[Acorna 08] - First Warning: Acorna's Children (with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough)

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Going somewhere, Captain?”

  She turned to see Marl Fidd leaning against the doorway, his head at a tilt, eyes narrowed, watching her.

  “Not really. Just getting her ready since there’s no one out here. Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Yeah. But this is my practical navigation period. You’re the instructor, remember?”

  Asha shook her head in disgust. Damn, she had forgotten about it in her rush to get out to the supply ship. “With everything that’s happened recently, it completely slipped my mind, Marl. Give my apologies to the other students and tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “I don’t think so, Captain,” Marl said, with a mocking note in his voice.

  “What was that?” she asked, with a hint of warning in her own.

  “I don’t think you’re going to class. I think you’re heading out to that ship. You believe them, don’t you? That the alien and the android can purify our supplies and make them safe, then return without bringing the plague with them.”

  She turned and met his gaze, then slowly lifted an inquiring eyebrow, challenging him.

  “Because,” Marl continued, managing not to gulp under her hard-eyed stare. “Because I do. I’ve seen it. The alien kid—Khorii—she healed my arm right up. She said it was the poultice she used, but Singh tried it later on some little kid who hurt his knee, and it didn’t do a damn thing. I’ve heard the stories about her old lady, too—that she can also do that healing thing. Besides, I saw that transmission—yeah, I know the kids weren’t supposed to, but I hacked in—wouldn’t want to miss something important just because somebody decided not to consult me for my ‘own good.’ None of those kids is sick, are they? I think as long as we stick with Khorii, we’re fine. I also think we don’t have enough supplies to get us through more than a week, even with pretty strict rationing which, you know, isn’t much fun. So what I think, Captain, is that you think the same thing, and you’re going to go up there and bring the ship down. Aren’t you?”

  Asha didn’t know this kid very well at all, but she knew his type even before he opened his mouth. Marl was very much like the crewmen she had grown up around. She had no qualms about lying straight to his face, and she was sure he would have no qualms about doing the same if telling the truth had proved at all inconvenient, which, in this case, it hadn’t. Even as she tried to persuade him that she had no intention of doing what he had just said, she had to respect him putting it all together so fast.

  “Why, no, Marl. That would be disobeying orders, and I would never do something like that. I’m a teacher, after all.”

  “Yeah. So when do we leave?” He held up his hand, “And don’t bother telling me again that you’re not. You can’t kid a kidder, Cap.”

  “That’s Captain Bates to you. And you’re not just a kidder, Marl, you’re well on your way to becoming a junior criminal. You assaulted Khorii’s cat, fought with Elviiz, and lied about what happened. If I were going up there, you certainly wouldn’t be welcome.”

  “Hey, gimme a break. Haven’t you heard? I’m an impressionable youth traumatized by being orphaned and left all on my lonesome. A guy can change, you know. Besides, the fight with the droid was pretty one-sided. I may not make top grades, Cap—Captain Bates, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I just want to be on the winning side, that’s all. And I figure that’s where you’re going. You keep feeding me this line of exhaust fumes, and I’ll just have to go get my speculation validated by other authority figures, if you know what I mean?”

  She sighed, but actually, this was the first real indication Marl had shown that he was not, in fact, anything other than sullen and stupid. And if he was with her, then she could keep an eye on him rather that worrying about what he might be doing unsupervised around the moonbase. Besides, even if he tried to cause trouble up there, she had no doubt that Elviiz and Hap Hellstrom could restrain him if she herself could not.

  Asha pinned him with her most forbidding stare. “Okay, then, get on board. And no funny business; I’ll be keeping my eye on you the entire time. Let’s cut the chatter, shall we, before we have the entire student body joining us for a field trip.”

  Hap’s voice boomed through the intercom and echoed through the cargo hold. “Looks like we’ve got company, Khorii. How is the decontamination coming?”

  “Fine, Hap. I believe we’re clean now. Who’s coming? A Federation inspection team?”

  “No, it looks like a ship from the school. They’ve kept radio silence so far, but I happened to look at the screen and see them,” Hap said. “I’ve opened a channel and hailed them, but so far no—oh, wait, now they’re responding.”

