Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

  “As far as I know, Lady Acorna’s people don’t hire out for such things though, Count. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there.”

  “Perhaps no one has made them the right offer?”

  “They’re,” the general spat, “pacifists. Wouldn’t even fight to save their own planet from these big bug things we destroyed to liberate Rushima. They’re plenty scared of them though.”

  “Hmmm—do these bug creatures have any allies, I wonder?”

  “I’m told the only use they have for allies is at meal times.”

  “And perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary to have an actual member of this alien race to which the girl belongs to work the wonders. If the power is all in the horn, all one would need is the horn.”

  “Yeah, but where would you get one of those?”

  Ganoosh smiled. “I’m a resourceful man. And I do appreciate our little chat, General. Think about what I’ve said. See if you can come up with a proposal, a bid, for a solution to these little problems. And I will continue to research this matter.”

  “I’ll do that, Count. But—uh—please, if you don’t mind, utilize the code we set up for the last job I did for you after this. Nadhari is rather softhearted and sentimental about her former alliances. I wouldn’t want to upset her—”

  “I understand perfectly, General. Good day, and er, victory and glory to your armies.”

  “The same to you, Count.”

  Hafiz Harakamian, eh? There was an interesting footnote or two on his dealings in Manjari’s files. For instance, there was the first wife, whose death Manjari had helped fake when the lady, unfulfilled by her marriage to her inattentive and unappreciative spouse, had wished to return to the spotlight she had only begun to occupy in the recreational sex industry that was one of the pillars of Manjari’s empire. That wife, as her beauty waned, had retired into a profitable position as Didi of a house of pleasure. She was a particular favorite of Manjari as she had also divulged a great deal of information about her former spouse and his enterprises, associates, and most helpfully, the layout and security system of his compound on Laboue.

  The poor girl had been languishing in prison with the other Didis at the behest of her former husband’s ward. Ganoosh clicked his tongue. How sad. How very sad. Fortunately, he, Count Edacki Ganoosh, would be able to effect a happy ending.

  He lay back on his couch, his hands steepled over his abdomen and his face wearing a smile of satisfaction. Family reunions were so touching. He must arrange for one between this poor, ill-rewarded servant and her bereaved husband, who, unfortunately for the lady, had recently remarried.

  The information she had provided Manjari over the years would prove useful in effecting the reunion as the proper surprise that made such occasions so memorable.

  And of course, she should have a wedding present. Ganoosh picked up the piece of horn and fondled it, imagining he could feel its much-vaunted healing and purifying energy coursing through his being. Couldn’t have that now, could he? Being purified was the last thing he wanted. Picking up a heavy crystal ornament, he smashed the horn to powder. There now. That was a start. He kept a bit for himself—the aphrodisiac powers might work as well powdered as whole, and were far easier to slip into some victim’s beverage that way. He himself, of course, needed no such stimulant. Bringing out the baser emotional and physical responses in others served him very well in that regard.

  With a bit of a chemical additive from one of his other business ventures and a bit of a lure of the sort Harakamian was well known to covet, this was the perfect bait. If anyone knew where the unicorn girl and her kin were going, or how to find the planet where all of those magical horns on the hoof lived, it would be Harakamian.

  With the right messenger, the right bait, and—ah, the properly dramatically delivered tale surrounding the gift—not too much, of course, just enough to lead the rival in the right direction—Harakamian was quite likely to be concerned enough for the welfare of his ward to wish to personally check on her welfare. And where Harakamian could go, so could Ganoosh. Or Kisla. Dear little Kisla, who soooo needed to be healed from the death of her beloved parents and who would not hesitate to murder each and every unicorn person while they slept.

  Nadhari Kando showered and dressed in fatigues prior to reviewing her troops. As the sonic waves cleansed her skin of sweat and sex she felt the need to be cleansed of something else as well. Edacki Ganoosh, hmm? Now, what would he be calling Ikky for?

