The Unicorn Girl Read online

Uncle Hafiz was so dismayed at the thought of claiming kinship with the red-bearded unbeliever that he didn’t even think of asking who Calum might be. “Ah—it doesn’t work quite like that,” he said hastily.

  “How many percent rel-tive to Gill are you?”

  “Zero percent,” Hafiz said, then blinked. “Aren’t you a little young to be learning fractions and percentages?”

  “I know fraction, percent, decimal, octal, hexadecimal, and modulo,” Acorna said cheerfully. “I like numbers. You like numbers?”

  “Only,” said Hafiz, “when the odds are in my favor.”

  Acorna frowned. “Odd is not-even. Even is not-odd. Odds is not-evens?”

  “No, no, sweetheart,” Hafiz said. “The boys have neglected an important part of your education. Come along inside. I can’t explain without drawing pictures.”

  When Rafik came pounding down the stairs an hour later, sure that Acorna had been kidnapped while he and Calum slept, the first thing he heard from Hafiz’s study was a familiar piping voice asking a question.

  “That’s right!” Uncle Hafiz sounded more relaxed than Rafik had ever heard him, almost jovial. “Now, suppose you’re making book on a race where the favorite is running at three to two, so you offer slightly better odds—like, say, six to five—”

  “Six to five is much better,” Rafik heard Acorna object. “Should not give more than seven to four.”

  “Look, it’s just an example, okay? Suppose you offer seven to four, then. What happens?”

  “Many people place bets with you.”

  “And what do you do to make sure you don’t lose your money?”

  “Lay off the bets with another bookmaker?”

  “Or,” Uncle Hafiz said cheerfully, “make very, very sure the favorite doesn’t win.”

  That was the point at which Rafik interrupted them and brought Acorna back to their rooms for the excellent breakfast Hafiz had ordered sent up to them. He and Calum wrangled over the sliced mangoes and pointed skewers full of grilled lamb like weapons at one another while Acorna quietly worked her way through the bowl of leafy greens Hafiz had ordered especially for her.

  “How could you be so careless and irresponsible?” Calum demanded.

  “You were sleeping in this room, too,” Rafik pointed out acidly. “I happen to know that you slept very well last night. You snore!”

  “You should have told her not to go out without one of us!”

  “Look,” Rafik said, “no harm’s been done, okay? He didn’t hurt her.”

  “From your own account,” Calum retorted, “he was teaching her to gamble! That’s not the sort of education I want for my ward.”

  “She’s mine, too,” Rafik said, “and there is nothing inherently criminal about the profession of being a turf accountant.”

  Acorna chose that moment, having finished all the sweet greens and the sliced carrots, to speak up. “Nobble the favorite,” she said clearly, and smiled with pleasure at her new word.

  “I rest my case,” said Calum, arms folded. “And what’s more, you are not getting me back into those ridiculous garments. If Acorna can run around unveiled, so can I.”

  “You will not,” Rafik said with quiet intensity, “do anything to destroy my cover as a Neo-Hadithian. And that includes raising your voice. We’re just lucky that Uncle Hafiz respects my religious beliefs enough to order the servants to keep away from these rooms, or we’d be blown already.”

  “I think we are blown,” Calum said. “Blown clear out of the water. Now that he’s seen Acorna, what’s the point of wrapping ourselves up like white tents?”

  “My conversion to Neo-Hadithian tenets,” Rafik said, “is an essential part of my negotiating strategy. And it’s not such a bad thing that Acorna has charmed Uncle Hafiz, either. He’ll be all the more inclined to complete the transaction and speed us on our way.”

  Calum stared. “You sound as if you actually mean to give him Acorna!”

  Acorna’s eyes narrowed until the silver pupils were all but obliterated. She leaned across the table to grab Calum by one hand and Rafik by the other.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Calum soothed her, “we’re not going anywhere without you. Are we, Rafik?”

  “Want Gill,” Acorna said firmly. “All together.”

  “We will be together, darling, in just a little while,” Rafik promised.

  “Want Gill here now!” Acorna’s voice rose.

  Calum’s and Rafik’s eyes met over her head. “I thought you said she was over the dependency,” Rafik mouthed.

  “Being auctioned off as a curiosity makes a girl insecure,” Calum whispered back.

