First Warning: Acorna's Children

Chapter 6

Hap led them to a computer terminal and suggested they fill in the forms. She and Elviiz both did so. The curriculum on Maganos Moonbase was essentially directed toward mining engineering, Mr. Delzsaki Li's enterprise on the moon before he and Uncle Hafiz had joined Mother in establishing the school.

Other kinds of classes were offered, of course, and several were offered during each time slot, so students had more choices as to what to take when. The psychology and sociology classes taught by Calla Kaczmarek were no doubt designed to help the students deal with the various traumatic events that had brought them here. Steve Reamer, whose daughter Turi had once babysat Khorii, taught gemology and metal-smithing as well as drawing and, oddly enough, symbology. Khorii signed up for those, which were new to her, as well as advanced studies in conversational and written Standard and Calla's classes.

The others all seemed a bit redundant. Astrophysics, from the course description, seemed fairly elementary compared to the studies she had done with data provided by Elviiz's memory. Maak had equipped his son with not only the basic and advanced Federation courses required for those employed in intergalactic navigation, but also with the quirky theories and star charts compiled by Uncle Job and his adopted father, the late Captain Theophilus "Off" Becker. Great-uncle Off had taught Uncle Joh to use wormholes and pleated space as well as other physical anomalies as aids to navigation and shortcuts. She and Elviiz had already mastered many of the other conventional courses as well, and surpassed the lessons offered in the catalog. But she marked something for all of the required time slots, realizing that for the most part what she would actually be studying was her fellow students.

"Here's the 'ponies garden," Hap said, opening a glass door to a place as moist and green as Khorii imagined the rain forests of Khiindi's native Makahomia might be, from what Mother and Uncle Joh had told her.

Indeed, as they entered, Khiindi began purring loudly enough to drown out the noise of the generators and irrigation system. He sprinted forward, tail aloft, back paws flashing, till he was engulfed by the plants, where he sniffed and licked experimentally. One of them made him sneeze, and he turned his back on it and tried to bury it with digs of his back paws. Then he found a bed of something to roll in.

"Ah, he's found the herb garden," Hap said. "Do you know what all the herbs are for, Khorii? Rosemary is for remembrance and is delicious with fish and chicken, thyme is for . . ."

"Are there other cats here?" she asked. "Or has catmint a use to humans as well as cats?"

"Oh, yes, it's used in tea and is said to be good for stomach upsets and to calm the nerves," Hap replied.

"That's surprising," Khorii said. "It seems to have the opposite effect on Khiindi."

Khiindi gave her a look that seemed to indicate that he had heard and understood her words but didn't care one bit what her opinion of his behavior was. The cat went right on burrowing into the hydroponics bed.

But Hap bared his teeth at her! At first Khorii was startled, thinking she had done something wrong to make him react with such hostility, then recalled that with humans, that particular toothy expression was usually friendly.

"Khiindi's a cat," Hap said. "Cats have their own way of doing things."

"I've noticed," she agreed. "Often."

At that, Khiindi gave a flip of his tail, and vanished into the catnip patch. Hap continued talking and explaining every single plant in the beds, its uses and properties, dangers and lore, as well as any personal experiences he had had with each variety, while she and Khiindi used the 'ponies garden for their needs. On a Linyaari ship, she would have used the garden the same way Khiindi did to relieve herself, since Linyaari excrement was high in nutrients that were good for plants and very clean. But humans, as she had learned on MOO, were repulsed by the practice, and so Linyaari wasted their contributions in lavatories when they inhabited human-occupied spaces.

Khorii said, "It was good of you to wait for us and delay your own meal. We can accompany you now so you can eat, too."

"Not hungry!" Hap said. "This is more fun."

"But it would be a good opportunity to meet other students, would it not?" Elviiz asked.

"I guess so," Hap agreed, as if reluctant to share them. "Come on. It's three stories up."

She wasn't sure what he meant until they reached what he called the "hubbub."

"There's one of these at the center of each of our bubbles," he told her. "They were designed to make maximum use of the vertical space we have." A broad, moving walkway ascended in a wide, spiraling path to a series of what seemed to be suspended platforms, staggered so that each level branched off in a different direction.

