The Unicorn Girl

by Anne McCaffrey

  The two locked eyes, but Salitana immediately smiled her salesperson smile and turned to her key-board, accessing the stock for the sizes the niece needed: she had the measurements before her. Rather than embarrass the men any further, she ordered up what she felt would appeal to a young girl—what would have appealed to her had she had any options in what she could wear in puberty. While those were on their way to her station, she frowned down at the chest measurement. Poor child was absolutely flat-chested. Well, maybe a training or an exercise bra would suffice. She ordered several of those and the merchandise arrived, already wrapped.

  “You’ll find these suitable, I assure you,” she said, handing them over.

  The redhead looked most grateful as the covered items slipped into the carisak he held open.

  “You have been shopping. What about shoes, now? I can show you—”

  “No, that’s fine. We got footwear in the bazaar,” Rafik said, and hastily proffered the plastic card used on Nered for purchases. He didn’t like using a card because it could lead back to the Uhuru more quickly than credits would, but credits caused delays, since the shop had to check that these credits were legal and backed by a respectable credit authority.

  “We should get her some shoes somewhere,” Gill said when they were out on the mall walkway again.

  “The skirts measured long enough to cover her feet, and you know how she hates constriction,” Rafik said. He was tired—probably a remnant of having been dead yesterday for a few minutes—and he was eager to show her what they’d managed to find for her pleasure and adornment. “Let’s get a hovercraft back to the dock.”

  “I thought you looked tired,” Gill said solicitously, and waved his long arm to attract a hire vehicle from the rank at the end of the mall.

  One zoomed in to the head of the rank and blinked its HIRED sign to show it would take them, but they had to wait until it could get in the traffic pattern above the busy area. It was just turning at the far end when the saleswoman rushed out to them.

  “Don’t take that one,” she cried, and frantically pulled them back into the store. “You’ve been followed. Your charges were monitored. Come with me.”

  The urgency with which she spoke and Rafik’s so recent problem with an assassin impelled them to obey without question. Within the store again, she led them through the crowd of shoppers in a circuitous route to the rear, down two flights of steps, which had Rafik panting from exertion, and into a clearly marked STORE PERSONNEL ONLY room, which she had keyed to open.

  “I’m sorry to act so presumptuously,” she said, her face pale and eyes dark with worry, “but for the sake of your niece, I had to intervene. Anything to save her if she has been orphaned in this quadrant of space. I don’t know who’s tracing you, but I do know it isn’t Neredian-generated, so it has to be illegal and you are in danger.” She held up both hands defensively. “Don’t tell me anything, but if you’ll trust me just a little longer, I contacted a friend—”

  “From Kezdet?” Gill asked gently.

  “How did you know?” she said in a soundless gasp, one hand to her throat, her eyes wider than Acorna’s last night.

  “Let’s just say, we know a bit about what happens on Kezdet from…other friends…” Rafik said, “and we appreciate your help very much. Someone is after me and I do not know why. Is there another way out of here?”

  “There will be shortly,” she said, glancing at the chrono on the wall. “I cannot linger, or my absence will be noted. The…party…will tap like this.” She demonstrated with a long index finger nail on the door. “The…party…knows the access code,” and she gave a helpless little shrug. “You need it to get in or out. But the party is absolutely trustworthy.”

  “A child labor graduate?” Calum asked.

  She nodded. “I must go. Your niece is so lucky to have you! She has the right to have you in good health and one piece.”

  She was out the door again so fast they hadn’t time to see what digits she had pressed.

  “So, who’s after us? Or you, in particular?” Calum asked Rafik, leaning back against a table.

  “She was a nice woman,” Gill remarked, regarding the closed door with a bemused expression on his face. “Not as nice as Judit…”

  “Judit?” Rafik and Calum said in unison, staring at him.

  “She came from Kezdet.”

