Acorna's Search Part 10

Of course they're troubled. They've been gallivanting around the universe in one of those ridiculous contraptions. It's enough to unhinge anybody."

That's not it, you old fool. I can hear already that it's something far more serious. If you will just quit sending so much perhaps we could read why they've come to see us."

Acorna couldn't tell which thoughts were coming from which Ancestor, they came so quickly, but she settled herself in the middle of a group of three. Four more ambled casually to the edge of the group and put their heads down to tear up some gra.s.s.

She waited for them to raise their heads and begin chewing before she said, "People are missing. A lot of people. We are terraaforming we put things back where they belong, just as they were in the old days. On the first day of our survey, Liriili disappeared. Some of us thought she might have found a way to leave the surface. But then in a few days, another person disappeared and then another, and then, suddenly, people began vanishing in large numbers."

"Which people?" the Grandmother nearest her asked.

Acorna told her.

"Hmmm," was the only reply.

Thariinye said, "So we were wondering, Wise Ones, if you know anything about Vhiliinyar that might explain what's causing this problem. Since you have been around longer than anyone else, we thought you might remember something that will help us find our friends. Anything you can remember would be useful, even dating as far back as the time of the Friends."

"We're not that old, Sonny," a Grandfather informed him. I "And if we were wise enough to know all about it, we'd have been wise enough to warn you to avoid it, wouldn't we? Vanishings on Vhiliinyar... I've never heard of such a thing, myself."

"Oh," Thariinye said, with a wink at Acorna. "Then Maarni must have been wrong when she said how knowledgeable of ancient history the Ancestors are. How sad. I'm sure that, I whatever has become of her, she'll be understanding if you don't know enough to help."

The old Grandfather gave a snort and a very indecorous laugh and one of the Grandmothers, a rather plump one, nuzzled Thariinye's cheek with her horn. "Isn't that the cutest thing you ever saw? The little dear is trying to manipulate us."

"Aren't you the clever one, though?" cooed another Grandmother.

Thariinye ducked his head boyishly at being caught out. But Acorna said, "I don't see how we can be said to be manipulating you. We've told you already we need your help. And Maarni id among the missing, though it's true we don't know what she's thinking. But she certainly found a lot of worth in the stories you told her, and that's part of what gave us the idea of coming to you in case you know something that might help."

"Maarni is that nice girl who likes those tall tales you tell her, Hree," the plump Grandmother said to the Grandfather.

"Oh, yes, she's a polite girl. Always brings the most delicious flowers she grows herself when she comes for stories. I'm sorry she's missing. Wish I could think of something to help. Which of my stories did she tell you?" he asked.

"The one about the waterfall was the first one," Acorna said. "That was awfully interesting. It certainly shed some light on the characters of the Friends. I had no idea they ever thought of the Ancestors in that sort of way."

"Well, of course they did, silly girl. Otherwise, how do you suppose your kind came to be?"

"Haarilii, don't scandalize the poor girl. Of course it took more than that, sweetheart, there was a lot of scientific tinkering involved in getting from us and them to you. We were alien lifeforms to each other initially, after all."

"She also mentioned after we found an artifact that there were once another kind of Linyaari sii- Linyaari, I believe she said. They lived in the oceans. She told us that they'd been gone for some time, that they vanished one day long ago." Is that what she said?" one of the Grandmothers asked in a brisk disapproving voice. "Some things she wasn't supposed to repeat."

"Really?" Acorna asked. "Why not?"

Thariinye asked eagerly, "Was it something maybe to do with breeding?"

Thariinye, do not be rude!" Acorna told him. It wasn't that she thought there was anything one shouldn't speak of regarding breeding. It was just that it seemed to be all Thariinye was thinking about. That wasn't exactly the case Acorna thought he was just hoping the topic the Ancestors expounded on first would be the one he found most interesting.

She was rather surprised therefore when one of the Grandmothers said, "How did you guess?"

Before he could answer a Grandfather continued, "It's not about breeding in a recreational kind of way, sonny, I know what you're thinking. It's about the scientific kind of breeding, which supposedly takes the strengths of two species and combines them to make what should be an even stronger species. It requires some fiddling by those who are directing the process. That's how the Friends took themselves and us and came up with you younglings. But it's also how they came up with the sii- Linyaari."

"How can that be?" Acorna asked, though she could think of several reasons how it might be.

"The way I heard it," the plump Grandmother said confidentially, "it's because the Friends were not all alike. Some were one kind and some were another."

"I'm sure they meant nothing bad by it, creating those strange creatures," said a very old Grandfather. "They were just trying different forms out. They did that, my grandsire said. Always tinkering."

"Aye," said a very old Grandmother wisely. "My Grandam hinted that the Friends had many different appearances that even the same person took many seemings sometimes. She never came right out and said shapeshifter, but she did say and she had actually met them, mind you that we were not the first people they took to themselves and blended with. That they had done it elsewhere, with other races. Vhiliinyar was only one of the planets they had inhabited throughout their long history."

"But you're not supposed to repeat that," the plump Grandmother told them. "It would upset people."

