Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 5 - Acorna's Search

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Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 5 - Acorna's Search
Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Home!
The word sang in Acorna's mind, a song of chiming silver streams and drumming waterfalls, of wind
fluting across the tops of bending blue-green grasses and through the spade-shaped leaves of gigantic
trees in vast forests. The song echoed in the minds of every Linyaari present as they beheld
Vhiliinyar-that-was.
The first homecoming place was on a high plateau, overshadowed by a conical mountain. Among deep
purple and azure wildflowers lay a sprinkling of snow, while a pinkish cap of glacier frosted the distant
peak, silhouetted against a delicate violet sky. A cascade flowed majestically from a plateau, the water
forming a roaring curtain that plunged down to the mountain's base, ending in a froth of rainbow mists and
white water that smoothed out into a broad plum-colored lake.
Acorna felt instinctively that this lake had tremendous significance for her but she didn't understand what
that significance could possibly be. She wanted to stop and stay there, gazing into it, looking for
something she was sure she could find if she just had time to look for it, but the world around her
swooped onward, as if she and her traveling companions were flying through it in an open-topped flitter.
The violet skies of Vhiliinyar arched overhead, edged by the scalloped beauty of snow-covered
mountains, as the spectacle swiftly segued from one glory to another.
Acorna almost forgot to breathe. This was the world she had dreamed of for so very long. She didn't
hear the thoughts of the others, not even Aari or Neeva, nor did she seek them out. Surely they were as
overwhelmed as she was by the sheer beauty of Vhiliinyar.
Abruptly the sky darkened, the moons rose, and sunset-colored words blazed overhead:
Brought to You Courtesy of Harakamiatr Homework Holo-gram, and Terrestoration Making Any
World a Better One®
A collective sigh went round the room as the images faded. Everyone began talking, aloud and with
thought-talk, all at once, so that the resulting words were little more than confused babble.
Despite all the verbal confusion, Aari's communication was very clear. He was trembling and looked
rather greenish. His jaw was firmly clenched and his brimming eyes stared straight ahead.
"What is it, yaazi?" Acorna asked, using the Linyaari term for "beloved." Taking Aari's arm, she led him
quickly to the main exit from the holo-bubble. She felt, rather than saw, Aari's parents, his sister Maati,
and Thariinye, who had become Aari's friend, following them.
Aari's answer to her question came into her mind in a wave of pain and shock, the sort of emotional
trauma he had seemed to be free of for some time now. Acorna placed her gleaming horn against his
cheek to reassure him. Normally, among Linyaari, this caress would have been horn-to-horn, but Aari
had been mutilated during his capture by the evil Khleevi. His horn had been destroyed. Thanks to hard
work by some of the best Linyaari healers and a tissue donation from his younger sister Maati, Aari's
horn had regrown to a short, twisted knot protruding an inch or so from his forehead and in time would
be fully restored, but horn-to-horn gestures weren't possible for him yet.
His friends and family, emerging from the holo-bubble that had been temporarily transformed into their
lost home, sensed Aari's anguish and joined their horns with Acorna to try and soothe him.
Hafiz Harakamian bustled out, the silk panels of his robes flying behind him like the wings of varicolored
butterflies. His round face retained its geniality, but Acorna, raising her head to watch her adopted uncle's
approach, felt a subtle blend of pique and embarrassment beneath his surface cheer, and saw the right
half of Hafiz's mustache twitch irritably.
"How is it that my small conjuring trick to bring to life your once-exquisite home world has so distressed
our heroic Aari that all of you must leave so precipitously, O She Who Is Closer to My Heart than Any
Daughter of My Flesh Could Ever Be?" Hafiz complained, addressing Acorna.
But it was Maati, a youngling not afraid to rush in where diplomats feared to tread, who raised her horn
from her brother's chest and answered, "The Khleevi made him watch while they destroyed it all, Uncle
Hafiz. It was awful. They killed all of those beautiful animals for sport, and ate every living plant and tree.
Then they fouled the lakes and streams with their horrible excrement before they blew the mountains
apart and filled the valleys with rubble."
Yes, yes, these regrettable circumstances are common knowledge. But have we not just demonstrated
with our science which is so much like magic how the damage can be repaired and the planet
reterraformed so it is as good as new nay, better than new? You cannot but be aware of the extensive
interviews we have conducted Linyaari who lived on Vhiliinyar, in order that we may gather
their memories of the place so that our scientists' efforts can bring them to life once more? Now all that
remains is a simple aerial topographical mapping expedition and..."
