First Warning: Acorna's Children

Chapter 14

Elviiz began the countdown and instrument check while Khorii took the copilot seat and Hap the "jump seat," an anachronistic term left over from inner-atmospheric flights when it was conceivable, with the use of a personal sail, actually to jump out of a craft and survive.

Before Elviiz finished his countdown, the hull came under attack. Pounding at first, then a horrible screech like-exactly like- claws scratching metal.

Khorii unstrapped and opened the hatch. Sesseli and Khiindi looked up at her reproachfully for a moment, then Khiindi, tail fully healed and waving majestically, marched aboard. Before Khorii could say anything to either of them, Sesseli darted after him.

"Wait," Khorii said, as Elviiz continued his interrupted countdown. "Sesseli, we are going on a special mission to a supply ship orbiting this moon. There are sick people aboard, and they might make you sick, too."

"What about Hap? Hap could get sick," the little girl argued.

"Thank you for pointing that out," Khorii told her. "Hap will have to stay in the shuttle when we go up, until everyone is healed and the atmosphere and cargo are cleansed. Even Khiindi will have to stay in the shuttle until Elviiz and I decontaminate everything and heal everyone."

"Then I'll stay in the shuttle and keep them company," Sesseli said.

"There's no room," Hap said reasonably. "We don't have another secure seat."

"Then I can sit on your lap and you can strap us both in and Khiindi can sit on my lap."

"No, Sesseli, that is not safe," Khorii said.

But just then another hail came from the supply ship. "Please," Taj gasped. "Can you give us an ETA?"

Khorii took a deep breath, and said, "We are on our way. Please conserve your strength and try to hang on." To the others she said, "Very well, then. We'll all go. There's no time to argue. Strap yourselves in. Elviiz?"

Elviiz had been counting down and checking himself while the others argued, and now he said, "Prepare for launch."

This flight seemed much longer to Khorii than the one from the Condor to Maganos. During the trip, another message came, with no video.

"Where are you?" This was not Taj, and the voice was young, female, and distraught. "Hurry. Please hurry."

"We'll be there as soon as we can," Khorii promised. "Please, just be patient a little longer. Do whatever you've been doing to treat each other. When we get there we can cure you. Just please hang on."

Elviiz transmitted their coordinates and an estimated time of arrival but the Mana made no reply.

Khorii wasn't worried about being able to cure the sickness once they arrived, but occupied herself with wondering how to do it and hide what she was doing. Elviiz would help, of course. She just hoped Hap, Sesseli, and especially Khiindi stayed out of the way. There was no way to secure the hatch from the outside that could not be undone from the inside. If harm befell either of the human kids, she would never forgive herself nor, she suspected, would anyone else. On the other hand, she thought, brightening, she could always just cure them, too, so it really wasn't such a big risk.

She began to feel a little alarmed when they requested docking instructions and received only the computerized voice directing all procedures. She tried to hail the bridge again but got no reply.

She was out of her seat and through the hatch door while Elviiz was still securing their vessel in its berth. "Hurry," she said.

The ship was not very large, and Khorii and Elviiz found their way to the bridge from the diagram on the wall of the landing bay, but when they got there, no one greeted them. As Khorii and Elviiz disembarked from the shuttle, Khorii felt as if she were right back on the Blanca, though the ship was not dark, and there was plenty of oxygen.

It was, however, very quiet, and Khorii's sensitive nostrils picked up the smell of human excrement and something worse before her horn purified the air. Passing a door with a yellow biohazard sign on it, and looking through the small viewport set into it, she saw a single examining table which bore a sheet-covered bulk with feet sticking out at one end. On the floor beside the table lay another sheet-draped figure.

"We can do nothing for them," Elviiz told her. "They have been without life for some time."

Khorii nodded, and they made their way straight to the bridge. On the bridge were three more people, one of them covered with a blanket. Beside the shrouded body lay the man whose face they had so recently seen on the com screen. Rajan Taj.

