Acorna’s Search (15 page)

As they drew nearer to the edge of the water, they saw down on one end of the shore the husks of several spacecraft and gantries, along with the domed buildings of a large spaceport. It occurred to her that the spacecraft were the first transportation they had encountered.

Acorna indicated the underground sea. “Here’s your mutant cave rat, Thariinye. It was the noise of the sea, as I thought all along!”

But Mac contradicted her, politely. “My auditory sensors detect very little sound coming from that body of water, Khornya. It is relatively still, with no tide at this time.”

She strained her ears toward the water and realized Mac was correct. The sea was silent. In fact, she had not heard the small mysterious noise since first entering the building from the cavern.

“I find this very odd,” Mac said, holding out his hand with a little instrument he had caused to materialize from somewhere on his versatile body. “I can see, and you can see that there
is
a sea, and
now
my detectors are also showing that there is indeed the sea we see before us.”

“We can see that,” Thariinye said. “What’s your point?”

“They did not show this body of water when we were above ground,” Mac replied.

“Nor did our ship’s, nor those of any of the other ships, including Becker’s,” Acorna told him. “I suspect the same thing that blocked our transmissions to the Survey ships once we entered the cave may be responsible for concealing all of this from the ship’s sensors. This place may be in disrepair, but it has some sort of shielding devices that are working miraculously well to conceal its presence and contents.”

The shields hadn’t protected the city from everything, though, she thought. Besides the damage to many of the buildings, there was one more very obvious breach in the defenses.

The street they were walking disappeared abruptly into water, which was lapping against the outer walls of a row of buildings that did not appear to have been built as waterfront property. Indeed, the doors of many of the nearest structures were awash in water, which entered halfway up their doorframes.

Farther out, lurking under a few feet of water, were the tops of other buildings. Debris that looked like it might have come from the timbers of docks floated on the water.

But most impressive, even in the very dim glow emanating from the buildings a block away, was what was actually
in
the water.

Far out into the bay an island of debris rose to the shadowy heights, blocking the view of the waters and opposite shore beyond.

“The ceiling has caved in a little there,” Acorna said, pointing. “It must have been well built to have sustained that much damage and not completely collapsed.”

Thariinye’s nostrils twitched till he pinched them shut with his fingers. “Nothing’s quite as revolting as the stench of Khleevi scat. I wonder that we didn’t smell that before the salt water.”

“I did,” Mac told him. “Or rather, my olfactory senses detected it. But its range is relatively limited and the scat is in its solidified and less pungent stage. The salt water occupies a much larger area and salination has increased as the years have passed. It has essentially pickled the scat in brine.”

“Eeewww, lovely,” Thariinye said. “Now there is a thought. I hope for their own sake there are none of those
sii
-Linyaari still in the water. Though I’d like to meet one. They must be very graceful and they sound so—exotic. Like aliens, only, more like us—possibly, we could crossbreed, don’t you think?”

“I doubt that you would find anything that has been in that water sexually appealing, Thariinye,” Mac said. “Even if something living remained. And my scanners show that nothing living has dwelled there for a very long time.” He asked suddenly, “How do the songs and stories of your people say that this city came to be underground and underwater?”

“They don’t say,” Thariinye told him. “But they talk of verdant fields and towering spires and skies—yes, skies of aubergine, skies of amethyst, skies of indigo setting the twin jewels of Our Star and the Consort.” His voice rose to dramatic heights as he pronounced these words, then sank back to normal, “So, yes, it must have been above ground when the stories and songs were written, I’d say.”

“I wonder how far below the surface we are,” Acorna said. She looked away from the sea, up the labyrinth of buildings, some shorter, some so tall she could not see the tops of them in the limited light. And she began to realize there must be a reason for that. “I want to climb to the top floor of one of these buildings,” she told her companions. “Mac, could you climb up in another? And Thariinye?”

“Why?” Thariinye asked. “I like it here.”

“Unless you like it well enough to remain here until we starve to death, we need to explore some more. I’d like to learn what we came here for.”

“How do we know it’s here to learn?”

“We don’t, of course, but where else would it be? We have ships and flitters in the air, and we thoroughly explored the solar system around Vhiliinyar before the Survey team even landed. None of those ships saw anything out of the ordinary. We know whatever it was that took our people did not come from there. Besides, all of the disappearances have been from the planet’s surface. Then there’s the shielding around the caverns and this city that blocks our sensors. I believe, if we look, we might find something that will help us find our friends who disappeared.” She desperately wished that it was Thariinye who had disappeared and Aari who was by her side now—Aari and Maati both. Even the little girl would have been a better companion on a mission like this one than Thariinye. “So the answer, it seems to me, is somewhere right here. Maybe even here in this buried city.”

