Anne McCaffrey - Acorna's Quest2

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McCaffrey, Anne.
Acorna's quest / Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball.
A short recounting of events that took place prior to the opening of this
book, events that are fully detailed in the novel Acorna, also by Anne
McCaffrey and Margaret Ball:
Three asteroid miners Calum Baird, Declan "Gill" and Ratif Nadezda were at the
beginning of one of their long collecting journeys when they discovered,
floating in space near the asteroid where they were working, a life-support
escape pod of unknown origin and its single, sleeping occupant. The occupant
was clearly humanoid yet not quite human; this was not as much of a problem
for the miners as the fact that they had suddenly been saddled with the care
of an infant-and a female one at that! Yet, having no desire to stop working a
profitable asteroid belt to bring the child back to their base, they had no
choice but to keep and care for her as best they could. In a few days, they
loved her as they would a child of thenown. Then the child's unusual qualities
became obvious-she could purify water and air, she learned with astonishing
speed, and she matured even faster. Within the single year of their voyage she
grew as tall and mature as an adolescent human girl.
When they did finally have a large and valuable enough load to return to their
base, they found that MME had been taken over by a larger company, Amalgamated
Mining. This change in ownership, as well as Amalgamated s desire to assume
all control over the waif whom they had named Acorna, proved unacceptable to
the three miners. When they and their "ward" fled, officials at Amalgamated
pursued them with claims to ownership of the ship, which was the miners' only
means of livelihood-untrue claims which could nevertheless keep Gill, Rank,
and Calum tied up in Federation courts while their resources were drained by
legal expenses. In desperation the miners turned to Rank's remarkable
Uncle Hafiz, the wealthy and more than slightly shady owner of an interstellar
financial empire.
Hafiz arranged to swap the identifying beacon of their ship for one belonging
to a wrecked vessel with Kezdet registration. Although the miners were uneasy
about adopting the registration of a planetary system with which they had had
some difficulty in the past-a small matter of disputed mining claims-they had
no option but to accept the offer and pay part of the price Hafiz demanded-a
substantial percentage of their profits from the last mining journey. The rest
of his price, though, was unacceptable to them. A dedicated collector of
rarities and one-of-a-kind treasures, Hafiz was fascinated by Acorna's short
horn and delighted by her precocious ability to understand the numbers he
loved most-gambling odds. He demanded that the miners leave Acorna with him
and clearly planned to keep them prisoner until they complied. Rafik outwitted
his uncle in a series of clever maneuvers which freed them but left them on
the run from even more enemies than they had had before: not only the minions
of Amalgamated Mining, but also the Kezdet magnates who had caused the wreck
of the ship whose identity they had "borrowed." In addition, they had a third
enemy they did not even know about. Hafiz Harakamian was so impressed by the
way in which Rafik had outwitted him that he decided this nephew was quite
clever and crooked enough to be a worthy heir to the Harakamian financial
empire -in contrast to his worthless, bungling son, Tapha. Hearing about his
father's plans to disinherit him in favor of Rafik, Tapha decided that the
only way to keep his inheritance was to find his cousin and kill him.
After a precarious time spent moving from system to system, trying to sell off
their payload without being caught by any of their numerous pursuers, the
miners were finally captured by Pal Kendoro, a young man working for Delszaki
Li. Li had been a friend of the real owner of the ship whose identity they had
borrowed, and when his agents discovered the ship's beacon again in use they
assumed the miners had killed the owner and hijacked the ship.
Although based on Kezdet, Delszaki Li was no friend of the Kezdet government
and their quasi-military police, the so-called Guardians of the Peace. In
fact, he had quietly funded an organization which worked to subvert the ruling
class of Kezdet. The wealth of Kezdet s few was based on the sufferings of the
many; its low-tech mines and factories were served by unwanted children
brought from nearby systems and kept in bondage by a semilegal system which
treated them as debtors who must work off their debts. The factory owners saw
to it that the children's nominal wages were so low and the charges against
them for food and shelter so high that they never "worked off any debt, but
remained in perpetual bondage. Few survived to adulthood, and those who did
were so debilitated by years of poor food and crippling work that they had no
energy to challenge the system that had enslaved them.
