^Preface

   The space/time coordinate system
  they used has no relationship to

      Earth, our sun, the Milky Way, or
any other point of reference we could use to find
our way around, and in any coordinate system we
use, they're so far off the edge of the chart that
nobody has ever contemplated going there, even
with the proton drive. So let's just say that they
were somewhere between the far side of nowhere
and the near side of here when their time and space
ran out, and what started as a pleasure cruise ship
turned into a death chamber. They are like us in
many ways besides appearance. They didn't want
to die if they could possibly avoid it; if they
couldn't live, then at least they wanted to die with
dignity and peace instead of in a Khievii torture
cell; and they would happily have thrown away life,
dignity and everything else to save their youngling,
who didn't even know what was about to happen
to them.




2 - ——'                ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

And they had time to talk; what amounted to
several hours by our reckoning, while the Khievii
ship closed in on the little cruiser that had run out

of places to flee to.

"We could offer to surrender if they'd spare

her," she said, looking at the net where their
youngling curled asleep. It was a mercy that she
slept so well; she talked well enough that they'd
have had trouble disguising their meaning from

her if she were awake.

"They make no terms," he said. "They never have."

"Why do they hate us so?"

"I don't know that they do hate," he said.
"Nobody knows what they feel. They are not like
us, and we can't ascribe our emotions to them. All

we know? is what they do."

And they both fell silent for a while, unwill-
ing to speak of what the Khievii did to prisoners
of other races. No one had ever survived capture
by the Khievii, but the images of what happened
after capture were broadcast by the Khievii, in
full three-D reproduction, with sound and color.
Was it a calculated ploy to terrorize, or simply a
display of triumph, as members of a more
humanoid race might display the enemy's flag or
captured ships? No one knew, because the same
things had happened to the diplomat-linguists
who went under sign of peace to make a treaty

with the Khievii.

"Cruel ..." she breathed after a long while

•watching their sleeping child.

"Their only mercy," he said, "is that they have
already let us know to expect no mercy. It won't

'A.corna.                                -^^ 3

happen to us, because we won't be alive when they
reach here."

Since the third broadcast of Khievii prisoner-
torture, shortly after the beginning of -what history
might know as the Khievii Invasion, no ship of
their people had gone anywhere without certain
necessary supplies. The only prisoners taken were
those caught away from a ship or without time to
use those supplies. The others were always far
beyond the reach of pain when the Khievii caught
up with their bodies.

"But I don't like to go without striking even
one blow," he said, "so I have made certain modifi-
cations to our engines. There are some privileges
to being director of Weapons Development; this
system is so recently designed that even the Fleet
has not yet been fitted with it."

His hands were not quite as flexible as ours,
but the fingers worked well enough to key in the
commands that would activate those modifica-
tions; commands too dangerous to be activated by
the usual voice-control system.

"When anything of a mass equal to or greater
than ours approaches within this radius," he told
her, pointing at the glowing sphere that now sur-
rounded their ship in the display field, "the dimen-
sional space around us both will warp, change,
decompose until all the matter within this sphere is
compressed to a single point. They will never
know what happened to us or to their own board-
ing craft." His lips tightened. "We've learned that
they don't fear death; perhaps a mystery will
frighten them somewhat more."

4 -^-?               ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"What happens to the space around us when
the compression effect is triggered?"

"No one knows. It's not something you'd want
to test planet side or from a close observation
point. All we know is that whatever exists within
the sphere is destroyed as if it had never been."

She said nothing, but looked at the baby. The
pupils of her eyes narrowed to vertical slits.

"It won't hurt her," he said gently, seeing and
understanding her grief. "We'll take the abaanye
now, and give her some in her bottle. I'll have to
wake her to feed her, but she'll go to sleep after-
wards and so will -we. That's all it is, you know:

going to sleep."

"I don't mind for us," she said, •which was a lie,
but a loving one. "But she is just beginning to live.
Isn't there some way "we could give her a chance?
If we cast her out in a survival pod — "

"If we did it now, they'd see and intercept it,"
he said. "Do you want to think about -what would
happen then?"

"Then do it when the ship explodes!" she cried.
"Do it when we're all dying! Can't you rig those
controls to eject the pod just before they reach the
radius, so that they won't have a chance to change
course and take her?"

"For what? So that she can spend her last
hours alone and scared in a survival pod? Better
to let her go to sleep here in your arms and never
wake up."

"Give her enough to make her sleep, yes," she
said. She could almost feel her wits becoming
sharper in these last moments. "Make her sleep for

A coma                                    •-•—~' 6

more hours than the pod has air. If only she -were
old enough to ... well, she isn't and that's that. If
the air runs out, she'll die without waking. But
some of our people might find her first. They
might have heard our last distress signals. They
might be looking. Give her that chance!"

She held the baby and fed her the bitter
abaanye mixed with sweetened milk to make it
palatable, and rocked her in her arms, and kissed
her face and hands and soft tummy and little kick-
ing feet until the kicking slowly stopped, and the
baby gurgled once and breathed deeply in and out,

and then lay quite limp and barely breathing in her
mother s arms.

"Do you have to put her in the pod now?" she
cried when he stooped over them. "Let me hold
her a little longer—just a little longer."

"I won't take the abaanye until I see her
safely stowed," he said. "I've programmed the
ship to launch the pod as close to the time of det-
onation as I dare." Too close, he thought, really;

the pod -would almost certainly be within the
radius when the Khievii approached, to be
destroyed with them in the explosive transforma-
tion of local space. But there was no need to tell
her that. He would let her drink the abaanye and
go to sleep believing that their baby had that one
chance of living.

She willed her pupils to widen into an expres-
sion of calm content while he was closing the pod
and arming it to eject on command.

"Is all complete?" she asked when he finished.``````

Yes.




6 - -—-'               ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

She managed a smile, and handed him a tube
of sparkling red liquid. "I've mixed a very special
drink for us," she said. "Most of it is the same vin-
tage as the -wine we drank on our vows-day."

He loved her more in that moment, it seemed
to him, than ever he had in the days when they
thought they had long years of life together before
them.

"Then let us renew our vows," he said.

At first Gill assumed it was just
another bit of space debris, wink-
• ing as it turned around its own
axis and sending bright flashes of reflected light
down where they were placing the cable around
AS—6-4-B1.3. But something about it seemed
wrong to him, and he raised the question when
they were back inside the Khedive.

"It is too bright to have been in space very
long," Rafik pointed out. His slender brown fin-
gers danced over the console before him; he read
half a dozen screens at once and translated their
glowing, multicolored lines into voice commands
to the external sensor system.

"What d'you mean, too bright?" Gill
demanded. "Star,) are bright, and most of them have
been around a good while."

Rafik's black brows lifted and he nodded at
Calum.

"But the sensors tell us this is metal, and too

8 - -——                ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

smooth," Calum said. "As usual, you're thinking
with the Viking-ancestor part of what we laugh-
ingly refer to as your brain, Declan Giloglie the
Third. Would it not be pitted from minor colli-
sions if it had been in this asteroid belt more than
a matter of hours? And if it has not been in this
part of space for more than a few hours, where
did it come from?"

"Conundrums, is it? I'll leave the solving of
them to you," Gill said with good humor. "I am but
a simple metallurgic engineer, a horny-handed son
of the soil."

"More like a son of the asteroidal regolith,"
Rafik suggested. "Not that this particular asteroid
offers much; we're going to have to break up the
surface with the auger before there's any point in
lowering the magnetic rake . . . Ah! Got a fix on
it." An oval shape, regularly indented along one
edge, appeared on the central screen. "Now what
can the sensors tell us about this little mystery? "

"It looks like a pea pod," Gill said.

"It does that," Calum agreed. "The question is,
what sort of peas, and do we want to harvest
them, or send them gently on their way? There ve
not been any recent diplomatic disagreements in
this sector, have there?"

"None that would inspire the placing of mines,"
Gill said, "and that's not like any space mine / ever
saw. Besides, only an idiot would send a space
mine floating into an asteroid belt where there's no
telling what might set it off and whose side might
be worst injured."

"High intelligence," Rafik murmured, "is not

ftcorna.                                     .--—> 9

inevitably an attribute of those who pursue diplo-
macy by other means . . . close reading," he com-
manded the console. "All bandwidths . . . well,
well. Interesting."

"What?"

"Unless I'm mistaken . . ." Rafik paused.
"Names of the Three Prophets! I mu^t be mis-
taken. It's not large enough . . . and there's no
scheduled traffic through this sector . . . Calum,
what do you make of these sensor readings?"

Calum leaned over the panel. His sandy lashes
blinked several times, rapidly, as he absorbed and
interpreted the changing colors of the display.
"You're not mistaken," he said.

"Would you two kindly share the great
insight?" Gill demanded.

Calum straightened and looked up at Gill.
"Your peas," he said, "are alive. And given the size
of the pod—too small for any recycling life-
support system—the signal it's broadcasting can
only be a distress call, though it's like no code I've
ever heard before."

"Can we capture it?"

"We'll have to, shan't we? Let's hope—ah,
good. I don't recognize the alloy, but it's definitely
ferrous. The magnetic attractors should be able to
latch on—easy, now," Rafik admonished the
machinery he was setting in action, "we don't want
to jostle it, do we? Contents fragile. Handle with
care, and all that. . . . Very nice," he murmured as
the pod came to rest in an empty cargo bay.

"Complimenting your own delicate hands?"
Calum asked caustically.




10

Acorna                               1 1

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"The ship, my friend, the Khedive. She's done a
fine gentle job of harvesting our pea pod; now to
bring it in and open it."

