Acorna’s Search

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Have you been able to read them?” Yaniriin asked Miirl.

  “I confess I haven’t had any desire to,” she admitted. “Surely these stinking, oafish louts can have nothing to do with the subtle, quiet disappearances of our people?”

  “Maak indicated that their language appeared to be some form of Terran,” Yaniriin said. “Perhaps when Captain Becker arrives in the Condor, he will help us communicate with them in their own tongue.”

  “Maak did indicate that the form of the Terran language they spoke was extremely primitive,” Miirl said doubtfully. “Becker seems to be an advanced representative of the species.”

  Nadhari Kando put in a comment from her command station on MOO. “Trust me,” she said. “That’s no problem. Becker can be very primitive when he wishes.”

  “I heard that,” Becker said over the com unit. “Give me a minute and I’ll be there to prove you wrong.”

  Since Becker was once more crewless, he chose to land the Condor on Vhiliinyar near the remaining shuttle, the one that had not instantly disappeared, he flew his own current shuttle, a sweet little Linyaari egg he had salvaged from the wreckage of one of the larger ships destroyed by the Khleevi attacks, to the surveillance ship. He would donate the shuttle back to the Linyaari if they wanted it, especially if he couldn’t talk Hafiz into buying it back for them. But just now it made quick work of getting him where he wanted to go.

  When he boarded the surveillance ship and was shown the prisoners he said, “Hol-eee hermitage, boys and girls, how can I tell anything about these fellas, if they are fellas? One or both could even be female for all we can tell—can’t see their eyes, much less anything else important down lower. Their mouths are all covered up with hair so I can’t even lip-read if I need to. These guys need a shave and a haircut worse than any lifeform I ever saw in all my born days! Not to mention a bath. Don’t you guys have a beauty operator on board this ship?”

  They looked baffled and he said finally, “Well, okay, then, I’ll do the honors but first I just want one of you to make sure I won’t get cooties or rabies or anything from touching these two. And I’m gonna need some tools, and some space to work in.”

  Finally, while Becker stalked off, muttering to himself about how a man had to do a job himself if he wanted it done right, Yaniriin did as Becker asked, he purified whatever he could reach with his horn, making sure to keep well away from the teeth or the ragged claws that protruded from the fingers of these creatures. Yaniriin noted that their prisoners’ hands were shaped more like Becker’s than like his own.

  “And me without my chain saw,” Becker muttered to himself when he returned. He brought forth some metal shears from the leather-wrapped tool kit he’d had in his egg-shuttle. “I sure hope you’ve got these guys fully secured,” he said, as he stepped into the enclosure with them.

  “I think some soap and water will be in order pretty quick, Cap’n,” he told Yaniriin as he started chopping off great hunks and clots and mats of felted hair that piled up at his feet, despite the prisoners’ anguished protests.

  The creatures were bound tightly in the net and could not struggle very hard, but the net itself made Becker’s work difficult, as he could not get underneath it to work freely on his subjects. He had to make do as best he could, inserting his shears in between the webbing of the net and taking off a lock of hair here, a matted string of hair there.

  He and the Linyaari loosened the nets just a bit, and as Becker pulled the captives’ wrists free of the hair, human and animal, covering them, he bound them securely with a couple of Red Bracelet restraints that he’d picked up along the way in his travels. The prisoners weren’t going any place now. They were disarmed, tied up, and in a space ship. These were definitely not high-tech warriors. It wasn’t going to be easy for them to escape.

  As he finally began to make headway in his shearing, Becker saw that they only had a few teeth between them and those were all rotten, and that their skin was covered with injuries. “No wonder they’re so damned mean,” he said. “These guys must be in a world of hurt with those choppers and all these sores. I think I’m going to need a little Linyaari help here. Could somebody get a horn over here and heal these boys?” Several Linyaari stepped forward and laid their horns on the prisoners, who were unappreciative.

