The Unicorn Girl

by Anne McCaffrey

  He was roused out of his contemplation when Pedir landed the skimmer, and Gill was astonished to find themselves in the very worst possible neighborhood.

  “You will wait in the skimmer,” Nadhari told Acorna. “I will fetch the girl.”

  “She won’t come to you,” Acorna said.

  Nadhari bared her teeth. “She will if I tell her to.” She slipped out of the skimmer, which barely fit in the narrow courtyard where they had landed, and trod through puddles of slime to where a short flight of stairs led to a basement door in the wall. She tapped a special sequence; the door opened a crack, then swung shut again.

  “Wait, wait!” Acorna cried, scrambling after Nadhari. “They don’t know you! She’s afraid! You’ll have to go back to the skimmer!”

  “Delszaki Li ordered me to protect you.” Nadhari planted her booted heels firmly in the mud and glared at Acorna. “You go, I go.”

  “Nobody’s going in,” Acorna said patiently.

  Gill thought it was time he joined the discussion. “Acorna, acushla, this is not exactly a shopping trip, is it? Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Acorna looked at her feet. “Not really.”

  “Not good enough,” Gill said sternly.

  Acorna drew a deep breath. “Well…”

  The door creaked on its hinges. “You talk too long!” whispered a woman. She put her face to the open crack, where the daylight cruelly illuminated the shiny red burn scars that disfigured the right side of her face from cheekbone to chin. “Someone will come! The lady must come in and pay the price. No one else.”

  There was a moment of tense bargaining, as both Gill and Nadhari initially refused to allow Acorna to go into the dark rooms at all, and the person on the other side of the door wanted them to go back to the skimmer, and Nadhari clearly wanted to blast her way into the rooms and take whatever it was Acorna had come for with no more talking. Finally a compromise was reached: Nadhari and Acorna were allowed in while Gill waited outside.

  “We are only women here,” the veiled figure had said. “Only women come in.”

  “And if they think that makes them safe,” Gill muttered, pacing the short length of the courtyard and back again, three strides each way, “they obviously don’t recognize dear Nadhari.”

  There was a cry from inside, then the door bolt snicked, the door was flung back, and Acorna’s arm pushed a very young girl out of the entry. Her arm did not follow as he hoped, but was yanked back inside.

  “They’ll kill her,” the child squeaked, and managed to jam her foot in the door. She cried out with pain as the closing door compressed her foot, but only for a heartbeat; then Gill had his shoulder to the door, forcing it open again.

  The sudden change from light to darkness startled him. He had a confused impression of figures struggling in the confined space. Was that Acorna? He was afraid to move for fear of hurting her or Nadhari.

  An elbow jammed into his solar plexus and Gill backed up two steps, banging into the door. “Be some use, can’t you!” Nadhari’s low rough voice excoriated him. “Open the fardling door!”

  Gill pulled the door open, and the daylight showed him that at least two of the figures he’d seen were going to give nobody any trouble. Two men lay on the floor, one with a trickle of blood coming from his open mouth, the other staring wide-eyed and blank at the ceiling. Acorna was breathing hard. Nadhari was not. In the light from the open door, her right hand flicked and sent a knife into the shoulder of the young woman who’d insisted that Acorna come inside.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Acorna cried.

  “It was a trap,” Nadhari’s toneless voice grated. “You have paid the price. Now come, before there is more trouble.”

  Gill could see that the woman’s face, though contorted with pain, was now smooth with new clean skin where the burns had disfigured her before. “I didn’t mean for you to be trapped,” she cried to Acorna. “They must have followed me.”

  Nadhari made a sound of disgust and took Acorna’s arm, pushing her out of the door.

  The child in the courtyard had been trying to get back in to help, but now she was hindering their escape by blocking the door. Gill swooped her up in one arm, pushed Acorna toward the stairs with the other, and was up the stairs, down the alley, and into the skimmer in seconds.

  They were actually in and Pedir was making a hasty lift out of the courtyard when more figures erupted out of the basement. The child started shrieking, clinging to Acorna.