There were no identification markings that any
of them could read on the "pea pod," but a series
of long scrolling lines might, Calum surmised,
have been some sort of alien script.

"Alien, of course," Raflk murmured. "All the
generations of the Expansion, all these stars
mapped and planets settled, and we're to be the
first to discover a sapient alien race ... I <)on't
think. It's decoration, or it's a script none of us
happens to know, which is just barely possible, I
think you'll agree?"

"Barely," Calum agreed, with no echo of
Rafik s irony in his voice. "But it's not Cyrillic or
Neo-Grek or Romaic or TriLat or anything else I
can name ... so what id it?"

"Perhaps," Rafik suggested, "the peas will tell
us." He ran delicate fingers over the incised carvings
and the scalloped edges of the pod. Hermetically
sealed, of a size to hold one adult human body, it
might have been a coffin rather than a life-support
module . . . but the ship's sensors had picked up that
distress signal, and the signs of life within the pod.
And the means of opening, when he found it, was as
simple and elegant as the rest of the design; simply a
matter of matching the first three fingers of each
hand with the pair of triple oval depressions in the
center of the pod.

"Hold it," Calum said. "Better suit up and open
it in the air lock. We've no idea what sort of atmo-
sphere this thing breathes."

Gill frowned. "We could kill it by opening it.
Isn't there some way to test what's in there?"

"Not without opening it," Calum said brightly.
"Look, Gill, whatever is in there may not be alive
anyway—and if it is, surely it won't last forever in
a hermetically sealed environment. It'll have to
take its chances."

The men looked at each other, shrugged, and
donned their working gear before moving them-
selves and the pod into the airlock.

"Well, Calum," Rafik said in an oddly strangled
voice, seconds after the lid swung open, "you were
half right, it seems. Not an aduit human, at any
rate."

Calum and Gill bent over the pod to inspect
the sleeping youngling revealed when it opened.

"What species is it?" Gill asked

"Sweet little thing, isn't she?" Gill said in such
a soppy tone that both Rafik and Calum gave him
an odd look.

"How'd you arrive at the sex of it?" Rafik
wanted to know.

"She looks feminine!"

They all admitted to that impression of the little
creature which lay on her side, one hand curled into
a fist and thrust against her mouth in a fairly com-
mon gesture of solace. A fluff of silvery hair curled
down onto her forehead and coiled down to the
shoulder blades, half obscuring the pale, delicate
face.

Even as they watched, she stirred, opened her
eyes and groggily tried to sit up. "Avvvi," she
wailed. "Avwi!"




2 - —-~'              ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"We're scaring the poor little thing," Gill said.
'Okay, obviously she's an oxygen breather like us,
let's get out of the suits and take her into the ship
so she can see we're not metal monsters."

Transferring the pod and its contents back into
the ship -was an awkward business. The "poor lit-
tle thing" wailed piteously each time she was tilted

in the pod.

"Poor bairn!" Gill exclaimed when they set her

down again. The movement of the pod had dis-
lodged the silvery curls over her forehead, show-
ing a lump over an inch in diameter in the center
of her forehead, halfway between the hairline and
the silver brows. "How did that happen? This
thing's cushioned well enough, and Rafik drew it
into the bay as gently as a basket of eggs and not

one of them cracked."

"I think it's congenital," Rafik said. "It's not the

only deformity. Get a good look at her hands and

feet."

Now that he called their attention to them, the

other two saw that the fingers of the hands were
stiff, lacking one of the joints that gave their own
hands such flexibility. And the little bare feet
ended in double toes, larger and thicker than nor-
mal toes, and pointed at an odd angle.

"Avvvi, avvvi!" the youngling demanded,
louder. Her eyes looked strange—almost changing

shape —but she didn't cry.

"Maybe it's not a deformity at all," Calum sug-
gested.

"Still looking for your intelligent aliens?" Rafik

teased.

13

"Why not? She's physically different from us,
we don't recognize the writing on the pod, and can
either of you tell me what an 'avwi' is?"

Gill stooped and lifted the youngling out of the
life-support pod. She looked like a fragile doll
between his big hands, and she shrieked in terror
as he swung her up to shoulder height, then
grabbed at his curly red beard and clung for dear

life.

"Perfectly obvious," he said, rubbing the child's
back -with one large hand. "There, there, acushia,
you're safe here, I'll not let you go. . . . Whatever
the language," he said, "'awi' has to be her word
for 'Mama.'" His blue eyes traveled from the pod
to Rafik and Calum. "And in the absence of 'awi,'
gentlemen," he said, "it seems that we're elected."

Once she had found that Gill's beard was soft
and tickled her face and that his big hands were
gentle, she calmed down in his arms. Figuring she
might be at least thirsty from being in the pod for
who knew how long, they experimented by offer-
ing her water. She had teeth. The cup would for-
ever bear the mark of them on its rim. She made a
grimace, at least that's what Gill said it was, at the
first taste of the water, but she was too dehydrated
not to accept it. Meat she spat out instantly and
she was unenthusiastic about crackers and bread.
Alarmed that what was basic to their diet was not
acceptable, Calum rushed down into the 'ponies
section of the life-support module and gathered up
a variety of leafy greens. She grabbed the lettuce
and crammed it into her mouth, reaching for the
chard, which she nibbled more delicately before




\A •-^—'              ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

going on to the carrot and the radish. When she
had had enough to eat, she wiggled out of Gill's
arms and toddled off—right to the nearest inter-
esting instrument panel and set a danger sensor
blaring before Gill swooped her out of harm's way

and Calum corrected her alteration.

She looked frightened, the pupils in her silvery
eyes slitted to nothing and her little body rigid.
She babbled something incomprehensible to them.

"No, sweetie pie, no," Gill said, holding up a
warning Finger to her. "Understand me? Don't
touch." And he reached out, almost touching the
panel and pulling his hand back, miming hurt and
putting his fingers into his mouth, then blowing on

them.

The slits in her eyes widened and she said

something with a questioning inflection.

"No!" Gill repeated, and she nodded, putting

both hands behind her back.

"Ah, it's a grand intelligent wee bairn, so she

is," Calum said approvingly, smiling as he stroked

her feathery-soft hair.

"Should we show her the head, d'you sup-
pose?" Rafik asked, regarding her nether regions,
which were covered with a light fur.

"She doesn't have the equipment to use our
head," Gill said, "unless she's a he and he's hiding
what he uses." Gill began fingering his beard,
"which meant he was thinking. "She eats greens

like a grazing animal. ..."

"She's not an animal!" Calum was outraged by

the suggestion.

"But she does eat greens. Maybe -we should

15

show her the 'ponies section. We've got that bed
we use for the radishes ..."

"And you just gave her the last of the radishes...."
Rafik's tone was semi-accusatoiy.

"She's not feline or canine," Gill went on. "In
fact, sweet-looking kid as she is there's something
almost. . . equine about her."

Rafik and Calum hotly contested that category
•while she became quite restless, looking all around
her.

"Looks to me that she's as close to crossing her
legs as a young thing can get," Gill went on. "We
gottatry dirt."

They did and she bent forward slightly and
relieved herself, neatly shifting loose dirt over the
spot with her odd feet. Then she looked around at
all the green and growing things.

"Maybe we should have brought the dirt to
her," Gill said.

"Let's get her out of here then," Rafik said.
"We've fed and drained her and maybe she'll go to
sleep so we can all get back to the work -we should
be doing."

Indeed, she was quite content to be led back to
the open pod and crawled up into it, curling her-
self up and closing her eyes. Her breathing slowed
to a sleeping rhythm. And they tiptoed back to
their workstations.

The debate about her future disposition, however,
went on through an afternoon of sporadic work,
intermittently adjusting the great tethering cable




16

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

17

around the body of the asteroid and placing the
augering tool in a new location. AS—6-4-B1.3 might
be rich in platinum-group metals, but it was mak-
ing them pay for its riches with a higher crushing
coefficient than they'd anticipated. The afternoon
was punctuated by one or another miner taking
his turn to suit up for EVA in order to search out a
slightly better location for the auger, to replace a
drill bit, or to clear the dust that clogged even the
best-sealed tool from time to time.

"Let's call this asteroid Ass," Calum suggested
after one such trip.

"Please, Calum," Gill reproved him. "Not in
front of the infant!"

"Very well then, you name it."

They were in the habit of giving temporary
names to each asteroid they mined, something a lit-
tle more personal and memorable than the numbers
assigned by Survey—if any such numbers were
assigned. Many of their targets were tiny chon-
drites only a few meters across, too insignificant to
have been located and named in any flyby mission,
but easy enough for the Khedive to ingest, crush, and
process. But AS-64-B1.3 was a large asteroid,
almost too large for their longest tether to hold, and
in such cases they liked to pick a name that used the
initial letters of the Survey designation.

"Hazelnut," Gill threw out. Their unexpected
guest was awake again and he was feeding her
another leaf of chard with carrots for afters.

"Wrong initial letters."

"We'll be Cockney about it. 'Azelnut. And you
can allow me a ze for an ess, can't you?"

"If there were any point to it. Why are you so
set on Hazelnut?"

"Because she's a hard nut to crack!" Gill cack-
led and Calum smiled rather sourly. The smallest
of the three men, he -was the only one who could
get inside the workings of the drill while wearing
full EVA gear, and the dust ofAS-64-B1.3 had
sent him outside on this shift rather too often for
him to find much amusement in it.

"I like that," Rafik said. "'Azelnut she is. And
while you're enjoying your way with words. Gill,
what shall we name this little one? We can't just
keep calling her 'the child.'"

"Not our problem," Calum said. "We'll be turn-
ing her over to Base soon enough, -won't we?"

