Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

  He fitted a mask over his face, then put one on her. After he got masks to Johnny and some of the others, they could clear the ship of this gas and work to wake her up, if the mask didn’t do the trick. But right now he had to try to save the others. Carrying as many masks as he could hold, he ducked out into the passage and down the next one which led to the computation/navigation center.

  He saw no more bodies, living or dead. The door to the locker area was concealed behind some pipes, so the enemy had missed it—and Annella—when they boarded. He wished he knew what had gone on while they were in hiding. Really, he’d have to talk to Johnny about rigging the vents with visual surveillance equipment in the future. Maybe bunks and hot and cold running water and battery-powered lights, too. He grinned at his own wild ideas.

  Tapping on the vent, he waited until it was pulled open and shoved a mask up at Johnny, who took it, then reached back for the other masks. The vent closed again—Markel assumed everybody was masking up. Johnny and other masked shipmates finally began dropping through the ceiling. Markel directed them to the lockers, to gather more masks for their remaining shipmates in the vents.

  All of this was done in eerie green silence. The only sounds on the ship were clanking chain sounds of opening and closing locks, seals, and hatches, and the soft sound of Markel’s shipmates’ phantomlike movements—or maybe elflike movements, in the case of some of the smaller kids.

  Markel himself made for the main hatch, warily, laser cannon in hand, alert for any intruders who had remained behind. But none had. Nor had they left behind any of his other friends.

  The gas was even thicker outside the ship than it was inside. He closed the hatch behind him and went to search for the ventilation control of the docking bay. He didn’t locate it, but he did find the pressurized transparent control shed. This was not full of the gas. Once inside, he was able to remove his mask as he studied the controls, finding by trial and error the panel that opened the overhead portal that allowed ships to take off and to dock.

  This he opened. The green gas was sucked into the vaccuum of space. When all tinge of green was gone, he closed the portal once more and adjusted the oxygen, pressurization, and ventilation fans. The air in the bay was soon breathable. He returned to the ship, opened the hatch, and allowed the bay’s vented fans to pull the gas from the interior of the Haven. Johnny Greene called softly from the open hatch. “Rocky used the healing horn to help Annella. She’ll be grand now.”

  “Fine. Nobody’s tried to kill me for at least ten minutes. I don’t think much of anybody’s left here.”

  “Good. Then maybe we should take advantage of that hospitality the general offered.”

  With Johnny’s help, Markel raided the airlock adjoining the bay, and two of the adjacent, unattended rooms. With the general and his troops gone, the place was virtually deserted. Johnny found station security headquarters, and took out the guard. There was only one. He had been watching reruns of the Haven’s capture. For a few mesmerizing moments, Johnny and Markel stood over the body of their unconscious captive and watched first Nadhari Kando, then their shipmates, being gassed and dragged or carried aboard the general’s flagship, now painted to look like a Federation Forces vessel. So that’s what those footsteps had meant. Thoroughly angry now, Markel and company had disabled the monitors and raided the unattended areas of the base. They took all the weapons and food they could find, and—as an afterthought on Johnny’s part—any uniforms they found lying around. They also removed all of the pressure suits from the lock. Johnny downloaded a copy of the flagship’s course from the computer in the security room. The security room guard was still unconscious, so they tied him up and took him along.

  It had taken them three trips back and forth to the Haven and about forty-five minutes to accomplish all this, before Markel, loaded with the last of the booty, returned to the Haven. Johnny, wearing one of the purloined pressure suits, opened the canopy and boarded the Haven through the air lock. Once they were well away from the general’s compound, Johnny adjusted their course to follow that of the general’s flagship.

