The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

by Anissa Gray

  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?”

  “I didn’t act like a baboon,” said Nafai. “I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn’t make me any less human, it just makes me less female. Don’t you ever tell me again that because I don’t act like a woman wants me to act, that makes me an animal.”

  Nafai was surprised by the anger in his own voice.

  “So it comes to this in our own house, too,” said Luet softly.

  “Only because you brought it to this,” said Nafai. “Don’t ever call me an animal again.”

  “Then don’t act like one,” said Luet. “Being civilized means transcending your own animal nature. Not indulging it, not glorying in it. That’s how you remind me of a male baboon—because you can’t be civilized as long as you treat women like something to be bullied. You can only be civilized when you treat us like friends.”

  Nafai stood there in the doorway, burning inside with the unfairness of what she was saying. Not because she wasn’t speaking the truth, but because she was wrong to apply it to him this way. “I did treat you as my friend, and as my wife,” said Nafai. “I assumed that you loved me enough that we weren’t competing to see who owns the dreams.”

  “I wasn’t angry because you appropriated the results of my dream,” said Luet.

  “Oh?”

  “I was hurt because you didn’t share the results of your dream with me. I didn’t jump up from bed and go tell Hushidh and Shedemei my dream, and then ask them to tell you about it later.”

  Only when she put it that way did he understand why she was so upset. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She was still angry, and his apology was too little too late. “Go,” said Luet. “Go and find the Oversoul. Go and find the ruins of the ancient starships in the ancient landing place. Go and be the sole hero of our expedition. When I go to sleep tonight, I’ll expect to find you starring in my own dreams. I hope you have a tiny role in mind for me to play. Perhaps holding your coat.”

  Almost Nafai let her words hurl him out the door. She had as much as repeated Elemak’s insult to him—and she knew how much Elemak’s words had hurt him because he had confided it to her long ago. It was cruel and unfair of her to say it now. She of all people should have known that it wasn’t his desire to be a hero that impelled him now, it was his passion to find out what would happen next, to make the next thing happen. She, if she loved him, should have understood. So he almost left right then, letting her bitter words travel with him all the way up into the mountains.

  Instead he strode into the children’s room. They were still asleep, except for Chveya, who perhaps had been wakened by their low-key but intense quarreling. Nafai kissed each one, Chveya last. “I’m going to find the place where the best dreams come from,” he whispered, so as not to wake the other children.

  “Save room in all the dreams for me,” she whispered back.

  He kissed her again and then returned to the kitchen, which was the main room of the house, where Luet was stirring the porridge in the pot by the fire.

  “Thank you for finding room for me in your dreams,” he said to her. “You’re always welcome in mine, too.” Then he kissed her, and to his relief she kissed him back. They had resolved nothing except to reaffirm that even when they were angry at each other, they still loved each other. That was enough to send him on his way content instead of brooding.

  He would need to have his heart at peace, because it was obvious that the Oversoul was protecting the hidden place without even knowing that it was doing so. At least, so he surmised, for something must have turned them all aside whenever they were hunting, keeping them from going to Vusadka, and it was certainly the Oversoul’s talent for making people forget ideas it didn’t want them to act on. Yet the Oversoul hadn’t been able to see that place itself, or even see that it could not see it. This certainly meant that the Oversoul’s own deflection routines must have been turned against the Oversoul itself, so it wasn’t likely that the Oversoul would be able to turn them off and let Nafai pass. On the contrary—Nafai would have to fight his way through, as he and Issib had fought their way past the Oversoul’s barriers back in Basilica so long ago, fighting to think thoughts that the Oversoul had forbidden. Only now it wasn’t just ideas that he had to struggle to think of. It was a place where he had to struggle to go. A place that even the Oversoul couldn’t see.

  “I must overcome you,” he whispered to the Oversoul as he walked across the meadows north of the houses. “I must get past your barriers.”

  〈What barriers?〉

  This was going to be so hard. It made Nafai tired just to think of it. And there’d be no clever trick to get around it, either. He would just have to bull his way through by brute force of will. If he could. If he was strong enough.

  It was dusk, and Nafai was near despair. After a day’s travel just to get here, he had spent this whole day doing the same useless things, over and over. He would stand outside the forbidden zone and ask the Oversoul to show him the map of all the paths taken by all the hunters, and easily see which direction he needed to travel in order to reach Vusadka. He would even scratch an arrow or write the direction in the dirt with a stick. And then, after setting boldly forth, he would soon find himself back outside the “hidden” area, a hundred meters from where he had written the direction. If he had written “northeast,” he would find himself due west of the writing; if his arrow pointed toward the east, he would find himself south of it. He simply couldn’t get past the barrier.

  He railed against the Oversoul, but the answers he got showed the Oversoul to be oblivious to what was going on. “I want to go southeast from this spot,” he would say. “Help me.” And then he would find himself far to the north and the Oversoul would say, in his mind, You didn’t listen to me. I told you to go southwest, and you didn’t listen.

  Now the sun was down and the sky was darkening fast. He hated the idea of returning to Dostatok tomorrow, a complete failure.

  〈I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.〉

  “I’m trying to find you,” said Nafai.

  〈But here I am.〉

  “I know where you are. But I can’t get to you.”

  〈I’m not stopping you.〉

  It was true, Nafai knew it. The Oversoul might not even be doing this. If the Oversoul could be given the power to block human minds, to turn humans away from actions they were planning, then couldn’t the first humans on Harmony have set up another set of defenses to protect this place? Defenses not under the Oversoul’s control—indeed, defenses that warded away the Oversoul itself?

  Show me all the paths I’ve taken today, said Nafai silently. Make me see them here on the ground.

  He saw them—faint shimmerings, which coalesced
into threads on the ground. He saw how they began, time after time, heading straight toward the center of the circle around Vusadka. Then they stopped cold, every one of them, and began again not very far to the north or south, obliquely coasting along the borderline.

  That really struck him—how precise the border was. He must be penetrating no more than a meter or so inside it before he was turned away. In fact, he could draw a line on the ground marking the exact border of the Oversoul’s vision. And because he could, he did. He used the last half-hour of light to mark the border with a stick, scratching a line or digging a shallow trench several hundred meters.

  As he marked the border of his futility, he could hear the hooting of baboons in the near distance, calling sleepily to each other as they headed for their sleeping cliffs. It was only when he was done, when full darkness had descended and the baboons were quiet again, that he realized that while some of their calls had begun outside the border, clearly they all ended up within it.

  Of course. The border is impervious to humans, but other animals have not been altered to be susceptible to this kind of fending. So the baboons cross the boundary with impunity.

  If only I were a baboon.

  He could almost hear Issib say, quietly, “And you’re sure that you’re not?”

  He found a grassy place on highish ground and curled up to sleep. It was a clear night, with little chance of rain, and though it cooled off more here than it did back near Dostatok—he was near the desert, and the air was noticeably drier—he would be comfortable tonight.

  Comfortable, but it would still be hard to sleep.

  He dreamed, of course, but couldn’t be sure if the dream had meaning or was simply the result of his sleeping lightly and so remembering more of the normal dreams of the night. But in one of the dreams, at least, he saw himself with Yobar. In the dream Yobar was leading him through a maze of rock. When they came to a tiny hole in the rocks, Yobar ducked down easily and climbed through. But Nafai stood there looking at the hole, thinking, I’m not small enough to fit through there. Of course, this was not true—Nafai could see it, even in the dream, the hole was not that small. Yet he couldn’t seem to think of squatting down and squirming through. He kept looking for a way to get through while standing upright.