Acorna’s People Read online

  ANNE McCAFFREY AND ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH

  ACORNA’S PEOPLE

  THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE UNICORN GIRL

  To Ryk Reaser,

  science and salvage consultant

  Contents

  ONE

  On the planet of Laboue, within the opulent chief residence…

  TWO

  The Condor lurched and shuddered and flung its captain and…

  THREE

  Acorna wanted a graze and a good long gallop more…

  FOUR

  Kisla Manjari’s pout at losing the junk man and his…

  FIVE

  The crew of the Balakiire and the dignitaries among the…

  SIX

  Kisla, precious, you look fatigued,” Uncle Edacki said.

  SEVEN

  The androids, KEN model numbers 637-640, stood at docking bay…

  EIGHT

  The eyes of every person in the pavilion were focused…

  NINE

  Hafiz Harakamian regarded his second wife, his most lusciously beautiful…

  TEN

  The House of Harakamian chemists reported that the powder was…

  ELEVEN

  Rocky Reamer and his children, shepherded by Khetala, arrived on…

  TWELVE

  The entire city—or village, as it seemed more to…

  THIRTEEN

  Grandam was as good as her word. Acorna joined Maati…

  FOURTEEN

  There was no doubt in Becker’s mind whatsoever that he…

  FIFTEEN

  Becker had definitely had better days. The pain in his…

  SIXTEEN

  Roadkill!” Becker cried, and the cat jumped back as if…

  SEVENTEEN

  Becker had never felt awe for anyone except his dad…

  EIGHTEEN

  Acorna stepped onto the platform and was followed by the…

  NINETEEN

  Maati wanted to know where her brother was and why…

  TWENTY

  It took nearly a week—a ghiiri-ghaanye—from the time…

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Shahrazad was still transmitting her distress signal when she…

  TWENTY-TWO

  Day after day and hour after hour the tortured bodies…

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN THE ACORNA UNIVERSE

  BRIEF NOTES ON LINYAARI LANGUAGE

  NOTES ON THE LINYAARI LANGUAGE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BOOKS IN THE ACORNA SERIES

  CREDITS

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  One

  On the planet of Laboue, within the opulent chief residence of Hafiz Harakamian, in one of the hundreds of finely crafted, hand-joined cabinets of rare and lustrous woods in which he kept his smallest and often most precious collectibles, Acorna had once seen a display of brilliantly bejeweled and decorated eggs. Created centuries ago by a man named Carl Fabergé for the collection of a Russian czar not nearly so wealthy as their present owner, the eggs had dazzled the eyes of the young girl with their richly colored enamels, their gold loops and whorls, their swags and bows of diamonds and glittering gemstones, and their tiny movable parts—the delicately wrought scenes that unfolded from within their interiors.

  Now, a fathomless distance from Uncle Hafiz’s home and many years later, it seemed to Acorna as if the eggs had magically grown to giant size and lofted themselves into space, where their colors shone even more brilliantly in the blackness of infinity than they had in the memories of her childhood. They formed a festive flotilla visible from the view-port of the Balakiire.

  The flotilla had been growing in size since the Balakiire exited the wormhole that deposited them just beyond the atmosphere of narhii-Vhiliinyar, the second Linyaari home world.

  The imagery was further borne out by the seemingly endless number of Linyaari space-farers, the denizens of those bright ships, who paraded across the comscreen to welcome the Balakiire delegation home.

  Melireenya introduced Acorna to each of the officers as they appeared on the screen, so that Acorna felt that she was already at one of the receptions or parties her aunt and Melireenya were threatening to give in order to introduce her to Linyaari society and, most especially, to prospective lifemates. Acorna was so excited by the sight of the egg-like ships and the spectacle of her people’s home rotating almost imperceptibly beyond them that she could hardly pay attention to the images on the comscreen.

  The Linyaari welcoming her to this world all looked so much like her that they could have been mistaken for her by her human friends. The figures on the comscreen were pale skinned and had golden opalescent spiraling horns growing from their foreheads, topped by manes of silvery hair which continued to grow down their spines. Like her, they had feathery tufts of fine curly white hair adorning their legs from knee to ankle, to just above their two-toed feet. Their hands, like hers, bore only three fingers, each with one joint in the middle and one where the finger met the palm.

  After the life she’d led, it was a little overwhelming to be among so many others of her kind. All of the equipment and utensils she could see and touch were designed for people like her. Nothing had to be specially adapted to her anatomical peculiarities. Nothing about her appearance was unusual to the Linyaari.

  However, as like her as these people were, they were all, even her mother’s sister and those aboard the Balakiire, still strangers—strangers who took a proprietary interest in her without actually knowing her very well. Although she had ceased to be regarded as a child by the humans she had grown up among, she seemed to be regarded by her Linyaari shipmates as little more than a youngling.

