"No," said Nafai. "In some ways better, yes, but how can it help but be a good thing to live in a world where people... where we could... fly?
The word almost choked him, but he said it, and even though he could hardly bear to stay in the same place, the air felt so close and unbreathable, nevertheless he stayed.
"You're good," said Issib. "I'm impressed."
But Nafai didn't feel impressive. He felt sick and angry and betrayed. "How does the Oversoul have the right? he said. "To take this all away from us."
"What, armies appearing at our gates without warning? I'm glad enough not to have that."
Nafai shook his head. "It's deciding what I can think?
"Nyef, I know the feeling, I went through all this months ago, and I kww^ it makes you so angry and frightened. But I also know that you can overcome it. And yesterday, when Mother talked about her vision. Of a planet burning. There's a word for-well, you couldn't hear it now, I know that-but the Oversoul has been keeping us from that. For thirty or forty million years- don't you realize that this is a long time? More history than we can imagine. It's all stored away somewhere, but the most we can hold onto, the most that we can get into our minds is the most skeletal sort of plan of what's happened in the world for the last ten million years or so-and it takes years and years of study to comprehend even that much. There are kingdoms and languages we've never heard of even in the last million years, and yet nothing is really lost. When I went searching in the library, I was able to find references to works in other libraries and trace my way back until I read a crude translation from a book written thirty-two million years ago and do you know what it said? Even then the writer was saying that history was now too long, too full for the human mind to comprehend it. That if all of human history were compressed into a single thousand-page volume, the whole story of humankind on Earth would be only a single page. And that was thirty-two million years ago."
"So we've been here a long time."
"If I take that writer's arithmetic literally, that would mean that human history on Earth lasted only eight thousand years before the planet... burned."
Nafai understood. The Oversold had kept human beings from expanding the scale of their destructiveness, and so humanity had lasted five thousand times longer on the planet Harmony than it did on Earth.
"So why didn't the Oversoul keep Earth from being destroyed?"
"I don't know," said Issib. "I have a guess."
"And what's that?"
"I don't know if you'll be allowed to think about it."
"Give me a try."
"The Oversoul wasn't made until people got to Harmony. It has the same meaning in every language, you know-the name of the planet. Sklad. Endrakt. So-glassye. Maybe when they got here, with Earth in ashes behind them, they decided never to let it happen again. Maybe that's when the Oversoul was put in place-to stop us from ever having such terrible power."
"Then the Oversold would be-an artifact."
"Yes," said Issib. "This isn't hard for you to think about?"
"No," said Nafai. "Easy. It's not that uncommon a thought. People have talked about the Oversoul as a machine before."
"It was hard for me? said Issib. "But maybe because I came to the idea another way. Through a couple of unthinkable paths. Genetic alteration of the human brain so it could receive and transmit thoughts from communications satellites orbiting the planet."
Nafai heard the words, but they meant nothing to him.
"You didn't understand that, did you," said Issib.
"No," said Nafai.
"I didn't think you would."
"Issya, what is the Oversoul doing to us now?"
That's what I've been working on. Trying to look through the forbidden words, find the pattern, find out what it means to be giving Father this vision of a world on fire. And Mother. And the dream of blood and ashes that Luet was given."
"It means that we're puppets."
"No, Nafai. Don't talk yourself into hating the Over-soul about this. That does no good at all-I know that now. We have to understand it. What it's doing. Because the world really is in danger, if the Oversoul's control is breaking down. And it is. It's given up on war wagons- what will it give up on next? What empire will be the next to get out of hand? Which one will discover-that word you asked about-puscani prah. It's a powder that when you put flame to it, it blows up. Pops like a balloon, only with thousands of times more force. Enough to make a wall fall down. Enough to kill people."
"Please stop," whispered Nafai. It was more than he could bear, fighting off the panic he felt as he heard these words.
"The Oversoul is not our enemy. In feet, I think-I think it called on Father because it needs help."
"Why haven't you said any of this before?"
"I have-to Father. To Mother. To some teachers. Other students. Other scholars. I even wrote it up in an article, but if nobody ever remembers receiving it, they can never find it. Even when I sent it to the same person four times. I gave up."
"But you told me?
"You came into the library," said Issib. "I thought- why not?"
" Zrakoplov," said Nafai.
"I can't believe you remembered the word," said Issib.
"A machine. The people don't just ... fly. They use a machine."
"Don't push it," said Issib. "You'll just make yourself sick. You have a headache already, right?"
"But I'm right, yes?"
"My best guess is that it was hollow, like a house, and people got inside it to fly. Like a ship, only through the air. With wings. But we had them here, I think. You know the district of Black Fields?"
"Of course, just west of the market."
"The old name of it was Skyport. The name lasted until twenty million years ago, more or less. Skyport. When they changed it, nobody remembered what it even meant."
"I can't think about this anymore," said Nafai.
"Do you want to remember it, though?" asked Issib.
"How can I forget it?"
"You will, you know. If I don't remind you. Every day. Do you want me to? It'll feel like this every time. It'll make you sick. Do you want to just forget this, or do you want me to keep reminding you?"
"Who reminded you ?"
"I left myself notes," said Issib. "In the library computers. Reminders. Why do you think it took me a year to get this far?"
"I want to remember," said Nafai.
"You'll get angry at me."
"Remind me not to."
"It'll make you sick."
"So I'll faint a lot." Nafai slid down the pillar and sat on the porch, looking out toward the street. "Why hasn't anybody noticed us out here? We haven't exactly been whispering."
Issib laughed. "Oh, they noticed. Mother came out once, and a couple of the teachers. They heard us talking for a couple of moments and then they just sort of forgot why they came out."
"This is great. If we want them to leave us alone, all we have to do is talk about the zmkoplovs?
"Well," said Issib, "that only works with people who are still closely tied with the Oversoul."
"Who isn't?"
"Whoever thought of the war wagons, for instance."
"You said the Oversoul had given up on them."
"Sure, recently^ said Issib. "But there were people in Basilica planning to build war wagons, people dealing with the Potoku about them for a long rime. More than a year. They had no trouble with the Oversoul. It's like they're deaf to it now. But most people aren't-which is why Gaballufix and his men were able to keep it secret for so long. Most people who heard anything about war wagons would simply have forgotten they even heard it. In fact," added Issib, "the Oversoul may have deliberately stopped forbidding that idea in the last little while precisely because there had to be open discussion of the war wagon thing in order to stop it."