Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 3 - Acorna's People

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Acorna's People
By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
One
On the planet of Laboue, within the opulent chief residence of Hafiz Harakamian, in one of the hundreds
of finely crafted, hand-joined cabinets of rare and lustrous woods in which he kept his smallest and often
most precious collectibles, Acorna had once seen a display of brilliantly bejeweled and decorated eggs.
Created hundreds of years ago by a man named Carl Faberge for the collection of a Russian czar not
nearly so wealthy as their present owner, the eggs had dazzled the eyes of the young girl with their richly
colored enamels, their gold loops and whorls, their swags and bows of diamonds and glittering
gemstones, and their tiny movable parts-the delicately wrought scenes that unfolded from within their
interiors.
Now, a fathomless distance from Uncle Hafiz's home and many years later, it seemed to Acorna as if the
eggs had magically grown to giant size and lofted themselves into space, where their colors shone even
more brilliantly in the blackness of infinity than they had in the memories of her childhood. They formed a
festive flotilla visible from the viewport of the Balakiire.
The flotilla had been growing in size since the Balakiire exited the wormhole that deposited them just
beyond the atmosphere of narhii-Vhiliinyar, the second Linyaari home world.
The imagery was further borne out by the seemingly endless number of Linyaari space-farers, the
denizens of those bright ships, who paraded across the comscreen to welcome the Baiakiire delegation
home.
Melireenya introduced Acorna to each of the officers as they appeared on the screen, so that Acorna felt
that she was already at one of the receptions or parties her aunt and -Melireenya were threatening to give
in order to introduce her to Linyaari society and, most especially, to prospective lifemates. Acorna was
so excited by the sight of the egg-like ships and the spectacle of her people's home rotating almost
imperceptibly beyond them that she could hardly pay attention to the images on the comscreen.
The Linyaari welcoming her to this world all looked so much like her that they could have been mistaken
for her by her human friends. The figures on the comscreen were pale skinned and had golden opalescent
spiraling horns growing from their foreheads, topped by manes of silvery hair which continued to grow
down their spines. Like her, they had feathery tufts of fine curly white hair adorning their legs from knee
to ankle, to just above their two-toed feet. Their hands, like hers, bore only three fingers, each with one
joint in the middle and one where the finger met the palm.
After the life she'd led, it was a little overwhelming to be among so many others of her kind. All of the
equipment and utensils she could see and touch were designed for people like her. Nothing had to be
specially adapted to her anatomical peculiarities. Nothing about her appearance was unusual to the
Linyaari.
However, as like her as these people were, they were all, even her mother's sister and those aboard the
Balakiire, still strangers-strangers who took a proprietary interest in her without actually knowing her very
well. Although she had ceased to be regarded as a child by the humans she had grown up among, she
seemed to be regarded by her Linyaari shipmates as little more than a youngling.
This was a new sensation for her. Acorna had been jettisoned in a life pod from her parents' ship as an
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infant to save her from the fatal explosion that claimed the lives other parents and the attacking Khieevi.
She'd been rescued soon after and had grown up among humans. Specifically, she had been raised by
her three adoptive uncles-Calum Baird, Declan "Gill" Giloglie, and Rafik Nadezda. Back when they'd
found her they had been miners working in the far reaches of the human galaxies. These days they'd gone
on to other things. Rafik, for example, was now the head of the House of Harakamian, the empire
founded by his uncle Hafiz Harakamian, an uncommonly wily merchant and wealthy collector.
When Acorna had first met Hafiz, he'd wished to add her to his many treasures, to be displayed along
with the beautiful Faberge eggs and the incredibly rare Singing Stones of Skarrness guarding his
courtyard. However, her value to Hafiz as a collectible had sharply decreased when Hafiz learned she
was not a solitary oddity but merely a member of a populous alien race.
Acorna's relationship with Hafiz, and the one between Hafiz and Rafik, had improved after that to the
point that Acorna now used the name Harakamian, along with that of her good and gentle mentor Mr. Li,
as a surname. Dear Mr. Li had passed on a few months ago, but the more durable Uncle Hafiz had
recently married his second wife and was now enjoying his retirement in her company.