"Nothing remains to map," Aari said, his voice flat with a lack of emotion that was painful to hear. "How
will you know where to put a river when there are no mountains to feed it or seas for it to flow into? Even
Joh Becker could find nothing to salvage from the planet except the bones of our ancestors."
Acorna considered this statement as the holo-bubble emptied of the rest of Hafiz's Linyaari guests. From
them she heard random snatches of troubled thought.
(I don't remember that mountain as being quite so high.) (No, and there was always a summer settlement
near the mouth of the Paazo river. The channels were all wrong.)
"There is still at least one recognizable landmark," Acorna said thoughtfully. "Maybe more than one..."
Liriili, the former viizaar of narhii-Vhiliinyar, was standing nearby, waiting to find fault, as usual, and to
contradict anyone who seemed to have something positive to contribute. She was that rarest of creatures,
a Linyaari with very little empathy for her fellow beings. She snorted, broadcasting her thought not only to
Acorna but also to all the other Linyaari near enough to receive it.
(How would you know, Khornya? You have never been to Vhiliinyar.)
(That's not quite true.) Neeva defended her niece. (Khornya was born in space, that is true, but my sister
and her husband brought their babe back to Vhiliinyar while Vaanye finished his work on his new defense
system. However brief that sojourn, and however young she was during it, Khornya was there.) Neeva
turned back to Acorna. (So what landmarks remain, dear Khornya?)
"The cave where Aari and his brother Laarye were," Acorna told them all. "And the final resting place
where the bones of our forebears were once buried before Aari and the captain brought them to
narhii-Vhiliinyar. We could use them as a starting point to rebuild the planet just as it was."
Hafiz wrung his hands. His wife Karina, arriving in a drift of lavender draperies and scent, cooed
solicitously and massaged his shoulders.
Hafiz protested in a wounded tone, "But rebuilding it just as it was will take a very long time. We
certainly can recreate the most beloved portions of Linyaari topography, my dear girl, as you have seen
with your own eyes. Surely it is enough to replicate only those features best remembered by your people.
How can they possibly miss that which they cannot recall?"
The aagroni lirtye clearly understood enough of this to make his opinion on the matter known. He pushed
to the front of the crowd and cleared his throat. "Human recollection has nothing to do with what is
necessary for a planet to function," he said in an authoritative voice, though in the Linyaari language.
"Appearances are only an outward manifestation of the processes that enable life to grow and develop
naturally upon a planetary body. Restoring the vitality of a world is much more complicated than
providing pretty mountains and panoramas of rivers, Lord Harakamian. It is based to an equal or greater
part in getting the most minute and fragile details of the ecosystem right, many of which are virtually
invisible to us. I have said this repeatedly to those who have interviewed me, Khornya. If our planet is to
flourish again, it must be fully restored biologically as well as topographically.
Your uncle promises to reproduce those landmarks that are stored in the memories of our people and in
what few records of our planet that now survive, but he also says that he cannot replace them exactly as
they once were nor with a full suite of native flora and fauna. He would merely give us vistas, and try to
make them live without the forests, the fields, the hills, and valleys, and indeed the very grasses, lichens,
mosses, and ferns that colored their beauty. He would give us rivers and waterfalls, but not the
associated swamps with all of their myriad microorganisms, plants, and animals that were once so
essential to our world. But the greater beauty cannot exist without the life that once gave it form, for
biology as well as geology brings its vital contributions to our ecology. And even the right geology is
essential to its function."
Acorna translated this to Hafiz. From his blustering growl and defensive posture, she shrewdly suspected,
knowing her adoptive uncle's piratical nature, that while he realized on some level the truth of the
aagroni's, arguments, Hafiz had his own agenda. His bursts of altruism frequently had a deeper
commercial motivation that was not immediately apparent.
In the case of the restoration of the Linyaari homeworld, Acorna did not need her telepathic abilities to
guess that Hafiz had it in the back of his mind that eventually he would convince the Linyaari to allow
off-worlders to visit. Maybe he was even plotting something as crude as an intergalactic attraction called
Ki-Lin Land or something similarly exploitative. Although the need of some Linyaari for peace and
privacy in an inviolate world of their own had been explained to him repeatedly, such feelings were so
foreign to Hafiz's own nature that he found them inconceivable. A master of hologrammatic illusion, he
was himself deeply involved in surface appearances and loved an audience for his work, and thus felt that
the same was true of everyone else.
