Acorna's Rebels

Two

You didn't need me, Jonas," Nadhari said once they were well away from MOO. "MacKenZ is strong enough to subdue our hairy friends, or you could have tied them up and locked them in an inner cargo hold."

"Yes, sweetie, but I wanted you to come," Becker said, twirling the ends of his mustache. "You know how much more secure I feel when you're here to protect me. I just used Acorna as a smoke screen so nobody else would know what a wuss I am."

Acorna added, "Nadhari has a point, Captain. Mac fought the Wats when they attacked Thariinye, Maati, and me. They regard Mac as a superior warrior. Him and RK both."

RK was draped across Nadhari's shoulders like a fur stole, his tail describing lazy Js against the insignia sewn to the sleeve covering her left arm. The cat's face, framed by its furry mane, was so large it looked as if Nadhari had two heads.

"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 Karma 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.

As she settled in for a sleep cycle, she pondered how to break it to Becker that the ship's current configuration was not one of his more successful ones.

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 wall 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.

The surface of the burgeoning sphere where the Condor was preparing to land occupied a third of the port. The Wats gaped at it, stricken by something close to awe, then knelt as if they couldn't support themselves on their feet any longer. Their minds were literally numb.

Becker glanced back around the side of his command chair, and jerked a thumb at the open-mouthed men. "Wot's with the Wats? They look like they got religion all of a sudden."

"That's the least of it, I believe, Captain. I don't think they've ever been permitted to see space since they first traveled to Vhiliinyar. They're a bit overwhelmed. They've been under the impression the Condor is being carried through space by the Thunder God."

"Thunderstruck, eh?" Becker asked, then held up both arms and rotated his wrists to show first the backs of his hands, then the palms. "But you're wrong about the god! Look, Ma, no hands! We're landing under our own power-but just barely."

Acorna got a sudden sense of the upcoming world's mineral composition. "Captain, I don't think you'll want to linger here. This world is extremely wet and the air, while breathable, is full of sulfurous effusions."

"Beggars can't be choosers." The viewport was taken up with the planet's surface except for a slender halo of atmosphere surrounding it. "Strap in, folks, gravity is about to grab us."

Acorna helped the Wats secure themselves in the auxiliary seats behind the command post and buckled in herself. The ship shuddered, and the planet blossomed to fill the entirety of the viewport, its surface becoming more and more detailed. Streamlets, rivers, lagoons, ponds, lakes, and all manner of wetlands, laced together with heavy vegetation. There didn't seem to be any seas as such, just innumerable smaller bodies of water running in and out of each other.

Finally Becker said, "Look, Princess, there's a kind of flat plain there with a patch of grass. We'll set down in it."

"I hope you have diving equipment, Jonas," said Nadhari, who had been very quiet through all of this.

"Why?" Becker asked. "Is there something you'd like to tell me, babe?"

"Well, yes, actually, but there's not enough…"

They splashed down rather than set down, as Becker had planned. The grass was actually a sea of tall reeds and the Condor was in water halfway up to the robolift. And sinking.

"… time," Nadhari finished. "Perhaps, Jonas, you could do a quick repair on the Khleevi unit so it would allow us to move to a drier spot?"

He already had a torch and a screwdriver in hand. "I wonder if there is a drier spot," he grumbled. "This whole place is one dismal swamp, from what I can tell."

"Yes," Nadhari said. "And there are large, unfriendly reptilian life forms living in these waters."

"How do you know about that?" he asked.

"Because I recognize this place. The Federation used it as a sort of boot camp for Makahomian recruits, to see if we qualified for the Corps. It is near enough to Makahomia that those who didn't make it through the training could be returned-dead or alive."

"Do tell?" Becker asked, scratching his chin. "Hmmm. We seem to have gone a little out of our way."

"I don't want to be rude, Captain," Acorna said. "But did you maybe detect some small differences in the functions of Khleevi navigational equipment as compared to that of other cultures whose salvage you have adapted to the Condor?"

