Eight
Somewhere on the Planet Vhiliinyar,
Several Years Earlier
Aari knew where he was long before he awakened fully in the dankness and darkness of the cave. He had come to know this place so well in the time before Joh Becker rescued him.
He held his breath and listened, reluctant to open his eyes. All around him he felt the upheaval of soil and rock, the thunder of erupting volcanoes, a quiver from distant earthquakes and—oh, no. For the love of the Ancestors, no. Could that sound just beyond the range of his physical hearing, a sound he felt more than heard, be the clomping and sliding of Kleevi feet and Kleevi bodies rending Vhiliinyar into slag, trailing their caustic slime as they destroyed everything they touched?
A nightmare… he thought. Surely it’s a nightmare. Though he remembered the agony that had accompanied those sounds for so very long, he was not now in pain. His hand touched his forehead. His fingers slid along the reassuringly solid base of his growing horn.
And then he remembered. He and Grimalkin had returned through time to find Laarye. In the time they came from, his brother had died of starvation in this very cave while Aari was writhing and screaming under the tender ministrations of the planet’s Khleevi invaders. But he and Grimalkin were only going to rescue Laarye, who had remained in the cave after Aari had healed him of injuries he’d sustained in that fall. Aari would not need to go for food. Grimalkin had timed them back to Vhiliinyar and sat in the ship waiting for them. All Aari needed to do was grab Laarye and they would reboard the ship, time it forward, and rejoin Khornya and the others. After the many journeys Aari and Grimalkin had taken together, after all Aari had learned of history, with Grimalkin and him such a prominent part of it, this was the time he had waited for. This was the time for which he promised Grimalkin his seed, his genes.
Becker had a peculiar saying about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Aari’s friend had explained that the chicken was a sort of a bird and the egg of course what it came from. But on the other hand, chickens laid eggs that produced more chickens. So where did the first chicken that laid the first egg originate, if not from another egg?
The Ancestral Hosts or Friends, as the Linyaari called them, had a similar situation. They were great scientists determined to create and give races on many other worlds the benefit of their superior genes. They were ageless beings from a possibly immortal race, but they were also shape-shifters whose own forms had become too unstable for them to bear young. And so, unable to have young of their own, they manipulated the DNA of other beings and created new races. Such as the Linyaari. Except they hadn’t been able to get it right yet. Their attempts to blend themselves with the Ancestors, a Terran species originally called unicorns, had been disappointing.
This was not the fault of the Ancestors, who were perfectly capable of bearing unicorn foals, though before their rescue from Old Terra by the Friends, they had been in danger of becoming extinct. Earthly hunters had harried them for their horns until the psychic vibrations of Ancestral anguish attracted the attention of the Friends once again. They’d picked the Ancestors up in a space vessel and brought them to Vhiliinyar.
The unicorn Ancestors were willing enough to be bred into a race that would have some of the strengths, such as opposable thumbs, of their former enemies. However, the unstable forms of the Hosts foiled their efforts to breed the race they had in mind—Aari’s race. The Hosts changed too quickly and at times too unpredictably. Their first attempts had resulted in the sii-Linyaari, a horned mer-people. While a viable race, they were not at all what the Friends were trying to create. Subsequent attempts at creation of the Linyaari, Aari gathered, had been even less successful. They’d resulted in stillbirths and early deaths of the offspring created.
When the destruction of Vhiliinyar destabilized the time network the Hosts had laced throughout the planet, Aari had found himself transported back to those early days, before the true Linyaari were created. The Hosts saw in Aari the shortcut they needed to produce his race. They had not explained themselves very well or bothered to solicit his consent before putting their plan into action. When they restrained him, Aari could think only of his torment by the Khleevi and of escaping from the creatures that were about to experiment on him. Grimalkin had helped him, taking them both forward in time until they could board a space vessel from Vhiliinyar just before the first Khleevi attack.
Once he saw how easily Grimalkin manipulated time, Aari saw the opportunity to save his doomed brother. Striking a bargain with Grimalkin to cooperate with future experiments, he had also agreed to go on the adventures the feline shape-shifter deemed necessary before they reached the cross in the double helix of time that would permit them to rescue Laarye.
Aari had been elated. He distinctly remembered landing, being afraid they would be spotted, though the Linyaari cloaking technology made them all but undetectable even upon descent. And yes, Laarye was there, and not surprised to see him since—from Laarye’s point of view, at least—Aari had only just stepped out to find food. His brother had been amazed and delighted that instead of returning with dinner, Aari had found a way off their doomed planet.
Grimalkin brought them both aboard and then…Aari couldn’t remember. He awakened in the cave. He opened his eyes at last. Laarye was not here, though there was food of a sort, grasses dried to a sort of straw, piled in one corner. Bending down, as he had to in order not to hit his head against the cave’s low ceiling, he crept to the entrance. The ship had vanished.
What happened? Had the destabilized time apparatus stuttered again and sent the ship back into space and himself back to the cave? How long would it take Grimalkin to discover the error and return for him?
