Miiri read that thought and smiled. (No, Kh.o.r.n.ya. The message really was for you.)
(Was it from Aari? Is he all right? Will he show me how to find him?)
(Sweet child, you know nothing is so direct as that. No, I do not think it was from Aari. I can"t actually say where it came from. But I know it was genuine, and it was meant for you. You still don"t realize, do you, that though you are Linyaari like the rest of us, you have special abilities and qualities that make you better suited for some missions than others of us? Perhaps it is your unusual upbringing. I don"t know. I can tell you that if Aari were in serious pain, or... no longer lived, I would know and I would tell you. You know, too, that Kaarlye, Aari"s father, is as powerful a transmitter as I am an empath. If we have word of our son while you are gone, we will get a message to you, no matter where you are.)
(I know. I know.) Acorna was trying to be reasonable, sensible.
Miiri reached inside the neck of her tunic and pulled from it a silvery chain Acorna had often noticed glinting at her neckline. Three small silvery disks jingled together upon it. Miiri lifted the necklace over her head, undid the catch, removed two of the disks and slipped them into her tunic, then ceremoniously placed the chain and the remaining disk around Acorna"s neck.
(This is Aari"s birth disk,) Miiri told her. (I had been meaning to give it to you anyway.)
(Birth disk?)
(Yes. When a baby is born to our people, it is customary for the artisans to make a disk like this with the exact position of the stars overhead inscribed upon it, as well as his unique personal code. It is a gift for the mother at her birthing. When the child reaches maturity, generally the mother gives it to him on his birthday. When he takes a lifemate, it becomes what you would call a wedding gift. I was going to give this to Aari, but then you two became lifemates, and I thought perhaps I would give it to you when we were all together. Now I think you must have it, as a token of the love you share with my eldest. I can get another chain for Maati"s and Laarye"s disks.)
Acorna examined the little disk, which shimmered in her hand with a shine that was not silver, but more like the opalescent fire of a healthy Linyaari horn. She recognized the constellation from the night sky -Hronii"s Book, the source of knowledge of the universe.
She clutched it for a moment, her emotions so strong that she was unable even to thank Miiri. Then she kissed the little disk and tucked it into her tunic.
Miiri enfolded Acorna in an embrace that was the most comforting thing Acorna had felt since Aari was lost. When Acorna finally released Miiri, she turned, ready to face Hafiz and Becker and agree to what they asked of her.
Becker barely glanced at her, nodded, and turned to Hafiz. "Tell you what, HH. You send Nadhari along with us to protect Acorna from the Wats, and you got yourself a deal."
Two.
You didn"t need me, Jonas," Nadhari said once they were well away from MOO. "MacKenZ is strong enough to subdue our hairy friends, or you could have tied them up and locked them in an inner cargo hold."
"Yes, sweetie, but I wanted you to come," Becker said, twirling the ends of his mustache. "You know how much more secure I feel when you"re here to protect me. I just used Acorna as a smoke screen so n.o.body else would know what a wuss I am."
Acorna added, "Nadhari has a point, Captain. Mac fought the Wats when they attacked Thariinye, Maati, and me. They regard Mac as a superior warrior. Him and RK both."
RK was draped across Nadhari"s shoulders like a fur stole, his tail describing lazy Js against the insignia sewn to the sleeve covering her left arm. The cat"s face, framed by its furry mane, was so large it looked as if Nadhari had two heads.
Our Temple cats are ferocious fighters," the woman "warrior said, running a finger along the cat"s curl of tail.
"I believe it, having seen RK in action," Acorna agreed. "However, he doesn"t have Mac"s facility for alien languages. I think, Captain, that since Mac mastered the Khleevi utterances well enough to fool their ships, he could certainly pick up the tongue the Wats are speaking among themselves.
"Our people have tried using the LAANYE on their language, but those two don"t seem to carry on normal conversations and the only words that consistently appear in their thoughts when faced with most of us are, "Maim, kill, destroy, rend," and that sort of thing. Most of my people find that too disturbing to pursue, not to mention it being too limited a sample to build a language base from. If Mac can communicate with them consistently, then perhaps we can start teaching them current languages and manners. It must be very frightening for them to suddenly be among us. We should try to help them a.s.similate so they can continue their lives in this time in a somewhat normal way."
"If you say so," Becker said. "Personally, I think we should just send them back to whenever it was the old-timers had banished them to." He grinned at Nadhari. "At least they were a bargaining chip for me to get Hafiz"s security chief off MOO for a while."
Acorna watched attraction spark between the captain and Nadhari like static from RK"s fur. The two humans still cared for each other, that was clear. With a sigh, Acorna turned to go speak to Mac.
The android readily agreed to her proposal. "You mean you want me to modify the Wats in the same way you modified me? An upgrade of their memory banks?"
"Yes, sort of. Though they are very backward and superst.i.tious."
"What is superst.i.tious?" Mac wanted to know.
"Hmm, some people would say it means to believe in any sort of magical charms at all, but I think it is more the belief in false magical charms that presuppose a cause-and-effect relationship between events or incidents that are actually unrelated."
"Then there are true magical charms as well as false ones?" Mac asked.
"I don"t know. I suppose that depends on the definition used for magic. In some places, the ability my people have to read minds, or the way that I can discern, from a distance, the mineral content of planetary bodies throughout their ma.s.s, would be considered magic. We cannot actually explain these abilities yet, and some people consider all unexplained events as magic. Many phenomena for which we now have scientific explanations were considered to be magic before we learned those explanations. There were no scientists that we know of in the time Wat and Wat came from, so all events and phenomena must seem magical to them."