  “Gill!” Acorna wailed on an even higher note.

  “Just so you understand,” Calum said some time later, “I’m only doing this for Acorna.”

  “Darling, I would never ask you to put on hijab for my sake,” Rafik said sweetly. “White isn’t your color.”

  They were strolling in the garden, Calum and Acorna decently veiled so that Gill could join them without outraging Rafik’s supposed Neo-Hadithian sense of propriety.

  “Explain to me again,” Calum said while Acorna skipped ahead, holding Gill’s hand, “exactly how wrapping me up in a bolt of polysilk is an integral part of your negotiating strategy. And don’t giggle!” he added sharply, almost tripping over some of the lower layers of robes.

  “Don’t hike your skirt up, it’s not decent,” Rafik said. “If you’d take small steps, like a lady, you wouldn’t trip all the time. Ah, Uncle Hafiz! The benevolence of your smile lights the garden more brightly than the summer sun.”

  “What joy can be sweeter than the company of beloved relatives,” Hafiz replied, “beloved relatives and, er, um…” He looked at Gill’s flaming red beard and freckled skin. “…relatives and friends,” he finished with an audible gulp. “I trust you have had time and privacy sufficient to confer with your family and your partner, dear nephew?”

  “We accept your offer,” Rafik said. “Transfer the registration of the ship’s beacon and sell the shares for us, and…” He nodded at Acorna, who was happily chattering to Gill about the new kinds of fractions she had learned, such as three-to-two and six-to-four.

  “Excellent!” Now Uncle Hafiz was truly beaming. “I knew you’d be reasonable, dear boy. We’re two of a kind, you and I. If only your cousin Tapha could do as well!”

  Rafik looked slightly queasy at being compared to his cousin, his uncle’s heir. “Where is Tapha, by the way?”

  Hafiz’s smile vanished. “I sent him to take over the southern half of the continent. Yukata Batsu has been running it long enough.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know where the rest of him is,” Hafiz said. “All Yukata Batsu sent back were his ears.” He sighed. “Tapha never had what it takes. I should have known when I abducted his mother that she didn’t have the brains to give me a worthy successor. Yammer, yammer, yammer, all the time complaining at me that she could have had a career dancing topless at the Orbital Grill and Rendezvous Parlor. Her and her perky breasts. Yasmin, I told her, all the girls have perky breasts in zero-g, you were nothing special, you’re lucky a good man took you away from all that. But would that woman listen?” Hafiz sighed and brightened up. “However, I’m not too old to try again. Now that I’ve found a woman with intelligence to match my own…” His eyes strayed to Acorna. “Don’t you mind her holding hands with that dog of an unbeliever?”

  “She’s only a little girl,” Rafik said stiffly.

  “Not for much longer,” Hafiz said. “They grow up faster than you think.”

  A sputtering sound escaped from behind Calum’s layers of white veiling. Hafiz looked startled. “Your senior wife? She is unwell?”

  “She suffers from nervous fits,” Rafik said, grasping Calum’s wrist and hauling him away from Hafiz.

  “A sad affliction,” Hafiz said. “Meet me within the house when you have calmed your women, Rafik, and we will pledge faith to our agreement ov
er the Three Books.” He turned away, muttering, “Ugly, prone to fits, big feet, and what a hairy wrist! No wonder he is reluctant to give up the other one…but with his ship and his credits, he can easily buy another wife.”

  “And just what were you snickering about?” Rafik demanded in a whisper when Hafiz had passed back into the house.

  “‘They grow up faster than you think,’” Calum quoted. “If he only knew how fast! Would he believe Acorna was a toddler when we found her less than two years ago?”

  “Let’s don’t tell him,” Rafik suggested. “This whole deal depends on mutual trust, and he’d be sure I was a thumping liar if I tried to tell him how fast Acorna grows. Besides, she’s not going to be here long enough for him to find out.”

  “But it’s the truth!” Calum said.

  “Truth,” Rafik said, “has very little to do with verisimilitude.”

  Gill kept Acorna amused in the garden while Rafik and Calum went into the study to meet Hafiz. He was seated behind a gleaming, crescent-shaped desk with the usual consoles and controls, plus a few that Calum did not recognize, inlaid flush with the surface so as not to spoil the smooth lines of the desk. Incongruously stacked atop the modern equipment were two antique books, the kind with hard covers enclosing a stack of paper sheets, and an old-fashioned databox with only six sides.

