Acorna's Rebels

by Anne McCaffrey

All around him cats’ eyes winked and blinked, some of them without cats behind them. “You really can’t tell,” someone said, “until one of them decides to move to eat or fight or have sex.”

  At that point she awakened. She tried to move, but could not. From the sensations in her chest and arms, it seemed as if someone had restrained her during the night, possibly even tied her up. Her arms were pinned to her sides at the elbows, and her ankles wouldn’t move when she tried to rise.

  She heard footsteps outside her door. A voice called, “Ambassador?” There was a sharp “hsst!” and the weight on her chest released as RK leaped straight up from the crouch he had assumed during the night to watch her face, apparently, for the first sign of wakefulness. He seemed almost to fly instead of jump to the catwalk, and one of the bolt-holes near the ceiling. Then he spoiled the illusion by losing a paw-hold and having to dangle his back end off the catwalk while he dug in with his front claws to force enough of him through the opening of the hole so his feet would have to follow. Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw ran in different directions, and Acorna found her arms and legs released as well.

  She’d been bound up, all right, courtesy of her cat guardians. She felt like laughing, but instead gathered her wits and composure and said, “Yes, what is it?”

  “The Mulzar’s address is about to begin.”

  “Thank you,” Acorna said. “Then I’ll be right along.”

  “But you must refresh yourself and break your fast before you go. We were not privileged to serve you yesterday morning. We were negligent and did not attend you when you awoke. Please, may we enter now?”

  Acorna sighed and reluctantly gave her assent. A string of Temple women—whether priestesses or acolytes or mere servants, Acorna could not tell—entered. One carried a ewer of water, another a basin, a third bore Acorna’s clothing, cleaned and pressed and devoid of the evidence of her adventures of yesterday. Yet another woman bore a basket of fruits and vegetables of various sorts.

  “Thank you. You’re very kind,” Acorna told them, nibbling on something with a rubbery green texture. “This is nice. What is it?”

  “It is called sand claw, ambassador. I removed the thorns myself.”

  “A sort of cactus, then? It’s very good.”

  They stood around nodding and watching her chew.

  “Have any of you seen Miw-Sher yet this morning?” she asked when she’d finished the cactus.

  “She was searching for Grimla the last time I saw her,” one of the women said. “The Mulzar is most particular that all of the sacred guardians are in attendance when he speaks.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, Ambassador. He wishes to let the people know what wonders you have performed.”

  “Does he?” This worried Acorna. If Kando had caused the cats to become ill, which he had if she read him correctly, then his seeming concern for displaying their healthy state was ominous.

  After her erstwhile servants were convinced she was presentable, she was taken straight to the cat’s mouth, which was open. On the tongue, a balcony looked out on not only the Temple courtyards but also the streets of the city, and beyond. Stale smoke colored by red dust hung over the city and the countryside beyond, intensifying the reddish cast the suns lent to the sky, giving the day an angry, stormy appearance.

  People thronged the walls and courtyards of the Temple, but behind them the city streets were deserted and empty, except for whirlwinds of red dust that zipped and rolled drunkenly through the town like alien invaders searching for loot.

  Although the wind stirred up these small cyclones, the day was scorchingly hot, and the breeze, when it came, was like the exhaust of some great antique flitter, spewing flames and fumes in its wake.

  Throughout the crowd and surrounding it stood priests armed with what appeared to be some sort of circular, discus-like weapons as well as swords, daggers, and spears. Just because Nadhari’s cousin was the Federation-acknowledged ruler of this city didn’t mean everyone who lived in the city was happy about it. Acorna read the general tone of the crowd and received the impression that people were not here because they particularly wanted to receive Edu’s counsel and leadership but because they had been ordered to come. Most of them seemed to dread learning what new proclamations, taxes, laws, or restrictions Kando was about to inflict upon them.

  Acorna, Nadhari, and a few other privileged people were allowed to stand on the balcony with Kando while he addressed the throng. Miw-Sher stood beside the right fang of the Temple’s open mouth. When she spotted Nadhari and Acorna, the girl abandoned her toothy post to stand nearer to them.