He looked at the suddenly stony faces of his
colleagues. "Well, we can hardly keep her here.
What will we do with a kid on a mining ship?"

"Have you considered," Rafik said gently, "the
probable cost of abandoning operations on
'Azelnut and returning to Base at high delta-V?"

"At the moment," Calum snapped, "I should be
only too happy to leave 'Azelnut for some other
fool to crack."

"And to bring back the KheSive with less than
half a payload? "

Calum s pale lashes flickered as he calculated
what they would make—or lose—on the trip in
that event. Then he shrugged in resignation. "All
right. We're stuck with her until we make our pay-
load. Just don't assume that because I'm smaller
than you, you Viking giant, that I'm naturally
suited to play nanny."




18

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

19

"Ah, now," said Gill with great good humor,
"the creature's walking and toilet trained already,
and she'll soon pick up our language—children
learn easily. How much trouble can one tod-
dler be?"

"Add that to your list of famous last words, will
ya?" Calum remarked at his most caustic when
they found the youngling had uprooted a good
half of the 'ponies vegetation, including the all-
important squashes and rhubarb, whose large
leaves provided much of the air purification.

Rafik ran tests to see how much damage had
actually been done to air quality. She'd gone to
sleep again and had awakened so quietly that none
of them had been aware of her movement until she
wandered back in, flourishing cabbage leaves.
Calum and Gill replanted, watered, and tied up
the pulled plants in an effort to save as many as
possible. The infant had evidently sampled every-
thing, pulling up those she particularly liked
instead of leaving her mouth-sized bite in leaf or
stalk: she had eaten all the half-ripe legume pods,
staples of Rafik's preferred diet. These subse-
quently caused a diarrhea which upset her almost
more than it upset them. They spent a good hour
arguing over a dose sufficient to bind her back to
normal. Body weight was the critical factor and
Rafik used the mineral scales to weigh her and
then the powder. She spat out the first dose.
And the second, all over Gill. The third dose they
got down her by covering her rather prominent
nostrils so that she had to open her mouth to
breathe—and thus swallow the medication. Once

again, she didn't cry, but her silverish eyes
reproached them far more effectively than tears
could.

"We can't have her doing this again," Calum
told Gill when they had finished replanting the
garden. Then Rafik came over, showing them the
readout on the atmosphere gauge.

"It should be down, but it's up," he said,
scratching his head and then tapping the gauge to
see if the needle moved. "Not so much as a stink of
excess COg in our air and we were about due for a
good backwash."

"I remember me mum putting a cage around
me," Gill said, "when I would get into her garden."

They made one out of netting in a corner of the
Khedive's, dayroom, but she was out of that as soon
as they turned their backs on her. So they netted
the 'ponies instead.

They tried to find toys to amuse her with, but
pots and pot lids to bang together and an array of
boxes to nest and bright colored cups and bowls
did not divert her long. She had to be attached to
someone, somehow, which generally made doing
their separate tasks difficult, if not impossible.

"Dependence transference," Rafik suggested
pompously.

"This is not in my job description," Gill said in
a soft voice when she had finally fallen asleep,
small arms limp around his neck. Rafik and Calum
helped to remove her as gently as possible.

They all held their breaths as they managed to
lay her in the open pod, which remained her noc-
turnal cradle.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

20

"And that's another thing," Gill said, still whis-
pering, "she's growing by the hour. She's not going
to fit in that much longer. What the hell species is
she?"

"Born more mature than human babies are,"
Rafik said. "But I can't find out a damned thing in
the Concordance or the Encycio, not even in the alien
or the vet entries."

"Look, guys, I know we'll waste time and fuel,
and we haven't got enough of a payload to resup-
ply if we go back to Base, but do we have the right
to keep her out here with us when someone might
be looking for her? And Base might be able to
take care other better?"

Rafik sighed and Calum looked away from Gill,
everywhere else but at the sleeping youngling.

"First," Rafik said, since he usually did this sort
of logical setting out of facts, "if anybody's looking
for her, they'd be looking in this sector of space,
not at Base. Second, since we've agreed she is of
an unknown alien species, what possible expertise
can Base supply? There aren't any books on how
to look after her, and we're the only ones with
hands-on experience. And finally, we Bon't have
enough of a payload to refuel. We do have what
looks like a real find here, and I'm not about to let
any hijackers take it away from us. We did catch
that ion trail last week, and it could very well be
Amalgamated spies, just checking up on us." Gill
growled and Calum sniffed his poor opinion of the
competition. "Well, we'll just have to include her
in the duty roster. An hour on, two hours off. That
gives us two crew working ..."

Acorna                             ——•> 21

"And one going off his nut..." Gill said, and
then volunteered to take the first duty.

"Ahahaha," Rafik waggled a slim finger at his
crewmate, "we all work while she sleeps."

Somehow or other the scheme worked a lot better
than any of them had any reason to expect. In the
first place, she learned to talk, which kept her, and
her current minder, occupied. She learned also to
respect "no" and brighten at "yes" and, when she was
bored with sitting still, would "yes" and "no" every
object in the dayroom. She never again touched a
"no." The third day, it was Rafik who brought out
the markers and "dead" computer printouts. He
showed her how to hold the implement and, while
she could not manage her digits as he did, she was
very shortly drawing lines and squiggles and looking
for approval at each new design.

"You know," said Calum, when called upon to
admire her handiwork, "looks a lot like the stuff
on her egg. How mature was she born, d'you
think?"

That sent all three comparing her efforts with
the egg inscription, but they finally decided that it
was pure chance and how would a youngling
know script at such an early age. So they taught
her to print in Basic, using the now-standard fig-
ures. She outdid them shortly by repeating the
computer printout programming language.

"Well, she prints what she sees a lot of."

The big discovery, and the treat could take up
to an hour, was bathing her.




22

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

23

"You gotta bathe all kids regularly. Hygiene,"
Rafik said, pausing to grin at her as she splashed
the water in the big galley sink. She still fit in it at
that point. "I know that much."

"Yeah? With water on board for three and she
makes four and drinks a lot, we'll be in deep kim-
chee on water quality soon," Gill said sourly.

"All sink water's recycled," Calum reminded
them just as the youngling dipped her face in the
bathwater and blew bubbles. And then drank the
bubbles. "No, sweetie, don't drink the bathwater.
Dirty."

"Actually it isn't," Rafik remarked, looking at
the clear liquid in which their charge sat.

"Has to be. I soaped her good." Calum peered
in and the metal bottom was clearly visible. "That's
impossible. There should be lather and she'd got
her kneecaps dirty crawling on the floor and she
got her fingers messed up drawing before that.
They're all clean now, too."

"Just a jiff," Rafik said, and went off for one of
his many diagnostic tools. He inserted it in the
bathwater and gawked at the reading. "This stuff
is one hundred percent pure unadulterated H^O.
In fact it's a lot purer than what I used to make
coffee this morning."

"But you saw me soap her," Calum said in a
defensive tone. "I washed her because she w<u dirty."

"Which neither she nor the water is now."
Rafik immersed the diagnostic tool again. "I
dunno."

Calum got a crafty expression on his face.
"Done a reading on our air lately?"

Rafik grimaced. "In fact I did, like I'm sup-
posed to this time of day."

"Well?" Gill's voice rose in a prompt when
Rafik delayed an answer -while scratching his
head.

"Not a sign of excess carbon dioxide, and with
four of us breathing air, there should be some
traces of it by now. Especially as we don't have
quite as many broad-leafed plants in 'ponies
because she," he pointed at her, "likes them better
than anything else."

The three men regarded their small charge,
who was bubbling her crystal clear bathwater,
greatly enjoying this innocent occupation.

"Then there's that sort of horn thing in the mid-
dle of her forehead," Gill remarked. "Unicorns
were supposed to purify water."

"Water maybe," Calum agreed as he had been
brought up with some of the same fairy tales as
Gill, "but air?"

"Wa-ter?" the youngling said, dropping her jaw
in what they now recognized as her smile. "Air?"
she added, though it came out in two syllables, "a-
yir."

"That's right, baby, water and air. The two
things both our species can't live without," Rafik
said, sighing at the puzzle of her.

"Let's call her Una," Gill suggested suddenly
into the silence.

"I don't like it," Rafik said, shaking his head.
"We're in the As, you know, not the Us."

"Acorna?" Calum. "Sure beats 'baby' and
youngling' and 'sweetums.'" He glanced sideways




24

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

at Gill, whom he had overheard addressing his
charge with what Calum thought a nauseating
euphemism.

"Acorna?" Rafik considered. "Better than
Una." He picked up a cup, dipped it in the clear
bathwater, and as he made to pour it over her
head. Gill grabbed it out of his hand.

"You ain't even Christian," he said—and, pour-
ing the water over her head, "I dub thee Acorna."

"No, no, you twit," Calum said, taking the cup
from his hand and dipping it in. "I baptize thee
Acorna. I'll stand as godfather."

"You -will not. I will."

"Where does that leave me?" Rafik demanded.
Acorna stood up in the sink, and only his quick
movement kept her from falling out of the impro-
vised bath.

"Holding the baby," Gill and Calum said in
unison. Calum handed him the towel.

They had learned to dry off as much moisture
as possible because, once set on her feet again,
Acorna tended to shake herself and there was too
much equipment about that did not need daily
sprinklings.

The Khedive had cracked and digested 'Azelnut and
was on her way to DF—4-H3.1, a small LL-
chondrite that should have a high enough concen-
tration of valuable metals to make up the payload
for this trip, when the first announcements from
Base reached them.

