Acorna’s Search (22 page)

“What is it?”

“We have a most important delegation arriving from narhii-Vhiliinyar. Their vessel requires refueling followed by immediate departure for Vhiliinyar.”

“Has this delegation no need to rest and refresh themselves for a night or two? Not,” he added, “that we are not rather crowded at the moment and our hospitality thus much poorer than our usual standards. But we would endeavor to make them comfortable.”

“Speed is of the essence, Uncle Hafiz. And this—delegation—requires absolute privacy, so we further request that only Linyaari people participate in the docking, refueling, and departure procedures.”

Hafiz sighed. Once more, he felt he was being insulted with mistrust, but he was nevertheless inclined to be magnanimous at this moment. He waved his hand dismissively. “So let it be done. It is all as one to me.”

As the council head turned to go he added, “If you see Madame Harakamian on your way out, would you tell her I have not yet finished instructing her as to my wishes, and require her presence again?”

“Certainly, Uncle Hafiz,” the council head agreed with a grave bow of the head, all the while wondering why, when Uncle Hafiz was so stern, Auntie Karina laughed and smiled so often.

Maati, Maarni, and Yiitir swam unguided and alone back out the darkened tunnel to the sea.

Maati was pretty sure the time thing had worked, because once they hit the water, the Ancestors vanished, and she knew they couldn’t have actually
gone
anywhere so quickly. But Khornya was not with them, as she had promised to be.

The older people were slightly confused, though Maarni pretended she knew exactly where she was going. The water seemed higher to Maati than it had been before, and there was stuff floating in it—not really dirty stuff, because their horns of course would purify the water around. But bits of metal and wood, glass, and plas that she felt, but couldn’t see very well.

She hoped with every stroke that the
sii
-Linyaari would return to the tunnel with Aari. It was spooky in here without them.

Once they got up to where the Ancestors lived, the walls lit up, but here they were left with only the sound of the water ricocheting around the high cavern ceiling. It reminded Maati of the sound inside her ears now that they were wet, all scritchy, pinging, and poppish.

But finally, after what seemed a very long time, she saw some brightness in the distance. She bumped into Maarni as the woman stopped in place, listening. There was a sound like the beating of a monster’s heart coming from beyond the tunnel.

“What
is
it?” Maati hissed, whispering.

Yiitir swam around his wife and on toward the light. “Girls, girls, it’s a pump. A large pump. My goodness, all our little escapades have made the two of you quite skittish. Some sort of work is taking place in the harbor.”

“Well, don’t reveal yourself in the open until you know what it is,” Maarni cautioned. “It could be the Khleevi for all we know. Or the Hosts. There’s no guarantee Khornya landed us at the proper moment.”

Maati gathered herself and swam even further than Yiitir. (Sure there is. Khornya wouldn’t have sent us unless she was sure.) She broadcast her thoughts, (Aari? Khornya? Thariinye? Anybody out there?)

For a moment it seemed as if the whole planet held its breath and she repeated, more feebly, (Anybody? It’s me, Maati, and Yiitir and Maarni are with me.)

(
Maati!
) The answering cry came from not just one, but many Linyaari consciousnesses, including one very special one in particular.

(Where have you been, brat? I’ve been—I mean, the council has been worried crazy!)

(Thariinye, I’ve been hiding just to make you mad,) she teased. (And so have Maarni and Yiitir. No, we’ve been time-traveling and we met the
sii
-Linyaari and ancient Ancestors and everything—did Aari come? Are the
sii
-Linyaari here? And Khornya? Is she here?)

(No, but one thing at a time, irritating Youngling. Where are you?)

She swam out to sea through the opening, which was now much shallower below and much larger above. Bouncing up and down in the water, she waved her arms. (Here! We’re here! Come bring a boat and get us. I am soooo tired of being wet!)

W
ith three more pairs of hands to help, Becker was able to expand the safety ring of irrigation far enough to accommodate landing area for two ships and three more shuttles. There had been no furthur Linyaari disappearances, and they had begun to retrieve their missing, so it was starting to look like their theory—he grinned to himself here—held water. When Hafiz’s equipment began arriving, soon after Maati and the others had been fished out of the sea, the network rapidly expanded.

