Acorna’s Search

by Anne McCaffrey

  “With the sensors, you could probably be traced, if you went missing.”

  “Yes, that is the hope. But, until we test that theory, we have no certainty, do we?” she said. “Just find a bit more patience in your heart, Captain. The information I seek here could be very valuable.”

  “Very well,” he said. “You must forgive me, Khornya. Aarlii, who disappeared with three others from the Siiaaryi Maartri, is my firstborn.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Yaniriin. I share your grief. Perhaps you don’t know, but my lifemate and his kin-sister, his parents, my mother-sister, and my former crewmates from the Balakiire are also among the missing. Be assured that I will do everything I can to find them all as quickly as possible.”

  The conversation, overheard by at least fifty people of three different races and spanning the vastness of space, seemed oddly intimate, down here in dark where she, Mac, and Thariinye moved slowly between the narrow, rough-hewn walls of the newly opened passage.

  “Here!” Mac said suddenly, pointing to a spot just within the pool of light cast by Acorna’s headlamp. “The cave entrance is here!”

  “We have found what we were seeking, Yaniriin,” she said. “I will now explore it.”

  “Continue communication, please,” he said. “I want a full report, and—”

  As she stepped out of the rough passage and into the wide opening that had been the cave’s mouth, her com unit failed. The indicator light on her shipsuit went dull and lifeless, and her receiver was silent despite repeated attempts to hail the surveillance ship.

  “Thariinye, please tell Yaniriin I have had an equipment malfunction,” she said, but Thariinye did not appear to hear her until he had joined her and Mac in the cave’s entrance.

  “That’s funny,” he said. “My com unit is dead.”

  “How odd.” Acorna decided a small test was in order. Signaling Thariinye to stay put, she stepped out of the cave once more. Her com link activated with the words, “—silence. We’ve lost—”

  “Yaniriin, this is Khornya. This cave has some sort of barrier to our com units. I am not sure how or why. Perhaps the mechanism causing this is part of the answer we seek—the reason why our friends and family are missing. Therefore, I feel it is essential to continue exploring, despite the communication difficulties. We will not be able to maintain contact with you while we are here. However, one of our party will remain outside the cave entrance as long as possible to maintain visual contact with the others, and transmit our report to you.”

  “That sounds very risky, Khornya. Perhaps you should return to your flitter and rethink your plan.”

  “Negative, Yaniriin. But we will take no longer than necessary in gathering the data we need. That’s the best I can promise. I am going to step back inside the cave now, but please expect contact to be resumed within sixty seconds by myself or one of my compatriots.”

  “I read you, Khornya, but I still don’t care for—”

  His last word was cut off as Acorna stepped back inside the cave entrance.

  Ten

  During the journey to Vhiliinyar, Mac had been studying the few entries Acorna and Thariinye had been able to make in the LAANYE from the Ancestor’s records, and now he and Thariinye were eagerly checking these entries against the very faint and faded scratchings on the cave walls. The first glyphs they saw were much damaged by the rock that had fallen against them during the cave-ins, but as they retreated farther into the cave, the damage to the paintings was less.

  “We have a problem,” Acorna told her team members. “This chamber blocks our transmissions to the surveillance ship quite thoroughly. One of us needs to stay out in the tunnel, maintaining contact with the ship and visual contact with the team in the cave.”

  “That’s no problem,” Thariinye said, straightening up at once. “I’ll be glad to stay outside. I think I’ve given Maak enough clues that he can decipher these scribblings—excuse me, ancient glyphs—readily enough. You can assist him as well as I can now.”

  “That’s very gracious of you,” Acorna said, suppressing a smile. “If there’s any news about who that person found wandering near the base camp is, please duck in and tell us, will you?”

  “Oh, certainly,” he said, and with what seemed to Acorna to be a sigh of relief, he stepped outside the chamber and into the tunnel, where he stood facing them, his mouth moving as he spoke into the com unit.

  “Thank you, Khornya,” Mac said. “It will be easier to concentrate without needing to pay attention to Thariinye as he regales me with stories about various young females of his close personal acquaintance.”

  Acorna laughed for the first time in several days and squatted down beside Mac, her hand stroking RK’s back as he strolled back and forth between them. The cat’s fur bristled slightly at the nape, just to let whatever there was at large that might hurt them know that he was prepared. If necessary, he could puff himself up to three times his normal size. That should throw a good scare into anything unwise enough to accost himself or his companions.

  The work began to go very quickly, with Mac moving more swiftly than Acorna could along the walls, recording the drawings and translating the writings, until he was out of her sight. Soon she had to duck out for a moment to tell Thariinye she needed to move farther back in the cave to keep Mac in visual range. “I’ll be able to hear you if you pop your head in now and then and call for us,” she said. “We’ll call back. If we fail to respond, please signal the surveillance ship and relate the problem, then come and see what is wrong.”

  Thariinye looked up from the com unit, into which he had been alternately babbling and listening appreciatively, and waved her on. “Yes, oh, yes, Miliira, I remember her, Vriin. Saucy little—she’s your lifemate now, you say? Well—er—congratulations. I always liked that girl.”

