Read Gods of the Greataway for Free Online Page A

humanoids. They should live together in harmony, one with God. It was also rather annoying that Manuel should have more influence over the Quicklies than he, a priest. It was that toy of Manuel’s, that machine he called a Simulator. It seemed to fascinate the Quicklies and to calm them.
    Later he and Ana walked together to the beach. The evening was drawing on, and she expected no more customers. The weather was fine and the stars were beginning to wink from behind a scattering of high horse clouds.
    Manuel was sitting on the beach before the Simulator, which showed a swirling, incomplete mind-painting. He could not concentrate; at their approach he looked up and took off the helmet.
    He said, “Do you know I’ve seen Quicklies cry? They cried at a mind-painting I once did, and I saw the tears. I
saw
the tears — do you know what that means, Dad Ose? It’s the same thing as my crying for a year and never wiping the tears away.”
    “What are they doing now?”
    “They had a big fight earlier. A battle.” He picked up a curious object from the beach, a triangle of straight sticks, each about a hand’s length, joined with thongs, with other thongs running crosswise like harp strings. It was insubstantial and tingled in his hand. “They left a lot of dead, and these things. I think they’re weapons. The tide’s covered most of it up, now.”
    “Can’t you stop them? They’ve been bothering Ana.” Dad Ose’s voice was stern, as though it were Manuel’s fault.
    “It’s nothing, really,” said Ana. She was watching a nearby patch of sand that seemed to be glowing.
    “I can’t seem to get them interested in the Simulator anymore. And …” he hesitated. “And I’m not so interested myself, now. My painting … I know it’s not very good.” He wanted to explain. He would have liked to explain to Ana — but Dad Ose was there. He had evoked his original painting several times —
Belinda: the Storm Girl
— but it didn’t seem to have the same meaning anymore. So he’d been fiddling with it, unsuccessfully. He felt like kicking in the front of the Simulator.
    Ana saidcarefully, “Drop in at my place sometime, Manuel.”
    “There’s something funny on the sand,” said Dad Ose.
    And a group of Quicklies jittered by. “Ya-heeee!” They darted to and fro, and Manuel felt a quick pluck at his clothing; but no one was there. Fast blurs flitted through the evening shadows and, for an instant, a small, inert figure lay nearby, dying fast before disappearing. The Quicklies were one of the coast’s mysteries. Their lifespan was measured in days — and very few days, at that. In later millennia, the minstrels would speculate that the Quicklies were one of the results of the war with the Red Planet; but whether they were victims of the frightful Weapon, or a human experiment created to counteract it, was never clear. Some learned minds held that they were a perfectly normal, though primitive, tribe living on an adjacent happen-track with a different frame of duration, sometimes impinging on normal Earth time. Another group suggested they were the offspring of a terrifying race of creatures known as the Bale Wolves.
    The village mothers used them as a threat:
    Lazy boy, lazy boy, what a surprise!
    Little blind Quicklies are stealing your eyes!
    So ran a local ditty.
    That evening they were busier than usual. Occasionally they stood before Manuel and he would catch a glimpse of an inquisitive chimplike face, eyes a blur of blinking; then they would be gone. A violent turmoil took place in the shallows and a few bodies rocked in the waves for a second before flickering out.
    “They don’t remember me,” said Manuel. “They used to be more friendly than this.” His voice was sad. His absence from Pu’este had cost him a lot.
    “Theseare many generations removed from the ones you used to know,” Ana reminded him. “And your influence has faded with time. I think … You used to be a kind of god to them