TEXT:  
   ACORNA'S TRIUMPH
   Book 7 in Acorna Series
   By
   Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
    
    
   Acorna's Triumph
   ANNE McCAFFREY
   and
   ELIZABETH ANNSCARBOROUGH
    
   An Imprint ofHarperCollinsPublishers
    
    
   This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's
  imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,
  living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
  
    
   ACORNA's TRIUMPH.
   Copyright © 2004 by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.
   FIRST EDITION
   HarperCollins Publishers Inc.,10 East 53rd Street,New York ,NY10022 .
   
   ISBN 0-380-97900-4
    
   Printed in theUnited States of America .
    
    
   OTHER ACORNA NOVELS
    
   Acorna's Rebels
   Acorna's Search
   Acorna's World
   Acorna's People
   Acorna's Quest
   Acorna
    
    
    
    
   In fond memory of Connie Johnson:
   mathteacher, bibliophile, adventuress, and friend
    
  
    
    
   Acknowledgments
   Our thanks go to Rick Reaser, science and salvage consultant and Ambassador to the Sulfur Beings, for
  his continuing advice and support. Also we wish to thank our editors Denise Little at Tekno Books and
  Diana Gill at HarperCollins for their suggestions and help, with special thanks to Denise for being the
  Keeper of Acorna's Database of names and Linyaari words. Thanks are also due to Margaret Ball,
  cowriter with Anne McCaffrey on the first two Acorna books, for inventing the Linyaari language, among
  other things. And we would most particularly like to thank Martin H. Greenberg, without whose trust and
  support this project would have been impossible to continue.
    
    
   Chapter One
    
   Acorna moaned. She struggled desperately to regain control of herself. As always, she was powerless.
  She could only watch as the room changed and the time portraits swirled around her like dervishes.
   The white lights symbolizing Linyaari blurred, blinked out, returned. Vhiliinyar's panoramas changed from
  lush toblighted, then became fertile again in a dizzying kaleidoscope of shape, color, time, and place. The
  images shifted to the deafeningboom-boom boom-boom boom-boomof a drumbeat.
   It doesn't really move that fast, she thought in an oddly detached way.And where are those drums
  coming from?
   Then she knew that the drumlike booming was the frenzied pounding of her own heart. Her blood
  seemed to be trying to leap out of her skin with each beat of her pulse. She struggled upright and reached
  for the door but something felt odd. She looked back to see herself still lying on the floor of the ancient
  time laboratory.How strange, she thought. Her hands twitched as she tried once more to rise. She had to
  get to the door.
   Aari would be coming through it soon.Coming with her.
   And the danger.She could not remember what the danger was, but she knew it was something horrible
  and unexpected, even though she realized that she had been through this same sequence countless times
  during many other sleep cycles. She knew what the danger was. She just didn't remember it.
   Didn'twantto remember it.
   But she had to. If only she could open the door quickly enough, get herself through it, gethiminside, and
  close it fast enough and hard enough, the terrible thing wouldn't happen.
   The room stopped spinning, and time stood still. She rose.
  
   Where is the door?she thought. Then she thought,Whatdoor? She could see grass and rivers, craters
  and furrows, mountains and trees, but no door.But there has to be a door…
   And then she walked through the wall, coming into the room. She wore a shipsuit and helmet and she
  was covered in something green and slimy. Right behind hercame Aari.
   That was it. That was when she had to shut the door.But therewasno door, she thought. She struggled to
  reach out again, but then realized she was still lying on the floor.
   Klik-klak, klik-klack.The sound entered the room with her ship-suited self and Aari. It was like the
  beating of her heart, but a different tone. Its volume increased, and the regular beat quickened and
  loosened into an overwhelming cacophony ofklikity-klak-klak-klikity-klak-klakings.
   She reached for Aari. He didn't seem to see her. He turned and raised his arms.
   Behind him, Khleevi swarmed into the room, their mandibles and pincersklaking, their antennae rubbing,
  their immense jaws devouring the floors and walls. Once more, the insect race was bent on destroying
  Vhiliinyar and the Linyaari who had returned to populate it.
   Acorna felt rather than saw something looming over her.
   Just as she was sure her death was certain, she was grabbed and shaken.
   "Khornya, Khornya, wake up! What's the matter?"
   Acorna opened her eyes and looked up into the concerned face of her young friend Maati. They were
  both inside the time lab within the great ruined office building that was among the remains of the lost
  ancient city ofKubiilikaan . This city was the original home of the shape-shifting people who were the
  fore-bearers of Acorna and Maati's race, the Linyaari, along with the unicorn-like Ancestors. Long
  buried and forgotten, the city was the only part of the Linyaari home planet that had escaped the
  depredations of the Khleevi invasion safe within its sophisticated shields beneath the surface of Vhiliinyar.
   The walls of the time lab were not spinning now, but as usual the static maps of the planet were dotted
  with small points of white light that indicated the places where Linyaari personnel were located. Many
  teams were back on the planet's surface, mapping, surveying, and otherwise planning each phase of the
  planet's renewal by regional applications of the terraforming process.
   "Khornya, are you all right? You look funny," Maati said.
   "I had a bad dream. That's all," Acorna assured her. Dream fragments filled her head. She looked
  around for the phantom door that had haunted her dream, but of course it wasn't there. The room was
  vast and spartan and very clinical-looking. Only Acorna's bedroll and the pool of water in the center from
  which a beam of energy rose to pierce the ceiling and each story above it saved the chamber from the
  sterile ambience of a typical research facility.
   "What kind of dream?" Maati asked.
   "I can't even remember what it was about now.Something about the Khleevi."
   "No wonder you were crying out and trying to run in your sleep," Maati said. She laid her horn gently
  against Acorna's head to soothe her friend and heal her of the residual effects of the dream.
  
   "Thanks," Acorna said. "But I'm fine now, really."
   "You shouldn't be spending all your time down here alone," Maati scolded. "You can'tpullAari out of that
  machine, you know."
   "I know," Acorna admitted. "It's not that I expect that, it's just that now that I know that Aari is with one
  of the Ancestral Friends, and they're using the device to cross time and even send messages back, I want
  to figure out how they're doing it. And Imightfind Aari in the process," she finished hopefully. "You never
  know."
   Maati sighed. "I miss him, too, Khornya. I barely got to know my older brother before he disappeared
  on us. But staying down here all the time is just plain unhealthy. That's probably why you're having all
  these bad dreams. Really, you should come up to the surface just for a little while," Maati coaxed. "You
  haven't been up in ages and ages, and you won't believe the progress we've made with the terraforming."
   "Of course I would," Acorna said, but her attention was elsewhere. She rose to inspect a hole in the wall
  behind one of the great maps showing the time and place of each person on the planet's surface. For a
  moment the hole gave her an odd turn, reminding her of something terrible in her dream. But that was
  silly. It was just a dream. And she had put the hole there herself — though with much trepidation.
   She'd wanted to see the workings of the map or whatever it was that was driving the time machine. "I
  can see everything that's going on up there on the maps," she told Maati. Returning her attention to the
  pictures on the surface of the wall, she gestured to the appropriate image as she spoke. "The watersheds
  are all exactly where they ought to be now, the streams are flowing, the rivers and their currents are
  behaving properly, the tides are turning the seas at the correct times, the waterfalls are falling, and even
  the rain is coming at the correct appointed intervals. All that water must be making everything quite
  green."
   "Yes, but you don't care about that at all," Maati said. "You can't fool me. You only know about the
  waters because they're needed for the time travel. But honestly, Khornya, you've done so much to make
  Vhiliinyar live again. It isn't just the planning and the exploration. You made it happen. It was all because
  of you that we got the catseye chrysoberyls."
   "I wasn't exactly alone on that journey. Anyway, it's only because of Captain Becker's negotiating such a
  good price with Uncle Hafiz that we ended up out of debt and with credits to spare to fund the rebirth of
  this planet." Captain Becker was her good friend, Jonas P. Becker, pilot of theCondor, flag and only ship
  of Becker Interplanetary Salvage and Recycling Enterprises, Ltd.
   Becker, a canny businessman himself, was undaunted by the bargaining skills of Acorna's adoptive
  uncle, Hafiz Harakamian, the semiretired former head of the also interplanetary enterprises of House
  Harakamian. Unlike Becker's business, Hafiz's boasted many ships, flitters, and other vehicles, a portion
  of one moon, and all of another.
   "It was pure good luck that we found the catseyes just when we needed to refine our terraforming
  process, so that we could restore sections of the planet instead of doing everything at once." Acorna was
  fully awake now and ready to return to her investigations. Maati and the others who had already voiced
  similar concerns about her only fussed because they cared, Acorna knew, but it was distracting. If she
  was going to justify spending all her time in the time lab, she had to make it pay off by conducting real
  research.
  
   With a pointed glance at Maati, she pulled down her goggles, turned on a special saw, and with a
  whirring of the blade enlarged the hole she'd made so it was big enough to stick her head through.
   Maati made a face. "It's nice to know that you've been listening to what we tell you when we come to
  visit you. But you can't fool me. It's not like you've seen anything up there for yourself. And this is a feast
  day. The best grasses of the season are all ready to harvest. Please come up and graze with us. Everyone
  will be there."
   "Not everyone," Acorna said.
   "Not Aari, I know," Maati agreed reluctantly. "I'm sorry. I know how hard it's been on you. I know that
  you feel like you've missed contact with him while others have received telepathic inquiries from him."
   Acorna frowned and withdrew her head from the hole in the panel. "You didn't tell me that when I talked
  to you from Makahomia. You said 'indications.' You didn't say 'telepathic inquiries.' "
   "Okay, I didn't. But it was no big deal. Aari's communications were very sporadic and scattered, and no
  one was really sure what they meant until they talked to each other and to you," Maati protested. "This
  has been frustrating for Mother and Father and me, too. At least you were doing something useful on
  Makahomia. That's why we decided to join you. And Aari's okay. You found that out yourself when you
  heard that message from him that the priest gave you down on Makahomia. You know very well that if…
  no…whenhe comes back it will be at some wildly romantic moment, when you need rescuing or help
  fighting some horrible enemy, and the rest of our people are being too analytical and fair-minded to be of
  any help at all."
   "You have a very big imagination, Maati," Acorna said, dusting off her hands. "We've finished off the
  Khleevi. I can't think of any other horrible enemies standing in line to be vanquished at the moment. And I
  think my own fair mind has just about analyzed this contraption. I'm beginning to understand how it
  works."
   "Really?"Maati was actually very interested in the time machine, so Acorna's ploy was successful. Maati
  crowded closer to see what Acorna was doing.
   "Yes, and the better I understand it, the more it explains a few things to me. Like the thought messages
  from Aari. I have entered all of the instances reported to me. I found that, far from being random, they fit
  a definite pattern — the same pattern that the time/space mechanism follows. Only at certain intervals are
  there connecting ladders between the time and place Aari occupies and our own time and space.Though
  he has made a couple of jumps."
   "How do you know that?"
   "I'll show you," Acorna said, and passed her hand across a section where the column of liquid light rose
  from floor to ceiling. At once a familiar shape appeared in that unfamiliar place. It was a double helix, a
  shape typical of the cellular blueprints comprising most life-forms.
   "What is that?" Maati asked.
   "Time," Acorna said. "And space also. Or a road map through both of them. Where the helix twists we
  intersect, but otherwise we travel separately. I've labeled the intersections between Aari and us in this
  interaction. There, and there, and there. See how they form a pattern?"
  
   "Yeah," Maati said. "How did you find all that out?"
   "Mostly by accident," Acorna admitted. "But after a couple of those accidents, things began to make
  more sense to me. And if the pattern holds, we're about due for another contact with Aari. So I've got
  too much work to do down here to spare the time to go to the surface."
   She waved her hand again, and the column shimmied and turned back into its amorphous self.
   She crossed to the map of Vhiliinyar, which dominated the wall with the hole in it. While Acorna
  concentrated on her excavation work on the wall, Maati noticed that some white dots flickered near the
  underground lake, a couple of blocks downhill from their position. When white dots appeared on one of
  these maps, they indicated the presence of Linyaari in that location.
   Acorna noticed the dots, too. There was a breathless catch in her voice as she inquired, "Did anyone
  come with you when you came through the tunnels?"
   Maati shook her head. "No."
   To reach the underground city from the surface, people had to enter through the labyrinth of caves
  occupied in ancient times by the Ancestors and their attendants. The caves led up into the building
  through an opening a few feet from the door of the room she and Acorna were in.
   Because of many previous accidents caused by malfunctions of the time device that had resulted in the
  disappearances of various beings, Aari among them, access to the area was carefully controlled, if not
  completely restricted. There shouldn't have been any Linyaari there to make those white dots on the map.
   "We'd better see who it is," Maati said, but Acorna had already passed her and run out the door.
   With Maati at her heels, Acorna took off, running so fast that she all but teleported herself to the shores
  of the lake.
   Acorna had had a premonition the moment she saw the white dots. Maybe, after all this time, Aari had
  returned. There was an Aari feeling to those dots, and she just suddenlyknewthat he had returned. And
  then she saw him, standing with another Linyaari beside the underground lake. It was unmistakably Aari,
  though he looked more erect and confident, and his horn was beautiful and gleaming, unbent, no longer
  stunted, just as it had been in her dream back on Makahomia.
   She was down the hill in an instant. Then her arms were around his neck, her head resting in the hollow
  of his shoulder, just as she'd wanted to be since the day he'd gone missing.Except thathis arms did not
  embrace her back, though one hand did tap against her shoulder in a sort of awkward pat.
   Behind her, Maati cried, "Aari? Is it really you? Your horn is fixed! When did that happen? Where've
  you been? What— "
   Aari held up his hand to stop Maati's stream of questions. "Greetings," he said. "Yes, it is I. At least, I
  am Aari, and this is Laarye, and we have just arrived. If Grimalkin's calculations are correct, you would
  be" — he juggled Acorna aside slightly to hold his wrist to one ear — "oh, yes, our beloved little sister
  Maati, unknown thus far to Laarye. And this affectionate lady" — he patted Acorna's shoulder again —
  "is my own lifemate, Khornya."
   A sour taste rose in the back of Acorna's throat. Though Aari was here, something was terribly wrong.
  
  This wasn't the Aari that she knew and loved!
   "I have received much data concerning you both," Aari said. "It is a pleasure to… er… renew… our
  acquaintance, I'm sure."
   (Acorna?)Maati thought, (What is going on here?)
   (I don't know. Maybe he's been recaptured by the Khleevi, and this time instead of torturing him
  physically, they brainwashed him,) she told Maati telepathically.
   (I assure you thatis not true, Khornya,) Aari told her. (Grimalkin helped me navigate time so that both
  Laarye and I avoided the Khleevi altogether. Once I found Laarye, he and I jumped here. I confess it's
  extremely disorienting. I have in my recorder notes from myself about my capture on the other timeline,
  the torture, the death of my brother, and the realization that our homeworld had been destroyed. I have
  recorded meeting Captain Becker and Riidkiiyi, also meeting you and my sister, and also my healing. I
  have many other events recorded, but the one that truly causes me pain — as it true that in this timeline,
  Grandam Naadiina has died?)
   (Yes, that's true,) Acorna said. (She died saving her people. I'm glad you've taken good notes of your
  life in our timeline. I take it since you identified me as your lifemate, you also recall our joining?)
   (I have it recorded as a most profoundly enjoyable experience,) Aari replied with a lusty gleam in his eye
  that reminded her of Thariinye. (I hope that soon we will have occasion to refresh my memory in this
  timeline to add verisimilitude to the recorded memory.)
   Maati, who had been talking earnestly with Laarye, telling him about her childhood after their parents'
  disappearance and her role in their recovery, felt emanations coming from Acorna such as she had never
  felt when her friend was among only other Linyaari.Dangerous emanations.Highly combustible.
   She didn't even have to eavesdrop on their thought-talk to hear it. Aari was putting up no shields, as if he
  was carrying on a casual conversation among a group of friends, as she had been told her people often
  had before the Khleevi came. Khornya was broadcasting on all frequencies, loud and clear enough for
  anybody to read.
   Acorna recoiled from Aari's light embrace as if shewere a Khleevi and he was coated with the
  Khleevi-killing plant slime that had helped them destroy their enemy. "Perhaps you should have chosen
  that time to return," Acorna suggested in an overly calm voice. Maati noticed that Acorna was now
  speaking aloud and guarding her thoughts. It seemed that this Aari was a stranger to her.
   "Oh, I couldn't have done that," Aari said. "This is really the first opportunity to cross over to this side
  without contaminating any major part of what's gone on already: the only change, as Grimalkin explained
  this thoroughly to me — I wish he were here to explain it to you, but he had pressing business elsewhere
  — the only change is that I don't actually remember anything from the time Laarye and I left home
  together until now. It's an awfully big chunk of time, but Grimalkin thought it would be best if in this
  timeline, the capture by the Khleevi never happened. So he rescued both Laarye and me — or rather, he
  assisted me as I rescued both of us."
   "How thoughtful of him," Acorna said. "It's a pity he couldn't have spared the planet the whole Khleevi
  catastrophe and let us all just skip that part. It would have saved a fortune in terraforming expenses."
   Aari had been chattering happily up to this point, but now he stopped and regarded Acorna more
  
  thoughtfully, "You're upset," he said with some surprise. "Why are you upset, Khornya? According to my
  records, you love me. I would think you'd be happy I'd found a way to return to my people with my
  brother alive and without having had to endure that endless torture."
   "And all it cost you was the couple ofghaanyiof memories of our life together," she said. "I can easily see
  why it was worth the trade to you."
   Acorna was struggling to be reasonable and keep the hurt out of her voice, but it wasn't working. Then
  she amazed Maati by employing one of Captain Becker's favorite curse phrases. Acornanevercursed.
  "Frack it all, Aari! I have searched through time on this world. I have caused the Ancestors to put a stop
  to the wholesale terraforming to return Vhiliinyar to its original state in case you returned to an unstable
  world. I have traveled to Makahomia, where all of us could have been killed by people who worshiped
  you and your friend Grimalkin as some sorts of deities. I got the message you left for me. But then…
  you… sounded like you. And now you've returned a stranger."
   He held up his wrist and listened to it again, then said, "Oh, yes. That. Well, I left the message for you on
  Makahomia, but that wasbeforethe crucial jump. I appreciate all of your trouble, Khornya, but really, I
  was fine. Grimalkin and I just had to wait for the proper moment, as I believe I said in my note."
   Aari clearly didn't understand why she was so upset — maybe because Acorna didn't understand it
  herself. She knew that if someone had offered her the chance to make Aari's torture vanish, and his
  brother Laarye live, all at the cost of Aari's memories of their love, she would have willingly agreed.
  Grabbed at the chance, even. But… she hadn't been consulted. And those memories had been a central
  part of her life, too. Now, looking into Aari's beautiful but emotionally distant eyes, those precious
  memories felt as if they were part of some sort of dream, or maybe of a vid she'd seen. Or as if their
  shared experiences and emotions — some of the most beautiful in her life — hadn't really happened.
   She felt discarded.
   She knew that feeling was not exactly logical and reasonable. She should be happy that Aari was whole
  again. She should be ecstatic that he was no longer tormented by memories of what the Khleevi had
  done to him. She should be thrilled that he had even managed to save the life of his brother — Laarye's
  death had haunted him and left him wracked with guilt. But the way he had done it made her feel as if she
  was irrelevant in his life. And what was worse was that it felt as if, somewhere in his voyages in time, the
  Aari she knew and loved had melted away to be replaced with this… this… infuriating stranger. Even
  worse yet, her own Aari had cooperated in the destruction of the person he had been. He'd allowed their
  love to fade from his mind and heart.
   She was a stranger to him. AndthisAari was very much a stranger to her.
   Maati was apparently taking all this much better than Acorna was. But Aari was only Maati's older
  brother, not her lifemate. And now Maati had her other brother back, and could get to know him. Maati
  had been born after Aari and Laarye were stranded on Vhiliinyar, where Laarye had starved to death
  while he lay injured in a cave and Aari had been captured and tortured by the Khleevi. The only family
  Maati had known as she grew up was Grandam Naadiina, who had died heroically during the Khleevi
  attack on narhii-Vhiliinyar. After Aari was rescued, he and Maati had helped to save their parents, and
  now they had theirotherbrother back. Maati's family was finally complete, so of course she was rejoicing.
  Maati loved Aari, of course, but she naturally did not know him as Acorna did — or had.
   But for Acorna, this new twist on her relationship with Aari was just one thing too much. She had in fact
  moved mountains and oceans and the rivers of time to find him. Now that he was back, he'd forgotten all
  
  that they had shared. Aari looked at her like she was someone he'd met at a party once, not the love of
  his life. For Acorna, it was past bearing.
   Acorna excused herself with a mumbled apology and returned the way she had come. Aari didn't even
  call after her — he started talking with Maati as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. Acorna
  kept on walking as she passed the room containing the time machine; for the first time in months she felt
  no urge to go inside it. Instead, she followed the hallway to the trapdoor leading to the cave connecting
  the abandoned underground city ofKubiilikhan with the surface.
   She needed someone to talk to, preferably someone who could not read minds, since hers wasn't fit to
  share with company at the moment. She wished Nadhari Kando was here. Acorna needed to talk to
  someone who could understand what she was feeling. Nadhari had seen and done so much that nothing
  surprised her or shocked her anymore. Nor was she one totsk-tskover the expression of negative
  emotions. When Nadhari felt negative emotions, whoever was causing her pain usually got to share that
  pain, and often got flattened in theprocess.
   But Nadhari was back on Makahomia right now, too far away and much too busy to serve as Acorna's
  confidante. Acorna thought she would be able to confide in her aunt Neeva, but Neeva and her
  spaceship, theBalakiire, were on the Moon of Opportunity, known as MOO to its tenants and all those
  who loved it. Neeva was consulting with Linyaari scientists regarding the terraforming process. She, too,
  was busy with important work. Acorna would have to find someone else to talk to. But she couldn't think
  of anyone who would believe her, much less understand.
   As she emerged from the cave into the open meadow made deliciously fragrant by sunshine and recent
  rain, courtesy of Dr. Hoa's weather wizardry, theCondor'sshuttle settled onto the surface.
   Acorna smiled broadly. That expression might be interpreted as an aggressive act by the Linyaari
  people, but Acorna knew that Captain Jonas P. Becker would see her human-style grin and correctly
  deduce that she was overjoyed to see him arrive. Becker and Maak — the android who affected an
  artificial horn attachment while on Vhiliinyar to spare Linyaari sensibilities about outsiders landing on their
  planet — and RK, theCondor'sfeline first mate, all disembarked. Acorna had never been so happy to see
  a group of beings since the day her human foster fathers had pulled her out of her castaway life-support
  escape pod.
   Acorna ran to meet her friends. Becker took one look at her face, and said, "Acorna! Princess! What's
  the matter? You look like you've lost your best friend." That was all it took. Acorna fell into his arms and,
  in a big rush, poured out what had happened and how she felt about it all. At the end of her story,
  Becker let her weep on his shoulder while Maak patted her head awkwardly and RK twined around her
  ankles mewing anxiously, just as if he didn't know how to thought-speak, though Acorna knew all too
  well that he did.
   "Captain, I know it's silly," she said, drying her eyes and wiping her nose inelegantly on her sleeve since
  she lacked a handkerchief. "All I've done since he went missing istry to get him back. Now he's back, but
  — "
   "Silly? Naah, it's not silly. Sounds to me like Aari is suffering from a bad case of mistaken identity — he
  doesn't know who the heck he is. You know, maybe Karina Harakamian can sort him out. She's the kind
  of person who is always trying to help the kind of people who are trying to find themselves."
   "Maybe.I suppose he'll have to figure that out on his own, though," Acorna said, thinking that the
  problem from her point of view was more that Aari didn't know whoshewas. "He doesn't seem to need
  
  any help from me. Maati, at least, seems to be just fine with him."
   "I wouldn't be too sure of that," Becker said. "He just got here. These things take time. You're not the
  only one who will have to adjust to the new Aari."
   "There may be more to adjust to than Aari's changed personality," she said. "Aari's experience with the
  time device and Grimalkin brings up many new questions about the time shift equipment's capabilities."
   "There's more to adjust to than just that. I came to bring you some good news. Rafik is coming to
  MOO."
   "When?"
   Becker gave one of his usual "precise" replies."Pretty shortly. If you hop aboard and we take off now,
  we can probably get back there by the time he arrives. That is, if you want to see him, of course."
   He was teasing. Acorna wasn't in the mood to laugh at his little sally, but she smiled politely, and said, "I
  certainly do."
   "That's great. It will do you good to see one of your foster dads again."
   Acorna felt the gloom that had settled onto her lighten just a bit. "It will indeed. I would love to see
  Rafik. The break will give me time to think about my situation. In the long term, I believe what I really
  need to do is to continue to educate myself about how the time device works. Perhaps the new —
  perhaps Aari can help me with some of the insights he has gained into its process while time-traveling
  with his friend. I can't help but believe there must be a way to regain my Aari without losing Laarye or
  making Aariundergo Khleevi torture again."
   "I'll say this, Princess, if anybody can do it, you can." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other for
  a moment, then said, "If you want to wait out here, I'll just go in and say hi to Aari — even if he probably
  doesn't remember me."
   Acorna waited with less patience than she usually exhibited, but occupied herself with admiring the
  changes wrought on Vhiliinyar's surface. She'd been so busy in the underground city that she'd not taken
  the time to appreciate all the changes on the planet's surface. A majestic mountain range rose where once
  hills of rubble stood. Wildflowers sprinkled the meadows and grew in such profusion at the base of the
  distant foothills that the brilliant blossoms shone like stars against a background of a thousand shades of
  blue. Streams and rivers ribboned through the periwinkle meadows and a wide lavender lake that in time
  would become an inland sea spread between her and the mountains. She grazed thoughtfully on the
  delicious grasses provided.
   But in a shorter time than she expected, Becker and Mac reemerged, trailed by Aari, Laarye, and
  Maati.
   Becker looked very uncomfortable."Hey, Princess. What a treat! Maati and her brothers want to ride
  back to MOO with us to see their parents. Won't that be exciting?"
   "Oh," she said. She wished she could change her mind about going, but the plea in Becker's eyes for her
  to accompany them was too strong for her to resist. She had hoped to have time to talk with Becker in
  the familiar surroundings of theCondor. She truly did not want to be closed up in the tight confines of the
  Condorwith the new, remote Aari.
  
   However, she reminded herself that Rafik was coming to MOO. Her aunt Neeva was already on MOO,
  along with her uncle Hafiz and his wife. She could look forward to seeing them. She would find the time
  and space and people on MOO to confide in. But still her spirits sank as the new Aari beamed brightly
  down at her. It was going to feel like a long, long space voyage.
   Her silence was not too noticeable, since Aari chatted in Linyaari to Becker about the things his
  recorded memory told him about theCondor, and Becker asked Aari about his adventures with
  Grimalkin. Becker also filled Aari in on the trip he, Mac, Nadhari, Acorna, and particularly RK had
  taken that landed them accidentally in Makahomia.
   RK, who had always been very fond of Aari, held back from the new, improved version of his friend.
  When Aari reached out to stroke the cat, RK sniffed at his fingers, hissed, and batted them away. Then
  the cat jumped onto Laarye's knee to sniff him instead.
   Maati was talking to Laarye about the rescue of her parents that she and Thariinye had staged.
   Laarye kept nodding as if that was familiar to him, and Maati said, "You know all about it?"
   "Yes, Aari filled me in. His account varies in some small details from your own story but is essentially the
  same."
   "How is it different?"
   "Aari told how he saved everyone and how he and Captain Becker cleverly devised a way to destroy
  the exoskeleton of the Khleevi using a plant toxin. This enabled him to save you and Khornya and
  Thariinye. Then he also located your parents."
   Maati frowned. "Yeah, that's different," she said in a noncommittal voice.
   Docking with theCondorsaved Maati from making further explanations.
   Once aboard the ship, as if by mutual consent, the Linyaari spread out. At Becker's suggestion, Laarye
  and Aari took Maati's LAANYE, the Linyaari language decoding device, and retired to the "library." This
  was a cabin that had once been stuffed with hard-copy books Becker had salvaged from dumps and
  landfills on various worlds. Mac had installed a vid screen and also patches to the main computer for
  those wishing to play vids, of which the library also boasted a considerable number. This current version
  of Aari had not been exposed to Standard Galactic, the human tongue through most of known space,
  though he knew that he was supposed to know it. This was, in fact, recorded in his memory storage unit.
  But Grimalkin had not recorded any clues to the language itself in the memory unit, and so Aari would
  have to re-learn it. Since Standard was the language of MOO and much of the multiverse, Maati
  suggested to Laarye that he, too, needed to become fluent in it.
   Acorna left them to it and sought out a place where she could be alone on the ship. She thought that
  Maati would go to the library with her brothers to coach them and point out the reallygoodbooks and
  vids, but instead the young Linyaari girl sought Acorna out where she was tending the hydroponics bed.
   "Can I help?" Maati asked.
   "I thought you'd want to help your brothers," Acorna said, wondering how weeds managed to creep into
  even the most controlled environments.
  
   "I thought you wouldn't want to spend a minute away from Aari," Maati retorted, more sharply than she
  had ever spoken to Acorna before. "But I don't feel that way. I thought they needed to process all that
  learning stuff on their own."
   Acorna said nothing in reply, but kept weeding.
   Finally, Maati could stand it no longer, and said, "You know about ghosts?"
   "Yes, I've heard of them," Acorna said. "I am surprised that you have."
   "Those stories are weird, but I like them — especially the ones where the atmosphere is sort of scary
  but the ghosts are nice. Ever since I read the first one, I've liked the idea that something of the spirit of
  someone who dies can stay with people they care about. But now I'm not so sure. Talking to Laarye is a
  lot like talking to a ghost. Talking to Aari — well, I keep thinking of him as Aari Whole-Horn, because
  he doesn't seem like the same person asourAari. He's more like a visually enhanced holo or something.
  Do you know what I mean?"
   Acorna nodded. She straightened slowly up from the garden, offering a handful of grass to Maati, who
  was still standing. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. It's as if he is a shell that looks like Aari, walks
  and talks a bit like him, but that's where the similarity ends. And yet, he is a person, just as much asour
  Aari, and probably just as lovable if we give him a chance. Maybe when your brothers meet your parents
  again, and we see them in the context of the family members they already knew, they will begin to seem
  more real."
   "Oh, sure," Maati said. "Of course they will. But it's funny, Khornya. I always thought my parents were
  dead, but when they came back I never felt about them the way I do about Laarye and Aari
  Whole-Horn."
   "You need to stop calling him that or he'll read you and be offended," Acorna cautioned. "He may be
  stranger than we wish he was, but he still reads thought-talk."
   "Maybe we should wear horn-hats until we get used to the boys," Maati suggested with a giggle,
  referring to the sometimes rather comical creations intended not only to costume and ornament a Linyaari
  horn for a dance or other festive occasion, but to shield some of the wearer's more spontaneous thoughts
  as well.
   "I'll bet Eedi saved some of them from that party when I first arrived on narhii-Vhiliinyar," Acorna said
  mischievously. "We should borrow some from her. I want the one with the pink pompom on the end."
   "No fair," Maati said, giggling. "I wanted that one!" And off they went, talking of commonplaces and silly
  apparel and other nonstressful things until the voyage was nearly over.
   When they finally docked on the MOO, Becker looked out the viewport, and said, "Damn. They forgot
  the brass band. Everybody else seems to be here though."
   Though he was exaggerating slightly, Maati's (and Aari's and Laarye's) parents Miiri and Kaarlye, and
  the Harakamians and their entourage of servants and security personnel awaited their arrival in the
  lavishly appointed terminal. Rafik Nadezda's vessel had set down just before theCondordid. He, too,
  was waiting at the terminal to greet them.
  
   On Acorna's last arrival on MOO, not more than two months ago, the terminal had consisted of a com
  shed in a temporary building. The new building was spacious and full of glass and plant life, artwork, and
  deep, comfortable seating. The Makahomian catseye chrysoberyls had enriched both the Linyaari and
  Hafiz immeasurably, and the improvements on both MOO and Vhiliinyar were the result of that influx of
  wealth.
   Miiri and Kaarlye rushed forward to greet their children, and Acorna stepped aside, only to be swept up
  in a big hug by Rafik. One of her triad of foster fathers, the three asteroid miners who had rescued her
  infant self from her escape pod, Rafik was now the active head of House Harakamian enterprises. Rafik's
  uncle Hafiz had named him as heir in preference to his own son. These days Hafiz claimed to beretired,
  and loudly extolled his nephew's business sense and stewardship. MOO and the rehabilitation of the
  Linyaari worlds were Hafiz's idea of a retirement sideline.
   Acorna returned Rafik's hug enthusiastically.
   Finally, Rafik held Acorna at arm's length and looked her over with a paternal eye. "I didn't think it was
  possible but, yes, you're even prettier than you were the last time I saw you. Howareyou, Acorna? "
   Rafik was a little gray at the temples, but it suited him, and his dark eyes, thickly fringed with curling
  lashes, were as shrewd and merry as ever. Though his waistline remained trim, Acorna noticed a family
  resemblance between Rafik and Hafiz that had not been as obvious to her previously.
   "Just fine, now that you're here," she said, linking arms with him. "It is so good to see you again! You
  must tell me what brings you here. And I want to hear all about Calum and Gill and the Kendoro sisters.
  And Pal, too, of course."
   "There is much to tell. You're going to have a half brother or sister pretty soon, for one thing," he said.
  "Mercy is pregnant."
   "Wonderful! Calum must be over the moon. He loves children so. He will love having a baby of his own
  to coo over."
   "He's happy as a hungry Linyaari in the height of grazing season. Gill and Judit have been spending most
  of their time at Maganos Moonbase. I don't get up there very often, but I hear from them by com unit
  quite a bit. We all miss you, of course."
   "I miss you all, too."
   "But we've been worried about you. Aari, your lifemate, we heard that he disappeared?"
   She took a deep breath and nodded.
   "Well, yes, he did. It's been a long, hard time for me. But I have news, as well. Aari seems to be back,
  sort of. That's him there with his family. I'm keeping a little distance from him right now." She nodded to
  where Aari, with great poise, was telling his parents how he and Grimalkin had located Laarye in time to
  prevent him from starving to death and brought him back through time to restore him to the family.
   "He just got back, and you're already estranged?" Rafik asked, shocked. "I thought you would shake the
  universe apart looking for him. What happened?"
   But before she could tell him, they met Hafiz and Karina Harakamian. Hafiz wore his usual rich robes
  
  embroidered with gold and glimmering with jewels, while Karina, also as usual, was floating in an oceanic
  drift of lavender, lilac, violet, and purple draperies, the colors subtly blending with each other in a
  beautiful whole, the layers difficult to sort out. What was not subtle was the jewelry she currently sported.
  Gone were her amethysts and tanzanites, and in their place was a collar of perfectly matched orchid-hued
  golf-ball-size catseye chrysoberyls.
   Becker did a double take that Acorna could sense even though her back was to him. "Wow! You are
  wearing enough power there to terraform a galaxy, lady."
   "Iknow," Karina said, stroking her necklace in a pleased fashion. "Lovely, isn't it? It was difficult to
  choose the right ones from all of those you brought home, but when I saw these in my colors, I just knew
  I had to have them. Especially after what you told us about the reverence in which these sacred stones
  are held, and how only the most devout priests and priestesses wear them. Haffy was a bit stuffy about it
  at first, but I pointed out to him that as the panspiritual leader of our little colony, I have a certain image to
  maintain. That means such powerful talismans as these should at least be represented by a few little
  samples in my personal collection. So he had that adorable Rocky Reamer design this necklace for me
  and gave it to me as a gift for our two year, four months, three weeks, two days, five hours, and six
  minutes anniversary. Unfortunately, Rocky hasn't yet finished the matching earrings, bracelet, and ring,
  but the necklace makes quite a statement on its own, don't you think?"
   "Statement!It's an entire library, and then some," Becker said.
   Karma looked crestfallen and frowned slightly. "You don't think it's a bit plain on its own like this?"
   Acorna felt that she could sincerely say, "You would be the hit of any Linyaari ball with that, Karina. It
  really is stunning."
   "I know they only wore one gem at a time on Makahomia, but their culture was rather primitive, from
  what you say. And they didn't have the means to set gems properly, as Rocky does," Karina said. "And
  then, too, they were not — from what you say of the high priest — truly evolved and enlightened beings.
  I doubt many of them could have maintained their sanity, much less control, in the presence of such
  powerful talismans as these. I myself must struggle as I wear it to remain in charge of the stones, to
  channel theiremanations, and it is only because of my years of dedicated study and selfless discipline that
  I am able to succeed."
   "Yeah, well," Becker said, stifling a smile, turning away, and looking desperately for an excuse to end the
  conversation.
   Rafik took his aunt's hand and kissed it, saying, "And the power becomes you mightily, treasure of my
  adopted father."
   Acorna wanted to giggle. Rafik's manners were now — or perhaps it was here — sodifferent than they
  had been aboard the asteroid mining ship where he, Calum, and Gill had raised her from babyhood. He
  couldn't have picked a better time to show up. Having him here steadied her and lessened the emotional
  vertigo she experienced from dealing with the new Aari.
   She was also very tired from keeping her thoughts shielded from everyone. She should be — was —
  glad to see her lifemate alive and well again. And not everyone had the chance to undo such a horrible
  chapter in life as Aari's torture by the Khleevi. She felt, if not guilty, as least as if her fellow Linyaari
  would not easily forgive her selfish unhappiness in the face of Aari's unexpected return.
  
   Hafiz beamed at her and sandwiched her hands between his own. "You have much cause to celebrate
  today, granddaughter of my heart. Rafik is here and also your own lost husband."
   "Lifemate, dearest," Karina whispered out of the side of her mouth, which she hid with the edge of a
  heavily beringed hand. "The Linyaari have lifemates, not formal marriages."
   He waved her objection away. "It is all the same. Better in fact, since Linyaari remain faithful throughout
  their lives to one beloved spouse."
   Becker cleared his throat. "Uh, Hafiz, could I speak with you privately for a minute?"
   "What is it, you wily camel trader, you?" asked Hafiz, waving his plump forefinger under Becker's nose
  in a jovial fashion. Hafiz referred to the deal Becker had made on behalf of the Linyaari for the catseyes.
  The old man had paid almost current market price for the precious and highly useful gems before realizing
  that the Linyaari and Becker were carting home enough to drive the price down significantly should they
  all become available at once. Furthermore, since the Linyaari had been heavily into debt to Hafiz for his
  help in fighting off the Khleevi and rebuilding their devastated worlds, very little money had changed
  hands.
   Still, Hafiz consoled himself with the thought that, though the Linyaari debt was wiped out and they had
  sufficient future credits granted for the remaining processes that would be required to revive both planets,
  Hafiz himself was able to make a handsome profit by selling some of the unusually large and fine catseyes
  he acquired at well above the usual rate. He was also making deals to sell others in the future. And under
  his capable and profitable guidance, the market would not be flooded, because the bulk of the stones
  were safely stored in one of the Harakamian warehouses on MOO, ready to be released at the whim and
  will of one Hafiz Harakamian.When the time — and the price — was appropriate, of course.
   Becker suspected Rafik might have come not only to see Acorna, but also to take possession of more of
  the stones to market on Kezdet.
   Karina linked arms with her husband, not wanting to be left out of possibly profitable discussions, for
  despite her well-cultivated ethereal airs, she was as canny in her way as Hafiz.
   This left Acorna more or less alone with Rafik, if she didn't count Aari's family and the security
  personnel.
   Acorna realized what Becker was doing and was grateful for the opportunity to confide in Rafik. She
  pulled her adopted father aside and quietly explained about Aari and Laarye and the time machine, along
  with the little she had learned about Grimalkin, Aari's companion on his voyages through time.
   As they conferred, they walked out of the terminal toward the guest quarters where Hafiz usually lodged
  his most important visitors. To get there, one walked through Hafiz's ornamental gardens. The moment
  they stepped into the bubble, the exotic fragrances assailing their nostrils told Acorna, even before she
  saw the brilliant blossoms, that the garden had been revived. The flowers were bigger and brighter than
  ever, and more fragrant. Here and there along the path elaborate fountains radiated fine sprays of
  moisture to cool the faces and throats of passersby.
   Only a short time ago the surface of MOO had been barren, the irrigation systems ripped up to provide
  conduits for the waters of Vhiliinyar. To free up the supplies needed to revive the battered planet, Karina
  and Hafiz had instituted water rationing on MOO, and had themselves submitted with a fortitude that
  amazed everyone who only knew them as luxury-loving potentates of their own private moon. During the
  
  hard times, Hafiz had softened the austerity of the ruined gardens to some degree with extravagant
  holograms that he created for that purpose, but they naturally did not emit the same perfumes or cooling
  spray that the real gardens did.
   Acorna and Rafik slowed as they strolled, both to secure the necessary privacy and to enjoy the
  beautiful surroundings. "You've heard my problems," Acorna said when she had finished relating them to
  her adopted father. "Now tell me to what we owe the honor of your visit? Is it the catseyes?"
   "Partly, yes.And partly for other family reasons.I am so relieved that you came when you did, and with a
  development dramatic enough to distract Hafiz from his current campaign to find me a wife. Now that I
  am his heir, he says, it is time I married and provided him with little heirs and heiresses. He dismisses my
  argument that you are an appropriate heir for us both. He tells me that you, my dear, have other falafel to
  fry. I'm just glad I'm not neo-Hadithian after all, or he'd probably try to get me to marry four women at
  once to improve my chances of fathering his 'grandchildren.' I can't understand him, Acorna. He is twice
  my age and had only one son — whom he couldn't stand. Now, all of a sudden, he's acting like a mother
  with a virgin daughter. And it'smylife he's arranging for me."
   Acorna laughed, "Don't you want to find a wife, Rafik?"
   "Yes," he said. "Ido. I don't want Hafiz to find one for me. And I don't want to find just any nice girl with
  a nice family that has a nice fortune that goes with her. I don't want to be an intergalactic playboy like
  Hafiz was in his younger days. I want to findmy ownwife, someone as special to me as Judit and Mercy
  are to Gill and Calum."
   "Well," Acorna said ruefully. "If you find her, take my advice and don't let her get involved with time
  travelers."
   "Poor Acorna."Rafik put his arm around her slim shoulders and gave her a hug. "It's going to be all right,
  you know," he told her. "You and Aari fell in love with each other once, and you will do it again.
  However much he has changed because of experiences he's had or hasn't had, he's the same person
  inside and will be drawn back to you. And once the strangeness goes away, you'll get to fall for him all
  over again."
   "Do you think so?" she asked, hoping against all logic that, because of the closeness of their relationship,
  somehow Rafik knew things about her she herself didn't know.
   "I do," he said.
   Chapter Two
    
   Dinner was a lavish affair. Hafiz's kitchens prepared a very good simulation of a fatted calf for the return
  of the prodigal heir. The Linyaari, of course, followed their own dietary agenda and dined on the
  beautifully arranged buds and grasses in the floral centerpieces while the other diners enjoyed gourmet
  delicacies from more substantial dishes.
   TheBalakiirelanded while the feast was in progress, but Neeva, Khaan, and Melireenya were all too
  space-weary from their journey to join in the feast. They'd come through a meteor shower on the way
  back, and had had a very tense time of it.
  
   (We just wanted to stop and say hello,) Neeva told Acorna through mind-speech as Melireenya and
  Khaari, slightly behind her, yawned and gave perfunctory waves of their hands to her and the other
  diners. (We'll graze later. I see you have someone more interesting to talk to than your old mother-sister
  anyway. It is well that you are together with Aari once more, Khornya. I am pleased for you.)
   Clearly Neeva's tiredness kept her from picking up on Acorna's inner conflict.
   Nevertheless, Acorna did her best to seem pleased, too. Under her family's watchful eye, she tried to be
  more welcoming to Aari.
   "Can you tell us something of your experiences before you met up with Laarye again?" she asked. "I
  have been studying the time device, and I think I've begun to understand how it works. But I admit I am
  still curious about why you and Grimalkin traveled to Makahomia."
   "Yes, Aari, I should very much like to hear that for myself," Hafiz said. "I trust you had some other plan
  in mind thanthat generations later your contributions to the history of that planet would eventually cost me
  my security chief." He inclined his head toward a tall uniformed man scrutinizing the area from the
  perimeter of the bubble. "The new fellow, Smythe-Wesson here, is a former Red Bracelet himself. While
  I find that somewhat reassuring, he does not inspire the same sort of confidence I had in Commander
  Kando." Hafizsighed a deep, put-upon sigh.
   Thrilled as he was about the catseyes and the immense profits they would bring him, Hafiz had yet to
  forgive Acorna and her friends for allowing Nadhari Kando to remain on Makahomia.
   Aari cheerily waved a dahlia through the air as he flung his hands wide, and said, "Oh, that! Well,
  Grimalkin, as you seem to have gathered, Khornya, is a feline shape-shifter. He is an empath and
  therefore much less egotistical than others among the Friends, but he shares Riid-Kiiyi's belief that those
  who are not cats are less fortunate than he. He was very happy to help me with my mission to rescue
  Laarye, but said we had to wait for exactly the right time and place to intersect with our home dimension
  so that I would be there to save my brother without falling prey to the Khleevi again. Even though he
  time-travels a lot, Grimalkin does not like towastetime, so he insisted we begin positioning ourselves by
  journeying to Makahomia, where he knew from the journals Nadhari will someday write that we were
  needed. It was also an excellent opportunity to refashion some of the inhabitants there inhis own image. I
  don't actually remember any of it, mind you, but I have it all here in the recording he helped me make so I
  would remember myself from the other timeline."
   "That soundsconfusing," Maati said.
   Aari shrugged. "Perhaps it was, but he understood it. He is far older and wiser and much more brilliant
  than I, of course, but I trust his interpretations."
   Acorna felt peeved all over again. If Grimalkin was so much older, wiser, and brilliant than Aari — and
  presumably, herself — why couldn't he have returned Aari to her with his memory intact? Aari spoke of
  Grimalkin so enthusiastically that she thought that maybe he regretted returning to her. Perhaps her lover
  would rather be with his new friend.
   Though Acorna carefully shielded these thoughts, Maati laid a hand on hers consolingly.
   Hafiz had also grown bored with Aari's explanation of Grimalkin's explanation of time and space. Karina
  yawned and stretched, burped, and covered her mouth delicately with two fingers.
  
   Hafiz then tapped his wineglass with a jeweled dagger."And now, honored guests, a special surprise. I
  have engaged something special for your enjoyment tonight. It is not a hologrammatic entertainment.
  Tonight you will see actual human performers of great skill and talent, and not incidentally, beauty,
  imported at enormous expense from the Akemilisan harems. Prepare yourselves to appreciate the
  astounding aerial acrobatics of Aziza and the Ornaments of Akemi!
   "And now, in the time-honored custom of my people I say" — and he clapped twice, sharply — "bring
  on the dancing girls!"
   In a rainbow cyclone of veils and gauzy gaudy gold-encrusted split skirts and puffy pants, their bosoms
  and hips adorned by silk clothing heavily encrusted with jangling gold coins and jewels, the dancers
  whirled from the taller bits of shrubbery onto the patio where the diners sat digesting the superb meal.
   Their feet were bare, except for tasteful toe rings and little chains of coins worn as anklets, as were their
  midriffs.
   "Nice," Becker whispered to Hafiz. "Are they just visiting or did you persuade them to be your in-house
  troupe?"
   "They were on their way to another engagement when their ship developed trouble," Hafiz whispered
  back. His right eye acquired a twinkle as the left one winked shut, as if he was enjoying a joke that was
  still a mystery to everyone else. "One of our — associates — evacuated them to her vessel, then
  persuaded them to come here.Lovely, eh?"
   Becker didn't respond because his jaw had dropped too far to make speech possible.
   The ladies appeared boneless. Not for them the skeletal look popular in some of the human ports. Their
  smooth, rounded flesh undulated effortlessly in time to a drumbeat that varied so that it made Acorna
  think at some times of a stalking tiger, at others of a cornered gazelle. Their eyes were lined with a black
  substance that made them look huge, while veils first concealed the lower part of their faces,then were
  whipped away just as, with an explosion of frothing cloth, the women turned to show the serpentine
  movements of their backs and shoulders.
   She heard Hafiz say to Becker, "The Three Prophets teach that a woman should be modest. See how
  modest they are, with their veils concealing their identities?And, yet, how lovely. And I do think that to be
  a good wife, a woman should be well versed in the womanly arts."
   "You're not thinking of taking another wife, Hafiz?"
   Karina's complacent smile faltered a bit, and she speared her husband with a rapier glance. He licked his
  lips and drummed his fingers on the sash around his paunch in time to the music. "No, no," he said with
  just a touch of regret, "Such barbaric customs are practiced only by blasphemers of the true path, such as
  the Neo-Hadithians. My interest in these ladies is for the sake of my heir. It is time Rafik began to think
  of finding a wife. A man's life should not be all business and good works. He should have a family as
  well. I once believed that it was important to have sons, until I had one, and he was worthless. On the
  other hand, I adopted my beautiful granddaughter, who is a jewel beyond price, so I am thinking Rafik
  must father many children of both sexes, so that he has many heirs to choose from and I have many
  grandchildren to comfort me in my advancing years."
   "I'llcomfort you, my dynamo of the desert," Karina whispered.
  
   "And I you, O pearl ofpulchritude, and our grandchildren shall comfort us both."
   The drum tempo changed again, and the troupe split off to leave a single dancer, her gossamer veils
  folded over her body like the wings of a sleeping butterfly. She emerged slowly, stretched backward,
  elongating her torso and extending her head back toward her ankles. Just as they thought she was going
  to do a backbend, she simply rolled her torso backward and then up again. Then she raised her arms
  above her head, facing them, her head moving back and forth like a snake's. Her feet rose above the
  ground and she rolled forward. It was not a tumble, simply a leisurely roll. She repeated these maneuvers
  in time with the music, her weightless body making lazy,graceful figure-eight arcs through the air.
   As the music picked up, her movements, while grounded, and those in the air grew faster and more
  acrobatic; and then suddenly the rest of the troupe joined her, all spinning madly, the large faceted jewels
  in the middles of their coin belts flashing as if lit from within with each turn. And then, like the fluff of
  seedpods twirling in a high wind, each dancer in turn swept her hand before her belt and spun up into the
  air, the soles of her feet nearly a meter off the ground.
   Karina clapped her hands delightedly.
   "Oh, Haffy, this is a truly inspiring performance! Even I, who have studied the sacred erotic dances of
  ancientBabylon andNineveh with high priestesses channeled from those cultures, have never seen such
  steps."
   "Truly they make an artistic tool of the simple antigravity belts they wear beneath their coins," Hafiz
  agreed.
   The girls spun downward again and, with their feet firmly planted on the ground, swept their veils before
  them and split off into the shrubbery to leave the stage to another soloist.
   Becker was immediately enthralled by the new dancer. She was swathed in veils and skirts that whirled
  and shifted with her movements rising and falling, appearing and disappearing. The spacer was reminded
  of one of the clear-faceted kaleidoscopes you could buy at nanobug markets.The kind that took their
  colors from whatever was around them. If you looked through one of them at a sunlit coastal morning,
  sky blue, sea green, sun yellow, and spun it around and around, he thought maybe you could come close
  to the effect the dancer created. But, of course, it wouldn't be nearly as tantalizing as the flashes of pale
  skin and bright gold-green eyes glimpsed among the veils and her long, butter yellow hair. Her head was
  crowned with a circlet of coins that held a green veil whose tail covered her lower face, but there was
  something familiar about her.
   As the tempo picked up, she suddenly approached and cast one of the veils around him. Then, fixing him
  in a green gaze made more exotic than it might have been by the kohl surrounding her eyes, she waggled
  her eyebrows up and down at him. Lifting one hip, then the other, she slowly worked her way into a
  shimmy, the coins at her hips flipping and clanking. She crooked her finger, beckoning, and he stood up
  and shook his lower half, too, though it didn't have the same effect.
   Laughing, she pushed him back down and deposited her harem-pants-clad behind on his lap. "Better
  stick to salvage, Becker," she said in unexotic Basic.
   "Andina!When did you get here?"
   "I would have come to meet you, but I didn't want to spoil the surprise," she told him.
  