At the suggestion of and with the help of the Linyaari engineers, the hole that had allowed the debris from the surface to collapse into the sea was expanded so that lines could be run up the column connecting the planet’s surface to the water of the ancient sea. This allowed a second network of irrigation troughs to feed directly from there.

Maati, Yiitir, and Maarni helped Becker locate the place where they had disappeared with Aari. This was the first place Acorna had wanted to make safe and, although three of the missing had returned, it was still the area closest to the lake site. Becker thought this was where Aari would probably return, and maybe Acorna, too.

“It’s amazing how much closer this is when we use your shuttle,” Yiitir remarked. “It took us a great deal of time and effort to walk from here to the city, didn’t it, ladies?”

Maati and Maarni agreed. Maati was pleased that the lines now made the site of the former waterfall safe. And the shuttle lost when Becker first arrived had reappeared over an irrigation ditch dug across the site where it had vanished. Amazingly, all hands were still on deck. It had been a triumphant moment for all of them.

Maati could scarcely believe they had been back only a day and a half—too much activity had been packed into the time for it to seem possible. They worked round the clock—digging, pumping, and laying hose, lines, and valves. Fortunately, there were machines that did most of the digging, with Mac pitching in where more finesse and intelligence were required than brute force.

Suddenly Maati heard Yiitir, who had been busy consulting with the engineers, exclaim to Maarni, “The Ancestors are coming! They’re on their way from MOO right now! According to our dispatcher, they insisted they were needed right here.”

“I can scarcely see the Ancestors in all this mess!” said Miryii, one of the engineers. “It will break their poor, old hearts to see their former planet reduced to this.”

“They’re a tougher lot than you might suppose,” Yiitir assured him.

When the ship carrying them landed, the Ancestors and their Attendants asked immediately to be taken to the Vriiniia Watiir and to the falls. At that point they demanded, quite shrilly, that a deep pond be dug immediately at a site they selected. Then it had to be filled immediately as well, never mind that the filling left the underground lake so low that some of the pumps could no longer pump to their irrigation lines. When the Linyaari attempted to explain this to them, the Attendants turned them away, said that the grandparents were weary from their trip, that the filling of the pond was well done and necessary, and that they could all go away and do their work elsewhere.

Since there was a great deal to do and enough equipment still functioning to start running a line toward where the crew of the
wii-Balakiire
disappeared, everyone but Maarni, Yiitir, Maati, and RK did as the Attendants suggested. Maati asked the Attendants if they could stay the night with the Ancestors.

The Attendant in rumpled lime and fuchsia looked like she was about to deny her request when the Ancestor with a blanket that color said, “Yes. Yes, we would like the company of these great-grandchildren. They have recently been among
our
Ancestors and we would like to hear of them.”

And so they all talked, and slept and—it seemed to Maati—waited.

Areel was the fastest and most powerful thing Acorna had ever traveled on, short of a space shuttle. And he
felt
even faster than one of those. He galloped so fast that the wind tore at her face and her hair, and once they were outside, clods of earth flew up and pelted her legs and sides. She still rode low over his neck, but once they were out of the tunnel, she hung onto his mane instead of riding with her arms around his neck.

She could run very swiftly herself, but how wonderful it must be to run like this. The Ancestors of her time deemed themselves too ancient or too important for this kind of race, but Areel gloried in it.

His endurance was greater than that of any living thing she had ever known. They ran far beyond the outskirts of the city, with pursuit still hot behind them. Looking back, she saw the Hosts following, flying, running, some on two legs and some on four. She wasn’t sure, but others seemed to be running on six legs or more. In and among them ran the Ancestors, trying to discourage them. She heard snatches of the thought-talk between them that flew into her mind, only to be whisked away as Areel’s feet ate up another furlong.

