Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

  It was these people who finally secured her release from prison and these people, also, who engineered her arrival at this same compound where once she had been mistress, who got her past the guards, and who supplied her with one other little thing.

  Hafiz delighted her by gaping at her as if she were indeed the ghost he supposed her to be.

  “Yasmin!” he gasped, as his well-fed and gorgeously robed form appeared from among the glittering beads of the curtained doorway.

  “Greetings, husband,” she said sweetly. “I was told you have recently remarried. I am assuming from this that you have recently embraced at least Reform Neo-Hadathian customs and have become polygamous, since we two are still legally twined in wedded bliss.” His face was turning the exact shade of scarlet she had hoped to see. She smiled sweetly. “No, no, my darling husband, do not imagine that I object. A senior wife can always use a young one to relieve her of some of her more distasteful duties. But I am surprised she is not here to greet me as well. Is this new girl perhaps indisposed? I had so hoped to meet her and see if she can live up to my standards—and of course, to instruct her in her duties to me, as your first wife and khadine.”

  Hafiz stared at Yasmin, with whom he had once briefly been so infatuated and whom he had long believed to be dead. He had never mourned her properly, it was true, for despite her beauty as a young woman, and her apparent ardor, she had not been a very good wife. She was vicious, vain, and somewhat stupid, so much so in fact that like many petty criminals her own emotional shortcomings even got in the way of fulfilling her greed at times. And Yasmin had been a very greedy woman.

  Unfortunately, it seemed she was also alive, because she did appear to be breathing even though she very much looked the part of a ghost. Her once-charming face had been resculpted, had had its wrinkles repeatedly removed by poison and knife blade so often that her skin looked as if it had been stretched over her skull bones like the skin of a goat on a drum. It was shiny, not from youthful moistness and freshness, but rather, it appeared, from some sort of pickling process that made it look thick and coarse. Little veins had broken in her cheeks.

  Her mouth was puffy with the injections she used to keep it from falling back into its former thinness—but back then, though thin, that mouth had been ready for bawdy laughter, and that was part of what had attracted him to her. Now it looked as if it pained her to speak. Her eyes had had the lids lifted and brows tattooed above them.

  Thick eyelashes had been implanted to augment her own. But none of this disguised the dull, stony glare of her eyes. Beneath black veils trimmed in a tasteless manner in black spangles, her hair was stiff with gilt metallic dye.

  “Yasmin, you are dead by law if not in fact, and even if you remain my wife, it is only in name, and that will not be for much longer, now that I know it is a problem. Had I realized that you still lived, I would not have divorced you before, for the sake of our son, but now that he is gone—”

  “Murdered,” Yasmin whispered, her eyes narrowed to slits. “Foully murdered and yet I understand that you, his father, did nothing to avenge him! Have in fact, it is said, with unseemly haste replaced him with that asteroid-hopping nephew of yours as your heir.”

  “Tapha had it coming. He was our son, it is true, but it is also true that he was a vicious and ignorant pig.”

  “He didn’t get that from my side of the family.”

  Hafiz waved his hand in dismissal. “No matter. There is no longer any ‘your’ side of the family. Your side of the family, apparently through your own contrivance, is extinct. And you have not been a member of my family in many years. It grieves me to tell you, oh dear departed mother of our late unlamented son, that I would have disinherited Tapha even if he lived. The boy managed, despite his legitimate birth during our marriage, to be a bastard of the worst kind.”

  “You have no sense of family! It is a good thing that I have returned, as your khadine, to instruct my junior wife.”

  Hafiz looked as if he were about to explode, and said in a slow, dangerous voice, “You will not speak to her, you will not so much as lay eyes upon her. You are not khadine. You are no longer even my wife.”

  He took a deep breath and began chanting the expeditious ancient Hadathian method of ridding oneself of unwanted marital attachments, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I—”

  Before he could say it the third and decisive time, she interrupted in a shrill, high whine that would not allow him to ignore it.