   "I didn't know you performed. I thought you were in the cleaning business."
   "I am. But these girls got stranded on a backwater asteroid populated by uncouth space bums not unlike
  you. I gave them a lift, and they gave me lessons for part of their fare. I persuaded them to let me bring
  them here instead of to the gig they were headed for when their ship began acting up. I figured Hafiz
  would pay them enough that they could reimburse me for the trip and fix their ship as well."
   "And if they couldn't fix it, you knew they could always sell it to me for salvage," Becker said.
   They said a lot of other things, as well, things that Acorna was too polite to listen to.
   It appeared that Andina had started a trend when she got Becker up to dance with her, and some of the
  other dancers began to do likewise. Each dancer swooped, using her veils like wings, to the table, picked
  up a wineglass, set it on her head, lowered herself to the floor, did a lot of astounding muscular
  contractions with her abdomen and a few flips, rose again, wineglass still balanced, whirled into the air
  with it still on her forehead, then, without spilling a drop, whirled back to the table, gave each glass to its
  owner, and made a gesture that they were to down the contents, then whipped a silken veil around the
  party in question and dragged him (and sometimes her) out onto the dance floor. They repeated this until
  each diner had a turn, each glass of wine had been aerated, and most of the diners were on their feet and
  laughing.
   As the gentleman at the head of the table, Hafiz would have been chosen first, except that when a
  lissome, sloe-eyed beauty undulated toward him, Karina sprang into action, placing herself between the
  dancer and her husband and waving her lavender draperies in a comparatively graceless and
  unprofessional but nonetheless effective fashion. The dancer applauded Karina with the ululating cry
  called azaghareet, bowed to them both, and did her trick with both of their wineglasses. Hafiz and Karina
  were by then so absorbed in each other that they barely noticed. Still, they dutifully quaffed their wine
  when the dancer returned it to them, then they left the party with their arms as far around each others'
  convex waists as their ample bodies would allow.
   The youngest member of the troupe was the daughter of one of the dancers. Like the other dancers, she
  seemed fascinated if somewhat confused by the Linyaari, who ate the centerpieces and drank only water.
  The other dancers avoided eye contact with the Linyaari diners, but finally the young girl's curiosity
  overcame her reserve, and she chose Maati to dance with her. Maati jumped in enthusiastically and
  imitated the girl's movements. Both of them giggled at the Linyaari girl's awkwardness. The dancer
  giggled even more when she realized Maati was female. "What is your name?" the girl asked as she
  whipped a veil off some part of her costume and handed it to Maati, showing her how to tie it around her
  haunches.
   Maati told her, and added, "It means harmony, like in music."
   Ah, my name is Layla. It means evening, in case one is living someplace where that makes any
  difference," Layla replied.
   She then did an aerial flip, after which she extracted a belt from beneath the coins at her waist and
  handed it to Maati.
   Layla made a little circle in the air with her upraised index finger.
   Maati nodded excitedly and clasped the belt in place just below her waist. She spun as the little dancer
  directed, making one or two complete revolutions before she got dizzy and stumbled upward, putting one
  
  foot out to catch herself and meeting only air. She was almost a full meter off the ground! Her new friend
  steadied her and pulled her back down. Maati returned the antigrav belt, but she seemed sorry to have to
  do so.
   Then she saw Laarye laughing at her and Layla, so they pulled him up to join them. He shifted from one
  foot to the other, watching them with a studious expression,then burst into a sort of prance as he circled
  them, holding one end of the veil until they were both entangled in it.
   Rafik, whose wineglass was upside down beside his plate, was pulled from Acorna's side when the lead
  dancer, clad in crimson-and-teal paisley velvet pants and a great deal of clanking gold, did handsprings
  up to him and captured him with a red veil.
   (Culturally fascinating, don't you think?) Aari asked, using thought-talk. (I wonder if those concealing
  cloths they wear over their faces and wave around themselves serve a function similar to horn-hats. Do
  you know?)
   (I don't think the purpose is the same,) Acorna replied politely, if a little stiffly. (I believe they are part of
  a tableau recreating a historical mating ritual.)
   "So are horn-hats," Aari said, as if reminding her. "It seems to me, and of course, in this timeline this is
  the first encounter I have had with human culture, that the cloths they wave— "
   "Veils," Acorna supplied.
   "Vaals," he repeated obligingly, if inaccurately. "I think they are intended to increase the magnetic field
  around the dancer's body, thereby attracting more potential mates, whereas thevaalscovering the mouths
  of the dancers serve to intensify the psychic vibrations emanating from their ocular organs. Of course, I
  could not actually make out what the message was supposed to be, but I feel sure it had something to do
  with mating."
   "Actually," Acorna said, "from what I have read of the culture Uncle Hafiz comes from, the dance was
  originally performed by females encouraging other females when they are in labor with their young. The
  female about to give birth is supposed to emulate the abdominal movements of the dancers in order to
  hasten her baby's entrance into the world. Practicing the dance from the time they are young girls
  strengthens the muscles required to give birth as well."
   "Ahhh," Aari said. "I felt sure there was some deeper meaning. Do the acrobatic feats and the airborne
  activities also play a role in human childbirth?"
   "Not that I'm aware of," Acorna said, suppressing a smile in spite of herself. This was starting to sound
  like Aari after all, with his rather whimsical interpretations of other cultures. "I believe the only function of
  those movements is to enhance the performance of the entertainers."
   She found her feet tapping and her hands patting her thighs as she listened to the music. Watching
  Laarye and the girls cavort, with Maati following Laarye's prance and the dancing girl joining in as if it
  was a new step, Acorna jumped to her feet, grabbed Aari's hand, and pulled him into the dance, too.
  The dancers shimmied and undulated for a moment or two while looking askance at the high-stepping
  Linyaari, then shrugged and fell in behind, so that Laarye was leading a line of dancers that soon took in
  the entire audience.
   For the first time since Aari's arrival, Acorna's tension vanished, a thing of the past as if each dance step
  
  kicked it farther away. Aari capered and kicked behind her, and she sensed his own relief. He truly had
  not meant to hurt her — he didn't even know her. Perhaps Rafik was right — they needed to get to
  know each other all over again, then everything would be fine.
   Finally, the giddiness of Acorna's relief turned to weariness. She said good night to Rafik and her friends
  and sought her usual sleeping mat in Hafiz's guest quarters.
   Tired as she was, she hoped she'd sleep well. The sleep Maati had interrupted had been unsatisfactory,
  plagued as it was by dreams that in some way involved the Khleevi, from what she could recall. She did
  not wish to return to that kind of sleep again, but she told herself the bad dreams only came when she fell
  asleep in the time lab.
   Hard as she tried to reassure herself, she could not find a comfortable position on the mat. Other
  thoughts, disturbing in a much pleasanter way, kept intruding, adding to her restlessness.
   Aari's presence stirred her on a number of levels, including the most basic physical ones. She had
  becomeusedto responding to him, and now, even though her mind was telling her it wasn't a good idea,
  her body still wanted to. She wondered again if there was a way the time device could be used to
  integrate her original Aari with the current one — so that memories of her and his other friends were not
  merely hearsay to him, but experiences he had been a partof, that had moved and changed him
  emotionally.
   She had to admit, though, that the new Aari sure could dance.
   But something else bothered her too much to allow her to sleep. While dancing with the entertainers, she
  had caught random snatches of thought from those around her.
   "After… find out where… back to ship…"
   Those thoughts, especially in a group of space travelers such as those at the dinner, could have been
  perfectly innocent. But she was almost certain she'd picked up the words from the dancers. And she felt
  that there was something secretive behind them, just as there was something profoundly unfriendly lurking
  behind the women's professional smiles.
   Perhaps it was nothing. Maybe it was simply that the dancers had led rather difficult lives and feared to
  trust the people they met on their travels. The young girl Layla had seemed to like Maati. Those feelings
  had been genuine, Acorna was sure. Layla had gone out of her way to be amiable to the young Linyaari
  girl. Of course, Maati was easy to like.
   It was certainly true, in Acorna's experience, that many humans found the Linyaari comforting to be
  around and enjoyed their company.
   But the soothing Linyaari aura had not seemed to affect these dancers in the same way it did ordinary
  humans.
   Acorna tossed and turned restlessly for perhaps two hours of Standard time. Maati was not sleeping on
  the pallet beside her as she usually did when they both visited MOO. Perhaps she, too, had been
  troubled by the thoughts of the newcomers.
   Acorna finally decided that, between her thoughts and the energetic dancing, she was too stimulated to
  sleep. She got up from her pallet and quickly dressed. She would go for a walk in an attempt to calm
  
  herself into sleep mode.
   Night and day were engineered events on MOO, so there were activities available for people whose
  bodies were on other schedules than the one programmed into the enormous envirobubbles housing each
  major area of MOO's multitude of domestic quarters. She might go to the lab, see if Aari's parents were
  working there, and get their impressions of their newly returned sons. Or perhaps she'd look for Maati.
  The girl was fond of hanging out in the com shed and talking to others who were the human equivalent of
  her age. She had made friends with many of the Moonbase students and the denizens of theHavenwhen
  they were in port.
   Acorna walked out of the guest quarters and stepped onto the pedestrian thoroughfare connecting the
  various envirobubbles with each other. The terminal and docking bays were in one direction, the
  laboratories in the opposite one. She closed her eyes and conducted a mental search for her friends. She
  didn't call to them. She simply tried to locate them by tracking their auras. Her mental powers had grown
  tremendously since she first rejoined her people. The earliest glimmer of psychic ability she had
  demonstrated, the power simply to look at an asteroid through a com screen or view port and discern its
  mineral content, had matured into a sort of mental sonar that allowed her, when she concentrated, to
  discern many details about her environment and to locate specific features contained within it.
   Never before had she attempted to use that sense in this particular way, but now, in her indecision, she
  searched for people as naturally as she would grasses or metals or other aspects of her surroundings.
   Maati was headed away from the terminal. Becker and Andina were spending the night on theHeloise,
  Andina's ship. RK slept in the command seat of theCondorwhile Mac was recharging his energy source
  nearby. The laboratories were empty. Kaarlye and Miiri conversed earnestly with Laarye in the guest
  quarters. Rather to Acorna's surprise, Aari and Rafik were deep in conversation as they strolled toward
  the laboratories.
   And the discontented, disquieting babble of dancer thoughts pattered across her mind like hail from the
  direction of the warehouses.What were they doing there?she wondered. She headed toward the dancers.
   As she passed through the outer gardens near the darkened laboratories, she saw Aari and Rafik. They
  were walking together and talking earnestly among the ivory flowers and twisting vines lining the paved
  path that meandered through the gardens. As she passed she saw Aari glance in her direction.
   But the dancers' voices, amplified by her telepathy, and the jumble of their thoughts occupied most of
  her concentration. Their thoughts assumed a melody and a beat that was much like the music they danced
  to. "Open, open, open sesame," one woman was thinking as she used a sonic saw on an intricate lock.
  "Off, off, you never saw us, we were not here," another one instructed the laser beams that usually
  guarded the warehouses as she disabled them. "In with you and grab the rocks. Now run, run,run !"
   And in counterpoint were the thoughts of two others.
   "This seems all wrong."
   "You bet it does. We haven't been paid yet, and we have no transport off this rock."
   "Rocks, rocks, grab the rocks and run, run, run!"
   "How would this one look in my belly button?"
  
   "Stop clowning, Layla, and run!"
   "Run where?"
   "To the spaceships, of course.Andina is a generous girl. She won't mind if we take her vessel for a little
  spin."
   "You planned that all along, didn't you, Aziza?"
   "Of course Idid, little chickpea. Now take your rocks and run."
   "What about the camera security?"
   "Your mama and Naima are giving the guards a private show. Nowhurry."
   Acorna had never before attempted to send an all-points bulletin to every Linyaari within her range, but
  now she did so.
   (Everybody, come quickly! The dancers are thieves, robbing Hafiz of the catseye stones.Hurry!)
   The evening's entertainment had been tiring for most of them, and although she received responses from
  Maati, Laarye, Aari, and their parents, other Linyaari awakened sluggishly and asked her to clarify her
  message.
   (No time. Just come.Now.Quickly!)she called. All the while she called she was running for the
  warehouses in hopes of intercepting the duplicitous dancers.
   (We're right behind you, Khornya.) Aari's thought reached her as she practically skidded to a halt on the
  path, where she was immediately threatened with a stampede of black-clad dancers bearing large and
  apparently heavy valises. As she gained on them, the first one laughed and spun around, spinning herself
  aloft and high over Acorna's head. Acorna jumped for the next one and caught a handful of the dancer's
  full black pants. But the antigrav belts the dancers wore were quite powerful. Instead of Acorna dragging
  the dancer down, the woman dragged Acorna up with her.
   Acorna reached up, twisting the black pants out of the way until the skin of her hand met flesh and bone.
   The woman kicked, "Let go! You're heavy! I can't very well carry you and the loot, too."
   "That — is — my — point — exactly," Acorna said through gritted teeth, while the woman's
  companions zoomed between the path and the shadowy dome of the bubble. Aari and Rafik pelted
  down the path that lay before them, with the raven-robed dancers soaring over them like Halloween
  witches. Rafik, seeing what Acorna was doing, made a leap and brought down the lead dancer as he
  snared her at the knee. But she kicked him in the face and got away. Aari leaped higher than Acorna had
  ever seen anyone, Linyaari or human, leap before, and when his prey ducked, he twisted in midair to
  redirect his grab. Unfortunately, Aari seemed to be trying to grab her using only the last joint of his
  fingertips instead of his entire hands or forearms. His fingertips, of course, slipped off her. Before he
  could tighten his grip, she drew her knees up to her chest and somersaulted over their heads. He landed
  lightly on his toes, giving his hands an odd, comical look of pure disgust before bounding after the others.
   The dancers gave their pursuers a wide berth after that, making horizontal zigzags away from them to
  elude their grasping hands.
  
   Rafik grabbed another one, though. He used a hand-overhand technique to pull his quarry down. When
  his hand met her waist, he gave a tug and her antigrav belt dangled from his hand. Then she fell and he
  with her, both of them coming down hard on the path, knocking the wind from Rafik and also driving the
  dancer's knee into his solar plexus. She grabbed for her belt but couldn't free it. But before Acorna or
  Aari could rush to Rafik's aid, two of the other dancers did back flips in the air, still clutching their valises,
  but with their free hands grabbed their fellow thief and pulled her up with them.
   The distraction as she worried about Rafik caused Acorna to lose her grasp on the dancer to whom she
  was clinging. With a slight kick, the thief slipped from her grip, and Acorna tumbled back to the ground.
  Picking herself up, she ran to Rafik. But before she could get there, Aari touched him with his horn to
  heal any injury done to him by the fall and the woman's knee.
   "Ouch!" Rafik said, rising and rubbing his backside. "I think your horn's on the blink, Aari. My butt still
  hurts."
   Aari's fingers went to his horn."Oh, no. Something must have happened during the time/space transfer.
  Grimalkin warned me that something like that might happen."
   Rafik waved Acorna away when she would have healed the hurt, and said, "It doesn't hurtthatbad,
  honey."
   By the time he stood up, all of the thieves were far out of reach, spinning, flipping, somersaulting, and
  otherwise propellingthemselves toward the terminal.
   "Ilikethose belts," Rafik said. "I want one."
   "Youhaveone," Acorna reminded him. "Maybe if you put it on, it will deprive them of the advantage."
   Rafik held it out to her. "I haven't been able to turn handsprings in years."
   Acorna quickly slipped it on.
   "Wait!" Aari said. "You can't do that. They might hurt you. Hand it to me. I will capture them."
   Acorna spun herself into the air. "Sorry,"and waved goodbye to him as she launched herself forward
  with a series of midair flips. This was fun! Since she was much taller than the dancers, each revolution of
  her long body covered more airspace than that of each dancer. She almost caught up with them, though
  thus far she actually had no idea what she was going to do with them once she had them.
   However, just as she was gaining, they came to the door leading to the passage between bubbles. They
  had enough of a lead that they were able to spinthemselves down, iris open the door, flee through it, and
  close it again before she reached them. She copied the motion they each executed before landing,
  passing her hand over the large jewel in the center of the belt. It spun her gently downward until her feet
  touched the path.
   She pressed the panel to open the door but it remained tightly closed. Somehow the fugitives had
  jammed it. She sent out a mental call to her fellow Linyaari. A few more seemed to be awake now,
  (Somebody stop them! And someone please come and release this door. Where are the security
  guards?)
  
   Nobody seemed to know the answer to that, but after what seemed an interminable time, during which
  Aari and Rafik also reached the door, Melireenya called out to them in mind-speech.
   (We heard you, Khornya, loud and clear. Neeva has gone to find the guards and to try to intercept the
  thieves. Khaari is waking Hafiz and Karina. Ah, now I see how they jammed this portal closed. One of
  them twisted her serpent armband through the layers.Got it.)
   The door irised open a bit jerkily, and Acorna, followed closely by Aari and Rafik, were through it and
  on the other side so quickly that Melireenya had to take a speedy backward hop to avoid being bowled
  over.
   Acorna launched herself again into the air, though it seemed a bit futile at this point. She didn't like how
  dark the gardens and pathways remained, nor how few people were about despite the alarm she had
  raised through her fellow Linyaari.
   Usually the recreation areas were well lit and populated throughout most of the night, but she saw very
  few people up and about now, and no security guards. Hafiz was going to have enough kittens to staff a
  Makahomian temple. Furthermore, she knew that she and Becker were going to hear a great deal more
  from Hafiz about why they had allowed Nadhari Kando to remain behind when she still had a contract as
  hidchief security guard. Such laxness never would have been tolerated under Nadhari's administration.
  Never mind that it had been Hafiz's laxness, not theirs, that had put the dancers on this planet.
   The other connecting doors had not been closed, much less jammed, which told Acorna that the dancers
  were no longer concerned about pursuit.
   As she finally gained the terminal, eerily silent and empty of travelers or personnel, she saw theHeloise,
  theCondor, and theBaiakiirein their bays beyond the terminal's transparent outer walls.
   She also saw the gantry attach itself to theHeloise'shatch, which opened to permit a file of black-clad
  figures bearing valises to disappear through it.
   Becker and Andina were still sleeping in theHeloise. She tried sending to Becker but only got a
  grumbling response. She could imagine him huffing through his mustache in irritation at being disturbed.
  (Captain, wake up. TheHeloiseis being boarded by thieves — the dancers have stolen the catseye
  chrysoberyls and are hijacking Andina's ship — with you in it.) She didn't leave her warning to telepathy
  alone but, as she transmitted silently to her friend, sought out the terminal communications station and
  grabbed a microphone. But, when she reached her goal, she looked back at theHeloiseto see that the
  gantry was gone and exhaust was coming from the ship's jets. Then, gently and without interference, the
  Heloiselifted off as gracefully as her hijackers had danced.
   Chapter Three
    
   Heads will roll when Hafiz finds out what happened," Rafik said. He lounged in a chair on the main deck
  of theCondor, watching Acorna adjust their current course in pursuit of theHeloise.
   Acorna agreed. "But the real excitement will be when Captain Becker learns he has been catnapped —
  excuse me, kidnapped." She gave RK a warning look. The cat had given her a mental nudge that made
  her say "catnapped," she was sure. TheCondor's, feline first mate thought-talked in perfectly good Basic,
  as well as in Makahomian and Linyaari when he wanted to, but generally he seemed to find it entertaining
  
  to pretend that he conversed only in his native meows.
   Rafik paid little attention. He was busy pursuing his own line of thought. "I don't understand how this
  could have happened. Why did so few people respond to your alarm, Acorna? Whydidn'tthe security
  team do its job? And even more puzzling is how those women knew about the stones and where they
  would be concealed. MOO is quite a ways from the beaten path, since this part of the universe is still
  largely a mystery to people in our galaxy. Their encounter with Andina Dmitri was certainly not random
  chance. Do you think she could be in on it?"
   Acorna thought of the few times she had been around Andina when the owner of the Domestic Goddess
  Intergalactic Cleaning Corporation visited Becker. "I've never caught any suspicious thoughts or felt
  uncomfortable or wary around her," Acorna said. "And she's quite well known in her field. If the dancers
  did have their own ship and it malfunctioned, as they claim, who would have known Andina was on her
  way to MOO?"
   "And how did they manage to take over the ship and escape so quickly?" Rafik asked. "It doesn't make
  any sense."
   TheCondorhad been following the trail of theHeloisefor several hours. But, just as Rafik had predicted,
  when Hafiz's face appeared on the screen of the com unit it looked a bit disturbed. Still, in Acorna's
  opinion, Hafiz looked much calmer than Rafik had expected him to. In spite of the enormity of his loss,
  the old bandit appeared more bemused than angry. "I don't suppose my new security chief is aboard
  your vessel and you have neglected to mention that to me?" Hafiz inquired.
   "No, Uncle," Rafik said.
   "He does not seem to be among his fellows either — all of whom are recovering from foul headaches
  and the same deep sleep that captured so many of us. I am surprised, heir of my house, that you escaped
  the drugging of the drinks."
   "Aha, Uncle, the truth is I only escaped the drugging of the drinks because I didn't care for the drink in
  question."
   "You question the quality of my cellars?"
   "No, I question the effects of their contents on my head and stomach — even when untreated with
  sleeping drugs. I can understand why you retired when still a young and vibrant man, O Uncle, for being
  the head of your household is adding years to my body while taking years from my life."
   "You have become as delicate as a flower petal, O my heir, for your body to reject the most delicious of
  nectars. This is a strange malady indeed for an asteroid miner who used to eat dehydrated rations for
  every meal."
   "They were not all dehydrated, my Uncle. Some were ration bars. And when Acorna came among us,
  she made us many excellent salads. Perhaps the drink that now suits the station to which you have
  elevated me is too rich for my lowborn digestion." He shrugged. "At least it has proved fortunate in this
  case."
   "Not so fortunate — at least until the thieves are apprehended, our sacred and valuable gems are
  regained, and our friends are safe once more," Hafiz said.
  
   Acorna noted wryly how Hafiz had ordered his priorities.
   "Of course," Rafik agreed. "I hear and obey, O Uncle, obviously."
   "Yes," Hafiz said."Very well, my boy. May the winds of good fortune be with you in yourendeavors. "
   "Thank you, Uncle," Rafik said with a straight face, though Acorna could hear him thinking how odd the
  blessing of his uncle sounded in space, where there was no wind.
   The ship's feline first mate rubbed against her shins and looked up into her face, then gave a mournful
  "Meow."
   Acorna knelt to stroke RK's plushy brindled back. "I miss our captain, too. But you will have to make
  do with the rest of us for the time being. Just believe,RK, that we will get him back as soon as we can."
    
   For his part, Captain Becker was not only fit to be tied, hewastied. It made him sad to think that an
  evening that had begun so promisingly had gone so sharply downhill.And so suddenly.
   After quite a lot of Hafiz's best hooch and Andina's fetching hoochie-kooch, Becker had been feeling
  quite amorous. So he quickly agreed when Andina suggested, soon after she landed in his lap, that they
  return to her ship, where they could be assured of privacy. Though Hafiz's guest quarters were luxurious
  and imaginative, not to say downright exciting in some areas, the walls in his assigned cubicle were not
  thick. In some cases, they were little more than a holographic veil drawn between one space and another.
  And both Becker and Andina knew all about the hidden surveillance cameras and bugs Hafiz had
  secretly installed throughout. These were mainly to allow him to spy on business associates, in order to
  get the best of them. But that didn't mean the cameras weren't used at other times by other people for
  other purposes. Andina's crew had been given leave to go dirtside to enjoy the delights of MOO, so she
  and Becker knew they would have the ship to themselves.
   Andina's quarters on theHeloise were far from spartan and not nearly as haphazard as Becker's on the
  Condor. Everything was clean, of course, as befitted the ship of a professional cleaning expert. But the
  ambience Becker remembered had definitely changed. Usually Andina's cabin was as cozy and homey as
  if it was made of logs and set beside a roaring trout stream of the sort Becker read about in his old
  hard-copy books. It seemed his lady's reading had lately taken a different turn. The homemade quilt he
  remembered decorating her double-wide bunk had been replaced by a hot-pink-and-gold paisley silk
  coverlet, swathed with gold-shot veils of turquoise, purple, and saffron hanging from eye hooks above
  the bunk. Soft, sensual music similar to that the dancers had used began playing as she led him into her
  chamber. A tray of real wax candles glowed beside the bed, their flickering glow the only light in the
  room, except for a holo window with a faux outside view, in which a holo crescent moon beamed in
  upon them. They had just slipped into something more comfortable, and were about to getreally
  comfortable, when the mood was spoiled by the beep of Andina's cabin's com unit.
   "Yes?" she answered, what is it?"
   "Captain Dmitri, this is Commander Smythe-Wesson, chief of security here on the Moon of
  Opportunity. I have an urgent security matter I must discuss with you.Permission to come aboard,
  please."
   "I am engaged in an urgent matter myself at present, Commander, " Andina said, as Becker nuzzled her
  
  neck. They were glad the com unit screen was not presently turned on. "Can this not wait until morning?"
   "No, ma'am.I would not have disturbed you if it could. It is a very grave matter, Captain, but I am not at
  liberty to discuss it via electronic means.Permission to board, please."
   "Oh, very well, then."She said, sliding out of bed. She opened a wall locker and pulled out a shipsuit.
  Becker reluctantly resumed his own garments as he watched her creamy body disappear into a rip-proof,
  waterproof, fireproof, well-ventilated synthetic fabric casing.Those old-time pashas and sheiks were
  lucky they lived back before com units were invented, he thought sourly.Otherwise, they'd never have
  made it through even one night without interruption, much less a thousand and one nights.
   "Maybe I should head on back to theCondor," he suggested to Andina.
   She looked troubled."Maybe. But I'd like it better if you'd stick around. I have no idea what all this is
  about. And with the crew ashore…"
   "Oh, sure," he said. Naturally she would feel better with him around to protect her. She was able to
  defend herself in the boardroom when bidding for jobs and navigating through space, but she was no
  Nadhari Kando.Which, much as he missed the formidable Nadhari sometimes, was kind of a relief.
  Andina was strong enough to have built an empire from excellent cleaning chemistry and superior elbow
  grease and was a very good shot with a wide variety of firearms, but when it came to hand-to-hand, she
  was a lover, not a fighter.
   As it turned out, that was unfortunate. Smythe-Wesson had already entered the hatch "when Becker
  received the mental alarm from Acorna. As soon as the security chief appeared, Becker said, "I know
  you said your business with Andina was urgent, Commander, but I've just been notified that the belly
  dancers have raided Hafiz's store of catseye chrysoberyls, which has got to be more urgent. I'll be glad to
  go with you and help you catch them."
   "Will you?" Smythe-Wesson said, with a supercilious sneer that expressed doubt, at the very least. Right
  about then, Becker, who had been distracted what with one thing and another, noticed that
  Smythe-Wesson's sidearm was no longer in its holster. It was, in fact, pointing at Andina and Becker. "I
  have a better idea. Why don't we just wait for them to come to us?"
   Whereupon he forced the two of them back to Andina's cabin and made Andina bind Becker's hands
  and feet with tape, checking the bonds himself to make sure they were tight enough. Then, pushing
  Andina in front of him, the security chief shut the hatch door between him and Becker.
   Becker concentrated very hard, trying to send a telepathic message to Acorna, as he had been able to
  do on Makahomia. But he got no answer, no sign that she read him. He figured she was in the middle of
  pursuing the dancers and her concentration was so focused on that she apparently didn't pick up his
  transmission.
   Smythe-Wesson forced Andina to the bridge, to begin the liftoff sequence. Becker couldn't see them of
  course, but Andina cleverly opened the intercom from her end so he could hear her muttering through her
  preflight check. He imagined her hands moving deftly over the controls, her brow slightly furrowed with
  concentration. Which wouldn't do her or their captor a lot of good withno crew, he thought smugly. This
  ship was noCondor, which could be flown by one person. But just then he heard other footsteps enter
  the ship, other voices, high, female ones, laughing and talking as they hurried past the cabin to strap down
  for liftoff.
  
   He fumed a little, frustrated by his helplessness,then began thinking about how to do something about it.
  He'd actually been in tighter spots trying to repair theCondorin space back in the days when he stored
  and shifted cargo alone. Back then every iota of space was consumed by cargo, and he'd had little
  maneuvering room.
   He might have his hands and feet bound, but he had a lot of room to compensate for those little
  inconveniences.
   Furthermore, he wasn't tapedtoanything. He scooted himself to the wall, inched up it, and punched the
  panel to open the first storage locker. The costume Andina had worn earlier that night hung incongruously
  above her bulky antigrav boots. Neither was terribly useful for his purposes. The next panel revealed
  more helpful contents. Here was a stash of Andina's personal cleaning supplies, low-tech antiques that
  were practically collectors' items these days, but still effective. They included a scraper and a pair of
  scissors. Tape was very hard to pull loose, but it was easier to cut than rope. Becker cut his hands loose
  within seconds, and in a few more seconds his feet were free.
   Unfortunately, by that time theHeloisewas rising above the thin native atmosphere of MOO. The
  increased gravity resulting from the acceleration of the launch pressed him to the floor. He lay well away
  from the metal lockers, allowing himself to sink into the soft Fellkastani carpet with which Andina had
  thoughtfully covered her deck. He wondered if his current position would leave her a Becker-shaped
  impression in the rug forever after. He hoped she wouldn't be using the carpet as a souvenir to help her
  remember the late Jonas Becker.
   So far, everyone concerned in this catseye caper seemed merely larcenous rather than murderous, but
  the cash value of the stones in the galactic marketplace was enough to unbalance even the sanest criminal
  mind.
   Certainly Hafiz's criminal mind was going to be considerably unbalanced by the theft. But that was just
  tough. A deal was a deal. Hafiz had already accepted the catseyes as full payment and then some for the
  Linyaari debt. It wasn't Becker's fault that the wily Hafiz couldn't hang on to the stones. The deal Becker
  had made for them with the old man would stand.Legally. That wouldn't matter to the Linyaari, however.
  They would feel morally obligated to Hafiz again if he didn't have the stones to offset the further expenses
  in reviving the Linyaari planets.
   Now that his bonds were removed, Becker wondered what to do next. Maybe he could lure the
  dancers into Andina's seraglio with the power of his animal magnetism (well, RK liked him) and
  passionate promises? Yep,thatwas a likely plan. Meanwhile, maybe Andina could overpower
  Smythe-Wesson and flyHeloiseback home. Yeah, right. The dancers, of course, would be so exhausted
  from their exertions with Becker that they would offer little resistance. As a plan, he liked it. It was a
  pretty safe bet that Andinawouldn'tlike it, but a person had to be prepared to make some sacrifices in the
  interests of freedom and criminal justice. Then, too, there was the other problem, which was that it
  wouldn't actually work. Still, it was more attractive than the alternative, which was that old standby of
  crawling through the ventilation ducts.
   Becker let go of his little fantasy. Seducing all the dancing girls would be nice, but it was a long shot.
  Really, reallylong.The ventilation ducts were probably much more realistic. He sighed and, feeling
  distinctly grumpy, looked around for something to stand on so he could reach the overhead grating and
  locate the opening to the duct.
   Andina's quarters were not as full of furnishings as they were of draperies. The only chair was bolted to
  the deck. The bed squished under his weight, and even when he bounced up on the mattress, he couldn't
  
  touch the ceiling.
   But the bouncing made him think of the dancers, and he returned to the first storage locker and Andina's
  costume. Sure enough, under the coins and fringes, there was the antigrav belt. He feared it wouldn't fit
  him, but the girls wore the adjustable belt low around their hips, so by holding his breath and grunting a
  lot, he dragged the buckle across his gut until it closed.
   He bounced into the air and nothing happened. It took him several tries before he remembered the little
  twirl the girls did, and the way they passed their hands over the jewel now twinkling just above his fly.
   It appeared he was about to lose his dignity yet one more time, all in the name of expediency. So,
  placing the tip of his index finger on the crown of his head, while raising the pinkie of the same hand, he
  pirouetted, strumming across the jewel until he rose and bumped his head on the ceiling. Ouch. Obviously
  these things were made for playing the Palace, where the rafters were loftier.
   After a little poking, prodding, and raiding Andina's cleaning tools again, he pulled the ventilator cover
  loose, only to find that the duct was much too small for him to crawl into, antigrav belt or not.
   Disgusted, he passed his hand over the belt and sank to the floor again, where he sat cross-legged,
  pondering his predicament.
   He finally decided that the best way to get out of the room was to create a disturbance, use the belt to
  hover above the hatch, and fall upon whoever came to check on him. Then he could escape through the
  still-open hatch and pick them off one at a time.
   Before he could decide whether fire, flood, or blood would best serve his needs, the decision was taken
  out of his hands.
   "Fire!" yelled Smythe-Wesson."Fire in the head!"Then came the pattering of female feet and a lot of
  exclaiming and the sound of a very calm female voice giving orders on how best to quell the reported
  blaze.
   Meanwhile, the door opened in front of him, and Andina came in, and said, "Oh, Jonas, you're loose and
  safe! I might have known! Come on, there's a fire aboard. Help us put it out."
   Though the blaze had already consumed every flammable thing in the head and flames crawled across
  every other surface in the room, the dancers worked well as a team and had it pretty well quelled by the
  time Becker and Andina arrived. Fire extinguishers smothered the wild tongues of flame, and it looked as
  if the emergency was over, until the youngest dancer, the one who had befriended Maati, turned
  suddenly, and the hem of her long skirt brushed a smoldering ember. Flames flared up the costume and
  caught on to her hair faster than anyone could move. Becker lunged forward. Catching the flaming girl, he
  smothered as much of the fire as he could against his flameproof shipsuit, then rolled over and over with
  her, putting out the flames in their path and the ones devouring the girl's clothing and hair at the same time.
   The women wielding the fire extinguishers turned the nozzles on the girl and Becker, while others of the
  women ripped off the girl's clothing. Becker's fireproof shipsuit had taken no harm, though Andina
  brushed his face with her hand and bits of char fell off. "You're going to look funny with no brows or
  lashes for a while," she said. "And I'll clip off the rest of your beard and mustache — you won't want to
  shave with that burn on your face. But I think you'll do.My hero."
   A woman Becker presumed was her mother cradled the girl in her arms and rocked her, speaking
  
  rapidly in a language Becker didn't understand.
   "Take her to my cabin," Andina said, "and keep her warm and elevate her feet. She's probably shocky
  right now. We also should get some fluids in her."
   Becker lifted the girl from the woman's arms and carried her to his erstwhile prison. He was very careful
  how he laid her down on the bed, but bits of her skin came away on his hands and suit anyway.
   Her mother was at her side immediately and the other women clustered close, but when they tried to
  cover the girl's red and blistering body, she moaned and thrashed, which made her whimper piteously.
  Andina turned up the thermostat.
   "We must give her something for the pain," said the lead dancer, apparently also the leader of the other
  women.
   "I have a mild analgesic in my first-aid kit," Andina said. "I understand with bad burns that there is little
  pain at the beginning."
   "What we need to do," Becker said grimly, "isturn this bird around and go back to MOO so the Linyaari
  can take care of her. They could heal her likethat." He snapped his fingers.
   "They are truly such healers, these Linyaari?"
   "Yes, Aziza," the girl's mother said eagerly. "Do you not remember thathe"— she gestured with a twist of
  her lips to the outer corridor of the ship, no doubt indicating Smythe-Wesson — "told us of their great
  medical skills in our briefing?"
   "Yes," Andina said. "The Linyaari have wonderful healing skills. And, in fact, two Linyaari friends of ours
  have been following us in Jonas's ship. I could send a Mayday, and I know they would come, even at
  risk to themselves, if your boss will permit it."
   "He is not our boss!" one of the women hovering in the doorway said. "We are a team. He is simply
  someone who had a little job for us to do. And he has not yet paid us!"
   From down the corridor came the cry of another woman, "He is gone!"
   As the incredulous cries erupted from her comrades, she reached the group, and said, "He is gone, the
  shuttle is gone, the stones are gone. And we are left to take the blame."
   "Well," Becker said, "that solves one problem anyway. Better get Acorna on the com unit, sweetie, and
  arrange a rendezvous so she can treat the kid. Unless any of you ladies are armed and have objections?"
   "No, no, please," said the mother. She turned to Andina, and asked, " 'Dina, these horned people, they
  will not hurt my Layla because we steal from them?"
   "Of course not," Andina said hotly. "They're not like you. They wouldn't steal from refugees either."
   "Don't listen to her,Fatima ," another of the women, younger but harder-looking said. "It's a trap. Tell
  her, Aziza. You are not fooled, surely? Once 'Dina and her man bring those people here, we are lost. As
  it is, we outnumber them."
  
   "And Layla?"
   The other woman shrugged. "She will die, I suppose. It would be merciful."
   "That's the most disgusting sentiment I ever heard!" Andina said. "Poor little girl."
   "But it is true, what Miriam says," added another woman. "If the little one is too scarred to dance, to
  work, then how will she be able to earn a living or support us in our old age?"
   Fatimabegan an anguished wailing.
   "Be still!" Aziza commanded. "She is not dead now, and she is not deaf either! Who would want to live
  with such vultures as you for aunts?"
   Becker shook his head and returned to the bridge, where he put in a call to theCondor.
   Chapter Four
    
   What do you suppose made Smythe-Wesson jump ship like that?" Rafik asked, now that the emergency
  evacuation had been dealt with. The two ships had rendezvoused as fast as Becker and Andina could
  manage it. Acorna used one of Becker's shuttles to board theHeloise, where she made short work of
  healing Layla's burns. Then everyone was transferred back to theCondor, while theHeloisewas towed by
  the other ship's powerful tractor beam.
   "He probably looked at the fuel gauge," Andina answered. "It was not a short trip, and I had not yet
  refueled when he hijacked us.Sloppy of him. He should have planned more efficiently. "
   "Yes," Acorna agreed, "but his plan, sloppy as it was, worked. He has the stones, and we don't. Besides
  which, we can't chase him just yet. We need to return to MOO to refuel your ship in tow and let Hafiz
  deal with these prisoners. Perhaps they will be able to tell us where Smythe-Wesson might go next."
   "Themarkets for stones of such size is limited," Rafik said.
   "All the potential buyers know we have the chrysoberyls, and that no one has ever seen their like.
  Whether or not legitimate dealers would buy them from an unauthorized source and risk the wrath of
  House Harakamian is doubtful. However, there's an additional problem. Partial payment has already
  been tendered for some of the stones. We will not be able to deliver unless we catch up with the thief."
   "Why'd Hafiz hire that character anyway?" Becker demanded. "Not only is he a crook, he's not half the
  security chief Nadhari was."
   "No one would be," Rafik pointed out.
   "True enough. But didn't anyone check his references?"
   "I'm sure they did," Rafik said. "But who has references that say, 'if said applicant found an opportunity
  to make himself richer than the employer, he would not take advantage of his position to do so'?"
   "I see your point."
  
   Aari listened to all of this with a look of profound concern on his face. "If this thief was bold enough to
  steal from the warehouses of House Harakamian, what is to stop him from going to the source of the
  stones? He might attack the Makahamian citadel of the sacred lake."
   Acorna said, "Perhaps, except that this particular individual won't know where to go looking. At the time
  of our return, as far as Hafiz knew, Nadhari was also returning, so he didn't hire a new security chief. As
  for what would stop him — well, Nadhari would."
   "Would she?" Aari asked. "I don't have much in my recorded memory about her — except that she was
  regent high priestess for a time…"
   "Is..."Becker corrected him. "…Isregent high priestess."
   "Oh, sorry, I am looking at the events there from the perspective of recorded history late in the planet's
  cycle. That is how I knew that Khornya would come and find the shrine the priests made to me for
  purifying their lake."
   "That's got to be very confusing," Becker said, shaking his head.
   Aari agreed. "It is, a little. But I was thinking. Perhaps I could record a memory of this event and go into
  the time device again and return in time to prevent the robbery. Isn't that a good idea?"
   Acorna felt uncertain. "Aari, I know you're more experienced at this than any of us now, but it seems to
  me still that this is not the sort of thing that should be done casually."
   "Yeah," Becker said. "Maybe upsetting the space-time continuum isn't going to destroy the universe, as
  the people of my home planet used to think way back when, but if everybody uses the way-back
  machine to go back and change their socks during the day because they don't like the color they picked
  originally, the space-time continuum is bound to get very chaotic."
   "But it would not be everyone, Joh.Just me.And Khornya, of course, if she would like to come and see
  how it all works."
   "I've used the machine several times already," Acorna told him, with a sharpness that slipped into her
  voice despite all of her good intentions."Searching for you."
   "Ouch," Becker said, giving Aari a sympathetic look.
   "I do think the decision for what todo next ought to be left up to Hafiz and to the MOO council," Acorna
  said. "My feeling is that we should see how well conventional means work to recover the stones and
  catch the thief before we try time-traveling. When you change one event, others are also altered.Perhaps
  not always for the best." She shrugged. "I don't know."
   Aari looked disappointed. "I suppose I understand your caution. But Grimalkin does it all the time, and
  nobody seems to mind."
   Acorna gave him a look, and he amended his statement. "Usually nobody seems to mind. The Friends
  used time-travel as a tool. I don't see why we can't do the same. You can do lots of wonderful things
  with it. For instance, Khornya, wouldn't you like to meet your parents?"
  
   For a moment she felt as if Aari had hit her, then she said with careful patience, "Yes, that would be nice.
  But I don't see how I could meet them without warning them of the Khleevi invasion. I would have to tell
  them not to go off on their own with baby me around that time. That way, I could save them. And if I
  save them, I would be raised by them as a Linyaari. I would never have been rescued by Rafik, Gill and
  Calum, I would never have helped Mr. Li and Hafiz free the child slaves of Kezdet, and I would
  probably never have met you. I really would like to see them, Aari, but I like the life I've had thus far."
   "Isn't that rather selfish, when, merely by using a little ingenuity, you could save your parents?"
   "Perhaps, but for that matter, couldn't we use the machine to save Vhiliinyar from the Khleevi?" she
  countered.
   He thought about it. "Well, no. There were so many of them, and they were very powerful. The
  intervention would require too much for a simple time-voyage by a few selected individuals to affect it.
  Once the Khleevi came, the doom of Vhiliinyar was inevitable. And, if you had not met the humans, you
  would not have discovered the plant sap that kills Khleevi. You would have to take very careful notes,
  and we would have to think it through. That is why we usually do not alter larger events in history.
  Grimalkin says everything must be carefully weighed and thought through first and that only Friends really
  have the capacity for such farsight and detachment."
   Rafik cleared his throat. "That settles it then. We carry through with this in the usual way.Time to face the
  music and tell old Hafiz what's going on."
   This did not prove as difficult as they all feared. When they returned to MOO with the prisoners, Hafiz
  sent for them to come to his administrative offices.
   In his own office, he sat ensconced in a huge chair upholstered in silks of peacock and flame. To
  Acorna's surprise, he greeted them with a beneficent smile.
   "Good work, my friends. You have captured the miscreants.
   "Yes, Uncle, but we did not recover the stones. Your former security chief used the young girl's injury as
  a distraction and carried the stones to theHeloise'sshuttle. He got away."
   Hafiz fluttered his gem-encrusted fingers dismissively. "It does not matter. Justice will catch up with him
  quickly. And the stones are registered to us. Each of them now bears our trademark. No matter who
  sells them, it will be known at once that they are ours. Also, I have sent relays informing our clients of the
  theft. Customers willing to pay the great sums the stones should bring are few. They will report to our
  headquarters if anyone contacts them with our property. This they will do for love and respect of me and
  for the high esteem in which they hold House Harakamian. Also they do it because they are, deep down,
  very honest men, however tempted they may be by the prospect of obtaining the stones for a lower
  price."
   "Uncle," Rafik said, shaking his head, "I never thought I would hear you say anything so naive."
   "I was not quite finished, son of my heart. As I was about to say,verydeep down they are honest men
  with a strong sense of self-preservation. I thought to mention to them the curse that was upon these
  jewels."
   "Curse?"Acorna asked, and she and Becker exchanged looks.
  
   "But, sir," Aari said. "I was the one who created the originals of the stones in question. They were
  produced by a chemical reaction that occurred when I purified the lake. They were actually impurities
  that bonded together to form pure wholes. That is somewhat magical-sounding, I agree, but certainly
  there was never a curse on any of those stones…"
   Hafiz lifted both eyebrows and said acerbically, "I did not say how old this curse was. It is, in fact, a
  recent curse, of my own invention. It will fall upon anyone stupid enough to try to cheat House
  Harakamian. These honest associates who hold our family enterprise in such high esteem understand its
  nature very well. Smythe-Wesson's betrayal will not profit him. Rather, it shall bring about his ruin."
   "As it has been said, so let itbe done," Rafik said, bowing to his uncle.
   The dancers listened raptly. Although they pretended to cower with fear, Acorna sensed it was as much
  an act as their dance had been. They were very glad that Smythe-Wesson, who had betrayed them as
  well as Hafiz, would find no reward from his deeds. They were also perfectly confident they could
  escape again anytime they wished. Acorna gathered from their thoughts that they had done so on many
  previous occasions.
   Before anyone else could bring it up, Aziza, the leader of the troupe, began nuzzling the toes of Hafiz's
  slippers with her face, "And what is to become of us, o' mighty sultan of this world? We are but humble
  entertainers — the man told us that you had stolen the stones and we would return them to the rightful
  owners who would happily reward us with riches that would allow us to retire and even purchase
  husbands if we desired."
   "Now, that is a strange tale," Hafiz said thoughtfully. "For, although you are each as beautiful as dawn, I
  did not think for one moment that any of you were stupid. Release my foot, woman, and rise." He
  pumped his outstretched hands, palms upward, into the air so that his jowls quivered and the satin linings
  of his sleeves shimmered."Up! Up! Up! All of you up, while I consider what is to be done with you. And
  uncover your faces, for we have all seen them, as well as a great deal more of you besides."
   At that moment there were scurrying steps outside the office. As the room's occupants listened, the
  footsteps stopped for a moment, as though someone was recovering both breath and dignity before
  entering. Finally, the door opened and Karina glided in. "Oh, exalted husband, do pardon me! I had no
  idea you were entertaining guests! I so longed for your stimulating company that I chanced coming here
  hoping to distract you from your duties."
   Acorna lowered her head to hide a smile. If Karina had missed the return of theHeloiseand theCondor,
  then she wasn't paying her own information network enoughbaksheesh. Her informants would have told
  her that the crews of the two ships guarded the voluptuous dancers, now all demurely clad in black.
  Unless Acorna missed her guess, Karina wasn't concerned with Hafiz's abundant charms at this particular
  moment. No, Karina had arrived in time to protect her own interests and help dictate the fate of the
  prisoners.
   Hafiz patted the divan beside him and gestured for Karina to come forward. "Now then, my love, we
  have these women criminals to deal with. Obviously, they are suited for only a limited sort of occupation.
  Will you not reconsider your argument against pleasure houses here on MOO so these houris may in
  some measure repay the debt incurred by their crimes against us?"
   "Oh, Hafiz, you know I would never ever think to argue with you about the institutions you wish to
  establish here on this moon you have brought to blossom. You don't think me a prude, surely, my
  darling?" she purred, snuggling up to him.
  
   "Oh, no, beloved."He shook his hand and regarded her with a mixture of awe and lust. "Not a prude by
  any means."
   "I only suggest that the children who work here and may grow up here — especially those from
  Maganos Moonbase, might be traumatized to see that their greatest benefactor allows such
  establishments. Jana and Kheti, for instance, escaped captivity in such places only through your
  intervention. I fear it would send conflicting messages to our young ones about our own values."
   He sighed. "Well, they were but innocent young ones, and these women are experienced criminals and
  courtesans."
   "Dancers, my darling, however criminal.And that one" — she pointed at Layla — "is a mere child
  herself. There is also the opinion of the Linyaari to consider. They are extremely pure and high-minded
  people."
   "That is so," Hafiz said. "You are as always a pearl of wisdom, beloved. But what shall we do with them
  otherwise? Must I build a prison to hold them?"
   "Oh, no, my darling, nothing so expensive!It is much more cost-effective to rehabilitate them, and that is
  what we will do!" Karina exclaimed. "The child shall go to school with the other young ones and learn
  whichever of the skills taught on this veritable university of a moon thatappeal to her. I am sure the ladies
  are capable at least of menial tasks such as cleaning. They do owe dear Ms. Dmitri for the theft of her
  ship, not to mention the passage she freely gave them from the generosity of her spirit."
   "Oh, no," Andina said. "I can't trust them. My people are everywhere on MOO, including the most
  secure areas, and at times when other personnel are not around. I must know that their honesty is above
  reproach."
   "Then perhaps some of them are fine seamstresses?" Karina suggested. "I can always use a new gown
  or two, and Hafiz's robes are in constant need of repair and replacement."
   "Alas, kind mistress," cried the troupe's leader, "we can sew a coin back on or hand-sew a tear in a
  costume, but we have always ordered our costumes custom-made from a supplier in a distant realm. We
  know nothing of cloth manufacture or clothing construction, and the new technology for bonding cloth is
  likewise unfamiliar to any of us."
   "What a pity," Karina said, pouting down at her current set of violet-and-lavender robes, which were
  probably at least a week or two old, and in Karina's opinion, soon to be in need of replacement.
   "However," Aziza said, lifting her head and looking Hafiz in the eye, "you now have a vacancy for a
  security chief. Who better than an experienced criminal to find the weaknesses in your present
  precautions? By myself I could improve a thousandfold upon the performance of that pig-dog," she spat
  twice on the ground, "who betrayed us all. My companions and I, in your service, would cleanse your
  security system of imperfections as surely as a river dampens each rock in its bed. We can immediately
  recognize those who practice our former criminal profession— "
   "Oh, Hafiz, how wonderful!"Karina cried. "She said 'former.' She clearly already considers herself
  rehabilitated!"
   "Yes, lady, even so," the would-be security chief said with a bow of the complicated and dramatic sort
  
  that climaxed her dance performance. "For your kindness and mercy have touched my heart — all of our
  hearts. Have not these beautiful white unicorn people healed our greatest treasure, our Layla, even when
  we sought to steal their own treasure? We owe you our gratitude and our allegiance, great lord and lady.
  Besides," she said, rubbing her first two fingers and thumb together, "the pig-dog said that the position
  pays very well."
   Hafiz laughed, and Karina, taking her cue from him, giggled behind her hand. "Are you sure you are not
  a distant relation of mine, woman of infamy? "Hafiz asked her.
   When he had finished laughing, he said quite soberly, "I should not even consider your impertinent
  proposal. But, as it happens, I find myself wishing once more that my former security chief, also a
  woman, would return. Since she will not, sentimental fool that I am, I feel inclined to listen to your
  arguments, gullible though I may be. Besides, I have so little left to steal." He took a deep breath and
  continued, his commanding tone lapsing into the voice he used to make a deal, "And therefore I say to
  you — yes, normally the job does pay well. But you owe us a great debt, and thus will receive only food,
  lodging, uniforms, and perhaps a small measure of pocket change to keep you from pilfering."
   "Uncle, should you really trust these women?" Rafik asked.
   "I am not sure. I think we must ask for a more accurate assessment. What say you, daughter of my heart
  if not my loins?" he asked Acorna.
   She knew at once what he was asking and scanned the thoughts of the women. To her surprise, the
  thoughts were indeed full of gratitude and relief. The only plots Acorna discovered centered on what
  each lady felt she might do to increase her own worth in Hafiz's or Karina's estimation. "As you have
  said, so let it be done, Uncle Hafiz," she answered with a slight curtsy.
   Hafiz turned to Rafik, "Even so," he said with a sharp nod. "It shall be done."
   Chapter Five
    
   Acorna, the crew of theBalakiire, Aari, and his family returned to Vhiliinyar. Before Aari's arrival,
  Acorna, of all her people, had been the one most interested in the time device. Now Yiitir and Maarni,
  historian and folklorist respectively, as well as several Linyaari physicists, occupied the room containing
  the time device, while Aari explained its mechanism to them.
   Acorna had hoped that Rafik's prediction would prove true, and that she and Aari might come to care
  for each other again as they had before their separation. But, despite her hopes, it did not seem to be
  working out that way. Indeed, she found it far easier to talk to Laarye than she did to his brother. At least
  Laarye did not presume to tell her about her past feelings and thoughts based on a collection of recorded
  memories.
   Laarye and she exchanged thoughts easily. He was very comforting to be around. He knew Aari — or,
  rather, this Aari, at least — better than anyone.
   When she complained that this Aari seemed to feel that everything that had happened before he'd
  arrived to join them was some sort of light entertainment, amusing but meant to be taken with a grain of
  salt, Laarye replied, "It's not just this situation, Khornya. It's his way. He's a good sort really, but he's a
  bit — um —naazhoni, if you know what I mean."
  