Khorii let out an involuntary cry and knelt beside him, lowering her horn to his head. He could not be dead. Not so suddenly. They had just spoken. Hadn't she told him to be patient?

"He is without life," Elviiz said.

"Maybe," she muttered, and tried to will him to return. Grand-sire Rank had told her a story once about Mother bringing Grand-sire Gill back to life when he was shot in front of them. Grandsire Rafik had been certain that his friend was dead, but Mother would not give up, and she restored his life. It was, as far as Khorii knew, the only time Mother or any other Linyaari had done such a thing, but that single story made it possible. If only she tried hard enough. This was not a "stiff" as Captain Becker had so dismissively termed the people aboard the Blanca. This man was a person. She knew what his voice sounded like and how his face looked when he was worried. Not all blank and waxy like this. He should not be dead. He had a daughter to take care of. He should be here to look after her.

For a moment she saw her own beloved father lying there and with all her might, all her newfound psychic power, she urged him to return. Spots flew in front of her eyes and vanished, but his closed eyes did not open. His chest did not move. His breath did not cast a breeze onto her skin.

"Are you praying for my father?"

Khorii turned away from the body that had contained Rajan Taj. A dark-haired, dark-skinned girl who seemed to be about Hap's age looked down at her from desolate black eyes.

"Because I've already done that," the girl said. "I've prayed for all of them."

"I was-trying to see if there was anything I could still do to help him," Khorii said, rising. "But there was not."

"No, you're a little late for that, Lady-what did he call you?"

"He called me by my mother's name. He used to know her when she lived here, or had heard of her."

"She's not with you?"

"No, she and my father are fighting the plague on another world. But I have the same skills, and I came to help. I did not take the time to explain that I was not my mother."

"Oh. Well, you might as well have done. He died anyway," the girl said, turning away.

"You are Jaya?"

The girl half fell into the command chair, as if her legs could no longer hold her. Her dusky complexion was underlain with a feverish red. Khorii felt heat rising from her skin. The girl's breathing was ragged, shallow, and irregular. "What's left of me," Jaya said.

Kneeling next to the girl, Khorii touched her, first on the pulse point at her jawline, drawn sharply against the long curve of her neck. She squirmed away and coughed. Khorii gently raised Jaya so she could put her head next to the girl's chest, as if listening to her heartbeat, but really to touch her horn to it. Jaya coughed once more and sat up, the fever draining from her like an outgoing tide.

"So if you're not your mother, Lady whoever, then who are you?" Jaya demanded.

"I am Khorii; this is Elviiz."

"Khorii, Elviiz, what took you so long? I'm sure my parents are sorry they missed you." The words were bitter and reproachful.

Elviiz said, "Had our civilization developed teleportation technology, we might have been quicker, but as it has not we were forced to use a space shuttle. That requires some travel time. Your father was no doubt aware of this flaw."

"We truly are sorry we could not be here in time to save your father and mother and are very sorry for your loss," Khorii said gently, to soften the edge of Elviiz's correct but unhelpful assessment of the situation.

Jaya looked from one of them to the other, and her eyes, so dry and hot before that there seemed to be no water for tears, flooded and overflowed with them. Khorii reached out a hand to touch her shoulder and comfort her but the girl shrugged it away, demanding, "Now what am I going to do?"

Khorii wished she had an answer.

Commander Ray Alcalde reflected that when it came to keeping the subordinates under your command pacified and happy, the Federation could have taken a lesson from him. He had the best record of any Federation liaison governor of a remote and primitive outpost. That was, for the love of the heavens, why he had been chosen to present his work to the Command Council held this year on Rio Boca. He had been unusually excited because the councils were for the most part dull, dry affairs, administrators instructing and admonishing other administrators. Only the odd recreational tour, generally of the most bland and banal variety, was ever included to break the monotony of the droning lectures and award the attendees for traveling so far to participate.