Seeing that his niece was reading, if not his mind, at least his character, Hafiz protested, "Acorna, dear
girl, have I not moved heavens and planets to help your people? I am willing to pour out my fortune for
them, to beggar my house in order to help them, but how can I restore those areas of Vhiliinyar no one
can describe to me, much less provide images for or specimens of the native lifeforms? In my employ are
the best terraforming engineers in the universe, but without detailed maps or charts or biological samples,
they can hardly be expected to revivify Vhiliinyar with such precision as your so-eminent scientist insists
upon."
Acorna nodded slowly and turned to the aagroni, to whom she had been transmitting Hafiz's remarks
after translating them into Linyaari. (Aagroni, I know that most of the written and visual records of
Vhiliinyar's features were destroyed in our battles with the Khleevi, but perhaps with your help, and the
help of your fellow scientists, I can help locate the original positions of these landmarks upon our old
planet using the resources available to us. Once we have these features in place, we can gather further
information on the location of other less prominent areas. It won't be perfect, but it will be a good start.
Then we can start thinking about the biological issues.)
(And just how do you intend to locate those sites, young lady?) the aagroni demanded.
Acorna smiled. (I have my methods.) she said. (We have promised the memory of Grandam Naadiina
that her home will be again what it was and her people will thrive upon it. She died so that we might have
this opportunity.)
The aagroni hung his head respectfully. (Did you think I would forget? But believe me, Khornya, the
restoration of Vhiliinyar must be done properly.)
Suddenly Karina Harakamian's body swayed and her eyes turned up in her head. She spoke up in an
eerie far-off voice.
Ground surveys," she said, in a rasping practical tone that was far removed from the dramatic voice she
used "when she was purporting to be, as she put it, "a conduit for the Other World."
Karina continued to speak in a voice and a language that was not hers. "Everyone who once lived on
Vhiliinyar must walk its ruined surface to participate in ground surveys. Vhiliinyar will be healed only by
the love in the hearts of those who once inhabited her surface. Perils will be many, but you will —
aaaaaaah..." Karina sagged and flopped somewhat gracefully into her husband's arms. Since he could not
entirely support her ample form, not being an athletic sort himself, Hafiz staggered backward to lay his
beloved on the ground. Aari intervened, however, swooping up Lady Harakamian in his arms and gently
lowering his new stub of a horn to her cheek.
Karina, who did not speak more than a few phrases of Linyaari, had been speaking it fluently.
Furthermore, distant and eerie though her words had sounded, they were readily recognizable as being in
Grandam Naadiina's voice. Since Karina did not know Grandam, this was no mere imitation of a voice
for effect. Karina claimed to be psychic far more often than she actually showed any evidence of psychic
ability, but this was one of those rare times when her claims would appear to be true.
Hafiz, who like Karina had never met Grandam, was the only one unfazed by his wife's behavior.
"Excellent suggestion, my little couscous," he said, patting his wife's hand and giving the others a look that
seemed to say, "Isn't it adorable how she comes up with these things?"
Captain Jonas Becker, the only non-Khleevi who had the coordinates for Aari's cave in his data banks,
took time off from salvage gathering in the ruins of narhii-Vhiliinyar to assist the remaining Linyaari space
vessels in transporting survey crews to the site on their old home world.
In the cargo holds of the Condor were a dozen House Harakamian flitters. As Acorna, Aari, Becker,
and the android Mac unloaded the last of these, Becker said, "I wish I could go with you kids, but -Mac
and I have a shipload of work to do back at NV. I got a favor to ask you though, Princess," he said.
He and Acorna stood on the robolift deck, Becker holding his feline first mate, Roadkill the Makahomian
Temple Cat, while Acorna scratched the cat behind the ears. Roadkill, who usually enjoyed such
attention, squirmed mightily, kicking out with his back paws, which were securely tucked under Becker's
left elbow. RK's front paws tried to jerk loose from the grip of Becker's left hand. Every striped hair on
the beast's body was standing at attention, and the cat's eyes, barely slitted open, had a ferocious glint.
