Footsteps in the Sky by Greg Keyes Page A

them. They came up the Reed, just as we did. They are the part of the way things are.
    To her credit, Sand realized that she was going mad. Her mother was sitting there. A two-heart was sitting there. A Kachina was sitting there, the creator of the world. Sand felt something trickling on her chin and realized that it was the confluence of two salty streams, running down from each eye. Desperate, she sought escape in the Dragonfly, but it was no use; the calm of the insect would not fill her, and though the mask was just within reach, she would have to confront the thing to get it. Sand’s breath came in short gasps, and the world erupted with spots of fuzzy darkness.
    Thing, thing. Sand had a chance, one chance, and she took it, stepping out on a lame foot, but still capable of running.
    â€œI. …” she began, and realized that her voice was going to fail her. She sucked in air, but the breath broke in a shuddering sob. She had no center, no focus for her thoughts. Yet she had a plan, if she could only breathe.
    The breath came. “I’m going to give you a name. Something to call you by,” she said. The ghost squinted its eyes.
    â€œA name?” the ghost asked.
    â€œYour name is Tuchvala.”
    â€œOkay,” said the ghost. “When you call me this name, I know you mean me.”
    â€œSay it!” Sand hissed fiercely. “Say your name!”
    â€œMy name is Tuchvala,” said the ghost, and was a ghost no more. The change was not visible to the naked eye, though Sand might have glimpsed a wavering, a subtle shift in its features. But as the ghost became Tuchvala, her power blew away like smoke from a dying flame. The stolen name of Sand’s mother vanished, never again to be a part of the body that sat in front of her. So, too, did the power of the two-heart, and perhaps even of the Kachina. Whatever power those names had were replaced by that of Tuchvala, the spittle that Spider Grandmother made the first people out of. This person was Tuchvala, the half-formed substance of life, a becoming-person. A thing from another star, perhaps, but human now.
    And that, Sand could deal with. Her breathing slowed. She had won. Her thoughts would stay straight now, unbent by otherworldly charms.
    Idiot, said a tiny part of her mind, the part that had taken a course in psychology at the lowland school. But Sand had learned what her mother had learned long years before, that reality and truth have many layers. She could sort it out later, the nonsense from the real. Now she had to learn what Tuchvala had come to tell her.
    â€œTuchvala, how can you be so old?” She asked, this time with no trace of sarcasm.
    â€œI am a very complex device,” Tuchvala said. “A created thing. My thoughts are patterned on those of the Makers, a race not unlike your own. In turn I patterned the thoughts of this brain—the one in this body—on my own tohodanet.” The last word came out as a series of hisses and clicks.
    â€œYour soul? Is that what you mean?”
    â€œI don’t think so. Your people use two words that together come close to what I’m talking about. The tohodanet is the part of you that sees itself again and again. It is a pattern, an ambiance, rather than a single thing in the brain. It is very difficult to re-create, especially in an alien. To my knowledge, it has never been done before. Frankly, it is possible that I am insane. In the lander, I maintained contact with my original tohodanet—which orbits above—checked my response against hers, but it is still difficult to know. Do I seem strange to you?”
    â€œStrange?” Sand muttered. “I would say so. Crazy? I’m no judge. Can you prove what you are saying?”
    Tuchvala considered. “Are you aware of the three starships orbiting this planet?”
    â€œI think I would say no,” Sand replied, skeptically.
    â€œThen it will be difficult to prove anything to you.