Acorna's Rebels

Seventeen

Despite the first mate's desperation to have no hatch between him and the new object of his lust, Becker obstinately waited until human beings, armed and dangerous and clad in very little, poured from and around the Temple, each of them accompanied by a bevy of felines.

(We are friends,) Acorna broadcasted. (We came to warn you and to help you, if necessary.)

Having entered into their minds, she now met their eyes as they peered in at her.

Haruna and her companion apparently understood for, much to RK's disappointment, they dismounted. Then the people began talking excitedly among themselves, in a dialect new to Acorna.

"What are they saying, Miw-Sher?" Acorna asked. Miw-Sher didn't notice at first that she had been addressed, as the boy was pointing out features of the Temple to her.

"Oh," she said when she turned back to Acorna, "they're simply telling each other that you are the one and you have come as prophesied."

"It's so nice that everyone but me knows about that," Acorna said a bit crossly. She was tired of many things, including her reputation, which had so unexpectedly preceded her nearly everywhere on this planet.

"At least you can rest here, Princess," Becker said. "These pussycats are fine as feline fur. You look like you need healing more than they do."

He raised the hatch and climbed out. Acorna and the others followed him. The sight of the boy caused one of the women to cry out and rush forward to embrace him. He was glad to see her, but disentangled himself rather quickly to show her the kittens. The Hissim Temple cats began mingling with the locals, and RK sidled up to Haruna. He was trying to get close enough to growl sweet nothings into her tufted ears, Acorna supposed.

For a few moments the locals chattered busily about everything, and Miw-Sher and the boy chattered with them. Then, as if recalling their manners, the woman, who was surely a relative of the boy's if not his mother, gestured for Becker and Acorna to ascend the steps carved between the cat Temple's outstretched front paws and up onto the tongue and into the mouth.

More stairs led them through the torso of the Temple, the interior of which was lined with beautiful murals, accented by wall sconces holding torches - currently unlit-to provide illumination when necessary. During daylight hours, as Acorna could see, the building had more than sufficient natural light because of all of the open areas leading to the exterior platforms where the Temple cats perched. If the cats wished to ascend the Temple 's outer walls, they could simply leap from one platform to the next, and descend in the same manner. There were also a number of interior platforms, should the cats wish to seek shelter inside the building.

It was a bit unnerving to watch the cats leap from platform to platform right through the Temple. As Acorna and her friends walked through the building's halls, Temple cats of every color and size appeared occasionally, often seeming to shoot out of the walls and fly through the air of the passageways above their heads. But after a while even Acorna and Becker grew used to the sudden rush of air as a fully extended furry body sailed from one side of the Temple to the other, as if crossing a jungle ravine.

Although Acorna had enjoyed some rest in the flitter on the way, the climbing tired her further and her feet felt heavy and clumsy as she set them on one step and then another.

And then her feet were no longer touching the steps and she felt pressure on the backs of her thighs, knees, and upper arms as six people adroitly inserted themselves between her body and the effects of gravity on it, lifting her up onto their shoulders and bearing her among them.

"Hey," Becker said, "how does a person get prophesied about around here? I'm kinda tired, too, you know."

Much to her surprise, the high priestess was not wearing robes as the priests in the other two cities did. In fact, she was wearing nothing except a coat of her own home-grown fur, pointed ears, and long elegant whiskers.

Miw-Sher gasped and Acorna caught her thought. (She can keep her cat form during the day!)

The creature on the throne beckoned languidly and growl/purred to Acorna, "So you are the one who He said was coming."

Becker, who had not been in on the change in conversation and wasn't sure if the high priestess was friend or foe, stepped in front of Acorna. "Who said she was coming and what did he say about her? Did he tell you she would heal all the sick cats? Because she did. Did he tell you she outsmarted the Mulzar of Hissim, otherwise known of the King of Everything? She did that, too."

The cat priestess stretched out her paw-hand and ran a single claw along Becker's jaw, drawing a thin line of blood. RK suddenly reached up a paw and smacked at the hand. "Mine!" he said clearly in his own tongue.

The priestess snatched her hand back. "Excuse me, little brother. I didn't realize he had a guardian. He seems to think he is one himself."

Becker stooped down and scratched RK's ears, whispering, "It's okay, big fella. It's not her fault. I seem to have this animal magnetism for cat ladies. You remember how Nadhari was about me when we first met."

Acorna said, "He's right. I don't know what has been said about me before I arrived and I would like to find out. But first, since your cats are all well, I must tell you that there is a 'gift' shipment of food and medicines coming from Hissim. You mustn't accept it. It's contaminated with an organism that will kill your guardians -and maybe you, too. I made a vaccine that could give you some protection, but there's not enough of it for all of these cats. The ones in Hissim all died except these few that came with us."

The boy set the basket containing Grimla and kittens at the high priestess's feet and Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw stepped forward as if they were characters in some feline creche pageant.

The spotted light from the holes in the walls dappled everyone so that they resembled the large cats. The heat made the air shimmer in a way that caused Acorna to feel as if the whole thing was one of Hafiz's holograms.

