Acorna’s Search

by Anne McCaffrey

  The folklorist came up with a LAANYE and a small notebook and stiil. Very low tech, but still light and handy and it did the job of writing.

  Maati rolled up the cuffs of her shipsuit and waded in, pushing the little piiro into the water and jumping aboard afterwards with such enthusiasm that the boat wallowed precariously. Yiitir flailed around and sat down abruptly. Maarni laughed. Then Yiitir handed Maati a paddle and kept one for himself, and together they paddled the piiro out into the water.

  They saw some other boats, including some very large ones, out on the water, and people were moving around on them—a few were Linyaari, but most were another sort of person, rather like Becker and Uncle Hafiz but longer and slimmer. Their movements were very graceful, she thought, and there was something Linyaari-ish about them, although they had no horns and she couldn’t see their hands and feet very well. Their hair resembled that of the humans Maati had met, too.

  “Can we go talk to them?” Maati asked. “It would be wonderful to finally meet one of the Friends, don’t you think?”

  Yiitir said, “There’ll be time enough for that if our situation can’t be sorted out. But I think we should merely listen for the moment. Aari was right, you know. We mustn’t disrupt things by letting on where we’re from and what we’re doing here unless it becomes a matter of life or death for us.”

  “As if we knew what we were doing here!” Maati said. “You know, if we have been brought back in time, who do you think brought us here? They did! The Friends. Somehow or other. So they could send us back.”

  “There is a flaw in your logic, you know,” Yiitir pointed out.

  “What? It seems sensible to me,” she said.

  “The Friends were all long gone by the time we were born. They couldn’t have brought us here deliberately. Not us specifically, at any rate. They didn’t know we existed.”

  “Well, yes, but even if they didn’t aim for us specifically they must know how our coming here happened.”

  “Why?” Maarni asked. “Perhaps we’re here as the result of something the Khleevi left behind on Vhiliinyar.”

  “Can’t be,” Maati said with an impudent grin.

  “Why not?”

  “Nothing has tried to eat us yet.”

  “A valid point,” Yiitir agreed. “She has you there, my dear.”

  “Still, I do not think communicating our plight is a good idea. We might be as big a surprise to them as they are to us.”

  “I suppose—oh, look!” Maarni cried as something flashed from the water with a brilliant dazzle of blue-green and a spume of spray. Just for a moment Maati had seen it—a horn among wet strands of long greenish hair.

  She was about to dive overboard after it when Maarni put a firm hand on her shoulder. The elder Linyaari sent out a mental message, broadcasting very loudly. (Please come to see us here on our piiro. We understand that our races are related. We would like to know you better.)

  They waited, paddling placidly in the lake, which had little rainbows of color floating on the waters from some kind of strange substance that Maati had never seen before on the lakes or seas of narhii-Vhiliinyar. It smelt funny, too, she thought, wrinkling her nose—nasty stuff. But it wasn’t the water she was interested in, but what was in it. Maarni sent out her plea again, reassuring the sii-Linyaari she meant them no harm, but simply wanted to hear their stories and songs, wanted to meet them.

  Meanwhile, they kept paddling out to a small island. Over on the far side of it, they rested their arms, floating gently and admiring the birds flying by, the way the suns gilded the shore with a tawny sunset, and the mildness of the air.

  As soon as they were on the other side of the island, their piiro was surrounded by turbulence in the form of streaks racing through the water toward them.

  And then they, too, were in the water. Maati gulped and splashed and sank beneath the waves, in spite of her best efforts to stay afloat. She was going to drown here in this strange world.

  It seemed Aari was right.

  Eighteen

  From the vantage point of their three skyscraper towers, Acorna, Thariinye, and Mac saw that in many places, despite its reinforcement, the sky had fallen. Huge triangles of the ceiling’s fabric, a substance Acorna guessed to be similar to that used in Linyaari space vessels, bulged with debris covering whole smashed city blocks.

