Acorna’s Search (18 page)

“O
h, Captain Becker!” Acorna cried. “Thank goodness you have come! Our Ancestral Hosts have this machine here, and I believe it allows time travel. Help me fix it so that I can fetch our people back, please. I believe they have become lost in time.”

“Is that what is going on?” Becker asked. “No problem. We’ll have ’er fixed in a jiffy.”

“What is a jiffy?” Thariinye inquired.

“Another time thing,” Becker said. In an aside to Acorna, he said, “Why don’t you let
him
fetch your lost ones back, Princess? You’re handy to have around and he’d be no great loss.”

“I heard that,” Thariinye said, with a curious combination of indignation
and
dignity. “And I think it highly premature to start talking about who is useful and who is not until we have determined how this device works and how best to retrieve our missing friends.”

“I have a few hypotheses, based on the data at hand,” Mac said. He was applying pressure to the map rapidly and repeatedly and storing the data it presented as it changed.

“You’d better be careful there, buddy, you could maybe break that thing,” Becker cautioned. “It’s an antique. In fact—wheeheee, would you look at this place! This would be some very high class salvage.” He saw Thariinye’s horrified look and Acorna’s rather stricken one of disappointment in his attitude toward her people’s ancient secrets and said quickly, “Just kidding, guys. Honest.”

“I hope so, Captain. Right now we need to concentrate on how to use this machinery, not what you could sell it for on an open market. You see there, those white lights we believe represent our people,” Acorna told him, pointing them out as the shape of the map changed over and over under Mac’s direction. “The maps overall represent the planet’s surface at different times in its history. Mac, can you show the Captain the schematic we found earlier?”

“Yes, Khornya. It required eight presses of your hand.” But as Mac attempted to do the same thing, and he came up with several different maps in which white lights appeared, he could not return them to the same one. “Hmmm,” he said. “I am sure there is a pattern here if one can locate it. Perhaps you should try again, Khornya,” Mac said, stepping aside before he added an unscientific comment that surprised her. “It seems to prefer you.”

Maybe it did. What could she do that Mac couldn’t? She was telepathic, an ability she supposedly had inherited from both sets of her ancient ancestors. This was an artifact created by those very ancestors. Maybe the map worked with telepathy—could it show the viewers the time they needed to see based on what it knew of their thoughts? Telepathy, after all, was a form of energy…

She wanted to concentrate on her friends but instead she projected a thought image of the silver threads connecting this subterranean chamber and its strange device to the surface. That image appeared on the wall, still showing ragged tatters and blobs among the silver extensions as they branched out above ground.

“Hmm,” Becker said.

Acorna noticed something about the map she hadn’t noticed previously.

“Look at this trunk-line here—running away from this room and downward,” she said, tracing it with her finger. “It comes from the sea.”

“Hmmm,” Becker said again.

“I think I see a pattern here. Our site in the Survey was beside what used to be a great waterfall. The
wii-Balakiire
was investigating the terrain near a former riverbed. Aari’s cave and the graves were located along the shoreline of another one of the seas, if I remember the details correctly from the maps we had of the planet from the time period immediately pre-Khleevi. Water seems to be a thread that connects every disappearance for which we have enough data to make a surmise.”

“I have an idea!” Thariinye exclaimed suddenly. “What if this supposed time force is conducted by the waters of this planet?”

Acorna had to laugh. “Thariinye, that’s what I just said.”

He looked puzzled. “Well, of course, Khornya. But I said it better. What do you think of my idea?”

Acorna rolled her eyes but remained silent.

“I don’t quite get it yet,” Becker said. “There’s no water to speak of left on the surface of this planet anymore. And that’s where everybody disappeared from. So how could the disappearances be triggered by water?”

“It’s just a theory,” Acorna admitted. “But there is plenty of water down here in this ancient city, and there was enough to grow vegetation in our Survey quadrant and so there may be more water out there than we know—let me see if I can get this to return to the time just before Aari and the others disappeared. What time-frame would best suit that—I know! When RK got in trouble with the carnivore plants.” She visualized the cat and the plant and when the map for that time appeared with their own small white lights and the cat’s showing on the screen, she imagined the diagram of the silvery energy superimposed on it.

“You may just have a point!” Becker said. “The silvery stuff is still all around, but it’s just attached to random bits of water or moisture now—nothing to conduct it in a reasonable way. I guess it’s gone a little haywire as a consequence. Which could be why people started popping off. Looks to me like if we could get the hydraulics going again at least well enough to get the energy channeled back into its old paths, it might stabilize, and if it stabilizes, well, I’m not sure how it would help exactly but seems to me we’d be closer to some answers. And maybe closer to controlling it well enough to bring some old friends home.”