  “You admire my desk?” Uncle Hafiz said pleasantly to Calum. “Carved from a single piece of purpleheart…one of the last of the great stand of purpleheart trees on Tanqque III.”

  “My wife prefers not to talk to other men,” Rafik said sharply.

  He’s rumbled us, Calum thought in despair. He knows I’m not a woman. Rafik and his damn silly games!

  “Dear boy,” Hafiz said, “surely within a family as close as ours, and soon to be united even more closely by the exchange of wives, even you Neo-Hadithians can drop some of these ridiculous…oh, all right, all right, I didn’t mean to insult your…religion.” He pronounced the last word with the faint distaste of someone directing the servants to remove whatever it was the cat had dragged in and failed to finish eating.

  Rafik bridled, scowled, and gave what Calum thought an excellent imitation of a man on the verge of taking mortal insult.

  “Your ship,” Uncle Hafiz said, “is now registered as the Uburu, originally of Kezdet.”

  “Why Kezdet?”

  “That was the original registration of the beacon you appropriated. It would have been extremely expensive to delete all traces of the beacon’s history. I think it suffices that we can now show an electronic trail of three transfers of ownership. Appropriate insignia have been applied to the body of the ship, along with some…ah…cosmetic changes.”

  Calum choked.

  “Every rascal in the galaxy registers under Kezdet,” Rafik protested. “They’re a known cover for all sorts of thieves, desperadoes, con men, and cheats.”

  Uncle Hafiz’s brows rose. “Dear boy! My own modest personal fleet has Kezdet registration.”

  “Exactly,” muttered Calum, too low for Hafiz to hear him. He jabbed Rafik in the side with one veiled elbow, hoping to remind him of the other problem with using Kezdet as their port of registration.

  “And,” Rafik said, “as it happens, I have had an…unfortunate encounter with Kezdet patrols. One of those pesky matters of trespassing that can occur with the best of will on both sides, but I am afraid they took it in a poor spirit.” There was no way of knowing for sure, but it seemed a safe bet that the Guardians of the Peace were still unhappy about the patrol cruiser he, Calum, and Gill had crippled and marooned before taking off with that load of titanium.

  “Then,” Uncle Hafiz said smoothly, “you will have an excellent excuse for not returning to your port of registration, will you not? Now, your shares have been converted to…” He named a sum in Federation credits that made Calum gasp through his veils.

  Rafik actually managed to look disappointed. “Ah, well,” he said sadly, “that would be after your discount, of course?”

  “By no means,” said Uncle Hafiz, “but I propose to take no more than twenty percent of the gross, which I assure you will barely cover my expenses in arranging…facilitation payments…to all the bureaucracies concerned.”

  “It was seventeen percent yesterday.”

  “Delay,” said Uncle Hafiz, “increases the expense. How fortunate that you have come to a wise decision! It only remains to complete the transaction. If you will swear on the Three Books to honor our agreement, then call Acorna in and divorce her, I shall marry her immediately and you will be free to depart.”

  Rafik looked mournful. “If only it were that easy!” he said. “But I must warn you that the Hadith require a waiting period of at least one sunset and dawn between a woman’s divorce and remarriage.”

  “That is not in my understanding of the Hadith,” Uncle Hafiz said sharply.

  “It is a new revelation of Moulay Suheil,” Rafik countered. “He had a dream in which the First Prophet, blessed be His Name, appeared and expressed his concern lest women, being weak in understanding and easily led, might be drawn into error by too much haste in the matter of divorces and remarrying. A divorced woman must spend one night in prayer, seeking the will of the First Prophet, before she may enter into any new alliance.”

  “Hmmph,” muttered Uncle Hafiz. “I would scarcely describe the young rarity out there as being weak in understanding. I’ve never seen anyone catch on so fast to the idea of keeping a double set of accounts, one for the Federation and one for private purposes.”

  Calum choked and Rafik trod on his foot. This was no time to resume the argument about whether Hafiz was teaching Acorna suitable things!