Acorna, along with her uncles and Mr. Li, had succeeded in rescuing the children imprisoned in the
camps on Kezdet, a planet whose economy had once depended on the exploitation of child labor. They
had been ably assisted in this task by the intelligent and resourceful siblings of the Kendoro family, Pal,
Judit, and Mercy, themselves former victims of the camps. Together, Acorna and her friends had been
instrumental in changing the planet's laws and ridding it of the Piper, the ringleader responsible for the
most heinous of the abuses. They had gone on to establish a mining and teaching facility on one of
Kezdet's moons, Maganos, to nurture and educate the children they had rescued from the horrors of the
labor camps.
Later, Acorna and her uncle Calum, while trying to locate her home world, had helped quell a mutiny
among the Starfarers, human voyagers on a large colony ship. After being forced to watch their parents'
murders during the rebellion, and the subsequent bloodshed, murder, and exploitation that the ship's new
masters were intent upon, the children of the ship were able, with Acorna's help, to wrest control from
the mutineers and destroy them. In the process, they rescued the famed meteorologist Dr. Ngaen Xong
Hoa, and his weather control system. The people who had seized the ship had used Dr. Hoa's new
system to destroy the economy and ecology of the newly colonized planet Rushima. The mutineers were
spaced by the triumphant youngsters, just as the mutineers had spaced their victims, when the children
regained control of the ship.
While returning with Dr. Hoa to repair the damage to Rushima, Acorna, her adoptive family, and the
children fell under attack by the Khieevi, a vicious bug-like race responsible for the death of Acorna's
parents. Fortunately, Acorna's aunt Neeva and the delegation from narhii-Vhiliinyar had arrived in time to
warn everyone of the impending invasion. With Acorna's help, the resources of Kezdet and the Houses
of Harakamian and Li had been mobilized to rout the Khieevi.
In the course of all this, Acorna had become something of a mistress of disguise, and had used her horn
to purify an entire ship's poisoned air and the waters of Rushima as well as to heal the wounded in all of
the hostile encounters with which she'd been involved.
This was all quite aside from her abilities to divine by seemingly magical means the mineral content of
each individual asteroid her uncles wished to mine, an ability which had earned her their respect while she
was still quite young. So Acorna had actually packed a great deal of activity into a relatively short life.
Consequently she did not feel particularly childlike most of the time.
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Nevertheless, she was a child to her mother's sister Neeva, a Linyaari Envoy Extraordinaire, or
vwhaanye ferllii She was considered a youngling by all the other Linyaari aboard the Balakiire as well:
Khaari, the navigation officer or gheraaiye mallvii in the Linyaari tongue; Melireenya, the senior
communications office or gheraaiye ve-khanyli; and Thariinye, the young male whose function was still
not exactly clear to Acorna, even after their travels together, but who seemed to think that without him,
the mission could not have succeeded. What had been taken by Acorna's human friends for talent was
apparently standard issue for her race. And many of the talents the other Linyaari possessed seemed to
have been carefully developed. For instance, none of them needed words to communicate with each
other and all of them could read the thoughts of the others on the ship-including hers, a fact which she
found rather unnerving at times. She had so very much to learn. Fortunately, if her shipmates were typical
examples, her people were kind and forbearing.
"Khornya, this is my counterpart in the Gamma Sector, Vtehaanye FeriUi Taankaril," Aunt Neeva told
Acorna. Khornya was the Linyaari version of Acorna, the name given her by her human "uncles." The
introduction pulled her attention once more from the spectacle of the ships outside the viewport. Acorna
dipped her horn, as did the vLfe()haanye ferllii, a woman who, like Aunt Neeva, Khaari and Melireenya,
was of an indistinguishable age, at least indistinguishable to Acoma.
"Khornya," Aunt Neeva said, nodding to the woman on the comscreen and relaying her thoughts to
Acorna, "the vifehaanye ferlili is the mother of two handsome sons who have not yet found their lifemates.
