a thing. Do you want to eat now, or shall I call everyone together to hear Wetchik’s dream?”
“Dream?” asked Rasa.
“He had a dream last night, from the Oversoul, and he wanted to tell us all together. But he didn’t want to waken you, so we all started doing other things, and I was supposed to watch for you.”
Now Rasa was deeply embarrassed. It was a bad precedent for Volya to set, making everyone else get up and work while Rasa slept. She did not want to be the pampered wife of the ruler, she wanted to be a full participant in the community. Surely Volemak understood that.
“Please, call everyone together. Point me to the kitchen tent first, of course. I’ll bring a little bread to the gathering.”
She heard Dol as she wandered off, calling out at the top of her lungs—with full theatrical training in projecting her voice—”Aunt Rasa’s up now! Aunt Rasa’s up!”
Rasa cringed inwardly. Why not announce to everybody exactly how late I slept in?
She found the kitchen tent easily enough—it was the one with a stone oven outside, where Zdorab was baking bread.
He looked up at her rather shamefacedly. “I must apologize, Lady Rasa. I never said I was a baker.”
“But the bread smells wonderful,” said Rasa.
“Smells, yes. I can do smells. You should catch a whiff of my favorite—I call it ‘burning fish.’“
Rasa laughed. She liked this fellow. “You get fish from this stream?”
“Your husband thought of doing some shore fishing down there.” He pointed toward where the stream flowed into the placid waters of the Scour Sea.
“So you had some luck?”
“Not really,” said Zdorab. “We caught fish, but they weren’t very good.”
“Even the ones that didn’t get turned into your favorite smell…”
“Even the ones we stewed. There just isn’t enough life on the land here. The fish would gather at the stream mouth if there were more organic material in the sediment being deposited by the stream.”
“You’re a geologist?” asked Rasa, rather surprised.
“A librarian, so I’m a little bit of everything, I guess,” said Zdorab. “I was trying to figure out why this place doesn’t have a permanent human settlement, and the reason came from the Index, some old maps from the last time there was a major culture in this area. They always grow up on the big river just over that mountain range.” He pointed east. “Right now there are still a couple of minor cities there. The reason they don’t use this spot is because there isn’t enough plantable land. And the river fails one year in five. That’s too often to maintain a steady population.”
“What do the baboons do?” asked Rasa.
“The Index doesn’t really track baboons,” said Zdorab.
“I guess not,” said Rasa. “I guess the baboons will have to build their own Oversoul someday, eh?”
“I guess.” He looked mildly puzzled. “It’d help if they’d just build their own latrine.”
Rasa raised an eyebrow.
“We have to keep an eye on them, so one of them doesn’t wander upstream of us and then foul our drinking water.”
“Mm,” said Rasa. “That reminds me. I’m thirsty.”
“And hungry too, I’ll bet,” said Zdorab. “Well, help yourself. Cool water and yesterday’s bread in the kitchen tent, locked up.”
“Well, if it’s locked up ... “
“Locked to baboons. For humans, it should be easy enough.”
When Rasa got into the kitchen tent she found he was right. The “lock” was nothing but a twist of wire holding the solar-powered cold chest closed. So why did they stress the fact that it was locked? Perhaps just to remind her to close it after her.
She opened the lid and found several dozen loaves of bread, as well as quite a few other cloth-wrapped parcels of food—frozen meat, perhaps? No, it couldn’t be frozen, it wasn’t cold enough inside. She reached down and opened one of the packages and found, of course, camel’s milk cheese. Nasty stuff—she had eaten it once before, at Volemak’s house, when she was visiting him once between the two times they were married. “See how much I loved you?” he had teased her. “The whole time we were married, and I never made you taste this!” But she knew now that she’d need the protein and the fat—they’d be on lean rations through most of the journey, and they had to eat everything that had nutritional value. Taking a flat round bread, she tore off half, rewrapped the rest, and then stuffed the part she meant to eat with a few chunks from the cheese. The bread was dry and harsh enough to mask much of the taste of the cheese, so all in all it wasn’t as nauseating a breakfast as it could have been. Welcome to the desert, Rasa.
She closed the lid and turned toward the door.
“Aaah!” she screeched, quite without meaning to. There in the doorway was a baboon on all fours, looking at her intently and sniffing.
“Shoo,” she said. “Go away. This is my breakfast.”
The baboon only studied her face a little longer. She remembered then that she had not locked the cold box. Shamefaced, she turned her back on the baboon and, hiding what she was doing with her body, she retwisted the wire. Supposedly the baboon’s fingers weren’t deft enough to undo the wire. But what if his teeth were strong enough to bite through it, what then? No point in letting him know that it was the wire keeping him out.
Of course, it was quite possible he could figure it out on his own. Didn’t they say that baboons were the closest things to humans on Harmony? Perhaps that’s why the original settlers of this planet brought them—for they were from Earth, not native to this place.
She turned back around and again let out a little screech, for the baboon was directly behind her now, standing up on his hind legs, regarding her with that same steady gaze.
“This is my breakfast,” Rasa said mildly.
The baboon curled his lip as if in disgust, then dropped down to all fours and started out of the tent.
At that moment Zdorab entered the tent. “Ha,” he said. “We call this one Yobar. He’s a newcomer to the tribe, and so they don’t really accept him yet. He doesn’t mind because he thinks it makes him boss when they all run away from him. But the poor fellow’s randy half the time and he can’t ever get near the females.”
“Which explains his name,” said Rasa. Yobar was an ancient word for a man who is insatiable in lovemaking.
“We call him that to sort of encourage him,” said Zdorab. “Get on out of here now, Yobar.”
“He was already leaving, I think, after I declined to share my bread and cheese with him.”
“The cheese is awful, isn’t it?” said Zdorab. “But when you consider that the boons eat baby keeks alive when they can catch them, you can understand that to them, camel cheese is really good stuff.”
“We humans do eat it, though, right?”
“Reluctantly and constantly,” said Zdorab. “And you never get used to the aftertaste. It’s the chief reason we drink so much water and then have to pee so much. Begging your pardon.”
“I have a feeling that city rules of delicate speech won’t be as practical out here,” said Rasa.
“But I ought to try more, I think,” said Zdorab. “Well, enjoy your meal, I’m trying not to create the aroma of burnt bread.”
He backed on out of the kitchen tent.
Rasa took her first bite of bread and it was good. So she took her second and nearly gagged—this time there was cheese in it. She forced herself to chew it and swallow it. But it made her think with fondness of the recent past, when the only camel product she had to confront was manure and no one expected her to eat it.
The tent door opened again. Rasa half expected to see Yobar again, back for another try at begging. Instead it was Dol. “Wetchik says we won’t gather until the shadows get long, so it won’t be so miserably hot. Good idea, don’t you think?”
“I’m only sorry you had to waste half the day waiting for me.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Dol. “I didn’t want to work anyway. I’m not much at gardening. I think I’d probably kill the flowers right along with the weeds.”
“I don’t think it’s a flower garden,” said Rasa.
“You know what I mean,” said Dol.
Oh, yes, I understand exactly.
I also understand that I must find Volemak and insist that he put me to work at once. It will never do for me to get days of rest when everyone else is working hard. I may be the second oldest here, but that doesn’t mean I’m old. Why, I can still have babies, and I certainly will, if I can get Volya to greet me as his long-lost wife, instead of treating me like an invalid child.
What she could not say to herself, though she knew it and hated it, was the fact that she would have to have babies to have any role at all here in the desert. For they were reverting to a primitive state of human life here, in which survival and reproduction were at the forefront, and the kind of civilized life that she had mastered in Basilica would never exist again for her. Instead she would be competing with younger women for position in this new tribe, and the coin of the competition would be babies. Those who had them would be somebody; those who didn’t, wouldn’t. And at Rasa’s age, it was important to begin quickly, for she wouldn’t have as long as the younger ones.
Angry again, though with no one but poor frivolous Dol to be angry at, Rasa left the kitchen tent, still eating her bread and cheese. She looked around the encampment. When they had come down the steep incline into the canyon, there had been only four tents. Now there were ten. Rasa recognized the traveling tents, and felt vaguely guilty that the others were still living in such cramped quarters, when she and Volya shared so much space—a large, double-walled tent. Now, though, she could see that the tents were laid out in a couple of concentric circles, but the tent she shared with Volemak was not the center; nor was the kitchen tent. Indeed, at the center was the smallest of the four original tents, and after a moment’s thought Rasa realized that that was the tent where the Index was kept.
She had simply assumed that Volemak would keep the Index in his own tent, but of course that would not do—Zdorab and Issib would be using the Index all the time, and could hardly be expected to arrange their schedule around such inconveniences as an old woman whose husband let her sleep too late in the morning.
Rasa stood outside the door of the small tent and clapped twice.
“Come in.”
From the voice she knew at once that it was Issya. She felt a stab of guilt, for last night she had hardly spoken to the boy—the man—that was her firstborn child. Only when she and Volya had spoken to the four unmarried ones all at once, really. And even now, knowing that he was inside the tent, she wanted to go away and come back another time.
Why was she avoiding him? Not because of his physical defects—she was used to that by now, having helped him through his infancy and early childhood, having fitted him for chairs and floats so he could move easily and have a nearly normal life—or at least a life of freedom. She knew his body almost more intimately than he knew it himself, since until he was well into puberty she had washed him head to toe, and massaged and moved his limbs to keep them flexible before he slowly, painfully learned to move them himself. During all those sessions together they had talked and talked—more than any of her other children, Issib was her friend. Yet she didn’t want to face him.
So of course she parted the door and walked into the tent and faced him.
He was sitting in his chair which had linked itself to the solar panel atop the tent so he wasn’t wasting battery power. The chair had picked up the Index and now held it in front of Issib, where it rested against his left hand. Rasa had never seen the Index but knew at once that this had to be it, if only because it was an object she had never seen.
“Does it speak to you?” she asked.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” said Issib. “Was your morning restful?”
“Or does it have some kind of display, like a regular computer?” She refused to let him goad her by reminding her of how late she had arisen.
“Some of us didn’t sleep at all,” said Issib. “Some of us lay awake wondering how it happened that our wives-to-be were brought in and dumped on us with only the most cursory of introductions.”
