Acorna’s Search

by Anne McCaffrey

  He had decided long ago that he was instinctively and incurably an empath, in other words, and there never had seemed to be anything he could do about it. Of all of them, only he had seen what the male subject had seen when he looked at them. He alone knew the reason for the man’s terror, and he alone did not believe the person strapped to the examining table was somehow a failure of science.

  So after a moment’s hesitation, he re-entered the chamber where the subject—Aari—lay breathing his heavily drugged sleep. The junior minister administered an antidote to the sedative, released the restraints, and waited.

  Aari struggled for breath against a great weight upon his chest, compressing his lungs. Confused and disoriented, he recalled meeting some people who seemed like friends, but turned out to be Khleevi. They strapped him down to torture him again. Dimly, he remembered hearing Khornya call him, trying to help. But now—he opened his eyes and after some initial blurriness, found himself staring into another pair of eyes which stared back curiously at him. Then something reached out and patted him on the cheek. It was soft but accompanied by a hint of sharpness.

  “RK?” Aari asked, though the cat sitting on his chest was not quite as large, nor brindled gray as his old friend from the Condor. Nevertheless, he reached to pet the animal—and realized his hands were free, as were his feet, chest, and head. “Who are you? What is this? Some sort of a cats’ underground movement to free prisoners?” he inquired. “Where were you when the Khleevi had me?”

  (Back here helping to create your race, and very glad of it I am too after seeing those nightmare creatures in your mind,) his furry companion’s thought answered. The cat’s fur was definitely not brindled, but it was not definitely anything else. It shifted from black to red to blondish, to spotted, striped from gray through deep brown, to pale gold, even as it changed from long to short.

  (You’re—one of them? The Hosts?)

  (I am one of them. I am Junior Cabinet Minister Grimaalkin.)

  (Thank you for freeing me. It was you, wasn’t it? I am Aari.)

  (I know who you are. I know you wish to leave before the others come back to vivisect you in the interests of making a kinder, gentler race to inhabit this planet. Come, let us go find the unicorn people and they will heal your wounds.)

  The cat jumped down and Aari sat up too suddenly, felt dizzy, and had to catch himself with the edge of the table before standing. At that point he realized he was naked. His shipsuit was neatly folded and stored under the table.

  (Vivisect?) Aari asked, wincing as he donned the suit. (Not really? Surely not!) After all, these were the kindly Hosts. He had heard them, vaguely in some unnoticed quarter of his mind, decry violence.

  (Oh, they wouldn’t mean to,) Grimaalkin assured him. (And they would ask the unicorns to heal you, of course, but what they would do to you wouldn’t make you happy. A couple of the unicorns already have come very close to not surviving the experiments. Good thing they have the healing power they have. On other planets, I understand, races with other abilities have not always survived our wish to improve their stock by blending it with our own.)

  Aari braced himself on the table and stood, more firmly this time. (I have to get back to my own time. And my friends, as well. Can you help us?)

  (Certainly. Any idiot can run the time transport.) The cat bounded from the chamber. When Aari did the same, a young man with long ginger hair, overlong eyebrows, and a sparse mustache that was longer than his face stood in front of the wall. He was wearing only a white coat, such as all of the scientists had worn, and his bare legs and feet—heavily covered with curling red hairs—looked incongruous with the coat. But his thoughts came to Aari in Grimaalkin’s voice.

  (When is your true time?) he asked.

  (Not so fast,) Aari answered, and was taken aback when Grimaalkin chuckled.

  (I meant in years, not in speed,) the cat/man said.

  (So did I. I was using a figure of speech I learned from a friend. It means, in this instance, please don’t rush me, for you are moving more quickly than I am prepared to do. I was not alone. My little sister and two companions came here with me. They are in the lake. I need to collect them before we leave this place—or, rather, this time.)

  (That presents no problem. The lake is a very good place to begin a time transport. I don’t care much for it when I’m in cat mode but I like a good swim otherwise. Since the unicorns have been here to keep it clean, the sea is a good place to be, if you can stay clear of the sea unicorns.)

