Acorna's Triumph

by Anne McCaffrey

  Maati was headed away from the terminal. Becker and Andina were spending the night on the Heloise, Andina’s ship. RK slept in the command seat of the Condor while Mac was recharging his energy source nearby. The laboratories were empty. Kaarlye and Miiri conversed earnestly with Laarye in the guest quarters. Rather to Acorna’s surprise, Aari and Rafik were deep in conversation as they strolled toward the laboratories.

  And the discontented, disquieting babble of dancer thoughts pattered across her mind like hail from the direction of the warehouses. What were they doing there? she wondered. She headed toward the dancers.

  As she passed through the outer gardens near the darkened laboratories, she saw Aari and Rafik. They were walking together and talking earnestly among the ivory flowers and twisting vines lining the paved path that meandered through the gardens. As she passed she saw Aari glance in her direction.

  But the dancers’ voices, amplified by her telepathy, and the jumble of their thoughts occupied most of her concentration. Their thoughts assumed a melody and a beat that was much like the music they danced to. “Open, open, open sesame,” one woman was thinking as she used a sonic saw on an intricate lock. “Off, off, you never saw us, we were not here,” another one instructed the laser beams that usually guarded the warehouses as she disabled them. “In with you and grab the rocks. Now run, run, run!”

  And in counterpoint were the thoughts of two others.

  “This seems all wrong.”

  “You bet it does. We haven’t been paid yet, and we have no transport off this rock.”

  “Rocks, rocks, grab the rocks and run, run, run!”

  “How would this one look in my belly button?”

  “Stop clowning, Layla, and run!”

  “Run where?”

  “To the spaceships, of course. Andina is a generous girl. She won’t mind if we take her vessel for a little spin.”

  “You planned that all along, didn’t you, Aziza?”

  “Of course I did, little chickpea. Now take your rocks and run.”

  “What about the camera security?”

  “Your mama and Naima are giving the guards a private show. Now hurry.”

  Acorna had never before attempted to send an all-points bulletin to every Linyaari within her range, but now she did so. (Everybody, come quickly! The dancers are thieves, robbing Hafiz of the catseye stones. Hurry!)

  The evening’s entertainment had been tiring for most of them, and although she received responses from Maati, Laarye, Aari, and their parents, other Linyaari awakened sluggishly and asked her to clarify her message.

  (No time. Just come. Now. Quickly!) she called. All the while she called she was running for the warehouses in hopes of intercepting the duplicitous dancers.

  (We’re right behind you, Khornya.) Aari’s thought reached her as she practically skidded to a halt on the path, where she was immediately threatened with a stampede of black-clad dancers bearing large and apparently heavy valises. As she gained on them, the first one laughed and spun around, spinning herself aloft and high over Acorna’s head. Acorna jumped for the next one and caught a handful of the dancer’s full black pants. But the antigrav belts the dancers wore were quite powerful. Instead of Acorna dragging the dancer down, the woman dragged Acorna up with her.

  Acorna reached up, twisting the black pants out of the way until the skin of her hand met flesh and bone.

  The woman kicked, “Let go! You’re heavy! I can’t very well carry you and the loot, too.”

  “That—is—my—point—exactly,” Acorna said through gritted teeth, while the woman’s companions zoomed between the path and the shadowy dome of the bubble. Aari and Rafik pelted down the path that lay before them, with the raven-robed dancers soaring over them like Halloween witches. Rafik, seeing what Acorna was doing, made a leap and brought down the lead dancer as he snared her at the knee. But she kicked him in the face and got away. Aari leaped higher than Acorna had ever seen anyone, Linyaari or human, leap before, and when his prey ducked, he twisted in midair to redirect his grab. Unfortunately, Aari seemed to be trying to grab her using only the last joint of his fingertips instead of his entire hands or forearms. His fingertips, of course, slipped off her. Before he could tighten his grip, she drew her knees up to her chest and somersaulted over their heads. He landed lightly on his toes, giving his hands an odd, comical look of pure disgust before bounding after the others.

