Acorna's Triumph

by Anne McCaffrey

  She reached for the side of the shuttle to pull herself erect again, but the craft’s hull seemed to be in the wrong place. She trained the torch on it. The side nearest her listed toward her as if about to confide some secret.

  And suddenly she noticed a sound. “Klikity-klakklak-klik-klik.” Khleevi!

  The hatch on the pilot’s side of the shuttle wouldn’t open—a corner seemed to be jammed against the ground, which was rolling again. Acorna used the shifting hull to steady herself and made her way to the hatch on the passenger side. Perhaps she could use her own weight to pull the craft upright enough that the hatch would open.

  She crawled on top of it and bounced. She thought she felt something move. Clambering down again, she pried open the hatch, which opened just enough to admit her.

  But although she was in, the shuttle was not out. It remained partially stuck in the crack. She prepared to launch nonetheless. If the ground shifted just right, she could take advantage of the difference in pressure to escape.

  Then she looked up and saw the bug eyes and pincers of the Khleevi staring in at her through the hatch. The things didn’t have recognizable mouths, but Acorna could have sworn this one was grinning at her.

  She touched the disk at her neck, crying out silently to Aari.

  Fourteen

  Khornya!” Aari awoke, digging himself out of the riverbed, which had buried all but his nostrils. He had distinctly heard her voice crying out to him. “Khornya, where are you?”

  He knew she was in terrible danger from the Khleevi. But that must mean she was here, somewhere in the past, at some time close to this one. But where and when? He had to get to her, had to help her somehow. She had faced the Khleevi before with cleverness and courage, but that was with a great deal of backing from their own Linyaari people and House Harakamian. He knew somehow that she was all alone this time. If she wasn’t actually frightened yet, she should be.

  He sat up and looked around him at his thoroughly alien—and alienated in the most literal sense—homeworld.

  He ought to be nearing Kubiilikaan now. Grimalkin had told him the entrance in his own time was through the Ancestors’ caves. His Linyaari navigational sense told him that was just about—here. He had seen an image of it in Grimalkin’s mind when Grimalkin spoke of it. But where the entrance to the Ancestors’ cave should have been he saw nothing but a mountain of rubble. While it didn’t look as if the Khleevi had found much to interest them here, the earthquakes and avalanches—and a tsunami, no doubt, from the inland sea, had thoroughly wrecked the entrance. If he had equipment half as heavy as his heart felt at the sight of the rubble, he could have moved it all out of the way, but as it was he would never reach Kubiilikaan by this route.

  He had come so far to reach this place that he was at the end of his strength. But the memory of Khornya’s dream voice spurred him onward. She needed him, and he had made it this far. Several tons of dirt were not going to stop him from reaching his goal. He could find Khornya if only he could get to the time device, and somehow he would reach her. What he would do after that was unclear.

  He eyed the obstacles between himself and the tunnel’s entrance bleakly. However, if one upheaval had caused the cave-in that prevented him from entering here, perhaps that other catastrophe, the one that had blasted another hole through to the underground city, had also occurred by now.

  He took several deep breaths. On hooves that felt as if they had been filed down to the quick and held over a slow fire, and muscles that were so sore they burned with the aching, he tottered forward, bypassing the cave’s entrance and heading for the sea upon whose shores he had played as a child.

  The sight of the sinkhole where the waters had been ought to have depressed him, but instead filled him with hope.

  He walked out onto the mudflats that stretched for miles in every direction. They were not actually mud any longer, however, since mud implied dirt and water. The seabed held no more water than a desert, and much less nourishment. He dropped to his knees, feeling as though he could go no farther, but after lying still a moment or two, fearing he might sleep, or pass out, and make easy prey of himself for any passing Khleevi, he crawled forward.

  Mac made a note to himself to invent a communication device that would cross time as well as space barriers. It was most inconvenient not to be able to continue instructing Acorna after she left the present time zone.

