How Luet envied Nafai and Issib, safe as they were in some distant land, not having to live in constant fear in this city that had so long been known by the poets as the Mountain of Peace.

  As the petition for the banning of Gaballufix gained support in the council, Gaballufix himself became bolder in the way he used his soldiers in the streets. There were more of them, for one thing, and there was no more pretense of protecting the citizenry from tolchocks. The soldiers accosted whomever they wanted, sending women and children home in tears, and beating men who spoke up to them.

  “Is he a fool?” Hushidh asked Luet one day. “Doesn’t he know that everything his soldiers do gives his enemies one more reason to ban him?”

  “He must know,” said Luet, “and so he must want to be banned.”

  “Then hasten the day,” said Hushidh, “and good riddance to him.”

  Luet waited for a vision from the Oversoul, some message of warning she should take to the council. Instead the only vision that came was a word of comfort to an old woman in the district of Olive Grove, assuring her that her long-lost son was still alive, and homebound on a ship that would reach port before too long. Luet didn’t know whether to be comforted that the Oversoul still took the time to answer the heartfelt prayers of broken-hearted women, or infuriated that the Oversoul was spending time on such matters instead of healing the city before it tore itself apart.

  Then at last the most feared moment came. The doorbell clanged, and strong fists beat on the door, and when the door was thrown open, there stood a dozen soldiers. The servant who opened the door screamed, and not just because they were armed men in perilous times. Luet was among the first to come to the aid of the terrified servant, and saw what had so unnerved her. All the soldiers were in identical uniforms, with identical armor and helmets and charged-wire blades, as might be expected—but inside those helmets, each one also had an identical face.

  It was Rasa’s oldest niece, Shedemei, the geneticist, who spoke to the soldiers. “You have no legitimate business here,” she said. “No one wants you. Go away.”

  “I’ll see the mistress of this household or I’ll never go,” said the soldier who stood in front of the others.

  “She has no business with you, I said.”

  But then Aunt Rasa was there, and her voice rang clear. “Close the door in the face of these hired criminals,” she said.

  At once the lead soldier laughed, and reached his hand to his waist. In an instant he was transformed before their eyes, from a youngish, dead-faced soldier to a middle-aged man with a grizzled beard and fiercely bright eyes, stout but not soft-bellied, clothed not in armor but in quietly elegant clothing. A man of style and power, who thought the whole situation was enormously amusing.

  “Gabya,” said Aunt Rasa.

  “How do you like my new toys?” asked Gaballufix, striding into the house. Women and girls and young boys parted to make way for him. “Old theatrical equipment, out of style for centuries, but they were in a stasis bubble in the museum and the maker machines still remembered how to copy them. Holocostumes, they’re called. All my soldiers have them now. It makes them somewhat hard to tell apart, I admit, but then, I have the master switch that can turn them all off when I want.”

  “Leave my house,” said Rasa.

  “But I don’t want to,” said Gaballufix. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Without them, you can speak to me any time. You know that, Gabya.”

  “I knew that once,” said Gaballufix. “Truth to tell, O noblest of my mates, my unforgotten bed-bundle, I knew that my soldiers would never impress you—I just wanted to show you the latest fashion. Soon all the best people will be wearing them.”

  “Only in their coffins,” said Aunt Rasa.

  “Do you want to hold this conversation in front of the children, or shall we retire to your sacred portico?”

  “Your soldiers wait outside the door. The locked door.”

  “Whatever you say, O mother of my duet of sweet songbirds. Though your door, with all its locks, would be no barrier if I wanted them inside.”

  “People who are sure of their power don’t have to brag,” said Aunt Rasa. She led the way down the corridor as Shedemei closed and barred the front door in the soldiers’ faces.

  Luet could still hear the conversation between Aunt Rasa and Gaballufix even after they turned a corner and were out of sight.

  “I don’t have to brag,” Gaballufix was saying. “I do it for the sheer joy of it.”

  Instead of answering, though, Aunt Rasa called loudly down the corridor.

  “Luet! Hushidh! Come with me. I want witnesses.”

  At once Luet strode forward, with Hushidh beside her at once. Because Aunt Rasa had brought them up, they didn’t run, but their walk was brisk enough that they had turned the corner and could hear Gaballufix’s last few whispered words before they caught up. “. . . not afraid of your witchlets,” he was saying.

  Luet gave no sign that she had heard, of course. She knew that Hushidh’s face would be even less expressive.

  Out on the portico, Gaballufix made no pretense of respecting the boundary of Aunt Rasa’s screens. He strode directly to the balustrade, looking out at the view that was forbidden to the eyes of men. Aunt Rasa did not follow him, so Luet and Hushidh also remained behind the screens. At last Gaballufix returned to where they waited.

  “Always a beautiful sight,” he said.

  “For that act alone you could be banned,” said Aunt Rasa.

  Gaballufix laughed. “Your sacred lake. How long do you think it will go unmuddied by the boots of men, if the Wetheads come? Have you thought of that—have Roptat and your beloved Volemak thought of it? The Wetheads have no reverence for women’s religion.”

  “Even less than you?”

