“I could give it to her?”
“Not directly, of course, not yet.”
“Then I’ll keep it,” she said. This, at least, would be hers and hers alone. But while she was being tested and questioned by these people she should have felt close to but didn’t, she had come to a decision.
Having taken her sample, the female who was introduced to her as her father’s mother smiled up at her. “Your information was correct, my dear,” she said. “You are indeed the daughter of my daughter and of Aari, and the identical twin of Khorii.” She rose and before Narhii knew how to respond, embraced her and touched horns with her. “Welcome, granddaughter. What an unexpected blossom you are in a meadow of what has been very bitter grass indeed of late.”
Once more Narhii was bombarded by images of illness and death and also those of a very confused and tumultuous family history, all of which was much too much to comprehend.
But when her parents were again connected to her by com screen, something finally happened that she understood, and that pleased her.
“Aari, Khornya,” her grandmother said to her parents by way of introduction. “This child is yours and the twin sister of your Khorii.”
Her mother smiled at her, showing teeth for a moment, then closing her mouth suddenly but Narhii knew without being told that where her mother had grown up, showing teeth was a sign of pleasure, happiness, and goodwill, even humor, and it moved her that her mother had been so glad to see her as to temporarily revert to her early conditioning. Her father simply said, “We knew that already.”
She wanted more than ever to embrace them both and feel the love they were trying to send to her from the screen. She touched her horn to the image of her father’s, but, of course, it was a cold touch.
He gulped, then steadied his voice, and said, “Daughter, your mother and I have been talking it over. We do not think the name the Friends gave you was a good personal name, though if you wish to continue being called by it, we would understand.”
“No,” she said. “No, I do not like it. Have you—are you going to—I mean, I would very much like to have a family name from you, like the one you gave Khorii, my sister.”
“How would you feel about being called Ariinye, then?”
“It is a beautiful name!” she said.
“A little long, perhaps,” her mother said. “Khorii’s full name is Khoriilya. You might shorten yours, for your family and other friends to call you more simply, to Ariin.”
“I like that even better!” she cried. A shortened name was so informal and yet, it seemed so personal, so affectionate. For the first time since she’d learned she could not be with her parents in person, Narhii—Ariin—was as happy as she had ever been.
Khorii and Mikaaye were each given a seat at a folding table at opposite ends of the rickety meeting hall, which was basically one long, empty room.
The people who came to the Linyaari for healing had mostly minor wounds and illnesses to cure. While Khorii and Mikaaye put their horns and powers to good use, Captain Bates, Hap, and Jaya searched the Mana’s cargo reserves for supplies the settlers needed, and specifically raided Khorii’s ’ponics garden for healing and useful herbs and plants, the Rushiman counterparts of which had been blighted in the wake of the plague. Sesseli assisted them as best a small girl could. The child’s telekinetic gift was difficult for her to use unless she was experiencing some profound emotion connected with the object to be moved.
A small seventy-year-old woman, her hair still black as a crow’s wing, limped to Khorii with the aid of a cane. “My sciatica,” she explained, gasping a little as she lowered herself onto the bench facing Khorii. “I haven’t been able to think, much less run the mill, for nigh unto a week.”
Khorii smiled, touched the sore place the woman indicated, and bent her head as if to examine it more closely. The Linyaari had hidden the power of their horns since her mother first made contact with them and discovered that some humans might seek to kill or enslave Linyaari for the benefit of the horns; but since the plague had killed and sickened so many and speed was of the essence, just now Khorii’s people practiced only token discretion at the most.
Elder Plimsoll tried to be discreet about his digestive problems, which he called “sour stomach” but which Khorii felt originated in the organ known among humans as a gallbladder. He looked much friendlier and more relaxed once she had healed the inflamed organ and unblocked the duct, dissolving a large and painful stone.
Two boys, one almost her age, the other perhaps six years old, supported and corrected the course of a confused-looking woman whose face looked lopsided and whose left arm hung limply while she dragged her left leg. “Miz Alison said Gran had a stroke. Can you fix her up, miss?”
She did and cleared the cloud that whitened one iris and pupil of a cataract while she was at it.
As her sight cleared, her face straightened, and strength and sensation returned to the paralyzed side of her body, the woman looked as if she would faint with relief. “Young lady, you are an angel. All your people are angels from above,” she said gratefully squeezing Khorii’s hands between her own, which were quite strong now. Khorii had learned long ago from Elviiz’s lectures in human folklore and theology what angels were and she knew she was not one; but it was true that, from the woman’s perspective, she did come from above.
“Mind you, it’s not that I’m opposed to meeting my maker when my time comes,” the woman continued, “but I wasn’t ready to go yet. Doctor Anne could have cured me easy if she’d lived, and Young Ali, even though she passed on, could have eased me with some of the herbs, but they all went in the blight. And someone has to look after these babies, even though it seems they spend too much time looking after us, they got no experience, and most haven’t had enough schooling to take care of themselves. I want to get my boys raised up a little before I learn to play the harp.”
