She continued to stroke him.
(Don"t take forever.)
She glanced up. Two coin-bright eyes stared down at her from one of the holes above her head. RK glared down at her. (There are three others that I can see, besides the dead queen. Can"t you revive her? These other toms aren"t going to do me a bit of good.)
Acorna tried to release Pash, but he clung to her with all his claws. She sent him a message to desist, but he snuggled his great head deeper under her armpit.
RK made some low sounds that could have come from any of the cats and Pash abruptly disengaged, hopped onto the counter, and with a flip of his tail, went to his personal food dish to see what was in it. Satisfied crunching and slurping sounds came from the direction of the dish as Acorna moved on to the next stricken cat.
"It"s a miracle!" one of the priests cried.
"The Star Cat has sent us a miracle!" another agreed.
The third said, "This stranger is a great doctor indeed, Miw-Sher. Where did you get her?"
Acorna didn"t listen to the answer. She was busy communing with a lovely golden-and-rust-colored fellow who appeared to be huge and fluffy. When she lifted him, however, he was as light as if he were in zero G. She cooed and crooned the most awful drivel to him, but he didn"t seem to mind. In fact he seemed to like it.
"What is his name?" she asked Miw-Sher, who was bending over another of the cats.
"Haji," the girl said in a voice unsteady with weeping.
Haji was very weak. Like Pash, his eyes were only half open. Drool dribbled from his mouth and raw sores pierced the pink of his gums. The cat did not even have the strength to reach for her. He lay limp as a discarded velvet scarf against her shoulder. She lay her cheek in his fur, bringing the horn into contact with him almost as if by accident. "Poor Haji, where does it hurt, darling boy?"
(Ugh. I think I"m going to be sick myself now,) RK said. He accompanied his statement with a mental image involving a hair-ball.
(Shhh,) Acorna said to him mentally, then turned the thought into a "Shush, shush, poor little kitty, poor dear boy, are you beginning to notice, hmmm? It doesn"t hurt anymore, does it?"
She inclined her head to stare into his face and brought her horn in contact with his mouth. The sores disappeared. The nictating membranes of the third eyelid retracted so that his eyes were fully open and bright as the highest caliber peridots.
With a voice rusty from disuse, Haji suddenly said, "Ryow!" and flew out of Acorna"s arms as if hurricane "winds blew in the direction of his food dish.
Miw-Sher"s tear-ravaged face was both frightened and hopeful as she advanced toward Acorna with a limp and spiky-furred tortoisesh.e.l.l cat in her arms. "This is our Grimla. She is still warm, doctor amba.s.sador. Not stiff. M-maybe I feel a little breath. M-maybe she is not entirely gone yet. J-just very tired? Could you please just look at her? "
Acorna stroked the fur and felt a very faint sigh of breath beneath it. Grimla hadn"t used up all of her lives yet, but it was fortunate for her that the Condor had arrived as soon as it had or she would have been lost. The life in the old queen was faint and flickering, but life nevertheless lingered. Acorna could see the essence of it trying to flee, clinging only to the tips of the cat"s whiskers, the very ends of her fur, moving them very slightly.
"Poor sweet girl," Acorna said, and bent to stroke the once-beautiful cat while she lay still against Miw-Sher"s chest. The acolyte"s own heart was beating hard, as if trying to encourage the cat"s.
Again, as if by accident, Acorna touched the Temple cat with her horn while seeming to examine her elsewhere. Grimla gave a deep sigh and a cough, and blinked twice. Then she stretched.
"You were faking, weren"t you?" Acorna teased. "You scared your friend very badly, you naughty cat!"
As she said these silly words, she waggled her lowered head, encouraging Grimla to play with her horn. Instead, with another sigh, the old queen stretched up and put the velvets of her paws carefully, one behind the other, on the top of Acorna"s horn, then stretched up and with a dry and raspy tongue, licked the tip once, and started down. Acorna caught her and kissed the top of her head. Then the cat took her leave of both Acorna and Miw-Sher to seek her own food dish. But she paused once and looked back at them with a serene expression. They could hear her purr from three feet away. Turning a contentedly waving tail on them, she stuck her nose in her dish.
After Acorna had cured Sher-Paw, the last of the remaining Temple cats, she said, "This room should be cleaned. I suggest that you discard everything that can"t be washed in disinfectant and very hot water, then wipe down all of the scrubbable surfaces. Though your sacred cats are cured, the disease could still be spread by vectors from the sick cats."
"Vectors? What are these, Doctor?" asked the male priest. "Tell me what this is that has killed so many of our guardian felines and I will slay it with my bare hands. My revered companion, Pedibastet, was the first of the holy creatures to succ.u.mb. Are these vector beasts demons, or perhaps some evil magic spell cast by the shaman of an enemy clan?"
"I was thinking more in terms of mutant nano-viruses." The people around her looked even more bewildered than before. She tried to explain. "I don"t actually know what causes this illness, but the causes of most sicknesses are organisms rather like animals but very, very small, too small to see. They are so small that they can go right inside a person or beast without anyone noticing, and attack healthy beings and make them sick. If you want to keep from spreading the sickness or getting the cats reinfected, you should do as I suggest. Clean everything thoroughly, including rugs, pillows, counter-tops, walkways, and the insides of those holes your cats climb through. If they become reinfected or if perhaps new cats are introduced to this group and become infected by organisms still living in the environment, I will not be here to cure them. "
"Aiee," Miw-Sher said, "I could not bear this again. Is there no medicine you could leave us, none of your knowledge or spells?"
