Nearing the planet, he saw what appeared to be a huge circle on the planet's dark, blue surface. It was as slightly different a shade of blue as the special place on the hill was a different shade of green... Slightly brighter, slightly... moving... Yes, it was moving, as if alive. It WAS alive! The circle was actually a huge group of people, standing in a vast indigo desert. He landed in the exact center, on a very soft, pillow-like pad.
The people were arranged in a long line that spiraled around him. Jimmy saw a small, blue man at the front of the line, and noticed that all of the others were blue also. They were about Jimmy's size, with long, thin arms and legs, and short, round bodies. Their heads were large and quite round, with not a trace of hair. Their eyes were very large, round and so dark blue, that they were almost black. Their noses were flat, with long bridges that rose nearly to the tops of their heads. They had small mouths with full lips. They looked intensely curious about their visitor.
Their clothing was a dull, blue-grey garment that looked like an oversized vest and hung loosely down to their knees. Many of the people wore a belt over their vest, with pouches on the belt. Some carried tools. The man at the head of the line took a step forward, saying "Va dan tande kuma se... Kuma se tande va." Jimmy didn't understand a word of what he'd said. The man continued. "Kuma se Elnara... Va se Hoo-monns... Va Jee-mee... Kuma Thoor." Jimmy was able to recognize two words: "Humans" and "Jimmy", but nothing else. "Could you say it again?" Jimmy asked. The man reached out and touched Jimmy's hand ever so gently and repeated: "Va dan tande kuma se." Immediately, Jimmy knew what the words meant: "Va" meant "You". "dan" meant "no". "tande" meant "understand". "kuma" meant "me" and "se" changed the word "kuma" to mean "us". The first sentence was plainly "You don't understand us." The rest meant "We understand you. We are Elnara. You all are humans. You are Jimmy. I am Thoor." Thoor then stepped past Jimmy and the next person, a woman stepped up and touched his hand and spoke to him in words he had never heard before, but he clearly understood the meaning. She said "When we don't touch, we..." Their hands parted briefly. "... dan tande kuma va se." Jimmy remembered that the last words meant "... not understand you us." He then understood that touch was a vital part of their way of learning. When they touched him, he could learn their language instantly.
Without touching, he only understood the words that he had already learned. Now that he knew this, he reached out to the people, as the line gradually stepped up to greet him. Each person taught him something about themselves, their world, their way of life, until he knew everyone as if he'd known them all of his life.
A long time later, the last person, whose name was Doorah, came up and asked Jimmy if there was anything else he wished to know. "I can't think of anything else, but I WOULD like to tell you about my world." Just as Jimmy started to speak, Doorah, put her hands on Jimmy's head and said "Just think, Jimmy. It's so much faster!" He began to think about where he came from... his home, his family, his pets, his friends. When he began to think about the hospital, she suddenly pulled back, with a horrified expression on her face.
"What happened, Doorah?... Are you OK?... What happened?!!" He realized that they were no longer touching and approached her to touch her hand. She recoiled, with a hurt look, as if he had hit her. Jimmy recalled that throughout all that he had learned about them, he had never heard about any sadness or anger among them. When she touched his thoughts, she was completely unprepared for his bad feelings. He realized that he mustn't let them touch his thoughts again... just his hands, so they could speak to each other. He wanted to say that he was sorry, but there was no word for sorry.
He wanted to touch her, so she could understand him. He shouted "VA DAN TANDE DOORAH!... Tunda kuma...Touch me." Doorah regained her composure and reluctantly reached out to touch his hand. "This place... this hospital... It's not a good place! You stopped being happy when you went there."
"Doorah, It is not a bad place. They make people healthy there. There ARE some people that aren't healthy, yet. They aren't happy yet. When they get healthy again, then they will be happy again."
"I didn't understand about that. I didn't understand... pain, sad, angry." With the words pain, sad and angry, she didn't really say them, but rather mirrored the feelings back to him, exactly like he had felt them in unhappier times in the hospital. Doorah continued, with a flurry of questions. "How do people get not healthy? How does not healthy make not happy? Why does Kumani let people not have happy and healthy? Is Kumani not happy with those people? Does someone else hold their happiness when they don't have it? Are there places where happiness is not there? Are there times when their happiness stops?" At this point, Jimmy interrupted her. He now understood that on this world, happiness was a constant, like gravity. Doorah was trying to understand something completely beyond her experience. As for the matters of illness and injury, there were neither in this world.
Jimmy tried to explain injury first. "If a person fell off of a high place, he would be hurt." He remembered the time he fell off a fence and banged his knees. Doorah looked surprised."Didn't Kumani catch you? Why didn't you slow down? Kumani always catches us and we slow down when we go down from high places."
Jimmy then tried to explain illness. "There are little things called germs that get inside people and make them sick." He said, remembering the cold he caught last winter.
"Why do you let them inside you if they make you sick and make your happiness stop? Why would anything want to do that? Why would Kumani let them do that? Why do you give them your happiness? Do they give you something when you give them your happiness?" Jimmy understood that there was no illness here either. It was impossible to explain one thing without raising a new bunch of questions.
"Doorah, please... One question at a time! I'll try to explain." He remembered other times when he got hurt. There was the time when he tripped over his toy truck in the dark and cut his toe. "When someone bangs into something he doesn't see, he can get hurt."
Doorah and Jimmy went on, in a nearly simultaneous mix of explanations and questions. "Kumani shows us things when we didn't see them before. Were those germs getting out? " She asked, referring to his bleeding toe.
"No, that was blood. We have blood inside us. When blood comes out, it means we're hurt."
"I think I understand more now, because while I touched your head and felt your thoughts, I think I was not happy. I felt happy again when I stopped feeling your thoughts. While I touch your hands and only feel your words, I am still happy, but I still do not understand about those not-happy things."
