If that ain’t just like an offsider,” a rough-edged voice complained. “Come to poor little Rushima to save the world and ends up gettin’ himself hurt so bad it takes us locals to save them instead.”
“Hush, Hector,” answered a female voice familiar from the earlier healing sessions. Mikaaye hurt too badly to be able to recall much about her except—oh yes, she was dead. “This boy already cured bushels of arthritis, rheumatism, sciatica, cataracts, heart ailments, pleurisy, and pneumonia today as well as earaches, hives, colic, bad teeth, hardening of the arteries, ringworm, shingles, and hives. I’d say that was a pretty good start on saving the world, or at least our people. Even Doc never had a day like that, did you, son?”
“Ali, I never had a month like that. Stay with us, son, there’s help comin’.”
Mikaaye groaned. He was cold, and it made the pain worse, but at least he was not alone. Although, recalling the salient feature of the female visitor, perhaps that was not entirely a positive thing. “Live help?” he asked. “I am still alive?”
“You’d be the best judge of that,” the female said. “You look solid enough to me, though.”
“Except that horn of his,” Hector, his whine unmistakable, spoke up again. “It looks a might see-throughish to me.”
“That’s how they get when they’ve been working too hard,” Doc told him. “I remember that happening to Acorna when she was helping with the wounded after the Battle with the Bugs. You’ll be fine, boy. Everybody get back from him. You know how the living are always complaining about us making cold spots.”
“I say we just go and let the living look after each other,” Hector said. “What have they done for us lately?”
“Don’t go,” Mikaaye said. The doctor and Alison were comforting, some of the other figures crowded into his unconsciousness were peculiar and might have been frightening had he been better able to tell what they were or what they were doing. Hector was obviously a sad spirit with a poor view of himself and everyone around him. But Mikaaye wanted them near simply because he didn’t want to be alone. Until he’d begun his duties on the Moon of Opportunity, he had always been surrounded by his own kind. Even on MOO, there were lots of other people around. Dead company was better than being by himself. “I have done what I could for your living people,” he said. “But I do not understand what I or other living people could do for you. Tell me.”
Hector began to do so, and Mikaaye learned how dead company could actually be. Old Alison and the doctor receded as Hector told Mikaaye the story of his life and death and all the injustices that had been done to him and of the ingratitude and indignity he had suffered. Mikaaye thought he might have been bored to death, except for the probability that if he died on Rushima, he would have Hector as an eternal companion.
Hector was reiterating how his stupid daughter-in-law, who was not good enough for his son and had probably been responsible for his falling off his horse and being a cripple, had stolen his grandchildren from him and when he died had had him buried facedown. “Trash,” Hector said. “Hey, what in tarnation is going on here? Don’t you young people know it’s rude to interrupt a conversation? You, girl, get out of my face! What are you doin’ hangin’ around here anyway?”
Mikaaye felt a brief, light pressure, and the cool of a horn against his chest. The pain fled, along with Hector, replaced by a comfort as sweet as clover. The horn traveled to his neck and head. He opened his eyes and saw Khorii. It could hardly have been anyone else, since they were the only people with horns in the vicinity.
He sighed and smiled at her. Not only was she his own kind, and had made the pain go away, but he had never known before how gentle she could be. She’d always seemed pretty bossy on the ship. But now she was the most sublime being he could possibly imagine, and, best of all, she had driven Hector away.
“Who is Hector?” she asked. “Here, hold on to me. Sesseli will pull us both up.”
“You heard that?” he asked.
“You’re not shielding very well at the moment. I’m surprised I didn’t hear you all the way back on the landing field. You must have been having nightmares at one point.”
“I was. I had a very bad one about a spirit who drove all the others away. He could not be satisfied in life or in death and never tired of complaining.”
Khorii giggled. “He drove you away from death, then. I suppose if we only knew it, everyone and everything has a use, and that must be his. But I was not referring to him. There were other things.”
“I remember very little. Even Hector is fading, which is a relief.” What he did remember was the touch of her horn and her hands soothing his nerves, washing away his pain and filling him with the pleasure of her touch instead. It was something all of his people could do, of course. He could do it himself. But not like she did. They were almost up to the road, and the injured and their friends would demand their attention, so he had only this moment to reassure himself. “Khorii? Are you still angry with me for going on the mission and not you?”
