"After that, the sector became a rather boring place again."
The girl with the short, straight black hair, who had started reading the first scroll, fell silent. She put her hand to her mouth and had a distant, thoughtful look in her eyes. The small room was now empty except for her and the old man in the dirty white frock.
"Jasha, I am truly impressed," the old man said. "When you said you wanted to continue, at the lesson's conclusion, I did not think you would manage to complete the entire tale. And other than a small number of corrections I made early on, your recitation was flawless." He stopped and saw that Jasha was nodding slowly, still with her gaze fixed somewhere faraway.
The old man chuckled once to himself, then said, "You have questions on the text. At this point it is likely you understand it better than I do, but since I have read it over a few times, why don't you ask them."
"You won't answer them," the girl said. "You'll only insist that I answer them. So I'm thinking about the answers before I ask the questions."
The old man chuckled again, then looked at the floor for a moment and smiled sadly. "I do think that soon you will be ready to leave for your studies. In any case, ask the obvious questions first." He paused only for a moment before adding, "And then...offer your explanation. I will then add my thoughts, for what they're worth."
"This seems to be some sort of historical story, taking place long before Condrian Unification, when our ancesters were enemies, and it even intimated that the advent of second generation high-C travel can be traced back to these events. Yet all but 'the Survivors' named in the first chapter die. How could the details of this story be captured?"
The old man nodded thoughtfully and motioned for her to continue.
"The light is the key. The white hole, whatever it may be, perhaps even an endratta k'hamiti or similar, was a consciousness observing everything. Therefore it would be the source. But that does not seem correct."
"First, you are wrong in calling it a 'historical story,'" the old man said. "Rather it is a specific form that was popular in its time. The closest translation would be to call it a 'four-part morality tale', though that is not entirely correct. There are four characters. Each is judged according to some unspecified standard. Though no records of contact with any endrattal exist from that time, and fewer than 100 contacts are known, it would fit the pattern, being a moral system beyond our ken. One character is clearly malign and met a rather simplistic, yet well-deserved end. Two others accomplish goals in their own minds, yet still fall. The remaining one dies yet continues to live, and there is little reason for us to believe that that was anything other than random chance."
As he spoke, the old man collected the scrolls and put them in his satchel.
"The bigger question is one which clearly has no answer," Jasha began. "What happened to The Reverend Lon? Since the source text offers no answers, I will hazard a guess based only on the undertone of what was presented. The endratta k'hamiti healed him, and positioned him at the exact point where the energy would flow out of other end of the small wormhole and allow his ship to leave the area. Even though he was a non-believer, everything he said was, in essence, true. He would go on to preach about the 'Stars' and the power they held."
"But you don't believe that," the old man said. "Why?" he demanded.
"Again, it does not ... feel right," she said.
"In this sort of tale, there are certain conventions," the old man offered. "One of them is the arbitrary nature of the judgements. There is no way to tell who shall live and who shell die.
Jasha cocked her hed quizzically. "But it was clear from the start."
"How so?" snorted the old man.
"He was the only one named as one of The Survivors," she said plainly.
A look of concentration washed over the old man's face and he muttered some phrases rapidly and quietly in Exoc to himself, then stopped suddenly. His eyes shown and he nodded, smiling. "I have read the text many times, and you have read it once. Amazing the details one misses that another sees."
After a moment, he continued. "Anyway, the bad don't always get punished, and aren't always that bad for that matter. Historical records from that time show that the Star Cult quickly faded into oblivion, losing members, influence, and relevance. Had someone who had talked to the equivalent of a Star been prosthelytizing properly, their membership numbers should have grown exponentially."
He gathered his satchel and walking stick and the two headed towards the door.
He continued. "I'll give you my take on it, for what it's worth. There's absolutely nothing in the text to bare this out. The Star, or whatever it was, perhaps even, as you say, an endrattal, shared a portion of its thoughts with Lon. While they may be fantastically powerful, they have no desire to be seen as deities and even less to be worshipped. Even though there have been few contacts with them, on that point they appear consistent and adamant. Lon said he wanted to go someplace simple and do something honest and right, though I believe he phrased it as simply 'less wrong' than what his life had been up until then."
"I like to believe that that was where they sent him or the course he entered. He landed on some small planet and decided to do some honest jobs. Having been healed in such a way, he was probably rejuvenated to some extent. I imagine he would have had many jobs, all trying to help people and make up for his previous life. Perhaps he tended the earth as a farmer, helped people who were suffering as a healer, maybe traveled the seas, trying to establish trade. Who knows what he had done, or how long he might have lived under the influence of the Star's power."
They walked out the door together in silence. Before they parted, for the last time, Jasha made one final statement that caused the old man to smile one last time at his best student, before their paths forever parted.
Quietly, Jasha said, "And perhaps...he even became a teacher, to help the children of the next generations...a teacher of ancient languages."