The cat lady returned her attention to Acorna. "There is something you must see. Perhaps then you will understand."

Flowing from the throne, the high priestess stepped to one side of the platform and beckoned. "You may use this if you wish," she said, gesturing to a column with steps carved in a spiral around it, descending into darkness. She murmured something else Acorna didn't catch and then dove headfirst into the hole.

Miw-Sher translated. "She said she'd take the shortcut."

"I believe I'll use the stairs," Acorna said.

"You're still lookin' puny, Princess," Becker told her. "You think you can go down that thing without getting dizzy and falling off?"

"There's a handhold," Miw-Sher said, pointing out a groove carved into the column. It ran at about waist height and parallel to the stairs. "And I'll go first. You can hold on to my shoulder, Ambassador, if you feel faint."

"Thank you, Miw-Sher," Acorna said. "I believe I'll manage going down."

And she did.

As she descended lower and lower, gripping the handhold with the tips of her fingers and occasionally touching Miw-Sher's shoulder for balance, she became aware that it was not entirely dark below. Thousands of gold coins with slots in the middle glittered up at her until suddenly, as the light from above grew too dim to see their feet, the space below was lit by one torch after another.

She had the sense that a few of the priests holding the torches had hastily covered their private parts, after transforming from their feline state. Of the felines large and small that lay in every imaginable attitude up and down the length of the room, she could not have said if they had declined to transform or were unable to.

Their eyes no longer glittered but blinked lazily in the light, or slitted, or in some cases showed the milky inner membrane that protected the eyes. There was no catty smell at all. In fact, it smelled fresher down here than it had in the open, with the jungle vegetation hemming the Temple so closely.

The high priestess beckoned them. "This way," she said, and Miw-Sher continued translating. "We are now in the most sacred part of the Temple. Ours was the place where first the Star Cat and the Companion landed to save our people and transform them from the refugee rabble they once had been."

Their shadows and those of the cats stretched, danced, and gyrated ahead of them, long and deeply black.

This space felt ancient, filled with secrets scaled with the deaths of many defenders and foes for generations reaching far back into time. The feeling was far more threatening, more mysterious, than the caves of the early Ancestral Attendants on Vhiliinyar, where Acorna had uncovered part of the buried history of her own people, but all the same she was reminded of those caves.

As Acorna followed, noting that even the layout of these caves was similar, the high priestess turned into a side passage that narrowed until they had to stand sideways to slip through it. This was not made any easier by all the feline bodies that suddenly simply had to come along. Cats flowed under kneecaps and over feet, leaped upon shoulders, plastered themselves against faces, greatly impeding breathing, then passed to the other side and leaped off. In the tight quarters, it became a rather chilling sensation in spite of the cats' warm fur, until one of the furry intruders suddenly spoke inside her head: (Excuse me, pardon me, oops, sorry, coming through.)

(RK!)

(Acorna! Oh, sorry, 'scuse me, I'll just get my paw out of your ear. There. Better?)

(Much.)

(I had to come down and check out my roots, didn't I? If anybody knows, I have a feeling it's this lady. Besides, Haruna pushed me. Spirited female.)

(Yes, and big enough to eat you in one bite.)

(Well, I always think a little danger adds to the excitement of a pursuit.)

Suddenly the way widened, the air freshened, and they could walk freely again. Acorna saw something gleaming wetly in the high priestess's torchlight. As the other priests unfolded from their feline forms and stood to light torches again, she saw that the room's center contained a small, perfect lake, its dark waters glinting in the dim torchlight.

But the lake was not what the priestess had brought them to see. She flourished her torch to illuminate the walls.

Like the Ancestral caverns of Vhiliinyar, where the walls were covered with complex hieroglyphics, these caves, too, were heavily embellished, but the markings here were very different from those back on Vhiliinyar.

These cave walls were covered with crude drawings, simple boxy line figures scratched into rock, some with a few vestiges of paint still adorning them, but most were simply ghostly white lines against the dark surface. The further back in the cave the priestess walked, the fainter and more primitive the drawings became.

Finally the priestess pointed the torch at a single panel of drawings on the cave's wall. Acorna examined the images lit by its glow. A tall boxy thing with triangles on either side of it dominated the picture, but next to the tall boxy thing stood several people. The person standing to the left of the center drawing seemed to be quite tall, standing on what were clearly human feet, but wearing two triangles atop his head - cats' ears, it appeared - and something long and thin was coming out from his legs. Acorna supposed that the thing could be meant to be an exaggerated male member, but judging from the context of the image she felt that it was more probably a tail. Next to this person sat a largish but nonetheless fairly normal-looking cat, also distinguishable by its ears and tail. Next to the cat stood a stylized figure of a man the same size as the cat man, but with a round head, unadorned by pointy ears, and with no tail.

The figure on the far side of the ship was more difficult to see. Here the sacred lake's water lapped close to the side of the cave. Acorna slid her hoofed feet around the rim of floor and leaned in, gesturing to the priestess that the torch be shoved further forward, too.

When she finally was able to see the figure clearly, she realized she had been expecting something of exactly this sort. Yet the surprise that it was actually there was so great that she almost fell into the lake. As her mind reeled and her balance faltered, however, a clawed hand grabbed her arm and pulled her back upright.

