Chapter 7: There's No Place Like Home

       When we were perhaps half a mile from the outer "wall" of this level, we exited onto a left turn ramp, travelled underground about 200 feet and merged into the by now fairly light flow of traffic into a section of the residential area reserved for private, single-family homes, as opposed to the condominium-type buildings that we'd have gone toward with a right turn.

       These were lovely houses, just right for a family of three or four. All had neatly-landscaped yards, using trees, shrubbery and flowers adapted from Terran species to thrive in the lower gravity and light level, approximating ours at sunset. Lin-Erri pointed out that Level 22 was devoted to botanical and farming activities, among them the capacity to grow enough food for 75,000 people.

       As an aside, although a fair portion of their food is in fact brought in from Earth simply because our world is better suited to providing it, the intent was to make the base entirely self-sufficient if needed. It was explained that fast-growing, high-yield grains, fruits and vegetables, plus hydroponic gardening, made the actual farming area less than ten square miles.

       My attention returned to the neighborhood through which we were driving. Children were very much in evidence, playing group games, entertaining themselves, or just relaxing in comfortable lawn furniture, engrossed in books, computers or simple thought. Adults were gathered in small groups discussing perhaps business, perhaps entertainment, perhaps whatever came to mind.

       Many of them acknowledged our passing with smiles, nods, waves or salutes from uniformed people. At Kalen's request, we stopped twice so that he could converse with residents. Some of it was "small talk", some was business, a little was highly classified information that I might not have been privy to even a few months before.

       Kalen knew that I was casually listening in, as were the others, but made no signal that I wasn't supposed to be hearing it. I thus assumed that it was for my consumption as well. As we resumed the trip, Orii verified my thought by saying, "You're one of us now, Brother. What we know, you'll know."

       I felt deeply honored to even be in the presence of these wonderful people. To be included in their "inner circle" gave me a sense of belonging and importance that I'd cherish to my final breath. There's simply no way to explain in print what I was feeling, but our definition of heaven isn't far removed from where I considered myself at that moment.

       After about five minutes more of driving, we pulled into a parking area outside what could easily be compared to a $500,000 home in one of our affluent suburbs. "Welcome to my humble abode," Kalen said grandly as we deboarded the cart. I whistled appreciatively at the simple, understated elegance of the place, very well appointed without being at all showy or opulent.

       As we walked along the flower-edged stone walkway toward the house, two little twin girls, blue-eyed blondes in frilly pink jumpsuits, stopped playing momentarily in the next yard, and called out, "Kalo, Master." He smiled and said, "Kalo, yourselves, little ones," then waved to their parents who were watching from their large "picture window". They returned the gesture with broad smiles.

       Kalen's home was two-storied, with a size appropriate to ten to twelve normal rooms. It was a combination of brick on the lower floor and natural redwood on the upper, both imported from Earth, as I found out. Even there, for all their democracy, one can find occasional evidence that, as we say, RHIP -- Rank Has Its Privileges.

       The front door slid aside as we approached, keyed, as he told me, by his implant. Lights switched on as we entered the foyer, and an automatic message recorder informed him that he had four communications on the queue. He instructed the device to convert them to hard-copy, and we followed him into a parlor that was, on a small scale, the equal of their lounges.

       One wall was taken up by a visiscreen, with its control console in the corner to its left. On a table by one of the two couches, a remote control transmitter for the screen rested atop several copies of what appeared to be a Korendian magazine. I found myself magnetically attracted to them, and asked Kalen if I might look through them, to which he nodded approval.

       While he and the others went off to another part of the house, I took a seat on the sofa by the table and opened one of the magazines. I was startled by its alienness. It seemed to be a Korendian equivalent to "Life", with many photos of their home world and its people. It offered abundant proof of the accuracy of my Korendian alter ego.

       The pages were thin, plastic-like sheets apparently photographically reproduced rather than printed. The pictures were fully holographic. There was no advertisement as we know it. The magazine was primarily devoted to reporting on Korendian news and cultural matters.