Becker harrumphed and looked at the strange array he had installed, waving at it casually. "You mean this? Well, Princess, when you've been in the salvage business as long as I have you learn that there are just so many functions a ship is going to perform and that they are to some extent interchangeable. If it wasn't for that blasted"-he looked at Nadhari and RK, who were both eying him through slitted eyes, and revised his adjective- "holy cat swinging from the toggles and playing leapfrog across the buttons…"

Acorna and Nadhari looked meaningfully at the watery landscape outside the viewport. The tops of the tall reeds were beginning to tickle the belly of the Condor by now.

"You suppose that's it?" he asked with a pained and apologetic grimace as he worked on the control panel. "The Khleevi warp drive is maybe a little juicier than what I'm used to?"

"Since we are now in a totally different quadrant of space than we planned to be, it would seem as if Khornya has justification for her assumption, Captain," Mac said. "If I may make a suggestion, sirs and ladies?"

"Sure, Mac, what is it?"

"Are the ship's communication devices still functional?"

"Seem to be," Becker said, checking them.

"Then I suggest we send a Mayday message, sir, and promptly. I do not believe the Condor has the appropriate modifications for supporting our lives for the rest of eternity under the sludge into which we are sinking."

"I was just about to do that little thing," Becker told him. "No need to state the obvious, Mac. In fact," he said, turning to Nadhari, "if we're close to your homeworld, babe, why don't you do the honors?"

Before she had finished her opening hail in her own language, RK had planted himself in front of her face. Becker plucked him out of the way, and with help from Acorna, they wrestled the cat into a harness that tethered him to one of the bridge seats. Afterward, Acorna doctored Becker's scratches and puncture wounds.

The Wats did not seem to entirely understand the danger they were currently in and Acorna saw no need to enlighten them for the time being. The two men stared out the viewport and seemed lost in the scenery. From the snatches of their thoughts Acorna caught while Nadhari made repeated hails in her native tongue, the Wats seemed to think sinking into an alien marsh was just another of the strange things their current captors did. They weren't sure if it was a function of battle, a form of transportation, a demonstration of power, or possibly some kind of strange courtship ritual, but Acorna's previous reassurances had gained their confidence and they saw no reason to lose it now.

Sooner than any of them had imagined possible, they received a response to their Mayday. "Condor, this is the Arkansas Traveler. I don't rightly understand all that language you're speaking, but I got enough of it to know you're in trouble. I'm coming up on your position now. Could you repeat your message in Standard Galactic lingo, over?"

"Certainly, Arkansas Traveler," Nadhari said smoothly in the more familiar language. "I will turn you over to Captain Becker."

"Uh, I don't suppose you folks could let me have a visual on you, could you? My cargo is not my own and it's always nice to know who you're dealing with. No offense."

"None taken, Traveler. We'll show you ours if you'll show us yours, over," Becker said in a tone that, in other quarters, might have implied something completely different. "Nadhari, you're more photogenic than me. Wave at the nice ship on the vid screen, will you?"

When she had done so, Becker leaned in and wiggled his fingers, too. In a moment, the handsome, friendly face of a man with green eyes and white hair grinned back at them. "Nice to meet you folks. I'm Scaradine MacDonald. I've got a load of tractors and irrigation equipment I'm delivering, but I reckon I can stop long enough to give you a tow."

"We'd appreciate it, Captain MacDonald," Becker said. "We got in a little deeper than we'd planned."

"No problem. I've got a tractor beam on this thing that can pull you up right through the atmosphere. And hey, call me Scar. Everybody does."

"Thanks, Scar. I'm Jonas Becker, Chief Executive Officer as well as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer of Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd. We were en route for a planet in another sector altogether when we had an equipment failure. I thought it would be safe to land here for repairs, but it was a lot soupier than it looked. This nice lady beside me is Commander Nadhari Kando. She tells me we're pretty close to Makahomia, which is where she's from. You think you could tow us that far?"

"Sure, that's not much out of my way. I was hoping to stop and refuel there, anyway."

