by Sylvia Waugh
Lydia shrank back into the cushions of the armchair, realizing that it was very important that the machine should be totally unaware of her presence.
OUT OF RANGE NOW. NO MORE WE CAN SEE HIM
‘Is he really safe? Will he be happy?’ said Steven. These questions were specifically to elicit an answer for Lydia.
JAVAYL IS SAFER THAN ON EARTH. HE WILL BE HAPPIER THAN HE EVER WAS IN HIS LONELY LIFE ON THAT PLANET
Steven unscrolled the screen and switched the protection module to its rest position. Now it was safe for him to speak to Lydia. He turned on the light to check the room before leaving.
‘I’ll try again later,’ he said feebly, knowing that later would be worse rather than better. Out of range now would be well and truly out of range later.
Lydia gave him a wan smile. There were so many things she knew without being told.
‘We could be given more information,’ said Steven, understanding her cynicism. ‘They might still want me to work for them.’
He opened the door and turned to switch off the light. He and Lydia together looked across at the Brick. What they saw told them all they would ever know.
On the shelf, where the Brick had been, was an ordinary builder’s brick, orange and porous, with not a button in sight.
Steven dashed over to it, searched behind it for the screen and its frame. There was nothing there.
‘LAMBERT BRICK CO.’ were the words embossed within the brick’s borders. Steven picked it up in his hands, turned it round and round, and was about to fling it to the floor when he remembered the sleepers in the room below. Lydia took it from him and put it back on the table.
‘You know now,’ said Steven. ‘You know all there is to know.’
‘I know,’ said Lydia. ‘I do know now. But that does not make it any less terrible.’
Steven grasped her arm in an attempt to comfort. ‘We won’t be alone,’ he said. ‘My people are not cruel and, though they lack the ability to return our son to us, there are other ways in which they will help.’
Lydia was puzzled. ‘We’ll see them?’ she said. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘We’ll not see them or know them, but they will do everything to protect us and to ease the pain. The Brick was a protection module. There are other protection modules. I know we will not be left entirely alone,’ said Steven.
They returned to the sitting room and, for some time, sat in silence.
‘I used to think it was my fault,’ said Lydia. The skin seemed stretched tight across her face and her lips were bloodless.
‘What was your fault?’ said Steven, not sure what this remark might mean.
‘I used to think it was from me that Jacob inherited his loneliness,’ she said. ‘You called me a waif-soul. I thought my son was just such another, and that the fault was mine.’
‘Life’s not as simple as that,’ said Steven. ‘That is an Earth way of looking at things – heredity, environment. They are valid up to a point, but every soul in the universe – and God alone knows how many or how scattered they might be – is an individual. We are not peas in a pod.’
Then Lydia thought of Jacob, her own very individual son, and for the first time since all this was sprung upon her she began to weep and weep as if she would never stop.
Steven put his arms around her and he too sobbed quietly.
Where was Ormingat protection from such sorrow?
There is an answer: sometimes the only thing left to do is to weep.
‘He’s not dead, you know,’ said Steven at last, in a voice hoarse with emotion. ‘And he will be happy. Just think that he has grown up a little faster. It is as if he had emigrated.’
True comfort came much, much later.
To Lydia was vouchsafed one brief, bright vision of Jacob’s arrival on a planet faraway. She lit just one candle on her son’s seventeenth birthday. She watched it burn, and in its flame she saw the joy of Ormingat.
* * *
The Faraway Planet
Javayl was suddenly aware of a change in the motion of the spaceship. In the past three years he had become accustomed to the quiet buzz of its engines, a buzz very near to silence but suggesting great speed. Now the buzz was more perceptible and there had been a sharp jolt in the ship’s movement.
‘What is it?’ he said, looking up at the Cube. ‘Is there a fault somewhere, Cam?’
He was now speaking in the voice and the language of Ormingat, though he was not yet aware of the change: others would have to explain it to him later.
We are arriving in Ormingat. The ship has slowed down. Everything is going as planned. Have no fear, Javayl ban.
The voice of the communicator still sounded tinny, but its speech was clear and correct. The language of Ormingat was easier to transmit. Translation was no longer needed.
Lie down and close your eyes. That is best.
Javayl did as he was told. The Earth-simulated side of the ship was the same as it had always been, but now it seemed alien, like something that might feature in a science museum. For more than a year now, Javayl had felt like a visitor there, just waiting to get to his real home.
The ship glided into the atmosphere of Ormingat.