RK was purring, but woven into the purr was a thin stream of growly whine. The cat had been behaving
wildly all during the journey to Vhiliinyar, leaping from deck to deck, racing along the tops of the Linyaari
passengers' heads with a recklessness that had seemed likely to get him impaled on a horn at any
moment.
"A favor? Certainly, Captain, if it is within my powers to grant it," Acorna said.
"I was hoping you'd say that," Becker growled, and shoved RK into her arms. "Take the cat with you."
Several of the Linyaari passengers, no matter how fond they had been of the pahaantiyir species native to
Vhiliinyar that RK was said to resemble, had been happy to finish their journey simply so they could
leave the cat and his erratic behavior behind them on the ship. Those Linyaari who read animals well
reported that RK's thought patterns were deranged and unpredictable — not at all to the surprise of
those who normally did not. Just now, the calculating appraisal RK gave Acorna, along with the paw full
of claws he used to leave a lasting impression on Becker about a cat's opinion of being held against his
will, bore testimony to that.
"Why would you ask that, Joh?" Aari asked, a little nervously. "Do you not need RK with you?"
Normally, you know me, I'd hate to let the little guy go, but I need to get him off NV so he can dry out."
"Dry out?" Aari asked.
Yeah. You guys got some baaad catnip there on narhii-Vhiliinyar, and it didn't get all burned up when the
Khleevi trashed the place. Old RK can't keep out of it, and it keeps him drunk as a skunk and it takes
darned near forever to wear off. I can see I don't have to tell you that he's a mean drunk. He's always
been a pretty shrewd character about keeping his tail screwed on straight, but while he's around that
stuff, I'm afraid
he's gonna get one of us killed. It's a temptation he can't resist, and it's driving him mad and me with him.
I'd leave him with Nadhari but, uh, we had this little disagreement."
"I see, Captain," Acorna said, and lowered her horn to scratch RK's forehead where a horn would be if
he had one. Tearing loose a paw from Becker's grip, he made a swipe at her nose with his claws. The
moment her horn touched him and her healing powers reached out to him, however, he detoxified. He
lowered his paw, waggled it at her, relaxed to boneless limp serenity, and purred with deep contentment.
"I will be happy to take care of Roadkill for you," she said.
"That's the ticket, Princess," Becker grinned, off-loading the foolishly grinning beast into Acorna's
embrace. "Your buddies on the ship -would have done the same thing if they'd thought of it, but nobody
could catch the little monster. See ya!"
Shortly thereafter, the Condor lifted off the rock-strewn blasted surface into the bruised purple sky of
Vhiliinyar. A rush of anguish flooded across Acorna's mind, though the pain -was not her own. She
looked up at Aari. He seemed to be fairly composed, his eyes perhaps a little hard, his jaw a trifle set as
he watched his friend's ship leave. But the other Linyaari were the ones having a difficult time of it as they
explored the broken ruins of their former home.
"There must be some mistake," Liriili said. "That stupid man set us down on the wrong world. This can't
possibly be Vhiliinyar. The scouts told us our home had been ruined, but they never said the destruction
was this bad! Even the sky is the wrong color! Vhiliinyar's sky was a beautiful shade of violet, not this...
this... putrescent purple."
"Yes, well, it darkened when the debris from all of the explosions and the smoke from all the fires filled
the atmosphere," Aari said matter-of-factly.
Liriili snorted. "Those scouts did not do a very good job of reporting the true extent of the damage. That
is all I have to say."
Turning to the aagroni lirtye, she said, (What do you think? Could you make use of Liriili's talents here?)
(She is a bureaucrat, isn't she?) the aagroni said gruffly. (We will have a great deal of paperwork and
accounting to do, once your findings start pouring in. And reports to send to Mr. Harakamian and test
results to transmit to Dr. Hoa regarding meteorological conditions. She could be quite useful. Yes,
certainly. Leave her.)
With great relief, they did. Maati laughed. "That'll be a perfect place for her," she told Acorna and Aari.
"Once these scientists get to work, they don't notice anything that isn't a specimen. They won't even see
her, much less allow themselves to become annoyed by her."
Relieved of their unwanted crewmate, the Balakiire's, crew, supplemented by Melireenya's lifemate,
boarded their flitter and lifted off to begin their work.