  This was a new sensation for her. Acorna had been jettisoned in a life pod from her parents’ ship as an infant to save her from the fatal explosion that claimed the lives of her parents and the attacking Khleevi. She’d been rescued soon after and had grown up among humans. Specifically, she had been raised by her three adoptive uncles—Calum Baird, Declan “Gill” Giloglie, and Rafik Nadezda. Back when they’d found her they had been miners working in the far reaches of the human galaxies. These days they’d gone on to other things. Rafik, for example, was now the head of the House of Harakamian, the empire founded by his uncle Hafiz Harakamian, an uncommonly wily merchant and wealthy collector.

  When Acorna had first met Hafiz, he’d wished to add her to his many treasures, to be displayed along with the beautiful Fabergé eggs and the incredibly rare Singing Stones of Skarrness guarding his court-yard. However, her value to Hafiz as a collectible had sharply decreased when Hafiz learned she was not a solitary oddity but merely a member of a populous alien race.

  Acorna’s relationship with Hafiz, and the one between Hafiz and Rafik, had improved after that to the point that Acorna now used the name Harakamian, along with that of her good and gentle mentor Mr. Li, as a surname. Dear Mr. Li had passed on a few months ago, but the more durable Uncle Hafiz had recently married his second wife and was now enjoying his retirement in her company.

  Acorna, along with her uncles and Mr. Li, had succeeded in rescuing the children imprisoned in the camps on Kezdet, a planet whose economy had once depended on the exploitation of child labor. They had been ably assisted in this task by the intelligent and resourceful siblings of the Kendoro family, Pal, Judit, and Mercy, themselves former victims of the camps. Together, Acorna and her friends had been instrumental in changing the planet’s laws and ridding it of the Piper, the ringleader responsible for the most heinous of the abuses. They had gone on to establish a mining and teaching facility on one of Kezdet’s moons, Maganos, to nurture and educate the children they had rescued from the horrors of the labor camps.

 
Later, Acorna and her uncle Calum, while trying to locate her home world, had helped quell a mutiny among the Starfarers, human voyagers on a large colony ship. After being forced to watch their parents’ murders during the rebellion, and the subsequent bloodshed, murder, and exploitation that the ship’s new masters were intent upon, the children of the ship were able, with Acorna’s help, to wrest control from the mutineers and destroy them. In the process, they rescued the famed meteorologist Dr. Ngaen Xong Hoa, and his weather control system. The people who had seized the ship had used Dr. Hoa’s new system to destroy the economy and ecology of the newly colonized planet Rushima. The mutineers were spaced by the triumphant youngsters, just as the mutineers had spaced their victims, when the children regained control of the ship.

  While returning with Dr. Hoa to repair the damage to Rushima, Acorna, her adoptive family, and the children fell under attack by the Khleevi, a vicious bug-like race responsible for the death of Acorna’s parents. Fortunately, Acorna’s aunt Neeva and the delegation from narhii-Vhiliinyar had arrived in time to warn everyone of the impending invasion. With Acorna’s help, the resources of Kezdet and the Houses of Harakamian and Li had been mobilized to rout the Khleevi.

  In the course of all this, Acorna had become something of a mistress of disguise, and had used her horn to purify an entire ship’s poisoned air and the waters of Rushima as well as to heal the wounded in all of the hostile encounters with which she’d been involved.

  This was all quite aside from her abilities to divine by seemingly magical means the mineral content of each individual asteroid her uncles wished to mine, an ability which had earned her their respect while she was still quite young. So Acorna had actually packed a great deal of activity into a relatively short life. Consequently she did not feel particularly childlike most of the time.

  Nevertheless, she was a child to her mother’s sister Neeva, a Linyaari Envoy Extraordinaire, or vise-haanye ferilii. She was considered a youngling by all the other Linyaari aboard the Balakiire as well: Khaari, the navigation officer or gheraalye malivii in the Linyaari tongue; Melireenya, the senior communications office or gheraalye ve-khanyii; and Thariinye, the young male whose function was still not exactly clear to Acorna, even after their travels together, but who seemed to think that without him, the mission could not have succeeded. What had been taken by Acorna’s human friends for talent was apparently standard issue for her race. And many of the talents the other Linyaari possessed seemed to have been carefully developed. For instance, none of them needed words to communicate with each other and all of them could read the thoughts of the others on the ship—including hers, a fact which she found rather unnerving at times. She had so very much to learn. Fortunately, if her shipmates were typical examples, her people were kind and forbearing.

  “Khornya, this is my counterpart in the Gamma Sector, Visedhaanye Ferilii Taankaril,” Aunt Neeva told Acorna. Khornya was the Linyaari version of Acorna, the name given her by her human “uncles.” The introduction pulled her attention once more from the spectacle of the ships outside the viewport. Acorna dipped her horn, as did the visedhaanye ferilii, a woman who, like Aunt Neeva, Khaari and Melireenya, was of an indistinguishable age, at least indistinguishable to Acorna.

  “Khornya,” Aunt Neeva said, nodding to the woman on the comscreen and relaying her thoughts to Acorna, “the visedhaanye ferilii is the mother of two handsome sons who have not yet found their life-mates. She regrets that she is about to embark upon a mission, but hopes you will feel free to call upon them for any assistance you need in adjusting to your new home.”