  Seventeen

  Becker had never felt awe for anyone except his dad in his whole life until he met Aari, but his respect for the maimed Linyaari grew on the journey from the old Linyaari home to the new one. Aari knew exactly how to get there. In spite of having endured tortures that would drive anyone else insane, he had kept the memory of the Linyaari escape route, drummed into him since boyhood, not only intact, but also secret from the Khleevi. He tidied up the Condor, which was, thanks to Kisla Manjari, almost vacant. Becker still had the money she’d paid him back on Kezdet, money that had nearly emptied his ship. Come to think of it, Becker was almost willing to bet Kisla’s credits were somehow fraudulent. He didn’t trust anything about that venomous little psycho.

  After cleaning the holds, Aari had reverently placed each Linyaari skeleton, from the most recent one of his brother, to the most ancient fragments, side by side throughout the ship. Becker helped him until Aari saw the android. Both men realized just how useful that android could be in the current situation. The horn would not work on its electronics, which Becker had already mostly repaired, but did a great job on shredded plastiskin. Soon the reprogrammed, aesthetically pleasing, and now very helpful KEN640 was back in business as official assistant keeper of the Condor’s charnel holds. With KEN640’s help, every skeleton was loaded aboard the Condor’s holds. Aari slept there every night among the bones of his ancestors.

  Away from those holds, Aari had a tougher time talking to Becker. He was trying hard to pick up Standard and Becker was trying hard to pick up Linyaari, and Roadkill wasn’t interested in speaking anything except Cat. Which meant that Aari and Becker indulged in a lot of communication through body language and charades. But that was more of an exchange than Becker usually had with the cat. Becker was enjoying the trip and the company.

  RK apparently felt the same way. He showed Aari the sort of kitty cat affection he had not thus far deemed appropriate to bestow upon Becker. He sat on Aari’s lap and took to sleeping beside him in the Linyaari graveyard. The KEN unit came in handy for changing the litter box. He was not the brainiest droid in the universe, but he was rehabilitated, thanks to Becker’s new programs, and no longer said things like, “Do you wish me to tear his arm from his socket now, or would you prefer I punch out one eye in a painful and maiming, yet not life-threatening, manner, Lady Kisla?” It had taken Aari and Becker both a lot more work to get KEN640 over some of these socially unacceptable utterances. These guys might be computers on feet and have opposable thumbs, but the computer was only there to operate the feet and thumbs in a useful way. KEN’s processor was an idiot compared to, say, the ship’s computer.

  KEN was also somebody who could play gin rummy with Becker when Aari was feeling antisocial, which happened fairly often. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why a guy who’d been left behind by his people, who felt he’d failed to take care of his brother who died while the guy himself was being slowly tortured to death by alien invaders who were also destroying his home world—why a guy like that might need a little down time once in a while. And Becker was a rocket scientist, albeit an idiosyncratically privately tutored and self-taught one.

  Aari didn’t spend all of his unsocial time in pity-party mode, however. His Standard improved by leaps and bounds as he watched the store of ancient films and clips stored in the ship’s computer, as well as read the hard copy books.

  “Did you see this one, Joh?” he asked, pronouncing Becker’s first name with a sort of a whuff through his nostrils. Aari was brandishing the How to Care for Your Kittycat book. Becker noticed that RK for once was not clinging to the Linyaari like a fuzzy leech.

  “Yeah. Skip the part on interfering in a feline’s sex life. I tried it and RK was not amused. That cat on a bad fur day could give those Khleevi bugs a run for their money.”

  Aari looked puzzled and retreated to the now-cleared-of-debris
berth in the newly organized crew’s quarters to pursue the cat care trends of several hundred years ago.

  Becker hardly recognized the Condor. The KEN unit had tidied up the ship so that things were stored and catalogued and there was actually room to move around. Becker wasn’t at all sure he liked it. The other way had been sort of cozy.

  After a while he found that having two other—well, one and a half other—people on board was distracting, so he had the KEN unit turn itself off between bouts of housekeeping. And Aari was busy studying or brooding (or both) a lot of the time, so that wasn’t too much of a problem. Becker’s real adjustment was that RK was spending most of his time with Aari and Becker missed the onery feline.

