Third Watch (29 page)

“I can well imagine!” Sona said, rolling her eyes sympathetically. “It was hardly an easy task, even with the map. If our mission here wasn’t so extremely urgent, Bogan, I’d love to keep chatting. However, I must ask, after Lord Odus disappeared and Lady Akasa departed, what remained of his laboratory?”

“Nothing,” Bogan said. “Nothing remained. That is, when the others searched the laboratory after Lady Akasa left, it had been completely emptied. All of Odus’s research, the specimens, experiments, and his notes, were gone. The building was destroyed when the new edifices were erected.”

“I take it the plague hasn’t reached you here?” Khorii said. Of course, she wouldn’t know for sure until she had a closer look, but she saw no sparkle of blue dots anywhere.

“Our races have great resistance to diseases, lady, even without the healing powers of your unicorn ancestors. And we have been careful to remain undetected by any who are not our own. That was why we were so startled to see your ship land.”

“We’ll need to see Akasa,” Ariin said. “You won’t try to stop us from visiting her island?”

Her tone was as imperious as Akasa’s own, but Bogan merely shrugged. “Why not? You could even take her provisions with you and spare the boatman a journey.”

All the time they’d been speaking, the so-called enforcement technicians had menaced the ship. But apparently they had a direct line to the com tower because they suddenly relaxed, most of them returned to the buildings from whence they came, and a few returned with bulging cloth bags. Sona went to the hatch and accepted these. As soon as she was seated again, they lifted off. Father took his turn at the controls, flew the versatile Linyaari vessel in low-altitude mode to the island, and set down once more.

Close to the waving fernlike trees, like an oversized exotic flower pod, sat another Linyaari ship, its hull bright with purple flowers, lime green leaves, and wavy aqua lines separated by swags of gold. Sona said, “That is her vessel.”

The tech addressed the com unit again, “Lady Akasa, Lord Grimalkin and I have returned. We brought with us your dwelling, which may be of comfort to you now that you live alone.”

The screen remained dark, but Akasa’s voice, though somewhat quavery, was identifiable as she said, “Take it right back again. I shudder to think that I ever lived inside the treacherous thing.”

“That is perfectly understandable,” Mother agreed.

“Who is that, Sona?”

“There is a delegation of Linyaari folk here who would speak to you about the plague, lady.”

“I do not wish to speak to anyone ever again of anything whatsoever. Go away.”

“I fetched Lord Grimalkin, too, though he is still in the form of a small domestic feline.”

“Good. Him you can leave. I have use of him. The vermin on this island disturb my sleep.”

“No!” Khorii said. “I’m sorry if you’re old now and lonely, but you brought it on yourself, infecting everybody with the plague so you could try and sell those moving houses to people. You can’t have my Khiindi just to catch your nasty vermin.”

“Akasa, I am Ariin,” her sister said. “You know me as Narhii. I found my family just in time to be separated from them because of your plague. Had it not been for the Linyaari, your disease and its monster children would have destroyed all life and matter in the universe. You owe it to everyone to help us find a way to put an end to your creation once and for all. We’re coming out, and you can’t stop us.”

As Mother murmured, “Manners, Ariin,” Captain Becker’s voice boomed over the feed from the
Condor.
“Attagirl, Ariin. You tell the old—gal—she’s ruined the salvage business, too. If she doesn’t cooperate, I’ll send RK down there to make things really nasty for her.”

It was an empty threat, Khorii knew. Uncle Joh could never part with RK, but she had to smile at the thought of the feline first mate treating Akasa and her belongings as he had the
Condor
’s shuttle.

Before Akasa could speak again, Ariin opened the hatch and hopped to the ground. For once, Khiindi followed her, so Khorii followed him.

“Gently, girls,”
Mother cautioned them.
“Can you not feel how consumed she is with grief and regret? She did not intend to cause this disaster.”

“She should have been more careful then,”
Ariin retorted hotly.
“They have always been this way—act first, and regret it, if they even stop to think about it—later.”

The beach was coarse gravel, though it sparkled in the bright sunlight as if it contained hidden gems. Khiindi raced across it, hopping over tide pools and not even stopping to harass the teeming marine life within them. Clearly Akasa had not brought the plague with her to this place.