Acorna handed RK to Maati after the younger girl had climbed into the flitter's four-seater cabin. The
cat, exhausted from his "catnip"-induced shipboard acrobatics, melted into a furry puddle across Maati's
knees. Thariinye boarded the flitter next. Acorna took the helm and Aari, as the person who knew this
planet best and needed to be able to focus all of his attention on the terrain, sat in the navigator's seat.
Given its location on the star maps, Acorna knew intellectually that the planet under the shadow of their
flitter had once been Vhiliinyar, "Home of the People," but it was hard to believe, as they skimmed the
surface of this desolate place, that it had ever supported any sort of life.
The planet's remaining sun, "Light of Our People," was an amorphous gray-blue glob of smoky light in the
sky, little resembling the brilliant orb she remembered from her dreams and from the descriptions Neeva
had provided.
Remembering those descriptions, Acorna realized that some of her recent experiences were at odds with
them. She turned to her lifemate perhaps he could shed some light on the inconsistencies.
(You know, Aari, for a long time I had the impression from the other Linyaari that you were the only one
left behind when the evacuation ships fled Vhiliinyar. But I've recently discovered that there were other
Linyaari who chose to stay behind rather than leave their homes, as well as scouts who remained to relay
information on what the Khleevi were up to. I wonder what happened to them. The scouts claimed that
all living beings on the planet appeared to have been killed that their bones were piled up by the Khleevi
as monuments and yet, so far, I have seen no such monuments.)
Beside her, Aari moaned. The memories her question brought back were undoubtedly terrible for him.
(Laarye and I were the only youths lost in the chaos, certainly. There were others, mostly Linyaari who
were reaching the twilight of their lives, who chose to remain behind on Vhiliinyar, yaazi, rather than
adjust to a new world. Almost all of them resided in distant settlements. I believe they were exterminated
before the Khleevi found me. Certainly the Khleevi thought so. The Khleevi showed me their bones to
torment me, but in the end, all of the chaos the Khleevi let loose on our world scattered those charnel
piles along with the stones of our mountains.)
(You survived. Do you think it is possible we will find others?)
(They would have starved here, with nothing left to eat.) Aari told her. (It was only because our
ancestors' graves were near my cave, purifying the blighted land around it and enabling the plant life to
continue to grow and thrive, that I was able to find the resources to sustain my own life.)
(I wonder...) Acorna said, and toggled the connection to Neeva's flitter.
"Yes, sister-child," Neeva responded. "Is everything well?" Then she added wryly. "Relatively speaking,
that is."
Considering the devastation below them, Acorna could understand her aunt's disquiet. "I am as well as
can be expected, Aunt Neeva. But I have a question. You once told me that our people had scouts who
risked being caught by the Khleevi in order to send back reports to narhii-Vhiliinyar of what happened
here following the evacuation. Are the surviving scouts among us now?"
"Just the parents of your lifemate, Khornya. The scouts who stayed behind to see what the Khleevi did to
our world sent in reports of conditions on Vhiliinyar as long as they could. But only Aari's parents
survived to rejoin us. None of the other scouts were ever heard from again after those initial reports.
Because we received no images of them being tortured by the Khleevi, we assume that they made use of
the substances they were issued to end their lives before they were captured."
"Oh," Acorna said. She was so distracted by that revelation that she was hardly aware of breaking the
connection.
Then Maati pointed out the windscreen and cried, "Look! Those long lumpy trails, aren't those ?"
"Khleevi scat," Thariinye said, disgusted. "Maybe it's my imagination, or bad memories, but I think I can
smell it from here."
"I smelled it back at the cave," Maati said.
Aari snorted. (The stench has not left my nostrils since we first landed.)
(It has been so for me, as well.) Even as she replied, Acorna tried not to broadcast the other disturbing
recollection she'd had from the scout reports she'd reviewed. The reports had spoken of Khleevi young
being bred in the rivers and streams of Vhiliinyar. She shuddered, recalling her own single encounter with
the Young, so voracious and vicious as to form the driving force behind Khleevi conquest. But surely all
of the Young were dead now, killed on their horrific home world where they were both protected by and
avoided by the adult Khleevi.
Aari picked up her concern and, to her surprise, he was the one to comfort her.
(I can sense when the Khleevi are close.) Aari told her. (And I do not sense them now.)
Acorna sighed. (Yes, they must have moved on once they had destroyed all the resources here, and
returned to their home world. I'm sure you're right.)
(They're gone now, yaazi.) Aari repeated. (Nothing of them remains to harm us or others.)
