The Unicorn Girl

by Anne McCaffrey

  Uncle Hafiz pretended to recoil in terror, his eyes sparkling with amusement. But no more was said. In fact, Pedir was excused, and so were Calum and Rafik, though they were enjoined to have the skimmer driver transport them to the most prestigious tailor in Kezdet, to be measured for masculine finery.

  “To talk of the sumptuousness of the coming evening of Mr. Delszaki Li’s prestigious house,” Uncle Hafiz said. He buffed his nails on his lapel. “I have already commissioned elegant evening attire. Unless you wish me to deprive you of acceptable female companionship for the entire evening, you had best look less like camel drivers than you do now.”

  Rafik snorted. He had hurried without changing from his usual shipboard gear to Mr. Li’s, and Calum had come dressed as he was because he was uncomfortable in anything but the casual clothing he was now wearing.

  “Come, Calum,” said Rafik, rising, “let us do as we are bid, for if my dearly beloved uncle has commanded us to appear in sartorial elegance, he will certainly be willing to pay for the best there is to be had.”

  While Hafiz was sputtering about impudent, improvident imps, the two made their escape, pushing the laughing Pedir ahead of them as Mr. Li cackled in appreciation of the taunt.

  “I have finished the list, Mr. Li,” Mercy said, instantly diverting them to the more important task of contriving a most exhaustive guest list.

  Mr. Li’s house was more than adequate for such a social evening, but rooms long unused for entertainment had to be turned out, refurbished in the newest fads, decorated in the latest color schemes, and exotic viands ordered from all over the galaxy.

  “Is going to be a legend in this time, this evening,” Mr. Li often said while Uncle Hafiz fervently seconded him, but had to be discreetly restrained from providing a few bizarre entertainments. “Is not to distract guests from main purpose of all this, good friend Hafiz.”

  “True, true.” Though Hafiz sighed, remembering the most amazing contortionist act he had happened to catch at one of the more elegant of the casinos on Kezdet, stimulating jaded tastes and appetites.

  The invitations, miracles of calligraphy and illustration in their own right, were dispatched to the recipients, and shortly it became difficult to manage necessary calls from Mr. Li’s house to suppliers, merchants, and even acquaintances.

  Acorna, accompanied by a glowing Judit and a more sedately excited Mercy, made many trips to the couturier who had been chosen, of the many available, to supply their gowns. Excitement was high in that establishment, which had made certain that every other couturier in Kezdet realized how much they had lost by not securing these commissions. Acorna was often so besieged by those wishing her miracles that Rafik and Calum joined them at the dressmaker’s.

  Rafik was actually helpful, for he had inherited, among other things, Calum said sourly, the Harakamian dress sense and was able to comment knowledgeably about fit, line, and color.

  The jewels were, however, left to Uncle Hafiz, who had sent for skilled craftsmen as well as the raw materials of precious metals and uncut gems, and supervised the styles and elegance of what each girl would wear. That special adornments were also being made for Mr. Li’s evening banquet was discreetly mentioned and several invitees finally decided to attend upon hearing that news.

  Calum and Gill had been busy, too, with electronic and engineering effects which would guard the already well-guarded Li household. They even did their best to protect against such ingenuities as contact poisons, sleepy powders, and other deadly elements. Special beams could render the most popular of these substances neutral. Not that Acorna could not neutralize venom but they wished to avoid such problems in the first place.

  And so the great day arrived, and the coiffeurs came with their preparations and oohed and aahed over Acorna’s magnificent mane. Her gown had been cut to free her hirsute splendor and a tiara had been designed to crown that silvery glory. (One of the many jealous females was later heard to swear that Mr. Li’s ward had had to be glued into her costume, for how else could it have stayed anchored so firmly when she gyrated on the dance floor.) The dark hairs of both Judit and Mercy were also teased into fetching styles, but nothing outré, since quiet elegance suited them better, and as a foil for Acorna’s unusual appearance.

  Khetala, Chiura, and Jana watched, almost as glued to their vantage seats in the “tiring room,” speechless with the beauty they were seeing, and the subtle ways which natural loveliness could be enhanced. They had received permission to watch the guests arrive and were to receive the same foods that would be served for dinner.

