“Caaras?” Dhalvad asked.
Caaras caught the look in Chulu’s eyes and shook his head. “No. I’m fine.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Dhalvad said, turning for the door. “Poco, you want some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll give you a hand, Dhal,” Chulu said. “Caaras, you stay here and keep Poco company.”
Chulu followed Dhalvad out of the room, down the hall, and into the kitchen. As Dhalvad went about freshening up the fire in the stove, Chulu took a chair at the kitchen table. He waited patiently while Dhalvad put water in the kettle and placed it on top of the stove.
Dhalvad turned around, a wry smile on his face. “You were a lot of help. All right, Chulu, what is it? You didn’t just come by to say hello to Poco. What’s on your mind?”
Chulu smiled. “You know me too well, Dhalvad, even better than some of my friends whom I’ve known for years. Why is that, do you suppose?”
Dhalvad dropped into the chair opposite Chulu. “You’re stalling, Chulu. Come on, out with it.”
“All right,” Chulu said, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ve come to ask you about the Tamorlee and the Elay. I didn’t want to press you about it because you and Poco needed time alone without being deluged by visitors, but the days are slipping by fast, and before you go off with the other Seekers, we must know more about the Elay, who they are, where they come from, and whether or not they’ll ever return the Tamorlee to us.”
Dhalvad dropped his elbows to the tabletop and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. He had known he would eventually have to explain, and had been consciously preparing a speech for the Council. He was glad Chulu had come alone.
He had told his side of the entire story to Caaras and Chulu several days earlier, only hinting about the part the Elay had played in his return to Jjaan-bi and the subsequent disappearance of the Tamorlee. Both Ni had seen the Elay for a few brief seconds as it left the cabin and returned to its module. He knew that curiosity would eventually overcome awe and they would want to know all.
“The Elay are like the Ral-jennob,” he began. “They are Star Travelers who move from world to world as a Seeker moves from place to place. They are not like us in bodily form, though they can take any shape they wish, including ours. They are beings of light and energy, wise beyond our greatest scholars, but more important, they are curious about everything. It’s they who brought crystals like the Tamorlee to our world. They call them Gatherers, because that’s what the crystals do—they gather information through a symbiotic relationship with compatible life-forms, such as the Ni.
“As for where they come from? I don’t know. Perhaps Mithdaar can tell us that, because the two crystals shared a deeper rapport with the Elay than either myself or my brother did.”
“The other day you said that the Elay gave Mithdaar back to your brother after they had recorded all of the knowledge within its mind,” Chulu said as he strove to understand. “Why didn’t the Elay return the Tamorlee to you?”
Dhalvad looked into Chulu’s eyes. “They said that the Tamorlee had broken their first law and thereby forfeited the right to continue as a Gatherer.”
“What law is that?”
“All life is sacred. You shall not kill.”
Chulu frowned. “The Tamorlee killed someone?”
“You can stop looking for Amet,” Dhalvad said softly. “Somehow the Tamorlee managed to leave him ‘between’ during that last transfer. Paa-tol and Amet left Barl-gan each using a Seeker ring. Paa-tol arrived safely. Amet didn’t. Paa-tol must have recovered the Tamorlee from the transfer point; the ring setting holding the crystal was melted. Paa-tol had it with him when he died. I know I should have told you this earlier, but I knew how you all felt about the crystal. After the Elay gave me the strength to save Poco, it took the Tamorlee to its sphere. It wasn’t gone very long. When it came back, it spoke to me a few minutes and explained why it couldn’t leave the Tamorlee with us. It simply feared that what had happened once might happen again.”
“But Amet was in the wrong in what he did!” Chulu protested.
“I know. I believe the Tamorlee did what it had to do, but that doesn’t change what happened. It still killed, and that’s against our laws as well as the laws of the Elay.”
Chulu looked down at the tabletop and sighed deeply. “So our past is lost to us.”
Dhalvad shook his head. “Not lost. The Elay have it, and during the time Mithdaar and the Tamorlee were in link, before the Elay came, I’m positive they shared deeply with each other, which means that Mithdaar might well now hold the history of the Ni-lach. Time will tell.”
“What will happen to the Tamorlee?”
“The Elay struck me as being both wise and compassionate. We’ll just have to trust them to do what is best for our friend.”
“Did the Elay ever say how many Gatherers are seeded on each world?” Chulu asked.
“One or two to every world, each with the capacity to reproduce itself a hundred times or more if the conditions are right.”
Chulu looked down at the fire stone within his ring setting. “The Seeker stones?”
Dhalvad smiled. “That’s what I was told.”
“But we’ve been using the Seeker stones for thousands of years! Why haven’t any of them become like the Tamorlee?”
“One has—Mithdaar. And there will be others if we gift them as we gifted the Tamorlee, helping them to grow.”
“And the Elay? Will they return one day to teach us about the worlds beyond our suns?”
“Yes, I think so. When we’re ready.”
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About the Author
MARCIA JOANNE BENNETT was born on June 9, 1945. Raised in a rural community, she has spent all but a few of her working years in central New York State.
After graduating from Albany Business College in 1965, she spent the next seven years in banking.
Several years ago she established a small craft shop in her hometown. While running the shop she began writing, a hobby that quickly became an addiction. Her other interests range from reading, painting, and basketry to astrology and parapsychology.
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Seeking the Dream Page 28
