Part 9 (1/2)

Stirred by this distress too strong for her mind to bear, I sung to her in the Second Language and the Inner Voice. Be calm, my Little One.

She stopped, wonderment blossoming on her face. And she looked directly at me, her intense dark eyes meeting my multicolored leaves. The waves of Inner Voice that she projected, changed pitch; distress receded and was replaced by gentle annoyance and rising awe. Hands on hips, she said, ”Trees don't talk.”

Hlutr are not trees, I sang. And now a tinge of my own wonderment answered hers...for she understood.

Little eyes wide, Chiriga Ho sat at my roots, and begged me to tell her more of the Hlutr.

Artist that I am, even I cannot sing but a fraction of Hlutr history in a lazy Inse afternoon- and long before the afternoon was past, Chiriga had to depart. But she was back again before nightfall, and stayed until she was yawning. By the time the sun settled below the horizon, Chiriga and I had entwined our songs- the first of many such links we would make- and she could be with me even though her body was half a kilometer away in her bed. Her loneliness was over, and she clung to our narrow thread of contact like a vine to its nouris.h.i.+ng host.

Chiriga Ho had at last found a friend.

Summer became Autumn, as Inse retreated from the sun and the silvery bridge of the Galaxy began to rise later and later in the night. My fellow Hlutr were busy with the slow change of season, directing the migrations of winged animals and the shedding of leaves.

And in that long Autumn, I came to love Chiriga Ho.

I loved her most for her strength. All Inse saw the determination that she brought to her schoolwork, to her daily exercises, to every corner of her life- but none saw the hidden strength that I could see within her mind. This was the strength that moved reluctant limbs despite constant pain, the courage that faced each new day of derision and humiliation with calm determination and impossible hope.

We Hlutr are strong by nature; but ours is the strength of time, the eternal gentle pressure by which plants crack solid stone in only a few centuries. Chiriga did not have the luxury of time; her might was an idomitable will. Nothing could stand in her way: not pain, nor distance, nor even the disapproval of her fellow Humans. Through that Autumn I saw more of Chiriga's strength than she had ever shown any living ent.i.ty. This little Human taught me things I had never suspected, things that the Hlutr had never told me; I could not but love her.

It was a lonely time for Chiriga and her folk. Less than twenty seventies of them remained; the rest had long since moved to more hospitable worlds. The first snows buried a domed garden, and before it was dug out a second storm struck- even from half a kilometer, the sound of the dome's cracking disturbed the animals that huddled around and within my roots for warmth.

Nearly a third of Chiriga's people left after the dome broke. Chiriga sat with me in the night, and we watched a few ancient shuttle s.h.i.+ps taking the Humans away from Inse.

”One day,” she said, ”All of us will go. One day you'll see the last Human leave Inse.”

I hope that will never happen, Little One.

Yet the Winter wore on, the hardest and coldest winter in Human centuries. Thick Hlutr bark and Hlutr inner warmth protected me and my brethren even as ice coated us; our roots went deep into boiling underground lakes and brought heat to the surface. We did what we could to shelter the other little lives around us: grubs and worms and tiny burrowing creatures crawled between my roots, and I allowed the boring insects to enter my very body. Winged beasts huddled where they could, in crooks and elbows that offered some small protection from the wind. Even the lesser trees pulled close, turning themselves to the Hlutr they way they turned to follow the sun.

Plants went dormant, larger animals hibernated where they could and died where they could not. But for Chiriga's folk, there was no help.

I did what I could, and all of us helped. Confined to their settlement, hungry and lonely, the Humans were ripe for despair. We Hlutr could give them neither food nor warmth nor freedom- but we could sing to them in the Inner Voice, and give them back their will to live.

Chiriga helped. With a music-sythesizer she found in an abandoned storeroom and her clear, strong voice, she sang and danced for her people. She could hear the Hlutr song, and she conveyed the quintessence of its meaning to her folk. And for a time, the song seemed to help them.

It did not last.

It was a few hours before Inse's slow dawn. Our sister planet, a great gas giant which the Humans call Eaun, was settling peacefully toward the western horizon. All at once the preternatural stillness was interrupted by a sullen groan deep in the rocks of the valley. Far below, relentless movements of Inse's crust had formed the valley; now rocks slipped against one another as balanced tensions were released. Mountains and valley shook, trees cracked and tumbled...and then the land was quiet again. For a time.

Chiriga's people woke in panic, and were just calming themselves when a slight skittering sound began at the north end of the valley. It continued, growing louder, and by the time the Humans managed to stumble to their observation screens, the sound had become an echoing roar that completely filled the night.

Half the mountainside, it seemed, came tumbling down upon the Human settlement, as irresistable as the onslaught of a Summer storm.

In the end only a few lives were lost. The damage to the settlement was much greater.

”The avalanche buried our last deep-mining installation,” Chiriga told me. ”Without that...we have nothing to trade.” She pressed her forehead against my frozen bark. Our shrunken sun was still climbing up from the horizon. ”In eighty hours it'll be night- the Manager wants everyone gone by then. Borshall is sending a transport, and it's supposed to be here by noon.”