   "I don't, actually," she confessed. "That's not a word with which I'm familiar."
   He tried several synonyms, and she understood at last that it meant something like the term "flighty" in
  Basic.
   Flighty, hmmm?Acorna began to see how Aari and Laarye had ended up in the cave just before the
  Khleevi attack when all of the other Linyaari evacuated. And yet, when he was captured by the Khleevi,
  Aari had told them nothing that would help his enemies. Though desperately tormented, he said nothing to
  his captors about Laarye or about the location of the new Linyaari homeworld. And he had survived
  afterward and saved Becker and RK. Those were not "flighty" actions.
   However, if Acorna was having more questions and reservations about her relationship with Aari, the
  reverse seemed to be true of him. The more he watched and listened to her, the more he worked beside
  her, the more time he spent with her, the more interested, then infatuated, he became with her. And
  Acorna supposed she ought to be glad that he was feeling that way, but she wasn't. It felt to her as if
  responding to Aari Whole-Horn would somehow be disloyal to her own beloved Aari — the two felt
  that different to her.
   They worked above ground now, smoothing out the waterways, making sure that they flowed one into
  the other in a pattern as similar as possible to the one remembered by the elder Linyaari.
   Maati and Laarye worked alongside them, though a bit farther upstream.
   Aari straightened his back and stretched. He was wearing a simple tunic, and the water flowed around
  his knees, plastering the feathery hairs to his calves. He shook his long silvery mane and combed it back
  with his fingers.
   Acorna did the same.
   Aari then puffed out his chest as he looked around at the countryside, well aware, Acornathought, of
  how majestic he looked against the periwinkle waters and soft lavender sky, the blue waving grasses and
  the newly formed purple, snowcapped mountains defining the horizon. The pure white coloring of
  space-faring Linyaari was well suited for striking a contrast with the surface of the homeworld. Aari
  gleamed in the light.
   "Every day Vhiliinyar looks less like a disaster area and more like a home," Aari said with a satisfied
  sigh.
   Acorna nodded. "The catseyes enhanced the particle beams so that even the localized surface
  terraforming we've done yields results almost as fast as if we had evacuated to terraform the whole planet
  at once."
   "That is good," Aari said. "But I cannot understand why the regular process was bypassed."
   "It was because of you," Acorna said. "You were missing — or at least, we didn't know where you
  were. I was afraid you'd return to Vhiliinyar while it was at its most volatile. If you had returned with the
  planet's surface in complete disarray, I was afraid you would be harmed.Or even lost forever. The
  council agreed that you had —" she broke off, looking at his perfect horn. "The council agreed," she said.
   "That I had suffered enough?" he asked.
  
   "I didn't say so, and it isn't polite to pluck thoughts from people's minds," she reminded him stiffly.
   "I didn't need to. I could read your face. And when I returned and hadn't suffered at all, everyone was
  disappointed in me. Now they've gone to all this extra trouble for nothing. It's a good thing I created the
  catseyes when I purified the sacred lake, or I doubt you would ever have forgiven me for escaping the
  Khleevi in this timeline."
   Acorna sighed and sat on the bank dangling her hoofed feet in the water, which was almost
  bone-chillingly cold at this time of the day. A few fetal amphibians swam over her toes. Theaagroni
  already had begun restocking the streams and rivers with life-forms salvaged from the homeworld before
  the Khleevi attack.
   The eastern sky was bulging with bruised-looking indigo clouds. The regularly scheduled afternoon rains
  would begin soon, according to Dr. Hoa's timetable. The scientist's meteorological manipulations had
  helped Vhihinyar bloom again, though the planet's scars were still evident when you knew where to look.
  Unlike Aari's scars. His perfect surface concealed so many scars that Acorna felt she hardly knew him
  anymore.
   "That isn't the problem," she said, and felt his surprise. He had expected an instant guilty denial from her.
  "Or at least, not all of it."
   "Then what is it?" he asked, taking her hand and staring earnestly into her eyes. "You have been so
  distant, and that is not how my recorded memories of you indicate that you behave with me. You are a
  warm and wonderful female, Khornya, and I was so looking forward to being with you. I suppose I must
  be somehow unfamiliar to you as I am now, but I thought you would be pleased that I could come to you
  whole."
   "You were whole before — I mean, in your other shape. It was familiar to me, and your memories of me
  were not recorded. They were like mine, real memories of moments we shared and glances exchanged,
  jokes we both laughed at, pain we both felt— "
   "And of our joining," he said, turning her hand over in his to stroke her palm gently with his thumb. His
  voice was low and caressing. "Perhaps if we joined again, if you let me hold you, you would find me
  more familiar, and we could regain our closeness."
   She withdrew her hand from his, which made him flinch. With renewed patience, she touched his cheek
  with her fingertips. Mistaking her gesture for encouragement, he wrapped his arms around her and
  rubbed his hands across her back, allowed his horn to touch hers. She met his kiss halfway, explored it
  with him briefly,then withdrew, shaking her head and disentangling herself. "I'm sorry, Aari. Maybe it's
  because of my human upbringing, but the feelings we shared have to come first, before we can join in that
  way. Rafik says that since we've fallen in love once, as we get to know each other, we will do so again.
  Our circumstances before, as your recording will tell you, involved danger and intense emotional
  experiences. Perhaps that intensity and the intimacy of our lives together on shipboard made it easier for
  us to care for each other so readily, though I confess, I shared similar experiences of danger with
  Thariinye, and they didn't have the same effect on me. The point is, your memories of that time, of me,
  you carry only in your head, not in your heart, as you did before you time-traveled. And I can feel the
  difference."
   He sat back, no longer touching her, his eyes no longer seeking to engage her in intimacy but seeming to
  evaluate her along with her words. This was not a side of Aari she had encountered before. "I see. So, in
  
  order to regain our love, we must have new shared experiences and — don't deny it, I didn't mean to
  read your thoughts without permission, but I couldn't help it — I must somehow prove my mettle to you
  as I seem to have proved it by heroically undergoing Khleevi torture — and surviving it, of course. I
  wouldn't have been any good to you had I not survived it."
   "Please don't be bitter," she said, reaching out to touch him again. But now he withdrew. "It isn't like
  that. It will just take time. Maybe it will take a bit longer than it did the first time, because we aren't being
  menaced all the time as we were before. I'm sure Rafik is right. Our feelings for each other will grow
  again."
   "Well, forgive me, but I have feelings for you already," he said, standing. "Ifell for you simply from the
  recorded memories of what a brave and beautiful lifemate you were. I thought that you would care for
  me now as you did when we — I — left. I appreciate you sharing your insight into this phase of our
  relationship, because you have given me some idea as to what I must do to win you again. At least now if
  I disappear again for a while, you won't worry. You won't care, really. But I hope to make you care
  when I return."
   "Aari — please, don't be rash. Disappearing again won't help. Staying and helping me get to know you
  again will help."
   "I have been here many days already. We have been on a mission together, and yet you are colder than
  ever. No. I must take action. Farewell, Khornya."
   He ran away through the tall grasses and up over a hill before disappearing from view. Disturbed as
  Acorna was by the exchange, which so far as she could tell resolved nothing, she was surprised to find
  that she was not sorry to see him go. In fact, a guilty sense of relief washed over her along with Dr. Hoa's
  patented rain.
    
   The remorse set in later, punishing her when she tried to rest. She tossed and turned and moaned in her
  sleep. Finally, she awakened bathed in sweat, her mane stringing into her eyes. Neeva's voice spoke
  inside her head.(Khornya, dear. Whatever is the matter with you? I strongly suggest you return to MOO
  and visit with Rafik again. He comes this way so seldom, and I do think from the nature of your dreams
  you need more time away from here.)
   Acorna sighed and sank back onto her sleeping mat. Her aunt was being tactful. (I've been broadcasting
  again, have I?)
   (Yes, dear, you have. And frankly, it was frightening and upsetting to some of the more sensitive among
  us. Why did you keep imagining Aari being turned into a Khleevi? You know very well that the two of
  you helped end that particular menace, and yet you had them running amok among us again.)
   Acorna winced and rolled over on her stomach, propping her chin up with her elbows as she stared out
  into the fog that enveloped the lowland area around the stream. (Isthatwhat that dream's about? I truly
  don't know why I would dream such a thing.)
   (Perhaps by making him an enemy in your dreams, you can justify the change in your feelings for him
  now?) Neeva suggested.
   (I suppose that could be it) Acorna admitted, though it didn't feel exactly right. And hadn't she had this
  
  dream or one very much like it before Aari's return?
   (I think you need to at least consider the possibility, my dear. I know it's hard. We all have adjustments
  to make. Although many of us are separated from our lifemates for great periods of time, true lifemates
  do not seem to be so significantly altered in one another's eyes when they rejoin as you and Aari have
  done. But of course, so far in my lifetime, lifemates have only been separated by space. You and Aari
  have been separated by time, as well. And no one has voluntarily given up their memories of loved ones
  in my experience. So wedounderstand. But we also would like to get our rest. It is very hard to relax
  when such a powerful sender as you are is so deeply troubled.)
   Acorna smiled wryly. (Therefore, you would all appreciate it if I would take my noisy, scary imagination
  up to MOO and leave you in peace for a while?)
   (Absolutely.But that's not the only reason we'd like you to visit your human family. Rafik would surely
  like to spend more time with you, dear,) Neeva answered. (Andyour other friends as well. Much as we
  love you, we Linyaari are only half of your family and culture. It would be selfish of us to wish to be the
  only ones to offer you comfort.)
   Acorna laughed and stood up. (They didn't make youvised-haanye feriliifor nothing, mother-sister. You
  are the soul of tact and kindness, but have made yourself abundantly clear. I'll put in a call for the shuttle.)
   And so she found herself back on MOO in time to have dinner alone with Rafik once more before he
  returned to supervising the vast House Harakamian Empire. Their friends and relations allowed them the
  time together. But it wasn't as if they had anything particularly private to say. They mostly ate in silence,
  she munching on grasses and flowers, he on more substantial human fare. They simply treasured being
  together in dear, familiar company.
   With an added romantic and physical element, this was how it should have been between Aari and her,
  Acorna thought. Time with those who were truly bonded didn't separate them, but deeply reinforced their
  attachment whenever they shared it.
   "You are leaving very quickly," she remarked.
   "I hope to hunt down those crystals soon," he said. "Our trademark signature on the stones, Hafiz tells
  me, has a homing device in it that should enable me to locate them if I'm in the right place at the right time.
  Like the markets of Kezdet, for instance. If I hurry, perhaps I can discover them before they are snapped
  up by black market dealers."
   On the far side of the garden, one of the dancers glided by. Somehow she managed to glide officiously.
   "How are the new security officers working out?" Acorna asked.
   "Rather well," Rafik said. "They are remarkable women.
   Aziza leads them better than a general could. It has been quite the success story. Kanna's been puffed
  up with pride for suggesting it. Oh, you'll be happy to know that Layla's doing fine. I knowFatima would
  be grateful if you came to say hello, so she could tell you that she is — ah, grateful."
   Acorna smiled. "I'll do that. They must be settling in well. You're on first-name terms with them already?"
   "We've become friendly, yes. I felt it necessary to get to know them better. I was worried about their
  
  hiring. I wouldn't want to be leaving Hafiz's safety to a stranger, would I? I try to learn from mistakes.
  Smythe-Wesson was someone Hafiz hired in haste when Nadhan left. My uncle knew very little about
  him except that he was highly recommended by the commander of the nearest Federation outpost. That
  man kept to himself. I have not allowed Aziza and her troupe to do the same. I've spent enough time with
  her to learn what those women have been through and what incredible lives they've led. In fact, Aziza
  reminds me a little of you, Acorna."
   "Me?"
   "Yes. Like you, she is seemingly a fey, graceful, fragile creature, and yet she is amazingly strong and
  resilient, with wonderful leadership qualities and, when you get to know her, a charming sense of humor.
  She has managed to keep herself and the others alive by the use of her wits as well as her talent. These
  women learned thievery to survive, and learned it so well they have become highly sought after by the
  criminal world as accomplices. I don't want you to think she or any of them are actually immoral women.
  They learned their dancing skills as slave girls, and used their less socially acceptable talents to escape the
  slavers and become independent agents."
   "You really seem to admire them, in spite of their participation in the theft of the catseyes," Acorna
  observed.
   "What's a little larceny among friends? "Rafik said. "It's not as if House Harakamian was founded
  without it. Hafiz admires them, too, but Karina makes sure he doesn't admire them too often or too
  closely."
   They shared a grin over that.
   He laid his purple brocade napkin beside his plate and rose. "Well, all good things must come to an end.
  It's been so good to see you again, sweetheart. I hope that boyfriend, or husband, or whatever of yours
  gets his act together pretty soon. Or we may have to introduce your people to the quaint Terran custom
  of divorce."
   Before Acorna could answer, three of the security patrol surrounded them, or more accurately,
  surrounded Rafik. Layla's hair was growing back nicely, and there was of course no sign of a scar on her
  heart-shaped face. All three women chattered happily at Rafik, who, to Acorna's amusement,blushed a
  little when Aziza teased him. "You cannot leave yet! I must have you empty your pockets to make sure
  you are not running off with the family silver implements for eating."
   "You watch her, Rafik,"Fatima said, batting at him playfully with the tassel from the end of her belt. The
  women had made rather unique security uniforms out of their black cat-burglar garb. It was practical
  really, if they wanted to sneak up on some evildoer. "She told me she intends to do a strip search!"
   Rafik held up his hands laughing, "Ladies, please, not in front of my daughter!"
   Layla looked curiously at Acorna. "Youarehisdaughter?" she asked. "That's funny. You don't look
  anything like each other."
   "Sure we do," Rafik said. "She has my chin and elegant jaw-line, don't you see?" He ran a tickling finger
  along Acorna's jaw.
   "If he was wearing his horn, you'd see the resemblance right away," Acorna told Layla with mock
  earnestness.
  
   "No way!"Layla said. Clearly she had been keeping company with the Maganos Moonbase kids.
   Acorna gave in. "Oh, yes. I have his chin and my other father, Gill's, eyes and gift of gab. My third
  father, Calum, says I get my brains and engineering talent from him and that I must be a throwback to his
  Highlander ancestors, who were tall like me. Gill says white hair like mine is very common in his family,
  as the Irish tend to go white early in life."
   Layla looked increasingly puzzled. "Wait. You have three fathers and you look like all of them. What
  about your mother?"
   Aziza pretended to pout. "This sounds like a very strange arrangement, Rafik.Three fathers and no
  mother for your daughter? You don't like women?"
   "Of course he likes women!" Acorna said staunchly, twining her arms around Rafik's neck in her best
  imitation of a clinging vine. "Helooooovesme, don't you, Rafik?"
   "You're getting me deeper in the mire all the time, Acorna." He laughed. "I think I've picked a fine time
  to go. But I'll be back." Turning to Aziza, he flirted seriously for a moment. Acorna was amused and
  pleased to see him use his beautiful dark eyes and long lashes to good advantage. Apparently it pleased
  Aziza, too, who shamelessly flirted back. "I should make you go with me. I'm going to go find those
  rocks you stole from us. If Hafiz didn't need you, I'd make you sit on the nose of the ship with the sensor
  and search for the homing beacon."
   "How grateful I am not to be forced to submit to such a stern lord and master," Aziza said. "But I — and
  my troupe, of course — will wait breathlessly for your return, for in reclaiming your treasures you redeem
  our honor."
   "Always happy to oblige," Rafik said.
   They all began strolling toward the docking bays, for which Acorna was grateful. The atmosphere in the
  dining alcove was becoming a bit clogged with hormonal emanations. Being a telepath was not always
  comfortable. Other Linyaari could send as strongly as she could under certain circumstances, and there
  were certainly other sentient species with some form of telepathy. Both Rafik and the women, particularly
  Aziza, were sending unspoken messages back and forth that were more intimate than she cared to hear.
  At least she felt reassured that the women were sincerely reformed and loyal employees of House
  Harakamian now. The regular meals, good beds, respectful treatment, and Hafiz's rather lavish idea of
  what constituted bare minimum pocket money for his security officers had a lot to do with their loyalty.
   Acorna felt a little wrench of pain when she hugged Rafik good-bye and he disappeared into his vessel.
  To her surprise, however, Aziza and Fatima each put an arm around one of her shoulders, and Layla
  took her hand. "Come," Aziza said. "We three are no longer on duty. You will have tea and cakes with
  us in our quarters, and you will tell us all about your childhood, yes?"
   Chapter Six
    
   Former Red Bracelet and former chief security officer of the House Harakamian Moon ofOpportunity ,
  Win Smythe-Wesson was well-known to Nadhari Kando. Had she been consulted, she would have
  advised Hafiz Harakamian against hiring him. In her opinion, Smythe-Wesson was essentially a faithless
  
  man and a mercenary to the core. And, as he had so recently demonstrated, even when his allegiance
  was well paid-for, it was temporary and for the most part imaginary if pledged to any but himself and his
  own best interests. But Hafiz had been unable to ask Nadhari. And, unlike Hafiz, Smythe-Wesson was
  quite pleased with the way his recent employment had turned out.
   Like other untrustworthy souls, Smythe-Wesson himself trusted no one and nothing but himself, his own
  cunning, and the proof he saw before his own eyes.
   After escaping in theHeloise'sshuttle, he had exchanged the shuttle for a ship he had stashed on a
  desolate planet within range of the shuttle. The battered sphere was one of the worlds the Khleevi had
  destroyed. It consisted mostly of melted rock, cooled and hardened into a surface stable enough to hold
  the ship. What little atmosphere it had was pure poison, however, so he needed a repair suit to make the
  transfer from shuttle to ship.
   Once away from the dead planet with a fueled and responsive ship to call his own again, he did not
  immediately set out to sell the catseye chrysoberyls the Akelimsin dancers had stolen for him. He had
  heard many claims for the powers of the stones, and he wanted to test those properties himself before he
  offered the stones up to the highest bidders. He also wanted to develop a capability for the stones that he
  had seen hinted at in some classified files. The stones, which could beso helpful as particle beam
  accelerators to intensify lasers for terraforming, could also be used as weapons. If he could demonstrate
  this use, he knew he could find buyers quite different from the ones who'd planned to buy the stones from
  House Harakamian. And, if he was right about what those stones could do, the sky was the limit for what
  he could charge for them.
   But he needed somewhere to test the powers of the stones. A dead moon wouldn't work, or an
  asteroid, or even one of the planets already gutted by the Khleevi. He needed to test the effect of his
  weapons on living things. He needed to show just how effective they could be as weapons of war.
   But he wanted an area far enough from MOO that House Harakamian's ships wouldn't find him, and
  closer to Federation space than MOO and Vhiliinyar were.
   And he had just the right place in mind.
   His unconventional "acquisition" of his new property had been planned for several weeks — since he
  first learned of the stones, actually. And his careful planning was working like a charm. So far, events had
  gone just as he had projected.
   Back in those heady days of planning, he'd spent a great deal of time finding the right target area. At last
  he settled on a mustard yellow planet that stank and bubbled with viscous, nasty-looking liquids,
  eye-watering gases, and volcanoes oozing bright orange magma. It was absolutely full of life of the
  primitive kind, brimming with it in each fetid breath, and blotched with it all over the bits of land that
  stood still long enough to let it thrive. Never in Smythe-Wesson's life had he seen a place that so
  deserved to be sliced and diced.
   And he had just the thing to do it. His ship was already fitted with a laser torpedo array, and it took him
  very little time to adapt it to accommodate one of the catseyes. Once the stone was in place, he trained
  the weapon on the planet's surface and set out to excise the top of a volcano.
   Unfortunately, the slice was so clean that, although he could tell he had done some damage by the small
  avalanches cascading from the incision, otherwise the top of the cone merely sat there on its base, just as
  it had previously. He sliced the top vertically into smaller slices and these fell away from the mountaintop
  
  with far more satisfactory crashes than his first attack had, spilling boulders to the valleys below. The
  boulders were rapidly joined by magma newly released from the burning core of the planet.
   That was all very well and good, but he couldn't really consider mere rock and boulder as living
  substance, nor would his prospective buyers. He searched for another target and found a vast forest of
  strangely shaped trees, occupying the top half of the continent just below the one containing his
  resculpted volcano. Zooming in on them for a more detailed view, he saw that they were mustard yellow
  and drooping with gold-brown mossy foliage. Their trunks were lumpy, as if bulging with some sort of
  growths. With glorious precision he sliced away the lumps on the first trunk, one at a time. He then
  lopped off the branches before rendering the tree into a stack of wafer-thin slices. Ruthlessly, he excised
  the extending branch of the nearest tree, which fell against the sliced trunk, toppling it into a sliding pile of
  slightly overlapping segments.
   For a while he refined his technique by vivisecting each tree in a similar manner, but then grew impatient
  and sliced through the entire forest many times. The results were spectacular, since the upper branches of
  the smaller trees fell into the diced trunks of the larger, bringing them down. The upper branches of the
  taller trees in turn smote everything in their downward path. In mere seconds, he reduced the forest to a
  mesa of wooden disks topped by a fretwork of fallen treetops. The mossy foliage withered and crumpled
  as he watched, and he shot a fist triumphantly into the air before looking for the next target.
   That was all very well, he supposed, but he really wanted to try it out on sentients, preferably people.
  Perhaps he could find a refugee camp or a pesky guerrilla encampment offending some wealthy
  government?
   Meanwhile, this lackluster planet could provide him with a place to store his booty. If Hafiz caught up
  with him, he'd just as soon have his loot stored andsafe, waiting for the instant he escaped to claim it.
  Keeping only the stone in his weapon and one other relatively tiny stone, small enough to fuel a
  devastating hand weapon, he found another forest like the one he had destroyed, jettisoned his carefully
  packed cargo into its midst, carefully taking the coordinates of the spot where he'd landed, then sliced
  away the tops of the nearest trees. They covered his treasure as they fell, but since the branches retained
  their shape, the forest canopy appeared unbroken from above.
   Satisfied that he could relocate the hoard at his whim, and that no one else would ever find it without his
  help, he departed.
   But, unbeknownst to him, he left behind the outraged and enraged inhabitants of the planet, a collection
  of sulfur-based life-forms. They were livid over his unprovoked attack and determined to avenge
  themselves on the perpetrator. They had been taken so completely by surprise that they had been unable
  to deploy their own weapons before the flyby massacre of a continentful of their people. But, after
  assessing the damage and finding the cache of stones left amid the decapitated bodies of an entire clan of
  Solids, they knew just who had attacked them. They began measures to counterattack.
    
   Though Hafiz had appeared sanguine about the loss of the stones, he was understandably eager to
  recover them. The docking bay was almost empty by the time Acorna returned from a fascinating tea
  with the new security staff. TheCondorwas still there, however, the robolift still on the ground.
   She saw why when Becker strode into the terminal, and said, "There you are, Princess! Are you going
  to join this Easter egg hunt or not?"
  
   "I wouldn't miss it, Captain. Rafik left not long ago on the same mission, though I think he mainly
  intended to check the black market on Kezdet."
   "Good idea. I can check a few other spots, too, but I have a feeling that our boy won't be showing up in
  the usual places. He might not have been the brightest star in the cosmos, but he had to know that Hafiz's
  customers wouldn't double-cross House Harakamian. My guess is he has some ideas of his own about
  where to sell them. And if his potential customers are the kind of characters I have in mind, our thief'll
  probably have stashed the stones in a safe place."
   "A place which a ship with superior sensors and scanners might be able to locate while the thief is
  elsewhere?"
   "You got it. TheCondor'sequipment along those lines may be a bit eclectic, but it beats anything else
  available right now, even to Hafiz. And your uncle tells me that the stones each have a nanochip
  embedded within the House Harakamian logo lasered into the girdle of the stones. One homing beacon
  might be too slight for a ship to detect from space, but if the stones are still clustered together, the
  beacon's power is magnified exponentially. If anybody can track it, we can."
   So Acorna accompanied them on their search.
   "Even with the homing beacons," she said, "it will be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack,
  although I have never understood exactlywhya needle wouldbein a haystack."
   "Just leave it up to theCondor, Captain and crew, Princess. This is our kinda job, what we do best.
  Finding stuff. This time we even know what we're looking for. Who knows, maybe that'll make iteasier.
  I've narrowed it down already to someplace in the multiverse. Sooner or later we're bound to find the
  catseyes."
   While watching the scanners, Becker kept up a conversation over the com unit with Rafik on his ship
  Sinbad. Rafik's course would diverge from theirs as he headed back for Federation space at some point;
  meanwhile the companionship was comforting for the crews of both vessels.
   While not on watch, Acorna busied herself in the hydroponics garden, with RK's enthusiastic
  participation, and caught up on Becker's log. She had thought that she would be able to forget Aari, since
  she had been so relieved when he decided to go elsewhere, but she found she was unable to do so. At
  least there weren't any active Linyaari telepaths to receive her conflicting thoughts aboard theCondor. On
  Makahomia, she had developed some telepathic communication with Becker, but it worked only when
  they were directly attempting to address each other.
   They were several days out from their starting point when, during Mac's watch, the android suddenly
  called over the ship's intercom, "Captain Becker, Acorna, please report to the bridge. There is something
  on our remote scanners you should see."
   When they saw the faint pulsing light, took the coordinates, and figured out the approximate location,
  Acorna said, "We should let Rafik know about this. He's much closer than we are, but theCondor's
  scanners are far more powerful than what he has on theSinbad."
   They did so, arranging to rendezvous with Rafik at the coordinates from which the beacon emanated.
    
  
   "What's to be done about this atrocity?" the spokesman for the Solids demanded. "Our folk were
  attacked during a peaceful assembly and horribly cut to pieces. They even had a permit. And then a
  perfectly innocent wedding party was also attacked, the bride, groom, bonder, and all of their attendants
  dismembered before being bombed by that horror from the heavens."
   "We are aware of all this, of course," said the Mutable magistrate in charge of keeping the peace, which
  was by no means easy with such a volatile population. It was usually the fickle Liquids, always into
  something they shouldn't be, who started it, but this time they were proving useful. "We sent several
  Liquid deputies to seep in under the corpses and determine what was dropped. It is an odd collection of
  stones. They are not sentient, but do carry a signature and a signal, which indicates that the beings who
  attacked us intend to return for the stones at some point in the future. We have only to leave the bodies
  where they are for the time being and wait. When the evil creatures who murdered your kinsmen return,
  we will be ready for them."
   "We — we will? We who? You're the magistrate. It's up to you to see that the peace is kept. I have no
  wish to be hacked, to pieces by some unseen menace."
   "Nor will you be. Your people who witnessed the massacre will be replaced with Mutables, backed up
  by Liquids, and we will guard the jettisoned cargo. Our scientists believe the stones are quite valuable.
  When the owners — this House Harakamian — return for the stones, they will not find such easy targets
  as those they murdered last time."
   And so the alliance was formed and the plot for revenge upon the horrible House Harakamian initiated.
   For many turns of the suns and moons, the Mutables stood around the murdered corpses of the Solids,
  heedless of the stench of decomposition. At their feet and flowing around them were their Liquid
  underlings, ready to spray into action at the first sign of trouble.
   And now, at last, the time had come. A vessel appeared in the heavens. At first it seemed to be scanning
  the surface. Then suddenly it homed in on the cache of stones and hovered above the bodies of the fallen
  wedding party. Trembling Solids watched from what cover they could find, though the force that had
  beheadedMountFumidor and spilled lava over three villages and one ski resort in the surrounding valleys
  made the idea of cover somewhat questionable.
   The Mutables were really awfully brave. You had to say that for them. They gamely stood their ground
  as Solids, but prepared to dissolve into Liquid before a laser could touch any of them.
   However, the vessel was ominously still. Surely it did not understand their plans! How could it?
   It appeared to be waiting for something. What?A full-scale invasion force? Egstynkeraht had never been
  invaded before. Were they to be totally annihilated?
   But the Mutables had no intention of staying in one shape any longer than they had to. They considered it
  degrading, even in the best of causes. They muttered among themselves. Just as they were debating
  whether or not to turn into vapor and risk dissipating themselves into space by directly attacking the ship,
  the vessel spawned a smaller vessel, which descended upon them.
   Chapter Seven
    
  
   "I don't like it," Acornasaid, when finally they were close enough to make out the planet above which the
  Sinbadand Rafik awaited them. The planet's shifting surface was the brilliant mustard orange of flitter
  traffic signs on Kezdet.
   Acorna hailed her foster father. "Rafik, please don't move until we arrive to back you up. Becker can
  use his tractor beam to pull the stones into the ship."
   "Not without moving a lot of foliage," Rafik told her. "The payload appears to be buried under the forest
  canopy. We'd have brush scattered from the surface to deep space if you use the tractor beam, and at
  the end of it the rocks would still be closest to the surface. Somehow we'd still have to wade through all
  that vegetation to get at the stones."
   "So what do you suggest?" Becker asked.
   "Your guess is as good as mine. There's no place to land a ship near the location of the signal, but I
  could take theRocdown."
   Then, suddenly, he said, "Well, if that's not the durndest thing! Ask and it shall be given! I didn't notice it
  before, but there actuallyisa clear space big enough to set the shuttle down fairly near the area sending
  out the signals. I just spotted it.Funny. I could swear it wasn't there when I started talking to you. I'm
  going to go suss out the situation."
   While he was on his way from theSinbad'sbridge to theRoc's, Acorna tried to get a feeling for the planet.
  The molecular base was sulfurous. That much was immediately apparent. But although it was still a great
  distance away, she felt oddly skittish just looking at it. Perhaps they would discover more as they drew
  nearer, but she felt sure that what she saw on the com screen was not all there was to this particular
  world.
   "Rafik, I really do think you should wait till we get there," Acorna said, her voice coming out in a higher
  pitch than normal. "I don't like the feel of this place at all."
   "Ow!" Becker said. RK, who had been sitting peacefully on the back of the command chair, sank his
  claws into Becker's scalp. "What?" he asked, then noticed Acorna's expression. "Rafik, did you read that
  last message? Belay your landing and return to theSinbad. Acorna is getting bad vibes. Frankly, I'm not
  crazy about the place either."
   But though they were still too distant to see exactly what was happening, and theRocwas now out of
  visual range, they clearly heard Rafik's response. "Mayday!" he shouted."Mayday! The shuttle is under
  attack. No,Sinbad, you are not to respond until I understand the threat a little better." Then he groaned.
  "Everybody stay put. I don't know how this is happening but something is shooting acid onto the shuttle's
  hull. The hull is being penetrated in some areas. Stay the frag away from here." He started to speak again,
  but what he was going to say was replaced by a yelp of pain, then the com unit fell silent.
   Before Acorna could react, Becker slammed theCondorinto warp drive, shaking the very seams where
  pieces of various salvaged vessels married on the outer hull. It was a while before Acorna could move
  freely again after being shoved violently vnto her seat back.
   But at last the stars quit blurring past the viewport, replaced by a view of the yellow planet with its
  fungus-crusted, leprous-looking surface relieved by odd puddles and ponds, seas and lakes of thick,
  polluted-looking liquid. Becker set the com screen for remote magnification.
  
   Acorna sent out mental runners, searching for Rafik's consciousness. She found it, and him. She sensed
  that although he was injured and in pain, he was mostly bewildered about what had hit him.
   TheSinbadhailed theCondor.
   "Condor, there are only two crew members aboard our ship other than the captain. Rafik took the only
  shuttle. One of us must remain aboard to maintain orbit. Are you in any better position than we are to
  help Rafik?"
   "Stand by,Sinbad. Maintain your position. The cavalry has arrived," Becker said.
   "That's a big relief," the crewman said, and signed off.
   Acorna knew that, in spite of the attempt the crewman made to sound calm, he was desperately worried
  and frustrated not to be able to rescue Rafik.
   But flooding across the emanations from the crewmen and Rafik, from Captain Becker and RK, she felt
  other presences, heard an undercurrent of other unintelligible thoughts babbling on the planet below.
   These consciousnesses were gibbering, gloating, vengeful. And they were closing in on the disabled
  shuttle, ready to finish it off.
   "Captain Becker, Rafik is surrounded!" she said, grabbing the LAANYE and inputting as many words
  as she could dis-tinguish of the language used by the vengeance seekers. Their thoughts were expressed
  in sounds that hissed, sizzled, and boomed through her mind.
   "How can he be surrounded?" Becker asked. "There's nothing down there but a lot of really ugly yellow
  trees and scrub brush."
   "Look more closely," she advised, glancing at the screen, but mainly relying on the telepathic impressions
  she was receiving. "Those are sentient 'really ugly yellow trees and scrub brush.' "
   RK jumped up between Becker and the scanner most firmly focused on the shuttle. Backing up to the
  com screen, the cat, ears laid back, eyes slitted and fur bristling, shook his tail spasmodically at the com
  screen, coating it with smelly essence of tomcat.
   "RK, you son of a skunk, what are you trying to do?" Becker bellowed, and smote the cat… gently…
  from the console. RK hissed, then turned and looked at him.
   The look said, as clearly as if the cat was speaking Basic, "Pay attention, stupid. You think I did that for
  my health?"
   Acorna wiped the screen with a rag. It still appeared cloudy.
   "Jeez," Becker said, "Cat spray can ruin anything. I'm going to have to locate a new screen somewhere if
  he's ruined that one. Can't see anything through it now— "
   "But you can, Captain," Acorna told him. "The screen is perfectly clear. The cloudiness is coming from
  the spray the beings are using to attack Rafik.Sulfuric acid spray."
   "Sulfuricacid?"
  
   "The beings on this planet are sulfur-based life-forms. The acid spray is a logical defense for them to use
  against intruders." She laid the LAANYE aside. There was no time to learn the language. Mac,
  approaching the bridge, picked up the instrument and watched his shipmates and the com screen while he
  nonchalantly connected himself to the LAANYE.
   "Sulfur-based?You sure?"Becker asked.
   "Why should that be hard to believe? You are carbon-based, after all. What's wrong with being
  sulfur-based?"
   "Copy that," Becker joked, but Acorna, who had less extensive knowledge of obscure ancient
  communications and record-keeping devices than Becker, shook her head.
   "Can we use the tractor beam to pull him out of there, Captain?" Mac asked.
   "That ship is dissolving around him," Becker said. "If it fell apart as we were pulling Rafik up, he'd have
  no protection at all from the acid or the vacuum of space."
   Acorna was no longer trying to understand the language of the sulfur beings, but instead was
  broadcasting a mental image picture of them backing off, ceasing to spray the ship.Of Rafik standing up,
  unhurt, and his tormentors allowing him to go.
   In return she received angry images of lightning bolts from above, attacking a joined pair of beings and
  the one joining them, cutting them to pieces in front of their loved ones, then dropping something on top
  of the bodies and dismembering the closest onlookers so that their heads and arms covered the jettisoned
  cargo.
   Acorna sent an image of Smythe-Wesson doing what they had just described — and of Rafik chasing
  him, trying to stop him.
   The spray disappeared from the screen and it seemed to her the sulfur people looked upward, as if
  trying to see her.
   She received an impression that clearly expressed the feelings of the hostile beings.
   "You all look alike to us."
   She had no trouble understanding the sentiment whatsoever.Maybe because it was such a universal
  expression of racism, or speciesism, or whatever.
   She sent a picture of herself to them.
   Mac, now disconnected from the LAANYE, was peering over her shoulder. "Acorna, they are saying
  you do not look like the other two."
   "Mac, you're a wonder. You learned their language in a fraction of the time it would have taken a
  Linyaari. How can I tell thern more clearly that Rafik is innocent?"
   "They will not believe you, Khornya. Rafik's ship bears the amblem of House Harakamian, as do the
  stones. The sulfur be-ings believe that House Harakamian is the name of the being who slaughtered their
  
  people."
   "How can I explain to them that the stones were stolen from us by the person who attacked them?"
   "Ahhh," Mac said, scanning his own data for the answer. Then he gave her a phrase in the hissing,
  sizzling, booming language.
   She let the phrases flow through her mind, transmitting them to the creatures below. Then she asked
  Mac, "What did I just say?"
   "You told them that we are honorable and superior Mutables attacked by the same lowborn Solid who
  attacked them, nd we too would like to spray acid on the… I'm afraid the descriptive phrase does not
  readily translate, Acorna."
   But she had stopped listening to him to pay attention to the thoughts suddenly bombarding her as thickly
  as the acid had fallen upon Rafik's shuttle. She opened her mouth and allowed the phrases to flow out so
  Mac could hear them. She was thankful that, because of her unconventional upbringing, her vocahzations
  were not as limited in range as were those of her fellow Linyaari. In fact, she was quite a good mimic.
   Mac recorded and translated them. While he did so, Becker kept watch on his monitors.
   The captain said, "They're not spraying, and it looks to me like some of the things surrounding the ship
  have melted away from it. He's got a moat of them around him now."
   Mac said, "They say they are reasonable beings. They did not intend to kill Rafik — yet. They were
  going to cause him extreme suffering such as their people experienced. But if we are the enemies of the
  Solid who massacred them, they are willing to parley with us."
   Becker's eyes flicked from Mac to Acorna and back again as he listened. "How do we know it's not a
  trap?" he asked.
   Acorna got her revenge for the carbon copy pun. "We'll just have to take theacidtest, Captain."
   The little joke did nothing to ease Becker's reluctance or her misgivings. They weren't the only beings on
  the shipwho had reservations. RK sat on the back of the command chair, growling low in his throat and
  whipping his tail back and forth.
   Only Mac appeared untroubled by their present course of action.
   "See there, Captain? They are backing away, clearing a place for us to land near Rafik."
   "Sure, so they can close in and spray us, too," Becker said.
   "Oh, I think not."
   "Well, you're betting your circuitry on this one, pal. Since you understand the language and are the most
  easily repaired, you go down and parley with them."
   "I think I should go, too, Captain," Acorna said. "While Mac understands their words, he is unable to
  read their thoughts — or Rafik's. If you remain on theCondor, you can use the tractor beam on the
  shuttle in case we run into problems. We will try first of all to rescue Rafik, so he will be with us if we
  
  need to be pulled back to theCondor."
   She heard a thousand protests go through Becker's mind, but he lost the argument with himself and had
  to agree it was the best plan they had. Huffing unhappily through his mustache, he said, "Oh, well, go
  ahead then.Like I could stop you."
   She laid her hand gently on his forearm, "Captain, besides the logic of my arguments — Rafik ismy
  father, or one of them."
   "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'd feel the same way if it was old Theophilus. Get cracking before they change
  their minds."
   She suited up, donning her Linyaari-engineered protective outer garment designed for nonoxygen
  atmospheres. Hafiz's people had invented a fabric similar to that of the Linyaari garment and called it
  Ecoderm, a second skin that could open its fibers to admit oxygenated air, but automatically sealed itself
  in a less congenial environment. It was constructed much like her shipsuit, but fit more loosely, providing
  air pockets to help maintain ambient temperature. It also featured built-in gloves and grav/antigrav boots
  the wearer could adjust with a twist of the tiny dial contained with other controls on the inside of the
  gauntlets. A spacious hood attached to the back collar of the suit flipped up over the user's horn, coming
  to a V in the middle of her forehead. The front of the headdress was a smooth, masklike, transparent
  covering that allowed the wearer's features to be easily identified and her expressions easily read, and
  also allowed a broad visual sweep with the fullest possible peripheral sight lines.
   Acorna and Mac strapped themselves into theCrow, as Becker had named theCondor'scurrent shuttle,
  and launched. As they neared the surface and the space the sulfur beings had cleared for them to land
  beside Rafik's shuttle, they saw that the hull was covered with a thick trellis of solid yellow runners.
  Acorna realized they were crystallized sulfuric acid, which explained why the visible portion of the hull
  blurred out of shape, as if melted.
   Acorna sent a message to Rafik, "We're here now. We can talk to these people. They attacked you
  mistaking you for Smythe-Wesson. It will be all right."
   She felt Rafik's relief, mingled with his worry that she, too, would be attacked. She also felt his pain,
  which had increased since she last checked. "What's wrong?"
   "I'm burned," he told her. "Something sprayed through the hull. I deflected some of it with my hands and
  arms, but they're burned badly. The suit resealed itself, and I managed to get my helmet on before the
  ship's oxygen dissipated, but my lungs may be affected, too."
   She turned to Mac. "We must convince them to let us free Rafik now. He's injured."
   She flipped up her hood, adjusted and attached the mask to the collar of the suit, and nodded to Mac,
  who opened the hatch.
   Mac clapped his hand over his nose and mouth. "My olfactory sensors are overloaded, Acorna. You
  are fortunate that your horn purifies and recycles the air inside your hood and suit."
   "I'm experiencing sensory overload myself, Mac," she told him. "These are very emotional beings, but
  their emotions seem to run the gamut from highly irritated to furiouslyenraged . They are curious about us,
  and do not view theCondoras a threat, or they would not have allowed us to land, but I am at a loss at
  the moment how to appeal to their better instincts."
  
   "You must consider the possibility that they have none," Mac said.
   "Perhaps, but that seems so harsh. Surely the couple who were being bonded, the relatives who
  watched, they all must have experienced other, more tender feelings."
   Mac cocked his head as if he needed to put himself at a slightly skewed angle to process her odd notion.
  "Not necessarily. Perhaps their bondings are matters of mathematical or chemical imperative, or for
  convenience, economic advantage, or even spite. All such motives have precedents in human society."
   "I suppose so, but that isn't helpful in getting them to release Rafik and allow us to take him with us, not
  to mention the catseyes."
   "Perhaps the logical thing to do would be to appeal to the motions you do feel coming from them,
  Acorna."
   "Anger and malice?" she asked, "Oh, I couldn't dothat, Mac. That would be unethical. And besides,
  how could I make work?Hmmmm."
   As they quietly conversed, the sulfur people moved and flowed in around them again, circling them and
  their shuttle and cutting them off from Rafik's shuttle.
   The front row of attackers assumed a vaguely humanoid form — extruding arm- and leglike limbs,
  gathering the bulk of their mass into a torso and lastly popping a round head out of the top of the trunk.
  The liquids flowed toward Acorna and Mac, keeping a deferential distance between themselves and the
  mutating front row. From time to time, the pools in the back nudged the pools in the front into miniature
  tidal waves that humped up, seemed to examine the visitors from first one angle, then another, before
  subsiding again into a puddle.
   Behind the puddles and pools, solid forms resembling large oddly shaped yellow trees with some fatal
  disease slid forward on rootlike lower limbs.
   "Tell them it is very urgent that we reach my father, since their mistaken attack has injured him and
  endangered his life," Acorna told Mac.
   "They know that, Acorna," Mac reminded her. "They don't care."
   "No, of course they don't. Well, try this. Tell them that the sacks that form the jettisoned cargo are very
  valuable. Tell them that House Harakamian would be happy to pay them a ward for the return of its
  property as well as reparations for the loss of their citizens, but first we must have Rafik back."
   "Appealing to their greed — yes.That is a good start, Acorna and I have a plan. I will tell them that the
  fee will be paid only the Solids, whose people were the ones injured," Mac said.
   He relayed the message.
   At once the first row of attackers began thrashing their arms around and speaking loudly.Angrily, they
  gestured toward their own trunks,then flattened the ends of their extended arm extrusions in a negative
  way as they pointed toward the Solids in the back ranks.
   "My plan worked. The Mutables saytheyare the only ones who should receive a reward, as they are the
  
  most sentient beings on this planet, the true leaders. The Solids are so stupid and inflexible they have no
  idea what to do with valuable items. They have no authority to release Rafik. They are limited to one
  form and not until their forms break down into their molecular structure for rebuilding are they of any
  use."
   As Mac was speaking the Solids from the back ranks zipped toward the front, their roots invading the
  area occupied by the Liquids.
   The Liquids began sloshing back and forth, up and down, in an agitated fashion.
   Acorna heard their glubbish thoughts clearly, but they were not able to vocalize. She told Mac, "The
  Liquids feel that had it not been for their ability to combine themselves with the atmosphere to make the
  acid, the Mutables, who will not waste any of their own precious molecules, would have had no weapon
  with which to attack Rafik. The reward would not have been offered. Therefore, the Liquids should share
  in the reward."
   The Mutables turned to refute the Liquids and Solids. Those Mutables who had turned some of their
  Liquid essence into the crystallized net holding Rafik's shuttle withdrew the runners back into themselves
  so that their energies were not divided. The beings between the shuttle and Rafik's craft joined in the
  battle, surging out into the crowd to express their views. In the ensuing confusion, Acorna and Mac
  slipped between the ships. Mac used his laser saw attachment to cut through the melted hatch, allowing
  them to barge through it. Fortunately, the airlock was not damaged, so they were able to enter without
  subjecting Rafik further to the sulfurous atmosphere.
   Rafik was sprawled on the center of the deck of the small craft. He was in shipsuit and helmet, but his
  suit was pocked with places where the acid had corroded it, despite its miraculous fibers.
   Mac picked Rafik up by the scruff of the neck, carrying him back through the hatch in one hand, just as
  one might carry a cat. In a moment Acorna, who had stayed behind to make some adjustments to the
  shuttle's instrument panel, joined him. Together, they sprinted for theCrow.
   "I'd rather not heal Rafik out here," she told Mac. "We might have some unfortunate interruptions if these
  beings stop fighting long enough to notice what I'm doing. I'd like to get him back into theCrowand away
  from his attackers."
   Mac nodded agreement. But before they could open theCrow'shatch, the angry noises ceased and one
  of the Mutables pointed an extrusion at them. With that gesture, the creature returned the indignant
  attention of all of his fellows to the interlopers.
   Mac asked blandly, quite as if he were not burdened with Rafik, "have you decided then who will
  receive the reward?"
   "What good is a reward to us?" One of the more sentient Mutables demanded. "We use no currency
  and we have no need of alien rocks. We only wish vengeance."
   The others took up the cry with the same guttural word, or their own version of it. The force of their
  homicidal enthusiasm gave Acorna a horrible headache.
   Mac said, "You shall have it. But this man is an enemy of your enemy, as are we. Therefore, we are your
  friends."
  
   The sulfur people turned to each other inquiringly, asking each other, "Friends? Whatis friends ?"
   "Those who are not your enemies, nor your inferiors, but equals who — wish for you to have what you
  wish for yourself," Acorna answered, showing the Mutables two Mutables in an amiable pose, the Solids
  two Solids likewise engaged, and the Liquids peacefully puddling along beside each other. "Let me heal
  my father and allow us to leave."
   They were still getting used to the "friend" concept, so Mac deposited Rafik in theCrow, though he
  himself remained outside. Acorna left Mac to deal with the natives while she took care of the most urgent
  problem facing them at that instant — healing her foster father. When the airlock closed behind Acorna
  and Rafik and they could once more breathe oxygen, she removed Rafik's helmet and her own hood. He
  had injuries to his hands and arms, a few to his face, and some to his throat and lungs. She tenderly
  applied her horn to all of the exteriorwounds, and to the skin over Rafik's interior injuries for a longer
  time.
   Outside the shuttle, Mac ranted on to the sulfur people. She could not read Mac's mind, of course, since
  he did not generate thoughts in the same way that wholly organic species did. Still, as she moved from
  wound to wound on Rafik, during the slight breaks in her concentration she could sense a swell of
  agreement among the sulfur people and a gradual dwindling of their rage and sorrow — or at least a
  dwindling of the rage and sorrow they were directing toward Acorna, Mac, and Rafik.
   A short time later, Mac joined Acorna and Rafik inside the shuttle.
   "They allow us to leave and insincerely express regret over the loss of theSinbad'sshuttle, Mr. Nadezda,"
  Mac said.
   "Never mind the shuttle, just get us out of this hellhole."
   Rafik said with a force that showed he was back to his normal state of good health and wished to remain
  that way.
   "No, no," Becker protested through the com line, which had been kept open between theCrowand
  Condor. "That's great salvage. I'll pull it up in a jiffy. And let's grab those catseyes while we're at it. I'm
  sure Hafiz wants 'em back just as much as those sulfur critters want them gone."
   "I have another plan, "Acorna said. "Before leaving theSinbad'sshuttle, I reset the damaged com unit's
  controls. Though, thanks to the damage it suffered, it cannot transmit and receive as it should, it can still
  emit a high-frequency signal if its scanner sensor is tripped. When Smythe-Wesson returns for the stones,
  he'll need to scan the area to find his loot's exact location. I have left the controls set to trip the shuttle's
  alarm when the craft is scanned, and thus it will notify us when he returns."
   "It should at that," Becker agreed. "We'll just have to rig up a few subspace amplifiers and sprinkle them
  in our path like bread crumbs as a relay between here and MOO. That should do it for the time being.
  Hafiz can dispatch his security people to patrol the area and intercept Smythe-Wesson when things get
  noisy. That way he gets his stones back — and the thief who double-crossed him."
   Since they now knew that the majority of the catseyes were buried beneath the remains of the fallen
  sulfur beings, there was no need for theSinbadto return to Kezdet to search for the stones, so both ships
  returned to MOO. Rafik remained aboard theCondorwhile his crew guided theSinbadto her destination.
   As they set down, the viewport showed the black-clad senior officers of MOO's security force gliding
  
  through the transparent-bubbled terminal like a murder of particularly lively crows.
   "Good thing Acorna got you all healed up and purty again, Nadezda," Becker said. "Your harem would
  have been disappointed if you came back mussed up."
   Rafik grinned. "Personally, I am happy that Acorna was there to heal me because those burns hurt like
  the seven pits of the seven hells of the seven devils, but as for my appearance, Becker, you seem to have
  learned very little about women."
   "How's that?"Becker asked through a bristling mustache.
   "They consider wounds in the line of duty rugged and manly. My great personal charm and animal
  magnetism for the ladies would only have been increased by evidence of my wounds. Probably even your
  own beloved Andina would have forsaken you for love of me had she seen me in my alluringly damaged
  condition. Hmmm, maybe I should wear the damaged Ecoderm suit when we dock. What do you think,
  Acorna?"
   "I think you are both — what is the word I'm looking for?"
   "Studly?" Becker suggested.
   "Charismatic?" Rafik asked.
   "Buffoons," Acorna said with some satisfaction. "It's an old-fashioned word, but it exactly describes you.
  You are a pair of buffoons."
   "You need to lay off the Shakespeare vids, kiddo," Becker said.
   Acorna's smile faltered a little. Rafik had only been teasing, of course, but was there some truth in what
  he claimed? It was so close to what Aari had accused her of —didshecare more forherAari because he
  had been damaged?
   Whatever the state of Rafik's charms, they were largely ignored as the security officers swept past with
  little more than a wink and a wave.
   "Wait!" He called after them. "Aziza, where are you going?"
   "To catch that demon spawn when he returns for the stones of course.The master allows me this
  revenge. Saida and Naima will go with me.Fatima is in charge while I am away, along with ZuZu, Jamila,
  and Aisha.And Layla, of course. So there will be plenty of us still here to protect you, young master."
  And she blew him a kiss and disappeared into the loading chute.
   Rafik was still looking vaguely stunned as he, Acorna, and Becker were met by Hafiz and Karina. Hafiz
  embraced Rafik, followed by Karina, who allowed her embrace to linger longer than was strictly
  necessary. She gave a deep sigh that caused her draperies to shimmy. "Did I not foretell it, Haffy? Did I
  not say that your gorgeous nephew would return to us even before we expected, and bring with him
  good tidings?"
   "I believe so, my flower," Hafiz said. "And it was very clever of you to divine our reunion and the news
  he brings only moments after my heir appeared on our com unit telling us he had found our stones. I
  confess I am sometimes confused between your predictions of events and the inevitability of the events
  
  themselves once you have predicted them, so dizzying do I find your powers."
   More feasting followed their arrival, and Zuzu and Jamila, who were off duty, insisted on entertaining
  again. As the dancers gyrated around her, Acorna sat next to Maati and chewed thoughtfully on a grass
  stem. The smell of sulfur had been clinging to her suit when she removed it on theCondor, and the odor
  was so pervasive that it was in her nostrils even as she sat toying with her marigold petals on MOO. The
  scent brought back memories of her short time on the sulfur planet, along with images of its inhabitants.
  She remembered how the front lines of sulfur beings changed themselves from trees and puddles into
  what seemed to be, if not human, at least bipeds. Each time she'd looked, they had seemed to resemble
  herself or
   Mac more closely.Imagine being able to change like that, she thought. On the whole, of course, she'd
  rather be able to heal people but still, what a talent… She wondered why the Linyaari hadn't received
  that ability from the Ancestral Hosts as they had received the ability to heal from the Ancestors
  themselves.
   Chapter Eight
    
   Somewhere on the Planet Vhiliinyar,
   Several Years Earlier
    
   Aari knew where he was long before he awakened fully in the dankness and darkness of the cave. He
  had come to know this place so well in the time before Joh Becker rescued him.
   He held his breath and listened, reluctant to open his eyes. All around him he felt the upheaval of soil and
  rock, the thunder of erupting volcanoes, a quiver from distant earthquakes and — oh, no.For the love of
  the Ancestors, no. Could that sound just beyond the range of his physical hearing, a sound he felt more
  than heard, be the clomping and sliding of Kleevi feet and Kleevi bodies rending Vhiliinyar into slag,
  trailing their caustic slime as they destroyed everything they touched?
   A nightmare… he thought.Surely it's a nightmare.Though he remembered the agony that had
  accompanied those sounds for so very long, he was not now in pain. His hand touched his forehead. His
  fingers slid along the reassuringly solid base of his growing horn.
   And then he remembered. He and Grimalkin had returned through time to find Laarye. In the time they
  came from, his brother had died of starvation in this very cave while Aari was writhing and screaming
  under the tender ministrations of the planet's Khleevi invaders. But he and Grimalkin were only going to
  rescue Laarye, who had remained in the cave after Aari had healed him of injuries he'd sustained in that
  fall. Aari would not need to go for food. Grimalkin had timed them back to Vhiliinyar and sat in the ship
  waiting for them. All Aari needed to do was grab Laarye and they would reboard the ship, time it
  forward, and rejoin Khornya and the others. After the many journeys Aari and Grimalkin had taken
  together, after all Aari had learned of history, with Grimalkin and him such a prominent part of it, this was
  the time he had waited for. This was the time for which he promised Grimalkin his seed, his genes.
   Becker had a peculiar saying about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Aari's friend had explained
  that the chicken was a sort of a bird and the egg of course what it came from. But on the other hand,
  
  chickens laid eggs that produced more chickens. So where did the first chicken that laid the first egg
  originate, if not from another egg?
   The Ancestral Hosts or Friends, as the Linyaari called them, had a similar situation. They were great
  scientists determined to create and give races on many other worlds the benefit of their superior genes.
  They were ageless beings from a possibly immortal race, but they were also shape-shifters whose own
  forms had become too unstable for them to bear young. And so, unable to have young of their own, they
  manipulated the DNA of other beings and created new races.Such as the Linyaari.Except they hadn't
  been able to get it right yet. Their attempts to blend themselves with the Ancestors, a Terran species
  originally called unicorns, had been disappointing.
   This was not the fault of the Ancestors, who were perfectly capable of bearing unicorn foals, though
  before their rescue from Old Terra by the Friends, they had been in danger of becoming extinct. Earthly
  hunters had harried them for their horns until the psychic vibrations of Ancestral anguish attracted the
  attention of the Friends once again. They'd picked the Ancestors up in a space vessel and brought them
  to Vhiliinyar.
   The unicorn Ancestors were willing enough to be bred into a race that would have some of the strengths,
  such as opposable thumbs, of their former enemies. However, the unstable forms of the Hosts foiled their
  efforts to breed the race they had in mind — Aari's race. The Hosts changed too quickly and at times too
  unpredictably. Their first attempts had resulted in the'sii-Linyaari, a horned mer-people. While a viable
  race, they were not at all what the Friends were trying to create. Subsequent attempts at creation of the
  Linyaari, Aari gathered, had been even less successful. They'd resulted in stillbirths and early deaths of
  the offspring created.
   When the destruction of Vhiliinyar destabilized the time network the Hosts had laced throughout the
  planet, Aari had found himself transported back to those early days, before the true Linyaari were
  created. The Hosts saw in Aari the shortcut they needed to produce his race. They had not explained
  themselves very well or bothered to solicit his consent before putting their plan into action. When they
  restrained him, Aari could think only of his torment by the Khleevi and of escaping from the creatures that
  were about to experiment on him. Grimalkin had helped him, taking them both forward in time until they
  could board a space vessel from Vhiliinyar just before the first Khleevi attack.
   Once he saw how easily Grimalkin manipulated time, Aari saw the opportunity to save his doomed
  brother. Striking a bargain with Grimalkin to cooperate with future experiments, he had also agreed to go
  on the adventures the feline shape-shifter deemed necessary before they reached the cross in the double
  helix of time that would permit them to rescue Laarye.
   Aari had been elated. He distinctly remembered landing, being afraid they would be spotted, though the
  Linyaari cloaking technology made them all but undetectable even upon descent. And yes, Laarye was
  there, and not surprised to see him since — from Laarye's point of view at least — Aari had only just
  stepped out to find food. His brother had been amazed and delighted that instead of returning with
  dinner, Aari had found a way off their doomed planet.
   Grimalkin brought them both aboard and then… Aari couldn't remember. He awakened in the cave. He
  opened his eyes at last. Laarye was not here, though there was food of a sort, grasses dried to a sort of
  straw, piled in one corner. Bending down, as he had to in order not to hit his head against the cave's low
  ceiling, he crept to the entrance. The ship had vanished.
   What happened? Had the destabilized time apparatus stuttered again and sent the ship back into space
  andhimself back to the cave? How long would it take Grimalkin to discover the error and return for him?
  
