"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 rate 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 to7 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 child- hood 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 th a t?" 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."
" Idon'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 full 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?"