She regrets that she is about to embark upon a mission, but hopes you will feel free to call upon them for
any assistance you need in adjusting to your new home."
Acorna smiled and nodded at the woman again. No actual words had been exchanged between her aunt
and the dignitary. Even across the vastness of space, it seemed that the senior space-faring Linyaari could
read thoughts. Acorna occasionally felt she was catching on to how it was done, but found the process
frustrating even with people standing in front of her. Particularly when they responded to thoughts she
would not have voiced, given a choice. But her grasp of the Linyaari tongue was not yet complete and
the crew of the Balakiire found the need to communicate with her in spoken words tedious. Neeva
assured her she'd get the hang of things soon enough. But Acorna still worried.
And so went her homecoming, with the space around her new home planet dancing with egg-ships full of
Acorna-like beings, all of whom seemed curious about the formerly presumed dead daughter of the
illustrious Feriila and the valiant Vaanye, all politely inquiring as to where she'd been all this time and what
she'd been doing, all seemingly with unmated sons or nephews or widowed fathers and uncles, all
shepherding the Balakiire into port and docking alongside her.
Acorna emerged from the Balakare behind her Aunt Neeva and just ahead of Thariinye to find the
docking bay crowded with Linyaari, some even holding a banner aloft. Behind the uniformed Acorna-like
space travelers streaming from their ships to add to the party, a mass of multicolored creatures similar in
form to the space-farers crowded onto the docking level, strumming, blowing into, pounding upon,
brushing, and stamping a variety of musical instruments. The docking bay was filled with strange but
wonderfully harmonious and joyous music.
Even before Aunt Neeva could explain, Acorna was overwhelmed with happiness. This was the
welcoming committee. They didn't even know her, and they'd brought the brass band and the welcome
mat. Aunt Neeva gave her a hug.
"We are all so glad to have you back, Khornya," she said, waving her hand to indicate the smiling
Linyaari. Tears came to Acornas eyes as she nodded an acknowledgment to all those who'd turned out
to meet her.
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At last she would truly belong. At last she would no longer be an oddity. What a relief that would be.
"And I am so glad to be here. Aunt Neeva," she said. "I can't tell you how glad."
Aunt Neeva looked a little puzzled, an expression that seemed common whenever she was dealing with
her niece. "But you just did, child," she said. "You just did."
Comdor lurched and shuddered and flung its captain and the human part of the crew-both parts
consisting of one Jonas Becker, CEO of Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises Ltd.
against the bulkhead. As quickly as Becker fell, he was released, and rose to the ceiling like a ballet
dancer in slow motion, while the rest of the crew, twenty pounds of grizzled black and gray Makahomian
Temple Cat, drifted past him, the cat's extended claws grazing what remained of Becker's right ear.
"Dammit, RK, have you been pissing on the GSS panel again?" Becker groaned. RK, whose full name
was Roadkill, growled back in his version of a friendly purr. His claws were flashing in and out, blissfully
kneading the air, and beads of happy cat drool floated up from between his formidable fangs. His good
eye was closed in an excess of feline ecstasy. Becker had never seen a cat who loved zero G the way
RK did-but then he had never seen a cat anything like RK before either. The cat's stub of broken tail
moved back and forth like a rudder as it floated by.
Becker gave the Gravitation Stabilization System panel a boot as he passed it. The force of his kick sent
him soaring upward to bang against the console of a fighter ship strapped to the ceiling above the control
panel of the Condor. There wasn't a whole lot of room in his vessel to store cargo, and Becker utilized
every cubic centimeter of extra space. This left him no soft place to land when, after a couple more
shudders, the ship's gravity stabilized and Becker and RK tumbled back to the deck.
Becker massaged his hip. He'd banged it against one of the packing crates of cat food he had unloaded
from RK's original home ship. The cat, always interested in those particular crates, rubbed himself
between it and Becker. As usual, Becker was surprised at how soft the cat's coat was in comparison to
his personality. Becker had lost the little finger of his right hand while trying to salvage Roadkill. The cat
had then been nameless, of course, the spitting, hissing, clawing sole survivor left aboard a derelict
Makahomian spacecraft along with the corpses of his former shipmates.