The crude, dimly lit humanoid figure had one elongated triangle on its head instead of two. The triangle was located squarely in the middle of the person's head. Like a horn. The entire mural was a petroglyph of her dream.

Emerging from the underworld of the Temple was like emerging from another dream. Acorna felt as if she were awakening. She knew that the figure in the cave drawing was a Linyaari. In fact, she was sure that it was Aari. Involuntarily, her hand went to Aari's birth disk. It was him. That was why everyone on this planet seemed to believe that she had some special significance in their-what? History? Religion? Myth cycle?

"You okay, Princess?" Becker asked as he helped her up the last step and onto the platform beside the throne, where the cat woman was already lounging. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Very astute, Captain. I almost have. I think - no, I'm sure that Aari has been here."

"When? How? Why didn't anybody say anything?"

"They have said something-to me. And as for when, it was a very long time ago. They just showed me an ancient petroglyph of a Linyaari. It had to be Aari-he's the only Linyaari we know of who has done a lot of traveling through time and space. And that petroglyph definitely depicted a Linyaari."

Miw-Sher popped her head out of the hole. "Yes, Ambassador. You saw the Companion of the Star Cat, who alone was privileged to call him by his most sacred name, Grimalkin. Tagoth says the Companion was a being like yourself, and personally foretold your coming. I saw the glyph long ago, when I was small, before my capture."

The priestess's guards, human and feline alike, glared at the newcomers chattering away so near the throne of their ruler, and Acorna quickly led her friends down the steps to a respectful distance. The priestess had not answered Acorna's questions or offered comments of her own. She simply smiled her enigmatic, catty smile and led them back from the cavern with a "there, you see?" air, as if the petroglyph explained everything.

Acorna was very shaken; in fact, she was worried that she might even be broadcasting her feelings. Miw-Sher put her hand on Acorna's arm and said, "Surely you understand that this is your fate. You are the one we knew would come. Surely you knew that, too?"

"Prophecy doesn't always work that way," Acorna told her.

The high priestess spoke then, and Miw-Sher interpreted her words for Acorna. "Shabasta is puzzled that you are so disturbed by what she has shown you. She says that the Companion and the Star Cat foretold that you would come and save us. The prophecy was a true one, since here you are. She now asks when you are planning to save us."

Before Acorna could think of any reply to that, a sleek tawny cat with red ears, tail, and paws came bounding up the stairs, as if on cue. Its message was simple. "Come."

The high priestess, no doubt for dramatic effect, gathered her legs beneath her and from her sitting position leaped over the heads of her guests and a quarter of the way down the steps. Her court, or flock, or whatever the other tribal members were considered, followed after her, as did all of the cats except Grimla and the kittens.

Acorna and her friends, except for the boy, who was gathering up his small family, trailed behind the locals.

Jungle people with spears surrounded three priests in Hissimi garb sitting in a wagon like the ones Captain MacDonald was using. The wagon was loaded with bundles.

"Ungrateful savages," one of the priests muttered. "We bring them emergency food and medical relief and they treat us like enemies."

"We are enemies, holy brother, strictly speaking," the youngest of the three priests said in an undertone.

"Not right at this moment," whispered the third. Then, showing his teeth to the assembly, he announced in a loud voice, "We are friends. We come in peace from the Mulzar of Hissim. He sends lovely gifts. Food, medicine."

"Why should we need medicine?" the High Priestess said.

"There's a terrible plague on our planet that has decimated the ranks of our own Temple cats," the man explained.

Haji, Pash, and Sher-Paw strolled forward and faced the three, their tails jerking angrily.

"By their tails!" cried the eldest.

"And their whiskers!" cried the second.

"It's our own Temple guardians. What are they doing here? We heard of no raid. How did you capture them?"

"We didn't," the priestess said. "They came here with these people who were seeking refuge from the murderous Mulzar of Hissim." Seeing the priests' confusion, Miw-Sher stepped forward and translated the words for the benefit of the Mulzar's men.

"Miw-Sher! What are you doing here? You traitor!"

The high priestess stalked forward, her tail switching, her yellow-green eyes slitted and her ears laid back into her golden-brown hair/fur.

The three priests fell silent, fear apparent in their eyes.

The priestess snarled at them. The big cats moved closer and closer to the Mulzar's men.

"Well, now," Becker said, stepping back from the wagon and pulling Acorna with him, "we can see you're busy with your new visitors-the ones we were telling you about, ma'am. I can see you have things under control. So we'll just be going now."

No one said a word as he and Acorna, followed after a moment of indecision by Miw-Sher and RK, returned to the flitter. The three male guardians of the Hissim Temple followed behind them, and a moment afterwards, Grimla zoomed out the door and hopped in the flitter, too. The boy they'd brought home followed close behind Grimla, carrying the basket of kittens, which he set inside the flitter. Then he retreated a short distance away, standing with his family and waving good-bye.

The flitter rose above the trees and flew away from the jungle.