Definitely not what Ray would have chosen as his only trip away from the endless rolling waters of LoiLoiKua, the mournful chanting and dreary singing of the whale people, the drumming on the waters that woke him at all hours. It was hard on the nerves. Before the young were transported to that school near Kezdet, Ray had always liked the singing. That was the period during which he established his reputation as a good governor. The truth was, though they were a superstitious lot and a bit too given to passively accepting whatever befell them-otherwise, they would have moved on when the water overtook the land, not just adapted and evolved into water dwellers-they were easy to govern. They had been happy, satisfied, content. And then some idiot told them that a solar catastrophe was damaging their environment. They did not adapt this time. They became whirlpools of anxiety. What would happen to their young? Their beloved children would perish as would all LoiLoiKuans if their sun and their water betrayed them.

Well, sure. Ray tried to tell them that sort of thing was years, maybe decades, in the future, and they didn't really need to worry about it, but there was no shutting them up until the Federation took the problem under advisement. With unusual speed and efficiency, the children had been lifted into tanks that were loaded aboard a huge cargo ship and transported to Maganos Moonbase. The locals didn't write, of course, since they lived underwater. Neither did the kids. Ray certainly had not been given communications equipment sophisticated enough to allow the kids to hail the home-folk every week or so.

So the adults had stayed unhappy and just a tinge bitter, though they still considered Ray their friend. Little did they know how happy he would have been to turn the whole moist mess over to some fresh new officer who was, as Ray confided privately to his fellow commanders, heh heh, wet behind the ears to, heh heh heh, get his feet wet.

But he thought, when he got the invitation to speak at the council on Rio Boca, that at least the Federation recognized his work and was rewarding him by sending him home in time for Carnivale.

That would have been wonderful, to see his brothers and sisters again, to get into a costume that excused all sorts of behavior unbefitting an officer and a gentleman, and to parade through the streets to music a whole lot livelier than a LoiLoiKuan lament.

He simply could not believe it when the council ended early and everyone was dismissed, told to report back to their duty stations at once. Just because a few guys had gotten sick. Probably the hotel food. It didn't keep very well in hot climates, and all of the planets in the Solojo system were pretty tropical. The incomers who had set up some of the new industries should have paid attention to his mama and other locals who knew how to preserve and prepare food in the climate. He hadn't had any trouble himself, well, not at first, but he had been ordered back two days before the start of Carnivale. His ship left four hours before his sisters and brothers were due to arrive from Paloduro to catch him up on the news and take in the first of the parades on Rio Boca.

After that, all of them were going back to Corazon on Paloduro to see the hometown events where Ray could let his hair down without quite so much Federation scrutiny.

He was so disappointed and angry he felt literally sick by the time his shuttle docked on the small island containing the goofy sand castle outpost building the LoiLoiKuans had designed as an acceptable surface structure on their world.

He felt as if he was burning up, had started to cough and yes, finally, the effects of whatever bug had ended the conference early began to tell on his own digestion. He threw up on the beach as he disembarked from the shuttle, and almost didn't make it to the latrine. He sat in there for hours afterward, coughing when he wasn't making use of the bowl from one end or the other. He felt as if his chest were in a vise. Finally, he had to abandon the latrine and the castle because there simply wasn't enough oxygen in there. He couldn't get his breath. He dragged himself out onto the beach. He had no idea what time it was when he reached the water because he kept conking out every time he pulled himself forward a little and collapsed into the coughing fits again. What he coughed up had become bloody. This was some case of dysentery!

Finally, in his fever, he reached the water's edge and dipped his face and hands into it. He knew it was only lukewarm, about like swimming in pee he always thought, but he was so hot that it felt deliciously cool.

He didn't know when the LoiLoiKuans found him and dragged him the rest of the way into the water, carefully keeping his head above water, while they called for their healers, cleaned him, and sang to him.

He didn't know when the healers reached him and saw him, no longer coughing, eyes fixed and glazed, limbs dangling limply, doing their own slow dance to the rhythm of the waves.