Khorii found the last reference a bit baffling, but said, “My people understand the need to maintain your bodily systems perhaps longer than you would normally require in order that you may impart your experience and wisdom to your younglings.”
“Not that they’ll listen worth a plugged credit,” a voice said as the grateful trio, who Khorii had imagined were her last patients, departed. Mikaaye still had three or four people lined up and she was going to go assist him. Somehow she had missed the arrival of this elderly female and the small boy accompanying her.
Perhaps the elder had tired of waiting in Mikaaye’s line and, seeing Khorii idle, decided to take advantage of the opening. Khorii didn’t sense any of the usual problems she’d been treating. In fact, she didn’t sense anything at all.
The old lady, lowering herself to the bench with the help of the boy, said, “You’re going to have to do something about ’em, you know. They ain’t natural.”
“Who?” Khorii asked. “The younglings?”
“No. They’re all too natural. That’s why I wonder how much experience or wisdom they’re likely to pick up secondhand from any of these old fossils still hanging on. I mean the haants, of course, the new ones.”
“Haants?” Khorii stumbled over the word, which certainly had never been entered in her LAANYE.
The old woman leaned forward, and whispered so loudly it seemed to Khorii she might as well have spoken in a normal voice. “You know, ghosts, girl, spooks. Boo!” Khorii recoiled briefly, and the old woman cackled. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m talkin’ about spirits of the ones who died during the plague. Things that look like them are flittin’ around everyplace like fruit flies at a picnic but it’s only their looks that are like our dead”—she leaned forward and whispered again, stabbing a bony, wrinkled finger at Khorii for emphasis with each syllable—“only these ones got no spirit that’s any kin to the last occupants of the forms they’re takin’.”
“They don’t? How do you know?”
The woman didn’t answer the question but gave her a withering look and sat back with an indignant
expression on her face, as if she’d eaten something unpleasant. “It’s disrespectful is what it is. And I am here to tell you that however much that bunch may look like our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, they are up to no good.”
“They? The haants, you mean?”
“Who else would I mean?” The old lady rapped the edge of the table with a cane that Khorii hadn’t seen before. “Except, like I said, they ain’t natural ghosts.”
“I don’t know a great deal of human folklore,” Khorii said, “but my understanding is that ghosts are not natural in the first place. They’re—” She started to say supernatural, but the old woman glared at her, clearly offended.
“Not too long ago I’d have said unicorn people weren’t natural either, but here you are,” she said.
Yes, I am, Khorii thought. But are you?
The boy and the old lady exchanged grins.
“Well, of course I am,” the elder said aloud, as if Khorii had spoken, too, “in spirit, right, boy?”
Her grandson said, “Oh yes, folk always said my gran had more spirit than a still full of home brew. Dyin’ didn’t make a bit of difference in that with her, or me either.”
Khorii tried to be matter-of-fact, but these people gave her a strange feeling that was neither dread nor fear, but more a sense of vertigo. She could see them, she could hear their words, and they could hear her thoughts, but she could not feel anyone there in the same way she felt a living person’s presence. There was no matter to them, no substance. Though they were much more clear to her than any of the other specters had been thus far, they were communicating with her as if they were holos on a com, except that they didn’t need technology, evidently, to manifest themselves.
“That’s a good way to put it, honey,” the old woman said. “My boy here and me passed over fifteen years ago, but it’s close enough here on Rushima for us to come visit when we’ve a mind or there’s a need. Bodies come and go, but spirits seem to stick around for a long time after the mortal shell turns into fertilizer. Something about the atmosphere, or the proximity of the string beans here, I reckon.”
“String beans?” There were very tasty green vegetables by that name, but immediately Khorii knew she had misunderstood.
“That’s what some non physicsy as well as physically disinclined among my kind call it. They don’t believe in string theory, even though they’ve made the transition to the next strand themselves. They think we are in limbo or purgatory or some other place they heard about in one of their religions. I say call it whatever you will, it all amounts to the same thing. But what it amounts to is we have our own place but can come to visit, too. There’s quite a few of us hangin’ around, lots longer than me and my grandson, but mostly it’s only their family members and friends can see them, usually just before that person is about to join us.
“Me, I’ve always been more sociable than that, so the boy and me get out a good bit. But my point is, we have a respectable society of haants that call in around here from time to time, and this new riffraff pretending to be our kinfolk is an offense and a disgrace to us.”
“Because they’re, as you said, unnatural?” Khorii asked.
“Because they’re maniacs, that’s why! They don’t have the spirits of our families—they’re mean and destructive and don’t care about anybody.”
She lowered her voice. “I happen to know they were responsible for that fire at Bug Gulch and for the horse jack breaking under Marsden.”
“They can do that?” Jaya and the others had told her that the ghosts on the Mana moved things, but she naturally assumed it was just mischief. If Jaya’s parents and other crew members were lingering aboard, however belatedly after their deaths, why would they want to do anyone harm? But other, malevolent spirits—
“Sure as I’m pushin’ up daisies!” the old lady said with a snort. Khorii saw white hairs quiver on her chin when she did so. “But that’s just a saying. Truth is, I can’t move a thing. Most of us can’t, not here leastways. But these fake haants—”
“This is really interesting, but why are you telling me?” Khorii asked.
