Third Watch (32 page)

“It may be a bit cramped in there. Perhaps the humans, the created humans, and the cats could wait in my house? I’ve prepared refreshments for all species, hoping to see you again. Though truly, I hoped you’d be leaving because your mission was a success.”

“That makes—one, two, three, four, five—nine of us,” Uncle Joh said. “Counting the cats.”

Khorii entered with the others and greeted Akasa, who did indeed look better. Her white hair was now wavy and shining, and her skin was less lined, her eyes brighter. Recalling the group of her own friends huddled and frightened in the field outside Corazon, Khorii found she couldn’t enjoy the effects of her healing on this arrogant woman who had been so instrumental in causing the death and suffering of others.

Nor did she have the inclination to challenge her, as Ariin did. And, in the confines of the ship, there wasn’t room for five horns to—well, horn in closely enough to do healing.

“Excuse me. I am suddenly famished,” she murmured aloud for Sona’s and Akasa’s sake rather than her family’s. “I think I’ll go out and graze for a while.”

She didn’t really want to graze, but she didn’t want to go inside the mutable dwelling either.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to. Khiindi came flying out of the door with RK and Elviiz hot on his tail. “Khiindi, bad cat!” Elviiz scolded. “Stealing is antisocial behavior.”

“Leave him alone, Elviiz,” Khorii said crossly, and knelt to pick up the former elder who would always be her kitty now. He had something short, cylindrical, and metallic clenched carefully in his jaws. The moment she opened her palm he uncharacteristically opened his mouth and dropped the item.

“Hmmm,” she said, turning it over. Khiindi growled a warning. “I don’t think this is just some shiny object he decided to pilfer. Look at him. His ears are back, and all the fur along his spine is bristling, and his tail is fluffed. And he isn’t even looking at RK. Whatever it is, this thing is dangerous.”

Chapter 26

M
aak was about to take Khindii’s shiny prey from her when the ship’s hatch opened and Ariin emerged, followed by Mother and Sona. Father and Mikaaye supported a wobbly but ambulatory Akasa between them.

“Khiindi found something in Akasa’s old house,”
she told her family and Mikaaye.
“He seems to think it is dangerous, but he wanted me to have it. I think maybe it is his Grimalkin self that took the thing instead of just Khiindi playing with a shiny object.”

“Show me,”
her parents said together.

Khiindi continued to growl and bristle as she carried it to them and at an urgent hiss from the cat, she laid the thing gently into her father’s outstretched hand. His other arm and hand were taken up with Akasa, who saw the thing and frowned. “I haven’t seen that in a while,” she said in a voice close to her old one. “I’d forgotten I still had it. No! No! Be careful. Don’t point it at me, or I’ll never recover from this state I’m in.”

“Why would that be?” Ariin asked, plucking it from Father’s hand.

“Careful, Narhii! Be careful handling that.”

“But why, milady? What is it? What was it doing in your house if it was so dangerous, and why would Khiindi bring it to my sister?”

“He probably thinks she can return him to his Grimalkin form with it, but of course she can’t. It can only freeze forms. It cannot unfreeze them.”

“Is that a fact?” Uncle Joh asked. “This is the thing you people used to turn old Grimalkin into Khorii’s kitty, is it?”

“Yes, have I not said so?”

“How does it work?”

“Joh, are you thinking what I am thinking?” Father asked, which was not fair since he wasn’t letting any of the rest of the family know what he was thinking.

“I think so,” Uncle Joh replied. “Well, lady, we ain’t any of us getting younger while we’re waiting on you, and some people could be dying. Can this thing help us or not?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she replied. “I’m not accustomed to dealing with your sort of problems.”

Ariin said, “We don’t need her to find out. Sona knows the last time Grimalkin was himself. We can set the cronos for then and ask him why he brought it out.”

“No,” Akasa said. “No. I might have to go through that terrible ordeal again. I suppose if Grimalkin, even in cat form, thinks this object might be of use to you in undoing what Odus began”—Khorii noticed Akasa took none of the blame on herself—“then it might be. If you point it—no, other end around—and press the trigger on the head of it, it has the ability to tighten molecular structure. Our people share with the creatures that made our houses a loose molecular structure that allows us to shift shapes easily. This condenses the form, compresses it into a smaller more closely connected being that cannot alter its shape, at least no more than normal growth patterns. A small cat was the smallest of Grimalkin’s many shapes, so that is what he became.”

