"To tell you the truth, I haven't given it much thought. There isn't much I can do about it."
"Well, we're not. We could have done that back at your camp. We could have killed all of you. No, we want to show you something."
I had a ridiculous thought that they made star-pictures, too—even those who are not lame like my brother. I said, "Well, what will happen to me after you show me?"
She smiled. "You still think we're going to kill you. What's your name?"
I told her, but I thought: she can't even keep a conversation going without changing the subject.
"Jak," she repeated after me. "That's a common enough name. We have Jaks among our Onist people, you know."
"No, I didn't. But you probably copied it."
"I doubt that. We were here first, Jak. Our records say so. Probably, you once captured a man with that name, long ago, liked it, and took it for your people."
"You were here first!" I sneered. "Maybe that's what your records tell you, but it isn't so. Look: the Makers endowed us with life, then went away in to the sky. By mistake they left one idiot-Maker behind, and he had nothing to do. He made you Onists before he perished, and that is why you think there is only one Maker."
She seemed highly insulted. "Idiot-Maker? Idiot! There was only one Maker, ever, but because your minds cannot conceive of all that glory residing in one figure, you invented a score."