Acorna's Quest

by Anne McCaffrey

  “It’s mean, putting him in that dark little place,” another girl piped up. “Let’s not. He’s so cute!”

  “Cute,” Hajnal said darkly. “Lemme tell you, you wouldn’ think ’e was so bleedin’ cute if you’d had to carry him through Central under your shirt, and ’im gougin’ tracks in your belly every time he startled!”

  “Sita Ram wouldn’t like it,” Eva said.

  “Huh! Lukia don’t mind. She ’elped me get away,” Hajnal boasted.

  Eva’s eyes widened. All the children seemed suddenly to be looking up, over Hajnal’s head. Slowly he turned, certain that Ramon had spoiled his plot by reaching the workings before he could conceal the marchare.

  But it wasn’t Ramon who stood behind him, but a being taller and far brighter than the little miner; a being who seemed clothed in light from Her golden horn to the silvery wisps of hair around Her hooves.

  “Epona,” “Sita Ram,” “Lukia,” whispered the children, and then they were all over the bright being.

  “I knew you were here, Acorna, I knew you wouldn’t just leave us without saying good-bye,” squealed Khetala, who had known Acorna as a person rather than a vision of goodness. She threw herself on the tall, silver-haired being in an unrehearsed—and decidedly unwelcome—embrace.

  “Get off me!” Thariinye sputtered in his own tongue. In the panic of the moment he could not remember the words the LAANYE had implanted in his cortex a few hours previously.

  There was a smaller girl clutching his tunic, now, marring the elegant drape of the fabric, and a boy jumped up and down and swung from his arm as if he were some kind of climbing toy. Why hadn’t that plump little woman warned him that the moon base was full of children? Pre-pubes, their psychic abilities still latent, were not susceptible to the mental projections that could be used to calm adults…and apparently that particular developmental factor was true across species, or at least it was as true of these beings as it was of his own race. But he had no other projection, nothing else to try! Frantically he projected (You don’t see anything unusual) (Nothing is happening) (Need to get back to work).

  “But I do see you, Lady Epona, I do! I do!” squealed the smallest girl.

  Khetala, the oldest of the group, loosened her embrace and backed off a step, puzzled. Why had she thought this was Acorna? It was obviously only a tall miner…she squinted…with silver hair…and a horn….

  “Don’t you remember me, Lady Acorna?” she asked, hurt and puzzled.

  Hajnal was too high on success and escape even to be touched by the projections. “Whaddaya screechin’ about now? I know my Lady Lukia of the Lights!”

  Thariinye gritted his teeth and redoubled the force of his projections, but the children were jumping up and down, shrieking with excitement, and far too hyper to receive the calming influence he was trying to put forth, even if they had been old enough to pick up his mental images. Not only that, but they seemed to be insane. They expected him to cuddle them. They thought he was…

  Under sufficient stress, Thariinye stopped trying to remember the words of the alien language and just used them without thinking.

  “Lookh, yuuu liiteli twerpis,” he hissed in rage, “I—aam—naat—a—ghiril! See?”

  And, just as the security guard requested by Gill arrived at the workings, Thariinye yanked open his blue tunic to display irrefutable evidence that he could not be the “lady” these brats were greeting so ecstatically.

  The guard, unlike the children, was affected by Thariinye’s projections; so he saw nothing unusual in the sight of a seven-foot horned male with a cascade of silver hair falling down his neck. What that male was doing, however, was both unusual and strictly forbidden on Maganos Moon Base.

  “You’d better come along with me, mister,” he said.

  Seven

  Haven, Unified Federation Date 334.05.18

  “That’s Hoa,” Markel mouthed in Acorna’s ear, as they peered down the vent at the first of the innermost security cells, much smaller and more closely guarded than the row where Acorna had been kept.

  “Who?”

