said Luet. "The Oversoul already said there's no hurry - she won't even be ready for us at Vusadka for years yet."
"This place can't sustain us - it's already getting harder to find game," said Nafai. "And we're too close to that settled valley over the mountains to the east."
"That isn't what you're anxious about, either," said Luet. "It's driving you crazy that the Keeper of Earth hasn't sent you a dream."
"That doesn't bother me at all," said Nafai. "What bothers me is the way you keep throwing it up to me. That you and Shuya and Father and Moozh and Thirsty all saw these angels and rats, and I didn't. What, does that mean that some computer orbiting a planet a hundred or so light-years away somehow judged me a century before I was born and decided that I wasn't worthy to receive his neat little menagerie dreams?"
"You really are angry," said Luet.
"I want to do something, and if I can't then at least I want to know something!" cried Nafai. "I'm sick of waiting and waiting and nothing happens. It's no good for me to work with the Index because Zdorab and Issib are constantly using it and they're more familiar with how it works than I am - "
"But it still speaks more clearly to you than anybody."
"So while it tells me nothing it does it with greater clarity, how excellent."
"And you're a good hunter. Elemak even says so."
"Yes, that's about all anybody's found for me to do - kill things."
Luet could see the shadow of the memory of Gaballufix's death pass over Nafai's face. "Aren't you ever going to forgive yourself for that?"
"Yes. When Gaballufix comes down out of the baboons' sleeping caves and tells me he was just pretending to be dead."
"You just don't like waiting, that's all," said Luet. "But it's like my being pregnant. I'd like to have it over with. I'd like to have the baby. But it takes time, so I wait."
"You wait, but you can feel the change in you."
"As I vomit everything I eat."
"Not everything," said Nafai, "and you know what I mean. I don't feel any changes, I'm not needed for anything..."
"Except the food we eat."
Chapter 9
"All right, you win. I'm vital, I'm necessary, I'm busy all the time, so I must be happy." He started to walk away from her.
She thought of calling after him, but she knew that it would do no good. He wanted to be miserable, and so all she would do by trying to cheer him up was thwart him in his mood of the day. Aunt Rasa had told her a few days ago that it wouldn't hurt for her to remember that Nafai was still just a boy, and that she shouldn't expect him to be a mature tower of strength for her. "You were both too young to marry," said Rasa then, "but events got away from us. You've come up to the challenge - in time, Nyef will too."
But Luet wasn't sure at all that she had come up to any challenge. She was terrified at the thought of giving birth out here in the wilderness, far from the physicians of the city. She had no idea whether they'd even have food in a few months - everything depended on their garden and the hunters, and it was really only Elemak and Nafai who were any good at that, though Obring and Vas sometimes went out with pulses, too. The food supply could fail at any time, and soon she'd have a baby and what if they suddenly decided they had to travel? Bad as her sickness was right now, what if she had to ride atop a swaying camel? She'd rather eat camel cheese.
Of course, the thought of camel cheese made the nausea come back in a wave, and she knew that this time it might well come out, so down she went on her knees again, sick of the pain of the acidy stuff that came up from her gut into her mouth. Her throat hurt, her head hurt, and she was tired of it all.
She felt hands touch her, gathering her hair away from her face, twisting it and holding it out of the way, so none of the flecks of vomitus would get in it. She wanted to say thank you, knowing it was Nafai; she also wanted him to go away, it was so humiliating and awful and painful to be like this