Acorna's Triumph

by Anne McCaffrey

  Now she hoped she could open the hatch and fire quickly and in a wide enough pattern to buy herself a little time. Perhaps her movements and those of the Khleevi would be enough to free her little vessel and allow her to escape after all. Perhaps she would simply have the time to destroy more of the Khleevi. At least she would not simply sit in the shuttle and wait to be taken.

  She finally cut the webbing loose and freed the weapons—there were only a half dozen of them from a stock Becker had taken in trade for some Huicholian welded circuit boards he’d salvaged from a freighter called the Zapata out of Nuevo Guadalajara. Before she strapped two of them across her chest and back, bandoleer-style, she held another one of the rifles with the barrels pointed at her, took a deep breath, and fired, covering herself and the command chair, but not the console, with the odious-smelling sap.

  The sap! She had a momentary flash from her future dream of the dripping green stuff covering her, Aari, and the Khleevi. It was the sap. Was the dream in the process of coming true? It could not. It simply could not. And yet, this was the only possible course of action open to her if she was to survive and rescue Aari.

  At one point during the trip back to Vhiliinyar, she’d confided her dream to Becker, and her concern that it could be a premonition of things to come.

  That was when she suggested the side trip to PU-#10 to pick up the plant sap.

  Becker had approved. “Makes sense. Any Khleevi that tries to take a bite out of you will want to take a bite out of something else to take the taste out of his mouth. But by the time he does, it’ll be too late because he won’t have a mouth anymore.” The sap was corrosive to the Khleevi carapace, then it destroyed the inner tissue. The worst thing any non-Khleevi being had experienced from the sap so far was a slight allergic reaction.

  She cleared her nostrils, eyes, and fingers of the sap, strapped the guns across her body, and picked up two more, one for each hand. The Linyaari were pacifist by nature but fortunately for Acorna she hadn’t been raised in her own culture. Her mentors growing up had been three rough-and-ready human asteroid miners, all of whom had a nice streak of violence when it was necessary to survive. Besides, she considered this not so much destroying Khleevi as saving whatever life-forms these few Khleevi would destroy. Maybe even herself.

  After taking another deep breath, which she regretted almost at once, she once more looked up to face her attackers.

  They goggled down at her for a split nanosecond, then suddenly turned away, looking at something, lumbering toward something that she couldn’t see because the Khleevi in front of her blocked her view.

  Then, to her horror, she found out what it was.

  (Khornya! I am drawing them off so you can escape!) Aari’s thought-voice, the real Aari’s thought-voice, spoke to her mind.

  (Not without you!) she said, standing with her head lowered and throwing her shoulders and back against the hatch. It gave more quickly than she dared hope, and she stood with her torso exposed, dripping slime and pointing her water guns at the Khleevi clustered fifteen yards from the bow of the shuttle. She fired into them. The Khleevi broke, emitting high-pitched squeals along with frantic kliking and klaking. Their defection exposed Aari, who was being held in the pincers of three more Khleevi.

  Acorna fired the contents of her other water rifle, aiming first to cover Aari, then waving the firing weapon so it spread its contents over Aari’s attackers as well. They dropped him.

  (Quickly, love, before the others replace them,) she said. But he was very weak, and could only stumble toward her. Staggering forward, he tripped and fell over a fissure in the ground.

  Without another thought for her own safety she pulled herself out of the hatch, discarding her discharged weapons and tossing the rifles strapped over her out onto the ground so they didn’t catch on something as she ran. She leaped to the ground, slid in the sap, but reached Aari and pulled him to his feet as the other Khleevi advanced. There were far more of the bugs than she had realized—perhaps the patrol she’d seen at first had called for reinforcements?

  She dragged Aari to his feet and pulled him back as far as her abandoned rifles, which she snagged, keeping one for her own use and handing the other to him. The damaged Khleevi were being trampled as their comrades advanced on the two Linyaari. Acorna knew that the sap covering the downed Khleevi would eat into the feet of the tramplers, but by the time the attackers realized they were injured, it would probably be too late for her and Aari.