Heir to a financial empire tnat rivaled that of Hafiz Harakamian, Delszaki Li
had first freed his own interests of any connection -with the Kezdet
child-labor system, then had begun working secretly to help the enslaved
children in any way he could. Although physically disabled by a wasting
neurological disease which had almost totally paralyzed him, he -was still
brilliant and wealthy and was able to recruit others to his cause-among them
Pal Kendoro and his two sisters, Mercy and Judit. The Kendoro siblings had
been among the orphans brought to Kezdet for slave labor, but Judit had
escaped by winning one of the scholarships established by Delszaki Li to
encourage education among the bonded children, and by hard work she had soon
earned enough to buy her young brother and sister free. Now grown, all three
were determined to take whatever risks were necessary to free the children who
remained in bondage.
Their attempts to effect peaceful change by educating the enslaved children
and helping them to demand better conditions were continually frustrated by
the wealthy class that controlled Kezdet s government, and by the time he
encountered Acoma, Delszaki Li was on the verge of despair. It seemed as
though nothing short of a revolution would free the children-and it would take
a miracle to overthrow the solidly entrenched government of Kezdet.
In Acorna, Delszaki Li thought that he recognized that miracle. Half-Chinese,
he saw in her a ki-lin-the legendary unicorn of China, whose appearance is an
omen of great and beneficent change. The fact that she came accompanied by
three asteroid miners only increased his belief that she was sent by the
heavens to bring good fortune to his enterprise, for it happened that he was
in particular need of such expertise as they might supply. Before he met
Acoma, Mr. Li had subtly acquired the mineral and mining nghts to Kezdets
three moons-Maganos, Saganos, and Tianos- seeing in them a possible place for
the children he wished to rescue from Kezdet s factories and mines. None of
the planetary mining companies wanted to bother with the problems of building
moon bases when it was so cheap to use child labor on ... or rather below .. .
the surface of the planet. But Li's plan was ambitious as well as altruistic.
He meant to use his great fortune to create mining bases on the three moons,
where the children he freed could work part-time and be schooled part-time.
With love and care and decent nourishment, upon reaching adulthood they should
be ready to take over the mining bases and make them truly self-sufficient.
But until he met the three asteroid miners and their "ward," the mysterious
unicorn girl, Acorna, Mr. Li's plans had moved so slowly that he despaired of
their coming to fruition in his lifetime. There were too many problems for one
man to overcome: the entrenched opposition of the wealthy families of Kezdet,
the bureaucratic obstacles which the Kezdet government threw in his path, and,
most of all, the fears of the children who had been taught from arrival on
Kezdet to flee strangers-even benevolent ones. When the factory owners would
not admit to employing children, and the children themselves had been trained
to hide, how could they be found and freed?
Once it was clear that Calum, Gill, and Rank had not caused harm to his
friend, but had merely exchanged identities with the wrecked and derelict
spacecraft in an effort to evade their own pursuers, Li recruited them as his
allies and offered to adopt Acorna as his own ward. Recognizing that the child
they had raised was now maturing to the point where she needed a permanent
home and an education in the ways of "normal"-i.e., planetside-civilization,
the miners agreed to help Mr. Li with his project. But when Acoma learned of
the plight of Kezdet s enslaved children, she precipitated a crisis that
affected all of Delszaki Li's slow and careful plans. Unable to wait and do
nothing where she saw obvious cases of need, she became entangled in any
number of projects that aroused the wrathful attention of Kezdet s ruling
class-rescuing one child from a brothel, another from begging on the streets,
giving shoes to the barefoot slaves of a glass factory and using her hom to
heal their wounds. The furor aroused by her actions forced the Child
Liberation League to forgo their years of patience and incremental
improvements in favor of a bold stroke for freedom.
