The Unicorn Girl
Page 31
“She’s dead,” he insisted, his voice a gravelly protest “Everybody saw the funeral banners…”
Gill raised his eyebrows. “The funeral banners? Those were a sign of respect from House Li to House Harakamian in their mourning for the heir.”
“Whatever could have made you think they were for Acorna?” Judit added with a slight smile.
“Acorna is alive and well,” Gill emphasized. “And Mr. Li suggests that it would be best for everybody if she stayed that way.” He lowered his voice. “The children you met the other night are already in a safe place. You cannot get at them, but they can be brought back to tell all Kezdet who you really are…and if Acorna is harmed in any way, you can be very sure we will bring them back.”
The baron’s face sagged, as if the muscles had been suddenly cut, leaving only unsupported, aging flesh.
“The Manjari ships are employed elsewhere,” he said. The dry voice was once again level and betrayed no emotion. “I will make…alternative arrangements.”
He spoke into his com unit at some length. Shortly thereafter several things happened. First, obsequious men in Manjari uniforms arrived to invite Gill, Judit, and the children to Baron Commodore Manjari’s personal storage hangar. Next, a second Manjari skimmer discharged two women: one short and plump, the other gaunt to the point of emaciation. The older woman wore a bejeweled robe and had a look of pleased expectancy on her round face. The younger one was dressed in unrelieved black and began shrieking before she even got out of the skimmer.
“Father, how dare you commandeer my personal ships! They’re mine, you said so! To make up for not letting me have a real job as a navigator, because it was supposed to be an unsuitable occupation for the Manjari heiress. Anything I wanted, you said, and when I said I wanted my own collection of private spacecraft, you said yes. You can’t go back on that bargain now!”
She stared, suddenly speechless in horror, at the dirty, ragged children being led into her personal skiff with its luxurious interior fittings.
“Hush, Kisla,” Manjari snapped. “I am only borrowing your ships. I would not do so if it were not absolutely necessary, I assure you!”
“They’re mine,” Kisla repeated.
“Then, Kisla, if you want to keep them, you will allow your father the use of them for as many days as this takes,” Manjari said so firmly that Kisla’s narrow mouth closed on her next complaint. “You have no conception of the difficulties I face.”
“How should I? You never tell me anything!”
“Well, I’m telling you now. We face ruin, girl. The House of Manjari is going to lose three-quarters of its income for years to come. Maybe forever.”
“Manjari, what is it?” The baroness touched his sleeve. “What is the trouble?”
“Oh, don’t bother me. You’ve never been any use—one child, and that one a scrawny girl—and you certainly can’t help now. Go watch one of your romance vids and eat a box of sweets and stay out of our way!” Manjari turned back to Kisla. “You will help me out in this crisis. And we will rebuild the fortunes of House Manjari. You and I, together, as many years as it takes.”
“By letting these stinking beggars on my ships?” Kisla’s thin face twisted in disgust. “Forget it! You go too far, Father. They’ll get bugs on the upholstery.”
“Quite likely.”
“They’ll get space-sick.”
“Almost certainly.”
“They’re dirty, and they stink, and some of them are bleeding. They are absolutely disgusting, and I’m not having any more of them anywhere near my ships. Stop them, do you hear me? Stop them boarding! Now!”
The baron cocked his right hand back over his left shoulder, but the baroness was beside him before he could strike his daughter.
“Wait a moment, Manjari,” she said calmly. “While I do believe that this once I sympathize with your desire to beat Kisla, there is something she must know first—and you, too.” She looked at the gaunt young woman with something approaching pity. “Kisla, you would have been one of those children.”
“I?” Kisla gasped. “You’re crazy! I’m your daughter! No child of House Manjari was ever even close to one of those filthy beggar brats!”