Acorna pondered this. Even if she sacrificed a slice of her horn, as she had once done on Rushima, it could not serve all of the stricken for all of their illnesses. For that reason and many others, the Linyaari tried not to allow others to realize that it was their horns that healed and purified water and air. But until she a.n.a.lyzed the causative agent of the disease that had decimated Temple cats all over Makahomia, she couldn"t hope to vanquish the illness merely by curing these few victims of it.
"I will do what I can before I leave," she said finally. "Meanwhile, introduce no other cats - "
At that point, RK half jumped, half fell among them. At first Acorna thought the big fellow was faking it to gain access to Grimla, but he did not spring back up when he landed, even though Pash was growling menacingly at him. He gave the smallest, saddest mew Acorna had ever heard him utter. In case she hadn"t got the point, he sent her a feeble transmission, along with a pitiful vocalized mew.
(I don"t feel so good,) he said.
(I did warn you,) she told him silently. By now the other cats hopped up to surround him.
"What Temple is guarded by this one?" Miw-Sher asked. "Is he from the steppes?"
"No," Acorna said, lifting RK"s considerable bulk. Since he had acquired the disease apparently between one breath and the next, he had had no time to lose weight and was his usual hefty self. She didn"t elaborate. She didn"t wish to have anyone seek to execute her or Becker or anyone else for being in RK"s company. "He is my friend and Captain Becker"s, who came with us on our s.p.a.ceship. Not a very wise cat, but a friend nevertheless."
Rubbing her face against his furry sides so that her horn as well as her cheek and nose pressed against him, she murmured what sounded like coos to the other people but what she was actually saying was, (I told you so! I knew you would catch this disease, you stubborn beast.)
RK wriggled free and with a smug purr and eyes wide and bright again, said, (And I told you that you would heal me if I did.)
"He certainly looks like a Temple cat to me," one of the priests who seemed unaffiliated with any particular feline said. "In fact he looks more like the real thing than any of ours at the moment, tatty as they are from undereating and all of that noisy puking they"ve been doing."
"With all respect, Your Reverence, the amba.s.sador is not only our guest, she has laid healing hands upon our sacred guardians and saved them from certain death," the woman in the priestly robes said. "I think we must give her the benefit of the doubt."
"Oh, of course," the man said with false joviality. "No offense meant, Your Excellency." But his smile was oily and his eyes were shifty. Acorna imagined he would be giving a report to Nadhari"s cousin before long, and would not neglect to mention RK"s entrance.
"None taken," Acorna said lightly. "But now, if you"ll forgive me, the healing process is very draining to me. I need to rest."
"You"re welcome to leave your guardian here with ours if you wish, Excellency," the woman grooming Sher-Paw said with genuine concern.
RK had been doing reconnaissance among the Temple cats, but apparently found them still too weak to be stimulating companions. He hopped up on Acorna"s shoulders and made himself comfortable around her neck, letting his head and front paws drape to her waist on her left side, while his back paws dangled on her right side to the middle of her arm.
Acorna laughed. "I believe he has spoken."
"I will show you to our guest quarters," Miw-Sher said, leading them from the room. As the girl began to turn down a hallway that appeared to penetrate deeper into the Temple"s interior, Acorna said, "Please tell your high priest that RK and I must return to our vessel. I can examine the tiny animals that cause this illness there, and perhaps discover a means to combat the sickness. If I am successful, I will be able to leave with you a medicine you can use in case of further outbreaks of the disease. I may also be able to teach your people how to prepare this medicine themselves."
Acorna thought she might be able to prepare a vaccine for the illness using a blood sample from RK, but the Temple would lack the necessary laboratory facilities to purify and test it. And, given the Federation proscription on introducing new technology to these people, she"d better do any research she wanted to do aboard ship.
Miw-Sher said, "Perhaps your friend should stay aboard your vessel until you go. I fear he may not be allowed to return with you unless you keep him out of sight. Especially with the number of our own guardians so sadly depleted. You may find him missing when you are ready to leave."
That provided Acorna with an opening to discuss her amba.s.sadorial role with someone she felt instinctively was trustworthy.
"This cat is very important to my people." That would give her a further justification for RK"s presence with her. "You must understand that my people have had their world destroyed twice just within my lifetime and have already suffered many losses."
The girl nodded as if they were discussing the weather. "Makahomia wasn"t destroyed, but my family and home have been," she said. "We allied ourselves with the Kandos and sent warriors to fight beside them. So when our village was attacked, our men were away fighting for them, and no one was around to protect us from our enemies. My mother and brothers were all slain and I alone of all my family remained to greet our allies when they finally arrived. Among them was Brother Bulaybub, who is my mother"s steppe-cousin, and he persuaded the Mulzar that I would be good with the cats, particularly Grimla, whose special friend was killed in the battle. But I"m interrupting you!" the girl said, her hand flying to her mouth as if to shush herself. "I"m sorry. I"m very rude. Please go on."
Acorna continued. "During the first attack, my people left their original homeworld. They took what they could with them in one great evacuation. They intended to take with them cats they called pahaantiyirs. I know this only through the stories of my people. I myself was not born on our homeworld, but was orphaned in s.p.a.ce. I"ve only just returned to my people recently."
"You have? But I thought you must be from an important family, and very well known to have achieved your high office so young!" She saw that Acorna was patiently waiting, and once more her knuckles flew to her lips. "Oh, there I go doing it again. Pardon me, please, and continue."