       At that point I had a "bright idea". By accessing the base computers via my implant, I found myself reading the Korendian text with fluency. The index page then revealed that the magazine was split into five sections: Alliance news, Korendian news, cultural and social articles, miscellany and editorial commentary.

       Being an inveterate writer of letters to editors, I found that last one irresistible, and I flipped through the pages toward the back of the issue, stopping occasionally to study a particularly fascinating photo or news item. Sure enough, when I reached the editorial pages, several were devoted to my favorite free-time pursuit. Oh, frabjous day!

       The range of topics was diverse as any that we'd find in our own magazines and newspapers, and as in any democracy, there were those who used the forum to air their gripes. Even on as marvelous a world as Korendor, there was apparently room for improvement. One of the major controversies that, so I gathered, had been raging for several issues concerned an article detailing the plans of the Planetary Council to raze a fair-sized part of an aging suburb of Vrell City called Malikarn.

       It was the first step in constructing a mammoth cultural and civic center to serve the needs of Vrell City. The faction opposing it based its stance on the historical value of the site, as the place where the founders of Vrell City had lived during its creation some 700 years earlier. The letters stopped short of name-calling, and they always maintained decorum and politeness, but it was evident that the Korendian people have as much capacity for sarcasm, anger and even hot-temperedness as any of us on Earth.

       Most of the other letters dealt with comments on earlier editions, or were simply friendly communication to pass information to the readers. It was an utterly refreshing and thrilling experience to sit in on the day-to-day happenings of a marvelous race of beings on a world over 400 light years away, and discover that they're after all every bit as human as we are.

       I put down that issue, and my eye was caught by a front-cover photo of the Cybernetic Institute computer that Orii had mentioned. A quick scan of the index, then open to page 57, and there in glorious tridim was the ultimate machine, surrounded by engineers and technicians tending to its brain. Abruptly, a caption to one of the photos arrested my attention.

       "Oh, my God," I thought aloud. It was a picture of two people standing in front of one of the main consoles. The one on the right had a familiar name indeed. The caption said, in the Korendian phonetic equivalents, "Programming specialists Edron-Kalor and Astra-Lari begin Phase Two testing of the computer's executive operating system."

       This was her Korendian form. I stared a long time at that photo. It was assuredly her. She still wore around her neck, plainly visible in the picture, the silver, heart-shaped locket that I had given her in the mid-1960's. I now appreciated just how complete the transition to my Korendian form had been during my visits, because I saw her there just as enchanting and beautiful as she was in her Terran form.

       Looking at her this way, she was alien and frankly unattractive. The Korendian woman, though physically female, with softer, more feminine facial features, was every bit as hairless and almost as sturdily built as the man. It had to be that way, of course, but there was little that the awareness could have done to cushion the shock of seeing my star lady in her natural form.

       So taken by this photo was I that I didn't hear the others rejoin me. They were silent as I pondered it, and only when I closed the magazine and looked up did they say anything. The expression on my face must have been very telling.

       "It does have a tendency to be very unsettling the first time," Lin-Erri said softly. I looked at this exquisite lady standing in front of me, and just couldn't envision her as short, powerful and bald. Then I realized that I was looking at a form as alien to Earth as her Korendian self would be, and I gave up trying to fathom it. She laughed warmly at my musings. Kalen then offered to show me around the rest of the house, while the others tended to some business.

       Our first stop was what could be called the kitchen, although a computer dominated it, and was responsible for all food preparation. In one corner, a multi-armed robot stood motionless, with only a pulsating red light to indicate its readiness. There were no recognizable appliances, although a number of doors at robot-arm-level probably concealed them.

       Nor was there a sink or any visible means of washing dishes. Kalen explained that after a meal, the robot brings the table settings to a small automated room off the kitchen, where the cleaning is done by an ultrasonic immersion bath that cleans and sterilizes. Drying is by hot air jets, and the ware is then stored in a vacuum until needed again.

       Even in so small a matter, their attention to the finest points was exhaustive. It was little wonder that the Alliance was the major power in this struggle. They came prepared.

