The message concluded, "The dastardly insect creatures of torture, doom, and enormous appetite, the Khieevi, are known to be attacking the Niriian homeworld. Any who dare assist the Niriians, feel free to do so, please, -with our commendations and blessings. All others in the same quadrant might think seriously about evacuation or defense, as your culture dictates."
Becker gave him a disgusted look, but said only, "Good. Now then, that should be translated to all of the languages of the nearby races. I don't expect, since -we're making first contact here, more or less, their Standard is going to be really up to par."
"Ah! A good point." He clapped his hands. A servant appeared. "Please fetch our Linyaari guests-all of them. Ask them to bring their clever translation devices and tell them it is a matter of some urgency."
Hours later, -which seemed like months to Becker, each Linyaari had contributed a translation of the message in all of the languages each of them knew. Since all but Maati and Acorna had spent considerable time visiting nearby planets at some point in their lives, they felt they had pretty much covered it.
Meanwhile, Nadhari and her staff went on red alert, and to the whine of the sirens, the first evacuation drill began, just as the drone was shot into space.
The Balakiire had not yet landed on the first planet on the list of those to be warned when they heard a broadcast that at once made their mission and their caution futile and provided them with a new mission.
Oddly, this new mission began in a similar fashion to their present one.
"Mayday, Mayday! This is the Niriian vessel Fo^en broadcasting a Mayday to all worlds and ships in the area. Our homeworld is under attack. The Khieevi have landed. Our ship escaped before the invasion. Mayday! Come in, please." With a glare at Liriili, Neeva picked up the communication device.
"Please give us your coordinates, Fo^en. The Linyaari ship Balakiire, is reading you loud and clear."
The Niriian gave the Fo^en's coordinates. "Hurry, Balakiire. We are nearly out of fuel and air. We were on our way in for both when the Khieevi attack commenced. The Khieevi have covered our cities like sweet-bugs converging on their hive."
"We are coming, Fo^en. Please do not send additional communication unless we request it or you are in further distress. To do so may alert the Khieevi to your-and our-position. Signal that you have understood and then please, silence unless we contact you."
"Understood, Balakiire. Be swift, be swift, please."
Liriili snorted. "I suppose we will join them just in time for a Khieevi attack."
"Perhaps," Neeva said. "But I, for one, hope not. At least their signal should be heard by nearby worlds and other craft, so our personal warnings to those worlds will not be necessary."
"I wonder what they will make of it on narhii-Vhiliinyar," Liriili said with a bitter smile. "I warned them."
"Yes, you did, and fortunately, with you no longer in charge, they will probably ready the evacuation ships, refuel the fleet, gather the lifeforms, and prepare to leave narhii-Vhiliinyar in the direction farthest from the Niriian world. I suspect they may fly into Federation space. That will be the recommendation of those of us who have been in contact with the peoples of that alliance."
"Yes, and they "will come with their weapons, disrespecting the principles the Ancestors taught us."
Melireenya turned in her seat and stared at the former viizaar, "What is it with you? You are not satisfied one way or the other. Would the destruction of our people please you now that you have been deemed unfit to lead them?"
Liriili gave her a superior smile but didn't answer. Neeva was becoming alarmed by the woman's attitude. Instead of helping her heal, this entire experience was driving her more and more into herself. She -was so aloof there was no question of touching her with a horn to try to heal her and besides, she seemed to be resistant to the usual bonding that cohered the Linyaari.
The next hours were spent in preparation to take the Niriians aboard. The Balakiire had no fuel to give them, and their ships were fueled somewhat differently. Extra berths were prepared, the gardens hyper-planted with varieties of plants the Ninians "were known to favor.
The Niriians were pathetically glad to see their Linyaari allies, and also somewhat shame-faced. "VLfe^haanye-Ferlili Neeva," the captain of the Niriian ship began. "We heard you and your crew had been taken into custody by false authorities. Please know that our lives are yours from this day forward and we will defend you always to any-"
She choked, sputtered, swallowed, and continued. "I was about to say, to any who seek you on our planet. But it is unlikely we will have a home to return to."
"Which brings up a good question," Khaari interjected. "Where should we go now? Return to narhii-Vhiliinyar?"
"Yes, but we should emulate Captain Becker and take evasive action, don't you think, rather than returning directly? In case the Khieevi have spared any ships to follow the Fo^en."
"A lot of good it did the junk man," Liriili sneered.
