Sacred Trust (18 page)

“Let's have dinner at my place,” I said as I stepped out of the elevator at my floor. “We'll be able to continue our discussion without any unwanted ears.”

Eonus and Ruen agreed and then disappeared behind the closing elevator doors as they went to their own floors to gather food for themselves. I let myself into my apartment and went about throwing together a quick dinner for myself. Before it was ready, the door buzzer sounded, announcing the return of both Ruen and Eonus. I let them in from the kitchen control panel that regulated all our automated conveniences.

“Umm, something smells good in here,” Ruen said, as she set her covered meal on the kitchen table.

“Just a tuna salad and some leftover pasta.” I smiled at her as I carried my plate to the table. Eonus joined us with a plate full of something that smelled atrocious and looked even worse. “What's that?” I asked, wondering how that black ugly mess could be considered food.

“Moonberries and Tafsta.” He grinned at me. “Good.”

Whatever Tafsta was, there was apparently no word for it on my translator's dictionary. “
Good
?” I echoed, frowning as I thought I saw something in that goo move. “Is there something alive in there?” I pointed at his plate.

He nodded, plunging what could be considered chop sticks into the mess to nab a wiggling wormlike thing. “Tafsta,” he said, showing it to me before tossing it into his mouth and chewing with obvious enjoyment.

“Eww,” Ruen said at the same time I said, “Yuck, that's disgusting.”

Eonus swallowed as he nabbed another squiggly from his plate. “Good. Try,” he said, offering it to me.

“Aw, no. That's okay,” I said, waggling my fingers at him to get it away from me. “You just enjoy it there...all you want. Unless you want to try it, Ruen.”

She almost choked on the glob of something that looked similar to tofu that she'd just stuck in her mouth. “Uh-uh,” she managed, barely able to keep from gagging.

Eonus shrugged his shoulders. “Too bad. Miss out,” he said, consuming the second worm with even more relish than he had the first.

I merely shook my head and dug into my pasta. “So what do you guys want to do? About our parents, I mean.”

“I want to go back and investigate the high priest and The Temple of Enlightenment,” said Ruen. “I feel that someone from there is involved with our abduction and probably our parents' disappearance as well.”

“But how can we do that?” I asked. “We have to come straight home after school every day. Remember your father, the tyrant? Besides, those babysitters of ours aren't going to fall again for the same stunt we pulled on them today. Your father will make sure of it.”

Ruen smirked at me. “Very funny,” she said.

“Study religion,” said Eonus.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Sometimes I could understand the Arandi and, sometimes, I felt like killing them.

“Study religion. After school.”

It took me a moment, but then I understood his reasoning. “You want us to somehow get permission to go to The Temple of Enlightenment after school to study religion.”

“Yes.” Eonus rubbed his head. He was obviously agitated and worried about his mother. He had taken Ruen's concerns into consideration as well.

Ruen threw in her two cents. “Let me call my father and tell him Tata wants to study our religions. I will then suggest we all participate on our way home from school. That might be the solution. I will tell him it will take our minds off our parents.”

Beside me, Eonus took my hand and nodded at me.

“I think our answer is yes,” I said, not taking my eyes off Eonus. Sometimes, our coupling, and its emotional consequences threatened to overwhelm me.

Ruen shook her head at our romantic exchanges, but went ahead and called her father. After a barrage of questions and stern warnings he finally agreed to our request. However, our walk home would include the presence of a police officer; obviously Kikess hadn't yet heard about our antics from this afternoon or he would have assigned more officers to us for the walk home. He or she would wait outside the temple until we were done and then escort us home and be our guard for the evening.

“It's not a bad idea,” I said. “I'm still very worried about our parents. Who knows, our captors may decide they want our presence again too.” I hoped not, though, and from the look on Ruen's face, I shouldn't have said anything.

Ruen looked at me, and said, “May I stay here with you? It would be comforting.”

I stood up and gave her a big hug. “Of course. Eonus, you need to stay too.”

