"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."
"Why couldn't the Oversoul have made him get stupid when he thought of doing that?"
"Because the Oversoul's job isn't to make us perfect," said Issib. "But imagine if Klati had been able to get on a-been able to travel very quickly and get to another city in six hours."
"They would have known he was a stranger and watched him so closely that he couldn't have done a thing."
"But you don't understand-thousands, millions of people every day are doing the same thing-"
"Butchering women?"
"Flying from one place to another."
"This is too crazy to think about!" shouted Nafai. He bounded to his feet and moved toward the house.
"Come back," cried Issib. "You don't really think that, you're being made to think it!"
Nafai leaned against one of the pillars of the front porch, Issib was right. He had been fine, and then suddenly Issib said whatever it was that he said and suddenly Nafai had to leave, had to get away and now here he was, panting, leaning up against the pillar, his heart pounding so hard that somebody else could probably hear it from a meter away. Could this really be the Oversoul, making him so stupid and fearful? If it was, then the Oversoul was his enemy. And Nafai refused to surrender. He could think about things whether the Oversoul liked it or not. He could think about the thing that Issib had said, and he could do it without running away.
In his mind Nafai retraced the last few moments of his conversation with Issib. About Klati. Going from city to city in a few hours. Other cities would notice him, of course-but then Issib said what if thousands of people... were ... flying.
The picture that came into Nafai's mind was ludicrous. To imagine people in the air, like birds, soaring, swooping. He should laugh-but instead, thinking of it made his throat feel tight. His head felt tight, constrained. A sharp pain grew out of his neck and up into the back of his head. But he could think of it. People flying. And from there he could finish Issib's thought. People flying from city to city, thousands of them, so that the authorities in each city had no way of keeping track of one person.
"Klati could have killed once in each city and no one would ever have found him," said Nafai.
Issib was beside him again, his arm resting oh-so-lightly across Nafai's shoulder as he leaned against the pillar. "Yes," said Issib.
"But what would it mean to be a citizen of a place?" asked Nafai. "If a thousand people ... flew here... to Basilica... today."
"It's all right," said Issib. "You don't have to say it."
"Yes I do," said Nafai. "I can think anything. It can't stop me."
"I was just trying to explain-that the Oversoul doesn't stop the evil in the world-it just stops it from getting out of hand. It keeps the damage local. But the good things-think about it, Nafai-we give our art and music and stories to the Oversoul, and it offers them to every other nation. The good things do spread. So it does make the world a better place."