Becker didn't like to talk about the loss of his second finger, but it had to do with what he referred to as
"RK's adjustment period," the time when the cat had recovered enough from his injuries to start feeling at
home. When Becker went to sell a couple of choice bits from the inventory soon after he'd acquired
Roadkill, he'd found them slick with yellowish liquid and stinking worse than a musk otter in heat. The
cause was obvious-and so was the need for a solution.
Becker consulted the library he had rescued from a landfill on Clackamass 2. He was a sucker for
information in any form: hard copy, chip, what have you. It came in handy when he wanted to identity or
figure out how to operate some of the inventory.
He dug through quite a few moldy, torn books before he found the copy of How to Care for Your
Kith/cat he'd stashed in the stall of the spare head. The book advised that when a male cat began
"marking his territory" by spraying it, the only way to stop the behavior was to have the cat neutered.
Beckers business kept him a long way from a veterinarian, but back when he was a kid on the labor farm
on Kezdet, he'd helped with the calves and goats. He'd figured a cat couldn't be that much different, so
he attempted a little home surgery on RK. Turned out he'd figured wrong. The attempt ended with them
both having surgeries of a sort RK was now one nut short and Becker had another stump in place of his
right ring finger next to the stump of the little finger the cat had shredded during the original rescue. You
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had to love an animal like that.
"That's okay, man," he told the cat, scratching it behind the right ear, which, like his own, was only
partially there. The cat's purr increased in volume until it sounded like a whole pride of lions right there in
the cabin. "Those gravity systems are worthless anyway."
He knew he had a replacement system someplace among his cargo, probably a better one than the one
he'd installed six months ago. Only problem was he couldn't do these particular repairs in space. To the
best of his recollection, the piece that he needed was buried so deep he'd have to unload the cargo hold
to find it. As usual, the ship was packed too tightly to have any room inside to conveniently shift the cargo
while he looked. He could maneuver around and manage it in a pinch, of course, but why bother?
"So, cat, looks like it's dirtside for us again. I was going to pass up this next trashed-out planet and head
back for civilization, but it looks like we need another pit stop first. The way I figure it, with this one,
we've pretty much replaced the whole ship since we last headed back to Kezdet-we'll basically have a
brand new Condor by the time we dock there again."
This wasn't unusual. On the average, he replaced most of the Condor about three times a year. This was
an occupational hazard, or maybe a hazard of the kind of personality that occupied Backer's occupation.
He hated to pay full price for anything when there was so much good stuff, only a little used, laying
around for the taking. He was an expert at improvisation, refitting, retooling, and emergency landings on
remote hunks of rock in the middle of space. He could do mid-space repairs, too, but it was so much
easier to land somewhere with a bit of gravity where he could suit up, toss stuff he didn't need out the
hatch while uncovering what he did need, close the hatch, pressurize the ship, make his repair, then
retrieve and reload his previously discarded cargo.
He ended up making some pretty rough landings occasionally, but he wasn't much worried about
scratching his paint job, and the Condor wasn't so big that he needed a lot of level area for a landing pad.
He headed for the planet he'd selected for this minor emergency. If the rock had an oxygen atmosphere,
he'd even be able to empty the cat box and let RK out to do a little business.
Sometimes they found some of their best cargo on these pit stops. Lately he'd run across a whole string
of planets, all pretty well stripped of resources on the one hand, but chock full of possibly profitable
debris on the other hand. Becker lived for debris. His big regret was that he had not yet devised a way to
strap extra cargo to the outside of the Condor, but so far he hadn't found a way to do so that would
allow him to enter and exit atmospheres without burning up the merchandise.
The Condor landed on what seemed the only level bit of ground for miles around. Soil and vegetation
had pretty much been stripped from the rock around this little basin in the wreckage, but here bluish
grass-like plants still grew-until the Condor's descent singed them, anyway. It was a rough landing. The
atmosphere was tumultuous-roiling clouds of various red and yellow gases filled the sky. That was okay.
