Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

Acorna could well understand why Maati was so tired at the end of every day. She could also understand why the young girl did not need to be in school. Walking and even running to the various homes, businesses, agencies, and other message stations within the central compounds was quite educational in and of itself.

  Thariinye complained that Acorna had so little time to walk out with him and accept his “tutelage” and indeed, when she was not on duty, she was far too glad to be off her feet to wish to walk anywhere with anyone. So she was quite surprised when carrying a message to the agro-farm one day to sense great hostility from a young woman, with ruddy skin and black hair who was sorting seeds into packets for distribution throughout the planet.

  “Have I done something to offend you?” Acorna finally asked, though she couldn’t imagine what it might be, aside from the usual prejudice she had felt when she first arrived.

  That had diminished somewhat now that she was frequently seen to be serving an important function among her people. She supposed it was also that she was harder to avoid and too busy to notice, most of the time, any lack of friendliness.

  The woman’s anger and dislike were evident not just in unvoiced thoughts, however, but in the stiff way she held herself, the angry way she wrestled the seeds into their packets and sealed the packets as if imprisoning the guilty seeds for life. It was evident in the flashing of her big green eyes as she darted glances at Acorna while she was delivering her verbal message from Liriili, and in the snappishness of her voice when she finally attempted to dismiss Acorna.

  “Isn’t it obvious? First you bring trouble to us so that my father is sent off-planet to solve it—”

  “Wait, wait. What trouble? Who is your father?”

  “Aagroni Iirtye. He criticized you and you used your influence to have him sent away.”

  “My influence?” Acorna said. “Feel free to read my thoughts. I have no influence here. If anything, I have the opposite of influence. And I have nothing to do with the problems that sent your father off-planet.”

  If the woman took her up on her offer, she did it very quickly, and she looked away for a moment, confused, and then back up. “And then—and then there’s Thariinye. Why won’t you release him?” the woman demanded.

  “Release him?” Acorna asked, quite baffled.

  “You don’t care for him, you don’t even like him, I can see that, so why are you taking him as a lifemate? He means nothing to you and he m-means everything to m-m-m-me!”

  “You’re telling the wrong person this!” Acorna said. “You should tell him if you feel that way! I have no claim on him whatsoever. He was the first Linyaari male I met and is an old shipmate with whom I’ve shared certain adventures, but it’s his idea entirely that we should be lifemates, not mine!”

  The girl looked puzzled, and wiped at the tears of anger and frustration that flowed down her cheeks. “I can tell you’re speaking truly, but I thought…”

  “What I think,” Acorna said with sudden insight, “is that Thariinye is no more interested in me than you seem to think he is in you. I believe he likes all of the attention from all of the eligible females and doesn’t wish to settle yet with one—by seeming to choose me, when he must know I don’t feel that way about him—I suppose he feels free to take his time making another, more suitable choice. He’s not unkind and I doubt it occurs to him that he is causing you pain.”

  “It’s true he—he doesn’t know how I feel. I knew he was promised to you and so I concealed my thoughts, thought pointedly of plowing furrows and planting when he was around and”—she blushed—“I suppose he took my metaphor literally.” She sighed. “He is such a lusty fellow, it was very hard, I mean difficult, I mean…”

  Now Acorna was amused. “I definitely think Thariinye is the one you should talk to. Good luck.”

  Her amusement faded as she went about her other errands. It was true that Thariinye was not her choice for a lifemate, but on a whole planet of beings similar to herself, with many eligible males, she had not thus far met anyone who was.

  In fact, Pal Kendoro, who was not even the same species as she was, inspired more warm feelings in her than almost anyone she had met here so far except Grandam and Maati.

  So if finding her a mate was part of the reason for her being here, it wasn’t working out. And she would much rather be taking her chances with her aunt and the rest of the Balakiire’s crew, or any crew, than stuck down here with no real purpose and no ability to influence events or people.

  What if the Khleevi had returned, what if the radio silence was because the ships, the crews, the other planets even, had all been destroyed, invaded?

  Acorna firmly shook her head and put that out of her mind. It did no good to worry about such things. For the first time in her short life, it did no good to do much of anything but wait and watch and hope for the best. She did not think she was going to be very good at it.

  “What do you mean ‘detained,’” Melireenya asked the official on the comscreen. She had a hard time believing she was having this conversation. The Niirians were the last people she would have expected to behave even rudely to the Linyaari ambassadors or tradespeople. Niirians were courteous and ethical, like the Linyaari themselves, punctilious and moral almost to a fault.

  “We do apologize, madam, but the circumstances were totally beyond our control, as we explained to Visedhaanye Neeva. Probably your ship will only be impounded for the time it takes to retrieve your original representatives and return them to you, but in the meantime, our orders are very clear.”

  “Not to me,” Melireenya said. “And I’m good at reading minds. So please enlighten me. What is it that your orders say?”

  “All Linyaari coming within our spheres of influence are to be detained for diplomatic reasons. I’m afraid I’m not privy to the reasoning behind this. I am so sorry to be the bearer of such distressing tidings, madam. You have been a good friend for many years.”