Gratefully, she allowed her special talent for sensing the mineral composition of any substance she chose
to probe - something she'd developed while working with her asteroid-miner foster parents to preoccupy
her with the data it fed her senses. Instead of smelling Khleevi scat she smelled, tasted, mentally touched,
each major mineral deposit in their flight path as they passed above it. This was a vital part of her plan to
map the planet. The few survey maps they had were short on biological detail, but extremely precise
when it came to mineral deposits. She could take what she learned on their surveys of Vhiliinyar as it
existed now and use it to reconstruct the planet topology as it had been before the Khleevi had attacked.
The work was a welcome distraction from the ugliness below her, and from the cold bleakness that
overcame Aari as he withdrew to that inner place where he found protection when reminded too
forcefully of his ordeal among the Khleevi.
Long stretches of alluvial deposits containing copper, gold, garnets, agates, and other, rarer gems
indicated riverbeds, and when Acorna sensed these she noted their coordinates on the flitter's computer.
The distribution of these minerals and gems would help her trace the rivers to their origins in the
mountains and their endings in the seas. Limestone deposits in large quantities indicated former ocean
floors even recent ocean floors, since the Khleevi had diminished as well as befouled the planet's oceans
until they were turgid, lifeless swamps.
Salt deposits provided another indication for the oceans, and basalt deposits often outlined original
shorelines. Acorna's talent for sensing minerals, a trait apparently unique among the Linyaari, was
invaluable here. She could use it to help Hafiz and her people reverse engineer Vhiliinyar from the mess it
had
become and return it, she hoped, to something at least approaching its original beauty and vitality.
The terrain abruptly changed and she increased the flitters altitude to avoid the vast ranges of tumbled
boulders before them. This landscape was in constant motion, like a terrified animal pinned down and
writhing to escape torture. Showers of stones plummeted from precipices, landing with puffs of dust on
the hills newly formed from the avalanches. These in turn were blasted apart by subsequent slides.
Plumes of ash and smoke rose from three vast craters gaping in the range like festering pockmarks on the
planet's face.
After the calderas were some distance behind them, the ground finally stabilized a bit. For the first time
they could see vegetation growing, low and scrubby at first, and then a thick parrot-green jungle rising
from the battered ground.
At the edge of this jungle, Aari indicated Acorna should set down the flitter, which she did.
"Ouch," Maati said to RK as she tried to pry him from her lap. The cat's ears were flat and his tail was
poofed into something that looked like a massive feather duster.
"I don't think he likes it here," Thariinye said.
"But it's beautiful," Maati replied as she was finally able to dislodge RK and dump him onto the flitter's
deck. She followed after him, climbing out onto the scarred stone surface of Vhiliinyar. "Isn't this
wonderful? This is the first sign we have seen that the planet is finally starting to heal and grow things
again."
"Hmmm," Acorna said, noncommittally, "but what kind of things?" Something scuttled across the edge of
the greenery, but disappeared before they could determine its nature. It might have been an errant breeze
moving a plant frond, though the air here was inert and stagnant right now.
Actually, the whole planet was, for the most part, stifling, with much of its protective ozone layer
punctured by volcanic explosions and toxic chemical reactions from its unstable land masses and
destroyed seas. Add to that the effect of the hazy atmosphere, which served to trap and reflect the
energy from Vhiliinyar's sun, and the planet's climate was far hotter than it used to be and likely to get
worse before it got better. Acorna suspected that the lush greenery before them was a valiant attempt on
the part of this world to restore its own much-depleted atmosphere.
A sudden, happy thought occurred to Acorna. This survey might well have positive consequences for
their ravaged world. The presence of the planet's native people might well speed its efforts to recover,
even before Hafiz's terraformation could begin. With so many Linyaari horns available to purify the
waters and the air and to cleanse much of the poison inflicted upon Vhiliinyar by the Khleevi, the planet
might well heal a little each day they were present, just as a wounded creature would heal with the
application of the horn's power.
The Linyaari were superb healers, and their horns could detoxify nearly any substance that they came into
contact with. The powers of their horns were not unique to the Linyaari, nor had they originated on
Vhiliinyar. They were a legacy from their Ancestors, the ki-lin of long ago Terra, often called unicorns.
An ancient spacefaring race the Linyaari knew only as the Ancestral Friends had saved the ki-lin from
primitive and brutal humans who were hunting them to extinction on Terra, and brought them through the
cosmos to Vhiliinyar, where they had thrived once again.