  Gaballufix rolled his eyes to show his disdain for her accusation. “If Roptat and Volemak have their way, the Wetheads would own this city, and to them, the view from this portico would not be a view of holy land—it would all be city property, undeveloped land, potential building sites and hunting parks, and an extraordinary lake, with both hot and cold water for bathing in any weather.”

  Luet was astonished that so much of the nature of the lake had been explained to him. What woman had so forgotten herself as to speak of the sacred place?

  Yet Aunt Rasa said nothing of the impropriety of his words. “Bringing the Wetheads is Roptat’s plan. Wetchik and I have spoken for nothing but the ancient neutrality.”

  “Neutrality! Fools and children believe in that. There is no neutrality when great powers collide!”

  “In the power of the Oversoul there is neutrality and peace,” said Aunt Rasa, calm in the face of his storm. “She has the power to turn aside our enemies so they see us not at all.”

  “Power? Maybe he has power, all right, this Oversoul—but I’ve seen no evidence that he saves poor innocent cities from destruction. How did it happen that I alone am the champion of Basilica, the only one who can see that safety lies only in alliance with Potokgavan?”

  “Save the patriotic speeches for the council, Gabya. In front of me, there’s no point in hiding behind them. The wagons offered some easy profit. And as for war—you know so little about it that you think you want it to come. You think that you’ll stand beside the mighty soldiers of Potokgavan and drive off the Wetheads, and your name will be remembered forever. But I tell you that when you stand against your enemy, you’ll stand alone. No Potoku will be there beside you. And when you fall your name will be forgotten as quickly as last week’s weather.”

  “This storm, my dear lapsatory mate, has a name, and will be remembered.”

  “Only for the damage that you caused, Gabya. When Basilica burns, every tongue of flame will be branded Gaballufix, and the dying curse of every citizen who falls will have your name in it.”

  “Now who fancies herself a prophet?” said Gaballufix. “Save your poetics for those who tremble at the thought of the Oversoul. And as for your banning—succeed or fail, it makes no difference.”

  “You mean that you don’t intend to obey?”

  “Me? Disobey the council? Unthinkable. No one will find me in the city after I am banned, you can be sure of that.”

  But with those words he reached down and switched on his holocostume. At once he was armored in illusion, his face an undetectable mask of a vaguely menacing soldier, like any of the hundreds of others he had so equipped. Luet knew then that he had no intention of obeying a banning. He would simply wear this most perfect of disguises, so that no one could identify him. He would stay within the city, doing whatever he wanted, flouting the council’s edicts with impunity. Then the only hope of freeing the city from his rule would not be political. It would be civil war, and the streets would flow with blood.

  Luet knew from her eyes that Aunt Rasa understood this. She looked steadily at the empty eyes that stared back at her from Gaballufix’s holocostume. She said nothing when he turned and left; said nothing at all, in fact, until at last Luet took Hushidh’s hand and they walked away to the edge of the portico, to look out over the Valley of Women.

  “There’s nothing between them anymore,” said Hushidh. “I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content.”

  To Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love; they had made two babies, and yet, only fifteen years later, the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing. Even this forty-million-year world that the Oversoul had preserved as if in ice, even it would melt before the fire. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.

  TEN

  TENTS

  Wetchik had pitched his tents away from any road, in a narrow river valley near the shores of the Rumen Sea. They had reached it at sunset, just as a troop of baboons moved away from their feeding area near the river’s mouth, toward their sleeping niches in the steepest, craggiest cliff in the valley wall. It was the baboons’ calls and hoots that guided them during the last of their journey; Elemak was careful to lead them well upstream of the baboons. “So we don’t disturb them?” Issib asked.

  “So they don’t foul our water and steal our food,” said Elemak.

  Before Father allowed them to unburden the camels and water them, before they ate or drank anything themselves, Father sat atop his camel and gestured toward the stream. “Look—the end of the dry season, and yet it still has water in it. The name of this place is Elemak from now on. I name it for you, my eldest son. Be like the river, so that the purpose of your life is to flow forever toward the great ocean of the Oversoul.”

  Nafai glanced at Elemak and saw that he was taking the peroration with dignity. It was a sacred moment, the naming of a place, and even if Father laced the occasion with a sermon, Elemak knew that it was an honor, a sign that Father acknowledged him.

  “And as for this green valley,” said Father, “I name it Mebbekew, for my second son. Be like this valley, Mebbekew, a firm channel through which the waters of life can flow, and where life can take root and thrive.”

  Mebbekew nodded graciously.

  There was nothing named for Issib and Nafai. Only a silence, and then Father’s groan as his camel knelt for him to dismount. It was well after dark before they finally had the tents pitched, the scorpions swept outside, and the repellents set in place. Three tents—Father’s, of course, the largest though he was only one man. The next largest for Elya and Meb. And the smallest for Issib and Nafai, even though Issib’s chair took up an exorbitant amount of room inside.

  Nafai couldn’t help but brood about the inequities, and when, in the darkness of the tent, Issib asked him what he was thinking, Nafai went ahead and voiced his resentment. “He names the river and the valley for them, when Elemak’s the one who was working with Gaballufix, and Mebbekew’s the one who said all those terrible things to him and left home and everything.”