“Oh, Issya,” said Rasa, “you know that this situation is the natural consequence of the way things are, and nobody planned it. You’re feeling resentful? Well, so am I. So here’s an idea—I won’t take it out on you, and you don’t take it out on me.”
“Who else can I take it out on?” said Issib, smiling wanly.
“The Oversoul. Tell your chair to throw the Index across the room.”
Issib shook his head. “The Oversoul would simply override my command. And besides, the Index isn’t the Oversoul, it’s simply our most powerful tool for accessing the Oversoul’s memory.”
“How much does it remember?”
Issib looked at her for a moment. “You know, I never thought you’d refer to the Oversoul as it.”
Rasa was startled to realize she had done so, but knew at once why she had done so. “I wasn’t thinking of her— the Over-soul. I was thinking of it— the Index.”
“It remembers everything,” said Issib.
“How much of everything? The movements of every individual atom in the universe?”
Issib grinned at her. “Sometimes it seems like that. No, I meant everything about human history on Harmony.”
“Forty million years,” said Rasa. “Maybe two million generations of human beings. A world population of roughly a billion most of the time. Two quadrillion lives, with thousands of meaningful events in every life.”
“That’s right,” said Issib. “And then add to those biographies the histories of every human community, starting with families and including those as large as nations and language groups and as small as childhood friends and casual sexual liaisons. And then include all natural events that impinged on human history. And then include every word that humans ever wrote and the map of every city we ever built and the plans for every building we ever constructed…”
“There wouldn’t be room to contain all the information,” said Rasa. “Not if the whole planet were devoted to nothing but storing it. We should be tripping over the Oversoul’s data storage with every step.”
“Not really,” said Issib. “The Oversoul’s memory isn’t stored in the cheap and bulky memory we use for ordinary computers. Our computers are all binary, for one thing—every memory location can carry only two possible meanings.”
“On or off,” said Rasa. “Yes or no.”
“It’s read electrically,” said Issib. “And we can only fit a few trillion bits of information into each computer before they start getting too bulky to carry around. And the space we waste inside our computers—just to represent simple numbers. For instance, in two bits we can only hold four numbers.”
“A-1, B-1, A-2, and B-2,” said Rasa. “I did teach the basic computer theory course in my little school, you know.”
“But now imagine,” said Issib, “that instead of only being able to represent two states at each location, on or off, you could represent five states. Then in two bits—”
“Twenty-five possible values,” said Rasa. “A-l, B-l, V-1, G-1, D-1, and so on to D-5.”
“Now imagine that each memory location can have thousands of possible states.”
“That certainly does make the memory more efficient at containing meaning.”
“Not really,” said Issib. “Not yet anyway. The increase is only geometric, not exponential. And it would have a vicious limitation on it, in that each single location could only convey one state at a time. Even if there were a billion possible messages that a single location could deliver, each location could only deliver one of those at a time.”
“But if they were paired, that problem disappears, since between them any two locations could deliver millions of possible meanings,” said Rasa.
“But still only one meaning at any one time.”
“Well, you can’t very well use the same memory location to store contradictory information. Both G-9 and D-9.”
“It depends on how the information is stored. For the Over-soul, each memory location is the interior edge of a circle –a very tiny, tiny circle—and that inside edge is fractally complex. That is, thousands of states can be represented by protrusions, like the points on a mechanical key, or the teeth on a comb—in each location it’s either got a protrusion or it doesn’t.”
“But then the memory location is the tooth, and not the circle,” said Rasa, “and we’re back to binary.”
“But it can stick out farther or not as far,” said Issib. “The Oversoul’s memory is capable of distinguishing hundreds of different degrees of protrusion at each location around the inside of the circle.”
“Still a geometric increase, then,” said Rasa.
“But now,” said Issib, “you must include the fact that the Oversoul can also detect teeth on each protrusion—hundreds of different values from each of hundreds of teeth. And on each tooth, hundreds of barbs, each reporting hundreds of possible values. And on each barb, hundreds of thorns. And on each thorn, hundreds of hairs. And on each hair—”
“I get the idea,” said Rasa.
“And then the meanings can change depending on where on the circle you start reading—at the north or the east or south-southeast. You see, Mother, at every memory location the Oversoul can store trillions of different pieces of information at once,” said Issib. “We have nothing in our computers that can begin to compare to it.”
“And yet it’s not an infinite memory,” said Rasa.
“No,” said Issib. “Not infinite. Because eventually we get down to the minimum resolution—protrusions so small that the Oversoul can no longer detect protrusions on the protrusions. About twenty million years ago the Oversoul realized that it was running out of memory—or that it would run out in about ten million years. It began finding shorthand ways of recording things. It devoted a substantial area of memory to storing elaborate tables of kinds of stories. For instance, table entry ZH-5-SHCH might be, ‘quarrels with parents over degree of personal freedom they permit and runs away from home city to another city.” So where a person’s biography is stored, instead of explaining each event, the biographic listing simply refers you to the vast tables of possible events in a human life—it’ll have the value ZH-5-SHCH and then the code for the city he ran away to.”
“It makes our lives seem rather sterile, doesn’t it. Unimaginative, I mean. We all keep doing the same things that others have done.”
“The Oversoul explained to me that while ninety-nine percent of every life consists of events already present in the behavior tables, there’s always the one percent that has to be spelled out because there’s no pre-existing entry for it. No two lives have ever been duplicates yet.”
“I suppose that’s a comfort.”
“You’ve got to believe that ours is following an unusual path. ‘Called forth by the Oversoul to journey through the desert and eventually return to Earth’—I bet there’s no table entry for that. “
“Oh, but since it has happened now to sixteen of us, I’ll bet the Oversoul makes a new entry.”
Issib laughed. “It probably already has.”
“It must have been a massive project, though, constructing those tables of possible human actions.”
“If there’s one thing the Oversoul has had plenty of, it’s time,” said Issib. “But even with all that, there’s decay and loss.”
“Memory locations can become unreadable,” said Rasa.
“I don’t know about that. I just know that the Oversoul is losing satellites. That makes it harder for it to keep an eye on us. So far there aren’t any blind spots—but each satellite has to bring in far more information than it was originally meant to. There are bottlenecks in the system. Places where a satellite simply can’t pass through all the information that it collects fast enough not to miss something going on among the humans it’s observing. In short, there are events happening now that aren’t getting remembered. The Oversoul is controlling the losses by guessing to fill in the gaps in its information, but it’s only going to get worse and worse. There’s still plenty of memory left, but soon there’ll be millions of lives that are remembered only as vague sketches or outlines of a life. Someday, of course, enough satellites will fail that some lives will never be recorded at all.”
“And eventually all the satellites will fall.”
“Right. And, more to the point, when those blind spots occur, there will also be people who are not under the influence of the Oversoul in any way. At that point they’ll begin to make the weapons again that can destroy the world.”
“So—why not put up more satellites?”
“Who? What human society has the technology to build the ships to carry satellites out into space? Let alone building the satellites in the first place.”
“We make computers, don’t we?”
“The technology to put satellites into space is the same technology that can deliver weapons from one side of Harmony to the other. How can the Oversoul teach us how to replenish its satellites without also teaching us how to destroy each other? Not to mention the fact that we could probably then figure out how to reprogram the Oversoul and control it ourselves—or, failing that, we could build our own little Oversouls that key in on the part of our brain that the Oversoul communicates with, so that we’d have a weapon that could cause the enemy to panic or get stupid.”
“I see the point,” said Rasa.
“It’s the quandary the Oversoul is in. It must get repaired or it will stop being able to protect humanity; yet the only way it can repair itself is to give human beings the very things that it’s trying to prevent us from getting.”
“How circular.”
“So it’s going home,” said Issib. “Back to the Keeper of Earth. To find out what to do next.”
“What if this Keeper of Earth doesn’t know either?”
“Then we’re up to our necks in kaka, aren’t we?” Issib smiled. “But I think the Keeper knows. I think it has a plan.”
“And why is that?”
“Because people keep getting dreams that aren’t from the Oversoul.”
“People have always had dreams that aren’t from the Oversoul,” said Rasa. “We had dreams long before there was an Oversoul.”
“Yes, but we didn’t have the same dreams, carrying clear messages about coming home to Earth, did we?”
“I just don’t believe that some computer or whatever that’s many light-years from here could possibly send a dream into our minds.”
“Who knows what’s happened back on Earth?” said Issib. “Maybe the Keeper of Earth has learned things about the universe that we don’t begin to understand. That wouldn’t be a surprise, either, since we’ve had the Oversoul making us stupid whenever we tried to think about really advanced physics. For forty million years we’ve been slapped down whenever we used our brains too well, but in forty million years the Keeper of Earth, whoever or whatever it is, might well have thought of some really useful new stuff. Including how to send dreams to people lighters away.”
“And all this you learned from the Index.”
“All this I dragged kicking and screaming from the Index, with Zdorab’s and Father’s help,” said Issib. “The Oversoul doesn’t like talking about itself, and it keeps trying to make us forget what we’ve learned about it.”
“I thought the Oversoul was cooperating with us.”
“No,” said Issib. “We’re cooperating with it. In the meantime, it’s trying to keep us from learning even the tiniest bit of information that isn’t directly pertinent to the tasks it has in mind for us.”
“So how did you learn all that you just told me? About how the Oversoul’s memory works?”
“Either we got around its defenses so well and so persistently that it finally gave up on trying to prevent us from knowing it, or it decided that this was harmless information after all.”
“Or,” said Rasa.
“Or?”
“Or the information is wrong and so it doesn’t matter whether you know it or not.”
Issib grinned at her. “But the Oversoul wouldn’t lie, would it, Mother?”
Which brought back a conversation they had had when Issib was a child, asking about the Oversoul. What had the question been? Ah, yes—why do men call the Oversoul he and women call the Oversoul she? And Rasa had answered that the Oversoul permitted men to think of her as if she were male, so they’d be more comfortable praying to her. And Issib had asked that same question: But the Oversoul wouldn’t lie, would it, Mother?
