Eventually Ukatonen gave up trying to understand why :r how humans had done this to their world. It was easier for him to help humanity restore their battered planet’s ecosystem than it was for him to understand why they had destroyed it. At least restoring the ecology felt familiar. It would take him out into the forest, where he was at home. And he would see to it that there were as few schedules jod meetings and little boxy rooms full of people as possible. He woke up the computer and began doing a little research, while the bus ground its way slowly uphill.
Juna shook hands with the team of diplomats who had helped them, thanking them and bidding them good-bye. Oddly enough, she was going to miss working with them, though she wasn’t going to miss the demanding schedules and the punctilious attention to protocol that went with this work. She was glad the diplomatic portion of their trip was over.
She watched Moki making his final farewells. As usual, he had made a lot of friends. She saw M. Pichot slip Moki a small round tin of the candied rose petals that he had become so fond of. Ukatonen, moving at a slower, more dignified pace, brought up the rear. People’s faces changed as they turned from Moki to Ukatonen, becoming serious and respectful. He might not generate the bubbly popularity that Moki did, but the diplomats and their staff clearly honored and admired the alien elder. Despite all the difficulties, the two Tendu had managed to accomplish an incredible amount of valuable face-to-face diplomacy on this trip.
Moki and Ukatonen finished their good-byes, and the three of them boarded the zeppelin.
Juna watched as Analin stowed her gear and strapped herself into one of the seats by the window of the cabin they would be sharing for the three-day flight to Darwin, Australia. Analin had performed one miracle of public relations after another for them. Her deft handling of the Tendu’s disappearance into the forest had turned the whole trip around. She was the one who made the world aware of how homesick the Tendu were for the forest, gently shaming the leaders of the world into accommodating the Tendu’s interests and needs.
“I wanted to thank you again for all your hard work. I’m afraid we made things pretty hard for you sometimes,” Juna told her press secretary when they were settled. “But you made us look good despite all our mistakes.”
Analin shook her head. “It wasn’t that bad. The three of you are fun to work with. And you tried to make my job easy whenever you could.”
“I guess we make a great team, then,” Juna said with a smile. “You made our work easier too. We’ll miss you. Are you looking forward to seeing your relatives in Indonesia?”
“I’ve never met them. They’re my grandmother’s family. Second cousins several times removed. My grandmother kept in touch with them, and my mother sent them cards at New Year’s and visited a few times.” She shrugged. “We may not have all that much in common.”
The zeppelin lifted off then. They watched the ground move away from them with a barely perceptible shudder of the engines. Juna had never traveled on a zeppelin before. She had never had the time or the money for such a slow, luxurious method of travel. But there had been enough money left over in their travel budget, and they were ready for a little pampering after all their hard work.
“You know,” Juna offered as a bank of clouds obscured their view of the ground. “We’d love it if you could visit us at the reserve. It would be nice to spend some time with you when we weren’t in the middle of a crisis.”
“I’d like that too,” Analin said with a smile. “I’ll try to come up and spend a few days with you and the Tendu. I’ve never really seen them in the jungle,” she said wistfully. “I was too busy in Costa Rica, and I think they didn’t really want to be seen.”
Juna nodded. “I wish I could climb with them, but this belly throws my balance off. And if I fell it wouldn’t just be me falling.” She sighed and then added, “but I’ll miss the treetops. It’s like another world up in the canopy. It’s wonderful.” Juna yawned. “I think this trip is catching up with me,” she said. “I’m going to take a nap.”
Juna napped her way across most of Australia, getting up only to eat and to pee, and to look down at the scenery or up past the bellying bag of the zeppelin at the incredible array of Southern stars. The distant drone of the zeppelin motors wove in and out of her dreams, becoming a small plane soaring by overhead in a bright summer sky, or the distant drone of a tractor on a long, hot summer’s day.
Shortly after they landed at Alice Springs, Ukatonen heard Eerin being paged over the zeppelin’s comm system. A few minutes later she tapped on his door. There were some Australian Aboriginal elders who wished to meet with him and Moki. Clearly Eerin seemed to think this was something special, so he agreed to meet with them.
They were shown to a small private lounge. As soon as they were settled, the doors opened to admit a pair of ancient elders escorted by respectful grandchildren. They wore nothing but their loincloths and their dignity, but they carried themselves with more majesty than most of the rulers the Tendu had met. The Aboriginals were the first people he had met on Earth who reminded him of Tendu. He longed to link with them.
Ukatonen struggled to follow their heavily accented Standard as they told him about their history, how their land had been taken and their people killed like animals, the imported illnesses that swept through their people, how their children were taken away from them and raised to be white. It was a fearful and frightening story.
“So far you’ve only talked to the people who won their struggles,” the male elder, Stan Akuka told him. “You’ve been talking to the wrong people, mate. Talk to the losers. They’ll tell you a thing or two. Be careful the whites don’t come to your place and steal your land.”
“It is very far away,” Ukatonen said.
“So was Australia,” the female elder said. “Once.”
“Tell us about your place,” Stan said. He sounded hungry, eager to hear about Tiangi.
Ukatonen stood. “There are no words for my world. I will perform a quarbirri for you, instead.” He pulled a small flute from his gathering bag, and began to play the melody for the quarbirri he had been working on. His skin flared and died as the music rose and fell. Then his skin and the music shifted into the main portion of the quarbirri. The main section of the quarbirri began by depicting the dawn as the sun rose from the sea over the Outer Islands on Tiangi. His skin speech gradually brightened as the sun rose, flaring big and brilliant as the first rays lit up the treetops of the island. Then he told them of swimming with the lyali-Tendu, the people of the sea, his words shimmering like schools of brightly colored fish against the blue depths of his skin. He depicted the coastal forests, singing and dancing their green mystery. He told them of rivers, wide and slow, and fast and treacherous; and of the ancient inland forests, sloping up into the bunched foothills. He sang the rugged rocky outline of the mountains, with their cool, misty slopes.
Then he showed them sunset on the shoulders of the mountain passes overlooking the dry savannas and deserts where vast herds of animals roamed. The savannas were lands of mystery and legend to the Tendu. They were visited only rarely by adventurous hermits and enkar. In the distance, further mountains loomed black against the red sunset. No Tendu had ever been there. As night fell, Ukatonen sang of the soft glow inside a village tree, and the sounds and sights of the villagers as they settled in for the evening. He ended with darkness and the distant sounds of the night forest.
The Aboriginal elders watched intently as he performed for them, their faces calm, like a wide river where the water runs smooth and deep. They had the patience and deliberation of boulders, as though they had existed for centuries, despite their short-lived humanity.