  The dancers gave their pursuers a wide berth after that, making horizontal zigzags away from them to elude their grasping hands.

  Rafik grabbed another one, though. He used a hand-over-hand technique to pull his quarry down. When his hand met her waist, he gave a tug and her antigrav belt dangled from his hand. Then she fell and he with her, both of them coming down hard on the path, knocking the wind from Rafik and also driving the dancer’s knee into his solar plexus. She grabbed for her belt but couldn’t free it. But before Acorna or Aari could rush to Rafik’s aid, two of the other dancers did back flips in the air, still clutching their valises, but with their free hands grabbed their fellow thief and pulled her up with them.

  The distraction as she worried about Rafik caused Acorna to lose her grasp on the dancer to whom she was clinging. With a slight kick, the thief slipped from her grip, and Acorna tumbled back to the ground. Picking herself up, she ran to Rafik. But before she could get there, Aari touched him with his horn to heal any injury done to him by the fall and the woman’s knee.

  “Ouch!” Rafik said, rising and rubbing his backside. “I think your horn’s on the blink, Aari. My butt still hurts.”

  Aari’s fingers went to his horn. “Oh, no. Something must have happened during the time/space transfer. Grimalkin warned me that something like that might happen.”

  Rafik waved Acorna away when she would have healed the hurt, and said, “It doesn’t hurt that bad, honey.”

  By the time he stood up, all of the thieves were far out of reach, spinning, flipping, somersaulting, and otherwise propelling themselves toward the terminal.

  “I like those belts,” Rafik said. “I want one.”

  “You have one,” Acorna reminded him. “Maybe if you put it on, it will deprive them of the advantage.”

  Rafik held it out to her. “I haven’t been able to turn handsprings in years.”

  Acorna quickly slipped it on.

  “Wait!” Aari said. “You can’t do that. They might hurt you. Hand it to me. I will capture them.”

  Acorna spun herself into the air. “Sorry,” and waved good-bye to him as she launched herself forward with a series of midair flips. This was fun! Since she was much taller than the dancers, each revolution of her long body covered more airspace than that of each dancer. She almost caught up with them, though thus far she actually had no idea what she was going to do with them once she had them.

  However, just as she was gaining, they came to the door leading to the passage between bubbles. They had enough of a lead that they were able to spin themselves down, iris open the door, flee through it, and close it again before she reached them. She copied the motion they each executed before landing, passing her hand over the large jewel in the center of the belt. It spun her gently downward until her feet touched the path.

  She pressed the panel to open the door but it remained tightly closed. Somehow the fugitives had jammed it. She sent out a mental call to her fellow Linyaari. A few more seemed to be awake now. (Some-body stop them! And someone please come and release this door. Where are the security guards?)

  Nobody seemed to know the answer to that, but after what seemed an interminable time, during which Aari and Rafik also reached the door, Melireenya called out to them in mind-speech.

  (We heard you, Khornya, loud and clear. Neeva has gone to find the guards and to try to intercept the thieves. Khaari is waking Hafiz and Karina. Ah, now I see how they jammed this portal closed. One of them twisted her serpent armband through the layers. Got it.)

  The door irised open a bit jerkily, and Acorna,
followed closely by Aari and Rafik, were through it and on the other side so quickly that Melireenya had to take a speedy backward hop to avoid being bowled over.

  Acorna launched herself again into the air, though it seemed a bit futile at this point. She didn’t like how dark the gardens and pathways remained, nor how few people were about despite the alarm she had raised through her fellow Linyaari.

  Usually the recreation areas were well lit and populated throughout most of the night, but she saw very few people up and about now, and no security guards. Hafiz was going to have enough kittens to staff a Makahomian temple. Furthermore, she knew that she and Becker were going to hear a great deal more from Hafiz about why they had allowed Nadhari Kando to remain behind when she still had a contract as his chief security guard. Such laxness never would have been tolerated under Nadhari’s administration. Never mind that it had been Hafiz’s laxness, not theirs, that had put the dancers on this planet.

  The other connecting doors had not been closed, much less jammed, which told Acorna that the dancers were no longer concerned about pursuit.

