~~~
When I set off for Columbus with Dr. Ventnor, I was retracing a journey that I'd often taken. On my earlier visits to the city, I'd at first been a passenger while the Colonel and Mom drove; then, once I'd earned my driver's license, I'd shared the driving duties with them. Now, as familiar roads through Louisville and Cincinnati rolled past, Dr. Ventnor held the wheel of a black Lexus, and my destination wasn't he, but the truths that he and the Colonel had long kept from me.
"May I ask you a few questions, Dr. Ventnor?"
He gave me his rich, deep laugh. "A few? Surely you have far more than a few."
I began with what puzzled me most. "Whose body did you switch for the Colonel's? Even though the body that you left in his place was badly burned, any decent forensic pathologist would look up dental records and find other identifying marks that the fire hadn't touched. You shouldn't have been able to get by with the switch."
"You're right, Belle -- or you would be, if not for a special feature of the body that Camille and I switched for the Colonel's. You see, the substitute body was the body of the real Colonel Gordon."
I shook my head in disbelief. "Are you saying that the Colonel assumed the identity of a real colonel, and that the switch was actually restoring the true colonel to his rightful place?"
"Yes, Belle. The real Colonel Gordon had a distinguished career in the Special Forces, but suffered from post-traumatic stress and alcoholism. When the military referred him to me for treatment, I saw a strong resemblance between him and your adoptive father, and arranged for your adoptive father to learn of the real Colonel Gordon's life. When the real Colonel Gordon resigned from the service and died of his alcoholism, your adoptive father took his place."
I felt horror. "Do you mean that Mom was once married to another man, and lived with the man who took his place? Why did she go along with the switch? Did you somehow fool her?"
Dr. Ventnor sighed. "You've picked up the earth-human habit of jumping to conclusions, Belle. The real Colonel Gordon was single. Your adoptive father met and wooed your mother after he'd taken the real colonel's place. At one time, she'd been a patient of mine."
My mind reeled, as the saying goes. "What of Captain le Mars, Dala's father? He was an old Army buddy of the Colonel's. Does he know of the switch?"
"Yes. He helped the Colonel and me pull it off. He --"
"Was Captain le Mars a patient of yours?"
Dr. Ventnor grinned. "Nothing gets past you."
My mind was bouncing around like a marble on a roulette wheel. "How did you still have the true colonel's body? Did you keep it frozen in a locker for years till you needed it?"
"No, Belle. Any decent pathologist would know that a body had been frozen. I preserved Colonel Gordon's body with a Tan sleeping-crystal that your grandfather Dor-Sad gave me. A sleeping-crystal seems to suspend time."
Taking a deep breath, I plunged in. "For years, I've thought that you and the Colonel belonged to some black-ops agency training alien refugees as operatives. A strange idea, I know, but all on this world is strange to me. Now, it sounds to me as if you're part of a conspiracy acting on its own. How have you been able to get eight sets of adoptive parents to go along with it?"
"You Tani have a set of gifts. I have a set of my own. They're not as flashy as the Tan gifts, but just as useful."
"I don't understand."
"Open the glove compartment and take out what you find there. It'll help you understand."
Numbly, I obeyed his order. From the glove compartment, I took a lacquered wooden box about twelve by nine by two inches. The box had a lock, open.
"This is the box that I stole from the antiquities dealer in Madison, Wisconsin, the night when I met Lona, isn't it?"
"Open the box."
It held a book made of fine metal leaves bound with metal rings. On the leaves were signs in a script resembling musical notes.
Recalling a book once displayed in a niche in Gam Tol, I cried out, "This is the writing of the Lil-i, the Others! Are you --"
"Yes, Belle. I have a long story for you, but, before you hear it, you must learn other things long kept from you. You must see two items at my house; then I'll tell you all that I know."
Frustrated with my ignorance, but eager to learn, I settled back in my seat. It'd be wonderful for life to make sense to me.
Dr. Ventnor and I talked of generalities the rest of the way to Columbus. At his house, he left me to watch the evening news while he made supper. The news was the run of political corruption, celebrity scandals, financial crises, wars in the earth's far corners, religious strife, and ecological catastrophe. I wonder that the news didn't clabber my guts. Maybe, my days on the earth have hardened me.