“Because you got the healin’ horn, girlie, and like it or not, that puts you in charge. Sooner or later, someone’s gonna suggest you heal the heathen haants and send them to their rest, and we just want you to know who you are dealin’ with. Me and my friends mind our own business, watch over our kinfolk, try to meet and greet them when it’s their time to join us. We thought when that plague started up that we’d have a mighty big job to do and prepared to welcome and comfort our kin. But our sons and daughters and their wives and husbands never did join us, though we were right here waiting for them. I don’t know what became of them, but I can tell you for sure that the haants that caused that fire may look familiar, but they are no kin of anyone I know.”
Khorii thought that explained a lot, but it also left even more to be explained. “So who do you think they are? Other than unnatural, that is?”
“I don’t know, but I can tell you that they are not human nor your kind neither and you can take that to the bank.”
The old woman rose and started hobbling off with the boy’s support, vanishing halfway across the room. Khorii rose and went to join Mikaaye, who was finishing up with his last patients, a man and a woman. As she approached, they rose, winked at her, and flicked from sight as if a holo had been switched off.
Mikaaye had had another “string bean” visit him as well. “I thought the old man standing beside me was a local doctor because he told me all about everybody I was seeing and who their families were and what had been wrong with everyone. I thought he wanted to coach me on the local customs. But when I told someone what he had advised, they said he’d been not practicing medicine for the last twenty years on account of being dead. This is a very unusual place, Khorii.”
Hap, who had come up behind them in time to catch the end of the exchange, said, “No kidding! Listen, just now I almost got trampled by a horse galloping down the main street of town. Lucky for me I grew up around critters. I headed her off and calmed her down. Elder Bawb came out and said she was one of that team that was transporting the patients from Bug Gulch. Looks like something happened to them. Bawb tried hailing their mobile, but nobody answered.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Khorii agreed.
“So Jaya and Captain Bates think we’d better take a couple of the shuttles out there. Cap’n Bates said Mikey should probably come with.”
“Mikey?” Khorii asked.
Mikaaye said, “It is my nickname. Hap says it is what my name is in Standard.” He sounded very pleased. Khorii thought it likely that, since the human universe had become so familiar with the Linyaari recently, human boys named Mikey might soon be called Mikaaye as well.
They joined their shipmates in the shuttles, Jaya piloting the large shuttle cargo, Captain Bates flying her own personal craft. Hap came, because of his size and knowledge of animals, and Sesseli, because her telekinesis might come in handy. Khorii and Mikaaye both started to board Jaya’s shuttle, but Captain Bates stopped them. “Khorii, I think since we don’t know what’s going on yet, or what the danger is, you should stay behind. That way there’ll be one healer in reserve to help the rest of us if need be.”
“I must be the one to go then,” Khorii said. “If there is more plague among the injured, I will know, as Mikaaye would not.”
“What does it matter if I can see the plague or not? I could cure it as well as you, Khorii, and I am larger and male,” Mikaaye said, then added, “and you are unique among our people in that you can see the plague. You cannot be replaced.”
“I’m sure your mother feels the same about you,” Khorii said, and prepared to board, but Jaya and Hap blocked her.
“Mikey’s right, Khorii,” Jaya said. Khorii thought angrily that Jaya was just agreeing with Mikaaye because Hap was, and they were boys. Jaya was inclined to defer to boys, especially if it wasn’t her they were disagreeing with. “You ar
e unique. The entire universe needs you.”
Captain Bates laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’re right in that you’re the senior Linyaari on this mission, Khorii, but that means Mikaaye needs a little experience soloing without another healer along. Also, if anything happens to the rest of us, you’re better prepared to function independently to do whatever needs doing than Mikaaye is.”
“Besides,” Sesseli said from Khorii’s elbow, “somebody has to keep Khiindi company. He’s been acting like a real fraidy cat since we landed.”
Chapter 18
As more and more of her new family returned from the plagued worlds, Ariin met her uncle, Lariinye, her father’s brother, as well as her grandparents on her mother’s side of the family. She visited her parents often by com unit and also got to know “Uncle Joh” Becker and his odd-looking first mate Maak, who seemed to have a screw stuck in the center of his forehead where a horn would be. She also caught glimpses of the father of most Petaybean cats, the bushytailed RK.
She learned about the ways and customs of her people, stopping to wonder now and then that she not only had people but they had customs of their own, an advanced society, and a role in the broader universe much more important, it seemed to her, than the one the Friends played. Her people did a lot of good without kidnapping poor innocent eggs from their mothers’ wombs. Even their scientific probing was done in a more kindly manner.
She was pleased to see that the Others had survived, unchanged, from her time as well, though people referred to them as the Ancestors. Her parents were quarantined in the midst of the grazing grounds preferred by these ancestors, who were apparently unaffected by the plague. Probably because it was gone, she thought.
Which made her all the more anxious to put her plan into action. She was able to do it more quickly and easily than she expected, and with less deception.
Second Wave Page 15