  (I believe my friends are with the sea unicorns,) Aari replied.

  (Then you are wrong. I am not too fast. We haven’t a moment to lose. It may be too late already. Quickly now, tell me when you are from so I may set the transport. Then as soon as we find your littermate and friends, we can activate from the lake. Hurry!)

  Aari gave him a year, but that meant nothing. Finally, at Grimaalkin’s urging, he described the area and era from which he and his friends had been transported. Grimaalkin, working furiously, changed the shape of the map to look like post-Khleevi Vhiliinyar.

  Then the junior cabinet minister turned to Aari and said, (Now. Follow me!) Before Aari could blink, Grimaalkin blurred back into a cat and raced for the inclinator to the ground floor.

  (Wait! It’s all very well for you. You belong here. But someone will see me.)

  (Not tonight! Feast night! They’ll all be there, or at least be too busy with their own changing to notice you. Come on!)

  Aari ran after the cat as fast as he could, down the hill toward the docks and the sea once more. In the middle of the sea, he saw the island his friends had been heading for. He saw the boat, too, floating upside down in the water. He took a deep breath to steady himself—surely his friends were fine. They had to be fine.

  (I hope we’re not too late,) Grimaalkin answered Aari’s alarm with more urgency of his own. (If you think my fellow cabinet members are bad, you should see their offspring by the unicorns!)

  In one fluid motion the little ginger cat grew longer, paler, broader, and bumpier, and with a flash of white buttocks dove into the water. Aari, shipsuit and all, dove in after him, and both began swimming toward the upended boat.

  Then, suddenly, he was swamped by an upsurge of water that left him gasping and floundering.

  He felt a touch and opened his eyes. Acorna swam to him—and through him—and when he surfaced, she was gone.

  He was in a dark wet place which shook constantly, as if with horror.

  (Is this your time?) Grimaalkin asked. (No wonder you were so scared!)

  Acorna plunged beneath the surface of the lake and felt it—somehow—deepen beneath her. She opened her eyes and saw the filthy sea giving way to a younger, cleaner wash of water below. She turned to head back for the surface, her eyes open, and saw what she thought were jellyfish swimming above her, transparent, indistinct, ghostly. She was heading straight for one and she swerved to avoid it. It had been further off than she thought, however, for as she neared collision with it, she saw it was a man—her man. She cried out, swallowed water, reached to embrace him…and lost him.

  And then she was on the surface of a busy harbor. Where the column of stinking debris had been was a lovely little island. Fish swam around her and farther away ships sailed busily back and forth. A few yards from her, on shore, was the living version of the dead city from which she had just come.

  And Aari? She dove several more times, calling him, calling Maati, but there was no trace of him, nor the other figure, his companion. Had it been Maati? Were they dead? Had she seen their ghosts? Phantoms? Shivering with more than the cold of the water, she swam ashore, wiping herself and squeezing the water from her hair and clothing as best she could.

  Then she climbed the hill to the building she had left just moments ago, yet many, many years in the future.

  She had no idea what she would find here, except that she had a hard time imagining it could be as fearsome as all of the things she had gone through already in her l
ifetime—not as terrible as the Khleevi, or as wily as Baron Manjari, his crazy daughter Kisla, and her guardian Count Edacki Ganoosh, or even as formidable as General Ikwaskwan.

  Aari had sounded terrified to her, but she was not reading any terror in the air now, as she walked toward the city. According to legend and history, this time on Vhiliinyar should have as sentient beings only the Hosts, the Ancestors, and the earliest beginnings of her own race. The history of Vhiliinyar according to Grandam had been remarkably placid for the most part. No wars, perhaps a few natural disasters, but nothing as deadly as the events and creatures Acorna had encountered in her own time.