   He waited.And waited.And waited. And finally the straw disappeared and most of the water he had
  found beside it. And he realized that whatever had happened, Grimalkin, Laarye, and the ship were not
  returning anytime soon.
   In his mind he saw Khleevi patrols passing closer to his hiding place every moment. He shook all over
  and broke out in a cold sweat thinking of them capturing him again. He had no idea how long they would
  be there before the planet was so depleted they were forced to leave it, before theCondorarrived on its
  first salvage mission. His ordeal with his torturers had seemed to last an eternity, but it could have been a
  matter of weeks or merely days.
   One thing for sure.If Aari was still here when Joh and Riid Kiiyi arrived for the first timethistime, Aari
  would not wait for the second mission to meet them.
   The only alternative was somehow to find his way back to Kubiilikaan and the time apparatus and hope
  that he could manipulate it to take him back to Khornya somewhere close to the moment he lost her.
   Another Sector of Space,Another Time…
    
   He certainly hoped this plan of his would work. He'dthoughtit would be easy enough, given his skill with
  time travel, but as it turned out, it required a number of attempts, each of them at the risk of his own life.
   Once he succeeded, she had better appreciate all the trouble he'd gone to on her behalf. She had better
  appreciatehim.
   The main problem was that no one still living knew exactly what had happened during Ferula and
  Vaanye's last and fatal voyage. Neeva, Feriila's sister, had managed to learn that Vaanye had used a new
  defense system he'd invented to destroy the Khleevi ship bearing down on his family's small cruiser. For
  threeghaanyi, Neeva and the Linyaari people thought that the entire family had died in the destruction.
  Neeva had learned of her error only when she and her shipmates embarked on a mission to warn other
  worlds of the Khleevi menace bearing down upon them and discovered Acorna and her human family.
   Which was very nice for Khornya, of course, but the story was quite short on the sort of specifics one
  needed when trying to do a certain sort of intervention.
   Once Neeva had told him all that she knew of the incident, including the approximate times and
  coordinates, he began to test the waters to find the correct time to intercept his subjects. It needed to be
  afterthe pod was ejected,afterFeriila and Vaanye took theabaanye, which would put them to sleep
  forever (unless, of course, the antidote happened to be administered just in time by a heroic rescuer), and
  afterthe controls had been set to collapse the dimensional space surrounding both the Khleevi ship when
  it came within a certain range and the little cruiser. And, most importantly of all, his move had to be made
  beforethe actual collapse took place.
   Tricky.Very tricky.
   So he simply observed the first time, not making his presence known. When the couple drank fatal
  doses of theabaanyesleeping potion and gave a dilute dose to Khornya in her bottle before ejecting her
  life pod into space, he lost his nerve and, with uncharacteristic panic, changed his time. Whether he was
  more alarmed by the prospect of the Khleevi warship clearly visible in the viewport or of the detonation
  
  of Vaanye's weapon, he couldn't have said for sure.
   But having made careful notes of the times and coordinates, he returned, this time with the remedy for
  theabaanyesleep. He arrived unprotected in deep space. No Khleevi ship, no cruiser. No pod. He
  returned at once to his former time-space slot, made notes, and pondered.
   Vaanye and Feriila stowed their baby in her pod and set the command to eject her before the Khleevi
  tripped the sensor that would detonate Vaanye's weapon. Then they toasted each other with glasses of
  sparkling red wine, each mixed with a fatal dose ofabaanye.
   Feriila fought to stay awake long enough to see and hear the signal, and watch the mechanism outside
  the pod activate. She did not see the pod leave the ship, and her eyes closed shortly after, but she felt she
  could finally die in peace knowing that her baby had a chance.
   But she wasn't allowed to die. Someone dribbled something bitter into her mouth, and said, "Wake up,
  Feriila. That was the antidote for theabaanyeI just gave you. You're safe with me now. You're not going
  to die today."
   "Vaanye?" she asked, her tongue thick and slurring her life-mate's name.
   "He isn't going to die either, though I believe he has a terrible hangover."
   She heard a groan in the familiar tones of her beloved. "Were it not for you and our child, I'd almost
  have preferred to take my chances with the Khleevi to this!"
   "The Khleevi!" she said, forcing her eyes wide open and half-expecting to see the insectoid monsters
  studying her.
   "They are far away, in another time and place. Khornya — as your daughter is called in Linyaari — and,
  uh, I, along with many others, have engineered the defeat and destruction of the Khleevi."
   Feriila still felt a bit tipsy. The wine was potent and theabaanyeantidote had done nothing to counteract
  the effects of the drink. Above her loomed a familiar but unexpected face. "I know you!" she said,
  pointing at the young male standing over her. "You're Aari! What are you doing here?"
   "And whereishere anyway?" Vaanye asked.
   "It is far into the future from the time when theabaanyesedated you," he told them. "I've brought you
  forward to be with your daughter. I'm afraid you've missed her childhood — she was found and raised
  by three human males."
   "What's a human?" both of the other Linyaari asked.
   "It's a bit complicated. They are another race of sentients. Once you see one I can explain more clearly.
  As I was saying, you missed much of your daughter's childhood, but perhaps we can do something about
  that later. I'll have to think about it."
   "Wait a bit," Feriila said. "Why are you doing this, Aari?"
   "Howare you doing this, Aari? Or is this a dream or perhaps a postmortem delusion — some sort of
  afterlife experience? Were you and our daughter both killed before your time but are here to guide us to
  
  the hereafter?"
   "Oh, no!" he said. "As to your question, Feriila, I am doing this because you are in trouble and need my
  help, of course, but also because I am, or should be, Khornya's mate, and I wish to make her happy. As
  to how I am doing this, Vaanye, let me assure you that there is more physics than metaphysics behind this
  process, but it would take as long to explain — even to you — as it would for you to explain your
  weapon to me. And Khornya and I are both very much alive, as are the two of you."
   Feriila and Vaanye exchanged looks, shrugged, and followed Aari, who, Vaanye recalled, had not been
  one of the more outstanding physics students in Kubiilikhan.
   The Moon ofOpportunity , Present Time
    
   Acorna was visiting Maati in the terminal's sophisticated communications room — no longer the humble
  com shed it had once been — when eerie calls began coming in over the subspace amplifiers.
   Shortly after they heard the first of those keening signals, Aziza's face appeared on Maati's screen.
  "MOO base, we are receiving transmissions most peculiar from the amplifiers. They do not sound like the
  utterings of the sulfur beings you recorded for us, nor do they appear to emanate from the planet where
  the stones are."
   Acorna hailed theCondor, which was still in port. Becker's and Mac's faces both appeared on the
  screen, to be blocked momentarily by RK's as the cat peered straight at her. Becker lifted his first mate
  off the com console. "What's up, Princess?" Becker asked.
   "We are receiving a weird signal from the subspace amps, Captain," she told him. "I was hoping Mac
  might be able to give us some idea if the sounds being transmitted are actual words of a language, and if
  so, can he translate them?"
   "Oh, sure," Becker said. "We'll be right down."
   To Maati's delight, RK came, too, and jumped into her lap, purring. But as soon as she toggled the
  connection to the sub-space amplifiers and the noises began, RK mewed and pawed at the console.
  Maati petted him, but the cat continued to meow louder and more plaintively with each incoming sound.
   Finally, Mac said, "Would someone be good enough to remove the first mate to an area where his
  complaints will not interfere with my ability to process those transmissions that we are receiving from
  space?"
   "I can't take him," Maati said. "I'm on duty and can't leave my post, even with you guys here."
   Acorna scooped the cat up and took him out of the terminal area. As soon as they were out of earshot
  of the transmissions, he calmed down and stopped caterwauling. "You seem to be more attuned to alien
  utterances than anyone except Mac," she told him. "I wish you would condescend to tell us more directly
  what is upsetting you, rather than insisting that we interpret feline cries and body language. We could use
  your help."
   He gave a sharp "Prrt," and licked her ear. She was reminded suddenly of something Gill had said
  teasingly when she was little. If she asked a question about anything that she wasn't supposed to know,
  
  Gill always looked wise, and said, "That's for me to know and you to find out." She seemed to be getting
  the same response from the cat.
   She grazed for a bit in theCelestialGarden , the one closest to the terminal, while RK did his bit for the
  fertilization and irrigation of Hafiz's prized orchids.
   Hearing distinctive Linyaari footfalls, she looked up to see her aunt Neeva stride past on her way toward
  the terminal, her head bent over a clipboard and her mouth moving.
   Acorna called out to her aunt, and Neeva looked up and smiled."Khornya! Are you heading back to
  Vhiliinyar soon?"
   "Maybe," Acorna said."Unless I'm needed elsewhere."
   "I had the strangest dream the other night. It was all about you and Feriila and Vaanye, of all people."
   "Can you tell me about it?"
   Neeva stopped while Acorna joined her beside the path, and they both seated themselves on the
  clover-strewn grass. Hafiz had the grasses of his gardens dotted with the little wild-flower plants
  specifically for the delight of his Linyaari friends.
   "Do you remember I told you that your parents were on their way to the planet where I was posted
  when they met up with the Khleevi?"
   "You mentioned it, yes," Acorna said. Neeva had not gone into great detail at the time except to let her
  know that her parents had jettisoned her pod in hopes of saving her.
   "Well, I had this very peculiar dream in which Aari came to see me and asked me all sorts of questions
  about when each event occurred during the last moments your parents were alive. He was very…
  intense… about it, insisting that I remember the exact sequence, trying to get me to visualize the chrono
  on my com screen so that I would see the exact times I learned of each event."
   "Was it Aari Whole-Horn doing the questioning or — " She started to say "my Aari" but thought better
  of it.
   "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. This was the Aari who brought Laarye back with him. I couldn't
  understand why he was so interested. Though, of course, as your lifemate, he would want to know a lot
  about you. But by the time your parents were dead, the evacuation was taking place, and he and Laarye
  were taking refuge in the cave. Dreams are so odd. I wonder what that one meant."
   "Me too," Acorna said, though she thought she might know the answer and didn't like to think about it.
   (Hey, Princess, Mac's figured it out,) Becker sent her a mental message. He enjoyed using telepathy as a
  special bond between them, pleased that she could read him when he deliberately addressed her with a
  thought.
   (I'll be right there,) she replied.
   RK ran ahead of the two Linyaari as they entered the terminal. The receiver was blessedly silent, but
  Mac looked quite pleased with himself. If she hadn't known he was an android, Acorna would have said
  
  he looked humanly smug, in fact.
   "You have translated the strange signals? What sort of language is that?" she asked.
   "It isn't a language, Acorna. It is song. Specifically, it is the sort of song known in some cultures as a
  lament, although that terminology is usually, but not exclusively, applied to vocalizations of actual words."
   "Is it coming from instruments, then?" she asked.
   "No — it is vocalized, but uses the voice as an instrument, expressing sounds that have no actual
  linguistic meaning but fit into a melodic pattern."
   "Oh! Like the Singing Stones of Skarness."
   Becker looked smug. "Exactlylike the Singing Stones of Skarness, in fact. Mac matched the tonal
  qualities and determined that they were basically identical."
   "WhereisSkarness?" Maati asked. "I know we have some of the stones in Kubiilikhan. Those stones
  luckily escaped damage when the Khleevi attacked. And Hafiz has some stones, too."
   "The truth is," Becker told her, "that nobody really knows the truth about where Skarness is. The stones
  are very valuable trade items, but the trades take place in such a way that the origin of the stones has
  never been discovered. I suppose it's for the same reason that your people don't let many others know
  about your horns. If people knew what they could do, before long galactic hunters would kill the goose
  that laid the golden egg."
   "Wait!" Maati said. "What are geese?"
   Becker paused long enough to explain the analogy to her. "It's another of those Old Terran things. Geese
  were a largish fowl, actually wild at one point but in latter days mostly domesticated. They laid eggs —
  that's how they had their young. Eggs shaped like your spacecraft."
   "But the Singing Stones aren't shaped like the spacecraft," Maati said.
   "No. And geese didn't lay the stones. Wait a minute. You're confusingmenow. What it means to say
  'killing the goose that laid the golden egg' is that if you have something that generates a lot of income, like
  the goose, killing it cuts off the source of income and is therefore a… uh… no-no."
   "So the people who live where the stones are don't allow anyone else to know so they won't take all the
  stones away?" Maati asked.
   "You got it."
   Neeva looked pensive, her fingers twiddling at her chin. "I've never heard of the stones being able to sing
  loudly enough to broadcast into space, Captain Becker."
   "Me, neither.But ancient Terran lore also tells us thatrocksongs were often very loud and could be heard
  a long way— "
   He was unable to finish the sentence because of the gasping and giggling sounds that Acorna, who was
  the only one in the room with enough knowledge of ancient Terran culture to get the joke, made in
  
  answer to his pun.
   "Gotcha," he said with a pleased grin.
   "Indeed," she said, straightening up and continuing to explain more seriously. "The thing is, Maati, so far
  as I know, the people who have actually had the stones only have them in small groups of maybe two
  dozen. If the stones' song was emanating from their planet of origin, there would be many more stones
  singing in unison. The sounds are coming from the area we laced with subspace amplifiers. We've never
  had receivers in that sector of space before."
   The MOO intercom receiver switcheditself on, and Kanna Harakamian's face appeared. "I couldn't help
  overhearing, my dears," she said. Obviously, she had been using Hafiz's security surveillance equipment,
  which was separate from the com center's, to eavesdrop. "And I must tell you, the truth is obvious to me.
  The blessed Singing Stones might have been singing their hearts out long before this for all we know, but
  they never tried to sing loudly enough to be heard until the sacred catseye chrysoberyls of Makahomia
  were deposited in close enough proximity that the Singing Stones felt the emanations from their fellow
  sacred stones. They are not singing tous;they are singing to the chrysoberyls, and the amplifiers are simply
  intercepting and transmitting the song as we wished them to intercept and transmit other outside signals
  affecting the chrysoberyls."
   Becker sent another mental message to Acorna.(I have been in this quadrant entirely too long. She's
  beginning to make a weird kind of sense to me.)
   "Mac?"Acorna asked. "Could that be the case?"
   "I am not programmed to divine the motivations of stones, Acorna, but it is as likely a conjecture as any,
  I suppose, though expressed in very unscientific terms."
   "You do what you do very well, MacKenZ," Karina said somewhat condescendingly, using Mac's full
  self-chosen name as an adult might use the full given name of someone else's child to indicate that they
  knew to whom they were speaking and from whence the speaker came, just in case the speaker would
  have preferred to remain anonymous. "But you have not the seasoned sensitivities of those of us who
  have received true enlightenment. No one would expect you to understand. Dear friends, now that we
  know who is lamenting, the question is, what are we going to do about it?"
   Hafiz appeared beside her. "What is the matter under discussion?" he asked in a businesslike tone.
   "It is quite all right, my darling," Karina said. "We have intercepted sad sacred songs and I have
  fathomed the source of the problem and— "
   "Please, my curvaceous kumquat, I require an answer phrased in terms that may be understood by those
  of us who operate on a less elevated plane than that which you frequent," he told her, offering her a
  chocolate tidbit to occupy her busy mouth if not her enlightened mind.
   Acorna filled him in and turned up the volume on the receiver so he could hear the song for himself.
   Large tears fell from his eyes, and he whipped out an exquisite silk handkerchief and blew his nose,
  waving for them to turn the sound down again. "Aiee, thatis the saddest thing it has ever been my
  misfortune to hear. My friends, I think that my beloved is correct as usual. We must learn the cause of the
  stones' sadness — and their location as well, of course — and relieve their distress."
  
   As he was speaking, the door to the communications center irised open and Rafik stepped through.
  "Any word from… ?" he began, but was struck dumb by the sight of his wily uncle weeping to the sad
  song wailing through the other receiver.
   "O, son of my heart, you have arrived in time to undertake a mission of mystery and possibly mercy,"
  Hafiz said. He summarized the situation as he understood it.
   After which, Rafik said, "I understand, Uncle.A mission of mystery, mercy, and possibly an incidental
  monetary reward?Possibly an exclusive trade agreement for House Harakamian if we manage to be
  helpful in this matter to the stones or those who control them?"
   Hafiz turned to Karina, beaming. "Did I not tell you that this boy is astute?Sharp as a saber, keen as a
  bridegroom on his wedding night.
   Rafik left that line alone and returned to the matter at hand. "So I am to rescue these rocks, Uncle?"
   "Yes, dear boy. Discover their whereabouts — perhaps the excellent Captain Becker and his estimable
  eclectic scanner array might provide assistance once more?"
   "You betcha," Becker said. RK was pacing quickly and with precise delicacy across the console. For
  once, he did not set paw to any key that would have disrupted the proceedings. He merely walked from
  Becker on the one side to Rafik and back again. Maati reached out to tweak the cat's tail and received a
  stern look warning her that he was working now and so his tail was to be left strictly alone to play its part
  in his concentration.
   "When you have located the source of the stones, you will have the more difficult task of learning the
  source of their distress and why it is they have seen fit to broadcast it forall the universe to hear. I can
  only imagine that the cause must be most grave for them to sing so loudly that anyone — even someone
  unscrupulous who might take advantage of the situation — might hear them."
   Rafik turned his head slightly away from the com screen and with the eye not visible to the screen
  winked at Acorna. "The reason for your tears now is clear to me, Uncle. Not only do the Singing Stones
  enlist your sympathy with their song, but you also fear for their safety. We will mount an expedition at
  once. Captain Becker, Mac, I, and of course Acorna, if she wishes to go…"
   Acorna nodded. She did indeed wish to see the home of the famous Singing Stones of Skarness.
   "Perhaps it would be wise to have other Linyaari with us as well," Rafik said. "The stones may be
  lamenting some injury or illness that affects them. In that eventuality, the presence of healers would be
  most efficacious."
   "As it has been said, so let it be done, O son of my heart," Hafiz agreed.
   Which was how theBalakiireand her crew joined theCondoras it retraced the course to the world of the
  sulfur beings, which Becker had dubbed Planet PU-#10.
   Chapter Nine
    
   En Route to the Sulfur Planet,
  
   Present Time
    
   Acorna, Mac, and Becker spent much of the trip modfying their sensors to pick up auditory signals,
  especially those of the sort made by the Singing Stones of Skarness.
   "That way we canbacktrack the signal," Becker said. "We tune the scanners to the frequency of the
  songs the amps picked up, and rig our sensor so that instead of someone else telling where we are by
  bouncing sound off us, we can tell where the source of the stone is by the way the sound bounces back
  from us to it."
   "You and my new aunt have a gift for scientific discourse," Rafik said.
   "Up your exhaust, Nadezda," Becker replied.
   Traversing the galaxy containing the sulfur world, theCondorpassed one burned-out devastated husk of
  a planet after another. Acorna felt oddly cold. The eerie song emanating from the stones didn't help.
   "Geez," Becker said. "This place gives me the creeps. It's like a ghost galaxy!"
   Rafik hailed theHabibiand was visibly relieved when Aziza appeared on the screen. Her eyes were wide
  and a trifle wild-looking. "Is that nasty sulfur world the only live planet in this galaxy?" she asked.
   "Looks like it," he said. "The Khleevi passed it by for some reason."
   "Hah!" Aziza said. "They probably forgot they hadn't been there already, since it looks even more
  inhospitable than the ruined ones."
   "It is," Rafik said. "I can guarantee that. Under no circumstances should you try to land."
   "You did," she said.
   "You didn't see me before Acorna healed me. Those creatures shoot sulfuric acid first and don't bother
  asking questions later. Just be alert for the signal that Smythe-Wesson is returning and let us know."
   "I don't believe we will be too far away," Acorna said, checking the scanner array. "I've been calculating
  the time it will take us to reach Skarness, according to the sonar tables Mac provided. It may be the next
  planet in this solar system, though it could be a moon, I suppose. Still, the impression I'm getting is of a
  larger mass than that of a mere satellite."
   Aziza and Rafik exchanged a few more remarks, but their usual joking banter was somewhat damped
  down by the bleakness of this sector of the galaxy.
   When Rafik signed off it was with a heavy sigh and a troubled expression. Acorna hailed theBalakiireand
  checked her calculations with Melireenya's.
   "It does seem to be rather close," Melireenya said, scratching the base of her horn thoughtfully with her
  stylus. "But I don't see how that can be. According to the readings we've been getting on the surrounding
  planets, moons, and even asteroids, everything here is completely lifeless — no plant or animal life
  
  anywhere. The Khleevi were very thorough."
   "They missed the sulfur world," Acorna said. "So they may have missed something else, too. And, as
  Karina pointed out, we're dealing with mineral-based life-forms in the case of the sulfur people, minerals
  in the Makahomian catseyes,andminerals with the Singing Stones. Perhaps if there was nothing but
  mineral substance to deal with on a planet, the Khleevi simply ignored it. Minerals, in my experience
  anyway, don't exhibit the sort of fear the Khleevi use to feed their Young."
   "Maybe," said Neeva, who had been listening in also. "But from what you say of the sulfur beings, I
  would wonder if they wouldn't be more than a match for the Khleevi. Maybe the Khleevi realized it and
  steered clear."
   "Maybe— " Acorna said, then she, Becker, and Rafik in unison said, "Naaaah."
   Had it not been for what Becker dubbed "the trail of wail," they would have missed their target
  altogether. It was, as Acorna had surmised, the next planet from the nearest sun, but it showed no more
  sign of life than any of the Khleevi-wrecked rocks they had passed already.
   Acorna, however, knew at once that it was the right place, for she felt the particular mineral composition
  of the Singing Stones immediately. And she also knew that this planet had definitely not escaped the
  Khleevi. It showed the same sort of devastation as the others.
   The keening of the stones seemed to escalate as theCondorand theBalakiireapproached orbit, though
  Becker turned the volume of his com systems down to the minimum. The songs were so loud now that
  they didn't need Becker's sensitive equipment to be heard.
   "All right already!" Becker bellowed, sticking his fingers in his ears. RK, who had begun running wildly
  around the deck, bouncing off the bulkheads as the volume grew, now burrowed his head into Becker's
  armpit, his coat and tail so puffed up it caused him to resemble a porcupine more than a cat.
   "This reminds me of the stories of sirens luring ancient mariners onto the rocks," Rafik told Acorna
  nervously."Except in reverse. The sadness dragged me here. But the noise now makes me want to turn
  and run."
   "We cannot land," Mac pointed out. "And we must go no closer. If we approach the planet too closely,
  the sonic waves it is projecting may fatally damage any organic parts among the landing party. Except for
  myself , this crew is entirely made up of organic parts."
   "Good point," Acorna said. The same thought had occurred to her.
   Even telepathic communication was difficult, so thoroughly did the wailing fill the air, bombarding not
  only their ears but also all of their other senses.
   "Geez, this is worse than the jungle drums in those old 'bwana' vids," Becker complained.
   "Another good point, Captain," Mac said. He alone was able to maintain a conversational tone in the
  cacophony surrounding them. "Studies of ancient indigenous cultures which rely on magical ceremonies
  have shown that such drumming blocks the alpha waves of the brain, making the listeners far more
  susceptible to suggestion than they would otherwise be."
   "I suggest they shut up. If they don't shut up, I suggest we leave," Becker snapped.
  
   Acorna hailed theBalakiire, which took some time to answer since all aboard were also preoccupied
  with the wailing coming from the planet below. Her friends clustered onto the screen, their pained
  expressions a mirror of her own.
   "We need to let whoever is singing — orwhateveris singing — know that we're here to help, but that we
  can't come any closer if they don't stop," Acorna said.
   Melireenya nodded, as did Neeva and the other Linyaari.
   "Pity we don't know the language," Tharnnye said.
   "Send emotions," Neeva suggested."Compassion, a wish to heal, but fear for one's own safety as well."
   Becker, who had been straining to listen, closed his eyes and grasped Acorna's hand with his free one,
  "Works for me. Princess, grab on to your daddy. Rafik, take her hand and let's do a thinkathon that
  would make Aunt Karina proud."
   Acorna had to smile. Becker, like Mac, had begun to consider himself an honorary Linyaari. She joined
  minds with those aboard theBalakiire, lifting the thoughts of her shipmates and transmitting them as well,
  broadcasting the emotions and intentions as clearly as she possibly could.
   She concentrated so totally that she wasn't sure when exactly the singing stopped, but she slowly
  became aware that RK had withdrawn his face from Becker's underarm and was thoughtfully washing a
  forepaw. The cat caught her staring, and looked up at her as if to say, "What?"
   Becker opened his eyes and looked to the right and the left, and said, "Yippee! We did it. They listened.
  They really did. I guess that means they want us to land."
   Acorna shuddered slightly. She had heard the saying that you couldn't get blood from a stone, but it
  wouldn't have surprised her if these Singing Stones literally were bleeding from the tone and volume of
  that song.
   TheCondorset down, the robolift descended, and the crew members stepped tentatively out onto the
  planet's ruined surface.
   A spiderweb of pain seemed to spread itself across the ground. Acorna saw the devastation, as she had
  on so many other planets, but here she sensed the pain and grief of separation from each fragment of
  stone. Which seemed odd since normally stones were themselves chipped off of larger deposits and
  ought to be — well, used to it. But the Singing Stones of Skarness were very sensitive instruments.
   Still, it was hard to believe anything on this field of splintered rock could make a noise, much less sing,
  much less communicate telepathically. And yet, the singing had stopped in response to the telepathic
  message.
   Even so, her mind reeled with the force of the now unsung anguish. Her knees buckled, and she slipped
  down among the shards of stone.
   Once these stones had been formed and tuned in tall columns, each column a family, surrounded by the
  other columns who were the members of its community, hundreds of thousands of them stretched along
  the vast coastal areas of the planet. Once there had been a curling ocean, and when individual stones left
  
  each family as the result of wind or erosion or simply gravity, they formed stepping-stones leading into the
  waters. The beach and the floor of the ocean were composed of these individual stones, which in time
  piled one upon the other, singing new songs and forming new colonies. The colonies spawned harmonic
  units such as those found in Hafiz's gardens and at the center of Kubiilikhan on narhn-Vhiliinyar. These
  colonies were harvested from their resting places tenderly, respectfully, and appreciatively by other
  beings.
   "Khornya!Khornya, we are here."
   As the tip of the first horn touched her, the dizziness dissipated, her head cleared, and Acorna sat up,
  waving away the Linyaari clustered around her. "I'm fine, thank you."
   "Communing with the minerals again, dear?" Neeva asked.
   Acorna nodded."But there's another life-form, too — other beings.The ones who harvest the stones for
  export. We were just getting to that."
   "Sorry we interrupted, Khornya, but you seemed to be in pain," Melireenya told her. "Are you trying to
  tell us that the Singing Stones are sentient? If so, all of the off-worlders who own them, according to what
  I've studied, are in violation of your Federation's directives against owning sentient alien species…"
   "I don't know about sentience. It's more of an awareness, rather than thought. They aren't so much
  communicating as — well, as you put it, Neeva, communing.With each other."
   Becker strolled away from them briefly. The stone fragments under his boots whimpered in harmony.
   "They should be reassembled," Acorna said.
   "That would be quite a jigsaw puzzle," Rafik said.
   "Besides, I didn't bring enough Superbond," Becker said. "I only brought enough for a fleet of salvaged
  ships, not enough for a whole planet full of pebbles."
   "We don't have to do the whole planet yet. But we need to reassemble the stones in this region so we
  can safely tell what lies beneath them without harm to them, ourselves, or what's below," Acorna said
  without fully understanding why. She picked up a handful of gravel while trying to figure out exactly what
  she meant. Idly, she arranged the bits of rock into different shapes on her palm. Two of them seemed to
  fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. She tapped their edges together with her fingernail. And felt an odd
  tingling in her hand as the two fragments seemed to flow into each other and become one. "We may not
  need as much glue as it seems, Captain." She opened her hand and showed the others what had
  happened. "Look here. The oddest thing is happening. Once you line up the fragments correctly, they
  bond themselves together with only the slightest encouragement."
   Rafik nodded."Naturally. These stones are a variant of basalt. They're thoroughly infused with
  high-quality quartz." He picked up a largish piece and pointed at little lines of dark coloration appearing
  randomly throughout the stone. "These are rutiles of iron. Embedded in the quartz, they form a conductor
  of a static charge that, when properly aligned with other stones with the same rutiles, forms a strong
  linkage."
   He was lecturing now. Acorna knew all of this and suspected the information was not unfamiliar to
  Becker. Mac might have had it somewhere in his data banks, too, but he drank it all in nevertheless. "But
  
  how does that make them go together without a bonding agent, Rafik?" the android asked.
   "Like I said, it has a static charge. You know about static electricity, right, Mac?"
   "Of course.When there is a lot of it, I can feel rather giddy."
   "Yes, but it can also make certain things cling to other things — and they'll remain there until the link is
  broken. These stones set up their own bond by forming their own static charge. In other words, if you
  line them up correctly, the molecules have a kind of memory for where they belong. The same
  phenomenon is what enables these stones to sing — the quartz rutiles act like antennae and set up
  harmonic resonances that allow for the range of tones."
   "So," Becker said, "they don't need glue. That's good. So we'll have the ships' computers scan the
  fragments on the surface, twirl 'em in different sequences to come up with matches, feed the data about
  the location of the fragments into Mac, and he can reassemble them."
   "Meanwhile," Rafik said, "we'll probably still need all the glues you have to initiate the bonding. No
  doubt many of the fragments have been powdered when the stones got turned into gravel. The glue and
  some of the dust can maybe make up lost pieces. And although it won't take much for each stone, there
  are a lot of stones here."
   "Sounds like a plan. And it sure beats standing here listening to them wail. So let's get cracking, folks!"
  Becker said. "… Or uncracking, as the case may be…"
   Acorna and Rafik fed a formula into the replicator aboard theBalakiire,then ran the various substances
  Becker had gathered through it, recombining them into the appropriate bonding agent.
   Before they had stored the last batch of glue in the last of all of the containers they used from all of the
  ships, Mac had taken the first batch of the stuff out and blurred across the com screen reassembling the
  stones.
   The process was tedious, but it seemed to be working. While carrying it out, they took turns sleeping
  and supplying Mac with sufficient bonding agent.
   Although the sleep periods were brief, Acorna was almost too tired to dream. Only once during the
  three sleeps did the Khleevi/Aari dream intrude, right at the end where it hung unfinished in her mind.
   But once she awakened and looked out the viewport, the dream was banished as she rubbed her eyes in
  astonishment. In place of the pathetic gravel pit that had surrounded the ships when they landed, stacks
  of whole stone towered all around them. On the ground beneath them, the stepping-stone patterns of the
  Stones of Skarness were starting to form a pleasing semicircular pattern. Mac had slowed down so that
  he no longer blurred across her vision, but he still moved very swiftly, scooping rock from the area
  beyond the re-formed stones, seeming to juggle the load in midair while applying dabs of bonding agent
  with the hand that wasn't catching falling stones.
   "He should have been in show biz," Becker said. "He'd have been a real hit."
   Acorna said nothing. The re-formed rocks were singing again — at least they sang in her mind.
   (Do you hear them?)she asked Neeva and the other Linyaari.
  
   (Who, dear?)
   (The stones.Listen.)
   (I seem to hear something now that you mention it, but it may just be an echo of what you are picking up
  as I receive it through your thoughts. You do have this way with minerals, you know. Unique among us,
  so far as anyone's memory extends. Keep listening, dear.)
   Acorna turned her attention inward again, hearing the melodious mental whispers of the stones again.
   Leaving the ship once more, she walked out across the newly mended stones, each of them striking a
  tone as her boot touched its surface.
   (Come! Make Haste! Seek! Find!)the stones sang.
   As she walked, Mac continued to lay newly mended stones on the ground. He didn't appear to be
  conscious of creating a pattern, but in fact the stepping-stones formed three-quarters of a circle to the
  east of the ship, farthest from where the columns towered.
   Acorna walked toward the center, her heels chiming off the stones as she walked slowly and
  deliberately, listening, looking down at the stones as if they had faces she could read.
   (Underground, under stone, living flesh and living bone,) the stones sang.
   Mac, four stones nearer to the center of the circle than she was, suddenly stopped what he was doing
  and looked down. Acorna caught up and followed his gesture. A deep pit lay within the circle. This was
  not surprising. The planet was pocked with them. But if this one had a bottom, Acorna could not see it.
   She frowned at the stones around her. (And your point is?)she thought. They stopped singing, chiming,
  or making any other noise either aloud or in her head. Then she could hear the other voices, the ones
  from underneath, very faint, very weak, but voices.
   "Someone is trapped down there," she told Mac.
   "Ah," he said. "That explains it."
   "Yes, I suppose it does. The stones weren't singing simply because they had been ruined. They were
  sending a Mayday for whoever is below."
   Quickly the others gathered while Becker, Mac, and Rafik deployed the earthmoving equipment the
  Condorcarried for particularly heavy salvage jobs.
   "Are they right below us?" Rafik asked. "We don't want to injure anyone."
   Acorna searched, her mind excavating the pit, seeping between the rocks and dust of a collapse, finding
  open space, another collapse, and, at last, after sifting through yards of boulder and soil, meeting the
  minds trapped beyond. "No," she said, "they aren't directly beneath. But this seems to be the only
  opening to the place where they've taken shelter. I will tell them to keep as far back as possible anyway.
  Their tunnels have collapsed in two places, much the same as happened in Kubi-ilikaan and the old
  Ancestral caves on Vhiliinyar. These tunnels are old mine shafts, I think, but when the Khleevi came, the
  people who could not get off-planet hid down there to escape them. They had no idea of the destructive
  
  force they were dealing with."
   "They told you all that?" Neeva asked. "What I'm getting is far too faint to make sense."
   "No," Acorna admitted. "I feel it though." She tried to explain.
   "It's partly the rock. This mineral affinity I have seems to magnify my other senses and make
  communication possible here."
   "Whatever," Becker said. "Tell 'em to stand clear anyway."
   Becker, Rafik, and Mac set up a tripod over the hole, with heavy cables laced across the opening
  providing a suspension grid for the laser drill. Mindful of the Singing Stones, Becker and Rafik began
  digging and drilling, Mac working alongside the larger equipment. Suddenly the machinery shuddered,
  and a noxious gas, redolent of Khleevi scat, boiled up from the opening. Becker and Rafik gasped and
  coughed. Acorna and the other Linyaari rushed forward to purify the air.
   "Before you drill again," Acorna said, "let me go down there, Captain, and clear the passage. If the air
  below is anywhere near as bad as what came out of the hole, it could kill any beingswho have respiratory
  problems."
   Becker coughed and hacked. "You mean like humans?"
   "Perhaps we should go with you, Khornya," Neeva suggested, with a worried look at her niece. It was
  as if she was afraid that Acorna was not quite up to such a challenge.
   (What is it?) Acorna asked.
   (Nothing, really.You are still very upset though. You had that dream again. Do please be careful.)
   (Thanks for your concern, but I'm fine.)
   "If it's very bad and there's room, I'll call for you," Acorna reassured her aloud for Becker's benefit. "But
  I hope as I get nearer to the barrier I'll be better able to distinguish the thoughts of those trapped beyond.
  Also, I may see a way to bring the people out again without disturbing the Stones any more than we have
  to."
   Everyone agreed this was sensible. They attached a mesh basket to one of the cables and lowered
  Acorna into the pit beside the drill.
   Rafik loaned her the helmet with the miner's light he always carried with him. She wished he'd brought
  hers from her younger days, when she, too, mined with her foster fathers out among the asteroids. Her
  miner's hat was tailored to fit around her horn. This one kept bumping into it. The light bounced around
  as a result so she got rather fleeting impressions of the area into which she was descending.
   There was the debris, of course, but surrounding it was evidence of the interior columnar structure that
  on the surface broke into the segments that later became the Singing Stones.
   The drill and the basket touched bottom and, since the machinery was very noisy, she sent a mental
  message to Becker to withdraw it.
  
   Now she would need to listen, to make her way toward the second cave in the area, to try to
  communicate with the entities trapped behind it.
   "Khornya, there you are," a familiar voice said. She thought for a moment she was hallucinating.
   "Aari, how did you get here?" she asked, though she knew already. He was undoubtedly traveling
  through time and space, using the Ancestral Friends' technology. "What are you doing here?"
   "Looking for you, of course.I only had to check the log on record to know you'd be here about now.
  And I have a wonderful surprise for you!"
   "That's — interesting," she said, wondering if it was possible for a Linyaari to be insane. Because she felt
  like she was going what Becker would call "stark raving bonkers" just aboutnow. Her lifemate's
  insouciant flitting about through time and space made her more uneasy every time he did it. In that
  moment just now when he had appeared out of nowhere, goose bumps had actually risen on her skin.
  She tried to keep her voice level, as she said, "Aari, right now I'm rather busy, as I'm sure the — er —
  log recorded.
   "That's all right. You can do this and enjoy my surprise, too. I can return you here and now once I've
  shown you what I have for you, if you want. But this is probably going to be the most exciting thing in
  your entire life, so maybe you'll want Neeva or one of the others to come down here and fill in for you."
   His voice was as eager and enthusiastic as it had often been on a new mission, but there was also
  something… well… pushy about it, too.And self-serving. In all, what she was dealing with right now was
  Aari Whole-Horn at his most irritating.
   But she said patiently, "Aari, you know that the others don't share my mineral-awareness. I am down
  here because I can best do what needs to be done at this moment. I have people waiting on me to do it,
  both my friends up on the surface and those who are trapped here. These beings may be injured. Some
  may be dying."
   "You don't get it, do you?" Aari asked, with a smug little smile. She knew he thought his "Friend"
  Grimalkin was wonderful, but she was beginning to think the Ancestral Being had been a bad influence on
  him. Even the way Aari spoke was different now, more flippant and dismissive of other people's, or at
  least of her own, concerns. "They won't have to wait at all. I can even make it possible for you to
  perform your task faster. I can return you here before now if you want me to. Only… right now we have
  to go. Someone else is waiting for you."
   Aari's tone was deliberately mysterious, mischievous, and playful, but she did not share his mood.
   "I have to tell the others what's happening," she said firmly.
   "There is no need," Aari Whole-Horn said.
   He shot his hand out of the shipsuit sleeve, and tapped at a rather large object strapped to his wrist. It
  resembled a watch, but it had a keyboard and a very substantial face. When he stopped tapping, he
  grasped her hand, and said, "Here we are."
   "I know that," she said, almost snapping. They hadn't moved at all, as far as she could see.
   "Of course you do. It's the same here, but it's rather different now. It's much earlier in time, before the
  
  Khleevi attack, even. Come on. The ship is out here. They can hardly wait to meet you."
   Chapter Ten
    
   Somewhere on the Planet Vhiliinyar,
   During the Time of the Khleevi Invasion
    
   Aari was about to drink the last of his water when something occurred to him. Water was the conduit for
  time-sliding on Vhiliinyar. It had been so in the time when
   Kubiilikaan was great, and it had been so when Aari fell out of his own time.
   Could this little bit of water perhaps take him where he needed to go? It wasn't a lake or a river or even
  an ocean, and it hadn't, as far as he knew, come from Vhiliinyar. It was the last tiny drink he had to see
  him through to distant Kubiilikhan, or Grimalkin's return, or recapture by the Khleevi. A small risk by
  comparison with what he might gain. He was unsure how exactly to use the water, but he thought giving it
  something of Vhiliinyar might serve to connect it to the time-water partnership the Hosts had installed on
  his poor homeworld.
   He bent low and sloshed the thermos a bit so that the water met the gnarled nub of his horn. Maybe it
  could serve two purposes. Perhaps he could time-travel with it and drink it as well? How he wished
  Grimalkin had explained more about how the time apparatus worked. If only he could go back to
  pre-Khleevi Kubiilikaan and examine the time machine, then he would have the whole ocean to
  experiment with until he could send himself to his own time, Khornya's time. But, for right now, all he had
  was his last drops of drinking water. It would have to do.
    
   Somewhere on the Planet Skarness,
   During the Time of the Khleevi Attack on Vhiliinyar
    
   When Acorna and Aari emerged from the hole, theCondor, theBalakiire, Rafik, Captain Becker, Neeva,
  Melireenya, and Khaari were missing from where they had been only moments before. RK, however, sat
  glaring at them.
   Acorna found the cat's presence reassuring. "Look, he waited for us," she said, scooping the cat into her
  arms, which was not an easy thing to do since he stiffened himself into a straight-legged, flat-eared,
  flinty-eyed scowl of a cat.
   "But how?"Aari asked. He did not seem pleased to see RK. The cat hissed at him.Which was very
  strange. RK and Aari had always been fond of each other. When Aari touched Acorna's elbow to guide
  her across the stones, RK took a swipe at him with five right hooks.
  
   "What has gotten into you?" Acorna asked RK, squeezing him a little as a reprimand. RK pulled his paw
  back, looked up at her with a hurt expression in widened eyes, and meowed reproachfully, as befitted a
  misunderstood cat who had been wronged by someone he trusted.
   "He can't come where we're going," Aari said. His wound continued to bleed, and Acorna wondered
  why he didn't heal it. She allowed RK to squirm away from her,then she stopped Aari with a glance.
  Holding his sliced forearm aloft, she bent her head to it and healed the scratches.
   "You should know by now that you can't keep a cat from going where he wants to," she said. "And, for
  RK, that's evenmore true than it is with most cats."
   "That is so. But that cat does not appreciate his opportunities. If I had been in your arms, I would not
  have jumped down. I know where I want to be," he replied, and tried to pull her into his arms.
   She disentangled herself from his embrace only slightly more tactfully than RK had exited her own.
   It was Aari's turn to look wronged. Remorse washed over Acorna again, but she couldn't help it. He
  kept rushing her.
   And yet she remembered how she had longed for him to touch her, ached for him, before he returned.
  As those memories rushed over her, she tried to smile.
   He brightened. "That's all right, Khornya. You will feel differently when you see what I've brought you."
   He led her to a flitter parked among the restored stone columns. Two young adult Linyaari stood there,
  waiting. They looked dazed and confused, but when they saw her, their thoughts immediately flew to her.
   (Is it you? Is it really my little girl all grown-up?)
   (F-father?)Acorna asked, though she knew even as she asked that it was he.Vaanye, her father, the
  scientist who had used his new discovery to sacrifice himself and his lifemate so that their baby could
  escape a Khleevi attack.
   (My baby!)Feriila, Acorna's mother cried, and rushed to embrace her daughter, as Acorna embraced
  her.Vaanye joined them, throwing his arms around them both.
   Aari cleared his throat. "She didn't want me to try to find you," he said. "But I knew she would be
  pleased once I brought you here."
   Trouble clouded Acorna's happiness. Her objections, callous as they might seem compared with the
  saving these precious people holding her, were still valid. Seeing the worry in her eyes, Aari laughingly
  explained how clever he had been to find just the proper moment to whisk her parents forward in time
  and onto firmer ground using Grimalkin's ingenious devices.
   Acorna was overwhelmed by her own emotions. And she was swamped with those radiating from her
  parents. (Where have you been all these years? How were you rescued? Aari has told us a little, but we
  have so many questions!)
   (I do, too. But right now we need to return to the time I was in when Aari fetched me. One of my foster
  dads, Rafik, is along on this mission, and I imagine you will enjoy hearing him tell embarrassing childhood
  stories about me while I try to rescue some refugees who seem to be trapped in a tunnel beneath the
  
  planet's surface.)
   She looked expectantly at Aari, who was beaming at all of them. He didn't seem to be returning them to
  her proper time, however.
   (Well?)she asked.
   "Oh, er, what?" he asked aloud.
   "We need to get back to the others. My parents will want to meet Rafik especially, and I have a rescue
  to complete, in case you've forgotten."
   "Sorry, Khornya, I was just caught up in the moment. It was good to surprise you and make you
  happy."
   His head drooped ever so slightly, and she wondered why she always seemed to feel like a… well…
  she could think of any number of colorful terms Becker might have used to describe her… around him.
  Aari had just given her the most precious thing she could possibly have wished for, and already she had
  grown impatient with him. Perhaps they had been too quick to form the lifemate bond. How strange that
  it had been so very strong before his disappearance, and yet it was completely absent now. To Acorna, it
  felt like her emotional ties to him were all in the past. "It's not that I'm not grateful. It's just that we have to
  return. I don't quite understand why if you already time-traveled to bring them here, then traveled to get
  me, that you didn't come to my time to begin with."
   "I thought your reunion should be private," he said.
   (I was wondering about that myself,) Vaanye sent the thought to Acorna. (Grateful as we are to him for
  bringing us to meet you, daughter, I cannot help but feel that this time-shifting is somehow — unhealthy.)
   Feriila looked pensive, glancing between Aari and Acorna.
   RK growled and started to run a paw full of claws down the leg of Aari's shipsuit. Aari looked down at
  the cat. RK sat back and began washing as though nothing unusual had happened. RK backing down
  from anything or anyone — but especially from his old friend Aari — would have been remarkable under
  other circumstances. Among so many incredible events, it went unnoticed.
   Aari tapped at his wrist and beckoned for them to follow.
   Somewhere on the Planet Skarness,
   During the Present Day
    
   Acorna heard Neeva's voice mingling with Becker's and Rafik's.
   Neeva stopped speaking to stare at them. An amazed silence was finally broken by her words, "Feriila?
  Vaanye? Can it be you?
   "Yes, sister," Feriila said. "Didyou miss us?"
  