  “Ho—A,” Markel separated the syllables. “He’s the guy the Palomellese spaced my”—he had to swallow—“my father for—to get control of his work. If he hadn’t come aboard the Haven, everything would be all right. He’s how Rushima’s being flooded, burned, blasted, or stormed until they pay Nueva Fallona’s gang protection money.”

  “He?” And Acorna looked down again at the dejected, dark-haired man sitting with his head in his hands. What she could see of his skin had a faintly yellow cast that reminded her of Delszaki Li and made her instinctively wish to trust him. “Then why’s he here”—she pointed one hand down—“and not up there with them?”

  “Because he trusted our Speakers—my father and Andrezhuria and that Gerezan.” The last name was expelled like a curse, and, in the light from the cell below, Acorna could see the tears begin to form in Markel’s eyes. He brushed them aside with impatient fingers, taking a deep breath. “He didn’t know about what they”—Markel jerked a contemptuous finger upward—“planned. He was scared stiff that the governments of Khang Kieaan, where he used to live, would’ve figured out that he couldn’t just predict weather, he could manipulate it.”

  “Ooooh.” Acorna’s mind made leaps of conjecture on how that could be used. “So that’s what happened to Rushima?”

  Markel nodded.

  “But how could Hoa give that sort of power to renegades like them?” Now she, too, pointed upward.

  “He didn’t. He thought he’d be safe on Haven…and he would’ve been, only Nueva and those traitors Gerezan and Sengrat planned a coup and got rid of all the rest of the First Generation….” Markel gulped.

  “Like your father.” Acorna laid a sympathetic arm about the thin shoulders, thinking proudly of his loyalty and resourcefulness. “Did you escape before they could…you know…”

  He nodded. “They don’t know the half of what I know about the Haven. I could do anything to this ship…sometimes I think I ought to be making more trouble for them, only I don’t want to wreck it and kill a lot of innocent people. The other Second-Generation kids may be pretending to go along, but they shouldn’t die for it. I could do anything,” he repeated, “if only I knew what to do….”

  In that pause, Acorna softly asked, “Like being able to release the clamps on my ship so we can all get away?”

  Markel considered, eyeing her, then the lighted vent and the rounded walls of the tube. She didn’t think she’d called a bluff: rather she felt, through her arm still about his shoulders, that he was figuring out how to accomplish this.

  “I’d be glad if you could alert Shenjemi Federation that one of their colonies is being blackmailed. And my planet that I’m being held hostage.”

  Markel gave a little snort, muffled by his fingers. “You’re not a hostage, you’re a prisoner. They got better things to do than collect ransom for hostages. They can hold up whole planets for ransom now.”

  Acorna gulped, happier than ever that she was no longer trapped in that cell, vulnerable. But Calum was still a prisoner. And, if they had no need to take hostages, Calum was in greater peril than she’d originally thought. They’d have to work fast. She was considering priorities when suddenly she saw that Hoa’s face was turned up to the vent. She gave Markel a discreet nudge.

  “Oh, oh,” he mouthed back at her, and would have led her away, but she stopped him.

  “He didn’t intend this to happen…and he looks ill. I think they’ve hurt him. Let’s free him, too. Maybe he’d know how to stop what they’ve started. Can we do that? Please?” Markel didn’t really have any defense against Acorna in pleading mode—especially with her arm around him and the comforting warmth of her soft feminine body giving him the nurturing love he had needed so desperately for so long.

  “He’ll have to be quiet,” he said.

  “I doubt that will be a problem,” she replied, and helped Markel unscrew the vent.
>
  Dr. Ngaen Xong Hoa’s slender frame made it through the narrow vent with no difficulty, but he was so weak they had to help him far more than Acorna had expected; he did almost none of the work of climbing. When he was finally in the tunnel, she realized why he had been so helpless. Even in the bad light, Acorna could see what had been done to the man’s hands and arms. Pretending to bend lower to reset the screws on the vent, Acorna made sure her horn touched—through the fine fabric of her hat—both mangled hands.