"Summary of proposed adjustments to share-

25

holder status ..." Gill scowled at the reader. "Why
are they sending us this garbage? We're miners,
not pixel-pushers or bean-counters!"

"Let me see that." Rafik snapped his fingers at
the console. "Hardcopy, triple!"

"Wasting paper," Calum commented.
Acorna needs more scratch paper to mark
on," Gill said.

"And if this is what I think it is," Rafik added,
you two will be wanting to read it for yourselves,
not to wait for me."

"Whatever it is," Gill said in disgust after peer-
ing at his printout, "it's wrapped up in enough
bureaucratic double-talk that we'll have to wait for
you to interpret anyway, Rafik."

"Not all of it," Calum said slowly. "This para-
graph—" he tapped his own hardcopy—"says that
our shares in Mercantile Mining and Exploration
are now worth approximately three times what
they were when we left Base."

Gill whistled. "For news like that, they can
wrap it up any way they please!"

"And thLt paragraph," Calum went on, "says
that they have become nonvoting shares."

"Is that legal? Oh, well, for three times the
money, who cares? We didn't have enough shares
between us to make a difference anyway."

Calum was blinking furiously as he translated
the announcement into numbers without bother-
ing to consult the voice calculator. "The net worth
of our shares has increased by a factor of three-
point-two-five, actually. But if -we had ever voted
our shares in a block, our interest in MME would

26

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

17

have been sufficient to influence a close-run policy

decision."

"I believe," Rafik said in an oddly strangled
voice, "that if you two will stop jingling your
pocket change and look at the last page, you will
observe the important part of this announcement.
It seems MME has been acquired. By Amalgam-
ated."

Gill flipped through his hardcopy. "Says here
it's a merger, not an acquisition."

Rafik shrugged. "When the tiger executes a
merger with the goat, which one walks away?"

"Ah, it's nothing for us to be concerned about,"
Gill said. "We hadn't enough shares to be worth
the voting anyway, Calum, and besides, we were
never around for their AGMs when we could vote.
And it says right here that nothing is going to
change in the way the company is run."

Rafik shrugged again. "They always say that.
It's a sure sign that heads are about to roll."

"Back on Base? Sure. But that won't affect us."
"Not immediately, no."

"Oh, quit spouting doom and gloom, Rafik.
Since when do you know so much more about the
ways of big business than the rest of us? Like I
said, we're miners, not pixel-pushers."

"My uncle Hafiz," Rafik said demurely, "is a
merchant. He has explained some of these matters
to me. The next announcement should follow
within twenty-four to thirty-six hours Standard.
That will be the company's change of name. The
restructuring and the first revised organizational
chart will occur somewhat later, but still well

before we reach Base—especially if you still
intend mining Daffodil before our return."

"I'm beginning to think we should rename
DF-4-H3.1 Daffy, in your honor, Rafik," Gill said.
"You can't possibly predict all that."

"Wait and see," Rafik suggested. "Or to make
it more amusing, how about a small wager? I'll
give you odds of—umm—three to two that you'll
not recognize the old MME by the time we bring
the Khedive, in again."

Calum grinned. "Not very good odds, Rafik,
for someone who claims to be as certain as you are
of the outcome!"

Rafik's brown lashes swept down across his
face as demurely as any dancing girl in his ances-
tors' harems could have looked. "My uncle
Hafiz," he murmured, "also kept racing horses.
He instructed me never to bet on longer odds
than I had to."

"And even if they do reorganize," Gill went on,
"we're independent contractors, not staff employ-
ees. It won't affect us."

"Remembering some of your other famous last
•words, Gill," Calum said unhappily, "I rather wish
you hadn't said that."

The Khedive stayed out much longer than their
original prospecting plan filed -with MME. A case
of finding Daffodil nearly as lucrative as 'Azelnut
and covering a wider area. Since their water
remained pure and their air remarkably clear of
CO;, they really were not at all pushed.




28

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

29

Acorna also supplied diversion enough to keep
all three men from feeling any need to seek
fresher companions. Though their arguments
about her upbringing slowly verged on the
"•what'11 we teach her today" rather than physical
concerns, the debates usually occurred while she
was sleeping. She did require a good deal of sleep,
growing out of nap times to at least ten hours in
the hammock they devised as her sleeping accom-
modation. Once asleep, she was impervious to
noise — except for the one time a thruster misfired
and set off the hooter and she was wide awake in
an instant and standing by her assigned escape
pod. (Rafik had put her original pod in it, "just in
case" he'd said, and the others had concurred. As
there were only three pods on the Khedive, and
Calum was the smallest of the miners, he would
share hers.) So they would discuss her lessons
quite freely and sometimes at the top of their

lungs.

Such EVA work as was needed was generally
accomplished when she was asleep, or so involved
with her "studying" she didn't notice that one of
them was gone.

"We're going to have to train her out of such
dependence, you know," Rafik said one night. "I
mean, when we get back to Base, we'll each have
duties that will separate us, and she's got to learn
that having just one of us around is okay, too."

"How do we do that?" Calum wanted to know.

"Start doing short EVAs while she's awake, so
she sees us going and coming back. I think once
she realizes that we f)o come back, she'll settle

down more," Rafik said, shaking his head and
casting a sorrowful glance to where she swayed
slightly in her hammock. "Poor tyke. Losing her
family to who knows what. Small wonder she
needs to see all of us all the time."

They'd been giving her lessons in Basic, nam-
ing everything in the KheSive for her. At first she
had reciprocated—at least they thought that -was
what she was doing—with sounds in her own lan-
guage. But since her words sounded like nothing
they'd ever heard before and their efforts to repeat
them were dead failures, she soon began accepting
and using their vocabulary.

"Just as well," said Gill.

"A pity for her to lose her original language,"
Calum said, "but she's so young, I doubt she had
that much command of it anyway."

"Well, she sure knew how to say ..." and Gill
spelled the word out rather than upset Acorna by
hearing it spoken.

"Awi?" she said aloud in response. The look of
expectancy in Acorna s eyes as she looked toward
the airlock of the KheSive nearly had the tender-
hearted Gill in tears.

"She can spell?" Rafik exclaimed, grasping the
important facet of that incident. "Hey, there,
Acorna baby, what does R-A-F-I-K spell?"

Diverted, she pointed her whole hand, the
digits closed as was her habit, at Rafik and said his
name.

"And G-I-L-L?"

"Gill." She made the odd noise through her
nostrils which the men had identified as her laugh.




30

Acorna

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

31

"C-A-L-U-M?" demanded the last of her par-
ent figures.

"Calum!" Now she drummed her closed hands
on the table and her feet on the floor, her expres-
sion of high happiness.

A good bit of that day's segment went into a
spelling lesson. That evening produced the knowl-
edge that she had assimilated the alphabet, and
with only a little help from her friends, she began
to print what she spelled.

"In a ten-point type, gentlemen, if you will
examine the evidence," Calum said, holding up
one of the sheets she had covered with her deli-
cately wrought script.

"What's so amazing about that?" Rafik asked,
turning the sheet to the other side where the print-
out words were also in ten point type.

"How much has she absorbed?"

"Damn," Acorna said very clearly as the writing
implement she was using ran dry.

"I'd say more than enough, mates," Gill said,
"and he who uses foul language will pay one half
credit to the box for every foul-mouthed syllable
uttered from this point onward." He picked up an
empty disk box, started to write FOUL MOUTH on
it when Acorna, reading it, repeated the legend.
He erased it hastily and wrote FINE instead.

"What is 'fine'?" Acorna asked.

That's when they showed her how to access the
Khedive's, reference programs. She had a bit of trou-
ble getting her oddly shaped fingers to hit just the
keys she wanted until Rafik made up a keyboard
with spacings appropriate to her manual dexterity.

If improving this new skill kept her occupied so
that they could get on with their professional work
and more beneficiated ore was sacked and stored
in the drone carrier pods that festooned the exte-
rior of the Khedive, she totally confounded them
three days later.

"Cargo pods are nearly two-thirds full. What. . .
when they are three-thirds full?"

"Say what?" Rafik asked, blinking at her.

"I think she's trying to ask what we'll do then.
We take the three-thirds full pods back to Base,
get paid for them, resupply the ship, and come
back for more," Calum replied, trying to speak in a
nonchalant tone.

"But Daffodil is more than three-thirds cargo
pods."

"Well, you know, we send the iron and nickel
back by the mag drive. The ship's own payload is
merely the metals too valuable to send that way,"
Calum explained, as if he really expected Acorna
to understand him.

"Platinum is val-uble."

"That's right."

"Then palladium and rhodium and ruthenium
is val-uble."

"Are," Calum corrected absently.

Rafik had straightened. "Did you hear that?
She knows the platinum-group metals!"

"And why not?" Gill retorted. "Doesn't she
hear us talking about them all the time?"

Acorna stamped her foot to get back their
attention. "Osmium is val-uble. Iridium is val-uble.
Rhenium is not val-uble."




32

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

53

"Rhenium isn't one of the platinum group,"
Calum corrected her, "but at the moment, thanks
to the boom in proton accelerometers, it is very
valuable indeed."

Acorna frowned. "Not mining rhenium."

"We would if there was any on Daff, I assure
you, honey."

"Rhenium is. Deep."

"No, love. Daffodil's regolith is rich in plat-
inum-group metals, but low in iron and the minor
metals, including rhenium. We could tell that from
spectroscopic analysis and . . . um, other instru-
ments," said Gill, who left the technical task of
deciding which asteroids were likely candidates to
Calum whenever he could. "That's why we're min-
ers, hon. This is our job. And we are very lucky to
have found Daffodil. 'Azelnut was good, but the
Daff's been better for us."