  “You think you can cast me out, just like that, kill my son, marry another, and dismiss me as if I were someone of no consequence?”

  “I am certainly about to,” Hafiz told her.

  “There’s no need to get so unpleasant. As you recall, it was I who left you. I was only testing you,” she said with a poisonously sweet smile. She pulled a beautifully jeweled box from her robes and offered it to him. “I confess, I was afraid you might react this way, that the shock of my resurrection would prove too much for you and that the years we have spent apart would have put too great a strain on your affection. Still, although I do not care for the way you’ve treated me, I am a broad-minded woman. And to show there are no hard feelings, I have brought you a wedding present. One I know will be of great interest to you.”

  “I have no wish for your gifts—but, ahhh—is that a rare Terran early nineteenth century inlaid vermilion and jade snuffbox similar to the one from the court of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte?” He must at least inspect such a treasure. His fingers itched to do so, as they did with any fine and rare collectible object. Perhaps he was only imagining the sneer that crossed Yasmin’s red swollen mouth?

  “The very one. The emperor himself gorged his very nostrils from this same box, oh avaricious husband. And now it holds a new rarity, a treasure of particular meaning for you. Go ahead, take it.”

  He started to accept it from her hand and then thought better of it. “No, you open it. Show me. It would be like you to have had it fitted with some poisoned clasp…”

  “You wrong me, beloved,” she said, and wondered how the man who sold her this box had known that Hafiz would say this. She touched the catch and the lid popped open. “You see? Nothing in it but fine sparkling powder, like ground moonstones or opals.”

  “I do not traffic in drugs, Yasmin,” Hafiz said huffily. He didn’t either. Not anymore. Not for many years. Well, not on a regular basis. It wasn’t really profitable anymore.

  “Ah, but, husband, this is no drug of the sort to which you refer. This is a very special powder indeed. It will heal any wound, neutralize poisons, and will act as an amazing aphrodisiac to any man or woman who takes only a few grains in a drink or food.”

  “This is so?” Hafiz asked. “That is a wondrous thing indeed, mother of my deservedly deceased son. And something I will happily accept if only you will tell me, why is it that you, who have never, so far as I could discern, borne love for any part of me but my wealth, bestow this upon me? As a gift,” he reminded her hastily. A gift was, after all, a gift, though for a remedy with such powers as this powder was said to have, he might well have paid a great deal.

  “Because, dear husband, it is said to come from the horn of a humanoid being who has but a single horn in the center of her forehead. Since you once showed favor to such a being…” She laughed, and taking a deep breath, blew the powder from the open box into his face, and into his eyes, blinding him with a starry swirl that also, somehow, silenced him and made him swoon so that when he regained his senses, he was lying upon the central pattern of the Garden of Paradise carpet, and the living ghost of his late wife had vanished.

  He was one with his home world, gray-brown and broken, and to an onlooker would have been almost indistinguishable from the rubble. He no longer knew which was rock and soil and which part of his own body, except for the pain. He had had no fear, when the ship landed, that either the small furry animal or the cumbersome monster who kept flinging things in and out of the vessel would notice him.

>   But he watched when they landed once more with far greater trepidation, and with relief that he had already removed from its resting place the sacred trust that undoubtedly drew the outsiders.

  Ten

  The House of Harakamian chemists reported that the powder was a mixture of the ground pollens of the rare Wahanamoian Blossom of Sleep and another substance difficult to analyze, but appearing to be calcified tissue of the horn variety, about which they could say nothing further except that one of the men who had cut himself accidentally a little earlier spontaneously healed upon coming in contact with the powder.

  Hafiz mentioned nothing of this to Karina. Until he could finalize his divorce to a supposedly dead woman, he did not wish to jeopardize his marriage by mentioning the inconvenient vitality of his late spouse to his present one.