  Then the ground convulsed beneath her boots and knocked her, Aari, and the Khleevi off their feet. She kept scuttling backward, pulling Aari with her, then, suddenly, she felt air beneath her scrabbling hand and heard a crunching, rending noise. Turning, she saw that the crack holding the shuttle was opening to a chasm into which the shuttle tumbled.

  Aari’s hand caught on her wrist. He went still, then he grasped her wrist with his other hand and rubbed away the sap. (Grimalkin’s timer?) he asked.

  (Yes. I found it out there, which is why I stopped.)

  (Using the timer, we can leave,) he told her, radiating excitement and the first hope she had sensed in the emotional bleakness he’d been broadcasting.

  (How?) There was no time for caution, but she felt an awful sinking inside her, a sense of the inevitability of fate. My dreams, she thought. They could come true… The risk was unimaginably horrifying, but the other way lay certain death for both of them.

  (Input the desired date, time, and coordinates. Simple.)

  She made a quick decision. Predestination and the inevitability of fate were not concepts she embraced. Thrusting her fears aside so they would not distract Aari, she sent a practical thought instead. (Maybe it would be if I could see the timer, but it’s dark.)

  He touched something and the timer illuminated.

  Meanwhile a wall of Khleevi feet, mandibles, and pincers crushed in on them.

  (You know how it works. You use it,) she said. (I’ll try to keep the Khleevi off us.) She started to shove the timer off her wrist to him, but he stopped her.

  (I need to touch you so we can both go,) he told her. (Just a—) His fingers were busy.

  Acorna opened a half circle around them by attacking the surprised Khleevi with the most sap-saturated parts of herself she could while still allowing Aari to retain her wrist. The Khleevi tried to touch her, but quickly retracted their pincers and jaws, klaking and making high-pitched squealing sounds of pain and shock.

  Khleevi telepathy alerted the rest of them that the prey wasn’t palatable. The giant bugs backed away from the Linyaari.

  Acorna felt hope rise within her heart. They were going to get out of this!

  Then the Khleevi hordes around them opened to permit two new pairs of Khleevi to approach. Each pair of the Khleevi held something between them.

  (They’ve got nets! Hurry, Aari, hurry!)

  (Almost got it—)

  The first pair of Khleevi threw their net. Acorna ducked, but still she felt the metal strands drop onto her head and shoulders. Aari grabbed her close to him as the Khleevi grabbed the net edges.

  Acorna shut her eyes tight. All she felt was the warm pressure of Aari’s arms beneath the net, holding her neck and back, and the touch of the cold steel net tightening around them.

  She dimly heard Maak’s voice calling, “Mayday! Mayday! Captain Becker, please assist at once! Implement emergency plan B and dispatch all available personnel to lend immediate aid! As we feared, Acorna and Aari have returned, but I cannot discern their condition because they are covered with a net of some sort and are surrounded by Khleevi.”

  Grimalkin screamed as the Khleevi pincers snipped at his tail. He felt the rush of air and actually lost a few hairs before he could jerk his treasured appendage into the hole after him. The Khleevi simply ate the rock and soil around his hiding place until he was exposed again. As one leaned forward to grab him, he bounded over its head and landed behind it, facing the feet of another Khleevi. He zipped between those legs, and several ot
her pairs of legs as well, running through them like he was speeding down a slalom course until suddenly he faced open mandibles instead of feet.

  He screeched to a halt, then turned to flee in another direction. But other Khleevi were also bending down, grabbing and snapping at him with those cruel pincers. Once more Grimalkin leaped, but this time the Khleevi in back were ready for his move so he had to stay aloft. He did this by landing on the nearest bug’s skull, then leaping from that bug head to the next and the next.

  If only there weren’t so many of them, he could get behind them, outrun them, and return to where he lost his timer. Once he had that again he would be safe. Even in feline form, he could work the controls.

  But no matter how he leaped and turned, hid, or skittered among them, the Khleevi always surrounded him. There were so many of them. He had hoped they might tire of trying to capture one small feline, which was why he had shifted to his alternate shape as soon as they laid hold of him in his two-legged form. But the bugs were relentless, and as stubborn as only the deeply stupid could be.

