And of course, there was the Answerer to tell them. Everyone had heard of the Answerer, built by a race not unlike themselves, now long departed.
"Will you ask him anything else?" Ilm asked Lek.
"I don't know," Lek said. "Perhaps I'll ask about the stars. There's really nothing else important." Since Lek and his brothers had lived since the dawn of time, they didn't consider death. And since their numbers were always the same, they didn't consider the question of life.
But purple? And the mound?
"I go!" Lek shouted, in the vernacular of decision-to-fact.
"Good fortune!" his brothers shouted back, in the jargon of greatest-friendship.
Lek strode off, leaping from star to star.
Alone on his little planet, Answerer sat, waiting for the Questioners. Occasionally he mumbled the answers to himself. This was his privilege. He Knew.
But he waited, and the time was neither too long nor too short, for any of the creatures of space to come and ask.