   The hug they exchanged was answer enough.
   Meanwhile, while the Linyaari family celebrated a grand reunion, Mac unloaded the drill from the ship.
   "I do not understand how it happened, Khornya," he said. "You were in the hole a moment ago — I
  have a very clear record of it in my data banks — but now you are not. I believe you said before that
  there are people trapped below."
   "Yes," she said. "Yes, I did, but apparently you and I are the only ones who remember what went on
  from before. Once we accomplish our mission here, I think that we need to have a chat, Mac."
   Mac nodded and lowered her once more.
   This time she was uninterrupted as she felt her way through the blockage to the cave inside. Her mind
  met with the minds of the people beyond.
   (We're coming. Help is coming.)
   (Good,) a thought voice replied. (We still have hydrient, but were considering the digestibility of the most
  recent corpses when the stones began their song.)
   (You have been here a long time?)
   (An eternity, it seems. We stocked these tunnels long ago with emergency provisions, but we were
  thinking in terms of days — -weeks, perhaps months. It has been over ayear since the Khleevi came to
  rip this planet apart.)
   (I take it that this world is your home, then?)
   (We are musicians who serve the stones. Their home is our adopted home. To serve them is our great
  honor.)
   (You serve them?How?)
   (We are their agents to other worlds. When an ensemble has reached perfection and is ready to be
  heard off-world, we select it and take it to a place where it may be chosen for the honor and the wonder
  of all who hear it. We also help train the newly severed to reach full voice, to blend with others.)
   (Fascinating.Your relationship to the stones is what caused them to set up such a racket once they made
  contact with the chrysoberyls and hence, with us?)
   (Is that what happened? All we know is that so many began singing at once — and so badly — that we
  still have our fingers in our ears. Even so, I fear our perfect pitch is ruined. It's a good thing you're
  telepathic, or we wouldn't know you were here.)
   (You didn't hear the drill?)
   (Drill?)
   (Well, keep your fingers in your ears a bit longer and we'll have you out. Stay to the back of the space
  you're in now. Once the opening is visible, come out quickly. We have no idea how stable the walls will
  
  be once the rubble is cleared.)
   (How many of you are there, anyway?)
   (Many fewer than came down here originally,) the voice answered.(Maybe three hundred now? Oh, no,
  make that two hundred and ninety nine. Fkara's youngest died after the stones' first lament).
   (So many!)Acorna thought, (And yet, for the entire — er — nonmineral population of a planet…)
   (As I said, we are not the planet's inhabitants. The stones are. On this entire world therewere only twice
  our present number . Fortunately, most of us found shelter before the invasion. And, equally fortunately,
  you have now come to our rescue.)
   Using the drill's remote laser guide, Acorna pointed the drill at the blockage from the cave-in. Its own
  laser quickly sliced through the first barrier. Shutting it down, Acorna crawled through the hole and
  guided the tip once more at the pile of boulders blocking the tunnel. (Stand back,) she told the people
  behind the rubble. (You don't want this drill's beam to mistake you for a rock.)
   When she sensed that there was enough room between the cave-in and its victims, she activated the drill
  and made an opening large enough for a person to climb through. She fused the edges, withdrew the drill,
  and helped the first of the cave'soccupants scramble toward freedom. The light on her miner's helmet
  caught the face of a humanoid female who looked little different than the women of Kezdet, except that
  her ears were unusually large, long, and pointed at both lobe and crest.
   (Send them out to us, Khornya,) Neeva said. (Feriila and I will help them to the area where Captain
  Becker can use theCondor'stractor beam to raise them to the surface.)
   This rescue had become a real family effort for the women of Acorna's line. The thought deepened
  Acorna's smile as she greeted the rescuees. Not that they could see it, but her smile was there, all the
  same.
   It seemed to take hours to free everyone, and at the end the last few able-bodied people stayed to help
  those too young, too old, or simply too weak to walk out under their own steam. Mostly the last, since
  those too young or too old to fend for themselves had not survived the ordeal.
   Finally, Acorna joined her mother and Neeva as they watched the last group ascend to the surface. As
  the soles of their feet disappeared, Acorna heaved a sigh of relief. From the surface came a chiming, a
  humming,a happy tuneful greeting from the stones.Missionsuccessful.
   (Khornya?)hermother asked, rather shyly. (That's what they call you, isn't it?Khornya? Aari calls you
  that.)
   (Yes,) she answered. (My foster fathers named me Acorna because of my horn — no one else has one
  where we… they… come from. But when Neeva and theBalakiirecrew found me, it seemed impossible
  for them to say Acorna, so our people call me Khornya.)
   (I was going to name you Aliliiya, after your grandam, but Khornya suits you.)
   (You must tell me more about my grandam sometime,) Acorna said. (Grandam Naadiina told me a few
  things, but we had so little time together that I didn't get to ask everything I wanted.)
  
   (I am so pleased you've come to know Grandam Naadiina. How is she?)
   Neeva and Acorna exchanged looks in a darkness lit only by the lights on their heads.
   "Oh, no," Feriila said, reading them. (It hardly seems possible. She has always been there, as long as
  anyone can remember.)
   They both sent her the thought-pictures they had received from other survivors of the Khleevi attack on
  narhii-Vhiliinyar, where Grandam had given her life to save an Ancestor, anaagroni, and almost more
  importantly, theaagroni'sprecious specimens of the DNA taken from life-forms from old Vhiliinyar.
   "I suppose many things have changed since I last saw you," Feriila said aloud, sighing. "From my point of
  view, you are grown now, and mated, daughter, when only moments ago we kissed you good-bye
  before placing you in the escape pod. Aari is a fine young male, of course. We both find it really
  remarkable how much he has learned about manipulating time and space."
   "Yes," Acorna agreed. "Remarkable.Incredible, really."
   "You are troubled about him, daughter. I sensed great passion from him toward you when he spoke of
  you, but you seem unhappy. I realize it must be hard for you to think of me as your mother, as someone
  you can confide in, but— "
   "Oh, no!"Acorna cried, reaching out to touch her hand. "You have always been a part of me, you and
  Father both…"
   "The truth is," Neeva told her sister humorously, "you are probably the only Linyaari living who is not
  privy to Khornya's feelings on this matter. She tends to broadcast in a wide band, even her bad dreams."
   "Well, yes, I keep confusing Aari with a Khleevi in my dreams, or Aari bringing the Khleevi or
  something. It gets all mixed up. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth, and the Khleevi are all
  dead now but…" Acorna tried to explain to her mother how Aari had come back after his voyages in
  time changed so much, how he wasn't the post-Khleevi Aari with whom she had shared adventures. She
  told her mother about this Aari, who never had that experience, whose horn was whole, who was
  unscathed by torture. "In order to return as he did, he wiped out everything that happened afterwards,
  including me. He knew of me and of our bond only by hearsay, really. His friend Grimalkin, of whom he
  speaks constantly and worshipfully, made him make a record of the old Aari's memories to refer to."
   "Ewwww," her mother said, as if she had just stepped in dung. "No wonder you're upset, child."
   "It's almost as if time sent back the wrong person," Acorna complained. And then listened toherself .
  "You know, Mother, Gill (he's one of my foster fathers) used to tell me some of the stories fromEire ,
  where his ancestors lived on Old Terra. His people shared the island with another race of beingswho had
  lived there before them. Those people were magical and lived under the ground. They were mischievous
  and sometimes malicious. One of the things they did was to steal human children and replace them with
  one of their children. They would look the same, but… they weren't the same. They were called
  changelings."
   "Oh, that would never happen with a Linyaari," Feriila said.
   "You sound so sure, Mother," Acorna said with a sigh as she held her female family within the circle of
  light from her helmet.
  
   "Of course I am," Feriila said. "We have our birth disks after all." She reached into the neck of her
  shipsuit and pulled forth a double-sided metal locket that even in the dim light reflected several colors.
  "This is yours," she said proudly. "It's hermetically sealed, but inside is a tiny snippet of your umbilical
  cord. The design on the edge here" — her broad fingernail indicated looping scrollwork delicately etched
  along the closure — "is your DNA code. Should any of us become lost, or should any Linyaari bodies be
  discovered in a place or time where they were not recognized, the mother or mate of any missing Linyaari
  would only need to compare the code on the locket to that of the body to know."
   "Oh," Acorna said, touching the one she wore. "Aari's mother gave me his. I had no idea there was more
  than a sentimental purpose to them, though."
   Neeva shook her head in exasperation."That Miiri! Such a romantic! She's a scientist. You'd think she'd
  have imparted the scientific reason for the disks."
   "Okay, below, all aboard!" Becker called down to them.
   The three of them stepped to the spot where the tractor beam lifted them to the surface. It was not a
  particularly pleasant sensation. Acorna felt as if her horn was about to be sucked off and her mane pulled
  out of her scalp. Her suit rode up around her neck and pulled at the arms and legs where the fabric tried
  to rise more quickly than the rest of her.
   (I should have brought one of Aziza's antigravity belts,) she told Neeva.
   When they reached the surface, Mac moved the beam to the edge of the pit and deposited them among
  the refugees, who resembled large-eared humanoid skeletons, thanks to their long imprisonment, and the
  crooning stones. The stones sang a song of welcome and joy. Some of the humanoids tried to sing with
  them, but they were very weak indeed.
   (Sorry about the tune, folks,) one of them said. (It's true that musicians are usually hungry, and it only
  makes their voices finer. But I think we've gone a bit beyond that right now.)
   (You poor things!)Acorna said, contrite that she had been dwelling on her own problems instead of
  focusing on the far more urgent ones of those around her. (We really didn't rescue you from starvation
  below just so you could starve on the surface.) Aloud she said, "These people need food and water.
  How much have we aboard the ships?"
   "We used almost all the water and raw materials aboard theCondorto make the glue for the stones,"
  Rafik told her. "We reserved enough to feed ourselves for the voyage home, of course, but that's about
  it."
   "We have ample stores for our usual crew on theBalakiire," Neeva said. "But of course, it is our food,
  and they may not find it nourishing. Besides, we don't have enough to feed this many people. However,
  once we harvest we could start growing more. It will, of course, take time."
   RK clawed his way up to Becker's shoulder and sat glaring at Aari.
   "Oh, yeah, we've got the c-a-t-f-o-o-d," Becker said, holding his hand between his mouth and RK's
  face. "If they leave enough for the first mate, he'll probably share, as long as nobody tells him about it."
   "That won't be enough to support this many people until we return from our mission," Rafik said. "And
  
  we may lose some more of them by the time Hafiz can send provisions."
   Becker scratched his perpetually bewhiskered chin. "Well, the supply has lasted us several years
  already, but we gave some away to the cats on Makahomia. I've done some fancy navigating out here
  since I met up with Aari and Acorna and the rest of you folks. I could probably make it out to MOO and
  back before any of Hafiz's folks that weren't foliowing my course." He nodded toward Neeva. "But even
  with every shortcut I know, it still takes us almost thirty watches to get here — that's what?Seven
  standard Kezdet days? Then there's the trip back. I don't think the cat food will last this mob that long."
   (Perhaps one of the nearby planets has something we could eat?)the fellow who had spoken to Acorna
  before suggested when she transferred the conversation into thought-images for him. She quickly
  returned images of the other planets they had seen.(That bad, huh? Worse off than we are.)
   Aari said eagerly, "But there's no problem, really. I — we can go for the supplies and be back before
  you come out of the hole."
   "Who's 'we,' buddy?" Becker asked, his deliberately calm, soft tone indicating he had had about enough
  of Aari doing fancier tricks with time than he himself could using the worm-holes and warpings in space.
   "Oh, uh, Grimalkin, of course.He's in the ship that brought Khornya's parents and me here. I will simply
  fly the flitter back up to our ship, and he can return us to MOO. He could return us there before we left
  and we will know to load up with many extra provisions this time, enough to feed all of these people for a
  very long time.And more."
   "There was someone else aboard besides us?" Vaanye asked. "Where was he? I didn't see him."
   "He was sleeping during my watch," Aari said. "And it just happened that you slept during his."
   "But we should have met him!" Feriila exclaimed. "After all, he was the one who taught you the skills that
  enabled you to save us. We should have thanked him."
   "Oh, he's — er — very shy about that sort of thing," Aari said. "Modest, you know how it is."
   Acorna and Becker exchanged looks. From all that they had heard about Aari's new friend up until now,
  he sounded anything but modest.
   "Do you suppose he'd be shy with me?" Acorna asked as sweetly as she could manage. "Because I
  think I'll go with you. I'd like to meet him, too."
   "Maybe when we come back," Aari said hurriedly. "We'll travel faster without distractions. Not that it
  matters how fast we go, really, with the time thing but… I'll just be on my way now. These people do
  look hungry."
   Aari edged away as he spoke. Acorna thought he looked more than nervous. He looked downright
  shifty. She would need to come up with a backup plan about her lifemate very soon. Something was not
  right about Aari, and the more he used his time-travel skills to be heroic, the less trustworthy he seemed
  to her.
   "Wait!" she said, and grabbed him for a long horn touch, twining her fingers in his mane as they met.
   He finally backed away, gulping. "I'll be back before you can miss me," he said, and headed for his
  
  shuttle.
   Acorna turned back to the others. Becker regarded her with one eyebrow cocked. The stones were
  singing something that sounded suspiciously like a love song with their humanoid agents trying, despite
  their depleted condition, to join in over the sounds of their rumbling bellies.
   Acorna held out her hand to Neeva and deposited a few white hairs in it. "Would you ask Khaari to run
  a test on these for their DNA code?"
   Neeva took the hairs carefully. "Did you get those where I think you did?"
   Acorna nodded.
   "Then I think that might just be very interesting," Neeva said, and walked away toward her ship. She
  looked back. "Aren't you coming, Acorna?"
   Mac, Becker, and Rafik began reloading the drill and other equipment. Becker stood up and stretched
  his back. "I think I'd better hail Hafiz and warn him about all this. I'm not sure how this time stuff Aari
  does works. But I probably need to explain to Hafiz that his beneficence in providing the chow will earn
  him the undying gratitude of the sole agents and purveyors of the talents of the Singing Stones of
  Skarness."
   Rafik laughed. "Becker, are you sure you're not related to House Harakamian somewhere way back in
  your birth family? You and Hafiz certainly think alike."
   Meanwhile, Neeva, Acorna, and her parents boarded theBalaklire. It didn't take Khaari long to run the
  simple test.
   "Hmmm," she said.
   "Hmmm?"Acorna said. "What do you mean by 'Hmmm'?" She slipped Aari's birth disk off over her horn
  and handed it to Khaari. "This is Aari's, and those hairs came from his mane just now. Do they — I
  mean, is he… Is there a match?"
   "I can tell you that without even looking at the disk," Khaari said."Though I will, of course. But this DNA
  can't belong to Aari. It's not even completely Linyaari."
   "I was afraid of that," Acorna said. "I don't suppose you can tell which species it does belong to?"
   Khaari smiled at her. "Don't worry. It's not Khleevi."
   Acorna groaned. "Maybe I should wear a horn-hat when I sleep. Of course it's not Khleevi. But whose
  is it?"
   "It bears some resemblance to ours — you see these sequences here. But this — these are feline
  pairings. And there are many other oddities."
   Acorna shook her head, looking skyward. "All right," she said. "Who are you really, and what have you
  done with my lifemate?" But she was already pretty sure she knew the answer to the first question,
  anyway.
  
   Somewhere on the Planet Vhiliinyar,
   During the Time of the Khleevi Invasion
    
   Aari wasn't surprised that the water trick didn't work. Mildly disappointed, but not surprised. Very well,
  there was no help for it but to try to find his way alone, on foot, and in the midst of the Khleevi invasion,
  back to the underground city. If he remained in this cave any longer, history would show that he, not
  Laarye, perished there of thirst and hunger.
   As soon as he stepped outside the cave, he found food, of course. The small patch of green that marked
  the Linyaari burial grounds was kept alive by the energy still residing in the DNA of the horns and bones
  of the dead. He grazed hungrily,then stuffed as many tufts of grass as he could pull into his shipsuit. It
  occurred to him that he was being foolish to leave what could be the only source of nourishment left on
  Vhiliinyar, but he felt an increasing urge to vacate the cave where his brother had once died. The skin
  along his spine twitched with a desire to be away from there.
   He had nothing besides the grass to take with him, so he took nothing else. He noted how white he
  looked against the dark and broken ground of his home planet. When he was out of sight of the green
  cemetery, he found a nice muddy, ashy place and rolled around in it, blackening his suit, skin, and mane,
  and rubbing liberal amounts onto his horn and face. It was not much, but it would have to do. If he came
  across a trail of Khleevi slime fresh enough not to be hardened he might rub a bit of that onto himself,
  too, repulsive as it was.
   If the bugs had any sense of smell, their own stench should disguise his.
   He was alert, vigilant, always moving, but progressing very slowly, staying close to the ground so he
  might be below the sight line of a crawling Khleevi. He broadcast no cries for help to Grimalkin, to
  Khornya in her own time, or anyone else, in case the Khleevi's own sense for the thoughts of their fellows
  picked up his alien signal. Yet he tried to keep his own senses attentive for their nonverbal
  communications. He could recognizeit, he was sure, though he detected no trace of it so far. But then,
  neither did he hear any of thekliking andklaking sounds they made with their legs and pincers when in
  direct communication.
   He couldn't dwell on that. He couldn't emit the fear that smothered him every time he let his mind touch
  on what had happened the last time he was in this situation. He had learned when he fought the Khleevi
  before that the pheromones he exuded when he was afraid would attract them. They fed on fear and
  pain.
   Hismind kept drifting back to the time he had spent with Grimalkin, wondering why the Ancestral
  "Friend" who had taken Aari under his wing would betray him and leave him behind here, where his
  worst nightmares had been born. Now, thanks to Grimalkin, this was no longer merely a nightmare, but
  reality once again.
   What the frack, as Joh Becker would say, was Grimalkin up to? The creature was an empath. As such,
  the Friend didn't merely know what Aari felt; he actually felt all that Aari had felt during their association,
  unless Aari shielded from him, which he seldom did. Grimalkin had to know how hard this would be for
  Aari, had to feel for him. So what could have made him do this?
   Aari reviewed all the conversations they'd had. Had he unintentionally mortally offended Grimalkin?So
  
  much so that the feline shape-shifter would take such fearsome revenge on him? Surely he'd have noticed
  something like that. But Aari could think of nothing. Mostly, they'd talked about Aari's life since the
  Khleevi, and especially of meeting Khornya and how they had become lifemates, joined in spirit and
  body. That was a joy so intense that he had never imagined it was possible forhimself — especially as
  scarred and tortured as he had been after his misadventures with the Khleevi. Aari missed Acorna so
  much, and he hated being separated from her, but even so he knew she would understand that he had to
  try to free Laarye. Certainly Grimalkin had understood that part of the mission. He had even carried it out
  while betraying Aari.
   Aari could hardly believe it. Grimalkin had seemed so intrigued by Aari's stories of his courtship with
  Khornya. He'd laughed delightedly at the tale of the silly holograms the children of MOO had devised to
  finally lure the two of them into each other's arms. He'd seemed touched when Aari told him how he and
  Khornya helped his little sister Maati rescue their parents. And he'd declared himself thrilled and chilled
  by the adventures they'd had together ridding the universe of the Khleevi once and for all. But more than
  any adventures or stories, Grimalkin had seemed to understand just how much Aari loved his Khornya
  andshe him. He'd understood that she was the most remarkable, brilliant, beautiful, kind, insightful,
  intelligent, resourceful, courageous Linyaari female he had ever met and how privileged he felt that she
  had chosen him. Grimalkin had even agreed that she must surely be the best specimen of womanhood of
  her race. Aari began to wonder if perhaps he hadn't dwelled on that a bittoolong.
   But from the first journey they made together, Grimalkin had urged him to make recordings of all of his
  memories of the time since his capture. Aari recorded his reunions with family members, his rescue by
  Joh Becker and Riidkiiyi, his healing, his friendships, his adventures,his part in victory over the Khleevi,
  and anything and everything to do with Khornya.
   When Aari balked at committing his private memories to recorded data, Grimalkin had said in a patient,
  purring voice, "I'm only thinking of your own good, son of my sons to be. I am a master of time, but even
  I occasionally find lapses in my memories from slipping too quickly forward or back. If you miss the
  synapse in the time-space helix by even a fraction of a nanosecond, you may become disoriented and
  never recover all of the moments of your life. Recording them is the best way to make sure you have
  them always."
   "Is that what you do?" Aari had asked him.
   "Oh, yes, but my device is much more sophisticated. I use it constantly, recording everything as it
  happens.With visuals, as well as olfactory and other sensory data."
   "You must have had a fascinating life," Aari said. "I would like to see these recordings you've made."
   Grimalkin hadgrinned his sly grin, reminding Aari of RK. "You're still too young, my boy. Wait until I've
  shown you a few things; then perhaps I will share certain selected passages that might amuse you. Now,
  this Khornya of yours, when you mate, what sort of sounds does she make?"
   Ugh! Even as a memory, that question was much too personal. Aari had refused to answer Grimalkin, or
  even to record such intimate information. "That is for Khornya and me to know, no one else," he said.
  "To speak of these things to others would be a betrayal of our bond."
   "No need to get all stuffy, son," Grimalkin said with a bored-sounding yawn and a stretch. "But if you
  should by ill chance lose that part of your memory in our travels, you'll be sorry. It's your life, after all. I'm
  just trying to help you, as I have from the start. Does she close her eyes when you touch horns or leave
  hem open, by the way?"
  
   For an empath, Grimalkin could be appallingly insensitive.
   And he could be worse than insensitive, as Aari knew. In the right circumstances, Grimalkin could be as
  cruel as a cat playing with a rodent, a personality trait common to most of the Friends. Aari had seen a
  great deal of that before he and Grimalkin had left Makahomia. It seemed now to Aari that Grimalkin's
  empathy apparently extended just far enough to learn Aari's feelings, but only in order to exploit them.
  And perhaps to develop a prurient interest in Khornya.
   But Aari knew that his Khornya would never betray him, just as he would never betray her. While
  Grimalkin had been busy restructuring the gene pool of Makahomia, making over the population, which
  was mostly from immigrant Terran stock, into his own image, Aari had recorded not memories, but
  messages for Khornya, to send across time, to let her know he was coming back to her.
   Grimalkin, caught up in a storm of procreation with anything female on the planet, guaranteeing feline
  shape-shifting offspring among at least some of them, had urged him to do likewise. "There's room for
  two superior species here, my boy. And you are a hero to those females since you purified their lake.
  You could have your pick. They're a bit scrawny, it's true, but some of them could be quite attractive."
   Aari had declined. Later, exhausted from his exertions, Grimalkin had collapsed next to Aari and sighed.
  "It must be restful, being bonded to only one female. When she's away, if you wish you can do something
  else."
   "We will not be wishing to do anything else for quite a while once Khornya and I are together again,"
  Aari said, smiling.
   Grimalkin stood up, his face shadowed by the walls of the temple that his new friends had built for him.
   "Leaving again so soon?" Aari asked.
   "I'm suddenlyhungry," he said. "I need to go pounce on something."
   This time, Aari thought, he was the one who had been pounced on.
   But not by the Khleevi.Not yet. The ground beneath him shook so often that when it stopped he found
  himself counting silently, waiting for the next quake.
   But, for the time being, he had been spared meeting the Khleevi. As far as he could see in the sun's
  brilliant searing light, the world around him was bleak and dead. Nothing moved on its surface, though
  the surface itself trembled, cracked, heaved, and spewed like someone burning with fever.
   He had that wonderful Linyaari navigational sense to guide him as he inched through the parched
  landscape toward the underground city. What if the entrance was blocked by cave-ins from the
  earthquakes? The city had been above ground when he first saw it, but when he brought thesii-Linyaari
  forward in time, the city had long been buried, abandoned, and for the most part forgotten except in
  legend and song. But it was a real place. He had been there, and now, if only he could return there and
  find the time device, he could return to his own time without having to wait for Joh to rescue him again.Or
  for Grimalkin to reconsider and return for him.
   Meanwhile, he kept very low and tried to move as quickly as possible while still maintaining his alertness
  and strength for the long journey. He wished he had dared to run at the first, when he still had the energy.
  
  He could have covered a great deal of ground. Though his people used spaceships and flitters, they all
  loved to run and could travel vast distances in the course of a day. But with the Khleevi presence, he
  knew he couldn't make himself so conspicuous. So instead he crept, crawled, and sometimes walked
  cautiously. As his food gave out, he lost strength. And he was constantly thirsty. His throat felt like the
  land looked.
   He found a place where he and Laarye had splashed in a wide river as boys. The riverbed was now an
  upheaval of rocks coated with Khleevi scat and husks from the larvae the Khleevi spawned there.
  Looking at the wreckage from a distance, Aari shuddered. He remembered the voracious Young who
  frightened even the older Khleevi.
   But now the riverbed was scored and stripped of everything but broken stone, which didn't surprise Aari
  at all. The Young devoured anything and everything of nutritional value to any known species, and only
  then left to devour other areas. He was fairly sure from his later experience with them that the Young
  probably also devoured each other as well as their elders when other food sources weren't available in
  abundance.
   Still, remembering the river of his youth, he found it hard to believe that even in a fewmonths,allof the
  water had gone. He found one soft place in the riverbed with less rock over it than the rest and no
  Khleevi slime. He dug with both hands until he ached so badly he had to run his horn over the parts he
  could reach to keep digging.
   At last he was rewarded by a bubble of stinking, venomous-looking liquid burbling its way into the hole
  he had made. Cupping some in his hands, he managed to dip his horn into it before it dribbled through his
  quivering fingers. He drank and repeated the process until he could no longer coax more of the liquid
  from the ground. Then there was nothing to do but continue his journey.
   Once more he counted himself lucky to have arrived after the Khleevi vacated the area. He just wished
  he had something — anything — to tell him where they actually were so that he could continue to avoid
  them.
   He listened with his entire being for theirklik s andklak s.
   Their thoughts had been incomprehensible when he first encountered them, but he now understood a
  great many Khleevi concepts and preoccupations. He heard no babbling of them anywhere near him and
  had to hope he was safe for the present.
   Renewing the coating of soil on his suit, skin, and hair every few hours, Aari dared to walk upright down
  the riverbed. It was as good a plan as any. Rivers fed into seas. The city had been by the sea. Perhaps
  this riverbed would lead him to the place where the city was buried.
   When he was once more too thirsty to continue, he stopped and dug in the riverbed again. He didn't
  have to dig as deep this time to find the liquid under the surface. That might mean that he was closer to
  sea level, he surmised, which was encouraging.
   He walked on and on until he found a shallow cave carved into the side of the riverbank. He crawled
  inside and carefully scooped rubble and rocks toward him so the entrance was somewhat blocked. After
  his trek through the blasted landscape, he now smelled as bad as any Khleevi. He lay down on his side
  thinking he could at least try to rest.
   Before he dropped into an exhausted doze, he wondered what made Grimalkin think he could claim
  
  Khornya, even if the Friend had left Aari stranded andalone?
   Chapter Eleven
    
   "Captain, we have an urgent message on the com unit."
   Mac announced.
   Acorna and her fellow Linyaari were hauling huge sheaves of grasses and flowers harvested from the
  Balakilre'sonboard gardens.
   Mac, Rafik, and Becker brought out the meager stores of human food remaining on theCondorand four
  large bags of cat food. RK danced around the bags nervously, as if trying to guard them all at once.
   Mac continued. "Chief Security Officer Aziza Amunpul reports that our stones are definitely in the
  process of being tampered with. She inquires whether or not she and her crew should attempt to detain
  the suspects."
   "You didn't go near the bridge when you picked up your load of cat food, Mac. How do you know all
  this? Don't tell me you're establishing mental communication with the hardware on theCondor."
   "No, Captain. I will not tell you that. However, I do have a surprise for you." He opened the top of his
  uniform and pressed a spot where a navel might be found on a human being. Aziza's anxious face spread
  across his chest. "You see? I have installed a portable com unit modification. I thought it might be useful
  for just such situations as the one in which we presently find ourselves. Away from the ship when an
  important message comes in, that is."
   "Mac, you're going to have to add about a foot to your height and get bigger around if you're going to
  have room on yourself for all those modifications," Becker said. Rafik was already earnestly in
  conversation with Mac's electronic belly button.
   "How far are they from your position, Aziza?"
   The dancer, frowning with concentration, gave him the coordinates. "That makes them about the same
  distance from us as you are, but coming from the opposite direction."
   "Stay put. We're on our way," Rafik told her.
   "We can't just leave these people here with four bags of cat food and a hank of grass," Becker said.
  "The way Aari talked, he ought to be back by now."
   "He may not return at all, Captain," Acorna said. "The creature who just promised to save these people
  isn't Aari."
   "You could have fooled me," Becker said.
   "And all of us as well," Neeva told him. "But we just ran the DNA and checked it against Aari's. That's
  not him."
  
   "It's Grimalkin," Acorna said. "At least, I'm pretty sure it is."
   "Where's Aari, then?"
   "I'd like to know that myself," Acorna said. "I'm hoping he was also on board the ship my parents came
  on, but there's certainly been no evidence of that. If he was there, why wouldn't he let us know? I'm
  afraid that I believe that Grimalkin wasn't leaving in order to help us feed these people. I think that he left
  because he knew he was about to be caught out as an impostor. He has a lot of explaining to do, but I
  suppose answering questions right now didn't fit in with his plans."
   "All I can say is he picked a lousy time to turn out to be somebody else," Becker growled. Then he
  repeated himself, shouting. The refugees were making a lot of noise, what with chowing down on the cat
  crunchies and the grass. They had descended on the food like locusts and were already polishing off
  most of it.
   "Mac, shut your shirt and let's go use the real thing to call Hafiz."
   "We can remain here to help these people," Vaanye said. "TheBalakiiregardens will grow more food
  within twenty-four hours."
   (Can your people exist on salad for a while?) Acorna asked the refugees in general.
   (It's better than— ) one began, but interrupted himself with sudden convulsive vomiting. Several of the
  others began doing the same thing.
   "What?" Becker asked, alarmed. "The food we have doesn't agree with them? But I ate those cat
  crunchies myself!"
   "No, Captain," Neeva assured him as she steadied the nearest sickly refugee, seeming accidentally to
  touch him with her horn. "They've simply been eating too fast on stomachs too long deprived of food."
   Acorna and the others surreptitiously healed the refugees with horn touches. As well as curing the
  starving people of nausea, the healing stopped the hungry people from wasting more precious nutrients.
   (You white-horned people are very comforting to have around,) the musician she'd been speaking with
  in the hole said. (I don't suppose any of you are musically inclined and would like to stay with us?)
   (We can all stay with you if you like, until relief comes,) Neeva told him. (Captain Becker has gone to
  call Uncle Hafiz for it now.)
   (I would like to complete the mission on the sulfur planet and return to Vhiliinyar as soon as possible,)
  Acorna said. (I'm worried about Aari now. Grimalkin must have done something to him or with him to
  conceal the ruse, whatever the reason forthatwas. And I'm afraid that even if they were friends, as Aari
  thought, and Grimalkin meant no harm, that creature's judgment just isn't very good.)
   (It certainly is not!) Neeva agreed. (He may not be a Khleevi, but it would be just like him to endanger
  us all by going back in time and finding one just to see what they were like.)
   Acorna shivered. (I hope my dreams were only dreams and not a vision of what that creature has done
  to Aari. I can't bear to think of him back in the clutches of the Khleevi.)
  
    
   Aari was wrong, Grimalkin decided. His Khornya was a hardhearted, horn-headed filly who was not
  worth the effort. No matter how he courted her, she rejected him. He felt distinctly unappreciated and
  aggrieved. He would have got on better with her if he'd taken over that very territorial ship cat, RK. She
  cuddled withhimreadily enough.
   He supposed he might as well return to Vhiliinyar and fetch Aari from the cave. As for his purported
  mission to get food for the people of Skarness, as far as he was concerned, that had been mostly an
  excuse to escape from Acorna's penetrating gaze. Though that last horn touch she'd given him had been
  almost enough to make him stay, he'd sensed an ulterior motive on her part. Such abrupt changes in
  behavior, when he did them at least, were usually part of some sort of trick.
   But now he was back in space, where he was responsible for no one and to no one. He could go his
  own way.
   He lay on the broad windowsill in front of his viewport. As usual, when he viewed the stars, he wished
  he could rearrange them to his own liking. They were sorandom.
   He really needed to go retrieve Aari. He had one last trick to play before returning to his friend,
  however. Those chrysoberyls were his by rights. Aari had made them from the contaminants in the
  Makahomian sacred lake. What nobody realized or at least remembered was that to begin with they had
  been just unattractive rocks. Fortunately for the planet, Grimalkin had a sense of myth and story. He had
  rearranged the molecules so that the rocks would always resemble the gleam in his own eyes. And as he
  and Aari departed their worshipers, Grimalkin had added one more mythic touch, blasting a long valley in
  each of the planet's moons and setting each slightly off its axis. This gave the moons a slightly irregular
  orbit so they would align closely enough every so often, and the valleys would fill with shadow while the
  rest of the moons' surface reflected the red sunlight. It was a lovely and mysterious sight, one that the
  Makahomians still trembled to see. Grimalkin licked the back of his hand and passed it over his face. His
  eyes really were, if not his best features, then his favorite among his many attractive personal attributes.
   Poor Khornya.The wench had no idea what she was missing. It wasn't as if he meant to take her away
  from Aari. He'd just wanted to borrow her for a little while to get the species started. If she wasn't so
  distrustful and particular, she probably wouldn't have known the difference. He had hoped, actually, to
  feel some of the emotion he drank in from Aari when the lovesick boy talked about her. If his recent
  experiences were any indication, well, mostly he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Yes, she was
  an interesting member of her species, but she was not so special she could really afford to go turning
  down the advances of interested males, especially a male whom she had every reason to believe was her
  chosen mate.
   Grimalkin would just have to find another way to capture her and Aari's particular genes for the future of
  their race — the race he would brilliantly create where his fellow scientists had failed.
   But meanwhile, there were those chrysoberyls, down there among beings that had no use for them, or
  any appreciation for them, at all. He decided to lurk back in time a few days and wait to intercept the
  thief. That was the when. Now he just had to find out where to lurk. Again, that was no problem, except
  that the spot he needed to occupy was presently filled with Aziza Amunpul's ship, theAli Baba. What to
  do… What to do…
    
  
   "Hi, y'all.Anybody hungry?" asked the voice from inside the front of Mac's shipsuit.
   Becker stopped in his tracks and in midgrowl. "Honey-bunny?" he asked. "Is that you, Andina?"
   "You bet your sweet rolls, Jonas. Speaking of which, I have a full cargo of cooking supplies and
  equipment along with the basic food groups for the ten primary types of alien and humanoid found within
  the Federation and the immediate vicinity of Vhiliinyar."
   "Don't tell me you're going all psychic on me, too, sweetie…" Becker said. "How did you know we
  were going to have three hundred extra mouths to feed?"
   "I knew you were on a rescue mission. In my experience, there is alwayssomebodywho gets very
  hungry, even if it's only the rescuers. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to cook for rocks or not, since it
  was the Singing Stones sounding the alarm, but I came prepared for all eventualities."
   "Thank goodness someone thought of it," Neeva said with relief.
   The musical refugees happily supplied a list of their normal dietary requirements and preferences. Mac
  relayed it to Andina, who very shortly set theHeloisedown on the other side of theCondorfrom the
  Balakiire. Her staff immediately set up a soup-kitchen-type operation, three of them serving, while a
  fourth staff member handed out dishes and a fifth herded the refugees into line. Andina and her personnel
  grew a bit sharp with the customers when they refused to allow them to stack up Singing Stones to a
  height suitable for seating. But, even without handy seating, food was soon in the hands of those who
  needed it.
   "That seems to be well in hand," Neeva said aloud. (Feriila, Vaanye, as much as I hate to, perhaps I
  should eschew your company for now. Khornya urgently needs to return to Vhiliinyar. I know you want
  to spend time with her. So it seems to me that you might want to accompany her on her journey.)
   (We will go with her and her human friends,) Vaanye told her. (Until we meet on Vhiliinyar,
  lifemate-sister.)
   The three of them touched horns in farewell.
   Becker returned from bidding Andina a fond farewell. "She is so great. She always knows what people
  are going to need," he said, wondering how she did it.
   Acorna was wondering about that, too. She was wondering just how, in this particular instance, Andina
  had known that food would be needed right here, right now.
    
   As an empath, Grimalkin had felt many borrowed emotions, but he had never acquired the knack for
  guilt. He didn't worry about his promise to return with food or with ships that had food for the refugees.
  He could always attend to that, if he decided to, later, with a time shift.
   He made a slight one now, back to the time of Smythe-Wesson's drop of the chrysoberyls, cloaking his
  ship to escape the notice of both the thief and the sulfur beings. He watched the whole thing, from when
  Smythe-Wesson sliced up the first group of Solids to the decapitation of the volcano and the treelike
  Solids of the wedding party, to the burial of the catseye stones. As he watched, he began to understand
  Smythe-Wesson better and to guess at his plan. It gave him an amusing idea.
  
   He had already discarded the notion of retrieving the stones before Aziza was sent to guard them. To do
  so would negate the mission to Skarness and his coup of presenting Acorna's parents to her. Not that
  Acorna deserved all the trouble he had gone to after her repeated rebuffs of his affection, but he was
  justifiably proud of what he had pulled off and had no wish to undo it. Or not right away, at least. The
  only thing he did while he was waiting for time to catch up with him again took place after theCondor
  approached the sulfur planet and made contact with Aziza. Once theCondorwas well away, Grimalkin,
  as Aari, hailed MOO and tipped them off that there were humanoids on Skarness who needed feeding.
   Too bad the sulfur beings weren't humanoids. Grimalkin had no trouble shifting his own shape, or that of
  certain other things, but after he saw the reception Rafik got from the sulfurians he decided that he'd do
  better to stay off the surface of the planet, if possible.
   He zoomed in, extending both the very sensitive monitors on his ship and his own psychic receptors as
  he watched the sulfur beings attempt to destroy Rafik and his vessel. He plucked up the data Mac
  gathered on the communications of the aliens and his analysis of it, and "overheard" Acorna's reception of
  the sulfur beings' emotional outpourings.
   These creatures were a bit too alien, even for someone of Grimalkin's universality. Grimalkin had
  difficulty figuring them out. He had never met any individual of any race of beings who didn't want
  something, and he was sure these creatures did, too. At least some of them did. They were themselves,
  at least some of them, shape-shifters, so what else could he offer them?Something. There had to be
  something.
   Ah, yes. The same old godhead thing really, except this time he wasn't about to join with anyone to
  spread his glory along with his seed. The sulfur people were not a species he cared to mate with.
  However, he could temporarily make himself over in their image — at least in the consciousnesses of
  those he wished to contact. Creating a form that resembled what he gathered from the sulfurous masses
  below was considered the noblest and most elevated among the Sulfurians, a Mutable, he projected this
  image of himself to the audience he had selected from among their number.
   "Hear me, you Liquids," he transmitted in a mind voice suggestive of explosions and frantic boiling
  bubbles as the image of himself shifted from one of the treelike victims of Smythe-Wesson to a rocklike
  Solid and on through Liquid form until returning to the original. "Why should you who can assume the
  form of any container you allow to hold you be bound by the edicts of the other forms? Heed my words
  and I will deliver you from your bondage and give you the form you most desire."
   "What are you? Some kind of container?" the hissing Liquid consciousness inquired.
   "I am far more than that. Heed me and you will never again be dependent upon a container for your
  shape. Never again shall you spend your substance, losing precious molecules as you become acid spray
  to fight the battles of the Mutables and the Solids."
   "But you are a Mutable," they observed suspiciously.
   "NotaMutable. I am the great Mutator. I have the power to change all beings. I can change you from
  Liquids to Solids if you wish, and back again, making you as great as any except myself."
   "Prove it. Change us to Solids now."
   "But if you are Solids and Mutables, who shall be beneath you? Who shall spray the acid to protect the
  
  memorial of the fallen and the stones that lie under it?"
   "It's true. It's true. Only Liquids can do that."
   "Cannot the Mutables become Liquid?"
   "They can, but you'd never catch them wasting their drops to spray acid. They leave that to us. But when
  you make us like them, they'll have to, won't they?"
   "Icouldin fact, stabilize their forms so they can no longer mutate. If they should become Liquid, while you
  become Mutable, your positions would be reversed."
   Malevolent acidic glee bubbled up from the beings below. "Do it! Do it!"
   Grimalkin's sulfurically impressive thought-form gave the local version of a shrug. "I will change you. Can
  you change them?"
   The Liquids formed a whirlpool of consultation.
   "What are you up to? That is not the proper formation for guarding the memorial!" a delegation of
  Mutables informed the Liquids.
   "You know how we are without a container," the Liquids replied slyly. "We forget all about the proper
  form. You had better show us again."
   Whereupon the Mutables turned into Liquids to demonstrate.Grimalkin froze the lot of them, turning
  them all temporarilySolid , and used his own tractor beam to extract the chrysoberyls from the war
  memorial. Once he had the stones aboard the ship, he rolled them around and played with them when he
  didn't actually have to navigate. Then it was time to play with Smythe-Wesson.
   Chapter Twelve
    
   "Listen," Becker said, turning the com unit up several decibels and cupping his hand over his ear.
   "What?" Rafik asked. "There's nothing to hear."
   "Yeah.Ain't it great? No rock music.Just nice, empty, silent space."
   And at that moment, Aziza's face appeared on the screen. "That traitor cur Smythe-Wesson is closing in,
  Condor. Are you detecting his signal yet?"
   "Oh, yeah," Becker said, nodding at the small blinking image appearing on three out of ten of the screens
  of his current scanner array. "With these babies I can practically count his nose hairs. I'm not getting any
  noises from our amps any longer though, are you?"
   "We are not. But then, he is not yet close enough to interfere with them. As long as everything is as it
  should be, we will hear nothing, yes?"
   "That's the general idea," Becker said.
  
   Acorna had been following this conversation with a sense of unease. At first she attributed it to her
  anxiety over Aari — the real Aari. But as the ship drew nearer to the sulfur world, she realized she was
  picking up on something else altogether.
   "Captain, doesn't it strike you that the Sulfurian planet is a bittooquiet?" She indicated the area of the
  central scanner where once a small red light had pulsed. "You see? No homing beacon coming from
  there."
   "Well, I'll be spaced!" Becker said. "She's right!"
   "She usually is," Rafik said. "It's a habit with her. But look — the signal is coming from that ship instead."
  He indicated an image of the second of two vessels approaching the sulfur planet. Its pale green icon
  bore a pulsing red heart.
   "Smythe-Wesson must have doubled back while we were on MOO and retrieved the stones, before
  Aziza took up her post here. But I don't see how he got past the sulfur beings this time unless he finished
  them all off. Are you getting any sense of their status, Acorna, or are we too far away?"
   She took a moment to concentrate on the sulfur beings. "They are exhibiting a new emotional pattern for
  them," she said when she had finally decided what the information she was receiving indicated.
   "Happiness?"Rafik guessed.
   "Peace in the universe and goodwill to all species?" Becker guessed.
   "Nothingthatuncharacteristic," Acorna told them. "They seem to be even more furious than ever. But
  what they feel now is, in some cases, a suppressedfury. But I don't know why they feel that way. All I'm
  picking up is emotion, not thoughts. I'll tell you as soon as I pick up any specific expressions for Mac to
  translate."
   She continued concentrating on the planet's inhabitants as theCondorcame within its orbit. It seemed to
  her that the Sulfurians had been cheated in some way and were bickering more bitterly with each other
  than they had before.
   She was startled to see two unfamiliar ships occupying a large portion of the viewport's screen,
  obscuring the view of the planet below.
   No, that was wrong. Only one of the ships was truly unfamiliar. The other very much resembled the
  derelict ships she had glimpsed docked beside the underground lake on Vhiliinyar.Host ships.
   "Who's that?" Rafik asked.
   "I think it's a Host ship, which means it probably has something to do with Grimalkin," Acorna said.
   "Then all that talk of his about returning to MOO to get food was just talk."
   "Maybe," Acorna said. "But I suppose he could have consulted history, which seems to be his answer to
  a lot of problems, and learned that Andina would arrive on Skarness in time to feed everyone."
   "But that doesn't explain what he's doing here," Becker said.
  
   "Perhaps if we hail him, he will explain," Mac suggested reasonably.
   "Or give us some kind of cock-and-bull story," Becker pointed out. "I can guess which is more likely."
   Meanwhile, Acorna was sending out a hail of her own to Aari, in case Grimalkin had him aboard the
  ship. This time her whole heart was in her message. She imagined her own Aari, not changed, not having
  betrayed her by abandoning their brief life together and all memories of it in exchange for an earlier, more
  physically complete self. Aari Whole-Horn was a fraud! The thought brought her relief and worry at the
  same time. Relief that Grimalkin's interpretation of Aari was not the only version of her beloved she was
  ever likely to see again, and at the same time the fear that if Aari was still missing, he was in some terrible
  danger Grimalkin had yet to reveal.
   Or worse.
   "Has either ship identified itself yet, Aziza?" Rafik asked the security chief.
   "No, but neither have I. That is why I am cloaked, is it not?"
   "You have a good point," he said.
   But Acorna had tuned out of the conversation going on around her. Another conversation on a tight
  band only her telepathy could penetrate had her full attention.
   Smythe-Wesson said, "The stones are right down there.Under that pile of limbs."
   "You expect me to take that on faith, do you?" asked Grimalkin's voice, now not even vaguely like
  Aari's. It was higher and more nasal. "I do not buy concealed items. I will need to inspect them to make
  sure they are of the size and quality you claimed. The syndicate I represent doesn't need any more stones
  of the ordinary variety you showed me. I came out here only because you guaranteed you could deliver
  something remarkable."
   "Of course.Of course.I will descend low enough to engage my tractor beam. I assure you, you will be
  not merely satisfied, but astounded."
   "Yes, yes. Carry on," Grimalkin said. But meanwhile, Acorna picked up on another communication from
  him.
   "O ye Liquids that were and ye Mutables that are,We have returned."
   All of the pent-up fury of the Sulfurians focused on the mental voice.
   Acorna had not, apparently, been the only victim of Grimalkin's tricks.
   "What? Don't tell me you are dissatisfied with our bargain. Have I not made you equal with the
  Mutables?"
   Acorna suddenly had a vision of translucent yellow puslike substances frozen in place as more solid,
  foamy-looking yellow substances, also frozen, towered above. Ah, so that explained the rather caged
  feeling she had received in connection with the Sulfurian rage. Grimalkin had frozen in place both Liquids
  and Mutables as they transformed to Liquids. She had no way of knowing what the original bargain was.
  
  She only knew that the Sulfunans felt Grimalkin had violated it.
   In her mind's eye she saw Grimalkin, that cat-man shape she once saw in a dream and later in a
  petroglyph, lounging on the broad ledge of his ship's viewport, his furred head yellowish from the
  reflected glow of the sulfur world. Casually, he deployed a low-intensity laser beam that thawed the
  chemical freeze he'd performed on the Liquids and the Mutables in Liquid form. "Satisfied now?"
   They weren't, of course.
   She took in as much as she could stand, then sighed and told the others, "I hate to say this, but even if he
  is a thief, I don't think we can leave Smythe-Wesson to Grimalkin and the Sulfunans."
   "Why not?"Becker asked indignantly, but he didn't stop her as she toggled the com unit.
   "Smythe-Wesson," Acorna said. "This is theCondor. We have been deputized by House Harakamian to
  arrest you for the theft of the chrysoberyls from the Moon of Opportunity."
   "What chrysoberyls?" Smythe-Wesson asked. "I am in pursuit of the thieves — those belly dancers the
  cleaning lady so unwisely brought to the Moon of Opportunity."
   Aziza shrieked indignantly, "Son of a syphilitic she-camel, do you think Lady Acorna is a fool to be
  taken in by your lies? For the past few weeks we 'belly dancers' have been pursuingyou."
   Both theCondorand theAliBabadropped their cloaks.
   "Now that you've caught me, what do you propose to do?" Smythe-Wesson demanded. "I did save out
  a few of the chrysoberyls to modify my armaments and, using them, I assure you I could cut you into
  pieces too small to interest another salvage ship."
   "Pah!" Aziza spat. "Do you think Lord Hafiz did not think of that? We also have terrible weapons
  employing the gems."
   "Impossible. I have all the ones you stole from the warehouse."
   "Ah, but we were not so bold as to steal the gems from Lady Karina's person," Aziza told him. "And
  those were of a size and purity that make highly accurate and effective weapons. Shall I demonstrate,
  Lord Rafik?"
   Acorna appreciated the bravado of her companions but, knowing something they had no way of
  knowing, interrupted. "Who is your companion, Smythe-Wesson?"
   "An ally.A customer."
   Grimalkin, who disliked being talked about instead of directing the discussion himself, interjected, "An
  impatient customer. Deal with these people later, Smythe-Wesson. I am anxious to see the merchandise.
  I will keep them at bay while you retrieve it."
   "Don't do it, Smythe-Wesson," Acorna felt compelled to warn him. "The stones are no longer there."
   "Where are they, then? Don't tell me you've retrieved them already? How could you have?"
  
   "It would have been easy, if we'd been in time," she told him. "There was a homing beacon embedded in
  each stone and visible only to ships cued with its code, as we are. That beacon is now coming from your
  so-called customer's ship. He poses a much greater danger to you than we do."
   "An old ploy, my friend," Grimalkin said. "Divide and conquer. Why would I follow you to acquire the
  stones if I already have them?"
   Acorna had no wish to bandy words with Grimalkin or argue with him over his manufactured version of
  events.
   Hoping Smythe-Wesson had some smidgen of telepathic sensitivity and sense of self-preservation, she
  sent him images of what had happened to Rafik in the past, and of what Grimalkin had arranged for him
  below. She also sent him clear images of the pile of chrysoberyls lying in somewhat scattered disarray on
  thebridgeofGrimalkin 's vessel. Some of them were rolling around, and he swatted at them in a rather
  bored manner.
   Her hunch paid off. She got a response to her imaging.
   (Why?) Smythe-Wesson wondered.
   (Good question. Our current theory is that he's a sociopath,) Acorna replied. (He enjoys manipulating
  events and people and he doesn't care who is injured by his actions. Compared to him, you are almost an
  honest man. I suggest strongly that you surrender yourself to Aziza's tender mercies before having any
  further dealings with Grimalkin.)
   To make certain he understood the peril awaiting him, she concentrated again on what had happened to
  Rafik. However, she substituted images of Smythe-Wesson for her foster father before sending the
  images to him. She also included some of the sentiments the Sulfurians had expressed regarding the man
  who had massacred their fellows.
   Smythe-Wesson did not scare easily, but the waking nightmare Acorna planted in his head was enough
  to convince him. Shuddering, he said, "I surrender." Acorna picked up a brief impression that as soon as
  the man was out of danger from Grimalkin, he would probably cease to be so cooperative, but she
  would leave that to Aziza and the others. She had other priorities at the moment.
   "Space your weapons," Aziza demanded, and when the laser cannon drifted slowly out of an airlock,
  Aziza locked a tractor beam on the vessel.
   "That was no fun at all," Becker complained. "I don't know what you did, Princess, but you somehow
  averted all the burning, bloodshed, violence, and the many explosions that I was counting on to gladden
  my heart."
   "Yes," Rafik agreed. "Good job, Acorna. The sulfur people will never forgive you if they learn you
  warned Smythe-Wesson away, but good job nonetheless."
   She nodded distractedly and hailed Grimalkin's ship. "I want a word with you," she said severely.
   "Haven't you said enough already? I was about to see justice done, and you spoiled it all."
   "I have no time for that. I want to knowwhereAari is, andwhen, and I want to know it now, in the
  present timeline, immediately.If not sooner."
  
   "Keep your horn on," Grimalkin said irritably. "He's perfectly safe back on Vhiliinyar."
   "He'd better be," Acorna said, sounding positivelyka-Linyaari, and certainly not pacifistic in the least.
   TheCondorclosed the distance to the Host ship. Grimalkin, in his Aari guise, appeared on the screen of
  the com unit. "Khornya," he said in what was meant to be a soothing, gentle tone, "be reasonable— "
   "Take off his face," she said in the closest to a growl Rafik or Becker had ever heard from her. "And
  don't call me Khornya. It's Lady Harakamian-Li to you."
   Grimalkin morphed before their eyes into the shape of a small and, as he no doubt hoped, adorable
  kitten with a black spot over one wide green eye. (I'll give you back the stones. I only wanted to help
  you get them back.) He was using thought transference with her while her shipmates heard pathetic,
  plaintive mewing. RK, who had awakened from a nap, stopped in midstretch and hopped up on the
  console. He hissed and took a swipe at the kitten on the screen.
   (As far as I'm concerned, the matter of the stones is between you and Hafiz. My business with you is
  more important at this moment. I want Aari back, and I want him back now — or, since you are who
  you are — sooner. Where is he? What have you done with him?)
   "Maybe I'd better lock the tractor beam onto that guy," Becker said."At least until he hands over the
  stones."
   But the Host ship had already winked out. Acorna caught only a whisper of a thought. (We'll meet you
  on Vhiliinyar.)
    
