Third watch, p.23
Third Watch, page 23
“I thought it was shock making me feel unwell,” Akasa said. “I do not actually recall having felt unwell prior to that although while aboard the cruiser I was not my usual ebullient self. I attributed that to the lackluster quality of my companions. However, particularly after I returned with Odus’s materials to the confines of the much smaller ship, I felt increasingly ill, drained, diminished, and I found it harder and harder to maintain the routines that have always helped me look my best. I found I could not shift forms either. Then I picked up other signals concerning a terrible plague, believed to have started on the planet I visited, and I began to suspect the truth. I knew I could not return to Vhiliinyar, lest I bring disaster there, too. That was when I contacted you, Sona. I did not know who else to turn to. As time wore on, I was reduced to the form you behold.
“Feeble and alone at last, I had no choice but to return here, but I deliberately chose this island for my landing, lest I be infected.”
“You are not infected,” Khorii told her, because there were no blue dots dancing around her. “Possibly you were, but your strong constitution threw off the plague, though at the cost of your youthful appearance. Maybe as you get stronger you’ll start looking more like your old self again.” She had no idea if this was true, but felt the old female needed a bit of hope right then. Even self-centered Akasa had finally realized at least a portion of the enormity of what she had done and was suffering as much as she was capable of suffering on behalf of others.
“Do you really think so, Narhii?” she asked, even though Ariin was there, too.
Khorii didn’t correct her.
Sona said, “Lady, we came to see if you could help us find Lord Odus so he might suggest a way to destroy this creation of his. It is not, as you know, what he intended.”
“I cannot help you. I spaced the materials I took from his laboratory, even the visual and holographic depictions of our homes on Vhiliinyar. I shall never be happy and whole again!”
And she began sobbing in earnest self-pity.
“You take the ship,” Sona told the Linyaari. “I will remain with her and care for her until she is well enough to rejoin the others. She does look better already, thanks to your healing.”
As the rest of the group left, Khorii’s heart sank. Now they were back to square one, with no idea how to find the one person who might be able to help them.
Chapter 24
Two of you started this mess,” Ariin harangued the elder Ancestral Friends. “Now the rest of you have to put a stop to it.”
Khorii thought her twin’s righteous wrath more than made up for two planets full of pacifistic Linyaari. The elders, via Bogan on the com, had wanted to refuse the second landing of Sona’s vessel near their city. They thought the gentle Linyaari they seemed to consider their somewhat feebleminded offspring would acquiesce to the order and go away. They had obviously mistaken Khorii’s family, her human-reared mother, her heroic father, who had endured Khleevi torture and lived, and even Mikaaye, the volunteer pirate, for what they considered the usual sort of Linyaari. Even Khorii, who had the most conventional upbringing of them all, had witnessed so much death and illness in her attempts to save the Federation-controlled sector of space that she had little sympathy and no respect remaining for the elders’ finer sensibilities and what she considered to be their outright cowardice.
Her race had always held these people in awe because the legend was that they had saved the unicorn Ancestors. Now that she knew the truth behind that story, and how miserably these arrogant people had treated her sister as a helpless, ignorant child, Khorii’s awe was over. And then there was Khiindi/Grimalkin, a trickster and untrustworthy at times, perhaps, but nevertheless in her opinion the best of his race and one who had been punished for trying to spare her and her family, even if it had been at Ariin’s expense.
When the refusal came from Bogan, it was Mikaaye who best expressed the attitude of his shipmates. “Arrrgh, then, me fine fellow. Prepare to be boarded,” he said, though it came out somewhat differently in his Linyaari accent. Father had laughed, and Mikaaye said defensively, “Well, it’s the traditional thing to say. Captain Coco taught me himself.”
Ariin was the first out the hatch. When the enforcement techs surrounded her with shields, she looked each of them in the eyes, and said, “Makawe, Tika, Ano. Shame on you. You are the ones who have all of the real knowledge and do all of the work. How could you just sit here with these preening buffoons while they allowed the universe to die around them without lifting a finger?”
Tika lowered her shield. “Frankly, Narhii, when some of us heard of the plague and realized what Lord Odus and Lady Akasa had done, we thought we were doing the universe a service by keeping our elders from harming it any more than they already had.”
Father, just behind Ariin, thought, “That sounds like a reasonable course of action to me.”
Ariin gave a mental push hard enough to send the techs scrambling from the path of the Linyaari delegation and stalked ahead.
It took Mother to make something useful from Ariin’s aggression. “Excuse me,” she said sweetly to the one Ariin had addressed as Tika. “Could you tell me where we might locate the Council of Elders or someone who can call them together to speak with us? It’s rather urgent. A matter of life and death actually.”
Meanwhile, Ariin was giving everyone a headache with her incessant demands that the Council convene immediately.
Tika answered a personal com device, and said, with a courtly wave of her hand, “This way, honored offspring. The Council has agreed to grant you an audience.”
The Council looked very august and imposing, seated as they were in a collection of ornately crafted massive chairs along the curving inner wall on the top story of the tallest building in the city. A moving ramp like the one Khorii remembered in the time device building spiraled up from the ground floor, carrying the Linyaari into the presence of the frowning elders.