  “They’ll get me. They’ll get me,” she cried.

  “Who?” Then Gill did a double-take on one of the male figures who had joined in the futile attempt to catch the rising skimmer. “By all the saints, that’s Uncle Hafiz!”

  “Uncle Hafiz?” Acorna swiveled round, but the courtyard and its occupants were now out of sight and Pedir had pushed the speed bar as far forward as it would go, kicking the skimmer into full power.

  “So, after all, Tapha told him you were here? And there’s Rafik trying to make a good impression on Uncle!” Gill gave a snort of exasperation. “Where was that? And who’s this?” He decided these were safer topics than speculating about Rafik’s annoyance when he discovered that Hafiz was here and might even know that his son had been trying to kill his nephew. Or maybe that wouldn’t surprise him.

  “This—” Acorna smiled proudly down at the young girl who was hugging her rescuer’s waist in a stranglehold, still chanting her litany, “she’ll get me/he’ll get me” “—this is Khetala, who saved Jana and so many of the children and guarded them as best she could until Didi Badini took her away. And we’ve taken her away from Didi Badini!”

  “That won’t help now,” Khetala blurted. “He’s after you and the Piper always kills those he’s after.”

  “The Piper?” Pedir said, noticeably blanching.

  “The Piper?” Acorna’s tone held contempt and scorn.

  “The Piper?” Gill asked, wanting to understand the diverse reactions.

  “He’s the one who’s supposed to be behind the child bondage schemes here on Kezdet…” Acorna began.

  “He is,” Pedir said in an awed tone, jiggling the controls to get more speed out of the skimmer as he aimed it toward the nearest congregation of vehicles exactly like his.

  “But we have Khetala now and she’s safe with me,” Acorna said.

  “I’m not sure I am,” Gill said, and sucked his bloody knuckles.

  “Did you have a chance…I mean…” Pedir floundered and craned his head around to look at Acorna.

  “Of course, I did. That was the bargain, wasn’t it?” Acorna said stoutly.

  Gill decided that since Pedir seemed to care what happened to the scarred girl, it might not be tactful to mention that they had left her with a knife through her shoulder and suspected her of setting them up. Nadhari and Acorna seemed to be working through the same thought processes, for they were both silent on the trip back. For Acorna, at least, that was unusual.

  They reached Delszaki Li’s home to discover that the population had been augmented by one that very morning, and a three-way fight was raging in the entrance hall.

  “Now what?” Pal demanded, taking in their disheveled condition and the girl clutching Acorna like a life-preserver. “Oh, never mind, don’t tell me. I’ve got enough trouble this morning already, what with Mercy running out on her job.”

  “I’m sorry, Pal,” said the slender young woman facing him. Her delicate yet firm features and the thick braid of dark hair that hung down her back reminded Gill of Judit, though this girl wasn’t half as pretty. Her dark eyes didn’t flash like Judit’s, and she didn’t have Judit’s way of tilting her chin up just before charging into battle. “I know you—we—need the information I was getting from the Guardians’ office. But there wasn’t going to be much more information that way. Not through me. Even Des Smirnoff noticed eventually that there were too many people named Kendoro around him. You and Judit haven’t exactly been keeping a low profile, you know. Smirnoff an
d Minkus started being careful what they said around me last week. Today I came in to find they’d changed the passwords on all their files…and then I saw one of those windowless skimmers from Interrogation on the landing pad. I had to get out. I’m not brave like you and Judit, you know that. If they took me to Interrogation, I don’t know what I might have told them.”

  Surrounded by unknown people, Khetala clung with bruising fingers to Acorna. She quietly led the child away to the kitchen, hoping that the probably unusual experience of having all she wanted to eat would soothe and reassure her.

  “Stop apologizing!” Calum snorted. He put one arm round Mercy’s shoulders, as if to hold her upright. “I’ve heard about some of the methods Interrogation uses. One jab of the needle and you spill all, no matter how you try to keep from talking. I doubt I could stand up against them myself. You did exactly the right thing—not just for yourself, but for all of us—by getting out before they could take you.” He glared at Pal. “What were you thinking of, to let the kid stay there at all after they started suspecting her?”