“I heard what you thought!” he said. “You think I’m useless! I’m not that bad. Maati will tell you that when we find her. I can certainly be counted on to do what’s necessary—if I know what it is. Maati and I survived plenty of adventures on our voyage together. She quite depends on me, or I certainly wouldn’t be here risking my neck and the rest of me on this mission. And Aari thinks highly of my abilities, too.”

“I will think highly of them as well,” Acorna said, “if we get Aari and Maati back to tell us what a great help you are. But in the meantime, for me to think highly of you, you need to climb highly in one of those buildings—one so tall we can’t see the top of it. I want to know what is on the ceiling of this place. Maybe we can even find a way out.”

“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?” he asked.

The three of them each found one of the buildings that scraped what passed for a sky in this underworld and climbed to its top. Acorna re-entered the building from which they had entered the underground city.

Just inside the doorway, she broadcast again. This time, maybe it was because she was alone, or maybe because she wanted to so desperately, she thought she felt a query in return, just her name, “Khornya?”

But then RK looked up quizzically and said, “Rryow?” and she thought what she heard must have been the cat’s reply.

She wanted so badly for it to be Aari, she thought with a surge of loneliness and worry for her lifemate that she had been suppressing during the whole adventure. Instead of concentrating on missing him, she had tackled each task she thought might bring him closer. But now, for a moment, she felt the weight of the worry that he would never return, that having found her lifemate, she had lost him again so suddenly. Worse than that, she worried that he needed her, that perhaps he was hurt and calling her name, longing for her to come and heal him, that he was facing an enemy they should be fighting together. Of course she was anxious for the fate of Neeva, of Maati and the others as well, but she ached for Aari.

RK rubbed against her, breaking her concentration, and she patted him, then continued as she had done before, putting one foot in front of the other.

Fortunately for both of her feet, and the rest of her as well, the upper floors of this building had staircases that were in much better repair than the one they’d faced on the lower level, and the walls lit sufficiently well to allow her to see all the way up on each level. RK was with her, making his presence felt in the usual way, dashing ahead, then jumping back down to land on her shoulders or in her arms if she stretched them out to catch him.

Once she reached the top of the last staircase in the building she stopped to catch her breath, then began exploring. By leaning out a broad window she could touch one of the outer walls of the building. It lit. In its gentle light she could see that there was a balcony all around this story. When she walked out on the balcony and looked down, she saw the streets of the city below where the walls still glowed from her team’s passing.

A block away, another building lit from top to bottom and Mac’s voice crackled to life on the com unit, which worked perfectly well among the three of them, even if they could hear nothing from the other Linyaari survey team members outside of the cave. “Khornya,” the android said, “I can see you from here! I trust your rise in this world was uneventful?”

“It was.”

“Mine, too,” Thariinye said. As he spoke, another building a block away, its position triangulating with hers and Mac’s, lit all the way to the top story. Like three large candles, the buildings illuminated the area around them, including the sky, which rested upon their rooftops, and the rooftops of other buildings of the same stature.

“Would you look at that! They made columns of their skyscrapers!” Acorna cried. “The buildings do not just scrape the sky. These columns hold up the sky.”

Y
aniriin and Vilii Hazaar Miirl surveyed the prisoners with distaste born not from their smell, which was rapidly dispersed, thanks to the horns of the Linyaari crew, nor even their appearance, though that was frankly disgusting, composed as it was of layers of filth, matted hair, caked blood, dirt, and skin, where they could see it, that was a carapace of dirt. The creatures’ eyes were deeply shadowed by swags of hair mats, and their speech for the most part consisted of shouts and grunts and threatening noises. But the Linyaari reserved the bulk of their disgust for themselves. What actually disgusted the Linyaari most was the concept of having to hold anything prisoner at all.

“Have you been able to read them?” Yaniriin asked Miirl.

“I confess I haven’t had any desire to,” she admitted. “Surely these stinking, oafish louts can have nothing to do with the subtle, quiet disappearances of our people?”

“Maak indicated that their language appeared to be some form of Terran,” Yaniriin said. “Perhaps when Captain Becker arrives in the
Condor,
he will help us communicate with them in their own tongue.”

“Maak did indicate that the form of the Terran language they spoke was extremely primitive,” Miirl said doubtfully. “Becker seems to be an advanced representative of the species.”

Nadhari Kando put in a comment from her command station on MOO. “Trust me,” she said. “That’s no problem. Becker can be very primitive when he wishes.”