“Why would anyone send time energy through water?” Thariinye asked.

“Hey, why not? How do we know what a bunch of your crazy Ancestors were thinking?” Becker asked. “You know all those songs the Ancestors sing about the rivers of time and the endless sea of life and so forth—maybe some Ancestral Friend took them seriously! Actually, it seems to me that if anything could hold a lot of time, water could—it’s the original deal they were talking about with the saying ‘what goes around comes around.’”

“I never thought of it that way, but then, Linyaari songs and poems are more about the tall stalks growing beside the water than about the water itself,” Thariinye said. “Still, I fail to understand why we wouldn’t know about the time-travel technology from the tales of the Ancestors. Surely, if the Hosts put so much emphasis on time transference as this room indicates, it would still be evident in the stories the Ancestors or the Linyaari tell today. I don’t recall any of the Elders ever speaking of time technology among our people, not in their lifetimes nor in the days of the Ancestors. The Ancestors didn’t say anything about it to you, did they, Khornya?”

“Well, I know of some references to time in the Attendants’ writings, actually,” she said. “In the glyphs we read back in the Ancestors’ cave. But they seemed cryptic to me when I read them. Now, however…yes, it’s starting to make sense. A little, anyway. I think that the truth is that this technology was entirely one for the Hosts, not something our people adopted for their own at any point. Perhaps by the time our own people evolved enough to use it on their own, this city had vanished into legend and the time-travel mechanisms along with it. Perhaps as long as its normal conduits were available, the—power—was dormant, turned off—and we never knew it was there.”

“But by the time the Khleevi finished trashing the planet, the damage they did to the water table which made up the circuitry for the time force kinda shorted it out,” Becker said. He gave a half shrug and a grimace. “I think it’s worth a try to see if we’re right. Y’know, it makes as much sense as wormholes as a way to move through time and space. We know those old Hosts really got around the galaxy. Maybe this is how they did it.”

Acorna said, “If we are right, I am worried about the consequences of it. It could take us months, even years, to reestablish the waterways on Vhiliinyar in their proper places, and Aari is in trouble now. I heard him, Captain, and I know. Something is very wrong with him, wherever he is.”

“You heard him?” Becker asked. “Across time and all? Are you sure—what am I saying? Of course you’re sure. But, do you think maybe it’s just that he’s lost and missing you?”

“No,” she said. “He was afraid. He was in trouble. If he is in danger, then it is fair to assume the others are, too. We need a solution that will work now.”

“Now, huh?” Becker snapped his fingers. “I know. Why should we wait for terraforming? We can run water lines from this lake here to the surface right this instant. I’ve even got a salvaged pump that would be just the ticket somewhere on the MOO, and I bet Hafiz could rustle up a drilling rig.”

“There’s not enough water here to restore the entire planet’s former river systems, Captain,” Mac pointed out.

“Not to do them all at once, no, but if we could get a couple of them working, string them out, see if the time force is attracted back into it again long enough for us to get back the folks who disappeared from just those areas—we can use this map deal to tell where they are now—that we can do, and it shouldn’t take much time. I’ll go get the hardware we’ll need if you kids want to stay here and figure this thing out. We need to plot out where and when everybody is. Mac can store the data in his banks. I’ll be back in a jiffy—relatively speaking. There’s a tricky bit of space between here and MOO I can use as a shortcut. So, wait for me, right?”

Acorna nodded absently, and stared back over her shoulder at the wall. Could Aari wait while they tried this? Could any of the others? What if it didn’t work? She couldn’t let herself think of that…. She was secretly relieved that Becker’s plan would mean it would be easiest to retrieve those who had disappeared closest to the hidden lake first. That would mean Aari and Maati would be the first of the lost ones they would try to retrieve. She could not in good conscience have put her own family and friends ahead of the others who had disappeared—people like Yaniriin’s wife, for instance. But she
knew
Aari was in trouble and she had felt throughout the discussion with Becker as if her skin would fly off if she couldn’t do something to help him right away.

“Speaking of moisture, you guys got anything to eat or drink down here?” Becker asked.

“We have some provisions left in our packs,” Thariinye said. “Though I did eat and drink most of mine on the climb to the ceiling.”

Becker looked puzzled.

