Acorna's Search Part 22

"What did they say?"

"They said they were something called liege men of what I gather is a sort of warlord named Bjorn. They tell me they came to hunt the four-legged unicorns and kill them to take them back to their master for the good their horns will do him. They want to kill our Ancestors!"

The two Wats were now leering and poking at each other.

Miirl looked horrified. "They say their master was particularly eager to get the horns when he sent them because he had just become lifemates with a very much younger lady named Ingeborg the Buxom, and our horns or the horns of the four-leggeds are believed to restore manhood."

The men began shouting and pointing with their bound hands and trying to stomp their bound feet, sounding very commanding. "They say they have been wandering many years in their quest that they had their hands on some of the four-legged unicorns when, all of a sudden, they fell into a deep sleep. When they awakened, the unicorns awoke, too, and bounded away into a countryside these men had never seen before. But they recognize us as the descendants of the unicorns they hunted. They say that, now that they have us in their power, they demand our immediate and unconditional surrender."

Becker laughed. "I'm starting to like these guys."

Maati's strongest concern about her recent change of venue was the discovery that hav-ing a big brother along for the ride was definitely a mixed blessing. He was being very bossy over events n.o.body could change, n.o.body had planned, and n.o.body knew what to do about. Not even him whatever he thought. He gave more silly orders than Liriili. Yiitir and Maarni, on the other hand, were a lot of fun. It had all begun when she, Aari, and the older couple had been standing looking at the sii-Linyaari artifact. All of a sudden, they were facing a bright river tumbling from the distant mountainhead, framed by tree-covered hills just ahead of them. Turning, they beheld a wide open sea with a white sand beach on their side of the river. On the opposite bank stood a great city. It was a big improvement over the Khleevi-wrecked landscape they'd just been looking at. She "ad thought Aari would say, "let's explore." But instead he got all huffy and cautious. And, after they couldn't contact any of the other Linyaari Survey teams, much less Acorna, he'd said, "We must interact with others as little as possible.We should keep to ourselves until we know what's going

"We are telepathic," Yiitir reminded him. "And we share ancestors on at least one side, according to what we know of them."

"It's an opportunity not to be missed," Maarni said, tugging at her lifemate's hand. Maati found herself dancing along beside them while Aari stood scowling.

She didn't really understand his att.i.tude at all. It wasn't like there was any danger. If Yiitir was right about where no, when, they were the Khleevi were an unthinkably long time in the future.

(Come on, Aari.) she pleaded. (It'll be an adventure! Come with us. There's nothing to be afraid of.)

(You don't understand, Youngling. You haven't been trained. All of this has just been thrust upon you. What we do and say now could change history beyond our imagining. No one will have told you about the s.p.a.ce-time continuum and why you must be careful)

(Not to meet yourself coming and going?) she replied scornfully. (Oh, we had all that before I left school. Grandam made sure I had progressive tutors. I learned all about that stuff and Grandam and I talked about it some, too. You know what she said?)

(You're about to tell me, I take it.) his thought came through huffy and impatient.

(Grandam said that if people go back and change history, then that's sort of like birth and death, isn't it? It's just fate. It's what happens. And maybe it's for the best. Maybe history should be changed. Besides, what else can we do but relax and explore? Can you get us back to where we were?)

(No, but I can stay put and hope that our friends will be able to find us.)

(They sure were not able to find anybody else that was lost! We are stuck here. Why can't we look around? Grandam would say we should take advantage of the situation if we can't change it.)

(I can't imagine her saying something so simplistic and irresponsible,) Aari said.

That made Maati so mad she didn't even try to conceal it. (She was not irresponsible! She was the most grown-up Linyaari of anybody ever but she wasn't always looking for bad in everything like you do. You want to talk about irresponsible? Who was it who couldn't even get himself and our brother to the s.h.i.+p in time to be evacuated? I would have had the benefit of your att.i.tudes and teachings a long time ago if you had just been on time for take-off! Instead I got Grandam to bring me up, while our parents went off looking for you and Laarye. And you know what? I'm glad! Grandam was wise, not full of gloomy old scary stories about making it so your future self is never born. What do we know about the future or anything else? Our life is wherever we are at the time, isn't it? Well, isn't it?)

She had been sending so fast and so furiously that she didn't notice until she ran down that he had grown very still, very sad.

"Oh, Aari, brother, I am so sorry!" she said, running over to try to catch his hand and make up with him. But she had gone too far. He hated her now. He wasn't sending hate, but he was pulling away from her as if she had some sort of horrible contagious disease.

"No, no, you might be right. Go along with Yiitir and Maarni. I will wait here and tell anyone who finds us where you

are.

And so she did. Maybe when he'd sat on the beach by himself long enough, he'd realize he was being silly and come and join them.

And she caught his thought, not actually intended for her to hear, (She is still young enough to think that things always come out all right, that your friends always find you, and that nothing very bad will happen.)