  Ganoosh was not in the same league with the Piper—at least, not while Manjari had been alive—and the investigation into the child labor and sex industry businesses hadn’t turned up anything conclusive linking Ganoosh’s businesses to Manjari’s. But he was the appointed guardian of Manjari’s adopted daughter, twisted little piece that she was. He also controlled the few legitimate enterprises the council had allowed Kisla Manjari to retain for her maintenance, as they had been very meticulous about not punishing the child for the sins of her adopted parents.

  And now he was calling Ikky on private business. This didn’t sound good for the hopes she had had for the general. She shook her head at her own foolishness. He was a good-looking man, fit and steely like herself and well able for the games she enjoyed. Bedding down with him, to use the term loosely, was a bit like a good day in battle, kept the body honed and the wits sharp. But she had felt, as she twisted his arm to join the forces of Li and Harakamian in battling the Khleevi, that he had taken some pleasure in helping the comparatively defenseless settlers of Rushima. Of being a good guy for a change, or at least of working for the good guys—who were for once the highest bidders. It was that, more than the blackmail or his attractiveness, which had made their fling turn into more of an alliance.

  She’d known he was getting restless, though, and from the men she had heard some things she didn’t particularly like. She had been, in fact, thinking for the last couple of days of bailing out.

  She bloused her trousers in her boots and took the back way down to the quadrangle where her men would be waiting. The com suite was on the way. She thought it might be wise to leave a message with the kids on Maganos and maybe Harakamian’s security forces as well, asking them to check for new activity on Ganoosh’s part.

  But as she drew level with the door to the communications suite, she heard Ikky’s voice. One thing about being a CO. Your voice did tend to carry after all those years of barking orders.

  “What I want you to do,” Ikky was saying, “is go back into our banks. Find the signals we received from that Linyaari ship when we were all on Rushima, up against the bugs. Isolate their signal, analyze it, and send word to our allies to do the same thing, and so forth, until they find it again.”

  “And once they find it, sir?”

  “Jam it from going any further then track it to its source. Keep me posted and when we have contact, I’ll issue further orders.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Nadhari managed to be well down the long corridor before Ikky entered the hallway himself, but she felt his eyes between her shoulder blades and she knew he would know that she had heard. Normal people, maybe, wouldn’t jump to such conclusions. But she and Ikky were trained by the same people and they thought very much alike. He knew. She had to make an effort not to stiffen, waiting for him to call after her, or even shoot her, perhaps, though that was less likely. But what he did was reenter the com shed.

  When she finished reviewing her troops and returned to “write her letter home,” Sergeant Erikson told her the computers were down, even though she could see very clearly that they were up and running. He kept his hand near his side arm as he said it and she knew that this was the sergeant’s rather respectful way of telling her Ikky had made the com suite off limits to her.

  Seven

  The androids, KEN model numbers 637-640, stood at docking bay 498 staring at the Condor. It did not compute.

  “I have tried the proper codes,” said KEN637, “and the hatch will not open.”
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br />   “I have attempted a manual override of all known computer codes for opening hatches with the result that we now have access to every other ship, flitter, chopper, and pizza delivery fly-by on the planet, and still the hatch will not open,” said KEN638.

  “I have tried hammering on the hull with all of my nonorganic attachments,” said KEN639, “and still the hatch will not open.”

  “Perhaps a can opener would be of benefit,” suggested KEN640, the one with the wet and smoking shredded pant leg. Fortunately for the other KEN models, they did not have olfactory sensors as part of the standard equipment.

  “What is a can opener?” asked KEN637.

  “An antique device for accessing the hatch of food containers and opening them,” KEN640 said.

  “Where may we obtain one?” asked KEN639.

  KEN640 opened a panel in his forearm and his own array of nonorganic tools swung into view: a hacksaw, chisel, fingernail file, scissors, screwdriver, two different knife blades, and a rotary tool with several different burrs attached. And—a corkscrew. And finally, a flat piece of metal with a knobby bit and a cut-out crescent shape. “Here!” KEN640 announced.

