Second Wave (19 page)

“Her ’n’ her family—some kinda Linyaari Mafiosi is my guess.”

“Well, the one I know can not only clear the plague, she can tell if it’s even still there or not. Besides which, she knows the location of a treasure ship from Dinero Grande and is on her way there even now. That’s why I need the ship and the minions. Got to catch up with her.”

“Cut you out, did she?”

“You could say, yeah. So how about it?”

“Just so happens we have agents on their way to Solojo for some of the reasons you mentioned in the first place. If they reckoned it was worth their while, they might agree to an alteration in their plans. Of course, if things is different than what you say, your life expectancy is going to diminish sharpish.”

“Understood,” Marl said. “I’m in the com room now. Give me their coordinates, and I’ll patch us through.”

By the time he’d finished his com-ferring with them all and was ready to descend and go wait for his lift, he was sweating profusely. The agents were unknown to him personally, but he had heard of this kind of person. They’d evidently weathered the plague in good shape because there were several adult males among them, swarthy, with colorful personal adornments both on and in their skins. They grinned at him a lot, which was not reassuring. Their teeth weren’t all in the best shape, but there were quite a lot of teeth among them, and most of them had been filed to sharp points.

He had been so engrossed in conducting his own business that he hadn’t paid much attention to the pallets still zipping around. But as he ended his transmission, he glanced over at one that hovered to the left and slightly lower than his own.

He had been wrong to assume that it was empty. It was not.

Chapter 17

B
ut I want to see them—in person,” Narhii argued. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, really. She’d been meek and humble her entire life, but having taken the step of leaving the Friends with their laboratories and their mind probes and their need to control everything, she wasn’t about to be thwarted now. The female sitting next to her in the flitter was a relative, but not the right one.

“You should take me,”
Narhii told her, pitching her thought to the same level she had used to convince the Friends to do as she wished.
“It will be all right. I can cure them.”

Her father’s sister shook her head as if Narhii had spoken aloud. “I can’t do that, you know. And if we can’t heal them, and the ancestors can’t, you can’t either.”

Narhii said nothing. So here she was among relatives and people like herself and that was good. But she was back to being as she had been before—a powerless youngling who must do as she was told and hope that sometimes what she wanted to do and what they wanted her to do would coincide. This hybrid people, this race to which she belonged, was less self-involved than the Friends and, therefore, harder to control. Maybe she should have stayed with the Friends a little longer and tested her new abilities? She would be just like everyone else here, but that meant she would have nothing special for herself. Not even, as it seemed, the parents she wanted to claim as her own.

Maati was glancing at her oddly. “Narhii, I’m sorry it’s working out this way, but please be patient just a little longer. Khorii, Khornya’s and Aari’s daughter—other daughter,” she corrected herself swiftly, but Narhii understood what she meant. Her own identity was still in question, “…is doing a last check, but we believe the plague may have died out elsewhere on its own. When she returns, she will be able to tell if the strain carried by her parents has also run its course. Meanwhile, our scientific teams, which include Mother and Father—mine and Aari’s—your grandparents, in fact—and our brother Lariinye are working, as are human teams, on finding a cure.”

“I guess I was a little early then,” Narhii said, meaning to be apologetic but sounding bitter, even to her own ears. “I thought six
ghaanyi
was long enough but—”

“Narhii, this plague did not happen to inconvenience you!” Maati said, sounding almost as sharp as Akasa when she was between male companions. “Billions of people died throughout an entire quadrant of space. Societies and cultures were destroyed, the children of those people will never get a chance to see
their
parents again, and if they are to survive, they must become adults now, when many of them are even younger than you. Most of the law and order that kept worlds and worlds of people civilized and stable has disappeared. Aari and Khornya exhausted themselves into illness trying to help, and Khorii has been leading our teams in making their healing efforts less random and more effective. You have to understand that this has nothing to do with how anybody feels about you.”