  “I had no reason to think she was under suspicion,” Pal said stiffly, “and the inside information she has provided on Guardians of the Peace activities has been invaluable. She’s warned three of our field agents to get out before the Guardians could break up the hedgerow schools they were running for factory children and arrest our people.”

  “With that kind of record, even the Guardians would have had to figure out there was a fly on the office wall somewhere,” Calum exclaimed. “What was your plan: save the field agents and sacrifice the local one?”

  “There was no need for any suspicion to have fallen on Mercy if she had been discreet,” Pal said.

  “Discreet? Didn’t you listen to the girl? It was her name, not her actions, that got her in trouble,” Calum said, blithely reversing his previous argument. “If you two hadn’t been taking Acorna all over Kezdet to stir up trouble, maybe it wouldn’t be so dangerous for her to be a Kendoro.”

  “Were you followed here, Mercy?” Pal asked, ignoring Calum.

  The girl shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so…. I used the old route, through East Celtalan, and then the tunnels under the Riverwalk Park.”

  “Let’s hope you haven’t compromised it, then.”

  Calum snorted. “Pal, if the Guardians are watching out for people named Kendoro, you can be sure they’ve got a watch on this house. What difference does it make whether Mercy was followed? The house is already under surveillance. But they’re hardly likely to break into Delszaki Li’s private residence to get a girl who’s committed no crimes…are they?”

  At this point Judit returned from her appointment with the head of Public Works and entered the fray.

  “Pal, leave Mercy alone!” Judit commanded. “She’s had the hardest job of any of us, and if she says it was time for her to clear out, the least you can do is trust her judgment.”

  Pal threw up his hands. “I give up! Two big sisters in one household is more than any man should be expected to take.”

  “Fine,” Judit retorted, “next time you can go and talk to the Public Works Department. Tumim Viggers is refusing to certify our base on Maganos for colonization. He says it’s an untried technology and the architect needs to come to Kezdet to explain his plans in person.”

  “The architect happens to be dead!” Gill exclaimed.

  “Precisely. It’s a stalling maneuver.” Judit frowned. “Usually that means they want more bribes. But Viggers didn’t hear any of Delszaki’s hints in that direction. Maybe he really doesn’t understand the base design. It is a radical departure from standard practice in some ways…and Kezdet’s Public Works Department doesn’t even have any experience with standard space environment designs.”

  Delszaki Li had steered his hover-chair in behind Judit and had been watching the argument with quiet amusement.

  “Perhaps would be wise for some people to go to Maganos,” he suggested. “Report, please, on how lunar base construction progresses; demonstrate success of habitat and ecological system.”

  “I’ll go,” Gill said. “Rafik may not be back for a while, and heaven forbid we should tear Calum away from his astronomical optimization programs.” He looked at Acorna. “And…I didn’t have a chance to tell you yet, but we spotted Hafiz this morning. Three guesses what he’s doing here! I think Acorna had better come with me. That’ll keep her out of his way.” And out of trouble, he added silently to himself.

  “I’ll go with her,” Pal said immediately. He shot a dirty look at Mercy, who didn’t notice. Her attention was all on Calum, who was talking quietly with her in a corner. “This house is entirely too full of sisters.”

  “Judit,” Delszaki Li said while Pal and Gill started discussing how they would produce a convincing report for Public Works, “I wish you would accompany them.”

  “Why me? Not that I mind,” Judit said hastily, “but you need an assistant.” She glanced at Gill. For some reason the idea of studying a half-completed lunar colony with Gill sounded as attractive as a month-long holiday on the rainbow beaches of Erev Ba.

  “Also need someone with sense to keep these children out of trouble,” Li said, which made Judit feel like the aging spinster governess in a Victorian household. Or the maiden aunt. “As for assistant, Mercy can take over in your absence. Continue tradition of a Kendoro as my personal assistant.” He cackled under his breath. “You and Pal need to get busy, produce next generation of Kendoros before this old man wears out all three of this generation.” His glance at Gill was full of meaning.

