Sky People Read Online Free PDF Page A

on another planet, and I had taught him all he needed to know. They never thanked me. I think it is a concept they don’t understand. Because they are superior, both physically and intellectually, they have the right to do as they please with humans.”
    “Are you angry about what they did?” I asked.
    “No. I resented their interference, but I learned so much from them. I have never told anyone this story. I carried it in my heart. At night I tell my children about the boy from the stars who is a duplicate of me and how he lives among the stars. They think Imake up stories, but I tell them the truth. When they are older, I will explain it to them. But for the time now, I am content with knowing that there is much more to the universe than just life here on this earth. It gives me hope.”
    “Why does it give you hope?”
    “I look around me and I see poverty and pain. It is comforting to know that there are other worlds with great knowledge. Perhaps someday, humans will become like the star travelers. They will put their efforts into saving people instead of killing them. The Star People do not believe in war, and they have no diseases where they come from. I have hope that it will someday be like that on Earth.”
    “Now that you can look back on those years, what is your overall assessment of your experience?”
    “When I was small, it was an adventure. When I was about nine or ten, I resented their visits. I wanted to be left to my own devices. Then about the time I reached puberty, I looked forward to meeting my double and teaching him things. I felt important and perhaps it was through the influence of the star travelers that I felt the need to go to the university. Who knows? Maybe not, but I think they gave me hope to follow my dreams, too.”
    Just as he finished his story, the waitress arrived with
ereba
, a cassava bread made from yucca, grated cassava, garlic, and salt, along with a local fish and
hudut
, a pounded plantain dish. After lunch, we drove Stephen back to the co-op. Several of the female workers came toward the van. They wanted to meet the USA Amerindian. I got out and shook hands and exchanged kisses. They asked me about my home and about the USA. They wanted to know if I drove a car and if it snowed in Montana. They also asked me if I lived in a teepee, an idea they had picked up from television. They wanted to know about my native language. For the next half hour, we traded words; I told them the word for common nouns and they gave me the Garifuna equivalent.
    “You are a very brave woman,” a woman called Sherry said.
    “Brave?” I asked.
    “To travel alone and to follow your dreams.” She embraced me and whispered in heavily accented English, “Go safely. Your dreams give other women hope.”
    As we said goodbyes to Stephen and the Garifuna women of Hopkins, Stephen suggested that we make a stop at the local shaman’s house. “I know he has traveled with the Sky People. I am sure he will talk with you.” Despite spending most of the afternoon in Hopkins looking for the
Buyei
(the Garifuna name for shaman), we eventually returned to Belmopan.
    T
he following day I planned to search for the famous stone woman of Belize, or at least someone who saw her. But for the time being, I felt good about my trip to Hopkins. I not only met an Amerindian who related a story of a world inhabited by doubles of human beings, but I had been reminded by a woman, who had never been outside of the village of Hopkins, how important it was to follow your dreams
.

Chapter 3
A Disk in the Sky
    I
n the 1800s, Edward Everett Hale wrote a short story, “The Brick Moon,” which was serialized in the
Atlantic Monthly,
and was the first known fictional description of an artificial floating city in the sky. In his fictional narrative, Hale imagined a brick moon floating above the Earth peopled by individuals of races from throughout the universe who lived and worked together
.
    In the 1960s, during the