"I"ll wait up," Becker said, brightening. He was a little puzzled. He simply didn"t want to be left out. He hadn"t actually thought Nadhari needed rescuing.
Acorna watched the byplay between them, amused. Becker was, if anything, a little jealous, Acorna thought. If she was reading him correctly, he rather admired Kando. The name King Arthur kept surfacing in Becker"s mind when he thought of Nadhari"s cousin-that, and El Cid.
A young Temple girl Acorna hadn"t seen before showed them to their rooms and brought them cool drinks. When the girl had gone, Acorna took her gla.s.s to the room across the corridor, where Becker half reclined, lifting his own gla.s.s to his lips. It was quite a beautiful vessel, its shape and design suggesting a more decorative aspect of what seemed to be an otherwise rather basic and utilitarian culture.
"Wait, Captain," Acorna said. "Please, hand me your gla.s.s before you drink."
He did and she dipped her head, touching the tip of her horn to the liquid.
"You don"t think it was poisoned?" Becker asked, chagrined.
"No, but I believe it may possibly have been drugged with a sleeping potion. Edu was apparently serious about ensuring our good night"s rest. While I intend to sleep, I think it would be best if we both are able to awaken naturally to any stimuli that would normally pull us from sleep. We are on a strange planet. There is a murderer loose. I "wish to take no chances."
Becker shook his head admiringly. "You"re good at this palace intrigue stuff-"scuse me, Temple intrigue stuff, Princess. Maybe you really are related to old Hafiz."
Acorna smiled, dipped her horn in her own drink, and returned to the room a.s.signed to her. She had left the door open and when she re-entered, she saw by the light of the lantern a bouquet of flowers in a wall sconce. She examined them. All of them were edible varieties of a most delicious kind. She was getting rather peckish, in spite of having grazed briefly in the hydroponics garden aboard the Condor. She sipped lightly at her drink, then stuck the flowers in the remainder of it so she could have a little breakfast when she awoke without troubling anyone about her dietary requirements. Putting her hoofed feet under the soft woven quilted coverlet, she felt a soft resistance. Looking down, she saw Grimla, who raised her face at Acorna"s gentle touch and purred loudly.
"You are very welcome," Acorna said, and settled down to sleep while the suns rose outside, painting Temple and city with color and shadow.
Ten.
She was dying. They were all dying in misery and squalor, dying of thirst and hunger, dying of exposure and contagion, poison and plague, and she knew it was their own fault.
Dirty-faced children with crusty eyes and noses cried and clung to the legs of adults who could barely stand. The lake, the one her grandfather had called Crystal Lake, was now a turgid swamp.
When first they arrived on this planet, her grandfather said, his great-grandfather had had very little. Some small technologies were sent with them when they emigrated, to make their lives in the new place easier. But this planet, though its resources were slender, especially where she lived, was not overpopulated, and could support the making of the small machines, as old Terra no longer could.
She had been told about all this, but she could not remember her world other than it was now.
And yet part of her was still Acorna, living inside the cracked and scaling skin of this other person, the one who lived beside the stinking lake.
That part wondered where she was and why she was here.
Then the ship landed, not near her and her people, but far away, down where the green-ness had been before it was cut into and cut out. She saw the ship in the sky and thought something like "Linyaari?" though it wasn"t quite that.
Word came that strangers had landed-two of them, both seemingly human, like her dream-self. And yet there was something funny about them. One of them had a horn in the middle of his head and the other one kept turning into a cat.
One day, without warning, the flitter arrived. Her people remembered flitters from their great-grandparents, though the word "shuttle" came to her instead, but none of the craft had worked on this world in over a hundred years.
Two got out, one small, red-haired, and quick, one tall and white, with silvery hair and golden eyes that went straight to hers. Aari. He turned to his companion, who turned into a red-striped cat and then back to a man. The word "Grimalkin"-was that a. name?-suddenly came into her head. Was this the companion who had taken Aari from her? But no, her dream people said that Aari was the Companion. The red cat/man was the Star Cat. Aari smiled into her dream face as if congratulating her on her understanding.
She must have cried his name, because she heard paws thumping to the floor. But she could not awaken all the way. Aari continued to hold the gaze of her dream-self. With a meaningful flick of his eyes, as if to say, "Watch this," he turned to the fouled lake and knelt beside it, dipping his horn. "And from his blessed horn came water and jewels."
As the dream faded, she wondered how that could be, since Aari"s horn was still so newly repaired and still so stunted that it would not really be capable of detoxifying such a lake. And what had happened to the cat/man? Grimalkin, wasn"t that its name? He was no longer there when Aari dipped his horn in the water. But that was how dreams were. They jumped around and were not logical.
She tried to return to the dream and to Aari. Tried so hard. Wanted to see him again, wanted to feel his eyes on hers -he saw through the dream person, and knew her even in this dream.
But instead, she dreamed next of cats that were sick, dying, crying, and of cats peering out at her with gold com eyes shining in the darkness of the little holes near the roof of the Temple cattery. She bent to heal one cat with peculiar blue and green fur, but others clawed at her legs, mewing up at her. When she bent down, their eyes shone as if they were looking into a bright light, the pupils slitted.
