Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

  He and RK checked out the food booths. There was a meat chili advertised as the specialty of Ma’aowri 3. It smelled really good to him, but RK took one sniff and backed off. When Becker tried to get closer, RK gave him a look that was hard to fathom, but left him thinking that maybe the meat in the dish was a little too close to home for comfort—whether to him or RK he wasn’t sure. He passed up oddly shaped fruits, cheap fructose candy and waxy chocolate, various roast beasts, some fairly bizarre vegetation, and assorted other delicacies too alien to identify. He finally settled on a good old-fashioned gyro and a cup of caf, then returned to the stall he’d rented and began to unload his container into it.

  After Becker had displayed his wares as temptingly as possible, he sat in the throne-like command seat he’d taken from an otherwise totaled Percenezatorian battle wagon. RK lay on the collection bag from the last trip. It had become his bed of choice. He had been willing to part with only the smallest and most broken piece of that funny opal-looking mineral. Becker kept that piece in his pocket as a deal-sweetener. It was eye-catching enough that maybe somebody would decide that his wife couldn’t live without it.

  As far as sales went, the day was pretty slow going—the usual looky-loos, a couple of rich teenage boys looking for ways to jazz up their cheap transportation. Becker figured he would offload what he could here and then move along to Twi Osiam to do some major trading and restocking. About then, she came along, her entourage trailing behind her.

  She wasn’t really his type—too young, for one thing. She had a figure like a twelve-year-old boy who had been dead of starvation for a year or two. Her hair was long and curly in the back and short and spiky in the front. But she was fashionably and expensively dressed in the furs and skins of several now-extinct species. Amazing that clothes that cost so much could cover so little of what was, to his eye, fairly pointless to reveal.

  Her entourage consisted of four men a little older than she was, all of whom ranged restlessly behind her. “Stay,” she told them, in a tone Becker would have been a fool to try to use on RK. “Helloo,” she cooed to him. Well, he had been right. He’d returned to his natural drop-dead handsomeness and now women found him so irresistible he’d get tired of it. Except, oddly enough, for Khetala. Later.

  “Helloo, yourself,” he said. “What can I do for you, princess?” he asked, judging correctly which endearment she would prefer. RK, on the other hand, was clearly not about to try and flatter this customer. His back was up; his tail, in its fully recovered state, would have made an excellent bottlebrush, his eyes were slits, his ears were flat, and he was hissing like a tubful of vipers. Becker stepped in front of him, to block his cat’s view of this doubtlessly well-heeled customer as well as to block the customer’s view of him.

  “I was hoping you could advise me,” she said. “I was told you know just everything there is to know about slightly used equipment.”

  “Not everything, but more than most,” he agreed.

  “I’m starting a small business and it would be a big help if I had just a teensy little fleet of ships all to myself. I can get some very good bargain spacecraft, but they all need parts here and there and I was just wondering—hoping actually—that you would have a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  She snapped her fingers and one of the men appeared and recited by rote a string of instruments, equipment, systems, and parts. Becker suspected the man wasn’t actually a flesh and blood type, but an android. For one thing, he didn’t pause for breath during the whole fifteen minutes it took to recite the lady’s shopping list. For another thing, while he was talking, RK peed on his foot and shredded his lower leg and the guy didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah, I got all that,” Becker said at the end of the recitation, looking closer at the guy. Yep. Android. Its foot and lower leg were smoking slightly. Cheap model. Bad wiring job. “You want takeout or shall I deliver the stuff to the hangar of your choice? Part of it is still aboard the ship.” The lady would be cleaning him out, actually, a fact that made him a little nervous. He’d have to make enough money from this sale to cover his expenses while he collected more inventory. Luckily, he was already planning to go back to all of those desolate planets and pick up the bits and pieces he’d left behind. And while he was at it, he’d check out what had done the healing job on him and RK.

  “Oh,” the lady said in an arch voice, “how much?”

