“What else?”
“I have seen lights inside Raealacaldae’s dwelling, and it makes noises.”
“What kind of noises?” Khorii asked.
“It sounds as if dry things are moving in there,” Nanahomea said after thinking it over. “Dry things are leaping from their moorings and diving onto dry ground. The noises they make sound as if they are breaking into parts. Small explosions have also been heard, and scrapings, clankings, noises that only Raealacaldae made when he lived on the land here. We seldom make them because we live in the sea, where all falling things are buoyed by water.”
“I will look inside the sand castle for you and see if I can determine what’s making the noises,” Khorii said.
She swam back to shore and stood on the beach. The flowers that had covered both the beach and the bodies of the dead were long gone, blown away by winds or rotted until they became part of the soil, as the bodies must have. Here and there Khorii saw holes in the sand, sinkholes, similar to the ones in the square in Corazon. Did they have a rainy season here, too? She would have to ask Nanahomea.
Seeing the door to the sand castle standing ajar, she thought that the wind had been blowing through the castle, sweeping through the former Federation administrator’s possessions as it had swept away the flowers.
Of course, that would not explain lights, but perhaps they were timed to come on automatically at certain times of the day or night, to coincide with the routines Raealacaldae had performed.
She had not entered the sand castle on her former trip. Her business was with the living, but if the material objects left behind by the dead were causing the ocean dwellers’ concern, she didn’t mind helping out.
“Hello?” she called, and immediately winced at her own rationality. There was no one here to answer, or even hear her greeting. She stepped inside and looked around. The little steepled windows made long blades of light on the floor, sparkling off shards of glass. The shadows were very deep, and she looked for the lighting controls. There were none.
She took another cautious step, toward the broken glass, treading carefully since, although her feet were hard enough to need no coverings, they could be pierced by sharp objects, and she had no wish to lame herself.
Outside she heard the purr of the surf as it pushed and pulled at the beach. She heard the cries of birds, too. She didn’t recall seeing any birds on her previous visit, but she had been much preoccupied. Though the plague killed animals and even plants, it probably spared these birds because most of its energies were spent in the sea. Perhaps the birds had sensed instinctively that they needed to avoid the areas where bodies were piled, though under most circumstances, from what she knew of many species of seabirds, they would have relished carrion.
She stooped and looked more closely at the broken object. A filament, a socket, and much broken glass. A lamp. One with its own individual power source and control, as colonists sometimes used in places where the trappings of larger settlements had yet to be installed. Whatever the nature of the mysterious lights that Nanahomea had seen, this lamp was not responsible. Looking up she saw the empty wall sconce where it had been stationed. How would the wind have knocked it down from there?
Her eyes more accustomed to the light, Khorii saw that the desk, the chair, and the narrow bed that were the other furnishings of the room were also in pieces. Pictures and documents lay atop the rubble, more glass, more twisted metal and broken frames.
What could have caused all this? No puddles of water among the wreckage suggested a wave. A determined animal could do some of it—or a herd of determined animals. But the only amphibious animal she’d encountered here had been a turtle, and turtles were not only unlikely to be excitable, they also were low to the ground when on land and would never have been able to reach some of the objects, even by crashing into lower ones.
She shrugged to herself and stood. And whirled around when she heard something, or thought she did. Had there been a noise from just beside her, or was it some weird echo of the sound she made when she stood?
There.
Again.
This time from overhead. She looked up, but the shadows were even deeper at the top of the castle’s towers, which rounded out the corners of the single room. The roof was flat. Perhaps it was coming from up there? There was no staircase, but peering into the tower enclosures more closely, she saw a ladder leaning against a far wall. She looked up and saw a thin rectangular thread of light above the highest rung of the ladder. She took it to be a trapdoor to the roof.
The round rungs of the ladder were not easy for her hard Linyaari hooves to manage. Ship’s ladders had proper steps, narrow, of course, but flat enough that Linyaari were able to plant their feet on them. This ladder was more primitive. She propped it at an angle against the wall. She was small and light, but the ladder wobbled alarmingly.
Was that some sort of laughter or had her stomach gurgled? She really wished Elviiz were with her, or Neeva. Even Khiindi could have scampered up the ladder with his nimble paws, though she doubted he had the weight to open the trapdoor.
She tested her weight on the next rung and lifted herself, using her hands to bear most of her weight. As she took her foot off the lower rung, it rolled and slid loose, throwing her off-balance so that the other foot slipped from the ladder as well. For a moment she clung with her hands, then realized that was stupid. She wasn’t that far off the ground, and if she clung to the ladder, she’d pull it down on top of her. So she let go and hopped down. The ladder tried to follow her but she caught it in time and propped it up. Well, it was a flat roof. She’d go outside and see what she could see. She hadn’t heard any more noises that she was not generating herself because hers were so loud they would have drowned out anything softer.
She stepped out into the sunlight again and looked up at the roof, but the only sounds she heard were the wind and the sea, which were lost as the shuttle descended.