  No sooner was she in the shuttle than he noticed that the Aari icon had unaccountably blinked off the screen, as had the icons for the ship, Laarye, and Grimalkin. He tapped cautiously forward but found no trace of them. He returned to the moment when the ship landed and watched it all over again, but this time continued to watch for a moment after the icons disappeared.

  Abruptly the ship and Grimalkin icons reappeared, but this time neither Aari nor Laarye was present. However, a great many Khleevi converged on the ship’s position. The Grimalkin icon disappeared, but a moment later, it reappeared. It was immediately swamped by Khleevi icons.

  He tapped forward in time, and the Grimalkin icon blinked on and off again. The Khleevi icons moved away. They were so thick that Mac could not tell if Grimalkin’s icon was among them or not. A light tap forward again and there was Acorna’s icon and that of her ship. The time device apparently was not deceived by Linyaari cloaking.

  Even Mac’s excellent analytical programming could make little sense of all of this. He kept tapping forward at the same site, looking for signs of Aari so that when Acorna returned he could tell her when to search next.

  “So, Mac, is she back yet?” Becker’s voice hailed Mac from his chest modification.

  “No, Captain, she is not. However, I have looked forward in time, and I am now at the point where the Khleevi are leaving Vhiliinyar.” The slime green icons were disappearing in droves, blinking out while he watched. In another tap they were almost all gone, but he saw no white Linyaari icon, nor for that matter did he see the golden one that signified Grimalkin.

  One more tap. No icons of any kind appeared on the part of the wall he scrutinized. He set his visual sensors so they minutely scanned the rest of the massive screen inch by inch. However, he detected nothing, no life signs whatsoever.

  Most puzzling,

  He tapped three more times, lightly, and on the third time, he saw Aari’s icon reappear inside the cave. “Ah! There he is.”

  “There who is?” Becker asked. “Aari?”

  “Yes, Captain. I wish Khornya was here to see this now. She would be extremely relieved. Grimalkin did not abandon Aari to the Khleevi. While everyone was on board, Grimalkin apparently shifted the ship forward in time until it and the people aboard were out of danger from the Khleevi. Then he abandoned Aari to the cave.”

  “Oh, hey, that was real nice of him,” Becker growled. “Guess I’ll only have to break him into two pieces instead of a dozen. What about Acorna? Where is she?”

  “I will return your hail when I have ascertained her geographical and chronological position, Captain. It will take me somewhat longer if we remain connected and I answer your questions while conducting my search.”

  “I can take a hint. You let us know immediately when you find her, though. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” Mac said, but he was already tapping a new sequence.

  The sinkhole was wide and deep. Aari had no idea how far he would fall before he landed in the water below. He didn’t know if there was enough water to break his fall or if the distance was so great he would be killed on impact. But there was no other way, so he closed his eyes, stepped forward, and dived head-first into the abyss.

  After a couple of nanoseconds he hit something solid that then gave, quickly covering his eyes and filling his nostrils and mouth. He jerked his head upward, shaking it from side to side, as he continued to slide down the slippery slope of—mud! His descent was slow enough now to allow him to bring his hands to his eyes to free them. His elbows dug into the surface and further slowed his
progress. His eyes adjusted, and he could tell he was sliding down a mud hill as tall as a small mountain. This was the surface debris that fell into the great inland sea upon which Kubiilikaan was built. He had hoped it would be here now—the sinkhole had indicated that it would, but he had never approached it from the surface before.

  He turned so he slid on his backside the rest of the way into the water, entering with such force that he created a personal tidal wave that washed ten feet or so up the mountain, muddying the water. His horn, of course, unmuddied it as soon as it touched the liquid.

  (Hey, be careful, Cousin!) a thought-voice complained. It was a familiar thought-voice at that. It sounded very like someone who couldn’t possibly be here now.

  For no sii-Linyaari should be occupying this stagnant sea, he knew. He had transported the aquatic folk, pre-Linyaari experimental genetic blends of Ancestral genes with Host genes, from their original position to a post-Khleevi future.

