“Fine,” said Meb.

  As the satirist returned to his place on the hill, he said, “And you wouldn’t be setting off the fire effect anyway.”

  “Sorry,” said Meb. He returned to his place behind the box that presumably would be spouting a column of flame tonight. The other maskers returned to their positions.

  “End of song,” said Meb. “Fire effect.”

  Immediately the potion-seller and the girl flung up their hands in a mockery of surprise.

  “A pillar of fire!” cried the potion-seller.

  “How could fire suddenly appear on a bare rock in the desert?” cried the girl. “It’s a miracle!”

  The potion-seller whirled on her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, bitch! I’m the only one who can see this! It’s a vision!”

  “No!” shouted Mebbekew, in his deepest voice. “It’s a special stage effect!”

  “A stage effect!” cried the potion-seller. “Then you must be—”

  “You got it!”

  “That old humbug the Oversoul!”

  “I’m proud of you, old trickster! Stupid girl—you almost fixed her.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing much to take her—you’re the master faker!”

  “No!” bellowed the satirist. “Not ‘take her,’ you idiot! It’s ‘take her,’ emphasis on take, or it doesn’t rhyme with faker!”

  “Sorry,” said the young masker playing the potion-seller. “It doesn’t make sense your way, of course, but at least it’ll rhyme.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense, you uppity young rooster, it only has to make money!”

  Everybody laughed—though it was clear that the actors still didn’t really like the satirist much. They got back into the scene and a few moments later Meb and the potion-seller launched into a song-and-dance routine about how clever they were at hoodwinking people, and how unbelievably gullible most people were—especially women. It seemed that every couplet of the song was designed to mortally offend some portion of the audience, and the song went on until every conceivable group in Basilica had been darted. While they sang and danced, the girl pretended to roast some kind of meat in the flames.

  Meb forgot his lyrics less than the other masker, and in spite of the fact that Nafai knew the whole sequence was aimed at humiliating Father, he couldn’t help but notice that Meb was actually pretty good, especially at singing so every word was clear. I could do that, too, thought Nafai.

  The song kept coming back to the same refrain:

  I’m standing by a fire

  With my favorite liar

  No one stands a chance

  When he starts his fancy dancing

  When the song ended, the Oversoul—Meb—had persuaded the potion-seller that the best way to get the women of Basilica to do whatever he wanted was to persuade them that he was getting visions from the Oversoul. “They’re so ready for deceiving,” said Meb. “We’ll have all these girls believing.”

  The scene closed with the potion-seller leading the girl offstage, telling her how he had seen a vision of the city of Basilica burning up. The satirist had switched to alliterative verse, which Nafai thought sounded a little more natural than rhyming, but it wasn’t as fun. “Do you want to waste the last weeks of the world clinging to some callow young cad? Wouldn’t you be better off boffing your brains out with an ugly old man who has an understanding with the Oversoul?”

  “Fine,” said the satirist. “That’ll work. Let’s have the street scene now.”

  Another group of maskers came up on the stage. Nafai immediately headed across the lawn to where Mebbekew, his mask still in place, was already scribbling new dialogue on a scrap of paper.

  “Meb,” said Nafai.

  Meb looked up, startled, trying to see better through the small eyeholes in the mask. “What did you call me?” Then he saw it was Nafai. Immediately he jumped to his feet and started walking away. “Get away from me, you little rat-eater.”

  “Meb, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Mebbekew kept walking.

  “Before you go on in this play tonight!” said Nafai.

  Meb whirled on him. “It’s not a play, it’s a satire. I’m not an actor, I’m a masker. And you’re not my brother, you’re an ass.”

  Meb’s fury astonished him. “What have I done to you?” asked Nafai.

  “I know you, Nyef. No matter what I do or say to you, you’re going to end up telling Father.”

  As if Father wouldn’t eventually find out that his son was playing in a satire that was designed to dart him in front of the whole city. “What makes me sick,” said Nafai, “is that all you care about is whether you get in trouble. You’ve got no family loyalty at all.”

  “This doesn’t hurt my family. Masking is a perfectly legitimate way to get started as an actor, and it pays me a living and wins me just a little tiny scrap of respect and pleasure now and then, which is a lot more than working for Father ever did!”

  What was Meb talking about? “I don’t care that you’re a masker. In fact, I think it’s great. I was hanging around here today because I was thinking maybe I might try it myself.”

  Meb pulled his mask off and looked Nafai up and down. “You’ve got a body that might look all right on stage. But you still sound like a kid.”

  “Mebbekew, it doesn’t matter right now. You a masker, me a masker—the point is that you can’t do this to Father!”

  “I’m not doing anything to Father! I’m doing this for myself.”

  It was always like this, talking to Mebbekew. He never seemed to grasp the thread of an argument. “Be a masker, fine,” said Nafai. “But darting your own father is too low even for you!”

  Meb looked at him blankly. “Darting my father?”

  “You can’t tell me you don’t know.”

  “What is there in this satire that darts him?”

  “The scene you just finished, Meb.”

  “Father’s not the only person in Basilica who believes in the Oversoul. In fact, I sometimes think he doesn’t believe all that seriously.”