  “And has a brother still stuck there…but one begins to wonder about the main occupation of those lucky enough to leave it,” Rafik said, then shook his head. “Nah, it’s more likely to be Hafiz who’s after me…but Uncle’s style would be more along the lines of kidnapping me to take the place of that idiot son who lost his ears.”

  “So long as the idiot son didn’t lose what’s between them,” and Calum inadvertently paraphrased the subject of his sentence, “maybe it’s him who found out and is going to put an end to Uncle’s future plans for you.”

  “Or it could be our erstwhile friends from Amalgamated. They’re still after us for our ship,” Gill said.

  “Or maybe it’s that spurious claim of the Theloi?” Rafik said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  “So who’s this Farkas Hamisen who hates your guts and registered the claim?” Gill asked.

  “Possibly my earless cousin,” Rafik said, nodding his head, as that fit the parameters of such a relative.

  “Or it could be the Greifen, after the ore…” Calum suggested.

  “Well, the ore’s gone.” Rafik dismissed that option. “Could it have anything to do with our new beacon? And here Uncle Hafiz was so certain he was doing us a real favor…. I wonder….”

  “What?” Calum and Gill said in chorus.

  “Who died in the wreck?”

  Gill’s eyes popped and his mouth dropped.

  “You mean,” and Calum recovered more quickly, “we got people we haven’t even annoyed after us, too?”

  The tap startled them in the silence that followed this observation.

  The door opened and a slender youth, with dark eyes that were wiser than his countenance, gestured imperiously for them to follow him. Though they did, Rafik hissed a bombardment of questions at the boy’s back as they had to jog to keep up with him.

  “Shush,” he said, holding up one hand, which Gill then noticed pointed at a spy-eye in the corner of the corridor.

  They shushed and he hunched over the pad of a heavily plated metal door at the end of the corridor. It opened slowly, because it was ten centimeters thick at least, Rafik estimated as he slipped through when the space was wide enough. They had to wait a few seconds longer for Gill to squeeze through. Their guide had judged it finely enough—he’d already tapped in the close sequence, hauling Gill’s leg out of the way. The door closed a lot faster than it opened. The youth then gestured to a goods van, thumbed open its back doors, and pushed the three inside.

  They could feel it rising on its vertical pads and then it moved forward. Very shortly they were all aware that they were in a traffic pattern of some kind, for the van was not soundproof. What it had originally carried was moot since there was nothing in it but three sweating miners. Rafik slid down one wall and onto his rump and mopped his forehead.

  “Dying takes more out of you than I ever realized,” he said. “I’m bushed.”

  “Are we am-bushed, I want to know?” Calum asked, hunkering down on his heels. Gill sat, too, as his head was brushing the ceiling of the van.

  “No, you would have been,” a new tenor voice said softly. “Salitana said you have taken a niece from Kezdet…”

  “No, that’s not correct,” Rafik said. “She has been our charge for nearly four years. She needs new clothes.”

  “Ah! But you know of Kezdet?”

  “Yes,” Gill answered, “we met someone who got out of there. Still trying to get her brother off that damned planet, too.”

  “Really?” Surprise more than a prompting to continue colored that one word. “Now, we are out of the mall. Where do I take you that you may safely d
escend?”

  “The docks,” Rafik said.

  “We should pick up Acorna’s EVA suit first,” Gill said, and cowered at the dirty looks the other two gave him for mentioning her name.

  “At which chandler’s?” the youth asked in such a natural tone of voice that some of their fury at his indiscretion was dispelled.

  “The one on Pier 48B,” Rafik answered, still glaring at Gill.

  “Can do.” And they all felt the van make a left-hand turn.

  That was right, Rafik thought and sneezed. Gill and Calum did, too. In fact they all were in such a paroxysm of sneezing that they inhaled a more than sufficient quantity of the sleep gas that circulated through the rear of the van.

  Some very astringent substance was being held under his nose and Rafik roused to avoid it. To his utter surprise, a slim hand was held out to him.

  “I am Pal Kendoro and it is my sister Judit who was working at Amalgamated who had paid for an education that would lift me out of the barrios of Kezdet. Are my bona fides sufficient to restore me to your good graces?”

