"Or maybe the Keeper still wants you here," said Shedemei. Then a new thought occurred to her. "Maybe she still needs the powers of the starship. The cloak of the starmaster."

"Maybe the Keeper needs you," said the Oversoul.

Shedemei laughed. "What, I have some seeds and embryos up here that she wants me to put down somewhere on Earth? All she has to do is send me a dream and I'll plant wherever she says."

"So we go on waiting," said the Oversoul.

"No, we go on prodding," answered Shedemei. "Like Chebeya did. We roust the old she-bear from her den and goad her."

"I'm not sure I like the implications of your metaphor. She-bears are destructive and dangerous when they've been goaded."

"But they do give you their undivided attention." Shedemei laughed again.

"I don't think you have enough respect yet for the power of the Keeper."

"What power? All we've seen from the Keeper up to now is dreams."

"If that's all you've seen," said the Oversoul, "then you haven't been looking."

"Really?"

"The gornaya, for instance. That massif of impossibly high mountains. The ancient geological data from before the departure of humans forty million years ago shows no tectonic formation or movement that could have caused this. The plates in this area weren't moving in the right direction to cause such incredible folding and uplift. Then, suddenly, the Cocos plate started moving northward with far more speed and force than any tectonic movement ever recorded. It attacked the Caribbean plate far faster than it could be subducted."

Shedemei sighed. "I'm a biologist. Geology is barely comprehensible to me."

"You understand this, though. A dozen ranges of mountains with peaks above ten kilometers in height. And they were lifted up within the first ten million years."

"Is that fast?"

"Even now, the Cocos plate is still moving northward three times faster than any other plate on Earth. That means that underneath the Earth's crust, there's a current of molten rock that is flowing northward very rapidly-the same current that caused North America to rift along the Mississippi Valley, the same current that crumpled all of Central America into pieces and jammed them together and... ."

The Oversoul fell silent.

"What?"

"I'm doing a little research for a moment."

"Well, pardon me for interrupting," said Shedemei.

"This has to have begun before humans left Earth," said the Over-soul.

"Yes?"

"The earthquakes, the volcanos out along the Galapagos ridge- what was it that encased the Earth in ice for a while? In my memory, it was all linked with human misbehavior-with wars, nuclear and biological weapons. But how exactly did those things cause the Earth to become uninhabitable?"

"I love watching a brilliant mind at work," said Shedemei.

"I will have to search all my records from that time period," said the Oversoul, "and see whether I can rule out the possibility that it was the movement of the Cocos plate, and not the warfare directly, that caused the destruction of the habitable zones of Earth."

"You're saying that the warfare might have caused the Cocos plate to move? That's absurd."

The Oversoul ignored her scoffing. "Why did all human life leave Earth? The diggers and angels managed to survive. I never thought to question it till now, starmaster, but don't you find it a bit suspicious? Surely some group of humans could have survived. In some equatorial zone."

"Please, I know creativity and serendipity are designed into your thinking algorithms," said Shedemei, "but are you seriously entertaining the notion that human misdeeds could have caused the Cocos plate to move?"

"I'm saying that perhaps human misdeeds could cause the Keeper of Earth to cause the Cocos plate to move."

"And how could she possibly do that?"

"I can't imagine any entity of any kind with power enough to move the currents of magma under the crust of the planet," said the Over-soul. "But I also can't imagine any natural force that could have caused the many anomalies that created the gornaya. The world is full of strange and unnatural things, Shedemei. Like the symbiotic interdependence that the diggers and angels used to have. You said yourself that it was artificial."

"And my hypothesis is that these changes were deliberately introduced by human beings before they left."

"But why would they do it, Shedemei? Whose purpose were they fulfilling? Why would they even care, knowing that they would leave this planet and believing that they would never come back?"

"I think it's possible for us to ascribe too many events to the plots and plans of the Keeper of Earth," said Shedemei. "She causes dreams and influences human behavior. We have no evidence for anything else."

"We have no evidence. Or we have the most obvious evidence imaginable. I must do research. There are gaps in my knowledge. The truth has been hidden from me, but I know that the Keeper is involved in all of this."

"Search all you want. I'll be fascinated to know the outcome."

"It may be that I'm programmed not to find the truth, you know," said the Oversoul. "And that I'm programmed not to find the way I've been programmed to hide the truth from me."

"How circular."

"I may need your help."

"I may need a nap." She yawned. "I don't believe that any computer, even the Keeper of Earth, has power over such things as currents of magma. But I'll help, if I can. Maybe in pursuing this worthless hypothesis you'll come across something useful."

"At least you're keeping an open mind," said the Oversoul.

"I'm sure you meant that in the nicest possible way," said Shedemei.

That night, in their hut, Akmaro and Akma washed and dressed Che-beya's wounds.

"You could have been killed, Mother," said Akma quietly.

"It was the bravest thing I ever saw," said Akmaro.

Chebeya wept silently-in relief that she hadn't been slaughtered in the field; in delayed fear at what she had dared to do; in gratitude to her husband for praising what she did.

"Do you see, Akma, what your mother is doing?" said Akmaro.

"She defied them," said Akma. "And they didn't kill her."

"There's more to it than that, Akma," said Akmaro. "It's a gift that your mother has had all her life. She's a raveler."

"Hushidh," whispered Luet. The tales of Hushidh the Raveler were well known among the women and girls. Not to mention Chveya, Nafai's and Luet's daughter, the Ancient One for whom Chebeya had been named.

"She sees the connections between people," Akmaro explained to Akma.

"I know what a raveler is," said Akma.

"To be a raveler is a gift of the Keeper," said Akmaro. "The Keeper must have seen, years ago, the dilemma we'd be in today, and so he gave a great gift to Chebeya so that when this day came, she could begin to unravel the conspiracy of evil that rules over us. We had with us all along the power to do what your mother began today. The Keeper only waited for us to realize it. For your mother to find the right moment to act."

"It looked to me," said Akma, "as if Mother stood alone."

"Is that what you saw?" asked Akmaro. "Then your vision is still very young and blurred. For your mother stood with the power of the Keeper in her, and with the love of her husband and children inside her. If you and Luet and I had not been in the field with her, do you think she would have done it?"

"We were there," said Akma. "But where was the Keeper?"

"Someday," said Akmaro, "you will learn to see the Keeper's hand in many things."

When the children were asleep, Chebeya rested her head on her husband's chest and clung to him and wept. "Oh, Kmadaro, Kma-daro, I was so frightened that I would make things worse."