Acorna's Rebels

by Anne McCaffrey

  “That’s cool, Mac.”

  “And, Captain, I do not think we need to worry too much about the Federation interference. There are not many personnel remaining here anyway. The Mulzar seems to be massing an army for an attack, and all available Federation troops except for a small skeleton crew are now riding beasts or manning chariots to monitor the situation. It has been vastly entertaining.”

  Becker whistled with surprise. “Do tell? Now that is a very interesting piece of intel, good buddy. But don’t call us, we’ll call…” And with that a blast of static replaced the transmission.

  “Huh,” Becker said, “I think Mac got outfoxed this time. We’ll try again later when the Federation com people have gone on their break. Maybe we better move it.”

  Acorna said, “We can’t leave these cats without good food.”

  “Are you kidding? Those greedy pussycats have filled up on the food we brought with us till their guts are dragging between their paws. They’re not going to be hungry again for another day or two. You need to rest and recharge. Then we can see about food.”

  “I’ll rest on the way.”

  Miw-Sher stood in the courtyard looking from the basket containing Grimla and the kittens, guarded by the boy, to the flitter and back again, clearly torn about leaving her favorite guardian behind.

  (Bring the brats, too, if the old girl won’t leave them,) RK said with a yawn. There was plenty of room for him and the others in the flitter’s fourth space now that the food bag was gone.

  Acorna wearily translated his remark to Becker, her tongue thick in her mouth and her words barely coherent.

  Becker called out, “Sheri, honey, bring the old cat and kittens and come on. Remember those other pussycats Acorna needs to cure!”

  Miw-Sher knelt beside the boy and said something, then turned to Becker. “He cannot be separated from them. He was captured from the rainforest himself. Can he come with us, too?”

  Again Acorna translated, though she was so tired she was barely able to speak. Becker looked behind him where RK and the other three Temple cats had spread themselves over all available space, the three Temple cats napping, RK regarding his shipmate somewhat cynically.

  “Yeah, sure, why not? The more the merrier. At least we know he’s not allergic to cats.”

  After that Acorna drifted in and out of sleep, but when she roused again as the flitter banked sharply, she was aware of Miw-Sher’s voice and the boy’s both calling out to Becker.

  The flitter was riding high above a canopy of deep copper forest, the leaves below them too thick to see the ground. However, off to the right something both coppery and smooth rose from the leaves, curling above them. Miw-Sher and the boy were pointing at this. As the flitter descended carefully, slowly, Acorna saw that the smooth thing was the curled tip of the tail of another cat Temple. The pose of the structure was a cat in a long stretch, its tail and hindquarters supported high in the air by tower-like hind legs and paws. Its front paws were outstretched and a long staircase led between them up to the cat’s open mouth. Most amazing here were the eyes, which were not open or blank windows as the eyes in the other Temples had been. These were lensed with chrysoberyls the size of the Condor’s viewport.

  Becker whistled, “Good thing Hafiz isn’t here.”

  Acorna nodded. Her eyes still refused to focus clearly in the dappled jungle light, since it seemed to her that the surface of this Temple, unlike the others, was alternately rough and shining. But as they drew closer she saw that the sides were tiger-striped with rows of smaller chrysoberyl stones. Spaced here and there, high up on the sides and back of the cat, as well as on the arms and legs and sides of the face, were small platforms with dark spaces behind. Other platforms were occupied by large cats. Some of these cats were black with tawny spots, like the one on the steppes. Some were tawny with black spots and looked more like the pictures of cheetahs from old Terra. Others were black with tawny stripes. Still others were just black or just tawny but more than the cats of Hissim or the cats of the steppes, these looked as if they had been bred from a limited gene pool. They were all much larger than RK or any of the other Temple cats Acorna had seen.

  Furthermore, they all looked healthy. Ferocious too as all of them rose at once, regarding the flitter with baleful eyes brighter even than the chrysoberyls. Then the screaming began, half shrill and piercing, half a deep, rumbling roar.