Something moved near the forest-docked ship, and the trees and brush shivered. Khiindi raced ahead, Ariin and Khorii pelting behind him. The rough stones didn’t bother their hooves, though Khorii was more careful than her sister not to lodge one where it would lame her, however temporarily.

They broke into the woods behind the white flash of the underside of Khiindi’s striped tail and caught a glimpse of color before the cat leaped. Ariin was right behind him and threw herself down.

“Leave me be, brat!” Akasa screeched.

Khorii reached them and helped Ariin restrain the struggling elder by embracing Akasa, pinning her arms, then laying her horn among the sparse white strands covering the woman’s pink scalp. As she infused calm and healing feelings into that hard old head, Akasa relaxed, and Khiindi threaded himself between Akasa’s neck and Khorii’s. By that time Mother, Father, Mikaaye, and Sona had arrived. Mother and Father joined their horns to Khorii’s, and soon Akasa was so relaxed that she almost fell asleep in their arms.

“Now then,” Mother said softly, “why don’t you tell us all about it?”

Akasa looked at the faces ringed around her, flinching only at the hardness in Ariin’s. Her eyes looked somewhat clearer and brighter than they had when Khorii first saw her.

“He ignored me!” were her first words. “I’m sorry I even mentioned the dwellings to him. At first he sought the dwelling creatures to please me, and of course for his own comfort, but when they were damaged, he became obsessed with restoring them.”

“Yes,” Sona said. “Lord Grimalkin and I witnessed that for ourselves. We tried to do as you told us, lady, and take Lord Odus to the future to see the end results of his work, but always Lord Grimalkin changed back into a cat before his arguments were complete, and I could not make the time device do as I wished, though it worked well enough elsewhere.”

Akasa moaned. “A few things, once set in motion, cannot be undone. The time line extends only to the past, and even with the crono, there is no future. Or the future that is possible is doleful and doomed.”

“As it certainly ought to be for people who murder an entire universe,” Ariin said. “Why did you spread the plague? Why didn’t you try to warn someone?”

“I didn’t intend to,” Akasa said, the creases in her face seeming to deepen and her voice shaking. “But I was not accustomed to being neglected and ignored. I tried to pretend it did not concern me and that I would find another consort, so I left him to his experiments and ignored him for three whole days to see how he liked it. I thought he would tire of his tubes and computer codes without someone to admire his handiwork, but when I finally tired of being alone myself and returned to the laboratory to confront him so he could suffer properly from my defection, he was no longer there.”

“Where did he go, Akasa?” Ariin asked aloud while pushing with all she was worth mentally.

“I don’t know!” Akasa wailed. “He wasn’t there, but his work was. I was weary of him spending all of his time on it. Do you know he even tried to mate with one of the dwelling creatures?”

“I was there, lady, just before Lord Grimalkin changed, and we had to leave,” Sona said. “I can understand how insulted you must have been.”

“It didn’t work, you know. Those things don’t reproduce at that stage. So he found a way to blend some of his essence with the earlier stage of the creature, the one he had created to substitute for the serpent phase of the development. Before I stopped going to see him, he told me all about it and showed me slides with this creature on it and described what it was supposed to be, though frankly, I couldn’t see it. I took his word for it. I have always been far more interested in behavioral sciences, as you know, Narhii, than in all of those test tubes and mathematical codes and things.

“When I found Odus gone, I decided that I would go, too. I had long ago wearied of this rustic new homeworld. I wished to return to the past on Vhiliinyar, before all of you were created, when Odus and I were happy and comfortable and everything was pretty. But such journeys, even when one has a ship to command, are costly. One needs provisions, fuel, and a few trinkets to exchange with the natives one meets along the way. So I took the holos and video representations of our homes on Vhiliinyar and his precious slides and a few vials from which they had been extracted. I did not wish to be interfered with by Odus, so I set my crono for several years in the future and flew to the planet in the Solojo system I knew to be the place he planned to interest in the creatures.

