Acorna’s People

by Anne McCaffrey

  Johnny shook his head. “No, the good news—though it’s also kind of mixed—is that we know the course the general’s ships took when they returned to their lair. We followed, and we know exactly where it is, but we couldn’t take them on with only kiddy power to draw on. While we were trying to decide what our next move was, we picked up the Mayday from the Shahrazad.”

  When that and all of the other information had been shared and a plan requiring Acorna and Aari to be in two places at once had been formed, Hafiz Harakamian demonstrated the skill upon which his first fortune had been founded.

  “My enemies have told many lies about me,” Hafiz said. “Among them is the tale that my earliest enterprises involved the sale of addictive substances, with hints that these were illegal drugs. As any of my people can tell you, I am a devout man and am guided by the Three Books and the Three Prophets. I would never consider such a thing. However, in one way, my enemies are correct. My fortune was founded on items that many find addictive. You will have noticed some of my specialty work here aboard the Shahrazad. Mr. Greene, I believe, will recall when I fulfilled my family obligation to make a profitable business of my own before I was named heir by running my business from a storefront on Todo Street.”

  Johnny snapped his fingers. “Harakamian Holo-gramatics! Fondest Fantasies Fulfilled! I remember it! I loved the holo of the music session in the Dublin pub.”

  “I think Dad mentioned your company a time or two, too, now that I think about it,” Becker said.

  “Why, Uncle Hafiz!” Acorna said. “I knew you had wonderful taste, but I had no idea you were an artist as well.”

  “Oh, yes, my dearest, and now, with your help and Aari’s, I will create the vision of a lifetime. Meanwhile, the rest of you—get to work.”

  “We’re on it, Hafiz,” Becker said. “C’mon, folks,” he said, and the KEN unit as well as the crew of the Haven followed him to first the Condor and then, laden with various tools and spare parts, back to the Haven.

  Twenty-two

  Day after day and hour after hour the tortured bodies of the children were dragged into the bubble—badly bruised, broken, and cut; some with ruptured organs and splintered bone. The Linyaari on the healing rotation did their best for them, working until the healers were past the point of total exhaustion.

  And all night long another team worked on Nadhari Kando, healing her flesh and bone, cleansing her spirit of the drugs which caused the disciplined woman warrior to behave in a way her sense of honor otherwise would not have allowed. The Linyaari were reaching their limits and feared they would soon become too exhausted to help.

  It would have been different if the Linyaari had been given time to rest between rotations but they were not. Ikwaskwan’s pet scientists were deliberately pushing the unicorn people to the limits.

  Melireenya had often been taken to her ship and interrogated again about the computer system. Every Linyaari underwent this, usually in the middle of the night or before a long-delayed meal time. Not that the meals were in any way adequate. Bales of old hay were all that Ikwaskwan provided for food for the Linyaari.

  After the interrogation, Melireenya had been shoved into the gas chamber. She had needed healing herself afterwards. So depleted had her horn become from the interrogation, it took much longer to purify the air than usual, and she absorbed some of the toxins before her system could purify them. Then it was on to the dismal swamp known among the inmates as “the pool.” It took her hours of lying on her belly with her face almost submerged in scummy, stinking sewage to clear this water.

  There were several different gas chambers and several different pools, actually, so that many Linyaari could undergo the same ordeals at once.

  Melireenya’s joy at seeing Hrronye, her lifemate, again was quickly dampened when others told her in whispers of thought-speak that they had been separated from their own families and told they would not see them again until they gave the soldiers the information they demanded. Nobody did, of course. The location of the Linyaari home world and the secrets of the horn were as locked into Linyaari psyches as their own DNA codes. Those who traveled from the planet learned from their superiors how to navigate from memory, and it became a part of them along with their newly white skins and silvery manes.

  But she seldom saw Hrronye now, and wished she had dared embrace him, as they were kept apart anyway on the tedious deadly treadmill of torture called the “duty roster.”

