I needed Elspeth. Now. She hadn’t responded to my signal. Painting again, if I knew her, and oblivious to everything else. I opened my receptors and scanned the park. Ah, yes, there she was.
“What do you think?” Elspeth waved her brush at the canvas. I jumped back narrowly escaping a smear of red across my sleeve. As usual, paint splattered her robes, just as when we were children. Mother had long ago given up trying to keep her clean.
I tilted my head and considered her latest effort. “It’s a little bright.” Swirls of red bled across the canvas.
“You don’t like it?”
“No, not really.”
Elspeth studied the painting and then gazed around the park. “How can you not?” she asked, “when everything out there is so … so bland?”
Bland? The shining green leaves, the sparkle of the sun on the white pavilions, the dots of colorful flowers…. “Our world is beautiful.”
She plunged her brush into a jar of purple and attacked the canvas. “Dull. Boring. Dreary. Mind-numbing. Monoton—”
“Elspeth! Stop.” I’d heard this litany many times. Her brush came maddeningly close to my robe again. Almost as if she’d waved it my way on purpose.
“What do you want, little brother?”
“It’s about Earth.”
Elspeth dropped her brush, wiped her hands on an old rag. “I’m all yours.”
I cleared my throat. “I want you to see what’s been happening down there.”
“Am I allowed?”
“No one has actually said not.”
Elspeth’s tinkle of laughter assailed my ears. “But no one has actually said yes.” She grinned and rubbed her hands together. “Why do you need me?”
Need was the word. How did she know? “You’ve always been … ah … you’re not….”
Another tinkle of laughter. “Oh, Yves, you can say it. I’m emotional.”
“Well, yes.”
“Like those creatures on that planet of yours?”
“Good Guardian, no. Not like them at all. Nowhere near as bad.”
“And that’s what you need my help with? Humans and their emotions?”
“Yes.” I blinked and an image of Earth shimmered before us on a plane of air. Elspeth’s intense interest aroused by curiosity; mine because my future depended on how well I did my job down there.
“Oh!” Elspeth squealed and clapped her hands. “There she is. Can we hear too?”
I adjusted the volume with a flick of my wrist.
“Oh my,” Elspeth whispered more than once as the woman I had chosen fought though the jungle, stormed the courtroom, and then faced the Spinda. “Oh my. Her emotions… Yves, does she not have any idea?”
“Very little.”
“You’d think the Guardians would do something about that. Show themselves.”
Elspeth was right, but then what did we know about the Guardians? Precious little. You’d think they would have done more to make their existence known in the Universe. But, even here no one ever actually saw them. Maybe the upper class communed with the Guardians. We Drones certainly didn’t. We didn’t even commune with the upper class.
“Can’t you do something? Use your powers to help her understand? I would if I were you.”
“I’m not sure what to do. Don’t forget this is all new to me,” I said.
“I am trying to send her messages.”
“Telepathically?”
“Yes, of course, what did you think? A cell phone? Ha, ha.”
“No need to be sarcastic.” Elspeth shook a finger at me. “You’d better figure out a way to show her how she can survive this. I think you’re mean to dump her into such dangerous situations.” Elspeth turned her attention back to the Earth image. “And yet, your messages are getting through. Some of them at least. She knew when she swore at you that someone was controlling her.”
“Have you ever heard anything like it?” I asked.
“Mom says that bad language exists here too, or used to, but I’ve never heard those kinds of words before.”
“Humph, you’ve been known to use a few yourself.”
Elspeth glared at me. “Never like that.” She squinted at the scene on Earth. I adjusted the light. “What is the human saying now?”
“She called me a magic manual. If only it was that simple.”
“She’s right, Yves. You should be doing more to help her.”
“She has nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of her.”
Elspeth tapped her foot. “And just how is she supposed to know that?”
I had set the ring to vibrating, sent her images. She looked at them, but the swirls of color meant nothing to her. My sister was right. I’d have to find another way.
“All that emotion, the fear, the uncertainty, the tears, it boggles my mind,” Elspeth said. “Are humans always like that?”
“It seems so.”
“I may be a little emotional at times, but if we were like that, up here …”
I shuddered at the thought.