Becker looked at Nadhari, who said, "That shouldn't be a problem. I will transfer to your navigation computer the proper coordinates for our final destination." She did so and then said, "These are the coordinates of the Federation outpost nearest my place of origin. It has an excellent spaceport and enough landmass that the planet's various border skirmishes really don't affect the people who aren't interested in the battles." After she'd finished the transmission, she sat back, as still as a statue.

Acorna looked at her sharply. Nadhari was clearly uncomfortable. Had she been a less disciplined and guarded individual, she might have been twitching or displaying a nervous tic, but as the highly trained peacekeeper that she was, Nadhari simply became increasingly still, outwardly calm, her face serene as a sheathed knife unless she was speaking.

At that moment the vid screen lit again, "Okay, Captain Becker, ma'am. I'm going to turn on the tractor beam now. Hope everybody is strapped in?"

Becker reassured him on that point. "Just about time too, buddy. The viewport is starting to get a little moist around the edges. You sure that winch of yours can pull us out of this? Want me to use my thrusters first?"

"Well, let's just crank 'er up and give 'er a go first, whatcha think?" the other captain suggested.

"Sounds good to me. Only step on it," Becker suggested.

The tractor beam had a little problem pulling the Condor loose, but after a few nasty jolts and some ghastly creaking the ship began to shift, until at last the outer hull was visible again through the viewport, the landing pods choked with reeds and dripping with giant sharp-fanged eel-like reptiles.

"Ewww," Becker said. "Glad we didn't go out there!"

The Wats were awestricken all over again as the Condor pulled free from the muck with a deafening sucking noise and leaped into the air under the tow of the other ship.

When Scar's face appeared on the screen, Sandy Wat said to Red Wat, "The face of the Thunder God as he lifts us onto his lightning bolt." To Acorna he pointed triumphantly at the screen and said, "You see?"

Acorna decided it was better to deal with the Wats' misconceptions later. Much later.

But Nadhari didn't move, not even when they felt the heavy pressure of acceleration as their ship was pulled out of the gravity well and into space.

"Nadhari," Acorna said carefully, "although we all know you and RK well, we know very little about Makahomia. Your planet has the reputation for being almost as secluded and secretive as Vhiliinyar and narhii-Vhiliinyar. Is there anything you would like to tell us about it so we can avoid embarrassing you or ourselves?"

"Like what?" Nadhari asked.

"Whatever seems pertinent right now - for instance, where exactly are we going? What is your planet like? Does the name of your planet mean something special? Answers to those questions seem like a good place to start."

Nadhari took a deep breath, more out of tension than the need for oxygen. Finally she said, "The name of my home planet? Makah is our word for cat, and 'hom' refers to either people or place, so we are the people or place of the cat, depending on the suffix. Makahomia, as you say, is 'place of the cat.' We would say 'Makahomin' for place, 'Makahomini' for ourselves. We'll be landing near the Federation outpost facility, which is the only place vessels like the Condor and the Arkansas Traveler can refuel on Makahomia. There is only one outpost, or at least that was the case when last I was here. It is just outside the city of Hissim, on the semiarid Mog-Gim Plateau bordering the Great Aridimi Desert."

"Is that where you're from, Nadhari?"

"Not originally, no, though I lived there briefly in semi-slavery before being recruited by the Federation."

"Semi-slavery?" asked Becker, who had himself been a child slave on Kezdet. "Does that mean they shackle you only on alternate days?"

"No," she said. "I was taken prisoner by the Aridimis after a battle and given to the Temple priests as an acolyte. As such, I was confined to the Temple to do menial chores. My fighting ability and my affinity for the sacred cats saved me from some of the less pleasant duties I might have been forced into otherwise."

"That must have been terrible for you," Acorna said sympathetically. "No wonder you were so eager to help Mr. Li free the children of Kezdet and establish the training center on Maganos."

Nadhari raised an eyebrow and smiled a half-smile. "Actually, it wasn't bad at all. I let myself be raptured, once I had demonstrated that I could handle myself in battle. I knew our enemy was near the new Federation outpost, and I knew that the Federation recruited likely Makahomian young people and took them off-planet to train for the Corps. One of my cousins had gone and returned, which was quite unusual. He said it was wonderful, but that Makahomia needed him more than the Federation. His stories made me determine to be chosen. Mostly they didn't choose girls, but there were not many girls who could fight as I could."

