Nafai had no ready answer. He had not questioned his own certainty, and so he didn’t know why Moozh’s reasoning was false. “It’s not just me,” said Nafai, struggling to find a reason. “My wife also trusts the Oversoul. And her sister, too. They’ve had dreams and visions all their lives, and the Oversoul has never lied to them.”

  “Dreams and visions all their lives?” Moozh leaned forward on the table. “Whom, exactly, did you marry?”

  “I thought I told you,” said Nafai. “Luet. She’s one of my mother’s nieces in her teaching house.”

  “The waterseer,” said Moozh.

  “I’m not surprised that you’ve heard of her.”

  “She’s thirteen years old,” said Moozh.

  “Too young, I know. But she was willing to do what the Oversoul asked of her, as was I.”

  “You think you’re going to be able to take the waterseer away from Basilica on some insane journey into the desert in order to find an ancient legendary planet?” asked Moozh. “Even if I did nothing to stop you, do you think the people of this city would stand for it?”

  “They will if the Oversoul helps us, and the Oversoul will help us.”

  “And your wife’s sister, which of your brothers did she marry? Elemak?”

  “She’s going to marry Issib. He’s waiting for us at my father’s tent.”

  Moozh leaned back in his chair and chuckled merrily. “It’s hard to see who has been controlling whom,” he said. “According to you, the Oversoul has a whole set of plans that I’m a small part of. But the way it looks to me, God is setting things up so that everything plays into my hands. I thought before you came in here that it looked as though God had finally stopped being my enemy.”

  “The Oversoul was never your enemy,” said Nafai. “It was your decision to make a contest of it.”

  Moozh got up from the table, walked around it, sat down beside Nafai, and took him by the hand. “My boy, this has been the most remarkable conversation of my life.”

  Mine, too, thought Nafai, but he was too astonished to say anything.

  “I’m sure you’re very earnest about your desire to make this journey, but I can assure you that you’ve been seriously misled. You’re not leaving this city, and neither is your wife or her sister, and neither are any of the other people you plan to take along. You’ll realize that sooner or later. If you realize it sooner—if you realize it now—then I have another plan for you that I think you’ll like a little better than puttering around among the rocks and scorpions and sleeping in a tent.”

  Again, Nafai wanted to be able to explain to him why he wanted to follow the Oversoul. Why he knew that he was freely following the Oversoul, and perhaps the Keeper of Earth as well. Why he knew that the Oversoul wasn’t lying to him or manipulating him or controlling him. But because he couldn’t find the words or even the reasons, he remained silent.

  “Your wife and her sister are the keys to everything. I’m not here to conquer Basilica, I’m here to win Basilica’s loyalty. I’ve watched you now for an hour, I’ve listened to your voice, and I’ll tell you, lad, you’re a remarkable boy. So earnest. So honest. And eager, and you mean well, it’s plain to anyone with half an eye that you mean no harm to anyone. And yet you’re the one who killed Gaballufix, and so freed the city from a man who would have been tyrant, if he had lived another day or two. And it happens that you’ve just married the most prestigious figure in Basilica, the girl who commands the most universal love and respect and loyalty and hope in this city.”

  “I married her to serve the Oversoul.”

  “Please, keep saying that, I want everyone to believe that, and when you say it it’s amazingly truthful-sounding. It will be a simple matter for me to spread this story about how the Oversoul commanded you to kill Gaballufix in order to save the city. And you can even bruit it about that the Oversoul brought me here, too, to save the city from the chaos that came after your wife’s sister, the raveler, destroyed Rashgallivak’s power. It’s all such a neat little package, don’t you see? You and Luet and Hushidh and me, sent by the Oversoul to save the city, to lead Basilica to greatness. We all have a mission from the Oversoul . . . it’s a story that will make the Imperator’s nonsense about being God incarnate look pathetic.”

  “Why would you do this?” asked Nafai. It made no sense to him, for Moozh to propose making Nafai look like a hero instead of a killer, for Moozh to want to link himself with three people he was keeping prisoner in Rasa’s house. Unless . . .

