~~~
It took me a while to get over my weepiness and withdrawnness. Now that I've taken AP Psychology and read more than may be good for me, I see that I was a victim of post-traumatic stress, survivor's guilt, culture shock, and simple grief. It's a wonder that I didn't curl into a ball.
I owe what mental stability I have to the Colonel and Mom. They kept me busy and were shoulders for me to cry on. Most of you others were also lucky in your adoptive parents, so you know what I mean.
To help me work through my grief, Mom got me to talk of life on Ul. In time, she began to record what I said. My talks became as good an oral history of a world as a six-year-old child can tell. In time, I'd type out my talks and put them with the Colonel's own reminiscences of his visit to Ul and the photographs that he'd taken there. Maybe, when the Work is done, I'll publish all of this material so that the earth-humans can know something of who we Tani are.
The Colonel brought out for me memory-crystals and books from Ul. As my crystal-shaping gift hadn't awoken, the crystals were inert in my hands. The books, though, I could read. I read them aloud in Tan speech for the Colonel and Mom, and translated them into English. The Colonel and Mom asked questions of me till all three of us were sure of understanding the books fully. Thus, I improved my knowledge of my adoptive parents' language, and they learned mine.
Actually, I didn't long read from the books themselves. They were far too valuable as artifacts, the Colonel told me, for daily use. He scanned them into a computer, and I read from its screen. The books themselves, he locked up.
I know now that, in each crystal-ship that brought one of us to the earth, Sor-On put eight memory-crystals and eight books. The inventory list for the crystals and the books came to the earth with Par-On. As a girl, though, I had no way to know that the Colonel had hidden from me a book and a crystal. Why he was hiding them, how they reached me, and what they held I'll tell you in due time.
One day, when the Colonel and Mom set out before dawn with me in the car, they drove and drove. They got onto a road that was two roads running in opposite directions -- I know now that it was Interstate 24, but keep in mind that I was a war-orphan just in from Afghanistan! -- and drove towards the rising sun. I did morning sacrifice by pouring water from a moving car's window. I felt good about myself when the Colonel told me that I was inventive.
In time, the car crossed the Tennessee River, and shortly thereafter the Cumberland, and kept going east through rolling countryside that seemed to me endless. Once in a while, large green signs marked turnoffs to towns, but the car stopped at none of these.
The Colonel and Mom told me that the three of us were going to spend several days away from home. I'd get to see mysterious, wonderful places called zoo, aquarium, and museum, but first I'd have to see a specialist. If anyone asked me why I was seeing him, I was supposed to say that he was treating my albinism and scleroderma. By now, I knew what those words meant, but it was unclear to me why I needed treatment for having pale, hard skin like any other Tan. I did enjoy wearing the sunglasses that Mom had bought me, though. They made the sky look like Ul's.
After what seemed to me an endless drive, the Colonel stopped at a place called Elizabethtown, where I had my first hamburger; then he began driving north. My eyes bulged at the endlessness of Louisville and a while later at the greater endlessness of Cincinnati. It awed me, too, that the Ohio River still ran so far from Paducah. Some hours later there rose ahead a city even larger than Louisville and Cincinnati.
That was, of course, Columbus. The three of us spent the night in a hotel there. I marveled at a world with whole huge buildings just for guests.
In the morning, we went to the Ohio State University. The specialist was, of course, Dr. Ventnor. He was a professor of psychology, but he was hiding his light under a bushel. He never told the university that employed him that he was the world's expert on xenobiology.
Seeing him astonished me. He might've been the Colonel in a laboratory smock. When I'd been introduced to him, I piped out, "Are you the Colonel's brother?"
Dr. Ventnor, the Colonel, and Mom all chuckled. "Why do you ask that question, Belle?" Dr. Ventnor said in a voice that might've been the Colonel's.
"Because you look and sound alike."
"Don't judge persons by how they look, Belle. I understand that, to a Tan, all humans may look alike. To humans, though, all Tani look like brothers and sisters."
Note that he avoided my question. He was, as I'd learn in time, misleading even in his evasion. The Colonel and Mom told me that they'd leave me with Dr. Ventnor awhile, but would take me to dinner and a movie later on.
All of you surely recall your first visits to Dr. Ventnor. He looked at eyes, ears, and throat with fearsome implements, and took blood. The blood-drawing, he'd give up when a needle bent before breaking my skin.
Mostly, though, he asked questions. It made me feel good about myself for so clearly powerful a man to show interest in me. He asked me of my life's tiniest details and seemed pleased by what I told him.
I, of course, asked him of the rest of you. Sadly, but firmly, he denied my request to rejoin you, but thrilled me by telling me that he'd just seen Dala and Sil-Tan. He told me that they were having trouble adjusting to the earth, but they had good parents who'd help them adjust in time. He told me details of Dala's and Sil's daily life -- puppies, swing-sets, and preschool. Only much later did I grasp that he never gave me the slightest clue to where either of you were.
When the Colonel and Mom got back, they told me to sit outside while they spoke with Dr. Ventnor in private. I didn't know why they made me sit outside, as I could hear through a closed door just fine.
"Belle," Dr. Ventnor said, "is showing remarkably little depression and dissociative behavior. I'd say that she's adjusting to the earth well. Feel free to introduce her to the social situations that you have in mind."
"Can I start to train her?" the Colonel said.
"Yes. Just keep in mind that, if she follows the same course of development that the Tani followed on Ul, it'll be six years before she can do what you need her to."
The Colonel sighed. "I just hope that we can wait that long."
When the Colonel and Mom came out of Dr. Ventnor's office, I pretended to have been reading a magazine. I felt that it'd be unwise to reveal that I'd overheard what was said in private. Honest Desert-child that I'd been, I'd picked up let's-pretend in no time.