       We walked into the dining room then, and I stopped to admire the furnishings, which were the products of Terran craftsmanship. They were obviously antiques, flawlessly preserved, dating from perhaps the mid-1800's. "I bought these while I lived on Earth during the 1970's," he told me in answer to an unasked question. "I have a passion for fine artisanship, and a soft spot for the products of people who work out of love for their profession and pride in their labors. It's a philosophy that we share." His face bore an expression of wonder as his hand caressed the carefully-carved intricacies of the tabletop.

       I looked about the room, admiring the 19th-century aura that it radiated. In one corner, a stately grandfather clock, apparently converted to lunar gravity, ticked away oblivious to its anachronistic presence in the interior of an alien base on the Moon. The dial showing the phases of the moon was delightfully appropriate. The clock was set to Eastern Daylight time, and its chimes sounded eight times just as my watch signalled the hour. It was a touch of old Earth that was truly music to my ears.

       An arched doorway led back into the parlor, and we crossed over to a stairwell rising upward from an alcove hidden by ornately-carved latticework. We went up the stairs into a hallway that bisected the upper floor. Our first stop was, for lack of a better description, the master bedroom. Again the furnishings were Terran antiques. "Eighteenth century French," he said with pride.

       "Korendor hasn't had such things in many hundreds of years. We haven't used wood to any extent for that long. We learned to allow our forests to be born, grow and evolve at their own pace without our interference. Once, about a millenium ago, we made the same error that your own world is now making, random, relentless deforestation without planning or caring.

       "We managed to arrest that heedless waste in time to allow our forests to recover, but we were perhaps twenty years from an irreversible ecological disaster. It was beginning to affect the quality of our air, since our forests provided much of the oxygen in our atmosphere, as they do on your Earth.

       "The change was swift when it happened. We developed a synthetic wood made of chemically processed and compressed vegetable fibers. It didn't have the natural beauty of wood, but it was cheap and plentiful, and it became the primary building material until we abandoned organic matter entirely for that purpose.

       "Our people follow sound forestry practices, but other than removing deadwood and dying trees, we allow the forests to tend to themselves as the Infinite One had created them to do."

       He looked around the room for a moment, lost in thought, then said quietly, "There's just something fine and satisfying about wood. Perhaps it's a sort of communion that we have with other life forms. You're very fortunate on Earth. Preserve what you have while you still have it." His voice faded to a whisper, as he leaned on the exquisitely crafted footboard of his bed, his fingers seeming to seek oneness with the wood.

       A moment later, he brought himself back to reality, then led me out of the room and across the hall to his den/study, with its three walls of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding thousands of volumes from Earth and beyond. Our own classics apparently held special favor to him, because they were in a separate section illuminated by a pair of shadowless, ceiling-mounted floodlights.

       I scanned the titles in that glass-enclosed case. An ancient but perfectly-kept edition of the King James Bible. The complete works of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Mark Twain. The Sherlock Holmes series. Most of Agatha Christie's mysteries. The Encyclopedia Britannica. Individual selections such as "Moby Dick", "Tom Sawyer", the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", Asimov's "Foundation" tetralogy.

       I stood there in amazement that this great mind found the time and inclination to read Terran literary works. He responded to my thought, saying, "The essence of a planet is often more easily discerned in its literature than in its official histories, which can carry the biases of those in power when they're compiled. Aside from that, just as you discovered fascination and deep interest in our magazines as windows into our culture, so we read these works and many others as media by which to get into the heart and soul of your world and its people."

       The last wall of the room, aside from the space taken by the entrance, was occupied by a visiscreen, which he said had direct access to the full capabilities of CommSec. There was nothing that could be done by the Plato communications facility that couldn't be duplicated right here. He then pointed to a section of the floor about four feet square where the carpet was isolated from the rest of the room by tightly-butted strips of metal.

       A button on the desk facing the visiscreen caused a low whirring sound, and the floor separated at the strips and rose upward, becoming the top of a full teleportal cabinet. "The one in Darrin Sen's home is active only within the Earth-Moon base network. This one is linked via the main portal section to anywhere in the Alliance.