According to his instruments'-if they were working properly, and they seemed to be -it was still
breathable out there. Even if it wasn't, he had a good protective suit if he needed it. It was the one item
he bought not only firsthand but also top of the line. He never knew what the conditions would be like out
here in the boonies. While he could use the robolift for most reloading, loading, and hauling jobs, some of
them he needed to do by hand. It took him a day and a half to repair his system. The first full day, with
RK's enthusiastic participation, he devoted to rooting around among the derelict shuttles, escape pods,
and command capsules in his inventory, looking for an outfit in better shape than the one he was using.
As usual, much of what was on top of what he wanted landed on the ground outside the vessel until he
found what he was looking for.
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He eventually rounded up a replacement system and patched it in. RK "helped" again, trying to stand
between him and what he was doing. Every time Becker reached past the critter, RK's low snarl warned
him off. When the cat tired of that game, he sat beside Becker and periodically reached up to sink a
single claw into the man's thigh. Finally, Becker opened the hatch again and the cat leaped out without a
backward look. The work went amazingly swiftly after that.
Prior to reloading his cargo, Becker suited up. He was a little more cautious of his own hide than the cat
was. Taking a work light, a collection sack, a tin of cat food to lure his roaming partner back aboard
again, and the remote to the hatch and the robolift, he popped the hatch and disembarked. All he had to
do now was throw his stuff back aboard and find Roadkill. While he was looking, he might as well take a
stroll and scope out the local real estate.
The grass around the Condor was singed for about thirty feet from where the vessel sat, and Becker
thought it was a real shame about that. All around the basin, bedrock lay tumbled as if something had
reached in, pulled it up, and stirred it around. What a dump. Only this one little patch showed any real
signs of life. Of course, it could be the planet was just in the process of giving birth to life, or it could be a
failed terraforming job, but his guess was that this planet had at one time been alive. The little patch on
which he stood was probably one of the last, if not the last, vestiges of that life. Damn shame, of course,
but without ruins like this, he'd be out of business. Only problem was, the devastation here was so
complete, there wasn't much left, even for him. The other planets they'd come across lately had been
much the same. Each of them had a few useless remnants that gave him the creepy feeling that a perfectly
good civilization had been destroyed fairly recently.
It was Roadkill who pulled him from his contemplation of mortality.
In fact, it looked as if the cat had dug up something, and was smacking it around. Space mouse? Not
very likely, with no signs of plant or animal life around, excluding themselves and the puny patch of grass
they occupied.
Whatever it was, RK was in love with it. Becker couldn't hear anything, but he could see that the cat's
sides were pumping up and down with the force of his purring.
A few feet further on, something gleamed in the beam of the work light, and Becker bent to examine it.
Like the object RK was mauling, the thing was long and thin, maybe had been pointed on the end at one
time, but the tip was broken off. There were definite spiral markings on it, he saw as he brushed away the
soil. It glistened in the light, refracting rich shades of blue and green and deep red from its white surface.
It looked like a big, carved opal. Pretty thing. He tucked it in the sack and swung his beam around. It
flashed on several other pieces like the one he had, all broken and sticking up through the soil. He took a
couple of other specimens, and made a note of the precise coordinates of this location so he could land
here again, in case this stuff was valuable. Then he grabbed RK and headed back to the ship.
He finished reloading his cargo. As usual, he left a few of the more expendable pieces behind to lighten
his load. He had inventory scattered all over the galaxy now. Well, most of the sites where he'd stashed
the stuff were uninhabited, so it would keep. He could reclaim it if he found a market later. Finally, after
he got the cargo stowed aboard once more, Becker lugged RK, the new treasure firmly clamped in his
fangs, back onto the ship.
First things first, he decided. He set their course back to Kezdet and lifted off. It wasn't like he wanted to
go to Kezdet.
He hated the damned place, but it was-unfortunately-the Condor's home port. The ship had originally
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been registered to Becker's foster father, Theophilus Becker, who bought Jonas from a labor farm to
help with the business when the boy was twelve. The old man had died ten years later, leaving the ship,
the business, and his private maps of all manner of otherwise uncharted byways and shortcuts through
various star systems and galaxies for his adopted son. Becker had spent every possible minute in space in
the years since.