Nadhari had not gone far before the wagon driven by the women caught up with her. She figured she had two choices at that moment. She could either walk back to Hissim and possibly be discovered along the way by Edu's guards searching the roads for unusual travelers, or she could blend in with these women on the road, save herself some steps, and possibly win herself some allies.

She chose the second alternative and flagged the travelers down.

"Who are you?" demanded one, but another woman caught at her sleeve.

"It's Lady Nadhari!"

"Yes," Nadhari agreed, "that's me."

"What are you doing out here?"

"I had to get my friends safely out of Hissim. I have done so, but I still have unfinished business with my cousin. I was hoping you could take me back to the city with you."

"You'd best ride up top, then."

"Thanks. I will, just for a little while. I think it might complicate your lives if I accompanied you all the way back. I'll make my own way once we're closer to Hissim."

"You're cutting it close if you want to find the Mulzar. I have heard it said that the Mulzar is about to leave the city with the Fed'ration man."

"I wonder why," Nadhari said, though she had some idea of what might be driving him.

"Don't know, Lady, but I'm sure he's leaving soon. Maybe he's going after the cats."

"Hah! Him?" said a younger woman. "He don't care for cats. He's got no use for creatures got more'n two legs. Him, he likes that machinery like they got at the Fed'ration post."

The woman shot an assessing glance at Nadhari that was, in the darkness, visible only as a gleam from the whites of her eyes. If she expected Nadhari to defend her cousin the Mulzar, she could relax, Nadhari thought. Edu was far worse than the woman thought he was. Nadhari knew from long experience that the only living creature Edu had ever cared about, two-legged or otherwise, was himself.

After that exchange, they rode in silence.

The little cavalcade halted once they reached the holding of the oldest woman in the outskirts of the city. None of them could pass through the gates into the middle of town until morning, so Nadhari took the time to demonstrate how to use the Metleiter boxes to her interested audience. She only hoped she remembered all of Scar MacDonald's instructions on how to get the boxes up and running correctly.

Then all the women but her hostesses-the youngest and the oldest of the ladies, a grandmother and her granddaughter - packed up their goods and their boxes and departed for their own homes. When the time came to seek a night's rest, Nadhari was perfectly willing to sleep in her new friends' stable. It was empty now because its former occupants had been slaughtered, victims of the recent plague, but the old woman and her granddaughter wouldn't hear of letting Nadhari bunk down there. Instead, they made a pallet for her on the floor near the cooking fire. They tried to insist that Nadhari take their bed, but she declined, saying that she needed to be able to flee quickly if necessary without involving them.

Which brought up the point of how Nadhari was going to get into the city in the morning. At the urging of her hostesses, she abandoned her plan to climb the walls of the city and wing it from there. After some discussion, the ladies convinced Nadhari to borrow a gown from them so that she might pass though the main gate into Hissim without attracting undue attention.

Once settled onto a prickly pile of dry grass gathered into a loose sack, Nadhari fell deeply asleep, a skill she had learned in her years as a fighter. She knew she would rouse at the lightest footfall, ready to fight or run if the need arose. But this night, at least, passed peacefully.

The next morning the farm women dressed her in one of the grandmother's ragged spare gowns. They all piled into the wagon together and drove it back to the city's main gates. There the old woman regaled the guard with a tale of finding the vehicle, clearly the Temple 's property, abandoned and empty on the desert's edge. As good citizens, she told him, they were returning it, and she was sure that the guard would reward them richly for their good deed.

That did the trick. The soldier confiscated the wagon, chided them for interfering in civic matters they did not understand, and sent the women away as fast as he could-empty-handed, of course.

By the time her friends had finished loudly arguing about the injustice of the guard's behavior, attracting the attention of every person within earshot, Nadhari had quietly made her way to the wall enclosing the Federation outpost.

The post was not large, as such places went, but it covered maybe five square miles, all of it walled, rather than fenced. She doubted electronics or surveillance equipment played a part in protecting this section. It seemed to depend on height and a guard who patrolled at intervals Nadhari timed by mentally counting hippopotamuses. She made her way through town to the end of the wall farthest from dwellings and from the post gate. The guard wasn't due to return for twenty minutes or so.

Though she had never been privileged to change into a cat, as Tagoth could, the perimeter wall provided no great challenge. She was over it and on the ground well before the guard was due to return. At that point, she thought she might ambush him or her and take the uniform. With that she would return to the Condor and send a message to some friends of hers in high places in the Federation. They might be interested in a few of the family stories she had to relate about the Mulzar and how he'd found a soulmate in the current post commander. If they were not interested, she was pretty sure she could persuade Hafiz to mount an investigation. Meanwhile, she would slip back over the wall and foment revolution and dissent, not necessarily in that order.

From the shadows where she lurked, quite at home, she saw a lone Federation officer approach an apparently disabled flitter. The flitter lay abandoned in the field between the wall and where the Condor and the Traveler were docked. The large spacegoing vessels blocked the small local transport craft from the view of the Federation headquarters building. So no one would see her take out the officer and relocate, in military parlance, his or her uniform to her own person.