  “So?” said Issib, ever sympathetic.

  “So here we are in the smallest tent. We’ve got two extras, still packed up, both of them larger than this one.” Having undressed himself, Nafai now helped Issib undress—it was too hard for him, without his floats.

  “Father’s making a statement,” said Issib.

  “Yes, and I’m hearing it, and I don’t like it. He’s saying, Issib and Nafai, you’re nothing.”

  “What was he going to do, name a cloud after us?” Issib fell silent for a moment as Nafai pulled the shirt off over Issib’s head. “Or did you want him to name a bush for you?”

  “I don’t care about the naming, I care about justice.”

  “Get some perspective, Nafai. Father isn’t going to sort out his children according to who’s the most obedient or cooperative or polite from hour to hour. There’s a clear ranking involved in the assignment of tent space here.” Nafai laid his brother on his mat, farthest from the door. “The fact that Elya doesn’t have a tent to himself, but shares with Meb,” said Issib, “that’s putting him in his place, reminding him that he’s not the Wetchik, he’s just the Wetchik’s boy. But then putting us in such a tiny tent tells Elya and Meb that he does value them and honor them as his oldest sons. He’s at once rebuking and encouraging them. I think he’s been rather deft.”

  Nafai lay down on his own mat, near the door, in the traditional servant’s position. “What about us?”

  “What about us? Are you going to rebel against the Oversoul because your papa gave you a tiny tent?”

  “No.”

  “Father trusts us to be loyal while he works on Elya and Meb. Father’s trust is the greatest honor of all. I’m proud to be in this tent.”

  “When you put it that way,” said Nafai, “so am I.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Wake me if you need anything.”

  “What can I need,” said Issib, “when I have my chair beside me?”

  Actually, the chair was down near his feet, and it was almost completely useless when Issib wasn’t sitting in it. Nafai was puzzled for a moment, until he realized that Issib was giving him a small rebuke: Why are you complaining, Nafai, when being away from the magnetics of the city means that I can’t use my floats, and have to be tended to like an infant? It must be humiliating for Issib to have me undress him, thought Nafai. And yet he bears it uncomplaining, for Father’s sake.

  Deep in the night, Nafai awoke, instantly alert. He lay there listening. Was it Issib who had called him? No—his brother was still taking the heavy, rhythmic breaths of sleep. Did he wake, then, because he was uncomfortable? No, for the sand under his mat made the floor more, not less, comfortable than his room at home. Nor was it the cold, nor the distant howling of a wild dog, and it could not have been the baboons, because they always slept the night in perfect silence.

  The last time Nafai had awakened like this, he had found Luet outside in the traveler’s room, and the Oversoul had spoken in the night to Father.

  Was I dreaming, then? Did the Oversoul teach me in my sleep? But Nafai could remember no dreams. Just the sudden wakefulness.

  He got up from his mat—quietly, so as not to disturb Issya—and slid under the netted fabric draped across the door. It was cooler outside the tent than inside, of course, but they had traveled far enough south that autumn hadn’t yet arrived in this place, and the waters of the Rumen Sea were much warmer and more placid than the ocean that swept along the coastline east of Basilica.

  The camels were peacefully asleep in their small temporary corral. The wards at the corners kept away even the smallest of animals not yet inured to the sound frequencies and pheromones the wards gave off. The stream splashed a syncopated music over the rocks. The leaves in the trees rustled now and then in the night breeze. If there is any place in all of Harmony where a man could sleep in peace, it’s here, thought Nafai. And yet I couldn’t sleep.

  Nafai walked upstream and sat on a stone beside the water. The breeze was cool enough to chill him a little; for a moment he wished he had dressed before leaving the tent. But he hadn’t intended to get up for the day. Soon enough he’d go back inside.

  He looked around him, at the low hills not that far off. Unless a person stood on one of those hills, there was no sign of a watered valley here. Still, it was a wonder that no one lived here but the tribe of baboons downstream of them, that there wasn’t even a sign of human habitation. Perhaps it had not been settled because it was so far from any trade route. The land here was barely enough to support a few dozen people, if it were all cultivated. It would be too lonely or unprofitable to settle here. Robbers might use it as a refuge, but it was too far from the caravan routes to be convenient for them. It was exactly what Father’s family needed, during this time of exile from Basilica. As if it had been prepared for them.

  For a moment Nafai wondered if perhaps this valley had not even existed until they needed it. Did the Oversoul have such power that it could transform land-forms at will?

  Impossible. The Oversoul might have such powers in myth and legend, but in the real world, the Oversoul’s powers seemed to be entirely confined to communication—the sharing of works of art throughout the world, and mental influence over those who received visions or, more commonly, the stupor of thought that the Oversoul used to turn people away from forbidden ideas.

  That’s why this place was empty till we came, thought Nafai. It would be a simple thing for the Oversoul to make desert travelers get stupid whenever they thought of turning toward the Rumen Sea near here. The Oversoul prepared it for us, not by creating it out of the rock, not by causing some hidden pool of water to burst forth into a spring, a stream for us, but rather by keeping other people away from here, so that it was empty and ready for us when we came.