Acorna's Search Part 12

"She is unfaithful?" Thariinye asked. "Really? The females I know are all extremely faithful." He said the last somewhat regretfully, which was understandable. He was very good at flattering members of the opposite s.e.x. Since he was a very attractive, articulate, and virile young male of excellent family, and since the Linyaari mated for life, the ladies took him at his word, which was in Thariinye's case not, unlike the words of the Ancestors, to be taken literally. Especially in matters concerning s.e.x.

"I wouldn't put it that way exactly. Nadhari let me know what was going on. Pretty loudly. She got all ticked off just because I was enjoying the dolmathes Andina fixed for me. These warrior ladies really have bad tempers, you know. Though they're awfully flexible, they can be kind of lumpy off the training room floor. Not cuddly, much. Actually, Nadhari took the incident pretty well. For her. It only took Kaarlye a touch of his horn, and my arm and head healed right up. Nadhari even said she was sorry, afterward. But she still spends all her off-duty time with that soldier boy. "

Acorna sighed. Apparently Nadhari was not the only one who had made other mating arrangements. Becker did not appear to be distraught, though, simply cautious.

Thariinye was fascinated. "Does it not injure your honor to be thrown over for another male like that, Captain?"

Becker looked as if he wanted to protest, then grinned wryly. Not as much as it would have injured the rest of me to be thrown the way Nadhari would have liked to. Her finer sensibilities and fondness for me plus my great personal charisma kept her from doing worse. Frankly, son, between you and me, I was getting worn out. I was still real flattered at how much she cared, but I was getting exhausted. That's how Andina I got to be uh close. She noticed how puny and

thin I was becoming, and she decided I needed feeding up. She suggested ways to get rust out of my hull, too, and clean up some of the cargo. Her company owns the cleaning concession for MOO, you know, and all of the cleaning products Hafiz intends to peddle to people in this little corner of the universe."

"Impressive," Thariinye said. "Though not as impressive as Commander Kando, I must say."

"Go ahead and say what you like. You know what Nadhari told me the last time we were together? She said she found me restful. Restful! That's not the kind of thing a man likes to hear from an exciting female. But I gotta tell you. I find Andina restful, and it's pretty nice not to be constantly sparring with someone."

"Andina suggested the shape and purpose of several of my horn attachments," Mac said with what pa.s.sed in him for enthusiasm. "The sc.r.a.per-sander and dicing attachments were entirely her idea, and she helped modify some of the others as I well."

Becker looked at Mac again as he spoke and burst out in helpless laughter once again. "So she helped you cook this up, did she? I don't suppose you have an attachment that will help you with the gardening?"

"Oh, yes," Mac said. "I have an excellent one for weed pulling, though it is somewhat awkward to use without further bodily modifications." He demonstrated by a.s.suming the weed- I pulling-with-the-horn position, which required him to all but I stand on his head.

"Yeah, I can see that," Becker said. "Somehow I don't think that's going to catch on with the Linyaari. But it's a good try.

Acorna said thoughtfully, "You know, Captain, I think perhaps it is a good idea to take Mac. So far as we know, everyone 1 who has disappeared is a Linyaari. It may be for lack of a better target. But despite Mac's courteous attempt to a.s.similate himself to our race, if whatever is taking our people wishes to take Linyaari specifically, perhaps it will ignore Mac and allow him to witness the disappearance of "

"Us?" Thariinye asked. "That's rea.s.suring, Kh.o.r.n.ya."

"Perhaps not, but it's not unlikely either," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "And Mac could be very hard to stop if he decided to rescue us."

"I would," Mac said earnestly. He turned to Acorna and said in an almost flawless imitation of her Linyaari accent, "I take it then, Kh.o.r.n.ya, that you now accept me as part of the rescue team?"

She smiled at his use of the Linyaari p.r.o.nunciation of her name. "I doubt we could do it without you," she told him.

It took several precious hours to convince the Council that Mac should be included in the roster of the search and recovery team, and it took almost as long to convince them that Acorna, Thariinye, and the cat should be the other members of the team.

