Lunari by Tala Bar	Table of Contents Preface Introduction 1 The Flight 1 1 part 2 2 The Planet, 1 2 part 2 3 Meetings, 1 3 part 2 3 part 3 4 The Controller, 1 4 part 2 5 Visions of Earth, 1 5 conclusion
Chapter 3: Meetings part 2 of 3

Mira, no less confused than Zohr, was relieved when the other left her mind. Having turned on the light, she noticed Lilit sitting up on the bed, looking at her with a concentrated stare. Nothing much was needed to awaken the ancient sage, and Mira assumed Lilit had had a peep into her dreamlike experience.

For the umpteenth time she felt that her own scanty, erratic telepathic ability was quite insignificant compared to Lilit’s powerful skill and talent. She could not tell why that scary experience had to be hers and not the other’s.

Besides Mira and Lilit, the enormous bed in this bedroom was shared that ‘night’ by Nogah and Ziv. The continuous daylight of three suns allowed easy shift changes among the travelers.

Ziv, his breathing even and peaceful, was deep in the slumber of the hard-worker; it would take more than switching on the light to wake him up. Nogah, lying close to him, turned on her side, her arm thrown over his body.

Lilit whispered, “Let’s get up and talk more comfortably.”

“I wouldn’t mind Nogah joining us,” Mira whispered back, “Do you think I could wake her without disturbing Ziv?”

Instead of answering, Lilit touched the young woman, sending her a silent message. Nogah sighed, opened her eyes and was immediately awake. The three women silently got off the bed and walked to the washroom.

Mira smiled lopsidedly at Nogah as the other woman was tying her long, silvery-blond hair on top of her head. Nogah did not have much patience with the effect her enchanting appearance had had on other people. Lilit, her head utterly bare of hair on account of her great age, was tying her usual purple scarf around it, while Mira was brushing her short, black curls.

“Why didn’t you get it?” she asked Lilit with a tinge of complaint in her voice.

“Barriers,” the other one answered, cryptically. “Let’s go have breakfast.”

The three women moved to the common room, and Nogah punched food and drinks at the wall buttons; Lilit helped her carry them to the table, as Mira dropped listlessly on a chair, as if spent by the mental experience. She straightened up when Nogah came and sat beside her, the younger woman having a strong moral effect on her.

“So, what’s it all about, Mira?” Nogah asked. “I’ve been having such a beautiful dream: back on Earth, with its green hills, blue sky, and all.”

Mira winced. “I wish. These three suns and permanent light is hell, and I can’t understand how anyone can live in this colorful desert.”

“Live? You don’t think there are people living here, do you?”

“I just saw one of them. Or, rather, was in communication with her,” Mira said with some apprehension in her voice.

Nogah stared at her. “How can that be?” she objected; “I thought we’ve made quite sure no living being can exist on this planet, without air and with those suns.”

Lilit intervened in the exchange. “I have an idea what Mira saw, or, rather, sensed,” she said quietly.

“What?” The artist turned to her, rather fiercely.

The old woman was silent for a while, as if forming her words carefully. “Someone from our future...” she announced at last.

“Our future?” Mira whispered after a while.

“Our descendants, you mean?” Nogah said, leaping into conclusion without believing her own words.

Lilit nodded. “We have to get together for a consultation,” she declared; “it’s not a thing the three of us can solve by ourselves.”

* * *

Ziv, having got up late after working his shift, joined Lyish and Leshem at breakfast. “I saw some strange apparitions on the monitors before I went to sleep,” he said in his soft voice, taking his meal from the wall slot and sitting beside his mates.

Lyish and Leshem were having a hearty meal, after Nogah and Lilit had gone to work on the terminal in the study room. Mira had lost herself somewhere in the ship, having few qualifications for much practical work. She would have preferred to roam outside, but as this was impossible without a spacesuit, she had given up the idea.