"Deep!" Acorna insisted. "Use auger. Drill. Find
rhenium, go back soon. Then go somewhere new?"

"To find your folks?"

Acorna's eyes narrowed and she looked down
an elegant but definitely equine nose at her closed
hands.

"Honey, one of the reasons we've stayed out so
long is to make enough money to do a real good
galactic search for your folks. Your Awi. Was
Awi the only one in your ship?"

"No. Lalli there, too."

"Your mother and father?" Gill asked, hoping
that now her comprehension of Basic was so good,
she might be able to make the leap to translating
her mother tongue.

"No, Awi and Lalli."

"Nice try. Gill," Rafik said, laying a sympa-
thetic hand on his arm.

"By the way, hon, three-thirds full is all full.
Three-thirds make one," Calum said, seeking to
distract her from her sad contemplation of her
hands. "Thirds are fractions."

"Fractions?" Her head came up.

"Parts of a whole. There're all kinds of frac-
tions, halves and quarters and fifths and sixths and
lots and lots, and when you have two halves, you
have a -whole. When you have four quarters, you
have a whole."

"And five fives is a whole, too?" Her eyes were
wide again as she grasped the concept. "What is
the smallest? One and one?"

"We also got us a mathematical genius," Rafik
said, throwing up his slim fingered hands in
humorous awe.

One mathematical concept led to another, and
it wasn't long before Acorna was accessing alge-
braic equations. Calum, muttering something
about leaving no regolithic grain unturned, bullied
the others into using the tether and auger to go
beneath the fine, friable rubble of Daffodil's outer
layers.

"Why not teach her something useful? Like
how to watch the catalytic converter gauges and
switch over at the right temps?" Rafik asked.
"Then I'd get to go out with you guys on EVAs
and she'd have less of this dependency thing."

"I think," Calum said in awed tones, "she was
born knowing more useful things than we can




34

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

35

imagine." He was inspecting the latest drilling
samples by remote control. "Look at this analysis,

will you?"

"Rhenium and hafnium," Rafik said slowly,
bending over the screens. "High concentrations,
too. If the drill keeps bringing up this quality of ore,
we can make our payload and be back at Base
sooner than if we keep working the surface regolith
for platinum. And the load will be richer by~"

"Forty-two point six five percent," Calum said,
blinking absently. "She dalS) there was rhenium
down deep, you know."

"Daffodil shows as an undifferentiated aster-
oid. There've been no atmospheric processes to
move deposits. Logically, the deep rock should be
the same metals, in the same concentration, as the
surface regolith . . . just harder to get at."

"Logically," Gill retorted, "looking at this anal-
ysis, it isn't. There just may be a few things the
cosmologists don't know yet. But I'd give a pretty
penny to know how you knew, Acorna acushla. I
think we'd better teach her the rest of the metals,
gentlemen, so she knows what to tell us about
from now on. And as for dependency ..." Gill
snorted. "Once you made her her own keyboard,
she undepended herself, or hadn't you two

noticed?"

"Some are born to be hackers, and some ain't,"

Rafik said.

"Well, it won't hurt to try, now •will it?" was
Gill's retort, but he was as proud of Acorna as

they all were. "We're not doing so bad as parents,

?„
are we.

"How mature was she born?" Calum asked,
almost plaintively. "She's only been aboard for ..."
He had to access the log for the date she'd been
recovered. "Hey, twelve months and fifteen days!"

"A year?" Rafik repeated astonished.

"A year!" Gill cried. "Hell, we forgot her birth-
day!"

The other two, tight-lipped with anger, pointed
to the FINE jar, which hadn't actually been fed for
some time.




37

Purely superficial changes," Gill
 said as the Khedive arrived •within
  visual range of the old MME
Base. "You'll not claim your winnings on the
basis of a few cosmetic details, will you now,

Rafik?"

"I should be delighted," Rafik said, "not to

claim them at all."

No announcement of any reorganization had
reached them, but the MME logo that had once
decorated both sides of each docking gate had
been replaced by a much larger sign reading,
AMALGAMATED MANUFACTURING. Instead of
Johnny Greene's cheerful greeting, they had
been read into position by something with a dry
mechanical voice that refused to give its name
and complained about their failure to introduce
themselves with "the Amalgamated protocol,"
whatever that might be.

The docking bay itself was much the same,

but immediately within the double airlock doors
leading to the interior of Base they were met by
the owner of the dry voice, still complaining
about their failure to use the Amalgamated proto-
col.

"Look, mate," Gill said, "like the pilot here
told you—" he nodded toward Calum "—we're
the Khedive, on contract to MME, and we didn't
get word of any new approach and docking pro-
tocol. If you chaps wanted us to use something
new, why didn't you send us the rules?"

"Violation of regulations to send classified
company protocols via unsecured space transmis-
sions."

"The ancient Americans had a phrase for it,"
Rafik said, smiling slightly. "Something about a
twenty-two catch, I believe."

"And where's Johnny Greene?"
"Redundant."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"
Gill's voice had grown loud enough to echo
down the corridors. A young woman in a pale
blue coverall, her fair hair drawn back into a
bun, hurried forward with one hand raised.

"Eva Glatt," she introduced herself, holding
out one small hand, "TT&A—that's Testing,
Therapy, and Adjustment Department. The con-
solidation of MME with Amalgamated has
resulted in a number of organizational changes
for efficiency, Mr.—Giloglie, is it? I've come to
take charge of the child."

"She is in our charge," Gill said.
"Oh, but surely you won't want to be bothered




38

-' 39

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

with her while you're filling out the docking pro-
tocol forms and reregistering the KheSive as an
Amalgamated ship. I've prepared everything,
though your message did not give us much time

to make ready."

Raflk and Calum had convinced Gill that it
would be tactful to tell Base something about the
enigma they were bringing back from this latest
expedition, but they had all waited until they
were on the way back from Daffodil, just in case
Base had any ideas about issuing an immediate

recall.

"And Dr. Forelle himself wishes to inspect the

pod in 'which she was found and your tapes of the
initial contact," Eva went on. "I'll just have that
material brought off the ship and taken to him
while you're reregistering yourselves, shall I?
And you can come with me, you poor baby." She
knelt and held out her hand to Acorna, who put
both hands behind her own back and stepped
back a pace, narrowing her pupils to vertical

slits.

"Not," she said with emphasis.
"Complete sentences, Acorna acushia," Gill

said with a sigh.

"Now, dear," Eva Glatt said brightly, "you'll

be very bored staying here with your nice uncles
while they do all that tedious paperwork.
Wouldn't you like to come along to the creche
and play some nice games?"

Acorna glanced at Rafik. He gave a small nod
and she relaxed her guarded pose slightly. "Will
go," she said. "Short!"

"There, you see," Eva Glatt said, straighten-
ing, "it's just a matter of elementary psychology.
I'm sure she'll be quite docile and trainable."

"That woman," said Gill as Eva led Acorna
off, "is an idiot."

"She said something about a creche," said
Rafik. "Acorna might enjoy being with some
other children for a change. And I do have a pre-
sentiment that the next hour or so will be boring
in the extreme."

While Gill, Raflk, and Calum worked their way
through questionnaires demanding everything
from grandmother's middle name to preferences
in basic food groups. Dr. Alton Forelle skimmed
through the ship's log of Acorna's first utterances
half a dozen times.

"Again!" he snapped, and his assistant, Judit
Kendoro, obediently replayed the first segments
of that haunting cry.

"Idiots," Forelle said cheerfully. "Why
couldn't they have recorded everything she said?
Why did they have to interfere by an attempt to
overlay Basic Universal speech patterns? There's
not nearly enough data here to analyze."

"There's enough to tell that she was just a lost
baby crying for somebody she knew," said Judit
softly. She thought she might be reduced to-tears
herself if she had to listen to that wail of "Awi,
awi!" any longer.

Forelle shut off the player. "You're anthropo-
morphizing, Judit," he said. "How can we presume




40

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

to interpret an alien speech merely from inflec-
tion and situation? We shall have to make a thor-
ough syntactic and semantic analysis before any
conclusions at all are valid."

"And just how are we going to do that," Judit
said, "when she's been with these people for over
a year, exposed to Basic Universal and forgetting
her own speech patterns?"

"We'll regress her to the time when she was
found, of course," Forelle replied, as if that
should have been assumed. "The technique is
simple enough, and with the right drugs, no one
resists a regression. From the number and
sequence of sounds she was making when they
found her, she must have had some mastery of
her native language at that time. The information
is still there, simply overlaid by recent experi-
ences. We have only to strip off the overlay."

Judit made a small, involuntary gesture. Even
adults who had volunteered for the process found
a full regression terrifying. What would it be like
for this child? "You'll halt the process, of course,
if she appears traumatized?"

"Of course," Forelle assured her. "But you
mustn't be so tender. We must have as much evi-
dence as possible to back up this discovery. If she
is a sapient alien, speaking a language totally
unrelated to any human tongue, whatever we can
learn of that language will be of inestimable sci-
entific value. We can't let individual concerns
stand in the way of Science."