“I heard that,” Becker said over the com unit. “Give me a minute and I’ll be there to prove you wrong.”

Since Becker was once more crewless, he chose to land the
Condor
on Vhiliinyar near the remaining shuttle, the one that had
not
instantly disappeared, he flew his own current shuttle, a sweet little Linyaari egg he had salvaged from the wreckage of one of the larger ships destroyed by the Khleevi attacks, to the surveillance ship. He would donate the shuttle back to the Linyaari if they wanted it, especially if he couldn’t talk Hafiz into
buying
it back for them. But just now it made quick work of getting him where he wanted to go.

When he boarded the surveillance ship and was shown the prisoners he said, “Hol-eee hermitage, boys and girls, how can I tell anything about these fellas, if they are fellas? One or both could even be female for all we can tell—can’t see their eyes, much less anything else important down lower. Their mouths are all covered up with hair so I can’t even lip-read if I need to. These guys need a shave and a haircut worse than any lifeform I ever saw in all my born days! Not to mention a bath. Don’t you guys have a beauty operator on board this ship?”

They looked baffled and he said finally, “Well, okay, then, I’ll do the honors but first I just want one of you to make sure I won’t get cooties or rabies or anything from touching these two. And I’m gonna need some tools, and some space to work in.”

Finally, while Becker stalked off, muttering to himself about how a man had to do a job himself if he wanted it done right, Yaniriin did as Becker asked, he purified whatever he could reach with his horn, making sure to keep well away from the teeth or the ragged claws that protruded from the fingers of these creatures. Yaniriin noted that their prisoners’ hands were shaped more like Becker’s than like his own.

“And me without my chain saw,” Becker muttered to himself when he returned. He brought forth some metal shears from the leather-wrapped tool kit he’d had in his egg-shuttle. “I sure hope you’ve got these guys fully secured,” he said, as he stepped into the enclosure with them.

“I think some soap and water will be in order pretty quick, Cap’n,” he told Yaniriin as he started chopping off great hunks and clots and mats of felted hair that piled up at his feet, despite the prisoners’ anguished protests.

The creatures were bound tightly in the net and could not struggle very hard, but the net itself made Becker’s work difficult, as he could not get underneath it to work freely on his subjects. He had to make do as best he could, inserting his shears in between the webbing of the net and taking off a lock of hair here, a matted string of hair there.

He and the Linyaari loosened the nets just a bit, and as Becker pulled the captives’ wrists free of the hair, human and animal, covering them, he bound them securely with a couple of Red Bracelet restraints that he’d picked up along the way in his travels. The prisoners weren’t going any place now. They were disarmed, tied up, and in a space ship. These were definitely not high-tech warriors. It wasn’t going to be easy for them to escape.

As he finally began to make headway in his shearing, Becker saw that they only had a few teeth between them and those were all rotten, and that their skin was covered with injuries. “No wonder they’re so damned mean,” he said. “These guys must be in a world of hurt with those choppers and all these sores. I think I’m going to need a little Linyaari help here. Could somebody get a horn over here and heal these boys?” Several Linyaari stepped forward and laid their horns on the prisoners, who were unappreciative.

As Becker worked, he hummed to himself, a little tune he had learned on Kezdet as a child laborer, a lullaby some of the older children sang to the younger. His singing had a noticeable effect on the captives, who must at any rate have been tired from their fighting. They stopped struggling. In fact, eventually they seemed to find all these attentions soothing, maybe even reassuring, and they soon fell asleep.

“Will you look at that?” he asked the Linyaari. “Two little lambies counting sheep while I’m shearing them.”

As the hair mats piled up on the floor, human features emerged from beneath the overgrown beards, mustaches, and hair. Once the hairy outer layer was gone, it was clear that these were two young humanoid men, who had not been in very good shape, wearing animal skins over shredded clothing and pieces of metal armor, much rusted and dented. In some places they had had scars from where their armor had rubbed them raw. In others, their skin had healed right over the foreign material. And they had more than their share of old battle wounds, some healed, some still healing. The injuries eased even as Becker watched, thanks to the efforts of the Linyaari healers.

Miirl smiled a soft, close-mouthed smile that reminded him, not too strangely, of Acorna when she was amused. “I believe that is why your suggestion that we apply our horns to these fellows was a good one. The relief from the discomfort of their vermin and sores has allowed them to rest peacefully. Their teeth will take a little additional work to reconstruct, but the decay has been arrested. Their dispositions may be much improved as well, when they awaken, though one cannot predict that sort of thing.”