  If something back here had harmed her love, if it was intent on harming Maati, Yiitir, and Maarni, then it would find her ready and willing to take it on. Theirs had been a peaceful mission, to rebuild what had been destroyed through no fault of their own. Her people had endured about all of the hardship anyone could stand and she didn’t intend that they should be subjected to more. And she was perfectly willing to explain that point of view to anyone who disagreed, regardless of what race they came from.

  She was in such a state by the time she stormed into the building with the time device that she felt ready for anything…except for what she got, which was a silent, deserted building with no one to challenge and no one challenging her.

  The changes in the rest of the city meant nothing to her at the moment. Her sense of ire was so aroused that her sense of wonder failed to register all the vehicles whizzing by and the beautiful music playing in the streets.

  She rode down the inclinator from the ground floor to the floor containing the time device in her own time.

  This area was eerily as she had left it—lit up and unoccupied. Not quite as silent. From somewhere she heard a pounding, as of construction or machinery starting up.

  And there was one other change too. A door she had never noticed before made an opening in the wall of shifting glyphs. She peered through it into some sort of medical or laboratory facility. A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with her wet condition.

  The metal table in the middle of the room beckoned to her from a memory that was not hers. She walked to it. A few curly silver hairs lay upon it, a drop of blood. Kneeling so that she was level with the table, she sniffed deeply. Aari. This was where he had been when he called. The hairs were his hairs. The blood was his as well.

  But where was he?

  What had happened to him?

  Was he hurt somewhere, needing her touch to heal him? She reached out to him mentally—and heard nothing.

  She searched the room, the walls, and then started on the adjacent room. In the back of her mind was Aari as she had seen him in the water, wondering what he was doing there. She passed the time map and saw that it surprisingly reflected Kubiilikaan as it had been before her dive into its shrunken sea. Deserted, subterranean, befouled, and damaged. She grinned suddenly. Aari had escaped back to their own time! They had passed each other time traveling, using the seawater as a conduit. He would be waiting for her when she returned! She should have trusted that he would find a way back to her! There had never been any need for her to travel at all.

  But what about the others?

  The map was no help—it seemed to be locked in its current incarnation.

  She was ready to pay attention to the thumping now, and she returned to the corridor, heading as if pulled toward it to the entrance to the Ancestors’ caverns. The stone floor shook as if a major earthquake rocked the building’s foundations.

  Acorna saw the release for the passageway door recessed in one of the flagstones and pressed it. As the door raised, hooves flashed past her nose.

  She backed away, then peered downward.

  “Ha! Got it!” An Ancestor had backed up on the top step and attacked the closed door with all the strength of its hooves and hindquarters.

  “Hello?” Acorna said.

  “It’s another one, Gladiis!” the Ancestor exclaimed. “What in creation does she want, do you suppose?”

  “Khornya!”

  The Ancestor was all but knocked aside by Maati as she leaped from the top step straight into Acorna’s arms, knocking her over backwards.

  “Oh, Khornya, you came! You came! I should have known! I heard the most awful cry from Aari and—where is he? Is he okay?”

  “I think so, yes,” Acorna said, smoothing Maati’s hair and hugging her tightly. “It looks as if someone hurt him, but not badly. Somehow he got away before I could rescue him. Inconsiderate of him, don’t you think? So I’ll have to rescue you instead, I suppose. Are Maarni and Yiitir with you?”

  “Yes, uh huh. They’re here. They’re fine. But before you rescue us, first, come on, you have to meet Grandmother Gladiis and Grandfather Humiir and the others, and Upp and the frii and their family.”

  Leaving the door open, Acorna allowed herself to be led below and found herself surrounded by Ancestors. Maati introduced her to the ones she had named. All the while Maati was pulling her by the hand deeper inside the cavern. Here Acorna could smell and hear the sea echoing against the walls. She also made out the faces of Maarni and Yiitir. They looked well, happy even. Acorna breathed a sigh of relief.

  Maati started to drag Acorna past them to the water. “Upp? Frii? Sii-Linyaari? I have someone I want you to meet!”

  “Maati, they’re not here,” Yiitir told her.