As Rasa recalled it, she hadn’t done very well answering that question the first time, and she wasn’t about to embarrass herself by trying to answer it again now. “I interrupted your work, coming here like this,” said Rasa.
“Not at all,” said Issib. “Father said to explain anything you asked about.”
“He knew I’d come here?”
“He said it was important that you understand our work with the Index.”
“What is your work with the Index?”
“Trying to get it to tell us what we want to know instead of just what the Oversoul wants us to know.”
“Are you getting anywhere?”
“Either yes or no.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re finding out a lot of things, but whether that’s just because the Oversoul wants us to know them or not is a moot point. Our experience is that the Index does different things for different people.”
“Depending on what?”
“That’s what we haven’t figured out yet,” said Issib. “I have days when the Index practically sings to me—it’s like it lives inside my head, answering my questions before I even think of them. And then there are days when I think the Oversoul is trying to torture me, leading me on wild goose chases.”
“Chasing after what?”
“The whole history of Harmony is wide open to me. I can give you the name of every person who ever came to this stream and drank from it. But I can’t find out where the Oversoul is leading us, or how we’re going to get to Earth, or even where the original human settlers of Harmony first landed, or where the central mind of the Oversoul is located.”
“So she’s keeping secrets from you,” said Rasa.
“I think it can’t tell us,” said Issib. “I think it would like to tell, but it can’t. A protective system built into it from the start, I assume, to prevent anybody from taking control of the Over-soul and using it to rule the world.”
“So we have to follow it blindly, not even knowing where it’s leading us?”
“That’s about it,” said Issib. “Just one of those times in life when things don’t go your way but you still have to live with it.”
Rasa looked at Issib, at the steady way he regarded her, and knew that he was reminding her that nothing the Oversoul was doing to her right now was even close to being as oppressive as Issib’s life in a defective body.
I know that, foolish boy, she thought. I know perfectly well that your life is awful, and that you complain about it very little. But that was unpreventable and remains incurable. Perhaps the Oversoul’s refusal to tell us what’s going on is also unpreventable and incurable, in which case I’ll try to bear it with at least as much patience as you. But if I can cure it, I will—and I won’t let you shame me into accepting something that I may not have to accept.
“What the Oversoul can’t tell us for the asking,” said Rasa, “we might be able to find out on the sly.”
“What do you think Zdorab and I have been working on?”
Ah. So Issib wasn’t really being fatalistic about it, either. But then another thought occurred to her. “What does your father think you’ve been working on?”
Issib laughed. “Not that” he said.
Of course not. Volemak wouldn’t want to see the Index used to subvert the Oversoul. “Ah. So the Oversoul isn’t the only one that doesn’t tell others what she’s doing.”
“And what do you tell, Lady Mother?” asked Issib.
What an interesting question. Do I tell Volemak what Issib is doing and run the risk of Volya trying to ban his son from using the Index? And yet I have never kept secrets from Volemak.
Which brought her back to the decision she had made earlier that day, to tell Volemak about what happened in the desert—about Elemak passing a sentence of death on Nafai. That could also have awful consequences. Did she have the right to cause those consequences by telling? On the other hand, did she have the right to deprive Volemak of important information?
Issib didn’t wait for her answer. “You know,” he said, “the Oversoul already knows what we’re trying to do, and hasn’t done a thing to stop us.”
“Or else has done it so well you don’t know she’s doing it,” said Rasa.
“If the Oversoul felt no need to tell Father, then is it so urgent, really, for you to do so?”
Rasa thought about that for a moment. Issib thought he was asking only about his own secret, but she was deciding about both. This was the Oversoul’s expedition, after all, and if anyone knew and understood human behavior, it was the Oversoul.
Sheknows what happened on the desert, just as she knows what Issib and Zdorab are doing with the Index. So why not leave it up to the Oversoul to decide what to tell?
Because that’s exactly what Zdorab and Issib are trying to find a way to circumvent—the Oversoul’s power to make all these decisions about telling or not telling. I don’t want the Oversoul deciding what I can or cannot know—and yet here I am contemplating treating my husband exactly as the Oversoul treats me. And yet the Oversoul really did know better than Rasa whether Volemak should be informed about these things.
“I really hate dilemmas like this,” said Rasa.
“So?”
“So I’ll decide later,” she said.
“That’s a decision, too,” said Issib.
“I know that, my clever firstborn,” said Rasa. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a permanent one.”
“You haven’t finished your bread,” said Issib.
“That’s because there’s camel cheese in it.”
“Really vile stuff, isn’t it,” said Issib. “And you wouldn’t believe how it constipates you.”
“I can’t wait.”
“That’s why none of the rest of us ever eat it,” said Issib.
Rasa glared at him. “So why is there so much in the coldbox?”
“Because we share it with the baboons. They think it’s candy.”
Rasa looked at her half-eaten sandwich. “I’ve been eating baboon food.” Then she laughed. “No wonder Yobar came into the kitchen tent! He thought I was preparing a treat for him!”
“Just wait till you actually give him a piece of cheese, and he tries to mate with your leg.”
“I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
“Of course, I’ve only seen him do it with Father and Zdorab. He might be a zhop, in which case he’ll just ignore you.”
Rasa laughed, but Issib’s crude little joke about the baboon being a homosexual made her think. What if the Oversoul had brought someone along in their company who wasn’t going to be able to perform his siring duties? And then another thought—did the Oversoul send this idea to her? Was it a warning?
She shuddered and laid her hand on the Index. Tell me now, she said silently. Is one of our company unable to take part? Will one of the wives be disappointed?
But the Index answered her not at all.
It was late afternoon and the only one who had killed any game today was Nafai, which annoyed Mebbekew beyond endurance. So Nafai was better at climbing quietly on rocks than Mebbekew was—so what? So Nafai could aim a pulse like he’d been born with it in his hands—all that proved was that Elemak should have fired the thing when he had the chance out on the desert.
Out on the desert. As if they weren’t still in the desert. Though in truth this place was lush compared to some of the country they had gone through. The green of the valley where they lived was like a drink of cool water for the eyes—he had caught a glimpse of the trees from a promontory a few minutes ago, and it was delicious to his eyes, such a relief after the bleak pale gray and yellow of the rocks and sand, the grayish green of the dryplants that Elemak persisted in naming whenever he saw them, as if anybody cared that he knew every plant that grew around here by its full name. Maybe Elemak really did have cousins among the desert plants. It would hardly have been surprising to know that some distant ancestor of Elemak’s had mated with a prickly gray bush somewhere along the way. Maybe I peed on a cousin of Elya’s today. That would be nice—to show exactly what I think of people who love the desert.
I didn’t even see the hare, so how could I possibly aim at it? Of course Nafai shot it—he saw it. Of course, Meb had fired his pulse, because everybody else was, too. Only it turned out not to have been everybody else after all. Just Vas, who aimed too low and his pulse set on too diffuse a setting anyway, and Nafai, who actually hit the thing and burned a smoky little hole right in its head. And, of course, Mebbekew, aiming at nothing in particular, so that Elemak had said, “Nice shot, Nafai. You’re aiming low and raggedly, Vas, and tighten the beam. And you, Mebbekew, were you trying to draw a hare on that rock with your pulse? This isn’t an etchings class. Try to aim toward the same planet that the quarry is on.”
Then Elemak and Nafai headed down to retrieve the hare.
“It’s getting late,” Mebbekew had said. “Can’t the rest of us go home without waiting for you to find the bunny-body?”
Elemak had looked at him coldly then. “I thought that you’d want to know how to gut and clean a hare. But then, you’ll probably never need to know how to do it.”
Oh, very clever, Elemak. That’s how to build up confidence in your poor struggling pupils. At least I fired, unlike Obring, who treats his pulse as if it were another man’s hooy. But Meb said none of that, just glared back at Elya and said, “Then I can go?”
“Think you can find the way?” asked Elemak.
“Of course,” said Mebbekew.
“I’m sure you can,” said Elemak. “Go ahead, and take anybody with you who wants to go.”
But nobody wanted to go with him. Elemak had made them afraid that Mebbekew would lose his way. Well, he hadn’t lost his way. He had gone in just the right direction, retracing their path quite easily, and when he clambered up to the crest of that hill just to be sure, there was the valley, exactly where he had expected to see it. I’m not completely incompetent, O wise elder brother. Just because I didn’t sweat my way across the desert a few dozen times like you, toting fancy plants on camelback from one city to another, doesn’t mean that I have no sense of direction.
If only he could figure out exactly when and where he tore his tunic and split the crotch of his breeches… He really hated it when his clothes weren’t at their best, and these were now soaked with sweat and caked with dust. He’d never be clean again.
He came to the edge of the canyon and looked down, expecting to see the tents. But there wasn’t a tent in sight.
For a moment he panicked. They’ve left without me, he thought. They hurried past me, struck the camp and left me behind, all because I couldn’t see the stupid hare.
Then he realized that he was simply downstream from the camp. There were the tents, up there to the left. And of course he was much closer to the sea. If the Scour Sea had had any waves like the ones on the shore of the Earthbound Sea, he’d have been able to hear the surf from here. And there were the baboons, eking out their miserable supper from the roots and berries and plants and insects and warty little animals that lived near the river and the seashore.
How did I end up here? So much for my sense of direction.
Oh, yes. We did walk down this way this morning, when we left Daddy’s lazy wife asleep in the camp and all the lazy women, especially my completely useless stupid lazy wife, lolling around the tents and the garden. That’s the only part of the route that I missed, just that one turn, so big deal, I still have a good sense of direction.
But he had a really bad taste in his mouth, and he wanted to kick something, he wanted to break something, he wanted to hurt someone.
And there were the baboons, right down there, stupid doglike animals that thought they were human. One of the females was showing red right now, and so the males were cuffing each other and maneuvering to get a quick poke. Poor stupid males. That’s how we live our lives.
Might as well go down the canyon wall here and walk up the valley to the camp. And on the way maybe I can get a clear shot at whichever male ends up plugging her siggle. He’ll die happy, right? And Nafai won’t be the only one going home with a dead animal to his credit.