Finally, only two Hosts pursued them. The rest simply abandoned the chase. Acorna was exhausted just from riding, and she knew Areel must be even more tired than she was, though his pace never faltered. “Great-Grandfather, we have to stop. You must rest or you’ll surely die. And I have
got
to relieve myself.”

“Aaaaaah,” Areel said, taking care of his own need as she dismounted. She found herself so stiff and sore that she fell, and she had a much harder time than she would have imagined rising to her feet again. Areel, finished with his own task, inclined his head. “Take my mane, child. There. I have never had a rider before, but you made yourself no burden. Now, quickly. I will graze as you do what you must. You grab some grass as well.”

She did as he said and pulled up handsfull of grasses rather than waiting to graze. She wished they had stopped near running water. Her mouth and throat were terribly dry from the rush of air filling them as Areel ran. But he was saying, “They come. Hurry. To me.”

And behind them she heard the thought-broadcast, (Halt! Stop! We need you! Come back immediately!)

Nothing there to make her change her mind, although eventually, if they could reach a place where there was some tactical advantage, she would have to try to negotiate.

But not now. Behind her she saw a huge black bird and a vast, fast, gray beast with a white patch covering its back and front legs. She climbed back aboard Areel and they were off again.

The landscape grew familiar and she wondered where she had seen it. In her dreams perhaps? She had had such sweet dreams as a child of a homeworld she never knew. And by the time she found out that the homeworld must be Vhiliinyar, that world had been destroyed. So perhaps this was a site from her dreams.

Or was it something more recent?

That was it! Hafiz’s holo-projection of Vhiliinyar when it was done. This was a place she had seen there, except that when she saw it on the vid, it was from a different perspective.

Now Areel splashed into a great broad river, swimming toward the other side, when a huge blue-eyed leviathan swam up behind them. From its fin, a white garment fluttered.

“The co-parent of the
sii
-Linyaari,” Areel informed her. “And the first to disown our watery children when they were not as well-formed as had been hoped by the Hosts. For myself, I thought they were quite attractive in their own unique way.”

The leviathan was much faster than Areel in the water, and the huge black bird caught up with them quickly, too.

Meanwhile they were being swept downstream.

“Great-Grandfather, I know this place. There is a waterfall not far from here, a very steep one, and you will not be able to avoid it. I’m going to jump off now. You swim to shore and save yourself.”

“You will be killed!”

“Perhaps not. I have seen this place. I think I can swim to a spot I know and avoid the rocks,” she said, but it was a vain reassurance to save Areel from dying with her. She had seen the holo of the waterfall, true, but she had no idea where the rocks were. The holo had prettily covered these up with decorative sprays of spume.

“Even if you escape death or injury, the Hosts will recapture you,” Areel said.

“Then you and the other Ancestors will just have to rescue me again,” she said. “I have faith in your ability to do so. Thank you, and farewell.” And she slid off his reassuring bulk into the water.

She made an arrow of her slender body and swam with the current, shooting toward the falls more quickly than even the powerful leviathan chasing her could swim.

The water became rougher, stiff white ruffles around rocks with only small patches of silver-green water maintaining the flow to the falls. She was so busy dodging rocks she forgot her pursuit, forgot to see if Areel made it to the far shore or not, and even forgot about the fall itself.

Until the instant when she hung over the edge, looking down and down and down over a sheet of spraying white water into a white trimmed green pool below, and then she was diving, for she would not let herself fall uncontrolled to her death, not if she could help it, plunging straight for the pool. She heard a high shrill sound in her ears and it occurred to her halfway down that she was hearing her own scream.

A
corna dived deep, deep, deep into the pool and then, laying her hands to her sides, shot to the surface like a rocket. Flicking the hair from her eyes and the water from both, she peered through the blurs the drops made and saw an Ancestral form on the bank. “Areel! You made it! And so quickly.”

“Who are you calling, Areel, Youngling? And these days I don’t do
anything
quickly,” the Ancestor replied. And then she was seeing double, triple, and in even more multiples as all sorts of Ancestors herded together beside the pool.