  Melireenya softened. The young official’s voice held genuine consternation and his horns seemed to droop with shame. “As you have been to me, Snoraa. I suppose there is no alternative but to trust our old friends one more time?”

  “None, I fear. But I will take it as a personal matter of honor that no harm befalls you or your crew.”

  “I appreciate that assurance, Snoraa. Did you issue the same courtesy to my lifemate?”

  From his silence, Melireenya guessed that Snoraa had—or at least had concerned himself with the fate of Hrronye and his students.

  “May I speak with the visedhaanye, please?” she asked politely. Neeva had taken the shuttle to the planet’s surface, feeling it a wise precaution until she knew what had become of the missing Linyaari and why they had sent a distress signal home.

  “The visedhaanye has been detained as well and is presently incommunicado, madam. Please dock your ship in bay one one four and present yourself and your crew to the guardians who will greet you there. I will do what I can to assist but my job, you understand, is to insist upon your compliance with my I orders at this time.”

  Melireenya had attempted to send another message back to Vhiliinyar. Like her previous attempts since coming within the planet’s orbit, her transmission met with no response.

  Unable to contact base for further orders and worried about what was happening to Neeva, she saw no viable alternative but to comply. From the transmissions they had been receiving from the other Linyaari spacecraft, she and Khaari had determined that most of the fleet, if not all of it, was now deployed. Unlike the Balakiire, the rest of the ships were not investigating a distress call, but rather a widespread radio silence on behalf of the diplomatic, trade, and educational missions stationed on various planets. She opened all channels in an attempt to reach the other ships, to apprise them of Nirii’s odd behavior, but was met with the same silence that greeted her calls to home base. Something was very wrong.

  She sent out a general Mayday, with no response whatever. Her only consolation was that none of thi
s seemed even remotely like a Khleevi attack or invasion.

  But as she prepared to land, she felt a deep sense of panic like none she had ever experienced. She thought that the elders must have felt this way in the old stories when, attempting to make contact with a hostile species by communicating with its least dangerous members, the young females, they found themselves instead surrounded by armed males and were taken into captivity, the purpose of which they did not truly understand to this day.

  Her fears were well founded. No sooner had she landed than a team of uniformed people, not Niirians but very much like the people among whom Khornya had been dwelling when the Balakiire located her, boarded the ship. Two of them forcibly removed her from the command seat while two others removed Khaari from hers and still others swiftly took over the controls at both of their stations and demanded the access code to the ship’s computer.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What gives you the right to tamper with a sovereign Linyaari vessel? I demand to see Runae Thiirgaare at once.”

  “Take it easy,” a burly young man who seemed to have no hair at all told her. “You are under arrest by the Federation Forces and your ship is being impounded.”

  (Don’t worry, Melireenya,) Khaari’s thought came to her. (They will have difficulty impounding us unless we cooperate.)

  (Then why do I feel us lifting up again?) Melireenya returned.

  (Oh, dear. This must be one of those tractor beams we’ve been hearing about that allows us to be towed by another ship. I didn’t see one, though, did you?)

  (No. But they may have been cloaked.)

  Over the com system, Snoraa’s voice could be heard demanding that the vessel ask for clearance but the uniformed people paid him no heed.

  “What are the charges?” Melireenya asked. “And for that matter, what are the mysterious crimes that our people are supposed to have committed?”

  She was picking up a welter of feelings and confused thoughts, most of them violent, angry, or lustful toward her or her fellow crewmen, or disrespectful of the bovine-like Niirians. They were lying, that much she knew. All of them were lying. But they were following orders, which was how they earned their living.

  “Well, let’s see, ma’am, what were those charges again? Resisting arrest, fleeing custody, failure to render assistance in a medical crisis, nondisclosure of residence, crimes of omission against the various environments under Federation protection. That’s for a start. When we think of others, we’ll let you know.”

  “That’s nonsense!” she said. “Narhii-Vhiliinyar is not part of your Federation!”

  (And to think, we were just discussing whether or not it should be,) came Khaari’s thought.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s the other charges,” said the uniformed ruffian. “Criminal trespass, entering Federation galaxies without a license, abduction of a Federation citizen.”

  “Abduction? The only person who accompanied us was the niece of Visedhaanye ferilii Neeva and she came willingly and eagerly to her home world.”

  “We’d just like a chance to check that out, ma’am,” he said. “Suppose you set this egg back on course for your home world and we’ll ask the citizen in question ourselves.”

  “We can’t do that,” Khaari said.

  She had been watching the woman who took her seat trying to access the navigation system.

  (Create a diversion, Melireenya,) Khaari said.

  Melireenya screamed and lunged forward, pointing and screeching out the words to a Linyaari poem she remembered from her youth.

  Khaari took advantage of the distraction to slip in closer to the woman sitting in her seat, who had swiveled around to see what the commotion was. Khaari was able to make two swift keystrokes before the woman turned back.

  (There!) she said. (Thanks.)

  (Were you able to delete the course information?)

  (Naturally. Had we been able to complete our sequence before they boarded us, it would have done so of its own accord. It’s a good thing we Linyaari have good memories for navigation.)

  The woman in the navigator’s chair swore something ugly and violent.