   Grimalkin shuddered. Perhaps he had done Aari a favor by leaving him behind. That Khornya!
  Personally, he would rather have faced the Sulfurians or the Khleevi than that Linyaari female in a snit.
   And she had nothing to be upset about, really. He would just go back and collect Aari at the cave. They
  would return the stones. Aari would no doubt rush back to the arms of his female, and Grimalkin would
  simply look elsewhere for his DNA samples. He could use Laarye now, and Acorna's parents. All of
  them had sufficient cause to be grateful to him, and they were close enough to his chosen subjects so as
  to make no difference in his genetic master plan. Though he thought maybe he should tinker with the
  material from Acorna's parents and eliminate the factors that produced such unbecoming stubbornness
  and suspicion in their offspring.
   What had she called him when speaking to that criminal, that thief from whom he, Grimalkin, was trying
  to protect her property? Oh, yes, a sociopath. Ungrateful kit! Why, any of his other females would have
  been thrilled to the roots of their tails if he had deigned to do them any of the favors he had done for
  Acorna.Theywould have been pleased if he'd so much as stuck around to inspect his spawn once they
  bore them. But not her!
   Some people were so heartless, so unfair. He mewed inside to think of her cruelty. Poor, poor Aari
  really would be better off in that cave, except… well, the fellow didn't actually have enough food to last
  much longer.
   Grimalkin had never intended for Aari to remain there for so long. The Linyaari was a likable fellow, and
  
  his companionship had been stimulating. Never in his wildest imaginings had Grimalkin thought it would
  take so long to impersonate him, seduce the female, then, before she knew what had happened,
  substitute the real Aari with a few implanted suggestions that would make both of them think Aari was the
  one who had been carnally reunited with Acorna. It was all Acorna's fault for being so much trouble.
  Otherwise, Aari would have been free long before this, neither of them the wiser, and no harm done.
  And, of course, Grimalkin would have what he came for.
   He glimpsed Restoration-era Vhiliinyar briefly from orbit before setting his wrist timer and returning to
  when he had retrieved Laarye. He'd given Aari a mental suggestion that acted as a light sedative, and left
  him food and drink. Laarye, of course, had thought that Grimalkin was Aari and indeed, Grimalkin's
  version of Aari was more like the Aari Laarye had known when they found the cave together than was
  the real Aari, sobered as he was by his ordeal with the Khleevi. Even Aari's parents were fooled.
   Oh, well, he never intended to be Aari indefinitely anyway. That would have been a bore. He set the
  ship down near the green graveyard, put an expression of extreme worry and concern on his face,
  disembarked, and entered the cave.
   "Aari?My friend, where are you? It's me, Grimalkin. I've come to rescue you and take you back to your
  family and your mate."
   But the cave was empty. The grasses Grimalkin had left behind were gone, the water bottle was empty,
  and there were fresh scratches on the walls marking off the time.But… no Aari.
   Flashes of lightning illuminated the cave's dry, dusty interior. Thunder and avalanche rumbled nearby.
  While he'd orbited the planet, Grimalkin had observed the frequent quakes that split the ground as if the
  planet were some fragile bit of cloth being crumbled and squashed in the fist of a giant. Rents in its fabric
  had opened with each cruel dig of the giant's fingers.
   Nota safe place to be. Personally, Grimalkin wanted to leave as soon as possible. But if he did, he'd
  have to make sure and avoid the time he'd just left, or Khornya would have his pelt.
   He returned to the ship and hopped into the flitter, after first loading it with the infrared tracking device.
  Although, with the ground cracking open and magma spilling out of every pore of the planet's surface, he
  wasn't sure that heat-seeking was a good way to find the boy. He lost the trail only a mile or so from the
  cave. Thoughtfully, he circled the area, keeping his eye on the scanners for any sign of Aari.
   Volcanic eruptions shot fire and smoke all aroundhim, clouds of ash enveloped the little flitter, and the
  quaking of the world unsettled him. He thought about his options. Really, this was doing things the hard
  way. He would just slip back a few days to before he left Aari in the cave and this time — not. He
  already knew that his purpose in depositing the boy there was futile. So they would do as Aari wished,
  retrieve Laarye, and return to Acorna's timeline… well, he would have to backtrack a bit, so that when
  she and Aari's sister first met him in Kubiilikaan it would be as GrimalkinwithAari instead of Grimalkinas
  Aari. All would be well.
   Everyone would be the way she liked it, and she'd have no reason to be peeved with poor Grimalkin.
   He started to tap his time device when his small craft was enveloped in brilliant white light.
   For a moment he was startled, but then he realized that it was only lightning. That couldn't harm the
  flitter.
  
   And then there was a second flash, a second boom, and the flitter rocked madly anddived dirtward.
  Grimalkin was surprised, but he was not alarmed until large pincers peeled back the hatch and a giant
  buglike bug-eyed alien plucked him from the flitter's interior as if he was some sort of a prize.
   Grimalkin looked into the thing's toothy mandibles,then glanced quickly at his wrist, which was waving
  around wildly as if it had nothing to do with the rest of him. He had gone back a bit farther in time than he
  meant to. In this time, the Khleevi were still very much present. And he, it seemed, was their latest
  entertainment. The Khleevi's pincers seized his wrist. He morphed to cat shape, pulled his forepaw free,
  and ran. But not before his time device fell to the ground at the feet of the Khleevi.
   Chapter Thirteen
    
   Aari huddled under the riverbank while the ground heaved and caved, rumpling great mounds of soil and
  rock up,then letting them drop below. He would find no water today, he knew. In spite of the dirt
  covering his hide, his skin was burned from the light of the sun through the thin atmosphere. His horn,
  newly grown over the place where it had once spiraled from his forehead, was little more than a stunted
  knot. But he had used it so often to try to heal his aches and gashes, bruises and sprains, and even
  fractures that it was depleted. He couldn't actually see it, since it was situated where it was and he had no
  mirror, nor, more's the pity, a clear pool of clean water to view it in. But he knew it would be transparent
  with fatigue now.Hefelt transparent with fatigue himself.
   And he still had no idea of how much farther he had to go until he reached the entrance to Kubiilikaan,
  or how far away the nearest Khleevi patrol was.
   If he could just avoid them a little longer, he knew he would cease to be in danger from them. But hunger
  made him feel hollow as an empty seedpod. His thirst made him brother to the cracks in the parched and
  blighted ground of his planet. Each explosion and rumble seemed to go right through him, so that the
  marrow of his bones quivered with the vibrations. He knew he was nearer to death than he was to
  Kubiilikaan. Once, stuck in this time and place, he would have welcomed death, but that was before he
  knew Khornya. Now his greatest regret was that he would not be able to tell her how much he wished
  they had their long Linyaari life span to live out together, to raise younglings, and explore new galaxies
  together.
    
   Acorna had no intention of leaving Aari's fate in Grimalkin's careless hands.
   TheCondormade only one stop on the way to Vhiliinyar, bypassing MOO, though Acorna asked to
  speak to Laarye on the com unit.
   "Yes, Khornya?The news you sent about Aari is very distressing, but I don't see how it could have
  happened. We were together almost all of the time."
   "It isn't your fault, Laarye, and I know he's glad you're safe, wherever he is, but the — creature — who
  enabled him to return for you has more layers of motive than Vhiliinyar has layers of soil and rock from
  surface to core. What I need to know from you is the time — when did they rescue you? Can you
  recall?"
   "My chrono was broken when I had my accident, I'm afraid."
  
   "The ship's instruments, once you were aboard — or the log.Did you see anything when you first
  boarded that would have indicated the precise time of day, moons' phases, or rotation?"
   "Oh, yes. Our Star had set on the horizon and neither of the moons was up. Of course, it was very
  difficult to tell, planetary conditions being what they were…"
   "I'm more concerned with theenye-ghaanye, the time of year, the season, the seasonal sector, as near as
  you can recall it."
   "Oh, now I remember! On the console it said it was the forty-seventh day of Haal, the moons of
  abundant rain. I remember thinking that was odd, since I don't recall it raining even once after the Khleevi
  arrived. Does that help you?"
   "Yes. Yes, it does. How long would you say you had been in the cave since you and Aari first separated
  from the others?"
   "No more than fourteen sunrises at most. Are you going back to Vhiliinyar? Could you stop for me? I
  want to help Aari."
   "You just did," she said. "And I'm sorry, but time is playing a rather fickle role in this crisis. I'm afraid we
  may not have enough of it as it is."
   "Where are we headed, the cave?" Becker asked.
   "No. I want to return to the time device," she told him. "If you would keep theCondorin orbit, I'll take
  the shuttle down to land outside the entrance to Kubiilikaan. I hope the planet will still support time travel
  on the surface at the time when Laarye was rescued. The fact that Grimalkin was able to do it is hopeful,
  but his level of technical expertise seems to transcend the time device's planetside capabilities. With any
  luck I will find a way to ride the current time flow back that far and include the shuttle in the equation so I
  have a way to bring Aari out of there again."
   "You'd better," Rafik said. "Otherwise, we lose you, too."
   Acorna said nothing, but she set her long jaw. She knew the risks very well but believed she had a
  reasonable chance of overcoming them. She had to try. There was no other choice, really.
   "No we don't," Becker said. "If she doesn't come back in a reasonable facsimile of a jiffy, we find
  Grimalkin and turn him over to RK until he tells us how to bring her — and Aari — forward to our time
  again."
   "Finding him would be the trick," Acorna said with a small smile. "But thanks for the thought, Captain."
   Mac clanked across the steel grid to the bridge.
   "Were you able to load the cargo in the shuttle?" she asked him.
   In preparation for theCondor'sorbit around Vhiliinyar, Mac had taken on his Linyaari persona, Maak,
  and had attached his horn modification to his forehead. "Yes, Khornya," he said. "Everything is in
  readiness. Perhaps I should come with you to interact with the time device? It may yield secrets to me it
  would keep from a purely organic being such as you."
  
   Before she could demur, both Becker and Rafik enthusiastically endorsed the idea. Rafik said, "That's an
  excellent idea, Mac. That way you'll be there when she — uh — travels, so maybe you can keep us
  posted."
   Well, itwada good idea, as Mac's often were. Whatever would help her get Aari back safely was fine
  with her.
   "Thank you, Maak," she said, giving his name its Linyaari pronunciation, which pleased him.
   They landed the shuttle in the shallows of a stream that sank into the ground to feed the underground sea
  — which was more of a lake these days. Since water was the conduit for time travel, it would be easier
  to time-travelinthe shuttle if it was within the liquid time channel.
   Wordlessly, she and Mac disembarked and trotted down the short tunnel leading to the entrance of the
  caves where the Ancestors had once lived with their first attendants. The caves were the foundation of
  much of the city ofKubiilikaan , and at the back of one of them was the staircase leading into the vast,
  echoing, self-lighting building containing the time device.
   No one else was around. On any Federation planet the place would have been buzzing with people,
  prodding, disassembling,prying into the secrets of the entire ancient underground city. The Linyaari were
  not exactly disinterested in the concept of time travel, but neither did they crave it. They simply wanted
  their planet back to normal and used the time device occasionally as a tool in that quest. Once the
  process of using the device was understood well enough so that people didn't keep disappearing, other
  matters took the attention of most of the scientists. Aari was the only Linyaari still missing in action, as
  Becker put it. Since Acorna was so vitally interested in the time device for such immediate and personal
  reasons, the other Linyaari left her to it.
   Besides, at this time of day most of the people on Vhiliinyar, the terraforming crews and reclamation
  teams, were grazing with their families, telling each other about their day, preparing to settle down and
  sleep with the comfort of other warm bodies around them. Things were so peaceful at present with the
  planet mostly restored to its pre-Khleevi state.
   Acorna stopped herself in the midst of that train of thought. No. Now was no time to feel sorry for
  herself . If she wanted a warm body to sleep next to, she would simply have to go fetch him herself.
   The double helix of light and water that flowed upward from the floor of the room to the top of the
  building twined and curled with unending precision. The wall panels glowed softly with their map of the
  planet.
   Acorna strode straight for the section of the map indicating Aari's cave, tapped in the time Laarye had
  provided, and concentrated on Aari's image. Two silver-white dots indicated the presence of two
  Linyaari and a gold dot probably indicated Grimalkin.
   The ship's icon was there, too, tiny but discernible.Barely. Had Acorna not known where to look, she
  might never have found the three dots, two white, onegold, that indicated her lifemate, his brother, and
  her adversary.Because every other place on the walls around her was crawling with green dots oozing
  across the surface as if it had suddenly been invaded by armies of insects.Which, of course, was the
  case.
   She suppressed a shudder, suddenly remembering that this image had been part of her recurring
  
  nightmare. She had the terrible feeling that she was about to make it come true. Taking a deep breath to
  steady herself, she returned her full attention to the white dots. Make that dot. The white and gold ones
  faded, a single white one remained, and then it, too, vanished.
   "What happened?" Acorna asked.
   "The white dot identified on the key as Aari disappeared, Khornya," Mac told her.
   "Uh, yes.It did.But, why?How?"
   "I do not know. But perhaps if you board the shuttle and I reset the device you will arrive in time to learn
  the answer."
   She certainly couldn't argue with that though the swarming icons of the Khleevi made her hesitate.But not
  for long. If she feared flying into them, how must Aari feel, abandoned again near the cave not too far
  from where he had been captured so longago.
   "Right.Let's see… it looks like the Khleevi are not too close to our present position at that time. And as
  far as I can tell from the map, the entrance to the cave is still open then. You know what to do, Maak. I
  will return to the rendezvous point in two Standard hours if all goes well. If I don't return then, keep
  watch for me at the same point for the next forty-eight hours," she said.
   "Yes, Khornya.And if you are not back by then, I will search for you in the future. If I do not find you, I
  will return to theCondor, we will acquire another shuttle, and follow your path until we locate you.Just as
  you are doing to find Aari."
   "That's about it," she said. "Thanks, Maak. Don't take any chances. The Khleevi would like your organic
  bits."
   "I will give them no opportunity to enjoythem, you may be sure, Khornya. I will see you in two Standard
  hours."
   She returned to the surface and boarded the shuttle with one backward glance to reassureherself that her
  cargo was secure. As she did so, she heard the com unit's smooth beep, and Mac said, "timetransfer
  beginning — oh, that's odd."
   He hadn't quite finished saying "odd" when the landscape shifted horribly. The newly reclaimed surface
  vanished, replaced by a bleak, parched, heaving, burned, and smoking wasteland.
   It stank, too. Acorna lifted up from the river's surface and saw the slimy Khleevi trails from the air.
  Acorna double-checked to make sure her shuttle's special Linyaari cloaking device was activated. Mac
  had modified the cloak from the Linyaari ships to adapt it to the smaller craft and allow the craft to be
  virtually undetectable whether in space or within the atmosphere of a planet.
   Acorna profoundly hoped that the Khleevi had no means of penetrating the shields. She had nothing that
  would protect her against the large numbers of them she saw swarming over the surface below. What
  looked like green foothills tunneled with holes were actually Khleevi colonies housed in a habitat formed
  from their own hardenedexcrement. Since this was the first time she had ever been on a planet in the
  midst of a Khleevi occupation, she had been fortunate enough before to escape seeing this particular
  feature of the Khleevi's so-called culture.
  
   The insectoid aliens crawled in and out of the tunnels of the mounds, radiating new slime trails from each
  like the legs of a mutant spider as they destroyed all living organisms remaining in their paths, then
  digested and excreted them.
   Other Khleevi, armed ones, blasted away at anything standing more than a foot taller than the ground.
  This caused a chain reaction from Vhiliinyar, which, it seemed to Acorna, went down fighting. Mountains
  were blasted into oblivion but their avalanches buried Khleevi hives. Other mountains spewed lava and
  magma from their hot centers, while the ground rumbled and shook, fell apart and tried to put itself back
  together again. The planet's death throes were terrible to watch. The very air was a hellish bruised purple
  with an overlay of red-violet acrid smoke.
   Though the trip via shuttle from Kubiilikaan to the cave was not an especially long one, it seemed
  interminable to Acorna. She hoped she would arrive before Grimalkin and Laarye left. She planned to
  give the cat creature a piece of her mind when she rescued Aari.Or rather, another piece of her mind.
   When the cemetery and the cave first came within the shuttle's visual range, she thought she'd come in
  time. The outline of Grimalkin's ship was black against the ruined surroundings.
   But as she flew nearer, the ship twisted, and she saw that the blackening really was black, and the ship
  was little more than the skeleton of a hull.
   How could that be? She knew Grimalkin and Laarye had arrived safely in her own time after abandoning
  Aari. And yet, it appeared that either one of the myriad natural disasters erupting simultaneously all
  around her had destroyed the craft, or else the Khleevi had intercepted and destroyed it.
   Very briefly, she activated her scanners, which she had been cautious about using lest the Khleevi could
  backtrack her signals as Becker had done with the Stones of Skarness. No life-forms were present in or
  around the ship, which didn't surprise her, since the Khleevi had been there. However, there was another
  strong, familiar signal emanating from the wreckage.
   The homing beacons Hafiz had placed within the catseye chrysoberyls were calling to her from the
  wreckage.
   Since Grimalkin had acquired the chrysoberyls long after he rescued Laarye and abandoned Aari, the
  ship had to have been wrecked on Grimalkin's second rescue attempt. Presumably, he had returned to
  rescue Aari, and the ship had been discovered by the Khleevi.
   From the air, Acorna could see no Khleevi patrols nearby, so she risked setting her own ship down
  beside the wreckage and briefly searching it for remains she hoped she wouldn't find. She was in luck.
  No people of any species or race had left traces of themselves in the wreckage. The only evidence of
  what had happened there was that of the stones.
   She picked up one, turning it over in her hand, gazing into its slitted eye. Acorna shoved the chrysoberyl
  into the pocket of her shipsuit. So, Grimalkin and the stones he had stolen from Smythe-Wesson had
  arrived here from her own time to fetch Aari, as promised. But somehow disaster had overtaken him,
  destroying his ship and leaving only the stones to identify it.
   She immediately discarded the notion of retrieving the other stones, and loading them into her shuttle. No
  doubt Hafiz would have wished her to do so. But her other task was more pressing.
   The trembling of the planet beneath her boots threatened to topple the wreckage onto her head. She
  
  kept her psychic ears open for the approach of Khleevi patrols. This was no place to linger gathering
  mere wealth. If she couldn't find Aari or Grimalkin, she needed to leave as quickly as possible.
   It was extremely unlikely that they could have remained hidden from the Khleevi in the cave, but she felt
  she had to check anyway. Infrared sensors did not penetrate the peculiar mineral makeup of the cave's
  walls, or Laarye would have been discovered by the Khleevi when they captured Aari. So the fact that
  she had not seen any sign of them on the scanner meant nothing.
   She ducked low, shining a small but powerful pocket torch around the cave.(Aari?)she sent out a mental
  call.(Grimalkin?) But there was no answer. She found traces of Laarye's recent occupation, but nothing
  indicating Aari had ever been here, or Grimalkin.
   She quickly returned to the shuttle, the ground rolling under her feet as she ran. She jumped into her craft
  and cloaked it while gaining altitude. She couldn't understand exactly what had happened. Why hadn't
  she found Grimalkin and Aari? Why was there no sign that either had ever been there except for the ship
  with the chrysoberyls?
   She glanced at the shuttle's console and saw that she had spent forty-four minutes on the ground. Mac
  would be expecting her in little more than an hour. But she could not now return straightaway.
   She had to search, in case Aari or Grimalkin or both of them were running, hiding from the Khleevi who
  had destroyed Grimalkin's ship. With her scanners activated and her sensors at their maximum sensitivity,
  she circled the airspace above the cave in an ever-widening spiral. A few miles away, a molten fire pit
  that had once been a sacred mountain glowed in the darkness.
   Acorna ignored the catastrophe all around her and focused on her personal mission. She called to Aari
  periodically and listened very hard for his thoughts. But she heard, felt, and sensed nothing except for a
  Khleevi patrol a bare kilometer from her position, moving quickly away.
   And then, from the scanners, there was another signal of inorganic origin. She hovered, undecided. The
  object was not Grimalkin or Aari, and she really should not risk her life, the shuttle, or the precious
  cargo, not to mention the chance offindingAari, by trying to retrieve the thing. She supposed the sensible
  thing to do would be note the coordinates and return after rendezvousing with Mac. But the ground
  lurched sickeningly below her. Whatever the object was, it could be swallowed up before she returned.
  She had to risk it.
   The shuttle's cloak didn't work while it was grounded. If she had some sort of grappling hook, she could
  fish for the object while hovering above it, but the shuttle was light on all but essential equipment. She
  checked the scanner one more time and homed in on the target as tightly as possible before setting the
  shuttle down.
   Cautiously, she opened the hatch and played her torch beam across the barren broken ground. She
  didn't want to use the shuttle's running lights — no sense in painting the Khleevi a huge sign that said,
  "Come and Get Me!"
   Rather to her surprise, the beam picked up a reflection from something shiny. As quickly as possible,
  Acorna climbed out of the shuttle, reached down, and scooped the object up in her fingers.
   It looked extremely familiar. Because she was viewing it by torchlight and in an unexpected place, it took
  her a moment to recognize it. Turning it over, she saw it for what it was — Aari's — no, Grimalkin's —
  wrist time-changing device, the source of so much trouble for them all.
  
   It had, in fact, been on Grimalkin's wrist when she last saw him.
   Her thoughtsspun, her nose and brain filling with the stench and smoke despite her horn's attempt to
  clean the air around her. Grimalkin would not have voluntarily separated from his timer, so he must be
  either dead or imprisoned.Which probably meant Aari was imprisoned or dead as well. The thought of
  Aari in the Khleevi's claws again made her almost physically ill. After all he had been through, to be
  recaptured. It was too much for anyone to bear.
   If she could figure out how to use Grimalkin's device, which seemed to be much more flexible and was
  certainly more portable than the larger device, perhaps she could separate the Khleevi from their prey.
  But she needed to return to the safety of her own time to study it properly. Perhaps Mac would have
  some insight.
   As she returned to the shuttle, she wonderedwhereGrimalkinwas? If the time device was here, now, then
  she knew at leastwhenthe shape-shifter was. She didn't know where. And if the Khleevi had him, she
  prayed Aari was not with him.
   As she reached for the shuttle hatch, the ground rolled under her, knocking her onto her back and
  sending the timer flying. She heard a shift and a thump from the direction of the shuttle, but kept her eyes
  on the timer and grabbed for it instead. Once she had it, she strapped it on to keep it from flying out of
  her hands again.
   She reached for the side of the shuttle to pull herself erect again, but the craft's hull seemed to be in the
  wrong place. She trained the torch on it.The side nearest her listed toward her as if about to confide
  some secret.
   And suddenly she noticed a sound."Klikity-klak-klak-klik-klik." Khleevi!
   The hatch on the pilot's side of the shuttle wouldn't open — a corner seemed to be jammed against the
  ground, which was rolling again. Acorna used the shifting hull to steady herself and made her way to the
  hatch on the passenger side. Perhaps she could use her own weight to pull the craft upright enough that
  the hatch would open.
   She crawled on top of it and bounced. She thought she felt something move. Clambering down again,
  she pried open the hatch, which opened just enough to admit her.
   But although she was in, the shuttle was not out. It remained partially stuck in the crack. She prepared to
  launch nonetheless. If the ground shifted just right, she could take advantage of the difference in pressure
  to escape.
   Then she looked up and saw the bug eyes and pincers of the Khleevi staring in at her through the hatch.
  The things didn't have recognizable mouths, but Acorna could have sworn this one was grinning at her.
   She touched the disk at her neck, crying out silently to Aari.
   Chapter Fourteen
    
   "Khornya!"Aari awoke, digging himself out of the riverbed, which had buried all but his nostrils. He had
  
  distinctly heard her voice crying out to him. "Khornya, where are you?"
   He knew she was in terrible danger from the Khleevi. But that must mean she was here, somewhere in
  the past, at some time close to this one.But where and when? He had to get to her, had to help her
  somehow. She had faced the Khleevi before with cleverness and courage, but that was with a great deal
  of backing from their own Linyaari people and House Harakamian. He knew somehow that she was all
  alone this time. If she wasn't actually frightened yet, she should be.
   He sat up and looked around him at his thoroughly alien — and alienated in the most literal sense —
  homeworld.
   He ought to be nearing Kubiilikaan now. Grimalkin had told him the entrance in his own time was
  through the Ancestors' caves. His Linyaari navigational sense told him that was just about —here. He had
  seen an image of it in Grimalkin's mind when Grimalkin spoke of it. But where the entrance to the
  Ancestors' cave should have been he saw nothing but a mountain of rubble.While it didn't look as if the
  Khleevi had found much to interest them here, the earthquakes and avalanches — and a tsunami, no
  doubt, from the inland sea, had thoroughly wrecked the entrance. If he had equipment half as heavy as
  his heart felt at the sight of the rubble, he could have moved it all out of the way, but as it was he would
  never reach Kubnhkaan by this route.
   He had come so far to reach this place that he was at the end of his strength. But the memory of
  Khornya's dream voice spurred him onward. She needed him, and he had made it this far. Several tons
  of dirtwere not going to stop him from reaching his goal. He could find Khornya if only he could get to
  the time device, and somehow he would reach her. What he would do after that was unclear.
   He eyed the obstacles between himself and the tunnel's entrance bleakly. However, if one upheaval had
  caused the cave-in that prevented him from entering here, perhaps that other catastrophe, the one that
  had blasted another hole through to the underground city, had also occurred by now.
   He took several deep breaths. On hooves that felt as if they had been filed down to the quick and held
  over a slow fire, and muscles that were so sore they burned with the aching, he tottered forward,
  bypassing the cave's entrance and heading for the sea upon whose shores he had played as a child.
   The sight of the sinkhole where the waters had been ought to have depressed him, but instead filled him
  with hope.
   He walked out onto the mudflats that stretched for miles in every direction. They were not actually mud
  any longer, however, since mud implied dirt and water. The seabed held no more water than a desert,
  and much less nourishment. He dropped to his knees, feeling as though he could go no farther, but after
  lying still a moment or two, fearing he might sleep, or pass out, and make easy prey of himself for any
  passing Khleevi, he crawled forward.
    
   Mac made a note to himself to invent a communication device that would cross time as well as space
  barriers. It was most inconvenient not to be able to continue instructing Acorna after she left the present
  time zone.
   No sooner was she in the shuttle than he noticed that the Aari icon had unaccountably blinked off the
  screen, as had the icons for the ship, Laarye, and Grimalkin. He tapped cautiously forward but found no
  trace of them. He returned to the moment when the ship landed and watched it all over again, but this
  
  time continued to watch for a moment after the icons disappeared.
   Abruptly the ship and Grimalkin icons reappeared, but this time neither Aari nor Laarye was present.
  However, a great many Khleevi converged on the ship's position. The Grimalkin icon disappeared, but a
  moment later, it reappeared. It was immediately swamped by Khleevi icons.
   He tapped forward in time, and the Grimalkin icon blinked on and off again. The Khleevi icons moved
  away. They were so thick that Mac could not tell if Grimalkin's icon was among them or not. A light tap
  forward again and there was Acorna's icon and that of her ship. The time device apparently was not
  deceived by Linyaari cloaking.
   Even Mac's excellent analytical programming could make little sense of all of this. He kept tapping
  forward at the same site, looking for signs of Aari so that when Acorna returned he could tell her when to
  search next.
    
   "So, Mac, is she back yet?" Becker's voice hailed Mac from his hest modification.
   "No, Captain, she is not. However, I have looked forward in time, and I am now at the point where the
  Khleevi are leaving Vhiliinyar." The slime green icons were disappearing in droves, blinking out while he
  watched. In another tap they were almost all gone, but he saw no white Linyaari icon, nor for that matter
  did he see the golden one that signified Grimalkin.
   One more tap. No icons of any kind appeared on the part ofhe wall he scrutinized. He set his visual
  sensors so they minutely scanned the rest of the massive screen inch by inch,However , he detected
  nothing, no life signs whatsoever.
   Most puzzling,
   He tapped three more times, lightly, and on the third time, he saw Aari's icon reappear inside the cave.
  "Ah! There he is."
   "There who is?" Becker asked."Aari?"
   "Yes, Captain. I wish Khornya was here to see this now. She would be extremely relieved. Grimalkin
  did not abandon Aari to the Khleevi. While everyone was on board, Grimalkin apparently shifted the ship
  forward in time until it and the people aboard were out of danger from the Khleevi.Thenhe abandoned
  Aari to the cave."
   "Oh, hey, that was real nice of him," Becker growled. "Guess I'll only have to break him into two pieces
  instead of a dozen. What about Acorna? Where is she?"
   "I will return your hail when I have ascertained her geographical and chronological position, Captain. It
  will take me somewhat longer if we remain connected and I answer your questions while conducting my
  search."
   "I can take a hint. You let us know immediately when you find her, though. That's an order."
   "Yes, sir.Of course, sir," Mac said, but he was already tapping a new sequence.
  
    
   The sinkhole was wide and deep. Aari had no idea how far he would fall before he landed in the water
  below. He didn't know if there was enough water to break his fall or if the distance was so great he
  would be killed on impact. But there was no other way, so he closed his eyes, stepped forward, and
  dived headfirst into the abyss.
   After a couple of nanoseconds he hit something solid that then gave, quickly covering his eyes and filling
  his nostrils and mouth. He jerked his head upward, shaking it from side to side, as he continued to slide
  down the slippery slope of — mud! His descent was slow enough now to allow him to bring his hands to
  his eyes to free them. His elbows dug into the surface and further slowed his progress. His eyes adjusted,
  and he could tell he was sliding down a mud hill as tall as a small mountain. This was the surface debris
  that fell into the great inland sea upon which Kubiilikaan was built. He had hoped it would be here now
  — the sinkhole had indicated that it would, but he had never approached it from the surface before.
   He turned so he slid on his backside the rest of the way into the water, entering with such force that he
  created a personal tidal wave that washed ten feet or so up the mountain, muddying the water. His horn,
  of course, unmuddied it as soon as it touched the liquid.
   (Hey, be careful, Cousin!)a thought-voice complained. It was a familiar thought-voice at that. It sounded
  very like someone who couldn't possibly be here now.
   For nosii-Linyaari should be occupying this stagnant sea, he knew. He had transported the aquatic folk,
  pre-Linyaari ex-perimental genetic blends of Ancestral genes with Host genes, from their original position
  to a post-Khleevi future.
   (Upp?)heasked. (What are you doing here?)
   (You should know that very well, Cousin. You brought us here. For that dubious boon I owe it to you to
  tell you that a female of your kind came seeking you.)
   (A female.Khornya.)
   (Could have been.We told her you and that cat-father had brought us here,then left in one of the old
  ships. She was not happy about it.)
   (When was this?)
   (Maybe oneswim around the water ago. Speaking of that, why are you back so soon? Where is the
  cat-father and where is your ship?)
   (That, my friend, is a very good question.)
   Aari was trying to swim, but he was very weak from his long ordeal. Upp regarded him with scorn on
  his ugly horn-studded face. (You are in very poor shape in such a very short time, land cousin.)
   (More time has passed for me than it has for you,) Aari said, realizing Upp probably wouldn't
  understand.
   (That troublesome device of the Parents, eh?)
  
   (Yes, somethinglike that.I… must… get… to… shore. Must… find…Khornya.)
   (Oh, very well.Hang on to my tail, then. You're never going to make it the way you're going now.)
   It took all of Aari's remaining strength to comply. He allowed himself to be towed to shore. Letting go of
  Upp's tail, he crawled out of the water and up onto the road leading down into it. Then he rolled onto his
  back and for a moment lay there gasping. As his breaths deepened and his heartbeat slowed, he began
  crawling up the hill, past the constantly changing facades of buildings lining the street.
   This part of the trip felt almost as if it was longer than the entire journey leading up to it. As he reached
  the entrance to the building containing the time device, he cursed Grimalkin. There was no adequate
  expression in the Linyaari language to express his feelings, so he borrowed a few choice phrases from
  Becker's repertoire.
   Aari reflected bitterly on the riverbeds he'd slept in, the foul-smelling Khleevi stench he'd wallowed in to
  throw them off his own scent, the caves he'd crammed his body into. And all for nothing! He was never
  in any danger from the Khleevi at all. Grimalkin had brought him forward in time before dumping him. Of
  course, Aari was glad the Khleevi hadn't been there to recapture him, but he would have been gladder if
  he'd known about it before he took such elaborate precautions to dodge them.
   Sparing little more thought for the cat-creature, Aari entered the building. The walls lit instantly. He
  picked his way down the incline that had once been a moving staircase and found the room containing the
  time device. Fortunately, after traveling with Grimalkin for what would have been several years in linear
  time, he was familiar with the workings of this sort of device. He knew the time he was in now, and the
  zone he and Grimalkin had been in when they landed to rescue Laarye. But how would he knowwhento
  find Khornya and expose Grimalkin's deception? He was wet enough now that he could leave from and
  arrive in the time machine room without going back to the lake, sowhereto go was no problem.
   He began tapping the screen. Pain shot up his hand, and his finger felt as if it had entered orbit on a
  particularly heavy-gravity world. He bent his horn to touch it but was able to make it only slightly less
  painful. His horn had been depleted by continually trying to purify the tainted air, water, and soil on his
  journey, as well as healing his injuries along the way. He was exhausted. But never mind that. He had to
  find Khornya.
   And he did. With only a few more taps, her icon appeared in the space on the screen indicating the
  room in which he now worked. That was better luck than he had any reason to hope for. His sore hand
  felt better just from touching her icon.
   Everything in him told him to go to her here, now — then. But if he stepped back into her time before he
  and Grimalkin rescued Laarye, Laarye would not be saved. He had to reenter after Grimalkin had
  returned Laarye safely to their parents.
   He sighed and leaned against the panel where Khornya's icon appeared. His head was spinning, and he
  realized that part of what he was thinking was rational, part of it mixed with senseless dreams. He had to
  sleep, and soon. His mind was too weary to work the equations that would tell him when to go. And yet
  she had cried out to him. She was in danger. He would lean this way just a while longer, touching her
  icon, feeling her presence across time, if not space.
    
   Mac continued his search, tapping ever more rapidly so that the Aari icon seemed to jerk across the
  
  screen from the cave southward along a riverbed until he came to… until he came to the same room in
  which Mac was now standing. Well. There should certainly be something Mac could do about that.
   It was true that Aari was probably not standing in water, and perhaps he was trying to travel to some
  other when. But Mac felt the highest probability was that Aari was looking for Khornya. So, the android
  reasoned, Aari should come to the present time with him. Mac could use his help.
   He wasn't one hundred percent certain that what he planned to do would work, but he performed the
  same operation he had performed to send Khornya back in time, reversed it, and hoped that was how
  one brought someone forward again.
   He felt himself shoved aside as Aari's body suddenly appeared almost on top of him. Aari appeared to
  be unconscious. If it were possible for an android to be shocked, Mac would have been shocked by
  Aari's appearance. He dimlyremembered, back when he himself had been a simpler being, how Aari had
  looked when Becker first rescued him from the cave. It wasn't quite the same. Nothing was broken or
  missing, but this Aari was so thin he could practically have crawled out the neck hole of his shipsuit
  without unfastening it. He was filthy, and Mac's olfactory sensors were not happy with the aroma wafting
  from the thin, bedraggled body.
   "Aari, my friend, I am here. Please awaken. I desire your help to find Khornya. I regret that she is not
  here, because if she was, I know she would wish to hover over you in your current condition, speaking
  soothing words and caressing your fevered skin with her beautiful horn."
   "What's going on down there, Mac?" Becker demanded from the area where Mac's fourth rib would
  have been had his construction been as shoddy as that of the average organic man. "Who are you talking
  to? Did you find Acorna? "
   "No, Captain, but Aari is here.The authentic Aari. But he is extremely weak and sick and very dirty. His
  horn is lying to one side and is the color of new oil."
   "In other words, he's no use to her or us in his current condition?" Rafikasked, an edge to his voice. He
  didn't know Aari well. All he had seen of Acorna's lifemate was the false version presented by Grimalkin.
   Becker said, "There's got to be someone with a functioning horn nearby. Let me call Terraform HQ and
  see who's in the vicinity."
   "Other Linyaari?"Aari asked in a raspy voice.
   Becker's voice returned in a minute. "Well, I suppose her horn is better than no horn at all. Liriili is taking
  inventory of new plantings near the cave entrance. She should be meeting you there in a few minutes."
   "No — time," Aari said, and pulled himself up the wall, starting to tap at it.
   He and Mac were at it when Aari heard Liriili's thought-inquiry, (Are you there? I hope this is as
  important as my work. I quite lost count when I received that peremptory summons.)
   "She's here," Aari told Mac, between taps. "She seems lost. I got her message, but my horn — too
  weak.Can't send."
   "I will go to the doorway and call to her then, shall I?" Mac said, striding away.
  
   Between his first footstep and Aari's next tap, Aari saw Khornya's icon, inside that of her little shuttle.As
  well as the icons of dozens of Khleevi surrounding her.
   Aari, still wet from the sea, did not hesitate. With a shaking hand, he scribbled the time signature and
  coordinates on the screen for Mac. Then, with a horrified visualization of what must be happening all
  around her, he focused on Khornya, dived into the time stream in the middle of the room, and went in
  after her.
   Chapter Fifteen
    
   Greedy Khleevi eyes watched Acorna through the clear shuttle hatch while their pincers scored and
  gouged at the little vessel's artificial carapace. Fortunately, it was every bit as tough as the Khleevi's own
  covering.Tougher, in fact. Since her attempts to free the shuttle from the crack in Vhiliinyar's surface had
  failed, Acorna turned in her seat and fumbled with the webbing holding her cargo. She didn't think she
  would be able to save herself with it, but she could at least relieve Vhilnnyar of a few plundering Khleevi
  before she died.
   Despite Mac's modifications, no Linyaari vessel contained gun ports. Instead he had equipped the shuttle
  with high-powered fire-extinguishing rifles with the anti-Khleevi weapon. Acorna was glad now that they
  had taken the time to stop on the sentient plant world Becker referred to as PU-#10. The sap secreted
  by these plants when they were in a state of agitation had been the secret weapon Acorna and her allies
  used with good effect against the Khleevi during their last invasion.
   Now she hoped she could open the hatch and fire quickly and in a wide enough pattern to buyherself a
  little time. Perhaps her movements and those of the Khleevi would be enough to free her little vessel and
  allow her to escape after all. Perhaps she would simply have the time to destroy more of the Khleevi. At
  least she would not simply sit in the shuttle and wait to be taken.
   She finally cut the webbing loose and freed the weapons — there were only a half dozen of them from a
  stock Becker had taken in trade for some Huicholian welded circuit boards he'd salvaged from a
  freighter called theZapataout of Nuevo Guadalajara. Before she strapped two of them across her chest
  and back, bandoleer-style, she held another one of the rifles with the barrels pointed at her, took a deep
  breath, and fired, coveringherself and the command chair, but not the console, with the odious-smelling
  sap.
   The sap! She had a momentary flash from her future dream of the dripping green stuff covering her, Aari,
  and the Khleevi. It was the sap. Was the dream in the process of coming true? It could not. It simply
  could not. And yet, this was the only possible course of action open to her if she was to survive and
  rescue Aari.
   At one point during the trip back to Vhiliinyar, she'd confided her dream to Becker, and her concern that
  it could be a premonition of things to come.
   That was when she suggested the side trip to PU-#10 to pick up the plant sap.
   Becker had approved."Makes sense. Any Khleevi that tries to take a bite out of you will want to take a
  bite out of something else to take the taste out of his mouth. But by the time he does, it'll be too late
  because he won't have a mouth anymore." The sap was corrosive to the Khleevi carapace,then it
  destroyed the inner tissue. The worst thing any non-Khleevi being had experienced from the sap so far
  
  was a slight allergic reaction.
   She cleared her nostrils, eyes, and fingers of the sap, strapped the guns across her body, and picked up
  two more, one for each hand. The Linyaari were pacifist by nature but fortunately for Acorna she hadn't
  been raised in her own culture. Her mentors growing up had been three rough-and-ready human asteroid
  miners, all of whom had a nice streak of violence when it was necessary to survive. Besides, she
  considered this not so much destroying Khleevi as saving whatever life-forms these few Khleevi would
  destroy. Maybe evenherself .
   After taking another deep breath, which she regretted almost at once, she once more looked up to face
  her attackers.
   They goggled down at her for a split nanosecond, then suddenly turned away, looking at something,
  lumbering toward something that she couldn't see because the Khleevi in front of her blocked her view.
   Then, to her horror, she found out what it was.
   (Khornya!I am drawing them off so you can escape!) Aari's thought-voice, the real Aari's thought-voice,
  spoke to her mind.
   (Not without you!)she said, standing with her head lowered and throwing her shoulders and back against
  the hatch. It gave more quickly than she dared hope, and she stood with her torso exposed, dripping
  slime and pointing her water guns at the Khleevi clustered fifteen yards from the bow of the shuttle. She
  fired into them. The Khleevi broke, emitting high-pitched squeals along with frantickliking andklaking.
  Their defection exposed Aari, who was being held in the pincers of three more Khleevi.
   Acorna fired the contents of her other water rifle, aiming first to cover Aari, then waving the firing
  weapon so it spread its contents over Aari's attackers as well. They dropped him.
   (Quickly, love, before the others replace them,) she said.
   But he was very weak, and could only stumble toward her. Staggering forward, he tripped and fell over
  a fissure in the ground.
   Without another thought for her own safety she pulled herself out of the hatch, discarding her discharged
  weapons and tossing the rifles strapped over her out onto the ground so they didn't catch on something
  as she ran. She leaped to the ground, slid in the sap, but reached Aari and pulled him to his feet as the
  other Khleevi advanced. There were far more of the bugs than she had realized — perhaps the patrol
  she'd seen at first had called for reinforcements?
   She dragged Aari to his feet and pulled him back as far as her abandoned rifles, which she snagged,
  keeping one for her own use and handing the other to him. The damaged Khleevi were being trampled as
  their comrades advanced on the two Linyaari. Acorna knew that the sap covering the downed Khleevi
  would eat into the feet of the tramplers, but by the time the attackers realized they were injured, it would
  probably be too late for her and Aari.
   Then the ground convulsed beneath her boots and knocked her, Aari, and the Khleevi off their feet. She
  kept scuttling backward, pulling Aari with her, then, suddenly, she felt air beneath her scrabbling hand
  and heard a crunching, rending noise. Turning, she saw that the crack holding the shuttle was opening to a
  chasm into which the shuttle tumbled.
  
   Aari's hand caught on her wrist. He went still,then he grasped her wrist with his other hand and rubbed
  away the sap.(Grimalkin's timer?)he asked.
   (Yes. I found it out there, which is why I stopped.)
   (Using the timer, we can leave,) he told her, radiating excitement and the first hope she had sensed in the
  emotional bleakness he'd been broadcasting.
   (How?)There was no time for caution, but she felt an awful sinking inside her, a sense of the inevitability
  of fate.My dreams, she thought.They could come true… The risk was unimaginably horrifying, but the
  other way lay certain death for both of them.
   (Input the desired date, time, and coordinates.Simple.)
   She made a quick decision. Predestination and the inevitability of fate were not concepts she embraced.
  Thrusting her fears aside so they would not distract Aari, she sent a practical thought instead. (Maybe it
  would be if I could see the timer, but it's dark.)
   He touched something and the timer illuminated.
   Meanwhile a wall of Khleevi feet, mandibles, and pincers crushed in on them.
   (You know how it works. You use it,) she said. (I'll try to keep the Khleevi off us.) She started to shove
  the timer off her wrist to him, but he stopped her.
   (I need to touch you so we can both go,) he told her. (Just a— ) His fingers were busy.
   Acorna opened a half circle around them by attacking the surprised Khleevi with the most sap-saturated
  parts of herself she could while still allowing Aari to retain her wrist. The Khleevi tried to touch her, but
  quickly retracted their pincers and jaws,klaking and making high-pitched squealing sounds of pain and
  shock.
   Khleevi telepathy alerted the rest of them that the prey wasn't palatable. The giant bugs backed away
  from the Linyaari.
   Acorna felt hope rise within her heart. They were going to get out of this!
   Then the Khleevi hordes around them opened to permit two new pairs of Khleevi to approach. Each
  pair of the Khleevi held something between them.
   (They've got nets! Hurry, Aari, hurry!)
   (Almost got it— )
   The first pair of Khleevi threw their net. Acorna ducked, but still she felt the metal strands drop onto her
  head and shoulders. Aari grabbed her close to him as the Khleevi grabbed the net edges.
   Acorna shut her eyes tight. All she felt was the warm pressure of Aari's arms beneath the net, holding her
  neck and back, and the touch of the cold steel net tightening around them.
   She dimly heard Maak's voice calling, "Mayday! Mayday! Captain Becker, please assist at once!
  
  Implement emergency plan B and dispatch all available personnel to lend immediate aid! As we feared,
  Acorna and Aari have returned, but I cannot discern their condition because they are covered with a net
  of some sort and are surrounded by Khleevi."
    
   Grimalkin screamed as the Khleevi pincers snipped at his tail. He felt the rush of air and actually lost a
  few hairs before he could jerk his treasured appendage into the hole after him. The Khleevi simply ate the
  rock and soil around his hiding place until he was exposed again. As one leaned forward to grab him, he
  bounded over its head and landed behind it, facing the feet of another Khleevi. He zipped between those
  legs, and several other pairs of legs as well, running through them like he was speeding down a slalom
  course until suddenly he faced open mandibles instead of feet.
   He screeched to a halt,then turned to flee in another direction. But other Khleevi were also bending
  down, grabbing and snapping at him with those cruel pincers. Once more Grimalkin leaped, but this time
  the Khleevi in back were ready for his move so he had to stay aloft. He did this by landing on the nearest
  bug's skull, then leaping from that bug head to the next and the next.
   If only there weren't so many of them, he could get behind them, outrun them, and return to where he
  lost his timer. Once he had that again he would be safe. Even in feline form, he could work the controls.
   But no matter how he leaped and turned, hid, or skittered among them, the Khleevi always surrounded
  him. There were somanyof them. He had hoped they might tire of trying to capture one small feline, which
  was why he had shifted to his alternate shape as soon as they laid hold of him in his two-legged form. But
  the bugs were relentless, and as stubborn as only the deeply stupid could be.
   It looked as if he'd have to backtrack to his timer while totally surrounded by these tiresome creatures.
   No sooner had that thought occurred to him than he suddenly felt the hunt cease. He ran without
  interference past theforestofKhleevi legs and feet into an open area of rock and rubble. He looked over
  his shoulder but the Khleevi weren't watching him. Their antennae were all pointing in another direction.
   He heard it then. It sounded like a high-pitched whine — but it was mechanical, not animal, in origin.
  Could it be an engine? It sounded like a small vessel — maybe a shuttle or a flitter. What was it doing
  here? Or more precisely — what was it doingnow? Grimalkin was sure that non-Khleevi vessels weren't
  present in this time. Vhiliinyar was completely conquered, with no non-Khleevi alive on the planet except
  himself.And… maybe…Aari? But Aari should be somewhere in the post-Khleevi future. Of course, he
  should have been in the cave when Grimalkin arrived, but he hadn't been. Grimalkin thought that was
  probably because he was trying to land the ship at the same time it had left with himself and Laarye
  before. There was always a bit of temporal distortion in that kind of situation.
   He scampered up the highest mound of rock and hardened slime to get a better vantage point. In cat
  form, seeing in the gloom presented him with little difficulty. The ground shook under his paws, though he
  was uncertain whether it was because of the stampede of Khleevi feet or from one of the monotonous
  earthquakes that periodically rocked Vhiliinyar.
   The Khleevi were bearing down on a large egg with wings on either side. Grimalkin recognized it as the
  Linyaari shuttle Captain Becker carried aboard theCondor. A Linyaari, though he couldn't be sure
  exactly who it was from this distance, squatted beside the vessel. The Linyaari seemed to be staring at
  something.
  
   His timer! The Linyaari… Aari, surely, or maybe Laarye… or perhaps even Acorna… had found his
  timer! Joy! Exultation! He could leave here and take whoever it was with him. He was beginning a leap
  to the plain where the Linyaari was kneeling when the ground bucked up and knocked him onto his tail.
  When he stood up, cautiously, on the trembling earth, it felt as if he was trying to ride some large and
  unhappy animal. He could see that the little egglike vessel had wedged one of its wings in the crack. The
  Linyaari became aware of the Khleevi bearing down on the ship. Thecreature pried open the hatch and
  crawled inside with barely a centimeter to spare between the hatch and the first Khleevi pincer.
   Grimalkin made his leap and pelted toward the ship, once more dodging between Khleevi feet.
  Grimalkin to the rescue! As usual, he was landing on his paws. He would get his timer from the Linyaari
  and save both of them!
   Then the situation got more complicated. Suddenly Aari appeared in the midst of the knot of Khleevi
  farthest from the ship. Grimalkin was surprised to see that Aari did not look at all well. However, Khleevi
  were converging upon him, so the poor fellow was apt to look a lot worse before too long. Too bad Aari
  was the one who was closest and the one with the timer — Acorna? Grimalkin still couldn't be sure —
  was inside the shuttle.
   Before he could decide what his next move would be, the hatch of the shuttle burst open and a monster,
  glistening wetly with something so foul-smelling that Grimalkin nearly swooned, climbed out.
   A second glance revealed that it was Acorna, though where she got that rotten slime from Grimalkin
  couldn't imagine. She emptied the weapons she carried in her hands at the Khleevi. The evil-smelling,
  wet-looking stuff erupted from the ends of her guns and coated both Aari and his enemies with the same
  glop coating her. Grimalkin realized this must be the sap Aari's recorded memories spoke of — the sap
  that had helped the Linyaari and their allies to finally destroy the Khleevi.
   It was working again. Khleevi fell screaming to the ground — or rather,klaking andklaking, which was
  much the same thing for them.
   But everything happened very quickly after that. Grimalkin tried to break through the line of Khleevi feet
  but had no luck. He would have switched to his other form, but then he would surely be captured, and,
  unlike Acorna and Aari, he had none of the sap. Even so, he would have risked it if he'd seen his timer on
  Acorna's wrist, where Aari feverishly programmed it. By the time Grimalkin saw the device and realized
  what was happening, it was too late. The Khleevi had thrown a net over Acorna, Aari, and, alas, the
  timer. Before Grimalkin could blink, both the Linyaari couple and the Khleevi clinging to the net had
  vanished from the clearing leaving the shuttle, more Khleevi and… oh, dear, himself… behind.
   That was when someone picked him up by the tail and started swinging him in a long arc. He changed to
  his biped form, which had no tail, to escape. Unfortunately, that form lacked not only a tail but also the
  grace, speed, and agility of his cat form. Two more Khleevi blocked his path at once. Each took one of
  his arms, not caring at all if they dislocated his shoulders. He suspected from the way they responded to
  his screams that they would prefer it. They carried him between them. He went limp and stopped
  struggling. Before long they entered one of the large mounds of hardened slime. He found himself in the
  center of an amphitheater-like space with a single furnishing at its center — the torture machine that had
  played a starring role in so many of the Khleevi's propaganda vids.
   Chapter Sixteen
    
  
   Acorna struggled to free herself from the net and the Khleevi hanging on to it, trapping her and Aari.
   As she unsnarled herself, pincers snaked out to grab her wrist. Just when she thought she would lose her
  head Maak charged in and chopped the pincer and the net away with his hand, or rather, the laser cutting
  tool he'd replaced it with. So precise was his cut that it maimed the Khleevi and opened a hole in the net
  big enough for Aari and Acorna to escape from its tangles. But the Khleevi wouldn't give up.
   Another pincer reached out, and Acorna grasped her wrist with her other hand to protect the time
  device. If the Khleevi got that, as they seemed to have realized, they and their kind could travel through
  time as well as space. Not only would their race be reborn in a time beyond their extinction, but they
  could travel back and forth in time ravishing the same planet, killing and torturing the same people, again
  and again.
   They seemed to be everywhere, their stench filling the room as they poured waste into it. Their
  mandibles snapped as they rampaged around the time labkliking andklaking and making high-pitched
  squealing sounds.
   Acorna slid away on a floor covered with fresh Khleevi excrement and the stinking green blood, as well
  as the noxious sticky plant sap. The monsters were covered with sap, just as the Khleevi in Acorna's
  dream had been.
   Despair ate at her heart as surely as the sap ate at their cells. Now she realized that her dream hadn't
  been a premonition or predestination. It had been a memory, bleeding through the veils of time to warn
  her that this would happen. Yet she had been powerless to prevent it. Even if she had sacrificed Aari by
  not returning for him, the Khleevi would have found the time device. The sap was gone, and now it was
  all she, Aari, and Maak could do to stay alive while the Khleevi seemed to fill the time lab.
   Maddened by the sap's caustic effect on their carapaces, they thrashed about wildly, gouging huge holes
  in the walls as they flailed against them. Panels fell dark as their controls were destroyed. The Khleevi's
  snapping pincers and jaws tore at the inner workings of the room.
   Maak madeklaking noises, too, using the bits of the Khleevi language he had learned on previous
  encounters. "It's no good," he called finally, his voice strangely calm and reasonable, though pitched
  loudly enough to carry over theklaks and squeals. "They are beyond understanding at this point.
  However, there are only four of them, and they are much damaged by the sap. Perhaps we can contain
  them before they do further damage."
   Only four?Acorna's spirits suddenly pulled out of a nosedive. No more Khleevi seemed to be appearing.
  So the dream was wrong in that respect. The time door was not yet open to infinite numbers of the
  monsters. "Too bad Maak ruined that net," she said, dropping and rolling out of the way as a Khleevi
  charged straight for her, missed, and fell into a wall instead. It stayed there, sagging as the sap finally ate
  into its vital organs.
   "I am sorry that I rendered that resource useless. In the future, I will add a net to my attachment arsenal,"
  Maak said. "There is a net on theCondor, but it is too far away to be of any use right now."
   Another of the creatures lumbered toward Acorna, snapping andklaking for all it was worth. Maak was
  busy with another one, but Acorna dodged, dropped, and rolled again, this time between the thing's legs.
  It was not a wise move. The Khleevi anticipated her and pulled its feet together.
   Aari lowered his head so his knobby horn pointed straight out and ran straight into the Khleevi, butting
  
  and goring at its center.
   The Khleevi fell back, tripping partly on Acorna and partly on its own feet. It landed hard on the side of
  the pool from which the DNA helix rose to penetrate the entire building. Maak's Khleevi also backed
  into the pool in its haste to escape Maak. This time it broke through the side of the pool and fell into it.
   The helix vanished as a geyser of water shot up then splashed over onto the floor, flooding the room and
  spilling out into the hallway. The remaining Khleevi, its carapace vanishing in a stream of green ichor,
  took one step toward them and fell forward, narrowly missing Aari, and lay motionless.
   Leaving the Khleevi carcasses to wash back and forth in the water spilling from the ruined pool, Acorna,
  Aari, and Mac quickly fled to the trapdoor leading to the Ancestral caves. Mac sealed the door with his
  laser attachment to prevent the tunnel from flooding, too, but water still seeped through and first dripped,
  then dribbled, then spurted down after them.
   With a collective sigh of relief, they reached the portion of the caves that led upward to the restored
  surface of the planet.
   "Captain, this is Maak, Captain Becker, please respond. Mr. Nadezda? We must relay an emergency
  situation to the Linyaari High Council. The time device has been damaged by some Khleevi who came
  forward in time with Khornya and Aari. The Khleevi are now dead. However, the chamber and possibly
  the entire building, maybe the caves, perhaps even the city, will be flooded by an underground spring
  flowing beneath the DNA helix in the time chamber. Repair and containment must be immediately
  initiated. Is that an accurate assessment of the situation, Aari?Acorna? Perhaps we should return…"
   Acorna, dizzy with relief to have lived through her worst nightmare without damage to her loved ones or
  herself, sagged against Aari.
   He met her halfway, and the two collapsed, panting, into each other's arms.
    