"Hsst!" another cat said and she opened her eyes to see a very real pair of cat eyes staring down into hers. RK stood on her chest, his nose pushed against her nose. A self-satisfied purr pumped in and out of him, and his claws p.r.i.c.kled and sheathed, p.r.i.c.kled and sheathed, against her collarbone.
(Come now, Linyaari Healer. I tracked, I stalked, I did what I do. Now it"s your turn,) the cat told her.
(What? You stalked something?) Acorna asked, a little puzzled and still bleary from her dream.
(The murderer. Or the ssussspect. Or maybe another victim, sssince he is badly injured and needs your help.) RK"s mental voice had a very distinct feline accent when he was highly excited, as he was now. (Follow me. Nyow.) His fur was electric Math his nervous energy, and she reached out to smooth his fur with a stroke of her hand, soothing him so that for one brief moment his tail stopped flagellating her chest.
"Very well," she said. He jumped to the floor as she rose. She hadn"t disrobed before lying down, partly because she was too tired and partly because she knew she could be awakened without warning. If that happened, she wished to be prepared.
"Perhaps we should call the other cats to walk with us until we"re clear of the Temple," she suggested. "You"ll be less conspicuous that way."
His whiskers twitched. (That again, eh?)
He paused, flipping his tail from side to side and c.o.c.king his ear to listen. (It is safe enough. Come. The Temple cats say Kando and the other high and mighty are deep in council with each other trying to figure out what to do about the-heh-heh - catastrophes that have befallen them, including you.)
"Me?" Acorna said. She was puzzled, but rose to follow RK. "But I was only trying to help."
(My entree is your "eeek!" and vice versa,) RK thought at her philosophically. (Cats like you. Cat servants like you. But not everybody.) He leaped up to one of the crossbars leading to a cat hole near the ceiling.
"I can"t go up there," she reminded him.
(Bipeds can be so feeble.) The cat sighed. (I suppose you"ll have to leave the ordinary way. I"ll meet you across the street from the Temple. Look up.)
Then he was gone. Acorna ran her fingers through her mane and stepped outside the room, where she was confronted by the Temple cats, sitting there patiently, as if waiting for her.
"Are you coming, too?" she asked them. "This is going to be something of a parade then, isn"t it?"
Well, Acorna thought, RK hadn"t said to come alone. Neither had he said to bring Becker or Nadhari, so perhaps she could a.s.sume that although their mission was confidential, it was not especially dangerous. She didn"t know if the Temple cats ever actually left the Temple or not, but as she walked away, they followed, so she supposed that they knew what was expected of them and could decide for themselves what they would do.
They didn"t meet anyone within the Temple building, but then, her route took her only through the living quarters. She followed a path that bypa.s.sed the ceremonial chambers and opened directly onto the outer courtyard. Here people abounded, each going about their various tasks beneath the punishing suns, cooking, drawing water, building, making mud bricks, weaving, and preaching. Acorna did not look too closely into any of the activities. She tried to appear as though she was on a mission of some urgency and knew exactly where she was headed. She"d found in her past adventures that such an appearance could often take her far without causing comment. The impression she was trying to convey had the added attraction of being quite true in this case. She hoped none of the people in the Temple courtyard would look at her too closely. Drawing the scarf Miw-Sher had given her around her head to disguise her horn, she walked straight ahead, as nonchalantly as it was possible to walk when she was being trailed by four large and determined Temple cats. She was considering what to do if the guard standing at the gate tried to stop her when Miw-Sher bounded up, swooped precious Grimla into her arms, and fell into step beside her.
"Amba.s.sador, are you leaving us so early?" Miw-Sher asked. "I was just going to have a look around," Acorna told the young acolyte, continuing to move toward the Temple gate. Her tone was cautious, not because of Miw-Sher but because of the other people in the courtyard. "I wish to learn all I can of your people and of the relationship between them and the sacred cats, as part of my mission to my own people."
"Ah, yes," Miw-Sher said. "Well, it so happens I had an errand in the town today myself. I can point out the sights to you as we go. With your permission, I will accompany you."
"How about them?" Acorna asked, indicating the three parading cats still marching along behind her. "Are they allowed out?" "Oh my, yes. They aren"t captives - or at least they never have been." The last part of her sentence was mumbled unhappily, clearly recalling that all was not well in the Temple these days.
"It is very good of you to go with me," Acorna said. "And the sacred cats, too, of course, but really, I can do this on my own. I"m sure you have other duties."
"Halt," the guard said. He was a short, pugnacious-looking fellow with bad teeth and worse breath.
"It"s all right, Brother Meyim," Miw-Sher said, "They"re with me."
"And who are you to have privileges, Miw-Sher?" the guard asked, spitting through the hole between two of his black teeth. "The Mulzar has sent word that none are to pa.s.s this gate without special permission. Hit permission."
Acorna wasn"t sure this person was going to be sensitive to mental suggestion, but she tried it anyway. She directed a very light push at his mind.