Khorii counted six levels, including the one they stood on.

'Ponies garden, administration offices, most of the recreation areas, laundry, and dorms are on this level of this bubble," he told them. "Next one up is the 'puter labs, holo cells, and communications center. That's where I was when you came in."

"It's not associated with the docking bays?" Elviiz asked.

"No. We found it easier to have it all in one place. The idea behind the moonbase, as I'm sure your mom must have told you, is for us to learn to do everything ourselves. We have some supervision from experts and teachers, like Calla, but we're not just learning schoolkid stuff. This is on-the-job training, apprenticeships, vocational-technical education, and all of the cultural essentials kids who live with their families or go to planetside schools would learn as well. And not all the teachers are adults. We also give classes to each other about our worlds of origin. Some of us are from pretty strange places."

"Is it true you were all child slaves before Mother and her friend Mr. Li and Uncle Hafiz rescued you?"

"Well, that was true when they first established the base, but most of those kids have grown up and gone on-of course, some are still teaching here, some you've probably met on MOO. A few of the kids who were little when the Moonbase was established are in the upper levels now. But most of us are orphans, or displaced from our families as the result of a war or some other catastrophe. Shoshisha's family used to rule one of the provincial kingdoms of Zapore, a country located on the most temperate continent of Zilbek, the second planet from the suns of the Ganesha star system. So she's like a princess or something, except that her family got deposed and everybody was sent into exile while she was on an off-world shopping trip, then the exile was made permanent by some of those political enemies, who had her family assassinated. One of her mother's old friends warned her not to return and arranged for her to be smuggled out of the Ganesha system to Maganos Moonbase."

Khorii sighed. "She has been through a lot. She must be very unhappy."

"Why?" Hap asked. "She's alive, she has us. Life goes on. Besides, it's not like her parents really had much to do with her, you know. People like her are raised by nannies and servants. And her brothers and sisters were all kids by other women in her father's harem. She says they were always plotting to kill each other anyway. No big loss."

Khorii disagreed. It surely must have been some sort of loss. How could it not be? Even if Shoshisha hadn't been close to her parents, it must have been quite a blow to lose them and have to leave the only home she'd ever known and a position of power and privilege to come to Maganos Moonbase, where she was just a student, like everyone else.

By the time Hap related Shoshisha's background, they had stepped onto the walkway and climbed beyond the computer sector to the third level, whence came the aromas of cooked food.

"Come on," Hap said. "I'll introduce you to some of the others in this bubble. Everybody here is more or less your standard-issue humanoid, like me, with a few variations. But there's a more exotic breed housed in the adjoining bubble."

"How are they exotic?" Khorii asked. She had no doubt that she was pretty exotic to most of these kids.

"Well, we call them poopuus-short for pool pupils, because they live in a big salt-water pool that takes up most of the bubble. They don't have a hub like we do, and they don't have a kitchen because they only eat what they grow in their pool-not vegetarian like you. They like fish and some kinds of seaweed."

"How did they come to be here?" Khorii asked. "And how many live in the pool? Do they study the same subjects as the rest of you?"

"Some of the same ones, but they are also studying what's known about oceans on other worlds. I don't know all the reasons behind it. They don't mix much with the rest of us. I've tried to strike up a conversation and, you know, make friends, but they just dive and won't talk to me. There's sort of a language barrier, too. They study Standard but they don't use it among themselves."

"How do they study if they can't leave their pool?" Khorii asked.

"By computer-only theirs are behind the walls in their waterways."

His whiskers and ears both twitching thoughtfully while the end of his tail traced curves on the shining plascrete tile of the floor, Khiindi looked up at Hap. It was as if the cat were thinking, thinking very hard. Suddenly his ears pricked up and he lowered himself to a tail-lashing squat, as if stalking prey, then galloped away from them, back down the spiral walkway, bounding off of it from the second level to land on the central street of the bubble. He ran off straight down the street toward the next bubble. The only time he slowed down was when he looked back once to see if they were following him.