Ariin bared her teeth at them in an expression that humans would consider a friendly grin, but Linyaari considered overtly hostile.
“What is it, Narhii?” the senior elder demanded. “You have chosen an inopportune time to return, if you wish to dwell with us again, and your family has not been invited.”
Now it was Mother who bared her teeth. “You know very well why we’ve come you—you plague-spreading kidnappers. And for your information, I would not allow any of you to come near my children or any of my family if the circumstances were not so very dire.”
Father said, “You have the only uninfested planet in this sector, and you have scientists and laboratory facilities. You must help us find a way to—ah—neutralize the harm your people have done.”
“We really cannot help you,” said one of the females, clad in gilt robes embroidered with jewels. “Lord Odus acted independently, and he was among our more brilliant scientific minds.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Ariin said. “And anyway, what we need most from you is a lab and supplies. Our brother Elviiz and his other father Maak are more brilliant than all of you put together, even though one of the nasty creatures created by your arrogance almost killed Elviiz. But we need help now, and you owe it to us and all of your other victims.”
They mumbled among themselves, shaking heads, throwing up hands, then nodding. In the end, a hawk-nosed male regarded them all with an expression Khorii had difficulty deciphering. “Finally,” he said. “An offspring who takes after our side of the gene pool. Very well. But under no circumstances do you bring samples of that disease or those creatures here, nor will any of us leave, nor will you disclose our location or presence to any other beings whatsoever.”
“Sure,” Ariin said. “Except for Captain Becker and the crew of the Condor, including Elviiz and Maak.”
“Shall we instruct them to land now?” Mother asked with her sweetest expression. “Orbiting can be so tiresome.”
“We’ve been talking this over,” Uncle Joh said when he and the Condor’s crew had joined them. “And I think we’ve come up with a battle plan—I mean a cure, begging your pacifist pardon, princess,” he added, apologizing to Mother.
The crews of both ships except for Khiindi and RK stood on the single floor of a huge hangar building where, at one end, a new time device was under construction. Techs set up equipment on long tables, including the computers Maak and Elviiz would not need, since their internal ones were more sophisticated than most unincorporated models, and Maak updated both of them often. Other techs and two of the elder scientists looked on expectantly.
“Come over here, you guys.” Uncle Joh beckoned to them. “You should hear this, too.” When his audience had assembled to suit him, he continued. “The thing is, we know from the trip Elviiz and the girls made and what the old lady told you—little Sona reported it all by com—that one thing that turned this—organism—mean is that they were attacked by and apparently absorbed some of the more charming qualities of our old pals, the Khleevi. Namely a bad attitude and a big appetite. We already know how to kill Khleevi, so why don’t we just zap these inogres with the same sap we used before?”
“Could it possibly be that easy?” Mother wondered aloud. “The sap destroyed the carapace, and these creatures have no carapace to destroy.”
“Yes, Khornya,” Maak said. “But the sap also set up a virulent infection in each Khleevi on a cellular level.”
“It is worth a try,” Father said. “You know the sap-gathering procedure, Joh, as do Neeva and the Balakiire’s crew.”
“Right,” Uncle Joh said. “I will gather the plant botherers.”
One of the techs said, “Then you may not need this facility after all?”
But Mother responded reasonably, “The sap-producing plants cover one area of a rather small planet. They produce the sap only under extreme stress. The creatures we wish to—neutralize—now cover much of many populated worlds. We will need to synthesize the sap to produce the necessary quantities.”
The hawk-nosed man, whom Ariin identified to the others as Hora, had been following their conversation, and now said, “If you do not need the facilities now, you will have to come back when you have something for us to work on. We cannot tie up valuable resources—”
“And we cannot afford to waste any more time,” Ariin cut in.
“Of course, we understand that time is of the essence,” Hora continued smoothly. “Therefore, those of you who stay here as well as our people must be able to concentrate. You may remain and await the return of this man and his ship if he takes the female younglings with him.”
“Oh, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Ariin challenged, but Father said, “Daughter, go with your sister. Captain Becker may require your assistance since he is loaning us Maak’s services. And since one gathers sap from the plants by irritating them and making them feel threatened, I believe that you, Ariin, may prove invaluable on that portion of the mission.”
Father’s faith in Ariin’s ability to annoy the plants was fully justified. Mikaaye decided that in case his extra male brawn was needed to compensate for the lack of Maak’s, he would leave with them on the Condor. Of course, Grandsire Rafik was also aboard the ship, where he had remained while Maak and Elviiz went ashore with Uncle Joh.
Khorii gave him a hug when she came aboard. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
“Someone had to keep the cats from killing each other,” he said. “And I feared my presence in an already tricky negotiation would complicate matters further. As it was, Maak let me know what was going on by keeping the channel on his personal com to the ship open. You did fine, by the way.”
Rafik put his hand on Ariin’s shoulder. She was brooding a bit at Father’s suggestion that she was irritating. “You, my dear, are a jewel beyond price. You brought those stuffed shirts to the table, so to speak, and made them relinquish what you wanted. You really must spend more time with your uncle Hafiz. He could help you refine your talents and make good use of them.”