"How do you know what good it did him?" Khaari demanded. "We don't know what became of anyone yet."
But they were to learn very shortly. On the other side of the wormhole, they picked up a broadcast.
The first portion was in Standard, and while the Balakiire's crew were putting their heads together trying to remember enough of that language to decipher the message, it was rebroadcast in other languages.
The Niriians became agitated, "They know! They know about the attack! Perhaps they will send help. They are speaking our tongue!"
Neeva looked up. Khaari said, "I know that voice! That's Thariinye speaking!"
"He's alive!" Melireenya said.
"Of course he is," Liriili said. "I told all of you that he would be perfectly all right, and no doubt the brat is as well."
The language switched again, this time to Linyaari, and Neeva smiled widely. "That's Khornya."
They recognized other voices as the broadcasts were repeated in other languages-Aari's and those of Miiri and Kaarlye, which made Khaari, who was related to Kaarlye on her mother's side, sigh with relief.
When the Standard broadcast was repeated, Neeva said, "I know that voice, too. Doesn't that sound like Khornya's kind and generous uncle Hafiz? He spoke before we parted of start ing a trade colony on that moon where we went to recuperate after-"
The other two nodded, indicating she needed to be no more specific. "That must surely be where they all are now."
"I have the coordinates right here, Neeva," Melireenya's voice practically sang. "Perhaps he can contact the Federation and they will drive the Khieevi away." She smiled up at the Niriians. "Your world may be saved yet."
They clasped each other so tightly their horns locked. "Only let it be so," the captain said fervently.
Acorna 'was awakened by a brilliant light shining in her eyes. She opened them wide. She was very tired, having spent the day formulating evacuation plans for the children. The first shipload carrying the youngest ones was to leave in two days' time with Calum on the AcaSecki. The crew of the Haven would send their youngest along too, but the older ones insisted they would stay and fight. Acorna had also done translations of follow-up messages to broadcast in the languages she knew-Linyaari of course, but also Federation-based languages. The Khieevi had invaded Federation space once in search of Linyaari, who was to say they would not do it again?
The tension and her efforts both had *wearied her until she had fallen onto her cot too tired to say goodnight to Maati.
Now the light awakened her and her first thought was that she was being wakened because the compound was under attack.
Aari knelt beside her, a few feet from her sleeping pad. He looked rather odd, but not especially alarmed. Maati, on the other side of Acorna from her brother, was rolled onto her side and covered completely by her blanket. She did not seem to notice the light. Acorna rubbed her eyes. "What is it, Aari? Is something the matter?" she whispered.
"Hark!" he said.
"What?" she asked, thinking for one ridiculous moment that he might break into a holiday carol, though she had no idea why he would unless he had been inspired by something he had been reading. But the archaic term was the only word he uttered in Standard. The rest was in Linyaari.
"What light is breaking through the pavilion flap over there? It is the suns and Khornya is the moons!" he asked in a very soft version of their rather nasal native language. Evidently this was not, then, an alarm, unless it was perhaps in some sort of code.
Otherwise, oh dear, she had to wonder if perhaps he might have a fever? An infection perhaps? Or a poisoning? She had no idea really which dangers he might be more susceptible to, without his horn, than the average Linyaari.
"Aari, are you all right?" she asked. "You look ratherwell, no pale, but see-throughish. I don't like the texture of your skin. And what you are saying does not entirely make sense. Here, let me feel your pulse. . . ."
But he backed away a bit, babbling, "A reed is a reed by any other name and would still not smell very much but be as graceful and delicious as Khornya." He beckoned her to follow. Which she did because whether his strange utterances were a code for danger or because he was ill, she could hardly ignore them.
Aari thought at first he must be dreaming. Khornya knelt a short distance from his sleeping mat. She was surrounded by a very bright light, as if perhaps she'd taken .radiation, and was looking at him with a yearning that echoed that he felt whenever he looked at her.
"Khornya!" he said, when she did not speak. "Khornya, is something wrong? Are the Khieevi attacking?" He looked for Thariinye, to waken and warn him, but the other man was not on his mat. This was not unusual for Thariinye. He had been gone a great deal lately, working on translations and evacuation procedures and also apparently chatting up females, even if they were the wrong species, just to keep in practice, as he said.
Khornya did not answer him directly but instead said something very strange. He thought it might be code, but if so, no one had given him the key.