"And publication," Judit said dryly.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Forelle said. "If

Acorna 41

you help me with the child, I shall certainly list you
as one of the coauthors. And you must bear the
other possibility in mind, too. If she's just a
deformed mutant gabbling some known tongue in a
way we didn't recognize from the log, what fools we
should look, announcing the discovery of the first
true alien language! We can't risk that, can we?"
He smiled into space and went on, more to himself
than to Judit, "Its high time linguistics came into
its own as a scientific discipline. We've been ridicu-
lously hobbled all these years by a squeamish reluc-
tance to experiment on human beings. Why, the
entire critical-period theory of language learning
could have been settled generations ago if someone
had just had the fortitude to isolate a few dozen
babies from human speech for ten or twenty years.
It would be a beautifully controlled experiment,
you see—take a child out every six months and
expose it to language, and when they stop respond-
ing, you know the critical period has passed. Of
course, one wouldn't want to contaminate the test
subjects by returning the exposed children, and one
has to allow for sickness, and the need to duplicate
results, so rather a large initial test group would be
required. I'm sure that's why my request for fund-
ing was turned down. Governments are so short-
sighted about pure research. But this time I won't
need to wait for a grant. I've got the subject right
here, at least I <fhall have as soon as that Glatt female
is through with her puerile tests, and Amal-
gamated's psycho-socialization lab is perfectly
equipped for the examination."

Judit Kendoro bit her lip and reminded her-

42

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

43

self that she had been lucky to get out of the fac-
tories of Kezdet, lucky to win one of the very few
technical school scholarships set aside for indi-
gent students, even luckier to have a good job
with Amalgamated that had paid off her sister
Mercy's bond and would, given just a few more
months, see her little brother Pal through school
and into a job of his own. Even forgetting the
other considerations that kept her at Amal-
gamated, no one could possibly expect her to
throw away all those years of hard work just
because some foundling child might be scared by
reliving a traumatic incident of her past. Besides,

what could she do?

"I'll )ust see how they're getting on with the

child at TT&A," she said.

Dr. Forelle smiled. "Good idea. They've had
her quite long enough. And you might bring the
test results with you . . . not that I expect much
from the clumsy, outmoded instruments that
Glatt woman uses."

"We've completed the forms," Gill said, leaning
over Eva Glatt's desk, "and we've come for
Acorna. If you could just show us the way to the

creche?"

Eva looked surprised. "Oh, you can't take her

now!"

"Why not? She may be enjoying the chance to

play with the other children, but I'm sure she will
be wanting to see us by now."

"Playing? Other children? I'm afraid you

have misunderstood. We've just begun testing
her mental and psychological capacity. She'll be
in tests most of this day. Most of the week, prob-
ably. You wouldn't be spending any more time
with her in any case."

"We would not?" repeated Rafik. "I am sorry,
that is not acceptable."

"She is used to us," Calum said hastily, trying
to smooth things over, "and . . . we're kinda used
to her, too. We figured, unless you located her
people, she could just stay on with us. She's
already lost her parents. She doesn't need to lose
us, too."

Eva Glatt laughed merrily. "How sweet! But
you really couldn't expect to retain care of her,
could you? Three mining engineers, isolated for
years at a time . . . I'm sure you've done your
best, but you hardly have the training and exper-
tise to solve her special problems."

"Acorna doesn't have any special problems,"
Calum said angrily. "She's a perfectly delightful
little girl, and we Like taking care of her. Oh, I'm
not saying we might not have handed her over to
a Company creche if we'd been able to at the
beginning. But she's been with us nearly two
years now. We're her family. Of course we expect
to continue taking care other."

Eva laughed again. "Don't be ridiculous. Even
if the situation were not obviously unsuitable,
your PPPs would invalidate any application for
formal guardianship."

"PPPs?" Rafik repeated.

"Personal Psychological Profiles," Eva




44

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

deigned to elucidate. "I pulled up the Amalgam-
ated psych files on you. All three of you are clas-
sified as maladaptive personalities who are drawn
to a lonely, high-risk profession such as asteroid
prospecting by a combination of self-destructive
traits and romantic thrill-seeking — "

"Excuse me," Rafik interrupted, "I do not,
myself, recall that this company has administered
any psychological tests to me. Calum? Gill?"

The other two men shook their heads.

"You just filled out the personnel forms," Eva
said patiently. "The computer analysis was routed
to my mailbox immediately, since your personal-
ity problems may have a bearing on the child's
psychological problems. The results are much as
I expected."

"Psychology! When we contracted with
MME," Gill said", "we reported to the Director of
Alining Engineering, who was more interested in
whether we knew how to handle an ultra-low-
temp vacuum blasting unit than in what we saw
in the inkblots."

"An outmoded attitude," Eva said. "Amalgam-
ated considers it of vital importance to see that
only socially well-adapted personnel are retained
in the trying conditions of space."

"And exactly how," Rafik inquired sweetly,
"did you come to this . . . conclusion . . . about
our personalities?"

"It's self-evident," Eva said. "Why else would
you expose yourselves to the risks and loneliness
of such a career, when you all score high enough
in SGIQ—Stabilized Generalized Intelligence

45

Quotient—and have more than enough education
to obtain much better-paid administrative posi-
tions right here at company headquarters?"

"More money," Calum agreed gravely, "and
the benefits of psychologically designed decor.
Why indeed?"

Eva looked at him uncertainly. "I . . . I'm glad
you agree with me. You understand, then. The
child is severely deformed and probably retarded
as well — "

A hissing noise distracted her for a moment,
until Rafik took Gill by the elbow. "Do not inter-
rupt, my friend," he said. "We are all most inter-
ested in the lady doctor's evaluation of Acorna,
are we not?"

"By height and weight charts, she is a reasonably
well-nourished six-year-old," Eva said, "but on the
SLI—Standardized Language • Interaction—she
scored as a low two."

"By my own experience," countered Gill, "she
was an infant when we found her, and that was
less than two years ago. She can't be more than
three or four years old."

"And her understanding of language is excel-
lent," Calum added. "If she's lagging in expres-
sive speech, it is probably because her brain is
not wired for human language; she's having to
learn it analytically, not naturally as a human
infant would."

"I'm glad to see you admit she has brain prob-
lems," Eva said quickly.

"Differences," Calum said, "not problems."

Eva fussed with her desk console for a

46

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

A7

moment. "Given the degree of language retarda-
tion, -we next administered the Colquhoun Color-
Matching Test, which is of course designed for
much younger children. She displayed notable
clumsiness in operating the cursor—"

"Her fingers are lacking a joint," Rafik
pointed out. "Of course she has trouble with
equipment designed for human hands. What are
you testing for, intelligence or manual dexter-

•         rt „

ity?

"The two have long been shown to be linked,"

Eva retorted. "Every fool knows that a child is
not ready for reading or computation until he can
hop a straight line on one foot; it's one of the

standard creche-readiness tests."

"Aye, I'm sure that is one of the things every
fool knows," Gill agreed with a heavy irony that
escaped Eva. "Du> you test her intelligence at

all?"

"Did you ask her to write a simple program

for carbonyl reduction?"

"Or to calculate the concentration of platinum-
group metals in the regolith of an E-type chon-

drite?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Eva snapped. "Even if
the child could perform such tasks, she must
have learned them by rote. Doing such extremely
age-inappropriate things is another sign of the
social maladjustment -we will cure after her defor-
mities have been corrected. If she is to develop
into an adaptively competent personality, her
upbringing must be entrusted to experts who will
understand how to help her compensate for her

disabilities without requiring excessive achieve-
ment from her."

"And exactly -what did you have in mind?"
Rafik inquired politely.

"Well, I—she must be tested more thoroughly
first, of course—but I see no reason why she
should not be trainable to hold a minimum-
responsibility position in a sheltered workspace."

"Stacking trays in the company cafeteria," Gill
said.

"Or folding linen," Calum suggested.

Eva flushed. "I'm not a miracle worker," she
snapped. "You've brought me a deformed,
retarded child who has already suffered the
effects of nearly two years in a socially maladap-
tive environment."

"I would not, myself, be so quick to be assum-
ing the child is retarded," said Calum. "Once you
take your eyes away from the psychological tests
long enough to observe that she is not human —
which any competent biologist could verify for
you—perhaps you will begin to understand that
differences are not the same as defects. And yes,
she has some problems with language and with
manipulating equipment designed for humans.
So? In any other field. Dr. Glatt, the expert is the
one who knows how to solve problems, not the
one who wails that they're unsolvable."

A gleam of triumph appeared in Eva Glatt's
eyes. "As a matter of fact," she said sweetly, "I am
already preparing to solve some ot the child's
problems. There's no known surgical correction
for the hand problem, but that disfiguring excres-




48

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

cence in the middle of her forehead can easily be
removed."

"That—you mean you want to cut off her
horn?" Gill exploded. "Woman, have you lost
your wits? That's not a deformity; it's an integral
part of her."

"Amalgamated's on-site med team is quite
capable of administering a local anesthetic and
tying off any blood vessels that have infiltrated
the deformity," Kva said primly.

"I think you do not understand." Rafik leaned
over Eva's desk, his dark eyes flashing with
intensity. "Acorna is ... not . . . human.
Differences are not deformities. And her race Uife^
that horn. We've already learned that she can use
it to purify air and water, and we suspect it's inte-
gral to her metal-sensing abilities."

Eva sighed. "I think you three have been Iso-
lated too long. You're beginning to hallucinate.
What you suggest is not scientifically possible."

"We speak from our own experience," Calum
said.

Eva fapped at her desk console. "In my capac-
ity as head of TT&A, I shall recommend
extended leave and a course of psychological
adjustment for all of you before you are allowed
to take out company property such as the KheSlve
again. My evaluation shows that you are not only
socially maladaptive but seriously delusional."

Gill began to hiss through his clenched teeth
again, but Rafik stopped him.

"Never mind the minor insults, Gill. The first
priority is to stop this nonsense of surgery on

4S

Acorna. The horn is an integral part of her.
Without it she would be crippled ... or worse.
We will absolutely not, under any circumstances,
give permission for an operation."

"I think you don't understand. Acorna is no
longer your problem. After surgery and remedial
training, she is to be transferred to an orphanage
pending identification of the parents who aban-
doned her."