He waited. And waited. And waited. And finally the straw disappeared and most of the water he had found beside it. And he realized that whatever had happened, Grimalkin, Laarye, and the ship were not returning anytime soon.
In his mind he saw Khleevi patrols passing closer to his hiding place every moment. He shook all over and broke out in a cold sweat thinking of them capturing him again. He had no idea how long they would be there before the planet was so depleted they were forced to leave it, before the Condor arrived on its first salvage mission. His ordeal with his torturers had seemed to last an eternity, but it could have been a matter of weeks or merely days.
One thing for sure. If Aari was still here when Joh and Riid Kiiyi arrived for the first time this time, Aari would not wait for the second mission to meet them.
The only alternative was somehow to find his way back to Kubiilikaan and the time apparatus and hope that he could manipulate it to take him back to Khornya somewhere close to the moment he lost her.
Another Sector of Space, Another Time…
He certainly hoped this plan of his would work. He’d thought it would be easy enough, given his skill with time travel, but as it turned out, it required a number of attempts, each of them at the risk of his own life.
Once he succeeded, she had better appreciate all the trouble he’d gone to on her behalf. She had better appreciate him.
The main problem was that no one still living knew exactly what had happened during Feriila and Vaanye’s last and fatal voyage. Neeva, Feriila’s sister, had managed to learn that Vaanye had used a new defense system he’d invented to destroy the Khleevi ship bearing down on his family’s small cruiser. For three ghaanyi, Neeva and the Linyaari people thought that the entire family had died in the destruction. Neeva had learned of her error only when she and her shipmates embarked on a mission to warn other worlds of the Khleevi menace bearing down upon them and discovered Acorna and her human family.
Which was very nice for Khornya, of course, but the story was quite short on the sort of specifics one needed when trying to do a certain sort of intervention.
Once Neeva had told him all that she knew of the incident, including the approximate times and coordinates, he began to test the waters to find the correct time to intercept his subjects.
It needed to be after the pod was ejected, after Feriila and Vaanye took the abaanye, which would put them to sleep forever (unless, of course, the antidote happened to be administered just in time by a heroic rescuer), and after the controls had been set to collapse the dimensional space surrounding both the Khleevi ship when it came within a certain range and the little cruiser. And, most importantly of all, his move had to be made before the actual collapse took place.
Tricky. Very tricky.
So he simply observed the first time, not making his presence known. When the couple drank fatal doses of the abaanye sleeping potion and gave a dilute dose to Khornya in her bottle before ejecting her life pod into space, he lost his nerve and, with uncharacteristic panic, changed his time. Whether he was more alarmed by the prospect of the Khleevi warship clearly visible in the viewport or of the detonation of Vaanye’s weapon, he couldn’t have said for sure.
But having made careful notes of the times and coordinates, he returned, this time with the remedy for the abaanye sleep. He arrived unprotected in deep space. No Khleevi ship, no cruiser. No pod. He returned at once to his former time-space slot, made notes, and pondered.
Vaanye and Feriila stowed their baby in her pod and set the command to eject her before the Khleevi tripped the sensor that would detonate Vaanye’s weapon. Then they toasted each other with glasses of sparkling red wine, each mixed with a fatal dose of abaanye.
Feriila fought to stay awake long enough to see and hear the signal, and watch the mechanism outside the pod activate. She did not see the pod leave the ship, and her eyes closed shortly after, but she felt she could finally die in peace knowing that her baby had a chance.
But she wasn’t allowed to die. Someone dribbled something bitter into her mouth, and said, “Wake up, Feriila. That was the antidote for the abaanye I just gave you. You’re safe with me now. You’re not going to die today.”
“Vaanye?” she asked, her tongue thick and slurring her lifemate’s name.
“He isn’t going to die either, though I believe he has a terrible hangover.”
She heard a groan in the familiar tones of her beloved. “Were it not for you and our child, I’d almost have preferred to take my chances with the Khleevi to this!”
“The Khleevi!” she said, forcing her eyes wide open and half-expecting to see the insectoid monsters studying her.
“They are far away, in another time and place. Khornya—as your daughter is called in Linyaari—and, uh, I, along with many others, have engineered the defeat and destruction of the Khleevi.”
Feriila still felt a bit tipsy. The wine was potent and the abaanye antidote had done nothing to counteract the effects of the drink. Above her loomed a familiar but unexpected face. “I know you!” she said, pointing at the young male standing over her. “You’re Aari! What are you doing here?”
“And where is here anyway?” Vaanye asked.
“It is far into the future from the time when the abaanye sedated you,” he told them. “I’ve brought you forward to be with your daughter. I’m afraid you’ve missed her childhood—she was found and raised by three human males.”
“What’s a human?” both of the other Linyaari asked.
“It’s a bit complicated. They are another race of sentients. Once you see one I can explain more clearly. As I was saying, you missed much of your daughter’s childhood, but perhaps we can do something about that later. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Wait a bit,” Feriila said. “Why are you doing this, Aari?”
“How are you doing this, Aari? Or is this a dream or perhaps a postmortem delusion—some sort of afterlife experience? Were you and our daughter both killed before your time but are here to guide us to the hereafter?”
