“Then maybe it’s about time we had a talk with them,” Zeigler said.
“Shall I have them brought here?” Kelm asked.
Zeigler thought for a second. “No. We’ll go over there,” he replied. “And use that translator of ours who’s been studying the tapes. We need to get her up to speed. Obviously the South African can’t be involved in this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The room that Rakki, White Head, and Gap Teeth were being held in was formed from the same kinds of materials as the crawling shell that had come to Joburg, the bird that had brought them to this “base” they called Serengeti, and the few other parts of it that they had seen since. The structure was not woven from anything, but consisted of unbroken sheets of a size and extent that amazed him. And how it was all fastened together such that the greatest force he could bring to bear failed to produce even the slightest bend or movement was a mystery. Doors opened silently of their own accord; light appeared at the touch of a finger; shining handles gave forth endless streams of water, hot or cold, and clearer than was found in the pools of high-mountain streams. How it was possible to create such things intrigued yet confounded him. He had seen the strange shapes from which the Sky People were constructing the base, and from which, presumably, they had also built their even vaster cities. And then, beyond that, what manner of knowledge of forces and powers enabled other creations to move themselves across the ground and fly in the sky?
Surely, Rakki would have thought, these were the god-beings that White Head had talked of, which people had once believed were to humans as humans were to animals and came from the sky. But no. White Head said they were human, just like himself, Rakki, or any of the others at Joburg or back in the caves. And that in itself was a challenge both to Rakki’s hunger to know, and to his pride. For if they were human, it meant that he could learn too. And if other humans commanded such powers, a leader of any stature would have to show himself as capable of possessing them too.
“You say they are humans like us.” Rakki brought the subject up again. He sat with his legs stretched along one of the fine woven-hair beds, his back propped against the wall, and addressed White Head, sitting in a chair at the table, causing pictures and lines of strange symbols to appear on a screen. White Head seemed to have an idea what some of the symbols meant. Gap Teeth was sitting cross-legged on the floor, silent and unmoving. He said the chairs were the wrong shape and too soft. They made him feel as if his bones were dissolving like salt stones dropped in a cooking pot.
“Just like us,” White Head said again.
“But they are not just like us. You tell me they make these things from essences that lie hidden in rocks. But I have broken rocks and examined them, and I do not see these things. Why can we not make machines from essences of rocks if it is not because the Sky People are different?”
White Head pushed himself back from the table but kept his eyes on the screen. “They are different only in what they know. In the same way, you know much and Shell Eyes’s baby knows nothing. But it is as human as you, and will become like you.”
“Are you saying we are nothing but children?” Rakki challenged. He didn’t like the comparison and felt anger at the suggestion.
“When it comes to learning the things the Sky People know, yes,” White Head answered, refusing to compromise. Rakki knew it was true and let it go. White Head called the achievements of the Sky People “miracles”—things that required knowledge that was beyond normal understanding. It had been discovered little by little and passed down from generation to generation, always growing, for longer spans of time than Rakki was capable of grasping.
He still didn’t know what to make of the confused impressions he had been getting ever since these gods who were not gods first appeared at Joburg. Keene, whom had first thought to be the head-god, and the long-haired goddess had told that the knowledge White Head spoke of came from people working with each other; that the ways of war prevented learning and brought only sorrow, pain, and destruction. They had brought him to Serengeti to see, and he had met the greater god Gallian, that even Keene served.