“What kind of apparitions?” Leshem mumbled with her mouth full; Ziv thought it was a shame that the usual laughter in her large, green eyes had been frequently replaced nowadays by doubtful meditations. She had already investigated Lunari at a fair distance from the spaceship that served as their home, looking for means that would help them stay alive on the planet.

They were lucky the instruments were still in good order; but since they were assured by the ship’s computer that they had no way of escaping that barren planet, they had no hope of being able to rely on these instruments beyond a few more years. The physicist and the biologist had united their efforts but so far were unable to make any viable breakthrough.

Ziv said, “They were some kind of people who seemed to be inhabitants of Lunari. But how can that be? I thought we’d concluded no life could exist here! Besides, they barely looked human.”

“What did they look like?” asked Lyish with interest.

“They looked like they had a metallic skin, for a start,” Ziv answered immediately, newly amazed at the thought.

“Ah!” the biologist cried out, meaningfully.

“What else?” asked Leshem. She had swallowed her food, and some of the old laughter returned to her voice. Being too practical to believe in mysteries, she usually had a knack of solving them in a realistic way, just for the sake of making everything clear as light.

“They had multicolor hair, eyes and skin. I suppose they did not need any clothing. Both their faces and bodies looked blank, with no openings or protrusions other than their eyes. It was rather awesome...”

“How many did you see?”

“Only two. They seemed to be talking, but I don’t know what they were saying, only... I thought I was hearing their thoughts.”

“We’ll have to get Lilit in on this,” Leshem commented thoughtfully.

“Were they male or female?” asked Lyish.

“I couldn’t tell! As I said, there were no outside markings at all on their bodies!” Ziv fell silent, reflecting. “But, through their thoughts, I had an idea they were one of each.”

“Hi!” Ofer joined the breakfasting people.

Leshem invited him to sit by her side. “I missed you in bed. Where’ve you been?”

“Lyish was busy in the biological lab, and Nan had taken to examining the planet’s soil — if you call that stuff by that word. I was taking a look at the garden.”

“And how is it doing?” asked Lyish with a sense of guilt.

Ofer shook his head. “In rather poor shape. I think the computer will have to come up with new ideas for looking after it, otherwise we might be in deep trouble in a few years’ time.”

“But now,” Leshem informed him, “we have a new idea, which may prove to be either another problem or perhaps a new solution, I can’t be sure yet.” She proceeded to tell him about Ziv’s dream.

“We should have a general conference,” Ofer commented. “What do you think it means?”

All three shook their heads, agreeing about the conference; Leshem then rose and went to the physics lab, which she shared with Nan.

* * *

“These rocks, or crystals, rather,” Nan said, talking from behind the microscope, “are something wonderful, absolutely out of this world.”

“Well, actually they are out of our world on Earth,” Ben remarked as he was removing the spacesuit. He missed Earth’s mountains, and thought that walking on the planet’s flat ground tired him more than climbing.

They had gone as far from the ship as possible, but could never stay long under the radiation of the three suns; besides, walking on the prickly ground demanded too great an effort. “What did you actually expect to find here?”

“I’ve seen rocks from space on Earth, but never anything like that,” Nan continued; “everything here is crystallized. Every part of the ground’s material of this planet is structured like a crystal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“In my last analysis,” Leshem announced as she came in, “I reached the conclusion that there is an enormous amount of potential energy in those crystals.”

“You think we can produce this energy and use it?” Nan wondered. “That could solve many of our problems.”

“It may work out,” the physicist replied. “Ziv will have to make up suitable programs for the computer, and we’ll have to build some new equipment. There’s a lot to think and plan about it and it’s not going to be simple.”

The ship’s intercom came to life. “Everyone is asked to come for a meeting in the common room.” They heard Nogah’s thin, clear voice.

“Right away,” Leshem answered for the others.

* * *

“Two of us,” Lilit opened the meeting, “saw what they thought were inhabitants of this planet: one in a dream and the other on the computer monitor. Let’s first hear what they saw exactly. Mira, you start, as you were the first to experience it. What was it?”