  But he was very troubled indeed. Surely, Yasmin had obtained the powder through her underworld contacts, which he was certain she had, as who else would have financed her all these years while she plied the trade that she seemed to feel made her a star? But if these people had somehow contrived to murder Acorna and the delegation from her home planet, Hafiz felt sure they would have said so more directly—he himself would have done that, though he was often the most indirect of men. Therefore, this powder was a warning. And yet—where could the horn material have come from?

  A sickening thought occurred to him. Before he had met the Linyaari, they had broadcast as a warning vids of the Khleevi torturing Linyaari prisoners. Was there some faction of the sort of worm with whom Yasmin consorted so low as to actually have contacts among the Khleevi who would sell them Linyaari horn?

  If so, this was a very grave matter. Acorna and her people should know of it at once. Hafiz wished to contact his nephew and heir about the matter but decided on balance it was best to do so in person rather than trusting the com units. Hafiz was far too practical to be overly brave, and Yasmin’s ability to come and go without his knowledge had shaken him profoundly.

  He forbade his house staff to say anything of the surprise visit to Karina until he could decide how to tell her himself and ordered the entire compound searched for the presence of his late wife. As he suspected, she had disappeared utterly and completely while he lay drugged on the floor of his own home.

  At last, only three hours’ time from when he had last been at Karina’s side, Hafiz appeared in the marital bedchamber, where his bride lounged upon their connubial couch. She had been sleeping, he thought, but had awakened at his step.

  “Karina,” he said, “You have convinced me. Our ship is being prepared and we shall soon depart for the Linyaari home world to visit Acorna and the others.”

  Karina would have known at once that something was amiss even if she had not already encountered a deeply troubled and no doubt deluded woman claiming to be Hafiz’s true wife. She naturally assumed that the woman was a ghost, since Hafiz’s first wife was dead. Of course, she could have been one of the holo-grams Hafiz was always constructing to surprise a person in odd nooks and crannies, but why would he make an ugly hologram that claimed to be his wife? Had to be a ghost. Karina attempted to soothe and comfort her, to tell her to go back into the light, but the specter had merely looked annoyed. Presumably she had then gone on to haunt Hafiz, or had just come from haunting him, as the very next time Karina saw him he was behaving in a very peculiar fashion, as those who had received visitations from the other side sometimes did.

  For one thing, Hafiz addressed Karina by name instead of calling her by one of his lengthy endearments. For another thing, he gave up without even a token tussle, totally unlike him, and let her have her way about seeking out Acorna’s people. And for a third thing, he hardly ever did anything in haste, but always with slow and deliberate preparation.

  His sudden acquiescence so alarmed Karina that she backtracked slightly.

  “My darling, perhaps we should wait a little after all,” she said, easing him down beside her with a light tug on his hand. “You look unwell. You perspire and your color is not at all good. I think you need a course of some of my special herbal teas and perhaps we should burn a cinnamon candle tonight to ease your—”

  “Pack it, beloved!” he said. “Pack all of the tea and candles you wish. Pack your gowns and jewels, pack your cards and stones and your crystal ball. But we cannot deprive Acorna and her people of our guidance for another day.”

  Nor could they wait a moment longer, he thought privately, for Yasmin to return and spoil the honey-moon any more than she had already done. Hafiz worried his first wife’s trouble-making would be even more distressing next time—and more obvious to Karina. He wouldn’t allow that. Women were extremely difficult to understand, even for a man of his considerable amatory experience. But what worried him more than Yasmin’s tricks was that the security of his stronghold had been breached. If he was to go, it had best be in all haste, before Yasmin’s unsavory associates followed her here.

  In the meantime he had ordered a complete restructuring of his security strategies, changes in locks, codes, and passwords, and that the compound be totally remodeled and its defenses reinforced. In his early days of affection—very well, lust—for Yasmin, he had shown her everything—everything.