“He means the city’s ceiling, Captain,” Mac enlightened him. “This city has been roofed. Quite a sturdy job too. Even the Khleevi damage has only breached it in a few places—such as the debris in the middle of the sea or lake.”

“Hmph,” Becker said. “You know, that’s another possibility. Whatever’s going wrong could be a combination of the lack of surface moisture and contamination from the Khleevi scat in the main conductor, so to speak. Might be worth tackling that one—clean up the mess, so to speak. I figure we can’t afford not to try all the possible solutions we can think of to fix this mess back up again. So, Princess, you and Thariinye might want to see about maybe purifying that lake before I get back. Just in case. Also, try to get some rest. I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna be busy for the next little while once I return. Mac, come on back with me to the ship and I’ll give you some grub to bring back. No sense starving if you don’t have to—”

“No cat food, please, Captain,” Thariinye pleaded.

“Why not?” Becker asked, pretending to misunderstand as he rubbed the head of RK, who had been uncommonly quiet and thoughtful throughout the whole encounter. “Cat’s gotta eat, too. But no, I still have your garden. I’ll send some fresh stuff.”

Acorna gave him a somewhat distracted embrace. “Thank you, Captain.”

“You stay out of trouble till I get back, Princess, okay? And don’t worry about Aari so much. From the looks of that map, the planet looked a whole lot better where he is now than it did when the Khleevi had him. Or than it does from where I stand at this very moment. So he’s not dealing with the Khleevi and he’s not stuck in some ecological disaster left behind by them. Before the big bugs got here, the way I understand it, there was nothing on Vhiliinyar that would hurt a fly, much less somebody as tough as Aari.”

But after examining this ruined city and listening to Aari’s panicked mental cry, Acorna was beginning to wonder if what the Linyaari had been given to understand from their history and the Elder’s old tales might have been altered to seem more peaceful and harmless than had actually been the case.

M
aati shrieked as she plummeted into the water and felt long, twisty tentacles pulling her down. When she opened her eyes, she tried to shriek again, and swallowed water instead. The
sii
-Linyaari were certainly not a race
she’d
ever be tempted to crossbreed with. Not that that was an issue if she drowned out here.

(No one has asked you to crossbreed,
frii,
have they?) said someone very scaly, with a head full of small but lethal-looking horns. His thought in her head appeared in a bubble and sounded deep as the ocean.

(It’s very rude to eavesdrop on someone’s thoughts without their permission!) Maati shot back, since if she was going to drown, she didn’t want to be insulted while she was doing it. (You have only yourself to blame if you don’t like what you hear.)

(Look, Ma, they have legs!) said another one of the strange creatures, this one smaller and floating just below Maati.

(And just one horn, like your grandparents,) observed another, floating on the surface and touching Yiitir’s horn. Maati could not see her well, but judged the being to be female by the thought-forms. Though she was beginning to worry a lot more about breathing than she was about what the strange creatures around her looked like!

(No need to get personal!) Yiitir said.

(Please,) Maarni said to the creatures crowding around her. (You don’t have to drown us to see what we’re like. We need to breathe to survive. We’ll be happy to sit on the bank of that island over there so you can examine the differences between yourselves and us. We want to see you just as much as you want to see us. There’s no need to be angry or hostile. We came to see you because we have heard of you and we wish to know more about you.)

(How can that be?) the horny-headed one asked, but as he asked—for Maati felt surely the creature had to be male—he backed away and let her bob to the surface. Once she surfaced, she found a shelf of land beneath her feet and was able to walk ashore. Maarni and Yiitir followed easily behind her. (How can you have heard of us? We have been alive but a single generation from our making. I was the firstborn, followed by others, some siblings, some of different parenting, so that we might breed. That was their intent. They thought better of it when they saw me,) he thought irritably.

Maati, safely on the shore now, lay on the beach on her stomach so she was staring face-first into the water. It seemed only polite to be on the same level with these beings. And now that she was, she saw that the horny-headed one was the most hideous of the lot. Two obviously female
sii
-Linyaari, aqua blue of skin and silver of horn, with only small bumps along the spine and top of the head, were actually quite beautiful. Their cranial bumps were surrounded with long thick strands of silvery hair floating away from their faces.

Maarni was thrilled. (Now you can see how the legends of the foam being the hair of the
sii
-Linyaari began. Aren’t they fabulous?)