"Ah," Mac said, "that may explain their hostility to you and your people. Is it possible that they wish to kill your people because they believe you are magicians with evil powers?"
"No, they kill us because they want to steal our horns. Their leaders believe that our horns have the power to make them more virile, to keep them from being poisoned, all that sort of thing. It"s even true, but what they don"t understand is that if they"d befriended our Ancestors and asked for help nicely instead of killing every horn-bearer they saw, things would have worked out better on both sides. As it was, their ruthless pursuit of "magic horns" back on Old Terra meant that soon there were no more magic horns" to pursue."
She and Mac worked as a team, spending hours on end with the Wats. She read their thoughts and supplied the images to Mac, "who asked questions in their guttural language, which he understood very quickly. "It is, as Captain Becker discovered, a very early version of Standard, with some Teuton and old Norse mixed in. Many sentences are actually not very different from those spoken by Captain Becker and other Terrans, but the inflection and accent make the words sound foreign."
Acorna had already noticed this, and was picking up on the similarities and learning the accent, but since the Wats were the ones who would have to a.s.similate to the dominant cultures around them now, it was more important for them to learn modern languages than for her to learn ancient Wat.
Now that the Wats were actually in a mood to communicate, thanks to Acorna"s telepathic skills, Mac made rapid headway teaching them words and concepts. The android tried to explain to them that they were flying through s.p.a.ce in a s.p.a.ceship. They asked him in awed tones if the Thunder G.o.d had his hand on the Condor, guiding the vessel across the heavens.
"Did you explain it to them?" Acorna asked, amused.
"I tried, but in the end I said no, it was more as if we were riding the Thunder G.o.d"s lightning bolt. They seemed not only satisfied with that explanation, but impressed and proud."
Though neither Wat had as yet directly addressed her, Acorna felt that great progress was being made in their socialization. She had no idea at what point in their temporal incarceration the time rupture had released them, but they were still relatively young men.
The red-haired one with the amorous intentions toward Karina was taller than his companion and was heavily muscled through the chest, shoulders, and arms. He had a blue-eyed stare that at some times was direct and at others seemed to be looking back into his past and asking many questions. Reading his thoughts, Acorna saw that he had several mates and many children in scattered villages.
The other Wat had sandy hair and blue eyes as well, and was more of a warrior by disposition. His glance was suspicious and his questions were sly, as if he thought to catch his captors out in a lie. He kept alert to escape opportunities.
Acorna cautioned Mac to watch that man. Though his outward behavior was less aggressive than that of the red-haired Wat, he was the more dangerous and less civilized of the two.
What they had taken for the red-haired Wat"s crudeness was simply a healthy l.u.s.t that had stood him in good stead in his homeland while siring his dynasties. He also had a certain sort of gregariousness, a willingness to found new dynasties no matter where his circ.u.mstances took him. Hafiz, with some justification, considered the man a barbarian rapist, but of the two Wats, he was actually far less hostile and more amenable to learning. Even his actions toward Karma would, in his own culture, have been a compliment. Acorna had deduced that the Wats" world had some remarkable differences from modern human society.
The personality and character differences between the Wats caused the men to argue among themselves a bit, which gave Mac opportunities to learn more of their language, and - once he"d deciphered what they meant-give them further instruction in modern Basic.
Acorna became sure they"d reached a turning point with the barbarians one day when she walked, on her way to turn in for some much-needed rest, through the cabin to which the Wats" lessons had been moved. Becker had hoped providing a civilized environment would speed the barbarians" education. Mac had a replicator salvaged from a merchant ship and was serving the men tea and cakes, though they would have much preferred beer and little salted fishes. Indeed, the blond Wat had developed quite a sweet tooth. The red-haired Wat looked up at her, and for the first time, his blue eyes focused. "Female" was the word that registered with him, and a broad grin-the baring of teeth the Linyaari considered so hostile-lit his face.
Acorna kept her face carefully grave, though she wanted to laugh and smile back. This one would cheerfully misinterpret friendliness for... uh... pa.s.sion. Even in another species. He was starting to remind her a bit of Thariinye that way.
Acorna hurried out of that room as quickly as good manners and the Wats would let her.
She wasn"t required on the bridge much on this trip. With the Condor"s new Khleevi control panel modifications, Becker and Mac were able to manipulate the controls much better than she was. She hoped that Becker would wear out this particular configuration before Aari returned. She doubted her lifemate would really appreciate the ironic humor in the use of Khleevi technology aboard the Condor. He was more likely to decline to board the ship while it was in place.
As she settled in for a sleep cycle, she pondered how to break it to Becker that the ship"s current configuration was not one of his more successful ones.
She fell asleep at once and dreamed of Aari, as always, but also, and primarily, she dreamed of cats. At first they were very large cats, as big as Aari. Then Aari began shrinking in size until his size in relation to the cats around him was the reverse of how it really should be. A lot of the dream was just about the daily life among the cats-the birth of kittens, hunting and eating, building. There were humans there, too, and they and the cats sometimes fought together. The dream became long and involved and increasingly catty, until Aari was not even in it. And the cats were crying, mewling, scratching, begging for something.
She awoke to the realization that the sounds were real. RK was setting up a horrible ruckus outside her quarters, scratching at the door, crying as if his heart was broken.
When she opened the hatch, RK rushed in, while from the bridge came roars from Becker. "Fragitall, RK, you know better than to play with the controls!"