  As she finally gained the terminal, eerily silent and empty of travelers or personnel, she saw the Heloise, the Condor, and the Balakiire in their bays beyond the terminal’s transparent outer walls.

  She also saw the gantry attach itself to the Heloise’s hatch, which opened to permit a file of black-clad figures bearing valises to disappear through it.

  Becker and Andina were still sleeping in the Heloise. She tried sending to Becker but only got a grumbling response. She could imagine him huffing through his mustache in irritation at being disturbed. (Captain, wake up. The Heloise is being boarded by thieves—the dancers have stolen the catseye chrysoberyls and are hijacking Andina’s ship—with you in it.) She didn’t leave her warning to telepathy alone but, as she transmitted silently to her friend, sought out the terminal communications station and grabbed a microphone. But, when she reached her goal, she looked back at the Heloise to see that the gantry was gone and exhaust was coming from the ship’s jets. Then, gently and without interference, the Heloise lifted off as gracefully as her hijackers had danced.

  Three

  Heads will roll when Hafiz finds out what happened,” Rafik said. He lounged in a chair on the main deck of the Condor, watching Acorna adjust their current course in pursuit of the Heloise.

  Acorna agreed. “But the real excitement will be when Captain Becker learns he has been catnapped—excuse me, kidnapped.” She gave RK a warning look. The cat had given her a mental nudge that made her say “catnapped,” she was sure. The Condor’s feline first mate thought-talked in perfectly good Basic, as well as in Makahomian and Linyaari when he wanted to, but generally he seemed to find it entertaining to pretend that he conversed only in his native meows.

  Rafik paid little attention. He was busy pursuing his own line of thought. “I don’t understand how this could have happened. Why did so few people respond to your alarm, Acorna? Why didn’t the security team do its job? And even more puzzling is how those women knew about the stones and where they would be concealed. MOO is quite a ways from the beaten path, since this part of the universe is still largely a mystery to people in our galaxy. Their encounter with Andina Dmitri was certainly not random chance. Do you think she could be in on it?”

  Acorna thought of the few times she had been around Andina when the owner of the Domestic Goddess Intergalactic Cleaning Corporation visited Becker. “I’ve never caught any suspicious thoughts or felt uncomfortable or wary around her,” Acorna said. “And she’s quite well known in her field. If the dancers did have their own ship and it malfunctioned, as they claim, who would have known Andina was on her way to MOO?”

  “And how did they manage to take over the ship and escape so quickly?” Rafik asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Condor had been following the trail of the Heloise for several hours. But, just as Rafik had predicted, when Hafiz’s face appeared on the screen of the com unit it looked a bit disturbed. Still, in Acorna’s opinion, Hafiz looked much calmer than Rafik had expected him to. In spite of the enormity of his loss, the old bandit appeared more bemused than angry. “I don’t suppose my new security chief is aboard your vessel and you have neglected to mention that to me?” Hafiz inquired.

  “No, Uncle,” Rafik said.

  “He does not seem to be among his fellows either—all of whom are recovering from foul headaches and the same deep sleep that captured so many of us. I am surprised, heir of my house, that you escaped the drugging of the drinks.”

  “Aha, Uncle, the truth is I only escaped the drugging of the drinks because I didn’t care for the drink in question.”

  “You question the quality of my cellars?”

  “No, I question the effects of their contents on my head and stomach—even when untreated with sleeping drugs. I can understand why you retired when still a young and vibrant man, O Uncle, for being the head of your household is adding years to my body while taking years from my life.”

  “You have become as delicate as a flower petal, O my heir, for your body to reject the most delicious of nectars. This is a strange malady indeed for an asteroid miner who used to eat dehydrated rations for every meal.”

  “They were not all dehydrated, my Uncle. Some were ration bars. And when Acorna came among us, she made us many excellent salads. Perhaps the drink that now suits the station to which you have elevated me is too rich for my lowborn digestion.” He shrugged. “At least it has proved fortunate in this case.”