Supper -- beef stir-fry -- made up for the news. Dr. Ventnor and I filled the time between bites with polite talk of his work as a professor of psychology and of colleges to which I might go. I was thinking of the Ohio State University, to be near him. Water under the bridge, as the saying goes.
After supper, as Dr. Ventnor and I cleared the table and put dirty dishes into his dishwasher, he said, "I'll be busy this evening, Belle. I must prepare a lecture and do some administrative work that piled up while I was away. The evening won't be wasted for you, though. A safe in the guest bedroom holds a manila envelope containing the two items for you to see. The safe is electronic; you'll have no trouble with it. The items will give you plenty to ponder this evening. In the morning, I'll tell you the long story that I promised you."
Wishing him a good evening, I went to the guest bedroom and opened the safe with my crystal-shaping gift. The manila envelope bore writing that brought tears to my eyes. In the Colonel's spiky script were the words, For Belle in the event of my death.
The envelope was thick and had a lump at its bottom. Opening the envelope, I found that its thickness had been due to several sheets of the linen-like cloth that the Tan had used as paper on the Homeworld. The sheets bore Tan script, which looked to me hastily drawn, and were, to my astonishment, clipped together. I assumed that a paperclip had been added to the sheets after they'd come to the earth.
When I tilted the envelope upside down to learn what the lump was, there slid into my hand a silken bag holding something hard, long, narrow, and faceted. Through the silk, I felt a memory-crystal's characteristic vibrations. Opening the bag's drawstring, I poured the crystal into my hand...
I was in the Chamber of Green Crystal in Gam Tol. On a throne on the chamber's dais sat a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing the three-spired crown. He wasn't Sor-On, for Par-On's father stood at the Kan Tan's feet, along with my grandfather, looking younger than I'd known him. I guessed that the Kan Tan was Yar-On, Sor-On's grandfather. As he was ruling in the crystal-city, he had to be within three years of his death.
"Tell me more, you two," Yar-On said, "of this new world that you've been exploring, and of the strangers who greeted you there."
Sor-on looked at Dor-Sad and motioned for him to talk. "Kan Tan," my grandfather said, "the inhabited world in the Sheep Stars is rich in water, vegetation, and livestock, and would be safe for the Tan if not for the world's inhabitants, the humans. They're intelligent in their own way, as we guessed from their building the radios that made our speaking-crystals speak across vast deserts of space. Altogether too often, though, the humans use their intelligence to harm one another as individuals or in crowds, and to harm their world."
"Please understand, Grandfather," Sor-On said to Yar-On, "that, though many humans show our virtues of duty, loyalty, and truthfulness, many others show forms of madness that would lead us to send them into the Desert."
Yar-On nodded. "It wasn't, though, these humans who met you when your ships landed on the earth."
Again, Sor-on deferred to Dor-Sad. "No, Kan Tan. As you ordered, our ships landed in areas far from large human settlements. To our surprise, though, we learned that among the humans lives a handful of strangers from a ruined world. These strangers have the gift of hearing
other minds afar. When our ships neared the earth, the strangers heard in their minds the thoughts of our ships' brain-crystals and came in secret to meet us."
"If I understood the tale that you told last night," Yar-On said, "the gift of these strangers is terrifying. Besides hearing thoughts afar, they can control the thoughts of those nearby."
"Only of humans, Kan Tan. Us Tani ,they can hear, but can't control."
"A small blessing, then. Tell me again the warning that these strangers gave you."
"To avoid the humans, Kan Tan. If they catch us, the strangers say, the humans will force us to do hard labor, cut us open to study us, or kill us at once. They'll learn our ships' secrets and come to this world to add its pitiful little to their much."
Yar-On turned to his grandson. "Do you agree with the strangers' assessment of the humans?"
Sor-On spread his hands. "Grandfather, I told you last night of the sound-and-light performances that appear on the humans' televisions. They show a world that looks as if the mad life within the Wall of Winds had grown mouths to speak and hands to shape."