  Grimla was in her arms and the guardian cat’s tail tickled the back of Acorna’s hand.

  Kando held up his hands and the crowd grew quiet. “People of Hissim, I call you together to speak to you concerning the sickness that has plagued our sacred guardians and has claimed the life of many domestic beasts and some of your own kinfolk. This scourge killed, among others, Sacred Phador, Sacred Nadia, the Sacred Kits One through Forty-Two, as yet and now forever unnamed. We have reason to believe that this plague is part of a plot perpetrated on our city, our Temple, and our rule by our enemies, who will stop at nothing to overthrow us. Heretofore, no matter how desperate the battle, Temple guardians have always been exempt from retaliation, but now it has been suggested to me by my wise friends and allies of the Federation that our sacred ones were poisoned! Also spies have been sent among us, and a priest has been murdered in a brutal, ritualistic fashion. Still another priest has been abducted. All evidence points to the involvement of the secretive Aridimi sect from the deep desert, your own relations. We must redress these crimes. We will invade their lands and avenge ourselves, taking into our Temple their own sacred ones to replace those of ours that they have slain.” Edu finally stopped to take a deep breath.

  “But,Your Reverence!” protested a large prosperous-looking man who wore soft white lightweight clothing and a wealth of red metal and gemstones on any part of his body that could be girded with ornamentation. “We have heard that the sacred ones are sick and dying on all parts of the planet.”

  “Ahhh,” Kando said, “I too have heard the lies. It has even been suggested that this scourge is not a covert form of warfare, but the work of a fanatical cult that seeks to destroy all who follow the path the Star Cat chose for us. If so, they have been foiled, deprived of four of their victims, again through the intercession of my contacts in the Federation.

  “However, we believe this cult idea is a fantasy, a fiction concocted by those who fear another war. In truth, it has been my greatest wish to lead you into an era of peace—or so I had hoped to, until this evil befell our Temple. Now I see that the only way to bring peace to this world is for all of it to be under a single rule. Until we find out who visited this blasphemous attack on our guardians, I believe it is for the good of all guardians that we conquer Hissim’s enemies and deliver their sacred animals from servitude to people who have loosed a plague upon us. Since we know not which state is guilty, we must assume they all are, and act accordingly.”

  “But why would they kill their own guardians or their own food beasts?” the prosperous man asked. “Surely we will be able to tell who poisoned our animals by how many of their own animals survive.”

  “Ah, but would they tell us? Would they let it be known? When our holy ones first became ill, and I heard that the other states were likewise afflicted, so deep was my grief and so aroused was my compassion that I chose slaves from each area and sent them back to their peoples bearing medicines and food. Perhaps it was my quick action that saved the others, or perhaps it was merely that we were the ones most directly attacked. I have heard that all other states were as badly stricken as we were, but what others have not heard is that of all of the Temples whose guardians fell prey to the disease, ours alone were snatched from the brink of death. This happened, we must believe, because the righteousness of our hegemony over the beings on our planet is manifest. Thus we were grant
ed a miraculous gift and blessed with the alien doctor who healed our guardians as a sign attesting to that righteousness.”

  “I heard all the guardians had died,” someone shouted.

  “Three days ago, it seemed that would be true, but now the acolytes and handmaidens will show you that through divine grace, four of our guardians have been restored to health.” At his signal Miw-Sher and her fellow cat attendants brought forth Grimla, Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw, all sleek of fur, bright of eye, and pink of nose and pads. “Of course, this miracle, this blessing of the gods was made manifest when my Federation contacts put me in touch with the Linyaari ambassador, Lady Acorna Harakamian-Li, whose advanced medical knowledge was able to save these last precious four guardians.”