Ruen rolled her eyes. “Are we going to sleep together like we did when we were afraid you were going to disappear?”

Such a diplomat
, I thought. “No. You can use my bed. I'll sleep in Dad's, and Eonus can have the sofa...if he wants it,” I asked, looking over at him.

He nodded. “Stay.”

“Okay then,” Ruen said, getting out her com. “Let me call my father again and suggest that he post our downstairs guard outside your door. I think he will feel a lot happier if we were all together, with police presence close by.”

Eonus and I agreed it was a good idea, and apparently her father thought so as well. After Ruen's conversation with her father ended, both she and Eonus left to gather up clothes and food for the following day. I hoped Eonus wouldn't bring anything else that wiggled. I wouldn't be able to bring myself to put it in my refrigeration unit.

After their return, Ruen told us she'd made a second call to her father, who'd agreed to make arrangements with the High Priest to accommodate our presence at The Temple of Enlightenment after school this week. “That way,” she explained, “we can quietly investigate without any unwarranted suspicion, since the request will actually be coming from my Dad.”

“You know what, Ruen. I think you're going to be a police officer like your father. You think about all the possibilities,” I said.

Pleased with my observations, Ruen said, “I do like to analyze things. So what are we going to do tomorrow?”

Her question made me pause. “Perhaps, we should let the police officer escort us to school. Then we bug out.”

“Bug...out?” Eonus asked, with a frown.

I laughed. Apparently his translator didn't contain a version for that particular expression. “A human saying,” I told him, “that means we leave as fast as we can from where we should be which, in this case, is school. We need to search for our parents and then be back at school by the end of the day so our escort can take us to The Temple of Enlightenment. Then there will be no suspicion.”

“Where look?” asked Eonus.

Ever the analytical type, he wanted to know where we would be going to look for our parents. Perhaps Arandi had some obsessive-compulsive traits. “I don't know. Perhaps Ruen can think of somewhere for us to search. Both you and I aren't really up on all the places in Basik. Ruen, what do you think?”

“This I can manage, but now I want some sleep. Our captivity deprived me. So you two can have some time alone. Do not stay up late; we have a busy day tomorrow.”

“Yes, mommy,” I snarked at her as she left the room, smirking at us.

Eonus and I still had a lot to discover about one another, so we appreciated her thoughtfulness in allowing us some alone time in the midst of all the turmoil.

Breakfast for the three of us turned out to be a quiet affair instead of the food adventure I'd been expecting after our exposure to Eonus' wiggly Tafsta. I suspected we'd all experienced a restless night with little sleep.

“Ruen, where do you think we should start looking today?” I asked.

“I think we should investigate someplace different. Everywhere we have looked before has had a scientific or historical theme. What do you think about taking a look at the Art Gallery? It contains such things as paintings, sculptures, and tinery.”

I shot her a questioning look. “What's tinery?”

“They are objects produced from pebbling,” said Ruen.

“Your explanation has not enlightened me,” I said. Wrong choice of words. My negative thoughts about The Temple of Enlightenment were erupting to toy with me.

“You know all those stones you like to collect?” Ruen sounded irritated. Obviously, her stress level had not been reduced overnight.

“Pebbling is the use of stones like those on objects. There is quite a large pebbling community locally,” said Ruen.

Tinery, I surmised, must be similar to working with mosaics.

Ruen sighed. Most of her breakfast was still on her plate. “You know, our parents could be anywhere,” she said. Her happy effervescent disposition had plummeted overnight.

“We'll find them,” I assured her. “I have a good feeling about today.”

* * * *

After we said goodbye to our police guard at school, we sneaked off to the Art Gallery. Outside, the building evoked in me the same ho-hum feeling as all the other official buildings in Basik. But, much to my surprise, the gallery's management had filled the place with wondrous works of art.

Inside, the building consisted of four open floors that ran around the inside of the outer walls, with railings to safeguard visitors from taking bad falls into the center. Three of the four floors were dedicated to different types of visual art. The fourth focused on music.

