Lunari

by Tala Bar

Chapter 3: Meetings

part 3 of 3

Zohr thought it was only decent to share her experience with Nour, now that it was a little clearer in her own mind. She found him, as she had expected, at the nearest computer terminal.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, absentmindedly looking at the screen. It showed some mathematical signs, and a variety of marks in different shapes and tints, which were unfamiliar to her. They certainly did not belong to the calculations concerning the construction they had been working on.

“What are these?” she pointed; “they don’t seem to have anything to do with my building, do they?”

Nour shook his head, continuing with what he was doing. Zohr waited patiently. After a while he stopped, and the screen returned to its initial position. “I’m trying to calculate distances according to some old measures I’ve found by accident in the computer’s store,” he explained at last.

“Distances of what?” She looked at him curiously. Nour was not noted as an initiator.

“Of the suns.” Instead of looking at her, he gazed out toward the horizon. Any gap between two suns was filled with black space, and the people of Lunari had no idea what it was. When none of the suns was at the horizon, the planet’s variegated, prickly surface was very prominent; its ground, composed as it was of myriad spiky crystals, glittered in a thousand hues in the permanent light.

“I need to talk to you,” Zohr repeated, not wanting to be diverted by what seemed to her a pointless activity.

Nour looked at her. He had seen her preoccupied before, but usually it was something to do with her artistic creation; this she would usually impart to him for the purpose of finding out whether the construction of her ideas was mathematically feasible. Looking into Zohr’s mind, he had a glimpse of Mira’s picture. “What’s that!” His own mind filled with a confused mixture of shapes and colors.

“Strangers,” she replied. It was not easy to put together the notion of alien people, necessitating the use of a new combination of lines and colors not having the standard appearance of Lunari’s visual language.

“I see...” He sent her a querying message. “Are you going to consult Oul about that?”

“I have to.” Oul, a member of the High Council, had been Zohr’s Mentor as well as many others’, including Nour’s. It was a task Oul had taken on herself, to teach young people the ways and rules of Lunari.

“Look!” The screen suddenly came to life without Nour’s touching it.

“That’s Mira!” Zohr’s mind filled with a spread of stable colors and forms, indicating certainty.

“What’s Mira?” Nour asked.

“That’s the stranger I told you about.”

Before she could explain further, his mind burst with astonishment. “There’s another one! What would you call that?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen it before...” The new shape on the screen was as tall as the first, slim but with wider shoulders, a shock of golden hair and dark blue eyes. Both Zohr and Nour were astonished at the features on the strange people’s faces, which they did not know as noses, mouths and ears. Their own faces had been completely smooth, with only eyes and a hidden opening for a mouth.

“I think this one is male, while the one I saw first is female,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“It’s the way they feel about themselves, and about each other. There’s something between them, the same as between us.”

“He is Ziv!” Nour’s mind filled with a flash of pleasurable red.

“Ah!” was Zohr’s answer. Then she added, “Now we’ll have to go see Oul together.”

“No,” Nour objected, “you go first and hear what she has to say about it, and come back to tell me.” He would not add that he was a little intimidated by Oul’s personality.

* * *

Oul was regarded as the epitome of wisdom and leadership on Lunari. She was as short as Lunari’s standard height had allowed, with a greenish hue of age to her metallic skin; her figure was permanently surrounded by a purple aura emanating from the color of her eyes and hair, which kept her interlocutors at a respectful distance.

As one of her many functions, she was giving at that moment a lesson in good citizenship to a group of newly hatched youngsters at the Lunari’s Center of Education, half the world away from where Zohr and Nour were. This, however, was no hindrance; as soon as decision was made, Zohr sent her mental feelers to look for the woman who had been her tutor, and was now a friend. Having easily located her, she concentrated her mind and was teleported to the Center.

The Center of Education was an enormous complex of columns, arches, garrets and gables, stretching over a vast area, containing sites marked for various functions and purposes; the main tools of learning, however, were computer terminals.

As usual whenever coming there, Zohr paused to admire this edifice, which had been created long before she had hatched. Its shape and proportions were classic, considered the prototype of all architectural art on Lunari; Zohr’s own style, however, was freer, wilder, and though admired by most critics, was still frowned at by older and more conservative people.

Standing at one of the building’s many openings, part of Zohr’s mind wandered among the columns until it spotted the old guide, rendering the wisdom and philosophy of Lunari to her eager students. A very slight change in Oul’s purple aura indicated her pleasure in sensing Zohr’s approach long before the young woman had actually appeared; Oul was known as the most sensitive person on Lunari.

She did not let her emotions disturb her working even when spotting Zohr’s troubled mind; she comfortably completed the presentation of the woven picture of their world before her students; only then did she turn her thought toward the approaching yet unseen young woman, sending her a rosy greeting.

The entanglement in Zohr’s usually clear and coherent thought appeared plainly before Oul’s discerning mind. “I can see that you need me, child,” she thought fondly, indicating a place at the Center. “Let’s meet at a more secluded area.”

* * *

Oul had followed her former student’s career with much care and affection. It was not plain sailing for Zohr, because her architectural work proved more independently imaginative than some people could approve of. The structures she created were bold in their innovation, at the same time introspective and invoking meditation. They formed a much more personal expression than any artist had ever done. Zohr’s opponents said that such emotional individuality may be harmful to the enlightened, rational society of Lunari.

Oul, on the other hand — sitting on the panel examining artists who had presented their works for public recognition — pointed out that a new approach to art should guard the rational society of Lunari against stagnation. Wondering now at what might have disturbed Zohr, she put away her speculations until the other opened her mind before her.

They met at the designated place, Oul sending a mental embrace to the young woman before they both sat down. They relaxed in the comfortable furniture, surprisingly springy despite its harsh, bright look. Zohr knew the green and blue wave she used to obscure her trouble from Nour would be completely transparent to Oul, so she did not bother.

“I am very glad for an excuse to see you again,” she said instead to her old friend.

“I am glad to see you, Zohr, and why should you need an excuse?”

“You know how things are. I’ve been very busy.”

“As I understand your present situation,” Oul said more openly, “you are having a good combination of work and love life, so your trouble must be something not quite so personal.”

“I wouldn’t bother you with anything personal,” Zohr replied with unwonted irritation.

Not bothering to react to that, Oul probed the young woman’s mind. “I see you’ve had a visitation.”

Zohr eyed the old woman carefully. “I’ve been thinking. Don’t you think we should address the Controller about it?” she asked.

“We?”

“Nour shared my experience. We don’t quite understand what is going on. Do you?”

After a moment of silence Oul said, “I can’t answer you on the spot, I’ll have to think about it and come back to you.”

Zohr sensed that Oul knew more than she was demonstrating; there was a kind of blocking in the Mentor’s mind, but blocking was not permitted in the open society of Lunari! “Can’t you tell me at least what it is all about?” she asked, a little offended.

“I am not quite sure myself, Zohr. Please, go back now, and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I have learned something about it myself.”

Zohr, unhappy with the blocking she sensed in the old woman’s mind, burst out, with a mixture of bright colors and the darker undertones of apprehension, “Oul! If it got known that you’re hiding things...”

The old sage smiled the bright, pastel colors of reassurance. “Everything will soon be generally known, I assume, so you don’t need to worry about me.”

Zohr had to accept her Mentor’s word. Unhappily, she concentrated and was teleported back without getting a proper answer.

To be continued...