       "There are fifteen of these full-function portals scattered around the base. This is the only one in a private dwelling, although a number of homes contain units for use in the local system."

       A fascinating concept, that. Walk out of your bedroom, punch in a few codes, and wind up anywhere in the Alliance with no more effort than we'd expend in going to the kitchen for a glass of milk. The reality of this place returned then, despite the surroundings that might have been out of the home of some well-to-do European nobleman of a hundred years past. Oddly enough, in this room the real world seemed somehow inappropriate. It was a strangely compelling paradox.

       We finished the tour of the upper floor with brief stops in the remaining rooms, primarily bedrooms and a couple of baths where shower-tub combinations offered concessions to luxury that offest the ultrasonic systems that were the usual means of cleanup. We then went back downstairs and rejoined Lin-Erri and Orii-Val, who had been waiting in the parlor for our return.

       Kalen then asked if any of us were thirsty or hungry. The thought of something wet, cold and sugary appealed to me, and I was about to say so when the service robot wheeled silently in with a tray in "hand", holding four goblets of that same golden liquid that I once savored in the Plato base over two decades past.

       I took one and automatically said "Thank you!" to the machine. It replied in a soft, feminine voice, "My pleasure, sir." A nice touch. We sat on the two couches and sipped this sinfully delicious nectar, allowing it to linger in the mouth a moment or two to extract every iota of its exquisite flavor. While we drank, Kalen asked, "What do you think of our humble little workshop so far?"

       I looked at him with an expression that said "you've got to be kidding", then replied, "On a scale of one to ten, it's about a two hundred. The old facility was wonderful. This one's just plain awe-inspiring."

       "We won't get to it all this time around, obviously, but before too long you'll have a chance to visit everything we have here and on Earth. From now on, my brother, you're one of the family, so to speak, and we have nothing to hide, although we may frequently request that you withhold certain information. However, you've never had difficulty with agreeing to that before."
       "Nor will I now," I assured him. I finished the drink, and the robot immediately came over to fetch the empty goblet. "Do you desire a refill, sir," it asked pleasantly.
       "No, thank you."
       "My pleasure, sir." It went to the others in turn, repeating the procedure, except that it addressed Lin-Erri as "Ma'am", obviously responding to her feminine appearance and voice.

       "It's controlled by the kitchen computer," Kalen said in reply to my mental question. "It's equipped with full visual and aural receptors and has a sufficiently advanced recognition capability that it can remember up to a thousand individuals by name and face. Still, it's a simple-minded machine, really."
       "But it does have good manners," I offered in its defense.
       "Civility is the benchmark of beings of culture, my good sir," he said as though it were a self-evident truth.
       "But of course. How plebeian of me," I replied contritely.
       "Well, one must expect mere commoners to lapse on occasion. Now repeat after me: the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
       "The rine in Spine fawls minely on the pline," I chanted in what I thought was an excellent Cockney.
       "No, no, NO, that's not it at all. It's pronounced 'rain', a long 'a'." He tried to sound exasperated.
       "That's whut oy said, guvnor, rine," I retorted impatiently.
       "Oh, bloody 'ELL," he shouted, throwing his hands upward in resignation.

       By now, Lin-Erri had fallen back into her seat with laughter. Orii, who had been watching the nonsense with obvious amusement, told me, "Bob, you're going to fit right in here. You're as strange as we are."
       "Thank you... I think."
       "It was a high complement."
       "Then I'm honored. From Orii-Val, I consider that a rare blessing indeed."
       "As well you might, sir. I am usually quite reserved in my beneficence, and you, a mere mortal, may be justly proud of having received it."
       "Oh, merciful heavens, yes, I am. Having heard that, I'll not wash my ears again," the last word spoken with an exaggerated long 'a'.
       "I think he's got it," Kalen interjected gleefully. "By George, he's got it."

       "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," I sang out quite correctly. Lin-Erri stopped laughing long enough to announce, "The next sound you hear will be that of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein rotating rapidly and repeatedly in their respective receptacles of rest."
       "Hey, I do a great Ezio Pinza," I offered. "How about a few bars of 'Some Enchanted Evening'?"
       "No, I believe we'll pass on that," Orii said, "but thank you, anyway."
       From the kitchen, "My pleasure, sir."