Unfortunately she had lacked worthy opponents since she'd taken the cushy job with Hafiz. Her reflexes and defensive instincts were not what they once had been. She circled around behind the officer and grabbed him as he bent toward the flitter.

But just then she was distracted by the Condor's robolift cranking and shuddering toward the ground. She looked toward it for just a moment, thinking somebody ought to oil that thing. And that, of course, was when someone attacked her from behind. No low-tech scruples for this assailant, she thought as she crumpled to the ground with the force of the stun waves from the gun. It was her last thought for some time.

"For a horse-and-buggy civilization, these guys make tracks," Becker said, sounding worried. "This is starting to look ugly. I'm guessing the welcome wagons with the poison goodies are Edu's advance guard. Soften 'em up with the disease and then send in the regular troops to finish them off or at least subdue them. Maybe we should have left both of the kids with the cat queen, rather than just one. The Mulzar won't know for quite a while that his trick didn't work at the jungle temple."

Acorna didn't translate verbally this time. She just transferred Becker's ideas into Miw-Sher's head.

"You can't leave me behind," Miw-Sher protested, without even questioning how she understood Becker's words. "You need me to show you where to go-or at least sort of where to go. We need to find my uncle Tagoth. We need his help. We've got to get to the Aridimi Stronghold before the Mulzar's men do. It is really hard to find. Or at least that's what Tagoth says, but he knows how to get to it. He's been there before."

Acorna patted the girl's hand, trying to cut through the questions and feelings that were cycloning through her own mind and concentrate instead on reassuring the frightened child. They both had a job to do.

"I'm sure that we can find Tagoth if we need to," Acorna said. "He can't have gone too far on foot. Had I known we were going to have the use of the flitter, I would have asked him to wait for us at some hidden place, and we could have all gone there together. But why is it we need to find this stronghold, especially right now? Do the Aridimi also have many cats and other creatures who could be endangered?"

"Oh, yes," Miw-Sher said. "Next to the Makaviti Temple, the Aridimi one is said to be the most highly guarded on our world. You see, it is where all of our sacred stones come from. I am sure that the Mulzar will be wild to get to it. Were it not for the Aridimi location being secret and hidden, all of the tribes would have raided it long ago, Tagoth says. It is so far out in the desert that none of our armies can survive the trip. But I believe we can get there in this conveyance."

"So what heading should I take?" Becker said.

Acorna relayed the question and Miw-Sher said, "North, as if to Hissim, but then west toward the dunes and white hills. We call them the Serpent Spine. That is as far as I know how to go. But I think we should be able to see Uncle Tagoth easily from this machine. The desert is vast, but it is barren, and he will be going the same direction as we are."

Acorna passed the information to Becker as they overflew the last of the rainforest and saw the terraced steppes rising before them, wrapped with glittering ribbons of water. This close to the jungle, and far from the Temple where Edu's plague had been introduced, the fields were healthy and fertile, covered with red, green, and golden grasses waving in the wind.

"Pit stop," Becker announced, and landed the flitter.

"Why is he stopping?" Miw-Sher asked. "I thought everyone agreed that we need to hurry."

Acorna wanted to know exactly the same thing. She turned to Becker and asked him.

"Well, this is as close to safe as we're likely to be for quite a while. The first wave of bad guys headed in our direction have been apprehended by the jungle cat folk, who may be making lunch of them right now. I don't think the second wave is going to be coming in the next few minutes.

"So now is as good a time as any-maybe the best time for Linyaari girls who have healed well but not always wisely to graze and get drinks of water. All of us need a break-pussycats, too. Maybe they can catch a quick mouse or something-that is, if they can move after all they ate last night. We don't know what kind of reception we're in for."

"But the stronghold…" Miw-Sher protested.

Becker held up his hand to ward off her objection. "If this Aridimi place is so hard to find, I bet their pussycats haven't got their nice present from the Mulzar yet, and we've got a little head start here, thanks to this flitter. We need to take the time to take care of ourselves. I think we should be as ready as we can be for whatever will happen. Heck, I have to go find a handy bush myself."

Acorna didn't translate the last part. She did realize that Becker's point was well taken. She needed to eat and drink as well as rest long enough to catch her breath, if she was to do any more mass healings. Possibly he was also correct that the cats at the Aridimi stronghold wouldn't require her help as a healer, but if they did, she must be prepared.

The place Becker had set the flitter down was as beautiful as any Linyaari dream of the lost homeworld. A stream frothed like fine lace over rocks that glittered with as many colors as a gemstone tiara. The water's depths were the soft, clear pink of rose quartz. Still, just to be safe, Acorna dipped her horn into the running water and also cleansed the grasses of the field before she ate them.

"RK, you and the guardians should bring any prey you catch to me to purify before you eat it."

To the disgust of the cats, however, the fields were barren of even the smallest prey, which made Acorna fear that the plague had already spread farther among the animals of the world than she had previously believed.

The grasses were delicious, though, and the water as well. She enjoyed the chance to stretch and walk about. She was feeling more like herself by the time they reboarded the flitter.

That was when she realized Becker had not been following his own advice about relaxing. "Mac, come in. Do you hear me? Condor, this is your captain speaking. Give me a call if you can hear my voice." But despite his various attempts to adjust, repair, and reset the equipment, all he received in return was static.