“Khornya!” cried four Linyaari voices, and Acorna swirled in the water to see Maati, Thariinye, Maarni, and Yiitir watching her from the shore and waving. Maati dived in and came out to meet her, pulling her to shore by the hand. “I don’t get it!” the girl exclaimed. “How did the Ancestors
know
? They had us dig this pool, then we all just sat and waited for you to pop out of it!”

“Hmph,” snorted the lime and fuchsia bedecked Ancestor. “That’s for us to know and you to find out, if you’re a very studious and clever girl, Youngling.”

“Still, Grandmother, you must admit it’s a good thing Khornya came to inquire about our ancient writings, or you and the other Ancestors might not have recalled the prophecy in time to fulfill it.”

“Nonsense. It was a prophecy. Of course we fulfilled it,” snapped the first Ancestor. “Now that the girl’s had her soft landing, let’s desalinate this frogpond and have us a nice cool drink. Nothing in this Friend-forsaken place to eat or drink. I’d take a bite out of one of the Khleevi themselves if they were here, I’m so disgusted with what they’ve done to our Home.”

RK hopped onto Acorna’s shoulder and began grooming her wet face and hair, which made verbal conversation difficult. Maati and the others led her back to a shuttle, and then down to the tunnel. On the way, she called Yaniriin and asked him to patch her through to Hafiz.

“It is good to hear your voice, child of my heart,” Hafiz said. “You are safe? Well?”

“Yes,” she said, rejoicing in her salvation. But then Acorna’s voice was slowing down and she found it hard to respond to the questions he asked her. She didn’t need to ask her own question. Aari had not returned. He was not here. Had he been, there would be no need to ask. He would have been with the others at the pool. She would have heard him in her mind the instant she had surfaced in her own time.

She didn’t allow herself to brood, however. She knew that wherever he was, he would find a way to return to her. Or she would find him. It was just a matter of time.

As the irrigation systems hydrated more and more of the sites where Linyaari explorers had vanished, Acorna helped to retrieve the missing Survey teams by working with the time machine, locating the appropriate dots of light, and helping the crews make sure that the fresh water flowed where the people were landing in this time.

Neeva and the crew of the
wii-Balakiire
returned with their pockets loaded with detailed drawings and notations about the planet as it had been before the Khleevi, with soil, plant, and grass samples—even examples of insect life.

When their collecting met with the admiration of the hydraulics crews, Melireenya said, “We simply treated it as another diplomatic expedition, gathering all the information we could about our surroundings. We knew where we were, although we didn’t know when—the area was totally unpopulated, which was certainly not the case shortly before the Khleevi came.”

“You must have been there sometime between the period when ancient Kubiilikaan disappeared and the period when our people became more populous,” Yiitir told her. “Of course, we now know the city didn’t actually disappear. It was deliberately buried and covered over with meadow.”

“We’ve been studying the writings on the walls of the old city, and when he has time, Maak has helped us with his translations,” Maarni said. “And we’ve made copies of the glyphs and their meanings—”

“Which she just happens to have in her shipsuit pockets,” Yiitir said with a wry smile. “In case you’d like to see. Along with the holos of the grandchildren.”

Maarni stuck out her tongue at him.

The crews were busily realigning the hydraulics to cover the distance between the sea and the former base camp. Neeva, Khaari, Melireenya, Hrronye, Maati, Thariinye, RK, Yiitir, Maarni, and Acorna remained within the protected area atop the buried city. Already the increased flow of fresh clean water was causing small, healthy plant life to pop up all over the sites they had irrigated. Tiny star-shaped white and yellow blossoms, furry coverings of lichens on blasted stone, even a bristle of grass formed a meadow of sorts. Here the lot of them sat, munching on packaged leaves and seeds, while Maarni pulled out her findings and smoothed them on the ground for all to examine.

“You see here, this falcon-headed glyph with a woman’s body? Up to this point she is in the guise of the Leader, or Highmagistrate and scientist/mage.”

“Highmagister,” Acorna supplied. “She was called Highmagister HaGurdy.”

