“Does it mean the base has a name now?” Keene asked.
Shayle nodded. “Borrowed from the old days. Gallian has decided to call it Serengeti.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The skies had changed in the course of the last year or so—not that Rakki had any clear concept of what a year was or why it was important. It was something that White Head kept track of by marking notches in a piece of bone for every day that passed. There were still storms and lightning, and winds that brought cold, sometimes with snow, if they came from the south; rain if from the west; dry, choking dust from the east. But the sky overhead had lightened and seemed higher, breaking up at times into patches of gray cloud and streamers moving against a ceiling that came close to white. In fact, on one or two occasions, even the ceiling had opened briefly to reveal glimpses of a pale, watery blueness that Rakki had heard was supposed to exist up there but had never known whether to believe. Perhaps the flashes he sometime saw in his mind of a dazzling light in the sky shining down over a world of color and life were real after all. And yet, strangely, he was unable to recall any details of that world—of the trees that White Head said had stood high overhead everywhere, or the places filled with people. Sims said that people’s minds protected themselves by shutting out memories that it would be too painful to know could never be experienced again. Generally, the air seemed to be colder, which caused aches in his wounds and in his leg at night.
Even so, the valley was looking greener these days. Slim shoots were appearing in more places, which the Oldworlders said would one day become trees many times the height of a man. When Rakki asked them how long that would take, it turned out—strangely—that none of them really knew.
He took in the view as he and White Head came over the crest of the ridge, riding side by side on what White Head called “mules”; but at the same time he said they weren’t like “real” mules, whatever that meant. Being carried on animals had been widespread in the former times, White Head said—but the animals they had then were larger and faster, but apparently were not the cattle that had existed in herds of thousands. Rakki had thought it strange that they would bother riding animals at all if they also possessed metal birds that they could fly in. But he had long given up trying to make sense of the conflicting and often seemingly contradictory things that Oldworlders said.
It had never occurred to Rakki that animals might be made to carry people. With his crooked leg that no longer bent fully, it was his main way of getting around these days, and his only means of traveling long distances. Sims had found the mules petrified in a canyon after an earthquake and suggested using them, initially as a way of moving Rakki more easily. That had been in the times following Rakki’s rescue, over a year ago now. All he remembered was returning briefly to consciousness as he lay on the rocky ledge where he had fallen, and then nothing more until a long time after that. He knew the story only from the things the others told him.
It was White Head who had first grown suspicious after Rakki’s departure from the caves with Shingral and the others, when he heard Gap Teeth’s account of Zomu’s warning to Rakki. From his own observations, White Head had seen signs of too close a collusion between Zomu and Jemmo to trust Zomu’s story. When he learned of how the result had been to separate Rakki from one of his two staunchest defenders, he became alarmed that this might have been precisely the intention. Convincing Gap Teeth that it was Rakki, not Shell Eyes, who was in danger—and that in any case he, White Head, would watch over her—he had persuaded Gap Teeth to set out after the party in order to aid Rakki and Shingral if they encountered trouble. But before Gap Teeth caught up with them, he had spied Alin and Dorik returning alone and was barely able to conceal himself before they passed. Two miles farther on, as night was falling, he came across Shingral’s body lying on a trail above a high precipice, stabbed from behind. On looking over the edge, he spotted Rakki on a ledge some distance below. He could see no sign of Zomu.