At the gateway, a priest stopped them. “Prayer or meditation?” he asked.

  Issib shuddered—a convulsive movement, for him, since the floats exaggerated every twitch his muscles made. “I think I’ll wait in the Airdrawing Auricle.”

  “Don’t be a poddletease,” said Nafai. “Just meditate for a minute, it won’t kill you.”

  “You mean you’re going to pray?” said Issib.

  “I guess so,” said Nafai.

  Truth to tell, Nafai wasn’t sure why, or for what. He only knew that his relationship with the Oversoul was getting more complicated every day; he understood the Oversoul better than before, and the Oversoul was meddling in his life now, so it had become important to try to communicate clearly and directly, instead of all this slantwise guesswork. It wasn’t enough to slack off their research into forbidden words and hope that the Oversoul got the hint. There had to be something more.

  He watched as the priests jabbed Issib’s finger and wiped the tiny wound over the bloodstone. Issib took it well enough—he really wasn’t a poddle, and he’d had enough pain in his life that a little fingerjab was nothing. He just had little use for the rituals of the men’s worship. He called it “blood sports” and compared it to shark-fights, which always started out by getting every shark in the pool to bleed. As soon as his little red smear was on the rough stone, he drifted over toward the high bench against the sunny wall, where there was still about a half-hour of sunlight. The bench was full, of course, but Issib could always float just beside it. “Hurry up,” he murmured as he passed Nafai.

  Since Nafai was here to pray, the priest didn’t jab him. Instead he let him reach into the golden bowl of prayer rings. The bowl was filled with a powerful disinfectant, which had the double effect of keeping the barbed prayer rings from spreading disease and also making it so that every jab stung bitterly for several long seconds. Nafai usually took only two rings, one for the middle finger of each hand, but this time he felt that he needed more. That even though he had no idea what he was praying about, he wanted to make sure that the Oversoul understood that he was serious. So he found prayer rings for all four fingers of each hand, and thumb rings as well.

  “It can’t be that bad,” said the priest.

  “I’m not praying for forgiveness,” said Nafai.

  “I don’t want you fainting on me, we’re short-staffed today.”

  “I won’t faint.” Nafai walked to the center of the courtyard, near the fountain. The water of the fountain wasn’t the normal pinkish color—it was almost dark red. Nafai well remembered the powerful frisson the first time he realized how the water got its color. Father said that when Basilica was in great need—during a drought, for instance, or when an enemy threatened—the fountain flowed with almost pure blood, there was so much blood. It was a strange and powerful feeling, to pull off his sandals and strip off his clothes, then kneel in the pool and know that the tepid liquid swirling around him, almost up to his waist if he sat back on his heels, was thick with the passionate bloody prayers of other men.

  He held his barbed hands open in front of him for a long time, composing himself, readying himself for the conversation with the Oversoul. Then he slapped his hands vigorously against his upper arms, just as he did in his morning prayers; this time, though, the barbed rings cut into his flesh and the sting was deep and harsh. It was a good, vigorous opening, and he heard several of the meditators sigh or murmur. He knew that they had heard the sharp sound of his slap and seen his self-discipline as he restrained himself from so much as gasping in pain, and they respected this prayer for its strength and virtue.

  Oversoul, he said silently. You started all this. Weak as you are, you decided to start intruding in my family’s life. You’d better have a plan in mind. And if you do, isn’t it about time you let us know what it is?

  He slapped himself again, this time on the more sensitive skin of his chest. When the sting faded he could feel blood tickling through the invisible new hairs growing there. I offer this sacrifice to you, Oversoul, I offer my pain if you need it, I’ll do whatever you want me to do but I expect a promise from you in return. I expect you to protect my father. I expect you to have a real purpose in mind, and to tell Father what it is. I expect you to keep my brothers from getting mixed up in some terrible crime against the city and particularly from getting involved in a crime against my father. If you protect Father and let us know what’s going on, then I’ll do everything I can to help your plan work, because I know that the purpose that was programmed into you from the beginning is to keep humanity from destroying itself, and I’ll do all I can to serve that purpose. I am yours, as long as you treat us fairly.

