“Please stop,” whispered Nafai. It was more than he could bear, fighting off the panic he felt as he heard these words.

  “The Oversoul is not our enemy. In fact, I think—I think it called on Father because it needs help.”

  “Why haven’t you said any of this before?”

  “I have—to Father. To Mother. To some teachers. Other students. Other scholars. I even wrote it up in an article, but if nobody ever remembers receiving it, they can never find it. Even when I sent it to the same person four times. I gave up.”

  “But you told me.”

  “You came into the library,” said Issib. “I thought—why not?”

  “Zrakoplov,” said Nafai.

  “I can’t believe you remembered the word,” said Issib.

  “A machine. The people don’t just . . . fly. They use a machine.”

  “Don’t push it,” said Issib. “You’ll just make yourself sick. You have a headache already, right?”

  “But I’m right, yes?”

  “My best guess is that it was hollow, like a house, and people got inside it to fly. Like a ship, only through the air. With wings. But we had them here, I think. You know the district of Black Fields?”

  “Of course, just west of the market.”

  “The old name of it was Skyport. The name lasted until twenty million years ago, more or less. Skyport. When they changed it, nobody remembered what it even meant.”

  “I can’t drink about this anymore,” said Nafai.

  “Do you want to remember it, though?” asked Issib.

  “How can I forget it?”

  “You will, you know. If I don’t remind you. Every day. Do you want me to? It’ll feel like this every time. It’ll make you sick. Do you want to just forget this, or do you want me to keep reminding you?”

  “Who reminded you?”

  “I left myself notes,” said Issib. “In the library computers. Reminders. Why do you think it took me a year to get this far?”

  “I want to remember,” said Nafai.

  “You’ll get angry at me.”

  “Remind me not to.”

  “It’ll make you sick.”

  “So I’ll faint a lot.” Nafai slid down the pillar and sat on the porch, looking out toward the street. “Why hasn’t anybody noticed us out here? We haven’t exactly been whispering.”

  Issib laughed. “Oh, they noticed. Mother came out once, and a couple of the teachers. They heard us talking for a couple of moments and then they just sort of forgot why they came out.”

  “This is great. If we want them to leave us alone, all we have to do is talk about the zrakoplovs.”

  “Well,” said Issib, “that only works with people who are still closely tied with the Oversoul.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Whoever thought of the war wagons, for instance.”

  “You said the Oversoul had given up on them.”

  “Sure, recently,” said Issib. “But there were people in Basilica planning to build war wagons, people dealing with the Potoku about them for a long time. More than a year. They had no trouble with the Oversoul. It’s like they’re deaf to it now. But most people aren’t—which is why Gaballufix and his men were able to keep it secret for so long. Most people who heard anything about war wagons would simply have forgotten they even heard it. In fact,” added Issib, “the Oversoul may have deliberately stopped forbidding that idea in the last little while precisely because there had to be open discussion of the war wagon thing in order to stop it.”

  “So the people who are deaf to the Oversoul—in order to stop them, the Oversoul has to stop controlling the rest of us, too.”

  “It’s a double bind,” said Issib. “In order to win, the Oversoul has to give up. I’d say that the Oversoul is in serious trouble.”

  It was making sense to Nafai, except for one thing. “But why did it start talking to Father?”

  “That’s what we need to figure out. That, and what it’s going to tell Father to do next.”

  “Oh, hey, let’s let the Oversoul keep a few surprises up its sleeve.” Nafai laughed, but he didn’t really think it was funny.

  Neither did Issib. “Even if we believe in the Oversoul’s cause, Nafai, somewhere along in here we may find out that the Oversoul is causing more harm than good. What do we do then?”

  “Hey, Issya, it may be doing a bad job these days, but that doesn’t mean that we’d do better without it.”

  “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  SEVEN

  PRAYER

  For a week Nafai worked with Issib every day. They slept at Mother’s house every night—they didn’t ask, but then, Mother didn’t send them away, either. It was a grueling time, not because the work was so hard but because the interference from the Oversoul was so painful. Issib was right, however. It could be overcome; and even though Nafai’s aversive response was stronger than Issib’s had been, he was able to get over it more quickly—mostly because Issib was there to help him, to assure him that it was worth doing, to remind him what it was about.

  They began to work out a pretty clear picture of what it was that humans had once had, and that the Oversoul had long kept them from reinventing.

  A communications system in which a person could talk instantly and directly to a person in any other city in the world.

  Machines that could receive artwork and plays and stories transmitted through the air, not just from library to library, but right into people’s homes.

  Machines that moved swiftly over the ground, without horses.

  Machines that flew, not just through the air, but out into space. “Of course there must be space traveling machines, or how did we get to Harmony from Earth?” But until he had punched his way through the aversion, Nafai had never been able to conceive of such a thing.