  Acorna shook her head and returned to the cavern.

  “I assume this is all making sense to you now, Mac?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes, Khornya. The writings are not difficult to translate, being mainly pictorial, and in a base language that strongly resembles modern Linyaari, in which I am fluent, except that these early ancestors of yours were very poor spellers, and are inconsistent in their symbology for certain concepts. This makes these glyphs harder to understand than they would otherwise be. But I believe I now understand what these walls have to tell us.”

  “Is there anything you’ve read so far that you feel might be helpful in our current situation?” she asked.

  “Not so far. The communications are mostly about where the best pasture is to be found, and the various indispositions of your ancestral race and cures for them, dietary preferences, that sort of thing.”

  “Is there anything about the Ancestral Friends?” she asked. “Do you know enough now that you might be able to scan the remaining glyphs and see if you can pick up a mention of them, or of these caves, or of the shield we’re encountering—or of any sort of weapon?”

  “I will try that, Khornya,” Mac said, and began to scan the walls even more rapidly until he said, “Aha!” in a highly dramatic manner, his finger pointing in the air as he said so. “Here they are, mentioned several times. It says…”

  “You’re both out of visual contact,” Thariinye called out rather crossly. “Are you quite all right?”

  “Yes, Thariinye, we’re fine,” Acorna called. “But we’re going to be here for a bit. Check on us, say, every five minutes.”

  “Oh, very well,” he said, as if he had more pressing matters to attend to.

  Mac meanwhile was moving deeper and deeper into the cave. The cave wound much further back, but presently they came upon a carved staircase leading upward, as it had in the Ancestral Attendants’ library on narhii-Vhiliinyar. The glyphs spiraled up with the staircase so they followed them to the upper room.

  “It is odd. The mentions are more frequent as the entries appear to increase in age and crudity, Khornya,” he told her. “Here! This one. It says, ‘Here I set down the s
tories of the Ancients as told to me by my own four-legged ancestors, whom I serve. I have long wondered at the difference between our mother people, the four-footed and finned ones with the healing horns and rather primitive minds, and our father people, the technologically advanced and sophisticated ones who call themselves simply our Friends.

  “‘Across time and space they came to rescue us and…’”

  “Khornya? Mac?” Thariinye’s voice called from the cavern room beneath them.

  “We’re here, Thariinye,” Acorna answered.

  “Yaniriin wants us to return to the flitter and go to the base camp. The person they saw wandering around is Liriili.”

  “Oh.” Acorna sighed. She had so hoped it would be someone else. Anyone else, in fact. “We’ll be there as soon as we can, but I believe that, having put so much effort into it, we should finish here first,” Acorna said. “After all our hard work, I would like to hear what these walls have to say, even if it delays the pleasure of our reunion with Liriili.”

  RK looked up at her and meowed loudly. He, at least, liked the former viizaar.

  “But tell me what you know about her reappearance. I would like to know how she is. Where was she? What happened to her? Does she know where the others are being held?”

  Thariinye said, “I’ll get back to you on that, Khornya.”

  “You didn’t ask?” Acorna said, stunned.

  “Not yet,” Thariinye said. “But I will do so now.” Silence again.

  “Sometimes I worry about that boy.” Turning back to Mac, she said, “Go back, Mac. That first line, what was it?”

  He repeated it.

  “Across time and space,” she said. “I wonder…Of course, some time differences are inherent in space travel. It may mean nothing.”

  Thariinye’s voice cut through the silence around them. “Liriili says that what happened to her was that she got lost. She left the flitter for a moment to go look for food. But the laboratory structure was not where she remembered it being. When she turned back to the flitter, it was not there either. She wandered around the area of the base camp growing more and more confused, she thinks for many days. Then suddenly she was facing the laboratory structure again, only it was deserted. She says she saw no one else between the time she left the com unit and the time she was rescued. Yaniriin wants to know if we wish to speak to her before she is evacuated to the surveillance vessel. Personally, since she has so little to say about her time away, I have no wish to speak with her.”

  “Hmmm,” Acorna mused. “Her time away.”

  Mac looked up and saw her twisting a lock of her mane around her finger thoughtfully, chewing slightly on her lower lip with an abstracted look on her face.

  “Khornya? What shall I tell them?”

  “Tell them to ask her—oh, never mind. I think I should do this myself. I hate to break this off here, but I have some questions I think may shed some light on our predicament. Ask them to wait before evacuating her. I would like to ask her some specific questions there where she was lost and rescued.”

  “Do you think she was abducted by aliens and returned to the same place?” Thariinye asked.

  “Invisible aliens? The same ones who took the others? The ones that never showed up on our sensors? It seems Liriili never saw an alien. Surely they wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to grab her just to return her to us without even introducing themselves. I find the alien theory doubtful, Thariinye, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Mac said, “Khornya, do you wish me to remain and continue the translation?”

  She sighed. “No, Mac, I might need you. Besides, given all that has happened, I don’t like being out of touch with any member of my team for any reason. We will come back and finish this. The cave has been here since the first Linyaari waited on the first Ancestor. It survived all during our history and even made it through the Khleevi attack when almost nothing else did. I am sure the opening will be here when we can return and continue our investigations.”

