Footsteps in the Sky by Greg Keyes

Author:Greg Keyes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roca Editorial/Open Road Español
Published: 2014-12-01T15:03:34+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Sand managed to get to her feet and stand for a brief moment before toppling for the sixth time.

Seven’s the charm, she thought, grimly. The Whipper was off in the rocks, hunting whoever had been in the downed ship. That should be a break for her, but the wasp sting was wearing off slowly. Though her back and arms held only the dull ache of remembered agony, her calves and feet were still cramping, evidence to Sand that human beings should never have been bipeds; they should have stayed in the First World with fish, bugs, and lizards.

Seven was not the charm, and Sand collapsed once more before pragmatically resigning herself to crawling, inspired by her thoughts of the First World. Climbing down the reed rather than up, she thought. Ironic, since Tuchvala was climbing up, from whatever she was to human.

That assumed, Sand realized suddenly, that humans were always up the reed. Crawling was making her humble. The religion taught that the Hopis had climbed up through Four Worlds on Earth, right up through the sky of each on ladders or canes or whatnot. The sky of each previous world then became the floor of the next. The Fourth World—Earth—had been Masaw’s world, and the Hopi lived there only by his leave. They had climbed once more, through the roof of the Fourth World, via starship and the Vilmir Foundation—which Fifth-Worlders, for obvious reasons, nicknamed the Reed. The Reed was their Masaw, now.

Hopi leaders taught that the movement from world to world was a metaphor, on one level, for evolution; that the essence of the Hopi had resided always in certain creatures, from the first, single celled creatures, and that this spirit had moved upwards towards the present state. Intellectually, Sand knew that evolution did not work in this way—that there was no up to seek, that people were anything but inevitable in the scheme of things. But if one believed in the gods—well, human beings could manipulate living substance to create whatever they want, now. Why couldn’t gods?

And why was she thinking of this as she dragged herself painfully across the many-fanged canyon floor? Her mind seemed to buzz with a life of its own, demanding her attention. You’ve been thinking with your legs, she seemed to be telling herself. The Kachina took your legs for awhile. Use your grey stuff, idiot!

She wasn’t making all that much progress towards the Whipper’s ship, but soon she would try to stand again. She could humor her brain for a while longer. There had been a thought a little earlier that jogged something. About Masaw. How did the legend go? In the Third World, the ancestors of Human Beings had been plagued by two-hearts and other evil. They heard footsteps in the sky above them. They fashioned a catbird out of clay and sent it to see what was there. The footsteps came from Masaw, the master of fire. Being a thing of clay, the catbird did not fear his dreadful appearance.

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