Becker had wanted Nadhari to open up, and now she was unusually garrulous. Acorna thought it was extreme nervousness, as well as being around people she trusted, that made her so talkative.

"What was your home like?" Acorna asked her. "Now that we are here, will you be able to visit your family? Can we explore the planet with you and see where you come from?"

"I very much doubt it," Nadhari said with a half shrug. "It may not even be advisable to let the Federation know I'm aboard, depending on who rules Hissim these days. Also, the Federation does not allow anyone to introduce alien technologies to our people."

"Why not?" Becker asked.

Nadhari took a deep breath. "Because if one faction had a technological edge, it would upset the balance of power that keeps our continual wars from escalating to a bloodbath that could wipe out the population. You must understand, Jonas, my people are at war all the time-it's part of what we do," she told him.

"But we don't need to worry about someone shooting us down as we land?"

"Oh, no, because the Federation are the only ones who have modern weapons. Anything more advanced than a spear or a knife is considered much too dangerous to be in Makahomian hands."

"By the Federation?" Acorna asked. "That's very… paternalistic, isn't it?"

"Actually, it was our priests, both the war priests and the peace priests, who jointly decided on the taboo and insisted that the Federation enforce it as a condition of their maintaining a presence on the planet. In exchange, the Federation gained the concession that it could choose likely youngsters to train for its service. Of course, when one of us was chosen to leave our world and take up fighting elsewhere, that is a different matter. As expatriates, we could learn anything they wished to teach us, including how to handle all the weapons with which they armed us. We are not allowed to take those weapons back to the indigenous areas of our homeworld with us, however. Or even to speak to our people of their existence."

Becker snorted. "Yeah, I can see where you could become Supreme High Pooh-Bah in a nanosecond if you had Old Betsy with you," he said. Old Betsy was what he called Nadhari's laser rifle.

"Should I visit my planet's surface, I will be allowed to carry no weapons but the dagger I took with me from the Temple when I left," Nadhari said.

"But on the other hand, you're saying that nobody else on your world will have anything badder," Becker said, nodding his understanding. "Well, that'll make things more even. But you don't need a laser rifle to do damage, babe. I've seen you in action."

She grimaced. "It is true I've learned much since leaving the Temple, but many of my people are at least as able in the traditional fighting skills as I was when I was chosen to leave. And though I may have had much more training and experience since, I am older now, and my reflexes are not as fast as once they were."

"You musta been a beautiful baby," Becker said. "And death on wheels if you were any tougher than you are now."

She didn't acknowledge either aspect of the intended compliment, but said seriously, "My bloodlines on my father's side are from the Kashirian Steppes, where the best fighters come from. Kashirians, when they are not personally defending their own territory or attacking someone else's, are hired by the other peoples as mercenaries. Normally, girls are not trained as highly as boys in battle skills. However, my mother's people were Felihari, one of the Makavitian Rainforest tribes. The climate in the forests is hot and very, very wet, and fighting is done with less physical and more intellectual finesse than elsewhere on the planet. My mother was initiated as a Felihari High Priestess."

As Nadhari spoke, Acorna saw the images of her memories quite clearly-the rubbery copper-colored foliage of the jungle, stirring sluggishly in a dripping heat, the striped and spotted creatures slithering along the ground or up and down the trees, the rainfall that came second- and third-hand after first being deposited on the tallest branches, then flowing onto the lower ones, and finally reaching the ground. The Temples draped in drowsing cats and studded with winking jewels-or were those more cats blinking back the light? Nadhari's mother, erect and proud as Nadhari herself but shorter, browner, wearing the practical dress for the climate -that is, very little dress at all. Her skin, coppery as the leaves around her, glistened with moisture. Her auburn/black hair was braided with what looked like-but couldn't be-the eyes of cats.

Nadhari was remembering one cat in particular - a sleek tawny creature with a throaty purr whose butter-soft fur turned red at ears and tail, and whose jonquil eyes always seemed uplifted to a particular young girl.