  “What do you think?” asked Moozh.

  “I think you imagine you can set me up as tyrant of Basilica instead of Gaballufix.”

  “Not tyrant,” said Moozh. “Consul. The city council would still be there, quarreling and arguing and doing nothing important as usual. You’d just handle the city guard and the foreign relations; you’d just control the gates and make sure that Basilica remained loyal to me.”

  “Do you think they wouldn’t see through this and realize I was a puppet?”

  “They would if I didn’t become a citizen of Basilica myself, and your good friend and close kin. But if I become one of them, a part of them, if I become the general of the Basilican army and do all that I do in your name, then they won’t care who is puppet to whom.”

  “Rebellion,” said Nafai. “Against the Gorayni.”

  “Against the most cruel and corrupt monsters who ever walked on Harmony’s poor face,” said Moozh. “Avenging their monstrous betrayal and enslavement of my people, the Sotchitsiya.”

  “So this is how Basilica will be destroyed,” said Nafai. “Not by you, but because of your rebellion.”

  “I assure you, Nafai, I know the Gorayni. They’re weak in the core, and their soldiers love me better than they love their pathetic Imperator.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt of it.”

  “If Basilica is my capital, the Gorayni won’t destroy it. Nothing will destroy it, because I will be victorious.”

  “Basilica is nothing to you,” said Nafai. “A tool of the moment. I can imagine you in the north, with a vast army, poised to destroy the army defending Gollod, the city of the Imperator, and at that moment you hear that Potokgavan has taken this opportunity to land an army on the Western Shore. Come back and defend Basilica, your people will beg. I will beg you. Luet will beg you. But you’ll decide that there’s plenty of time to deal with Potokgavan later, after you’ve defeated the Gorayni. And so you’ll stay and finish your work, and the next year you’ll sweep south and punish Potokgavan for their atrocities, and you’ll stand in the ashes of Basilica and weep for the city of women. Your tears may even be sincere.”

  Moozh was trembling. Nafai could feel it in the hands that held his.

  “Decide,” said Moozh. “Whatever happens, either you will rule Basilica for me or you will die in Basilica— also for me. One thing is certain: You will never again leave Basilica.”

  “My life is in the hands of the Oversoul.”

  “Answer me,” said Moozh. “Decide.”

  “If the Oversoul wanted me to help you subjugate this city, then I would be consul here,” said Nafai. “But the Oversoul wants me to journey back to Earth, and so I will not be consul.”

  “Then the Oversoul has fooled you again, and this time you may well die for it,” said Moozh.

  “The Oversoul has never fooled me,” said Nafai. “Those who follow the Oversoul willingly are never lied to.”

  “You never catch the Oversoul in his lies, is what you mean,” said Moozh.

  “No!” cried Nafai. “No. The Oversoul doesn’t lie to me because . . . because everything that it has promised me has come true. All of it has been true.”

  “Or it has made you forget the ones that didn’t come true.”

  “If I wanted to doubt, then I could doubt endlessly,” said Nafai. “But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in. I follow the Oversoul, I believe the Oversoul, because I want to live in the world that the Oversoul has shown me.”

  “Yes, Earth,” said Moozh scornfully.

  “I don’t mean a planet, I mean—I want to live in the reality that the Oversoul has shown me. In which lives have meaning and purpose. In which there’s a plan worth following. In which death and suffering are not in vain because some good will come from them.”

  “All you’re saying is that you want to deceive yourself.”

  “I’m saying that the story the Oversoul tells me fits all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I’m endlessly deceived, can also explain all those facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true—but you have no way of knowing that my story isn’t true. So I will choose the one that I love. I’ll choose the one that, if it’s true, makes this reality one worth living in. I’ll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me— your life, your view of life—is the lie. And it is a lie. You don’t even believe in it yourself.”