  He slapped his belly, the sharpest pain yet, and now he heard several of the meditators commenting out loud, and the priest came up behind him. Don’t interrupt me, thought Nafai. Either the Oversoul is hearing this or it isn’t, and if it is hearing me, then I want it to know that I’m serious about it. Serious enough to cut myself to ribbons if need be. Not because I think this bloodletting has anything to do with holiness, but because it shows my willingness to do what I’m told, even when it has a harsh personal cost. I’ll do what you want, Oversoul, but you must keep faith.

  “Young man,” whispered the priest.

  “Get lost,” whispered Nafai in return.

  The sandals shuffled away over the stone.

  Nafai reached over his shoulders and scraped his hands up along his back. This was tearing now, not jabbing, and the wounds would not be trivial. Do you see this, Oversoul? You’re inside my head, you know what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling. Issib and I are letting you alone so you can give people visions again. Now get to work and get this situation under control. And whatever you want me to do, I’ll do. I will. If I can bear this pain, you know I can bear whatever you set me to suffer. And, knowing exactly how it hurts, I can do it again.

  He scraped again. The pain this time, as new wounds crossed old ones, brought tears to his eyes—but not a sound to his lips.

  Enough. Either the Oversoul heard him or it didn’t.

  He let himself fall forward into the bloody water, his eyes still closed. It closed over his head, and for a moment he was completely immersed. Then the water buoyed him up, and he felt the cool evening air on his back and buttocks as they floated on the surface.

  A moment more. Hold your breath a moment more. Longer. Just a little longer. Wait for the voice of the Oversoul. Listen in the silence of the water.

  But no answer came to him. Only the growing pain of the wounds in his upper back and shoulders.

  He arose to his feet, dripping wet, and turned toward the edge of the fountain, opening his eyes for the first time since entering the pool. Someone was handing him a towel. Hands reached for him to help him over the lip of the pool. When his eyes were dry, he could see that almost all the meditators had come away from the wall, and were now gathered around, offering him towels, his clothes. “A mighty prayer,” they were whispering. “May the Oversoul hear you.” They would not let him towel himself, or even dress. “Such virtue in one so young.” Instead it was other hands gently dabbing at his wounded back, vigorously toweling at his thighs. “Basilica is blessed to have such a prayer in this temple.” It was other hands that pulled his shirt over his head and drew his trousers up his legs. “A Father’s pride is a young son bowed with piety yet lifted up with courage.” They laced his sandals up his legs, and when they found that the thongs ended below his knee, they nodded, they murmured. “No foolish styles in this one.” “A working man’s sandals.”

  And as Nafai followed Issib away from the fountain, he could hear the murmurs continuing behind him. “The Oversoul was here with us today.”

  At the doorway leading to the Outflowing Ventricle, Nafai was momentarily blocked by someone coming in through that door. Since his head was bowed, he saw only the man’s feet. As one whose shirt was stained with the blood of prayer, he expected the man blocking him to make way for him, but it seemed he would not go.

  “Meb,” said Issib.

  Nafai lifted his gaze from the man’s shoes. It was Mebbekew. In a moment of piercing clarity, it seemed as though he saw his brother whole. He was no longer dressed in the flamboyant costume that had long been his style. Meb was now dressed as a man of business, in clothing that must have cost considerable money. It was not his clothing that Nafai cared about, nor the mystery of where he got the money to buy it—for that was no mystery at all. Looking at Mebbekew’s face, Nafai knew—knew, without words, without reason—that Mebbekew was Gaballufix’s man now. Maybe it was the expression on his face: Where once Meb had always had a jaunty sort of half-smile, a spark of malicious fun in his eyes, now he looked serious and important and just a little bit afraid of—of what? Of himself. Of the man he was becoming.