While the miners worked desperately to get the first of the planned moon bases
in condition to receive children, and Delszaki Li fought Kezdet s bureaucracy
to get permission to open the base, Acoma solved the problem of finding and
freeing the children. They might have been taught to flee strangers, but the
mystical rumors which identified Acorna with the protective saints and
goddesses of the children's manifold belief systems ensured that she alone, of
all the beings on Kezdet, was accepted by all of them. Believing that the
silver-haired girl with the horn on her forehead was an earthly manifestation
of Lukia of the Lights, or Epona, or Sita Ram, at her call they came willingly
from mines and factories and followed her without fear. With the help of
Calum, Rafik, and Gill to implement plans for a working mining base on Maganos
Moon, and the sometimes overenthusiastic help of Acoma to reach out to the
neglected children of Kezdet, Delszaki Li had the immense gratification of
seeing his plan become a reality. He also saw that he had made many implacable
enemies among those formerly wealthy who were now, as a result of his
machinations, merely well-to-do. But it did not appear that this fact
disturbed him particularly.
By the time that Maganos Moon Base became a reality, the miners' lives as well
as Delszaki Li's had been changed-as much by Pal Kendoro's two sisters, Judit
and Mercy, as by the implementation of the moon-base plan. Gill and Judit
Kendoro had agreed to act as foster parents to the children brought to
Maganos. Rafik s cousin Tapha had died in an attempt to assassinate him, and
Rafik felt it was his responsibility to work with his uncle Hafiz and learn
the ins and outs of the Harakamian family businesses that he was now slated to
inherit. As for Calum, he was as taken with the shy, quiet Mercy as Gill was
with her more outgoing sister, but he felt that with the defection of his
comrades it was even more his responsibility to help Acorna in the search for
her home, especially as it was his mathematical analysis of the partial
results given them by Dr. Zip that had narrowed down the possible location of
her home planet to a searchable sector of space.
Even Acorna was not romantically untouched; Pal Kendoro had fallen in love
with her, and she was, like any young girl, flattered though distressed by his
devotion . . . but unlike most young girls, she had to wonder whether their
two species were even compatible ! In any case she felt that she could not
commit herself and her life to this young human while she still did not know
where, or even if, others like her might exist.
Where did she truly belong? And how much time did she have to find a suitable
mate? In the three years that had elapsed since the establishment of Maganos
Moon Base, she had matured from an adolescent into what appeared to be a fully
adult female other kind. Knowing nothing of her origins, she had no way to
guess whether
her body would stabilize or whether she would age and die as rapidly as she
had matured.
Although the search for her home world was of prime importance to Acoma and
almost as much to Calum, Acorna's other friends and guardians were reluctant
to see them start out on such a long and potentially perilous journey. They
had become used to protecting Acorna-not only from the enemies she and
Delszaki Li had made on Kezdet, but from the genuinely ill who wanted access
to her healing powers and the charlatans who thought to grow wealthy by
exploiting her unusual capabilities.
To protect her from wearing herself out in an attempt to heal everyone who
might approach her, they had grown into the habit of shielding her from the
world, screening her mail, and otherwise treating her as someone to be
sheltered and hidden. Sometimes it seemed that it would take another
revolution to free Acoma from her well-meaning friends, and as, Accrual Qiwf
begins, just such a revolution is about to take place. . . .
Maganos, Unified Federation. Date 33. 05.11
Acorna's office in the Dehoney facility Maganos Moon Base was far too full for
her ' comfort, and the meeting had been going on so long that she was
developing an alluring fantasy about escaping the comfort of the base for the
freedom of a good planetside gallop-any planet, anywhere, just so it offered
her clean firm earth to run on and a horizon very far away. The need for earth
and sky and open space was becoming almost an obsession for her as the meeting
dragged on -just as dreaming up all these new ways to stop her and Calum from
starting on their mission to find her species' home world had become an
obsession for Pal
She tried to compose herself, remembering that it was probably even worse for
Calum. He considered finding her home world his first duty to her, even before
his love for Mercy. The sooner Acorna could release Calum from that
self-imposed quest, the sooner he and Mercy could marry. Acorna understood why
some other friends were reluctant to see the Acad&cki depart. Gill and Judit
were happily settled now, overseeing the care and education of the
bondchildren still arriving to study and work at Maganos; and Rafik was
presumably satisfied with his new career as assistant and heir apparent to his
uncle Hafiz, the head of House Harakamian. But couldn't they see that Calum
needed to complete his quest for her home planet-and that she needed to find
her own people before she could be content anywhere?