  “Don’t you see, boy, that you’ve told me exactly the same story I told you? That the Oversoul has been fooling me all along? All I did was turn back on you the mad little tale you turned on me. The truth is that the Oversoul has played us both for fools, so all we can do is make the best life for ourselves that we can in this world. If you think that the best life for you and your new wife is to rule Basilica for me, to be part of the creation of the greatest empire that Harmony has ever known, then I’m offering it to you, and I will be as loyal to you as you are to me. Decide now.”

  “I’ve decided,” said Nafai. “There will be no great empire. The Oversoul won’t allow it. And even if there were such an empire, it would mean nothing to me. The Keeper of Earth is calling us. The Keeper of Earth is calling you. And I ask you again, General Vozmuzhalnoy Vozmozhno, forget all this meaningless pursuit of empire or vengeance or whatever it is that you’ve been chasing all these years. Come with us to the world where humanity was born. Turn your greatness into a cause that’s worthy of you. Come with us.”

  “Come with you?” said Moozh. “You’re going nowhere.” Moozh arose and walked to the door and opened it. “Take this boy back to his mother.”

  Two soldiers appeared, as if they had been waiting by the door. Nafai got up from his chair and walked to where Moozh stood, half-blocking the door. They looked into each other’s eyes. Nafai saw rage there still, unslaked by anything that had transpired here this morning. But also he saw fear, which had not been in his eyes before.

  Moozh raised his hand as if to strike Nafai across the face; Nafai did not wince or shrink from the blow. Moozh hesitated, and the blow, when it came, was upon Nafai’s shoulder, and then Moozh smiled at him. In his mind Nafai heard the voice that he knew as that of the Oversoul: A slap on the face was the soldiers’ signal to murder you. I have this much power in the mind of this rebellious man: I have turned Moozh’s slap into a smile. But in his heart, he wants you dead.

  “We are not enemies, boy,” said Moozh. “Tell no one what I’ve said to you today.”

  “Sir,” said Nafai, “I will tell my wife and my sisters and my mother and my brothers anything that I know. There are no secrets there. And even if I didn’t tell them, the Oversoul would; my secrecy would accomplish nothing but my loss of their trust.”

  At the moment he refused to agree to secrecy, Nafai saw that the soldiers stiffened, ready to strike out at him. But whatever the signal was that they waited for, it didn’t come.

  Instead Moozh smiled again. “A weak man would have promised not to tell, and then told. A fearful man would have promised not to tell, and then would have not told. But you are neither weak nor fearful.”

  “The general praises me too highly,” said Nafai.

  “It will be such a shame if I have to kill you,” said Moozh.

  “It would be such a shame to die.” Nafai could hardly believe it when he heard himself answer so flippantly.

  “You truly believe that the Oversoul will protect you,” said Moozh.

  “The Oversoul has already saved my life today,” said Nafai.

  Then he turned and left, one soldier ahead of him, and one behind.

  “Wait,” said Moozh.

  Nafai stopped, turned. Moozh strode down the hall. “I’ll come with you,” said Moozh.

  Nafai could feel it in the way the soldiers nervously shifted their weight, though they didn’t so much as glance at each other: This was not expected. This was not part of the plan.

  So, thought Nafai. I may not have accomplished what I hoped for. I may not have convinced Moozh to come with us to Earth. But something has changed. Somehow things are different because I came.

  I hope that means they’re better.

  The Oversoul answered in his mind: I hope so, too.

  SEVEN

  DAUGHTERS

  THE DREAM OF THE LADY

  Rasa slept badly after the weddings. She had, as a Basilican teacher should, kept her misgivings to herself, but it was emotionally grueling to give her dear weak Dolya to a young man that Rasa disliked as much as Wetchik’s son Mebbekew. Oh, the boy was handsome and charming—Rasa wasn’t blind, she knew exactly how attractive he could be—and she wouldn’t have minded him as Dolya’s first husband under ordinary circumstances, for Dolya was no fool and would certainly decide not to renew Meb after a single year. But there would be no question of renewals once they got into the desert. Wherever this journey would take them—Nafai’s unlikely theory of Earth or some more possible place on Harmony—there would be no casual Basilican attitude toward marriage there, and even though she had warned them more than once, she knew that Meb and Dolya, at least, did not give her warnings even the slightest heed.