Once the ship was out of the planet's gravity well and the course was set, Becker turned the helm of the
ship over to the computer. Too exhausted to fix himself anything else to eat, he opened another can of
RK's cat food and ate that before settling down for some sleep. The cat, who had of course been fed as
soon as the two returned to the ship-otherwise nothing else could have been accomplished-was already
sacked out on top of the specimen bag containing the strange rocks they'd salvaged from the planet.
Becker pushed the recline button on his seat at the console and slept at the helm. His bunk was full of
cargo. Besides, he couldn't get to it for the stacks of feed sacks full of seeds he'd picked up several
weeks before.
He woke up finally when a paw on his cheek told him he'd better do so if he didn't want another pat, this
time with the claws bared. He looked up into RK's big green eyes. Something was different about that
cat, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He fed both of them again, checked his course, and emptied the
collection sack onto the console. Time to get a better look at what he'd acquired.
He didn't figure he needed to use gloves with these specimens, since the cat had been carrying one
around in its mouth with no ill effects since they'd found them, so he dug a couple of the spiral rocks out
and ran a scanner over them. No radiation, nothing to poison, burn, freeze, or sting him. He knew that,
having just picked them out of the sack with his bare hands.
RK crowded in close as Becker examined the objects, stroking them, turning them, trying to chip a piece
off one with a rock hammer. The stones had a strange feeling to them-a sort of hum, as if they were alive.
Maybe they were. Damn, if these were sentient life forms, he'd have to take them back. He was going to
have to check this out with an expert. He dumped the rocks back into the collection bag.
There wasn't much else to do, so he slept again. When he awoke, it was to find RK standing on his
chest. Becker thought the cat must have been sleeping on his arm, because his right hand tingled as if it
had been numbed from the cat's weight. His right ear felt funny, too.
That was when he realized what was different about the cat. Two green eyes blinked back at him, the
good one and the one RK had lost in the crash. The cat's right ear was also whole and perfect. At that
point the cat stood up, stretched itself halfway down Becker's leg, and stuck its tail in his face. Becker
was stunned to see that the tail had straightened out, lengthened to a luxuriant and elegant appendage,
and now waved quite handsomely. Below the tail, well, yeah, that missing part had returned there, too.
Becker lifted his own right hand and saw that the stubs of his fingers had regrown. His hands looked just
as they had before he'd come into contact with RK-maybe minus the odd scar. He touched his ear. That
felt whole again as well. What in the name of the three moons of Kezdet was going on here? How could
this have happened-not that he was complaining. The only thing he could think was they'd run into some
kind of healing force on that derelict planet. If the planet was capable of this kind of miracle, it was no
wonder somebody had wrecked the place looking for the secret. As soon as he sold some of this cargo
and reprovisioned-he was getting tired of cat food-he was going right back there to see what he could
find.
"Mercy, Roadkill, when we get to Kezdet we're both gonna be so damned good lookin' we'll have to
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watch out they don't snag us for the pleasure houses." Not that he didn't intend to go there straightaway
himself. And he'd take Roadkill with him.
Hell, they didn't call those places cathouses for nothing. Must be a lady cat or two around there would
appreciate the attentions of a handsome space traveler like his buddy.
The trip back was real pleasant. For one thing, the cabin and hold didn't stink. Not even a little bit.
Becker had to keep looking around to make sure Roadkill was still aboard because the whole ship had
stopped smelling like cat piss. It was a smell you got used to, but it was nice to get used to not smelling it.
For another thing, they were making really good time, even though they had been traveling vast uncharted
distances from theirwell, Becker's-home world.
Theophilus Becker had been much more than just a junk dealer-er-salvage broker. He was a salvage
broker, a recycling engineer, and an astrophysicist. Jonas's new master, who liked to be called Dad, was
also just a tad on the reckless side. The man liked nothing better than riding the wild wormhole, finding
the quirks in quarks. He'd known how to detect those places where time and space pleated up,
accordion-style, to be shot through for a shortcut by a space-farer with the guts to use them. Jonas had
learned a great deal from Theophilus.
