So let the little suckers make it to the egg. Shedemei said it was a good time for them to have their competition for survival.

Let one of them, a strong and sturdy one, reach his microscopic goal and pierce that cell wall and join his helical deoxy-ribonucleic acid to hers and make a baby on our very first try, so I don't have to go through all of this again.

But if I have to, I will. For Shedemei.

He reached out and found her hand and clasped it in his. She did not awaken, but still her hand closed ever so slightly, gently enclosing his.

Luet could hardly sleep. She couldn't stop thinking about Nafai, worrying about him. In vain did the Oversoul assure her: He's doing well, all will be well. It was long after dark, long after Chveya slept from her last suckling of the night, before Luet drifted off to sleep.

It was no restful sleep, either. She kept dreaming of Nafai sidling along rocky ledges, creeping up the face of sheer cliffs with sometimes a bow in one hand, sometimes a pulse, only in her dream the cliff would grow steeper and steeper until finally it bent backward and Nafai was clinging like an insect to the underside of the cliff and finally he would lose his grip and drop away…

And she would come half-awake, realize it had been a dream, and impatiently turn her sweaty pillow and try to sleep again.

Until a dream came that was not of Nafai dying. Instead he was in a room that shone with silver, with chromium, with platinum, with ice. In her dream he lay down upon a block of ice and the heat of his body melted into it, and he sank and sank until he was completely inside the ice and it closed over him and froze. What is this dream? she thought. And then she thought, If I know that this is a dream, does that mean that I'm awake? And if I'm awake, why doesn't the dream stop?

It did not stop. Instead she saw that, instead of being trapped in the ice, Nafai was sinking all the way through it. Now the shape of his back and buttocks, his calves and heels, his elbows and fingertips and the back of his head began to bow downward at the bottom of the ice block, and she thought—what holds this ice in the middle of the air like this? Why didn't it also hold Nafai? His body bulged farther and farther downward, and then he dropped through, falling the meter or so to the shining floor. His eyes opened, as if he had been asleep during his passage through the ice. He rolled out from under the block, out of the shadow of it, and as soon as he stood up in the light, she could see that his body was no longer what it had been. Now, where the lights struck him, his skin shone brightly, as if it had been coated with the finest possible layer of the same metal the walls were made of. Like armor. Like a new skin. It sparkled so ... and then she realized that it was not reflecting light at all, but rather it was giving off its own light. Whatever he was wearing now drew its power from his body, and when he thought of any part of himself, to move a limb, or even just to look at it, it fairly sparked with light.

Look at him, thought Luet. He has become a god, not just a hero. He shines like the Oversoul. His is the body of the Oversoul.

But that's nonsense. The Oversoul is a computer, and needs no body of flesh and bone. Far from it—caught in a human body it would lose its vast memory, its light-fast speed.

Nevertheless, Nafai's body sparkled with light as he moved, and she knew that it was the Oversoul's body he was wearing, though it made no sense to her at all.

In the dream she saw him come to her, and embrace her, and when she was joined to him, she could feel that the sparkling armor that he wore grew to include her, so that she also shone with light. It made her skin feel so alive, as if every nerve had been connected to the molecule-thin metal coating that surrounded her like sweat. And she realized—every point that sparks is where a nerve connects to this layer of light. She pulled away from Nafai, and the new skin stayed with her, even though she had not passed through the ice that gave it to him. It is his skin I'm wearing now, she thought; and yet she also thought: I too am wearing the body of the Oversoul, and am alive now for the first time.

What does this dream mean?

But since she was asking the question in a dream, she got only a dream answer: She saw the dream Nafai and her dream-self make love, with such passion that she forgot it was a dream and lost herself in the ecstasy of it. And when their coupling was done, she saw the belly of her dreamself grow, and then a baby emerged from her groin and slid shining into Nafai's arms, for the babe, too, was coated with the new skin, alive with light. Ah, the child was beautiful, so beautiful.

(Wake up.)

She heard it like a voice, it was so clear and strong.

(Wake up.)

She sat bolt upright, trying to see who had spoken to her, to recognize the voice that lingered in her memory.

(Get up.)

It was not a voice at all. It was the Oversoul. But why was the Oversoul interrupting her dream, when surely the Oversoul had sent the dream in the first place?

(Get up, Waterseer, rise up in silence, and walk in the moonlight to the place where Vas plans to kill his wife and his rival. On the ledge that saved Nafai's life you must wait for them.)

But I'm not strong enough to stop him, if murder is in his heart.

(Being there will be enough. But you must be there, and you must go now, for he is on watch now, and thinks that he and Sevet are the only ones awake… he will soon be scratching on Obring's tent, and then it will be too late, you'll not make it to the mountain unobserved.)

Luet passed through the door of her tent, so sleepy that she still felt as if she were in a dream.

Why must I go down the mountain? she asked, confused. Why not just tell Obring and Sevet what Vas plans for them?

(Because if they believe you, Vas will be destroyed as a member of this company. And if they don't believe you, Vas will be your enemy and you will never be safe again. Trust me. Do this my way, and all will live, all will live.)

Are you sure of this?

(Of course.)

You're no better at telling the future than anybody else. How sure are you?

(The odds of success are, perhaps, sixty percent.)

Oh, wonderful. What about the forty percent chance of failure?

(You are such an intelligent woman, you'll improvise, you'll make it work.)

I wish I had as much faith in you as you seem to have in me.

(The only reason you don't is because you don't know me as well as I know you.)

You can read my thoughts, dear Oversoul, but you can never know me, because there is no part of you that can feel the way I feel, or think the way I think.

(Do you imagine I don't know that, boastful human? Must you taunt me for it? Go down the mountain. Carefully, carefully. The path is visible by moonlight, but treacherous. Obring is awake now; you have made it just in time. Now stay ahead of them, far enough that they can't hear you, far enough that they can't see.)

Elemak had noticed when Sevet and Obring both took extra flagons from the stores. He knew at once what it meant—that there was a plan to make a run for Dorova. At the same time, though, he could not believe that those two would ever have come up with a plan together—they never spoke to each other privately, if only because Kokor made sure they had no opportunity. No, there was someone else involved, someone who was better at this sort of deception, so that Elemak hadn't noticed his or her theft of an extra flagon.

And then, just before night, Vas had volunteered for the hated late watch, the second-to-last one before morning. Obring had taken the last watch already. It didn't take a genius to realize that they intended to leave on Vas's watch. Fools. Did they think they could make it down the mountain and across the waterless sand of the beach around the bay on two flagons of fresh water each? Not carrying babies they couldn't. They aren't going to take their babies. The thought was so outrageous that Elemak almost didn't believe it. But then he realized that it must be true. His loathing for Obring redoubled. But Vas… it was hard to believe that Vas would do such a thing. The man doted on his daughter. He had even named her for himself—would he leave her, heartlessly?