  Becker named his price. About a half dozen times more than the stuff was worth. She smiled and methodically cut it down to a pittance. He named a price more than four times what the merchandise should bring, and the bargaining began in earnest. The problem was, he was nearly selling out here. It would put him out of business until he collected more salvage. He wanted enough profit to float him and RK for a good long time, with enough left over to at least maybe take a little vacation, preferably somewhere there were still Didis or pleasure houses in operation.

  “Look, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but you’re a pretty lady and I can tell you have exquisite taste. You give me my original asking price and I’ll throw this in for free.” He reached into his pocket and drew forth the bit of spiral stone that RK had let him keep. “Give it to your jeweler, he can cut and shape it into a fabulous suite of jewelry for…”

  The woman’s eyes widened when she saw it, and she snatched it from his hand. She began to laugh. Not a pretty laugh either. “Where did you get this?”

  “Found it,” he said, with a shrug.

  “Found it?” She laughed again. “On whom? I mean, where?”

  “Now that would be telling,” he said. “Just be glad you’ve got it and nobody else does. A rare find, princess.” Part of him thought that if she liked it so much, he should show her the rest of the stones, but that would mean trying to get RK off the specimen bag. Frankly, he liked the cat a lot better than he liked this woman. He already deeply regretted letting her have this sample for nothing—well, nothing except making her pay a lot more than she’d wanted to for the items she needed.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said. “What a pity you can’t get more. I have an excellent market in mind.” She thrust her skinny chest toward him. “We might even go into partnership.”

  “Gee, just my bad luck. But you know how it is,” he said with a shrug. “Sometimes you just happen onto a good thing and you may never find it again.” He wouldn’t part with any more of the spiral stones until he knew what she knew about them that made her so interested in the one he let her have. The things were probably worth a lot more to someone else than what she was offering him.

  “Pity,” she said, her eyes as hard and narrowed as RK’s. For some reason she seemed to doubt his veracity. Good. That made them even.

  She handed him a big wad of credits. They were issued in the name of Lady Kisla Manjari. He counted and pocketed them.

  “Great. It’s a deal then.”

  “If you’ll step aside, I’ll have my crew reload your container and use it to transport my merchandise,” she said.

  “Fair enough. Come on, RK,” he said to the cat, and grabbed the specimen bag RK was sitting on. The cat spat at the woman again.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “I just bought everything here, including that mangy creature. I know a laboratory that would love to get such a specimen.”

  “Sorry, lady,” he said. “You bought everything on the list that your singed android friend there read. And the cat’s not on that list. I can’t sell him under any circumstances. Federation law prohibits it. RK here isn’t a creature. He’s my partner. A sentient being. The brains in the outfit really.”

  “I want it,” she said and beckoned to her men. RK left bloody skid marks on Becker’s arm as the cat leaped over him and raced off, to be lost among the stalls. Becker grabbed his arm and dropped the collection bag on his foot, but recovered quickly, fumbling to close the mouth of the bag before Kisla could see what he had. He didn’t dare look around too much,
so he didn’t see that one of the artifacts had slid out of the bag and rolled under an oxygen recycling unit.

  “Told you he was sentient,” Becker said, grinning up at her to make sure she was meeting his gaze and not looking too closely at anything else. “Sorry about that. I’d help you load your stuff but I have to find my partner now.”

  He nonchalantly tucked the collection bag into his belt and tried not to clank as he walked away.

  Three

  Acorna wanted a graze and a good long gallop more than she wanted anything else in this world at the moment, but before she could say so, her thought was taken up by all of the others.

  “A meal? What a good idea,” exclaimed a nearby dignitary, as if she had spoken her wish aloud. She had been introduced to this person onscreen but she couldn’t recall who he was exactly. Someone very important.

  “Yes, something to eat, and a good run. What a splendid idea!” Thariinye agreed, and others concurred with nods and other gestures of affirmation. The young male had also spoken aloud.