“I had no trouble convincing some quite influential and wealthy human males that I had a product that would benefit them, and after my demonstration, one was so impressed that he invited me on what was meant to be a luxury cruise. Only something went horribly wrong. First my host sickened, then all of his servants, then other people with whom he came in contact. It was messy, and smelled. I found it offensive. And then a few people died, and the trip was simply no fun any longer. By that time the ship had traveled far enough toward our own home quadrant that I could reach Vhiliinyar without further resources. I took back the things I had sold to my dead host, who certainly had no use for them, returned to my ship, and managed to escape from the docking bay just before the captain locked it down. I monitored the ship for a time. The captain was maddened by my enterprising exit from so much illness and chaos. She refused to allow anyone else to leave and in the end I fear—I very much fear—she caused their deaths.”

“She did,” Khorii said.

As Akasa had been speaking, Mother and Father had pulled up ferns to make a backrest for her against a tree. Sona took a packet from her shipsuit pocket that became a self-heating cup of a restorative drink and offered it to the elder. Khorii had to steady Akasa’s hand as she held the drink, for it trembled as with a palsy.

“I thought it was shock making me feel unwell,” Akasa said. “I do not actually recall having felt unwell prior to that although while aboard the cruiser I was not my usual ebullient self. I attributed that to the lackluster quality of my companions. However, particularly after I returned with Odus’s materials to the confines of the much smaller ship, I felt increasingly ill, drained, diminished, and I found it harder and harder to maintain the routines that have always helped me look my best. I found I could not shift forms either. Then I picked up other signals concerning a terrible plague, believed to have started on the planet I visited, and I began to suspect the truth. I knew I could not return to Vhiliinyar, lest I bring disaster there, too. That was when I contacted you, Sona. I did not know who else to turn to. As time wore on, I was reduced to the form you behold.

“Feeble and alone at last, I had no choice but to return here, but I deliberately chose this island for my landing, lest I be infected.”

“You are not infected,” Khorii told her, because there were no blue dots dancing around her. “Possibly you were, but your strong constitution threw off the plague, though at the cost of your youthful appearance. Maybe as you get stronger you’ll start looking more like your old self again.” She had no idea if this was true, but felt the old female needed a bit of hope right then. Even self-centered Akasa had finally realized at least a portion of the enormity of what she had done and was suffering as much as she was capable of suffering on behalf of others.

“Do you really think so, Narhii?” she asked, even though Ariin was there, too.

Khorii didn’t correct her.

Sona said, “Lady, we came to see if you could help us find Lord Odus so he might suggest a way to destroy this creation of his. It is not, as you know, what he intended.”

“I cannot help you. I spaced the materials I took from his laboratory, even the visual and holographic depictions of our homes on Vhiliinyar. I shall never be happy and whole again!”

And she began sobbing in earnest self-pity.

“You take the ship,” Sona told the Linyaari. “I will remain with her and care for her until she is well enough to rejoin the others. She does look better already, thanks to your healing.”

As the rest of the group left, Khorii’s heart sank. Now they were back to square one, with no idea how to find the one person who might be able to help them.

Chapter 24

T
wo of you started this mess,” Ariin harangued the elder Ancestral Friends. “Now the rest of you have to put a stop to it.”

Khorii thought her twin’s righteous wrath more than made up for two planets full of pacifistic Linyaari. The elders, via Bogan on the com, had wanted to refuse the second landing of Sona’s vessel near their city. They thought the gentle Linyaari they seemed to consider their somewhat feebleminded offspring would acquiesce to the order and go away. They had obviously mistaken Khorii’s family, her human-reared mother, her heroic father, who had endured Khleevi torture and lived, and even Mikaaye, the volunteer pirate, for what they considered the usual sort of Linyaari. Even Khorii, who had the most conventional upbringing of them all, had witnessed so much death and illness in her attempts to save the Federation-controlled sector of space that she had little sympathy and no respect remaining for the elders’ finer sensibilities and what she considered to be their outright cowardice.

Her race had always held these people in awe because the legend was that they had saved the unicorn Ancestors. Now that she knew the truth behind that story, and how miserably these arrogant people had treated her sister as a helpless, ignorant child, Khorii’s awe was over. And then there was Khiindi/Grimalkin, a trickster and untrustworthy at times, perhaps, but nevertheless in her opinion the best of his race and one who had been punished for trying to spare her and her family, even if it had been at Ariin’s expense.