  “Not so fortunate—at least until the thieves are apprehended, our sacred and valuable gems are regained, and our friends are safe once more,” Hafiz said.

  Acorna noted wryly how Hafiz had ordered his priorities.

  “Of course,” Rafik agreed. “I hear and obey, O Uncle, obviously.”

  “Yes,” Hafiz said. “Very well, my boy. May the winds of good fortune be with you in your endeavors.”

  “Thank you, Uncle,” Rafik said with a straight face, though Acorna could hear him thinking how odd the blessing of his uncle sounded in space, where there was no wind.

  The ship’s feline first mate rubbed against her shins and looked up into her face, then gave a mournful “Meow.”

  Acorna knelt to stroke RK’s plushy brindled back. “I miss our captain, too. But you will have to make do with the rest of us for the time being. Just believe, RK, that we will get him back as soon as we can.”

  For his part, Captain Becker was not only fit to be tied, he was tied. It made him sad to think that an evening that had begun so promisingly had gone so sharply downhill. And so suddenly.

  After quite a lot of Hafiz’s best hooch and Andina’s fetching hoochie-kooch, Becker had been feeling quite amorous. So he quickly agreed when Andina suggested, soon after she landed in his lap, that they return to her ship, where they could be assured of privacy. Though Hafiz’s guest quarters were luxurious and imaginative, not to say downright exciting in some areas, the walls in his assigned cubicle were not thick. In some cases, they were little more than a holographic veil drawn between one space and another. And both Becker and Andina knew all about the hidden surveillance cameras and bugs Hafiz had secretly installed throughout. These were mainly to allow him to spy on business associates, in order to get the best of them. But that didn’t mean the cameras weren’t used at other times by other people for other purposes. Andina’s crew had been given leave to go dirtside to enjoy the delights of MOO, so she and Becker knew they would have the ship to themselves.

  Andina’s quarters on the Heloise were far from spartan and not nearly as haphazard as Becker’s on the Condor. Everything was clean, of course, as befitted the ship of a professional cleaning expert. But the ambience Becker remembered had definitely changed. Usually Andina’s cabin was as cozy and homey as if it was made of logs and set beside a roaring trout stream of the sort Becker read about in his old hard-copy books. It seemed his lady’s reading had lately taken a different turn. The h
omemade quilt he remembered decorating her double-wide bunk had been replaced by a hot-pink-and-gold paisley silk coverlet, swathed with gold-shot veils of turquoise, purple, and saffron hanging from eye hooks above the bunk. Soft, sensual music similar to that the dancers had used began playing as she led him into her chamber. A tray of real wax candles glowed beside the bed, their flickering glow the only light in the room, except for a holo window with a faux outside view, in which a holo crescent moon beamed in upon them. They had just slipped into something more comfortable, and were about to get really comfortable, when the mood was spoiled by the beep of Andina’s cabin’s com unit.

  “Yes?” she answered. “What is it?”

  “Captain Dmitri, this is Commander Smythe-Wesson, chief of security here on the Moon of Opportunity. I have an urgent security matter I must discuss with you. Permission to come aboard, please.”

  “I am engaged in an urgent matter myself at present, Commander,” Andina said, as Becker nuzzled her neck. They were glad the com unit screen was not presently turned on. “Can this not wait until morning?”

  “No, ma’am. I would not have disturbed you if it could. It is a very grave matter, Captain, but I am not at liberty to discuss it via electronic means. Permission to board, please.”

  “Oh, very well, then,” she said, sliding out of bed. She opened a wall locker and pulled out a shipsuit. Becker reluctantly resumed his own garments as he watched her creamy body disappear into a rip-proof, waterproof, fireproof, well-ventilated synthetic fabric casing. Those old-time pashas and sheiks were lucky they lived back before com units were invented, he thought sourly. Otherwise, they’d never have made it through even one night without interruption, much less a thousand and one nights.

  “Maybe I should head on back to the Condor,”he suggested to Andina.

  She looked troubled. “Maybe. But I’d like it better if you’d stick around. I have no idea what all this is about. And with the crew ashore…”