  “Oh, is that what that is?” KEN637 said, opening his own arm. “I was wondering. I had noticed it in your assembly before and wondered what it was and why we earlier model numbers didn’t have one.”

  “I believe I was designed as a special commission. My original employer had some rather old-fashioned tastes.”

  KEN637 said, “Perhaps you should try it on the hatch then. From my observations, I would say that Jonas Becker, CEO of Becker Salvage and Recycling Enterprises, Limited, also has antiquated tastes.”

  KEN640 obligingly mounted the movable scaffolding that the androids had brought from the central facility of the loading docks. Modern vessels all had a fairly standard hatch location but the older ones were often made by a variety of manufacturers with a variety of specifications.

  KEN640 was still replacing his auxiliary components into his forearm while he mounted the scaffolding. Suddenly, his foot, which had developed a short and, consequently, an involuntary twitch from the attentions of RK, slipped off the top rung. He threw himself against the scaffolding to catch his fall and escape damage. The scaffolding banged hard against the hatch, which flew open, showering several tons of spare computer components, ancient nose cones, small flitters, and one long stretch of metal grating down onto the other KEN models, who had been standing directly beneath him, looking up to see what the ruckus was about.

  KEN640 lost his grip and made one last leap to try to regain purchase on something to stop his fall—and found it. His fingers closed on the edge of the hatch. He tightened his grip and swung himself aloft and into the hatch. As he slid away from the opening, the hatch closed behind him. He banged on it. Nothing. He pushed with all his might. It remained sealed shut.

  “Assistance!” He projected his vocalization so that it would carry to the units below. “Assistance is required. My sensors do not detect any accessible openings into the ship from here, and no means to operate the opening to the outside. Please assist me at once.”

  When time passed and he received no assistance, nor could further searches discover a mechanism to either allow him inside the ship or out of it entirely, he shut himself off to conserve power. Kisla Manjari did not appreciate it when her units wasted power.

  Just before his visual sensors shut down, however, they replayed a fleeting image he’d seen—of the debris from the hatch superimposed on the prone forms of the other KEN units, who presented during this flash an uncharacteristically two-dimensional appearance, as if they were mere splashes of plastiskin, machined parts, and various lubricants smashed onto the pavement beneath rather than their usual selves.

  Back at the nano-bug market, Becker was recounting his life story to Reamer and his family in an attempt to persuade Reamer that he was not the kind of guy to go bumping off idealistic young unicorn ladies to get at their horns. After all, he hadn’t even known what they were till he showed them to Reamer, had he?

  The redheaded rock hound was just starting to relax his suspicions again when the remote alarm went off. Since it sounded like the Klaxon horn on an old bicycle playing the first bar of “Dixie,” everyone heard it. RK growled.

  “That would be the skinny little princess and her heavy metal boys trying to board the Condor,” he told Reamer. “I hate it when people do that. Maybe I forgot to leave off the NO TRESPASSING sign. Or maybe she came before I got back to pick up the rest of her purchases.”

  “Kisla Manjari is nobody to mess with,” Reamer advised. “I’d stay away if I were you until she has what she wants, then go back and pick up the pieces of your vessel.”

  “Good advice, huh, RK?” Becker said, thinking it over. Then he said, “Naaah, a man’s vessel is his castle. Besides, she won’t be able to get in without this.” He tapped the remote, which was also the source of the alarm. “C’mon, RK.” The cat hopped up on Becker’s shoulder and the man began jogging back toward the flitcycle he had brought along for personal ground transport.

  “Wait a minute,” Reamer told him. “Manjari and her droids could trace your movements through the market to us. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find that particular woman anywhere near my bed or my kids insisting I answer a lot of questions about you when I don’t know anything to tell her.”

  “So better you should come along and find out all my secrets so you’ll have some juicy stuff to save your collective asses with, right?” Becker said. “Come on, then.”

  Reamer called to the woman in the Ogonquonian Ornamentation booth, “Watch the kids for me, okay, LaVoya?” and sprinted after Becker.