About halfway down the rugged slope, after scuffing a knee and sliding a couple of times, Meb realized that the lower he got, the worse his line of sight would be toward the baboons. Already there were rocks and bushes blocking his view of some of them, including the ones who were busy trying to mate. However, a smallish one was in plain sight, considerably closer than the others had been. It would be an easier shot anyway.
Meb remembered what Elemak had taught them earlier in the day and braced his elbows on a boulder as he took aim. Even so, his hands kept trembling, and the more he tried to hold them steady, the worse the sight on the pulse seemed to bounce. And when he pressed his finger against the button to fire, it jostled the pulse again, so that a small jet of smoke erupted from a bush more than six meters from the baboon he had been aiming at. The baboon must have heard something, too, because it whipped around to look at the burning shrub and then backed away in fear.
But not for long. A moment later it moved in again, and watched the flame as if trying to learn some secret from it. The bush was dry, but not dead, and so it burned only slowly, and with a great deal of smoke. Meb aimed again, this time a little to the right to compensate for the movement that pushing the button would cause. He also found that his hands were a bit more steady this time, and now he remembered that Elemak had stressed the need to relax. So ... now Mebbekew was doing it just as Elemak had said, and this boon would soon be history.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he was startled by a sharp cracking sound only a meter from his head. His own shot went wild as he turned sharply to look at the place the sound had come from. A small plant growing from a crack in the rock a couple of meters above his head had been burnt to nothing, and smoke was rising from the spot. Since he had just seen the same thing happen to the shrub near the baboon, Meb recognized immediately what had happened. Someone was firing a pulse at him. Bandits had come—the camp was in danger, and he was going to die, off by himself, because the bandits had no choice but to kill him to keep him from giving the alarm. But I won’t give the alarm, he thought. Just let me live and I’ll hide here and be very quiet until it’s all over, just don’t kill me ...
“What were you doing, shooting at baboons!”
With a clatter of small stones, Nafai slid down the last slope to stand in on the stone where Meb was standing. Meb saw with some pleasure that Nafai had slipped down just as he had; but then realized that Nafai had somehow done it without losing control, and ended up on his feet instead of sitting on the stone.
Only then did Meb realize that it was Nafai who had shot at him, and missed him by only a couple of meters. “What were you trying to do, kill me?” demanded Meb. “You’re not that good a shot that you should be shooting so close to humans!”
“We don’t kill baboons,” said Nafai. “They’re like people—what are you thinking of!”
“Oh, since when do people sit around digging for grubs, looking for a chance to tup every woman with a red butt?”
“It pretty much describes your life, Meb,” said Nafai. “Did you think we were going to eat baboon meat?”
“I didn’t really care,” said Meb. “I wasn’t shooting for meat, I was going for the kill. You’re not the only one who can shoot, you know.”
With those words, it occurred to Meb that he and Nafai were alone now, with no one else watching, and Meb had a pulse. It could be an accident. I didn’t mean to touch the button. I was just shooting at a target and Nafai came down out of nowhere. I didn’t hear him, I was concentrating. Please, please forgive me, Father, I feel so terrible, my own brother, I deserve to die. Oh, you’re forgiven, my son. Just let me grieve for my youngest boy, who just got his balls shot off in a terrible hunting accident and bled to death. Why don’t you go get laid while I’m weeping here?
That’d be the day, Father actually wishing Mebbekew something he wanted!
“You don’t waste pulsefire on nothing shots,” said Nafai.
“Elemak said so—they don’t last forever. And we don’t eat baboon. Elemak said that, too.”
“Elemak can fart into a flute and play it as a tune, it doesn’t mean I have to do it his way.” I have the pulse in my hand. Already sort of half-aimed at Nafai. I can show how I turned around, startled, and the pulse sort of fired and blew out Nafai’s chest. At this range, it might blow him up entirely, spattering little Nafai bits all over. I’ll come home with blood on my clothes no matter what.
Then he felt a pulse pressed against his head. “Hand me your pulse,” said Elemak.
“Why!” demanded Meb. “I wasn’t going to do it!”
Nafai piped up. “You already fired at the baboon once. If you were a better shot it would already be done.” So Nafai, of course, misunderstood completely what Meb had meant that he wasn’t going to do. But Elemak understood.
“I said give me your pulse, handle first.”
Meb sighed dramatically and handed the pulse to Elemak. “Let’s make a big deal about it, shall we. I’m forbidden to shoot at a baboon, but you can point your pulse at the head of whichever brother you feel like pointing at, and it’s all right when you do it.”
Elemak clearly didn’t appreciate Meb’s reminder about the supposed execution of Nafai for mutiny in the desert. But Elemak merely left his pulse pressed to Meb’s temple as he spoke to Nafai. “Never let me see you aim your pulse at another human again,” said Elemak.
“I wasn’t aiming at him. I was aiming at the plant above his head and I hit it.”
“Yes, you’re a wonderful shot. But what if you sneeze? What if you stumble? It’s quite possible for you to take your own brother’s head off with one little slip. So you never aim at another person or anywhere near, do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said Nafai.
Oh, yes, yes, Big Brother Elemak, I’ll suck up to you just the way I’ve always sucked up to Papa. It made Meb want to puke.
“It was a good shot, though,” said Elemak.
“Thanks.”
“And Meb is lucky it was you who saw him, and not me, because I might have aimed for his foot and left him with a stump to help him remember that you don’t shoot baboons.”
This wasn’t right, Elemak attacking him like this in front of Nafai of all people. Oh, and of course, here come Vas and Obring, they have to be here to see Elemak showing him such disdain as to rag him in front of Nafai. “So suddenly baboons are the sacred animal?” asked Meb.
“You don’t kill them, you don’t eat them,” said Elemak.
“Why not?”
“Because they do no harm, and eating them would be like cannibalism.”
“I get it,” said Meb. “You’re one of those people who believe that boons are magical. They’ve got a pot of gold hidden away somewhere, every tribe of them, and if you’re really nice and feed them, then, after they’ve stripped your land bare of every edible thing and torn apart your house looking for more, they’ll rush off to their hiding place and bring the pot of gold to you.”
“More than one lost wanderer on the desert has been led to safety by baboons.”
“Right,” said Meb. “So that means we should let them all live forever? Let me tell you a secret, Elya. They’ll all die eventually, so why not now, for target practice? I’m not saying we have to eat it or anything.”
“And I’m saying you’re through hunting. Give me your pulse.”
“Oh, swell,” said Meb. “I’m supposed to be the only man without a pulse?”
“The pulses are for hunting. Nafai’s going to be a good hunter, and you’re not.”
“How do you know? It’s only the first day of serious work on it.”
“You’re not because you’re never going to have a pulse in your hands again as long as I live.”
It stung Mebbekew to the heart. Elemak was stripping away all his dignity, and for what? Because of a stupid baboon. How could Elya do this to him? And in front of Nafai, no less. “Oh, I get it,” said Meb. “This is how you show your worship for King Nafai.”
There was a moment’s pause in which Meb wondered if he might have goaded Elya just a speck too far and maybe this was the time Elemak was going to kill him or beat him to a pulp. Then Elemak spoke. “Head back to camp with the hare, Nafai,” he said. “Zdorab will want to get it into the coldbox until he starts the stew in the morning.”
“Yes,” said Nafai. Immediately he scampered down the hill to the valley floor.
“You can follow him,” Elemak said to Vas and Obring, who had just clattered down the slope, both of them landing on their butts.
Vas arose and dusted himself off. “Don’t do anything stupid, Elya,” said Vas. Then he turned and started down the nontrail that Nafai had used.
Since Meb figured these words from Vas were all the support he was going to get, he decided to make the most of it. “When you get back to camp, tell my father that the reason I’m dead is because Elya’s little accident with his pulse wasn’t an accident at all.”
“Yes, tell Father that,” said Elemak. “It’ll prove to him what he’s long suspected, that Meb is out of his dear little mind.”
“I’ll tell him nothing at all, for now— unlessyou two don’t get back to camp right away,” said Vas. “Come on, Obring.”
“I’m not your puppy,” said Obring.
“All right then, stay,” said Vas.
“Stay and do what?” asked Obring.
“If you have to ask, you’d better come with me,” said Vas. “We don’t want to interfere in this little family quarrel.”
Meb didn’t want them to go. He wanted witnesses to whatever it was Elya was planning to do. “Elemak’s just superstitious!” he called after them. “He believes those old stories about how if you kill a baboon, his whole troop comes and carries off your babies! Eiadh must be pregnant, that’s all! Come on back, we can all walk to camp together!”
But they didn’t come back.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” said Meb. “You don’t need to make such a fuss about it. If s not as if I hit the boon or anything.”
Elemak leaned in close to him. “You’ll never take a pulse in your hands again.”
“Nafai was the one who shot at me,” said Meb. “You’ll take away my pulse for shooting at a boon, and Nafai shoots at me and he gets to keep his?”
“You don’t kill animals you don’t plan to eat. That’s a law of the desert, too. But you know why I’m taking your pulse, and it isn’t the baboon.”
“What, then?”
“Your fingers were itching,” said Elemak. “To kill Nafai.”
“Oh, you can read my mind now, is that it?”
“I can read your body, and Nafai’s no fool, either, he knows what you were planning. Don’t you realize that the second you started to move your pulse he would have blown your head off?”
“He doesn’t have the spine for it.”
“Maybe not,” said Elemak. “And maybe neither do you. But you aren’t going to get the chance.”
This was the stupidest thing Meb had ever heard. “A couple of days ago on the desert you tried to tie him up and leave him for the animals!”
“A couple of days ago I thought I could get us back to civilization,” said Elemak. “But that isn’t going to happen now. We’re stuck out here, together whether we like it or not, and if Eiadh isn’t pregnant yet she will be soon.”
“If you can just figure out how it’s done.”
He had pushed a bit too far, he discovered, for Elemak swung his left arm around and smacked him square on the nose with his palm.
“Gaah! Aah!” Mebbekew grabbed at his nose, and sure enough his hands came away bloody. “You peedar! Hooy sauce!”
“Yeah, right,” said Elemak. “I love how pain makes you eloquent.”
“Now I’ve got blood all over my clothes.”