  It looked as if he’d have to backtrack to his timer while totally surrounded by these tiresome creatures.

  No sooner had that thought occurred to him than he suddenly felt the hunt cease. He ran without interference past the forest of Khleevi legs and feet into an open area of rock and rubble. He looked over his shoulder but the Khleevi weren’t watching him. Their antennae were all pointing in another direction.

  He heard it then. It sounded like a high-pitched whine—but it was mechanical, not animal, in origin. Could it be an engine? It sounded like a small vessel—maybe a shuttle or a flitter. What was it doing here? Or more precisely—what was it doing now? Grimalkin was sure that non-Khleevi vessels weren’t present in this time. Vhiliinyar was completely conquered, with no non-Khleevi alive on the planet except himself. And…maybe…Aari? But Aari should be somewhere in the post-Khleevi future. Of course, he should have been in the cave when Grimalkin arrived, but he hadn’t been. Grimalkin thought that was probably because he was trying to land the ship at the same time it had left with himself and Laarye before. There was always a bit of temporal distortion in that kind of situation.

  He scampered up the highest mound of rock and hardened slime to get a better vantage point. In cat form, seeing in the gloom presented him with little difficulty. The ground shook under his paws, though he was uncertain whether it was because of the stampede of Khleevi feet or from one of the monotonous earthquakes that periodically rocked Vhiliinyar.

  The Khleevi were bearing down on a large egg with wings on either side. Grimalkin recognized it as the Linyaari shuttle Captain Becker carried aboard the Condor. A Linyaari, though he couldn’t be sure exactly who it was from this distance, squatted beside the vessel. The Linyaari seemed to be staring at something.

  His timer! The Linyaari…Aari, surely, or maybe Laarye…or perhaps even Acorna…had found his timer! Joy! Exultation! He could leave here and take whoever it was with him. He was beginning a leap to the plain where the Linyaari was kneeling when the ground bucked up and knocked him onto his tail. When he stood up, cautiously, on the trembling earth, it felt as if he was trying to ride some large and unhappy animal. He could see that the little egglike vessel had wedged one of its wings in the crack. The Linyaari became aware of the Khleevi bearing down on the ship. The creature pried open the hatch and crawled inside with barely a centimeter to spare between the hatch and the first Khleevi pincer.

  Grimalkin made his leap and pelted toward the ship, once more dodging between Khleevi feet. Grimalkin to the rescue! As usual, he was landing on his paws. He would get his timer from the Linyaari and save both of them!

  Then the situation got more complicated. Suddenly Aari appeared in the midst of the knot of Khleevi farthest from the ship. Grimalkin was surprised to see that Aari did not look at all well. However, Khleevi were converging upon him, so the poor fellow was apt to look a lot worse before too long. Too bad Aari was the one who was closest and the one with the timer—Acorna? Grimalkin still couldn’t be sure—was inside the shuttle.

  Before he could decide what his next move would be, the hatch of the shuttle burst open and a monster, glistening wetly with something so foul-smelling that Grimalkin nearly swooned, climbed out.

  A second glance revealed that it was Acorna, though where she got that rotten slime from Grimalkin couldn’t imagine. She emptied the weapons she carried in her hands at the Khleevi. The evil-smelling, wet-looking stuff erupted from the ends of her guns and coated both Aari and his enemies with the same glop coating her. Grimalkin realized this must be the sap Aari’s recorded memories spoke of—the sap that had helped the Linyaari and their allies to finally destroy the Khleevi.

  It was working again. Khleevi fell screaming to the ground—or rather, klaking and kliking, which was much the same thing for them.

  But everything happened very quickly after that. Grimalkin tried to break through the line of Khleevi feet but had no luck. He would have switched to his other form, but then he would surely be captured, and, unlike Acorna and Aari, he had none of the sap. Even so, he would have risked it if he’d seen his timer on Acorna’s wrist, where Aari feverishly programmed it. By the time Grimalkin saw the device and realized what was happening, it was too late. The Khleevi had thrown a net over Acorna, Aari, and, alas, the timer. Before Grimalkin could blink, both the Linyaari couple and the Khleevi clinging to the net had vanished from the clearing leaving the shuttle, more Khleevi and…oh, dear, himself…behind.

