Acorna's Search Part 9

"If you think you can make yourself useful in other than a supervisory capacity, yeah," Becker said. "Just kidding," he added, seeing, as Acorna did, that Thariinye appeared to be genuinely upset.

"Don't worry about Aari," Thariinye said. "I think I've figured out what happened, Kh.o.r.n.ya. Something went after those elders and you know how Maati is, she would have been in the middle of whatever it was before it knew what hit it. And Aari wouldn't let anything happen to Maati so he went, too. To tell you the truth, I'm glad in a way that, since the others disappeared, Maati and Aari are with them. They can take care of themselves, and save the others, too."

"Your confidence in our friends is very sweet and I know they would both be touched by it," Acorna said.

"Sounds good to me," Becker said. "I hope for once you're right, fella."

The captain strode off toward the Condor with RK wrapped around his neck.

Hafiz and Karina enveloped all the returning survey personnel in scented silken robes and solicitude as soon as they entered the dining gardens Hafiz had created especially to cater to Linyaari tastes.

As she grazed, Acorna kept both her ears and her mind open to conversation and nuances of thought around her. The verbal conversation was perfunctory, but the thoughts she could overhear spun in circles of wonder and fear.

(How did it happen? I'm sure I didn't take my eyes from him for more than a moment not even that yet he simply was nowhere. No sound, no word... How could he leave me like that?)

(But there were three of them! How could three people vanish? Why would they, or why would anyone else want them to?)

(No sinkholes, no avalanches, no eruptions there. I checked before I went there. Liriili checked, too. Gone into the air, as if they had been vaporized. And yet, if that were so, surely we would have heard fearful thoughts, perhaps a moment of startled recognition of what was happening, a cry for help from one who saw it happen to another. Surely something! I don't see how it could have happened without a trace.)

(How?... How?... How? I)

Everyone's thoughts eventually turned to that one question. No one questioned why it had happened. They a.s.sumed that the vanishings were involuntary, under the influence of some irresistible force. No one seemed to believe that any of the missing had reasons to vanish, or that anyone could possibly have a reason for wishing them to do so. They a.s.sumed that something was behind the events on Vhiliinyar, drawing them all along an unknown and possibly hostile path.

But how had it happened? Even if the ground or the heavens had swallowed their friends up, there would have been a ought-cry, an instant's panic, something that might have brought help, or at least a witness to the disappearance. Surely

their vanishing would leave a sign of some kind on all their instruments monitoring the planet. But it hadn't. Every single instance was traceless, leaving not a single clue behind, not even a blip on the energy or heat sensors, or the slightest joggle of the seismic detectors. No unidentified ships had been in their skies, and even the identified ones had remained just as they were in position and population before their friends had vanished.

The Linyaaris' unguarded thoughts at the banquet clearly demonstrated that they were as puzzled as she was, and that no one had any more information than she did to explain what had happened. But perhaps they knew things they were not aware of, had observed connections no one had yet put together. When the grazing was finished, she went to each member of the survey teams with the map of Vhiliinyar she had downloaded from the ship's computer, detailing their various work sites.

She asked each crew where they had last seen the missing people, where were they working when the disappearance occurred. She checked to see if the missing were in areas of the planet new to the survey teams, places that they had not been working before.

Few could exactly pinpoint for her the spots where their comrades went missing, but Kaari at least was able to give her the location of the relatively small area where Neeva and Melireenya had been seen conversing right before they had vanished. And she discovered that Fiiryi, when he disappeared, had been only a few meters from the flitters, on ground everyone had walked over hundreds of times as they unloaded equipment. She herself knew, within a fairly close range, where the people in her party had vanished. It was close to their camp, again in a place that they'd all traversed many times.

Little was decided at Hafiz's banquet that night. Everyone was too tired and distraught to even think, so the planning meeting was postponed until they had a little time to recover from the shock of it. Acorna gathered all the information she could, and took it back to the Condor after dinner, where she showed the maps to Becker and Thariinye. "What I'll have to do first is backtrack to the site where each of the disappearances happened and thoroughly investigate the terrain."

"But people did that when they searched to begin -with!" Thariinye said.

"Not in all cases. The largest numbers of disappearances happened just before the evacuation. No one has searched properly for those people. And no single person has yet searched all of the sites. So I "

"We," Thariinye said. "I'm going, too."

"Me, too," Becker said.

"Captain, you can't," Acorna told him. "The Council won't allow it, even now. You know how they feel about humans on their planet."

"Blessed Mother of Invention!" he roared. "I've been there already probably more than most of your folk. Who brought the bones of your people from Vhiliinyar to narhii-Vhiliinyar? Me! Who saved Aari from that cave after the Khleevi got through with him? Me, that's who!"

"It makes no sense, I agree, but even so, it is how they feel."

"You're taking Mac with you, then," he said. "He's not as good as me, but if he loses you, he knows I'll dismantle him and short out every circuit he's got."

Becker had one of the command chairs turned around to race the two secondary seats he had installed at the Condor's, helm. Acorna and Thariinye each occupied one of these, with RK perched behind Becker's head, on the back of the chair. Now the fourth chair turned and Mac, who had been monitoring the control panel, said, "The Captain is very strict."

Well, please don't be too hard on him, Captain," Acorna said. "He might not be able to stop matters. After all, Aari, Maati, and the elders disappeared from right under my nose."

If you go, he'd better plan on being with you if you vanish, Becker said with a pugnacious jut to his chin as he folded

"I will," Thariinye said. "And we'll get Maati and Aari back, too, and the others. Won't we, Kh.o.r.n.ya?"

