Her hand lashed out across his face. If she had been aiming for his cheek, she missed, perhaps because he reflexively drew his head back. Instead her fingernail caught him on the chin, tearing the skin. It stung and drew blood.

  “You forget yourself, sir,” she said.

  “Not as badly as you have forgotten yourself, Madam,” he answered. Or rather, that was how he meant to answer. He even began to answer that way, but in the middle of the sentence the enormity of her having struck him that way, the shock and hurt of it, the sheer humiliation of his mother hitting him reduced him to tears. “I’m sorry,” he said. Though what he really wanted to say was How dare you, I’m too old for that, I hate you. It was impossible to say such harsh things, however, when he was crying like a baby. Nafai hated it, how tears had always come so easily to him, and it wasn’t getting any better as he got older.

  “Maybe next time you’ll remember to speak to me with proper respect,” she said. But she, too, was unable to maintain her sharp tone, for even as she spoke he felt her arm around him as she sat beside him, comforted him.

  She could not possibly understand that the way she nestled his head to her shoulder only added to the humiliation and confirmed him in his decision to regard her as an enemy. If she had the power to make him cry because of his love for her, then there was only one possible solution for him: to cease loving her. This was the last time she would ever be able to do this to him.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Let me stanch it—here, with a clean handkerchief, not that horrible rag you carry in your pocket, you absurd little boy.”

  That’s all I’ll ever be in this house, isn’t it? An absurd little boy. He pulled away from her, refused to let the handkerchief touch his chin. But she persisted, and dabbed at the wound, and the white cloth came away surprisingly bloody—so he took it from her hand and pressed it against the wound. “Deep, I guess,” he said.

  “If you hadn’t moved your head back, my nails wouldn’t have caught your chin like that.”

  If you hadn’t slapped me, your nails would have been in your lap. But he held his tongue.

  “I can see that you’re taking our family’s situation very much to heart, Nafai, but your values are a little twisted. What does the ridicule of the satirists matter? Everyone knows that every great figure in the history of Basilica was darted at one time or another, and usually for the very thing that made her—or him—great. We can bear that. What matters is that Father’s vision was a very clear warning from the Oversoul, with immediate implications for our city’s course of action over the next few days and weeks and months. The embarrassment will pass. And among the women in this city who really count, Father is viewed as quite a remarkable man—their respect for him is growing. So try to control your embarrassment at your father’s having come to the center of attention. All children in their early teens are excruciatingly sensitive to embarrassment, but in time you will learn that criticism and ridicule are not always bad. To earn the enmity of evil people can speak very well of you.”

  He could hardly believe she thought so little of him as to think he needed such a lecture as this one. Did she really believe that it was embarrassment he feared? If she had listened instead of lecturing, he might have told her about Elemak’s warning about danger to Father, about his secret visit to Gaballufix’s house. But it was clear that in her eyes he was still nothing but a child. She wouldn’t take his warning seriously. Indeed, she’d probably give him another lecture about not letting fears and worries take possession of your mind, but instead to concentrate on his studies and let adults worry about the real problems in the world.

  In her mind, I’m still six years old and I always will be. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’ll not speak to you that way again.” In fact, I doubt that I’ll ever say anything serious or important to you again as long as you live.

  “I accept your apology, Nafai, as I hope you’ll accept mine for having struck you in my anger.”

  “Of course, Mother.” I’ll accept your apology—when you offer it and when I believe that you mean it. However, as a matter of fact, dear beloved breadbasket out of whom I sprang, you did not actually apologize to me at any point in our conversation. You only expressed the hope that I would accept an apology which in fact was never offered.

  “I hope, Nafai, you will resume your studies and not allow these events in the city to disturb the normal routines of your life any further. You have a very keen mind, and there is no particular reason for you to let these things distract you from the honing of that mind.”

  Thank you for the dollop of praise, Mother. You’ve told me that I’m childish, that I’m a slave of lust, and that my views are to be silenced, not listened to. You’ll pay serious attention to every word drooled from the mouth of that witchgirl, but you start from the assumption that anything I say is worthless.

  “Yes, Mother,” said Nafai. “But I’d rather not go back to class right now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I understand completely.”

  Dear Oversoul, keep me from laughing.

  “I can’t have you out wandering the streets again, Nafai, I’m sure you can understand that. Father’s vision has attracted enough attention that someone will say something that will make you angry, and I don’t want you fighting.”

  So you’re worried about me fighting, Mother? Kindly remember who struck whom here on your portico today.

  “Why not spend the day in the library, with Issib? He’ll be a good influence on you, I think—he’s always so calm.”

  Issib, always calm? Poor Mother—she knows nothing at all about her own sons. Women never do understand men. Of course, men don’t understand women any better—but at least we don’t suffer from the delusion that we do.

  “Yes, Mother. The library’s fine.”