  That was when someone picked him up by the tail and started swinging him in a long arc. He changed to his biped form, which had no tail, to escape. Unfortunately, that form lacked not only a tail but also the grace, speed, and agility of his cat form. Two more Khleevi blocked his path at once. Each took one of his arms, not caring at all if they dislocated his shoulders. He suspected from the way they responded to his screams that they would prefer it. They carried him between them. He went limp and stopped struggling. Before long they entered one of the large mounds of hardened slime. He found himself in the center of an amphitheater-like space with a single furnishing at its center—the torture machine that had played a starring role in so many of the Khleevi’s propaganda vids.

  Sixteen

  Acorna struggled to free herself from the net and the Khleevi hanging on to it, trapping her and Aari.

  As she unsnarled herself, pincers snaked out to grab her wrist. Just when she thought she would lose her head Maak charged in and chopped the pincer and the net away with his hand, or rather, the laser cutting tool he’d replaced it with. So precise was his cut that it maimed the Khleevi and opened a hole in the net big enough for Aari and Acorna to escape from its tangles. But the Khleevi wouldn’t give up.

  Another pincer reached out, and Acorna grasped her wrist with her other hand to protect the time device. If the Khleevi got that, as they seemed to have realized, they and their kind could travel through time as well as space. Not only would their race be reborn in a time beyond their extinction, but they could travel back and forth in time ravishing the same planet, killing and torturing the same people, again and again.

  They seemed to be everywhere, their stench filling the room as they poured waste into it. Their mandibles snapped as they rampaged around the time lab kliking and klaking and making high-pitched squealing sounds.

  Acorna slid away on a floor covered with fresh Khleevi excrement and the stinking green blood, as well as the noxious sticky plant sap. The monsters were covered with sap, just as the Khleevi in Acorna’s dream had been.

  Despair ate at her heart as surely as the sap ate at their cells. Now she realized that her dream hadn’t been a premonition or predestination. It had been a memory, bleeding through the veils of time to warn her that this would happen. Yet she had been powerless to prevent it. Even if she had sacrificed Aari by not returning for him, the Khleevi would have found the time device. The sap was gone, and now it was all she, Aari, and Maak could do to stay
alive while the Khleevi seemed to fill the time lab.

  Maddened by the sap’s caustic effect on their carapaces, they thrashed about wildly, gouging huge holes in the walls as they flailed against them. Panels fell dark as their controls were destroyed. The Khleevi’s snapping pincers and jaws tore at the inner workings of the room.

  Maak made klaking noises, too, using the bits of the Khleevi language he had learned on previous encounters. “It’s no good,” he called finally, his voice strangely calm and reasonable, though pitched loudly enough to carry over the klaks and squeals. “They are beyond understanding at this point. However, there are only four of them, and they are much damaged by the sap. Perhaps we can contain them before they do further damage.”

  Only four? Acorna’s spirits suddenly pulled out of a nosedive. No more Khleevi seemed to be appearing. So the dream was wrong in that respect. The time door was not yet open to infinite numbers of the monsters. “Too bad Maak ruined that net,” she said, dropping and rolling out of the way as a Khleevi charged straight for her, missed, and fell into a wall instead. It stayed there, sagging as the sap finally ate into its vital organs.

  “I am sorry that I rendered that resource useless. In the future, I will add a net to my attachment arsenal,” Maak said. “There is a net on the Condor, but it is too far away to be of any use right now.”

  Another of the creatures lumbered toward Acorna, snapping and klaking for all it was worth. Maak was busy with another one, but Acorna dodged, dropped, and rolled again, this time between the thing’s legs. It was not a wise move. The Khleevi anticipated her and pulled its feet together.

  Aari lowered his head so his knobby horn pointed straight out and ran straight into the Khleevi, butting and goring at its center.

  The Khleevi fell back, tripping partly on Acorna and partly on its own feet. It landed hard on the side of the pool from which the DNA helix rose to penetrate the entire building. Maak’s Khleevi also backed into the pool in its haste to escape Maak. This time it broke through the side of the pool and fell into it.