"Leave my house," said Rasa.
"But I don't want to," said Gaballufix. "I want to talk to you."
"Without them^ you can speak to me any time. You know that, Gabya."
"I knew that mce? said Gaballufix. "Truth to tell, O noblest of my mates," my unforgotten bed-bundle, I knew that my soldiers would never impress you-I just wanted to show you the latest fashion. Soon all the best people will be wearing them."
"Only in their coffins," said Aunt Rasa.
"Do you want to hold this conversation in front of the children, or shall we retire to your sacred portico?"
"Your soldiers wait outside the door. The locked door."
"Whatever you say, O mother of my duet of sweet songbirds. Though your door, with all its locks, would be no barrier if I wanted them inside."
"People who are sure of their power don't have to brag," said Aunt Rasa. She led the way down the corridor as Shedemei closed and barred the front door in the soldiers' faces.
Luet could still hear the conversation between Aunt Rasa and Gaballufix even after they turned a corner and were out of sight.
"I don't have to brag," Gaballufix was saying. "I do it for the sheer joy of it/
Instead of answering, though, Aunt Rasa called loudly down the corridor.
"Luet! Hushidh! Come with me. I want witnesses."
At once Luet strode forward, with Hushidh beside her at once. Because Aunt Rasa had brought them up, they didn't run, but their walk was brisk enough that they had turned the corner and could hear Gaballufix's last few whispered words before they caught up. "... not afraid of your witchlets," he was saying.
Luet gave no sign that she had heard, of course. She knew that Hushidh's face would be even less expressive.
Out on the portico, Gaballufix made no pretense of respecting the boundary of Aunt Rasa's screens. He strode directly to the balustrade, looking out at the view that was forbidden to the eyes of men. Aunt Rasa did not follow him, so Luet and Hushidh also remained behind the screens. At last Gaballufix returned to where they waited.
"Always a beautiful sight," he said.
"For that act alone you could be banned," said Aunt Rasa.
Gaballufix laughed. "Your sacred lake. How long do you think it will go unmuddied by the boots of men, if the Wetheads come? Have you thought of that-have Roptat and your beloved Volemak thought of it? The Wetheads have no reverence for women's religion."
"Even less than you?"
Gaballufix rolled his eyes to show tiis disdain for her accusation. "If Roptat and Volemak have their way, the Wetheads would own this city, and to them, the view from this portico would not be a view of holy land-it would all be city property, undeveloped land, potential building sites and hunting parks, and an extraordinary lake, with both hot and cold water for bathing in any weather."
Luet was astonished that so much of the nature of the lake had been explained to him. What woman had so forgotten herself as to speak of the sacred place?
Yet Aunt Rasa said nothing of the impropriety of his words. "Bringing the Wetheads is Roptat's plan. Wetchik and I have spoken for nothing but the ancient neutrality."
"Neutrality! Fools and children believe in that/There is no neutrality when great powers collide!"
"In the power of the Oversold there is neutrality and peace," said Aunt Rasa, calm in the face of his storm. "She has the power to turn aside our enemies so they see us not at all."
"Power? Maybe he has power, all right, this Oversoul-but IVe seen no evidence that he saves poor innocent cities from destruction. How did it happen that I alone am the champion of Basilica, the only one who can see that safety lies only in alliance with Potokgavan?"
"Save the patriotic speeches for the council, Gabya. In front of me, there's no point in hiding behind them. The wagons offered some easy profit. And as for war-you know so little about it that you think you want it to come. You think that you'll stand beside the mighty soldiers of Potokgavan and drive off the Wetheads, and your name will be remembered forever. But I tell you that when you stand against your enemy, you'll stand alone. No Potoku will be there beside you. And when you fell your name will be forgotten as quickly as last week's weather."
"This storm, my dear lapsatory mate, has a name, and will be remembered."
"Only for the damage that you caused, Gabya. When Basilica burns, every tongue of flame will be branded Gaballufix, and the dying curse of every citizen who falls will have your name in it."
"Now who fancies herself a prophet?" said Gaballufix. "Save your poetics for those who tremble at the thought of the Oversoul. And as for your banning-succeed or fail, it makes no difference."
"You mean that you don't intend to obey?"
" Me? Disobey the council? Unthinkable. No one will find me in the city after I am banned, you can be sure of that."
But with those words he reached down and switched on his holocostume. At once he was armored in illusion, his face an undetectable mask of a vaguely menacing soldier, like any of the hundreds of others he had so equipped. Luet knew then that he had no intention of obeying a banning. He would simply wear this most perfect of disguises, so that no one could identify him. He would stay within the city, doing whatever he wanted, flouting the council's edicts with impunity. Then the only hope of freeing the city from his rule would not be political. It would be civil war, and the streets would flow with blood.
Luet knew from her eyes that Aunt Rasa understood this. She looked steadily at the empty eyes that stared back at her from Gaballufix's holocostume. She said nothing when he turned and left; said nothing at all, in feet, until at last Luet took Hushidh's hand and they walked away to the edge of the portico, to look out over the Valley of Women.
"There's nothing between them anymore," said Hushidh. "I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content."
To Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love; they had made two babies, and yet, only fifteen years later, the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing. Even this forty-million-year world that the Oversold had preserved as if in ice, even it would melt before the fire. Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.
TEN - TENTS
Wetchik had pitched his tents away from any road, in a narrow river valley near the shores of the Rumen Sea. They had reached it at sunset, just as a troop of baboons moved away from their feeding area near the river's mouth, toward their sleeping niches in the steepest, craggiest cliff in the valley wall. It was the baboons' calls and hoots that guided them during the last of their journey; Elemak was careful to lead them well upstream of the baboons. "So we don't disturb them?" Issib asked.
"So they don't foul our water and steal our food," said Elemak.
Before Father allowed them to unburden the camels and water them, before they ate or drank anything themselves, Father sat atop his camel and gestured toward the stream. "Look-the end of the dry season, and yet it still has water in it. The name of this place is Elemak from now. on. I name it for you, my eldest son.
Be like the river, so that the purpose of your life is to flow forever toward the great ocean of the Oversoul."