   Maak continued sending his Mayday along with instructions and coordinates, but Khornya and Aari
  didn't seem to hear him. Instead, each of them gazed at the other as Mr. Harakamian had looked at the
  catseye chrysoberyls, as if they each had discovered, or rediscovered, a treasure beyond price. Neither
  seemed to notice that the other was, despite the flood-water dripping from them, still covered in sticky
  sap and the stinky slime they had inherited from the now deceased Khleevi.
   They were horn to horn, nose to nose, their eyes wide, as each of Mac's very untidy Linyaari friends
  drank in the sight of the other. Aari's hands cradled Acorna's head and back, and hers did the same to
  his. It seemed to Mac that deafness was a side effect of the interesting mental condition they both shared.
   Mac continued trying to reach Becker. He was somewhat distracted by the verbal murmuring sounds
  coming from Aari and Acorna, subvocalizations that were almost purrs. They didn't seem to care about
  the disaster or the ruin of the underground city, an ancient relic full of amazing artifacts that no doubt
  would hold much valuable knowledge for, not only the Linyaari, but many other raceswho might learn
  through them.
   "Maak, this is Melireenya aboard theBalakiire. We received your transmission to Captain Becker and
  are relaying it to the Council. A team is on its way."
  
   Immediately Melireenya was replaced by Neeva."Maak? Is Acorna with you? Did she find Aari?"
   "Yes,visedhaanye feriliiNeeva, they are both here. They appear to be uninjured, though they are
  extremely messy. And they are behaving in a peculiar way that I believe may be attributed to Linyaari
  preliminary mating rituals. Or… at least… is that what it means when they lie on the ground together,
  heedless of their surroundings, horns touching and… ?"
   "Oh, yes!" Feriila, Acorna's mother, now appeared on Maak's chest screen. Vaanye, his face partially
  obscured by Maak's left nipple, nonetheless seemed to be smiling indulgently as his hands rested on his
  wife's shoulder."The dear children!" Acorna's mother seemed almost to weep with joy.
   Khaari's voice said, "Everyone prepare for landing. We'll be joining them soon!"
   "I am very relieved that you are coming," Mac told Acorna's relatives. "I had received no response to
  my prior communications."
   "That's because Becker and Rafik had to make a detour to rendezvous with Aziza and her crew. As
  they were entering orbit on their way to join your crew, they picked up the homing signal from the stolen
  catseye chrysoberyls and located them in the ruin of a ship heretofore undiscovered outside Aari's cave."
   "Curiouser and curiouser," Mac said, using a literary quotation from a classic children's book lie had
  discovered in Becker's library of salvaged hard-copy volumes.
   "We have all been trying to reach Khornya by thought-talk," Neeva told him, "But she didn't respond. I
  understand now that she has been too preoccupied…"
   "I apologize, Mother, Father, Neeva," Acorna said, taking Aari's hand to rise to her feet and giving
  herself a little shake, which was meant to settle her clothing about her but instead only redistributed the
  sap and slime. Aari stood with his arm protectively around her shoulders. "We were in another time zone,
  being attacked by Khleevi, and then the Khleevi followed us to the time chamber with the results I
  believe Maak has mentioned, and then — well, this is therealAari."
   "Indeed," Vaanye said.
   "Perhaps you'll want to tidy up a little before any of the other teams arrive, Khornya," Neeva suggested
  with a not-quite-suppressed smile.
   "Oh!" for the first time, Khornya seemed to notice that she and Aari were looking less than their best.
  No doubt she only noticed that she and Aari had seemed beautiful to each other. "Oh, yes! Perhaps we
  could use theBalakiire'ssonic cleaner when you land?"
   As she finished speaking, theBalakiireset down in the clearing reserved for ships bringing equipment and
  provisions to this sector of Vhiliinyar.
   (You go clean up,Yaazi,)Aari told Acorna. (I have one more thing to do before I do the same.)
   Acorna sighed. (I suppose this something will require the use of Grimalkin's timer?)
   (I fear that is so.)
   (Then my shower will have to wait, too. I haven't gone to all this trouble to find you just to lose you
  
  again. It is very good of you to put his fate above your shower, under the circumstances. After all, he left
  youto the Khleevi.)
   (Not really,) Aari said, and explained the time shift to her.
   By that time theBalakiire'screw, including Neeva and Acorna's parents, had joined them.
   Acorna looked at them a little helplessly. She longed to embrace her parents, but knew she would soil
  them with the sap. Besides, she needed all of the sap still clinging to her as protection from the Khleevi.
  (I'm sorry, Mother, Father, Neeva. But Aari and I need to return for Grimalkin. We can't just leave him
  to the Khleevi.)
   (How do you intend to get him away from them?) Vaanye asked. (It seems to me you will most likely
  arrive to find him beyond help and yourselves captives again.)
   (And for goodness sake, you can't go against a Khleevi invasion force armed with only a few patches of
  sap on your bodies. You've got a time control device. Use it! At least take the time to go back to
  PU-#10 and get more sap.)
   (There's more aboard theCondor,)Acorna said. (And you're right, of course.)
   (In that case, I think you should take more people with you.)
   (More Linyaari would probably just get killed. Our people hesitate to use a deadly weapon, even against
  Khleevi,) Aari told her. (Thanks to our past experiences, Acorna and I don't have that problem. Besides,
  I don't know exactly what the limit is on how many people can use the timer at once. We did bring back
  two Khleevi with us so apparently four can travel with it so we could probably take Becker and Maak.
  But I see no reason for them to endanger themselves. For that matter, I wish you would keep Khornya
  here. Instead of directly confronting the Khleevi, I thought I might time it so that perhaps I meet Grimalkin
  just before he loses his device, warn him, and both of us return here. I am assuming he went looking for
  me. If he finds me, there is no reason for him to remain.)
   (He would want to take you back to the ship where the catseyes are,) Acorna said. (And you'd both be
  captured, as would the timer. With the underground time device disabled, you would never be able to
  come back, and no one would be able to save you. You're right that we mustn't let the captain endanger
  himself or Maak — if anyone can put the machine back together again, it will be Maak.)
   Vaanye harrumphed. (Really, my dear, I do have a bit of experience in that line myself — not with time
  machines, but other devices of a similarly complex nature.)
   "So I've heard, Father," she said.
   TheCondorlanded beside theBalakiire. The robolift descended, bearing Becker.
   "Aari!"Becker cried. "Well, looks like Acorna made a sap out of you, too!"
   Aari looked puzzled.
   Acorna said, (It's a joke employing an idiomatic expression. In Basic speech, the word "sap" refers to
  the blood of plants, such as the material we currently wear, as well as to a person who is a fool. It is a
  comradely insult in this case, made for the sake of wordplay. It indicates that Captain Becker is happy to
  
  see us together again.)
   (Ah! I thought so. Joh is notthathard to read.)
   "I would greet you properly, old friend, but then I would make a sap of you also," Aari told him. "We
  would like to clean up aboard theCondor."
   Becker glanced at theBalakiireand raised his right eyebrow inquisitively, but said only, "Sure. Maybe you
  kids want to share a shower. I know it's been a long time. I guess I can wait until you and Acorna have
  — uh — debriefed each other before I get any answers from you." To Acorna he said, "When we got
  theBalakiire's, relay that you were okay, Rafik stayed at the cave to help Aziza's crew load the catseyes."
   Acorna and Aari tried to hide their impatience and act as if they were going to do exactly what he
  expected. At last he stepped off the robolift, and they stepped on and were carried up into theCondor,
  and the remaining supply of the precious Khleevi-killing sap.
   (Khornya,) Aari said, turning to her and taking her shoulders in his large slightly trembling hands. (Please
  do not come. You have no idea what they could do to you if we are captured. If they get their claws on
  you, that would be worse for me than anything they did to me, even the second time.)
   (And how do you think it would be for me, love, waiting and waiting again, not knowing if you were
  coming back until you did?)
   Hequirked one side of his mouth up and gave her a shrewd look. (Actually, the waiting wouldn't be a
  problem. If we are not back at approximately the same moment I leave, you'll know we aren't returning.
  Ever. In which case you'd better prepare everyone for a second invasion because the Khleevi may just
  extract the secrets of the timer from one of us and come forwardthemselves .)
   (Now IknowI'm coming with you,) she said. (If we are captured, I will find a way to destroy the timer
  before I let that happen.)
   (Easier said than done,Yaazi.)
   RK mewed a greeting and hopped down from his perch atop the command chair of the bridge. Both of
  them gave him lingering strokes for a few precious moments,then turned their backs on the ship's cat. His
  paws clattered on the grid behind them.
   As they reached the cargo hold they heard the robolift descend once more.
   (The captain is returning,) Acorna said.(Or Maak.)
   (We'd better hurry,) Aari said.
   (I suppose — but in a way there is no hurry. With the timer, as you pointed out, we can retrieve
  Grimalkin before he is captured and bring him back so he won't have known suffering at all.On the other
  hand…)
   He caught her veryka-Linyaari thought of what she half wished would happen to the manipulative
  Ancestral "Friend." He shook his head, smiling very slightly. (Khornya, annoying as he is, he has done
  neither of us real harm. He certainly doesn't deserve what the Khleevi have in store for any prisoner.)
  
   (I suppose not,) she said. (But if he had had his way, I might be having kittens by now.)
   (No, because he would have made sure the Linyaari race sprang from your loins, so you would have
  only been your own multigreat-grandmother.)
   (And that's better?)
   They pulled forth the plas skins of sap and stared at them, wondering how they would fight a planetful of
  Khleevi.
   (We could open them up, throw them to the ground, and jump on them, squooshing the sap on anyone
  who comes near.)
   (I hate to say it, but that's as good a plan as any. I am changing my mind. We must wait until we can
  acquire a better means of distributing the sap.)
   Footsteps approached, and Acorna felt the unfamiliar but wonderfully welcome presence of her father.
   (Daughter?Aari?)Vaanyesaid, when he stood beside them surveying the sap in and out of the cargo hold.
  (I have been pondering our problem. You two are just beginning your life together, as I understand it,
  and after a very long interruption. Aari has already endured a long and painful ordeal with the Khleevi.
  And, Khornya, your mother and I could not bear losing you again after finding you, so beautiful and
  strong and ready to begin a new life and another generation of our clan. I owe Grimalkin my life and your
  mother's. It is fitting that I should attempt his rescue.)
   (No one will be able to rescue him the way things stand now, Father,) Acorna told him. (The plas rifles
  we used to shoot the sap at the Khleevi were all lost when the quake took the shuttle. We will have to
  wait until Hafiz can send more from MOO. Besides, even though you made defensive weapons for our
  people before, you have not actually used offensive ones before. Both Aari and I have learned that we
  are capable of doing so when necessary. It is not a common trait among our people.)
   (I wasn't thinking of using an actual weapon,) Vaanye replied. (Actually, the tool I have in mind is better
  suited for distributing the sap over a wide area than a plas rifle. We brought several fertilizer sprayers
  aboard theBalakiire. I could load more than a single charge with one of those, carrying a container that
  will feed into the sprayer.)
   (We thank you for the information, Vaanye,) Aari said. (But I will go. Khornya should stay here with
  you.)
   (Aaaarrri!)Acorna's thoughts were not kind.
   (She will not, of course, but she should,) Aari said. (I would have her do so.)
   (You two don't be somale,)Acorna told them. (After all, Aari, when we faced the Khleevi, neither of us
  would have escaped except for the other one.)
   (All the more reason for me to go.Also, if I cannot persuade you two to stay here…) Vaanye said.
   (… You cannot,) Aari and Acorna assured him.
   (Very well then.I can carry three of those containers.)
  
   They returned to the robolift, followed by RK who was bawling his protest at being left out of the
  excitement. When they stepped onto the robolift, each burdened with as much of the sap as it was
  possible to carry, the cat jumped onto the lift with them.
   All of them were trying to think what to tell the others — especially Acorna's mother — but they need
  not have worried. Ships and shuttles from all over Vhiliinyar were landing, and the Ancestors had also
  made an appearance. The reverse of a bucket brigade seemed to be taking place, with a line of people
  from the tunnel entrance to the river bearing a number of hoses from a series of pumps working to clear
  the passages.
   Acorna, who still possessed the timer, stayed below with the sap while Aari and Vaanye boarded the
  Balakiireto fetch the fertilizer sprayers.
   RK ran to the river, no doubt to examine the stuff coming out of the hoses to see if there were any fish
  for him in it.
   When the men returned with the fertilizer sprayers, they each transferred three of the easily expanded
  sap skins into one and strapped it on, attaching a feeder hose to the sprayer. At Acorna's insistence, Aari
  gave her and Vaanye a quick lesson on how to program the timer. If only one of them survived, at least
  that one would not be stranded among the planet's past and the swarming Khleevi for lack of knowledge.
   Once they were ready, they all joined hands. Aari programmed the timer with his free hand, as one of
  Acorna's hands rested in his and her other hand rested in Vaanye's. Acorna took in a last deep breath of
  clean, fresh air…
   …And exhaled it amid the hot, acrid fumes of Khleevi-occupied Vhiliinyar.
   Vaanye gasped. (Feriila is fond of saying that I go looking for trouble, but I never imagined anything like
  this! It's horrible! Horrible! Are you certain we are still on Vhiliinyar?)
   (Yes.) Aari's thoughts were full of even darker images than the one before them.
   The ground shook, and all of them stumbled.
   Acorna pointed to the fissure that had swallowed the shuttle.
   (I do not see any Khleevi here now,) Vaanye said, clearly trying to look on the bright side of things.
   (True,) Acorna said. (But we must go looking for them if we're to find Grimalkin. I suppose it's possible
  that he escaped them…)
   (No,) Aari said. (Not without the timer. If he was able to escape at all, he would have returned for that.
  I know what that is like, to be stranded here with the Khleevi, hiding from them and in fear every moment
  for my life.)
   Acorna felt Aari's hand growing stiff and icy with cold sweat despite the heat. (I saw mounds from the
  air with Khleevi coming and going from them. Is that the sort of place where you were when they had
  you,Yaazi?)
   (I think so, yes. I don't remember seeing the outside. I was unconscious when I was captured, and the
  
  torture chamber was destroyed when the Khleevi evacuated and I escaped. But it had a domed ceiling I
  looked up at a lot when I was able to see, and trying to focus on something other than pain.)
   (I saw one from the air as I flew to your cave and back,) she said. Her mineral sense was overloaded
  with foul smells, poisonous tastes, and the sinister rumbling from the tormented planet beneath their feet.
  But she let herself blend with the hellish landscape, felt the fissures and mountains of gravel, and finally
  found the right shape — the mound of slime she had noticed a mile or so from their position. (It's this
  way,) she said.
   Sparksand ash rained down on them. Acorna's right foot sank to her knee in something sticky. She was
  able to pull it out only when she mired her left foot as deeply.
   (Horn it all, what isthisstuff?)her father asked.
   (Khleevi slime trail,) Aari answered. It was hard to see, but he and Acorna were both well informed of
  its substance by the stench.
   (Try to pull free and walk through it as quickly as possible. It hardens fairly rapidly. The fact that it is still
  liquid means one of them has passed this way quite recently.)
   (They don't always leave this goo behind them though, do they?) Vaanye asked, thinking of the vids he'd
  seen and the reports he'd heard from those still attempting to escape the planet after the invasion began.
   (Only when they're feeding,) she replied. (I do hope this isn't Grimalkin we're wading through.)
   (They don't eat sentients, Khornya,) Aari reminded her. (Not at first, anyway…)
   A tense silence fell after that remark.
   Except for the sparks and the distant glow of the volcanoes that had once been Vhiliinyar's sacred
  peaceful mountains, the night was very dark as they moved through the blasted landscape.
   It was not still, however. Though she had scarcely been aware of it beneath the groaning and grumbling
  of the planet in its death throes, Acorna suddenly heard theklikings andklakings of the Khleevi sending
  staccato messages to each other. She heard something else, too, among all the Khleevi chatter. She
  heard the yowling and howling, hissing and snarling of a cat in great fear or pain. She had only known
  Grimalkin in his disguise as Aari. Hearing the feline cries of terror twisted her heart.
   (If he's in cat form, they will destroy him quickly,) Aari said.(Though that would be a good thing, of
  course, if we were not here to save him.)
   Acorna saw the movement before she saw the mound; Khleevi were gathered round to watch and listen.
  They were peering in,kliking their mandibles appreciatively as the yowling increased. They were having
  so much fun that they appeared unaware of the approach of the three Linyaari.
   (I believe our target is now within range,) Vaanye said.
   (While I bow to the previous experience that I'm told you two have in anointing the Khleevi with sap,
  may I suggest that we aim low? If their feet are affected, they will not be able to give chase easily, and
  laying down a good coat of sap on the ground should make sure they are all affected, as anyone within
  range will be. After the initial volley, perhaps we should reserve some sap so there is enough remaining to
  
  cover our retreat, however far that may need to be until we can use the timer again.)
   Acorna had learned something of her father from Grandam Naadiina and Neeva, but until that moment
  she had not realized that he really was the closest thing the Linyaari had to a military strategist. What he
  was not mentioning was that once the Khleevis feet were damaged, the rest of their bodies would follow
  as they wallowed in the sap. Acorna began to feel a bit better about the entire mission.
   Aari lifted a hand from his gun to scratch at his neck, face, other hand, and a bit of his leg where his
  shipsuit had been torn during his journey.
   (What's the matter,Yaazi?)sheasked.
   (I am not a Khleevi, but I do get something of an allergic reaction to the sap. Are you not feeling it?)
   (NowI am,) she said. She wondered if she dared to lean over and touch his itchy spots with her horn.
   At that moment, a Khleevi turned around from the entertainment happening inside the mound and saw
  them.
   (Spray!)Vaanye said.
   Acorna opened the nozzle on her sprayer and pulled the trigger on the pump sprayer. It squirted a glob
  of sap onto the middle of a Khleevi at the end of the spray nozzle. The Khleevi clutched itself and bent
  over in agony. Acorna adjusted her nozzle so it pointed down and laid a cover of sap between them and
  the Khleevi.
   Aari forged his way toward the entry to the mound, pointing his nozzle at the feet of first one Khleevi,
  then another. The Khleevi parted around him and tried to scale the walls of the mound to escape the sap.
  He could clearly see the torture machine in the center of the room now. He ignored the rush of memories
  of his own time in such a chamber and ran inside. (We're too late,) he told Vaanye and Acorna. (He's
  gone. They must have killed him off in his cat form. There's no one here but Khleevi now.)
   Chapter Seventeen
    
   As soon as the Khleevi clamped his wrists, legs, and head to the torture machine, Grimalkin resumed cat
  form, shrinking himself out of the restraints. He felt the first nauseating wave of energy rise from the
  machine as he shot straight into the air and onto one of the many ledgelike protrusions pocking the inside
  of the mound.
   The Khleevi surprised him by swarming up the wall after him. As they climbed up, he dropped down
  and dashed for the opening. Pincers snapped at his tail and he screamed and resumed biped form, thus
  removing himself from the Khleevi's grasp.
   If only he hadn't lost the timer! If only Acorna hadn't found it and taken herself and Aari away without
  him. He would have been far, far away from here and now.
   A Khleevi caught his arm and he shrank to cat form once more, but he knew he couldn't keep this up
  forever. There were other forms in which he could hide if only he could elude the Khleevi long enough to
  change unseen, but his two principal forms were the ones that required no concentration to shift from one
  
  to the other. He needed time to concentrate if he was going to try for something fancy.
   A Khleevi caught him again, this time with its pincer encircling his head. There was no escape from that.
  The Khleevi tenderly put just enough pressure on his catty cranium to carry him, not enough to injure him
  seriously or kill him. His paws were once more strapped tightly to the chair by something that was at first
  sticky and foul-smelling, then rapidly hardened. Even his tail was immobilized by it. Finally, something slid
  under the pincers to circle his neck. As the pincers pulled apart so he could see once more, he yowled
  over and over again, until the hardening Khleevi slime cut his wind short. What he saw now was a solid
  wall of Khleevi vastly entertained by his struggles and protests. Some of them crawled on the ground,
  and some stood. Some even hung overhead. His rapid changes had conditioned them to be alert for his
  shape-shifting.
   The one nearest himkliked its mandibles and lifted its pincers so they were about an inch from his face.
  They snipped, and the tip of his longest whisker fell away. He yowled with indignity andtheykliked and
  klaked appreciatively. They probably thought it hurt him. He was sure that before very long, as they
  snipped away at him, they would be right.
   His superb sense of smell in this form was totally bombarded by Khleevi stench and the fire and
  brimstone atmosphere of the planet, but suddenly it seemed to him that the ill wind was blowing a current
  of comparatively fresh, sweet air to his sensitive nostrils.
   His second whisker tip fell, and he lost himself in loud, piercing caterwauling. If they thought this really
  hurt, they might linger over it. He just hoped his voice would hold out.
   Suddenly, the wall of Khleevi surrounding him thinned. Those kneeling stood and turned away from him.
  Those who were tormenting him swiveled their heads to look toward the entrance.
   The plant stink grew stronger, and the stench of Khleevi slime increased as several of those who had
  been facing him extruded it behind them and tried to climb the walls, using only their pincers. They
  emitted high-pitched squeals along with chatters of mandiblekliks andklaks.
   Grimalkin couldn't see what his captors were looking at, but he could see that the ceiling was crawling
  with Khleevi, clumsily swarming over each other as more and more of the beasts avoided contact with
  the floor.
   The inevitable happened. The new ceiling crawlers bumped off the old ones and they started dropping
  like the dead bugs they were.Which was all very well until two of them crashed down on him.
   Fortunately, the weight of the first one landed on the top of the torture machine and tipped over the
  chair, breaking the hardened Khleevi slime holding him. He darted to the side, avoiding catching the
  second Khleevi in his tender feline mid-section. Then he had time to change into the only safe form he
  could think of.
   When he had transformed so successfully that he hardly knew himself, he scuttled forward to see what
  the fuss was about.
    
   (Whereishe?) Aari's thought images were increasingly, sick-eningly violent. He imagined what had
  happened to Grimalkin was much the same as what had happened to him. (I heard him screaming a
  moment ago.)
  
   (Yes, I did, too,) Acorna said. (You don't see him? Perhaps one of the Khleevi snatched him up.)
   But as she was trying to see past the squirming, squealing Khleevi, she heard another sort of noise
  behind her. She had heard that noise all too recently.
   (There's no time. Reinforcements are coming. You hear?)she said.
   A new horde of insectoid invaders marched into the light cast from the interior of the mound. The light
  was greenish and vaguely glittering. Acorna thought it must be some sort of bio-luminescence. She had
  not noted it before in connection with the Khleevi, but then, she had never been among them in a habitat
  of their own manufacture until now.
   She stepped forward to take a position between Aari and the oncoming force, standing with her back to
  his so that the containers strapped behind them were shielded. By now the interior of the mound was a
  mass of flailing, writhing, slipping, sliding Khleevi. They screeched so shrilly andklaked so constantly that
  it was a good thing the Linyaari were telepathic or they wouldn't have been able to hear each other. The
  ceiling of the mound was covered with climbing bodies but as the sap took effect on the injured, they
  dropped from their high perches like overripe fruit, often taking others of their kind with them.
   Aari said, (Vaanye, we have to leave! You come and watch Khornya's back. I'm going in to search for
  Grimalkin.)
   (You can't do that. What if they're armed?)
   Acorna examined the oncoming Khleevi even as she began laying down a barrier of sap between their
  feet and hers. (They're not,) she told her father.
   Aari added, (They didn't expect us, and I think they're too dangerous to each other to carry weapons
  when they're not engaged in battle. I don't remember my captors ever being armed with anything but their
  pincers and jaws.)
   (In that case, you and Khornya cover me. I'll go in.)
   (No!Father! I cannot stand to lose you when I've only just found you.)
   (I have no intention of being lost again — especially when Aari — I suppose I mean Grimalkin — isn't
  available to prevent my death a second time. But I have not seen one of their mounds before or seen
  them vulnerable like this. I want a closer look.)
   The vanguard of the reinforcements paused to sniff at the sap before stepping into it. Acorna wondered
  if the others had communicated with them about their previous encounter with thesap? They would have
  had to do so while they were dying. As far as she had been able to tell, Khleevi didn't appear to form
  emotional attachments, friendships, or kinships of any personal significance to them. Given that, she
  wondered who the dying Khleevi would warnfirst? As the squeals of the reinforcements joined those of
  the Khleevi in the mound, she found her horn itched to heal them, even despite all she knew about them.
  She decided it was simply her sap allergy, shook off the feeling, and shot a large gob of the sap onto the
  three Khleevi now dancing backward to escape her weapon. Meanwhile, others were edging around
  them. She shot a semicircle of the stuff around the bugs closing in on them, but her bursts were getting
  weaker and weaker. She was running out of ammunition.
  
   She turned to see how Aari and her father were doing, and if their sap containers were as depleted as
  hers. Aari stepped forward, but she saw her father wave him back. (Stay, I tell you. Take care of her.)
   Vaanye waded forward, picking up his feet and setting them down again ponderously as if he were
  walking on a heavy-gravity planet. Streamers of sap clung to his hooves no matter how high he lifted each
  foot.
   (I begin to understand where you get your courage,Yaazi,)Aari told Acorna.
   She turned and fired as a particularly hardy Khleevi crossed the narrow sap line to her right. But her
  weapon was sapped in more ways than one. The emerging substance extruded from the nozzle and hung
  there. In desperation Acorna scooped it up on her fingers and flung it at the intruder, hitting it squarely
  between the eyes.
   It retreated.
   She turned again. (Please, we have to leave. Have you received any message from Grimalkin, anything
  at all to show he's alive?)she asked Aari.
   (He could be alive but so crazed with pain and fear that he doesn't realize we're here and that he could
  reach us,) Aari told her, his thought bleak with his own memories.
   From the inside of the mound, a Khleevi waddled toward them, its progress through the sap even more
  labored than Vaanye's.
   (Watch out, Father!) Acorna cried. The Khleevi seemed unaffected by the sap and ignored it. The alien
  homed in on Vaanye, simply ducking out of the way of its fellows as they fell from the ceiling, Vaanye
  fired sap at his attacker but the Khleevi wiped it off and kept coming.
   (Could one of them have built upan immunity to this substance already?) Aari wondered.
   Before either of them could rush to Vaanye's aid, the Khleevi snagged him with a pincer and dragged
  him with it, trampling its fallen fellows to get at Aari and Acorna.
   Acorna fired at it point-blank, but nothing emerged from the nozzle. She backed away, toward the
  onslaught of Khleevi. One of the newcomers backed away, then ran forward, and she realized it would
  attempt — and probably succeed — to jump over the narrow channel of sap separating it from her and
  her companions.
   Not realizing the danger from that quarter, Aari dashed forward to try to extricate Vaanye. The creature
  dodged him quite adeptly for one so large.
   (Khornya!Watch out!) Aari warned. Failing to reach Vaanye, he now tried to block the creature from
  reaching Acorna. Its free limb brushed him aside and grabbed Acorna's arm, shaking the fertilizer gun out
  of her hand.
   Three of the relief Khleevi patrol hopped across the sap barrier and bore down on them.
   Aari shot a slug of sap at them, then dropped his own nozzle and shoved at the Khleevi. It focused its
  big bug eyes on him but did not release Acorna.
  
   (What are you waiting for?)it demanded. (That is no mere bauble on her wrist, but I can't program it
  with pincers. Punch this sequence. 1800-46-788-minus 56389 and get us out of here!)
   Chapter Eighteen
    
   Acorna tore the timer from her wrist and thrust it at Aari, who was more experienced with the device.
  He made several quick jabs at the cool blue light of the faceplate.
   All of the Khleevi except one disappeared, as did the devastated darkness of Khleevi-occupied
  Vhiliinyar. The remaining Khleevi turned into a cat, jumped onto Vaanye's shoulder, and disappeared. So
  did Vaanye. So did the timer. Acorna and Aari exchanged glances, rolled their eyes, and shrugged.
  There was no telling what Grimalkin was up to now.
   But the acrid air was also gone, replaced by the moist perfume of sweet grass after a light rain. The rush
  and tinkle of a fast-running stream filled their ears, and they saw its gleam through a stand of trees a short
  distance from the opening of the pavilion in which they stood. Instead of darkness, they were bathed in a
  soft lavender-to-violet rose-to-purple twilight as the star set over the sacred mountains.
   (Amazing!)Aari said, turning to her. (I had no idea so much had been accomplished with the
  terraforming.)
   (Nor didI . But I've spent most of my time either off-world or underground with the time device. Maati
  told me there's been remarkable progress, but I had no idea!)
   (Good of Grimalkin to bring us to such a lovely spot and discreetly vanish with your father so we can be
  alone — at last,) Aari remarked.
   (Yes.Though I must say that I have learned to be wary of Grimalkin's goodness.)
   (You have a point. But he's not really so bad. I thought so when I believed he'd abandoned me to the
  Khleevi, but now I realize he was just curious about you. I must be more careful about singing your
  praises to other males, no matter what species they are.)
   (What praises are those?)she teased. (I haven't heard them sung in quite some time — at least not by
  you.)
   (Oh, you know. How beautiful you are… Grimalkin can hardly tell the difference between one Linyaari
  and another — can you imagine? How brave you are, how clever…) He broke off to give himself a
  vigorous scratch in several places. (Do you suppose you could get my back? The sap itches so much I
  feel like leaving my body to get away from it.)
   (I have a better idea,) Acorna said. (Let's go bathe in the stream. We'll find some soapweed on the way
  and do a good job.)
   The soapweed grew conveniently near the stream banks. They stripped off the awkward containers that
  had held the sap, then their shipsuits and boots. Even in the moonlight, she saw that Aari's skin and her
  own were red and bumpy where they had been exposed to the sap.
   "Me first!"Aari said, and jumped into the stream feetfirst, splashing droplets that glittered like amethysts
  
  and rubies in the dying light.
   Acorna waded in after him. To her surprise and pleasure, the water was not cold, just pleasantly cool. It
  felt soothing on her irritated skin. She pulled soapweed from the banks and handed Aari some. Then she
  helped him find all of the hidden places the sap had invaded, and all of the hurts and bruises, and she
  soothed and healed them.
   He did the same for her, lingering where her skin was themost tender or sore, following each cleansing
  with a touch of horn and a light kiss. She needed no birth disk to tell her that this was truly Aari,herAari.
  The smell and feel of him were just right, the tension of muscle beneath his skin, the cording of the veins in
  his forearms and neck, the beloved stunted knot of horn that was in its very imperfection all the more
  beautiful to her.
   When he finished his exploration, she felt every cell of her being vibrating with the longing for closer
  touch and guessed he felt the same.
   But, to her disappointment, Aari dragged himself up on the bank and lay down in the grass, where he fell
  asleep.
   Sighing, she plucked their shipsuits from the bank and scrubbed them, laying them and herself on the
  bank beside Aari to dry. Then she joined him in slumber.
   Soon she was dreaming that she was being lifted and carried in strong, familiar arms, her head resting
  against a well-loved shoulder. She didn't need to open her eyes all the way to know that it was true. He
  carried her back to the pavilion and laid her upon the feather-soft sleeping mat. He started to rise and roll
  over to sleep again, but she kept her arms around his neck and pulled him down into her embrace again.
  (Yaazi, I am so glad you are finally home. Now I need you to come all the way home to me.All the way
  home.)
    
   Grimalkin leaped down from Vaanye's shoulder. Immediately, the wretched ship's cat landed on him
  with all talons extended, sharp fangs sinking into his head.
   (Scum-sucking phony, I've had enough of you!)RK growled, rolling over with him to try to get at
  Grimalkin's underside. (I knew you were nothing but a flea-bitten mite-eared, worm-tailed moggy from
  the first time I saw you.)
   (That's no way to treat one of your ancestors,)Grimalkin squawled in protest. (What is it with you
  anyway? You're acat, I'm a cat, what's the problem?)
   (This ismyturf, and those people you've been upsetting aremypeople. Give them backnyowor I'll gut you
  and go fishing with your entrails.)
   RK's back claws gouged hunks out of Grimalkin's hindquarters. The ship's cat twisted to bring himself
  onto Grimalkin's exposed belly.
   Grimalkin changed back to his Linyaari form.
   RK still clung to him.
  
   Grimalkin batted at him ineffectually withboth his hands, screeching, "Someone get this monster off me!"
   Someone did. "Cut it out, you fuzz-butted fraud. Let him alone!" Becker thundered as he pried RK's
  claws loose.
   "Thank you," Grimalkin said, trying to regain his dignity. Unfortunately, his dignity was in shreds, along
  with several other parts of him. "I don't know what he has against me."
   "I do. And I was talking to you, not RK. What did you do with Aari and Acorna?"
   Grimalkin ignored him and backed up to Vaanye. "Please. I am in pain. Heal me."
   "Please answer Captain Becker first," Vaanye said.
   "But you were with me. You know they're fine."
   "I did not see where we were. You changed times so rapidly I saw nothing except that they were gone,
  and you and I returned here. I cannot believe you continue to be so devious and secretive when the three
  of us just risked our lives and worse to go back to face the Khleevi and save you."
   "Devious?Secretive? Me? I was simply rewarding my dear friends by taking them somewhere beautiful
  and peaceful where they could finally be alone together and enjoy each other before returning to yet
  another disaster." He motioned to the lines of people from ships to the cave entrance, the pumps, the
  mud, and the air of urgency. "I have been trying to help them all along, and for my trouble have received
  only distrust and anger. Not from you, of course, Vaanye.At least, not until now. I am an empath. I suffer
  when you suffer. I suffered whentheysuffered. When this crisis is done, I will fetch them back.
  Meanwhile, they have earned a little holo day, don't you think?"
   Vaanye sighed, misunderstanding as Grimalkin had figured he would. "Yes, yes, of course they have. It's
  just that Feriila and I have had so little time with Khornya ourselves. But what time we've had we owe to
  you. We can be patient a bit longer." His posture had relaxed, and his voice softened, but it hardened
  one more time as he said, "Just so they return as you say they will. Meanwhile, I think it might be a good
  idea if I keep the timing device for you, in case you are tempted to disappear again."
   "Good thinking, Acorna's Dad," Becker said. He stood with his feet slightly apart, his fists balled at his
  sides as if he wished they were holding wrenches, crowbars, or other blunt and weighty objects capable
  of inducing trauma.
   "Very well," Grimalkin said, and removed the timer from his neck, where it rested when he was in cat
  form and could be programmed with touches from his hind foot. As he feinted with it toward Vaanye, he
  pressed the preprogrammed tab,then popped the device back around his own wrist. He had to laugh at
  the looks on their faces just before they vanished from his timescape.
   They'd probably accuse him of deviousness again, but he was only thinking of everyone's greater good.
  He could not surrender his timer. He had events to arrange, histories to shape, fate to engineer. If people
  were occasionally resentful of his power, it was because their understanding of the cosmos was too
  limited to encompass an understanding of his responsibilities.
   Like the one he must discharge now, knowing even as he did so that somehow or other it was bound to
  cause him more trouble.
  
   He arrived at the healing center three days after he deposited Aari and Acorna in the holo suite there.
  The center was seldom used, now that the unicorns were on Vhilnnyar and could so readily heal any
  injuries or illnesses. The holo suite was relatively new, and spacious enough that occupants could go for a
  romantic walk and never guess they were within a single room. Before he rescued Aari the first time, he
  had seen to it that the suite was especially tailored to contemporary Linyaari tastes. Whether it was
  intuition, or a memory from time he had spent in the future, he had known even then that the suite would
  be needed, though not exactly how or why.
   The pavilion had appointments their people found comfortable. The grasses were those they favored.
  The climate was carefully controlled to be pleasant and relaxing. Rain would patter down only when the
  occupants were near enough to the pavilion to enjoy a few refreshing drops before seeking shelter.
  Dramatic storms occurred only while the occupants were snug inside the pavilion. It was always twilight,
  or dawn, when the world was at its most beautiful, and not incidentally, at its most indistinct. Even the
  temperature of the stream was chosen with Linyaari pleasure in mind.
   It turned out to be the perfect place for — what had the humans called it?A honeymoon. This was the
  perfect place for their honeymoon, where Aari's and Acorna's union would be repeatedly consummated
  and where they could bond in peace.
   Grimalkin stopped by his own den, which changed the spots and stripes of its upholstery, floor, and wall
  coverings in slow rotation, a cosmic cat joke.
   He checked the observation screen and saw that within the suite it was night. Aari and Acorna slept
  tangled together in each other's arms. He gulped, feeling an unfamiliar ache in his upper thorax. They
  were very beautiful together.Maybe even more beautiful than they were separately.
   He checked the readings from the suite's internal monitors. What they told him was more definitive than
  he had hoped or imagined. It was a perfect opportunity. Much more perfect than what he had planned to
  do. Yet it also made him sad. They would never know, of course. There was no need for them ever to
  know, and what they didn't know could not hurt them. And it would be beneficial to the project, the race,
  and ultimately the universe. He was, of course, overjoyed to be the bearer of such a gift.
   He wished he did not have to —betraywas rather a loaded word, wasn't it?Trick, then. He wished he
  did not have to trick them again. But he did.
   And he would only feel worse the longer he delayed, so, gathering what he needed, he entered the holo
  suite.
   It was time.
   Chapter Nineteen
    
   Acorna awoke quickly, though she felt uncommonly drowsy and stiff. But she was aware, even before
  her eyes opened, that they were no longer alone. Beside her, Aari sat straight up.
   "Grimalkin," they said together.
   "Hello, lovebirds!" he said, looking even more smug than usual. Becker would say he had that "cat who
  swallowed the canary" look. Grimalkin was in cat-man form now, standing on two feet but wearing an
  
  orange-and-cream-striped tail, an inhuman amount of body fur in the same colors, and ears on top of his
  head, twitching in all directions. Though his face was more or less human, his pupils were unnaturally
  wide and round in the dim light of the pavilion, and his eyes glittered with the nocturnal brightness of a
  cat's. The mustache under his human nose was composed of very long individual whiskers that drooped
  like the mustache of one of those Fu Manchu villains in old vids.
   "I hope you have all ofthatout of your systems and are ready to rejoin your people. I have other things to
  do than ferry you around, you know."
   "Yes," Aari said lazily. "Now that you're alive and away from the torture machine to do them, I'm sure
  you do."
   "Don't think I'm not grateful," Grimalkin said in a way that told Acorna that although he thought heought
  to be grateful, the cat creature could not quite get his mind around the concept. "This little vacation was in
  part my way of thanking you."
   "What was the other part?" Acorna asked, instantly suspicious.
   Grimalkin's eyes grew even bigger and filled with kittenish innocence. He was as difficult to read as ever.
  But he hesitated slightly before answering, "Why, to allow you to rest, of course. Both of you were
  completely exhausted from your travels, and I felt somewhat responsible…"
   "Youwereresponsible," they said in unison.
   "Hmph, I saidsomewhat. Nothing interesting was happening in your usual haunts…"
   "Except for floods and mass destruction," Acorna said. "But I don't suppose a little thing like that
  concerns you."
   "All of that is under control. Don't you think there are others who can deal with that sort of problem?
  And you two didn't need to take on any more trouble just now. You needed to relax. So I brought you
  here."
   "Where — or should I say when — is here exactly?" Aari asked.
   "Never mind that.It is time for you to go back to your dreary workaday existences."
   He grabbed their hands, but first Acorna snatched up their shipsuits and tossed one to Aari. He looked
  regretfully at it. The Linyaari had no moral issues or societal mores concerning public nudity, but Acorna
  had been raised by humans. She had her share of rules about clothing. She pulled her suit on before
  taking Grimalkin's hand. Aari shrugged resignedly and did likewise.
   One moment they were inside the pavilion holding Grimalkin's hands and the next they were in the field
  outside the cave entrance. But Grimalkin was gone.
   They stood beside theCondor, watching the emergency crews remove their flood control equipment.
  Ferula ran up to greet them."Khornya! Aari, you're back. I will let Vaanye know. We have so been
  looking forward to spending time with you! Vaanye is in the old city inspecting the damage to the time
  device."
   Behind them, the robolift descended, and Becker yelled, "Hey, kids! Good to see you finally got out of
  
  the sack and came back to work!"
   RK and Maak were with him. Feriila disappeared into the tunnel. Acorna hugged Becker and lifted RK
  for a kiss, but the cat immediately squirmed to be released. Maak, his horn modification attached to his
  forehead, patted her carefully on the shoulder and, just as carefully, shook hands with Aari.
   "I'm not even going to ask what you've been up to," Becker said, winking at them, "but we have been
  real busy here. The flood messed up a lot of the old city. I have some of the most interesting salvage of
  my career aboard now. Can't wait to get out of here and find me some buyers. It's the durndest stuff you
  ever saw. And I can pack a lot of it aboard because its molecules are so loosely bonded it keeps
  changing shapes all the time. I literally was able to fit an entire hospital building into Bay 7."
   "But the waters have receded?" Acorna asked.
   "Not really. We pumped them up and dumped them into the rivers and what's left up here of the sea.
  The surface still needs the water. There's an artesian well down there underneath the time device
  apparently. The people who used to live thereregulated the flow, but the Khleevi you brought back with
  you busted the regulator. Your dad and some of the other engineers were able to fix that, but so far, they
  say it looks as if the time machine itself is toast."
   (Our people have made remarkable strides in trustingthisoutsider at least,) Aari said. (Remember when
  they didn't want him to step onto the surface of narhn-Vhiliinyar?)
   (Yes, and even when the Council decided he could be permitted to land here in an emergency, at first he
  couldn't leave theCondor, then he wasn't to know about the ancient city or the time device.)
   (Perhaps we should have an artificial horn made for him for his natal day?) Aari suggested playfully.
   (Don't mention that aloud, or he'll want one,) Acorna said, smiling.
   Becker looked from one of them to the other, grinning uncertainly. "Okay, what are you two thinking at
  each other? It's about me, right?"
   "We can't tell you," Acorna said. "It's a surprise."
   "Oh!" he huffed into his mustache."Really. Well, okay, then."
   They strolled toward the tunnel mouth as they talked, reaching it just as Vaanye and Feriila arrived,
  followed closely by Laarye and Maati.
   Vaanye embraced them both. "I confess I was a little worried about you two being somewhere known
  only to Grimalkin." He spoke aloud for the sake of Becker and Maak, and the others followed suit.
   "We worried about it, too," Aari said, putting his arm around Acorna's shoulders. "But we finally
  resigned ourselves to the inevitable and made the best of it. Fortunately for us, for a change Grimalkin
  proved trustworthy and came to get us."
   "I still don't trust him," Maati said. "He's a very shifty kitty."
   "But he has done great good along with all his tricks," Laarye argued. "We are all back together again
  because of him.And not dead. I certainly count that as a positive development."
  
   "True," Maati said. "But he only did it because it suited him to do so while he was doing something else.
  Still, I'm glad. I know I should feel grateful to him, but I guess I'm still waiting to see what else he's up to."
   "I suggest we forget about Grimalkin and what he might do and concentrate on the problems we
  currently have at hand," Vaanye said. "Khornya, Aari, you two are more familiar with the time device
  than any of us. Perhaps you would care to examine the damage the Khleevi inflicted yourselves and make
  some recommendations?"
   "I, too, would like to see it," Maak said. "As a fellow device, in a manner of speaking, I might have some
  helpful suggestions. Before the Khleevi returned with our friends, I collected and processed considerable
  data about the mechanism. It may help me analyze its operation and participate in its possible repair."
   Becker accompanied them since he needed to pack up some more salvage. "Pretty nice of them to give
  me the concession on all this stuff they're tossing out, seeing as how I didn't even know the city was there
  until a few weeks ago."
   As they slipped and slid down the passageway's mud-slicked rock floor, he remarked, "This is the
  cleanest-smelling flood site it has ever been my honor to visit. No smell of mold, no old sewage mixed
  with the water. The Linyaari horns took care of all that, I guess. The place is pretty well wrecked, of
  course. But instead of being a filthy mess, this place just looks like it got put through a too-enthusiastic
  rinse cycle."
   Acorna saw that Becker was correct when they traversed the freshly washed tunnel. She was glad to
  see none of the cave's paintings had been damaged. Instead, they were brighter than ever, gleaming as
  though they had just been painted. Small pools of water glistening in the indentations of the cave's floor
  were the only indication the place had been flooded.
   The time device building was the worse for wear — though the damage seemed to be from the struggling
  Khleevi rather than the floodwaters. The walls no longer lit when they were touched. Panels had come
  loose, littering the hallway and leaving openings into the various rooms.
   But the room where the time device had been was the worst. The Khleevi had done more damage than
  she realized, gouging great holes in the planetary maps within the walls, leaving circuitry exposed. The
  huge double helix that had once dominated the center of the room was gone. It left behind only the hastily
  patched container to hold the now placid pool.
   Acorna knew without further examination that the delicate device was damaged beyondherability to
  mend it, at least. But she went through the motions of looking at everything, just in case her intuition was
  wrong, though she was sure it wasn't.
   Then she heard the footsteps — not single ones, but important, impatient ones, steps of beings with
  two-hoofed feet and also the steps of beings with four.
   Thariinye, looking very important and impatient himself, stood in the entrance, and announced, "The
  Linyaari High Council and a Delegation of Ancestors has come to inspect the premises and make a
  determination as to its disposition."
   "Whoa there, big boy," Becker said. "I think we agreed that I got whatever was to be disposed of."
   With the Ancestors in the front, the Council members paraded soberly into the room. The Council
  
  questioned each of those who had come to fix the time machine. Then, without comment, the Council
  departed to tour the rest of the city. Acorna climbed after them to the upper level. Crude stairs had been
  inserted into the hill-like barrier between the lower floor and the upper.
   From this level she could see clearly into the street beyond,It was not a pretty sight. Many of the
  structures had already been cleared. Some that remained were little more than partial frameworks with
  bits of facade clinging to them. Others continued to shift their shapes — but each disconnected piece
  shifted at a different rate into a different sort of building from all of the other parts. To Becker, at least, it
  looked like the nightmare of an architect who had had far, far too much to drink.
   Thariinye acted as the guide, marching the Council up and down streets. The only place they paused at
  for any length of time was the shore of the little inland sea at the foot of the incline on which the city was
  built. Thesii-Linyaari lived there now. Maati said the reclamation efforts would have been far less
  successful without the help of the aquatic people placing pumps and hoses and helping to shut off the
  artesian well. The sea churned briefly, then was full of horned heads, smacking tails, and gesticulating
  webbed hands. That consultation continued for some time before the Council performed an about-face
  and marched back to the time device building.
   "Please be so kind as to follow us back to the surface,"AagroniIirtyi said. "There we will advise
  everyone at once of our decision."
   Once they were all aboveground, the ships' communications officers returned to their posts and hailed
  other crews at work on Vhiliinyar's surface as well as Linyaari on MOO and narhii-Vhiliinyar.
   Maak returned to theCondoron Becker's behalf. Becker remained at the invitation of the Council.
   "What we have to say concerns you, too, Captain." Theaagroniwas the speaker now. "The items you
  have already salvaged from the city below you may sell abroad, as is your practice. However, there is
  one condition."
   "Name it," Becker said.
   "You must never let anyone know where you obtained these things."
   "Of course.I never reveal my sources even without conditions." Becker sounded mildly offended, but
  very relieved.
   "Very well.Out of courtesy, we felt we should address your concerns first. For the rest, we will be brief.
  On the advice of the Ancestors we came as a body to inspect the city following the recent calamity, with
  a view toward abandoning the site."
   "Abandoning it?" Maati said. "I don't understand. There's so much to be learned, to be done down
  there…"
   "If one chooses to pursueit, that is true. However, the Council and the Ancestors feel that our energies
  and resources would be more usefully employed in the continued rejuvenation of Vhiliinyar."
   "But,aagroni, you yourself have used the machine to bring back specimens of life-forms lost during the
  Khleevi invasion. Our terraforming crew has used it to model the planet's new face. It has been extremely
  valuable in this work."
  
   "Yes, it has. I put forth the same arguments myself. But this was not my decision alone. Even while
  acknowledging those contributions, the Council — and the Ancestors — feel that there is too strong an
  element of danger involved with the use of the device.For instance, when Acorna and Aari brought
  Khleevi back into our time again, however accidentally. At present they are blessedly extinct. We very
  much wish to keep them that way.
   "The only issue for the preservation of the underground city that is equally compelling, in our estimation,
  as the argument for abandoning the site is that it has become a habitat for thesii-Linyaari who have been
  brought forward to our time. We propose, therefore, that thesii-Linyaari be brought above ground along
  with as much of their watery habitat as it is possible to bring. They may live among us and we may learn
  from each other as the siblings we are. Otherwise, the Council has decided that the city is to be sealed off
  once more. It is too ex-pensive and time-consuming to attempt to repair the damage done to it, even
  assuming we felt that was the best course of action for our people. And, without those repairs, it is far
  too hazardous for anyone to continue the studies of the Ancestral Friends' mechanisms. The usefulness of
  the time machine is also no longer an issue, since that has been destroyed. Of course, if a large enough
  percentage of our people petition a change in this decree, we will reconsider. But for the time being,
  except for the reintroduction of thesii-Linyaari to the surface waterways, the underground city — and the
  matter — are closed. We trust this will facilitate the progress of our more urgent work on our planet.
  Thank you."
   Chapter Twenty
    
   Karina's voice over the com unit was breathless, though she tried to maintain her deep mystical sonorous
  tones to lend authority to her words. Her chins and bosom trembled with emotion as she spoke, and her
  hands moved with fingers extending upward in both offering and benediction. Behind her, Hafiz's chins
  trembled with emotion as he watched Karina's chins and bosom. "I see a large gathering of people of
  diverse species and origins. Despite these superficial differences, many of them are related to each other
  through a single connection. Important life passages are taking place at the gathering. Two females, of
  different species, and yet, soon to be related, will become formally attached to their mates according to
  the rites of their indigenous cultures. There will be beautiful gowns, sumptuous fabrics, fine jewels, and
  rich and delicious foods to please all palates."
   "What my beloved Karina is trying to say," Hafiz interjected, "is that we wish to have a party celebrating
  the marriage of my beloved nephew and son of my heart to the woman he first met in her previous
  capacity as a thief. This pretty thief has stolen his heart it seems. Additionally, Karina, Rafik, and I would
  all like to formally celebrate the reunion of the daughter of our heart, you, dear Acorna, to your mate. We
  realize that the custom among your people is to make the forming of the lifemate bond under less formal
  circumstances, but we hope you will indulge our barbaric love of pageantry when such events occur in
  the lives of our loved ones."
   Acorna thoughtfully stroked RK's proffered tail and turned to Aari, Becker, and Maak. "We can hardly
  say no after all Uncle Hafiz has done for us," she said. And, as she said it, she heard in the lilt of her own
  voice how very much the idea pleased her.
   "Ask them if I would need to braid my mane with flowers and ribbons," Aari said, wrinkling his nose.
   Acorna laughed and conveyed his concern to the com unit. Rafik poked his head around the portly
  forms of his elder relations. "Tell him I certainly don't intend to, and that we bridegrooms should stick
  together."
  