“It’ll only help you bring off the illusion of being manly,” said Elemak. “Now listen to me, and listen close, because I mean this. I will break your nose next time, and I’ll go on breaking it every day if I see you plotting anything against anybody. I tried one time to break free of this whole sickening thing, but I couldn’t do it, and you know why.”
“Yeah, the Oversoul is better with ropes than I am,” said Meb.
“So we’re stuck with it, and our wives are going to have babies, and they’re going to grow up to be our children. Do you understand that? This company, these sixteen people we’ve got here, that’s going to be the whole world that our children grow up in. And it’s not going to be a world where a little ossly-ope like you goes around murdering people because they didn’t let him shoot a baboon. Do you understand me?”
“Sure,” said Meb. “It’ll be a world where big tough he-men like you get their jollies by smacking people around.”
“You won’t get smacked again if you behave,” said Elemak. “There’ll be no killing, period. Because no matter how smart you think you are, I’ll be there before you, waiting for you, and I’ll tear you apart. Do you understand me, my little actor friend?”
“I understand that you’re sucking up to Nafai for all you’re worth,” said Mebbekew. He half expected Elemak to hit him again. Instead Elya chuckled.
“Maybe so,” said Elemak. “Maybe I am, for the moment. But then, Nafai is also sucking up to me, too, in case you didn’t notice. Maybe we’ll even make peace. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’ve got camel kidneys where your brains should be, which is why your talk is nothing but hot piss in the dirt. Peace sounds just wonderful, my dear kind gentle older brother,” said Meb.
“Just remember that,” said Elemak, “and I’ll try to make your loving words come true.”
Rasa saw them come straggling home—Nafai first, with a hare in his poke, full of the triumph of making a kill, though of course, being Nafai, he tried vainly to conceal his pride; then Obring and Vas, looking tired and bored and sweaty and discouraged; and finally Elemak and Mebbekew, smug and jocular, as if they were the ones who had taken the hare, as if they were co-conspirators in the conquest of the universe. I’ll never understand them, thought Rasa. No two men could be more different—Elemak so strong and competent and ambitious and brutal, Mebbekew so weak and flimsy and lustful and sly—and yet they always seemed to be in on the same jokes, sneering at everyone else from the same lofty pinnacle of private wisdom. Rasa could see how Nafai might annoy others, with his inability to conceal his own delight in his accomplishments, but at least he didn’t make other people feel dirty and low just by being near them, the way Mebbekew and Elemak did.
No, I’m being unfair, Rasa told herself. I’m remembering that dawn on the desert. I’m remembering the pulse pointed at Nafai’s head. I’ll never forgive Elemak for that. I’ll have to watch him every day of the journey, to make sure of the safety of my youngest son. That’s one good thing about Mebbekew—he’s cowardly enough that you don’t really have to fear anything from him.
“I know you’re hungry,” said Volemak. “But it’s early yet for supper, and the time will be well spent. Let me tell you the dream that came to me last night.”
They had already gathered, of course, and now they sat on the flat stones that Zdorab and Volya had dragged into place days ago for just this purpose, so all would have a place to sit off the ground, for meals, for meetings.
“I don’t know what it means,” said Volemak, “and I don’t know what it’s for, but I know that it matters.”
“If it matters so much,” said Obring, “why doesn’t the Oversoul just tell you what it means and have done?”
“Because, son-in-law of my wife,” said Volemak, “the dream didn’t come from the Oversoul, and he is just as puzzled by it as I am.”
Rasa noted with interest that Volya still spoke of the Oversoul as he; so Nafai’s and Issib’s custom of calling her it had not yet overtaken him. She liked that. Perhaps it was just because he was getting old and unimaginative, but she liked it that Volemak still thought of the Oversoul in the old manly way, instead of thinking and speaking of her as a mere computer—even one with fractal-like memory that could hold the lives of every human who ever lived and still have room for more.
“So I’ll begin, and tell the dream straight through,” said Volemak. “And I’ll warn you now, that because the dream didn’t come from the Oversoul, it gives me more reason to rejoice—for Nafai and Issib, anyway—and yet also more reason to fear for my first sons, Elemak and Mebbekew, for you see, I thought I saw in my dream a dark and dreary wilderness.”
“You can see that wide awake,” murmured Mebbekew. Rasa could see that Meb’s jest was nothing but a thin mask for anger—he didn’t like having been singled out like that before the dream began. Elemak didn’t like it either, of course—but Elemak knew how to hold his tongue.
Volemak gazed at Mebbekew placidly for a moment or two, to silence him, to let him know that he would brook no more interruption. Then he began again.
“I thought I saw in my dream a dark and dreary wilderness,” said Volemak, but he knew as he said it that they would not understand what his words meant to him. Not the hot desert that they knew so well by now, dreary as that wilderness was. Where he walked in his dream was dank, chill and dirty, with little light, barely enough to see each step he took. There might have been trees not far off, or he might have been underground for all he knew. He walked on and on, with no hope and yet unable to stop hoping that by moving he would eventually escape this desolate place.
“And then I saw a man, dressed in a white gown.” Like a priest of Seggidugu, only those are ordinary men, sweating as they perform their rites. This man seemed so at ease with himself that I thought at once that he must be dead. I was in a place where dead men waited, and I thought perhaps that I was dead. “He up came to me, and stood there in front of me, and then he spoke to me. Told me to follow him.”
Volemak could tell that the others were getting bored—or at least the most childish of them. It was so frustrating, to have only words to tell them what the dream was like. If they could know how that voice sounded when the man spoke, how warm and kind he seemed, as if the very sound of him was the first light in this dark place, then they’d know why I followed him, and why it mattered that I followed him. Instead, to them, it’s only a dream, and this is clearly the dull part. Yet to me it was not dull.
“I followed him for many hours in the darkness,” said Volemak. “I spoke to him but he didn’t answer. So, since by now I was convinced that this man was sent by the Oversoul, I began to speak to the Oversoul in my mind. I asked him how long this had to go on, and where I was going, and what it was all about. I got no answer. So I became impatient, and told him that if this was a dream it was time for me to wake up, and if there was going to be some point to this maybe he should get to it before dawn. And there was no answer. So I began to think that maybe it was real, that it would go on forever, that this is what happens to us after death, we go to a dreary wasteland and walk forever behind some man who won’t tell us anything that’s going on.”
“Sounds like life, lately,” murmured Mebbekew.
Volemak paused, not looking at Meb, waiting for the others to glare him into silence. Then he went on. “Thinking it might be real, I began to plead with the Oversoul or whoever was in charge of this place to have a little mercy and tell me something or let me see something, let me understand what was happening. It was only then, after I began to plead for relief, that the place lightened—not like sunrise or coming near a campfire, I couldn’t see any source of the light, I could simply see, like bright daylight, and I came out of the stony place to a vast field of tall grass and flowers, bending slightly in the breeze. It was such a relief—to see life —that I can’t describe it to you. And a little way off—perhaps three hundred meters or so—there was a tree. Even at that distance I could see that amid the bright green of the leaves there were spots of white—fruit, I knew at once. And suddenly I could smell the fruit, and I knew that whatever it was, it was delicious, the most perfect food that ever existed, and if I could only taste that fruit, I’d never be hungry again.”
He paused for just a moment, waiting for Mebbekew’s obligatory smart remark about how hungry they all were right now, waiting for this dream to end. But Meb had apparently been chastened, because he was silent.
“I walked—I ran to the tree—and the fruit was small and sweet. Yes, I tasted it, and I can tell you that no food I’ve ever had in life was as good.”
“Yeah, like sex in dreams,” said Obring, who apparently thought that he could fill in for Meb. Volemak bowed his head for a moment. He could hear a movement—yes, Elemak rising to his feet. Volemak knew the scene without looking, for Elemak had learned this technique from him. Elemak was standing, looking at Obring, saying nothing at all, until Obring withered before him. And yes, there it was, Obring’s mumbled apology, “Sorry, go on, go on.” Volemak waited a moment more, and there was the sound of Elemak sitting back down. Now he could go on, perhaps without another interruption.
But it had been spoiled. He had thought he might be on the verge of finding exactly the right words to explain how the taste of the fruit had been in his mouth, how it made him feel alive for the first time. “It was life, that fruit,” he said, but now the words sounded empty and inadequate, and he knew the moment of lucidity had passed, and they would never understand. “The joy I felt when I tasted it—was so perfect—I wanted my family to have it. I couldn’t bear the thought that I had this perfect fruit, this taste of life in my mouth, and my family didn’t know about it, wasn’t sharing it. So I turned to look for you, to see where I might find you. You weren’t back in the direction / had come from, and as I turned around I saw that a river ran near the tree, and when I looked upriver, I saw Rasa and our two sons, Issib and Nafai, and they were looking around as if they didn’t know where they were supposed to go. So I called to them, and waved, and finally they saw me and came to me, and I gave them the fruit and they ate it and felt what I had felt and I could see it in them, too, that when they ate the fruit it was as if life came into them for the first time. They had been alive all along, of course, but now they knew why they were alive, they were glad to be alive.”
Volemak couldn’t help the tears that flowed down his cheeks. The memory of the dream was so fresh and strong inside him that telling it was to relive it, and the joy he felt could not be contained even now, after a day of work in the garden, even with the sweat and dirt of the desert on him. He could still taste the fruit in his mouth, could still see the look on their faces. Could still feel the longing he felt then, for Elemak and Mebbekew to taste it, too.
“I thought then of Elemak and Mebbekew, my first two sons, and I looked for them, wanting them to come and taste the fruit as well. And there they were, too, toward the head of the river where Rasa and Issib and Nafai had been. And again I called to them, and beckoned, but they wouldn’t come. I tried to tell them about the fruit, shouting to them, but they acted as if they couldn’t hear me, though I thought at the time that perhaps they really could. Finally they turned away from me and wouldn’t even pretend to listen. There I stood with that perfect fruit in my hand, that taste in my mouth, that scent in my nose, knowing that they would be as filled with joy as I was if only they would come and taste it, and yet I was powerless to bring them.”
Before his tears had been of joy; now they flowed for Elemak and Mebbekew, and they tasted bitter to him. But there was nothing more to be said about their refusal—he went on with the dream.
