The Call of Earth: 2 (Homecoming) by Orson Scott Card

into holes in the ground, all the way to deep warrens and burrows, and each rat that had stolen a statue gave it to another rat and then together they gnawed at it, wet it down with their spit and rubbed it all over themselves. Covered themselves with the clay. I was so angry, Hushidh. These beautiful statues, and they wrecked them, turnedthem back into mud and rubbed it—even into their private parts,
everywhere.”
    “Lovers of beauty,” said Hushidh.
    “I’m serious. It broke my heart.”
    “So what does it mean?” asked Hushidh. “Who do the angels represent, and who are the rats?”
    “I don’t know. Usually the meaning is obvious, when the Oversoul sends a dream.”
    “So maybe it was just a dream.”
    “I don’t think so. It was so different and so clear, and I remember it so forcefully. Shuya, I think it’s perhaps the most important dream I’ve ever had.”
    “Too bad nobody can understand it. Maybe it’s one of those prophecies that everybody understands after it’s all over and it’s too late to do anything about it.”
    “Maybe Aunt Rasa can interpret it.”
    Hushidh made a skeptical face. “She’s not at her best at the moment.”
    Secretly Luet was relieved that she wasn’t the only one to notice that Rasa wasn’t making the best decisions of her life right now. “So maybe I
won’t
tell her, then.”
    Suddenly Hushidh smiled her tight little smile that showed she was really pleased with herself. “You want to hear a wild guess?” she said.
    Luet nodded, then began taking huge bites of her long-ignored bread as she listened.
    “The angels are the women of Basilica,” said Hushidh. “All these millennia here in this city, we’ve shaped a society that is delicate and fine, and we’ve made it out of a part of ourselves, the way the bats in your dream made their statues out of spit. And now we’ve put our works to dry, and in the darkness our enemies are going to come and steal what we’ve made. But they’re so stupid they don’t even understand thatthey’re statues. They look at them and all they see are blobs of dried mud. So they wet it down and wallow in it and they’re so
proud
because they’ve got all the works of Basilica, but in fact they have
nothing
of Basilica at all.”
    “That’s very good,” said Luet, in awe.
    “I think so, too,” said Hushidh.
    “So who are our enemies?”
    “It’s simple,” said Hushidh. “Men are.”
    “Not, that’s
too
simple,” said Luet. “Even though this is a city of women, the men who enter Basilica contribute as much as the women do to the works of beauty we make. They’re part of the community, even if they can’t own land or stay inside the walls without being married to a woman.”
    “I was sure it meant men the moment you said they were giant rats.”
    The cook chortled over the stew she was making for dinner.
    “Someone else,” insisted Luet. “Maybe Potokgavan.”
    “Maybe just Gaballufix’s men,” said Hushidh. “The tolchoks, and then his soldiers in those horrible masks.”
    “Or maybe something yet to come,” said Luet. And then, in despair. “Or maybe nothing to do with Basilica at all. Who can tell? But that was my dream.”
    “It doesn’t exactly tell us where we should have sent Smelost.”
    Luet shrugged. “Maybe the Oversoul thought we had brains enough to figure that out on our own.”
    “Was she right?” asked Hushidh.
    “I doubt it,” said Luet. “Sending him to the Gorayni was a mistake.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” said Hushidh. “Eating your bread dry—now
that’s
a mistake.”
    “Not for those of us who have teeth,” said Luet. “We don’t have to sog our bread to make it edible.”
    Which led to a mock argument that got silly and loud enough that the cook threw them out of the kitchen, which was fine because they were finished with breakfast anyway. It felt good, for just a few minutes, to play together like children. For they knew that, for good or ill, they would both be