  “What’s the matter, Brill?” the man with no hair asked.

  “It’s gone!” she said. “I had almost accessed the route when—you erased it!” she said to Khaari.

  “It’s self-deleting,” Khaari said, which was true enough. “After all, we know where we’ve been already.”

  “Yeah, but how do you know how to get back there?” the man asked.

  “That is a matter of planetary security,” Melireenya said. (If they can talk like petty bureaucrats, so can we.) “Now then, speaking of abductions, if you are the people who have abducted our ambassador and other members of our diplomatic community, we must insist you release them and us immediately.”

  “Yeah, well, tell us who is going to make us and how we can get to talk to them and maybe we will,” the man said.

  Khaari was staring at them. (Those aren’t the uniforms of Federation Forces, Melireenya.)

  (I noticed that. These are the same uniforms worn by the troops on Rushima. Mercenaries. Now, what do you suppose they are up to?)

  (I have the unhappy feeling we’re about to find out.)

  Fourteen

  There was no doubt in Becker’s mind whatsoever that he should space the android. The damned things had homing beacons that left indelible electron trails for the owners to follow in case of loss, theft, or, on very rare occasions, defection. Furthermore, there was no way to remove the damned beacons that Becker had ever heard of. Even if he inactivated or destroyed the android completely, the beacon would take the lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

  Of course, if he spaced the android, the homing device would go into space, too, and kinky Kisla could follow it into infinity for all he cared.

  The thing was, Becker just could not quite bring himself to throw out something so useful, so potentially salvageable. So ultimately valuable. He hadn’t actually tried to deactivate the homing beacon on an android before. People abandoned androids very rarely and if an android happened to be the sole survivor of an unfortunate space accident, it was unlikely there’d be anybody left to follow the beacon, even if whoever found the droid could not legally claim salvage rights. Surely if he tried, he could do it. But Kisla wasn’t a problem to be sneezed at.

  RK jumped on the droid’s chest and kneaded big rents in its tunic. This was accompanied by a lot of drooling and the cat rubbing the top of his head under the android’s chin, then rubbing the sides of his mouth against the droid, cat lip curled upward as if smelling something nasty.

  “You don’t think you marked this thing enough already, huh?” Becker asked. “Come on, cat, we have to space this dude.”

  But when Becker started to lift the android a second time to haul him to an airlock, RK took a swing at him that would have ripped his hand open if it had connected. The cat’s back was up and his tail bristled.

  “Hey, look, I know he followed us home but you can’t keep him, dammit, and neither can I. He’s bugged.”

  For a cat in the business RK was in, the feline member of the crew did not seem to take technical difficulties as sufficient reason for infringing on his territory. He snarled menacingly, ears flat, eyes narrowed, back feet clawing on the android’s chest much in the way bulls were known to paw the ground before charging.

  Becker swore and sat back on his haunches, hearing the cat on the one hand and the steady bleep on the other. “I’ve got half a mind to leave you both off on some rock and let him take care of you if you’re so crazy about him,” Becker said. The cat remained unimpressed. They both knew that Becker would not do this, however unreasonable RK was, as the android would sooner or later attract Kisla Manjari and he would not wish her attentions on his worst enemy, much less his usually more or less convivial shipmate.

  “Okay, okay. Will you let me haul him up to the bridge then so I can watch where we’re going and probably, who’s coming with us, while I try t
o disable the beacon?”

  The cat marked the android again, then lightly jumped to Becker’s shoulder and wound purring around his neck, claws close to his jugular, just in case he tried something funny. Becker hauled his and everyone else’s asses up to the bridge just in time to spot one of those rare wormholes, uncharted by anyone but Theophilus Becker.

  “You’re beautiful, baby!” he said, blowing a kiss as the Condor dove into the hole.

  He wasn’t sure how effective those electron trails were through wormholes but with any luck at all, maybe he could buy a little time this way.

  The hole spit them out in the same chewed-up galaxy where he had discovered the trashed planet with the horned cat toys.

  Becker returned his attention to the android. Now he really had to get that transmitter disabled. He dug in to the task at hand. The cat looked on as anxiously as an expectant father.

  Becker kept hoping that if he fooled around long enough, the cat would do what he usually did and get bored and wander off someplace to sleep, but of course, that was what Becker wanted so no way was RK going to do that.

  Becker was concentrating so hard he was sweating, and meanwhile that annoyingly regular little bleep continued. After a while, RK’s possessiveness subsided enough for the cat to start noticing the bleep, too, and taking an interest in it. An intense interest. The cat stalked up and down the recumbent length of the robot, across the open control panel, waving his newly fluffy tail under Becker’s nose as he walked between Becker and what he was trying to work on.

  “Look, cat. A little cooperation would be appreciated.”

  RK, much to Becker’s surprise, backed off a little, looking offended, sat down and began washing his right front paw. Both ears, now that he had two again, were cocked forward at an extreme angle. Becker stopped working for a moment to watch the control panel again.

  When he glanced back at RK, he saw that the cat’s ears twitched very slightly with each bleep, and the critter was hunkered low, into stalking posture, his hind end wiggling with suppressed excitement as if he was about to spring.