"I see the point," said Rasa.

"It's the quandary the Oversoul is in. It must get repaired or it will stop being able to protect humanity; yet the only way it can repair itself is to give human beings the very things that it's trying to prevent us from getting."

"How circular."

"So it's going home," said Issib. "Back to the Keeper of Earth. To find out what to do next."

"What if this Keeper of Earth doesn't know either?"

"Then we're up to our necks in kaka, aren't we?" Issib smiled. "But I think the Keeper knows. I think it has a plan."

"And why is that?"

"Because people keep getting dreams that aren't from the Oversoul."

"People have always had dreams that aren't from the Oversoul," said Rasa. "We had dreams long before there was an Oversoul."

"Yes, but we didn't have the same dreams, carrying clear messages about coming home to Earth, did we?"

"I just don't believe that some computer or whatever that's many light-years from here could possibly send a dream into our minds."

"Who knows what's happened back on Earth?" said Issib. "Maybe the Keeper of Earth has learned things about the universe that we don't begin to understand. That wouldn't be a surprise, either, since we've had the Oversoul making us stupid whenever we tried to think about really advanced physics. For forty million years we've been slapped down whenever we used our brains too well, but in forty million years the Keeper of Earth, whoever or whatever it is, might well have thought of some really useful new stuff. Including how to send dreams to people lighters away."

"And all this you learned from the Index."

"All this I dragged kicking and screaming from the Index, with Zdorab's and Father's help," said Issib. "The Oversoul doesn't like talking about itself, and it keeps trying to make us forget what we've learned about it."

"I thought the Oversoul was cooperating with us."

"No," said Issib. "We're cooperating with it. In the meantime, it's trying to keep us from learning even the tiniest bit of information that isn't directly pertinent to the tasks it has in mind for us."

"So how did you learn all that you just told me? About how the Oversoul's memory works?"

"Either we got around its defenses so well and so persistently that it finally gave up on trying to prevent us from knowing it, or it decided that this was harmless information after all."

"Or," said Rasa.

"Or?"

"Or the information is wrong and so it doesn't matter whether you know it or not."

Issib grinned at her. "But the Oversoul wouldn't lie, would it, Mother?"

Which brought back a conversation they had had when Issib was a child, asking about the Oversoul. What had the question been? Ah, yes—why do men call the Oversoul he and women call the Oversoul she? And Rasa had answered that the Oversoul permitted men to think of her as if she were male, so they'd be more comfortable praying to her. And Issib had asked that same question: But the Oversoul wouldn't lie, would it, Mother?

As Rasa recalled it, she hadn't done very well answering that question the first time, and she wasn't about to embarrass herself by trying to answer it again now. "I interrupted your work, coming here like this," said Rasa.

"Not at all," said Issib. "Father said to explain anything you asked about."

"He knew I'd come here?"

"He said it was important that you understand our work with the Index."

"What is your work with the Index?"

"Trying to get it to tell us what we want to know instead of just what the Oversoul wants us to know."

"Are you getting anywhere?"

"Either yes or no."

"What do you mean?"

"We're finding out a lot of things, but whether that's just because the Oversoul wants us to know them or not is a moot point. Our experience is that the Index does different things for different people."

"Depending on what?"

"That's what we haven't figured out yet," said Issib. "I have days when the Index practically sings to me—it's like it lives inside my head, answering my questions before I even think of them. And then there are days when I think the Oversoul is trying to torture me, leading me on wild goose chases."

"Chasing after what?"

"The whole history of Harmony is wide open to me. I can give you the name of every person who ever came to this stream and drank from it. But I can't find out where the Oversoul is leading us, or how we're going to get to Earth, or even where the original human settlers of Harmony first landed, or where the central mind of the Oversoul is located."

"So she's keeping secrets from you," said Rasa.

"I think it can't tell us," said Issib. "I think it would like to tell, but it can't. A protective system built into it from the start, I assume, to prevent anybody from taking control of the Over-soul and using it to rule the world."

"So we have to follow it blindly, not even knowing where it's leading us?"

"That's about it," said Issib. "Just one of those times in life when things don't go your way but you still have to live with it."

Rasa looked at Issib, at the steady way he regarded her, and knew that he was reminding her that nothing the Oversoul was doing to her right now was even close to being as oppressive as Issib's life in a defective body.

I know that, foolish boy, she thought. I know perfectly well that your life is awful, and that you complain about it very little. But that was unpreventable and remains incurable. Perhaps the Oversoul's refusal to tell us what's going on is also unpreventable and incurable, in which case I'll try to bear it with at least as much patience as you. But if I can cure it, I will—and I won't let you shame me into accepting something that I may not have to accept.

"What the Oversoul can't tell us for the asking," said Rasa, "we might be able to find out on the sly."

"What do you think Zdorab and I have been working on?"

Ah. So Issib wasn't really being fatalistic about it, either. But then another thought occurred to her. "What does your father think you've been working on?"

Issib laughed. "Not that" he said.

Of course not. Volemak wouldn't want to see the Index used to subvert the Oversoul. "Ah. So the Oversoul isn't the only one that doesn't tell others what she's doing."

"And what do you tell, Lady Mother?" asked Issib.

What an interesting question. Do I tell Volemak what Issib is doing and run the risk of Volya trying to ban his son from using the Index? And yet I have never kept secrets from Volemak.

Which brought her back to the decision she had made earlier that day, to tell Volemak about what happened in the desert—about Elemak passing a sentence of death on Nafai. That could also have awful consequences. Did she have the right to cause those consequences by telling? On the other hand, did she have the right to deprive Volemak of important information?

Issib didn't wait for her answer. "You know," he said, "the Oversoul already knows what we're trying to do, and hasn't done a thing to stop us."

"Or else has done it so well you don't know she's doing it," said Rasa.

"If the Oversoul felt no need to tell Father, then is it so urgent, really, for you to do so?"

Rasa thought about that for a moment. Issib thought he was asking only about his own secret, but she was deciding about both. This was the Oversoul's expedition, after all, and if anyone knew and understood human behavior, it was the Oversoul.

She knows what happened on the desert, just as she knows what Issib and Zdorab are doing with the Index. So why not leave it up to the Oversoul to decide what to tell?

Because that's exactly what Zdorab and Issib are trying to find a way to circumvent—the Oversoul's power to make all these decisions about telling or not telling. I don't want the Oversoul deciding what I can or cannot know—and yet here I am contemplating treating my husband exactly as the Oversoul treats me. And yet the Oversoul really did know better than Rasa whether Volemak should be informed about these things.