Acorna's Search Part 16

"You know, Mac, you really frightened Kh.o.r.n.ya," Thariinye said. "She taught me how to fly without the benefit of a s.p.a.cecraft, making a glider of me as she towed me in her wake coming to save you."

"I apologize for frightening you with the cave-in," Mac said. But I knew the elders did not want me to kill the monsters, yet the monsters were quite persistent. It was a dilemma. I do not read minds, but after a few moments, I could understand their words, which were a very antiquated form of one of the early Terran languages, a forerunner of Standard Galactic. Oddly, they seemed to think you were the monsters, and were thinking mostly basic thoughts such as 'Kill, kill, kill the beasts' back and forth to encourage each other, and laughing as they did so, reminding me in their own rough-hewn way somewhat of my former owner, Kisla Manjari. I landed several blows with the flat of my pick on their heads, but they were impervious. I doubt the cave-in will damage them, but it will provide us with protection for the moment, and I can dig us out soon enough when the flitter arrives with help."

"Famous last words," Acorna muttered.

"Excuse me?" Thariinye said.

"Nothing, just something my uncles used to say about planning things in times of danger "

Two bellows, some more cras.h.i.+ng and rumbling, a great deal more clatter and rattle, and a lot more dust belching into the cave followed.

Neither the Linyaari nor Mac coughed, but the cat ran back into the cave. Without a word, the others followed him.

As the fluff of tail disappeared around the corner Thariinye and Acorna had not taken, Acorna called, "RK, it's all right. We're coming. But slow down or you'll be lost and we'll never find you."

RK peered around the corner, his tail las.h.i.+ng impatiently, as if to say, "Fine with me. You people are nothing but a lot of trouble," which seemed remarkably ungrateful considering that they had just healed his undoubtedly otherwise mortal wounds.

But then, cats were not fabled in song and story for their undying grat.i.tude. Acorna winced at her own apt pun and joined the cat in the corridor he had chosen. Thariinye and Mac joined her, with Mac lagging behind as rearguard while the others tried to outdistance the dust.

"Stop!" Mac said. "I can scan the images on these walls into my processor very quickly, but not this quickly."

"Are you still suspended from a high place on that?" Thariinye asked, literally translating a slang phrase he had picked up from Becker. "Those things are making a fine mess out of your cave-in. For all we know, they may be moving enough rock to get through to us right now."

"Judging from what we have seen, I would say that is quite likely," Acorna said. "I feel it is best for us to go as far from them as possible at the moment. We might be able to lose them here in these caves, making further violence unnecessary. Besides, RK is having a difficult time breathing in all this dust. Further in and away from the worst of the haze, Thariinye and I can control the air quality much faster with our horns."

"Very well," Mac said, and his tone surprised Acorna. The usually genial and cooperative android was almost grumbling. "But this data is extremely interesting and it is, after all, why we came here."

"True," Acorna said, "and it is most commendable of you to show such dedication to your task. And, at some more convenient time, we will resume our work. However, I think that, rather than doing what we came here to do, our skills and lights would be put to better use for the moment looking for an alternative way out of here."

"These are superior lanterns with a very long life," Thariinye said.

"And I can always recharge them from my own cells," Mac pointed out.

"And who is going to recharge you when you run out of energy?" Acorna asked. "Though I realize how unlikely such an event is," she added when Mac protested. "How long has it been since our conversation with the captain, Thariinye?"

Mac answered. "Approximately half an hour, Kezdet time, Kh.o.r.n.ya."

"Not long enough," she said. "Stay here. I'll be back in a moment."

"Where are you going?" Thariinye asked. "Back to the tunnel to tell Yaniriin of what happened and what we are doing. I will also mark the way we came to this place, then we can keep marking as we go. That way we can find our way back, as soon as it is feasible. Or, once our people get past the monsters at the entrance and the cave-in, they can find us."