It set down on the beach, the roar of its landing drowning out the subtle sounds Khorii had been trying to trace.
Khiindi leaped from the hatch and landed protectively in front of her, growling up at the castle’s flat roof.
She laughed. “Good show, cat, but I know you only came here hoping that the LoiLoiKuan elders would be as generous with the fish as their children.”
Khiindi cast a wounded glance in her direction, then let out a long ferocious hiss at the roof and with an unusually long spring placed himself on the rooftop where he made a great show of hissing, snarling, stalking, pouncing, then chasing something off the far edge. He jumped back to the beach and gave chase as far as the water’s edge, then cast a reproachful look back at Khorii as if she should have prevented his imaginary quarry from escaping.
By that time, Elviiz was standing beside her. She was laughing so hard the tears were streaming, and she could scarcely draw breath.
“Oh, Khiindi Kaat, you were magnificent!” she said. “Whatever that was will think twice before returning while you’re around.”
Khiindi turned and stood up straight, head proud, chest puffed out, tail held like a standard with its fluffy hairs flagging in the wind, and pranced toward her, the conquering hero, or, if not conquering, at least undefeated.
And then, suddenly, her mind was full of frenzied thoughts, cascading over her so fast and so furiously that she couldn’t separate them. The LoiLoiKuans were desperately agitated about something—fear, pain, more fear…Khorii waded back into the water and swam out in search of the emotional hornets’ nest.
“What is it?” she called. “Nanahomea, what’s wrong?”
“Korikori, come quick, the monster attacked Mokilau.”
Chapter 8
Narhii is not going in that thing alone,” Hruffli said.
“Don’t be daft, old nag,” Neicaair told him. “You can’t use that machine.”
“I can be with her,” the old stallion said. “If we should land during the time of the monsters Grimalkin spoke of, I will defen
d her with hoof and horn, and she may escape while I fight them off.”
“You don’t know how to use it,” Morniika said.
“I think I do,” Narhii told her. “I’ve seen the Friends do it. I think I even know how to tell where to go. And Hruffli, if I chose a wrong time and we landed among monsters, I would never leave you to fight them. I appreciate your wanting to defend me, but you have family here and mine is there. I would not feel right if you come with me and then I’d never know if you safely returned to this time again.”
“Couldn’t be that much to it,” the old stallion grumbled. But he nosed her neck, and she felt his relief in his touch. He was brave, he was willing, but he did not truly wish to leave.
She knew all about the timer, however. There was no need to involve him or the others. It looked very easy when she saw the Friends use it, but she had never had reason to try until now because she had not known before that she had family. All she had to do was find them.
There was another problem, she realized, once she left the Others and returned to her little cell off the laboratory. They could read her thoughts, but she couldn’t read theirs. They would know what she was planning. Or would they?
They weren’t ever interested in what she wanted to think about, only in what they wanted her to think about. Otherwise, they were preoccupied with their own much more important concerns. She didn’t think she’d be able to hide the revelation the Others had given her, but unlike everyone else, she wasn’t concerned about the mating aspects of finding her people. She only wanted to be among others like her, to belong. Still, it would be best if she could make her move before the next interrogation.
If only she could read their minds, too! Then she’d know exactly how to time travel and where to find her people. Why was it she could understand the thought-talk of the Others and not that of the Friends? Why couldn’t the probing work two ways? It was so unfair!
Then, looking up at the ceiling, she saw something looking back. An eye. A viewer that had never been there before, in the one space that they had given her to be her own. She groaned. Why was she surprised? But inside her anger began to burn. The more they tried to see her, the more they erased her. And she did not want to be erased, especially when she felt for the first time that she might be somehow enlarged when others like her taught her more about what she was, why she was, other than an object of study for the curiosity of the Friends.
She leaped from her cot and charged to her closed door, which she could not lock from the inside. As she stormed into the empty laboratory, looking for someone to complain to, not that it would do any good, she was startled to hear voices.
Not hear with her ears, exactly, but hear in the way she heard the Friends. The voices were inside her head, muttering and murmuring, even counting sometimes. She walked through the lab to the outer chamber where the great skein of water and energy twisted upward through the ceiling. She had observed enough to know that this was the power generator of the time device, and that it pierced the entire building and spread outward to catch the rains and downward, thrusting out into all of the waterways of the world.
Why? she wondered, and received a distracted answer. “Because time and water flow, of course.” Four technicians tended the timer, calibrating, tabulating, charting, and making adjustments she didn’t understand.
The person who answered her seemed to think that her question came from one of his colleagues. “Interesting,” she thought, unconsciously mimicking the response she often received from Akasa or Odus.
That, too, was taken to be the comment of one of the time technicians.