Had Mac been a purely organic being, he might have felt chagrin at Becker's response to his attempt to ascertain the field functionality of the flitter and to educate the crew regarding its upgraded equipment. When the Condor's com receiver suddenly filled with static, Mac's initial reaction had been that Captain Becker, in one of his customary fits of gruffness, had "hung up" on him. But then he realized that the monitoring had somehow penetrated his careful programming and those who were doing the monitoring had cut off the transmission.

He needed to do something about that, but he wasn't sure what. His programming was now quite advanced, as evidenced in his promotion to uniformed crewman, but although he was capable of independent thought, he was not actually programmed to think strategically.

He was pondering what response if any would be appropriate when he observed irregular activity in the aft view screen. Earlier in the morning a flitter had made a short hop from behind the headquarters building to the field east of the Condor's docking bay. Now three figures approached it, each from a different angle. Zooming in, he recognized the person nearest the flitter as Lieutenant Commander Macostut.

And very quickly, from the litheness of her movements and some other characteristics he had stored as recognition factors, he identified the second person, coming between Macostut and the third person, as Nadhari Kando. She would be wanting to board as soon as she had spoken to Macostut, he felt sure, so he lowered the robolift. She looked up, then fell down. The third figure, one Mac did not recognize except that a certain facial resemblance to Nadhari identified him as her cousin, the ruler of this place, placed a weapon in his belt and helped Macostut bind Nadhari and load her into the flitter. Before Mac could raise the robolift again and board it to go to her assistance, the flitter was over the wall and gone.

He stood inside the robolift as it lowered.

Once the lift met the ground, Mac understood that his presence and position would now be known to any who were watching from headquarters. Therefore, he waved in a friendly fashion in that general direction. Two men emerged from the building, looking straight at him.

It seemed as good a time as any to undo the damage they had done to his communications system. He needed to warn the captain about the Federation flitter, and to advise him of Nadhari Kando's predicament.

Mac walked nonchalantly toward the troopers, wearing his customary friendly and diffident expression. He was, however, accessing the memories he had of the time when he was "muscle" for Kis la Ma njari. There were very few of these Federation people left on the post, and only a handful in the communications area. He would reason with them first, of course, and point out that their own commander had broken their prime rule against technological contamination of this world. If they disagreed or failed in any way to be other than helpful and cordial, he, who possessed the strength of about twenty fully organic men, would be forced to modify their physical configurations.

"Captain, shall I take the helm for a while?" Acorna asked. "It would be easier for me to do so, since the controls are built for Linyaari hands."

"You forget I fly with all kinds of alien equipment," Becker said proudly, forgetting that they were on Makahomia precisely because he had added Khleevi equipment to his control array. "Besides, you need to coordinate the mental communication around here. Might be too distracting for you to do that and fly, too. While you were resting up, I familiarized myself with some of Mac's upgrades. The scanner is a little clunky, but better than you'll find in any of the antique Federation buggies they have around here."

Acorna nodded and settled down for a quick nap. She wasn't the only one to take advantage of the opportunity. Miw-Sher was already limply sprawled under her seat harness, with cats settled beside her, on her lap and shoulders, and at her feet. RK rode up front between Becker and Acorna. Before she could fall asleep, Acorna heard RK's ruminations about his tragic parting from Haruna, and how the unfortunate feline female would never know what she had missed.

Acorna raised a solicitous hand and scratched the cat under his chin.

He climbed into her lap, put his paws on her shoulder, rubbed his face against her neck, and purred a little. (It's just that seeing those kittens makes me feel like I've missed something, Acorna, you know? I should be a daddy by now, but nooooo… Becker wants only one ship's cat. I want to make babies.)

Acorna laughed and scrubbed his ears. (You should know better than to try that line on me, Mr. Cat. You don't care about the baby kittens at all. You just want to make time with a female cat!)

RK sat back up, since he was getting no sympathy, and licked his right front paw. (Nothing wrong with that. It's what tomcats do.)

(Yes, I understand your frustration,) Acorna said, with such fellow feeling that RK favored her once more by leaning against her face. (I know exactly what you mean. Female Linyaari long for their mates, too.)

(I know,) RK said, and rubbed against her cheek with a brief burst of a purr. (Aari was on the wall.)

Acorna felt the little disk warm against her chest. (Yes, though it wasn't what you would call a good likeness. And it could have been any Linyaari, but I have had the dreams. It's him. I know it. He's long gone, though. The way they speak of him here, he was from some very ancient time in their history.)

She hoped Aari had not returned to Vhiliinyar while she'd been off saving the world again - though this time it was RK's world. She cupped the little disk against her throat. She missed him. Aari in dreams and as an ancient historical and mythological character in the Makahomian doctrine was not at all the same thing as Aari beside her.

She sighed and settled down for another catnap. The rest, food, and drink had helped, but she still felt drained by all the healing she'd done since they'd come to this world, and from all the long sleepless nights before that she'd spent wondering when she would see Aari again. She allowed her eyelids to close, hoping to dream of him -

- And jerked awake some time later, hailed by a mental call.