"The Felihari women hold much of the power in their culture, and since their fighting skills require more of an intelligent application of the laws of physics than brawn, the women are quite effective fighters. When my father was taken prisoner by her people, my mother thought he would make a highly desirable contribution to the tribe's bloodlines and became impregnated by him. Religiosity does not require celibacy on my homeworld. The resulting child, my elder brother, was considered such a success, and I suspect my mother and father found the process so enjoyable, that they formalized their union and made me as well."

"That's romantic," Becker said dryly.

Acorna could tell there was much Nadhari was not saying and didn't wish to say, for reasons of her own. Perhaps the reasons were connected with the emotional problems Becker had described on the way to MOO. But until she was ready to talk about it, it did little good to press her for more information.

Instead, Acorna asked, "Nadhari, the aagroni wanted some information about the Makahomian Temple cats. He believes, having seen RK, that there might be some connection between them and a species that existed on Vhiliinyar before the Khleevi attack. I would like to speak with some of the high priests about them. How much exposure have your people had to people not of their own species? Should I disguise myself, or would it be best to simply present myself as a Linyaari ambassador?"

Nadhari considered, then said, "You will have to-in fact, any of us would have to-obtain a permit from the Federation officials to enter the cities or countryside, and especially to interact with any of our officials. Even I will have to, since I have been away so long."

"Surely they wouldn't keep you from seeing your family?"

"I cannot be sure any of my family members still live," Nadhari said. "My mother was killed by a band of mercenaries unrelated to my father, who was at that time off fighting for another Makavitian tribe involved in a blood feud with Aridimis. My brother was killed defending my mother and her Temple." Nadhari was remembering the tawny cat, accidentally wounded with a great gash in its side, growling over her mother and brother, defending their bodies against all comers, while a little girl screamed desperate war cries and kicked and chopped until she was so exhausted her laughing opponents were able to simply scoop her up and carry her off. "But when the mercenaries who killed them found me and learned who my father was, they ransomed me to him. He was killed in a battle soon after the one in which I was taken prisoner."

In Nadhari's mind, Acorna saw the blood and heat of the battles, the gaping mouths of wounds and splintered bone. She smelled the stench of overheated bodies and felt the weapons slip with the sweat of hands. Heard the crunch and dull thwuck sound of blunt objects striking flesh, the ring of metal as it sought targets.

Becker whistled. "You haven't had a dull life, have you? No wonder you haven't been homesick!" Acorna noted that although he appeared to understand Nadhari's motives, he was still gently probing. The concept of a settled home was more alien to him than the Linyaari were. His childhood as a Kezdet farm slave was ended by his adoption by Theophilus Becker to be son and first mate aboard the Condor. The ship was Becker s home more than any planet, much less any town or city.

Nadhari's rainforest memory shifted to one of hilly lands covered with riders of beasts who looked a bit like the Ancestors, without horns, and yet were not quite Terran horses. The people riding the beasts were ferocious looking, with bristling facial hair. And they gave way in Nadhari's imaginings to red-robed hairless figures, in the background, and flat-roofed houses looking out over an even flatter plain. These places had all been home briefly to the girl Nadhari had been.

Acorna began to wonder if the accident ending in the Condor becoming stranded near Makahomia was an accident after all. Becker was bluff and jovial with her, but also was a shrewd man, sometimes every bit as sly as Hafiz. Blaming RK was convenient, as the cat was unlikely to challenge him, at least verbally.

"It isn't only that. Without a family, as an acolyte, you become the tool of the ruling priests. Some of them are good, holy people. Others are where they are only because of their influence and family connections and because they wish to exercise power over others. Only the Temple cats," she said, stroking RK, who slitted his eyes and purred appreciatively, "can be trusted to be always completely honest in their reactions and judgments. They protect the Temples, the acolytes, the priests, and the people - especially those they favor. They attack, when away from the Temple, only for food or when threatened. It is a great tragedy when one is killed or injured - even for the side attacking." She fell silent, her thoughts returning to the injured tawny red-tipped cat dying beside her mother and brother as the rain dripped onto their bodies.