  “So you can feast even as we do,” Judit explained. “There will be so many people, small persons like yourselves would get lost and that might be scary.”

  Khetala had agreed. She still liked lots of space around her and felt safe around strangers only if her “uncles” were nearby.

  Chiura had put behind her all the terrible memories which still woke Jana, sweaty and trembling in the night. She was forever leaving her little bed and creeping in with Kheti for comfort. But she was truly excited about the party and knew exactly where she could crouch, unseen, on the first landing of the great stairs and see everyone arriving.

  Finally the ninth hour came, an hour which the fine clocks in their niches, corners, and surfaces celebrated with melodious, arrogant, or demure chimings. At precisely the third stroking of the hour, the front door was opened to receive the first guest, a very minor official and his wife, splendidly garbed for the occasion. Jana didn’t think much of her dress: the color was garish and the flickering light display adorning the neckline made her look like a washed-out sketch. On the stroke of the ninth, another minor official, his wife, oldest son and daughter, were admitted. Jana liked what the daughter was wearing—the very prettiest shade of pale blue—though it didn’t really suit the girl. Her shoes, with their very high heels, studded with sparkling jewels, and straps that started at her toes and went up to her knee, were nice.

  The trickle of guests became a rivulet and then a river, with no time to close the door between their comings. Kheti and Chiura got bored with looking at what people were wearing, but Jana feasted her eyes on the colors, the patterns, the combinations, the swags and the trimmings, the feathers and the furs. She could not quite believe there could be so many variations of dress and suit: she, who had lived much of her life in darkness, in a black to gray environment, lapped up all the colors as a desert dweller would drink from an oasis.

  Then, he stood in the doorway. Jana was frozen with fear. Kheti and Chiura had left their positions when the undermaid had called them to eat their share of the banquet. Not that Jana could have uttered a word. She could only stare at him, seen in the bright lights, in a deep blue suit which gave off subtle glitters, with a white-white shirt collar barely showing at the neck of it. But it was he, and he was here where she thought she could be safe.

  Rigid with terror she watched as Mr. Li greeted him and introduced him to Uncle Hafiz, who introduced Acorna, who smiled and made Judit and Mercy and Pal known to him in this silly ritual they had been performing for every guest that entered the house. Nearly fainting, she saw Gill and Judit usher him into the main salon, where he passed from her sight. Then she collapsed in a little heap.

  That is how the undermaid found her when she went to collect the third of her charges for the evening.

  “He’s coming for us,” was all Jana could say when she first recovered from her faint. “We’ve got to hide Chiura.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s here. I saw him. They invited him.”

  There could be only one “him” who would elicit that terrified note from Jana. Kheti’s face went gray. “The Piper?”

  Jana nodded. She snatched up Chiura, eliciting a wail of protest as the little one was seriously involved with the tray of sweets, and wrapped both arms around her as though to shield her with her own body.

  “We have to get away,” she whispered. “The lift-chute’s too dangerous, it lets out in the fr
ont hall. The windows—”

  “Wait!” Khetala sank down on the floor, not quite as gracefully as she had been trained to do by Didi Badini; her knees were trembling too hard for that. “Let me think.”

  Jana crammed sweets into Chiura’s mouth randomly, to keep her happy while Kheti thought. She was shocked, though, when Khetala reached for a jellabie and bit into the sweet, crystallized-honey crust.

  “Is this a time to be stuffing your face?”

  “Sugar helps when you got the shakes,” Khetala said. “You eat something, too. Even if we do run—”

  “We have to. Now!” Jana interrupted.

  “Even if we do, you won’t run far on an empty belly. You eat. I’ll think.”

  Khetala washed down the jellabie with a long drink of iced madigadi juice while Jana obediently picked at a witifowl pastry. Each crumb seemed as if it would choke her.

  “Now then,” Khetala said at last. “I been thinking. The Lady Acorna is good. She wouldn’t invite the Piper here.”

  “I tell you, I saw him! The gray man who came to the mine with Didi Badini. Ain’t he the Piper?”