  Becker had purposely docked as far out in the boonies as the docking bay went because he didn’t like a bunch of officious inspectors messing with his vessel. The problem was, security wasn’t very good out here either. A lot of semiderelicts were warehoused in this part of the bay until they could be refurbished or junked, and it was very tricky trying to tell if the Condor was one of them or not. However, if anyone had been passing by, they’d have noted that the Condor was evidently crewed by untidy personnel, as a large pile of miscellaneous technogarbage was heaped on the pavement to one side of the ship.

  “Looks like the princess came by, okay,” Becker said, scratching his chin. “Guess she went back for more help. Whatever she wanted seems to have been too heavy for these guys.”

  “Are you kidding?” Reamer asked, most sincerely, because it was hard to tell with Becker sometimes. “She sent her goons to break into your ship! I bet she was after the horns—”

  “Shhh, not so loud,” Becker said with a finger to his lips. “Now that I know what they are, I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. In fact, I need to pull a disappearing act real quick now, before her highness returns with more goons. Look, tell you what—hang onto this.” He gave him a piece of the horn. “I swear to you I didn’t get it off of anybody alive and didn’t even see any bodies. RK and I found these things lying around on a trashed out planet. You decide what to do with it. I’m outta here.”

  He thumbed the remote, which played another tune Reamer didn’t recognize, and what appeared to be an exhaust chute for a Mytherian toxic waste transport extruded a broad platform that Becker and RK stepped onto.

  “Don’t you get beamed up?” Reamer asked, as Becker and RK ascended into the chute.

  “Nah, that stuff makes the cat nervous,” Becker said. “Say bye to the kids for us.”

  “You got it,” Reamer called back, waving. Becker had forgotten the flitcycle so Reamer climbed back on it and proceeded to put as much distance as possible between himself and the pile of junk with the squashed androids at the bottom.

  Reamer was thinking hard as he bombed through the back streets, trying not to make a clear path to the nano-market and his kids. Despite his customarily mellow attitude, education from the school of hard knocks had taught him a healthy amount of street-smart par
anoia. Damn the red hair anyway. Between that and his height, he sort of stood out, and anyone who had seen him riding with Becker was likely to identify him to Kisla Manjari. Neither he nor his kids would be safe now. Even if nobody had spotted him on the way to Becker’s ship, the nano-market was a hive of gossip and it wouldn’t lighten Kisla Manjari’s purse by much to find out that Becker had spent quite a bit of time at Reamer’s booth. The nice, anonymous life he had built for himself and the kids, not attracting attention, not violating laws but at the same time not possessing anything anyone else would want enough to hassle them for it, was now totally blown. Well, these things happened. It was time, maybe. The important thing was to get the kids to safety and also to let Baird, Giloglie, and Nadezda know about the horns.

  Reamer’s heart settled back down in his chest when he saw his children working the crowd as usual, sizing up prospects for the Ogonquonian Ornaments with the same expertise they used to determine who could be tempted by the rocks and minerals in their own booth.

  “Come on, Deeter, Turi, we have to pack up and get out.”

  “But, Daddy, we’ve paid in advance for our space for the season,” Turi, his little business manager, objected.

  “Baby, haven’t I told you there’s things more important in life than money? Now hop to it!”

  He was thinking fast about where they would go from here. The authorities were only nominally clean, even in these reform days. Kisla Manjari’s guardian, the count, was a man of vast influence and many of the security patrolmen were in his pocket. They were far more apt to frame Reamer on some charge and detain him at Kisla’s convenience than they were to be helpful. It was all fine when the Lady and her uncles and Delszaki Li had lived here but without their physical presence…

  Reamer suddenly remembered the little story Becker had told of going to the pleasure house and running into Khetala. Reamer had had a similar encounter with her himself, for similar reasons. But she was one of the Lady’s people, one of the children Acorna had saved from the mines. Khetala would know what to do about the horn. She could help him and the kids escape Kezdet, too. She would help them. She had to.