   "Bridegrooms?"Mac said."An unusual word. But, Khornya, from my research into the sociological
  patterns of wholly biological bipeds, it seems to me that when the principal person involved in a rite of
  passage is from two cultures, the rite is frequently celebrated according to the customs of first one, and
  then the other. Since you were raised in human culture, it would not be inappropriate for you and Aari to
  wed according to human custom."
   "There. See? Mac saysit's okay, so it must be okay," Becker said. "I'll haul out the dress uniform.
  Weddings are good for business. You can do a lot of valuable schmoozing at the receptions, and you
  know Hafiz will invite a lot of his business buddies."
   "Do you think Calum and Gill will come?" Acorna asked Rafik wistfully. She hadn't seen her other two
  foster fathers since the defeat of the Khleevi.
   Rafik grinned. "They'd better. They're the groomsmen. They started wrangling about who would be best
  man at my wedding, so Hafiz took matters into his own hands and declared thathewould be the best man.
  Then they sulked and neither of themwere going to come until we told them we planned to get you and
  Aari hitched at the same time — uh — according to our quaint native customs." He grinned evilly. "Now
  youget to decide which of your daddies gets to give you away."
   "But I don't want to be given away," she said. "I want to keep all of you."
   Mac said, "I think this is an opportunity for you to forge some new customs, Rafik. Perhaps a committee
  formed ofyourself , Mr. Baird, Mr. Giloglie, Uncle Hafiz, Vaanye, Captain Becker, and I should see
  Khornya safely to Aari's side at the ceremony."
   "Sounds kinda like a posse," Becker suggested, with a twinkle under his heavy brows. "Too bad Aari
  doesn't have as many people to make sure he gets to the altar on time. He's the one who's done the most
  disappearing."
   "Actually," Hafiz said, we will be entertaining a state visit from Makahomia at that time, led by Regent
  Nadhari and the Mulzarah Miw-Sher. I believe they feel they have a very strong claim to our Aari, who is
  widely celebrated in Makahomian history, legend, and myth."
   RK's ears pricked up, and Hafiz noticed. "The original purpose of the visit," he continued, "was to
  deliver two of the new litters of kittens as a planet-warming gift to the Linyaari from the people of
  Makahomia. It seems to me that things are falling together nicely. Leave matters in my hands, and all will
  be well."
    
   Thus it was that a remarkably short time later, amid much fanfare and confusion, a double ceremony was
  held on the Moon of Opportunity, uniting Rafik and Aziza in holy matrimony, and also uniting Aari and
  Acorna as lifemates.
   The double-wide wedding canopy, with ample room for expanded wedding parties, was adorned with
  red silk and garlands of brilliant orange-gold flowers, which incidentally happened to be delicious to eat
  for the Linyaari. Aziza wore a gold-gilt-filigree-trimmed gown of sheer silks layered rose over orange
  over rust over red over wine. Her hands, feet, and face were painted with intricate reddish designs, which
  was an ancient practice among her people.
  
   Acorna's gown, ordered for her by Karina, was of a similar style to Aziza's, though it was moreflowing
  than draped and tucked. The gown's skirt and long, bell-shaped sleeveswere a waterfall of brilliant aqua
  over deep emerald, all over deep blue, and trimmed in silver to complement Acorna's complexion.
  Grandam Naadiina's belt was the perfect finishing touch to the outfit. It served as the "something old"
  Mercy Kendoro told Acorna she needed as a charm for good luck and happiness.
   Mercy, Judit, Calum, and Gill had all arrived a week before the festivities so that the ladies could help
  with the preparations. Of course, there were several hundred staff members, relatives, and friends
  already there to help, but Mercy and Judit had recent knowledge of the wedding customs that Calum's
  and Gill's people foliowed.
   "Let's see, Grandam's belt is the 'something old.' Your gown is the 'something blue.' Calum wishes you
  to carry a kerchief in the tartan that's related to his family. So you'll be borrowing that.Something new?
  Hmmm. We could say you're getting a new husband, but you and Aari have actually been together for
  some time."
   "The dress can be blue and new, too, can't it?" Acorna asked.
   "Well, yes, I suppose so," Mercy agreed reluctantly. It was clear that she felt that they really should be
  separate items.
   Karina, who had been circling Acorna as she tried on the wedding gown, snapped her fingers, and said,
  "I know what it is!" She looked meaningfully at Acorna's hand, then at Mercy's and Judit's. However,
  they looked back at Acorna's three-fingered, single-knuckled hands.
   "Oh, well, perhaps not," Karina said."But something! I must go see to it at once! And talk to Aari, of
  course."
   Ferula, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, out of the way of the cyclones created by the human
  women, suddenly giggled, "Iknowwhat's new, daughter ."
   Baffled, Acorna turned to her. "You do, Mother?" It was so nice to have someone to call "Mother." She
  had many fathers and uncles and even an aunt, but it pleased her deeply every time she reaffirmed the
  presence of her own actual mother, who was once again in her life. Of course, her mother looked to be
  about the same age as she was, but that was to be expected. The Linyaari aged very slowly once they
  reached adulthood, and then there was all that time-shifting to confuse the issue. "What?"
   "You mean you don't know yet? Hasn't she spoken to you?"
   "I don't understand what you mean."
   "Your daughter.The one who caused you to loosen Grandam's belt a notch just now."She shook her
  head in amazement, staring at first her own abdomen, then at Acorna. "It seems only a few weeks ago
  you weremybaby daughter."Her mouth quirked wryly. "That's time travel for you, I suppose. Itwasonly
  weeks ago in my life. And now I will be a grandam, and you the mother of a daughter."
   "I'm having a daughter?When?" She didn't know what to ask, and instead of addressing Feriila, asked
  her question of her own midsection, which gurgled. Not in answer to the inquiry, but because she hadn't
  grazed all day long, having been so busy with meeting and greeting the steady stream of arriving guests.
   "Soon.Our children grow quickly, you know. You'd better finish this rite of passage in short order and
  
  brace yourself for the next one."
   "Really?Oh, I can't believe it! How wonderful! Our own child already! I have to find Aari…"
   Mercy and Judit laughed and held her back as she tried to jump down from the chair on which she was
  standing while they pinned up her dress to just the right length. They insisted that laser stitchers just
  weren't accurate enough since they needed measurements input instead of using a keen bridesmaid's eye.
  "Whoa, Acorna! Not in that dress! It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her gown before the
  wedding."
   "You're joking! He's seen me in nothing at all! Why should it be bad luck for him to see me in this pretty
  dress?"
   "It's just a human superstition, butI think the reason is it spoils the surprise. We're done here for now.
  Change and then go find him. Please?"
   She laughed at them but did as they asked.
   She found Aari seeking sanctuary from the wedding chaos in the laboratory with his parents and Laarye.
  His human friends had been bombarding him with their plans and expectations, too, she knew. Judit said
  males were programmed not to enjoy their role in these ceremonies as much as females.
   But Acorna's news had nothing to do with ceremonies and everything to do with love.
    
   After Acorna told Aari her good news, the others had to make their wedding preparations without them,
  as they were too busy taking long walks through the gardens, grazing, gazing at the holo sky at the top of
  the bubble, and thinking of baby names, planning for the new arrival a variety of childhoods and careers.
    
   The ceremony, when it finally arrived, was very lively. The MOO's security chief was accompanied
  down the aisle by her trusted lieutenants and kinswomen. They had traded in their black uniforms for new
  dance costumes that were even more colorful and revealing than the ones they'd first worn. From the way
  each dancer made eyes over her veils at the men seated around the center aisle, Acorna guessed each of
  them was thinking that the next such ceremony could be hers.
   Rafik looked… well… beautiful. Instead of his familiar shipsuit, he wore an outfit that might have been in
  the closet of the Arabian Nights' sultan, Harun al Rashid. His clothing was in the same colors as that of
  his bride, with the addition of a dollop of yellow-orange, his shirt. Standing beside him, Aari looked
  skittish, as if he was about to bolt, as if he would almost rather be facing the Khleevi than this.
   But then Acorna followed Aziza and the dancing girls up the aisle, and Aari turned and saw her. His face
  lit up in a grin that almost, but not quite, bared his teeth. The rest of the ceremony was a blur for her. She
  felt as if she were wearing one of the dancers' antigrav belts, as if she were floating a foot off the ground.
  Words flew around and through her like so many bright birds. She could only hope they said them in the
  correct order. All of the other faces were a blur. Only Aari's eyes held hers and her hand gripped his,
  which gripped hers back as if separate tractor beams were trying to pull them away from each other.
   When Rafik and Aziza exchanged rings, Aari slipped a bracelet onto Acorna's wrist — Karina's idea of
  
  something new, Acorna realized. Rings were impractical for the Linyaari, but this bracelet bore in its
  center a teal blue catseye large enough that she could carve out a home in any wilderness if she so
  desired. Carve out a whole city, in fact. Aari smiled apologetically and winked. They both knew that
  there was no saying no to Karina, who only meant to be kind and generous, after all.
   At the end of the ceremony was the reception. More merrymaking ensued, with the wedding garden
  suddenly terraced with banks of edible reeds, flowers, vines, and plants. It was all too much.
   Then there were the gifts. The Linyaari, unfamiliar with these customs, mostly brought bouquets of
  edibles, but the humans lavished both of the couples with all manner of things. The agents of Skarness
  brought a set of stones for Aari and Acorna. When the agents learned of Acorna's condition, the stones
  were retuned for lullabies.
   Becker was far more excited about the news of their incipient offspring than he was about the wedding.
  He gave them a set of children's vids and some rather decrepit hard-copy volumes of stories about an
  odd-looking ursine creature who lived on a planet populated with a braying, depressed equine with long
  ears and a very energetic feline not unlike Grimalkin. It seemed to possess an unusually flexible set of
  antigrav-technology-equipped paws. "I think Joe's confused the wedding reception with the baby
  shower," Andina said, smiling as they opened her set of cleaning supplies.
   Even RK got into the act. Acorna thought there was something odd about his fur when she first saw him
  at the reception, then realized that parts of it were blue and part had red designs on it rather like those on
  Aziza's hands and feet. "Cat got himself painted by a Makahomian cat painter from the planet's
  delegation. That hot jungle cat Haruna came with them, and she had a dandy paint job, too. It's
  something the cats do on special occasions, and RK didn't want to be left out. He brought you these."
  Becker hefted a dead rodent and one of the large bags of cat food with which he'd replenished the
  Condor'ssupply. "Well, the kid will need a kitten. The kitten will need food. We're thinking practical here.
  The — uh — dead rat is a customary cat gift. Feel free to heal it if you want to." Acorna and Aari looked
  nervously toward the Makahomians. Instead of the rumored litters of kittens, they had brought with them
  only Gnmla and Haruna and one of the kittens, now almost fully grown, from the orphaned litter Gnmla
  rescued in the steppes. Acorna couldn't have been happier to see her old friends.
   Mac apologetically said he was making them a gift. He had not had time to finish it yet.
   Hafiz's gift was a new space vesselof their very own .
   (Good,) Aari told her. (It will give us someplace to put all these other things. What do we do with three
  portable kaf replicators anyway?)
   (Perhaps we can trade one of them with Aziza and Rafik, in case they got three of something we might
  need one of.)
   (We don't need any of these things! We need a name for our daughter! We need good teachers, we
  need…)
   (Excuse me, Aari. I hate to break in like this, but I cannot make myself heard otherwise.) That was
  Feriila. The crowd around them parted to make room for her and Vaanye. (I have something for you.
  Miiri gave Khornya your birth disk.) She pulled a silver chain from around her neck, and the little disk
  winked with rainbows from the party lights. (I thought this was an appropriate time to give you
  Khornya's.)
  
   Aari's family smiled across atFeriila, as Aari ducked down to receive her gift.
   (We will, of course, arrange for the birthing assistants and physicians, if needed,) Kaarlye told him. The
  Linyaari were all using thought-talk now because it was very difficult to makethemselves heard over the
  noise of the party.
   (And we have employed the best artisan among our people to create your daughter's birth disk,) Miiri
  said. All of the Linyaari relatives smiled.
    
   When they finally caught up with him, Grimalkin was batting at a shiny silver disk and watching it spin.
   "Give us the specimen, Grimalkin," the eagle said as it landed in the tree where he had been hiding and
  changed into a beautiful woman. "You know you can't escape us. We got your timer."
   "Yes, I know, and I'd like to make a formal objection about that…"
   "I'm sure you would. Return the specimen, and we'll discuss this rationally. That is, if you are still capable
  of rational thought, words, or deeds."
   Grimalkin sulked and palmed the disk. "I am. More than you are. Why should you censure me when I
  exceeded all of you in obtaining what we need?"
   A man who was still folding his long tail into his rather simian body answered. "It's your attitude, and you
  know it. Exceeded all of us indeed! Without authorization, you released a valuable subject of study."
   "You were scaring him to death. Besides, there was an easier way. I thought."
   "This led you off-planet with him for how many time twists?And the rest of your story, about the brother
  and that cultural half-breed mate of his."
   "Khornya.Acorna.And it wasn't a story, it was true."
   "True or not, it was quite a story. You cannot simply go chasing your tail through time because the
  potential donor of some useful genetic material believes himself to be frightened of us. Look what you led
  him into when it suited you to become better acquainted with his mate! You are not fit to carry a timer,
  Grimalkin. You lost it, and it could easily have fallen into the hands… no, pincers… of those monsters.
  As it was, they ruined this time facility for all future generations. Besides which, three unauthorized
  subjects used your timer without supervision. It could very well have been lost to you then. You are too
  irresponsible to continue carrying it. You are certainly not reliable enough to retain possession of the
  specimen."
   "It is not a specimen, it — she — is a child in progress.The child of your subject and the cultural
  half-breed. They are friends of mine— "
   "Which is why you took it?"
   "They have another one."
   "Why did you not bring it as well, then?" the woman demanded. "Theirsort enjoy making more."
  
   "I saw no reason to be greedy. Starting the Linyaari race from one individual from the future race istruly
  chasing our own tails, if you consider it, as you say, rationally. Taking a second female with the same
  DNA and genetic structure would be pointless."
   "Not at all.We may need a backup. Zygotes are fragile. Something might happen to it."
   "Exactly," Grimalkin hissed, his eyes narrowing. "Which is why I decided not to give her to you after all.
  That and — sheis lonely. She misses her sister. I had no idea she'd feel that way. I couldn't wait to get
  away from my littermates, myself."
   "Be that as it may, you cannot care for the specimen — for the incipient infant — and it will soon
  outgrow the collection womb. You will need our facilities to preserve its — her — viability."
   "I plan to return her to Aari and Acorna."
   "I see. And Acorna can simply put it back where it came from until it is born?"
   "No — no, I believe it is too old at this stage. But something could be done."
   "Something has been done, Grimalkin. We have taken your timer so you cannot return the specimen. It
  will die unless you give it to us to preserve. In doing so, as you well know, you will have provided the
  missing link betweenourselves , the unicorns, and the Linyaari."
   He could not argue. The beings surrounding him, known to the Linyaari as the Ancestral Hosts or
  Friends, were shape-shifters as powerful, maybe even more powerful, than he. They were excellent at
  political intrigue, whereas he considered himself merely tricky. He brought forth the collection womb and
  stroked it with the pad of his hand that was rapidly turning into a paw. (Don't be frightened, little one. No
  one will hurt you. And the unicorns are rather nice.)
   (?) The thought was small and indistinct — probably inaudible to the telepathy of those around them, but
  it twisted something inside him with unexpected pain.
   The woman reached for it.
   He pulled it back. "I'll just carry it as far as the laboratory,then I will relinquish it."
   "You'll relinquish it now or risk its destruction," she told him.
   "Oh, very well.Don't fret, little one. Daa will come and visit you often."
   The woman took the womb and handed it to a swan-woman, who flew away with it.
   "I'm afraid that won't be possible, Grimalkin. You see, we've decided to banish you."
   "Banish me? You can't do that!"
   "Oh, but we can. We have your timer, but we can send you whenever we wish. Since you are so
  concerned about this family, we suggest you return to them if they'll have you. You'll have a lot of
  explaining to do. I'm afraid you'll have a difficult time doing it."
  
   He was shrinking into his smallest cat form as she spoke, literally shrinking away from her.
   She held out her hand, and the simian man slapped an instrument into it. Grimalkin tried to change again.
  She pointed it at him, and he felt something tight and cold, so cold, enter him.
   "Just as you froze the forms of the acid creatures you mentioned, we can freeze your form. Perhaps this
  will be beneficial to your fickle nature. Good-bye. Good riddance."
   Grimalkin could only mew and vanish.
   Chapter Twenty-One
    
   As Feriila predicted, the baby began communicating before she was born. She knew the thought-form
  for mother — "Lalli" and the one for father, "Avvi." It delighted Aari when he picked up on it, though at
  times Acorna felt a bit foolish talking to her own abdomen. But often the baby seemed restless, more
  than just the restlessness of the child longing to escape the womb for the wide worlds beyond. She
  lacked something, called for something with a word her parents didn't understand. When one of those
  incidents happened, it took a long time to comfort her. Acorna had the oddest feeling that just when she
  and her baby were the closest, the child was lonely.
   The baby became a source of contention. Hafiz felt he could offer Acorna the best medical care on
  MOO. The Council, on the other hand, felt the ideal solution, considering the redistribution of the
  Linyaari population according to stargoing or planet-hugging proclivities, was for her to give birth on
  narhii-Vhiliinyar. There, they pointed out, her human and other alien friends could visit and yet she would
  still be surrounded by Linyaari who could heal any illness or injury, any slight anomaly she might
  experience during her pregnancy. The problem with that plan was that narhii-Vhiliinyar was not as
  rehabilitated from the Khleevi attack it had suffered as Vhilnnyar was. By now, thanks to the catseyes
  and the funds from their sale, Vhiliinyar was almost entirely reterraformed into the world it once had
  been.
   A compromise was struck. Acorna and Aari would remain on MOO throughout the rest of her
  pregnancy, as long as she stayed healthy. Six weeks before she was due to deliver, she would be
  transported to their new quarters on Vhiliinyar.
   She was very tired of so much attention, even from the people she dearly loved. (I wish you and I could
  get into Hafiz's wedding gift with our three portable kaf replicators and all and just go away somewhere
  quiet to do this,) she told Aari. (I am tired of trying to act less irritable than I feel, or to stand up straight
  when my back aches so. I am tired of being asked every few minutes if I am all right. I am tired of having
  othersaddress my abdomen instead of my face. I wish we could just leave. You could heal me if I got
  into trouble.)
   (Yes, but could you heal me when our mothers learned I had deprived them of the opportunity to help
  you at this time?)
   (And here I have always considered you the bravest of our kind.)
   (Khleevi are one thing. Family is another.)
   Shortly afterward her labor began. Fifty ships were available to take her to the surface, but Becker
  
  didn't consult anyone else. He simplybustled them onto the robolift along with both sets of parents.
  Neeva and theBalakiirecrew brought Laarye and Maati.
   "I want you in constant touch by com unit!" Hafiz insisted. "Her fathers and I have a right to know!"
   Vaanye smiled, and said, "Rest assured that I shall personally see to it that you are kept informed, Uncle
  Hafiz. We fathers must stick together."
   "And bring them back as soon as they can travel!" Karina said. "We will need to see the baby. There are
  ritual blessings it must receive."
   Naturally, Acorna gave birth to her daughter halfway between MOO and Vhiliinyar, in the hydroponics
  garden aboard theCondor. Aari, his mother, and Feriila soothed her with horn touches and calming birth
  songs the women remembered from their own times.
   Khoriilya came out of the womb star-clad, as white and silver as her mother and father, once the reddish
  mess was cleaned off her. Her nub of a golden horn was the delight of everyone. RK hopped up onto
  Acorna's berth to inspect the newcomer and gave her a lick of approval.
   "We may as well turn around and go back to MOO," Becker said. "You'll be as comfortable there as
  anywhere and you can get fussed over by House Harakamian, Gill, and Calum, as well as everybody
  else."
   Acorna groaned. Khoriilya gurgled and reached out for RK's tail, which he waved and twitched back
  and forth in front of her.
   "She likes cats," Becker said when he saw what the baby was doing. "That's good. Miw-Sher and
  Nadhari particularly want her to have a kitten from one of the new litters. I think she'll find several that
  look pretty familiar." He nodded at RK.
   Three weeks after they landed, they saw Gill, Calum, and the Kendoro sisters off and waited to greet
  Johnny Greene and the star-faring crew of young folk from theHaven. Khoriilya toddled around the
  terminal, determined to deconstruct it, while Aari and Acorna said their good-byes.
   Weary as Acorna had become of all the attention, she ached to see them leave.
   Maati stepped out of the com room, and said, "Khornya, Aari, Captain Becker wants you and Khoriilya
  to come to theCondor's, robolift. He says Mac is ready to present his wedding and birthing gift."
   Acorna lifted a protesting Khorii into her arms. The baby could get into entirely too much trouble out in
  the docking bays.
   Becker and RK were on the ground when they reached theCondor. The robolift was ascending. "Mac
  just went back up to get his present," he said.
   "What is it?" Aari asked. There was no Linyaari etiquette that considered it impolite to inquire about the
  nature of a gift.
   "You'll see. Picked out her cat yet?"
   "No. For the sake of the kitten we thought it best to wait until she's a bit older. They're still quite small."
  
   "Are you sure about that? Nadhari says temple cats do better if they're bonded young to their people."
   The robolift descended, carrying Mac and another person, a child from the look of him. As the lift
  lowered even farther, Acorna saw that it was a Linyaari child, a young boy.
   "Who is this?" she asked.
   "You might say he is my son," Mac told her. "Your kinspeople said much about tutors for Khoriilya. But
  knowing you and Aari, she will not be on the planet long enough to go to tutors or meet other children, if
  there were many other Linyaari children which I have noticed there are not. So I used some of my spare
  parts and some other — items — Captain Becker had to create this boy. He is, as you see, a Linyaari
  android and so can accompany Khoriilya to Vhiliinyar. He can be her playmate and guardian as well as
  her tutor. His horn acts as a medical scanner. I thought it would be especially good if she heals people
  because she can always say my son is the one programmed to do it."
   The little boy looked coolly from Mac to Acorna and Aari, but his gaze settled on Khorii, who solemnly
  returned it.
   With Khorii in her arms, Acorna knelt to be at eye level with the child droid. "Do you have a name?" she
  asked.
   "I researched that quite thoroughly," Mac said. "I wanted my son to have a name easy to pronounce by
  both Linyaari and humans. I wanted it to be a name of noble origin and wide fame. I consulted all of the
  vids and texts aboard and decided to name him after an Old Terran king. Tell them your name, son."
   "I am Elviiz," he said.
   "Viizzz!"Khoriilya said, and stuck out her arms to him. He gently grasped one of her pudgy baby hands
  and shook it lightly.
   Khorii squirmed to be put down, where she and Elviiz crawled around at first until he stood and
  encouraged her to do so.
   Acorna thought Mac had come up with the perfect solution for her daughter's odd bouts of loneliness.
  For the first time ever, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
   "Does that mean you are pleased, Khornya?"
   "Oh, Mac, you've given us your son! How could we not be pleased! You will have to come and visit
  always."
   Mac seemed a bit puzzled. "I always visit with you and Aari when you are near, Khornya. Of course I
  will."
   "Well, let's go look at cats," Becker said. "RK is itching to visit some of his offspring, I know. He can't
  wait till they're weaned. He's hoping the mamas will go back into heat again before they have to return to
  Makahomia."
   Miw-Sher and Nadhari had already returned to Makahomia, since it could hardly do without leadership
  for a prolonged period. But they had left the guardian mothers behind with nine acolytes — one per
  
  mother per eight-hour watch. Three of these very young Makahomians sat playing with a calamitous
  confusion of kittens tumbling and bumbling all over them, the mothers, and the room. At least half of them
  bore brindled stripes and puffed-out facial ruffs similar to RK's. Acorna thought Khorii would certainly
  choose one of them.
   But one little golden-striped kitten with large green eyes headed straight for the child and began
  grooming her. She giggled and petted it awkwardly.
   Viiz joined her on the floor. He didn't touch the kitten but turned his head first one way, then another,
  and lay down on his back to look up at the kitten's belly. He gently patted the kitten's back,then fingered
  something shining in the fine but very dense fur around its neck. Then he reached out and touched
  Khorii's mouth, bringing away a little of her enthusiastic drool and rubbing it against his finger.
   "What is it, son?" Mac inquired.
   "This kitten is wearing what appears to be Khorii's birth disk, Father. On cursory examination, the DNA
  code inscribed upon it appears to match hers."
   "But her birth disk isn't ready yet," Acorna said. "Mother said it would take the artisans another week or
  so."
   Becker laughed. "Nadhari knew how much Aari's meant to you. I'll bet she was going to give it to you,
  then found out your parents wanted to."
   "Yes, but how did it get on the kitten?" Aari asked, looking askance at the small innocent creature.
   "You know kittens.Unintentionally probably. Looks like thisis the one the kid wants anyway," Becker
  said. "Now, if I were you, buddy, I'd let him mate a time or two since this planet is a little low on cats.
  Then if you're going to take him into space with you, and you don't want the whole ship to smell like
  tomcat" — he lowered his voice as RK looked up — "get him neutered. But don't do it yourself unless
  you have some powerful healing horns nearby."
   Becker and Mac returned to the ship after Mac had tweaked Viiz's programming. Aari carried Khorii,
  and Acorna held Viiz's hand. Solemn and erudite he might be, but he looked like a Linyaari youngling. In
  the crook of his other arm, Viiz gently held the still-nameless kitten.
   Karina and Hafiz walked toward them on the garden path. Fluttering and cooing, Karina turned to her
  husband, "Oh, Haffy, aren't they just the sweetest things? The picture of Linyaari domestic bliss — the
  perfect peaceful little family! I just know they're going to — we all are going to — live happily ever
  after!"
   Acorna and Aari exchanged smiles. (I hope this is one time when Karina's self-proclaimed gift of
  prophecy is true,) Aari said.
   (Yes, wouldn't that be a nice change,) Acorna agreed. (But somehow I rather doubt it.)
    
   Glossary of Terms and Proper Names in the Acorna Universe
    
  
   aagroni— Linyaari name for a vocation that is a combination of ecologist, agriculturalist, botanist, and
  biologist.Aagroniare responsible for terraforming new planets for settlement as well as maintaining the
  well-being of populated planets.
   Aari— a Linyaari of the Nyaarya clan, captured by the Khleevi during the invasion of Vhiliinyar,
  tortured, and left for dead on the abandoned planet. He's Maati's older brother. Aari survived and was
  rescued and restored to his people by Jonas Becker and Roadkill. But Aari's differences, the physical
  and psychological scars left behind by his adventures, make it difficult for him to fit in among the Linyaari.
   Aarlii— a Linyaari survey team member, firstborn daughter of Captain Yaniriin.
   Aarkiiyi— member of the Linyaari survey team on Vhiliinyar.
   abaanye— a Linyaari sleeping potion that can be fatal in large doses.
   Acorna— a unicorn-like humanoid discovered as an infant by three human miners — Calum, Gill, and
  Rafik. She has the power to heal and purify with her horn. Her uniqueness has already shaken up the
  human galaxy, especially the planet Kezdet. She's now fully grown and changing the lives of her own
  people, as well. Among her own people, she is known as Kornya.
   Ali Baba— Aziza's ship.
   Ancestors— unicorn-like sentient species, precursor race to the Linyaari.Also known aski-lin .
   Ancestral Friends —an ancient shape-changing and space-faring race responsible for saving the unicorns
  (or Ancestors) from Old Terra, and using them to create the Linyaari race on Vhiliinyar.
   Ancestral Hosts—seeAncestral Friends.
   Andina— owner of the cleaning concession on MOO, and sometimes lady companion to Captain
  Becker.
   AridimiDesert— a vast, barren desert on the Makahomian planet, site of a hiddenTemple and a sacred
  lake.
   Aridimis— people from theMakahomianAridimiDesert .
   Arkansas Traveler— freight hauling spaceship piloted by Scaradine MacDonald.
   Attendant— Linyaari who have been selected for the task of caring for the Ancestors.
   avvi— Linyaari word for "daddy."
   Aziza Amunpul— head of a troop of dancers and thieves, who, after being reformed, becomes Hafiz's
  chief security officer on MOO.
    
   Balakiire— the Linyaari spaceship commanded by Acorna's aunt Neeva.
  
   Basic— shorthand for Standard Galactic, the language used throughout human-settled space.
   Becker—seeJonas Becker.
   Bulaybub Felidar sach Pilau ardo Agorah— aMakahomianTemple priest, better known by his real name
  — Tagoth.A priest who supports modernizing the Makahomian way of life, he was a favorite of Nadhari
  Kando, before her departure from the planet. He has a close relationship in his young relative, Miw-Sher.
    
   Calum Baird— one of three miners who discovered Acorna and raised her.
   chrysoberyl— a precious catseye gemstone available in large supply and great size on the planet of
  Makahomia, but also, very rarely and in smaller sizes, throughout the known universe. The stones are
  considered sacred on Makahomia, and are guarded by the priest class and theTemples . Throughout the
  rest of the universe, they are used in the mining and terraforming industries across the universe.
   Condor— Jonas Becker's salvage ship, heavily modified to incorporate various "found" items Becker
  has come across in his space voyages.
   Crow— Becker's shuttle, used to go between theCondorand places in which the Condor is unable to
  land.
    
   Declan "Gill" Giloglie— one of three human miners who discovered Acorna and raised her.
   Delszaki Li— once the richest man on Kezdet, opposed to child exploitation, made many political
  enemies. He lived his life paralyzed, floating in an antigravity chair. Clever and devious, he both hijacked
  and rescued Acorna and gave her a cause — saving the children of Kezdet. He became her adopted
  father. Li's death was a source of tremendous sadness to all but his enemies.
   Dinan—Temple priest and doctor in Hissim.
   Domestic Godded^— Andina's spaceship.
   Dsu Macostut— Federation officer, Lieutenant Commander of the Federation base on Makahomia.
    
   Edacki Ganoosh—corrupt Kezdet count, uncle of Kisla Manjari.
   Egstynkeraht— A planet supporting several forms of sulfur-based sentient life.
   Elviiz— Mac's son, a Linyaari childlike android, given as a wedding/birth gift to Acorna and Aari.The
  android is named for an ancient Terran king, and is often called Viiz for short.
   enye-ghanyii— Linyaari time unit, small portion ofghaanye.
    
  
   Fagad—Temple priest in the Aridimi desert, who spied for Mulzar Edu Kando.
   Felihari —one of theMakavitianRain Forest tribes on Makahomia.
   Feriila— Acorna's mother.
   Fiicki— Linyaari communications officer on Vhiliinyar expedition.
   Fiirki Miilkar— a Linyaari animal specialist.
   Fiiryi— a Linyaari.
   fraaki— Linyaari word for fish.
   Friends— also known as Ancestral Friends.A shape-changing and space-faring race responsible for
  saving the unicorns from Old Terra and using them to create the Linyaari race on Vhiliinyar.
    
   Gaali— highest peak on Vhiliinyar, never scaled by the Linyaari people. The official marker for
  Vhiliinyar's date line, anchoring the meridian line that sets the end of the old day and the beginning of the
  new day across the planet as it rotates Our Star at the center of the solar system. With nearby peaks
  Zaami and Kaahi, the high mountains are a mystical place for most Linyaari.
   ghaanye(pl.gbaanyi)— a Linyaari year.
   gheraalyenutlivii— Linyaari for navigation officer.
   gheraalyeve-khanyii— Linyaari for senior communications officer.
   giirange— office of toastmaster in a Linyaari social organization.
   GSS— Gravitation Stabilization System.
    
   haarhaliirni— Linyaari term for advanced education, usually pursued during adulthood while on
  sabbatical from a previous calling.
   Hafiz Harakamian— Rafik's uncle, head of the interstellar financial empire of House Harakamian, a
  passionate collector of rarities from throughout the galaxy, and a devotee of the old-fashioned sport of
  horseracing. Although basically crooked enough to hide behind a spiral staircase, he is genuinely fond of
  Rafik and Acorna.
   Heloise— Andina's spaceship.
   Highmagister HaGurdy— the Ancestral Friend in charge of the Hosts on old Vhiliinyar.
   Hissim— the biggest city on Makahomia, home of the largestTemple .
   Hraaya— an Ancestor.
  
   Hrronye— Melireenya's lifemate.
   Hrunvrun— the first Linyaari Ancestral attendant.
    
   Iiiliira— a Linyaari ship.
   Iirtyi— chiefaagronifor narhn-Vhiliinyar.
   Ikwaskwan— self-styled leader of the Kilumbembese Red Bracelets.Depending on circumstances and
  who he is trying to impress, he is known as either "General Ikwaskwan" or "Admiral Ikwaskwan," though
  both ranks are self-assigned.Entered into devious dealings with Edacki Ganoosh that led to his downfall.
   Johnny Greene— an old friend of Calum, Rafik, and Gill; joined the Starfarers when he was fired after
  Amalgamated Mining's takeover of MME.
   Jonas Becker— interplanetary salvage artist; alias space junkman.Captain of theCondor . CEO of
  Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd. — a one-man, one-cat salvage firm Jonas
  inherited from his adopted father. Jonas spent his early youth on a labor farm on the planet Kezdet before
  he was adopted.
   Judit Kendoro— assistant to psychiatrist Alton Forelle at Amalgamated Mining, saved Acorna from
  certain death. Later fell in love with Gill and joined with him to help care for the children employed in
  Delszaki Li's Maganos mining operation.
    
   Kaahi— a high mountain peak on Vhiliinyar.
   Kaalmi Vroniiyi— leader of the Linyaari Council, which made the decision to restore the ruined planet
  Vhiliinyar, with Hafiz's help and support, to a state that would once again support the Linyaari and all the
  life-forms native to the planet.
   Kaarlye— the father of Aari, Maati, and Laarye.A member of the Nyaarya clan, and life-bonded to
  Miiri.
   ka-Linyaari— something against all Linyaari beliefs, something not Linyaari.
   Karina— a plumply beautiful wanna-be psychic with a small shred of actual talent and a large fondness
  for profit.Married to Hafiz Harakamian. This is her first marriage, his second.
   Kashirian Steppes— Makahomian region that produces the best fighters.
   Kashirians— Makahomians from the Kashirian Steppes.
   kava— a coffeelike hot drink produced from roasted ground beans.
   KEN— a line of general-purpose male androids, some with customized specializations, differentiated
  among their owners by number, for example — KEN637.
  
   Kezdet— a backwoods planet with a labor system based on child exploitation.Currently in economic
  turmoil because that system was broken by Delszaki Li and Acorna.
   Khaari— senior Linyaari navigator on theBalakllre.
   Khleevi— name given by Acorna's people to the space-borne enemies who have attacked them without
  mercy
   Khoriilya— Acorna and Aari's oldest child, a daughter, known as Khorii for short.
   kii— a Linyaari time measurement roughly equivalent to an hour of Standard Time.
   ki-lin— Oriental term for unicorn, also a name sometimes associated with Acorna.
   Kilumbemba Empire— an entire society that raises and exports mercenaries for hire — the Red
  Bracelets.
   Kisla Manjari'— anorexic and snobbish young woman, raised as daughter of Baron Manjari; shattered
  when through Acorna's efforts to help the children of Kezdet her father is ruined and the truth of her
  lowly birth is revealed.
   Kubiilikaan— the legendary first city on Vhiliinyar, founded by the Ancestral Hosts.
   Kubiilikhan— capital city of narhii-Vhiliinyar, named after Kubilikaan, the legendary first city on
  Vhiliinyar, founded by the Ancestral Hosts.
    
   LAANYE— sleep learning device invented by the Linyaari that can, from a small sample of any foreign
  language, teach the wearer the new language overnight.
   Laarye— Maati and Aari's brother.He died on Vhiliinyar during the Khleevi invasion. He was trapped in
  an accident in a cave far distant from the spaceport during the evacuation, and was badly injured. Aari
  stayed behind to rescue and heal him, but was captured by the Khleevi and tortured before he could
  accomplish his mission. Laarye died before Aari could escape and return. Time travel has brought him
  back to life.
   Laboue— the planet where Hafiz Harakamian makes his headquarters.
   lalli— Linyaari word for "mother."
   lilaala— a flowering vine native to Vhiliinyar, used by early Linyaari to make paper.
   Liriili— formervlizaarof narhii-Vhiliinyar, member of the clan Riivye.
   Linyaari— Acorna's people.
   Lukia of the Lights— a protective saint, identified by some children of Kezdet with Acorna.
    
  
   Ma'aowri 3— a planet populated by catlike beings.
   Maarni— a Linyaari folklorist, mate to Yiitir.
   Maati— a young Linyaari girl of the Nyaarya clan who lost most of her family during the Khleevi
  invasion.Aari's younger sister.
   MacKenZ— also known as Mac or Maak, a very useful and adaptable unit of the KEN line of
  androids, now in the service of Captain Becker.The android was formerly owned by Kisla Manjari, and
  came into the Captain's service after it tried to kill him on Kisla's orders. Becker's knack for dealing with
  salvage enabled him to reprogram the android to make the KEN unit both loyal to him and eager to
  please. The re-programming had interesting side effects on the android's personality, though, leaving Mac
  much quirkier than is usually the case for androids.
   madigadi— a berry-like fruit whose juice is a popular beverage.
   Maganos— one of the three moons of Kezdet, base for Delszaki Li's mining operation and child
  rehabilitation project.
   Makahomia— war-torn home planet of RK and Nadhari Kendo.
   Makahomian Temple Cat— cats on the planet Makahomia, bred from ancient Cat God stock to protect
  and defend the Cat God'sTemples . They are — for cats — large, fiercely loyal, remarkably intelligent,
  and dangerous when crossed.
   Makavitian Rain Forest— a tropical area of the planet Makahomia, populated by various warring jungle
  tribes.
   Manjari— a baron in the Kezdetaristocracy, and a key person in the organization and protection of
  Kezdet's child-labor racket, in which he was known by the code name "Piper." He murdered his wife,
  then committed suicide when his identity was revealed and his organization destroyed.
   Martin Dehoney— famous astro-architect who designed Mag-anos Moon Base; the coveted Dehoney
  Prize was named after him.
   Melireenya — Linyaari communications specialist on theBalakiire, bonded to Hrronye.
   Mercy Kendoro— younger sister of Pal and Judit Kendoro, saved from a life of bonded labor by Judit's
  efforts, she worked as a spy for the Child Liberation League in offices of Kezdet Guardians of the Peace
  until the child-labor system was destroyed.
   Miiri— mother of Aari, Laarye, and Maati.A member of the Nyaarya clan, life-bonded to Kaarlye.
   mitanyaakhi— generic Linyaari term meaning a very large number.
   Miw-Sher— a Makahomian Keeper of the sacredTemple cats.Her name means "Kitten" in
  Makahomian.
   MME— Gill, Calum, and Rafik's original mining company.Swallowed by the ruthless, conscienceless,
  and bureaucratic Amalgamated Mining.
  
   Mog-Gim Plateau—an arid area on the planet Makahomia near the Federation spaceport.
   MOO, or Moon of Opportunity— Hafiz's artificial planet, and home base for the Vhiliinyar terraforming
  operation.
   Mulzar (feminine form: Mulzarah)— the Mog-Gimin title taken by the high priest who is also the warlord
  of the Plateau.
   Mulzar Edu Kando sach Pilaudom Mog-Gim— High Priest of Hissim and the Aridimi Plateau, on the
  planet Makahomia.
    
   Naadiina— also known as Grandam, one of the oldest Linyaari, host to both Maati and Acorna on
  narhii-Vhiliinyar, died to give her people the opportunity to save both of their planets.
   Naarye— Linyaari techno-artisan in charge of final fit-out of spaceships.
   naazhoni— the Linyaari word for someone who is a bit unstable.
   Nadhari Kando— formerly Delszaki Li's personal bodyguard, rumored to have been an officer in the
  Red Bracelets earlier in her career, then a security officer in charge of MOO, then the guard for the
  leader on her home planet of Makahomia.
   narhii-Vhiliinyar— the planet settled by the Linyaari after Vhiliinyar, their original homeworld, was
  destroyed by the Khleevi.
   Neeva —Acorna's aunt and Linyaari envoy on theBalakiire,bonded to Virii.
   Neo-Hadithian— an ultraconservative, fanatical religious sect.
   Ngaen Xong Hoa— a Kieaanese scientist who invented a planetary weathercontrol system. He sought
  asylum on theHavenbecause he feared the warring governments on his planet would misuse his research.
  A mutineer faction on theHavenused the system to reduce the planet Rushima to ruins. The mutineers
  were tossed into space, and Dr. Hoa has since restored Rushima and now works for Hafiz.
   Niciirye— Grandam Naadiina's husband, dead and buried on Vhilrinyar.
   Niikaavri— Acorna's grandmother, a member of the clan Geeyi-inah, and a spaceship designer by
  trade.Also, asNiikaavre , the name of the spaceship used by Maati and Thariinye.
   Nirii— a planetary trading partner of the Linyaari, populated by bovinelike two-horned sentients, known
  as Niriians, technologically advanced, able to communicate telepathically, and phlegmatic in
  temperament.
   nyiiri— the Linyaari word for unmitigated gall, sheer effrontery, or other forms of misplaced bravado.
    
   Our Star— Linyaari name for the star that centers their solar system.
  
    
   PaazoRiver— a major geographical feature on the Linyaari homeworld, Vhiliinyar.
   pahaantiyir— a large catlike animal once found on Vhiliinyar.
   Pandora— Count Edacki Ganoosh's personal spaceship, used to track and pursue Hafiz's ship
  Sbabrazadas it speeds after Acorna on her journey to narhii-Vhiliinyar. Later confiscated and used by
  Hafiz for his own purposes.
   piiro— Linyaari word for a rowboatlike water vessel.
   piiyi—a Niriian biotechnology-based information storage and retrieval system. The biological component
  resembles a very rancid cheese.
   Praxos— a swampy planet near Makahomia used by the Federation to train Makahomian recruits.
   PU#10— Human name for the vine planet, with its sentient plant inhabitants, where the Khleevi-kilhing
  sap was found.
    
   Rafik Nadezda— one of three miners who discovered Acorna and raised her.
   Red Bracelets— Kilumbembese mercenaries; arguably the toughest and nastiest fighting force in known
  space.
   Roadkill— otherwise known as RK.A Makahomian Temple Cat, the only survivor of a space wreck,
  rescued and adopted by Jonas Becker, and honorary first mate of theCondor.
   Roc— Rafik's shuttle ship.
   Scaradine MacDonald— captain of theArkansas Traveler
   spaceship, and galactic freight hauler.
   Shahrazad— Hafiz's personal spaceship, a luxury cruiser.
   sii-Linyaari— a legendary race of aquatic Linyaari-like beings developed by the Ancestral Friends.
   Siiaaryi Maartri— a Linyaari survey ship.
   Sinbad— Rafik's spaceship.
   Sita Ram— a protective goddess, identified with Acorna by the mining children on Kezdet.
   Smythe-Wesson— a former Red Bracelet officer, Win Smythe-Wesson briefly served as Hafiz's head
  of security on MOO before his larcenous urges overcame him.
   Standard Galactic Basic —the language used throughout the human settled galaxy, also known simply as
  
  "Basic."
   stiil— Linyaari word for a pencil-like writing implement.
    
   Taankaril—viiedhaanye feriliiof the Gamma sector of Linyaari space.
   Tagoth—seeBulaybub.
   techno-artisan— Linyaari specialist who designs, engineers, or manufactures goods.
   Thariinye— a handsome and conceited young space-faring Linyaari from clan Renyilaaghe.
   Theophilus Becker— Jonas Becker's father, a salvage man and astrophysicist with a fondness for
  exploring uncharted wormholes.
   thiilir(pi.thilirii)— small arboreal mammals of Linyaari home-world.
   thiilsis— grass species native to Vhiliinyar.
   Toruna— a Niriian female who sought help from Acorna and the Linyaari when her home planet was
  invaded by the Khleevi.
   Twi Osiam— planetary site of a major financial and trade center.
   twilit— small, pestiferous insect on Linyaari home planet.
    
   Uhuru— one of the various names of the ship owned jointly by Gill, Calum, and Rafik.
    
   Vaanye— Acorna's father.
   Vhiliinyar— original home planet of the Linyaari, destroyed by
   Khleevi.
   viizaar— a high political office in the Linyaari system, roughly equivalent to president or prime minister.
   Virii— Neeva's spouse.
   visedhaanyeferilii— Linyaari term corresponding roughly to "Envoy Extraordinary."
   Vriiniia Watiir— sacred healing lake on Vhiliinyar, defiled by the Khleevi.
    
   Wahanamoian Blossom of Sleep— poppylike flowers whose pollens, when ground, are a very powerful
  
  sedative.
   wii— a Linyaari prefix meaning "small."
    
   yaazi— Linyaari term for beloved.
   Yukata Batsu— Uncle Hafiz's chief competitor on Laboue.
   Yaniriin— a Linyaari Survey Ship captain.
   Yiitir— history teacher at the Linyaari academy, and Chief Keeper of the Linyaari Stories.Lifemate to
  Maarni.
    
   Zaami— a high mountain peak on the Linyaari homeworld.
   Zanegar— second-generation Starfarer.
   Brief Notes on the Linyaari Language
   byMargaret Ball
    
   As Anne McCaffrey's collaborator in transcribing the first two tales of Acorna, I was delighted to find
  that the second of these books provided an opportunity to sharpen my long-unused skills in linguistic
  fieldwork. Many years ago, when the government gave out scholarships with gay abandon and the cost
  of living (and attending graduate school) was virtually nil, I got a Ph.D. in linguistics for no better reason
  than that: (a) the government was willing to pay; (b) it gave me an excuse to spend a couple of years
  doing fieldwork in Africa; and (c) there weren't any real jobs going for eighteen-year-old girls with a B.A.
  in math and a minor in Germanic languages. (This was back during the Upper Pleistocene era, when the
  Help Wanted ads were still divided into Male and Female.)
   So there were all those years spent doing things like transcribing tonal Oriental languages on staff paper
  (the Field Methods instructor was Not Amused) and tape-recording Swahili women at weddings, and
  then I got the degree and wandered off to play with computers and never had any use for the stuff
  again… until Acorna's people appeared on the scene.
   It required a sharp ear and some facility for linguistic analysis to make sense of the subtle sound changes
  with which their language signaled syntactic changes; I quite enjoyed the challenge. The notes appended
  here represent my first and necessarily tentative analysis of certain patterns in Linyaari phonemics and
  morphophonemics. If there is any inconsistency between this analysis and the Linyaari speech patterns
  recorded in the later adventures of Acorna, please remember that I was working from a very limited
  database and, what is perhaps worse, attempting to analyze a decidedly nonhuman language with the aid
  of the only paradigms I had, twentieth-century linguistic models developed exclusively from human
  language. The result is very likely as inaccurate as were the first attempts to describe English syntax by
  forcing it into the mold of Latin, if not worse. My colleague, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, has by now
  
  added her own notes to the small corpus of Linyaari names and utterances, and it may well be that in the
  next decade there will be enough data available to publish a truly definitive dictionary and grammar of
  Linyaari; an undertaking that will surely be of inestimable value, not only to those members of our race
  who are involved in diplomatic and trade relations with this people, but also to everyone interested in the
  study of language.
    
    
   Notes on the Linyaari Language
    
   1. A doubled vowel indicates stress: aavi, abaanye, khleevi.
    
   2. Stress is used as an indicator of syntactic function: in nouns stress is on the penultimate syllable, in
  adjectives on the last syllable, in verbs on the first.
    
   3. Intervocalic n is always palatalized.
    
   4. Noun plurals are formed by adding a final vowel, usually -i: one Liinyar, two Linyaari. Note that this
  causes a change in the stressed syllable (fromLI-nyartoLi-NYA-ri)and hence a change in the pattern of
  doubled vowels.
   For nouns whose singular form ends in a vowel, the plural is formed by dropping the original vowel and
  adding-i: ghaanye, ghaanyi.Here the number of syllables remains thesame, therefore no stress/spelling
  change is required.
    
   5. Adjectives can be formed from nouns by adding a final-ii(again, dropping the original final vowel if
  one exists):maalive, malivii; Liinyar, Linyarii.Again, the change in stress means that the doubled vowels in
  the penultimate syllable of the noun disappear.
    
   6. For nouns denoting a class or species, such as Liinyar, the noun itself can be used as an adjective
  when the meaning is simply to denote a member of the class, rather than the usual adjective meaning of
  "having the qualities of this class" — thus, of the characters inAcorna, only Acorna herself could be
  described as "aLiinyargirl" but Judit, although human, would certainly be described as "alinyariigirl," or "a
  just-as-civilized-as-a-real-member-of-the-People" girl.
    
  
   7. Verbs can be formed from nouns by adding a prefix constructed by [first consonant of noun]+ ii +nye
  : faalar— grief;fiinyefalar— to grieve.
    
   8. The participle is formed from the verb by adding a suffix-anor-en: thiinyethilel— to destroy,
  thiinyethilelen— destroyed. No stress change is involved because the participle is perceived as a verb
  form and therefore stress remains on the first syllable:
    
   enye-ghanyii— time unit, small portion of a year (ghaanye)
   fiinyefalaran— mourning, mourned
   ghaanye— a Linyaari year, equivalent to about one and one-third earth years
   gheraalyemalivii— Navigation Officer
   gheraalyeve-khanyii —Senior Communications Specialist
   Khleevi— originally, a small vicious carrion-feeding animal with a poisonous bite; now used by the
  Linyaari to denote the invaders who destroyed their homeworld.
   khleevi— barbarous, uncivilized, vicious without reason
   Liinyar— member of the People
   linyaari— civilized; like a Liinyar
   mitanyaakhi— large number (slang — like our "zillions")
   narbii— new
   thiilir, thiliiri— small arboreal mammals of Linyaari homeworld
   thiilel— destruction
   visedhaanyeferilii— Envoy Extraordinary
    
   About the Authors
    
   Anne McCaffreyis considered one of the world's leading science fiction writers. She has won the Hugo
  and Nebula awards as well as six Science Fiction Book Club awards for her novels. Brought up in
  theUnited States , she is now living inIreland with her Maine Coon cats and a silver Weimaraner and
  declines to travel anymore. She is best known for her unique Dragonriders of Pern series.
  
   Elizabeth Ann Scarboroughis the author of 23 science fiction and fantasy novels, including the 1989
  Nebula Award — winningHealer's Warand the Powers series co-written with Anne McCaffrey, as well
  as the popular Godmother series and the Gothic fantasy mystery,The Lady in the Loch. She lives in a
  Victorian seaport town in westernWashington with her cats, beads, and computer stuff.
    
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/M/Mccaffrey, Anne/Acornia/Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 7 - Acorna's Triumph.pdf