broke the silence. "If meat is what our babies need, then of course we'll eat it seared, or even raw. But I wonder - are we so close to the edge, nutritionally, that we can't go a week without meat?"
Elemak looked at her coldly. "You can treat your baby as you want. Ours will always suckle on milk that has been freshened with animal protein within three days."
"Oh, Elemak, do I have to eat it?" asked Eiadh.
"Yes," said Elemak.
"It'll be fine," said Nafai. "You'll never notice the difference."
They all turned to look at him. His remark was quite outrageous. "I think I can tell whether meat is raw or cooked, thank you," said Eiadh.
"We're all here because we're more or less susceptible to the Oversoul," said Nafai. "So I just asked if the Oversoul could make the meat taste acceptable to us. Make us think that there's nothing wrong with it. And it said that it could do that, if we didn't try to resist it. So if we don't dwell on the fact that we're eating raw meat, the Oversoul can influence us enough that we won't really be aware of the difference."
No one answered for a moment. Hushidh could see that Nafai's almost casual relationship with the Oversoul was quite unnerving to some of them - not least to Volemak himself, who only spoke to the Oversoul in solitude, or with the Index.
"You asked the Oversoul to season our food?" asked Issib.
"We know from experience that the Oversoul is good at making people stupid," said Nafai. "You went through it with me, Issya. So why not have the Oversoul make us just a little stupid about the taste of the meat?"
"I don't like the idea of the Oversoul messing with my mind," said Obring.
Meb looked at Obring and grinned. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm sure you can be adequately stupid without help."
The next day, when Nafai brought home a nolyen - a small deerlike creature, barely a half-meter from the shoulder to the ground - they cut it up and seared the meat and then ate it, rather gingerly, until they realized that either raw meat wasn't so bad or the Oversoul had done a good job of making them insensitive to the difference. They'd get by without fire whenever they had to.
But the Oversoul couldn't give them a new pulse to replace the lost one.
They lost two more pulses crossing the Nividimu. It was a stupid, unnecessary loss. The camels were reluctant to make the crossing, even though the ford was wide and shallow, and there was some jostling as they were herded across. Still, if all the loads had been competently and carefully tied in place, none of them would have come loose, none would have spilled their contents into the ice-cold water.
It took a few minutes before Elemak realized that this was the camel that carried two of the pulses; until then he had concentrated on getting the rest of the camels across before trying to retrieve the load. By the time he found the pulses, in a poke, wrapped in cloth, they had been immersed for a quarter of an hour. Pulses were durable, but they had not been meant for use under water. Their seals had been penetrated and the mechanism inside would corrode rapidly. He saved the pulses, of course, in the hope that perhaps they would not corrode, though he knew the chance of that was slim.
"Who packed this camel?" Elemak demanded.
No one seemed to recall having packed it.
"That's the problem," said Volemak. "The camel obviously packed itself, and it wasn't good with the knots."
The company laughed nervously. Elemak whirled on his father, prepared to castigate him for making light of a serious situation. When he met Volemak's gaze, however, he paused, for he could see that Volemak was taking things very seriously indeed. So Elemak nodded to his father and then sat down, to show that he was going to let Volemak handle it.
"Whoever loaded this camel knows his responsibility," said Volemak. "And finding out who it is will be very simple - I have only to ask the Index. But there will be no punishment, because there's nothing to be gained by it. If I ever feel a need, I will reveal who it was whose carelessness cost us our security, but in the meantime you are safe in your cowardly refusal to name yourself."
Still no one spoke up.
Volemak said no more, but instead nodded toward Elemak, who got