“Well, that’s the best I can do for them for now,” Becker told Miirl, Yaniriin, and the crew. “I haven’t got all day. Still have to dig Acorna and the boys out of the tunnel, and the cat. Who knows what the oxygen supply is like down there…” He slapped the newly bald, fully disarmed, cleaned, healed, and bound warriors each once lightly on the cheeks and said, “So come on, you sleeping beauties. Wake up and smell the tea!”

They instantly bolted awake, growling, but he smiled at them in a friendly way and said, “Okay, boys, let’s have it. We’d like to hear your life story, but names, ranks, and serial numbers will do for starters. If you want, you can save the rest till we get to the flaming-bamboo-under-the-fingernails portion of our conversation.”

“They do not understand,” Miirl said.

“Obviously. Didn’t expect them to. This calls for a more basic approach.” He tapped himself on the chest, “Me. Becker.” And pointed to them, “You?”

“Wat,” said the (formerly) red-haired one.

“Wat,” said the (formerly) dark-haired one.

“What?” asked Becker.

“Their names,” Miirl said, with Acorna-like gentleness that got Becker’s attention. “They are doing as you asked and telling you their names. Both are named Wat.”

“How’d you know that? I thought you needed me to translate—oh, I get it. You read them, huh?”

She nodded. “Their intention is clear. They are feeling much better. They are now trying to communicate with their new manservant, which is how they see you, since you are quite clearly not their mother.”

“We’ll just change
that
little notion,” Becker said, turning back to them. “Okay, you crewcut canaries, you speak Terran, I speak Terran, we should be able to come up with some kind of understanding but I need you to
sing.”

Both began babbling at once. As they talked, their voices rather nasal in a singsong rhythm that went up and down and up and down, with a few familiar words interspersed, Becker grinned.

“Oh, please do not frighten them by baring your teeth so, Captain,” Miirl said.

“I’m not scaring
them,
honey. Being scared of teeth is a Linyaari thing. I don’t believe it, but these guys are a cross between Beowulf and Chaucer! I’m pretty sure they’re gabbing at us in Old English. I’m not exactly fluent in it, but the old man—my Dad, I mean—and I used to play around with and read some of the epic sagas to each other when the salvage business was slow—real slow. This’ll be a piece of cake for you. You already have a lot of the words in the LAANYE, but it probably doesn’t recognize them on account of the accents. Now that they are cooperating, once you get the right mix in your translation, you’ll figure it out in no time flat. You guys are geniuses. Go on, try a question yourself. You’ll do better than me. I can’t read minds and you can. Besides, I can’t hang around here chewing the fat with these guys all day long. I have to go dig out my pals.”

“Very well, Captain Becker, we will try,” Yaniriin said. “But please stay to monitor our initial efforts and instruct us on how to improve them, before you return to your vital mission.”

“Sure thing, Cap’n, but make it snappy, will you? I’ve already lost a lot of time already—and Acorna, my feline first mate, and that other kid might be in real trouble. Mac can take care of himself, but I’m gonna have a few choice things to say when I catch up to him about letting the kiddies get into trouble.”

“We will not waste your time, Captain. Miirl,” Yaniriin said. “Would you like to try questioning these beings? You seem to have established an affinity with them already.”

“Just finishing adjustments on the LAANYE here, Captain. Oh, yes, I believe I have a couple of simple phrases in their tongue.

“Velcommen,” she said to the captives in an impeccable up and down nasal singsong that seemed to trip lightly from her Linyaari tongue. “Who are you? What do you want?”

They replied in a gabble so fast that even Becker couldn’t understand them, but Miirl gasped and stepped back a pace.

“What did they say?”

“They said they were something called liege men of what I gather is a sort of warlord named Bjorn. They tell me they came to hunt the four-legged unicorns and kill them to take them back to their master for the good their horns will do him. They want to kill our Ancestors!”

The two Wats were now leering and poking at each other.

Miirl looked horrified. “They say their master was particularly eager to get the horns when he sent them because he had just become lifemates with a very much younger lady named Ingeborg the Buxom, and our horns—or the horns of the four-leggeds—are believed to restore manhood.”

The men began shouting and pointing with their bound hands and trying to stomp their bound feet, sounding very commanding. “They say they have been wandering many years in their quest—that they had their hands on some of the four-legged unicorns when, all of a sudden, they fell into a deep sleep. When they awakened, the unicorns awoke, too, and bounded away—into a countryside these men had never seen before. But they recognize us as the descendants of the unicorns they hunted. They say that, now that they have us in their power, they demand our immediate and unconditional surrender.”

Becker laughed. “I’m starting to like these guys.”