  Urgently now, Markel directed them away from the empty cell and around a bend in the tubes and over to the other side of the prison block. At the intersection, he firmly placed Dr. Hoa against the curving side and, finger on lips, indicated that he was to stay put. Dr. Hoa nodded, only too happy to comply. Then Markel beckoned Acorna to slither past the scientist. He put his lips to her ears and spoke low but distinctly.

  “We got to get your buddy right away now because as soon as they see Dr. Hoa’s gone, there’ll be nine kinds of alarms and searches and stuff. Might not get another chance. Any way you can help me locate him?”

  Acorna closed her eyes. If only her horn had the power of locating people as well as healing them! Maybe it does, she thought…I’ve never known another of my kind. How do I know what I can do?

  She composed her thoughts and tried to visualize Calum’s features, but all she could sense was the aura of misery that filled the whole area around the cells…and something about…maps? She shook her head, trying to clear it. How could she concentrate on finding Calum when she kept getting this feeling that somebody was lecturing her on how to color a map? It felt as if there was a whole geography class going on somewhere under her right hand…no, not geography. Strange, half-familiar words floated into her head.

  “Conjecture…lemma…simple closed curve…”

  Well, how about that!

  “I think,” she said slowly, “he might be in the cell on the far right.”

  Calum was so absorbed in the diagrams he was tracing on his cell wall that she had to hiss several times before he finally noticed—and even then he did not look up.

  “Just a minute, I’m thinking,” he said—and then did a comical double take, looking up so fast that he nearly lost his balance. “Acorna? What the—”

  “We’re rescuing you,” Acorna explained patiently.

  “Who’s we? And do you have anything I can copy this down on? I don’t want to lose it, and the trouble with drawing diagrams in the condensation on the wall here is…”

  “Ten thousand devils fly away with your diagrams and drop them in the dung of the camel pits of Sheol!” Acorna ripped out a variation on one of Rafik’s favorite curses. “Do you want to wait around until they come to torture you into releasing the hold on the Acadecki? Or do you think you could drop your mathematical conjectures long enough to climb up this rope?”

  Calum gave a dubious glance at the slender rope and the narrow space of the air vent through which Acorna was whispering to him, then looked back once regretfully at the drawings he had traced on the wall of his cell.

  “Oh, well, I can probably reconstruct it later,” he muttered.

  The vent opening was a tighter squeeze for Calum than it had been for Dr. Hoa or Acorna, but when he seemed to be stuck fast Markel inspired him by mentioning a few of Nueva Fallona’s favorite Palomellese tortures, then commented that if Calum’s shoulders were really wedged firmly into the vent his feet would doubtless be at a convenient height for Nueva’s attentions.

  “She likes playing with matches,” he said.

  Calum made one last convulsive effort, freed his broad shoulders, and wriggled upward into the tunnel, clutching the rope.

  “Oh, well,” he said, as Acorna exclaimed over his scrapes, “it’s only skin, plenty more where that came from.”

  They replaced the vent, went back around the curve, and collected Dr. Hoa, who was trembling violently in reaction to his salvation.

  “I am not a man of violence,” he whispered in apology. “I am a scientist…and I was trying to get away from people like these. Now we are all trapped….”

  Acorna touched his cheek with her horn and the spasms stopped. Toward the end of their passage, they had to tie the rope around his shoulders, and Acorna pulled him behind her, with Markel helping the scientist over the joins and aprons that connected the klicks of interior tubes and conduits. As soon as they reached Markel’s nest, the boy picked up his listener, a device that sat comfortably in his ear, and indicated that Acorna should make Dr. Hoa comfortable on the pile of miscellaneous clothing and thermal sheeting behind them.

  Acorna was glad to oblige. While she was at it, she also assessed the scientist’s other injuries and healed them. He had been badly knocked about before the Palomellese even began their systematic destruction of his fingers and hands; she could not blame him for having given them enough information to use his research, nor for the fear and despair that had all but overwhelmed him in the tunnels. But as she soothed his bodily aches, he seemed calmer and more in control of himself. When she was finished, he caught her by the arm, his eyes once more alive with intelligent curiosity.

