Free Earthfall (Homecoming) by Orson Scott Card

sent such a dream to him, because it had nothing to do with his life. And in fact the Oversoul hadn’t sent the dream to him. The dreams and the background conversations were all real enough, but they were also not his own.
    He wondered: Why doesn’t the Oversoul have anything to say to me ?
    By the time Oykib turned eight, he had long since learned to keep what he overheard to himself. He was naturally quiet and reserved, preferring to be silent in a large group, listening to everything, helping when he was needed. He understood far more than anyone thought he did, partly because he had grown up overhearing adult problems being discussed with an adult vocabulary, and partly because he could hear, along with the vocal conversation, scraps and snatches of internal dialogues as the Oversoul made suggestions, tried to influence mood, and occasionally attempted to distract someone from what they were thinking or doing. The trouble was that it always distracted Oykib, so that he could hardly have any thoughts of his own, so busy was his mind in trying to follow all that was going on around him. When he did open his mouth to speak, he could never be sure if he was responding to what had been said aloud, or to things that he understood only because of overhearing that which he really shouldn’t have been hearing.
    There was also another reason why Oykib said little. He had learned about privacy and secrets, and he knew people wouldn’t be happy if they ever guessed how much he knew. He suspected that it would make them angry to know that their most intimate thoughts, framed in their own minds where only the Oversoul could hear, were being heard and noted and stored away in the mind of a six-or seven-or eight-year-old boy.
    Sometimes, the burden of all these secrets was more than Oykib could bear. That was why he had begun having little talks with Yasai, his younger brother. He never told Yaya how he was learning the things he learned. Instead he always said things like, “I’ll bet that Luet is angry because of the way Hushidh never stops Dazya from bossing the younger children,” or “Father doesn’t really love Nafai more than everybody else, it’s just that Nafai is the only one who understands what Father is doing and can help him to do it.” Oykib knew that Yaya was dazzled by how often Oykib’s “insights” turned out to be right, and that Yaya was also flattered to be included in his “wise” older brother’s confidence; sometimes it made him feel like a cheater, to let Yaya think that Oykib had simply figured things out. But he knew, without knowing why, that it was a bad idea to tell even Yaya about how all communication with the Oversoul spilled over into Oykib’s mind. Yaya was good about keeping secrets, but something that important was bound to slip out sometime.
    So Oykib kept his secrets to himself. The hardest time was a few months back, when Nafai went out to the mountains and broke through the perimeter and found the starships. Oykib heard some terrible, frightening things. Luet pleading for the Oversoul to protect her husband. The Oversoul urging someone else to be calm, be calm, don’t kill your brother, you don’t want to live with yourself afterward if you kill your brother. He understood the community well enough by then to know who it was who was planning to kill Nafai. Oykib longed to be able to do something, but he couldn’t; in fact, he was almost immobilized by the maelstrom of needs and hungers, shouts and demands, pleas and griefs. He was so frightened; he went to Mother and clung to her, and heard her say to Volemak, “See how the children pick up on things without understanding them?” He wanted to say, “I understand perfectly well that Elemak and Mebbekew are planning to kill Nafai and then rule over all of us—I know it because I’ve heard the Oversoul trying to get them to stop. I know that Luet is terrified and so are you, that Nafai might be killed. But I also know that