The entire center of the building was an open area with an escalator that took visitors up to each floor. Sculptures hung at varying heights, level with each of the surrounding floors. The art pieces themselves splashed the colors of the Basili rainbow onto the light gray and beige walls. And, much to my delight, ribbons of light shone down on the works of art, making their vibrant colors glisten even more radiantly.

Although I was primarily interested in the sciences, the building astounded me with its allure. “What an amazing view,” I said from the top floor where I'd suggested we start looking and work our way down. “In my opinion, the Basilians are very artistic, but what is that supposed to be?” I pointed at an object hanging from the ceiling above us. The shape reminded me of a spider web, but it looked amazingly solid. The colors were predominantly blue but its color gradually changed from blue to purple and then oozed back to blue. I was mesmerized. I could have watched it all day.

“Nara, wake up,” said Ruen.

I blinked and snapped back to reality. “Sorry. I kind of zoned out there.”

“Understandable. This object is meant to imitate our oceans. Depending on the time of day, the color can fluctuate from blue to purple and back. Now, we need to get going. We only have so much time until we need to be back at school to meet our escort.”

Being bossy came naturally to Ruen, but she was correct. I could play tourist another day. Once we got our parents back I would like to come back and do an in-depth study of the tinery.

It took most of our available time to traverse the floors—the building was immense. We did take a short break, in the middle of the day, to eat our lunch at the cafe. We were watched closely, so we didn't linger long over lunch. Hopefully, no one would mention our presence here today to Officer Kikess. Unfortunately, we saw neither our parents nor any albinos during our day-long visit.

With very little time to spare, we got back to school in the nick of time. Our guard escorted us to The Temple of Enlightenment and waited outside while we wandered around looking for the high priest. Eventually we found him in an ornate candlelit room, dressed in nothing more than what looked like a diaper. I almost laughed out loud at the site of his scrawny legs and arms, not to mention his pot belly, but I managed to control my unsuitable amusement just in time.

High Priest Ada Chap was in the midst of some kind of meditative movement that reminded me of yoga. I thought perhaps we might be intruding upon a personal ritual and should leave to wait in the outer sanctum for him to finish, but Ruen didn't seem uncomfortable watching him, so I let my thought go.

We watched the head priest as he finished his ritual by bringing together both palms of his hands over his heart and bowing before a large bejeweled shrine. “Children,” he said, without having to look at us to know we were there, which was a bit unsettling for me, since he'd given no previous reaction to our presence. “It is a pleasure to see you.” Still to look at us, he went about extinguishing all the candles. “I am glad you wish to learn about our religion, Nara and Tata.” Finally, he looked at us. “And I am most impressed with you, Ruen, for introducing your friends to our beliefs.” He was laying it on a little too thick for my liking.

Two temple members arrived with his robes in hand and helped him don them. Again, I felt uncomfortable in the priest's presence as he dressed, but neither Eonus nor Ruen seemed put off by it so I perused the ornate walls as Chap was robed.

He and his assistants took us to a conference room in the bowels of the temple. It contained tables, stools, and a screen. The walls and floor were the same dull gray the Basali seemed to favor for their public buildings. In this case, perhaps for non-glare viewing.

I suspected we would soon be subjected to a video of some sort.

My assumptions were correct. To be fair, the video entertained me—I wasn't sure about Ruen and Tata. Ruen had probably been subjected to all this before, and Eonus was as uncommunicative as always after the film, about Basilian early history and the part it played in the development of all their different religious sects.

At the conclusion, the high priest asked, “Does anyone have any questions?”

“I'm sure you'll have lots more to show and tell us tomorrow,” I said, “and in future days, since we'll be here every day. So I need to digest what you've just shown us. However, my burning question is why you neglected to tell the Arandi and Basilians they had a common Ancestor?”

The High Priest's face was normally expressionless but now his features seemed to turn to stone. “Young lady of Earth, that is not something you should be concerned about. I am sure humans have much in their past that is concealed for their best interests. Do not pursue this topic.”