"Yes," Acorna said, finding herself a little stunned by the information, "I can well imagine. That would explain the existence of the sii- Linyaari, I suppose, but what about their disappearance? "

"Tell us again what happened back on Vhiliinyar," another Grandmother said, c.o.c.king her ears forward to show that she was listening most intently to Acorna.

"Well except for our friends going missing, nothing, really, which is what was so odd," Acorna told her. "You would think, given our telepathic powers, that if something was about to capture our people or make them vanish as it did, even if the ground swallowed them up or some unseen bird of prey swooped away with them, at least one of them would have cried out for help. But no one remaining reports hearing anything like that, through their minds or their ears. The missing people were just gone."

"And you're sure it's not those bug things?" asked a Grandfather with a narrow-eyed half-snort toward the sky.

"No, Grandfather. If it had been the Khleevi carrying them off, Aari would have known. He senses them, you know. Besides, the Khleevi were never good at hiding their presence or at any sort of subtlety, for that matter. Khleevi like their victims to scream, and to prolong the screaming as long as possible. They depended on terror as their primary tactic. It is what they feed on. Why would they do something so puzzling that no one can figure out whether to be afraid or not? It would serve no good purpose for them."

"What I'd like to know is, if something on Vhiliinyar made our folk disappear, did it make Khleevi disappear, too?" declared a Grandmother. "And if it did, why didn't it disappear all or them? Preferably before they made such a big mess of our planets."

You know, I'm beginning to remember something," the eldest Grandmother said. "I was talking with Grandam once about our natures. You remember don't you, Hraaya, the old stories of how fierce and smart and courageous our Terran forebears were? How the only way they survived was to be so wily and dangerous that the men of Terra could not capture them without trickery?"

"Ho, yes, who can forget? It's part of who we are."

"Yes," she said. "But it's not part of who they are, these younglings. The Friends, I remember Grandam saying, did not believe in fighting or killing, even when extremely provoked." She paused, ate a mouthful of gra.s.s, and chewed thoughtfully. "And I remember asking, well then, how did they deal with people who wanted to hurt them maybe hurt their younglings? And she said, oh, they didn't do anything violent, but the aggressors disappeared. I wish such a thing worked on the Khleevi. It is certain those bugs were nasty enough to deserve to disappear. Perhaps your answer lies there, child. You did say you thought it might be something from the Ancients."

Acorna let her breath out in a deep sigh. Progress, at last. She began munching on a gra.s.s stem herself. So, once upon a time the Friends had caused aggressors to disappear. Interesting maybe, a little, but she still didn't know how the Friends had caused it, or why it didn't work on the Khleevi when they invaded Vhiliinyar, or why the long-gone Friends would cause people who were not aggressors, but their own descendants, to disappear now.

Thariinye, reading her, said aloud, "Well, I think, if it is the Friends come back to haunt us, that these disappearances are a mistake. I bet they wouldn't have let it happen if they were still around I mean, the Friends took off a long time ago, didn't they? So if they left something there that started grabbing people it probably just didn't recognize us."

Acorna looked at her young male friend, who was speaking matter-of-factly and as usual without troubling to engage many of his higher intellectual functions, as if he had suddenly ' manifested genius. Which, in a way, he had.

"Excuse me, Kh.o.r.n.ya," said the Attendant in the lime and fuchsia silks, approaching from behind, "Thariinye, we must ask you to retire for now and leave the Ancestors to their own company. So much stimulation, especially in the wake of the disaster that recently overtook us and the enormous output of energy required to restore the Ancestral Meadows, drains their stamina and vitality. Do you see how translucent their horns are becoming, just from conversation, without even the strain of healing?"

"Nonsense, Granddaughter, I'm as spry as I ever was!" insisted the Grandmother who seemed to be this woman's special charge. But the woman stroked Grandmother's nose and cheeks and kissed her between the eyes and said, "Yes, but I can't keep up with you. And Kh.o.r.n.ya and Thariinye have had a long journey. If you are not tired, they probably are."

"Ah, yes," the oldest Grandfather said. "They don't make younglings like they used to."

Acorna smiled at the remark, one so appropriate to the conversation they'd just been having.

The Attendant in lime and fuchsia, whose name was Imaara, led Acorna and Thariinye to a pavilion and showed them where they could lay their sleeping mats. "You know, you might wish to consult the Ancestors' library," she said.

"But I thought that the destruction of our planetary records by the Khleevi was total, that nothing remained of the files " Acorna began.

Imaara said, "Oh, I don't mean any of the Linyaari records here on narhii-Vhiliinyar. I mean the Ancestral ones we attendants use as our handbook, training manual, journal, history, chronicle, what have you. These are personal records, not part of the planetary system of pooled knowledge. The main Linyaari archive was destroyed during the attack, but not our work. Our original materials are always carefully protected, and new material is divided among us. It is a continuously growing work, you see, as parts of it are still under construction."

"Really?" Acorna asked.

Oh, yes, it is a careful record of our Ancestors' preferences, habits, histories, and perhaps most important for your cause, for of course, I couldn't help but overhear it's my job to do so, in fact all of the Ancestor's utterances. We have historical notes dating all the way back to the time when the Linyaari first began attending the Ancestors."