  As Becker worked, he hummed to himself, a little tune he had learned on Kezdet as a child laborer, a lullaby some of the older children sang to the younger. His singing had a noticeable effect on the captives, who must at any rate have been tired from their fighting. They stopped struggling. In fact, eventually they seemed to find all these attentions soothing, maybe even reassuring, and they soon fell asleep.

  “Will you look at that?” he asked the Linyaari. “Two little lambies counting sheep while I’m shearing them.”

  As the hair mats piled up on the floor, human features emerged from beneath the overgrown beards, mustaches, and hair. Once the hairy outer layer was gone, it was clear that these were two young humanoid men, who had not been in very good shape, wearing animal skins over shredded clothing and pieces of metal armor, much rusted and dented. In some places they had had scars from where their armor had rubbed them raw. In others, their skin had healed right over the foreign material. And they had more than their share of old battle wounds, some healed, some still healing. The injuries eased even as Becker watched, thanks to the efforts of the Linyaari healers.

  Miirl smiled a soft, close-mouthed smile that reminded him, not too strangely, of Acorna when she was amused. “I believe that is why your suggestion that we apply our horns to these fellows was a good one. The relief from the discomfort of their vermin and sores has allowed them to rest peacefully. Their teeth will take a little additional work to reconstruct, but the decay has been arrested. Their dispositions may be much improved as well, when they awaken, though one cannot predict that sort of thing.”

  “Well, that’s the best I can do for them for now,” Becker told Miirl, Yaniriin, and the crew. “I haven’t got all day. Still have to dig Acorna and the boys out of the tunnel, and the cat. Who knows what the oxygen supply is like down there…” He slapped the newly bald, fully disarmed, cleaned, healed, and bound warriors each once lightly on the cheeks and said, “So come on, you sleeping beauties. Wake up and smell the tea!”

  They instantly bolted awake, growling, but he smiled at them in a friendly way and said, “Okay, boys, let’s have it. We’d like to hear your life story, but names, ranks, and serial numbers will do for starters. If you want, you can save the rest till we get to the flaming-bamboo-under-the-fingernails portion of our conversation.”

  “They do not understand,” Miirl said.

  “Obviously. Didn’t expect them to. This calls for a more basic approach.” He tapped himself on the chest, “Me. Becker.” And pointed to them, “You?”

  “Wat,” said the (formerly) red-haired one.

  “Wat,” said the (formerly) dark-haired one.

  “What?” asked Becker.

  “Their names,” Miirl said, with Acorna-like gentleness that got Becker’s attention. “They are doing as you asked and telling you their names. Both are named Wat.”

  “How’d you know that? I thought you needed me to translate—oh, I get it. You read them, huh?”

  She nodded. “Their intention is clear. They are feeling much better. They are now trying to communicate with their new manservant, which is how they see you, since you are quite clearly not their mother.”

  “We’ll just change that little notion,” Becker said, turning back to them. “Okay, you crewcut canaries, you speak Terran, I speak Terran, we should be able to come up with some kind of understanding but I need you to sing.”

  Both began babbling at once. As they talked, their voices rather nasal in a singsong rhythm that went up and down and up and down, with a few familiar words interspersed, Becker grinned.

  “Oh, please do not frighten them by baring your teeth so, Captain,” Miirl said.

  “I�
��m not scaring them, honey. Being scared of teeth is a Linyaari thing. I don’t believe it, but these guys are a cross between Beowulf and Chaucer! I’m pretty sure they’re gabbing at us in Old English. I’m not exactly fluent in it, but the old man—my Dad, I mean—and I used to play around with and read some of the epic sagas to each other when the salvage business was slow—real slow. This’ll be a piece of cake for you. You already have a lot of the words in the LAANYE, but it probably doesn’t recognize them on account of the accents. Now that they are cooperating, once you get the right mix in your translation, you’ll figure it out in no time flat. You guys are geniuses. Go on, try a question yourself. You’ll do better than me. I can’t read minds and you can. Besides, I can’t hang around here chewing the fat with these guys all day long. I have to go dig out my pals.”

