When he departed, munching on the food as he climbed to the upper story, she pressed her hand to the map and thought of Aari, Maati, and the others. She was not at all sure her plan would work, but she needed to try. She pressed until she found the place where all four of the white lights were visible, three of them in the water surrounded by aqua lights, one on the sh.o.r.e and headed up toward the city.
Having found that place, she dared not try to adjust it further and waste more time. She had trotted quickly to the edge of the water, and stood watching it lick at the land for only a moment.
Then she stuck her toe in, felt the temperature, which was not as cold as she had feared, and waded in. If their theory was correct, the water of this planet was the main conduit for the energies of time travel. Pollution and the disruption of its courses caused a corresponding disruption in the flow of the time force. The sea before her should be the least disrupted of all of this planet"s water, since it was the closest thing to a whole body of water on the planet at the time. That was her hypothesis and she hoped it was correct. She was about to put it to the test.
If she was wrong, she would go for a nasty swim before she purified the water and prepared it for the implementation of the rest of their plan.
If she was right, however, the wall mechanism was a control as well as an indicator of where people were and where they were sent. She was about to see if her theory would work. If it did, the others should be able to find her from what they had discussed. Meanwhile, she could save Aari from the harm that she felt sure had befallen him.
But up to her neck in filthy seawater, she could see no change in her surroundings, either in time or place. The mountain of refuse still dominated the lake, the city still loomed dead and broken beyond her, the buildings from the front street still drowned beneath the soles of her feet.
Nothing had changed. Was she wrong? And then she told herself that it was no wonder she was getting nowhere. She was not concentrating hard enough on where she wanted to go. And she had not yet committed herself sufficiently to totally submerge in this sea. So, drawing a deep breath, she jackknifed forward and plunged beneath the water.
The Hosts hurriedly left the inner chamber where the male unicorn person lay in a drugged stupor on the metal table. They had extracted from him the DNA samples they needed to test, x-rayed him, taken samples of blood, bone marrow, urine, stomach contents, sperm, and other fluids, and then left as quickly as possible.
"Gracious, what a fuss he made," said a small winged person currently female. Her wings were flapping very rapidly, which indicated she was upset. "I was sending all the rea.s.surance and good thoughts I could to him and he still backhanded me so hard I flew across the room."
"You"d think they would have evolved past that behavior after all this time," said a fellow with a long, serious face. "If he is the result of our work after generations of evolution, I think we should try harder."
"Yes, after all, it"s not like we hurt him or anything. All of us were trying to calm him, but he simply kept fighting and glaring at us as if we were monsters or something."
"But he knew who we are," Highmagister HaGurdy said. "Perhaps he isn"t a final result after all. Perhaps he is only a starting place." She sighed. "I fear we"ve our work cut out for us. We should break now. It is almost time for the feast and we all need to change into something more festive."
Not that that wilt take very Long, thought a very junior cabinet minister, given our nature. He wanted to add, "Shouldn"t someone ask one of our unicorn guests to attend to him?" The unicorns were familiar with the needs for healing after studies done on the various subject offspring. Not only would they heal him of the holes drilled in him from the tests; they would also comfort him.
But Highmagister HaGurdy had left the building, followed by her cabinet, who fanned into the city in all directions. The minister had no one left to make that observation to. The junior cabinet minister was destined to remain junior because of the direction his telepathic abilities took. He was not, as were the other cabinet ministers, a powerful and charismatic sender, the most useful sort of telepathy a politician could project.
Even his shape changes did not seem to be under his control. He changed according to whom he was with, which was also what the others did, but he seemed to demonstrate a different purpose in his changes. They changed into more dominating shapes the better to control the beings around them. His own changes, insofar as he understood them, occurred to put his fellows at ease. Among the politicians, he appeared to be one of them, only less able, less forceful, and less impressive easily ignored. Easily made the delegatee rather than being the delegator of tasks.
He had decided long ago that he was instinctively and incurably an empath, in other words, and there never had seemed to be anything he could do about it. Of all of them, only he had seen what the male subject had seen when he looked at them. He alone knew the reason for the man"s terror, and he alone did not believe the person strapped to the examining table was somehow a failure of science.
So after a moment"s hesitation, he re-entered the chamber where the subject Aari lay breathing his heavily drugged sleep. The junior minister administered an antidote to the sedative, released the restraints, and waited.
Aari struggled for breath against a great weight upon his chest, compressing his lungs. Confused and disoriented, he recalled meeting some people who seemed like friends, but turned out to be Khleevi. They strapped him down to torture him again. Dimly, he remembered hearing Kh.o.r.n.ya call him, trying to help. But now he opened his eyes and after some initial blurriness, found himself staring into another pair of eyes which stared back curiously at him. Then something reached out and patted him on the cheek. It was soft but accompanied by a hint of sharpness.
"RK?" Aari asked, though the cat sitting on his chest was not quite as large, nor brindled gray as his old friend from the Condor. Nevertheless, he reached to pet the animal and realized his hands were free, as were his feet, chest, and head. "Who are you? What is this? Some sort of a cats" underground movement to free prisoners?" he inquired. Where were you when the Khleevi had me?"
(Back here helping to create your race, and very glad of it I am too after seeing those nightmare creatures in your mind.) his furry companion"s thought answered. The cat"s fur was definitely not brindled, but it was not definitely anything else. It shifted from black to red to blondish, to spotted, striped from gray through deep brown, to pale gold, even as it changed from long to short.