  She arose. “Then you must go there now. Keep the handkerchief, of course.”

  She left the portico, not waiting to see if he obeyed.

  He immediately got to his feet and walked around the screen, straight to the balustrade, and looked out over the Rift Valley.

  There was no sign of the lake. A thick cloud filled the lower reaches of the valley, and since the valley walls seemed to grow steeper just before the fog began, for all he knew the lake might be invisible from this spot even without the fog.

  All he could see from here was the white cloud and the deep, lush greens of the forest that lined the valley. Here and there he could see smoke rising from a chimney, for there were women who lived on the valley slopes. Father’s housekeeper, Truzhnisha, was one of them. She kept a house in the district called West Shelf, one of the twelve districts of Basilica where only women were allowed to live or even enter. The Women’s Districts were far less populated than any of the twenty-four districts where men were allowed to live (though not own property, of course), yet on the City Council they wielded enormous power, since their representatives always voted as a bloc. Conservative, religious—no doubt those were the councilors who were most impressed by the fact that Luet had confirmed Father’s vision. If they agreed with Father on the war wagon issue, then it would take the votes of only six other councilors to create stalemate, and of seven councilors to take positive action against Gaballufix’s plans.

  It was these same councilors from the Women’s Districts who, for thousands of years, had refused to allow any subdivision of the thickly populated Open Districts, or to give a council vote to any of the districts outside the walls, or to allow men to own property within the wall, or anything else that might tend to dilute or weaken the absolute rule of women in Basilica. Now, looking out over the secret valley, filled with rage against his mother, Nafai could hardly see how beautiful this place was, how rich with mystery and life; all he could see was how unbelievably few the houses were.

  How do they divide this into a dozen districts? There must be some districts where the three women who live there take turns being the councilor.

  And outside the city, in the tiny but expensive cubicles where unmated men without households were forced to live, there was no legal recourse to demand fairer treatment, to insist on laws protecting bachelors from their landlords, or from women whose promises disappeared when they lost interest in a man, or even from each other’s violence. For a moment, standing there looking out over the untamed greenery of the Rift, Nafai understood how a man like Gaballufix might easily gather men around him, struggling to gain some power in this city where men were unmanned by women every day and every hour of their lives.

  Then, as the wind gusted a little over the valley, the cloud moved, and there was a shimmer of reflected light. The surface of a lake, not at the center of the deepest part of the rift, but higher, farther away. Without thinking, Nafai reflexively looked away. It was one thing to come to the balustrade in defiance of his Mother, it was another thing to look on the holy lake where women went for their worship. If there was one thing becoming clear in all this business, it was that the Oversoul might very well be real. There was no point in earning its wrath over something as stupid as looking at some lake over the edge of Mother’s portico.

  Nafai turned away from the view and hurried back around the screen, feeling foolish all the while. What if I’m caught? Well, so what if I am.? No, no, the defiance wasn’t worth the risk. He had more practical work to do. If Mother wasn’t going to listen to his fears about the danger to Father, then Nafai would have to do something himself. But first he had to know more—about Gaballufix, about the Oversoul, about everything.

  For a moment he toyed with the idea of going to Luet and asking her questions. She knew about the Oversoul, didn’t she? She saw visions all the time, not just once, like Father. Surely she could explain.

  But she was a woman, and at this moment Nafai knew that he’d get no help of any kind from women. On the contrary—women in Basilica were taught from childhood on how to oppress men and make them feel worthless. Luet would laugh at him and go straight to Mother to tell her about his questions.

  If he could trust anyone in this, it would be other men—and precious few of them, since the danger to Father was coming from Gaballufix’s party. Perhaps he could enlist the help of this Roptat that Elya had talked about. Or find out something about what the Oversoul was doing in the first place.

  Issib wasn’t thrilled to see him. “I’m busy and I don’t need interruptions.”

  “This is the household library,” said Nafai. “This is where we always come to do research.”

  “See? You’re interrupting already.”

  “Look, I didn’t say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door.”

  “I was hoping you’d walk back out.”

  “I can’t. Mother sent me here.” Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered about thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place.

  The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old.

  “What language is that?” Nafai asked, pointing to one.

  Issib sighed. “I’m so glad you’re not interrupting me.”

  “What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?”

  “Very good. It’s Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It’s dead now.”

  “I read Vijati, you know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh, so you’re specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?”

  “I’m not learning these languages, I’m researching lost words.”

  “If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost.”

  “Words that used to have meanings, but that died out or survived only in idiomatic expressions. Like ‘dancing bear.’ What’s a bear, do you know?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought it was some kind of graceful bird.”

  “Wrong. It’s an ancient mammal. Known only on Earth, I think, and not brought here. Or it died out soon. It was bigger than a man, very powerful. A predator.”

  “And it danced?”

  “The expression used to mean something absurdly clumsy. Like a dog walking on its hind legs.”