“It was only then, after my two oldest sons had refused to come to the tree, that I realized we weren’t the only people there in that huge meadow. You know how it is in dreams—there aren’t any people, and now there are thousands of them. In fact, not just people, but others—some that flew, some that scurried along—but I knew that they were people too, if you know what I mean. A lot of them had seen the tree. I thought maybe they had heard me shouting to Elya and Meb about what the fruit was like, how it tasted and all, and now they were trying to get to the tree. Only the distance was much farther now than it had been before, and it was as if they couldn’t actually see the tree itself, but only knew generally where it was. I thought, How are they going to find it if they can’t see it?
“That was when I saw that there was a kind of railing along the bank of the river, and a narrow little path running right along the river’s edge, and I could see that that was the only route they could follow to reach the tree. And the people who were trying to find the tree caught hold of the iron rail and began to follow the path, clinging to the rail whenever the ground was slippery, so they didn’t fall into the water. They pressed forward, but then they came into a fog, a thick and heavy fog drifting up from the river, and those that didn’t hold on to the rod got lost, and some of them fell into the river and drowned, and others wandered off into the mist and got lost in the field and never found the tree.
“But the ones who held on to the railing managed to find their way through the fog, and finally they came out into the light, near enough to the tree that now they could see it with their own eyes. They came on then, in a rush, and gathered around me and Rasa and Issib and Nafai, and they reached up and took the fruit, and those that couldn’t reach high enough, we plucked fruit for them and handed it down, and when there weren’t enough to reach from the ground, Nafai and Issib climbed the tree –”
“I climbed…” whispered Issib. All of them heard him, but no one said a thing about it, knowing or guessing what he must think, to imagine himself climbing a tree alongside Nafai.
“Climbed the tree and brought down more of the fruit to give to them,” said Volemak. “And I saw in their faces that they all tasted what I had tasted, and felt what I had felt. Only then I noticed that after eating the fruit, many of them began to look around them furtively, as if they were ashamed of having eaten the fruit, and they were afraid to be seen. I couldn’t believe that they could feel that way, but then I looked in the direction that many of them had looked and there on the other side of the river I could see a huge building, like the buildings of Basilica only larger, with a hundred windows, and in every window we could see rich people, extravagant people, stylish and beautiful people, laughing and drinking and singing, the way it is in Dolltown and Dauberville, only more so. Laughing and having a wonderful time. Only I knew that it wasn’t real, that it was the wine making them think they were having fun—or rather, they were having fun, but the wine made them think it mattered to have fun, when here, just across the river, I had the fruit that would give them the kind of joy that they were pretending they already had. It was so sad, in a way. But then I realized that many of the people who were there with me, people who were actually eating the fruit, were looking at the people in that huge building and they were envious of them. They wanted to go there, give up the fruit of the tree and join the ones who were laughing so loudly and singing so merrily.” Volemak didn’t tell them that for a moment he also felt a faint sting of envy, for seeing them laughing and playing across the river made him feel old, not to be at the party. Made him remember that when he was young, he had been with friends who laughed with him; he had loved women whose kisses were a game, and caressing them was like gamboling and rolling in soft grass and cool moss, and he had laughed, too, in those days, and sung songs with them, and had drunk the wine, and it was real enough, oh yes, it was real. Real, but also out of reach, because the first time was always the best time, and anything he repeated was never as good as it had been before, until finally it all slipped out of his reach, all became nothing but memory, and that was when he knew that he was old, when the joys of youth were completely unrecoverable. Some of his friends had kept trying, had pretended that it never faded for them—but those men and women faded themselves, became painted mannequins, badly made worn-out puppets made in a mockery of youth.
So Volemak envied the people in the building, and remembered having been one of them, or having tried at least to be one of them—was anyone every really a true part of this transient community of pleasure, which evaporated and re-formed itself over and over again in a single night, and a thousand times in a week? It never quite existed, this family of frolickers, it only seemed about to exist, always on the verge of becoming real, and then it retreated always just out of reach.
But here at this tree, Volemak realized, here is the real thing. Here with the taste of this fruit in our mouths, we are part of something that isn’t just illusion. We’re part of life, wives and husbands, parents and children, the vast onward passage of genes and dreams, bodies and memories, generation after generation, time without end. We are making something that will outlast us, that’s what this fruit is, that’s what life is, and what they have across the river, their mad pursuit of every sensation their bodies can experience, their frantic avoidance of anything painful or difficult, it all misses the point of being alive in the first place. Nothing that is new is ever new twice. While things that are true are still true the next time; truer, in fact, because they have been tested, they have been tasted, and they are always ripe, always ready…
Yet Volemak could explain none of this to the people gathered around him, because he knew that these feelings were his own. Not really part of the dream itself, but rather his own responses to the dream, and perhaps not even what the dream was supposed to mean.
“The people in the building looked out at us who were gathered by the tree, and they pointed and laughed, and I could hear them ridiculing us for having been duped into standing around eating fruit when we could really experience life if we would only come over the river and join them. Join the party.”
“Yes,” whispered Obring sharply.
“I saw a lot of the ones who had tasted the fruit drop what was left of it onto the grass and head for the river, to cross it and get to the building, and many who had never tasted it or even come near the tree also headed for the endless party going on there. Some of them drowned in the river, were swept away downstream, but many of them made it across and went to the building, dripping wet, and went inside, and I saw them come to the windows and point at us and laugh. But I wasn’t angry with them, because now I saw something I hadn’t seen before. The river was filthy, you see. Raw sewage floating in it. All the garbage of an unfastidious city was flowing downstream, and when they got out of the water, that’s what was dripping from their clothing, that’s what they smelled like when they entered the party, and inside the building, everybody there was covered with the sludge from the river, and the smell was unspeakable. And when you looked into the building you could see that no one actually enjoyed being near anybody else, because of the filth and the stench. They’d come together for a short time, but then the vileness of the other person’s clothing would drive them away. And yet nobody seemed to realize that—they all seemed so eager to cross the river and get into the party. They all seemed to be afraid that they’d be turned away if they didn’t hurry and get there now.”
Volemak sat straighter, leaned back on the rock he was sitting on. “That was all. Except that even at the end, I found myself looking for Elemak and Mebbekew, hoping they’d come join me at the tree. Because I still had that fruit in my hand, the taste of it in my mouth. And it was still delicious and perfect, and it didn’t fade away; each bite of it was better than the one before, and I wanted all my family, all my friends to have it. To be part of the life of it. And then I knew that I was waking up—you know how it is in a dream—and I thought, I can still taste it. I can still feel the fruit in my hands. How wonderful—now I’ll be able to bring it to Elya and Meb and they can taste it for themselves, because if they once taste it they’ll join the rest of us at the tree. And then I really woke up and found that my hands were empty, and Rasa was asleep beside me having her own dream and so she hadn’t tasted the fruit after all, and Nafai and Issib were still in their tents, and it hadn’t happened.”
Volemak leaned forward again. “But I could still taste it. I can taste it now. That’s why I had to tell you. Even though the Oversoul denies that he sent the dream to me, it felt more real, more true than any dream I’ve ever had before. No, it felt—it feels —more real than reality, and while I ate the fruit I was more alive than I’ve ever been in life. Does this mean anything to you?”
“Yes, Volya,” said Rasa. “More than you know.”
There was a general murmur of assent, and Volemak could see, looking around the group, that most of them looked thoughtful, and many of them had been moved—perhaps more by Volemak’s own emotions than by the tale of the dream itself, but at least something about it had touched them. He had done what he could to share his experience with them.
“In fact it’s made me really hungry,” said Dol. “All that talk about fruit and stuff.”
“And the sewage in the river. Mm-mmmm,” said Kokor. “What’s for supper?”
They laughed. The seriousness of the mood was broken. Volemak couldn’t be angry, though. He couldn’t expect that they would spend the rest of their lives transformed by his dream.
But it does mean something. Even if it didn’t come from the Oversoul, if s true, and it matters, and I’ll never forget it. Or if I do, I’ll be the poorer for it.
Those who had worked on supper got up to check on the food and begin to serve it. Rasa came and sat beside Volemak and put her arm around him. Volemak looked for Issib and saw that he had tearstains down his cheeks, and Nafai and Luet were walking arm-in-arm, thoughtful and tender with each other—so good, so right, the two of them. Most of the others Volemak barely knew. His gaze instinctively glided over and past them, searching for Mebbekew and Elemak. And when he saw them he was surprised, for they looked neither moved nor angry. In fact, if Volemak could have put a name on what he saw in their faces, he would have called it fear. How could they hear this dream and be afraid?
“He’s setting us up for later,” whispered Mebbekew. “This whole dream thing, with us cut off from the family—he’s going to disinherit us both.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Elemak. “He’s just letting us know that he knows about what happened on the desert, and he isn’t going to make a big fuss about it, but he knows. So this is probably the end of it—unless one of us does something really stupid.”
Meb looked at him coldly. “As I recall, it was you who pointed the pulse at Nafai on the desert, not me. So let’s not point the finger and call people stupid.”
“I seem to remember a more recent incident,” said Elemak.
“Of which you were the only witness. Even darling Nyef had no idea, and in fact it isn’t even true, you made it all up, you sorry pizdook.”
Elemak ignored the epithet. “I hope I never look as stupid as Father did, crying in front of everybody—about a dream.”
“Yes, everybody’s stupid except Elemak,” said Mebbekew. “You’re so smart you fart through your nose.”
Elemak could not believe how disgustingly childish Meb could be. “Are we still twelve, Meb? Do we still think rhyming smart with fart is clever?”
“That was the irony of it, you poor thick-headed lummox,” said Meb in his most charming voice. “Only you’re so smart you never understand irony. No wonder you think everybody around you is dumb—you never understand what they’re saying, so you think they must not be speaking intelligibly. Let me tell you the secret that everybody else in this camp knows, Elya, my pet brother. You may know how to get through the desert alive, but it’s the only thing you do know. Even Eiadh jokes with the other women that you finish with her so quickly she doesn’t even have time to notice you’ve started. You don’t even know how to please a woman, and Elya, let me tell you, they’re all very easy to please.”
