Needless to say, I rested very little for the next three days. Even had I not tended, of myself, to think incessantly of Shisken's promised revelation, it would have been forced on my thoughts by the questions of the other Selicarites. It is difficult to keep a secret in a small colony of inquisitive juveniles, and I rather doubt that Shisken and Berel (or, for that matter, Limilt) were trying particularly hard. By the morning after our conference on the ridge, every youth in the Refuge seemed to know that some tremendous event was expected in three days' time – and they all wanted me to tell them what it was. They seemed quite unable to believe that I did not know; indeed, one young female named Nannashee-Kopimil-Algoit said to me, with every appearance of seriousness, «But you are the Master of Selicar. There is nothing that you do not know.»
Such confidence in my wisdom was gratifying, but I could not share it. I knew there were many things of which I was ignorant – including some things that I longed desperately to know. What was this "home" that Shisken proposed to take Kirinar to? How could it substitute for the home she had lost? And how, in any event, could she be taken to it when all the powers of the Andalite government were arrayed to keep her imprisoned in the Selicar Refuge?
For the Selicar was a prison. I saw that now. No matter that it spanned a thousand square miles; no matter that there were no guards patrolling its borders. It was a place of confinement for those who could not be permitted to walk among Andalites. That made it a prison.
This distressed me greatly. The Selicar was the only home I had ever known; if it were in truth a thing noxious to the sentient spirit, then I was as much a homeless refugee as Kirinar was. I mentioned this to her at one point during the second day of waiting, and she merely smiled and said, «Well, then, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer, perhaps Shisken's secret home may be yours as well as mine.»
This, of course, only made me desire the more fervently to see what Shisken had planned. I slept not at all on the second night, and, during the third day, my humors were so agitated that even the sound of a morrimil running past was enough to set my hearts racing. Had Shisken made me wait a fourth day, I believe I might have gone mad.
As it was, I bolted for the western hill as soon as the sun had set, and traversed a full third of the Selicar's length in a mere quarter of an hour – which, though it seems a small matter to me now, was at that time quite an achievement for me. When I reached the hill, I was breathing heavily, and my fur was in great disarray – which greatly amused Shisken, who was leaning against a towreath tree at the foot of the hill. «Well, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer,» she said, «has a sharbat been chasing you, or were you simply afraid that I would forget about our meeting and go off to practice the Orniya Quest with Kirinar?»
«What is it you wished to show me?» I said, ignoring her badinage.
«Oh, it has not arrived yet,» said Shisken blithely. «Come, and let us contemplate the universe while we wait.»
Accordingly, we ascended the hill (not an arduous task, despite its height) and looked upon the night sky from as near as a Selicarite could come. The Great Moon had risen for the first time that month, but two other moons had set in the meantime, so the carpet of stars that Andalite poets have so often praised was visible to us in all its splendor. The two of us gazed up into infinity, and a million remote suns gazed back at us.
«I used to dislike two-moon nights,» Shisken commented quietly. «One feels so small against the universe, and I have never liked feeling small.» There was irony in her tone, and the two of us exchanged a glance of mutual understanding.
«But I don't seem to mind tonight,» she said. «Tonight it makes me think, not of my own smallness, but of the smallness of everything. Your grandfather is small. Governor Haithul is small. The Selicar Refuge, the Southernmost Island, the Planetary Republic: they are all small on a two-moon night.»
I shifted my hooves uneasily. «Shisken,» I said, «if you mean to console me with the insignificance of my troubles, I fear you will have little success. The injustice of Kirinar's predicament may be of no interest to the Kafit's-Eye Nebula, but it is none the less significant to me for all that.»
I had feared that I might offend her by speaking thus, but she took no umbrage at my words. To the contrary, she laughed. «Ah, Garatron,» she said. «It seems we are fated never to understand each other.»
«What will you?» said a new voice. «He is the child of scientists. Your thoughts are too subtle for his direct, factual mind.» I turned around and saw Berel standing behind us, his eyes aglow with an excitement that I had never seen in them before.
