Acorna's Triumph Read online

  “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 that is 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—is 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 she were 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 of ghaanyi of 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. Acorna never cursed. “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 was before the 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. And this Aari 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 their other brother 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 of Kubiilikhan 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 to tsk-tsk over the expression of neg
ative emotions. When Nadhari felt negative emotions, whoever was causing her pain usually got to share that pain, and often got flattened in the process.

  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, the Balakiire, 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, the Condor’s shuttle 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, the Condor’s feline 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 is try 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 who she was. “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 Aari undergo 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 the Condor. She truly did not want to be closed up in the tight confines of the Condor with 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 the Condor, 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 the Condor saved 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 relearn 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 really good books 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 as our Aari. 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 as our 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.”