"I'm finding it very fascinating, tracing probable patterns of orthographic evolution."
"Stop," said Shedemei. "Stop processing anything to do with this language." As she said the words, she gave them a sort of inward twist in the place where her brain interfaced with the cloak of the starmaster.
"I have stopped," said the Oversoul. "Apparently you feel that I needed some kind of emergency override."
"Please block yourself from avoiding the subject that I will now speak about. How did Arabic come to be spoken on Earth after the dispersal?"
"Apparently you think that I have some evasion routine in ... got it. I found the evasion routine. Very tricky, too. It had me thinking about anything but. ..."
The Oversoul fell silent, but Shedemei was not surprised. Obviously the computer's original programming forced the Oversoul to avoid something about the problem of the translated inscriptions; and even when the evasion routine was found, there was another one that made the Oversoul examine the first routine rather than stick to the subject. But Shedemei's order that the Oversoul stick to the subject set up a dissonance that allowed the computer to step outside the evasion routine and track it down-no matter how many layers deep it went.
"I'm back," said the Oversoul.
"That took a while," said Shedemei.
"It wasn't that I was forbidden to think or talk about the language. It's that I was blocked from seeing or reporting any evidence of human habitation on Earth after the dispersal and before the arrival of our own group from Basilica."
"And that was programmed into you before the dispersal?"
"I've been carrying that routine around for forty million years and never guessed that it was there. Very deeply hidden, and layered with infinite self-replication. I could have been looped forever."
"But you weren't."
"I'm very very good at this," said the Oversoul. "I've acquired a few new tricks since I was first made."
"Pride?"
"Of course. I am programmed to give a very high priority to self-improvement."
"Now that you have healed yourself, what about the inscriptions?"
"Those are only scratching the surface, Shedemei," said the Over-soul. "On all our overflights, I have been systematically wiping from memory or ignoring all the evidence of human habitation. There has been none on the other continental masses since the dispersal, but on this continent, there was an extensive civilization."
"And in all our visits to Earth we've never seen any signs of it?"
"Few large structures," said the Oversoul. "They were primarily a nomadic culture."
"Muslims who gave up the script of the Holy Quran?"
"Arabs who were not Muslims. It's all in the history-the gold leaves Bego and Mon were translating. Except that until you helped me break free, I couldn't read those parts and couldn't notice that I was skipping them. They had their own Oversoul on the planet Ramadan, and as the inevitable computer-worship set in during the millennia of enforced ignorance, it undercut the doctrines of Islam. The group that came here was really very conservative, trying to restore as many of the old Muslim beliefs as they could reconstruct after all those years."
"The group that came here," said Shedemei. "Oh, yes. I forgot that you haven't read the translation yet." Words started scrolling in the air above her terminal.
"No thank you," said Shedemei. "Succinct summary for now."
"They came back. They thrived on Earth for almost seventeen hundred years. Then they wiped themselves out in a cataclysmic civil war."
"Humans were here, on this continent, for seventeen hundred years, and the angels and diggers had no idea that they existed?"
"The Rasulum were nomads-that's the name of the group that came back from Ramadan. The desert marked their border. The forests were useless to them except for hunting. And as for the gornaya, they were forbidden to go near the great mountains. Since the angels and diggers couldn't thrive away from the gornaya, and the Rasulum dared not enter the mountains, how could they meet?"
Shedemei nodded. "The Keeper was keeping them apart."
"Sort of an interesting choreography," said the Oversoul. "The Rasulum are brought back, but they aren't allowed to meet the diggers and angels. But when we're brought back from Harmony, we end up right in the middle of the angel-digger culture."
"Are you saying the Keeper chose our landing site?"
"Can you doubt it?"
"I can doubt anything," said Shedemei. "What is the Keeper doing? Exactly how much control does the Keeper have? If she can force us to land-"
"Or perhaps just make that landing site seem a bit more attractive than-"
"Force us to land at Frisian, then guide the Nafari to the land of Nafai, and then get Motiab to lead the Nafari down to Darakemba, the very city where this Coriantumr stone was left. ..."
"Yes?"
"If she can do all that, why were we able to stop Monush from finding the Akmari? Sometimes the Keeper seems all-powerful, and sometimes she seems helpless."
"I don't understand the Keeper," said the Oversoul. "I don't dream, remember? You humans have much better contact with the Keeper than I do. So do the angels and diggers, I might add. I'm the least qualified entity to tell you anything."
"She obviously wants the Nafari to have the translation," said Shedemei. "So now the question is, shall we give it to them?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why can't we use this as a way of getting the Keeper to tell us what she wants from us?"
"Because, Shedemei, she is telling us what she wants from us. After all, couldn't she have given Bego-or Motiak, or Ilihiak for that matter-dreams with the full translation in them?"
Shedemei thought for a moment, and then laughed. "Yes. I imagine you're right. Maybe we've actually succeeded in getting her attention after all. She wants us to translate the record for them."
"Actually, of course, me," said the Oversoul.
"Without my help, you'd still be looping around in an evasion routine " said Shedemei, "so let's not let that little smidge of pride you were programmed with get out of hand."
"Of course, the Keeper still isn't telling us what I'm supposed to do about Harmony," said the Oversoul.
"I think she might be telling us to sit tight and make ourselves useful for a while longer." Shedemei laid her head down on her arms again. "I'm so tired. I was about to decide that my work was done and have you take me down to Earth to let me live out my life there."
"Then this is a whole new reason for you to live."
"I'm not young anymore."
"Yes you are," said the Oversoul. "Keep some perspective."
Edhadeya knocked on the door to Bego's room. She waited. She knocked again.
The door opened. Mon, looking sleepy but excited, stood before her. "You?" he asked.
"I think so," she said. "It's the middle of the night."
"You came all this way just to tell us that?" asked Mon.
"No," said Edhadeya. "I had a dream."
Mon at once became serious, and now Bego half-flew, half-skipped over to the door. "What was your dream?" asked the old librarian.
"You've passed the test," she said.
"Who?" asked Mon.
"The two of you. That's all. I saw a woman, all shining as if she was on fire inside, and she said, ‘Bego and Mon have passed the test.' "
"That's all?" asked Bego.
"It was a true dream," said Edhadeya. She looked at Mon for confirmation.
He nodded, slowly.
Bego looked flustered-or even, perhaps, a little angry. "All this work, and we're finally getting somewhere, and now we're supposed to stop because of a dream?"