  Of the man who owned him. There was nothing in his expression or his clothing to mark him as belonging to Gaballufix, and yet Nafai knew. This must be how it comes in Hushidh, he thought, to see the connections between people. To have no reason, and yet also to have no doubt.

  “What were you praying for?” asked Mebbekew.

  “For you,” answered Nafai.

  Inexplicable tears came to Mebbekew’s eyes, but his face and voice refused to admit whatever feelings called them forth. “Pray for yourself,” said Mebbekew, “and for this city.”

  “And for Father,” said Nafai.

  Mebbekew’s eyes widened, just a bit, the tiniest bit, but Nafai knew that he had struck home.

  “Step aside,” said a quiet but angry voice behind him. One of the meditators, perhaps. A stranger, anyway. “Make way for the young man of mighty prayer.”

  Mebbekew stepped back into the dark shadow of the temple’s interior. Nafai moved past him and rejoined Issib, who was waiting in the corridor just beyond Meb.

  “Why would Meb be here?” asked Issib, once they were out of earshot.

  “Maybe there are some things you can’t do without speaking to the Oversoul first,” said Nafai.

  “Or maybe he’s decided it’s useful to be publicly seen to be a pious man.” Issib laughed a little. “He is an actor, you know, and it looks like somebody’s given him a new costume. I wonder what role he’s going to play?”

  EIGHT

  WARNING

  When Nafai and Issib got home, Truzhnisha was still there. She had spent the day cooking, replenishing the meals in the freezer. But there was nothing hot and fresh for tonight’s meal. Father was not one to let his housekeeper indulge his sons.

  Truzhnisha saw at once, of course, how disappointed Nafai was. “How should I have known you were coming home for supper tonight?”

  “We do sometimes.”

  “So I take your father’s money and buy food and prepare it to be eaten hot and fresh on the table, and then nobody comes home at all. It happens as often as not, and then the meal is wasted because I prepare it differently for freezing.”

  “Yes, you overcook everything,” said Issib.

  “So it will be nice and soft for your feeble jaws,” she said.

  Issib growled at her—in the back of his throat, like a dog. It was the way they played with each other. Only Truzhya could play with him by exaggerating his weakness; only with Truzhya did Issib ever grunt or growl, in mockery of a manly strength that would always be out of his reach.

  “Your frozen stuff is all right, anyway,” said Nafai.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her exaggerated tone told him that she was offended at what he had said. But he had meant it sincerely, as a compliment. Why did everybody always think he was being sarcastic or insulting when he was just trying to be nice? Somewhere along the way he really had to learn what the signals were that other people were forever detecting in his speech, so that they were always so sure that he was trying to be offensive.

  “Your father is out in the stables, but he wants to talk to the both of you.”

  “Separately?” asked Issib.

  “Now, should I know this? Should I form you into a line outside his door?”

  “Yes, you should,” said Issib. Then he snapped his jaws at her, like a dog biting. “If you weren’t such a worthless old goat.”

  “Mind who you’re calling worthless, now,” she said, laughing.

  Nafai watched in awe. Issib could say genuinely insulting things, and she took it as play. Nafai complimented her cooking, and she took it as an insult. I should go out in the desert and become a wilder, thought Nafai. Except, of course, that only women could be wilders, protected from injury by both custom and law. In fact, on the desert a wilder woman was treated better than in the city—desert folk wouldn’t lay a hand on the holy women, and they left them water and food when they noticed them. But a man living alone out on the desert was likely to be robbed and killed within a day. Besides, thought Nafai, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to live in the desert. Father and Elemak do, but even then they only do it by carrying a lot of supplies with them. Out on the desert without supplies, they’d die as fast as I would. The difference is, they’d be surprised that they were dying, because they think they know how to survive there.

  “Are you awake, Nafai?” asked Issib.

  “Mm? Yes, of course.”

  “So you plan to keep that food sitting in front of you as a pet?”

  Nafai looked down and saw that Truzhya had slid a loaded plate in front of him. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Giving food to you is like leaving it on the graves of your ancestors,” said Truzhya.

  “They don’t say thanks,” said Nafai.