“No child of House Manjari, true,” the Baroness Ilsfa agreed, “but you see, Kisla, I learned of some of Manjari’s more disgusting habits very shortly after our marriage. There was a little maidservant…well, never mind. I vowed then that I, an Acultanias, descended from the First Families of Kezdet, would never bear a child to him. But he would not leave me alone until I produced an heir, so…” She shrugged her plump, white shoulders. “While he was away on one of his half-year business trips, I made a small payment to a Didi in East Celtalan for a relatively new baby. The…ah…donations to the Celtalan Medical Center to certify that you had been born to me and that I would never be able to have another child were considerably more expensive. I had to sell a lot of my dowry jewels-gaudy things; I never liked them anyway, and Manjari certainly never noticed they were gone. So you see, Kisla, it becomes you ill to sneer at children whose fate—or worse—you might well have shared.”
Baron Manjari and Kisla stared at the baroness in shocked silence.
“Which Didi?” Manjari finally asked.
“One of those you hired to procure children for your filthy habits, Manjari dear,” the baroness said sweetly. “How else would I have known where to find a Didi? So you see, there is even a possibility that Kisla is your own daughter. Although it seems unlikely to me, since you always preferred children too young to become pregnant—”
Baron Commodore Manjari had lowered his hand during her disclosure and, with an insouciance that was almost laudable under the circumstances, had slipped it into his pocket. Now he withdrew that hand. There was a glint of metal; Gill sprang forward with a warning cry, but he was too late. The plasknife had neatly sliced through the baroness’s neck. Blood spurted over Manjari’s hands.
“No, Father! Don’t kill me, too!” Kisla shrank away from him.
“I had to stop her talking. Surely you see that,” Manjari said in a conversational tone, his dark eyes glittering and staring. “If people found out that you were a brothel foundling, it would ruin our position in society.”
He looked around him at the horrified faces of Judit, Gill, and half a dozen Manjari Shipping employees. “Stop talking…stop them all talking…stop them all talking…. It’s too late for that, isn’t it?” he asked Gill, like a child. “Isn’t it too late?”
Gill nodded heavily.
“I was afraid of that,” Manjari said heavily, and turned the plasknife upon himself.
They had tried to keep the children from seeing the removal of the bodies, but Kisla’s piercing screams attracted all eyes until she, too, was removed, under restraints and shot full of tranks.
“The Piper’s dead,” one child reported to those already on the shuttle.
“The Lady Lukia killed him for us.”
“How could she? She ain’t here!”
“She can do anything. Prolly she put mal ojo on him to make him kill hisself.”
Gill shook his head as the children calmly took their places on the shuttle.
“I thought they’d be upset,” he muttered.
“They have always known death,” Delszaki Li said. He had come upon them silently, in his hover-chair, and Gill jumped half a meter at the unexpected sound of the old man’s voice. “Death is no stranger. Now it is for you and Judit to teach them about life.” He looked down, where the Manjaris blood stained the floor of the port, and sighed. “But it is great pity about the baron commodore.”
“I don’t see why,” said Judit. She was somewhat pale, but she was no longer leaning against a wall and fighting nausea. “He was an evil man. He deserved to die.”
“Judit, Judit.” Li sighed. “Have I taught you nothing of business? Now will have to pay own shipping costs instead of extorting from Manjari. Is great pity,” he repeated.
Acorna, still e
ast of Celtalan, heard nothing of the happenings at the spaceport. The enormity of the task was exhausting her—so many places to visit, so many children hidden away and working as slaves! But it grew easier as the day went on. The same secret, subterranean channels of communication that had once spread tales of Epona, of Lukia, of Sita Ram, now carried the word that the promised day of freedom had arrived. Those who hid would not be taken away into the sky; they would have to remain as slaves. And so the children began coming out even before they saw Acorna.
“Tomorrow you won’t have to do it all,” Pal said cheerfully. “Anywhere they see a Li consortium skimmer, they’ll come to us. You should go home and rest now.”
“The skimmer pilots have been flying all day,” Acorna said. “If they can keep on, so can I.” She beckoned to Pedir. “Can you and your friends manage one more flight today, Pedir? Good. There is one place more that I must visit now. For Jana and Khetala.”
