The Memory of Earth Page 0,67

you to look at both your parents and decide which one deserves your loyalty. I do not say love, because I know you love us both. I say loyalty."

"You shouldn't speak to me this way, Mother," said Sevet. "I'm not your student. And even if you succeeded in banning Father, that still wouldn't mean I'd have to choose between you."

"What if your father sent soldiers to silence me? Or tolchocks-which is more likely. What if it was a knife he paid for that slit your mother's throat?"

Sevet regarded her mother in silence. "Then I'd have a pichalny song to sing indeed, wouldn't I?"

"I believe that your father is the enemy of the Oversold, and the enemy of Basilica as well. Think about this seriously, my sad-voiced Sevet, think deep and long, because when the day of choosing comes there'll be no time to think."

"I have always honored you, Mother, for the fact that you never tried to turn me against my father, despite all the vile things he said about you. I'm sorry you have changed." With great dignity, Sevet swept herself from the room. Luet, still a bit stunned by the brutal nature of the conversation under the veneer of elegant speech, was slow to follow her out the door.

"Luet," whispered Aunt Rasa.

Luet turned to face the great woman, and trembled inside to see the tears on her cheeks.

"Luet, you must tell me. What is the Oversoul doing to us? What does the Oversoul plan?"

"I don't know," said Luet. "I wish I did."

"If you did, would you tell me?"

"Of course."

"Even if the Oversoul told you not to?"

Luet hadn't thought of such a possibility.

Aunt Rasa took her hesitation for an answer "So," she said. "I wouldn't have expected otherwise-the Oversoul does not choose weak servants, or disloyal ones. But tell me this, if you can: Is it possible, is it passible, that there was no plot to kill Wetchik at all? That the Oversoul merely sent that warning to get him to leave Basilica? You must realize-I was thinking that-Lutya, what if the only thing the Oversoul was doing was getting rid of Issib and Nafai? It makes sense, doesn't it-they were interfering with the Oversoul, keeping her so busy that she couldn't speak to anyone but them. Might she not have sent your vision to make sure they left the city, because they were threatening to her ?"

Luet's first impulse was to shout her denial, to rebuke her for daring to speak so sacrilegiously of the Oversoul-as if it would act for its own private benefit.

But then, on sober reflection, she remembered with what wonderment Hushidh had told her of her realization that Issib and Nafai might well be the reason for the Oversoul's silence. And if the Oversoul thought that her ability to guide and protect her daughters was being hampered by these two boys, couldn't she act to remove them?

"No," said Luet. "I don't think so."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm never sure, except of the vision itself," said Luet. "But I've never known the Oversoul to deceive me. All my visions have been true."

"But this one would still be a true instrument of the Oversoul's will."

"No," said Luet again. "No, it couldn't be. Because Nafai and Issib had already stopped. Nafai even went and prayed-"

"So I heard, but then, so did Mebbekew, Wetchik's son by that miserable little whoreling Kilvishevex-"

"And the Oversold spoke to Nafai and woke him up, and brought him outside to meet me in the traveler's room. If the Oversoul wanted Nafai to be still, she would have told him, and he would have obeyed. No, Aunt Rasa, I'm sure the message was real."

Aunt Rasa nodded. "I know. I knew it was. It would just be ..."

"Simpler."

"Yes." She smiled ruefully. "Simpler if Gaballufix were as innocent as he pretends. But not true to character. You know why I lapsed him?"

"No," said Luet. Nor did she want to know-by long custom a woman never told her reasons for lapsing a man, and it was a hideous breach of etiquette to ask or even speculate on the subject.

"I shouldn't tell, but I will-because you're one whot must know the truth in order to understand all things."

I'm also a child, thought Luet. You'd never tell any of your other thirteen-year-olds about such things. You'd never even tell your daughter. But I, I am a seer, and so everything is opened up before me and I am forbidden to remain innocent of anything except joy.

"I lapsed him because I learned