  Kheti nodded and folded her hands to conceal the shaking of her fingers.

  “Oh, yes. I heard him talking to Didi Badini, many and many a time, when she had me locked in that closet where they keep—Well, never mind that,” she interrupted herself hastily. Jana didn’t need to know about Didi Badini’s dark closets and the means she employed to make sure new girls would be docile when she finally let them out. “I got to hear him talk again to make sure, though. If it is him…” she shivered “…it’s bad. Very bad. See, I don’t think they know who the Piper really is. He’s got himself another name for this side of Celtalan. I heard them talking about it the other day. It’s a big secret, the Piper’s real name. Maybe the biggest secret in Celtalan. If he finds out we’ve seen him here—” She mimed slitting her throat. “Best we could hope for is he kills us quick. He ain’t taking us back to the mines, Jana. He ain’t taking us anywhere. Did he see you?”

  Jana shook her head. “He went straight into that big room with all the lights and pretty ladies.”

  “Did the Lady Acorna go with him?”

  Jana shook her head again.

  “Good,” Kheti murmured. “She should be all right here, anyway. He wouldn’t do anything to her here, where he’s passin’ under his real name.”

  “What would he do to her?”

  Khetala looked at Jana pityingly.

  “He wants her killed, too. He told Didi Badini she’s making too much trouble here on Kezdet, getting the bond kids and the Child Labor League all stirred up.”

  Jana stiffened and squeezed Chiura so hard that the sleepy child cried in protest. “You didn’t tell me that before!”

  “Told Delszaki Li,” Khetala said. “He knows. He’s been seeing that the Lady’s safe. Why do you think he sent her off to Maganos? I heard them talking about that, too. I hear a lot.”

  Jana went unerringly to the weak point in Khetala’s argument.

  “But he doesn’t know the Piper is that dressed-up man I saw downstairs. Nobody knows. You said that yourself. So he doesn’t know the Piper is here, in this house. How can he keep the Lady safe if he doesn’t know?” She felt more frightened than she ever had in her life, more than when Siri Teku came at her with the whip that last time. She’d thought she might as well die then, she was hurt so bad and Chiura was gone. But the Lady Acorna had made her live again and had brought her back to Chiura. Debts had to be paid. Jana forced the next words out. “We got to warn her.”

  “We’ll find Mr. Li. Or somebody we can trust,” Kheti said sharply to force down her fear at the idea of going among all those strangers. “But I still think he won’t move against her now, in this house, where everybody knows him by his real name!”

  “He could put poison in her food or something.” As none of the children had experience with Acorna’s ability to detect poisons, this seemed all too probable to Khetala as well as to Jana. “Or maybe he’s going to lure her out into the garden and there’ll be a bomb. Or…” Jana’s invention failed. What did it matter? She only knew that the Lady Acorna, her lady, was in terrible danger and she had to do something about it. Even if she was so scared all she wanted to do was hide and cry. “Come on. We got to warn her!”

  She stood up with some difficulty, because Chiura had become frightened by the older girls’ evident tension and was refusing to let go of her “Mama Jana.”

  “He sees us,” Khetala said, “we’re dead. You know that?”

  “I know that,” Jana said, wishing her voice wouldn’t wobble so much. “But I got to go. She took me out of Anyag.” She gave Khetala a scornful look. “You want to, you can stay here. Maybe the Lady didn’t take you out of Didi Badini’s bonk-shop. Or maybe you forgot already?”

  But Kheti was on her feet now.

  “You’re an idiot, Jana,” she said, sighing, “but I can’t let you go and be an idiot all by yourself. Got in the habit of taking care of you little kids too long ago, I guess. Come on. Let’s go and get ourselves killed, if that’s what you gotta do. Only let’s leave Chiura here. He don’t need to know about her.”

  But Chiura wound her arms tighter about Jana’s neck when Jana tried to set her down, and screwed up her pretty face in the grimace that they knew was preparatory to one of her ear-piercing screams.

  “All right, all right,” Jana hushed her, “you can stay with me. But you got to be real quiet, you understand? Quiet like a ghurri-ghurri, like a shadow, like you’re not even there. Or Piper’ll get you.”