  “Oh, he said thanks,” she grumbled.

  “Well what am I supposed to say?” asked Nafai.

  “Just eat your supper,” said Issib.

  “I want to know what was wrong with my saying thanks!”

  “She was joking with you,” said Issib. “She was playing. You’ve got no sense of humor, Nyef.”

  Nafai took a bite and chewed it angrily. So she was joking. How was he supposed to know that?

  The gate swung open. A scuff of sandals, and then a door opening and closing immediately. It was Father, then, since he was the only one in the family who could reach his room without coming in view of the kitchen door. Nafai started to get up, to go see him.

  “Finish your supper first,” said Issib.

  “He didn’t say it was an emergency,” added Truzhnisha.

  “He didn’t say it wasn’t” answered Nafai. He continued on out of the room.

  Behind him, Issib called out. “Tell him I’ll be there in a second.”

  Nafai stepped out into the courtyard, crossed in front of the gate, and entered the door into Father’s public room. He wasn’t there. Instead he was back in the library, with a book in the computer display that Nafai instantly recognized as the Testament of the Oversoul, perhaps the oldest of the holy writings, from a time so ancient that, according to the stories, the men’s and women’s religions were the same.

  “She comes to you in the shadows of sleep,” Nafai said aloud, reading from the first line on the screen.

  “She whispers to you in the fears of your heart,” Father answered.

  “In the bright awareness of your eyes and in the dark stupor of your ignorance, there is her wisdom,” Nafai continued.

  “Only in her silence are you alone. Only in her silence are you wrong. Only in her silence should you despair.” Father sighed. “It’s all here, isn’t it, Nafai?”

  “The Oversoul isn’t a man or a woman,” said Nafai.

  “Right, yes, of course, you know all about what the Oversoul is.”

  Father’s tone was so weary that Nafai decided it wasn’t worth arguing theology with him tonight. “You wanted to see me.”

  “You and Issib.”

  “He’ll be here in a second.”

  As if on cue, Issib drifted through the door, still eating some cheesebread.

  “Thank you for bringing crumbs into my library,” said Father.

  “Sorry,” said Issib; he reversed direction and started floating out the door.

  “Come back,” said Father. “I don’t care about the crumbs.”

  Issib came back.

  “There’s talk all over Basilica about the two of you.”

  Nafai traded glances with Issib. “We’ve just been doing some library research.”

  “The women are saying that the Oversoul is speaking to no one but you.”

  “We aren’t exactly getting clear messages from it,” said Nafai.

  “Mostly we’ve just been monopolizing it by stimulating its aversive reflexes,” said Issib.

  “Mmm,” said Father.

  “But we’ve stopped,” said Issib. “That’s why we came home.”

  “We didn’t want to interfere,” said Nafai.

  “Nafai prayed, though, on the way home,” said Issib. “It was pretty impressive stuff.”

  Father sighed. “Oh, Nafai, if you’ve learned anything from me, couldn’t you have learned that jabbing yourself and bleeding all over the place has nothing to do with prayer to the Oversoul?”

  “Right,” said Nafai. “This from the man who suddenly comes home with a vision of fire on a rock. I thought all bets were off.”

  “I got my vision without bleeding,” said Father. “But never mind. I was hoping that the two of you might have received something from the Oversoul that would help me.”

  Nafai shook his head.

  “No,” said Issib. “Mostly what we got from the Oversoul was that stupor of thought. It was trying to keep us from thinking forbidden thoughts.”

  “Well, that’s it, then,” said Father. “I’m on my own.”

  “On your own with what?” asked Issib.

  “Gaballufix sent word to me through Elemak today. It seems that Gaballufix is as unhappy as I am about the situation in Basilica today. If he had known diat this war wagon business would cause such controversy he would never have begun it. He said that he wanted me to set up a meeting between him and Roptat. All Gaballufix really wants now is to find a way to back down without losing face—he says that all he needs is for Roptat also to back down, so that we don’t make an alliance with anybody.”