  The Temple cats shocked Acorna and Becker by screaming back. Even RK used a voice neither of his shipmates had ever heard before. Instead of cowering away from the awful sound, the cats plastered themselves against the viewports and shrieked, whether in challenge or greeting even Acorna couldn’t say.

  Because of the dense vegetation surrounding the Temple, the flitter had to pass within a few feet of the Temple walls, and a couple of the more enterprising guardians leaped onto the hatch covering with mighty thumps, and screamed again.

  Fortunately, by that time the flitter had nearly landed.

  “We got here in time!” Miw-Sher cried excitedly, gripping Acorna’s shoulder. “These guardians still glow with vitality and health!”

  Acorna automatically translated the girl’s remark for Becker, who said, “Yeah, but will we if we try to get past them? Lookit the hooks on those beasties, will you?”

  Acorna was looking into the cavernous mouth of the cat over her head as it screamed again, playfully this time, dabbing a saber-sharp claw at her.

  RK immediately was on her shoulders and scratching at the top of the hatch. The other cat closed its mouth and put its nose to the glass. RK did the same.

  (She’s okay, just doing her job.) RK’s thoughts were full of randy cat images that made Acorna giggle. He reminded her of Becker when he’d first seen Nadhari. (Her name is Haruna. Rrrrrrrowl. When do you go into heat again, beautiful?)

  Seventeen

  Despite the first mate’s desperation to have no hatch between him and the new object of his lust, Becker obstinately waited until human beings, armed and dangerous and clad in very little, poured from and around the Temple, each of them accompanied by a bevy of felines.

  (We are friends,) Acorna broadcasted. (We came to warn you and to help you, if necessary.)

  Having entered into their minds, she now met their eyes as they peered in at her.

  Haruna and her companion apparently understood for, much to RK’s disappointment, they dismounted.

  Then the people began talking excitedly among themselves, in a dialect new to Acorna.

  “What are they saying, Miw-Sher?” Acorna asked.

  Miw-Sher didn’t notice at first that she had been addressed, as the boy was pointing out features of the

  Temple to her.

  “Oh,” she said when she turned back to Acorna, “they’re simply telling each other that you are the one and you have come as prophesied.”

  “It’s so nice that everyone but me knows about that,” Acorna said a bit crossly. She was tired of many things, including her reputation, which had so unexpectedly preceded her nearly everywhere on this planet.

  “At least you can rest here, Princess,” Becker said. “These pussycats are fine as feline fur. You look like you need healing more than they do.”

  He raised the hatch and climbed out. Acorna and the others followed him. The sight of the boy caused one of the women to cry out and rush forward to embrace him. He was glad to see her, but disentangled himself rather quickly to show her the kittens. The Hissim Temple cats began mingling with the locals, and RK sidled up to Haruna. He was trying to get close enough to growl sweet nothings into her tufted ears, Acorna supposed.

  For a few moments the locals chattered busily about everything, and Miw-Sher and the boy chattered with them. Then, as if recalling their manners, the woman, who was surely a relative of the boy’s if not his mother, gestured for Becker and Acorna to ascend the steps carved between the cat Temple’s outstretched front paws and up onto the tongue and into the mouth.

  More stairs led them thro
ugh the torso of the Temple, the interior of which was lined with beautiful murals, accented by wall sconces holding torches—currently unlit—to provide illumination when necessary. During daylight hours, as Acorna could see, the building had more than sufficient natural light because of all of the open areas leading to the exterior platforms where the Temple cats perched. If the cats wished to ascend the Temple’s outer walls, they could simply leap from one platform to the next, and descend in the same manner. There were also a number of interior platforms, should the cats wish to seek shelter inside the building.

  It was a bit unnerving to watch the cats leap from platform to platform right through the Temple. As Acorna and her friends walked through the building’s halls, Temple cats of every color and size appeared occasionally, often seeming to shoot out of the walls and fly through the air of the passageways above their heads. But after a while even Acorna and Becker grew used to the sudden rush of air as a fully extended furry body sailed from one side of the Temple to the other, as if crossing a jungle ravine.