  “Correction,” Elviiz said. “They are not merely responding, they are docking.”

  “Who is it?” Khorii and Jaya asked together, Jaya sounding territorial. She was the de facto captain of the ship, after all. Even if she was a child, the set of her small jaw told Khorii that Jaya thought someone should have asked her permission to board.

  “Dunno,” Hap said. “They’ve not turned on the visuals. Just a sec. I’ll patch it through.”

  “This is Captain Asha Bates aboard the shuttle Nakomas en route to the Mana. Permission to dock?”

  “What is she doing here?” Hap wondered.

  Khorii told Jaya, “She’s the practical astrophysics teacher.”

  Jaya nodded, and said aloud, “Permission granted.”

  “Okay, Mana, prepare to be boarded.”

  “Prepare to be boarded?” Jaya asked. “Sounds like freebooters.”

  Hap was laughing. “No, that’s just Captain Bates. She talks like that sometimes. Captain, this is Hap. Haven’t you heard we’re supposed to be space lepers?”

  “I heard. But I did think you might find some small use for my skills. And it seemed like more fun than being trapped in a classroom for what might be the rest of my life. Situations like this, a person has to decide which way to jump. What can I say? I’ve always been a sucker for the out group. So do you open the docking bay, or is there a secret code word? Ah! Thanks.”

  Jaya and Khorii returned to the central corridor, where they were joined by Hap and Sesseli, the latter clutching Khiindi to her thin chest.

  In the docking bay, a slim figure emerged from the Nakomas. “Captain Bates!” Hap said. “If anyone at Maganos would listen to reason, I should have known it would be you.” Then, seeing the second person climbing out behind the teacher, Hap scowled, and demanded, “What’s he doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too, Happy,” Marl Fidd said, grinning in pure self-satisfaction.

  Khiindi hissed, and Sesseli screeched as the cat laid bloody tracks across her arms and shoulder and shot off back down the corridor.

  Khorii knelt and examined the wound, leaning her head close so that her horn touched the little girl’s shoulder. She needed a moment to think about these new developments.

  “There now. Better?” she asked Sesseli, who nodded, though tears spilled down her cheeks. “Khiindi did not mean to harm you, yaazi,” she said, using the Linyaari endearment that translated meant “little one,” though her mother and father used it as an endearment for each other as well as for her, and none of them were particularly small. “He was frightened.”

  “I know. He’s kind of a ’fraidy cat. But I would have protected him. Doesn’t he know I’m his friend?”

  “Yes. I am sure that he does. But he is a cat and they scratch and run first and think it over later. You would probably do the same if you were his size surrounded by people our size. Perhaps you should go find him now and tell him that you are not too hurt and that you forgive him and will protect him from Marl.”

  Sesseli nodded solemnly and ran back toward the bridge.

  “Marl assures me,” Captain Bates said, with a meaningful glare at the bully, “that if he harms any crew member, whether on two or four feet, we will not have to space him as he’ll gladly jump out without a suit. Since there are no barnacles in space, and w
e can’t keelhaul him like they did in the old days, it will have to do.”

  Marl’s eyes widened as he looked at his teacher during her speech. She narrowed hers in return, and he nodded once.

  “He came along to help load the supplies,” Asha continued. “If Khorii has decontaminated the cargo, we can safely transport it to the surface as originally planned. Uh—how’s everybody feeling?”

  “Fine,” Hap said. Jaya remained silent and looked down at the deck.

  “We did not arrive in time to save the rest of the crew,” Khorii told her. “Both of Jaya’s parents were unfortunately beyond our help.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jaya,” Captain Bates said, laying a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “They used to come into the school after their deliveries and visit with us. They brought you to meet us shortly after you were born. They were fine people and good spacers. They’d want this mission fulfilled, don’t you think?”

  Jaya’s mouth twisted, and she stared at the floor, nodding slightly. Khorii caught two trains of thought—Asha Bates chiding herself for being so trite and teacherly when what this girl obviously needed was comfort, and Jaya feeling that her parents would have liked to see her grow up into her own life even more, but that they weren’t going to get the chance now. That, and the sudden, crushing feeling of being all alone, surrounded by strangers, well-meaning ones, perhaps, but strangers nonetheless.

