~~~
What the Colonel wanted me to see was the crystal-ship. It stood in a stall in the barn, a stall just like one in which we Tani had kept lex-i and gur-i back on Ul. At the thought of them, tears leaked from my eyes. I wiped the tears away with the back of a sleeve.
The Colonel stared at the ship. "Last night, Belle, I told the ship to fly itself here and open itself while I got the crystals and books out of it. Once I'd put them into a safe, I told the ship to close itself. This morning, before dawn, I'd meant to have the ship fly itself to a shelter for long-term storage, but the ship didn't answer my commands. If you look through its hull, you'll see why the ship didn't."
When I peered through the hull, I saw that the great crystals within -- red, purple, green, and gold -- each bore a fine network of cracks. "The Kan Tan told me that when the crystal-ships got here their crystals would break so that they wouldn't fall into wrong hands."
"The last messenger who came here told me so, too. Can you lift the ship, Belle?"
I tried to. I raised its front end, but the rear end's weight made it slide from my hands. "It's too --"
I stopped, not knowing the word that I needed.
"Slippery?" the Colonel said. When he explained the word to me, I nodded. "Maybe you can slide the ship up a ramp into a truck," he murmured, stroking his chin. "You can try to some night soon. The ship really should be somewhere safer than here."
To make a long story short, one night soon I did slide the ship up a ramp into a truck. The Colonel drove it to an underground storage facility where it stayed till a little over a year back.
Just then, looking at the ship made me think of a question that, if I hadn't felt so numb, I would've asked far sooner. "Did the other Tani get here safely? Is Par-On all right? What about Lona, Van-Dor, and Dala?"
Sorry, you other three! I'd met you just three days before and barely knew your names.
"All of them got here safely," the Colonel said. "Each of them is with his or her adoptive parents, who'll keep him or her safe till time for all of you to be reunited."
I didn't know then how he knew that each of you was safe; I just trusted him. I guess that overnight many phone calls had been made, or many e mails had been exchanged. Just then I had another question. "Why can't we Tani see each other now?"
The Colonel looked sad. "Didn't Sor-On tell you that you Tani would have to stay apart so that your adoptive parents could keep you safe?"
"He did, but I didn't understand why. It sounded to me as if you earth-humans would hurt us, but I didn't understand why. Why would one person hurt another?"
The Colonel sighed. "You grew up in Paradise, Belle. Now, you've been cast out of the Garden."
I blinked at words that made no sense to me. "I don't understand, Colonel."
"I know that you don't, Belle. It'll take time for you to learn the meaning of what I just told you. When you do learn, you'll know why you must hide, learn to act like everyone else around you, and stay apart from your fellow Tani till you're old enough to start the Work."
The Colonel was right, as he almost always was. I can't resist stating an irony that understanding the earth has taught me. The earth-humans were born in the Garden and cast out into a desert. We Tani were born in the Desert and cast out into a garden. Maybe, one's birthplace is paradise, and each of us is trying to get back to his or her own vision of it.
When Mom got home, she made breakfast. I had bacon, scrambled eggs, grapefruit, toast and jelly, and milk. I felt as if I wouldn't need to eat for another three days. I've never gotten used to how much Americans eat.
After the meal, she taught me how to take a shower. This filled me with such awe that I felt I was meeting Holy Light in person. I'd taken the equivalent of sponge baths on high occasions on the Homeworld, but I'd never conceived of bathing in falling water that ran down a drain. The earth's riches are amazing! When I'd dried off, Mom dressed me in panties, a jersey, sweat pants, socks, and boots. She'd guessed my shoe size by eye and gotten it right.
Once I was dressed, she and the Colonel took me on a drive in their car. Having flown in crystal-ships, I took the car in stride, but the world through which the car traveled was an endless marvel. I passed rolling fields filled with grazing-plant and wood-plants -- all right, from now on I'll call them grass and trees. I passed cattle and horses, which again reminded me of Ul's lost livestock. I passed houses and barns in endless profusion, and strange buildings, each nearly as large as Gam Tol had been. These were schools, factories, and warehouses.
I soon learned that Paducah is a small town by American standards.On my first full day on the earth, that small town seemed to me a universe.
The Colonel and Mom took me to Wal-Mart, where they bought me clothes, shoes, and other necessities, as well as, to my delight, books and Disney and Dreamworks DVD's. These would make me popular with earth-human girls who'd soon come by the Colonel's to see me.
Don't think for a moment that I took Wal-Mart in stride! To my girlish eyes, it looked as if it held more goods than all of Ul's settlements had held. I gazed wide eyed at wonders in every aisle and grew too awed to speak.
From the vantage of thirteen years later, I feel guilty at how the earth's material wealth drove the Homeworld from my mind just then. My parents, Grandfather Sor-On, and the other Tani -- all were dying just then, but I had thought for nothing but Disney princesses on goods now mine. Still, Sor-On had sent me to the earth for life, not death. Maybe, I was doing his will.
My wide-eyed look and silence helped when the Colonel and Mom met friends and acquaintances, and told them what the Colonel would tell me was my cover story. I was Amira, an Afghan war-orphan whom the Colonel and Mom had adopted as their daughter. They'd named me Mirabelle to combine part of my own name with part of Mom's, but I was going by the name Belle.
When persons said that I didn't look Afghan, Mom told them that I had genetic conditions called albinism and scleroderma, but these wouldn't keep me from enjoying a normal life. Mom's listeners nodded at her words, shook my hand, and welcomed me to America. When I murmured, "Thank you," my Tan accent just helped the cover story. I defy you to find one American in a hundred who can tell an Afghan accent from a Tan accent.
You're nodding. All of you, of course, had cover stories like mine, and the Colonel and Dr. Ventnor obtained for you adoption papers that'd let each of you, like me, become a naturalized American citizen. Maybe, someday, each of us can again be openly accepted as such.
But to our tale. When the Gordon family got through shopping at Wal-Mart, the Colonel and Mom took me through Paducah to where I saw something like a box with a house atop it sitting on a wide gray strip that stretched away past the horizon to the left and to the right. With awe, I grasped that I was seeing what an illustrated book had told me was a ship floating on a river. "Is all of that water?" I squeaked out.
"That's the Ohio River," the Colonel said. "A few miles west of here, it flows into the Mississippi. That's even bigger than the Ohio."
"Would you like to get out and walk beside the river, Belle?" Mom said.
I would. I dipped my hand into chilly water, gaped at a dead fish on the shore and at birds flying by, wept awhile on Mom's shoulder, and watched barges float downstream towards mysterious places called St. Louis and New Orleans, or upstream to Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Actually seeing these cities would rob them of their mystery, but I'm getting ahead of myself again.
After a while, I got cold, and the Colonel and Mom drove me home. I was ready, though, to try to be an earth-human girl.