"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 all 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.