So it was a matter of only a month or so before Becker, with RK trotting along beside him like a dog,
showed up in front of his favorite bawdyhouse. A girl he didn't recognize came to the door. She was fully
dressed in a long-sleeved coverall fastened clear to her neck, not the attire he was accustomed to in this
place.
"Oh, Lord, not another one," she said.
"You don't sound glad to see me," he replied, smiling. It had never been customary to bring flowers or
any other greenery here-just a few hundred credits and the courtship was complete.
"When will you men get the word that this is an honest establishment for making safety belts for flitters
now? The Didis are history."
"History?" Jonas felt stupid. "I like history. What do you mean, history? Where's Didi Yasmin?"
"In jail, where she belongs. Where have you been? Outer space?"
"As a matter of fact, yeah," he said. "Why is she in jail?"
"I haven't got time enough to tell you," the girl said. "But you might try asking some of the kids on
Maganos-little girls she forced into prostitution." She glared at him.
"Hey, not with me! No, don't look at me that way. I like big girls-grown up girls, women, actually. I
never-aw..."
His hostess's attention was diverted by Roadkill, who was rubbing against her ankles. She reached down
and petted him, then picked him up. "What a pretty kitty," she said.
"Lady, I wouldn't do that," Becker said. "He'll take your arm off."
But RK, the traitor, lay happily purring in her arms, butting up against her chin with the top of his head,
shamelessly cadging caresses. Becker wished he could do the same thing.
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"What's his name?" the girl asked.
"RK," Becker hedged.
"What does that stand for?" Now she was tickling the traitor's tummy. It was white. Becker had had no
idea that the cat's belly was white. RK never wanted him to do any tickling. Quite the contrary.
"Refugee Kitty," Becker lied, knowing that the truth would not go down well with her. "I found him on a
derelict ship-his people had been killed in a freak accident and he was in a bad way."
He hoped this would elevate him in her estimation from a simple child molester to a child molester who
was at least apparently kind to animals. "And my name is Jonas. Jonas Becker. What's yours?"
"Khetala," she said.
"Nice to meet you," he said.
"I can't say the same to you, Mr. Becker. You'll find Kezdet has changed quite a bit since the Didis and
the Piper got what was coming to them. Maybe you considered the houses harmless fun, but I was
forced to work in one before the Lady Epona liberated us. I don't share your attitude."
"Hey, I understand. I was slave farm labor myself but I got adopted out. I " She was staring at him
stonily. Even he knew it wasn't the same. His voice drifted off into confusion and he reached for RK,
who took a slice at him. Becker ignored the cat's reluctance to be dislodged and firmly, if painfully,
extricated him from Khetala's arms. "We-uh-nice meeting youwe'll just be going now."
She turned on her heel and went back inside. One good thing about meeting her. He wasn't in the mood
any more for what he had always let pass for love. So it was time to get back to work instead. He'd
always found making money a fairly acceptable substitute for most pleasurable pursuits.
Before he went to the trouble of renting a container cruiser and offloading his cargo, he made a few
inquiries about the state of the market. He was gratified to find that the Lady Epona who had so
thoroughly cleansed the planet of evil hadn't minded junk, presumably as long as its purveyors weren't
htterbugs.
The nano-bug market was still flourishing. He took a look around before settling in for the day. It was
getting harder to find a real good deal any more. The original Mars probe, still in prime condition
(because it hadn't worked in the first place), had been recovered by a guy who used to work for Red
Planet Reclamation-the outfit that was supposed to return planets to their pristine condition after the
minerals were stripped. The guy wanted enough of it to build a whole new planet from scratch. Becker
shook his head and moved on. He also found a great booth for rockhounds. He was particularly
attracted to four new gemstones he hadn't seen before-bairdite, giloglite, nadezdite, and acornite. Bairdite
was a multicolored opaque stone with a pebbly crystalline surface striped both ways with red and
yellow-probably iron and sulfur deposits. Giloglite was the color of serpentine, only translucent and
cloudy. Nadezdite was a transparent purple with gold flecks, and the acornite was a blue-green stone
that cleared in the middle to the most gorgeous deep teal transparency he had ever seen in any rock, real
or manufactured. The sequence of names sounded familiar to him, but he couldn't quite think why.