  Although Acorna had enjoyed some rest in the flitter on the way, the climbing tired her further and her feet felt heavy and clumsy as she set them on one step and then another.

  And then her feet were no longer touching the steps and she felt pressure on the backs of her thighs, knees, and upper arms as six people adroitly inserted themselves between her body and the effects of gravity on it, lifting her up onto their shoulders and bearing her among them.

  “Hey,” Becker said, “how does a person get prophesied about around here? I’m kinda tired, too, you know.”

  Much to her surprise, the high priestess was not wearing robes as the priests in the other two cities did. In fact, she was wearing nothing except a coat of her own home-grown fur, pointed ears, and long elegant whiskers.

  Miw-Sher gasped and Acorna caught her thought. (She can keep her cat form during the day!)

  The creature on the throne beckoned languidly and growl/purred to Acorna, “So you are the one who He said was coming.”

  Becker, who had not been in on the change in conversation and wasn’t sure if the high priestess was friend or foe, stepped in front of Acorna. “Who said she was coming and what did he say about her? Did he tell you she would heal all the sick cats? Because she did. Did he tell you she outsmarted the Mulzar of Hissim, otherwise known as the King of Everything? She did that, too.”

  The cat priestess stretched out her paw-hand and ran a single claw along Becker’s jaw, drawing a thin line of blood. RK suddenly reached up a paw and smacked at the hand. “Mine!” he said clearly in his own tongue.

  The priestess snatched her hand back. “Excuse me, little brother. I didn’t realize he had a guardian. He seems to think he is one himself.”

  Becker stooped down and scratched RK’s ears, whispering, “It’s okay, big fella. It’s not her fault. I seem to have this animal magnetism for cat ladies. You remember how Nadhari was about me when we first met.”

  Acorna said, “He’s right. I don’t know what has been said about me before I arrived and I would like to find out. But first, since your cats are all well, I must tell you that there is a ‘gift’ shipment of food and medicines coming from Hissim. You mustn’t accept it. It’s contaminated with an organism that will kill your guardians—and maybe you, too. I made a vaccine that could give you some protection, but there’s not enough of it for all of these cats. The ones in Hissim all died except these few that came with us.”

  The boy set the basket containing Grimla and kittens at the high priestess’s feet and Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw stepped forward as if they were characters in some feline crèche pageant.

  The spotted light from the holes in the walls dappled everyone so that they resembled the large cats. The heat made the air shimmer in a way that caused Acorna to feel as if the whole thing was one of Hafiz’s holograms.

  The cat lady returned her attention to Acorna. “There is something you must see. Perhaps then you will understand.”

  Flowing from the throne, the high priestess stepped to one side of the platform and beckoned. “You may use this if you wish,” she said, gesturing to a column with steps carved in a spiral around it, descending into darkness. She murmured something else Acorna didn’t catch and then dove headfirst into the hole.

  Miw-Sher translated. “She said she’d take the shortcut.”

  “I believe I’ll use the stairs,” Acorna said.

  “You’re still lookin’ puny, Princess,” Becker told her. “You think you can go down that thing without getting dizzy and falling off?”

  “There’s a handhold,” Miw-Sher said, pointing out a groove carved into the column. It ran at about waist height and parallel to the stairs. “And I’ll go first. You can hold on to my shoulder, Ambassador, if you feel faint.”

  “Thank you, Miw-Sher,” Acorna said. “I believe I’ll manage going down.”

  And she did.

  As she descended lower and lower, gripping the handhold with the tips of her fingers and occasionally touching Miw-Sher’s shoulder for balance, she became aware that it was not entirely dark below. Thousands of gold coins with slots in the middle glittered up at her until suddenly, as the light from above grew too dim to see their feet, the space below was lit by one torch after another.

  She had the sense that a few of the priests holding the torches had hastily covered their private parts, after transforming from their feline state. Of the felines large and small that lay in every imaginable attitude up and down the length of the room, she could not have said if they had declined to transform or were unable to.