“Oh, no!” he said. “As to your question, Feriila, I am doing this because you are in trouble and need my help, of course, but also because I am, or should be, Khornya’s mate, and I wish to make her happy. As to how I am doing this, Vaanye, let me assure you that there is more physics than metaphysics behind this process, but it would take as long to explain—even to you—as it would for you to explain your weapon to me. And Khornya and I are both very much alive, as are the two of you.”
Feriila and Vaanye exchanged looks, shrugged, and followed Aari, who, Vaanye recalled, had not been one of the more outstanding physics students in Kubiilikhan.
The Moon of Opportunity, Present Time
Acorna was visiting Maati in the terminal’s sophisticated communications room—no longer the humble com shed it had once been—when eerie calls began coming in over the subspace amplifiers.
Shortly after they heard the first of those keening signals, Aziza’s face appeared on Maati’s screen. “MOO base, we are receiving transmissions most peculiar from the amplifiers. They do not sound like the utterings of the sulfur beings you recorded for us, nor do they appear to emanate from the planet where the stones are.”
Acorna hailed the Condor, which was still in port. Becker’s and Mac’s faces both appeared on the screen, to be blocked momentarily by RK’s as the cat peered straight at her. Becker lifted his first mate off the com console. “What’s up, Princess?” Becker asked.
“We are receiving a weird signal from the subspace amps, Captain,” she told him. “I was hoping Mac might be able to give us some idea if the sounds being transmitted are actual words of a language, and if so, can he translate them?”
“Oh, sure,” Becker said. “We’ll be right down.”
To Maati’s delight, RK came, too, and jumped into her lap, purring. But as soon as she toggled the connection to the subspace amplifiers and the noises began, RK mewed and pawed at the console. Maati petted him, but the cat continued to meow louder and more plaintively with each incoming sound.
Finally, Mac said, “Would someone be good enough to remove the first mate to an area where his complaints will not interfere with my ability to process those transmissions that we are receiving from space?”
“I can’t take him,” Maati said. “I’m on duty and can’t leave my post, even with you guys here.”
Acorna scooped the cat up and took him out of the terminal area. As soon as they were out of earshot of the transmissions, he calmed down and stopped caterwauling. “You seem to be more attuned to alien utterances than anyone except Mac,” she told him. “I wish you would condescend to tell us more directly what is upsetting you, rather than insisting that we interpret feline cries and body language. We could use your help.”
He gave a sharp “Prrt,” and licked her ear. She was reminded suddenly of something Gill had said teasingly when she was little. If she asked a question about anything that she wasn’t supposed to know, Gill always looked wise, and said, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” She seemed to be getting the same response from the cat.
She grazed for a bit in the Celestial Garden, the one closest to the terminal, while RK did his bit for the fertilization and irrigation of Hafiz’s prized orchids.
Hearing distinctive Linyaari footfalls, she looked up to see her aunt Neeva stride past on her way toward the terminal, her head bent over a clipboard and her mouth moving.
Acorna called out to her aunt, and Neeva looked up and smiled. “Khornya! Are you heading back to Vhiliinyar soon?”
“Maybe,” Acorna said. “Unless I’m needed elsewhere.”
“I had the strangest dream the other night. It was all about you and Feriila and Vaanye, of all people.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
Neeva stopped while Acorna joined her beside the path, and they both seated themselves on the clover-strewn grass. Hafiz had the grasses of his gardens dotted with the little wildflower plants specifically for the delight of his Linyaari friends.
“Do you remember I told you that your parents were on their way to the planet where I was posted when they met up with the Khleevi?”
“You mentioned it, yes,” Acorna said. Neeva had not gone into great detail at the time except to let her know that her parent
s had jettisoned her pod in hopes of saving her.
“Well, I had this very peculiar dream in which Aari came to see me and asked me all sorts of questions about when each event occurred during the last moments your parents were alive. He was very…intense…about it, insisting that I remember the exact sequence, trying to get me to visualize the chrono on my com screen so that I would see the exact times I learned of each event.”
“Was it Aari Whole-Horn doing the questioning or—” She started to say “my Aari” but thought better of it.
“Yes, I know exactly what you mean. This was the Aari who brought Laarye back with him. I couldn’t understand why he was so interested. Though, of course, as your lifemate, he would want to know a lot about you. But by the time your parents were dead, the evacuation was taking place, and he and Laarye were taking refuge in the cave. Dreams are so odd. I wonder what that one meant.”
“Me too,” Acorna said, though she thought she might know the answer and didn’t like to think about it.
(Hey, Princess, Mac’s figured it out,) Becker sent her a mental message. He enjoyed using telepathy as a special bond between them, pleased that she could read him when he deliberately addressed her with a thought.
(I’ll be right there,) she replied.
RK ran ahead of the two Linyaari as they entered the terminal. The receiver was blessedly silent, but Mac looked quite pleased with himself. If she hadn’t known he was an android, Acorna would have said he looked humanly smug, in fact.
Acorna's Triumph Page 11