  “Very well, Captain Becker, we will try,” Yaniriin said. “But please stay to monitor our initial efforts and instruct us on how to improve them, before you return to your vital mission.”

  “Sure thing, Cap’n, but make it snappy, will you? I’ve already lost a lot of time already—and Acorna, my feline first mate, and that other kid might be in real trouble. Mac can take care of himself, but I’m gonna have a few choice things to say when I catch up to him about letting the kiddies get into trouble.”

  “We will not waste your time, Captain. Miirl,” Yaniriin said. “Would you like to try questioning these beings? You seem to have established an affinity with them already.”

  “Just finishing adjustments on the LAANYE here, Captain. Oh, yes, I believe I have a couple of simple phrases in their tongue.

  “Velcommen,” she said to the captives in an impeccable up and down nasal singsong that seemed to trip lightly from her Linyaari tongue. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  They replied in a gabble so fast that even Becker couldn’t understand them, but Miirl gasped and stepped back a pace.

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they were something called liege men of what I gather is a sort of warlord named Bjorn. They tell me they came to hunt the four-legged unicorns and kill them to take them back to their master for the good their horns will do him. They want to kill our Ancestors!”

  The two Wats were now leering and poking at each other.

  Miirl looked horrified. “They say their master was particularly eager to get the horns when he sent them because he had just become lifemates with a very much younger lady named Ingeborg the Buxom, and our horns—or the horns of the four-leggeds—are believed to restore manhood.”

  The men began shouting and pointing with their bound hands and trying to stomp their bound feet, sounding very commanding. “They say they have been wandering many years in their quest—that they had their hands on some of the four-legged unicorns when, all of a sudden, they fell into a deep sleep. When they awakened, the unicorns awoke, too, and bounded away—into a countryside these men had never seen before. But they recognize us as the descendants of the unicorns they hunted. They say that, now that they have us in their power, they demand our immediate and unconditional surrender.”

  Becker laughed. “I’m starting to like these guys.”

  Seventeen

  Maati’s strongest concern about her recent change of venue was the discovery that having a big brother along for the ride was definitely a mixed blessing. He was being very bossy over events nobody could change, nobody had planned, and nobody knew what to do about. Not even him—whatever he thought. He gave more silly orders than Liriili.

  Yiitir and Maarni, on the other hand, were a lot of fun.

  It had all begun when she, Aari, and the older couple had been standing looking at the sii-Linyaari artifact. All of a sudden, they were facing a bright river tumbling from the distant mountainhead, framed by tree-covered hills just ahead of them. Turning, they beheld a wide open sea with a white sand beach on their side of the river. On the opposite bank stood a great city. It was a big improvement over the Khleevi-wrecked landscape they’d just been looking at. She had thought Aari would say, “let’s explore.” But instead he got all huffy and cautious. And, after they couldn’t contact any of the other Linyaari Survey teams, much less Acorna, he’d said, “We must interact with others as little as possible. We should keep to ourselves until we know what’s going on.”

  “I hate to disagree with you, young fellow,” Yiitir had pointed out, “but if we keep to ourselves, we’re unlikely to learn what’s going on.”

  “Oh, look,” Maarni said. “Piiro! I haven’t been out on the water since way before we left Vhiliinyar and there are two piiro sitting right there empty, just waiting for passengers.”

  “I’m very hot and weary,” Yiitir said. “A little row and a bit of a swim would be lovely. How about you, Maati? What do you think?”

  “She doesn’t swim,” Aari said.

  “How do you know?” she asked indignantly. “You’ve been in my life again less than a ghaanyi and already you’re an expert on what Maati can and can’t do? It so happens I—I can learn. You’ll teach me, won’t you, Yiitir?”

  “Oh, I’m very bad at teaching anything other than my own specialty, I fear, but Maarni is a good teacher and a good swimmer. She taught all of our younglings before we left Vhiliinyar, and many of her students, too.”

  “Have you people forgotten about all the others who have disappeared? That we are on a serious mission here, and cannot contact a single member of the Survey team? We have no idea what has caused us to come to this place, or where this place is.”