But when she reached the main cavern room, she found that the rocks from the cave-ins caused by their hairy friends outside had tumbled down the tunnel and choked half the room as well as the entrance. Now they were well and truly trapped until Mac had time to dig through the rock again. And it looked like this time the job would be a lot more difficult. It appeared her instincts were right it might be easier to seek another way out of here than to tackle that rock fall a second time. Furthermore, her com unit worked no better inside the cavern than it had before. The survey s.h.i.+p personnel would be very worried about them. Still, matters were not desperate. The blockage kept the monsters at bay for the moment. And Yaniriin knew they were inside the tunnel somewhere. In time, people would come to search for them if they did not find another way out.

On to the next matter. How to mark their pa.s.sage? Even if no rescuers arrived, such markings would help her own parry retrace their steps when it became necessary. She had no ball of yarn, no bread crumbs, no chalk. The sensors in their s.h.i.+p suits did not work in here. Or did they? Perhaps they simply did not work outside the cave to detect what was inside and vice versa. They might work very well inside the cave itself. It was a good idea, and she would test it as soon as she rejoined the others. Nevertheless, she and her friends must be able to count on something more tangible to retrace their steps. Equipment that had failed once for no apparent reason could do so again. Of course, it was possible that Mac had already stored in his database the entire sequence of runes from one room to another, and so the whole exercise was unnecessary. But if Mac became separated from them, they needed a fallback position.

So what could she use to mark their paths? Something effective... Something easy to use.. Something more basic... Something there was a ready supply of... And here it was all around her: rocks.

She filled her pockets and hands with them and began laying them in fours, one for each of them. She placed each pile six paces apart, the distance between herself and the end of her lantern beam. That way, they could always see the next pile of rocks. And, even if the lantern was dead, they should be able to find the rock piles by pacing.

She handled each pebble before piling with the others, so it would be marked with the scent of her hands, which quickly grew rough and chafed under the unaccustomed work. When that happened, she used her horn to heal them, and continued laying a path of rock cairns until Thariinye tapped her on the shoulder.

Acorna looked up from her pa.s.sage marking to see three expectant faces - Mac's, Tharinnye's and RK's where he lay draped across Thariinye's shoulders.

"We're on our own for now," she told them. "That cave is half full of rubble from the cave-in, and it will be tough getting into the pa.s.sage. So I'm marking a trail. You two might want to fill your own pockets with rocks while we've got such a nice supply of them. I've already marked this far. I'll go back for another load now.

Her friends agreed with her. While they loaded up with rock, Mac also continued his work on the cave drawings, which he certainly had the time to pursue now. The flitter was only an hour away, according to Mac's calculations.

"Wel then" Thariinye said, "actually, all this effort is unnecessary. We could just wait to be rescued. Those monsters aren't lkely to find us through the mess they made. The s.h.i.+p will have warned the flitter and Yaniriin has undoubtedly sent properly equipped reinforcements to help capture our guests."

"True," Acorna said, "but I still believe we shoud continue our own efforts here. The survey s.h.i.+p might decide we were killed in the cave-in. Or there may be some problem up on the surface with digging us out that we're unaware of. For example, what if there are a lot more of those hairy things running about the planet? Besides, we came here to explore. Why don't we do it? I agree with Mac he should return to deciphering runes. And I'd like to see if my mineral sense can tell me more about the geological origins of this place, and look for another way out."

"Even if there was another exit at one time, there's probably not now," Thariinye advised. "After all, the main entrance was buried pretty deep."

He looked dejected, and rather frightened. Thariinye was not a coward, no matter how cautiously he had behaved recently. She had seen him charge Khleevi when his friends were in danger. But he was not one to court death unnecessarily especially when no one interesting was around to be impressed.

So she gave a smile and a little shrug and turned toward the hidden mysteries of the unexplored cavern, saying, "You have a point. On the other hand, the recent upheavals we've witnessed and those caused by the Khleevi when they were here may have exposed something that was less accessible in the days when the Attendants used this place. Who knows what we might discover? We might even be heroes! Look on it as an adventure."