Where will you go?

”Mother says we have family on New Sardinia. The Manager's going to give us our shares of the Inse Company, and in Borshallan sols, so we won't have money problems for a while.”

It will be lonely without you, Chiriga Ho.

”I'll miss you very much.” She stood for a long moment, hugging as much of my trunk as he little arms could embrace, s.h.i.+vering all the time. Then she said, ”I'll try to sing with you, even when I'm on New Sardinia.”

I shot her an encouraging note in the Inner Voice, but I had no hope that a Human, even one as talented as Chiriga, could make herself heard across pa.r.s.ecs of empty s.p.a.ce. Only the Hlutr could do that.

So it came that as night approached, I lifted all my leaves to heaven and watched the last of the shuttles sail upward, carrying the last Human to live on Inse. I followed Chiriga's mental song as long as I could, while night fell and her s.h.i.+p moved outward from the sun- then there was a distortion of the song as the s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed into the mysterious tachyon phase, and she was gone.

That very night, at the depth of Inse's coldest Winter in centuries, the Ice Dancers came out to play.

We know little about them; they appear only when the cold is so severe that even Hlutr find it difficult to live, when carbon dioxide snow falls on mountain slopes and water is hard as rock. Then, while airborne bacteria retreat into spores and even the viruses are crystallized, when the Hlutr live slowly just to survive the night- then the Ice Dancers frolic, moving through the night in their slow saraband. Listening hard, one can almost catch a hint of their stately song, one is within reach of the meaning of their odd, brief lives...then morning comes, and they are gone like the snows that evaporate upon the hillside.

Let me tell you about loneliness, my brothers and sisters.

You do not feel it, you in whole forests of Hlutr, who busy yourselves with watching and directing the ecology of whole worlds. You who sing with the rest of us whenever you wish, you who taste the very presence of life surrounding you. How can you know what it is like to be an Artist, to stand solitary in a valley with only the distant sight of a few hillside Hlutr to keep you company? How can you know what it is like to lack the power to change life?

Since the long-lost days of Paka Tel, there have been Hlutr like me- and since those days, the rest of you have shunned us. Even in your pity and compa.s.sion you set us apart, so that we can never completely enter the society of Hlutr. You rely on us to keep the tales of Hlutr history, you expect us to sustain the eternal Hlutr symphony in the Inner Voice.

And the Inner Voice gives us an escape from our loneliness. Worlds away, there are other Hlutr Artists, others who live as we do and understand the peculiar polyphony that we bring to the Universal Song.

I never expected to hear from Chiriga after she left Inse. And indeed, it took her more than half a revolution: on a late-Summer evening I had cast my mind into endless s.p.a.ce and was singing with my fellows, when I heard the trace of a melody I recognized. Weak, distant and unpracticed, it was Chiriga nevertheless.

Little One, I sang in delight, reaching forth toward her with all my will.

Artist! Her glee warmed me more than the midday sun on my widespread leaves. It's been six years. I...I thought I'd never sing with you again.

I am glad to find you. How fare you? What has happened in your life?

I am on New Sardinia. I've been training at the Ramatiad Conservatory.

You are singing for Humans? The way you did during the Winter here on Inse?

I felt her pa.s.sion...and her distress, that she could not fulfill it. I'm trying. I...I know I can sing better. Somehow I just haven't been able to capture the feeling I had then. Maybe I'm too old.

Nonsense, Little One. My song, too, has been diminished since you left. Let us join our Inner Voices once more, and give the Universe the sweetest melodies it has ever heard.

So we sang, brothers and sisters, sang to the glory of the Universal Song and to the joy of finding one another again. And no matter what you believe about Human ability with the Inner Voice, our song was the sweetest heard in ages. Hlutr Artists on twice-seventy worlds heard us, and stopped their own songs to listen.

Under my tutelage, Chiriga soon left her Human teachers behind. New Sardinia is the world of art, of color and music and the poetry of life. My Little One sang for the Humans, and the best of them could merely sit astonished to hear such beauty.

Human art, my Elders, was suffused with the same despair that had struck their economy, their science and their politics. Death, pain, disease, and disaster were the themes of Human song, Human drama, Human literature. Now Chiriga stood before these men and women, singing the essential Hlutr theme of joy, of coexistence, of the wonder of the Universal Song. And for a moment, the Humans believed; I felt the glimmer in their minds.

Is this why you stopped us? Because together, Chiriga and I were bringing life back to Mankind? Then I weep for you, for you are truly deaf to the Universal Song.

In her thirtieth year, Chiriga returned to Inse.

She came in her own stars.h.i.+p, purchased with the profits from her recent tour of the Sardinian League. Some Human buildings were still standing, and she set her crew to work refurbis.h.i.+ng them. Then, wrapped in her warmest clothes, she came alone to see me.

You have grown, Little One. In truth, Chiriga was barely over a meter tall, and would never be taller; her head was too large and her limbs too narrow. She had always been aware of her deformities, and now they rose again in her consciousness...but now her voice and music had transcended them and made her a star on seventies of Human worlds.