Pal continued inexorably to read on from the notepad in his hand. "Supplies
and munitions are still not completed. But right now"-and he looked directly
at Acorna and then Calum, shaking his head sadly-"the worst problem is that of
reinstalling and testing the AcaSecki's defense system. My people estimate it
will take at least four weeks to be certain that the new defenses are
accurately installed this time."
"Wait a bleeding minute!" Calum jumped to his feet. He and Acorna exchanged a
glance that told her he felt sure this was yet another one of the many phony
little delaying tactics thought up by Pal in collaboration with his sister
Judit and Gill. Possibly even Delszaki Li had had a hand in this one; although
the AcaSecki had been supplied by Hafiz Harakamian, Mr. Li had offered to
finance its refitting to make it the perfect vessel for this long-distance
quest. Had that generous offer really been a sneaky way of seeing that
Delszaki Li retained control over the ship and could drag out the refitting
until they gave up the search?
Calufti shot a second, almost accusing glance at Mr. Li, who was floating
quietly in the chair which allowed him such mobility as his increasing
paralysis permitted. Some people had made the mistake-sometimes a fatal
mistake-of underestimating Delszaki Li because of his great age and the
debilitating neurological disease which had all but paralyzed him. Not Calum!
He was all too aware of the clear, penetrating mind encased in that ancient
body. Delszaki Li was a force to be reckoned with- benevolent, powerful,
astute, and, Calum thought wryly, about as straightforward as a spiral
staircase in an Escher print.
Calum knew that Mr. Li found it hard-deep in the heart which Acorna's beauty,
charm, bravery, and intelligence had thawed-to let her start out upon her
search. He did make every appearance of helping to secure her ambition of
finding her folk; but he was easily tempted into thinking up new ways to delay
her actual departure. And Pal Kendoro, his personal assistant, was not limited
by even the pretense of wanting to help Acorna on her quest! He considered
himself in love with Acorna, could not or would not see why she couldn't
settle down happily with him while remaining in ignorance about her own race,
and absolutely did not want her going off alone for months, possibly years,
with Calum. Neither of Pal's sisters could convince him that Calum Baird had
absolutely no interest in Acorna, apart from completing his self-imposed task
of finding her species.
Cal might seem totally immersed in technologies, improvements, designs, star
systems and analyses thereof, but he wasn't oblivious to Pal's obvious
jealousy, and he did his best to defuse situations which fed that unreasonable
attitude. Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn't be better to openly declare his
love for Pal's youngest sister Mercy and his desire to marry her as soon as he
had completed this mission-though that would not be fair to Mercy; she should
not be tied down while he went away on a quest of unknown duration. But right
now, all Calum's good intentions of calm, rational behavior had gone out the
nearest air vent as, once again, Pal seemed to be sabotaging the start of
their voyage.
"If you think," Calum went on, his anger apparent in his acid tone of voice,
"that a lousy defence system is going to stall us another few months, you're
crazy. Crazy!" And he scissored his hands to emphasize his denial.
"Why we should require a defence system," Acorna jumped in to support him, "so
far beyond what was originally designed for that class of ship, I do not
know."
"Is not sensible to send you so far without every possible consideration taken
for your safe return," Mr. Li said,
"We have communications devices that can reach a habitable system soon enough
to summon help if the long-range missiles, the mines, the warheads, and the
laser cannon do not dissuade a pirate," Calum went on. He was seething with
resentment.
"First"-and Acorna held up one of her blunt, two-jointed digits - "what could
a ship the size of our scout possibly have that anyone would want?"
"You," Pal said in an unequivocal tone.
"Second," Acorna said, ignoring that, "the built-in weaponry already installed
allows us to defend ourselves against ships with three times our capability.
..."
"Not to mention our built-in speed," Calum interjected. "Why, that drive could
outstrip the fastest drone ever manufactured. And that's saying something." He
gave an extra nod in emphasis.
"Third, Uncle Hafiz has supplied us," Acorna continued, "with so many
identities and drive-variation signatures that anyone looking for us from one
port of call would never recognize our ship in the next one. And he has
already taken long enough to supply such multitudinous identities!"
