Gods of the Greataway Read Online Free PDF Page B

Girl.
    “You’d be happy with a body like a Polysitian woman?”
    “Well, what do you think, Zozula?” said the Girl, smiling.
    “More important, what would Manuel think?”
    “Shut up,” she muttered.
    As they made their preparations to leave the Dome, her brief happiness faded, however, and she found her thoughts returning to the Celestial Steam Locomotive, with its passengers in their insane pursuit of unearthly delights, and the crazed driver and the sinister stoker. And worst of all, now that Dream Earth was firmly in her mind, that terrifying figure of the Blind Man, from whom she’d escaped but who still chased her through the night, his white stick taptapping its way through her dreams …
    Then Zozula and she climbed onto shrugleggers, and the ground-floor airlock swung open. Their bipedal mounts carried them into the bright sunshine and fresh, keen air of Outside.
    Soon she would be seeing Manuel again.

T HE H OME OF A NA’S E YES
    S
he looked about forty physical years old, by natural reckoning. Her face was plump and smiling and friendly, her mouth large, her lips like petals, her teeth perfect. Her breasts were big and they moved as though they had intentions of their own, sliding behind her sapa blouse as she moved her arms in animated conversation. She wore a skirt also of sapa cloth — her specialty and chief trading advantage — which fell to mid calf, showing strong legs and ankles and suggesting more. Her voice was like low, soft music, and her body had the fragrance of the spices that lined the shelves of her store.
    Andher eyes …
    Ana’s eyes were almond and slanted like a Polysitian’s, but the resemblance ended there. They were luminous, and no man had ever been able to state exactly what color they were, because every man saw what he wanted in them.
    Many times a vision of Ana would jiggle in the mind of a village man as he drank before his hut, the day’s work done. He would wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and, grinning furtively, would make his way down the road to the little store with the bright cloths hanging outside. His mind would be glowing with a vision of the mature and delectable Ana, and what he was going to do with her. He would stop outside the store, finger the cloths, and chip at the sandstone with his fingernail while he peered inside, wondering how best to declare his intentions. The evening sun would slant across the entrance, so he couldn’t see much, but his imagination would fill in the shadows. And the wind, rustling among the grasses that hung above the cave entrance, would be the rustlings of her clothes. Then, blinking, he would enter.
    Her loomwould be working; that was for sure. The warp would be stretched across the frame — Ana did that herself, working quickly with strong fingers — and the two tiny animals, the sapas, would be scurrying to and fro, shuttling the weft. The sapas were one of the wonders of Ana’s cave. The villagers had never seen
useful
(in the human sense) rodents before, and they couldn’t understand how Ana had trained the little animals to carry out this intricate task. They themselves had tried, with cavies, and the cavies had simply sat and eaten the warp.
    The sapas weren’t trained, of course. It was in their nature to weave. They were a relic of a bygone age, when man had been in partnership in the stars with the kikihuahuas, who worked together with nature and the creatures around them. How Ana had come by the sapas is not recorded, but she had bred them carefully down the ages.
    Then there would be the spices and the curios and the dried fruits and fish; shelf upon shelf of goods that Ana bartered with the villagers and anyone else who might be passing. Pu’este had no currency, and barter was the rule. Ana was so experienced — and so honest — that she was often called upon to arbitrate in village transactions.
    At the very back of the cave was a dark, damp hole that was rumored to be a Life Cave, because Ana