  By far the worst part of it all was the healing. At first, it was not so bad. The average Linyaari in good physical condition could heal a deep wound within moments. And there were many Linyaari in the compound. Only four were assigned to heal at the same time, and this was after their resources had been depleted by the other “duties,” lack of sleep, and increasingly, by malnutrition.

  Neeva had tried to reason with Ikwaskwan. “This is hardly a fair representation of our skills that you are seeing, General,” she said in her best diplomat’s manner. “We could show you so much more were we properly fed and rested.”

  He had actually reached out and run his hand down her horn, a violation of privacy that ran very deep among their people. Neeva had tried to pretend it did not distress her but of course it did. “And we could feed you so much better, dear ambassador, if you would tell us the location of the place where we might find your native grasses and other foods. If you continue to refuse to satisfy our very reasonable curiosity, why then…” He stroked her horn with his fingers again and when she winced away from him, she was forced to stand still by two of the soldiers, and he repeated his repugnant gesture several more times. “The horns will survive all of you, I’m told. Perhaps they alter to their translucent and less useful state because, while on a living member of your species, they are less stable—having to self-heal as it were. It may be that detached horns, having fewer frivolous demands made on their powers, will be of more use to us. I understand these things have aphrodisiac properties. Is that true?”

  “How would I know?” Neeva asked, undiplomatically.

  He retaliated by grabbing her horn with his fist and yanking on it so that she sobbed with pain and humiliation. “One way or another, dear ambassador, I will have yours for myself.”

  This had been too much for her lifemate, who, like other Linyaari present at the pond where she approached the general, was listening.

  “Leave her alone!” Virii demanded, stepping forward, only to be grabbed by two more of the soldiers. He had spoken in Linyaari, of course, but his meaning was taken by Ikwaskwan, who wagged a scolding finger at him. “I’ll have yours, too, stud. I wonder—are they a pair? How interesting.” He had nodded at the pond. “Let’s see how long it takes these two to purify that. Make sure it’s good and foul.”

  The soldiers had eliminated in the pond and then forced the heads of both Neeva and Virii into the filth, not bothering to make sure their noses and mouths were clear of the water. No one else had been allowed to help. It was horrible. In the shape they were in it took both of them almost ten minutes to purify the water and by the end of it both had nearly drowned. Thereafter they underwent a joint interrogation session. Melireenya and the others had not so much as dared to whisper while the interrogation was broadcast throughout the compound.

  Today it was rumored something even worse would happen. The architect of this horror, the one who had retained the services of Ikwaskwan and his mercenaries, had arrived during the night. Ikwaskwan told everyone he had special entertainments planned for their distinguished guest.

  (They almost make you miss the Khleevi, don’t they?) Khaari asked sadly. (At least with the Khleevi, we were never sure if they understood what they were doing to us or not. The calculation of this is repulsive.)

  The tournament was about to begin and during it, Melireenya had been specifically chosen for healing duty. Her horn was translucent, difficult to see now in some light, and it had even begun to droop. It was awful enough to think of its powers failing while she was up to her ears in f
ouled water or breathing poisoned air or enduring the mistreatment of the interrogators—but worst of all for her was the thought that it, and she, would fail in the middle of trying to heal a massively wounded child.

  So far this had not happened but it now took all the Linyaari on duty many many long moments to heal each and every wound. All the time the victims were in terrible pain.

  Now the soldiers and their masters had assembled in the stadium, and this time all of the Linyaari and all of the children of the Haven were being forced to watch as well. The lovely young captain ’Ziana of the Haven was bound at the wrist and ankle to that young man who would someday, if they lived through this, surely be her lifemate.

  Poor Nadhari was healed once more of all but the massive amounts of drugs Ikwaskwan had injected into her system. The last three nights she had seen patients still undergoing healing. Once the drugs were leeched from her system, she had begged them to kill her, or to at least let her die so she could no longer be used in this fashion. But of course, no Linyaari could do such a thing.