I frowned. «Is Berel also to be shown your secret tonight, Shisken?»
«Berel already knows,» she said. «He was with me when your grandfather relayed my father's message; since the council of three nights ago, we have discussed the subject at length.»
«I see,» I said. «And what is your opinion, Berel-Thorondor-Suparit? Will what I am about to see solve Kirinar's dilemma?»
Berel smiled strangely. «Is Kirinar truly the one who has the dilemma, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer?» he said.
I sighed. «Berel, please do not be coy with me,» I said. «Will Shisken's secret provide a means of freeing Kirinar from her exile?»
Berel considered. «Let us say that it will provide the opportunity,» he said. «Securing the means, I think, will be your task.»
And, having delivered himself of that enigmatic pronouncement, he turned the conversation to other subjects, drifting aimlessly from the beauty of the Kneeling Widow constellation to the concern of a certain Selicarite for her sickly twin sister, and from there to a speculation on the ritual infanticide of the Voiceless People. I listened to him without real interest for perhaps twenty minutes, until I felt Shisken touch my arm. «Garatron,» she whispered, her thought-speak tense with sudden, subdued excitement, «turn your eyes to the northeast.»
I did so, and saw a speck of light rising into the sky somewhere beyond the river Kra. It seemed to be perhaps a thousand miles off, and I was surprised I could discern its purple gleam so clearly. I said as much, and asked whether it was some sort of weapon.
«No,» said Shisken. «It is the vessel through which Falkrith-Ispadagar-Konin and two of his associates will travel into low homeworld orbit. From a technical standpoint, there is no reason for it to bear a million-candela beacon – but Scholar Falkrith has attached one to it anyway, for he wishes all the Northern Continent to observe his journey tonight.»
«Falkrith?» I said. «That is the scientist who...» I hesitated.
«Who made us what we are,» said Shisken. «Yes. Now hush, Garatron, and observe.»
So the three of us watched the purple light climb slowly into the sky until it was perhaps a finger's width above the horizon, just below the rear hoof of the Kneeling Widow. Then its ascent ceased, and it hovered motionless in the sky for perhaps half a minute – and then, to my bewilderment, it vanished completely. There was no flicker, no apparent movement; it simply ceased to exist.
I turned to Shisken, my eyes wide. «Did something go wrong?» I said.
«Nothing whatsoever,» said Shisken with a smile.
«But then...»
«Look into the Furlet's eye, Garatron.»
Baffled, I turned my gaze to the constellation she had named (which necessitated a rather uncomfortable craning of my neck, for the Furlet, at that time of year, was very nearly directly above the Selicar Refuge), and saw a violet light gleaming to the right of the star Hallameth. It couldn't, of course, be what I thought it was; there was no way for a vessel to travel such a distance in the blink of an eye – but, all the same, it certainly seemed...
I turned to Shisken, and she answered the question before I asked it. «Yes,» she said. «That is Scholar Falkrith's vessel.»
«But how...» I began – and then I realized. «Z-space?»
«Precisely,» said Berel. «Tonight, for the first time in history, an Andalite has traveled through the singularity in the universal cone.» He looked at me, and added, «Falkrith's experiments began with the creation of a distorted sub-race that belonged nowhere on this world. It has now ended by making all the other worlds in the galaxy accessible.»
With a sudden shock, I saw what he meant – but it was too much to take in all at once. Yet Shisken and Berel both looked at me as though they expected me to pass some judgment on what we had just seen.
«This has been a solemn night, then,» I managed at last. «And the morning, when it comes, will be a solemn one as well: the first morning of a new age. Let us return to our scoop, and prepare to greet it with all the energy and clearness of mind that such an event merits – for I suspect that it will merit all that we can give.»
Shisken's eyes flashed with amusement at my rather obvious evasion, but Berel seemed to think that I had spoken great wisdom. «It will, indeed,» he said.
As we descended the hill, I raised my eyes and cast another look at the panorama of stars. Might our destiny indeed lie beneath one of them? And, if so, what sort of destiny was it liable to be?