“So, maybe if we use this on the creature, we could condense it back into a muddy spot in the road?” Uncle Joh said. “It’s worth a try.”

T
he
Condor
carried two more passengers on its next run over Corazon. Sona and Akasa rode with them. This time they did not fly over the creature, but set down in the field, on the far side of the encampment.

Jalonzo jogged out to meet them, followed by several of their other friends. “You have brought your abuelita, Capitan José?” he asked Becker.

“No, no, she’s not my grandma,” Uncle Joh said.

Mother quickly explained the situation to Jalonzo.

“But it is too far for her to walk to the creature,” he said, and before the Linyaari or Maak or Elviiz could do so themselves, he swept Akasa into his arms and began jogging with her toward the creature.

“Come, children, they may need us,”
Mother called.

“Wait for us, Jalonzo,” Mikaaye cried, running to catch up.

“Maak, you, Elviiz, and me, back on the bird,” Uncle Joh said, running back to the
Condor
as Khorii and her family galloped after Jalonzo and Mikaaye.

They arrived in time to see Akasa raise a hand that at first trembled, but then, with the imperious assurance Ariin knew so well, aimed the shining cylinder at the nearest portion of the undulating, sludgy mass of the monstrous inogre.

Khorii fully expected disappointment again, despite the feeling she had had since Khiindi first brought her the object that it could be the key they needed.

She had not expected the immediate and dramatic shrinking of the creature as it retreated farther and farther toward the center of the city from which it had spread. Jalonzo started to charge in after it with Akasa in his arms but Father stopped him, shaking his head, and took her from him.

The
Condor
flew in a circle over the city, dropping “feeding tubes” into the mass ahead of Father’s advance with Akasa. Perhaps that was why Khorii saw no more red dots.

In the end, they were back in a patch of grass measuring the length and breadth of a city block. This was the town square, and the graveyard, Khorii realized with a start. The carefully placed markers had disappeared, but beside the square, in the middle of what used to be a street, the last of the inogre congealed into a vibrating, brown-colored mass. When it had become as small as it seemed likely to, Akasa lowered her hand, Father lowered Akasa to the ground, and everyone gathered around the mass.

“It looks like a face,” Mikaaye said.

“It looks like Odus,” Ariin and Akasa said together.

T
he last bit of the Corazon inogre was killed by one small application of the viral salt and synthesized sap mixture from the Condor’s arsenal.

Uncle Joh, having delivered the final blow to the thing, shook his head, and said, “Too bad there’s only one of those gizmos. We could use thousands, but I bet those fancy pants on Boss World wouldn’t make more of them for a little thing like saving the universe.”

“They don’t have to,” Mother said. “They didn’t make that one. Grimalkin invented it, and later modified the device enhancing it with the catseyes. He used it to freeze the mutable acid beings on a hostile planet. It’s a long story. But it was a created thing. If we need more advice on how to modify them for this purpose than the elders are willing to give us, we can still resort to time travel, I suppose.”

There was no need for that, although in the last push to rid the universe of the final effects of Odus’s experiments, the Linyaari fleet and all of the weary volunteers who had only recently returned home were called out again. Since the creature was not an independent race, but an artificially produced menace, Linyaari ethics were not compromised by combating it.

The catseye chrysoberyls required to fuel the devices were mostly obtained from Hafiz’s stores. Only the smallest ones were used, and when more of that size were needed, the Makahomians willingly supplied them.

As the universe once more grew as safe as it ever had been for mankind, for commerce, salvagers and pirates included, Khorii’s family, the
Balakiire,
and the
Condor
headed back to MOO. Jaya and the
Mana
were under a new, long-term contract from House Harakamian to begin mass supply runs to worlds that had suffered from the plague and its aftereffects.

Uncle Joh, Maak, and RK stopped off on MOO to discuss an “interesting business proposition” Uncle Hafiz had for them.

Khorii’s family and Mikaaye joined the
Balakiire
’s crew and at last arrived home.