When they did see her, they ignored her without thinking about it. She had been among them since she was a baby. Unaccustomed to children, for the Friends did not seem to have any, they assumed she was as stupid and harmless now as she had been as a baby. During her toddler period, when she was extremely exploratory, she had been penned in a special environment with playthings that taught her skills the Friends found it useful for her to have, though she had learned far more than that. She had learned quickly to watch and listen but not touch any of their devices or instruments without being invited. Someone told her once not to touch things, and that was all it required. She stopped exploring tactilely beyond her play environment, and soon she was released from it.
So the technicians paid her no heed, something much to her advantage.
She noted that on the wall where all time and events were laid out in a sparkling mural of coded light, there was one area devoid of light or movement. In fact, a large X had been painted over it. It looked broken and incongruous next to the rest of the sleek equipment.
“Pity,” the nearest technician muttered aloud, then turned his body very slightly to bounce his remarks off the technician beside him, if not to open an actual dialogue. “Too bad we can’t send someone in there to repair it, but the Khleevi monsters caused great damage. We cannot arrive after the damage is done using our apparatus because it is broken beyond that time and we can’t arrive before it’s broken or risk meeting the monsters ourselves. The only way to do it would be by using one of the personal timers the nobles wear, but they’d never entrust one to a lowly technician.”
Narhii wondered why that was.
“They wouldn’t be able to stand the inconvenience of not being able to flit about from now till then till once upon a time as they choose. We run this entire system and yet when the new model became available from the homeworld, were we given any, even to study in case it needed repairs?”
“Not on your life!” a fellow technician answered.
Narhii found all of this very interesting. These fellows seemed to resent the noble Friends almost as much as she did.
Technician number 2 continued. After all the years she’d spent among them, Narhii had no clear idea of which one was which or what any of their names might be, if they had mates or interests aside from maintaining the time mechanism. The nobles, the scientists, were very colorful, bursting into alternate forms frequently and dressing in vivid colors and sweeping robes when in humanoid form. The technicians could have been siblings, and although some bore female secondary sexual characteristics, all had short hair, wore uniforms, and were of similar size. She saw the time technicians most frequently, but sometimes around the city she would see others repairing or installing other devices.
One of the females spoke up, “It would have made sense, when Grimalkin fell and was stripped of his timer, to allow us to study it so that we might produce more, but no, into Milady Akasa’s jewel box it went, and there it has remained, neglected and useless.”
“How do you know she put it in her jewel box?” one of the others asked.
“One of my batch sibs services her suite,” the female answered.
Batch sib? Here was another mystery and where she least expected it, among the dull technicians. A sib would be a brother or sister but why “batch”? Why not simply family or group, or even litter, as some of the smaller animals produced?
Who was this Grimalkin and why was he stripped of his timer?
As if she had asked aloud, the female continued. “Shame about Grimalkin, really. I always liked him.”
“Females do!” one of the males said.
“No, not that way. But sometimes when he was in trouble, he would switch to his cat form and lie beside me while I worked or rested. I found it very soothing. And his antics were entertaining. He annoyed the other nobles even more than they sometimes annoy us.”
“Hush! That’s heresy. The nobles are not annoying. We are merely inadequate to understand the nuances of their needs at times.”
“Oh please! You lot from the last batch are insufferable now, believing everything they coded into you. You’ll learn as you age and are around your prototypes more. They are so arrogant I sometimes think they created us to hold any humility that may have been part of their original characters.”
“Nobles have no need for humility. They are infallible,” the new batch
lackey replied with a sincerity that the others, Narhii could tell, found pitiable.
“That’s what I liked best about Grimalkin. He was not infallible. And it was unfair, his disgrace. He brought back the mutant, even though he had to steal her egg from her mother, who had saved his life, you know, and was his friend, before the twin was born. But they were angry that he didn’t take both twins!”
“How do you know that?”
“My sib overheard Lady Akasa complaining about it. She laughed about how, since he was so devoted to that family and had left the other poor twin to grow up among them, the nobles had stripped him of his timer. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they froze him in his alter form, even regressing the form so that he was presented as a juvenile feline to grow up with the twin.”
Narhii ducked back into the laboratory, stunned by this information and needing time to digest it. Not only did she have people, she had a twin! And she had been stolen from a brave mother before she could be born.
She had to return to her people—had to. But the timer was useless beyond a certain point, and she gathered from the chronology of the technician’s thoughts that she had been born after the damage, in the distant future. If only she could lay hands on Grimalkin’s timer and learn how to use it, she would be able to return to her family, to her twin, and expose the disgraced noble, now her sister’s cat, for what he was.
“Mu, there you are!” Odus said. “It is time to continue yesterday’s session. But today we must probe a bit deeper.”
Chapter 9
No, Khorii!” Elviiz said, holding her back when she would have dived into the water. “You will not swim.” He dragged her back into the shuttle, Khiindi a jump ahead of them. “The wii-Balakiire has an amphibious mode. If there are monsters, the vessel will be much less vulnerable than you are.”
And though she seethed at her android brother’s assumption of command over her actions, she had to admit, as the wii-Balakiire sped into the sea and submerged, that he was correct.
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