Elemak let the insults and the innuendos slide off him. He knew Meb when he was in these moods. When they were both boys, Elemak used to beat him up when he got this way—but then it finally dawned on him that this was exactly what Mebbekew wanted. As if he didn’t mind the pain as long as he got to see Elemak so angry and red-faced, sweating, with sore hands from pounding on Mebbekew’s bones. Because then Meb knew he was in control.
So Elemak didn’t let himself be goaded. Instead he left Meb and joined the others getting their supper at the cookfire. Eiadh was serving from the stewpot—there hadn’t been time to cook the hare, so the only meat in it was jerky, but Rasa had made sure to pack plenty of spices so at least there’d be some flavor to the soup tonight. And Eiadh looked so lovely ladling it out into the bowls that Elemak was filled with longing for her. He knew well that Meb was lying—Eiadh had nothing to complain about in their lovemaking—and if there wasn’t a baby in her there would be soon. That knowledge tasted sweet indeed to Elemak. This is what I was searching for in all those journeys. And if that’s what Father meant by his tree of life—taking part in the great enterprise of love and sex and birth and life and death—then Elemak had indeed tasted of the fruit of that tree, and it was delicious, more than anything else that life had to offer. So if Father thought that Elemak would be shamed because he didn’t come to the tree in Father’s dream, then he’d be disappointed, because Elemak was already at the tree and didn’t need Father to show him the way.
After supper, Nafai and Luet headed for the Index tent. They would have gone before eating, they were that eager—but they knew that there’d be no stock of food for snacking later. They had to eat when meals were served. So now, as darkness fell, they parted the door and stepped inside—only to find Issib and Hushidh already there, their hands together on the Index.
“Sorry,” said Luet.
“Join us,” said Hushidh. “We’re asking for an explanation of the dream.”
Luet and Nafai laughed. “Even though it’s perfectly clear what it means?”
“So Father told you that, too,” said Issib. “Well, I suppose he’s right—it’s sort of a general moral lesson about taking care of your family and ignoring the fun life and all that—like the books they give to children to persuade them to be good.”
“But,” said Nafai.
“But why now? Why us?” said Issib. “That’s what we’re asking.”
“Don’t forget that he saw what the rest of us have seen,” said Luet. “What General Moozh saw.”
“What do you mean?” asked Issib.
“He wasn’t there,” Hushidh reminded them. “I haven’t told him yet—about my dream.”
“We saw dreams,” said Luet. “And even though all our dreams were different, they all had something in common. We all saw these hairy flying creatures—I thought of them as angels, though they don’t look particularly sweet. And the Oversoul told us that General Moozh saw them also—Hushidh’s and my father. And our mother, too, the woman called Thirsty who stopped Hushidh from being married to General Moozh. And the ones on the ground, too…”
Hushidh spoke up. “I saw the ratlike ones eating—someone’s children. Or trying to.”
“And Father’s dream is part of all that,” said Luet, “because even though it’s different from the others, it still has the rats and the angels in it. Remember that he said he saw some flying, and some scurrying along the ground? But he knew they were people, too.”
“I remember that now,” said Issib. “But he skipped right over it.”
“Because he didn’t realize that that was the sign,” said Luet. “Of what?”
“That the dream didn’t come from the Oversoul,” said Luet.
“But Father already said that,” said Issib. “The Oversoul told him.”
“Ah, but whom did it come from?” asked Nafai. “Did the Oversoul tell him that?”
“The Keeper of Earth,” said Luet.
“Who is that?” asked Issib.
“That’s the one that the Oversoul wants to go back to Earth to see,” said Luet. “That’s the one we’re all going to go back there to see. Don’t you understand? The Keeper of Earth is calling us all in our dreams, one by one, telling us things. And what happened in Father’s dream is important because it really does come from the Keeper. If we could just put it together and understand it ... “
“But something coming from Earth—it would have to travel faster than light,” said Issib. “Nothing can do that.”
“Or it sent these dreams a hundred years ago, at lightspeed,” said Nafai.
“Sent dreams to people who aren’t even born?” said Luet. “I thought you had dropped that idea.”
“I still think that the dreams might be sort of—in the air,” said Nafai. “And whichever of us is sleeping when the dream arrives, has the dream.”
“Not possible,” said Hushidh. “My dream was far too specific.”
“Maybe you just worked the Keeper’s stuff into your own dream,” said Nafai. “It’s possible.”
“No it isn’t,” said Hushidh. “It was all of a piece, my dream. If any of it came from the Keeper of Earth, it all did. And the Keeper knew me. Do you understand what that means? The Keeper knew me and she knew… everything.”
Silence fell over the group for a moment.
“Maybe the Keeper is only sending these dreams to the people it wants to have come back,” said Issib.
“I hope you’re wrong,” said Nafai. “Because I haven’t had one like that yet. I haven’t seen these rats and angels.”
“Neither have I,” said Issib. “I was thinking that maybe –”
“But you were in my dream,” said Hushidh, “and if the Keeper is calling to me, she wants you, too.”
“And we were both in Father’s dream,” said Nafai. “Which is why we have to find out what it meant. If s obviously more than just telling us to be good. In fact, if that’s what it was for it did a pretty lousy job, since it made Elemak and Mebbekew furious to be singled out in the dream because they refused to come to the tree.”
“So join us,” said Issib. “Touch the Index and ask.”
The longer arm of Issib’s chair held the Index so he could rest his hand on it; the others gathered near and touched it, too. Touched it and questioned it, asking over and over again, silently in their minds …
“No,” said Issib, “nothing’s happening. It doesn’t work this way. We have to be clear.”
“Then speak for us,” said Hushidh. “Ask the question for all of us.”
With their hands all on the Index, Issib put voice to their questions. He asked; they waited. He asked again. They waited again. Nothing.
“Come on,” said Nafai. “We’ve done everything you asked. Even if all you can tell us is that you’re as confused as we are, at least tell us that.”
The voice of the Index came at once: “I’m as confused as you are.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so from the start?” asked Issib in disgust.
“Because you weren’t asking me what I thought of it, you were asking what it means. I was trying to figure it out. I can’t.”
“You mean you haven’t yet,” said Nafai.
“I mean I can’t,” said the Index. “I don’t have enough information. I can’t intuit the way you humans do. My mind is too simple and direct. Don’t ask me to do more than I’m capable of. I know everything that is knowable by observation, but I can’t guess what the Keeper of Earth is trying to do, and you exhaust me when you demand that I try to do it.”
“All right,” said Luet. “We’re sorry. But if you learn anything…”
“I’ll tell you if I think it’s appropriate for you to know.”
“Tell us even if you don’t,” demanded Issib.
But the Index’s voice did not come again.
“It can be so infuriating dealing with the Oversoul!” said Nafai.
“Speak of her with respect,” said Hushidh, “and perhaps she’ll be more cooperative with you.”
“Show it too much respect and the computer starts thinking that it’s really a god,” said Issib. “Then it’s really hard to deal with.”
“Come to bed,” said Luet to Nafai. “We’ll talk of this again tomorrow, but tonight we need our sleep.”
It took little persuasion to get Nafai to follow her to their tent, leaving Hushidh and Issib alone.
They sat in silence for a while. Issib felt the uncomfortableness as if it were smoke in the air; it made it hard to breathe. It was Father’s dream that had brought them together here, to speak to the Oversoul through the Index. It was an easy thing to show Hushidh how comfortably he dealt with the Index; he was confident of himself, when it came to the Index, even when the Oversoul was itself confused and couldn’t answer aright. But now there was no Index between them—it rested voiceless in its case, where Nafai had placed it, and now only Hushidh and Issib remained, and they were supposed to marry each other and yet Issib couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I dreamed of you,” said Hushidh.
Ah! She had spoken first! At once the pent-up need to speak brought words to Issib’s lips. “And you woke screaming?” No, that was a stupid thing to say. But he had said it, and—yes, she was smiling. She knew it was a joke, so he didn’t have to be embarrassed.
“I dreamed of you flying,” she said.
“I do that a lot,” he said. “But only in other people’s dreams. I hope you didn’t mind.”
And she laughed.
He should have said something else then, something serious, because he knew she was doing all the hard part—she was saying serious things, and he was deflecting them with jokes. That was fine to make them comfortable with each other, but it also kept turning away from the hard things she was trying to say. So he knew he should help her say the hard things, and yet he couldn’t think of what they were, not now, sitting here with her in the Index tent, alone. Except that he knew he was afraid, for she needed a husband and it was going to have to be him except he had no idea if he could do any of the husbandly things for her. He could talk, of course, and he knew Hushidh well enough to know that she was a talker, when she knew you—he’d heard her speak passionately in class, and also in private conversations that he’d overheard. So they’d probably be able to talk, except that for talking they wouldn’t need to marry, would they? What kind of father will I be? Come here right now, son, or I’ll mash you with my chair!
Not to mention the question of how he’d get to be a father in the first place. Oh, he had worked out the mechanics of it in his own mind, but he couldn’t imagine any woman actually wanting to go through with her part of it. And so that was the hard question that he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Here is the script for how we’ll make babies—are you willing to consider taking the starring role? The only drawback is that you’ll have to do everything, while I lie back and give you no pleasure whatsoever, and then you’ll have the babies while I help you not at all, and finally when we get old you’ll have to nurse me till I die except that it won’t make much difference since you’ll probably have been nursing me all along, since once I have a wife everybody will expect to leave off helping me, so it’ll be you, performing personal services that will disgust you, and then you’ll be expected to receive my seed and bear me babies after that and there’s no words I can bring to my lips that could persuade you to do that.
Hushidh looked at him steadily in the silence. “You’re breathing rather heavily,” she said.
“Am I?” he asked.
“Is that passion or are you as scared of all this as I am?” she asked.
Yes. More scared. “Passion,” he said.
It wasn’t very light inside the tent, but it wasn’t very dark, either. He could see her make a decision, then reach up under her blouse and do something or other, and when she brought out her hands again, he could see that her breasts now moved freely under the cloth. And because she did that, he was more scared than ever, but he also felt just a touch of desire, because no woman had ever done such a thing in front of him, and certainly not for him, for him to see on purpose. Only he was probably expected to do something now and he had no idea what to do.
