The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (41 page)

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 head 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 his 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.

Call us forth from where, to where?

“From Dostatok,” said the Index.

To where?

“To Earth,” said the Index.

To Nafai it was clear—the empty place on the map, which the Index could not see, was also the place where they would gather to leave for Earth—again, a place that the Index could not name.

“I can name any place on Harmony,” said the Index. “I can report to you any name that any human has ever given to any spot on this planet.”

Then tell me the name of
this
place? asked Nafai, again focusing on the gap in the hunting maps.

“Point to a place and I’ll tell you.”

On a whim, Nafai mentally drew a circle all around the gap in the paths.

“Vusadka,” said the Index.

Vusadka, thought Nafai. An ancient-sounding name. But not dissimilar to the word for a single step just outside a door. He asked the Index: What does Vusadka mean?

“It’s the name of this place.”

How long has it had this name? asked Nafai.

“It was called this by the people of Raspyatny.”

And where did they learn this name?

“It was well known among the Cities of the Stars and the Cities of Fire.”

What is the oldest reference to this name?

“What name?” asked the Index.

The Oversoul could not have forgotten already. So he must have run into the block in its memory again. Nafai asked: When is the oldest reference to this name in the Cities of Fire?

“Twenty million years ago,” said the Index.

Is there an older reference in the Cities of the Stars?

“Of course—they’re much older, too. Thirty-nine million years ago.”

Did Vusadka have a meaning in the language they spoke then?

“The languages of Harmony are all related,” said the Index.

Again it was being non-responsive. Nafai tried another circling approach that might bring him the information he needed:

What is the word in the language of the Cities of the Stars thirty-nine million years ago that most closely resembles Vusadka without
being
Vusadka?

“Vuissashivat’h,” answered the Index.

And what did that word mean, to them?

“To disembark.”

From what?

“From a boat,” said the Index.

But why would this place in the mountains be given a name that is related to a verb meaning to disembark from a boat? Was there once a shoreline that touched here?

“These are very ancient mountains—before the rift that created the Valley of Fires, these mountains were already old.”

So there was never a shoreline that touched this land of Vusadka?

“Never,” said the Index. “Not since humans disembarked from their starships on the world of Harmony.”

Because it used the modern word
disembark
in reference to the original starships, Nafai knew at once that the Oversoul had done its best to confirm what he already had surmised: that Vusadka was the very place where the starships had landed forty million years ago, and therefore the very place where, if there were any possibility of a starship still existing, it would most likely be.

And another thought:
You
are there, aren’t you, Oversoul? Where the starships landed, that’s where
you
are. All your memories, all your processors, all are centered on this very place.

“What place?” asked the Index.

Nafai stood up, fully awake now. The scraping of his stool across the wooden floor brought the others out of their reveries. “I’m going to find the Oversoul,” Nafai said to them.

“Yes,” said Issib. “The Oversoul showed us its conversation with you.”

“Very deftly done,” said Zdorab. “I would never have thought of starting with the map of the hunting trips.”

Nafai almost didn’t tell them that he hadn’t done that deliberately; it felt good to be thought clever. But he realized that if he let them continue to think this about him, it would be a kind of lie. “I was just dozing,” said Nafai. “The hunting trip thing was just a mad idea on the edges of a dream. The Oversoul knew that it could not know that it knew, and it recognized that through the map it
could communicate with me, that’s all. It had to fool itself into telling me.”

Issib laughed. “All right, then, Nyef,” he said. “We’ll agree that you really aren’t very bright at all.”

“That’s right,” said Nafai. “All I did was hear it when the Oversoul found an oblique way to call me past barriers in its own mind. Tell the others that I’ve gone hunting, if anyone asks. But to Luet and your wives, of course, you can tell the truth—I’m off searching for the Oversoul. Both statements are true.”

Zdorab nodded wisely. “We’ve had peace here all these years,” he said, “because this was a good land and there was room for us and plenty to share. No one will be glad to think of uprooting ourselves again. Some will be less glad than others—it’s just as well to postpone telling them until we actually know something.”

Issib grimaced. “I can imagine a
real
battle over this one. I almost wish we hadn’t had so long a time of happiness here. This will divide the community and I can’t begin to guess what damage might be done before it’s through.”

Nafai shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “The Oversoul brought all of us on this journey. The Keeper of Earth is calling to all of us as well.”

“All are called,” said Zdorab, “but who will come?”

“At this moment,” said Nafai, “I will
go
.”

“Remember to take a bow and arrows, then,” said Issib. “Just in case you find supper for us on the way.” He didn’t say: So that our story of your having gone hunting will be believed.

It was a good idea in any event, so Nafai stopped by his house to get the bow and arrows.

“And if you hadn’t needed those,” said Luet, “you wouldn’t have stopped by and bid me farewell or explained anything at all, would you?” She sounded quite annoyed.

“Of course I would,” said Nafai.

“No,” she said. “You probably already asked the other two to let me know where you had gone.”

Nafai shrugged. “Either way, I made sure you’d know.”

“And yet it was
my
dream, and Chveya’s,” she said.

“Because
you
had the dreams,
you
own the outcome of it?” he asked, getting just as annoyed as she was.

“No, Nyef,” she said, sighing impatiently. “Because I had the dream today, I should have been your partner in this. Your fair and equal partner. Instead you treat me like a child.”

“I didn’t ask them to tell
Chveya,
did I? So I hardly treated you like a child, I think.”

“Can’t you just admit you acted like a baboon, Nafai?” asked Luet. “Can’t you just say that you treated me as if only men mattered in our community, as if women were nothing, and you’re
sorry
you treated me that way?”