  The soldiers were using their prods to push the young couple out to Nadhari when a soldier came running through the crowd and bounded up to the box where Ikwaskwan and Ganoosh sat waiting for the maiming to begin. The soldier saluted and said something to Ikwaskwan, who looked very pleased, which was not at all good, and nodded to him, then held his hand up to the soldiers below to desist for a moment. The first soldier bounded down the steps and out of the stadium bubble. He was headed in the direction of the bubble where the captured Linyaari ships were stored and the interrogations took place.

  A moment or two passed, and Melireenya was wondering, along with the other Linyaari linked in thought-speak, what fresh horror was about to be visited upon them. Then the light shifted and the top of the bubble was filled with oversize faces and forms of richly dressed Linyaari people standing in front of colorful pavilions with a stately hill in the background cradling more egg ships than could possibly be left on narhii-Vhiliinyar.

  “Dearest ambassadors, tradesmen, students, and scientists, this is your viizaar speaking,” said the woman, who was not the viizaar at all, not unless Khornya had rapidly risen to power. She was speaking in her rather broken version of Linyaari, so Melireenya was inclined to doubt she had become the planet’s administrator already. Beside her was a fellow who was vaguely familiar, and yet, different somehow. Melireenya was far too weary to try to place him. “Dr. Vaanye”—Khornya indicated the man beside her who was hardly old enough to be the Dr. Vaanye who was her late father—“has finally succeeded in widening the band of our broadcast so it can reach to the various planets upon which you should now be posted. We have had no word of you in a long while. Have you lost your way home? Have you forgotten how to contact your loved ones? In case such a disaster is happening, we will rebroad-cast our coordinates on this band only.”

  Ikwaskwan was impatiently gesturing to a soldier who dragged Neeva and Virii, bound at wrist and ankle like the young Starfarer couple, out into the arena.

  “Well, Ambassador? What’s the message?”

  Neeva raised her filthy face, her mane matted and chunks of it torn loose in parts, her horn barely visible.

  She spat.

  Ikwaskwan roared. “Let Nadhari have them both and bring me their horns when she’s done with them!”

  Melireenya and Khaari passed a signal between them and Melireenya sprang up and cried, “No! General, please don’t hurt them anymore! I’ll tell you what it says! I know it will harm the rest of my people but I simply can’t take it anymore! Please let Neeva and Virii go and I’ll tell you anything you want to.”

  Khaari ran into the arena after her and tried to pull her back. “Melireenya, you don’t know what you’re saying. You mustn’t betray all of us for one person, not even Neeva.”

  Perhaps the general would not notice in the heat of the moment that they were both speaking Standard, for his benefit.

  The message overhead was in a loop, repeating over and over again. Melireenya, babbling, stumbling over her words, forgetting the Standard that she had learned from Khornya’s people what seemed like ghaanyi and ghaanyi ago, told Ikwaskwan what the transmission said. She hesitated over the coordinates until he threatened Neeva and Virii again, and then she allowed herself to cave in under the weight of his cruelty, as she had wanted to do for days. She lay in the dirt of this strange moon beside her poor tortured friends and wept and wept and wept until she thought her weeping would never cease. When at long last someone, Khaari, thought-touched her and she looked up, everything around her had changed. The most drastic change was that the bleachers were empty, with most of the soldiers, Ikwaskwan and Ganoosh, gone. Although the broadcast was still playing and replaying overhead, it was infused with far more light, and Melireenya realized that this was because there were no longer the shadows being cast by the towering fence of bullet-shaped troop ships that had surrounded the biosphere bubbles. All of these ships were also gone, and the atmosphere outside the bubbles was clouded only by settling dust and debris. The bubbles still resounded with the roaring of the troop ship drives as they lifted off.

  That roaring seemed to continue for an awfully long time, Melireenya thought. With the games over, Nadhari was netted, sedated, and Melireenya and the other three on her shift went to work healing her. This day there were no wounds except the psychic ones from the drugs and the shame she suffered to be so badly misused. So far this day she had maimed no one.