  “I’d say that was rather obvious,” Yiitir said. “We have disappeared, too. Far from being killed or chased by monsters, we now find ourselves in a very nice place, which I guess to be Vhiliinyar of several thousand ghaanyi ago. If I am correct, that would be the original Kubiilikaan over there, the home of the Ancestral Hosts.”

  “Yiitir! I just saw one! I’m sure I did! A sii- Linyaari!” Maarni was jumping up and down like an excited child. “Oh, let’s go try to talk to them!”

  “You don’t know their language,” Aari pointed out.

  “We are telepathic,” Yiitir reminded him. “And we share ancestors on at least one side, according to what we know of them.”

  “It’s an opportunity not to be missed,” Maarni said, tugging at her lifemate’s hand. Maati found herself dancing along beside them while Aari stood scowling.

  She didn’t really understand his attitude at all. It wasn’t like there was any danger. If Yiitir was right about where—no, when, they were—the Khleevi were an unthinkably long time in the future.

  (Come on, Aari,) she pleaded. (It’ll be an adventure! Come with us. There’s nothing to be afraid of.)

  (You don’t understand, Youngling. You haven’t been trained. All of this has just been thrust upon you. What we do and say now could change history beyond our imagining. No one will have told you about the space-time continuum and why you must be careful—)

  (Not to meet yourself coming and going?) she replied scornfully. (Oh, we had all that before I left school. Grandam made sure I had progressive tutors. I learned all about that stuff and Grandam and I talked about it some, too. You know what she said?)

  (You’re about to tell me, I take it,) his thought came through huffy and impatient.

  (Grandam said that if people go back and change history, then that’s sort of like birth and death, isn’t it? It’s just fate. It’s what happens. And maybe it’s for the best. Maybe history should be changed. Besides, what else can we do but relax and explore? Can you get us back to where we were?)

  (No, but I can stay put and hope that our friends will be able to find us.)

  (They sure were not able to find anybody else that was lost! We are stuck here. Why can’t we look around? Grandam would say we should take advantage of the situation if we can’t change it.)

  (I can’t imagine her saying something so simplistic and irresponsible,) Aari said.

  That made Maati so mad she didn’t even try to conceal it. (She was not
irresponsible! She was the most grown-up Linyaari of anybody ever but she wasn’t always looking for bad in everything like you do. You want to talk about irresponsible? Who was it who couldn’t even get himself and our brother to the ship in time to be evacuated? I would have had the benefit of your attitudes and teachings a long time ago if you had just been on time for take-off! Instead I got Grandam to bring me up, while our parents went off looking for you and Laarye. And you know what? I’m glad! Grandam was wise, not full of gloomy old scary stories about making it so your future self is never born. What do we know about the future or anything else? Our life is wherever we are at the time, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?)

  She had been sending so fast and so furiously that she didn’t notice until she ran down that he had grown very still, very sad.

  “Oh, Aari, brother, I am so sorry!” she said, running over to try to catch his hand and make up with him. But she had gone too far. He hated her now. He wasn’t sending hate, but he was pulling away from her as if she had some sort of horrible contagious disease.

  “No, no, you might be right. Go along with Yiitir and Maarni. I will wait here and tell anyone who finds us where you are.”

  And so she did. Maybe when he’d sat on the beach by himself long enough, he’d realize he was being silly and come and join them.

  And she caught his thought, not actually intended for her to hear, (She is still young enough to think that things always come out all right, that your friends always find you, and that nothing very bad will happen.)

  Maati felt an answering flutter of unease. Of course, she had been through a lot of bad things, but basically her brother was right. There were usually a lot of good people around to help her out of whatever predicament she was in. Though, in her secret heart, so far, she still sort of preferred the Khleevi to Liriili. Their attacks at least were less personal.

  “The youngest gets to push off!” Yiitir commanded cheerily, as he stood in the bow of the little boat and struck a pose worthy of the admiralty of some great navy. Maarni was rummaging in the pack she had had with her when they were—transferred? Shifted? Transported?