"I know," said Issib. "I felt it, too, when I first started getting on the track of this a couple of years ago. I was playing around with lost words, just like that dancing bear thing. Making lists. I had a l&ng list of terms like that, with definitions and explanations after each one, along with my best guess about what each lost word meant. And then one day I was looking at a list that I thought was complete and I realized that there were a couple of dozen words that had no meanings at all. That's stupid, I thought. That's ruining my list. So I deleted all those words."
"Deleted them?" Nafai was appalled. "Instead of researching them?"
"See how stupid it can make you?" said Issib. "And the moment I finished deleting them, it came to me-what am I doing! So I reached for the undelete command, but instead of pushing those keys, I reflexively gave the kill command, completely wiping out the delete buffer, and then I saved the file right over the old one." , "That's too complicated to be clumsiness," said Nafai.
"Exactly. I knew that deleting them was a mistake, and yet instead of undoing that mistake and bringing the words back, I killed them, wiped them out of the system."
"And you think the Oversoul did that to you?"
"Nafai, haven't you ever wondered what the Oversoul is? What it does?"
"Sure."
"Me too. And now I know."
"Because of those words?"
"I haven't got them all back, but I retraced as much of my research as I could and I got a list of eight words. You have no idea how hard it was, because now I was sensitized to them. Before, I must have simply overlooked them, gotten stupid when I saw them-the way Father did when he was getting wrong ideas about the Oversoul's vision. That's how they got on my first list, but without definitions-I just got stupid whenever I thought of them. But now when I saw them I'd get that claustrophobic feeling. I needed air. I had to get out of the library. But I forced myself to go inside. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I forced myself to stay and think about the unthinkable. To hold concepts in my mind that the Oversoul doesn't want us to remember.
Concepts that once were so common that every language in the world has words for them. Ancient words. Lost words."
"The Oversoul is hiding things from us?"
"Yes."
"Like what?"
"If I tell you, Nafai, you'll take off again."
"No I won't."
"You wtil? said Issib. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think I haven't had my own struggle this past year? So you can imagine my surprise when last night Elemak sits there in the kitchen and explains to us about one of the forbidden things. War wagons."
"Forbidden? How could it be forbidden, it isn't even ancient."
"See? You've forgotten already. The word kolesnisha"
"Oh, yes. That's right. No, I remember that."
"But you didn't till I said it."
That's right, thought Nafai. A memory lapse.
"Last night you and Elemak were sitting there talking about war wagons, even though it took me months to be able to study the word kolesnisha without gasping the whole time."
"But we didn't say kolesnisha."
"What I'm telling you, Nafai, is that the Oversold is breaking down."
"That's an old theory."
"But it's a true one," said Issib. "The Oversoul has certain concepts that it is protecting, that it refuses to let human beings think about. Only in the past few years the Wetheads have suddenly become able to think about one of them. And so have the Potoku. And so have we. And last night, hearing Elemak talk about it, I felt not one twinge of the panic."
"But it still made me forget the word. Kolesnisha,?
"A lingering residual effect. You remembered it this time, right? Nafai, the Oversoul has given up on keeping us away from the war wagon concept. After millions of years, it isn't trying anymore."
"What else?" asked Nafai. "What are the other concepts?"
"It hasn't given up on those yet. And you seem to be really sensitive to the Oversoul, Nyef. I don't know if I can tell you, or if you'd be able to remember for five minutes even if I did."
"You mean I can know that the Oversoul is keeping us from knowing things, only I can't know which things because the Oversoul is still keeping me from knowing them."
"Right."
"Then why doesn't the Oversoul stop people from thinking about murder^ Why doesn't the Oversoul stop people from thinking about war, and rape, and stealing? If it can do this to me^ why doesn't it do something useful?"
Issib shook his head. "It doesn't seem right. But I've been thinking about it-I've had a year, remember-and here's the best thing IVe come up with. The Oversoul doesn't want to stop us from being human. Including all the rotten things we do to each other. It's just trying to hold down the scale of our rottenness. All the things that are forbidden-how can I tell you this without setting you off?-if we still had the machines that the forbidden words refer to, it would make it so that anything we did would reach farther, and each weapon would cause more damage, and everything would happen faster:"
"Time would speed up?"
"No," said Issib. He was obviously choosing his words carefully. "What if... what if the Gorayni could bring an army of five thousand men from Yabrev to Basilica in one day."
"Don't make me laugh."
"But if they could ?"
"We'd be helpless, of course."
"Why?"
"Well, we'd have no time to get an army together."
"So if we knew other nations could do that, we'd have to keep an army all the time, wouldn't we, just in case somebody suddenly attacked."
"I guess."
"So then, knowing that, suppose the Gorayni found a way to get, not five thousand, but fifty thousand soldiers here, and not in a day, but in six hours."
"Impossible."
"What if I tell you that it's been done?"
"Whoever could do that would rule the whole world."
"Exactly, Nyef, unless everybody else could do it, too. But what kind of world would that be? It would be as if the world had turned small, and everybody was right next door to everybody else. A cruel, bullying, domineering nation like the Gorayni could put their armies on anybody's doorstep. So all other nations of the world would have to band together to stop them. And instead of a few thousand people dying, a million, ten million people might die in a war."
"So that's why the Oversoul keeps us from thinking about... quick ways... to get lots of soldiers from one place to another."
"That was hard to say, wasn't it?"
"I kept ... my mind kept wandering."
"It's a hard concept to keep in your mind, and you aren't even thinking about anything specific."
"I hate this," said Nafai. "You can't even tell me how anybody could do a trick like that. I can hardly even hold the concept in my mind as it is. I hate this."
"I don't think the Oversoul is used to having anybody notice. I think that the very fact that you're able to think about the concept of unthinkable concepts means that the Oversoul is losing control."
"Issya, I've never felt so helpless and stupid in my life."
"And it isn't just wars and armies," said Issib. "Remember the stories of Klati?"
"The slaughter man?"
"Climbing in through women's windows in the night and gutting them like cattle in the butcher's shop."