It was true; the first light was brightening the sky outside their parchment-glazed window.
Zdorab woke instantly, coming to open the door even before Nafai and Luet reached it. Shedemei appeared in a moment, and after a few whispered words she left to go summon Issib and Hushidh. They gathered then at the house where the Index was kept. Luet told them all her dream, and Zdorab and Issib at once began searching through the Index, trying to find answers.
Luet grew impatient first, as they waited in silence. "I'm useless here for now," she said. "And the children will want me."
"Me too," said Hushidh, and Shedemei reluctantly left with them, each returning to her house. Nafai knew that when it came to searching the Index, he wasn't much use, either—it was Issib and Zdorab who had made exploration of the Oversoul's memory their life's work, and he couldn't compete with them. He knew that the women would resent his tacit assumption that he could stay and Luet needed to leave… but he also knew that it was true. The children's routines revolved around Luet, who was always there, while Nafai was so often gone on hunting expeditions that his presence or absence barely made a difference in their lives. Not that they didn't care whether he was there or not—they cared a great deal—but it didn't change the normal events of their day.
So Nafai stayed in the Index House as Zodya and Issya asked it questions. He heard their murmuring, and now and then one would ask him a question, but he was truly useless to them.
He reached out his hand across the table and rested the back of his fingers against the Index. "You're looping, aren't you," he said.
"Yes," said the Index. "I realized that as soon as Luet had her dream from the Keeper. Issib and Zdorab are already working to find the loop."
"It must be in your primitive routines," said Nafai, "because you could find it and program your way out of it if it were your own self-programming."
"Yes," said the Index again. "Zdorab assumed that at once, and that's where we're exploring."
"It must be a loop where you think you've found something only you haven't really," said Nafai, remembering the dream.
"Yes," said the Index. It couldn't be sounding impatient, could it? "Issib insisted on that from the start, so we're trying to find something that I can't detect myself. It's very hard to search my memory to find what I haven't detected."
Nafai realized that all his thoughts were doing nothing but following far behind Zdorab and Issib, and so he sighed and took his hand away from the Index, sat back in the chair, and waited. He loathed being a spectator at important events. It's what Elemak has so often said about me, Nafai told himself nastily. I have to make myself the hero of every story I take part in. What was it he said that time? That someday if he didn't stop me I'd find a way to be the protagonist of Elemak's own autobiography. Thus I fancy myself to be vital to the process of discovering what has the Oversoul going in circles, wasting its time, wasting our time …
Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.
Like a hunt, around in circles, the poor Oversoul is tying itself up in knots, covering the same ground without realizing it.
And as he thought this, Nafai envisioned the path he took on his most recent hunt as if he were above the ground, looking down at it like a map, seeing his own path drawn out among the trees, watching as he went in twisting, interlocking circles, but never quite passed the same tree from the same direction so he never guessed it except by seeing the map.
That's what the Oversoul needs to do—see its own tracks.
He reached out and touched the Index and said so to the Oversoul.
"Yes," said the Index—still maddeningly unreproachful. "Zdorab already suggested that I look through my recent history to find repetitive behavior. But I don't track my own behavior. Only human behavior. I have no autobiography stored here, except insofar as my actions impinge on humanity. And apparently whatever I'm doing that has me in a loop has no direct effect on humanity—or is so primitive that I'm unaware of it. Either way, I can't retrace my own steps."
Stymied again, Nafai didn't take his hand away. It might be too disturbing to the others, to keep touching the Index and then removing his hand.
Disturbing? No. He simply didn't want the embarrassment of having them know that again his would-be contribution was futile.
He was still sleepy. Luet's dream had woken him too early, and sitting here now, with nothing to do, he began to doze. He laid his head down on the table, resting on his other arm; still his fingers touched the Index.
He went back to that image of himself seen from above, a map being traced behind him as he hunted in circles through the woods. Maybe I really do that, he thought, drifting on the edge of sleep. Maybe I really move in circles.
"No you don't," said the Index. "Except when the animal you're tracking moved that way."
I might, said Nafai silently. I might drift around and around in large circles, casting for the tracks of some beast, never realizing that I'm seeing my own tracks. Maybe sometimes I hunt myself. Maybe I find my own tracks and think, what an exceptionally large beast, this will feed us for a week, and then I track myself and track myself and never catch up until one day I come upon my own body, lying there exhausted and starving, dying so that in my madness I now imagine myself detached from my body and…
I was dozing, he said silently.
"Here's the map of all your journeys," said the Index. "You'll see that you never make circles, except when tracking a beast."
Nafai saw in his mind a clear map of the land all around Dostatok, clear up to the mountains and beyond, showing all his journeys.
I've really covered this territory, haven't I, said Nafai silently.
But even as he said it, he saw it wasn't true. There was an area where none of his hunts had ever taken him. A sort of wedge right up among the mountains, tending toward the desert side of them, where none of his paths went.
Do you have a map of the others' hunting trips? asked Nafai.
Almost at once, a map that he "knew" was Elemak's hunts was superimposed on his own, and then a map of Vas's and Obring's hunts, and the group hunts. They interlocked until they formed a tight net all around Dostatok.
Except for that wedge in the mountains.
What's in that place in the mountains, where none of our paths meet?
"What are you talking about?" asked the Index.
The gap in the maps. The place where no one has been.
"There is no gap," said the Index.
Nafai focused on the spot, giving it all its attention. There! he shouted inside his mind.
"You speak to me as if you were pointing, and I can see you giving great attention to something, yet there is no point on the map that you're singling out above any other."
Could there be something here that is hidden even from yourself?
"Nothing on Harmony is hidden from me."
Why did you bring us to Dostatok?
"Because I've prepared this place for you to wait until I'm ready."
Ready for what?
"For you to carry me on the voyage to Earth."
And why should we have come here to wait?
"Because this is the nearest place where you could sustain your lives until I'm ready."
The nearest place to what?
"To yourselves. To where you are."
This was getting circular again, Nafai could see. He tried a different tack. When will you be ready for us to carry you to Earth? Nafai asked.
"When I call you forth," said the Index.