[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Gap Teeth seemed just as overwhelmed, and even White Head was unusually silent. At intervals, voices
spoke seemingly from the walls and from the flat windows that showed colors. In one of them a female
face appeared, as sometimes happened with the things the Sky People carried on their arms. Gusts of
wind seized the bird continually, causing it to rise and fall violently. Maybe the straps on the seats were
there for more practical and mundane reasons than symbolizing unity with the Mother Bird, Rakki
decided. The Sky People left them alone to take in all the strangeness and adjust to it in their own time.
Then Rakki noticed that details of the ground below were becoming larger again and took it to mean that
they were going down. A sinking feeling in his stomach confirmed it as the bird's descent steepened. And
then he saw what must have been one of the cities that White Head had sometimes tried to describe.
At first it looked something like Joburg, with huts set out in a cluster, rocks and hills all around, and
farther off, part of a wide river running roughly westward, as far as Rakki could judge from the
direction of the still-visible mountains. But as the bird came closer, the "huts" gradually revealed
themselves as more immense than anything built of thatched boughs and grasses, formed from
combinations of sharp lines and curves like the objects inside the bird. And moving around among them
were more crawling eggs like the one that had come to Joburg. Rakki made out different kinds of them
as the bird came to hover, then resumed sinking slowly. One had a long arm and was lifting something
huge, while others nearby were being emptied of things that didn't mean anything. They were for carrying
loads, he realized. The Sky People didn't need to tame animals to do their work. They made their
own but with capabilities no animal conceivable in his wildest imaginings could ever hope to match.
The sounds that had been present to a greater or lesser extent all through the journey ceased suddenly.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
A face was talking from one of the windows to the front again, below the bird's eyes. Naarmegen
unfastened his seat straps and stood up, and then did the same for Rakki, White Head, and Gap Teeth,
while behind him another of the Sky People opened the bird's side. "This is our base here," Naarmegen
said. The word was a new one. So perhaps it wasn't a city, after all. "Name, Serengeti." He then added
something that sounded like "Welcome," which Rakki didn't quite get the meaning of either. He stood up,
and in response to Naarmegen's waved directions, followed him down the metal steps to the outside.
Out in the open and close-up, the constructions were even vaster than Rakki had guessed when looking
down at them. What manner of craft was needed to fashion such things, he had no idea. Farther away in
the opposite direction, a number of long columns of white and the silver color showed by freshly
scratched metal lay along the ground, and one was standing on end, pointing toward the sky. Something
told Rakki intuitively that these were yet larger and more powerful birds that traveled to the domain
beyond the clouds. Strange noises came from all directions: droning and snorting like the calls of some
animals; banging and clashing; bursts of what sounded like the rapid barking of dogs.
They began walking toward the nearer structures, over ground that was as flat as smoothed sand, yet
hard like rock. In one place, a metal animal with an arm bearing a huge bowl, but with flat sides, was
digging a trench, scooping as much earth with each bite as a man could move in a day of heavy work.
Naarmegen waved a hand and said something that sounded carelessly cheerful. Rakki indicated that he
didn't understand. "All a mess. Still lots to do," White Head translated from behind, where he was
following with Gap Teeth. Many heads turned to follow them curiously. Some of the figures waved.
Rakki was not sure what it meant, and so didn't respond.
They arrived at one of the structures. It was like a cliff or the side of a crag that had been split by a
fissure, but made of metal or some other Oldworlder stuff like the made-animals and the birds. Like
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