Narhii tried to grasp the images Maati was bombarding her with, but they were beyond her comprehension. Why didn’t those people get up again? Why didn’t they turn their color to its proper state, resume breathing, go about their business, and leave her family to go about theirs—which ought to have a lot to do about how they felt about her. They evidently felt extremely fond of one another, and they should feel the same way about her. She needed them to. It was as if she were terribly thirsty and water was just beyond her but nobody would let her drink any of it.

Maati heaved a deep sigh. “Come now. We’re going to Kubiliikhan to meet other family members—the ones who are researching the plague. And your grandparents on your mother’s side will be there. They will be so excited to meet you.”

That was something, at least, she thought, but when she got there she saw that even these new relatives had agendas for her, too, more politely requested and executed than those of the Friends; but still, after a short introduction and what seemed a ceremonial grazing interval, plans that involved interrogating, testing, and poking her.

Although she tried not to balk, Maati sensed it quickly, and said, “Usually when one of us is born, we are given an identity disk with our DNA codes and those of our parents inscribed upon the surface and a sample of our DNA encapsulated within. Since you do not have one of these—”

“How could I?” Narhii protested. “I was never born here. I told you they took me while I was still an egg!”

“Exactly. That is why we are doing this now. Your birthing disk was not made for you when it should have been, so we are making one for you now. You may either keep it if you wish or give it to your mother.”

“I could give it to her?”

“Not directly, of course, not yet.”

“Then I’ll keep it,” she said. This, at least, would be hers and hers alone. But while she was being tested and questioned by these people she should have felt close to but didn’t, she had come to a decision.

Having taken her sample, the female who was introduced to her as her father’s mother smiled up at her. “Your information was correct, my dear,” she said. “You are indeed the daughter of my daughter and of Aari, and the identical twin of Khorii.” She rose and before Narhii knew how to respond, embraced her and touched horns with her. “Welcome, granddaughter. What an unexpected blossom you are in a meadow of what has been very bitter grass indeed of late.”

Once more Narhii was bombarded by images of illness and death and also those of a very confused and tumultuous family history, all of which was much too much to comprehend.

But when her parents were again connected to her by com screen, something finally happened that she understood, and that pleased her.

“Aari, Khornya,” her grandmother said to her parents by way of introduction. “This child is yours and the twin sister of your Khorii.”

Her mother smiled at her, showing teeth for a moment, then closing her mouth suddenly but Narhii knew without being told that where her mother had grown up, showing teeth was a sign of pleasure, happiness, and goodwill, even humor, and it moved her that her mother had been so glad to see her as to temporarily revert to her early conditioning. Her father simply said, “We knew that already.”

She wanted more than ever to embrace them both and feel the love they were trying to send to her from the screen. She touched her horn to the image of her father’s, but, of course, it was a cold touch.

He gulped, then steadied his voice, and said, “Daughter, your mother and I have been talking it over. We do not think the name the Friends gave you was a good personal name, though if you wish to continue being called by it, we would understand.”

“No,” she said. “No, I do not like it. Have you—are you going to—I mean, I would very much like to have a family name from you, like the one you gave Khorii, my sister.”

“How would you feel about being called Ariinye, then?”

“It is a beautiful name!” she said.

“A little long, perhaps,” her mother said. “Khorii’s full name is Khoriilya. You might shorten yours, for your family and other friends to call you more simply, to Ariin.”

“I like that even better!” she cried. A shortened name was so informal and yet, it seemed so personal, so affectionate. For the first time since she’d learned she could not be with her parents in person, Narhii—Ariin—was as happy as she had ever been.

K
horii and Mikaaye were each given a seat at a folding table at opposite ends of the rickety meeting hall, which was basically one long, empty room.

The people who came to the Linyaari for healing had mostly minor wounds and illnesses to cure. While Khorii and Mikaaye put their horns and powers to good use, Captain Bates, Hap, and Jaya searched the
Mana
’s cargo reserves for supplies the settlers needed, and specifically raided Khorii’s ’ponics garden for healing and useful herbs and plants, the Rushiman counterparts of which had been blighted in the wake of the plague. Sesseli assisted them as best a small girl could. The child’s telekinetic gift was difficult for her to use unless she was experiencing some profound emotion connected with the object to be moved.