(Acorna, can you hear me? It's Nadhari.)

(I can read you, Nadhari. Where are you?)

(I'm a prisoner on a Federation flitter with Macostut and Edu. We're on our way to the Aridimi Stronghold.)

Acorna relayed the information to Becker.

"What's her position?" he asked.

(Nadhari, can you see the instruments? Do you know what your position is?)

She did indeed know where she was, and relayed the coordinates to Acorna, who told Becker.

After a moment he said, "Bingo! Tell her not to worry. Rescue's on the way." Becker changed course and put on a burst of speed.

Miw-Sher woke with a start. "What? Have you found Uncle Tagoth?"

"No," Acorna said, and explained about Nadhari's capture.

"But we must find my uncle first. If the Mulzar finds him before we do, he'll know that Tagoth has betrayed him, and he will kill him."

"I don't think so, kid," Becker said when Acorna told him of Miw-Sher's concern. "I bet Edu's too focused on his goal to pay any attention lo a lone life form down there in all that desert. And if he does find your uncle, I bet Edu's just like us. He'll want your uncle to show him the way to this stronghold. I'm on Edu's tail now. We can see him but he can't see us, thanks to the Linyaari cloaking. If it looks like he's after your uncle, I'll take him down before he knows what hit him. He'll never lay a hand on Tagoth."

Becker was enjoying himself now, flying low and fast, tracking Edu's flitter and keeping pace with it, following it as closely as possible without overtaking it. The Federation vehicle's signal was strong and loud. "Remind me to promote Mac for thinking to put this scanner in," Becker said.

"Can you find a person on the ground with it?" Acorna asked.

"Yeah, but not when the rig's set up like this," Becker said. "Mac adapted it from the Condor's array, and it's meant to have a few more toggles in the control apparatus that this little flitter just doesn't have. To get enough focus to pick up someone on the ground, it has to be recalibrated. If I do that, I run the risk of losing 'His Holiness' and Nadhari. Damn, I wish Mac had thought to install a couple of laser cannons on this thing too, but I guess that wouldn't go over big with the Linyaari."

"Probably not," Acorna agreed. Then she sat back and concentrated on broadcasting her thoughts to a specific mind out there on the desert floor. (Tagoth? Tagoth, this is Acorna. There's a Federation flitter with the Mulzar and Macostut aboard heading at top speed to the Aridimi stronghold. They have taken Nadhari prisoner. Please just think of me and concentrate on an answer if you are receiving this.)

But she heard no reply, nor did she sense that her message was reaching its target. She was not too surprised. Her telepathy, though highly developed, worked best with those she knew well.

"Are you trying to contact him with your mind?" Miw-Sher asked.

"Yes. I already tried, but it's not working. I'm sorry."

"I can do it, if I change. I can find him. But you have to land. I need to change my form and call to him-cat to cat."

"Miw-Sher, it's a bad idea to stop. We're pretty safe here in this flitter, and we have Edu under observation. The Mulzar already has Nadhari as a prisoner. We can't give him a chance to take us captive as well. If Edu can't find the stronghold without your uncle's help, then you'd play right into his hands by giving him the opportunity to capture you to use as leverage to ensure your uncle's cooperation in finding the hidden stronghold. Can you imagine what your uncle would do if Edu and Macostut threatened to kill you? Tagoth might be able to hold out against them if they threatened Nadhari or us, but not if they have you, too."

"They won't get me!" Miw-Sher said. "I can find his trail, and once I do, I can call him. Let me try. If we get to my uncle first, then perhaps the Mulzar won't ever be able to find the Sacred Lake."

Acorna couldn't see how anyone in a well-equipped flitter could avoid finding an entire temple complex, but then, Miw-Sher wasn't accustomed to flying in flitters. "He could find it," Acorna told her.

"Maybe, but with my uncle's help, we can certainly get there ahead of him to help the Aridimi prepare some kind of defense against him. Captain Becker could keep following the Mulzar, if he wishes to, after he drops me off. He could also come to my rescue, should I be captured."

"All right, you have a point," Acorna said. "We'll try it your way, but I'll go with you."

(Hmph,) RK said, rising and stretching, (I could do with a bit of a run myself.)

Whereupon Sher-Paw, Haji, and Pash all rose and stretched as if to say that they, too, wouldn't mind a bit of healthy exercise.

Grimla mewed piteously, torn between the two competing paths her Temple guardian duties required of her. She couldn't allow her two-legged kitten to leave without her protection, but on the other hand, she had a litter of four-legged kittens to care for. What should she do? She had to stay with the youngest and most helpless of her charges. She did not think this was at all fair, but what was a mother to do?

Becker put his foot down, however. "Nope. This situation is bad enough. I'm not gonna try herding cats all over the desert in addition to all the problems we've got already. I'm not landing, and nobody is getting out."

"In that case," Acorna said, "it seems that the only alternative is to recalibrate your scanner. Excuse me, Captain. Allow me." She did this easily. It was one of those talents she seemed to have been born with, a talent that had constantly amazed her asteroid-mining foster fathers. "Now then. See if you can find Tagoth with the scanner."