Though the ki-lin still existed as a separate race, many of them had blended genes with the Ancestral
Friends, and the result of that fusion was the Linyaari people. The powers were the same in the Linyaari
as in the Ancestors themselves.
But that was all ancient history this was now, and they were in the midst of a terrible ecological disaster,
one that needed all the healing power the Linyaari could muster.
Maati frowned. The caution displayed by all of her friends, right down to RK the cat, in the presence of
the lovely greenery before them confused her. Still new to thought-talk, she addressed the silence of the
others with a perplexed protest. "But that forest is pretty. And alive! Why aren't the rest of you happier
that it's growing things and pretty?"
Aari glowered at her, the first harshness he had shown to his little sister.
Thariinye, picking up on Aari's thoughts, pointed out, (How is she to know what is wrong? She was not
born here! She has never been here before. She has nothing but some stories, a few thought-pictures,
and Uncle Hafiz's holos to compare it to.)
(True.) Acorna agreed. To Maati she said, "You remember that place we were in within the holo-bubble,
right at the beginning? With the beautiful mountain and the waterfall and lake?"
"Yes. Are we going there tomorrow?"
"We are here now. This is that place," Acorna told her.
"But it is so flat," Maati said, bewildered. She was not at all stupid, but the concept of total terrestrial
destruction was a large one to absorb, especially in the presence of the reality of the thing. This rather
savage and uncertain "prettiness," First vestige of life among the ruins of Vhiliinyar though it might be, was
a far cry from the deeply spiritual beauty of the mountain with its glorious waterfall and wine-hued lake
that she'd seen in Hafiz's holo.
"It's not as flat as it appears. We had to climb quite steeply to land here. And the vegetative growth is no
doubt due largely to the residual moisture from the lake. Perhaps not even the Khleevi could destroy it
entirely."
"Its very waters were known to have healing powers akin to those of our horns," Thariinye said.
"That is clearly no longer the case," Aari said, with a snort to dislodge the stench of the place a mix of
rotting vegetation and who knew what else from his nostrils.
"The presence of the plants means that there is water here," Acorna said. "We should purify it, but
perhaps it would be wise to explore this forest a little at a time at first, until we can analyze just what it
consists of, and what pollutants are present in the water and the vegetation."
Aari nodded. "There are chemical combinations that could eat right through what we're wearing before
we could purify it with our horn. There are even chemicals the Khleevi developed that can eat through
Linyaari horns themselves."
Maati and Thariinye exchanged startled glances. The idea that any chemical could be so strong as to
counteract the purifying effects of their horns, and harm the horns themselves, was totally alien to all they
knew about their own abilities. And more alien was the thought that such hostile strangeness could exist
here, on what had once been the safest place in the universe to be Linyaari.
The pallid sun drooped near the scarred horizon, and Acorna said, "Let's settle in for the night here. For
now, we should perhaps use only the water and food we brought "with us from MOO."
Her opinion was unanimously accepted, and after a quick meal of water and dried grasses, they spread
air mats over the rocks and arranged the flitter's attachable awnings as tents over their small campsite.
The flutter of useful activity served to calm Acorna's nerves, which were, if not exactly jangling, at least
on red alert. An air or menace pervaded this spot, the very place, however unrecognizable, that had
seemed to be the epitome of peace and serenity in Hafiz's holo. At least she wasn't alone in her concern.
Aari -was alert to the slightest shift in air currents, the least nuance of shifting current in the miasma of rot
and waste simmering around them.
RK, too, that veteran of a thousand adventures, clearly was displeased with the place. He stayed near
the Linyaari, slinking with his belly dragging the rocks, his ears rotating constantly, his whiskers and fur
bristling, his upper lips raised above his tangs in a snarling expression that uncovered the scent glands
on either side of his muzzle. He looked like a creature from a nightmare.
摘要：

AnneMcCaffrey-Acorna5-Acorna'sSearchAnneMcCaffrey&ElizabethAnnScarboroughHome!ThewordsanginAcorna'smind,asongofchimingsilverstreamsanddrummingwaterfalls,ofwindflutingacrossthetopsofbendingblue-greengrassesandthroughthespade-shapedleavesofgigantictreesinvastforests.ThesongechoedinthemindsofeveryLinya...

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