"We'll try, Thariinye," she said. "You know, Captain, Uncle Hafiz mentioned something about research. I can't help but feel that whatever is causing these disappearances has nothing to do with the Khleevi. It doesn't have their touch the terror and destruction that are the hallmarks of their inventions. I am beginning to wonder if it is keyed into our own people's history on the planet. It seems to me that if this problem is happening to us now and yet, if what Aari observed was true all over the planet, it did not trouble the Khleevi"

Becker snorted, "Not much troubled the Khleevi. They weren't exactly sensitive little things."

"No, but Aari felt fairly certain that they were unmolested in their destruction of the planet. It seems to me that the destruction our enemies visited upon Vhiliinyar itself may have stirred up some forces from long ago, from back when the Friends first brought life to this planet. Remember what Maarni told us about the sii-Linyaari vanishing into thin air? Maybe these disappearances are related following the same path as the sii-Linyaari. Perhaps the Ancestors would have some clue about this. I wonder if an interview with them might be illuminating."

"Oh, yes," Thariinye said. "The Ancestors are older even than Grandam was. If anyone knows about the olden days they do. I think Joh "

"Captain Becker to you, punk," Becker said.

"All right Captain Becker, then," Thariinye said with a pout, "must take us to narhii-Vhiliinyar to see them. The Ancestors no doubt already know what is happening here and why, and will be able to tell us what has become of our friends in that sarcastic, cryptic way they have. Maybe it is possible they know how to get our friends back. Yes, going to see them is a very good idea." He said this with a great deal of self-satisfaction, as if it had been his idea, which was exactly the sort of thing Thariinye often did that irritated people. But Acorna was glad to think they'd agreed on any valid course of action, no matter who thought of it first.

She would consult with Hafiz, and head back to narhii-Vhiliinyar as soon as possible.

Unlike their descendants, the Linyaari, the Ancestors needed none of the trappings of civilization to live their lives in a happy and fulfilled manner. As soon as the funerals on narhii-Vhiliinyar were over and the losses counted, the Ancestors retired to their accustomed hills, and began to heal the damage left behind by the Khleevi. They had only to apply their horns to the scorched and scored soil to make it flourish again, green with shoots of their favorite gra.s.ses. They were content in their place. The Ancestors' Linyaari handlers needed almost as little as their charges: a place to store the ceremonial trappings, a pavilion for when the weather was inclement, grazing privileges on the newly restored fields, and they, too, were satisfied.

Becker landed at the site of the old s.p.a.ceport and began accepting loads of salvage again from Linyaari who had been picking through the ashes for it. The sale of such gleanings would help to offset some of the Linyaari debt to Uncle Hafiz for the reclamation of both Vhiliinyar and narhii-Vhiliinyar, although in the long run the Linyaari services to Hafiz as healers and psychics would be far more valuable than the more tangible goods they were unearthing. But it felt good for them to be doing something physical, while they were cleaning up the mess the Khleevi had left behind.

Linyaari began lining up, their arms full, some of them pulling makeshift carts and wagons also full of debris, as the ship set down. Becker greeted most of the waiting Linyaari as old friends, but Acorna spared little more than a nod for most of them as she pa.s.sed. Already her thoughts flew ahead of her feet, as she moved quickly toward the hills and her forthcoming visit to the Ancestors.

Thariinye trotted along beside her, occasionally bursting into a flurry of distracted chatter. This told her that he was as profoundly disturbed by the disappearance of their friends as she was. She knew he had grown to admire Aari and was, though he would deny it, genuinely fond of Maati.

They traveled for three days from the s.p.a.ceport before reaching the hills where the Ancestors lived.

Acorna realized as they came down over the brow of one of "1 the hills that the "hills" were actually a single ridge the rim of a 1 very old volcanic crater. A beautiful blue-green lake filled much of the basin, surrounded by flowering blue meadows and groves of young trees. The Ancestors had done a fine job at restoring their homeplace to normalcy.

Two of the Linyaari Attendants walked toward them across 1 the meadow where the four-footed, goat-bearded unicorns I from whom the Linyaari were partly descended stood grazing, 1 sleeping, or simply enjoying the day. The weather of narhii-Vhiliinyar seemed unusually fine after the storms of Vhiliinyar, with high fleecy pink clouds and warm sunshine. At nightfall a light rain would mist the fields for about an hour, just to cool things off, before clearing off so the individual stars could be counted and clearly identified.

"Greetings, Kh.o.r.n.ya and Thariinye," said the female Attendant wearing fuchsia and lime silks. "You are troubled and your news is troubled. Grandmother says you have come to ruin her day. "

"Well, I might do that, but it's not why I've come," Acorna said, dredging up a small smile. "We need help. We need to draw on the wisdom of the Ancestors and their memories of things past. Some of our people have come into danger. We feel that it might be due to things that happened long ago. Only by learning more about the past can we determine what has now become of these people and how best to help them."

"You can ask," the other Attendant said. He wore yellow and sapphire silks and was perhaps a head shorter than Acorna. His voice held a wry twist to it.

When Acorna had conversed with the Ancestors before, the Attendants had served as interpreters most of the time. This time, however, she caught commands from the Old Ones themselves as they approached.

"Hurry up, Children. I'm trying to save you some of this but it isn't easy around these other old goats. n.o.body has any manners these days."

"Never mind her, Younglings. You're troubled. Come graze and tell us what 's on your mind and how we can help."