  All she could see of the sea from this vantage point was the part washing over the lower city and the debris column in the middle. But she got a vaster and more shadowy impression of the landward side. Ranging outward from where she stood, as far as her eyes could see, were outline beyond outline beyond outline of buildings stretching endlessly into the darkness. How could she and her friends ever explore all of this?

  There were hundreds of buildings as tall as the ones they climbed, though not all were as large in circumference, and not all had survived the depredations of time and Khleevi in the world above. Whole blocks of the city lay buried under earth, trees, and Khleevi scat. Other buildings, less sturdy than the columns, lay in pieces, shaken by the earthquakes that had so disrupted the surface, Acorna guessed. It was very difficult to see too far by the mere glow of the building walls.

  (Aari? Where are you, yaazi?) she called again, disheartened by the distance yet to be covered, the buildings to be explored, the length and breadth of the city.

  (Khornya!) A cry came, its intensity stunning her. Though the volume was faint, the sound of her name was a desperate plea for help.

  (Aari!) she cried, but received no answer. (Aari?) Silence.

  She called again and again, until her mind ached and she heard another call, not Aari.

  (Khornya?) This was from Thariinye, and uncharacteristically timid.

  (I heard him, Thariinye, I did! And he sounded terrified,) she said.

  “She heard Aari,” Thariinye told Mac. “You must have imagined the tone, Khornya. Aari would not be terrified, no matter what. He is very brave.”

  She ignored that, but insisted, “I heard what I heard and he’s here somewhere. They all must be.”

  “I didn’t hear him. Perhaps it’s your building.”

  “I doubt it, but it’s a theory. Look, from here I can see that there’s actually another floor above the one you’re standing on—Mac’s, too. Can you see the same thing on my building? If so, I think we should go to see what’s there.”

  It was true. Whereas the story on which each of them stood was the last one at the top of the stairs, surrounded, at its perimeter, by something of an open porch with columns on all sides, the very top floor on Mac’s building and Thariinye’s appeared quite solid.

  “Yes, your structure contains another layer as well, Khornya,” Mac said.

  Continuing to cast a mental broadcast as loudly and as far as she could, heedless that it could be picked up by whatever unseen enemy had spirited away the other Linyaari, she clicked across the stone tiles and touched the inner wall.

  And found herself looking down onto a huge dark globe that encompassed the center of the building. The inner wall was transparent.

  “It’s like one of those ancient lighthouses in Becker’s pirate books!” she said to the others. “See if you have one. If we can light them, we’ll be able to see more of the city, have a better chance of finding our people.”

  As she spoke she found the single door giving access to the globe. Opening it, she entered.

  A narrow circle of floor was separated from the globe by a railing, but she found, leaning forward, that she could easily touch the globe with her hand. Unlike the walls, it failed to light up, and for a fleeting second she was disappointed.

  It appeared to be held aloft by columns of something that moved slightly, even in the gloomy light cast by the walls, something quicksilver with a shine to it. The ancestor to the interior streams of the Linyaari pavilions, she decided.

  Circling the globe, she saw no controls of any sort. Then, in one place, there was a small narrow extension to the walkway, leading to the glo
be. When she set foot on it, it jiggled. Then she saw a tiny point on the globe’s vastness, just at the end of the extension. She also noticed that there were loops in the ground level of the railing, and realized that she was meant not to walk on the extension, but to lie down upon it, hooking her feet into the railing. She found that by doing this, her horn was in the proper position to touch the globe.

  Breathlessly, she craned her neck just a tiny bit and made the touch, then shut her eyes tightly, expecting a blinding light. However, the person who had dreamed this up no doubt had a healthy respect for his or her own vision, for the globe merely shimmered, then glowed, then glittered at various spots, growing a bit brighter. It did all of this without increasing in temperature either on its surface or in the room surrounding it. Acorna was easily able to return to the outer portion of the building before the light blossomed into a small brilliant sun. It lit the ceiling in the area for two blocks beyond the building with the violet and rose hues of dawn.