  He deeply regretted that now, for even though he had added and altered several systems since the time of his first wife, still she knew too much. He and Karina would not truly be safe here, in his own home, until the presence of Yasmin was purged.

  His personal vessel was kept in readiness at all times and well equipped for his comfort on journeys around most of his customary haunts. He commanded that it be readied for an extended cruise and had retrieved the data plotted by Calum Baird and Acorna for their originally planned journey to the Linyaari home world.

  They would travel with the bare minimum crew—pilot, navigator, physician, and communications officer, plus one trusted personal attendant for each of them, including the ship’s officers, who must be relaxed and at peace to do their jobs well.

  Hafiz himself was a competent pilot but for such a long journey, and one that had not actually been previously successfully completed by anyone of his acquaintance, he preferred to employ a specialist.

  He would have preferred to take along his personal chef, the hairdresser and dressmaker, manicurist, massage therapist, valet, lady’s maid, and other servants they were accustomed to, but most of these functions could either be performed by the personal attendants or were well within the ship’s ability to provide electronically. For entertainment, they would have his holograms to amuse them and add a bit of spice and variety to the atmosphere. He had been constructing and collecting holograms most of his adult life, first as a business and now as one of his little hobbies. They were lightweight, took up no actual room, and could be surprisingly useful.

  In the interests of maintaining security—both his own and that of the Linyaari, he decided that perhaps they had best rough it on this journey. His skeleton crew was handpicked and had been raised and educated within the House of Harakamian. They were loyal and trustworthy.

  Then there was the additional problem that, in the interests of establishing rapport with Acorna’s people, he felt he could not carry the usual arsenal on board, or any obvious security guards. Although the crew and attendants were well trained in security functions, that was not their primary job. Perhaps braving the unknown without sufficient weaponry or an army at his back was foolish, but there were always the ship’s built-in defenses that could be deployed if necessary. He doubted even the Linyaari would suspect they were there. Given his mission, it was either go this way, or not at all.

  In the unlikely event that Acorna’s people did spot his ship’s defenses, the Linyaari would simply have to understand. He was sincerely attempting to come in peace—very possibly at the expense of his people’s safety, as well as his own. He could only hope their departure would be rapid enough that Yasmin and whoever it was she worked for would be unable to launch a pursuit.

  Karina wa
s rather distracted on the journey from Laboue to Maganos.

  “What troubles you, my love?”

  “My spirit guides keep looking over their ectoplasmic shoulders, darling. I’m just sure they’re trying to tell me I’ve left something important behind or perhaps we forgot to turn off some major appliance—”

  “You are having a flashback to your days of penury and poverty, flower of my soul. You have servants to see to those things now, remember?”

  She gave him a wan little smile. “So we do, O beloved. Still, I wish the communication was clearer. It’s very disorienting to spirit guides moving from planet to planet, you know. They get very attached to the places from whence they entered the other side.”

  “Indeed? You are a fountain of information, best beloved among women. I had no idea.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Tell me, love of my life, is Delszaki Li still among your otherworldly friends?”

  “Oh, my, yes.”

  “Then tell him your husband said that he’s to explain himself at once and stop worrying you, precious pearl of psychic perception.”

  Karina giggled. “Oh, Hafiz, you are so cute when you’re indignant. I couldn’t say that to Mr. Li. But I will mention that you are concerned, too, and see if he can offer enlightenment. I must meditate in solitude to concentrate my energies. Now, where is that twenty-carat amethyst crystal you gave me?”

  “I believe you loaned it to the physician to try to communicate with his bacterial specimens, my love.”

  “So I did. Well, I’ll simply have to borrow it back. I must have the proper tools of my profession, after all. Can you manage without me for a while, beloved?”

  “Each moment will be as a dagger in my heart, sweet and succulent spouse, but I will valiantly endure.”

  They kissed and she departed.

  To the communications officer, Hafiz said, “Please alert Maganos Base to have my nephew standing by when we arrive.”