Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 2 - Acorna's Quest

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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, hav-

ing 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 their own.

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.

was fascinated by Acorna's short horn and delighted by her precocious

ability to understand the numbers he loved most-gambling odds. He de-

manded 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 Amalga-

mated 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 Haraka-

mian 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 pur-

suers, 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

shelter so high that they never "worked off any debt, but remained in per-

petual 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 that rivalled that of Hafiz Harakamian, Del-

szaki 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 sib-

lings had been among the orphans brought to Kezdet for slave labor, but

Judit had escaped by winning one of the scholarships established by Del-

szaki 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 en-

countered Acorna, Delszaki Li was on the verge of despair. It seemed as

supply. Before he met Acorna, Mr. Li had subtly acquired the mineral and

mining rights 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 for-

tune 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 com-

ing 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 own-

ers 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

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 horn 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, Acorna 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 with-

out fear. With the help of Calum, Rafik, and Gill to implement plans for a

working mining base on Maganos Moon, and the sometimes over-

enthusiastic help of Acorna to reach out to the neglected children of

Kezdet, Delszaki Li had the immense gratification of seeing his plan be-

brought to Maganos. Rafik s cousin Tapha had died in an attempt to as-

sassinate 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 ori-

gins, she had no way to guess whether her body would stabilize or whether

she would age and die as rapidly as she had matured.

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 an-

other revolution to free Acorna from her well-meaning friends, and as Ac-

crual Qiwf begins, just such a revolution is about to take place. . .

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

AcaSecki 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 as-

sistant and heir apparent to his uncle Hafiz, the head of House Haraka-

mian. 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. "Sup-

plies 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."

ting until they gave up the search?

Calufti shot a second, almost accusing glance at Mr. Li, who was float-

ing 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 Ca-

lum! 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 assis-

tant, 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 igno-

rance 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 con-

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asmuchofaproblemfortheminersasthefactthattheyhadsuddenlybeensaddledwiththecareofaninfant-andafemaleoneatthat!Yet,hav-ingnodesiretostopworkingaprofitableasteroidbelttobringthechildbacktotheirbase,theyhadnochoicebuttokeepandcareforherasbesttheycould.Inafewdays,theylovedherastheywouldachildoftheirown.T...

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Anne McCaffrey - Acorna 2 - Acorna's Quest

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