"Khiindi!" Khorii called after him as she ran in full pursuit. "Come back, silly cat!"

"We'd better catch him," Hap said. "They're not used to animals around here, I'm afraid. Things are kidproofed to some degree, but not critterproof. There's all kinds of stuff that could hurt him or that he might damage. Your grandpas would not be pleased."

Although they had stopped at the entrance to the dining hall, it vanished behind them as they chased Khiindi. Khorii called to Khiindi as she ran down the corridor, while students stopped, goggled at her, and moved off to the side to avoid being trampled, finally staring after her as she passed them.

Hap and Elviiz stampeded after her, and at the end of the street they all stopped, panting, seeing Khiindi waiting by the circular doorway into the next bubble as if he were waiting for some vermin to bolt from the hole. The cat looked highly satisfied, as if he'd done something exceptionally clever.

But it was a man, not a mouse, who emerged from the doorway as it irised open. And Khiindi had no interest in him at all. Instead, the cat leaped through the open doorway and was long gone again by the time Khorii, Elviiz, and Hap passed through it after him.

Hap laughed. "Does Khiindi speak Standard?"

"I don't know," Khorii said. "I think he understands it well enough when he wants to. But when he doesn't . . ."

"He is a sentient being on some level," Elviiz continued. "He seems to comprehend a great many simple words or phrases, though only those that are not addressed to him as direct commands. He is developmentally challenged in recognition of the simple negative."

"That's not unusual in cats," Hap pointed out. "But are you sure it isn't more than that?"

"Why do you ask?" Khorii wanted to know.

"Because I could swear he understood exactly what I was telling you about the poopuus and that they had fish in their tanks. He took off the instant I said it."

"But he has never met a fish," Elviiz told him. "He would not know what one was."

"Maybe not, but it sure looked like he knew where he was headed and what he wanted to me. I bet he could smell the fish from where we were and went to find some. I never met a cat who didn't like fish. I think that there's more to that cat than meets the eye."

Khorii laughed. "He is not very good at grazing, it's true. And he seems to form his own ideas about what he likes on his menu. My mother says that his sire, RK, is a completely sentient being. Who knows what a cat thinks? I only know that he can be a rare handful."

As they entered the bubble, the smell of water freshened the air, and a scent Khorii would come to identify with fish and the poopuus who swam in the pool and through the waterways that occupied most of the interior of the bubble. In place of the hubbub moving walkway, water flowed upward to another pool, then, on the other side, back down in a playful waterfall.

"It not only serves as a playground for the pool kids, it also helps aerate and recirculate the water," Hap told them.

But Khorii could barely hear him for the shrill noises and splashing coming from the pool.

The poopuus were much larger than she had expected, very young but with rounded bodies that floated nicely. Their bare skin was the color of a roan Linyaari youngster not yet star-clad, and glistened in the light of the bubble. All of them had flowing hair of a black that was almost purple in its density, and they had very large, prominent dark eyes.

Oblivious to their latest visitors, they leaped from the surface of the pool and dived back into it again. As she drew nearer, she realized that some of the shrill noises were laughter.

"There he is!" Elviiz said, pointing. "There's Khiindi!"

And indeed, he was there, soaking wet, a fish in his jaws, and carefully borne aloft on the back of a swimming student. The student deposited the sodden cat on the edge of the pool, where Khiindi tried to shake himself while keeping a grip on his fish. His water taxi lingered at the pool's edge, watching the cat with dark eyes round with fascination. Khiindi stood with his front paws on his flopping fish, shook himself vigorously, and head-butted the nose of his rescuer before ravaging the fish.

The language the poopuus used among themselves reminded Khorii somewhat of that of the sii-Linyaari back home, the ancient beings who were forerunners of her own race. Her parents had saved the sii-Linyaari from extinction by bringing them forward in time, and now they lived in the newly reborn oceans of Vhiliinyar, a development that did not please many of the traditionalists, which Khorii thought was stupid. The sii-Linyaari were not the prettiest people, it was true, having tiny horns all over their heads sometimes instead of just the one in the middle, and they did not have the healing power of her own people, but they were great swimmers and good friends of her parents. They had also taught her to swim when she was just a baby. She pulled off her shipsuit.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Hap asked, sounding shocked.

