"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 Over-soul 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.

Yobar came back through the hole and touched him by the hand. And when he did, Nafai suddenly shrank down and became a baboon. Then he had no trouble at all getting through the hole. Once he was on the other side, he turned back to human size immediately. And when he turned around to look at the tiny hole, it had changed—it was now as tall as an adult human, and he could pass through standing up.

In the morning, that was the dream that showed the most promise of being worthwhile. He lay, shivering now and then in the predawn breeze, trying to think of some way to use some insight from the dream. Clearly the dream was reflecting his knowledge that the baboons could pass easily through the barrier, while he, a human, could not. Clearly if he turned into a baboon he could cross the barrier too. But that was exactly what he had wished for the night before, and wishing wasn't likely to make anything useful happen.

In the dream, thought Nafai, the hole seemed to be too small for me to get through. But I could have got through it easily at any time, because it was really as tall as a man. The barrier was only in my mind—which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.

No, that's foolish. The barrier must surely have been designed to fend away even people who were completely unaware of the boundary. Wandering hunters, explorers, settlers, merchants—whoever might inadvertently head toward Vusadka—the barrier would turn them away.

But then, it would take only the mildest of suggestions to turn away someone who had no firm intention of heading toward Vusadka—they wouldn't even notice they were being turned. After all, did any of us ever notice that we were avoiding that area on all our hunting trips during all these years in Dostatok? So those original paths didn't define a sharp, clear border the way that I'm defining it now. And our paths didn't turn all that sharply… we just lost track of our prey, or for some other reason turned gradually away. So the forcethe barrier uses must increase with my firm intention to cross it. And if I somehow were able just to wander through here, the barrier's strength might be much weaker.

Yet how can I casually and accidentally wander where I know full well that I must go?

With that thought, his plan came to him full-blown; yet he also hardly dared to think it clearly, lest it trigger the barrier and fail before he tried it. Instead, he began to focus on a whole new intention. He must hunt now, and bring prey to feed the children. He himself was certainly hungry, and if he was hungry then the young ones must be famished. Only the young ones he thought of feeding were the young baboons. He remembered the baboons of the Valley of Mebbekew and felt himself responsible for bringing them meat—as Yobar had scavenged food, to please the females and strengthen the young.

So he set out in any direction that morning, not particularly orienting himself toward Vusadka, and searched until he found the pellets of a hare. Then he stalked his prey until, within the hour, he was able to put an arrow through it.