  Judit blushed and tried to think of some way to disguise her eagerness to go.

  “Seems hard on Pal,” she murmured. “He’s going to Maganos to get away from his big sisters, and now you’re sending one of us along to keep tabs on him.”

  Li cackled again. “I think maybe Pal has other reason for wishing to go to Maganos.” He looked meaningfully at Pal, who was staring at Acorna with an expression his loving older sister could only categorize as goopy in the extreme. “Just when I have an assistant who understands my mind,” he sighed with pretended disappointment, “his gets bent in another direction. You will go to Maganos, Judit,” he said firmly, a little too soon for Judit to be sure that his previous complaint had been meant to apply only to Pal. “Mercy will stay and take care of poor old man in his declining years.”

  “If you’re sure she can do it…” Judit began doubtfully.

  “You people don’t appreciate Mercy!” Calum reentered the conversation with a bang, still clasping Mercy’s shoulders. “For years she’s had the hardest job of any of you, working undercover for the Guardians of the Peace. Wasting her intelligence on pretending to be a secretary and carrying trays of kava! It’s criminal. Do you realize this girl has an advanced degree in linear systems optimization theory? She’s coming down to the basement now with me to see the programs I’ve developed to search for Acorna’s home world.”

  Li sighed as they left, but his dark eyes were twinkling.

  “At least is not etchings,” he murmured, “but is getting harder and harder to keep good help these days!”

  Eleven

  Brantley Geram, the subcontractor in charge of building the living quarters and life-support systems for Maganos Moon Base, was only too happy to have representatives of Delszaki Li coming to look at the work in progress. He was in general a happy man, working on Maganos in almost complete autonomy, developing the last designs of the legendary Martin Dehoney, and with the financial backing of the Li consortium allowing him to make sure that for once everything was done exactly as it should be, no corners cut in construction processes and no inferior materials used.

  This did not, he hastened to assure Pal and Acorna, imply any extravagance. Quite the reverse. Mr. Dehoney’s plans were far-reaching, ambitious, futuristic, perhaps, but not impractical or extravagant.

  “As you see, we started with minimal living quarters, due to the expense of lifting shielding m
aterials into orbit. But as soon as the beneficiation and reduction processors for the regolith were in place, we were able to expand significantly, using the dust and by-products of reduction as our radiation shield.”

  Acorna looked over the one large room he was showing them.

  “Is this all?” she asked.

  “We will, of course, be able to expand the living quarters even more as the processing of regolith continues,” Geram said, “but there’s no need for that at present. We have ample space for the contractors and work crews here.”

  “You’ll need more space,” Acorna said. “How fast can you expand the quarters? We’ll need dormitories, schoolrooms—”

  “Schoolrooms?”

  “Children may take up less space than adults,” Acorna said, “but they must be educated. Or did you think Delszaki Li had gone into the business of exploiting child laborers like the rest of Kezdet?”

  Brantley Geram sputtered unintelligibly and finally managed to convey that nobody had told him anything about children.

  “That’s why Mr. Li wants all the machinery designed for easy maintenance and operation by people with little upper-body strength,” Pal told him. “But I suppose you weren’t involved with the mining machinery contract.”

  “No,” Brantley said, with a regretful glance down the tunnel leading to the processing section of the base.

  Gill had disappeared almost immediately upon arrival to inspect the technical workings, taking Mr. Li’s other assistant—strange how all of Li’s assistants seemed to be named Kendoro—along with him and reducing Brantley’s audience to two. The funny-looking girl didn’t even seem to be interested in the technical obstacles they had overcome to get this much of the lunar base operational in such a short time. Women! Let them into a place and they were mentally hanging curtains and planting flowers before you even had a decent oxygen-nitrogen balance established.

  “And don’t start turning the whole space into communal living quarters,” young Kendoro added to the girl. “Remember, we’ll have adults here, too, and they’ll want some privacy. Make sure there are some shielded bedrooms for staff.”