Acorna's Rebels, Page 3
Anne McCaffrey
“Our Temple cats are ferocious fighters,” the woman warrior said, running a finger along the cat’s curl of tail.
“I believe it, having seen RK in action,” Acorna agreed. “However, he doesn’t have Mac’s facility for alien languages. I think, Captain, that since Mac mastered the Khleevi utterances well enough to fool their ships, he could certainly pick up the tongue the Wats are speaking among themselves.
“Our people have tried using the LAANYE on their language, but those two don’t seem to carry on normal conversations and the only words that consistently appear in their thoughts when faced with most of us are, ‘Maim, kill, destroy, rend,’ and that sort of thing. Most of my people find that too disturbing to pursue, not to mention it being too limited a sample to build a language base from. If Mac can communicate with them consistently, then perhaps we can start teaching them current languages and manners. It must be very frightening for them to suddenly be among us. We should try to help them assimilate so they can continue their lives in this time in a somewhat normal way.”
“If you say so,” Becker said. “Personally, I think we should just send them back to whenever it was the old-timers had banished them to.” He grinned at Nadhari. “At least they were a bargaining chip for me to get Hafiz’s security chief off MOO for a while.”
Acorna watched attraction spark between the captain and Nadhari like static from RK’s fur. The two humans still cared for each other, that was clear. With a sigh, Acorna turned to go speak to Mac.
The android readily agreed to her proposal. “You mean you want me to modify the Wats in the same way you modified me? An upgrade of their memory banks?”
“Yes, sort of. Though they are very backward and superstitious.”
“What is superstitious?” Mac wanted to know.
“Hmm, some people would say it means to believe in any sort of magical charms at all, but I think it is more the belief in false magical charms that presuppose a cause-and-effect relationship between events or incidents that are actually unrelated.”
“Then there are true magical charms as well as false ones?” Mac asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose that depends on the definition used for magic. In some places, the ability my people have to read minds, or the way that I can discern, from a distance, the mineral content of planetary bodies throughout their mass, would be considered magic. We cannot actually explain these abilities yet, and some people consider all unexplained events as magic. Many phenomena for which we now have scientific explanations were considered to be magic before we learned those explanations. There were no scientists that we know of in the time Wat and Wat came from, so all events and phenomena must seem magical to them.”
“Ah,” Mac said, “that may explain their hostility to you and your people. Is it possible that they wish to kill your people because they believe you are magicians with evil powers?”
“No, they kill us because they want to steal our horns. Their leaders believe that our horns have the power to make them more virile, to keep them from being poisoned, all that sort of thing. It’s even true, but what they don’t understand is that if they’d befriended our Ancestors and asked for help nicely instead of killing every horn-bearer they saw, things would have worked out better on both sides. As it was, their ruthless pursuit of ‘magic horns’ back on Old Terra meant that soon there were no more ‘magic horns’ to pursue.”
She and Mac worked as a team, spending hours on end with the Wats. She read their thoughts and supplied the images to Mac, who asked questions in their guttural language, which he understood very quickly. “It is, as Captain Becker discovered, a very early version of Standard, with some Teuton and old Norse mixed in. Many sentences are actually not very different from those spoken by Captain Becker and other Terrans, but the inflection and accent make the words sound foreign.”
Acorna had already noticed this, and was picking up on the similarities and learning the accent, but since the Wats were the ones who would have to assimilate to the dominant cultures around them now, it was more important for them to learn modern languages than for her to learn ancient Wat.
Now that the Wats were actually in a mood to communicate, thanks to Acorna’s telepathic skills, Mac made rapid headway teaching them words and concepts. The android tried to explain to them that they were flying through space in a spaceship. They asked him in awed tones if the Thunder God had his hand on the Condor, guiding the vessel across the heavens.
“Did you explain it to them?” Acorna asked, amused.
“I tried, but in the end I said no, it was more as if we were riding the Thunder God’s lightning bolt. They seemed not only satisfied with that explanation, but impressed and proud.”
Though neither Wat had as yet directly addressed her, Acorna felt that great progress was being made in their socialization. She had no idea at what point in their temporal incarceration the time rupture had released them, but they were still relatively young men.
The red-haired one with the amorous intentions toward Karina was taller than his companion and was heavily muscled through the chest, shoulders, and arms. He had a blue-eyed stare that at some times was direct and at others seemed to be looking back into his past and asking many questions. Reading his thoughts, Acorna saw that he had several mates and many children in scattered villages.
The other Wat had sandy hair and blue eyes as well, and was more of a warrior by disposition. His glance was suspicious and his questions were sly, as if he thought to catch his captors out in a lie. He kept alert to escape opportunities.
Acorna cautioned Mac to watch that man. Though his outward behavior was less aggressive than that of the red-haired Wat, he was the more dangerous and less civilized of the two.