       That finished us off. The four of us spent the next two minutes helpless with laughter. When I could catch my breath, I said, "Well, it has good ears." Between gasps, Kalen replied, "Right. Polite, but not too bright."
       "Damn, my ribs ache. I wonder what the High Council would think of us right now," I wondered aloud.
       "I suspect," Orii conjectured, "that we'd be unceremoniously shipped off to the nearest home for the incurably unprofessional."

       "And with that," the Master said, trying to bring back some semblance of sanity, "I do believe that we'll depart to more productive pursuits." We stood and I rubbed my rib cage, still sore from the first session of real, unrestrained laughter that I'd had in many years.

       In all that time, nothing on Earth had been humorous enough to evoke more than a smile from me. I prided myself on my seriousness and reservation. It took these wonderful people, and a few minutes of levity on an interstellar plane, to break me free of that self-imposed prison of discipline and solemnity. I might once more find myself back in that cell on my return to Earth, but for a few minutes at least, I had fun. God bless them for that.

       We left the house and waved goodbye to the little girls, then boarded our cart and headed back along the street toward the radial avenue. I noted that the "sky" was a little darker now, as the sun sank toward the projected ridge of mountains. Around us, the leaves of the trees rustled in a warm, gentle breeze that seemed to come from nowhere and was going in no special direction.

       "The air circulators have switched to stage two," Orii said. "The sensors must have detected a pocket of stale air in the dome. Usually it comes from a concentration of people in one place." When he stopped speaking, we all heard in the distance the sounds of orchestral music.

       Kalen thought for a few seconds, then remembered, "Tonight's the night for the concert in the park by the Vrell City Touring Philharmonia. I completely forgot about it. Bob, how about some Korendian music?"

       "I'd love it," I replied eagerly. In response, Orii stepped up our pace, and in less than five minutes we were at the perimeter of the park surrounding the central column. We pulled into one of the few remaining parking spaces, and walked toward the source of that glorious sound.

       The park was alive with people, adults and children, listening with rapt attention to the music. There was something structurally odd about it, but it was pleasantly odd. Lin-Erri said, "Your scale has twelve notes with sharps. Ours has 24 notes. The frequencies are approximately the same, but we have notes that are between yours, and ours have no precise length, so that our composers are given a far greater freedom than yours."

       I listened avidly to the results. It sounded vaguely like Beethoven, but with far greater range. Although the tempo was fairly slow, some passages displayed intricate sweeps of tonality that seemed far quicker, yet always following the main line. On occasion, various sections of the orchestra sounded almost to be playing different melodies, and yet it all fused together in a thoroughly beautiful symphonic work.

       There was no sheet music to be seen, but when Lin-Erri pointed to her forehead I understood at once. I looked around the orchestra at the various musicians, and saw that the instruments were totally unlike ours in configuration, many being obviously electronic. There were no stringed instruments at all. However, the sound they produced was close enough to what we're accustomed to that we'd find nothing uncomfortably alien in the music.

       We spent the next two hours enjoying this concert under the sunset, not even really noticing the darkening of the sky and the appearance of the evening's stars. Only when the final applause had died away did we notice the lights of the night-time city, the strings of streetlamps running arrow-straight toward the perimeter, the running lights of the carts in an ever-changing ballet of movement. I looked up then and recognized the stars of summer.

       If someone were brought there blindfolded, and then had his eyes uncovered, it would be difficult indeed to convince that person that it was not a small city somewhere on Earth. The illusion was that perfect. Only the elevator tower rising to the sky brought home the reality of this place. It was one more wonder in a place of wonders.

       When the crowd of people had at last dispersed, we boarded our cart and headed for the elevator entry area. The door slid open, the glare of its lights flooding out in a stark blue-white trapezoid onto the street. We drove into the shaft, and I looked back one last time, as the world behind me vanished. I felt almost sadness at leaving this town beneath the Moon. We were silent during the descent to our next destination.