“I’m not very experienced at this sort of thing,” said Hushidh.
What sort of thing? he wanted to ask, but then decided not to, since he understood exactly what she meant and it wasn’t a good moment to joke.
“But I thought we ought to perform a kind of experiment,” she said. “Before we decide anything. To see if you could possibly be attracted to me.”
“I could,” he said.
“And to see if you can give anything to me,” she said. “It’ll be better if we can both enjoy it, don’t you think?”
Her words were so matter-of-fact. He could hear, though, from the trembling in her voice, that it wasn’t matter-of-fact to her. And for the first time it occurred to him that she probably didn’t think of herself as a beautiful woman. She was never one that the young men in the school had drooled over behind her back; now it occurred to Issib that she might be perfectly aware of that, probably was aware, and that she might be as frightened about whether he would desire her as he was about whether he could please her. It put them on something closer to equal terms. And instead of worrying about whether she’d be disgusted, he could give some thought to what she might enjoy.
She moved closer to him. “I asked my sister Luet,” she said. “What men do for women that she thought you might be able to do for me.” Her hands now rested on the arms of the chair. And now her right hand dropped down and rested on his leg. His thin, thin leg; he wondered how it felt to her, this thigh that barely had muscle on it. Then she pressed closer to him and he realized that his hand was now touched by the cloth of her blouse. “She said that you could do buttons.”
“Yes,” he said. It was hard, but he had learned to button and unbutton clothing that fastened that way.
“And I assumed that meant you could also undo them.”
Only then did he realize that he was being invited.
“An experiment,” he said.
“A midterm exam,” she said, “in unbuttoning and opening, with an extra credit question later.”
He lifted his hand—it was such hard work—lifted it and took hold of her blouse’s top button. It was a bad angle—backhanded.
“Not a good angle, is it,” she said. Then she moved her right hand to his other thigh, and higher, and then leaned in front of him. Now he could use both hands, and unbuttoning her blouse was almost easy, even though he had never had to unbutton someone else’s clothing before. It occurred to him that this would be a useful skill with children who hadn’t learned to dress themselves yet.
“Perhaps you can improve your time on the next one,” she said.
He did. And now as he worked the skin of his hands brushed against her breasts. He had dreamed, day and night, of touching a woman’s breasts, but had always believed that it would never be more than a dream. And now, as he unbuttoned each button, she lifted herself higher, so the next lower button would be in reach, and this moved her breasts closer to his face, until finally, by turning his head just a little, he would be able to kiss her skin.
His fingers unbuttoned the last button, and now the two sides of her blouse swung free, too. I can’t I can’t, he said, and then he did anyway, turned his head and kissed her. The skin was a little sweaty, but also soft and smooth, not like skin that had been weathered—not like his own hands, smooth as they were, or even his mother’s smooth cheek, which he had often kissed; this was such skin as had never touched his lips before, and he kissed her again.
“You only got an average mark for unbuttoning and opening,” she said, “but your extra credit work seems promising. You don’t always have to be that gentle.”
“I’m actually being as rough and brutal and manly as I can,” he said.
“Then it’s fine,” she said. “You can’t do it wrong, you know. As long as I know you’re doing it because you want to.”
“I do,” he said. And then, because he realized that she needed to hear it, he said, “I want to very much. You’re so ... perfect.”
She seemed to wince a little.
“Like what I imagined,” he said. “Like a dream.”
Then her hand moved, and tested him as well, to see how he was responding, and though his first instinct was to hide, to shy away, for once he was glad that his body wouldn’t allow him to move away that quickly, because she needed also to know that he had been aroused.
“I think the experiment was a success, don’t you?” asked Hushidh.
“Yes,” said Issib. “Does that mean you want me to stop now?”
“No,” she said. “But someone might come into this tent at any moment.” She drew away and rebuttoned her blouse. She was breathing rather heavily, though. He could hear her despite his own heavy breathing. “That was a lot of exercise, for me,” he said.
“I hope to wear you out.”
“Can’t unless you marry me,” he said.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Will you?”
“Is tomorrow soon enough?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Then maybe I should go and get your parents.” Her blouse was buttoned by now, and she got up and left the tent. Only then did he realize that whatever the underwear was that had bound her breasts before, it was lying in the middle of the carpet, a little white pile. He dropped his right hand to the controls of his chair and made the chair’s long arm go out and pick it up, then bring it close to him. He could see how the undergarment was made, and thought it was rather ingenious, but at the same time resented the way the elasticized fabric must hold a woman’s breasts close to her body all the time. Maybe the women wore such things only for riding camels. It would be sad if they were confined like that all the time. Especially for him, because he liked very much the way Hushidh’s body moved under her blouse when this had been removed.
He told his chair to stow it in the small case under the chair; it complied. Only just in time—Hushidh came back in at once with Father and Mother. “I can’t very well complain that it’s too sudden,” said Father. “We’ve been expecting this and hoping it would come sooner rather than later.”
“Do you want us to call everyone together for the ceremony?” asked Mother.
And have them spend a half hour being alternately bored by the ceremony and curious about how Hushidh and Issib would handle sex? “No thanks,” he said. “All the important people are here.”
“Well, too bad,” said Hushidh. “I asked Luet and Nafai to come in, too, as soon as they’ve notified Zdorab and Shedemei about the new sleeping arrangements.”
Issib hadn’t thought of that—Hushidh had been sharing a tent with Shedemei, just as Issib had with Zdorab. The two of them would be forced together before they were ready, and… “Don’t worry,” said Father. “Zdorab will sleep here with the Index, and Shedemei will stay where she is. Hushidh will move in with you, because your tent is already… equipped.”
Equipped with his private latrine arrangements, the pans for his sponge baths, his bed with the mattress of air bubbles so he didn’t get bedsores. And in the morning, he’d need to void his bladder and his bowels, and he’d say, Shuya, darling, would you mind bringing me my jar and my pan? And then wipe up after me, there’s a dear…
“And Nafai and Zdorab will come in the morning, to help you get ready for the day,” said Father.
“And to teach me,” said Hushidh. “That’s not going to be a barrier between us, Issib, if you’re to be my husband. I refuse to let it bother me, and you must refuse to let it bother you.”
Easier said than done, thought Issib, but he nodded his agreement, hoping that it would be true.
The ceremony took only a few moments, once Nafai and Luet got there. Nafai stood with Issib and Luet with Hushidh, while Mother and Father took turns saying the parts of the ceremony. It was really the women’s marriage ceremony, which was the usual way in Basilica, and so Father had to be prompted now and then to say his part right, but that was just part of the ceremony, or so it felt, to have Father’s voice repeating the words Mother had just spoken, so gently, to remind him. At last it was done, and Rasa joined their hands. Hushidh bent to him in his chair, and kissed him. It was the first time his lips had touched hers, and it surprised him. It also pleased him very much, and besides, during the kiss she knelt down beside the chair and as she did, her breasts came to press against his arm, and all he really wanted was for everyone else to leave them alone so he could see how the rest of the experiment would go.
It was another half hour, with some teasing and joking from Nafai and Luet, but at last they were alone in Issib’s tent, and they took up the experiment where they left off. When Hushidh was naked, she lifted him out of the chair—he knew that she was surprised at how very light he was, though Nafai had no doubt assured her that she’d have no difficulty lifting him, tall as he was. She undressed him and then brought her body near him, so he could give to her as much as she would give to him. He thought that he could not bear how powerful the feelings were as he could see the pleasure he was giving her, and feel the pleasures she was giving him; his body spent itself almost the very moment she eased herself upon him. But that was all right, too, for she still held him, and moved upon him, and kissed him, and he kissed her cheek, her shoulder, her chest, her arm, whenever a part of her came near his lips; and when he could, he pulled his arms around her so that when she moved atop him she could feel his hands also on her back, her thighs; gently, weakly, capable of nothing, really—but there. Was that truly enough for her? Was it something she could enjoy, again and again, forever?
Then, instead of wondering, it occurred to him to ask.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re done, then?”
“The first time, anyway,” he said. “I hope it didn’t hurt you too much.”
“A little,” she said. “Luet told me that I shouldn’t expect to be overwhelmed the first time anyway.”
“How not-overwhelmed were you.”
“I wasn’t overwhelmed,” she said. “But it’s not like I wasn’t whelmed at all, either. In fact, I’d say that on my wedding night I was well and thoroughly whelmed, and I rather look forward to our next whelming, to see how much better it can get.”
“How about first thing in the morning?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But don’t be surprised if you wake up and find yourself being taken advantage of in the middle of the night.”
“Are you just pretending, or do you really mean all this?” said Issib.
“Are you just pretending?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “This is the most wonderful night of my life. Mostly because…”
She waited.
“Because I never thought it would happen.”
“It did though,” she said.
“I answered,” he said. “Now you.”
“I thought I might have to pretend, and I would have pretended if I’d had to, because I know our marriage can work in the long run—I know it because I saw it in my dream from the Keeper of Earth. So if it meant I had to pretend to make it work well at the start, then I would have done it.”
“Oh.”
“But I didn’t have to pretend. I showed you what I really felt. It wasn’t as good as it’s going to be, but it was good. You were good to me. Very gentle. Very kind. Very…”
“Loving?”
“Was that what you meant to be?”
“Yes,” he said. “I meant that part most of all.”
“Ah,” she said.
But then in a moment he realized that she hadn’t said ah at all, but rather had let a sound escape her mouth without meaning to, and he saw in the dim light that she was crying, and it occurred to him that he had said exactly the right things to her, as she had said exactly the right things to him.
And as he drifted toward sleep, her body close to his, his arm resting lightly on her side, he thought: I have tasted of the fruit in Father’s dream. Not when we coupled, not when my body first gave its seed into a woman’s body, but rather when I let her see my fear, and my gratitude, and my love, and she let me also see hers. Then we both reached up and tasted just the first bite of that fruit, and now I know the secret from Father’s dream, the thing that even he didn’t understand—that you can never taste the fruit by reaching for it yourself. Rather you only taste it when you pick it from the tree for someone else, as Shuya gave the fruit to me, and I, though I never thought it possible, plucked and gave a taste of it to her.