"It sounds as if your cats are as revered as our Ancestors," Acorna said. "And yet your people have so many wars. What do they find to fight over?"

Nadhari laughed. "What do they not fight over? The tribes of the rainforest are wealthy, with water and growing things needed for medicines and food. Our Temples are the most elaborate, our cats the closest to the wild state, our jungles teem with wild things good for food and clothing. The people of the arid zone have no water, few plants. My father's people of the plains would perhaps be the greatest targets for attack were they not the fiercest of all fighters. They are nomadic, herding beasts from river to river, using the arable land for short-term crops when there is sufficient peace to grow them. They are often the object of attack from both the arid zones and the forest. But more often they fight for one side against the other, gaining the forest treasures for the desert folk and the sacred cat's-eye gems for the forest tribes. These are the material reasons for our warfare. We also fight for the same reasons everyone does: sport, power, love, honor, territory, revenge, loot, or slaves, or to free ourselves from slavery if we are captured."

"Your people still keep slaves?" Acorna asked. "And the Federation permits it?"

"They didn't interfere on Kezdet while the slavery served a purpose, did they?" Nadhari asked with a shrug. "While we fight each other, we are not threatening those with real power out in the galaxy. Our own priests have the power that matters to them. And as long as our wars employ nothing but traditional weapons and stay confined to our planet's surface, the Federation feels that our Quaint Native Customs can be honored. I didn't realize all of this until I began to work for Delszaki Li on Kezdet and learned from him more about the uses and abuses of power. As his personal guard, I was beside him always. Mr. Li was not a man to look down upon someone simply because he paid them wages. He talked to me a great deal. He taught me much of the history of the peoples who settled Kezdet. And I came to realize some of the reasons my people never found peace, although there has always been much sentimental talk of it.

"Our leaders do not actually desire peace any more than they desire annihilation. Our wars serve many purposes. They are the main business of our priests. The priests fan the conflicts to maintain a constant sense of danger and a state of emergency so people will not question their actions or motivations. The wars solidify loyalties and make simple things like starving seem trivial by comparison. The fear of death and destruction keeps the people occupied. And then there's always something for the fighters to look forward to: the thrill of acquiring loot and slaves, the joy of decreasing the population-preferably that of your enemy, of course. There are a very few cultural safeguards in all of this that have kept us from destroying the planet. Our people do not engage in wholesale slaughter of noncombatants, and we do not seek to decimate the gene pool of the opposing side by disposing of those with brains or talent when we have the opportunity. As terrible as I find the conflicts, they are not as terrible as they could be if our people followed another path."

"But nobody else on the planet sees this the way you do?" Becker asked.

She sighed. "I don't know. I haven't been hack since I was a child. It seemed to me then that people didn't think about anything much at all. Things were as they were; allegiances shifted, but there was always an allegiance to something. There was always something to defend and something to hate and fight. Most of us have been partially raised in all three areas of the planet, sometimes as slaves, sometimes as steppe-children of the tribes we live among. We fight only each other. The Federation is here now to protect us from outside threats like the Khleevi, so we ourselves are our only enemies."

Becker shook his head, saying, "It still sounds weird to me. Not that I'm ethnocentric or xenophobic or anything."

"If we wish it, we need know nothing of what is going on, on the planet. The Federation officials may require you to fill out forms before allowing your repairs and refueling, but you need not see any two-legged Makahomians except me unless you seek to do so. If the officials permit Acorna to carry out her mission, they may arrange for the priests to come to the Federation post. It will all be very civilized. At least, if things are still as they were when I left."

Nadhari paused, as if unsure of the wisdom of continuing. Then she went on, saying, "You know, Jonas, when we get to my planet, it might be a good idea if you and Acorna do the talking for us while RK and I keep a very low profile, at least until we know what we're dealing with and who."

"Why hide RK?" Becker wanted to know. "Won't the pussycats back at your home be glad to see the big guy?"

"Taking a Temple cat from Makahomia is frowned upon," Nadhari told him. "Keeping him hidden could be good for your health. Such a theft is punishable by death."