  “Ki-lin?” he asked in a bare whisper that would not reach Markel, occupied with eavesdropping.

  She smiled and put her finger across her lips as their young guide so often had.

  He closed his eyes once, indicating he understood, but he also put one frail, healed finger to his lips and then pressed it against hers.

  She turned to take a water bottle from the rack above her head and handed it to him. Though he clutched the bottle as possessively as any thirsty man would, Acorna did not have to warn him to take small, slow sips and accustom his body to water again.

  Markel was grinning with delight at whatever he was hearing on his earphone. He kept listening, but occasionally would whisper at what was going on.

  “They found Hoa missing first, then checked the rest of the cells. They haven’t a clue how he and Calum got away, and they got into an argument about it and haven’t yet checked to find out that you’re gone, too, Acorna. That’s as well. Gives us more time to figu…” The boy paused, pushed the device more securely into his ear, his eyes blinking angrily. Then he relaxed and smiled again.

  “I got to meet someone. And fast,” he said, taking out the listener and carefully restoring it to its pouch on the tube wall. “You stay put and stay quiet,” he murmured to Acorna and Calum. He glanced over at Dr. Hoa, shrugged his shoulders, and crawled away with the speed of a spider after an intruder in its web.

  Acorna saw that Dr. Hoa was asleep, the water bottle securely clutched against his chest with both hands. Briefly she remembered the swollen, distorted knuckles and torn, burned skin she had seen before her healing touch had soothed them. She shivered and tried not to imagine what deliberate cruelty had inflicted those injuries.

  “I don’t much like this,” Calum muttered. “How do you know we can trust the kid?”

  Acorna gave him a chilly look. “For starters, he just saved us both from imprisonment and you, at least, from torture. Then there’s the fact that his father was killed resisting the coup that put these people in power—”

  “So he says. How do you know he’s telling the truth?”

  “Well, we’re free, aren’t we?”

  “Are we?” Calum stretched until one elbow banged into either side of the tunnel where they crouched.

  “Damn!” Acorna exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of asking Markel to send a message to either Shenjemi or Maganos—or better, both?”

  Whatever could Markel have heard that had produced first fury and then humor? Acorna pondered that for a moment. No way to tell now. While waiting, she might as well restore her strength. She took a careful mouthful of water and munched on another carrot as quietly as one can munch a carrot. But they were not vegetables that dissolved even when mixed with her saliva. She swallowed hard, forcing down the half-masticated bits of carrot, so that she could listen once again.


  After an interminable wait she heard slight noises coming toward them—but they sounded like the movements of a large man, not like Markel’s quick, delicate crawl. She threw a blanket over Dr. Hoa in the faint hope of concealing him from whoever had discovered their hiding place, and looked at Calum with wide, frightened eyes. He squeezed her hand reassuringly—at least, she assumed he meant it to be reassuring.

  With her acute hearing, she registered before Calum did that there were two people approaching them, the smaller one in front.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered to Calum, “Markel’s bringing someone.”

  “That,” Calum whispered, “is exactly what I was afraid of.”

  “Acorna?”

  She lifted her head, identifying Markel’s whisper. The much larger person behind him looked vaguely familiar, yet the feel of him was completely strange…she felt sure she had never been in his presence before, yet his face raised some chord of recognition in her.

  He caught sight of her, goggled and gulped and pointed. Markel looked around, then at Acorna, and he, too, goggled.

  “Damn,” Acorna said out loud. In her hasty attempt to conceal Dr. Hoa, her hat had come off. And her horn was visible.

  Calum began chuckling. What was so funny about the situation? A moment ago he’d been sure Markel had betrayed them, now he thought it was funny that her horn was in plain sight?