“I wasn’t angry!” she replied. “I just—it doesn’t matter, Mikaaye. As long as the injured are healed and what needs purifying gets purified and the plague is truly destroyed so we can go home again, what does it matter if you do it or I do?”
“None at all,” he said. “I just was wondering. I did not intend to cause you emotional distress.”
“You did nothing wrong,” she said, although the feeling he got from her was that he had. However, he knew that her words were truer than her feelings, and therefore her feelings were unreasonable, and that annoyed him.
But by that time Hap, Scar, and the others were hauling them over the edge and onto what was left of the road.
The road was destroyed in so many places that in the end they healed the injured then ferried everyone back to town. Scar, Hap, Captain Bates, and Mikaaye returned to her damaged shuttle and spent hours repairing it with spare parts from the Mana—many of which were inexplicably damaged as well.
Khorii thought wistfully of her uncle Joh, who could have had the entire shuttle and the Mana besides completely refurbished in less time. Thinking of him made her think of his asteroid and the Estrella Blanca, the White Star. This thought was less fond. He was the one who had sent them—what was the phrase?—to pursue wild geese? His flaw of lusting for riches had attracted Marl and the other men of mercenary motivation.
By the time the Mana’s crew was ready to depart, two days and nights had passed.
Elder Plimsoll declined to take charge of the prisoners. “We’ve been held up by pirates for less in the past,” he said. “We don’t want them messin’ with us again because we have what they think is theirs.”
The cargo nets that had formed Marl’s shipboard prison weeks before were still in place. “That’s fine,” Captain Bates said. “We may find a use for them yet.”
Khorii couldn’t read her former teacher, who used telepathy rarely and was expert at shielding her thoughts. She had a connection to the pirates, that much was clear from her conversation with Pauli, who had claimed to be her father. Whether that connection was warm enough to keep the captain’s clan from trying to kill her shipmates was not clear. Khorii didn’t think Captain Bates knew herself yet, but it would bear discussion once they were under way.
Jaya started the countdown.
The com unit beeped and Maati, Thariinye, and Khorii appeared on the screen.
No one was more startled than Khorii herself. To the others, most star-clad Linyaari looked alike but to Linyaari, there were many variations in appearance that distinguished them—the shape, length, and color of the horn, the color of the eyes, texture of the mane, conformation of the skull and body. The girl standing beside Maati looked to Khorii like her own reflection.
“Where have you been?” Maati asked. “We’ve been trying to hail you since yesterday.”
“There were emergencies,” Jaya said.
“We’ve had a few of those, too,” Maati said. “If you can delay your departure until we arrive, we can explain more fully.”
“How soon can you be here?” Jaya asked.
“We’re unsure. We await the arrival of the Balakiire.”
“Maati, what is the situation? Who is your companion and why must you wait for the Balakiire?”
“I thought you would never ask. It is so awkward at times to have humans, however competent and friendly, in the middle of our communications. I wanted you to know this news ahead of the others. My companion is your twin sister Ariin, who will be accompanying you and the Balakiire back to Vhiliinyar so Elviiz’s father can finish healing him.”
“Wait! Why does Elviiz need healing, and when did I get a twin sister?”
Maati sent her a series of images of how they found Ariin, or rather, how Ariin found them, followed by other, less-distinct images of the horrific way Elviiz had been injured.
While Khorii digested this, her twin watched her face carefully. So did Jaya. “I know I’m missing something here, Khorii. What’s going on?”
“Family issues,” Khorii said. Jaya’s lids came down to shutter her eyes, and she pretended to be very interested in the instrument console. She no longer had family to cause problems or to give her joy or support. Khorii did not know what she should do first, but finally said to her look-alike, “I am very surprised to learn that I have a sister, Ariin.”
“I was surprised, too, Khorii, but very glad. I have heard so many wonderful things about you. I will try to live up to your example and be of some small assistance in your great work.” She inclined her head in what almost amounted to a bow.