  He was thinking that he had been a real sucker to think that because the cat tried to rescue him from Kisla and her men that it meant the animal harbored any affection for him. Why, he showed his fuzzy purry side more to Khetala on first acquaintance, or to this Aari guy, than he ever did to Becker. As Becker was thinking this, he felt a familiar pain in his thigh and looked down to see RK sitting there, switching his tail back and forth, and looking expectantly up at Becker.

  As soon as Becker paid attention, the cat sprang up to his shoulder, lay against his neck and purred with a noise that rivaled that of the rustiest rattletrap engine of an outmoded junker ship. “Aw, RK. I didn’t know you cared.”

  RK backed down and proceeded to rub his face all over Becker’s, marking him in one of the less objectionable ways the cat had of performing that task. And it occurred to Becker that he really hadn’t previously actually solicited the cat’s actual affection—theirs had been a more rough and ready relationship. Man-to-man or cat-to-cat as it were, depending on the viewpoint. Of course Roadkill liked him. Otherwise the cat would have found himself new quarters the first time the Condor docked.

  Becker suddenly realized he was also thinking a lot like a cat and he looked at RK suspiciously. The cat, whose fur was lightly coated with white dust from the Linyaari boneyard, blinked back at him three times and intensified the purr.

  Thereafter on the journey, the cat spent a little more time on the bridge and after a while so did Aari, asking Becker questions about the things he was learning and trying out words on him, getting his accent corrected. Becker, in return, tried to learn Linyaari words and phrases. The little box, a LAANYE in Linyaari, took only a bit of tampering with on Becker’s part, with the technical assistance of Aari, to translate in both directions.

  Meanwhile, they came within shouting distance of narhii-Vhiliinyar. “Shall I hail them or will they be less freaked out if you do it?” Becker asked Aari. “My accent isn’t as good as it should be yet.”

  “I will speak if only you will not turn on the visual projector,” Aari said. He had stayed with the bones for days on end the first time he got a look at himself in Becker’s shaving mirror. “I—I do not wish to frighten my people.”

  He did anyway.

  Becker got his first visual of a Linyaari female when the communications officer, a white-skinned, white-haired girl with a pretty shiny spiraled horn growing out of her forehead, said, “Please adjust your visual transmission, Condor. We are not receiving you.”

  “This is Aari of Clan Nyaarya, narhii-Vhiliinyar port,” Aari repeated. “Our visual projector is temporarily out of service. Request permission to land.”

  There was silence, while the communications officer presumably conferred with someone else, and then her skeptical voice said, “Aari of Clan Nyaarya was lost to us during the evacuation of Vhiliinyar prior to the Khleevi attack. Please adjust your transmission and properly identify yourself.”

  Aari’s voice was tight as he said, “I have been imprisoned on Vhiliinyar by the Khleevi but escaped them, and have been rescued by the captain and crew of the Condor. I have recovered the bones of our forebears from the sacred cemetery, to save them from plundering and bring them back to their children for reinterment. Now please give us permission to land so that I may rejoin my family.”

  “Really?” The communications officer forgot to use the official language and lapsed into vernacular Linyaari. “You actually escaped the Khleevi after they captured you? I’ll have to apply for official permission but—oh, welcome home, Aari! Everyone will be so happy to see you!”

  By the time she came back on screen, the Condor’s fuel supply was running dangerously low.

  The communications officer’s face was closed again as she said, “Aari, the ship may land long enough for you to meet a greeting committee who validate your identity, but all non-Linyaari personnel aboard the vessel must remain aboard and the vessel itself must depart immediately after you have been identified.”

  “Tell her we’re out of fuel,” Becker said.

  “The Condor will need to refuel,” Aari said.

  “Permission denied,” the communications officer said.

  “Gimme that thing,” Becker said, and took the portable transmitter from Aari. “Look, lady, I know your people have been through a lot,” he said in the best Linyaari he could muster. “Aari explained all that to me. But he’s been through whatever you people use for hell himself, and my crew and I went through a lot to get him here. The least you could do is have the common courtesy not to make us take off again without enough fuel to get to the next stop.”