At Anyag, the news of some crazy woman who was taking away perfectly good bond-laborers had reached the overseers as well as the servants. Some locked their gangs in the sleep sheds. Since Siri Teku’s gang was just coming off shift at the end of the day, he simply told them to stay Below. There would be no off-shift until this Acorna person had come and gone. She wouldn’t find Anyag as easy to ruin as those city-type factories with their soft managers!
But the news had not mentioned a small army of skimmer pilots, medical technicians, and House Li guards coming along with Acorna. While Delszaki Li’s people swarmed over the Anyag workings, breaking open sleep sheds and escorting the dazed, blinking children to skimmers, Acorna looked and looked for the faces she remembered.
“You won’t find ’em,” Siri Teku taunted her, grinning. “They belong to me and Old Black.”
Mention of the underground demon whose name was used to terrorize the children was all the clue Acorna needed. She stopped briefly at each open shaft, delicately testing the air with her horn until she came to the one where the air was heavy with the breathing of many small people left all alone in the darkness of Below.
The engines that moved a cage up and down the shaft were stilled, but there were emergency ladders at the side.
“Laxmi,” Acorna called down into the darkness. “Faiz. Buddhe. Lata.”
There was a shuffling sound deep in the shaft and a scuffling noise behind Acorna, as Siri Teku moved toward her and three pilots joyfully sat on his chest. Acorna took no notice; all her attention was concentrated on the slender thread of her own voice, drawing the children toward her. “Ganga, Villum, Parvi,” she called.
As she named the children, they slowly, fearfully, climbed the long ladders to the top of the shaft. Laxmi was first.
“Sita Ram.” She sighed. “You did come back!” She fell to her knees and kissed Acorna’s skirts.
Acorna gently lifted her. “I will need your help with the younger ones, Laxmi,” she said. “Lata, Ganga, Parvi?” she coaxed again.
“These are the last ones at Anyag,” Pal said tensely beside her. “Now will you come home and rest? If only so you can come with us tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Acorna said. “Come, Faiz, Villum, Buddhe,” she called. “We are going home. We are all going home.”
That the home she would eventually go to—if Calum’s researches were true—would be many light-years, and possibly many subjective years, of travel from Kezdet was not important now. And certainly not to be mentioned to these children until she saw them happy on Maganos under the care of Judit and Gill. Perhaps she and Calum would wander the stars without success, but, in helping these children, was she not earning the right to find her own people? Had she not made good her vow to the destitute and abandoned of Kezdet?
Smiling, she swung Lata up into her arms and walked toward Pedir’s skimmer, trailed by children, whose grimy hands clutched her skirts and her long silver hair.
No one at Anyag dared to stop them.
About the Authors
Anne McCaffrey is considered one of the world’s leading science-fiction writers. She has won the Hugo and Nebula awards as well as six Science Fiction Book Club awards for her novels. Brought up in the United States, she is now living in Ireland with her Maine coon cats, her piebald mare, and a silver Weimaraner and declines to travel anymore. She is best known for her unique Dragonriders of Pern series.
Margaret Ball lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, two children, three cats, two ferrets, a hedgehog, and a large black dog. She has a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas. After graduation, she taught at UCLA, then spent several years honing her science fiction and fantasy skills by designing computer software and making inflated promises about its capabilities. Her most recent book publications are Lost in Translation and Mathemagics. When not writing, she plays the flute, makes quilts, and feeds the pets.
Don’t miss the next book by your favorite author. Sign up now for AuthorTracker by visiting www.AuthorTracker.com.
BOOKS IN THE ACORNA SERIES
First Warning
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s Triumph
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s Rebels
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s Search
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s World
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s People
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Acorna’s Quest
by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball
Acorna
by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball
See Also
Anne McCaffrey’s The Unicorn Girl
An illustrated novel featuring stories by
Mickey Zucker Reichert, Jody Lynn Nye,
and Roman A. Ranieri
Credits
Cover illustration © by 1997 by John Ennis
Cover design © 1997 by Saksa Art & Design
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ACORNA: The Unicorn Girl. Copyright © 1997 by Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub Edition © JULY 2005 ISBN: 9780061798344
20 19 18 17
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street<
br />
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com