the gates of the Emerald City began to open.
Richard was always concerned about naming things. After less than a minute of inspection of the creatures they were going to ride, he called them “ostrichsaurs.”
“That’s not very imaginative, darling,” Nicole chided him.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but it is a perfect description. They are just like a giant ostrich with the face and neck of one of those herbivorous dinosaurs.”
The creature had four birdlike legs, a soft, feathery main body with an indented bowl in the middle where four humans could easily sit, and a long neck that could be extended three meters in any direction. Since the legs were about two meters long, the neck could reach the surrounding ground without difficulty.
The two ostrichsaurs were surprisingly swift. Archie, Ellie, and Eponine rode on one of the creatures, on whose side the large hexagonal painting had been tied with a kind of twine. Nicole and Richard were by themselves on the other ostrichsaur. There were no reins or other obvious means of controlling the creatures; however, before the group departed from the Emerald City, Archie spent almost ten minutes “talking” to the ostrichsaurs.
“He’s explaining the entire route,” Ellie said. “And also outlining what to do in case of an accident.”
“What kind of an accident?” Richard asked, but Ellie simply shrugged in reply.
At first both Richard and Nicole hung on to the “feathers” that surrounded the bowl in which they were — sitting, but after a few minutes they relaxed. The ride was very smooth, with very little jostling up and down. “Now, do you suppose,” Richard said after the Emerald City faded from view, “these animals naturally evolved this way, with this near perfect bowl in the middle of their backs? Or did the octospider genetic engineers somehow breed them for transportation?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind at all,” Nicole replied. “I believe that most of the living things we have encountered, certainly including those dark, wriggling coiled things that crawled through my skin, have been designed for a specific function by the octospiders. How could it be otherwise?”
“But you can’t believe these animals were designed from scratch,” Richard said. ‘That would suggest an incredible technology, far beyond anything we can even imagine.”
“I don’t know, darling,” Nicole said. “Maybe the octospiders have traveled to many different planetary systems, in each place finding life-forms that could be slightly altered to fit into their grand symbiotic schemes. But I can’t accept for a minute the idea that this harmonious biology just happened by natural evolution.”
The two ostrichsaurs and their five riders were guided by three of the giant fireflies. After a couple of hours, the group approached a vast lake stretching to the south and west. Both the ostrichsaurs squatted on the ground so that Archie and the four humans could descend.
“We’re going to have lunch and a drink of water here,” Archie said to the others. He handed Ellie a container filled with food and then led the two ostrichsaurs over to the lake. Nicole and Eponine walked off in the direction of some blue plants growing at the edge of the water, leaving Richard and Ellie by themselves.
“Your proficiency in their language is very impressive, to say the least,” Richard said in between bites of food.
Ellie laughed. “I’m afraid I’m not as good as you think.
The octos purposely keep their sentences very simple for me. And they speak slowly, with broad bands. But I am improving… You realize, don’t you, that they are not using their true language when speaking to us? It’s just a derivative form.”
“What do you mean?” Richard asked.
“I explained it to Mother back at the Emerald City. I guess she didn’t have a chance to tell you.” Ellie swallowed before continuing. “Their true language has sixty-four color symbols, just as I mentioned, but eleven of them are not accessible to us. Eight lie in the infrared part of the spectrum, and another three in the ultraviolet. So we can only distinguish clearly fifty-three of their symbols. This was quite a problem in the beginning. Luckily, five of the eleven outside symbols are clarifiers. Anyway, for our benefit they have developed what amounts to a new dialect of their language, using only the color wavelengths that we can see. Archie says that this new dialect is already being taught in some of their advanced classes.”
“Amazing,” Richard said. “You mean they have adjusted their language to accommodate our physical limitations?”
“Not exactly, Father. They still use their true language when talking to each other. That’s why I cannot always understand what they are saying. However, this new dialect has been developed, and is now being expanded, just to make communications with us as easy as possible.”
Richard finished his lunch. He was about to ask Ellie another question about the octospider language when he heard Nicole yell. “Richard,” she shouted from fifty meters away, “look over there, in the air, toward the forest.”
Richard craned his neck and shaded his eyes. In the distance he could see two birds flying toward them. For some reason his recognition was delayed until he heard the familiar shrieking sound. Then he jumped up and ran in the direction of the avians. Tammy and Timmy, now full-grown, swooped down out of the sky and landed beside him. Richard was ecstatic. His wards jabbered incessantly and pressed their velvet underbellies against him for a rub.
They looked perfectly healthy. There was not a trace of sadness in their huge expressive eyes. A few minutes later Timmy suddenly stepped away, shrieked something in a very loud voice, and became airborne. Within a few minutes the avian returned with a companion, a female with an orange velvet covering unlike any Richard had ever seen. Richard was a little confused, but he did realize that Timmy was trying to introduce him to his mate.
The remainder of the reunion with the avians lasted only ten or fifteen minutes. Archie insisted, after he first explained that the vast lake system supplied almost half of the fresh water in the octospider domain, that the entourage needed to continue on its journey. Richard and Nicole were already in the bowl on the back of their ostrichsaur when the three avians departed. Tammy hovered over them for a good-bye jabber, obviously disturbing the creature on which they were riding. At length she followed her brother and his mate in their flight toward the forest.
Richard was strangely quiet as their mounts also headed north in the direction of the forest. “They really mean a lot to you, don’t they?” Nicole said.
“Absolutely,” her husband replied. “I was all alone except for the hatchlings for a long time. Timmy and Tammy depended on me for their survival… Committing myself to rescuing them was probably the first selfless act of my life. It opened up new dimensions of both anxiety and happiness for me.”
Nicole reached over and took Richard’s hand. “Your emotional life has had an odyssey of its own,” she said softly, “every bit as diverse as the physical journey you have experienced.”
Richard kissed her. “I still have a few demons that are not yet exorcised,” he said. “Maybe, with your help, in another ten years I’ll be a decent human being.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Nicole said.
“My brain I give plenty of credit,” Richard said with a grin, changing the tone of the conversation. “And do you know what it is thinking right now? Where did that avian with the orange underbelly come from?”
Nicole looked puzzled. “From the second habitat,” she replied. “You yourself told us that there must have been a population of almost a thousand before Nakamura’s troops invaded. The octospiders must have rescued a few also.”
“But I lived there for months,” Richard protested. “And I never ever saw an avian with an orange underbelly. Not one. I would have remembered.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. Your explanation is definitely consistent with Occam’s Razor. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe our octospider buddies have some secrets they have not yet discussed with us.”
They reached the large igloo hut not far from the Cylindrical Sea after several more hours. The tiny glowing igloo that had been beside it was gone. Archie and the four humans dismounted. The octospider and Richard untied the hexagonal painting and stored it against the side of the igloo. Then Archie led the ostrichsaurs aside and gave them directions for their homeward trek.
“Can’t they stay a little while?” Nicole asked. “The children would be absolutely delighted with them.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Archie replied. “We have only a few and they are very much in demand.”