“Yes. Oh! I see. That’s what this character here means. It’s a proper name. Thank you, Khornya. Well, as you can see, here she is wearing the coat of high office and that light around her head indicates power. We see in this panel what looks like the punishment of a Linyaari criminal, significant because until this point, no other Linyaari appear in any of the glyphs.”

“That was no criminal,” Acorna said. “That’s Aari. She wanted to use him as a shortcut to building our genetic structure. But she tried to do it without his consent.”

“Ahhhh—well, yes, that begins to explain things.” Maarni waited, in case Acorna had anything further to add. She had not spoken or projected thoughts to anyone since her return about what had happened to her on her journey. While she did not appear to have been injured in any way, her attitude of thoughtful withdrawal worried her friends. These comments were the first any of them had had from her indicating what had happened in the Hosts’ chambers once she had returned Maarni, Maati, and Yiitir to their own time.

“The figure that was Aari simply disappears and is not seen again in any of the glyphs. However, the female Linyaari figure who appears here—why, that must be you, Khornya!”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Maarni said, “I want you all to know that I obtained permission from the Ancestors and the Attendants to share this information with our people. Prior to this time, even this record has been kept as the sacred secret of the Ancestors. I believe in light of what we know from our personal experience that perhaps from the most ancient Ancestors to the present ones, they were wise enough that they did not wish their descendants to think badly of half of their lineage.”

“So the stories Grandam told me and the ones told to her were the versions the Ancestors edited to make them suitable for children?” Maati asked.

“Yes,” Maarni told her. “The Ancestors place a high value on peace and contentment, as do most of us, and knowing about the—tempestuous side of the family—would be upsetting to some and perhaps have had a bad influence on some of the youngsters. Now the Ancestors feel that the truth has come out, but that our race has endured times that make us long more than ever for peace and contentment. Enough time has passed that much can be forgiven. Perhaps, also, the Hosts don’t seem so bad when one knows about the Khleevi.”

“No,” Acorna said, closely scrutinizing one of the star-shaped blossoms as she spoke. “Though it seems more of a betrayal when it comes from those who are kin than those who are clearly enemy and alien.”

“You see here now the story I told you of the origin of the falls. At least we thought it was the origin of the falls, but it seems the story was actually a creation story of the pool. The version we found on the walls shows the falcon with the woman’s body and all of these other strange-looking creatures, interspersed with Ancestors, chasing what looks like a two headed ancestor—”

“That would be Great-Grandsire Areel with me on his back,” Acorna said. “The Ancestors intervened when Highmagister HaGurdy would have used me to replace Aari in her experiments.”

“Here,” Maarni’s finger stabbed at a picture of the two-headed unicorn with a wave halfway up his body to indicate the river. “We see the pursued creature—Areel and Khornya, in the water but not until here—” she tapped a later picture, where a pool surrounded by Ancestors received the body of a falling Linyaari superimposed on what was clearly supposed to be a waterfall, “do we see that there is a Cascade there. This glyph must have come from a private story of the Ancestors…”

Behind her, a standing figure cleared her throat. “After your visit, the Ancestors recalled the prophecy of Grandam Gladiis. It was she who saw you fall into the future, to be saved from the waters of the past by those of the present day. Everyone thought Grandam Gladiis had gone a bit gaga when she made her prophecy, but the Ancestors decided differently when they heard of the time machine. Once they knew that you’d gone missing, they realized that they were the ones to do the saving, and you were the one to be saved and they—er—sprang into action, after their fashion, that is.”

Acorna smiled broadly for the first time since she’d returned and Maati smiled even more broadly in appreciation of it. “Once more I benefit from their wisdom and insight,” Acorna said.

Maarni said, “And as you can see here, once this waterfall glyph appears, the light disappears from around the bird-woman’s head and she is always shown with wings folded. Here she and her fellows help with the birth of the Linyaari—you can see a line of them there. But then there follows a glyph—this one, which says that all lab-conceived Linyaari were sent immediately to the Ancestors for nurturance for their first few years. Later, those who wished to returned to the city for their education. But you see from this other figure—this one here, the woman with the bear’s head, that the bird-woman’s power was diminished and soon she is shown entering one of the ship glyphs. More and more of them disappear. There are three panels of what appear to be grown Linyaari inside the city building towers and carrying sun-shapes on their shoulders along with the Hosts.”