  (Upp?) he asked. (What are you doing here?)

  (You should know that very well, Cousin. You brought us here. For that dubious boon I owe it to you to tell you that a female of your kind came seeking you.)

  (A female. Khornya.)

  (Could have been. We told her you and that cat-father had brought us here, then left in one of the old ships. She was not happy about it.)

  (When was this?)

  (Maybe one swim around the water ago. Speaking of that, why are you back so soon? Where is the cat-father and where is your ship?)

  (That, my friend, is a very good question.)

  Aari was trying to swim, but he was very weak from his long ordeal. Upp regarded him with scorn on his ugly horn-studded face. (You are in very poor shape in such a very short time, land cousin.)

  (More time has passed for me than it has for you,) Aari said, realizing Upp probably wouldn’t understand.

  (That troublesome device of the Parents, eh?)

  (Yes, something like that. I…must…get…to…shore. Must…find…Khornya.)

  (Oh, very well. Hang on to my tail, then. You’re never going to make it the way you’re going now.)

  It took all of Aari’s remaining strength to comply. He allowed himself to be towed to shore. Letting go of Upp’s tail, he crawled out of the water and up onto the road leading down into it. Then he rolled onto his back and for a moment lay there gasping. As his breaths deepened and his heartbeat slowed, he began crawling up the hill, past the constantly changing facades of buildings lining the street.

  This part of the trip felt almost as if it was longer than the entire journey leading up to it. As he reached the entrance to the building containing the time device, he cursed Grimalkin. There was no adequate expression in the Linyaari language to express his feelings, so he borrowed a few choice phrases from Becker’s repertoire.

  Aari reflected bitterly on the riverbeds he’d slept in, the foul-smelling Khleevi stench he’d wallowed in to throw them off his own scent, the caves he’d crammed his body into. And all for nothing! He was never in any danger from the Khleevi at all. Grimalkin had brought him forward in time before dumping him. Of course, Aari was glad the Khleevi hadn’t been there to recapture him, but he would have been gladder if he’d known about it before he took such elaborate precautions to dodge them.

  Sparing little more thought for the cat-creature, Aari entered the building. The walls lit instantly. He picked his way down the incline that had once been a moving staircase and found the room containing the time device. Fortunately, after traveling with Grimalkin for what would have been several years in linear time, he was familiar with the workings of this sort of device. He knew the time he was in now, and the zone he and Grimalkin had been in when they landed to rescue Laarye. But how would he know when to find Khornya and expose Grimalkin’s deception? He was wet enough now that he could leave from and arrive in the time machine room without going back to the lake, so where to go was no problem.

  He began tapping the screen. Pain shot up his hand, and his finger felt as if it had entered orbit on a particularly heavy-gravity world. He bent his horn to touch it but was able to make it only slightly less painful. His horn had been depleted by continually trying to purify the tainted air, water, and soil on his journey, as well as healing his injuries along the way. He was exhausted. But never mind that. He had to find Khornya.

  And he did. With only a few more taps, her icon appeared in the space on the screen indicating the room in which he now worked. That was better luck than he had any reason to hope for. His sore hand felt better just from touching her icon.

  Everything in him told him to go to her here, now—then. But if he stepped back into her time before he and Grimalkin rescued Laarye, Laarye would not be saved. He had to reenter after Grimalkin had returned Laarye safely to their parents.

  He sighed and leaned against the panel where Khornya’s icon appeared. His head was spinning, and he realized that part of what he was thinking was rational, part of it mixed with senseless dreams. He had to sleep, and soon. His mind was too weary to work the equations that would tell him when to go. And yet she had cried out to him. She was in danger. He would lean this way just a while longer, touching her icon, feeling her presence across time, if not space.

  Mac continued his search, tapping ever more rapidly so that the Aari icon seemed to jerk across the screen from the cave southward along a riverbed until he came to…until he came to the same room in which Mac was now standing. Well. There should certainly be something Mac could do about that.