  “The vision, Meb! The fire in the desert, the prophecy about the end of the world! Who do you think it’s about?”

  “I don’t know. Old Drotik doesn’t tell us what these things are about. If we haven’t heard the gossip then so what? We still say the lines anyway.” Then Meb got a strange, quizzical expression on his face. “What does all this Oversoul stuff have to do with Father?”

  “He had a vision,” said Nafai. “On the Desert Road, this morning before dawn, returning from his journey. He saw a pillar of fire on a rock, and Basilica burning, and he thinks it means the destruction of the world, like Earth in the old legend. Mother believes him and he must already be talking to people about it or how else would your satirist know to include this bit in his satire?”

  “This is the craziest thing I ever heard of,” said Mebbekew.

  “I’m not making it up,” said Nafai. “I sat there this morning on Mother’s portico and—”

  “The portico scene! That’s . . . He wrote how the apothecary—that’s supposed to be Father?”

  “What do you think I’ve been telling you?”

  “Bastard,” whispered Meb. “That bastard. And he put me on stage as the Oversoul.”

  Meb turned and rushed toward the masker who played the apothecary. He stood in front of him for a few moments, looking at the mask and the costume. “It’s so obvious, I must have the brains of a gnat—but a vision!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the masker.

  “Give me that mask,” said Mebbekew. “Give it to me!”

  “Right, sure, here.”

  Meb tore it out of the other man’s hands and ran up the hill toward the satirist. Nafai ran after him. Meb was waving the mask in front of the satirist’s face. “How dare you, Drotik, you pus-hearted old fart!”

  “Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t know, my boy.”

  “How would I know? I was asleep till rehearsal started. You put me on stage darting my father and it’s just coincidence that you didn’t happen to mention the fact, yes, I’m sure I believe that.”

  “Hey, it brings an audience.”

  “What were you going to do, tell people who I am, after all your promises about keeping me anonymous? What are these masks supposed to mean anyway?” Meb turned to the others, who were clearly baffled by the whole thing. “Listen, people, do you know what this old pimple was going to do? He was going to dart my father and then tell people that it was me playing the Oversoul. He was going to unmask me!”

  The satirist was obviously worried by this turn of events. Though most of the maskers’ faces were still hidden, they must be angry at the idea of a satirist exposing his maskers’ identities. So the satirist had to get things back under control. “Don’t waste a thought on this nonsense,” he said to the others. “I just fired the boy because he had the audacity to rewrite my lines, and now he wants to wreck the entire show.”

  The maskers visibly relaxed.

  Meb must have realized that he had lost the argument—the maskers wanted to believe the satirist because if they didn’t, they’d lose a paying job. “My father isn’t the liar,” said Meb, “you are.”

  “Satire is wonderful, isn’t it,” said Drotik, “until the dart strikes at home.”

  Meb raised the white-maned apothecary mask over his head, as if he was going to strike the satirist with it. Drotik flung up an arm and shied away. But Meb never meant to hit him. Instead he brought the mask down over his knee, breaking it in half. Then he tossed both pieces into the satirist’s lap.

  The satirist lowered his arm and met Mebbekew’s gaze again. “It’ll take ten minutes for my maskmaker to put the beard onto another mask. Or were you trying to make a metaphorical threat?”

  “I don’t know,” said Meb. “Were you trying to get me to metaphorically murder my father?”

  The satirist shook his head in disbelief. “It’s a dart, boy. Just words. A few laughs.”

  “A few extra tickets.”

  “It paid your wages.”

  “It made you rich.” Meb turned his back and walked away. Nafai followed him. Behind them he could hear Drotik sending the script boy to the wall to ask for maskers who thought they could learn a part in three hours.

  Mebbekew wouldn’t let Nafai catch up with him. He walked faster and faster, until finally they were running full tilt along the streets, up and down the hills. But Mebbekew hadn’t the endurance to outlast Nafai, and finally he fetched up against the corner of a house, bowed over, panting, gasping for breath.

  Nafai didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t meant to chase Meb down, only to tell him what he thought—that he’d been terrific, the way he put the satirist in his place, the way he called him a liar to his face and blasted every argument Drotik raised in his own defense. When you broke the mask in half, I wanted to cheer—that’s what Nafai meant to tell him.

  But when he got close enough to speak, he realized that Meb wasn’t just panting for breath. He was crying, not in grief, but in rage, and when Nafai got there Meb started beating a fist against the wall. “How could he do it!” Meb was saying, over and over. “The selfish stupid old son-of-a-bitch!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Nafai, meaning to comfort him. “Drotik isn’t worth it.”

  “Not Drotik, you idiot,” Meb answered. “Drotik’s exactly what I always thought he was except that now I’ve lost my job and I’ll never get another one, Drotik will spread the word on me that I walked out on a show three hours before lights.”

  “Then who are you mad at?”

  “Father! Who do you think? A vision—I can’t believe it, I thought Drotik would tell me that it wasn’t Father he was darting, it was somebody else, and what ever gave me the idea it was Wetchik, what kind of cheese-brained fool would come up with the idea that the honorable Wetchik was off getting visions from the amazing unbelievable Oversoul!”

