Chapter 21

Yet another time the Edenite mother seemed at a loss for a response. The silence went on for a full minute, longer. Meiersdottir and her companions simply waited.

"You ask us to leave this world, to leave our home and go with you?" the alien finally said.

"Yes," she answered. "There's no other way for you to live. Your world is going to die, and you'll die with it if you stay. But we can help you leave it."

"All of us?"

"No, I'm sorry," Meiersdottir admitted. "Even we can't build a ship big enough for you all. The bodies of most must remain here. But I know that all live in your mind even after their bodies die, and in that way yes, all may come. But we can take only about one hundred of you physically with us, along with the things of your living."

The mother absorbed that. "Where is it that you would take those one hundred?" she asked.

"To our own world, where you will be safe."

"How is it that we may live there, on your world?" persisted the mother. "When you are here before you cannot eat the food that we eat, it will not help you, you will die. Is it not the same for us on your world? If we go there, how can we live?"

"In the usual way you'd be right. Our worlds are very different in some ways, we can't live on yours and you can't live on ours. But we've known about this explosion of the star for more than five of your years now. In that time we've worked hard to make a place for you, as you once made a place here for us, but much more. I think you know that we took many samples of your plants, the things that grow in the ground, with us when we were here before."

"Yes."

"They won't ordinarily grow on Earth, on our world, because even the soil, the ground beneath your feet, is very different. But we've made a place where they will grow, we've changed the soil there. They grow there now. Khalika grows there, and a harvest waits for you when you come. You'll be able to eat there, and so will other animals of this world. And in other ways our worlds are very alike, the air that we breathe and the water that we drink, even the sun that shines above there as yours does here, all these things are the same there as they are here. You can live in the place that we've made for you."

One more pause, but this time shorter. "Why have you done this?"

"Long ago I explained the meaning of friendship to you," Meiersdottir said. "I told you that a friend is one to whom you sometimes give even though your friend has nothing to give back, nothing to trade, because you value your friend. That was very long ago, but I think you still remember, I know you don't forget."

"We remember."

"This is such a time. We can't save your world, all of our knowledge isn't great enough for that. But we can give you a piece of our own world for yourselves. We call your world Eden in our words. This small piece of our world we have named New Eden, it is set aside for you and the plants and animals of Eden. It will be yours."

There was yet a further pause, but this one shorter. "You say that you will give this place on your world to us because we are friend," the mother said. "But how are we friend now? In the last time you speak with Gagugakhing who was then we tell you leave our world and do not return. How are we friend after that? We do not see you again until now, you do not see us, how can you and we be friends?"

"You didn't tear down the house you made for us, did you, Gagugakhing? You've just told me that was in memory of our friendship. In the same way we've held onto the memory of your friendship. You're very dear to us, you're the only ones we've found in all of our travels who are like us."

"We are not like you," the alien contradicted. "We think together, you are singles, it is very different."

"It's different in that way. And yes, it's a big difference, I don't deny that. But only with you have we found any other than ourselves who can think at all! It's in that way that we're alike, you and we. And we believe that's important, much more important than the difference in the way that we each think."

"Do you truly believe what it is that you say, Amanda?" asked the mother. The final word perked up Meiersdottir's ears; it was the first time the alien had pronounced her name, recognized her. It seemed to her a crucial milestone.

"You know me from before," she said. "I lied to you only once, and the Gagugakhing that was then told me later that I was right to lie on that occasion. I won't lie to you again. I don't lie now. Yes, what I've said is what I believe."

"To us it is not so," the mother told her bluntly. "When we ask you to leave us, in that time, you said that you understood why it was that we would do this. Have you forgotten now?"

"No. You said the way we were showing you, our way, the way we humans live, was not right for Ghotagatogulagunga. And when I tried to see in the same way that you do, when I tried to think as you do, I couldn't disagree, not for that time. I still don't entirely disagree. But I believe there's something more important than the differences between us, and it's that we both think. We do it very differently, but we both do it, and only we. In all of the universe"—she gestured broadly—"only you and we are able to think beyond surviving until tomorrow, beyond eating and breathing and moving from here to there, only you and we that we have ever met. Is the similarity not greater than the difference in how we do this?"

"It does not seem so to us," the alien responded.

"I can only answer that it does to us," said Meiersdottir. "You haven't roamed the stars as we have, looking always for intelligence elsewhere, for thinking. You haven't spent years upon years always searching, never finding. What you and we share is very rare, it could be that we'll never find it again. This is why we've come to you, come to save you."

"If we go with you as you say, we must go to your world, there is no place else for us, is that true?"

"That's true."

"But how on your world may we still be Ghotagatogulagunga?" the mother pressed. "We cannot be alone more, as we were before you came and have been again after you have left. You say you have make place for us to live, but it is only place, and it is on your world. It will again be as it was when you were here, that we are small and you are large and your way must become our way."

This wasn't the direction in which Meiersdottir had hoped to direct the discussion, and she sought to forestall it. "That's not so, Gagugakhing," she said hastily. "The place we've made for you, it's far apart from where we live, with great water all around. You will live there as you choose, without our interfering."

"But it is still your world," the mother pointed out. "It is not ours. We must live as you allow."

That one was hard to dispute; it was, in fact, entirely accurate. But so was something else. "It's the only way in which you may live at all," Meiersdottir replied.

"If it is as you say," the mother parried. "Perhaps it will not be as you say, that our world must die. You have taught us that you do not know all."

Meiersdottir cast her eyes at Amuri. "This one is Amuri, and he knows more than I of this. 'Sheda?"

"I'm sorry, Gagaking, is it?" the astronomer stammered.

"Gagugakhing," both the mother and Meiersdottir corrected in the same instant.

"Gagugakhing, sorry," he said. "Well, Gagugakhing, you're right that we don't know everything. There's so very much that we don't know." Then his voice grew stronger. "We don't know, for example, exactly how strong the radiation will be when it reaches here. But we don't need to know that. What we do know is that it will be strong enough that nothing, anywhere, will survive on this world. Not above the ground, not beneath it where we are now, nowhere. Life on this world will not exist."