"You, Acorna, are valuable for so many reasons and to so many people," Pal
said, his tone almost as angry as Calum s had been, "that of course House
Harakamian desired to support you with alternate documentation and
drive-emission camouflages."
"Nineteen of them? Requiring six months to develop? To be any safer, I would
have to be dead already!" Acorna said, unusually sarcastic for her
characteristically gentle self. "You can stay
here, safely, and let Calum find your folk," Pal said, desperation creeping
into his tone.
Acorna straightened her narrow shoulders, tossing the magnificent mane of
silvery hair behind her. "These are my people we are trying to find. How will
they know that Cal is on a genuine search unless I am with him to represent
myself? We know so little about my circumstances." She shook her head sadly.
Her brilliant silvery eyes filmed over, ever so slightly, with the melancholy
that was deepening within her daily, almost drowning her with an urgent need
to be resolved. Sometimes, at night,
she was nearly overwhelmed by the intensity other need to find her own kind.
"Why was my life pod evacuated from the ship in the first place? Who did it?
Enemy or friend? Why was it done? To save me or to destroy me without trace?
Why have no vestiges of my kind been discovered with all the explorations that
are being undertaken in every direction of this galaxy? "
"That's another point," Gill said, speaking for the first time and squeezing
Judit's hand in his big one. "You may not even come from this galaxy. The
search could take decades."
"Decades it could be," Delszaki Li said, sadly nodding.
"Oh, Mr. Li." Acorna leapt from the chair she was seated in and lowered his
float so she could take his almost useless right hand in hers and stroke it
lovingly. "I will not tarry a moment longer than necessary to hurry back to
Kezdet and you. You will receive a message the moment we have found my home
world."
"I know this, Acorna," Mr. Li said in a gentle, understanding voice. He nodded
as if he were patting her hand, an action he could no longer perform.
Acorna bent her head, touching his hand with her horn, wishing she had the
power to eradicate completely the wasting disease which slowly consumed him.
She could, and did, ease his discomfort. But she need not stay for that; there
were medicines which did as much as she could to alleviate his pain. And she
was more and more "urged" to begin the search. Before it was too late? The
phrase sprang into her mind. Startled, she looked up at Mr. Li's black eyes,
wondering if he had a vestige of telepathy. But she saw nothing other than his
real love and concern for her.
"Acorna, my love," thundered Declan Giloglie, "you're not going without the
best defenses we can fit you out with, and that's me final word on the
subject!"
Calum heaved a dramatic sigh. "I see there's no changing your minds."
Acorna glanced at Calum, aghast at this apparent collapse of resistance. The
side of his face that was turned toward her, away from the rest of the group,
flickered in what might have been a brief wink.
"I suppose you are right," she said, bo-wing gracefully toward Mr. Li. "Please
forgive me for causing you anxiety. It was indeed extremely selfish of me to
wish to find my own people before I die of advanced old age." She could not
restrain that comment, even though she recognized as she made it that her
words might destroy Calum's pretense at acquiescence ... if it was indeed
pretense?
"Women!" Calum said in a disgusted tone. "All sentiment, no logic. But I do
see the force of your arguments, and I'll explain it all to our pretty one
here until she understands."
"Oh, no, you won't," Pal said. "That's my job."
"Convince me later, Pal," Acorna said sweetly. "Right now- since we are all
agreed on the necessity for installing the revised defense systems-I wish to
go over some matters of the ship's living space with Calum. I am afraid we may
need to completely remodel a portion of the interior."
"By all means," said Delszaki Li, beaming in a way that reinforced Acorna s
belief that this talk of the new defense system
was just another taradiddle designed to delay her departure yet again.
"Make whatever changes you wish. My architect will accommodate. " Li bowed to
Acorna.
Once they were alone on the Aca()ecki, Calum looked at Acorna.
"You didn't really -want to redesign the living space again, I trust?"
"You don't really want to wait six more weeks, which •will
probably turn into six months if Mr. Li and Pal can arrange it, before we take
off, do you?"
"No I" they both said in chorus.