  For, of course, Rasa was sure that Meb did not intend to leave Basilica. Married to Dol, he was now entitled to stay—he had his citizenship, and so he intended to laugh at any attempt by anyone to get him out of the city. If there weren’t Gorayni soldiers outside the house, Meb would have taken Dolya and left tonight, never to show his face again until the rest of them had given up on him and left the city. So it was only the fact that Rasa was under house arrest that kept Meb in line. Well, so be it. The Oversoul would order things as she saw fit, and Mebbekew was hardly the one to thwart her.

  Meb and Dolya, Elya and Edhya. . . . Well, she had seen nieces of hers marry miserably before. Hadn’t she watched her own daughters marry badly? Well, actually, it was Kokor who married badly—Obring was a more moral man than Mebbekew only because he was too weak and timid and stupid to deceive and exploit women on Mebbekew’s scale. Sevet, for her part, had actually married rather well, and Vas’s behavior during the past few days had quite impressed Rasa. He was a good man, and maybe now that her voice had been taken from her Sevet would finally let pain turn her into a good woman. Stranger things had happened.

  Yet when Rasa went to bed after the weddings, and could not sleep, it was the marriage between her son Nafai and her dearest niece, Luet, that troubled her and kept her awake. Luet was too young, and so was Nafai. How could they be thrust so early into manhood and womanhood, when their childhood was far from complete? Something precious had been stolen from both of them. And their very sweetness about the whole thing, the way they were trying so hard to fall in love with each other, only served to break Rasa’s heart all the more.

  Oversoul, you have so much to answer for. Is it worth all this sacrifice? My son Nafai is only fourteen, but for your sake he has a man’s blood on his hands, and now both he and Luet share a marriage bed when at their age they should still be glancing at each other shyly, wondering if someday the other might fall in love with them.

  She tossed and turned in her bed. The night was hot and dark—the stars were out, but there was little moonlight, and the streetlights shone dimly in the curfewed city. She could see almost nothing in her room, and yet did not want to turn on a light; a servant would see it, and think she might need something, and discreetly enter and inquire. I must be alone, she thought, and so she lay in darkness.

  What are you plotting, Oversoul? I’m under arrest, no one can come or go from my house. Moozh has cut me off so that I can’t begin to guess whom I might or might not be able to trust in Basilica, and so I must wait here for his plots and yours to unfold. Which will triumph here, Moozh’s malevolent scheming or your own, Oversoul?

  What do you want from my family? What will you do to my family, to my dearest ones? Some of it I consent to, however reluctantly: I consent to the marriage of Nyef and Lutya. As for Issib and Hushidh, when that times comes, if Shuya is willing then I am content, for I always dreamed of Issib finding some sweet woman who would see past his frailty and discover the man he is, the husband he might be—and who better than my precious raveler, my quiet, wise Shuya?

  But this journey in the wilderness—we aren’t prepared for it, and can’t very well get prepared here in this house. What are you doing about that, in all your scheming? Aren’t you perhaps a little over your head in all that’s going on? Have you really planned ahead? Expeditions like this take a little planning. Wetchik and his boys could go out into the desert on a moment’s notice because they had all the equipment they needed and they had some experience with camels and tents. I hope you don’t expect me or my girls to be able to do that!

  Then, a little bit ashamed of herself for having told the Oversoul off so roundly, Rasa uttered a much more humble prayer. Let me sleep, she prayed, dipping her fingers into the prayer basin beside the bed. Let me have rest tonight, and if it wouldn’t be too much bother, show me some vision of what it is you plan for us. Then she kissed the prayer water off her fingers.

  As she did so, more words passed through her mind, like a flippant addendum to her prayer. While you’re telling me your plans, dear Oversoul, don’t be afraid to ask for some advice. I’ve had some experience in this city and I love and understand these people more than you do, and you haven’t been doing all that well up to now, or so it seems to me.