Had Liriili still been viizaar, it would have taken longer still. However, with many of the council members, including the aagroni and Neeva, missing, only five were present to make the decision. Their concerns were more for the team's safety than anything else. That was why they were concerned that Acorna should partic.i.p.ate, even though they acknowledged her losses of Neeva and Aari and his family gave her a strong motivation to solve the problem. Once they convinced the council that the controls they proposed to safeguard themselves were as stringent as possible, the Council was more amenable to allowing them to proceed.

Another persuasive argument was that fewer, rather than more, people on Vhiliinyar's surface, backed up by intensive air surveillance, was not only the most cost-effective method to Proceed, but also probably the most effective method of locating the lost ones, and the least likely to result in more personnel losses. They acquiesced to Acorna's plan.

The council's approval of the addition of Mac to the team, however, was not made thanks to logic alone. Nor was it made because they considered him a device instead of a person. The Council, which could have found Mac's "modifications" insulting, instead were touched by the inventiveness of the android's attempts to blend into their society, and his earnest desire to help them. His horn impressed them so much that one of the senior Council members joked that Mac would next have to modify his hair follicles to make his short sandy brush cut grow out long, curly, and silver as befit a star-clad Linyaari. Mac promised to give it his full attention as soon as the current mission was successfully completed.

Once the Council was won over, it was just a question of getting the equipment Acorna wanted supplied by House Harakamian. It was a lot like a gambling game Hafiz had taught her as a child a sh.e.l.l game. It involved multiple s.h.i.+ps each a bit farther out from Vhiliinyar. A large s.h.i.+p would monitor the surveillance s.h.i.+p and Acorna's party from the depths of s.p.a.ce. A smaller surveillance s.h.i.+p would enter close orbit around the planet, ready to send down help to those on the sur-face at a moment's notice, though it would return to the mother s.h.i.+p as needed for refueling or necessary maintenance. Be tween the two s.h.i.+ps, there would never be a moment when Acorna and her friends would be out of contact with those monitoring them. While in orbit, the smaller s.h.i.+p would monitor the team's every word and breath as well as all of the many other signals transmitted by the sensors Acorna, Thariinye, Mac, and RK wore. The cat's sensors were embedded in a special collar which Becker and Acorna had buckled around RKs neck with some trepidation, despite Acorna's best attempts to communicate its function to the cat. However, for once the didn't object, and seemed to rather admire himself in the ornate neckpiece.

Becker fussed during all of the preparations. Acorna and the others could hear him muttering to himself all the way down to Vhiliinyar's surface as they began their mission, only seven days, Vhiliinyar time, since Aari, Maati, Yiitir, and Maarni disappeared.

He was afraid that his friends would vanish, no matter how careful they were.

Acorna did not have the heart to tell him that it was her fear, too and perhaps the heart of her plan.

You sure you can track them, Nadhari?" Becker's voice boomed across the com links as the Condor, on MOO, spoke to the surveillance vessel commanded remotely by Nadhari Kando.

"Becker, you are like a mother hen with one chick. Every possible sense and emanation has a sensor attached to it. The landing party members are lit up like Christmas trees."

Getting pretty folksy there, Nadhari. What, your new boyfriend used to be a farmboy on Rus.h.i.+ma or something?"

That is none of your business, Jonas. Neither is this mission, from here on out."

I in sorry, Nadhari. You know I only noodge because I care." Becker sounded truly contrite. Acorna could just imagine the sort of race he would be making to well, there was no one for him to make a face aboard the Condor now. Aari and Maati were gone, and she, Thariinye, Mac, and RK were in the flitter headed for the site of the great waterfall.

Thariinye disagreed with her chosen target area.

I want to save Maati and Aari as much as you do. Kh.o.r.n.ya, but more people disappeared from the site of the laboratory, and other places. Shouldn't we start there?"

"We are more familiar with the terrain in that sector," Acorna reminded him. "Besides, there's something else I want to check out." She flew past the place where she had last seen Aari and the others. The plants swayed gently in the wind, green and inviting unless you knew their true nature. "The waterfall was near the sea, right?"

