~~~
The next morning, when Holy Light appeared as a dim bruise on the eastern horizon, my fellow Tani and I knelt on both knees, promised to serve Holy Light with duty, loyalty, and truthfulness, and poured out water onto the sand. Even at our last sunrise on Ul, we Tani kept the traditions of seven thousand years.
The wind was low when we rose, and no ash was falling. With a swiftness that I now find incredible, I kissed Par-On good-bye and handed him to Sor-On and Luna. They gazed at him a moment, kissed him, said, "Lar-in-i es, bar-in-i," 'We love you, our son," and placed him aboard the first of the crystal-ships. It closed upon him, rose like a leaf, tilted its bow at the sky, and rushed heavenwards, dwindled to a dot, and was gone.
With a pang for which I lack words, I stared at where the ship had vanished while around me parents wept, and other ships shot skywards. I came from my reverie when Luna knelt before me and took me in her arms.
"Take care of my son," she murmured.
I promised her that I would take care of him. I didn't know then that thirteen years would pass before I saw him again.
Suddenly, my own parents were hugging and kissing me, and telling me that they loved me. Sor-On lifted me aboard the last of the crystal-ships and said, "Be faithful to the Work, Mira."
I nodded.
He stepped aside. My grandfather, looking bleak, took his place. In a broken voice, he murmured the last words that I heard on Ul: "Ti-kel-es in-i!"
'Remember us.'
The crystal-ship closed upon me and began to rise. As, amid feelings that I couldn't name, I stared and stared through its clear hull, I saw the Kan Tan, my grandfather, my parents, and other Tani looking up at me. They dwindled away, the crystal-city's broken shell dwindled away, and the mesa on which it stood dwindled away.
At last, I glimpsed the true scale of Ul's agony. Clouds of ash hid most of the world's outer face, but, through them, I saw craters and rivers of lava, miles wide. As the ship kept rising, I saw that the clouds shot far into space against the backdrop of a reddish glow surrounding the world. For a moment, I puzzled over this glow; then I grasped that I was seeing Nas-Ul, the gas giant that the Homeworld circled. Nas-Ul's gravity, helped by the great crystals, had at last destroyed its too close moon.
I wish that I could say I was brave. Hammering with my fists on the ship's crystal hull, I screamed over and over "Mi-el?" -- 'Why?'
Amid one of my screams, the sleeping-crystal cut in. Darkness took me.
In the light-crystals' glow. I see stunned faces on my listeners. Some of them were too young when they left Ul to recall clearly what had happened. To even Lona and Van-Dor, nearly as old as I, the events of tak-al Ul, the Homeworld's death, must've become like images in a dream. In my own mind, I suppressed those events while I pretended to be an earth-human girl. Telling them brought them back to me as if I were reliving them. Thus do I fulfill Sor-On's command, "Remember the Homeworld!"
Shy Dala murmurs, "What do you think became of the rest of the Tani when we left?"
"I don't know. I don't know whether Sor-On and Dor-Sad told them what was happening. I think, though, that, on some level, the other Tani knew that their world was ending. I guess that they went on with tradition as well as they could go on. I hope that knowing that some Tani had escaped to the earth and would remember them lightened their last hours."
"How long do you think those were?" wise, artistic Sil-Tan murmurs.
"Days, at most, as Sor-On told me. Maybe, we'll learn how long when the Message comes. I know that Grandfather would've broadcast till the very end."
I don't tell my companions of a dream that's haunted me thirteen years. In it, I'm standing, again a small girl, at the foot of the dais in the Chamber of Green Crystal as the world shakes around me. Sor-On is seated on his throne, with Luna, my parents, and my grandfather by him. As the shaking worsens, the five turn on me empty eyes; then my relatives vanish from view in a rain of green crystal.
How often my screams awoke a household till I learned not to scream! Maybe, tonight will exorcize that dream.
Dour, brooding Un-Thor shakes his head. "I don't understand why so few of us got out. The ships could've returned to Ul on autopilot and brought more Tani here. For that matter, the ships could've been taking Tani to the earth all along. Didn't you say that there were many flights to the earth before we left?"
I catch sharp glances from Par-On and fierce Kuma, who, besides me, alone know what the earlier flights to the earth had been doing. Those flights may've hastened Ul's end, but they may also have hastened the Tan's rebirth. I give Kuma and Par a faint smile as if to say, "Later!" They nod.
"I suspect," I say to Un, "that Dor-Sad didn't try to bring the ships back from the earth once we reached it because he feared that atmospheric conditions on Ul had deteriorated too much to let the ships land there on autopilot. As for what the earlier flights to the earth did, I can tell you, but it comes later in the story.
"Just now, I must tell you of our arrival on the earth."