  Acorna, as she understood what Kando was claiming, grew furious. Her gift of healing to the Temple cats was being perverted into a cause for war, and into something for which Kando could claim credit. She could read him as easily as if he were made of glass. He had downplayed her role in the Temple cats’ recovery, being shrewd enough to realize she wanted it that way, but he’d used her actions to justify his own schemes. If he was not very specific about the nature of the help the cats received, he might even get the credit for curing them.

  The people listening were pleased about the cats, she could read that, but they remained mistrustful of Kando. They quite rightly feared that they were being manipulated into something.

  Acorna was thoroughly disgusted.

  It took only a light touch to Nadhari’s mind to read that she was no more thrilled with her cousin’s speech than Acorna was.

  Acorna decided Kando had enjoyed playing both ends against the middle for too long. He cared nothing for the welfare of the cats and the domestic beasts, or of the people, for that matter, or he would never have loosed the plague among them.

  Acorna stepped forward, taking advantage of his slight introduction to bow graciously to the crowd, who cheered, and then to Kando, who started to say something, before she beat him to it. “Thank you, Mulzar. I am, as you say, a healer, and in spite of being an ambassador, I am not always as diplomatic as I should be. Please forgive me that I find this talk of war and conquest under the circumstances shocking. As I mentioned to you earlier, my people do not believe in war. However, that is neither here nor there. The real point here is that this disease is spreading, is killing the guardians, creatures that all of the people of this planet hold sacred. Should not the emphasis be placed upon curing as many as possible, rather than going into a war that may—no, will—spread death, injury, and disease to even more two- and four-legged beings? As I look upon you, my physician’s heart knows that you are weary and sick of sickness, bereft at the loss of the beloved guardians whose protective presence has always been one of your greatest securities, and impoverished and starving due to the loss of your beasts. And these feelings are shared by all the other peoples of this planet.”

  “All the more reason for conquest!” one of the priest guards shouted at her.

  “But what will you be conquering? Dead and dying people with dead and dying beasts, who have no food you can use and no guardians to bring back with you. What is the point in that? I would like to propose to you, Mulzar…” she said, returning her attention to Kando, whose face probably looked bland from below the balcony but whose eyes showed that he was not at all amused or moved by her speech. She had not expected that he would be. She continued, “…is that I go among those who are normally your, um, cobelligerents and offer them the use of my skill as a physician to cure as many of their Temple cats and other beasts as I can. In this way I might at least ascertain how many of the Temple guardians have survived in various areas. If I come upon a Temple that has many, I shall ask for kittens in payment for my services and shall bring them to the Temples that have lost the most. Certainly this one falls into that—oh dear, this seems to be a pun in your language, too—category.”

  The Mulzar smiled suddenly. “You would spy for us? Truly, you are a thoughtful guest to offer to inform us who has the most of what we seek.”

  Acorna felt her face grow so hot she thought her horn must be glowing with her anger, but she kept her words and tone calm and sweet. “Oh, no, Mulzar! You mistake my meaning. If your opponents are honorable people, there will be no need for you to attack them. Some will have so few cats it would not be worth your own losses to attack them. And as for those who have escaped the epidemic with less damage, if I cure those who are ill, the priests should grant me the boon of bringing some of their kittens to the less fortunate Temples. There is no need for me to prevaricate, much less to spy. I seek only to bring aid to your whole planet during this tragic time.”

  Nadhari sent her an urgent mental warning: (He’s seething. Don’t turn your back on him, Acorna.)

  Kando said smoothly, “It is delightful to see such idealism in someone of your station, Ambassador. But you are young, tenderhearted, and by your own admission, from a people who do not wage war. You cannot possibly understand the complications your proposed actions would cause among our planet’s people. I’m quite sure the Federation would never permit you to pursue your proposed course of action.”

  “I’m sure if you intervened, sir, your contacts there would smooth my path—I imagine that your friend Lieutenant Colonel Macostut would do his best to find a way to accommodate us.”

  Nadhari’s face was twitching as if she had some sort of nervous disorder, as she sternly suppressed laughter at her cousin’s discomfiture.

  The Mulzar raised his arms again to make it clear that Acorna’s interruption was not going to end his speech before he was ready to end it.