Ariin brightened at his compliments, and said, “I would like to spend more time with my new uncle when all of this is over.”
Khorii had heard the story of the first sap-gathering to defeat the Khleevi, and asked, “Now we’ll have to gather more of our people to collect the sap?”
“We could stop and try to talk Coco into loaning us the Balakiire and crew,” Uncle Joh said. “But then we’d have to argue with him about whether or not there was treasure involved.”
Grandsire said, “Acorna was right, of course, in that no matter how many people we have aggravating the sap out of the plants, it will have to be synthesized in order to have enough. So why don’t we keep our mission among ourselves and gather a sample big enough to ki”—he glanced at his granddaughters and Mikaaye—“test on one of the creatures?”
The others could see no problem with this plan. Using all of the navigational tricks in his arsenal, Uncle Joh took them to the planet where long ago the Condor’s crew and Mother and Father had gone to answer a distress call from a Linyaari ally. There they had accidentally discovered the plants whose sap destroyed the carapaces of the insectoid Khleevi, thereby, to make a long story short, saving the entire universe, at least for the first time.
Khorii and Mikaaye sang the song to Ariin, the one Mother and the others had used to get the cooperation of the plants. “Move gently, open wide” was all the first part of the song consisted of, but it was necessary to have the right attitude to go with the thought-words, and it took Ariin a while to calm down enough to grasp that. The next part was more complicated. “Close up, gather together, twining, tangling, plaiting.”
Mother and Father kept in touch with the ship via Maak’s com. When Ariin proudly sang the song for her, Mother said, “You won’t need that last bit quite so much. We used that to teach the vine people to capture the Khleevi, but we don’t want them to capture you. You do need to explain to them why you want sap though, and they understand smells better than sound. We finally gave them the smell of Khleevi, and they understood that and produced plenty of sap.”
“We should try that again, then, perhaps,” Khorii said. “We can’t bring the smell of the disease or the inogres to them without risking infecting them too—though the inogres wouldn’t bother them, I suppose, since they only eat inorganic things.”
“Why can’t the vines talk Standard like everybody else?” Uncle Joh complained. “We don’t have time to go making another trip back to that place they came from to get Khleevi spoor.”
“There’s probably some left on Rushima, Joh, from the battle there,” Father said.
“Got it,” Uncle Joh said.
Collecting the spoor was tricky. It was buried at some distance from the town of Bug Gulch, but inogres oozed up and down the ravaged streets, and the faces of the people Khorii saw were frightened and looked as if they’d been that way for a long time. She wished there was time to go see Moonmay and their other friends, or even get some tips from the spectral community that routinely haunted their living counterparts on Rushima, but once they had the stinky Khleevi relic, they had to leave quickly before the Condor became another morsel for the inogres to devour.
“It’s the most horrible smell ever!” Ariin complained.
“Don’t worry,” Uncle Joh said. “We can leave it for the vine people to destroy once we get the sap.”
Khorii had been told that the vine world was beautiful, but her first sight of it made her catch her breath. Climbing, trailing, twisting ropes burgeoning with multicolored blossoms exhaled sweet fragrances into her nostrils, creating a beautiful patchwork of greenery dotted with exotic flowers that stretched as far as she could see.
It took the growls of the cats from the hatchway behind her to remind her that these lovely plants were also dangerous and deadly.
They thought the first part of the song at the plants, and, amazingly, the vines remembered and responded, making room around the Condor and its landing party.
Mother had said, “These are sentient beings, sapient beings. Treat them with respect for their intelligence, and they may reward you by making your task easier this time than ours was before.”
When Uncle Joh brought out the containers, it took only a single whiff of the Khleevi spoor before the blossoms changed color, the perfume turned acrid and stinging, and cherry amber sap began rolling down the stems of the plants. They had to keep thinking the “Move gently, open wide” part to get the vines to allow them to walk among them and collect the sap they needed.
Since the smell was part of the vines’ gift, the Linyaari horns didn’t do much to dissipate it, and they could scarcely wait to return to the ship.
“I thought I was going to choke to death from the stink!” Ariin complained. “It made the Khleevi sample smell almost good by comparison.”
“Smelled worse than my shipmates when I first joined them,” Mikaaye agreed.
“There’s a saying among human healers that if a cure isn’t painful or distasteful, it isn’t any good,” Grandsire Rafik said. “With a smell like that, the sap should cure anything.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Uncle Joh said, with a bloodthirsty glint in his eye. “All we want it to do is kill that salvage-spoiling son-of-a-pox.” They capped and packed the last of the containers, and he added, “Okay, we’ve got some annointin’ to do. Where shall we start?”
“Corazon,” Khorii said. “That is a huge monster, so we can see how much of it the sap kills. Maybe if it dies altogether, Jalonzo and Abuelita can go back and gather whatever food they left behind before it attacked.”
“Corazon it is,” Uncle Joh said. “It’s handy to the big-shot planet, too, where the lab is.”