  “And now it means the opposite. That’s weird. How could it change?”

  “Because there aren’t any bears. The meaning used to be obvious, because everybody knew what a bear was and how clumsy it would look, dancing. But when the bears were gone, the meaning could go anywhere. Now we use it for a person who’s extremely deft in getting out of an embarrassing social situation. It’s the only case where we use the word bear anymore. And you see a lot of people misspelling it, too.”

  “Great stuff. You doing a linguistics project?”

  “No.”

  “What’s this for, then?”

  “Me.”

  “Just collecting old idioms.”

  “Lost words.”

  “Like bear? The word isn’t lost, Issya. It’s the bears that are gone.”

  “Very good, Nyef. You get foil credit for the assignment. Go away now.”

  “You’re not researching lost words. You’re researching words that have lost their meanings because the thing they refer to doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Issya slowly turned his head to look at Nafai. “You mean that you’ve actually developed a brain?”

  Nafai pointed at the screen. “Kolesnisha. That’s a word in Kunic. You’ve got the meaning right there—war wagon. Kunic hasn’t been spoken in ten million years. It’s just a written language now. And yet they had a word for war wagon. Which was only just invented. Which means that there used to be war wagons a long time ago.”

  Issib laughed. A low chuckle, but it went on and on.

  “What, am I wrong?”

  “It just kills me, that’s all. How obvious it is. Even you can just walk up to a computer display and see the whole thing at once. So why hasn’t anybody noticed this before? Why hasn’t anybody noticed the fact that we had the word wagon already, and we all knew what it meant, and yet as far as we know there have never been any wagons anywhere in the world ever?”

  That’s really weird, isn’t it?”

  “It isn’t weird, it’s scary. Look at what the Wetheads are doing with their war wagons—their kolesnishety. It gives them a vital advantage in war. They’re building a real empire, not just a system of alliances, but actual control over nations that are six days’ travel away from their city. Now, if war wagons can do that, and people used to have them millions of years ago, how did we ever forget what they were?”

  Nafai thought about that for a while. “You’d have to be really stupid,” he said. “I mean, people don’t forget things like that. Even if you had peace for a thousand years, you’d still have pictures in the library.”

  “No pictures of war wagons,” said Issib.

  “I mean, that’s stupid,” said Nafai.

  “And this word,” said Issib.

  “Zrakoplov,” said Nafai. “That’s definitely an Obilazati word.”

  “Right.”

  “What does it mean? ‘Air’ something.”

  “Broken down and loosely translated, yes, it means ‘air swimmer.’”

  Nafai thought about this for a while. He conjured up a picture in his mind—a fish moving through the air. “A flying fish?”

  “It’s a machine,” said Issib.

  “A really fast ship?”

  “Listen to yourself, Nafai. It should be obvious to you. And yet you keep resisting the plain meaning of it.”

  “An underwater boat?”

  “How would that be an air swimmer, Nyef?”

  “I don’t know.” Nafai felt silly. “I forgot about the air part.”

  “You forgot about it—and yet you recognized the ‘air part’ right off, by yourself. You knew that Zraky was the Obilazati root for air, and yet you forgot the “air part.”

  “So I’m really, really dumb.”

  “But you’re not, Nyef. You’re really really smart, and yet you’re still standing here looking at the word and I’m telling you all this and you still can’t think of what the word means.”

  “Well, what’s this word,” said Nafai, pointing at puscani prah. “I don’t recognize the language.”

  Issib shook his head. “If I didn’t see it happening to you, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you even curious to know what a zrakoplov is?”

  “You told me. Air swimmer.”

  “A machine whose name is air swimmer.”

  “Sure. Right. So what’s a puscani prah?”

  Issib slowly turned around and faced Nafai. “Sit down, my dear beloved brilliant stupid brother, thou true servant of the Oversoul. I’ve got something to tell you about machines that swim through the air.”

  “I guess I’m interrupting you,” said Nafai.

  “I want to talk to you,” said Issib. “It’s not an interruption. I just want to explain the idea of flying—”

  “I’d better go.”

  “Why? Why are you so eager to leave?”

  “I don’t know.” Nafai walked to the door. “I need some air. I’m running out of air.” He walked out of the room. Immediately he felt better. Not lightheaded anymore. What was all that about, anyway? The library was too stuffy. Too crowded. Too many people in there.

  “Why did you leave?” asked Issib.

  Nafai whirled. Issib was silently floating out of the library after him. Nafai immediately felt the same kind of claustrophobia that had driven him out into the hall. “Too crowded in there,” said Nafai. “I need to be alone.”

  “I was the only person in there,” said Issib.

  “Really?” Nafai tried to remember. “I want to get outside. Just let me go.”

  “Think,” said Issib. “Remember when Luet and Father were talking yesterday?”

  Immediately Nafai relaxed. He didn’t feel claustrophobic anymore. “Sure.”