  “People of Hissim, while I join you in rejoicing at the survival of our guardians, it seems to me we are being tested. The gods have sent us these tribulations and this lady to determine if we have absolute trust, loyalty, and obedience to them, even as you must do to me. They have taken from us first that which we value most—our beloved guardians. And then we were given a choice in the form of the Ambassador Acorna’s ability to heal our surviving sacred ones. I have had an epiphany, a revelation.”

  Silence fell over the crowd. Acorna got the collective thought that they hoped the revelation would not be too bad this time.

  “Clearly the gods have been merciful to us, but now it is our duty to show ourselves worthy and return to them something of that which they have spared us.”

  Acorna caught his thought early in the sentence. So this was how he was going to reconcile his real motives with his public sentiments! She sent a mental push to Miw-Sher. “Take Grimla and run! He’s going to demand a cat sacrifice!”

  However, before the thought was out of her mind, another of the Condor’s crew dropped down from the nose of the Temple onto the mouth, uttering a loud yowl that seemed to Acorna to translate as “Scatter, brothers and sisters! Run for your lives! This infidel wants to waste you!”

  Although there were only five Makahomian Temple cats present, counting RK, for a split-and-spitting-second the air seemed filled with pinwheeling paws, lashing tails, and slashing claws…particularly claws. Cats flew everywhere, leaping, bouncing, pouncing, and laying down tracks of flayed flesh wherever those lethal claws happened to touch.

  Then, just as suddenly, there were no more cats. Anywhere.

  However, this observation was made only by those who were still there. Acorna, Nadhari, and Miw-Sher were not.

  Kando had been so caught up in the results of his own theatrics that he could do nothing but stand open-mouthed for a moment, using a loose fold of his robe to stanch the flow of blood from a wound on his shoulder. The keepers of the cats, with the exception of Miw-Sher, were still present, looking around to see what had hit them. But the only remaining sign of the cats was a few stray hairs floating to the flagstones below on eddies of hot wind.

  People were murmuring, exclaiming, even—though it was instantly squelched—laughing.

  One of the priests whispered something to Kando and he resumed his
speech. “As you can see, People of Hissim, the cats live, but their spirits are in disarray because they were not intended to remain among us. I am sure the ambassador just realized that, which is why she disappeared. And all of you saw for yourselves the foreign cat that attacked me, no doubt a direct challenge from our enemies. The ambassador may do her best among our enemies, but we will prepare for war.”

  To the priest beside him he said, “In two days’ time, when our cats have had the chance to regain their senses and have resumed their feeding stations and nests, at the second setting our precious four will travel to the gods in person to deliver our thanks.”

  The wagons were loaded and ready outside the Temple. The priest driving the first of the wagons was totally taken by surprise when the rampaging RK led the four Temple cats skittering over the Temple walls and leaping onto the wagon beds. Close behind them were Acorna, Nadhari, and Miw-Sher.

  Captain MacDonald was at the reins in the second wagon, Red Wat in the third, Sandy Wat in the fourth. In the first was the priest who was apparently to be their guide. Nadhari shoved him off the wagon and took the reins herself. Acorna and Miw-Sher sat beside her, yelling “Hyah! Hyah!” to the team, which broke into a respectable run. Acorna sent a mental message to Captain MacDonald: (Follow us! Quickly! We will explain later!)

  He sent a startled reaction back. He’d been prepared for a peaceful mission to aid civilians, not a fast getaway from government forces. He switched mental gears quickly, nevertheless, clicked his tongue at his team, and fell in behind them. The Wats apparently relished all the excitement. They whipped their poor beasts into a lather and almost wrecked their wagons as they rattled over the rutted streets at high speed.

  The city gates were open and their wagons arrived faster than any messengers telling the gatekeepers to close them. Instead of stopping to assist the local farmers engaged in slaughtering their beasts, as MacDonald had intended before this mad flight, they kept driving as far and as fast away from Hissim as they could.