  “Mother believes him,” said Nafai.

  “Mother has renewed his contract every year since the year you were conceived, obviously she’s got a lot of judgment where he’s concerned! Do you believe him? Does anybody who hasn’t slept with him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know who knows about it.”

  “Let me tell you something. Six hours from now the entire city of Basilica will know about it, that’s who knows about it. I want to kill him, the flatulent old pincushion!”

  “Calm down, you don’t mean that—”

  “Don’t I? Do you think I wouldn’t love to push this fist right through his face?” Meb turned around and screamed his next sentence at the passersby on the street. “I’ll show you some visions, you pebble-headed weed-hauler!”

  People were stopped on the street, staring.

  “Right,” said Nafai, “Father’s embarrassing you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to follow me. You’re the one who chased after me, so if you don’t like being with me you can choke to death on your own snot, that’s perfectly all right.”

  “Let’s go home,” said Nafai, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  FIVE

  WHEELS

  Home certainly wasn’t where Nafai wanted to be, not tonight. He had been hoping Father would be somewhere else, so Meb would have a chance to calm down before they talked. But no, of course not, Father wanted to talk to Meb. He had already spent an hour talking with Elemak—Nafai wasn’t too broken up about missing that scene—and now he seemed to have the fantasy that he might possibly persuade Meb to believe in his vision.

  The yelling started as soon as Mebbekew located Father in the study. Nafai had seen what these arguments were like, and so he quickly retreated to his room. On his way through the courtyard, he caught a glimpse of Issib peering out of his doorway. Another refugee, thought Nafai.

  For the first hour or so, all that could be heard was the low murmur of Father’s voice, presumably trying to explain about his vision, interrupted every few minutes by Mebbekew’s clear, piercing shout making comments that ranged from accusation to derision. Then it finally came out, amid all of Mebbekew’s complaints about how Father was humiliating the family, that Meb had been doing a fair job of bringing the family into disrepute by working as a masker. Then it was Father’s turn to shout and Mebbekew’s to try to explain, which was good for another hour of quarreling before Meb left the house in a rage and Father went out to the stables to tend to the animals until he calmed down.

  Only then did Nafai venture to the kitchen, absolutely starving by now, for his first serious meal of the day. To his surprise, Elemak was there, sitting with Issib at the table.

  “Elya, I didn’t know you were here,” said Nafai.

  Elemak looked up at him, blankly, and then remembered. “Forget it,” he said. “I was angry this morning but it’s nothing, forget it.”

  Nafai had forgotten, with all that had happened since, that Elemak had warned him not to come home. “I guess I already did,” he said.

  Elemak gave him a disgusted look and then went back to his food.

  “What did I say?”

  “Never mind,” said Issib. “We’re trying to think what we should do.”

  Nafai headed for the freezer and started scanning the food that Truzhnisha had stocked there for occasions like this. He was dying of hunger and yet nothing looked good. “Is this all that’s left?”

  “No, I have the rest hidden in my pants,” said Issib.

  Nafai picked something that he remembered liking before, even though it didn’t sound particularly good tonight. While it was heating he turned around and faced the others. “So, what have we decided?”

  Elemak didn’t look up.

  “We haven’t decided anything,” said Issib.

  “Oh, what, am I suddenly the only child in the house, while the men are making all the decisions?”

  “Pretty much, yes,” said Issib.

  “And what decisions do you have to make? Who has any decisions to make at all, besides Father? It’s his house, his business, his money, and his name that’s getting laughed at all through Basilica.”

  Elemak shook his head. “Not all through Basilica.”

  “You mean somebody hasn’t heard about this yet?”

  “I mean,” said Elemak, “that not everybody is laughing.”

  “They will if that satire runs long. I saw a rehearsal. Meb was really pretty good. Of course he quit since it was about Father, but I think he really has talent. Did you know he sings?”

  Elemak looked at him with contempt. “Are you really this shallow, Nyef?”

  “Yes,” said Nafai. “I’m so shallow that I actually think our embarrassment isn’t all that important, if Father really saw a vision.”

  “We know Father saw it,” said Elemak. The problem is what he’s doing about it.”

  “What, he gets a vision from the Oversoul warning about the destruction of the world, and he should keep it a secret?”

  “Just eat your food,” said Elemak.

  “He’s going around telling people that the Oversoul wants us to go back to the old laws,” said Issib.

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them.”

  “I mean which ones aren’t we already following?”

  Elemak apparently decided to go straight to the heart of things. “He went to the clan council and spoke against our decision to cooperate with Potokgavan in their war with the Wetheads.”

  “Who?”

  “The Gorayni. The Wetheads.”

  They had got the nickname because of their habit of wearing their hair long, in ringlets, dripping with a perfumed oil. They were also known as vicious warriors with a habit of slaughtering prisoners who hadn’t proved their valor by sustaining a serious wound before surrendering. “But they’re hundreds of kilometers north of here,” said Nafai, “and the Potoku are way to the southeast, and what do they have to fight about?”

  “What do they teach you in your little school?” said Elemak. “The Potoku have extended their protection over all the coastal plain up to the Mochai River.”