  And the weapons of war: Explosives. Projectile weapons. Some so small that they could be held in the hand. Others so terrible that they could devastate whole cities, and burn up a planet if hundreds were used at once. Self-mutating diseases. Poisonous gases. Seismic disruptors. Missiles. Orbital launch platforms. Gene-wrecking viruses.

  The picture that emerged was beautiful and terrible at once.

  “I can see why the Ovcrsoul does this to us,” said Nafai. “To save us from these weapons. But the cost, Issya. The freedom we gave up.”

  Issib only nodded. “At least the Oversoul left us something. The ability to get power from the sun. Computers. Libraries. Refrigeration. All the machines of the kitchen, the greenhouses. The magnetics that allow my floats to work. And we do have some pretty sophisticated handweapons. Charged-wire blades. And pulses. So that large strong people don’t have any particular advantage over smaller, weaker ones. The Oversoul could have stripped us. Stone and metal tools. Nothing with moving parts. Burning trees for all our heat.”

  “We wouldn’t even be human then.”

  “Human is human,” said Issib. “But civilized—that’s the gift of the Oversoul. Civilization without self-destruction.”

  They tried explaining it to Mother once, but it went nowhere. She stupidly failed to understand anything they were talking about, and left them with a cheerful little jest about how nice it was that they could be friends and play these games together despite the age difference between them. There was no chance to talk to Father.

  But there was someone who took an interest in them.

  “Why don’t you come to class anymore?” asked Hushidh.

  She sat down on the porch steps beside Nafai and bit into her bread and cheese. A large mouthful, not the delicate bites that Eiadh took. Never mind that Mother was the one who taught all her girl students to use their mouths when they ate, and not to take the mincing little bites that were in fashion among the young women of Basilica these days. Nafai didn’t have to find Hushidh’s obedience to Mother attractive.

  “I’m working on a project with Issib.”

  “The other students say that you’re hiding,” said Hushidh.

  Hiding. Because Father was so notorious and controversial. “I’m not ashamed of my father.”

  “Of course not,” said Hushidh. “They say you’re hiding. Not me.”

  “And what do you think I’m doing? Or has the Oversoul told you?”

  “I’m a raveler,” she said, “not a seer.”

  “Right. I forgot.” As if he should keep track of what kind of witch she was.

  “The Oversoul doesn’t have to tell me how you’re weaving yourself into the world.”

  “Because you can see it.”

  She nodded. “And you’re very brave.”

  He looked at her in consternation. “I sit in the library with Issya.”

  “You’re weaving yourself into the weakest of the quarreling parties in Basilica, and yet it’s the best of them. The one that should win, though no one can imagine how.”

  “I’m not party of any party.”

  She nodded. “I’ll stop talking if you don’t want to hear the truth.”

  As if she were going to be the fount of irresistible wisdom.

  “I’ll listen to a pig fart as long as it’s the truth,” said Nafai.

  Immediately she got to her feet and moved away.

  That was really stupid, Nafai rebuked himself. She’s just trying to help, and you make a stupid joke out of it. He got up and followed her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She shrugged away from him.

  “I’m used to making stupid jokes like that,” said Nafai. “It’s a bad habit, but I didn’t mean it. It’s not as if I don’t know for myself now that the Oversoul is real.”

  “I know that you know,” she said coldly. “But it’s obvious that knowing the Oversoul exists doesn’t mean you automatically get brains or kindness or even decency.”

  “I deserve it, and the next three nasty things you think of.” Nafai stepped around her, to face her. This time she didn’t turn away.

  “I see patterns,” she said. “I see the way things fit together. I see where you are starting to fit. You and Issib.”

  “I haven’t been following things in the city,” said Nafai. “Busy with the project we’re working on. I don’t really know what’s going on.”

  “It’s been wearing you out,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Nafai. “I guess so.”

  “Gaballufix is the center of one party,” she said. “It’s the strongest, for more reasons than one. It isn’t just about the war wagons anymore, or even about the alliance with Potokgavan. It’s about men. Especially men from outside the city. So he’s strong in numbers, and he’s also strong because his men are asserting themselves with violence.”

  Nafai thought back to conversations he had overheard at mealtimes. About the tolchocks, men who were knocking down women in the street for no reason. “His men are the tolchocks?”

  “He denies it. In fact, he claims that he’s sending his soldiers out into the streets of Basilica in order to protect women from the tolchocks.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Officially they’re the militia of the Palwashantu clan. But they all answer to Gaballufix, and the clan council hasn’t been able to meet to discuss the way the militia are being used. You’re Palwashantu, aren’t you?”

  “I’m too young for the militia yet.”

  “They’re not really militia anymore,” she said. “They’re hired. Men from outside the walls, the hopeless kind of men, and very few of them really Palwashantu. Gaballufix is paying them. And he paid the tolchocks, too.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I was pushed. I’ve seen the soldiers. I know how they fit together.”