"We're well enough supplied for the initial voyage right now," Calum said
thoughtfully.
"If something happened to distract the others for just a little while ..."
Acorna murmured.
On their return to the base, it seemed that distraction might just be at hand.
Pal and Gill were fuming out loud at one of the
corn techs, who had innocently sent the requested acknowledgment for delivery
of a message to Acorna.
"What is the problem with this?" Acorna asked. "It seems perfectly standard
behavior to me."
Gill gave her a disgusted glance. "For people who aren't celebrities, maybe.
For you-the acknowledgment tells whoeverthis-is that they have found your
Lattice node. Now you'll be inundated with junk mail and worse. Damn it,
people send these test messages out like confetti, hitting every node where
they think they might find their target, and I thought we had trained all the
corn techs never to acknowledge anonymous messages!"
Acorna put her hand on the techs shoulder. He was young enough to have been
trained at Maganos in the past two years, thin enough to have come from one of
Kezdet's factories before that, and he was shaking under her hand. She sent
soothing, calming impulses to the boy until she could feel that he was
steadier.
"If you upset the people who work here for no reason at all, Gill," she said,
"how can you expect them to remember your wishes? Do not worry," she said to
the tech, "it is a small matter, soon forgotten."
"That's what you think!" said Pal darkly.
Acorna shrugged. "I've never had an anonymous message before, so there is no
reason to suppose this one is the beginning of a flood."
"Never-had-" Gill plunged both hands into his curly red beard and tugged as if
he were trying to root it out. "Why, we must have bounced half a hundred of
these confetti jobs back in the last week alone!" He glared at the younger
man. "Didn't you tell her, Pal?"
"I didn't think," Pal said unhappily, "it would be a good idea to mention that
we were screening her mail. ..."
"You were WHAT?" Acorna demanded in outraged tones. "Gill, whatever gave you
the colossal gall to intercept my personal messages? And Pal, did you think
that because I hadn't absolutely rejected your declarations, you owned me and
my communications ? "
"See here, Acorna acushia," put in Gill, "you can't be talking to me that way,
me that bathed you when you were a baby and that's not so very long ago
neither!"
In a few short, scathing sentences Acorna demonstrated that she could and
would talk to Gill that way and worse. By the time she stalked away, Gill's
face was as red as his beard, and Pal later swore that he had seen small puffs
of steam coming out of the miner's ears.
"I knew it wasn't a good idea to tell her," Pal said.
Gill glared at him. "You could have explained why we had to doit!"
"Did you hear her give me a chance to get a word in edgewise?" he replied.
"Besides, you could have explained, too, and I didn't hear you saying
anything!"
Gill's deep laugh rumbled through the coin center, and he wiped his sweating
forehead. "You've a point there, young Pal. Tell you what, let's get a
printout of all the messages we've deleted in the past ten days or so. That'll
explain it to her without us having to get that word in past the young lady's
offended fury." ,
"Where'11 we send it? The mood she's in- "
"No matter what kind of a mood she's in," Gill said, "you can't stalk off very
far on a lunar mining base. And you should be able to guess as well as I where
she'll go to let off steam. Why don't you give your sister a call, let her
know what to expect?"
He leaned over the desk and began explaining to the corn tech exactly what
arcane procedures he'd have to follow in order to retrieve the massive amounts
of "junk mail" that he and Pal had deleted from Acorna's files before she ever
saw them.
"They treat me like an infant," Acorna declared, stalking around the circular
floor of the main dome in the living space Judit Kendoro shared with Gill. "I
am not to search for my own people ... I am not to read my own mail ... I will
not have it!" Her head came up, her nostrils flared, and the silvery mane that
cascaded down her back quivered with the force of her indignation.
"Of course you will not," Judit agreed, taking Acorna by the hand and leading
her to a comfortable couch designed with her equine proportions in mind, "but
perhaps you will have a cooling drink before you quite explode with
indignation? Iced kava, perhaps, or madigadijuice?"
"If you are trying to make me forget about it," Acorna said, seating herself,
"I should tell you that it will not work! I am no longer to be treated as an
ignorant child!"