He and RK checked out the food booths. There was a meat chili advertised as the specialty of Ma'aowri
3. It smelled really good to him, but RK took one sniff and backed off. When Becker tried to get closer,
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RK gave him a look that was hard to fathom, but left him thinking that maybe the meat in the dish was a
little too close to home for comfort-whether to him or RK he wasn't sure. He passed up oddly shaped
fruits, cheap fructose candy and waxy chocolate, various roast beasts, some fairly bizarre vegetation, and
assorted other delicacies too alien to identify. He finally settled on a good old-fashioned gyro and a cup
of cat, then returned to the stall he'd rented and began to unload his container into it.
After Becker had displayed his wares as temptingly as possible, he sat in the throne-like command seat
he'd taken from an otherwise totaled Percenezatorian battle wagon. RK lay on the collection bag from
the last trip. It had become his bed of choice. He had been willing to part with only the smallest and most
broken piece of that funny opal-looking mineral. Becker kept that piece in his pocket as a
deal-sweetener. It was eyecatching enough that maybe somebody would decide that his wife couldn't live
without it.
As far as sales went, the day was pretty slow going-the usual looky-loos, a couple of rich teenage boys
looking for ways to jazz up their cheap transportation. Becker figured he would offload what he could
here and then move along to Twi Osiam to do some major trading and restocking. About then, she came
along, her entourage trailing behind her.
She wasn't really his type-too young, for one thing. She had a figure like a twelve-year-old boy who had
been dead of starvation for a year or two. Her hair was long and curly in the back and short and spiky in
the front. But she was fashionably and expensively dressed in the furs and skins of several now extinct
species. Amazing that clothes that cost so much could cover so little of what was, to his eye, fairly
pointless to reveal.
Her entourage consisted of four men a little older than she was, all of whom ranged restlessly behind her.
"Stay," she told them, in a tone Becker would have been a fool to try to use on RK. "Helloo," she cooed
to him. Well, he had been right. He'd returned to his natural drop-dead handsomeness and now women
found him so irresistible he'd get tired of it. Except, oddly enough, for Khetala. Later.
"Helloo, yourself," he said. "What can I do for you, princess?" he asked, judging correctly which
endearment she would prefer. RK, on the other hand, was clearly not about to try and flatter this
customer. His back -was up; his tail, in its fully recovered state, would have made an excellent
bottlebrush, his eyes were slits, his ears were flat, and he was hissing like a tubful of vipers. Becker
stepped in front of him, to block his cat's view of this doubtlessly well-heeled customer as well as to
block the customer's view of him.
"I was hoping you could advise me," she said. "I was told you know just everything there is to know
about slightly used equipment."
"Not everything, but more than most," he agreed.
"I'm starting a small business and it would be a big help if I had just a teensy little fleet of ships all to
myself. I can get some very good bargain spacecraft, but they all need parts here and there and I was just
wondering-hoping actually-that you would have a few things."
"Like what? "
She snapped her fingers and one of the men appeared and recited by rote a string of instruments,
equipment, systems, and parts. Becker suspected the man wasn't actually a flesh and blood type, but an
android. For one thing, he didn't pause for breath during the whole fifteen minutes it took to recite the
lady's shopping list. For another thing, while he was talking, RK peed on his foot and shredded his lower
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Acorna'sPeopleByAnneMcCaffreyandElizabethAnnScarboroughOneOntheplanetofLaboue,withintheopulentchiefresidenceofHafizHarakamian,inoneofthehundredsoffinelycrafted,hand-joinedcabinetsofrareandlustrouswoodsinwhichhekepthissmallestandoftenmostpreciouscollectibles,Acornahadonceseenadisplayofbrilliantlybeje...

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