  They rejoined Thariinye outside the main room’s entrance, checked in with the surveillance ship, and began the steep trek back up the tunnel. RK chose to ride around Thariinye’s neck as the tall male led the way back to the surface. Acorna made use of the time to be briefed by the ship’s captain, though he could tell her little more than Thariinye had already.

  “Liriili is complaining that she was deserted and left to starve for days and now you are keeping her from returning to civilization, Khornya,” Yaniriin said. “I have explained the situation to her, and the flitter crew have opened their minds to her, but she still seems to feel it is all a plot of some sort.”

  “It sounds as if she has suffered no ill effects from her ordeal then, Yaniriin, and is still very much herself,” Acorna said. The path they were following was very steep, and at times she had to use both hands as well as her feet to keep herself upright during the ascent. She was thankful for the distraction. Somehow, Liriili always managed to try her patience. Even rescuing the former viizaar ran true to form. “Tell Liriili that we are moving as quickly as we can. Quicker than is comfortable, even.”

  That was certainly true. In their haste, Thariinye kept kicking rocks back into her face, and as she drew level with him, RK’s tail tickled her nose. Mac was so close behind his “horn” prodded her in the back occasionally.

  It was very hot in the tunnel, and close.

  She spoke slowly, pausing for breath between her words, “We must regain the surface and then there is a little bit of a hike to the flitter. Then perhaps another two hours’ ride to the base camp? Try to get Liriili to complain more rather than less while she waits for me, Yaniriin. It should not be difficult. Perhaps she will remember something she endured that she has not yet mentioned that will give us clues to the whereabouts of the others.”

  “Very well,” Yaniriin said. She could hear the reluctance in his voice as he contemplated spending more time than he had to listening to Liriili.

  Acorna said, “Bear in mind, Captain, that once she is evacuated from the planet’s surface you will not be hearing her complaints vicariously, but on your own bridge, and she will be standing right next to you as she delivers them. Every moment we delay postpones that scenario.”

  “Oh—yes. I suppose there is that,” he said, sounding somewhat abashed.

  The team continued its upward journey until they were near the tunnel mouth when Yaniriin suddenly said, “Wait! There is something, someone, moving near your flitter. Let me zoom in for a closer look.”

  “Someone Linyaari?” Acorna asked, breathless because of more than the climb now. Could Aari or one of the others have come back, too? Perhaps whatever had taken the research teams was now releasing all of them. “Can you tell who it is?”

  “Not yet. Unlike yourselves, this being is not carpeted with an array of sensors. Let me look more closely. How odd…The being is not Linyaari. No horn. But it is very large—”

  “Two feet? Four feet? More?” Thariinye asked.

  “Hard to tell. Something seems to be draped over its lower portions, but I would guess four. It is very bulky. From what we can see, it could be an animal of what your human friends call the ursine species, Khornya, the sort that is heavily furred and may stand on two legs or four.”

  “A bear? On Vhiliinyar?” Mac shook his head, grazed Acorna’s shoulder and stepped a steep step backward, only just catching himself against the wall and preventing himself from falling. “Highly unlikely.”

  “Until we have sent the flitter to investigate it and determine its intent, perhaps you should stay in the cavern,” Yaniriin suggested.

  “I would like to see what it is,” Acorna said.

  “If it is harmful, you might regret that decision,” Yaniriin said. “Wait for the flitter to come get you after we have investigated.”

  “Becker said we should have brought weapons,” she murmured.

  “That would not have been permitted,” Yaniriin said most sever
ely. “It does not appear to be Khleevi, from what we can see, at least. But that does not mean it will not take a bite out of you.”

  In the time since Acorna had met the first emissaries of her people—her Aunt Neeva, Thariinye, and the other crew members of the Balakiire—even the most sheltered Linyaari had become more aware of the universe around them. Some of them even realized that the Khleevi were not the only hostile lifeforms they might have to contend with. When Neeva and her ship had first came to Kezdet, the Linyaari had believed beings were either Linyaari or Khleevi—good, like their own species, or horrible and alien like the invaders who had destroyed Vhiliinyar. Now Yaniriin was acknowledging that this being near the rescue team’s flitter could be an enemy, even if it was not Khleevi.

  “I am armed,” Mac told Acorna. “I did not deliberately bring weapons onto your world, but devices which can be used as weapons are a part of my physiology. I assure you we are well protected.”

  “Against some things, perhaps,” Yaniriin said, overhearing this. “But it would be better if we could determine what this being is, contain it, isolate it, and find out its intent before it meets three Linyaari on foot.”

  The com unit went silent for a moment and Acorna heard an odd noise from behind her. She looked back to see Mac wiping his eye, though it was perfectly dry.

  “Is something bothering your vision, Mac?” she asked.

  “I weep internally for joy, Khornya. Did you hear? The captain said three Linyaari. I am considered one of you now.”

  “Don’t expect Liriili to be so broad-minded,” Thariinye said. “I don’t suppose it would hurt anything if we just stepped outside the entrance, just a little, to cool off and get a breath of air while we wait for the flitter to inspect our new friend and then come and get us.”