What they had taken for the red-haired Wat’s crudeness was simply a healthy lust that had stood him in good stead in his homeland while siring his dynasties. He also had a certain sort of gregariousness, a willingness to found new dynasties no matter where his circumstances took him. Hafiz, with some justification, considered the man a barbarian rapist, but of the two Wats, he was actually far less hostile and more amenable to learning. Even his actions toward Karina would, in his own culture, have been a compliment. Acorna had deduced that the Wats’ world had some remarkable differences from modern human society.
The personality and character differences between the Wats caused the men to argue among themselves a bit, which gave Mac opportunities to learn more of their language, and—once he’d deciphered what they meant—give them further instruction in modern Basic.
Acorna became sure they’d reached a turning point with the barbarians one day when she walked, on her way to turn in for some much-needed rest, through the cabin to which the Wats’ lessons had been moved. Becker had hoped providing a civilized environment would speed the barbarians’ education. Mac had a replicator salvaged from a merchant ship and was serving the men tea and cakes, though they would have much preferred beer and little salted fishes. Indeed, the blond Wat had developed quite a sweet tooth. The red-haired Wat looked up at her, and for the first time, his blue eyes focused. “Female” was the word that registered with him, and a broad grin—the baring of teeth the Linyaari considered so hostile—lit his face.
Acorna kept her face carefully grave, though she wanted to laugh and smile back. This one would cheerfully misinterpret friendliness for…uh…passion. Even in another species. He was starting to remind her a bit of Thariinye that way.
Acorna hurried out of that room as quickly as good manners and the Wats would let her.
She wasn’t required on the bridge much on this trip. With the Condor’s new Khleevi control panel modifications, Becker and Mac were able to manipulate the controls much better than she was. She hoped that Becker would wear out this particular configuration before Aari returned. She doubted her lifemate would really appreciate the ironic humor in the use of Khleevi technology aboard the Condor. He was more likely to decline to board the ship while it was in place.
She fell asleep at once and dreamed of Aari, as always, but also, and primarily, she dreamed of cats. At first they were very large cats, as big as Aari. Then Aari began shrinking in size until his size in relation to the cats around him was the reverse of how it really should be. A lot of the dream was just about the daily life among the cats—the birth of kittens, hunting and eating, building. There were humans there, too, and they and the cats sometimes fought together. The dream became long and involved and increasingly catty, until Aari was not even in it. And the cats were crying, mewling, scratching, begging for something.
She awoke to the realization that the sounds were real. RK was setting up a horrible ruckus outside her quarters, scratching at the door, crying as if his heart was broken.
When she opened the hatch, RK rushed in, while from the bridge came roars from Becker. “Fragitall, RK, you know better than to play with the controls!”
“To what do I owe this honor?” she asked the cat, closing the hatch. “Could it be that you’re looking for sanctuary?” She lay down again on her bunk, cradling her friend in her arms.
RK growled softly and burrowed his face into her hand.
Then the ship lurched and she was catapulted from her berth. The cat laid tracks on her flesh right through her shipsuit as he shot out into the room and bounced off the far wall. The ship bucked again. The artificial gravity on board fluctuated wildly once more from Federation standard to zero G and back again. Acorna’s first impulse was to head for the bridge and see what the trouble was, but until things were a bit more stable, that didn’t seem to be wise. Rolling down the corridors and ricocheting from the ceiling would hardly be helpful. She lay back down on her bunk and strapped herself in, searching for Becker’s thoughts. The process didn’t involve much mind reading at the moment. The captain’s mental voice was very loud when he was upset.
(Fraggin’ Khleevi piece of decomposing roach manure, who would have thought they’d put the warp drive where the brakes ought to be? Fraggin’ cat playing fraggin’ Tarzan with the fraggin’ levers.)
The ship’s gravity failed again. RK levitated from the place where he landed during the first lurch. He swam expertly to the hatch, bumped against it, and when it did not give, roared his complaint. He wanted out and he wanted out now, with the same intensity he had formerly exhibited expressing his desire to come in.
The Condor lurched and shuddered. Acorna could only imagine what was happening to the ship. It felt roughly like it did when Captain Becker took the Condor through a patch of what he called “black water,” where space was full of wormholes and pleats that either offered shortcuts to their original destination or landed them somewhere far removed from where they entered.
Cautiously, Acorna unfastened her berth strap, moved hand over hand along the wall to the storage locker, found her gravity boots, and did a few somersaults while pulling them on, fastening them, and activating them. It was a bit tricky making sure her feet were pointed at a place that would not endanger the rest of her when they grabbed hold of the surface. Her quarters were small and, while not as cluttered as they had been during Becker’s “bachelor” days, when the Condor’s crew consisted solely of him and RK, they were still barely large enough for Acorna to stretch out full-length. RK continued to howl and claw at the steel door hatch. Acorna opened it and the cat swam out like a newly launched torpedo. Becker’s thoughts were still thoroughly profane. Nadhari was attempting to soothe him, but being soothing was not a natural role for her.
Hearing panicked bellows and pounding noises, Acorna made her way to the hold where the Wats were incarcerated. Through the viewport, she saw the two hirsute men floating and flailing, their faces distorted with terror and their mental state much too confused to make any sense of the thoughts she was trying to read.