"Of course you are not," said Judit Kendoro understandingly. "You have grown
up quite amazingly in the last two years. You never lose yourself galloping in
the park anymore, or get into fights with street vendors, or ..."
Laughing, Acorna stopped her. "Enough, please! I do not deny that I did some
very foolish things when I first came to live with Mr. Li-but remember that
nearly two years aboard a mining ship is not much preparation for social
life on a planet! And I was much younger then."
"That's true," said Judit, "and Gill and Pal now realize that they were wrong
to screen your mail for you."
Acorna looked at her suspiciously, "Then why did they not say so? And how do
you know?"
"Did you give them a chance to apologize?" Judit asked. "Or did you just stalk
off in high dudgeon, 0 mature and sober woman of the world? Pal guessed where
you would go and called to tell me that he and Gill would be sending your
intercepted mail from the last ten days over as soon as it could be retrieved
and printed-and here it is now," she said as the delivery bell chimed to
signal arrival of a parcel.
And chimed.
And chimed.
And chimed. . . .
"Two dozen boxes!" Acorna exclaimed when the last of the boxes of printouts
had been dumped on Judit's floor. "Impossible! I do not know two dozen people
apart from the children, and most of those people I know are right here on
Maganos and would have no need to send me any mail. Gill is making a joke."
"Well, this one seems to be addressed to you," Judit said, picking a flimsy at
random from one of the boxes. "Don't you want to read it?"
"Let Karina, Psychic Healer, make your fortune?" Acorna read aloud. "What is
this about? I do not know any Karina, and if I did, why would I wish to join
in partnership with her to sell my healing abilities at so much for each
millisecond of time expended? It sounds like a most immoral notion to me!"
"It may not be the most immoral notion you come across today," Judit said
softly. "Read some more."
By the time Acorna had worked her way through half a box full of requests for
money, suggestions for a line of gilt plastiflex visors called "Acornas,"
offers of partnership, and demands that she submit herself to some research
institute or other for immediate examination, she began to understand why Gill
and Pal had been so protective.
Judit, for her part, silently blessed the men for leaving all the heartrending
pleas for help and healing at the bottom of the heaviest box, where with any
luck Acorna would never see them. She would never be able to resist those
cries for help . . . yet to heal even one percent of those who needed her
would so sap her, energy that she would be unable to do anything else. We
miutfim) a better eolation for her, thought Judit. We cannot go on hQing her
from the worl^-the war 13 L) catching up with her, aru) it will destroy her.
But, of course, Judit realized, with a catch in her breath and a queer ache in
her heart, the solution was there-had been there all along. If they hadn't
been interfering with Acorna's desire to go and find her people, she would
long since have left Maganos Moon Base to explore distant regions where even
junk mail had not yet penetrated. And now that one of these messages had been
acknowledged, whoever had sent it was sure to be on his or her way to Maganos
... to be followed by newscasters, charlatans, and the terminally ill. The
fiction that Acorna's healing abilities had faded as she matured would be
exploded the first time Acorna's soft heart was touched and she touched her
horn to an ill or injured person.
The only solution, after all, was for Acorna to leave Maganos before she was
tracked down here. And even if she never came back . . . she would come back.
Judit blinked away incipient tears and set about the task of persuading the
lost youngling of an alien species, whom she had come to love like a younger
sister, to leave immediately.
It was not, after all, much of a task. So, feeling as if she was doing
something heinous, she contacted Pal's missile-defense supplier and told him
that Mr. Li wished that the installation would take longer.
Mendaciously, she also told Pal that she had received a call to that effect:
there was some difficulty in supply. She told Calum, who exploded, and Acorna,
who gratified her by assuming the most rebellious expression ever seen on that
lovely, tranquil face. Judit decided that frustration would have the desired
result.
摘要：

McCaffrey,Anne.Acorna'squest/AnneMcCaffreyandMargaretBall.Ashortrecountingofeventsthattookplacepriortotheopeningofthisbook,eventsthatarefullydetailedinthenovelAcorna,alsobyAnneMcCaffreyandMargaretBall:ThreeasteroidminersCalumBaird,Declan"Gill"andRatifNadezdawereatthebeginningofoneoftheirlongcollecti...

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