The Memory of Earth

SIXTEEN - THE INDEX OF THE OVERSOUL

Nafai and Father sat and Issib lay on a rug in Father's tent The Index rested on the rug between them. Nafai touched the Index with his fingers. Father also reached out and touched it with one hand. Then, with the other, he lifted Issib's arm and brought his hand near, until it touched. With the three of them in contact with it at the same time, the Index spoke.

"Awake, after all this time," said the Index. It was a whisper. Nafai wasn't altogether sure whether he was hearing it with his ears, or whether his mind was transforming the ambient noises-the desert breeze, their own breathing-into a voice.

"You came to us at great cost," said Father.

"I waited for a long time to have this voice again," answered the Index.

It wasn't the Index speaking. Nafai knew that now. "This is the voice of the Oversold."

"Yes," said the whisper.

"If this contains your voice," said Father, "why is it called an index?"

The answer came only after a long hesitation. "This is the index to me? it finally said.

The Index of the Oversold. An index was a tool created to make it easier for people to find their way through the labyrinthine memory of a complex computer. The Over-soul was the greatest of all computers, and this was the tool that would let Nafai and Issib and Father begin, at last, to understand it. "Now that we have the Index," said Nafai, "can you explain to us who you- whatyou are?" Nafai asked.

Again the pause, and then the whispering: "I am the Memory of Earth. I was never meant to last so long. I am weakening, and must return to the one who is wiser than I, who will tell me what to do to save this unharmonious world called Harmony. I have chosen your family to carry me back to the Keeper of Earth."

"T ha tis where you're leading us?"

"The world that was buried in ice and hidden in smoke is surely alive and awake now. The Keeper who drove humankind from the planet they destroyed will surely not turn his face away from you now. Follow me, children of Earth, and I will take you back to your ancient home."

Nafai looked from Father to Issib and back again. "Do you realize what that means?" he said.

"A long journey," said Father, wearily.

"Long!" cried Nafai. "So long that it takes light a hundred years to reach us!"

"What are you talking about?" said Issib. "You'd think the Oversoul had promised to take us to another planet."

Issib's words hung in the air like music out of tune. Nafai sat there, stunned. Of course the Oversoul had promised to take them to another planet. Those were its plain words. Except that this wasn't what Issib had heard.

Or Father. Obviously, then, the Index did not make literal sounds, and they were in fact hearing with their minds, not their ears.

"What did you think the Oversoul said?" Nafai asked.

"That he was going to lead us to a beautiful land," said Father. "A good place, where crops would grow, and orchards thrive. A place where out children could be free and good, without the evils of Basilica."

"But where ?" asked Nafai. "Where did it say that this beautiful land would be?"

"Nafai, you must learn to be more patient and trusting," said Father. "The Oversoul will lead us one step at a time, and then, one day, one of those steps will be the last one in our journey, and we'll be home."

"It won't be a city," said Issib, "but it will be a place where I can use my floats again."

Nafai was deeply disappointed. He knew what he had heard, but he also knew that Father and Issib had not heard it. Why not? Either it meant that they simply couldn't comprehend the voice of the Oversoul as clearly as he could, or it meant that the Oversoul had given them a different message. Either way, he couldn't force his own understanding on them.

"What did you hear?" asked Father. "Was there more?"

"Nothing important for now," said Nafai. "What really matters is knowing that we're not going to wait around for Basilica to take us back. We're not exiles now, we're expatriates. Emigrants. Basilica is not our city anymore."

Father sighed. "And to think I was just about to retire and turn the business over to Elya. I didn't want to journey anymore! Now I'm about to take the longest journey of my life, I fear."

Nafai reached out and took the Index between his hands and drew it dose. It trembled in his grasp. "As for you, my strange little Index, I hope you turn out to be worth all the trouble that was taken to get you. The price that was paid."

"Such a fortune," said Issib. "I never knew we were so rich until the day we weren't."

"We're richer than ever now," said Father. "We have a whole land promised to us, with no city or clan or enemy to take it away. And the Index to the Oversoul is here to lead the way."

Nafai hardly heard them. He was thinking of the blood that he had shed, of how it stained his clothing and his skin. I didn't want to do it, he thought, and it was simple justice, to take the life of a murderer. When Elemak thought he might have killed a man, from far off, with a pulse, he bragged about it. But I killed him close, under my own hand, as he lay drunken and helpless on the street. I did it, not in fear for my own life, and not to protect a caravan, but in cold blood, without anger. Because the Oversoul told me that it was right. And because I believed in my own heart that it was necessary.

But I also hated him. Will I ever be sure that I didn't do it because of that hatred, that longing for vengeance? I fear that I will always suspect that I am an assassin in my heart.

I can live with that, though. I can sleep tonight. With rime I'm sure that the pain of it will even fade. It's the price of the thing that I agreed to be: a servant of the Oversoul. I'm not my own man anymore. I'm the man the Oversold has chosen to make of me. I hope I like at least a small part of what I've become, when at last the Oversoul is through with me.

He slept that night and dreamed. Not of murder. Not of Gaballufix's head, nor of the blood on his own clothes. Instead he dreamed of drifting on a sea whose currents ran hot and cold, as fog drifted endlessly in front of his face. And then, out of this lost and mysterious and peaceful place, hands searched across his face, his shoulder, and then took hold of his arm and pulled him close. I'm not the first one here, he realized as he woke from the dream, I'm not alone in this place, this kingdom of the Oversoul. Others have been here before me, and are with me now, and will be with me through all that is to come.