  Neither of them had apparently read the part of her thought in which the galloping and grazing was being done by herself, alone, with the wind blowing through her hair, down in that field below. She put the thought away as antisocial, something she didn’t wish to appear to be, especially now, when she really wanted to make a good impression on her native people.

  So she smiled and nodded and avoided being trampled while the assembled masses poured out of the spaceport and onto the broad plain separating the port from the town. The plain was lush with lovely grasses, foreign to her but tasting deliciously of lemon and pepper, with a hint of cinnamon.

  The people who had joined the Balakiire’s crew to celebrate their homecoming happily pulled up and munched the grasses, while wandering from one area to another chatting, laughing, and calling to each other. Acorna slid a sidelong glance at one of the nearby Linyaari. He was not white like her fellow space travelers, but a deep red color with a rich black mane. Others in the crowd were black, brown, golden with white hair, or gray with hair that was lightly dappled with a darker tint.

  Neeva smiled at her, catching her thought. “You didn’t know we came in colors?”

  Several grazers glanced at them in a startled sort of way, then looked politely away.

  “We should either speak aloud now or you must keep a tight focus upon me, my dear,” Neeva told Acorna. “You send quite well, you know, and will have half the planet privy to your inner thoughts if you’re not careful.”

  “Sorry. It’s going to take some getting used to, guarding my thoughts so that everyone can’t hear. I’m still not quite sure what, or even when, I’m transmitting.”

  “You’re very strong, dear, if somewhat new to this. You tend to—well, sometimes you shout a bit. Most people won’t deliberately intrude upon your thoughts, but you have to try to control your broadcasts. It’s not like it is on shipboard where we’re in sync with each other, thanks to long-term close association. People here on narhii-Vhiliinyar tend to use thought-speak mostly only among their own kinship groups or close friends. They tend to vocalize at events like this, both to maintain their own privacy, and to avoid intruding on the thoughts of others. Most would no more try to listen in on your private thoughts than they would try to eavesdrop upon your private audible comments.”

  “I’ll try to be more careful,” Acorna promised quietly, watching both white and multicolored Linyaari sitting cross-legged in the field or simply lying down, rolling over to get a new nibble when they’d worn out the old spot. No one seemed to mind about their clothing getting mussed. Acorna decided it was time for a change of subject. “No one mentioned to me that Linyaari came in varied colorations. I was a bit surprised, that’s all. You and the other Linyaari I’ve met until this moment are white like me, so I thought we all would have the same coloring.”

  Neeva made a wry face. “The color of our coat, or lack of it, among those of us who travel in space has until recently been a matter of pride to us. It shows our people who we are, and where we have been. The white coloration is known as becoming starclad, wearing the white and silver of the distant stars. A space traveler proudly sheds his or her color the way a child sheds his or her toys. We’re not sure why, but a Linyaari’s natural coat color bleaches to white during his or her first space voyage.”

  “It’s not genetic then, as coloring is among humans?” Acorna asked.

  “Not the white coloring, no.” She said, “Since the evacuation, when many people who would have preferred to retain their original pigmentation lost it, being star-clad has come to be considered, at least among some circles, as an abnormality that should be addressed. Our researchers are being asked to study it as a ‘condition.’ The last I heard, they had postulated that the change is caused by a combination of factors: the deprivation of natural light during a typical space voyage, which results in the destruction of certain photosensitive pigment-producing elements in our skin; and the lack of certain nutrients in our diet which are only found in plants native to Vhiliinyar, and which will not grow successfully in hydroponic gardens. We can store the plants in seed form for transport to suitable new environments, of course, but during the space voyage, we simply have to do without them, with the resulting effects on pigmentation. Between the two processes, Linyaari space-farers lose all coloration in their skin during the course of a typical space voyage.”

  Acorna looked down at her own arms and hands, trying to imagine them red or black or any of the other colors she saw around her. “Will I change colors now that I’ll be in the sun and eating the right nutrients, then?”