  It was true that Aari was probably not standing in water, and perhaps he was trying to travel to some other when. But Mac felt the highest probability was that Aari was looking for Khornya. So, the android reasoned, Aari should come to the present time with him. Mac could use his help.

  He wasn’t one hundred percent certain that what he planned to do would work, but he performed the same operation he had performed to send Khornya back in time, reversed it, and hoped that was how one brought someone forward again.

  He felt himself shoved aside as Aari’s body suddenly appeared almost on top of him. Aari appeared to be unconscious. If it were possible for an android to be shocked, Mac would have been shocked by Aari’s appearance. He dimly remembered, back when he himself had been a simpler being, how Aari had looked when Becker first rescued him from the cave. It wasn’t quite the same. Nothing was broken or missing, but this Aari was so thin he could practically have crawled out the neck hole of his shipsuit without unfastening it. He was filthy, and Mac’s olfactory sensors were not happy with the aroma wafting from the thin, bedraggled body.

  “Aari, my friend, I am here. Please awaken. I desire your help to find Khornya. I regret that she is not here, because if she was, I know she would wish to hover over you in your current condition, speaking soothing words and caressing your fevered skin with her beautiful horn.”

  “What’s going on down there, Mac?” Becker demanded from the area where Mac’s fourth rib would have been had his construction been as shoddy as that of the average organic man. “Who are you talking to? Did you find Acorna?”

  “No, Captain, but Aari is here. The authentic Aari. But he is extremely weak and sick and very dirty. His horn is lying to one side and is the color of new oil.”

  “In other words, he’s no use to her or us in his current condition?” Rafik asked, an edge to his voice. He didn’t know Aari well. All he had seen of Acorna’s lifemate was the false version presented by Grimalkin.

  Becker said, “There’s got to be someone with a functioning horn nearby. Let me call Terraform HQ and see who’s in the vicinity.”

  “Other Linyaari?” Aari asked in a raspy voice.

  Becker’s voice returned in a minute. “Well, I suppose her horn is better than no horn at all. Liriili is taking inventory of new plantings near the cave entrance. She should be meeting you there in a few minutes.”

  “No—time,” Aari said, and pulled himself up the wall, starting to tap at it.

  He and Mac wer
e at it when Aari heard Liriili’s thought-inquiry, (Are you there? I hope this is as important as my work. I quite lost count when I received that peremptory summons.)

  “She’s here,” Aari told Mac, between taps. “She seems lost. I got her message, but my horn—too weak. Can’t send.”

  “I will go to the doorway and call to her then, shall I?” Mac said, striding away.

  Between his first footstep and Aari’s next tap, Aari saw Khornya’s icon, inside that of her little shuttle. As well as the icons of dozens of Khleevi surrounding her.

  Aari, still wet from the sea, did not hesitate. With a shaking hand, he scribbled the time signature and coordinates on the screen for Mac. Then, with a horrified visualization of what must be happening all around her, he focused on Khornya, dived into the time stream in the middle of the room, and went in after her.

  Fifteen

  Greedy Khleevi eyes watched Acorna through the clear shuttle hatch while their pincers scored and gouged at the little vessel’s artificial carapace. Fortunately, it was every bit as tough as the Khleevi’s own covering. Tougher, in fact. Since her attempts to free the shuttle from the crack in Vhiliinyar’s surface had failed, Acorna turned in her seat and fumbled with the webbing holding her cargo. She didn’t think she would be able to save herself with it, but she could at least relieve Vhiliinyar of a few plundering Khleevi before she died.

  Despite Mac’s modifications, no Linyaari vessel contained gun ports. Instead he had equipped the shuttle with high-powered fire-extinguishing rifles with the anti-Khleevi weapon. Acorna was glad now that they had taken the time to stop on the sentient plant world Becker referred to as PU-#10. The sap secreted by these plants when they were in a state of agitation had been the secret weapon Acorna and her allies used with good effect against the Khleevi during their last invasion.