“Those are the globes at the top of the buildings!” Thariinye said.

“Other Linyaari figures,” Maarni continued, “meanwhile, are shown building the ceiling and covering it over with soil and trees. Even the sea is divided between the upper world and the lower.”

“And then the last of the Host figures are shown entering the ship glyphs and are not seen in further drawings. For a time the city is shown to be lit by the globes with some of the Linyaari involved in technological activities below, while others, in ships much as we know them now, are shown coming and going from the planet, and engaged in a different level of technical activity on the surface. Here is the final glyph of the city, indicated by the column with the rayless globe, no longer accompanied by Linyaari figures. And this symbol here,” she tapped a horizontal doorway, “which appeared earlier in the open position between the caverns and the city, is shown locked, or sealed shut.”

Acorna turned to the Attendant who had spoken earlier. “Do the Ancestors recall any other apocryphal material about a Linyaari like Aari entering at any other time?”

The Attendant shook her head. “I’m sorry, Khornya. No. If they remember anything, I will notify you at once.”

“How about the
sii
-Linyaari?” Maati asked.

“After the initial glyphs, they are not mentioned again,” Maarni said. “Of course, we know now it’s because they vanished in time.”

“Oh, I hope they didn’t go to a time when the water was too foul for them to live,” Maati said. “But—but they should have come out at the same time as Aari, right? So he could have purified it for them.”

“The entire sea? Always?” Yiitir shook his head. “Doubtful, I’m afraid.”

With a roar, the
Condor
’s shuttle landed nearby and Becker alighted. RK yawned, stretched himself off Maati’s lap, and sauntered over to greet the Captain. “We have the water in place, Princess, if you want to go work the way-back machine and see if you can find Aari and the
aagroni
and the rest of your scientists and bring ’em back alive.”

Before becoming involved with the rescue efforts, Acorna had barely known many of the people who disappeared, but that had changed. Now she carried a palm-held computer stocked with pictures, anecdotes, resumes, preferences, passions, and stories from loved ones about each person. Now she felt she knew each of them much better than she had known any of them to begin with. If she was to use psychic energy to help locate and bring them home, she had to know who they really were.

She found the base camp location, near the old graveyard and Aari’s cave. Then she concentrated mostly on the
aagroni,
Kaarlye, and Miiri, at first, then on Lareel and Liimi, Faarli and Paari, Seela and Kewmii.

As she concentrated, she held her hand against the map and watched carefully. Her reward was fourteen white lights widely dispersed from the original area, which no longer bore the topography of the ruined planet, but instead included rivers, streams, foothills, and forests as well as pastures. Other lifeforms, indicated by lights of different colors and intensities, moved among the white lights. Why were they so scattered? That was going to make them much more difficult to bring back.

The heavy shielding that had confounded the surveillance ships when Acorna and the others first explored the caverns and city had been partially removed. Through the breach, Acorna was able to send the Linyaari engineers at the base camp a picture of where each white light was, so they could distribute their irrigation ditches appropriately. But if these people kept moving, it would be hard to bring them home.

Once she located the lost Survey team members, she returned with Becker to the base camp. By the time they arrived there, so had several of the missing people. She saw at once why they had been so scattered when she’d seen them. They were scientists. They’d been collecting specimens, of course. Their hands were full and pockets stuffed with all manner of plant life, and any animal small or cooperative enough to come along. The
aagroni
and Kaarlye and Miiri arrived with three species of birds nesting in their manes and some small furry rodent-like creatures in their shirts. Miiri was leading what looked like some kind of baby deer, while Kaarlye had a pair of bear-like creatures clinging to each hand. The
aagroni
’s shirt was stuffed with the Vhiliinyar equivalent of rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and a large bird, a gooselike creature which had fouled—or perhaps fowled?—the inside of the
aagroni
’s shipsuit.