Mira took her time, and when she began it was with some hesitation. She was never a very definite person, and the new experience did not help. “I had been sleeping, and I thought I was dreaming. At first I saw nothing, just a thought someone was thinking to herself. She was afraid of the dark.”

“Could she have been a child?” asked Ofer.

“Not at all. She did not understand the lack of light and it frightened her, in the way a new experience may frighten anyone.”

“A new experience...” Lyish reflected; “she had never experienced darkness?”

“Tell us what she said,” Lilit prompted Mira.

“That was the strangest part. At first I thought she was talking to me, and I talked aloud. Then I realized I was hearing it in my mind, she was sending me a mental message. I couldn’t understand at all what she wanted to say; then it seemed as if she was trying to put order in what she was getting from me! She seemed a very experienced telepath, much better at it than I am.”

“You’re talking about that person as a female,” Leshem commented.

“Yes, she thought of herself as female, definitely human, and very colorful... I can’t say more than that—”

“Ziv, now,” Lilit turned to him, “tell us what you saw.”

“I don’t know where their picture came from, but certainly it did not belong in any computer program I was familiar with. It came on spontaneously and was gone the same way.”

“You did not see them in a dream, then? You were not asleep when you experienced it?” Nogah asked.

“I was sleepy, just before going to bed, but still quite awake.”

“So, what was it?”

“What I got was an impression of a man, and he was a mathematician, like me!” Ziv exclaimed in wonder.

“How did you know?”

“He had numbers in his head, and equations. I could not have made a mistake! I felt such an affinity to him...”

“What happened then? Did he speak to you?”

“No. He was working on some mathematical equations, perhaps even with the help of a computer. Then the other person appeared, and it was female, maybe the same one Mira had met, because they had a kind of relationship like the one I have with Nogah and Mira... Everything was so strange, because I don’t really believe any life form can exist on this planet!”

“You’re right there,” Lyish confirmed. “We’ll have to think of another explanation.”

“Listen,” Lilit said, “I think it’s only the beginning, that we — all of us — are going to have many more meetings like these two. So, we should first of all wait for more messages before we know for sure what to do. In the meantime, as the main telepath in this company, I’ll start a search for those people in a more active way.

“You don’t think these are Mira’s and Ziv’s figments of imagination, then?” Leshem asked, doubtfully.

“No, in fact. I think they’re real. But I can’t yet say what I really think, not before we create a more stable and meaningful connection with them.”

“Don’t forget Mira has had hallucinations before...” Leshem reminded her.

“Mira, but not Ziv!” Nan protested.

Suddenly, Mira started talking fast, as if afraid someone was going to interrupt her. “I’ve been having some feelings even before that apparition... About the place itself. I can’t explain them, but I’ve been sensing certain kinds of presence, like ghostly images appearing all over the place. It was difficult to make out their appearance, except that they looked very colorful, like the one who appeared in my dream...”

“But, Mira,” Leshem interrupted her, “don’t you remember what happened on the ship...”

“No, Leshem, this is nothing like the other... I am sure I saw these people, although they were quite transparent... And I can describe them. They look very much like that person in my dream-like vision, very thin and colorful, as Ziv has described them...” She stopped, sensing all eyes lying on her, and that made her shut down in confusion.

“This is very interesting,” Lyish said, and Leshem cried, “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

Mira blushed slightly, her usually white face taking on a pinkish hue. “After what had happened on the ship, I couldn’t. At that time I was having a nervous breakdown, like I did when Lee died. But now it’s all different, and much more real.”

Leshem rose and came up to the young woman, hugging her warmly. Mira laid her head on the older woman’s ample bosom and closed her eyes.

“Well!” Lyish said.

“This does not contradict my first verdict but rather strengthens it. We’ll have to wait for more messages, whoever these people are. And I am pretty sure we won’t have to wait long,” Lilit concluded.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...

Copyright © 2009 by Tala Bar