Maati found it easier to agree now that they had stopped trying to drown her. And while the one child in this grouping had seemed ugly to her, with his scalp full of vestigial horns instead of hair, his brother, who had the same feature, was much more attractive, perhaps because his eyes were a bit less prominent, and because he had hair like that of the females. Not that her opinion of their appearance mattered in any way. She was sure that, like all beings, they had their own ways of judging each other’s attractiveness.

Seated a little farther away, Maarni was getting to work collecting data. She was nothing if not single-minded, and as soon as she had beached herself asked the group peering up from the water, (So, if your people have only recently been created, I suppose you have no legends or stories to share with me?)

(I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,) the horn-headed male replied, allowing himself to wallow in the shallows and blowing a spume of water to fountain up and fall back down to the surface. (But I’ve a thing or two to ask you before we say any more.)

(What?) Maati, Maarni, and Yiitir all said at once.

(Just this. You,) and he nodded toward Maati, (you are a youngling, barely more than a
frii,
whereas you two are older than me, I’d judge, and I am the eldest among my kind. Yet we have never seen your kind before, and presume you must be the latest attempts. Is this true and if so, how did they manage to vary your ages so?)

Maati immediately saw the difficulty Aari had been talking about, with possibly changing the course of history with their presence, but Yiitir, who had expressed some reservations about it, too, blithely answered the
sii
being.

(We are not newly created. In our own time, we’re already a race well established on the planet. Your race is no longer there, however, and we have been wondering what happened to you.)

(Couldn’t tell you that since as you can see, we are here,) the male replied. (But we’re few and spawning is not easy. Also, there are large predators in these waters and we are easy prey. And the water we live in, as you may have observed, is unclean…)

(No, it isn’t,) Maarni said. (Look at it.)

They murmured among themselves, small words that made bubbles below the surface, like the bubbles that contained their thoughts when they arrived in Maati’s head. One of the females ran her webbed hand along the surface, and said, (Look, Upp, no film clings to me! The water surface no longer shines with the rainbows of its destruction.)

(You have the power! The power to cure. They gave you the power we were denied!) the big male, apparently the Upp the female had been addressing, said accusingly.

(Why are you so upset?) Maati asked. (We cleaned your home for you. You should say “thank you.”)

(It’s not their fault, Upp,) the female with the filmless hand told her mate. (Their blending succeeded in that way, ours failed. Our four-legged parents care for us just the same.)

(And the Changing Ones consider us accidents of the lesser parts of their nature because of it,) Upp said bitterly.

(Changing Ones?)

(Our parents-who-are-not-unicorns. The shape changers.) This information appeared in a series of bubbles within bubbles, no doubt a result of the thoughts and concepts translating from the
sii
-Linyaari dialect to the modern speech Maati and the others understood.

Before anyone could say or think anything further, one of the great ships they had seen before as they journeyed on the river hove round the island and the sailors, gathered at the railing and looking very threatening, broadcasted: (You pond scum monsters cease menacing those people at once, or so help us we will beach you.) Then their thoughts turned solicitous, but in a way Maati didn’t care for, (You there, guests, are you unharmed?)

Maati scowled toward the ship, angry about the threat to the
sii
-Linyaari. But Yiitir said, (We are quite well, thank you for your concern, but were enjoying a private conversation.) He said this quite as if everything, including themselves, was normal and under control. Maati’s scowl broke up as she failed to control a giggle. A nervous giggle, but a giggle nonetheless. They all waved nonchalantly at the watchers on the ship.

(That won’t be enough for them. If you want to learn more, and can swim, come with us to see our horned parents,) the male said, in a tightly controlled thought-whisper.

Maati felt a glimmer of hesitation from Yiitir, but Maarni dove right in. Maati did, too, and felt the impact in the water as Yiitir joined her. The
sii
-Linyaari dove deep and swam underwater as they rounded the island and headed back toward the shoreline. One of them, observing Maati’s unfamiliarity with moving through the water, towed her along behind him. Once they were safely on the other side of the island, out of sight of the ship, the land Linyaari surfaced for air, then dove back under while the
sii
-Linyaari fanned their fish tails impatiently.

The
sii
-Linyaari, except for Maati’s guide and helper, were dark and dappled shapes above and surrounding them. Then one of the
sii
-children swam under Maati, popping up between her legs, swimming over the top of her and dropping down to back-paddle in front of her face in a most annoying fashion.

But it turned out that the little
sii-
Linyaari was doing more than playing. As a solid wall of land loomed in front of them and she saw nothing to do but surface, the child motioned with webbed palms down for her to stay submerged, then, still back-paddling, began to twitch its small webbed fingers backward, guiding her to follow it.