  More of the witchery. But how could he doubt it? Hadn’t he felt the influence of the Oversoul whenever he thought about forbidden words? It made him sweat just to think of what he’d been through during the past week. So why couldn’t Hushidh just look at a soldier and a tolchock and know things about them? Why couldn’t camels fly? Anything was possible now.

  Except that the Oversoul’s influence was weakening. Hadn’t he and Issib overcome its power, in order to think about forbidden things?

  “And you know that I’m not one of them.”

  “But your brothers are.”

  “Tolchocks?”

  “They’re with Gaballufix. Not Issib, of course. But Elemak and Mebbekew.”

  “How do you know them? They never come here—they’re not Mother’s sons.”

  “Elemak has come here several times this week,” said Hushidh. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Why would he come here?” But Nafai knew at once. Without being able to think the thought himself, he knew exactly why Elemak would come to Rasa’s household. Mother’s reputation in the city was of the highest; her nieces were courted by many, and Elemak was of an age—well into the age, in fact—for a serious mating, intended to produce an heir.

  Nafai looked around the courtyard, where many girls and a few boys were eating their supper. All the students from outside were gone, and the younger children ate earlier. So most of the girls here were eligible for mating, including her nieces, if Rasa released them. Which of them would Elemak be courting?

  “Eiadh,” he whispered.

  “One can assume,” said Hushidh. “I know it isn’t me.”

  Nafai looked at her in surprise. Of course it wasn’t her. Then he was embarrassed; what if she realized how ridiculous it had seemed to him, that his brother might desire her.

  But Hushidh continued as if she didn’t even notice his silent insult. Certainly she was oblivious to how the idea of Elya courting Eiadh might hurt Nafai. “When your brother came, I knew at once that he was very close to Gaballufix. I’m sure that it’s causing Aunt Rasa a great deal of sorrow, because she knows that Eiadh will say yes to him. Your brother has a great deal of prestige.”

  “Even with Father’s visions causing such a scandal?”

  “He’s with Gaballufix,” said Hushidh. “Within the Party of Men—those who favor Gaballufix—the worse your father looks, the better they like Elemak. Because if something happened to your father, then Elemak would be a very rich and powerful man.”

  Her words reawakened Nafai’s worst fears about his brother. But it was a monstrous, unbearable thought. “Gaballufix wants Elya to influence Father, that’s all.”

  Hushidh nodded. But was she nodding in agreement, or just silencing him so she could get on with what she had to say? “The other strong party is Roptat’s people. They’re being called the Party of Women now, though they are also led by a man. They want to ally with the Gorayni. And also they want to remove the vote from all men except those currently mated with a citizen, and require all non-mated men to leave the city every night by sundown, and not return until dawn. That’s their solution to the tolchock problem—and to Gaballufix, as well. They have a wide following—among mated men and women.”

  “Is that the group that Father’s with?”

  “Everyone in the Party of Men thinks so, but Roptat’s people know better.”

  “So what’s the third group?”

  “They call themselves the City Party, but what they truly are is the Party of the Oversoul. They refuse to ally with any warring nation. They want to return to the old ways, for the protection of the Lake. To make this a city above politics and conflict. To give away the great wealth of the city and live simply, so no other nation will desire to possess us.”

  “Nobody will agree to that.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Many do agree. Your father and Aunt Rasa have won over almost all the women of the Lake Districts.”

  “But that’s hardly anybody. Only a handful of people live in the Rift Valley.”

  “They have a third of the council votes.”

  Nafai thought about that. “I think that’s very dangerous for them,” he said.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Because they don’t have anything but tradition to back them up. The more Gaballufix pushes against tradition, the more he frightens people with tolchocks and soldiers, the more people will demand that something be done. All that Father and Mother are doing is making it impossible for anyone to get a majority on the council. They’re blocking Roptat from stopping Gaballufix.”

  Hushidh smiled. “You’re really very good at this.”

  “Politics is what I study most.”

  “You’ve seen the danger. But what you haven’t told me is how we’ll get out of it.”

  “We?”

  “Basilica.”

  “No,” said Nafai. “You said that you knew what party I was in.”

  “You’re with the Oversoul, of course,” she said.

  “You don’t know that. I don’t even know that. I’m not sure I like the way the Oversoul manipulates us.”

  Hushidh shook her head. “You may not make the decision in your mind for many days yet, but the decision in your heart is already made. You reject Gaballufix. And you are drawn to the Oversoul.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Nafai. “I mean, yes, I’m drawn to the Oversoul, Issib came to that decision long ago and his reasons are good. Despite all its secret manipulation of people’s minds, it’s even more dangerous to reject the Oversoul. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to turn the future of Basilica over to the tiny minority of crazy religious fanatics who live in the Rift Valley and have visions all the time.”

  “We’re the ones who are close to the Oversoul.”

  “The whole world has the Oversoul inside their brains,” said Nafai. “You can’t get closer than that.”

  “We’re the ones who choose the Oversoul,” she insisted. “And the whole world doesn’t have her inside their brains, or they would never have started carrying war to faraway nations.”