"Yes," Thariinye said, with exaggerated patience.

"And Imaara said that somewhere between the fall and the sea was the old cave where the archives were kept. If it still exists, I'd like Mac to have a look at the walls."

"Too bad that when Aari and Maati disappeared, they took that black coral thing with them," Thariinye said. "Mac could have looked at that and probably reconstructed the whole language of the sii-Linyaari. If only we'd thought to take him to Vhiliinyar to see the Ancestors with us. Of course, the Ancestors probably wouldn't have talked to us if he'd been with us. Still "

Acorna, ignoring him, was tuned in to the mineral content of the areas beneath them. "That seems a likely spot," she said. "I'm getting a sense of hollowness, and of limestone there. A good place for a seash.o.r.e cave."

She set the flitter down and the four of them disembarked and walked cautiously forward, the two males following Acorna, while RK stalked ahead of them, his bushy black-streaked gray tail las.h.i.+ng. He was armed not only with sensors but also with plenty of repellent for the carnivorous plants. He seemed to think he was immune to attack.

Thariinye, much less c.o.c.ky now that they were on the ground, furtively examined himself now and then, inspecting his feet or arms, to see if he was vanis.h.i.+ng yet.

Mac simply took in the devastated landscape, impa.s.sively storing what he saw as data.

Acorna's steps across Vhiliinyar's surface were tentative at first, then as they moved closer to the place she had sensed from the flitter, grew more confident. Until she literally came up against a stone wall. At that point she stopped, staring at the rock as if willing it to go away, because she knew it shouldn't be there. She turned to Thariinye and Mac. They shrugged. Thariinye scratched his head and Mac looked as if he was trying to calculate the rock's density and how much thrust it would take him to burst through it.

RK came up with an immediate and much simpler solution. Without waiting for the rest of the party, he sprayed the wall. Then he walked over to one side of it, and rounded a corner that had been concealed by the shadow from an overhang. He stood just beyond their sight, except for the tip of his tail, which he kept flipping as if to signal them in case they were so dense they hadn't figured out where he was.

The cat was right. There was an opening in the rock, one that seemed to lead downward almost immediately. But it was heavily choked with rocks, mud, broken bits of Khleevi scat, and other debris. It hardly looked pa.s.sable.

"Of course, with mountains and cliffs leveled and waterfalls and seas buried in muck, we could hardly expect the cave entrance to be in any shape to use," Thariinye said glumly. "Besides, the cave must be buried so deep that it's impossible to get to that is, if the whole thing hasn't caved in."

Acorna said, "The fact that there is still some sort of an opening at this level indicates to me there's a good chance that the cave hasn't filled in. I certainly didn't get a sense of it being filled in when I read the elements in the substrate here. But that's beside the point. Getting through to see what shape that cave is in is our problem right now."

"Not a problem, Kh.o.r.n.ya," Mac said. He had strapped a pack to his back when they left the flitter, and now he shrugged out of the straps and plowed through the contents, extracting Pick and shovel attachments that locked into his hands. "Stand back, he advised, and attacked the blocked pa.s.sage.

RK bolted and jumped to the top of Thariinye's head, holding on with all his claws as rock and mud began flying from the hollow in the rock he had so proudly discovered. Acorna didn't need to be telepathic to read the cat's mind.

"This is the treatment I get for showing those stupid people the way?" he was clearly thinking indignantly.

Thariinye was clearly yelling, though he couldn't be heard over all the noise Mac was making. Acorna extricated the cat I from Thariinye's scalp as gently as possible, which wasn't very. A liberal application of horn-healing was necessary for all par- ties concerned except the cat, who retreated a considerable distance from the android-made avalanche and sat down to wash.

Thariinye was still in a bad mood, even after his scratches were healed. He nodded toward the storm of debris flying from beyond the rock. "What the Khleevi didn't destroy, that android will if he keeps this up. What good will it do him to un-cover the cave if he builds a mountain in front of it?"