A small seventy-year-old woman, her hair still black as a crow’s wing, limped to Khorii with the aid of a cane. “My sciatica,” she explained, gasping a little as she lowered herself onto the bench facing Khorii. “I haven’t been able to think, much less run the mill, for nigh unto a week.”

Khorii smiled, touched the sore place the woman indicated, and bent her head as if to examine it more closely. The Linyaari had hidden the power of their horns since her mother first made contact with them and discovered that some humans might seek to kill or enslave Linyaari for the benefit of the horns; but since the plague had killed and sickened so many and speed was of the essence, just now Khorii’s people practiced only token discretion at the most.

Elder Plimsoll tried to be discreet about his digestive problems, which he called “sour stomach” but which Khorii felt originated in the organ known among humans as a gallbladder. He looked much friendlier and more relaxed once she had healed the inflamed organ and unblocked the duct, dissolving a large and painful stone.

Two boys, one almost her age, the other perhaps six years old, supported and corrected the course of a confused-looking woman whose face looked lopsided and whose left arm hung limply while she dragged her left leg. “Miz Alison said Gran had a stroke. Can you fix her up, miss?”

She did and cleared the cloud that whitened one iris and pupil of a cataract while she was at it.

As her sight cleared, her face straightened, and strength and sensation returned to the paralyzed side of her body, the woman looked as if she would faint with relief. “Young lady, you are an angel. All your people are angels from above,” she said gratefully squeezing Khorii’s hands between her own, which were quite strong now. Khorii had learned long ago from Elviiz’s lectures in human folklore and theology what angels were and she knew she was not one; but it was true that, from the woman’s perspective, she did come from above.

“Mind you, it’s not that I’m opposed to meeting my maker when my time comes,” the woman continued, “but I wasn’t ready to go yet. Doctor Anne could have cured me easy if she’d lived, and Young Ali, even though she passed on, could have eased me with some of the herbs, but they all went in the blight. And someone has to look after these babies, even though it seems they spend too much time looking after us, they got no experience, and most haven’t had enough schooling to take care of themselves. I want to get my boys raised up a little before I learn to play the harp.”

Khorii found the last reference a bit baffling, but said, “My people understand the need to maintain your bodily systems perhaps longer than you would normally require in order that you may impart your experience and wisdom to your younglings.”

“Not that they’ll listen worth a plugged credit,” a voice said as the grateful trio, who Khorii had imagined were her last patients, departed. Mikaaye still had three or four people lined up and she was going to go assist him. Somehow she had missed the arrival of this elderly female and the small boy accompanying her.

Perhaps the elder had tired of waiting in Mikaaye’s line and, seeing Khorii idle, decided to take advantage of the opening. Khorii didn’t sense any of the usual problems she’d been treating. In fact, she didn’t sense anything at all.

The old lady, lowering herself to the bench with the help of the boy, said, “You’re going to have to do something about ’em, you know. They ain’t natural.”

“Who?” Khorii asked. “The younglings?”

“No. They’re all too natural. That’s why I wonder how much experience or wisdom they’re likely to pick up secondhand from any of these old fossils still hanging on. I mean the haants, of course, the new ones.”

“Haants?” Khorii stumbled over the word, which certainly had never been entered in her LAANYE.

The old woman leaned forward, and whispered so loudly it seemed to Khorii she might as well have spoken in a normal voice. “You know, ghosts, girl, spooks. Boo!” Khorii recoiled briefly, and the old woman cackled. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m talkin’ about spirits of the ones who died during the plague. Things that look like them are flittin’ around everyplace like fruit flies at a picnic but it’s only their looks that are like our dead”—she leaned forward and whispered again, stabbing a bony, wrinkled finger at Khorii for emphasis with each syllable—“only these ones got no spirit that’s any kin to the last occupants of the forms they’re takin’.”