"I am going to go meet these students," she said, and dived in. She was happy for a change to be taking the initiative herself instead of being herded here and there, even by someone as friendly and well-meaning as Hap. The water felt wonderful, cool but not too frigid, and though it had been a bit murky when she first jumped in, almost immediately it became as clear as glass. Beneath the surface many students-schools of them, she supposed you might say-swam through the deep waters. The bottom contained a veritable jungle of aquatic plant life, including lacy palaces of some shell-like substance that glowed with rainbows of color.

She could hold her breath underwater for a long time, but when she surfaced, halfway across the pool, she found herself encircled by poopuus.

"Hi, I'm Khorii. I'm new here. Who are you?" she said aloud.

"We are the children of LoiLoiKua. You are not," was the reply. It came from underwater but unlike the bubbling and popping language of the sii-Linyaari, the words came in Standard, accented so that the words seemed to be ebbing and flowing with a tide of their own. It sounded like "We are the children of LoiLoiKua. You are not." The last words did not seem to be said any more softly, but somehow from a greater depth or distance.

"You do not belong with us, Khorii," one of them said, surfacing to playfully flick water at her with the tips of webbed fingers.

"Your legs are separated," another one said. And she noticed for the first time that their legs were fused together from their waists to their knees. "If you belonged here, your legs would not come apart like that."

"She does not swim as if her legs are separate," another one observed. "She swims correctly, the way of the ocean people," and he demonstrated the undulating full-body motion that propelled him through the water.

"I was taught by ocean people," Khorii told them. "They have no legs at all. They have tails. They were distant relatives of mine, and they didn't care that I have legs. So I didn't think you'd mind either. If you do, I can get out. I just thought it might be friendlier to greet you on your own-well-territory."

"Look at the water," another one said. "Look at the 'puter screens. See how crisp the images appear, how the murkiness of the water has gone since she came." Khorii did not comment. In another moment, perhaps the observant student would think she imagined the change in clarity. The horn's powers were a Linyaari secret.

"She looks like Our Founder!" said another, this one with long, flowing hair that caught the webs of her fingers and floated up around her thighs.

"What do you mean?" asked one with pale skin and a thousand little brown spots across her wide nose.

"Look," said the first one, and swam to the edge of the pool. Now Khorii saw that a deep band around the pool's lining was clear, and behind the covering, computer screens waited for students to activate them.

The poopuu with the unruly hair did just that with a squeal pitched to turn the nearest machine on. A series of pictures flashed by-an elderly human Khorii did not recognize, a younger Uncle Hafiz, and her human grandsires, then-Mother!

"Our Founder," the student said.

"That is my mother," Khorii said.

"Does she not swim like you? Where is she? Is she here with you?" the student asked excitedly.

"Oh, yes, she swims really well-and correctly, too. But she and my father had to go to another world to help end a plague."

"Ahhh, do you speak to them in the far talk while they are gone?"

"You mean do I hail them on the ship's computer?"

"Noooo," the student said. "Do your water-kin not use the far talk?"

"I don't think I know what that is if it is not using the com units," she said. She wondered if they were telepathic.

"Mostly we use it only at night, when the others are sleeping," said a pretty young girl with a face like a full moon. "Otherwise, it interrupts studies. The dorms are farther from our lagoon than the classrooms."

"Is it loud then?"

"No, but it carries. It is the far talk. When we are very quiet, we listen for the far talk from our parents and grandparents on LoiLoiKua. They miss us. So we answer back."

"Could you do it just a little?" she asked.

"Oh, no, Calla asked us not to," the girl said. "She said 'You should use your 'puters like the land folk.' "

Khorii wanted to stay and ask the poopuus more questions, but footsteps echoed through the hallway leading to their pool. Moments later, several children trooped in, led by Calla Kaczmarek.

Oh, bother, what now? Khorii thought. Looks like I've put my hooves in it again.