Before Mikaaye followed his mother and the rest of her crew to their pavilions, he squeezed her hand.
“If you find a bouquet at your tent flap some morning, it’s meant for you, Khorii,”
he told her. For one of the very few times in her life so far, she was left speechless.

They traveled to their old quarantine area, in the heart of the Ancestral grazing grounds, and wearily entered the family pavilion.

However, no sooner had they taken to their mats than Khiindi jumped onto Ariin, pawing at the crono she still wore around her wrist.

Ariin glared at him, but Khorii slipped off the crono she had taken from Pircifir and held it out to her cat. “I will miss you, Khiindi kitty, but you’ve earned your freedom, and if you want to live in the past, where you can be Grimalkin, then I will gladly do without you,” she said.

But he didn’t take it from her. Instead he nudged her hand until it rested on Ariin, then walked to Mother’s pallet and Father’s and finally, somewhat hesitantly, Elviiz’s. All the time he meowed in a very bossy and irritating fashion, as if ordering them about.

“I think he wants us touching,” Khorii said. “He wants us together so we can all time travel with him.”

“Oh, no,” Father groaned. “Not tonight. Grimalkin, I just want to be home.”

“It seems important, Aari,” Mother said, and took his hand and Ariin’s. Father took Elviiz’s hand, and he took Khorii’s free hand, the one that wasn’t touching Ariin. They formed a tight circle, with Elviiz in the middle and Khiindi on his shoulders, with his whiskers against Khorii’s cheek and his tail brushing Father’s. Khorii held up the hand she’d joined with Ariin’s for the cat to choose his time.

The pavilion blurred and disappeared so that they stood in an open meadow with the sea shining in the distance and down the shore, an early and comparatively unimpressive version of Kubiilikaan. Khiindi was no more. Grimalkin stood behind Elviiz.

“When are we and what is this all about?” Father asked. “If this is another trick…”

Grimalkin smiled and shook his head. “This is no trick, my friend and grandson. But since you have all endured rude treatment at the hands of my race as they pursued the origins of your race, I thought you deserved to see what those origins are. Khorii, I may return to you from time to time to have my ears scratched as only you can, but you gave me leave to go, and I wish to take it here with your original Ancestor and many times great-granddam, my true lifemate, Halili. Don’t laugh, Aari. You and I know I have helped found many races, but yours is the most interesting, and Halili is the mate I love best. Fortunately for you, but inconveniently for me, she is not feline. Now pardon me while I change.”

Khorii’s family stood together as they watched Grimalkin’s body lengthen into the sleek, fleet form of an Ancestor, and he galloped away into the meadow, meeting up with another beautiful, snow-white unicorn that was part of a small herd. They nuzzled each other’s necks, then the herd galloped off over the hills. Grimalkin’s mate rushed to race with them, and the mischievous erstwhile feline reared once, pawing the air with his hooves as if actually saying good-bye, before running over the hill to join his new family.

Glossary of Terms and Proper Names in the Acorna Universe

aagroni
—Linyaari name for a vocation that is a combination of ecologist, agriculturalist, botanist, and biologist.
Aagroni
are responsible for terraforming new planets for settlement as well as maintaining the well-being of populated planets.

Aari
—a Linyaari of the Nyaarya clan, captured by the Khleevi during the invasion of Vhiliinyar, tortured, and left for dead on the abandoned planet. He’s Maati’s older brother. Aari survived and was rescued and restored to his people by Jonas Becker and Roadkill. But Aari’s differences, the physical and psychological scars left behind by his adventures, make it difficult for him to fit in among the Linyaari.

Aarkiiyi
—member of the Linyaari survey team on Vhiliinyar.

Aarlii
—a Linyaari survey team member, firstborn daughter of Captain Yaniriin.

Abuelita
—grandmother to Jalonzo Allende.

Acorna
—a unicorn-like humanoid discovered as an infant by three human miners—Calum, Gill, and Rafik. She has the power to heal and purify with her horn. Her uniqueness has already shaken up the human galaxy, especially the planet Kezdet. She’s now fully grown and changing the lives of her own people, as well. Among her own people, she is known as Khornya.