  Another long silence before she returned to say, “Permission to land granted. Prepare to be boarded upon docking.”

  The Condor was forced to land in a field outside the regular port, as all of the docking bays were hollowed into deep ovals, the wrong shape for the ship’s alien tail. Becker sent down the robolift. He was busy talking to Aari and didn’t notice RK scooting out down the emergency cat flap chute. The cat depressed the exit mechanism himself and landed neatly on the deck of the lift, thereby forming his own greeting committee.

  Aboard the Condor, Aari was letting Becker know that he was just as glad the inspection committee was going to come aboard instead of the other way around. He was seemingly as afraid to meet his people again as he had ever been of the Khleevi.

  Becker turned on the outside visual and saw Road-kill being lowered with the robolift. Four of the white unicorn people, three females and one male, and two brown male ones plus one small female spotty one, stood below watching as the cat joined them. The little spotted one clapped her hands but was held by one of the white females, while another gently reached onto the lift to receive RK, who jumped up to meet her. While the women were occupied, the white male and the two brown ones climbed onto the lift. They did not look happy about it.

  In the middle of the night, Thariinye appeared in the flap of Grandam’s pavilion, insisting that Grandam, Acorna, and Maati all rise, dress for a long walk, and hurry with him to viizaar’s pavilion immediately.

  When they got there, Viizaar Liriili’s eyes showed white all around the pupils, and Acorna could smell her fear, strong and goatishly acrid.

  Grandam asked, “What in the name of the Ancestors is wrong?” None of them asked why the problem couldn’t wait until morning.

  “An alien ship is entering our atmosphere,” Liriili told them. “It refuses to transmit visuals, but the person who initially contacted us claims to be Maati’s brother Aari, who was missing at the time of the evacuation along with Maati’s other brother, Laarye. You know as well as I do, Grandam, that it’s absolutely inconceivable that anyone escaped the Khleevi or the destruction of the planet.”

  Acorna cleared her throat. “I escaped.”

  “What?” Liriili asked and Acorna read her clearly to mean, “How dare you interrupt?”

  “Everyone presumed all were lost when my parents’ ship exploded, but I escaped. Perhaps Maati’s brother did, too.”

  Maati, who had never known her brother, glanced agitatedly from one of the adults to the other, her sleepiness completely overcome by the excitement.

  “I believe it is a trick,” Liriili said.

  “How can that be?” Grandam asked. “No one knows of Aari and
Laarye except a few of us.”

  Liriili shook her head violently. “Everyone we have sent into space has disappeared without so much as a hailing,” she said. “I can’t help but believe they have come to harm. If they haven’t actually fallen into the hands of the Khleevi, then they’ve run afoul of some other race, one that seeks to know us. Our people may have been interrogated for anything that would get the captors past our defenses.”

  “Yes,” said Grandam. “That may be true. But it may also be true that somehow Aari has found his way home. Though I can’t think how.”

  “In an alien vessel with a very bad-tempered alien with an atrocious Linyaari accent, according to Saari, the duty officer at the space port. Here is a tape of the transmission.”

  She played it for them.

  “That’s a human!” Acorna said.

  Liriili glowered at her. “I thought that might be so. One of your people. Who is it?”

  “How should I know?” Acorna asked. “It doesn’t sound like any of my friends.”

  “It doesn’t?” Liriili was surprised. Acorna was a little amused in spite of herself. The viizaar sounded like the old joke that went, “Hi, I’m Mirajik. I’m from Mars.” “Hi, I’m Sarah from Earth Prime.” “Earth Prime? Oh, say, I have a friend from there. Do you know John Smith?” The viizaar seemed incredulous that since Acorna knew some humans they would not be the same ones currently on the “doorstep” of narhii-Vhiliinyar.