Part 2 (2/2)

Let it be so, Brother Elders. Brother Hlutr. I am cold, so cold. Chari Anne, are you there?? It must be autumn, Chari Anne; look how my leaves are red and orange and yellow. Are they not beautiful, my Little One? Is not the Universal Song a grand and glorious thing, to have contained two such as we?

I always did love the leaves of October.

INTERLUDE 1.

Kev couldn't keep his secret to himself. When he arrived home, his Mama Tiponya was programming dinner; he hugged her and said, ”Can I have a cookie?”

”Just one, dalinka. You don't want to ruin your appet.i.te.”

”Thank you.” He punched for a cookie, accepted it from the kitchen cabinet, then sat down next to Mama Tiponya, swinging his legs. ”Would you like a bite?”

”Thank you, yes. Mmm, that's good.” She turned back to her terminal. ”So what have you been up to today?”

”I've been in the treehouse.” Shyly, he added, ”The tree talked to me.”

”Did it?” Her tone was one that Kev had heard too often: she didn't believe him, and she was secretly laughing at him. How cute, Kev thinks he's talking to a tree.

”No, really, it did.”

”Tell you what, you can tell me me all about it later.” She giggled and gave him another hug. ”Now why don't you go wash? Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

”Yes, Ma'am.” Frowning, Kev jumped to the floor. So she didn't believe him...she didn't have to laugh at him. At dinner Mama Tiponya brought it up again. ”Kev, why don't you tell everybody what you did today?” She was trying to hide a smile, and Kev looked down at his food.

”Nothing,” he muttered.

”Oh, tell us, Kev,” urged Mama Cho. ”You always have such fun.”

Against his better judgement, Kev told them...but he mentioned only the barest outline, just the fact that the tree had talked to him, and that it told him a story. Somehow, he didn't quite feel like sharing the story itself.

Father Nnamdi grinned. ”So now the trees are talking to you! What next, the birds?”

”I'd rather not talk about it,” Kev answered sullenly.

”All right, son, we'll let it drop.”

He knew just what was going to happen, though- later, when they thought he was asleep, all the grownups would have a good chuckle about Kev and his talking tree. Soon it would be a family joke, a cute story to tell visitors.

Never mind, he thought. Dar will believe me.

”No kidding?” Dar looked at the tree, his eyes wide. ”It honestly talked to you?” Kev had called his friend right after dinner, and despite the setting sun the boys ran out to the tree at once.

”Well, it wasn't talking, not really. More like singing, or dreaming. Immanuel heard it too...didn't you, boy?” The dog wagged his tail furiously, and earned a scritch behind the ears in return.

”All right, let's go on up, and you can show me.” Dar was two years older than Kev, and was already six levels ahead in school. He knew everything- or at least, he knew how to use his terminal to find out everything.

They climbed up, then pulled Immanuel up with the pulley. The little dog actually enjoyed being hoisted into the treehouse. When the dog was safely aboard, Dar said, ”Well, how do we make it talk?”

”Uh...I don't know. I was just resting, and I put me head against it, like this.” Kev demonstrated.

Dar stretched out next to him, and for the next few minutes the two boys were silent.

”What's supposed to happen now?”

”You hear music. Then...it's hard to describe.”

”You were dreaming.”

”I was not!”

”Were too.”

”Was not.”

”All right, all right, let's not get into a fight about it.” Dar glanced at the sun, then at his terminal rolled up and hanging from his belt. ”It's getting late. Tomorrow's a big day. I've got to get home before the folks miss me.”

”Okay. I'll see you tomorrow.” Kev watched Dar descend, then flopped to the wooden platform. ”It's no use,” he said to Immanuel. ”n.o.body believes me.” He laid his head back against the tree trunk, and not even Immanuel's sloppy tongue on his face brought a smile.

Listen, Little One....

PART TWO:.

Teacher.

In the quiet night of this eternal wood, I lift my soul to the stars in the waves of the Inner Voice. I sing, as the Hlutr have sung since the beginnings of life. My roots are deep in the lush soil of this world that now, after the fas.h.i.+on of the Humans, we call Amny. My limbs rise high into the fresh, clear air, reaching for the dim radiance of the distant stars in lieu of the vanished sun. And I sing.

Answering voices come from the sky and beyond: a chorus of my brethren on a million worlds. Most of them are Hlutr, for we alone of all the races have mastered the mystery of the Inner Voice. In this way, as in our physical stature, we stand above all other creatures; in this way, we do our duty to the Universal Song. For how could there be a Song, without the Hlutr to sing...?

I sing, and this should be pleasure. I seek the communion of my race, the oneness that comes through the Inner Voice and lifts us all far beyond the various worlds we inhabit. The animal races, however mobile, are bound by their very nature, bound in s.p.a.ce to one particular location; only the plants, seemingly sessile, have truly transcended all boundaries. This night, I sing, and in my song I seek to become one with the Universal Song.

This should be a pleasure. Yet too soon, before I am even begun, a discord intrudes. It begins faintly, a mere hint of the song gone wrong, and I turn my soul away from it in my attempt to fly the night. Yet the discord is still there, on the worlds of the Hlutr and in the empty s.p.a.ces where only our dormant spores drift; in the oceans and the clouds, spoiling their wet happy melodies, in the soil and the turf, poisoning their deep restful peace.

It is the Humans.

I know, my brothers, that many of you do not agree with me. Many of you, I know, do not see them as I do, these sons and daughters of Terra with their machines and their Thrones and their ever-continuing racous jabber. Most of you do not concern yourselves with the Humans. Many of you feel that they are not truly sapient, that they do not have enough sense of the Inner Voice to cause any discord in its melodies. You are wrong. I live in their midst, not a dozen Hlutr-lengths from one of their cities, not eight hundred pa.r.s.ecs from one of their most populated worlds, and I know: this dissonance I feel comes from them.

Still more of you, my siblings, feel that the Humans are sapient and feel a special compa.s.sion for them, silly and weak as they are. You may remember our dealings with them, and our strange brother who left Amny and went to the world where the Humans live. I think of him always as ”The Traveller,” for he went places where Hlutr seldom go.

The last remnants of his carca.s.s stand yet, in the clearing only a Hlut-length or so from me. He had been specially-bred for his mission, and he burned out his stunted life in a very short time. But his memory lives on, in all of us. It comes through our roots from the wet ground, it descends on us in the summer winds, and it echoes yet in the waves of the Inner Voice. We will never forget the Traveller...and I least of all. I was his Teacher; I bear some of the responsibility for his mission, for making him what he was. Sometimes, when I look to the lonely blackness of interstellar s.p.a.ce, or when I contemplate the grand sweep of time, I feel that he is near, and I can almost hear his whisper. It is a sad whisper, a lost sound as he entreats us on behalf of those strange folk he came to love- as if a Hlut could truly love any of the Little Ones.

You remember our decision, in that time of judgement and the appeal of the Traveller. We spared Man, when we could have eliminated him from the Universal Song like the violent blight he sometimes seems. This was the will of the Hlutr, and this was my will too and yet at times I wonder.

What did we know of Humans, then? Few enough of us had paid any attention to them. We had a few flashes of the Inner Voice, the knowledge we gained from the poor children of Nephestal, and the ravings of our misshapen brother.

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