"What if we lose the other flitter?"

"We know roughly where they are going, so we'll catch up with them before this is over regardless of what happens. And if we can find Tagoth, we'll beat them to the Aridimi stronghold. He's the only one among us who knows exactly where that is. So let's find Tagoth. Don't worry, I'll recalibrate the scanner for you as soon as we locate Miw-Sher's uncle."

Becker huffed and growled into his mustache. "You drive a hard bargain."

The cats settled back, though Grimla left her kittens long enough to groom Miw-Sher's fingers, comforting her.

The scanner was quiet for some time as the Condor continued on its course, and then suddenly a small dot began to show on the perimeter of the pattern, moving away. Becker headed for it. "I hope that's not a jackrabbit or some varmint out for a midnight run," he said.

But as they drew nearer, a visual scan homed in on the images of a large cat bounding across the desert.

"That's him," Miw-Sher said, leaning forward "It's my uncle!

I'll bet the Mulzar wouldn't realize it was him if he saw him in cat form. He doesn't know Uncle can change!"

Becker didn't seem to hear her. He was happily watching the scanner. "Doesn't that Mac do top-notch work?" Becker asked Acorna. "Isn't this great? Your guys can't even get visuals like this with the standard scanners you have in the flitters you've got on Vhiliinyar! I knew my scanners could find salvage lightyears away, but I never tried to find a moving guy on the ground while I was moving too. Yippee!"

But finding Tagoth was one thing. Catching him was another. Although he couldn't possibly see the cloaked flitter, he seemed to sense it. He looked up, then bolted in the opposite direction. Becker headed him off again. Again the cat-man fled, this time feinting to the left but taking off again in the direction he was originally headed.

"He thinks we're the Mulzar," Becker said.

Miw-Sher pleaded, "Please, land. I'll chase him. I'll get him to come to us."

"No," Acorna told her. "By the time we land, he'll be far away. We'd just have to load up and chase him again. If we keep this up long enough, we may wind up directly in the path of the Federation flitter ourselves, or we might chase Tagoth into their hands. I think we can find a better way to reach him. Here, link hands with me and call him - except call him as if you're speaking to me. I'll see if I can relay your thought. Maybe since we're this close to him, it wall work."

They linked arms and Acorna carefully touched her horn to the girl's forehead. Miw-Sher's eyes widened, and she whispered, surprised, "That feels… nice. Not pointy and sharp or anything. It makes everything… feel better, even smell better."

Acorna smiled, but knew they had a job to do. "Shhh, concentrate. Talk to your uncle." But before either of them could seek to make contact, the Temple cats and RK pressed in on them on every side, reinforcing the catty side of the mental conversation.

(Uncle Tagoth, it's me, Miw-Sher. I'm in a flitter flying right over you. You can't see it because we're wearing a cloak that makes us invisible to the Mulzar and the Federation commander in another flitter, but we're here and we're trying to help you!)

The cat figure in the visual scanner kept fleeing.

"We're not getting through. Keep it simple," Acorna breathed to her. "Just tell him it's you in the flitter this time. Think of it as a mental shout. Captain, it might help if we uncloaked for a moment."

Becker nodded and Miw-Sher did as Acorna suggested.

This time the cat stopped and looked up at them.

"It's working," Becker hooted, and Acorna felt the flitter begin to descend. "I do believe he heard you, ladies. Thaaaat's right, big kitty guy, come to the flitter." The vessel landed on the sand with a thump.

Tagoth began losing his feline characteristics as he came to the grounded flitter. His ears, already flattened with alarm, seemed to melt back into his skull and re-emerge as human ears; his tail flicked once and disappeared. His muzzle shortened and his whiskers shrank to nothing and vanished, as did his claws and the fur.

"Oops," Becker said. "Watch it, fella, ladies present."

Miw-Sher was already holding out her scarf, which her uncle accepted, turning it into a sort of loincloth before climbing into the flitter.

"Where to?" Becker asked Tagoth, who seemed relatively unperturbed by this sudden change in his circumstances. He settled himself in next to his niece, looked around calmly, and shared quick cheek rubs with Miw-Sher and the Hissimi Temple cats. He admired the kittens, running one finger along their tiny backs.

Acorna repeated Becker's question to Tagoth, who pointed and said, "That way. Continue as you were going when you found me. I will say when to change course."

Becker obliged, getting them into the air as quickly as possible.

While Becker took care of the flying, Acorna studied their new passenger. She could see the appeal of the man, understanding why Nadhari had been attracted to him. Tagoth had a quiet, concentrated magnetism. He seemed to Acorna to be a man of strong convictions, with a great sense of honor, but one who had lived for many years under the constant threat that his double life would be discovered-and that his days would be prematurely ended as a result.

Acorna sent a message to Nadhari. (We just picked up Tagoth and will be taking him to the Aridimi Stronghold. Are you all right?)

(Yeah, except for being a prisoner of a man I've hated since I was a little kid,) she replied. (But you've got trouble. Edu and Macostut spotted you just now. They're speculating as to why you just dropped off their screens again. Be careful.)