  “Okay, then, where’s the food?” Marl asked, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “I didn’t come up here just to haul crates, you know.”

  Hap snorted and turned his back on all of them, especially Marl and Asha Bates, for bringing him.

  Over the intercom, Elviiz said, “Maganos Moonbase for Captain Bates.”

  “Asha, when did you first become suicidal, and why didn’t you come to me for treatment?” Phador Al y Cassidro’s strident voice demanded.

  With a frown Asha headed toward the bridge, followed by Khorii, Jaya, and Marl. When she arrived, the slim woman confronted the vid screen. “I’m not going to dignify that remark with an answer, Phador. As you can see, I’m not dead yet, nor is anyone else who’s come since Khorii arrived. Great galaxies, man, our school was founded by Khorii’s mother, who also saved the original student body by means of her extraordinary gifts! If her daughter claims some similar abilities, why should we doubt her? We are going to load the shuttles—mine, Khorii’s, and the Mana’s delivery shuttle—and all of us will return to the surface with enough supplies to see us through this quarantine. I don’t know why I’m the only one who realizes that this is the only sane solution.”

  “We are teachers, Asha. We follow the rules, however difficult or painful, and set an example for our students to follow,” Phador replied, speaking slowly, as if to a stubborn child. “I’ve sent a request to the Federation inspection teams to come and inspect the Mana and exempt us from quarantine restrictions, but until they respond in the affirmative—”

  “Have they replied at all?” Hap asked. “Because I sure wasn’t getting anywhere on any Federation channels. Face it, the plague has broken down the system. We are on our own, and we have an advantage—we have Khorii and Elviiz.”

  “Dr. Al y Cassidro?” Khorii said, meeting the teacher’s gaze with her own and trying to hold it by sending to him psychically as well as convincing him with words. “There is no plague here anymore. It went away. I saw it go.”

  Calla Kaczmarek intervened, asking, “You saw it go? Khorii, we don’t know what causes this plague, but it’s nothing visible to the human eye.”

  “I know, but I am not human,” she said. “I am Linyaari. My mother sometimes sees things that are not visible to the physical eye.”

  “Does she?”

  Elviiz answered. “Yes, she does. She can tell about the mineral content of asteroids, for instance, just by looking at them. This is documented in your own files by Grandsires Baird and Giloglie. Khornya could do this from a very young age, even before developing her other Linyaari psychic abilities.”

  Calla, Al y Cassidro, Reamer, and Mr. Singh conferred, then Mr. Singh asked, “And how long have you been able to see the—er—microorganisms in retreat, dear?”

  “I have only just discovered this ability,” Khorii admitted. “I imagine it will develop more fully as time passes. That is how these things usually go, or so I understand from my elders.”

  “I see,” the doctor replied. “Well, you can hope that it doesn’t develop too rapidly. Everything around us teems with such microorganisms. I would think that, after a while, such an ability would become quite a burden. You wouldn’t be able to see the forest for the—er—trees.”

  “I believe I have to be trying to see the particular organisms to do so,” Khorii said, realizing the truth of this only as she said it.

  “Maybe so,” Phador Al y Cassidro continued. “But unless the health inspectors can determine that the plague has gone away for themselves, we cannot risk the entire school on the basis of what you claim is your newfound talent. We also cannot accept cargo from a contaminated ship any more than we can allow you to return before the health inspectors have cleared you.”

  “Phador, Calla, Singh,” Asha Bates said, shaking her head. “You’re all suffering from an overdose of overcautiousness, if you ask me. In case you’ve forgotten what life outside the ivory tower is like, everything involves some kind of risk. But there’s a simple enough test here. I am now exposed. If I don’t get sick and die as the other crew members did within whatever the incubation period is supposed to be. A week? Two? Then you’ll know Khorii’s gift worked, and you can accept the food and let us come back to the base. Okay? I think that should be perfectly clear even to the most hide-bound bureaucrat. I also think that continuing to argue the obvious is a waste of energy. So on behalf of Acting Captain Jaya and the entire crew I will sign off now. Mana out.”