  The lone sentry left to guard the Linyaari ship bubble was surprised to see two troop ships land so soon after the others had left. He thought he understood when he saw the cadre of uniformed Federation Forces men and women pushing one of the ’corns in front of them. This one was lipping off to them in her own horsey-sounding babble.

  “Got another live one for the general,” the short, barrel-chested master sergeant said. “He’s gonna want to interrogate this one personally.”

  “Well, he’ll have to do it when he gets back from the Linyaari home world then,” the sentry smirked.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you get the message? The stupid ’corns broadcast to all of their ships, which we intercepted, of course, the coordinates to their planet. The general and the boss have taken off with most of the personnel to check it out.”

  “No kiddin’? Well, we’ll just park her with the others then. What’d they have in the mess hall tonight?”

  The sentry told him while the rest of the cadre marched the ’corn past him, and past the ships, into the biosphere where most of her kind were kept.

  “Where’d you find her?”

  “Pleasure house on Rahab Three.”

  “No kidding? You mean somebody wanted to do it with one of…” The sentry didn’t finish his sentence. Something banged against the backs of his knees, knocking him into the sergeant. The last thing he saw was the sergeant’s belt buckle as the newcomer raised both fists and brought them down hard on the back of the sentry’s skull.

  Acorna heard the thump when the sentry hit the ground and saw only a brief flash of movement as Aari penetrated the biosphere. He had an uncanny talent for taking on the coloring of his surroundings, she saw. It was augmented by smearing himself with soil, but it was more in the way he became whatever was around him, though she would have said if asked previously that it was impossible for anyone to blend with a plastic bubble.

  Khetala was giving the next trooper they encountered the same story Becker had about Acorna being a special prisoner they’d found in a pleasure house. Meanwhile Reamer guided her to the bubble where many other Linyaari were crammed into a place far too small for them. They were very subdued. At first she thought they all wore horn-hats to mute their thoughts, but then she saw that their horns were in very bad condition—that they were emaciated and filthy, their bones protruding and their postures drooping.

  She began to pick out the ones who looked the strongest and ablest and used her horn judiciously on them, meanwhile broadcasting
in thought-speak, (We have come to take you home. Please be ready. Do as you are directed and with any luck, we will all leave here safely.)

  (Khornya?) Her name spoken in her aunt’s thought-speak sounded as if Neeva was seeing her as a ghost. Acorna waded through her people until she found an adjoining bubble where four Linyaari were laying horns on Neeva and a male Linyaari, and also on someone who vaguely resembled the Red Bracelet who had once been Delszaki Li’s chief of security, Nadhari Kando.

  (Neeva!)

  (We are doing what we can for her, Khornya, but she and Virii have been badly abused.)

  (Melireenya! Khaari, I am so glad to have found you. Stand aside a moment—no, wait.) She laid her horn on all of them and in a few moments, except for looking very thin, they had recovered to the point that they once more resembled her old shipmates and her aunt.

  (Oh, Khornya! You see how low we have fallen. Thanks be that your horn is still fresh. Can you help Nadhari? They have almost killed her with their wicked drugs that make her do terrible things to us all.)

  Nadhari was feverish, and her eyes were staring, the blood vessels in her neck and upper chest standing out like those of her arms, seemingly in spasm. Acorna laid her horn against them and Nadhari relaxed.

  Becker poked his head in. “Khetala, Reamer, Markel, and Hafiz’s people have taken care of the guards. You got enough pilots for the Linyaari vessels?”

  “Yes. But none of them are very strong.”

  “That’s okay. They don’t have to fly far. I swept all the ships for homing devices. Learned that lesson once already. Let’s go, then.”

  “It is a fortunate thing that all of my gardens are not of the illusory variety,” Hafiz said as he, Acorna, and Aari watched the Linyaari former prisoners stripping his hydroponics gardens like locusts in a field. The gardens in the Linyaari ships, which could have fed the prisoners, had been deliberately killed by Ikwaskwan’s men or allowed to die.