  Rafik glanced over at the still unconscious forms of his two friends.

  “All of you would overpower me. One I can handle,” Pal Kendoro said, tilting his head—evidently a family trait; Rafik saw the resemblance to his sister in that pose. “I apologize for…” and he waved his hand toward the front of the cab, “…the necessity, but I was seeking another whom I thought might be you.”

  Rafik straightened up. He’d a crick in his neck from lying in an uncomfortable position, but the back door of the van was open and, while the air it let in smelt of fish and oil and other unpleasant odors, the last of the gas was dissipating.

  “And who might that be?” Rafik asked in a droll tone. “There’s a waiting list.”

  Pal grinned. “So I have discovered.”

  “How long were we out?” and Rafik rubbed at his neck. “Oh migod…”

  “She will not worry,” Pal said, reaching out a hand to steady Rafik when he tried to leap to his feet. “I sent a message to your ship…. She believes you have stopped to eat.”

  “How the devil did you access our security codes…? Oh.” He groaned. “I think I know. You’re looking for the legal owners of the beacon we borrowed. Believe me, the ship was split like a nut when we found it wedged in an asteroid. Nothing could have lived.”

  “Would you at least remember where you found the derelict?” Pal asked, his dark eyes intent.

  “Sure can, but I don’t know what good that’ll do.”

  “We…I…would be obliged.”

  “We…I…owe you one,” and Rafik left off rubbing his neck.

  Pal Kendoro got off his haunches now and went to wave his restorative under Calum’s nose before he handed the bottle to Rafik to tend to Gill. Rafik chuckled at Kendoro’s innate caution. Gill did indeed come out of his inadvertent nap ready to do mischief to whoever did that to him. A few brief explanations and harmony was restored, thanks for their escape offered and dismissed.

  “Can we get back to—”

  “Our ship,” Rafik hurriedly interjected.

  “Yes, and with one stop at the chandlers on Pier 48B,” Pal said, exiting the van and adding as he closed the sides, “this time I let you see where I am driving you.”

  He was as good as his word, for the opaque panel between the goods section and the driver’s turned transparent.

  “I have had fresh words with Salitana,” he told them as he eased the van out of the side road and into a busy traffic pattern, “and there was considerable interest in you which she was unable, of course, to answer, since you were strangers buying clothing for female friends and she, naturally, wanted no part of the offers you made her.”

  “She wouldn’t have imparted to you a description of the interested parties, would she?” Rafik asked with a weary smile.

  Pal Kendoro slid three quik-prints through a small slot in the panel.

  “She is efficient.”

  “Hey, that looks like…” and Gill closed his mouth on “the assassin.”

  “No, but there’s a resemblance to the uncle,” Calum said, “and if I’m not mistaken this shot shows quite new ears on him.”

  Rafik had also noticed that.

  “He is registered at the port as Farkas Hamisen,” Pal Kendoro said over his shoulder.

  “She’s not the only efficient one,” Calum murmured.

  “Okay, why have you involved yourself with the cause of utter strangers, and don’t tell me because we have succored a minor female?” Rafik said. He was getting very tired of being chased and helped and then chased again.

  “I have also had a word with my sister, Judit, who is currently assisting my employer during my absence on the mission to discover who caused the death of our friends who owned the ship whose beacon you have appropriated for use in yours.”

  Rafik was not the only listener who blinked at the long and involved and grammatically correct sentence.

  “And…” Rafik prompted when Pal seemed to take a long time to make up his next sentence.

  “Would your niece be a young female of unknown origin with a curious protuberance on her forehead?”

  Rafik exchanged glances with his mates. Gill nodded solemn approval, but Calum looked wary.

  “I think this lad is in an…efficient…position to help us on a number of vexing matters,” Rafik murmured. “Yes, that is our niece, and Judit has already helped us save her. She isn’t still with Amalgamated, is she?”