  Chapter 21

  Jaya had never loaded the delivery shuttle by herself before, but with Elviiz’s strength and Hap’s mechanical aptitude, the task went quickly.

  Marl Fidd, unsurprisingly, was not a great deal of help. He was supposed to be hauling cargo, but instead felt it necessary to sample the more interesting varieties of food first, flinging the cartons every which way in his search for goodies. The Vermin Eradication Specialists flocked to the empties to see if there were any tasty bits left inside.

  From a safe high perch, Khiindi hissed down at them. “Watch your tails!”

  The team leader pulled her head out of a carton, glared up at him with gold eyes, and twitched her whiskers in disgust. “You stop watching our tails, you pervert.”

  “You wrong me again, female,” Khiindi replied as he feigned a disinterested yawn. “Were it not for the tiny and rather charming products of your now-barren loins, which I assure you are of no interest whatsoever to me, I would not bother to warn you. But that big thug stuffing his face and tossing around the cartons and boxes from which you feast is a cat killer. He tried to drown me by picking me up by the tail and hurling me into a deep pool of water.”

  “I already think more highly of him,” the queen said, with an upward jerk of her tail. But she called to her brood, saying, “Come along, all of you. We have vermin to catch and we don’t want to spoil our appetites.”

  Marl didn’t seem to notice the other cats at all, but Khiindi made sure that when he fell asleep it was somewhere high and hidden, but close to Elviiz and Khorii. He also made sure his tail was securely tucked beneath his belly.

  When Khorii slept, he tucked himself up tightly against her, ready to defend her against Marl or anyone else.

  Once the shuttles were loaded and ready to take to the surface, Mana’s new crew hailed the moonbase again.

  “See, Phador?” Asha said, when the other teachers were on the com screen. “Your canary in the mine is still alive and kicking. I told you Khorii’s technology could overcome this, and it has. So if you’re not dying to eat your shoes, could we please come back and bring these suppli
es?”

  “We have conferred on this issue, and I have consulted the Federation directives on this subject. You may send the supplies down to us, but none of you may return until the quarantine has been lifted.”

  “Why?” Marl demanded. “Fewer mouths to feed, is that it?”

  Phador glared at him. “The plan is this. I will expose myself to the questionable cargo. If I experience no ill effects, then we may unload it for the use of the compound at large.”

  “If it’s not contaminated,” Calla turned to him, looking nonplussed, “surely it stands to reason, since they’ve been handling it, that they, too, are safe to return?”

  “Not necessarily,” he argued. “We are still unsure about the incubation period. And some of them may be carriers. We cannot take the risk.”

  “Well then, you can starve for all I care,” Marl said. “I didn’t bust my hump so that you could take all the food and leave us up here like space trash.”

  “No,” Khorii and Asha said together. “We’ll take the shuttles down, unload them and return.”

  “You should leave one for our use—for later,” Phador said.

  “Ours belongs with this ship,” Jaya said stubbornly.

  “The shuttle we arrived in is the property of Captain Becker and the Condor,” Elviiz said.

  “And since you’re going to be so unreasonable about this,” Asha said. “The Nakomas is my personal property, and I will bring her back into exile with me. I suggest that if you need a shuttle, Phador, you do what you do best—run to the Federation.”

  They signed off before while the headmaster of Maganos was still spluttering a reply, with Asha muttering, “Pettifogging bureaucrat.”

  Khorii frowned. She didn’t have to be a telepath to understand that Phador was very angry. “While I appreciate what you’re doing for the people down at the base, Captain Bates,” Khorii said, “aren’t you worried about what Phador might do to you when this is all over?”

  Asha regarded the girl for a long moment before replying. “Don’t you fret about that, little one. He wouldn’t dare fire me over this, or I’d spill the news about him keeping the supplies away from the moonbase, when there was absolutely no danger from it, to everyone who would listen, including the Federation. I’m sure this incident will quickly fade away once the plague has been eliminated.” She pushed back from the com console and stood up with a quick smile. “Of course, if you and your mother had anything to add regarding my conduct, I would be very appreciative.”