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The crowd that had gathered around the globe that had been brought aboard began calling for Mailsh Heelbare to show them how they would go around the world and what countries they would pass over. Edith accompanied him and listened while he talked to them. She was bubbling with happy excitement, now. It had just dawned on her that shoonoon were fun.
"Would anybody tell a secret of this sort, about his own people, if it were not real?" "We had better say nothing about Mailsh Heelbare. We will say that the Gone Ones told us in dreams." "Let us say that the Great Spirit sent a dream of warning to each of us," another shoonoo said. "There has been too much talk about dreams from the Gone Ones already."
They are fools." "Am I a fool, Grandfather? Do I mock at the old stories, or show disrespect to elders and shoonoon? Yet I, Mailsh Heelbare, tell you this. The World is indeed round, and I will show you." The shoonoo looked contemptuously at the globe. "I have seen those things," he said. "That is not the World; that is only a make-like." He held up his phallic wood-carving.
He looked over the seated shoonoon, picking out those who wore the flame-colored cloaks of the fire-dance. "You and you and you," he said. "You have been making this dreadful magic, and leading your people in it. And which among the rest of you have not been guilty?" "We did not know," one of them said. "Mailsh Heelbare, have we yet time to keep this from happening?" "Yes.
"Mailsh Heelbare, this is not real! It cannot be!" "The Gone Ones " "The Always-Cool Time, when there will be no more hunger or hard work or death; it cannot be real that this will never come!" He rose, holding up his hands; his action stopped the clamor. "Why should the Gone Ones want to return to this poor world that they have gladly left?" he asked.
"Mailsh Heelbare, if there is no Dark Place where do the Sky Fire and the Always-Same go when they are not in the sky?" "They never leave the sky; the World is round, and there is sky everywhere around it." They knew that, or had at least heard it, since the Terrans had come. They just couldn't believe it. It was against common sense.
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