  “However,” Rafik said, “to allay your anxieties, I will do better than swearing on the Three Books. I will swear on this copy of the Holy Hadith themselves, authenticated by Moulay Suheil, and most sacred to me and to all true believers.” He drew a datahedron from his pocket and kissed it reverently before extending it in his cupped hands. Uncle Hafiz recoiled as if from a snake.

  “You swear on your Hadith,” he said, “and I will make my oath on the Books of the Three Prophets. Thus each of us will be bound by that which one holds most sacred.”

  “An excellent idea,” said Rafik.

  Calum’s attention wavered during the lengthy oath-taking which followed, most of which was not performed in Basic Interlingua but in the language of Hafiz and Rafik’s culture of origin. It sounded to him like a group of birds choking on something unpleasant, but it seemed to make sense. At one point they called for Acorna to be brought into the room; she stood quite still under her veils while more of the unfamiliar language spouted over her head. At the end Hafiz kissed the topmost of his Three Books, and Rafik pressed his lips to the datahedron again, and both men smiled as if in the satisfaction of a bargain concluded.

  “With your permission, Uncle, I will now escort my former wife to the place set apart for her, that she may begin her vigil of prayer. I know you will not wish to delay the final ceremony,” Rafik said.

  “Since I myself am not a Neo-Hadithian,” Hafiz said, “I see no need at all for this delay.”

  “I must report to her family that all has been handled decently and in good order,” said Rafik. “It is a matter touching my honor, Uncle.”

  Hafiz muttered and grumbled but finally let them go, after receiving Rafik’s assurances that Acorna’s prescribed time of prayer need not interfere with her attending the wedding feast that night. “Only family,” he promised. “Only ourselves and your partner.”

  Rafik looked surprised. “You will break bread with an unbeliever?”

  “You consider him as family and entrust him with your honor in the persons of your wives,” said Hafiz, looking as though he had just swallowed something very unpleasant. “In loving respect to you, my dear nephew, I can do no less.”

  “What,” Calum demanded as soon as they were safely in the secluded rooms upstairs, “was all that about?”

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bsp; “Well, you didn’t want me to hand Acorna over to him then and there, did you? I had to come up with some reason to delay. Now that the credits and registration are in order and he’s told me the passwords to access them, we can sneak out tonight. Have to wait until after this blasted feast, though.” Rafik frowned. “I wish I knew why he insists on having Gill there. He obviously didn’t like the idea above half.”

  “Makes it convenient for us,” Calum pointed out.

  “That,” said Rafik, “is what worries me.”

  Out of consideration for Rafik’s supposedly strict religious views on the seclusion of women, Hafiz arranged that no servants should be present at the celebration feast that night.

  “You see, dear boy,” he said, gesturing at the spacious dining hall with its carved lattice-work screens and colorful silk-covered divans, “all is prepared. The table is, after all, adequately furnished with heating and chilling chambers to keep food at the proper temperature. What could be pleasanter than a simple dinner en famille? The employment of dozens of servants to carry trays and pour drinks is merely an outmoded tradition of conspicuous consumption, something which the Third Prophet enjoined us to abjure at all times. Do you not agree?”

  Gill was glad that he, as an unbeliever, and Calum, as Rafik’s senior wife, were not expected to reply to this statement. All he had to do was keep a straight face as Rafik praised the modesty and simplicity of Hafiz’s arrangements…and try to keep his eyes from wandering over the incredibly lavish display before them.

  A long, low table stretched between two rows of divans covered in emerald and crimson silk. Dishes covered the table from one end to the other: bowls of pilau, silver trays of sizzling-hot pastries, sliced fruits arranged as an elaborate still life on a specially inset chilling tray, skewers of grilled lamb, dishes of yogurt with chopped mint, Kilumbemba shellfish fried in batter, crystallized rose petals and sugared goldenhearts…. Between the dishes stood tall tumblers frosted with ice, and a pitcher of some sparkling fruit drink rested in another cooling tray beside Hafiz’s divan at the head of the table. The far wall of the dining hall appeared to be a cliff of moss-covered rock with a veil of water running down its surface and splashing into a recirculating stream at the bottom of the miniature cliff. From behind the carved lattices, a recording of Kitheran harp music provided a softly tinkling counterpoint to the sound of the falling water.