  “No, and one of the reasons is your ward.”

  Rafik raised his eyebrow over that term, but it was more accurate than “niece” had ever been, technically speaking.

  “Here’s the EVA shop,” Gill said, pointing to the right.

  “So it is,” Rafik said and started to move.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Calum said, pushing him back down. “I’ll get it. No one’s been killing me.”

  “You are both wrong,” Pal said, twisting around. “You will undoubtedly have a chit that indicates the merchandise has been paid for.” He paused to don a cap that said clearly NERED MESSENGERS GMBH, INC & LTD on the peak. He held his hand at the slot and Rafik slid the receipt through.

  Pal got out whistling and entered the shop while the three miners watched…and watched all corners for anyone watching Pal’s activities. But by then he was out of the shop, still whistling, the EVA suit in its protective covering thrown over his shoulder in a careless fashion. He threw it through a barely adequate opening at the back of the van, winking as he did so, and slammed the door shut before resuming his position as driver. His forward motion could scarcely be called either furtive or fast. Clearly he was a messenger determined to increase the time of his errand for a larger fee.

  Clearly he was also very adept at inconspicuous trips because, although the three miners observed the twists and turns he made, they almost did not recognize the Uhuru when the van stopped at its closed hatch.

  Then a lot of things happened all at once: Pal Kendoro grabbed the EVA suit, jerked them out of the van when they didn’t appear to move quickly enough to suit him, and said that whoever had the command to open the Uhuru’s hatch had better activate it right now because “they” were here and waiting for them.

  Rafik activated it and the hatch opened just enough for them all to get inside, even Pal, though he had to be pulled through with the suit encumbering him.

  Acorna was at the pilot’s controls. “We have cleared for take-off, just as you asked, Uncle Rafik,” she said as he slid into the second seat.

  “I did?”

  “You did!” At the sound of his own voice so cleverly imitated, Rafik turned around to see Pal behind him. “And I advise the most speedy departure this ship can make and an even quicker jump to these coordinates.” He laid a flimsy beside Acorna.

  “Well, go ahead, Acorna,” Rafik said, waving his hand in submission.

  “Where?”

  “To a place of absolute safety,” Pal said, tr
ying very hard not to stare at the slender figure with the mane of silver hair who was in control of the ship.

  “I trust him,” Rafik said, uttering what would soon be added to the list Calum kept of his Famous Last Words. “He’s Judit Kendoro’s brother.”

  Acorna had no more than finished keying in the course than Rafik began to sneeze again. So did Calum, Gill—who tried to reach out to Pal, who held a mask over his face—and Acorna.

  Seven

  In the end, it was Judit who conveyed Delszaki Li’s invitation to the Uhuru when the ship reached Kezdet “Pal can negotiate with the miners,” she’d pointed out, “but if you want Acorna to come and stay with you—”

  “She must,” Li insisted. “I may not know how or why yet, but this I do believe: the ki-lin is vital to our goals!”

  “I have met these men,” Judit said. “They have been betrayed before; they will not entrust Acorna to strangers again. To me, perhaps, but not—forgive me—to an unknown businessman on a planet that has not treated them well.”

  “Name of Li is scarcely unknown in world of business and finance,” her employer remarked dryly.

  “They would probably trust your financial expertise,” Judit agreed, “but will they trust you to care for a young girl?”

  She was not entirely sure, herself, that she trusted Delszaki Li to recognize that Acorna was a little girl as well as a ki-lin. Pal had described her as a young woman…but that was ridiculous; after all, Judit had seen the child herself, only a year ago.

  And, with the image of that drugged child in her mind, she was taken aback at first by the tall, slender young woman in a sophisticated deep purple body wrap and misty blue flowing skirt who greeted her when at last she received permission to board the Uhuru. For a moment she wondered wildly if there could be two Acornas, if this could be the mother or older sister of the child she remembered.

  On her part, Acorna stared at Judit as soon as she spoke, and her silvery pupils narrowed to vertical slits.