The
sii
-Linyaari had stopped broadcasting thoughts and Maati realized that the sailors probably possessed telepathy, too.

Ahead of her, she saw the soles of Maarni’s feet disappear into what looked like an unbroken landmass, followed quickly by the flirt of two different tails. The child turned suddenly and thrust an arm into the bank and Maati saw the opening. When the child saw that she saw, it turned and slipped into the bank. Maati found it was much larger than it looked, but she still was able to guide herself with her hands on both sides for a yard or two until the space widened out enough for them to swim three abreast.

She considered herself a pretty fair survivor, having come all this way, but now her breath was running out. Could she make it, or would she drown here?

Suddenly, the tails and feet of those ahead of her turned sharply upwards. She righted herself, too, and found that with two strokes her head was once more above water. They were in an underwater grotto, deep enough to swim in, but with a good layer of air above their heads as well. They swam in silence down long stretches as the cave ceilings rose higher and higher above their heads. The water was pitch black, and very cold.

The
frii
began frolicking up the stream as they swam further in and their shrill repetitive voices broadcast their thoughts, the thought bubbles bursting after every utterance, (Going to Granny’s! POP! Going to Granny’s! POP!)

Up ahead, suddenly, Maati saw them, Ancestors, standing four abreast and at least twenty deep just uphill from where water met dry cave floor.

(Lookit there, Gladiis, it’s our web-footed offspring, come to pay their respects!)

(And see what we brought you! POP!) cried Maati’s young guide.

(I hope it’s some of that nice seaweed you brought last time,) the Ancestor just behind the one addressed as Gladiis said and others showed enthusiastic agreement ruffling air through their nostrils.

(Better! POP! We brought cousins from the future who say they’re your descendants, too! POP! But be prepared! POP! They’re not as pretty as we are, really funny looking! POP!)

(And very, very cold,) Maarni added through her chattering teeth as they swam up to the cloven hooves of the ancestors.

(They are
land
creatures, with two feet and horns! POP!) Maati’s
frii
friend explained before anyone else could, or the Ancestors could figure it out for themselves.

(They are, and this bears repeating,) Yiitir said, (freezing. They need to get warm and dry at once.)

The Ancestors took several steps backwards, their telepathy allowing them to march to the rear like precision dancers. Which was a good thing because they had crowded very close together and could have injured each other or at least knocked the foremost among their number into the water had they not all understood the intent to make room at the landing.

Getting out was a slippery operation for the Linyaari, since the water met the landing where the pavement sloped sharply downhill. It was all but impossible to get one’s feet under one, but Maati’s little guide boosted her from the rear and one of the Ancestors graciously bent his neck so she could grab hold of his mane. She, as the youngest and most agile, was first out, and helped Maarni and Yiitir next.

“Oooooh, look at them, Humiir!” the Ancestor addressed as Gladiis cried aloud with a little whinny.

“Yes, funny looking things, but kind of cute,” Humiir agreed. The other Ancestors closed around them, warming them with their heat and using horns to take the chill off their puckered and goose-bumped flesh.

“It seems to me if they’d wanted legs and horns, four were better than two,” another of the Ancestors said critically.

“Yes, but the Changers wanted the new ones to be part of each of us, Host and People of the Horn,” Gladiis replied. “I think they’re just lovely, really.”

“Hmph. I suppose we’ll be seeing little feathered replicas of ourselves with wings, next thing we know,” the other replied.

“When did they make you?” Humiir asked, nudging Yiitir with his nose. “You are an old one. That is a young one. They have not showed us your kind before. They
always
show us. When were you made?”

(My question exactly, Father Humiir,) Upp said. (Hang onto your horn. You won’t believe their answer!)

Yiitir repeated his explanation about coming from the future and Humiir grunted. The others made assenting noises.

(How does that happen?) Upp wanted to know.

“It is more of the magic they call science,” Gladiis told him. “They used their ability to change times when they brought us here too. By the time they were able to respond to our call for help, we were all but extinct. Humiir and I were the last of our kind on our old world and we were snatched from the very grip of death so quickly that death itself—in the form of two of the barbarians who had killed so many of us—were taken up with us.”

Humiir gave a braying laugh. “You should have seen their faces! Our Hosts hauled them away and secluded them. They don’t believe in killing anything, the Hosts don’t, which came as a disappointment to Gladiis and me. Oh, how I wanted to get my horn into one of them!”