~~~
If you think that I'd put off the quest for the three missing boys, I hadn't -- not wholly. Whenever I could get on line, I looked for news of the weird that might involve them, and I asked my ship's brain-crystal for tips on how to find the boys through their troves of memory-crystals. When the ship told me that a search for memory-crystals with a speaking-crystal took low-level overflights of large amounts of terrain, I shelved the plan awhile. It would do me no good to find the boys, but destroy the earth.
Thus, the honors of finding the next two boys went to someone besides me. Late one night, Lona and I were lying in my ship's shelter and listening to music on a battery-operated radio when Kuma, with her usual abruptness, stepped into our light-crystals' glow. "Do I have a surprise for you two!" she called out.
"Your surprises involve explosions," Lona muttered.
Kuma grinned. "Not this time, though you just might burst at that!" Turning, she called through the shelter's entrance, "Come in, guys!"
Out of the darkness stepped two more Tani. One was tall, but slender, with a wistful look; the other, tall and broad-shouldered, with a wide forehead. My heart leapt as I recalled his features as the royal line's. "Are you Par-On?" I said hopefully.
He gave me a wry smile. "Sorry, no. I'm Van-Dor, or Vance Givens, as I'm known back on the ranch in Nevada. I thought that you'd recall me, Mira. I used to study with you and Lona back on the Homeworld."
Now that I looked at him closely, I could see the features of the big, quiet boy who'd learned signs and watched Sesame Street with me in Gam Tol. Still, he does have royal blood, if you read the genealogies. He just wasn't Par. Hope had led me astray, likely not the last time.
Van gestured with his chin at the other boy. "This is Sil-Tan, or Bob Lake, as he's known in Taos, New Mexico. Kuma --"
I held up a hand. "You don't want to steal her thunder. Before we hear her story, though, let's greet each other in the Tan way. Van, you no doubt recall what that is."
He did recall, catching me up in a hug. This was followed by a round of hugs. At the end of these, Lona and Sil were slow to part as they gazed with questioning, but hopeful looks into each other's eyes. Yes, Lona had rejoined her husband-to-be, and Dala would no doubt soon meet hers. Mira, it seemed, was odd girl out.
"So, Kuma," I said, "you hold bragging rights again. How did you win them this time?"
"Just as I won them with you -- with the Internet. I came across a Web site of paintings of desert scenes, which showed men and women in Tan dress and bore writing in Tan script. The artist was Sil. I sent him an e mail suggesting that he and I meet --"
I shook my head. "When have you had time to run to Taos?"
"I didn't run there. Sil suggested meeting on neutral ground, so I met him and Van across the Mississippi in Helena, Arkansas."
Sil smiled wryly. "The meeting on neutral ground was Vance's idea. After the scandal over Dr. Ventnor's death, Vance figured that Kuma's e mail might be a trap, so he chose the meeting place to test her."
Van nodded. "Bob and I hid on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, but, when we saw Kuma run across it on water, we figured that she had to be legit. Running on water is a real feat, Kuma."
She shrugged. "Mira was the one who learned how to do it."
Lona and I gave each other stunned looks. Kuma, acting modest? To what strange world had we come?
I glanced at Sil. "Clearly, you were in touch with Van when Kuma's e-mail came. How had you met him? The West is so big."
"He found me. I'll let him tell the story.'
Van nodded solemnly. "The West may be big, but it has few places where you can cross the Grand Canyon. I figured that if I staked those places out I'd someday see a Tan run across one of them. One night, I saw Bob running across Hoover Dam, and I chased him down."
Van and Sil will fit right in, I thought.
"Kuma," Van said, "mentioned to Bob and me a Message and a Work."
I began to bring the newcomers up to speed.
In the light-crystals' glow. I pause, sweeping my gaze across the seven other Tani. "I'm nearing our story's end, but I think that we have time to let Van and Sil tell their stories."
Van-Dor shrugs. "There isn't much to my story. I live on a ranch with Mom and Dad. There, I learned to wrangle horses and kept up my knowledge of nal Tan. In my spare time, I looked for other Tani, but found just Bob. I went twice a year to Columbus to see Dr. Ventnor, but I never met any of the rest of you there."
Par-On nods sagely. "He did well, scheduling our visits so that they never overlapped. We could use his guidance now more than ever."
I shake my head. "He'd be unhappy if he thought we were still dependent on him."
Dala looks sad. "He liked to tell me, 'Cling to a crutch as long as you need it, but throw it away as soon as you can.' Still, I miss talking with him more than I can say."
Par looks at Sil-Tan. "What of your story?"
Sil shrugs. "It's soon told, just like Vance's. Taos is an artistic community, where I early on took up painting landscapes." He smiled. "Desert scenes, because those are what Taos offers. Vance and I were lucky, I guess. We got to live in places that reminded us of the Homeworld.
"When I learned to view the memory-crystals, I began to add figures from them to my landscapes. I also began to put in Tan script for color, but, as I couldn't read it, I used what looked good to me. What looked good didn't make sense. Vance, when he met me, told me the error of my ways. When he looked at one of my most dramatic paintings, one of a lex race, he asked me, "Why did you caption it, 'This is the way to peel a tuber'?"
Amid laughter, Dala asks Sil, "Did you post your paintings on line in hope of their leading the rest of us to you?"
He nods. "They did lead you to me, in the end."