(You"re one of them? The Hosts?)
(I am one of them. I am Junior Cabinet Minister Gri-maalkin.)
(Thank you for freeing me. It was you, wasn"t it? I am Aari.)
(I know who you are. I know you wish to leave before the others come back to vivisect you in the interests of making a kinder, gentler race to inhabit this planet. Come, let us go find the unicorn people and they will heal your wounds.)
The cat jumped down and Aari sat up too suddenly, felt dizzy, and had to catch himself with the edge of the table before standing. At that point he realized he was naked. His shipsuit was neatly folded and stored under the table. (Vivisect?) Aari asked, wincing as he donned the suit. (Not really? Surely not!) After all, these were the kindly Hosts. He had heard them, vaguely in some unnoticed quarter of his mind, decry violence.
(Oh, they wouldn"t mean to.) Grimaalkin a.s.sured him. (And they would ask the unicorns to heal you, of course, but what they would do to you wouldn"t make you happy. A couple of the unicorns already have come very close to not surviving the experiments. Good thing they have the healing power they have. On other planets, I understand, races with other abilities have not always survived our wish to improve their stock by blending it with our own.)
Aari braced himself on the table and stood, more firmly this time. (I have to get back to my own time. And my friends, as well. Can you help us?)
(Certainly. Any idiot can run the time transport.) The cat bounded from the chamber. When Aari did the same, a young man with long ginger hair, overlong eyebrows, and a spa.r.s.e mustache that was longer than his face stood in front of the wall. He was wearing only a white coat, such as all of the scientists had worn, and his bare legs and feet heavily covered with curling red hairs looked incongruous with the coat. But his thoughts came to Aari in Grimaalkin"s voice.
(When is your true time?) he asked.
(Not so fast.) Aari answered, and was taken aback when Grimaalkin chuckled.
(I meant in years, not in speed.) the cat/man said.
(So did I. I was using a figure of speech I learned from a friend. It means, in this instance, please don"t rush me, for you are moving more quickly than I am prepared to do. I was not alone. My little sister and two companions came here with me. They are in the lake. I need to collect them before we leave this place or, rather, this time.)
(That presents no problem. The lake is a very good place to begin a time transport. I don"t care much for it when I"m in cat mode but I like a good swim otherwise. Since the unicorns have been here to keep it clean, the sea is a good place to be, if you can stay clear of the sea unicorns.)
(I believe my friends are with the sea unicorns.) Aari replied.
(Then you are wrong. I am not too fast. We haven"t a moment to lose. It may be too late already. Quickly now, tell me when you are from so I may set the transport. Then as soon as we find your littermate and friends, we can activate from the lake. Hurry!)
Aari gave him a year, but that meant nothing. Finally, at Grimaalkin"s urging, he described the area and era from which he and his friends had been transported. Grimaalkin, working furiously, changed the shape of the map to look like post-Khleevi Vhiliinyar.
Then the junior cabinet minister turned to Aari and said, (Now. Follow me!) Before Aari could blink, Grimaalkin blurred back into a cat and raced for the inclinator to the ground floor.
(Wait! It"s all very well for you. You belong here. But someone will see me.)
(Not tonight! Feast night! They"ll all be there, or at least be too busy with their own changing to notice you. Come on!)
Aari ran after the cat as fast as he could, down the hill toward the docks and the sea once more. In the middle of the sea, he saw the island his friends had been heading for. He saw the boat, too, floating upside down in the water. He took a deep breath to steady himself surely his friends were fine. They had to be fine.
(I hope we"re not too late.) Grimaalkin answered Aari"s alarm with more urgency of his own. (If you think my fellow cabinet members are bad, you should see their offspring by the unicorns!)
In one fluid motion the little ginger cat grew longer, paler, broader, and b.u.mpier, and with a flash of white b.u.t.tocks dove into the water. Aari, shipsuit and all, dove in after him, and both began swimming toward the upended boat.
Then, suddenly, he was swamped by an upsurge of water that left him gasping and floundering.
He felt a touch and opened his eyes. Acorna swam to him and through him and when he surfaced, she was gone.
He was in a dark wet place which shook constantly, as if with horror.
(Is this your time?) Grimaalkin asked. (No wonder you were so scared!)
Acorna plunged beneath the surface of the lake and felt it somehow deepen beneath her. She opened her eyes and saw the filthy sea giving way to a younger, cleaner wash of water below. She turned to head back for the surface, her eyes open, and saw what she thought were jellyfish swimming above her, transparent, indistinct, ghostly. She was heading straight for one and she swerved to avoid it. It had been further off than she thought, however, for as she neared collision with it, she saw it was a man her man. She cried out, swallowed water, reached to embrace him... and lost him.
And then she was on the surface of a busy harbor. Where the column of stinking debris had been was a lovely little island. Fish swam around her and farther away ships sailed busily back and forth. A few yards from her, on sh.o.r.e, was the living version of the dead city from which she had just come.
And Aari? She dove several more times, calling him, calling Maati, but there was no trace of him, nor the other figure, his companion. Had it been Maati? Were they dead? Had she seen their ghosts? Phantoms? Shivering with more than the cold of the water, she swam ash.o.r.e, wiping herself and squeezing the water from her hair and clothing as best she could.
Then she climbed the hill to the building she had left just moments ago, yet many, many years in the future.