  To Chiura, the Piper was just a name used to frighten her into acquiescence, like Old Black, who lived down in the bottom of the mines and ate little girls for breakfast. So she was scared enough by the threat to hush up, but not scared into screaming hysteria.

  Acorna was in fact in the garden, where (under the watchful eye of Hafiz Harakamian) she had retreated from the noise and social chitchat of the party to talk with some of Delszaki Li’s distinguished guests about matters of more importance to her.

  “Is not only social occasion,” Li had instructed all his people. “Is testing of the waters. Must talk little, listen much, try to find source of high-government secret opposition. Perhaps head of Public Works says, ‘Is not my doing, gracious lady, is warning from Orator of the council that would be unwise for political appointee such as myself to further projects undesirable to certain of his constituency.’ Perhaps orator of the council says, ‘Having duty to protect interests of glass-working and related industries.’ Then perhaps we say, ‘Aha! Is looking closer at Tondubh Glassworks.’ Only example, you understand,” Li had said, almost purring. “Personally, do not expect to find source of opposition in Tondubh. Have already bought most of judges and public servants bribed by Dorkamadian Tondubh. He is cheap man, does not pay workers, does not even make good bribes. But perhaps you find some other thread. Listen! Listen! And if must talk, then be obnoxious.”

  “Why?” Pal had queried.

  “How?” That was Calum, who looked more interested than alarmed at this suggestion.

  “Accuse justicers of taking bribes, claim that politicians are put in office by industrial interests, hint that civil servants are in second service of the Piper. See who looks nervous and changes subject. All people here are wishing to be seen as respectable, good people, personally obeying Federation law as well as Kezdet local law. Someone is not. Be offensive, my children.” He smiled seraphically. “Someone already hates us. Be charitable. Give him good reason to hate and fear us.”

  Acorna did not feel that she had any real talent for offending people, so she had been dutifully following Li’s first directive and listening. But she doubted she would learn anything from this particular conversation except that Dork Tondubh lived up to his nickname and that Tumim Viggers, head of Public Works, and the politician Vidra Shamali were equally smug, self-satisfied, and impervious to suggestion. All three of these social and political lead
ers of Kezdet society were more than happy to stroll in Li’s exotic gardens with a lovely young lady, even if she did have an odd protuberance in the middle of her forehead. Acorna had followed Li’s suggestion and, instead of trying to disguise her physical differences for this party, had accentuated them. Her tight sheath of Illuc spidersilk showed off the lean, flat planes of her body; a spiral of jeweled ribbons accentuated her white horn. The result had been exactly as Li had predicted: after a few surprised looks, the haut monde of Celtalan had decided that anything so flamboyantly displayed must be an asset, not a deformity. (“It’s a feature, not a bug,” Calum had said sardonically, and when questioned, added, “Old Earth saying. I’m not sure exactly what it means.”)

  Unfortunately, the avuncular tone adopted by Dork and Tumim was not likely to give Acorna any results except extreme boredom and a growing desire to turn around and kick them where it would do the most good with her sharp, hard feet. As for Vidra, at least she wasn’t accompanying her lecture with the sleazy looks and surreptitious touches Dork added to his talk, but the bossiness of her manner more than made up for that.

  At present all three were happily “explaining” to Acorna exactly why it was impossible to eradicate Kezdet’s practice of child labor and why employers should be considered charitable guardians rather than slave owners.

  “Of course there are children around the glassworks,” Dork said. “It’s hot work, there among the furnaces. The workers need water; the children bring it to them.”

  “I saw a little boy running among the furnaces with a seven-foot iron rod loaded with molten glass,” Acorna said.

  Dork made a mental note to ream out the security guards at Tondubh for ever letting this pretty thing inside the compound. She hadn’t just been giving away shoes; she’d been noticing things. He shifted to his second line of defense.

  “Alas, yes, there have been some lapses. You must understand, my dear, Kezdet is an under-capitalized economy. Our people must work to eat. What can we do when parents bring their children to the factory and beg for work? Should we let them starve?”