"The devil she is!" Gill roared. "We're taking
her back. Now. Are you going to send for her, or
do we go and get her?"

"She was scheduled to go into surgery at 133C
hours," Eva Glatt said. She glanced at her wrisi
unit. "It's too late for you to make a fuss now."

"Relax, Gill," Calum said after checking his
own unit. "It's only 1345 now. They'll still be fid-
dling around with the anesthesia." He perched on
the corner of Eva Glatt's desk, one arm casually
draped over her console. "But I do think you had
better tell us how to get to Surgery. Now!"

A young woman with a wrist-thick braid of
dark hair hanging over one shoulder stepped into
the office. "I believe I can help you gentlemen
with that," she said. Her chest rose and fell as
though she had just been running, but her man-
ner was calm enough. "I'm going that way
myself, as it happens."

"That," said Gill, "would be very helpful.
We're in rather a hurry, though. ..." He steered
the girl out into the hall, blocking her view of
Eva Glatt's desk, while Calum slipped behind the
desk and stopped Eva from reaching for one of

50

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

51

the recessed buttons in the desk console. "Rafik,
go on ahead. I'll bring this one—keep her under
my eye so that she doesn't get any ideas about
calling Security." He hauled Eva Glatt to her feet
and clamped his free hand over her mouth.

"Calum," Rafik interjected, "we do not have
time to drag a captive •with us. And we do not
wish to alarm our guard." Eva Glatt's eyes rolled
up in her head as he approached and she sagged
limply against Calum's arm.

"Well, that's solved," said Calum with relief.
"She's fainted."

"No," Rafik said, "just weak with fear. I apol-
ogize for this," he told Eva, who was now feebly
struggling again, "but we do not have access to
your more scientific methods of quieting people."
His fist tapped her forehead, so quickly she could
hardly have seen the blow coming, and this time
she fell back in the complete relaxation of true

unconsciousness.

Gill and the girl who'd offered to guide them
were some distance ahead when they came out of
the office, walking at a pace just short of a jog
through the long curving corridor to the left.
Rafik and Calum ran and caught up with them at
an intersection where they had paused for a
moment.

"Running," the girl said severely, "is likely to
draw attention. Just -walk as quickly as you can
manage. I gather you three are the men who
brought the alien foundling in, is that right?"

"At least somebody around here understands
she's not of our kind," Rafik said as they race-
walked down the hall. "Yes. Acorna is ours. Or
we are hers. Depending on how you look at it.
And she must not be put through this surgery."

"Yes. My boss—Dr. Forelle—wants it
stopped, too. He was to have called ahead, to
make sure they delay until I get there with the
orders to release her to our department."

"Just a minute!" Gill grabbed the girl by the
upper arm. "She's to be released to UJ, not to
another department of this blasted company."

"You," said the girl without slackening pace,
"can't get Eva Glatt's orders for immediate
surgery rescinded. I can."

"And who might you be?" Rafik asked.

"Judit Kendoro, Psycholinguistics. I work for
Dr. Alton Forelle."

"Saints defend us," Gill exclaimed, "is there
nobody works for Amalgamated but head-
shrinkers?"

"Amalgamated decided to use the old MME
base as headquarters for the research and per-
sonnel departments," Judit explained. "They're
phasing out the independent mining operations;

yours is one of the last contract groups to come
in. Deliveries will be handled by drone and
routed to other stations from now on." Despite
the speed they were making, she wasn't even
breathing hard.

"Forelle," Rafik said. "The man who wanted
our logs of the first interaction?"

"Yes. He believes—or hopes—she is a sapient
alien."

"Then he's on our side?"




52

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

53

"I wouldn't say that exactly." Judit skidded to
a halt just before a three-way intersection with
corridors painted in different patterns of yellow
and green stripes. "He doesn't want her put
through surgery before he has a chance to study
her. What do you want with her?"

"To take care other," Gill said.

Judit looked him up and down for a long
moment, then turned to Rafik. "I believe you
mean that."

"Believe it," said Rafik.

"Then — " She glanced back the way they had
come. Calum followed. Judit dropped her voice.
"Don't let Dr. Forelle get her. He'll mine her
brain for memories of language without caring
what he does to the rest of her. It could be worse
than the surgery."

"Then what can we do?"

"Is your ship ready to take off?"

"We've just docked, we'd fuel and air to spare,
no repairs scheduled ..."

"Then this," Judit said, "is what we do next."
She outlined her idea.

"You trust us easily," Rafik commented when
she had finished.

"One must trust domebcxhi," Judit said, "and . . .
I had been listening for a few minutes outside the
door before I interrupted you in Dr. Glatt's
office. Incidentally, dare I hope that you gagged
her?"

"No time," Calum said, catching up with
them. "Knocked her out."

"Good."

"If you were, then you know something of us.
But what do we know of you? Why should you
take this risk for us?" Gill demanded.

Judit threw him a scornful glance. "Have you
ever heard of Kezdet? "

Gill shook his head.

"My Uncle Hafiz," Rafik said, "recommended
it as a place to be avoided."

"Your uncle was right. I got myself and my
sister out of Kezdet," Judit said, "and pretty soon
I'm going to get my kid brother out. Besides . . .
but that doesn't concern you. Let's just say I have
seen enough children suffering. If I can save this
one, maybe . . . maybe it'll make up for what I
ignored in order to get myself out."

A few minutes later, Judit Kendoro walked
through the swinging doors of Surgery and pre-
sented her Amalgamated badge to the desk clerk.
"Here to collect Child, Anonymous, recent
arrival on the KheVive," she said in a bored mono-
tone. "Dr. Forelle will have transmitted the
orders."

The clerk nodded and pressed a button. The
doors behind her slid open and a tall woman in
sterile scrubs came out.

"I wuh you people would make up your
minds," she said. "We had to give her a global
anesthetic, the local didn't work. I could go
ahead and get all the restorative work done right
now if Forelle would just wait a day."

Judit shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me, I'm
just the courier. You want her back when we're
done?"




64 -^-1              ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"If the order for surgery hasn't been canceled
by some other department," the •woman snapped.
"For now, take her with my compliments. I have
enough real patients without getting caught in
some power struggle between the psych depart-
ments."

She nodded toward the room she had come
from and a green-gowned aide wheeled out a
gurney on which Acorna lay limp and uncon-
scious. The tangle of silvery curls had already
been shaved in a wide naked semicircle around
her horn.

"I'll take her on the gurney," Judit said in a
bored tone, "no need for your people to waste
time with the transfer."

As soon as Judit had control of the gurney,
Rafik sprang forward and grabbed her from
behind. A plasknife slid out of his sleeve and
gleamed across Judit's throat.

"Thanks for showing us the way, dummy," he
growled in his best threatening tones. "We'll take
the kid back now."

"You can't do this! You tricked me!" Judit
was a terrible actress; the words came out as
woodenly as someone reading a Basic literacy
test.

"Raise the alarm," Rafik threatened the desk
clerk and surgeon, "and the girl gets it. Keep
quiet, and we'll let her go when we're safely
away. Understand?"

Gill reached down to the gurney and swept
Acorna up in one arm, and Calum held the doors
while he and Rafik and Judit made their exit.

"Is she all right?" As soon as the doors swung
shut behind them, Rafik dropped the pretense of
holding Judit at knife point. Now he was at Gill's
side, feeling for a pulse in Acorna's wrist.

"Breathing," Gill said. "We'll see about the
rest when the anesthetic wears off. Judit, is there
anything we should know about that?"

She shook her head. "Standard anesthesia.
She'll be out an hour, maybe two, depending on
how long ago it was administered. Just as well,
really. Gives you time to get her back on ship-
board without a fuss. ... I'd better go with you,
though. Keep the knife out, Rafik, and hold my
arm. You may need a hostage again."

"Which way from here to the docking bay?"
Gill asked.

"We can take the service tunnels. Less chance
of running into people." Judit pressed a panel in
the wall and a narrow inner tunnel opened before
them, barely wide enough to admit Gill with the
burden of a sleeping Acorna.

They reached the docking bay without inci-
dent. The bored, mechanical clerk who'd
replaced Johnny Greene hardly lifted his head
•when they came to his desk.

"Warn personnel out of the bay and prepare
the outer doors for opening," Calum said.
"KheDlve departing immediately."

"Not cleared," the clerk mumbled without
looking up from his console.

"Please," Judit said in a shaky voice, "do what
they say. He—he's got a knife."

This got the clerk's attention. His head

56

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

snapped up, he gave a startled look at the
plasknife in Calum's hand, and he dove under his
desk. "Do -what you want, just leave me out

of it!"

"Well, well," said Gill softly, "and here I

thought the wee man might make trouble by try-
ing to be a hero. Calum, d'you know the docking
system well enough to clear us for departure?"

"If Amalgamated hasn't changed it too much,"
Calum said. "Here, hold this." He handed the
plasknife to Judit, who quickly handed it on to
Gill. "I'm a hwtage, you idiots," she hissed.

Gill laughed quietly and accepted the task of
holding Judit "hostage." Calum, having swiveled
the desk console to face him, was oblivious to the
byplay. He brought up a series of screens in
quick succession, nodding in satisfaction.
"Hmm," he said at the sight of the fifth screen.
"Hmm . . . Uh-huh. Okay, next, okay, uh-huh."
He zipped through the rest of the status screens
and tapped in a command. "Okay, that clears us.
But there are a couple of little problems."

"Anything that would keep us on the base?"

"No, but. . ."