Mac must be on the bridge, helping Becker, she decided.
Unlocking the hatch, she ducked between the airborne Wats and found the storage locker there. She pulled out gravity boots for them. Snagging one of the struggling Wats by the arm, she tugged at him. His arm shot out and caught her on the side of the head and his hand tangled itself in her mane. Shaking her head to loosen his grip, she reached for his foot.
“The Thunder God is dropping us!” he was screaming.
“Calm yourselves,” she mentally commanded both of them in their own language. It was the first time she had actually spoken to them since she read them back on MOO. “The thunder god has nothing to do with this. This is simply a navigational difficulty, such as you would have with one of your ships. The captain has it under control.” The Condor lurched again. “Almost under control. Put these boots on and you will regain control of the…the air, which will once more stay properly above your heads while you keep your feet on this…deck.”
“You speak sooth?” asked the red-haired one, who was not the one she had grabbed to begin with.
Acorna was having some success radiating calm and courage at them, reminding them mentally that they were warriors on a more perilous journey than any of their kind had ever dared. Why, if they were back where they came from, the deeds they had done and the tales they could tell would be beyond belief, but if such stories were believed, would elevate them high above their former liege lord in the estimation of their fellows.
Acorna was frankly winging it in these assurances, for she had only the most shadowy idea of what their society must have been like. She would have to find some vids and books about old Terra, she thought, and realized she should have done this sooner.
But her glorification of their adventures—which carefully omitted the part about their being terrified and completely at the mercy of people they considered mortal enemies or prey—served its purpose. The Wats’ bellowing stopped, their breathing slowed, and their muscles relaxed. Then Acorna read a thought going through the head of the sandy-haired one—that now would be an opportune time to overpower her and take her horn.
She recoiled, calling mentally to Nadhari as she did so. “You are incorrigible!” she shouted at him, aloud this time, and quickly translated her sentiments into the closest approximation in his own tongue, an idiomatic expression rustic at best. “What good would that do you? We are about to make a forced landing on an unknown—no, not a star, a world. If we landed on a star we would burn up. My horn is of the greatest possible use to you now firmly attached to my head, where it belongs. As we told you before, the liege lord you wish to impress has been dead for several thousand years. You are the last of your kind. We are trying to rehabilitate you enough so you will have a place in our universe, but you will not impress the authorities—who are known as the Federation—by butchering a Linyaari ambassador, which is what I am. You really must stop thinking of your old mission and switch gears. Oars. Whatever!”
The red-haired one pried his friend, who had one boot on and one boot off, away from Acorna, putting himself between them, and said, “She is no beast, but a lady. The lady goddess herself now, I am thinking. If we displease her, well, you know what she will do to us. We will be turned into swine. Perhaps we do not realize it and are already swine, as she said she is trying to turn us into men who will be pleasing to the lords of this place.”
“I know no lord but Bjorn, to whom I’m sworn,” his blond friend said stubbornly.
The redhead reached out and clasped Acorna’s waist with one large paw, and kicked up a large foot, currently bare. He nearly bowled himself backwards in the process, and his fingers slacked their hold on her. She grabbed his hand and extended her other arm with the boot. He got it on, and then the other one, then extracted a peace bond from his friend before helping him with his remaining boot. “You will not harm her?”
“How can I? We are unarmed.”
“True,” his comrade agreed. “You are safe from us, lady unicorn goddess.”
“I’m
very relieved,” she told him. She thought it might be best to let them get used to all of the other new concepts that would be confronting them in the current time before officially renouncing her divinity. Just now, being a god in their eyes could come in handy. Later, if all went well, she would lose her divinity in their minds as the Wats became better oriented, and she’d never have to confront the problem directly at all. “Now that you know you can walk, I suggest you strap yourselves into your berths. We may be making a rough landing.”
“We do not die lying down,” said Red Wat, as she was starting to think of him. “There is no honor in that. If there is mortal danger, we will face it, and since we have no weapons, shake our fists at it.”
“Very effective, I’m sure,” she said. “The captain does that all the time, so it’s certain to be very useful.”
Becker’s thoughts were calmer now and she intruded long enough to send a mental message. (Captain, the Wats wish to observe the landing. Have I permission to bring them forward?)
(Why not?) The response was weary, but she sensed that much of the danger had passed. (I was going to get them to help us unload the Condor so I can get to the Niriian shuttle in cargo bay four that has a control panel I can patch together. I’m going to offload all these stinkin’ Khleevi parts when we make our pit stop. They’re about as worthless as the bugs who made them.)
Acorna didn’t reply but motioned for the Wats to follow her. In case either of them changed his mind about her divine nature and decided to attack her from behind, she kept a tight monitor on their thoughts until she stepped back and allowed them to precede her onto the bridge.
Nadhari, Becker, and Mac were all seated, their heads below the tops of their chairs, so the Wats looked straight past them out the viewport into space.