Maati felt an answering flutter of unease. Of course, she had been through a lot of bad things, but basically her brother wasright. There were usually a lot of good people around to help her out of whatever predicament she was in. Though, in her secret heart, so far, she still sort of preferred the Khleevi to Liriili. Their attacks at least were less personal.

"The youngest gets to push off!" Yiitir commanded cheerily, as he stood in the bow of the little boat and struck a pose worthy of the admiralty of some great navy. Maarni was rummaging in the pack she had had with her when they were transferred? s.h.i.+fted? Transported?

The folklorist came up with a LAANYE and a small notebook and stiil. Very low tech, but still light and handy and it did the job of writing.

Maati rolled up the cuffs of her s.h.i.+psuit and waded in, pus.h.i.+ng the little pure into the water and jumping aboard afterwards with such enthusiasm that the boat wallowed precariously. Yiitir flailed around and sat down abruptly. Maarni laughed. Then Yiitir handed Maati a paddle and kept one for himself, and together they paddled the piiro out into the water.

They saw some other boats, including some very large ones, out on the water, and people were moving around on them a few were Linyaari, but most were another sort of person, rather like Becker and Uncle Hafiz but longer and slimmer. Their movements were very graceful, she thought, and there was something Linyaari-ish about them, although they had no horns and she couldn't see their hands and feet very well. Their hair resembled that of the humans Maati had met, too.

"Can we go talk to them?" Maati asked. "It would be wonderful to finally meet one of the Friends, don't you think?"

Yiitir said, "There'll be time enough for that if our situation can't be sorted out. But I think we should merely listen for the moment. Aari was right, you know. We mustn't disrupt things by letting on where we're from and what we're doing here unless it becomes a matter of life or death for us."

"As if we knew what we were doing here!" Maati said. "You know, if we have been brought back in time, who do you think

brought us here? They did! The Friends. Somehow or other. So they could send us back."

"There is a flaw in your logic, you know," Yiitir pointed out.

"What? It seems sensible to me," she said.

"The Friends were all long gone by the time we were born. They couldn't have brought us here deliberately. Not us specifically, at any rate. They didn't know we existed."

"Well, yes, but even if they didn't aim for us specifically they must know how our coming here happened."

"Why?" Maarni asked. "Perhaps we're here as the result of something the Khleevi left behind on Vhiliinyar."

"Can't be," Maati said with an impudent grin.

"Why not?"

"Nothing has tried to eat us yet."

"A valid point," Yiitir agreed. "She has you there, my dear."

"Still, I do not think communicating our plight is a good idea. We might be as big a surprise to them as they are to us."

"I suppose oh, look" Maarni cried as something flashed from the water with a brilliant dazzle of blue-green and a spume of spray. Just for a moment Maati had seen it a horn among wet strands of long greenish hair.

She was about to dive overboard after it when Maarni put a firm hand on her shoulder. The elder Linyaari sent out a mental message, broadcasting very loudly. (Please come to see us here on our piiro. We understand that our races are related. We would like to know you better.)

They waited, paddling placidly in the lake, which had little rainbows of color floating on the waters from some kind of strange substance that Maati had never seen before on the lakes or seas of narhii-Vhiliinyar. It smelt funny, too, she thought, wrinkling her nose nasty stuff. But it wasn't the water she was interested in, but what was in it. Maarni sent out her plea again, rea.s.suring the sii- Linyaari she meant them no harm, but simply wanted to hear their stories and songs, wanted to meet them. Meanwhile, they kept paddling out to a small island. Over on the far side of it, they rested their arms, floating gently and admiring the birds flying by, the way the suns gilded the sh.o.r.e with a tawny sunset, and the mildness of the air. As soon as they were on the other side of the island, their piiro was surrounded by turbulence in the form of streaks racing through the water toward them. And then they, too, were in the water. Maati gulped and splashed and sank beneath the waves, in spite of her best efforts to stay afloat. She was going to drown here in this strange world. It seemed Aari was right.

From the vantage point of their three skysc.r.a.per towers, Acorna, Thariinye, and Mac saw that in many places, despite its reinforcement, the sky bad fallen. Huge triangles of the ceiling's fabric, a substance Acorna guessed to be similar to that used in Linyaari s.p.a.ce vessels, bulged with debris covering whole smashed city blocks.

All she could see of the sea from this vantage point was the part was.h.i.+ng over the lower city and the debris column in the middle. But she got a vaster and more shadowy impression of the landward side. Ranging outward from where she stood, as far as her eyes could see, were outline beyond outline beyond outline or buildings stretching endlessly into the darkness. How could she and her friends ever explore all of this?

There were hundreds of buildings as tall as the ones they climbed, though not all were as large in circ.u.mference, and not all had survived the depredations of time and Khleevi in the world above. Whole blocks of the city lay buried under earth, trees, and Khleevi scat. Other buildings, less st.u.r.dy than the columns, lay in pieces, shaken by the earthquakes that had so disrupted the surface, Acorna guessed. It was very difficult to see too far by the mere glow of the building walls.