"How do I love you?" she asked in Linyaari. "Let me count the trails! I love the very ions scattered behind your vessel. I love the fragrance of the grains on which you sup. I love the-"
"You do?" Aari asked, comprehending that what she said was complimentary if not particularly coherent, evidently not code, but her own pent-up feelings. Her tone of voice was rather declaiming and he could not read her at all. But then, there were times when that happened to him. "But-I have no horn."
"I love the horn you do not have and the horn you used to have and the horn you will have again," she continued, rather than answering him. "Come, my love, let us wander into a secluded bower and there take our ease, if you know what I mean?" Very un-Khornya-like, she waggled a silver-white eyebrow and winked at him. He wondered if perhaps Hafiz's gardens had inadvertently been planted with a stand of what was called "loco weed" in the ancient Zane Grey novels of the wild western America.
Either that or it was some peculiar female mating ritual his mother had neglected to tell him about. Well, there was no time to consult her now. Khornya was wafting away and he could not let her wander around this huge alien compound in such a state. Someone might take unfair advantage of her. He rose to follow her.
She flitted ahead of him like one of the ectoplasmic entities of the wraith-haunted ruined -world of Waali Waali his parents had taken him to as a child. Back in the early days of terraforming technology, a powerful company had rapidly terraformed planets, raised great cities upon them, and settled *whole transplanted civilizations upon their surfaces, where they thrived and bred, loved and warred for several eons. And then the terraforming destabilized, the ice caps melted, the seas froze, the mountains erupted, and the ground opened and buckled. The cities were ruined and the people were killed, but the heavy gravity kept them bound to the surface, which had an indelible memory of the former grandeur of its cities imprinted upon its ruins. A similar, more tangible memory of its inhabitants, now bodiless spirits seeking some solid vessel in -which to be reborn, flickered about the ruins in the same "way Khornya's white form was now kindled, now quenched, as she wound her way through the ornamental back alleys of Hafiz's compound.
He could only follow, the winds and rain of Dr. Hoa's climactically generated monsoon soaking through his mane, his steps clicking quickly up cobbled steps leading through narrow passages and by doorways shrouded -with night-velveted rugs and blankets, their patterns picked out golden with the light of the holo-torches from the main thoroughfares. Suddenly he saw Khornya's -white form disappear through a doorway and he found it, concealed by a waterfall of luminous beads, then he too quickly entered.
He threaded through -what seemed a maze, except that instead of blank walls, there were more often curtains, blankets, rugs, beads, and once, the side of a large gray beast with flapping ears, long curving fangs, a nose like a snake, legs like pillars, and small, disinterested eyes that regarded him mildly, then returned to contemplating the infinite. Aari passed the beast, but when he looked back, all he saw was blackness.
He began to -wonder and to fear. Perhaps he was still in the Khieevi torture machine, and his mind -was playing cruel tricks on him, all of this a mere illusion to build his hope, to give him a dream they could cruelly dash? But--well, no. He didn't hurt. That was a sure sign there were no Khieevi. When he had been with the Khieevi the pain -was always -with him and now there -was nothing but his body, feeling whole and quite astonishingly alive, and the night, and Khornya flickering ahead of him, a beckoning candle.
Abruptly, her white form twinkled out ahead of him and then, much farther than he thought she could have gone in such a brief instant, he heard her call, "Aari?" in a rather plaintive and childish voice. He rushed forward.
"Khornya? "
"Aari, where are you?" she sounded not frightened but anxious.
"Right behind you. I'll be there in a moment," he called, and he -was. Suddenly he found himself facing her across not a room, but a moonlit field, much like the ones he remembered from Vhiliinyar when he -was a boy. The moons shone down through mist rising from a free-flowing stream, and night birds crooned softly from the boughs of scattered trees. Khornya stood near one of the trees beside the stream, and noted his arrival with relief.
"There you are!"
"Of course I am." He went to her. He -was relieved to see she seemed healthier and more substantial than she had at first appeared in his pavilion. Her skin radiated warmth and the sweet clean floral smell she carried with her. But there -was another more enticing scent emanating from her as -well. She looked up at him -with her eyes wide and shining as the moons and her mouth moist.
"I feared you wouldn't come back," she said softly.
"Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution," he said.
"Excuse me?"
"It's something I read recently," he told her, his hand running through her mane, the backs of his fingers stopping to feel the curve of her cheek. "It seemed appropriate."
She sighed. "It sounds better in Standard."