Javayl felt it bounce lightly as if landing on an enormous feather pillow, though now the Earth simile would be lost on him. He was Ormingatrig to the core. When the motion stopped entirely, he opened his eyes and the room that had been his for three whole years had disappeared. What he saw, where he was, he instantly understood. This was Ormingat living space, indescribable on Earth, but full of comfort and beauty.
It is time to leave me now. Goodbye, Javayl ban.
The communicator sounded regretful, but that, of course, was impossible. Machines have no regrets.
Javayl lifted one hand in farewell to the Cube. ‘I shall not forget you, Cam. You have been a good friend to me.’
Then he went to what he knew to be the doorway. It opened outwards and downwards. The first surprise Javayl had was to see that the spaceship was no smaller outside than in. It was a full-sized spaceship resting on a circular pad that had clearly been prepared for its arrival.
Javayl stepped down the ramp and on to Ormingat. The door folded up into the side of the spaceship, locking the Cube inside. Now Javayl was alone on a strange planet.
Yet it did not feel strange, or look strange, or smell strange. All around him were features that made more sense to him than anything on Earth could ever do now.
‘Welcome,’ said a voice behind him, in the beautiful, musical tongue of Ormingat. No screeching now, just the right voice in the right place. To hear it gave Javayl a feeling of warmth as if the sound were embracing him, but he did not turn round to face the speaker.
He looked ahead of him and saw that he was on the shore of a silver lake, in whose rippling water were reflected two suns, one close and large and bright, one much further off and smaller.
He stepped down towards the lake and looked at his reflection. His appearance was totally different from that of Jacob on Earth. Yet he recognized himself immediately. That is myself. That is what I look like.
‘We have waited so long for you,’ said another voice behind him, too far away for its owner to be reflected in the water.
Javayl still did not look round. Instead he gazed across the wide lake to a distant shore, seeing much that cannot be expressed in human terms. The space above him seemed more closely related to infinity, and all around was the beauty that is truth. Everything there, above and beneath him, before and behind him, from the greatest to the least, seemed to say, This is myself . . . This is what I truly look like . . . Learn me and love me.
‘I am Tonitheen,’ said another voice, gently breaking in on his thoughts. ‘We can be friends. Friendship is as important here on Ormingat as it is on Earth.’
Still Javayl did not look round. He was aware of more and more movement, as if a whole company were gathering, but he was not ready for them yet. There was something important he still ne
eded to know. Not even Tonitheen’s offer of friendship could take this burden from him. Who was Tonitheen anyway? Javayl had lost his memory of most of the things that had made up his life on Earth. His Ormingat brain was filling with other, different information. The name Tonitheen was vaguely familiar, its connotation vaguely pleasant. That was all.
‘There is something I have to know,’ he said, addressing the sky and the shimmering lake, anything but the voices behind him.
‘Ask,’ said a different, older voice. It sounded womanly. On Ormingat clearly there were male and female as on Earth. ‘All you have to do is ask.’
‘Who am I?’ said Javayl in a voice no higher than a whisper. ‘Who truly knows me?’
‘I know you,’ said the woman, her voice ringing out like a bell. ‘I would know you anywhere. You are my grandson, son of my beloved Sterekanda. Come to me, Javayl ban.’
Then the young man who was Javayl turned round and saw a host of faces all smiling at him, all delighted to see him. We know you, we need you, and we love you . . .
In their midst Javayl recognized his grandmother, whom he was seeing for the first time, but that is not how it seemed to him. He ran to her side, instantly finding in her the family he had lost.
‘Welcome, Javayl ban,’ she said softly. ‘Welcome home.’
And all around them, the Ormingatriga joined in.
‘Welcome to Ormingat, Javayl berenishta.’
About the Author
SYLVIA WAUGH lives in Gateshead. She taught English at a local school for many years but has now given up teaching to devote her time to writing. She has three grown up children and two grandsons.
ALSO BY SYLVIA WAUGH
THE MENNYMS (winner of the Guardian Award)
MENNYMS IN THE WILDERNESS
MENNYMS UNDER SIEGE
MENNYMS ALONE
MENNYMS ALIVE
‘When Sylvia Waugh created the Mennyms, she lit a touchpaper of genuine original fantasy’ Guardian
The ORMINGAT trilogy:
SPACE RACE
EARTHBORN
WHO GOES HOME?
‘Waugh is an accomplished writer’ TES
‘Unputdownable’ The Times
WHO GOES HOME?
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19323 3
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © Sylvia Waugh, 2003
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 9780099433149 2004
The right of Sylvia Waugh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk
www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.