  Acorna smiled and nodded at the woman again. No actual words had been exchanged between her aunt and the dignitary. Even across the vastness of space, it seemed that the senior space-faring Linyaari could read thoughts. Acorna occasionally felt she was catching on to how it was done, but found the process frustrating even with people standing in front of her. Particularly when they responded to thoughts she would not have voiced, given a choice. But her grasp of the Linyaari tongue was not yet complete and the crew of the Balakiire found the need to communicate with her in spoken words tedious. Neeva assured her she’d get the hang of things soon enough. But Acorna still worried.

  And so went her homecoming, with the space around her new home planet dancing with egg-ships full of Acorna-like beings, all of whom seemed curious about the formerly presumed dead daughter of the illustrious Feriila and the valiant Vaanye, all politely inquiring as to where she’d been all this time and what she’d been doing, all seemingly with unmated sons or nephews or widowed fathers and uncles, all shepherding the Balakiire into port and docking alongside her.

  Acorna emerged from the Balakiire behind her Aunt Neeva and just ahead of Thariinye to find the docking bay crowded with Linyaari, some even holding a banner aloft. Behind the uniformed Acorna-like space travelers streaming from their ships to add to the party, a mass of multicolored creatures similar in form to the space-farers crowded onto the docking level, strumming, blowing into, pounding upon, brushing, and stamping a variety of musical instruments. The docking bay was filled with strange but wonderfully harmonious and joyous music.

  Even before Aunt Neeva could explain, Acorna was overwhelmed with happiness. This was the welcoming committee. They didn’t even know her, and they’d brought the brass band and the welcome mat. Aunt Neeva gave her a hug.

  “We are all so glad to have you back, Khornya,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the smiling Linyaari. Tears came to Acorna’s eyes as she nodded an acknowledgment to all those who’d turned out to meet her.

  At last she would truly belong. At last she would no longer be an oddity. What a relief that would be. “And I am so glad to be here, Aunt Neeva,” she said. “I can’t tell you how glad.”

  Aunt Neeva looked a little puzzled, an expression that seemed common whenever she was dealing with her niece. “But you just did, child,” she said. “You just did.”

  Two

  The Condor lurched and shuddered and flung its captain and the human part of the crew—both parts consisting of one Jonas Becker, CEO of Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises Ltd.—against the bulkhead. As quickly as Becker fell, he was released, and rose to the ceiling like a ballet dancer in slow motion, while the rest of the crew, twenty pounds of grizzled black and gray Makahomian Temple Cat, drifted past him, the cat’s extended claws grazing what remained of Becker’s right ear.

  “Dammit, RK, have you been pissing on the GSS panel again?” Becker groaned. RK, whose full name was Roadkill, growled back in his version of a friendly purr. His claws were flashing in and out, blissfully kneading the air, and beads of happy cat drool floated up from between his formidable fangs. His good eye was closed in an excess of feline ecstasy. Becker had never seen a cat who loved zero G the way RK did—but then he had never seen a cat anything like RK before either. The cat’s stub of broken tail moved back and forth like a rudder as it floated by.

  Becker gave the Gravitation Stabilization System panel a boot as he passed it. The force of his kick sent him soaring upward to bang against the console of a fighter ship strapped to the ceiling above the control panel of the Condor. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in his vessel to store cargo, and Becker utilized every cubic centimeter of extra space. This left him no soft place to land when, after a couple more shudders, the ship’s gravity stabilized and Becker and RK tumbled back to the deck.

  Becker massaged his hip. He’d banged it against one of the packing crates of cat food he had unloaded from RK’s original home ship. The cat, always interested in those particular crates, rubbed himself between it and Becker. As usual, Becker was surprised at how soft the cat’s coat was in comparison to his personality. Becker had lost the little finger of his right hand while trying to salvage Roadkill. The cat had then been nameless, of course, the spitting, hissing, clawing sole survivor left aboard a derelict Makahomian spacecraft along with the corpses of his former shipmates.

  Becker didn�
��t like to talk about the loss of his second finger, but it had to do with what he referred to as “RK’s adjustment period,” the time when the cat had recovered enough from his injuries to start feeling at home. When Becker went to sell a couple of choice bits from the inventory soon after he’d acquired Road-kill, he’d found them slick with yellowish liquid and stinking worse than a musk otter in heat. The cause was obvious—and so was the need for a solution.

  Becker consulted the library he had rescued from a landfill on Clackamass 2. He was a sucker for information in any form: hard copy, chip, what have you. It came in handy when he wanted to identify or figure out how to operate some of the inventory.

  He dug through quite a few moldy, torn books before he found the copy of How to Care for Your Kittycat he’d stashed in the stall of the spare head. The book advised that when a male cat began “marking his territory” by spraying it, the only way to stop the behavior was to have the cat neutered. Becker’s business kept him a long way from a veterinarian, but back when he was a kid on the labor farm on Kezdet, he’d helped with the calves and goats. He’d figured a cat couldn’t be that much different, so he attempted a little home surgery on RK. Turned out he’d figured wrong. The attempt ended with them both having surgeries of a sort—RK was now one nut short and Becker had another stump in place of his right ring finger next to the stump of the little finger the cat had shredded during the original rescue. You had to love an animal like that.