"I will ask my parents to tell me Linyaari love poetry and fill your ears with it, if that's what you -want," he said, realizing that the language of love must have been what she'd been trying to speak when she -was in his tent. She was right, even with the meaning rather unclear, the poetry from the books he'd been reading did sound much better in Standard.
"That is not all I want," she said, her voice husky and her breath sweet.
He felt parts of himself he'd thought dead rushing to fill his veins with life as hot and strong, as urgent as magma seeking to escape a volcanic fissure. She lifted her arms, almost as if in a trance, and he took her into his own and held her. Her sweet musky scent swept over him as they slid together into the wildflower sprinkled grass, which was not damp and dewy as he expected, but as warm and comforting as a blanket.
Annella and Maati let out a sigh at the same time. Jana pulled them away from the control booth for the holo suite. She had Laxme by the ear. Thariinye lingered a little until Maati reached back and snagged his arm.
"They deserve a little privacy," she said.
"I maybe should have given him a few more pointers before we started this," Thariinye said.
"There was no time," Laxme said. "They're going to make us leave pretty soon and we had to finish it-get them together before whatever is going to-happen, happens."
"Looked to me like he was doing-they both were doing- just fine, without your advice," Maati told Thariinye. "And we should leave them to do it."
Jana grinned at her. "I think you're wise beyond your years, Maati."
"Someone has to be," Maati said, with a meaningful look at Thariinye.
Feeling quite pleased with themselves and considering their good deed a job -well done, the group of young people emerged from the Spanish-Moorish castle that housed the grandest of the holo hotels. The curtain swags and bead-draped maze of back streets through which Aari and Acorna had followed each other's doppelganger was the hotel lobby. The suite Aari and Acorna occupied now was on the second floor. The field of fragrant flowers and grass was actually a rather nice Turkomoon carpet, the stream an en suite lap pool, in case they wanted to bathe after their . . . activities.
No sooner had they emerged however, than Maati realized the air smelled subtly different-she recognized the smell too. It was the smell of ships landing. Linyaari ships. She recognized it even before she heard the boots pounding in concerted double time down the street from the spaceport.
With each stroke of the hand, each gentle nip of teeth or lap of tongue, Acorna felt more and more bonded to Aari, as if they -were exchanging their very molecules, which of course, they -were, romantic as the thought might sound. It didn't feel unromantic however. The urges that had been mysteriously rising in her, troubling her dreams, thrilling her at inappropriate moments, were all about thi). This exquisite agonizing ache that made her feel as if she would burst from her skin if something didn't happen. She knew Aari felt the same -way and yet, he hesitated.
"If we-continue," he said. "There will be no going back."
"Why would I want to go back?" she asked. "You are my lifemate. I think I've always known that."
"Really? I didn't think-I couldn't hope-"
She shushed him with a kiss and they moved so that she was poised above him, his hands on her waist.
"Now, beloved?" he asked.
She bit her lower lip and nodded emphatically, "Yes. Now."
The double-quick pounding boots rounded the corner and the security forces halted with two quick and perfectly synchronized stomps. Nadhari Kando paced effortlessly at the head of the cadre and Captain Becker pantingly trailed behind the buff and ready cream of planetary militia from Federation -worlds.
Nadhari glared at the children. "It is long after curfew."
"What curfew?" Jana asked, innocently.
"Were you not at the briefing at twenty hundred hours this evening?" Nadhari asked. "We have a red alert situation and a curfew is in effect until further notice."
"So what're you gonna do, shoot us?" Laxme demanded. He liked being free after his childhood in the mines. He did not take kindly to orders, even from the good guys. Or gals.
Nadhari pursed her lips and regarded him seriously. "No, but you could ask Becker's friend Aari how much fun it is to not be where you're supposed to when the evacuation starts and be left behind when the Khieevi attack."
None of the kids said anything and Nadhari continued. "Now then, Maati, Thariinye, you are to report to the reception area. The Balaklire has just landed and they are very anxious to see that all of you are alive and well. I need to find Aari and Acorna, too."
Becker grimaced and told Maati, "That witch of an administrator came on the Balakiire, too. I bet the Linyaari couldn't take her on the planet anymore. But Neeva really wants to see everybody and make sure you're all okay."
"I'll go tell her Khornya is okay," Maati said. With a wicked grin she added, "Thariinye can fill Liriili .in."
"No, that's okay," Becker said. "Just tell us where Acorna is and I'll get her."
Thariinye's glance strayed toward the hotel entrance and Becker asked, "Are they still in there? Why didn't you say so?'