  “Not here? Where are they? Did they go back to sea?”

  “I don’t think so,” Maarni said. “One moment they were swimming below the landing, the next they were gone. They’re very quick, you know, and it’s dark here so I could be mistaken, but it seemed very sudden—even for them. The frii was doing one of his leaps from the water and it looked to me as though he vanished in midair.”

  “Oh, no!” Acorna said. Now she understood what had happened with Aari also. He hadn’t been trying to time travel when she met him in the water. Her own journey had precipitated his—probably before he was ready. He must have been looking for Maati and the others—and the sii-Linyaari, also in the water, had time-traveled, too.

  Maati caught her thought and laughed. “Aari is going to be unhappy with Khornya! She tried to rescue him and messed up his precious space-time continuum!”

  “Oh, Maati,” Acorna said. “I fear you may be right!”

  Twenty-three

  Halfway through the tunnel to the surface, Mac said diffidently, “Captain, with all due respect, I detect a flaw in your logic in this situation.” “Now that is totally inconceivable,” Becker told him. “You must be malfunctioning. What flaw?”

  “You have a com unit. Why would you fly all the way back to MOO, when they could fly what you need here in half the time, even considering your shortcut?”

  “Because—” Becker stopped. “Because…they wouldn’t know where to get what we need.”

  “Some of the finest engineers in the universe are in Mr. Harakamian’s employ, Captain. They are reputed to be very competent.”

  “Yeah, but the Linyaari only want me here. Not them.”

  “That is not the case if one is speaking of Linyaari engineers. Of which there are many on the MOO.”

  “Yeah, but in case you haven’t noticed, the Linyaari have a funny habit of disappearing from this place.”

  “Then perhaps we should attempt to stabilize the time diffusion in the landing area and nearby surroundings.”

  “For which we need the equipment they’d be bringing,” Becker said, one word at a time to emphasize that this time it was Mac whose logic was flawed.

  “Captain,” Mac said. “I may shut down from pure shock. Do you mean to tell me you no longer have aboard the Condor a half a dozen pumps of various sizes, hoses, and the other items necessary to make an irrigation system, albeit one of limited size?”

  Becker stopped and scratched his mustache. “You got a point, Mac. I congratulate myself on upgrading your memory. I’ll go ahead to the ship and start digging the stuff out. Meanwhile, if you re
turn for Acorna and Thariinye now, we’ll have more people to haul stuff back there. As soon as we have this first area built and get it tested, then we can have the other Linyaari come down from the sky and help us with the work while we’re waiting for the supplies from MOO.”

  “Other Linyaari, Captain?”

  “Yeah, see, they sent a couple of shuttles here but one of them disappeared, so the other one, which was supposed to help me, dropped off the equipment they brought and returned to the mother ship.”

  “Should I not come along and ensure that you do not disappear, Captain?”

  “I’ll walk back in my own tracks, son. It’s an old Becker trick taught to me by my pappy who was taught it by his’n.”

  “I do not entirely understand you, sir.”

  “Good. Good. I’d worry more if you did. Now off you go. RK, you with me or with him?”

  The cat looked from one to the other. There was no real choice to make. Becker was flesh and blood and winced and complained when RK dug his claws in. Mac was not. RK followed Becker. It was about time to re-mark his territory anyway.

  “Mr. Harakamian, there’s a relay from Vhiliinyar. Captain Becker wishes to speak to you personally.”

  Hafiz graciously indicated that the underling should activate the nearest com link. He was in his personal garden, surveying the progress of his Kardadistanian Rhodamians, whose bright red blossoms were being coaxed into bloom by his gardening staff.

  “Hafiz? Becker here,” a disembodied voice said from the direction of Hafiz’s favorite water feature, a four-tiered cascade plummeting from the exalted height of twelve feet from his artificial mountain. Only half of it was material. The other half was hologram and turned off when no one was in the garden. Frugality was a virtue (though one he practiced infrequently of late), even when turning an artificial moon into the showplace of the universe.