  “Behold the dawn!” Thariinye bellowed in her ear via the com link. “I have one, too!”

  And from beyond the transparent partition an answering brightness met that of her own globe.

  “Mine does not work,” Mac said and Acorna heard disappointment in the android’s voice.

  “Did you find the little walkway and the contact point?” Thariinye asked.

  “Yes, but it does not care for my horn modification. Perhaps the alloy from which I constructed it is inappropriate to the function.”

  “Hmmm,” Thariinye said. “Or it could be that the tip of your horn is the wrong size or shape. Maybe we should do a little filing when we return to the surface.”

  Mac sounded brighter. “An excellent idea. Actually, I have an array of files along my spine if you…”

  “Gentlemen!” Acorna stopped them.

  “Yes?” they both said.

  “Look!”

  Once more standing on the outer balcony, she beheld the city in much, if not all, of its glory.

  “I can’t see the end of it!” Thariinye cried. “Where are the grasslands and meadows? But, oh! Now! With color! How beautiful! And how huge! Oh, Khornya, we will never find them here!”

  Now they could truly appreciate the glory and the magnitude of this underground city and what it had once been, as well as assess the damage that had been done to it.

  Where the globe’s illumination flooded the street, the buildings danced and seemed to change shapes as the walls bulged and buckled, melted and grew, doming, spiraling, flattening, expanding, contracting, a living breathing panorama of color and light. Soft natural colors brightened to vivid, darkened to jewel tones, shifted to alien light modes that Acorna had never seen before—pattern and form shifted.

  (What an exhausting place to live!) Thariinye thought. (No wonder we saw no sleeping dwellings here. No one could sleep with all that going on.)

  (Impressive,) Acorna agreed. (But it brings us no closer than we were before to finding Aari and Maati and the others.)

  (True, and Maati’s just a little girl! A youngling! She was so proud of being star-clad, Khornya. So proud of finally hearing thoughts. Quite annoying really. Thinks she knows more than I do—or anyone else. I wish I could find her right now so I could tell her how irritating she can be.)

  (She’ll be with Aari, and the elders,) Acorna told him, (and Kaarlye and Miiri are missing, too. So if they’ve all been taken or sent to the same place, she’ll have more family around her than either of us do right now.)

  (Of course she will,) Thariinye said, his thought image one of RK quickly shoveling dirt over a recent production. (I’m not worried or anything, just appalled at how inconsiderate the little scamp is, disappearing when we need her help.)

  But the thought-picture of RK reminded Acorna that she hadn’t seen the cat for some time.

  “Has anybody seen RK recently?” she said into her com link.

  An assortment of negatives came back to her from the others in her party.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Now RK might be missing, too!”

  “We must find him then!” Mac said. “Captain Becker will be most aggrieved with us if we lose his first mate.”

  (Half the Linyaari population missing and now we have to worry about RK,) Thariinye grumbled internally, just loudly enough for Acorna to hear.

  But he and Mac joined her swiftly, and helped her hunt the area around the globe and the rest of that floor of the building besides.

  She stopped them with, “I’ve called the cat until my throat hurts, and sent him urgent mental messages as well. It’s no good. If RK is here, he is ignoring all calls.”

  Mac responded sensibly, “It has been, by my calculations, fully twelve hours since the cat last slept. Cats require a great deal of sleep, and my observations of RK lead me to believe that he is very feline in that regard. I suspect we shall find him curled up somewhere warm, snoring.”

  “A good point,” Acorna said. “Then let us continue looking for him.”

  They searched every floor of the massive building, all along the glowing walls and the inner chambers to the ground floor, without success. Acorna began to think the cat had wandered back outside, in which case he would only be found when he wished to be.