“This is my friend Jaya,” Khorii told her quickly. Hearing praise about herself from someone who looked so similar was extremely unsettling, and she wanted to get away from the subject of her “great work” as quickly as possible.
Captain Bates, Hap, and Mikaaye entered and prepared to strap themselves in for takeoff. “These are my other friends, our teacher Captain Asha Bates and Hap Hellstrom. You probably know Mikaaye already?”
Both Mikaaye and Ariin shook their heads, their manes ruffling slightly as they did so.
Sesseli entered last, clutching Khiindi. The cat looked at the com screen as if he had seen a larger carnivore and bolted, scratching a track across Sesseli’s forearm as he ran to hide beneath a storage bench. Leave it to a cat to capture all of the attention in the room, Khorii thought. Ariin barely acknowledged Sesseli, but had watched Khiindi’s flight intently. Surely she had seen cats before? Since Nadhari Kando became regent on Makahomia, litters of temple kittens had become ceremonial gifts between her world and Vhiliinyar. Quite a number of Linyaari pavilions hosted Temple Cats these days.
Sesseli, holding her bleeding arm, came to Khorii and held her injured limb up to the Linyaari’s horn. Khorii absently rubbed her horn against the wound as a good cat might rub his head against a beloved friend.
“And this is Sesseli,” Khorii concluded.
Sesseli scrutinized the screen, then looked back at Khorii.
“Maati says that Ariin and I are twins,” Khorii told Sesseli.
“Hi, Ariin,” the little girl said with a giggle. “Now I don’t know how I’ll tell you apart.”
Jaya asked, “Why are you waiting for the Balakiire? When is it due?”
“Soon,” Maati told her. “We need help towing a Federation tanker with a cargo of freshwater safely to the surface of Rushima. Then we need an extra crew to fly the ship to LoiLoiKua, where we can fill it with water from there to evacuate the sea people.”
“Perhaps we can help you with that,” Jaya said. “The Mana is larger and more suited to towing than the Balakiire. In the past we sometimes hauled strings of cargo barges for outlying ports.”
“We still need to rendezvous with the Balakiire, because of Elviiz,” Maati said. “Oops, forgot she could not hear us before, Khorii.”
“The ghost-beings attacked Elviiz shortly after we left, destroying many of his inorganic parts,” Khorii told her shipmates.
“I knew we shouldn’t have left him,” Hap said. “Shoot, I liked him, too. I thought it was safe making friends with a droid, but now he’s bought it, too.”
“Oh no, Elviiz is alive,” Maati told him. “Simply…somewhat diminished. The Balakiire is returning with him to Vhiliinyar, but they wish to pick up Khorii to accompany him. If she can determine that the strain of the plague affecting her parents and the Condor’s crew has vanished like the rest of it, then Elviiz’s father/creator Maak will be able to repair him more easily.”
“And I can finally meet the rest of my family in person,” Ariin said. “So I am coming, too.”
“So we’re going to have a basic switcheroo, is that it?” Captain Bates asked. “We’ll help you off-load the water and rescue the LoiLoiKuans with the tanker, and sometime in the course of all that, Khorii and Ariin will transfer to the Balakiire to return to their homeworld. Right?”
“But we also have another mission,” Jaya said. “Captain Becker in particular asked us to perform it.”
Khorii said, “Even Uncle Joh would not value his cargo above Elviiz’s and my family’s well-being. Besides, we do not have a specific function, simply to check on the status of his cargo, and the Balakiire can do that as well as the Mana. The Balakiire is also programmed with Uncle Joh’s universal shortcuts, so locating the cargo will pose no particular difficulty.”
“Brilliant,” Jaya said, “but whatever we’re going to do, we should do it quickly. Doesn’t the attack on Elviiz give anyone else a clue as to what has been causing all of the accidents and deterioration here?”
“Do you mean that these ghosts are absorbing—perhaps even feeding on—inorganic matter?” Khorii asked. That much was obvious. What was less evident was any other motive or methodology the entities might use in selecting their targets, or how they came to exist in the first place.
“We should do a final check, then lift off before they decide to chow down on us,” said Hap.