  Acorna imagined, in rapid succession, herself in each of the colors she saw on people around her, then herself with bright purple skin and a violet mane. Everyone nearby was clearly listening in, in spite of what Neeva said was polite. There was a scattering of laughter around her, and a few frowns. She deliberately broadcast an image of herself rainbow-colored. Conversations all over the meadow stopped and the laughter turned to embarrassed coughing. Even the frowns looked puzzled, and more people stared at her with politely quizzical expressions. Hmm.

  Neeva laughed. “You can see, Khornya, that you’ll need to learn to refine your range when you send thought-images. Some of our people have no sense of humor, and they will now think that you are not one of us at all, but some strange second-cousin to the Linyaari who started life as a—what is the little lizard from those vids? The one who changed colors?”

  “A chameleon,” Acorna said, blushing. “Can I send an apology?”

  “Perhaps it would be better to leave well enough alone for now,” Neeva replied, still amused. “Otherwise, they will see your blush and think you are trying to tell them you were originally pink. But in answer to your question, sister-daughter, once star-clad, always star-clad. The varicolored Linyaari you see here are younger than you are, born on narhii-Vhiliinyar since the evacuation.” She sighed and stood up. “You know, I haven’t spent a great deal of time on-planet since shortly after your parents disappeared, so perhaps the experts who see being star-clad as a disease are now close to finding a ‘solution.’ Perhaps I could return to being gray with spots if I wished. As it happens, I most emphatically do not wish to. I like what I am.”

  Acorna chewed thoughtfully on one last mouthful of the cinnamon-flavored grass. She caught several frankly annoyed stares and thought less strenuously. She was getting the distinct impression that it was rude to chew and broadcast at the same time. Oh dear, she hadn’t been here long at all and already she was afraid she’d get a reputation for unfortunate behavior. It was hard fitting in when she didn’t know the rules….

  She lowered her voice and moved closer to her aunt, and tried not to think too loudly. She was beginning to feel rather overwhelmed. For one thing, while no one was deliberately sending to her, under the vocalized chatter and laughter she was aware of a constant buzz of random thoughts. For another thing, even though her aunt had told her that the evacuation had happened
after her parents and she, as an infant, had left Vhiliinyar for their pleasure cruise, somehow she’d thought narhii-Vhiliinyar would more closely resemble the place she saw in her dreams—that wonderful land with rolling fields leading to snow-capped mountains, with crystal clear rivers and streams cascading into waterfalls and pooling into emerald lakes and ponds when they weren’t winding through green fields and wildflower-filled meadows. Nice, cuddly, furry animals drank from the waterways and birds darted everywhere.

  Here the hills rolled slightly, the mountains were conspicuously absent, and the plains stretched off to the far horizon. She saw only the Linyaari people; no other large life forms at all. It was a pretty enough place, but lacked the gorgeous scenery and amazing biodiversity of her dreams. Of course, she hadn’t seen the entire planet yet. It was unlikely the whole place was like this. Possibly there were many more interesting places on it.

  An older white Linyaari male joined Acorna and Neeva.

  “Visedhaanye Neeva,” he said, inclining his head.

  “Aagroni Iirtye, what an honor it is to see you again, sir.”

  “The honor is mine, Visedhaanye.”

  “Allow me to present my sister’s daughter, Khornya. Khornya, Aagroni Iirtye is one of the founders of narhii-Vhiliinyar. His team located this world. He headed the terraforming committee, determining what would be needed by our people to sustain life here, and he customized and implemented the programs and processes necessary to create a new habitat for us.”

  “An awesome responsibility, sir,” Acorna said.

  “I’m glad you realize that, young lady,” Iirtye said. “I could not help but overhear how disappointed you were at the lack of certain topographical and biological amenities we enjoyed on the old home world.”

  “Oh, dear. I am trying very hard to learn not to think so loudly, sir, but I can’t seem to find the volume control on my mind.” She smiled self-deprecatingly, hoping he would have a sense of humor.