  She looked out into the street. Perhaps he was merely curled up by the door, waiting for her to finish. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d bowed out of some activity the cat felt was boring to take a nice nap. But he wasn’t sitting by the door. Then, as her thoughts and her footsteps stilled, she heard something. “Listen,” she said.

  “What?”

  “There it is again. That sound I thought was the sea.”

  “Yes!” Mac said. “I hear it now, too. And purring. I hear purring. It is coming from below.” He indicated the level beneath the street, the one leading to the cave.

  They slipped and slid back down the steep incline they had climbed to reach the ground floor. The glow from the wall of the upper story was dim down here. This was not a place they had seen clearly before, since, upon coming out of the cavern, they had had no idea that they were in a place where walls glowed. Now, however, Thariinye walked over and touched a wall, and this lowermost floor was illuminated.

  RK lay near the inside wall, purring. As they approached him, lighting the wall he looked up and mewed as innocently as a kitten. He’d been caught napping, but he wasn’t the least embarrassed. As he stood up and stretched it appeared he had not a care in the world.

  “Now why do you suppose he chose this spot for his nap?” Thariinye asked.

  Acorna bent to pet the cat. When she touched the wall next to RK, she straightened up at once. “Because this wall is warmer than the rest. And it’s vibrating. We haven’t examined this floor thoroughly, but do you know, I could swear there is some sort of humming coming from whatever is inside this level.”

  “We will investigate it,” Thariinye said.

  Acorna was already trying the door nearest the cat, but to her surprise, it was locked firmly, as nothing else they had seen in this city had been.

  Mac stepped forward, his laser at the ready. “Allow me,” he said.

  But as soon as the laser cut the lock, a piercing siren split the air along with a loud voice clearly commanding them to do something, but speaking in a language none of them understood.

  RK, upset by this rude disturbance of his rest, bolted for the hole into the cavern and jumped down into it.

  No one paid him the slightest attention. Instead they entered the room that had been locked.

  Once they illuminated its walls, they beheld no ordinary meeting room, but a vast chamber taking up the entire interior of the huge building. At its core, something silvery and metallic looking spun inside a transparent cylinder. The walls here bore glyphs, too, but these changed constantly.

  “This entire wall is a screen,” Thariinye said, walking along and watching the numbers change. They did not appear to be made of light, but seemed painted on the walls like the other glyphs,
and yet they morphed at even intervals, reflecting new data that had no meaning for any of the team.

  “There will be controls somewhere,” Mac said knowledgably, searching along the walls. “Something is generating this whirling and this changing of data on the wall glyphs.”

  “Perhaps the instrument panel is in the floor,” Acorna said when Mac’s survey produced no results. “You know, this might be the control room for the lighting, especially the globes on the top floors. We didn’t hear it or feel anything when we came through before because we hadn’t yet activated any lights.”

  “I do not think so, Khornya,” Mac told her. “The lights, for all their power and sophisticated design, are relatively simple mechanisms. They would not require so much data as we are seeing here. I will try to translate some of this writing.”

  She had wandered to the far side of the silvery column and now saw that in addition to writing, the wall contained a huge map. It was not merely a flat wall map, but a globe, and she could see, just barely, that it revolved slowly.

  “Thariinye,” she said. “Look at this. Do you recognize any of the features here?”

  “No,” he said, and then it turned very slightly and he said, “wait, yes, I do! This is Vhiliinyar. See, here’s the gravesite and here’s the cave where Aari hid and—look, there is a little dot of light there, do you see?”

  “Yes, oh, but now it’s gone.”

  “Everything here is in a state of constant flux,” Mac said, with appreciation but also with some frustration. “It is very difficult to accumulate data when it is changing faster than I can record it.”

  Acorna drew closer to the map, and touched a point of light. A glimmer of understanding stung her finger like a crackle of static electricity. “That is Fiiryi,” she said. “That’s exactly where he disappeared. The light must stand for him. Thariinye! Mac! Come closer! I’ve found something! This map—it locates some of our people.”