Thariinye perked right up. Mac's pace, as he tried to translate and record the runes all around them, was much slower than the one they'd have used if the situation was truly desperate, but Acorna was in no real hurry. They continued for a little while in this way. She, too, needed to concentrate as she mapped out the geology of the rock around them.

Thariinye, however, suddenly felt the need to rea.s.sure her. "We'll be fine, Kh.o.r.n.ya, you'll see. They'll be here for us in no time. Why, I'll bet the s.h.i.+p dispatched extra flitters which have netted those beasts in cross tractor beams and are hauling them aboard a craft specially rigged as a jail. Where do you suppose those hairy things were from anyway? I've never seen anything like them."

"Mac says the language is ancient Terran," she replied, not really paying attention. The walls just ahead bore runes that were much older and more faintly etched than any they'd seen before, and beyond them the cavern walls appeared to be bare. "So perhaps they are from some devolved s.p.a.ce colony."

"Full of beings who don't know how to comb their hair or use lasers but are capable of s.p.a.ce travel?" Thariinye argued. "Unlikely, Kh.o.r.n.ya. Really! Use your head!"

"That's what I'm trying to do," she said, and turned him gently back the way they had come. "Perhaps your skills would best be utilized helping Mac with his translations. You are the only one of us to whom Linyaari is your first and native tongue, after all."

When he was gone, she felt pressure against her leg and saw that RK had remained to keep her company. Quietly. She smiled at the cat.

She opened her mind and put her hands upon the walls of the cavern, walking them one over the other as she paced the length of the corridor, not forgetting to leave her little stone quartets as she paced. When she had finished with the wall on one side of the corridor, she followed it back down the other, breathing as deeply and steadily as she could. The mineral composition was what came first and most easily to her. Limestone with veins of quartz and copper, basalt and deposits of ametrine and azurite.

Gradually, she could feel what was beyond them, just a bit at first, and then, more deeply.

Stone, stone, stone, sand and... water! Moving, surging water, waves and knots and fathoms of it, deep, very deep, beneath her feet.

To one side dirt and stone, the granite of a fallen mountainside.

The other side was what she had hoped to find lighter, thinner, air on the other side intermixed with other things she could tell much less about, though there was stone there... Her sensory impressions were being clouded by emotional ones. Disappointment... no... something deeper... disillusionment... repugnance... and a longing.... A longing for what, Acorna wondered. Love? Nurture? The emotion felt like a child wanting its mother. In fact, it reminded her somewhat of the impressions she had received so strongly, if not always consciously, from the child slaves on Kezdet, the orphans of war victims torn from their burning and bombed homes and the arms of their dead parents to be forced into the lowest and most degrading sorts of labor. Unlike Kezdet, there was no actual fear involved in the strand of emotion. Not here. But there was anger. A lot of it. What was that about?

She increased her concentration, deepened her breathing, and stared ahead of her. Suddenly, the corridor flooded with light.

Along the walls where the runes had been, holos sprung into life images, stories, vids, and vignettes of all sorts enacted themselves in a continuous loop down the corridors. She started to call Thariinye and Mac to see, and as she did so, the walls grew dark and cold again, glyphs scarred and no longer vibrant with tales of life as it had played out here.

Slowly she coaxed the images back again, reaching out with her thoughts and emotions. She kept walking, in her excitement forgetting to lay down stones to trace her path, forgetting about the landslide, about her companions, forgetting everything but the panorama around her and her need to get to the beginning, to the very beginning, so she could begin to understand what she saw.

But when she reached the source of the flowing river of narrative, it appeared to cascade from the ceiling at the dead end of a tunnel. Walking closer, she saw that the end wasn't dead after all. Stone steps were carved in the walls, embellished with the glyphs and runes forming the riverbed of the torrent of tales. And above the steps was a more prosaic symbol, a sign as clear to her as any she had ever seen on Kezdet. "EXIT," it said.

RK found Acorna as she started climbing the steps. The crisp st.u.r.diness of them disappeared, along with the EXIT sign and the visual story stream, as the cat took a solid swipe at her leg and yowled for attention.