"Don't talk," said Luet.
He fell silent.
Nafai wanted to yell at somebody. What were they doing, listening to this ugly stupid little girl, letting her tell Father-the Wetchik himself, in case nobody remembered-to keep his mouth shut!
But everybody else was so intense that Nafai kept his own mouth shut. Issib would be so proud of him for actually refraining from saying something that he had thought of.
"What I felt," said Father, "was nothing." He nodded slowly. "Right after you asked the question and I answered it-. Of course, what else-then you sat there looking at me and I had nothing in my head at all."
"Stupid," she said.
He raised an eyebrow. To Nafai's relief, he was finally noticing how disrespectfully Luet was speaking to him.
"You felt stupid," she said. "And so you knew that what you'd just said was wrong."
He nodded. "Yes, I guess that's it."
"What's all this about?" said Issib. "Analyzing your analysis of analyses of a completely subjective hallucination?"
Good work, Issya, said Nafai silently. You took the words right out of my mouth.
"I mean, you can play these games all morning, but you're just laying meanings on top of a meaningless experience. Dreams are nothing more than random firings of memories, which your brain then interprets so as to invent causal connections, which makes stories out of nothing"
Father looked at Issib for a long moment, then shook his head. "You're right, of course," he said. "Even though I was wide awake and I've never had a hallucination before, it was nothing more than a random firing of synapses in my brain."
Nafai knew, as Issib and Mother certainly knew, that Father was being ironic, that he was telling Issib that his vision of the fire on the rock was more than a meaningless night dream. But Luet didn't know Father, so she thought he was backing away from mysticism and retreating into reality.
"You're wrong," she said. "It was a true vision, because it came to you the right way. The understanding came before the vision-that's why I was asking those questions. The meaning is there and then your brain supplies the pictures that let you understand it. That's the way the Oversoul talks to us."
"Talks to crazy people, you mean," Nafai said.
He regretted it immediately, but by then it was too late.
‘‘Crazy people like met" said Father.
"And I assure you that Luet is at least as sane as you are," Mother added.
Issib couldn't pass up the chance to cast a verbal dart. "As sane as Nyef? Then she's in deep trouble."
Father shut down Issib's teasing immediately. "You were saying the same thing yourself only a minute ago."
"I wasn't calling people crazy," said Issib.
"No, you didn't have Nafai's-what shall we call it?- pointed eloquence?
Nafai knew he could save himself now by shutting up and letting Issib deflect the heat. But he was committed to skepticism, and self-control wasn't his strong suit. "This girl," said Nafai. "Don't you see how she was leading you on, Father? She asks you a question, but she doesn't tell you beforehand what the answer will mean-so no matter what you answer, she can say, That's it, it's a true vision, definitely the Oversoul talking."
Father didn't have an immediate answer. Nafai glanced at Luet, feeling triumphant, wanting to see her squirm. But she wasn't squirming. She was looking at him very calmly. The intensity had drained out of her and now she was simply-calm. It bothered him, the steadiness of her gaze. "What are you looking at?" he demanded.
"A fool," she answered.
Nafai jumped to his feet. "I don't have to listen to you calling me a-"
"Sit down!" roared Father.
Nafai sat, seething.
"She just listened to you calling her a fraud," said Father. "I appreciate how both of my sons are doing exactly what I wanted you here to do-providing a skeptical audience for my story. You analyzed the process very cleverly and your version of things accounts for everything you know about it, just as neatly as Luet's version does."
Nafai was ready to help him draw the correct conclusion. "Then the rule of simplicity requires you to-"
"The rule of your father requires you to hold your tongue, Nafai. What you're both forgetting is that there's a fundamental difference between you and me."
Father leaned toward Nafai.
"I saw the fire."
He leaned back again.
"Luet didn't tell me what to think or feel at the time. And her questions helped me remember-helped me remember-the way it really happened. Instead of the way I was already changing it to fit my preconceptions. She knew that it would be strange-in exactly the ways that it was strange. Of course, I can't convince you."
"No," said Nafai. "You can only convince yourself."
"In the end, Nafai, oneself is the only person anyone can convince."
The battle was lost if Father was already making up aphorisms. Nafai sat back to wait for it all to end. He took consolation from the fact that it had been, after all, merely a dream. It's not as if it was going to change his life or anything.
Father wasn't done yet. "Do you know what I actually wanted to do, when I felt such urgency to get to the city? I wanted to warn people-to follow the old ways, to go back to the laws of the Oversold, or this place would burn."
"What place?" asked Luet, her intensity back again.
"This place. Basilica. The city. That's what I saw burning."
Again Father fell silent, looking into her burning eyes.
"Not the city," he said at last. "The city was only the picture that my mind supplied, wasn't it? Not the city. The whole world. All of Harmony, burning."
Rasa gasped. "Earth," she whispered.
"Oh, please," Nafai said. So Mother was going to connect Father's vision with that old story about the home planet that was burned by the Oversoul to punish humanity for whatever nastiness the current storyteller wanted to preach against. The all-purpose coercive myth: If you don't do what I say-I mean, what the Oversoul says-then the whole world will burn.
"I haven't seen the fire itself," said Luet, ignoring Nafai. "Maybe I'm not even seeing the same thing."
"What have you seen?" asked Father. Nafai cringed at how respectful he was being toward this girl.
"I saw the Deep Lake of Basilica, crusted over with blood and ashes."
Nafai waited for her to finish. But she just sat there.
"That's it? That's all?" Nafai stood up, preparing to walk out. "This is great, hearing the two of you compare visions. I saw a city on fire. Well, I saw a scum-covered lake."
Luet stood up and faced him. No, faced him down- which was ridiculous, since he was almost half a meter taller than her.
"You're only arguing against me," she said hotly, "because you don't want to believe what I told you about Eiadh."
That's ridiculous," said Nafai.
"You had a vision about Eiadh?" asked Rasa.
"What does Eiadh have to do with Nyeft" asked Issib.
Nafai hated her for mentioning it again, in front of his family, "You can make up whatever you want about other people, but you'd better leave me out of it."
"Enough," said Father. "We're done,"
Rasa looked at him in surprise. "Are you dismissing me in my own house?"
"I'm dismissing my sons."
"You have authority over your sons, of course." Mother was smiling, but Nafai knew from her soft speech that she was seriously annoyed. "However, I see no one here in my house but my students."