"Yet you recommend that we keep studying these humans and someday contact them?"
"Grandfather, survival, in the long run, never means running from danger. We must face what threatens us and learn to manage it."
Yar-On stroked his chin. "I must give more thought to what you two have said. For now, limit your contacts on this new world to the strangers and those whom they control."
In my hand, the crystal went inert. Slipping it back into its silk bag, I thought, This truly was something that I needed to see. With a smile to myself, I added in thought, I always knew that the Colonel could read minds.
I turned to the pages written in Tan script:
Dor-Sad wishes his beloved granddaughter, Mira Das-Es, prosperity and joy.
Many years may pass before you, my beloved granddaughter, read this message. I can't imagine what experiences you've had, or what you've become on the world where I'm sending you. I can but hope that the foster parents to whose care I commit you have shown you love and given you the guidance needed to overcome the trials to which your new homeworld has subjected you.
I wish that there were another world where I could send you. Within the crystal-ships' reach, though, only Ul and Ul Har, which you've learned to call the earth, remain as abodes of life, and Ul and its life are now ending.
By now, you don't need me to tell you of the humans of the earth, with their many peoples, many languages, and many gods, all of them at odds with one another. You'll have learned that, though humans as persons may be kind and generous, the human people is dangerous to itself, dangerous to its world, and dangerous to the strangers who hide on that world.
To deal with the humans and to honor the will of your own people, who chose you to help carry on their memory through time, you must keep your mind on the Work and the Message. I know that Kan Tan Sor-On plans to tell you of the Work before you leave for the earth, but I know also that a reminder of the Work won't come amiss.
You must remember Ul. I know that, to survive on the earth, you must learn and adopt its ways, but, in your new life, please don't forget your old homeworld's ways. Conserve the memory-crystals and the books sent with you, retain our speech, worship Holy Light each day at dawn, and dance under the stars when you can. Call out in the dark the names of us whom you've left behind so that we may live again in memory.
You must perpetuate the People. You and Par-On must beget and bear children to carry on the royal line of the Crystal-Shapers, and the other couples whom we're sending with you must beget and bear children to aid the royal line in the Work.
You must save the earth. There, your gifts of strength, speed, healing, and crystal-shaping, the An birthright, will be magnified many times above what they are here. You'll need those gifts to keep both the People and the humans alive.
I'm sending the earth a message, which will arrive in thirteen point eight of the earth's years. The heart of this message, though, I'm telling you now, as it will shape the Work for which the People has sent you.
The crystal-ships have found nine worlds where life once flourished, but is no more. On all of those worlds lived intelligent beings much like us. It was the works of those intelligent beings that ruined their worlds.
You're familiar, I know, with the world of the Others, where a work of their hands removed all of the oxygen from the atmosphere. On other ruined worlds, other mechanisms ended life. It seems to me a rule that intelligent life shapes a means to destroy itself. You've seen this rule at work on Ul. The great crystals that I learned to shape destabilized this world to the point that Nas-Ul is tearing it apart. Now a tenth ruined world will join the first nine.
The earth must not become an eleventh ruined world, lest the memories of the first ten die along with it. The humans, though, aggressive and divided as they are, are unlikely saviors for their world. You and your fellow Tani must use your gifts, when the Message comes, to persuade or compel the humans to abandon, or never to develop, technologies that threaten their world's existence.
Do what the Work requires, beloved Mira, even if it may require killing those who oppose it. Those of the humans who oppose the Work won't hesitate to kill you. Let the humans teach you how to succeed at the Work. Without it, all will be lost.
Those to whom you and your fellow Tani will be entrusted are Others, or servants of the Others. The Others know of the Work, and will do what they can to aid it. They'll guide you awhile, but, past a certain point, you'll be on your own and must choose your own path. I pray to Holy Light for it to end in happiness for you, but I pray above all for it to end in the People's survival.
Remember us who sent you as you walk under Holy Light.
I blinked tears from my eyes as I struggled with grief and outrage. How couldn't you have told me, Kan Tan Sor-On, I thought, that "Save the earth" meant "Conquer the earth"?