After a quiet, leisurely breakfast the following morning with the members of Lyceum, Ilika and his crew wandered back to the ship. Without a word, they all began checking supply levels and running diagnostics. Sata selected the flight plan that would take them home.
Arantiloria appeared, cross-legged, in the middle of the large table.
“Hi, purple-hair,” Kibi said in greeting from the watch station.
The training specialist laughed. “Leaving so soon?”
Ilika, looking at fuel levels with Boro, frowned slightly. “This mission hasn’t been long enough?”
Arantiloria laughed again. “You’re almost done. The first performance of Jenny’s symphony is tomorrow, Nebador time. How many Lyceum members were present at Jenny’s death?”
Ilika stepped up to the steward’s station, thinking. “Twelve . . . no, thirteen.”
“And how many passenger seats do you have?”
Ilika grinned. “Room for one more!”
Arantiloria
nodded.
Sata came up from the bridge with wide eyes. “I bet you had to ask Melorania herself to get that approved!”
“No, Sata, I had to go a lot higher than Melorania . . . but she put in a good word for me. It just so happens that this planet is due for a nudge forward.”
“You have anyone in mind for the fourteenth seat?” Ilika asked the
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training specialist.
“No. You can let Lyceum decide.”
Ilika looked at Sata. “Sounds like a job for the mission leader.”
“Tell them, eyes and ears only,” Arantiloria added, “no recording devices.”
Sata nodded and strode through the hatch.
All of the invited guests were called to an emergency meeting, including Brother Malcolm, a simple, quiet man who worked in the kitchen and the gardens, and who had been selected randomly to fill the extra seat. Sister Rebecca would only say that they were invited to the first performance, perhaps the only performance, of Jenny’s symphony. It was somewhere far away, and they would journey there in the same ship that had recently saved six members from certain death. The ship was preparing to depart, and they had one minute to decide.
All of them nodded, some with huge grins, others with hearts in their throats. Minutes later, they were hurrying toward Lost Forest Heliport Pad Three. Few of them had seen the outside of the Manessa Kwi, none the inside.
Arantiloria disappeared before the first few approached the hatch.
Shawn’s mind had been swirling ever since Jenny’s death, trying to figure out the relationship between their visitors and the figures of religious history he had studied and worshipped all his life. As he stepped, with fear and trembling, up the ramp and into the mysterious ship, only Liberty’s firm hand kept him from feeling dizzy.
Liberty knew little of religious history, but was very aware that this little ship had recently plucked her from the clutches of Death with such determination that the helicopter, which she had once thought of as powerful, had been broken to pieces.
The moment Sister Rebecca stepped into the ship, she sensed that she was somewhere else, far from Lyceum. She knew she was seeing, with her old eyes, and touching, with her wrinkled skin, the real thing, of which Lyceum was just a pale shadow.
Sister Marsha, the hospice center nurse, stood at the base of the ramp trying to breathe. Something about these people, and everything they did, went against her deepest values. For some reason, they seemed to accept,
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even celebrate, Jenny’s death. To her, every illness, and certainly every death, was a terrible event to be avoided at all costs.
Brother Kenneth appeared at her side and offered his hand.
She didn’t accept his hand, but held her breath and forced her legs to take her up the ramp.
Sister Rachael the artist followed young Sarah into the ship, and was immediately enthralled by the harmonious colors, elegant curving lines, and rich, comforting textures. Everything, from the simplest control panel to the strongest structural beam, was gracefully integrated. Nothing was fake, nothing for show, and yet everything was beautiful. She grinned like a child in a candy store.
When Ashley, last of all, arrived at the ship, Brother Malcolm was still at the bottom of the ramp, shuffling his feet and looking at the floor. She held out her hand to him, he grinned and took it, and together they went aboard.
Kibi, standing beside a glowing panel, gestured to the remaining two seats, both in the front row beside Sarah.
The steward spent a few minutes helping with inertia straps and passing out little pillows, then stepped back to look over her passengers. They were much better behaved than her ship full of young reptiles about a year before.
Seeing that no one seemed to need anything else, she strode down the ramp, walked all the way around the ship, and pressed the hanger door control.
Back inside, she took her station seat, closed the hatch, and spoke softly in the language of Nebador. “Manessa, is Arantiloria my star transit guardian?”
“No, she does not have that ability, but one is here who does.”
“Ship and passengers secure for departure,” she announced to her captain on the bridge.
Sister Nancy had not piloted, nor even flown in any aircraft, since the failed attempt to rescue Senator Buchanan. She knew she had to wait at least until the shaking inside her stopped. She wasn’t absolutely sure she would ever again hold the cyclic and collective controls of a helicopter.
But after a little nervousness at the thought of journeying to some
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unknown far-distant place, she was beginning to relax, and was comforted knowing they were attending the first performance of a symphony written by a little girl she had seen, with her own eyes, in life and death.
Also, Nancy was fascinated by the mysterious ship that had remained hidden at Lyceum for several months, only coming out once to save her life.
From where she was now sitting, she could see the large young man who must be the pilot. He had the quietness and intensity that Nancy had seen many times, in others and in herself, that came from knowing the journey would rest on his shoulders, more than on anyone else’s.
Nancy was thrilled as she watched the large screen, first as they snaked through the trees, following back roads, then as they pitched up, instantly gained speed, and rapidly left the clouds and sky behind to reveal the star-studded blackness of space. But she was confused, for a moment, when she became irresistibly sleepy.
She must have nodded off, as the next thing she saw on the screen was a vast and beautiful array of gleaming jewels floating in space, some clustered close together, some attached to others with glowing threads, and a few off by themselves but still part of the same grand design.
When Sarah awoke and beheld the glowing local universe capital, she instinctively reached out her hand to whomever was near, and found Ashley’s hand.
They grinned at each other, then turned back to the screen.
Small and large ships came and went, but they did so like flower petals floating on the breeze, not like cars in traffic or people bustling along a sidewalk.
Each glowing jewel was a different size and shape, some as big as a large building, others more the size of a mountain. When the ship came near one of them, Sarah could see huge windows of many shapes, with movement inside, but little of it, maybe none of it, appeared to be . . . people.
Sarah squeezed Ashley’s hand, and was comforted when Ashley did the same. She could hear the crew speaking softly among themselves in a language she had never heard, except a few times at Lyceum when they thought no one was listening.
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From where she was sitting, Sarah could see part of the small screen in front of Sata, who seemed to be speaking to the person on the screen. Sarah rubbed her eyes, but when she looked again, the green bird on the screen was still there.
At that moment, the ship entered a tunnel, and the sparkling walls and gleaming windows of the local universe capital of Kerusemia could no longer be seen.