  Their eyes no longer glittered but blinked lazily in the light, or slitted, or in some cases showed the milky inner membrane that protected the eyes. There was no catty smell at all. In fact, it smelled fresher down here than it had in the open, with the jungle vegetation hemming the Temple so closely.

  The high priestess beckoned them. “This way,” she said, and Miw-Sher continued translating. “We are now in the most sacred part of the Temple. Ours was the place where first the Star Cat and the Companion landed to save our people and transform them from the refugee rabble they once had been.”

  Their shadows and those of the cats stretched, danced, and gyrated ahead of them, long and deeply black.

  This space felt ancient, filled with secrets sealed with the deaths of many defenders and foes for generations reaching far back into time. The feeling was far more threatening, more mysterious, than the caves of the early Ancestral Attendants on Vhiliinyar, where Acorna had uncovered part of the buried history of her own people, but all the same she was reminded of those caves.

  As Acorna followed, noting that even the layout of these caves was similar, the high priestess turned into a side passage that narrowed until they had to stand sideways to slip through it. This was not made any easier by all the feline bodies that suddenly simply had to come along. Cats flowed under kneecaps and over feet, leaped upon shoulders, plastered themselves against faces, greatly impeding breathing, then passed to the other side and leaped off. In the tight quarters, it became a rather chilling sensation in spite of the cats’ warm fur, until one of the furry intruders suddenly spoke inside her head: (Excuse me, pardon me, oops, sorry, coming through.)

  (RK!)

  (Acorna! Oh, sorry, ’scuse me, I’ll just get my paw out of your ear. There. Better?)

  (Much.)

  (I had to come down and check out my roots, didn’t I? If anybody knows, I have a feeling it’s this lady. Besides, Haruna pushed me. Spirited female.)

  (Yes, and big enough to eat you in one bite.)

  (Well, I always think a little danger adds to the excitement of a pursuit.)

  Suddenly the way widened, the air freshened, and they could walk freely again. Acorna saw something gleaming wetly in the high priestess’s torchlight. As the other priests unfolded from their feline forms and stood to light torches again, she saw that the room’s center contained a small, perfect lake, its dark waters glinting in th
e dim torchlight.

  But the lake was not what the priestess had brought them to see. She flourished her torch to illuminate the walls.

  Like the Ancestral caverns of Vhiliinyar, where the walls were covered with complex hieroglyphics, these caves, too, were heavily embellished, but the markings here were very different from those back on Vhiliinyar.

  These cave walls were covered with crude drawings, simple boxy line figures scratched into rock, some with a few vestiges of paint still adorning them, but most were simply ghostly white lines against the dark surface. The further back in the cave the priestess walked, the fainter and more primitive the drawings became.

  Finally the priestess pointed the torch at a single panel of drawings on the cave’s wall. Acorna examined the images lit by its glow. A tall boxy thing with triangles on either side of it dominated the picture, but next to the tall boxy thing stood several people. The person standing to the left of the center drawing seemed to be quite tall, standing on what were clearly human feet, but wearing two triangles atop his head—cats’ ears, it appeared—and something long and thin was coming out from his legs. Acorna supposed that the thing could be meant to be an exaggerated male member, but judging from the context of the image she felt that it was more probably a tail. Next to this person sat a largish but nonetheless fairly normal-looking cat, also distinguishable by its ears and tail. Next to the cat stood a stylized figure of a man the same size as the cat man, but with a round head, unadorned by pointy ears, and with no tail.

  The figure on the far side of the ship was more difficult to see. Here the sacred lake’s water lapped close to the side of the cave. Acorna slid her hoofed feet around the rim of floor and leaned in, gesturing to the priestess that the torch be shoved farther forward, too.

  When she finally was able to see the figure clearly, she realized she had been expecting something of exactly this sort. Yet the surprise that it was actually there was so great that she almost fell into the lake. As her mind reeled and her balance faltered, however, a clawed hand grabbed her arm and pulled her back upright.