A Far Sunset (1967) by Edmund Cooper

A Far Sunset (1967) by Edmund Cooper

Author:Edmund Cooper [Cooper, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berkely Medallion
Published: 1968-08-31T22:00:00+00:00


TWENTY-THREE

Unintentionally, the one-armed Bai Lut, a youth without any great degree of intelligence or initiative, changed the course of history not only on Altair Five but on many worlds about which he would never know. He changed the course of history by building a kite. It was a beautiful kite constructed of slivers of springy yana wood and with the wind-catching surfaces painstakingly woven from musa reed which, when separated into its fibres was used to weave musa loul, the kind of cloth known to the Bayani.

The kite had taken Bai Lut many days to make. It was in the shape of a giant guyanis butterfly. Bai Lut had dreamed of building such a kite for a long time. Having only one arm, he had to work hard with his toes as well as his fingers. When it was finished, he regarded his achievement with awe. It was truly beautiful. He would have been quite content to die after such an achievement - or, at least, after he had seen it fly successfully - for it did not seem possible to do anything greater in life.

He prayed for a smooth, steady wind. His prayer was answered. And, with about two hundred metres of ‘string’ made from twisted hair - which had taken longer to manufacture than the kite itself - he flew the musawinged guyanis and watched it soar joyously over the Canal of Life and lean high, almost yearningly, over the Mirror of Oruri towards the sacred city.

It may be that Bai Lut had prayed too ardently to Oruri for a wind. Because, when all of Bai Lut’s string was extended and the kite was as high as it could go, a great gust came - so suddenly that the string snapped.

It was a tribute to Bai Lut’s craftsmanship and intuitive grasp of aerodynamics that the guyanis kite did not immediately spiral down into the Mirror of Oruri. Instead it began to execute graceful curves, losing little altitude, but gliding almost purposefully towards the sacred city. Presently it was no more than a slowly descending speck in the sky. Presently it was out of sight.

And then the wind dropped, and the kite dropped. But Bai Lut did not know where to look for it. He was miserable with the conviction that he would never see it again. And in that he was right. For it had come to rest in the Temple of the Weeping Sun; and, though he fortunately did not know it, the guyanis kite had fallen on the stone phallus of sacrifice.

The following day, Poul Mer Lo was giving a lesson in school to his four pupils on basic mechanics and specifically on the use of the lever. He had demonstrated how a lever could be employed to do work that a man alone could not accomplish and was about to embark on the theory of the calculation of forces when he was interrupted by Nemo.

‘Lord,’ said the tiny cripple formally in Bayani, ‘the warriors of Enka Ne are approaching along the Road of Travail.



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