"Right. We'll discuss them later. Come on!
And Judit, act normal. The bay may be cleared,
but unless Amalgamated's remodeled, the loading
staff can watch us from the top gallery. We don't
want any of the staff to notice you're being a

hostage."

"So I'm not-a-hostage trying to act like a

hostage trying to act not-a-hostage," Judit mut-
tered as they passed through the series of doors

57

that protected the interior of Base when the
docking bay was open to space. "It's as bad as
singing Cherubino, having to be a girl pretending
to be a boy pretending to dress up as a girl."

"You like ancient opera?" Gill asked in sur-
prise.

Judit shrugged. "I was in a couple of amateur
productions at school. My voice isn't good
enough to go professional. But one year we got
Kirilatova to coach us in Figure. She did Susanna,
of course."

"Kirilatova? But she's got to be about a hun-
dred and ten by now!"

"Not quite. She was seventy then," Judit said,
"and when she sang Susanna, if you had your
eyes closed, she was a girl of twenty about to be
married to her beloved. It was an incredible per-
formance. I wish I'd been born early enough to
hear her at her peak."

"I have cubes," Gill said. "Early perfor-
mances, originally preserved on DCVCD, then
transferred to tri-D when the new format came
out."

"Are you going to invite the girl up to listen to
your opera cubes. Gill? How about lifting
Acorna up first?" There was an edge of sarcasm
in Calum's voice. They had crossed the open bay
without incident while Gill and Judit talked
about dead singers.

"I might at that," Gill said thoughtfully. He
took Judit's hand. "You could come with us. You
don't belong with the psych-toads at Amalgam-
ated, you know. As the customer said to the

58

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Vassar girl in the brothel, •what's a nice girl like
you doing in a place like this?"

Judit shook her head. "As the Vassar girl said
to the customer, 'Just lucky, I guess.' I know
nothing of mining; I'd be useless cargo to you."

Calum, who'd been on the verge of making
that point, opened his mouth and shut it again

•with an audible snap.

"You'd better knock me out, too, before you
go. The hostage act may not have been totally
convincing."

"After all the help you've been? I couldn't
bear to, acushla."

"It -will lend verisimilitude to an otherwise
bald and unconvincing narrative," Judit said.
"Look, I need this job. I can earn enough here to
see Pal through technical school. Anyway, I ... I
have my reasons for staying with Amalgamated.
Now will you get on with it?"

"Can't," Rafik said. "You've no protection. If
you're in this docking bay when we open the
doors, and not on the ship, you're dead. You "will
have to walk back through the inner doors. As
soon as you're safe, -we'll take off. They won't
have time to cancel the clearing sequence."

Unexpectedly, Judit laughed. "That fat little
toad of a receiving clerk is probably still under
his desk, and nobody else knows anything's
wrong . . . yet. But I look too unharmed to have
been the hostage of you brutal roughnecks. Give
me the knife. Gill." With rapid efficiency she
sliced through her outer coverall at the point

•where Gill had been pretending to hold the knife

59

point against her side, then pulled half the hair
out of her braid and let it fall in a dark cloud over
the side of her face. "Do I look enough of a mess
yet?"

"You look most beautiful," Gill said, "and I
shall carry your memory with me through the
cold of space."

"Get on with it, you two!" Calum snapped.
"We've got Acorna webbed in. The longer you
spend chatting the girl up, the more chance of
somebody noticing something's wrong."

"That's a brave girl," Gill said as he climbed
on board the Khedive and strapped himself in for
takeoff. He watched Judit's halting progress
across the floor of the docking bay. "I hope that
limp is part of the acting. ..."

"She was moving just fine on the way to
Surgery," Calum pointed out. "Rafik! Systems
ready? I want us in action the minute she's
through the first doors."

"Second doors," Gill said firmly. "She's too
valuable to risk."

"And Acorna? Not to mention us? And the
KheSive?"

"We'll make it," Gill said -with confidence.

And they did.

"Now what?" Calum said when they were well
away from Base.

Gill shrugged. "Long term or short term?
Long term, we've still got our skills and our ship,
and there are other companies to contract with —

60

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

or -we can go independent. Short term . . . you
said something about problems when you -were
humming over the console back there. What's our
status?"

"Refueling only partially complete, but that's
no problem; -we've enough to make it back into
the asteroid belt, and once there, we can mine a
carbonaceous chondrite to supply hydrogen for
the fuel converter."

"A C-type chondrite will replenish our water
and oxygen, too, if necessary," Rafik pointed out.
"So what's the problem?"

"Food's low. We're about to be temporary
vegetarians."

"At least one of us won't mind that," Gill said
with a tender look at the net where Acorna lay,
moving just enough in her drugged sleep to reas-
sure them all that she would wake soon enough.

"And we didn't get the replacement auger
bits," Calum said. "'Azienut cracked most of them
and Daffy just about finished the rest of the box
off. Our tether cables are •worn, too. We were
due for a good deal of refitting at Base."

There were more immediate complications
than shortage of spare parts, as they learned
when they activated the com units.

"Just receiving," Rafik advised them. "Trans-
mitting would give away our position."

"Ah, they're not going to follow us out of
sector for one little girl nobody had claimed any-
way."

"'Why step on me?' the ant asked the elephant.
'Because I can, and because you have annoyed

61

me,'" Rafik answered obliquely. "It is not wise to
annoy the elephant."

"I've got the. Base frequency," Calum
announced. "You two might want to listen in."

They listened in tight-lipped anger to the
repeated announcement being broadcast to all
Amalgamated bases and ships.

"They're claiming the KheSive is stolen prop-
erty!" Gill exploded. "They can't do that! She's
our ship, free and clear!"

"That ghastly female said something about
the Khedive being theirs," Calum said thought-
fully. "Rafik, is there some legal mumbo-jumbo
in the reorganization that could possibly make it
look like we had been leasing the ship from
them?"

"They can claim whatever they want to," Rafik
pointed out. "And if they catch up with us, and
we have to argue it out in the courts, who'll be
taking care of Acorna?" He smiled benignly at
his colleagues. "We might be well advised to take
on a new identity."

"We can call ourselves whatever we "want,"
Gill grumbled, "but the ship's registered and
known. ..."

Rafik's smile was seraphic. "I might know
someone who can take care of that little matter
for us. For a fee, of course."

"What have we got to pay your someone
with? I have a strong suspicion Amalgamated's
accountants are not going to credit us for all the
iron and nickel we've been sending back by
drone," Calum said dourly. "And the platinum

62

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

63

and titanium are sitting in the Amalgamated ship-
ping bay—-wrapped up in our only container
nets!"

"We have," Rafik said gently, "a large block of
extremely valuable, if nonvoting, shares of
Amalgamated stock. I think Uncle Hafiz -will be
•willing to convert it into local currency for us."

There was a moment's pause, then Gill
laughed and slapped his knee. "So Amalgamated
pays for the refit, after all! Good enough."

"We'll be broke afterward," Calum grumbled.

"We'll have our ship, our tools, and our
skills," Gill said in high good humor. "And
Acorna! Never worry, man. There are asteroids
out there richer than anything we ever mined on
contract. I can feel it in my bones."

"So, onward to Uncle Hafiz?" Rafik asked,
settling himself at the navigational board and
posing his fingers over the keys.

"Yeah. Where is your famous Uncle Hafiz?"

"The planet is called Laboue; the location is a
family secret I'm not allowed to divulge," Rafik
said, already plotting in a course. He had com-
pleted it and cleared the screen before either Gill
or Calum could see what he had entered.
"Naughty, naughty!"

"Nauuughtie?" a feeble little voice queried.

"Acorna, sweetie," and Gill, being nearest,
strode to her hammock. "Sorry, hon, sorry. We
had no idea at all what those idiots were going to
do to our little Acorna."

Her pupils widened and the fear drained from
her features, her hands and feet opening in relief

at finding herself back on board the Khedive and
with them.

"That stupid woman! Glad I decked her,"
Calum said.

"Very stupid woman," Acorna agreed, nod-
ding her head vigorously and then moaning. "Oh,
my head!"

"It'll wear off, acushia," he said, and then
added to Gill. "Get webbed. We're about to go
into the wild black yonder!"




Acorna was very nervous for the
next few days, so they all made a
big effort to divert her and
promise, on their honors, that she'd never be left
alone with stupid strangers again. One of the few-
unessential tasks that Calum had had time to do,
before they went to collect Acorna, was to pick up
some seed from the chandler. He was offered flow-
ers, too.

"There are quite a few decorative broad-leafed
types, flowering, too, which do give you some
diversity in your 'ponies. Also some botanical
oddities that do quite well on nutrient solutions,"
he'd been told. "Quick growing."

While he had been more interested in vegeta-
bles and edible legumes and some of the new
bean types, he also picked up alfalfa, timothy,
and lucernes seeds, remarking that he would be
making a planetfall and was doing a favor for a
friend.

Setting out the seeds and using the Galactic
Botanical from the ship's library program to figure
out how to speed up their growth helped pass the
time and increase the variety of their meals. Acorna
had read just as much as Calum and Gill had of the
GB and she very shortly told them she had the
matter well in hand and they were to please do
something else.

"You don't suppose she remembers stuff . . .
racial memory?" Calum asked.

Gill shrugged. "Who's to know? I did manage
to check that blood sample we took when she
scraped her knee. She's not of a known genotype.
Shit!" And he obediently put a half credit in the
FINE box. It joined its fellows with a clink.

"Hey, man, how much have we got in there?"
Calum asked and Gill opened the container,
spilling out a good fifty half-credits.

"Won't buy much, but it's a start."

"Uncle Hafiz will set us up, lads," Rafik
assured them from the pilots seat. Then he leaned
forward. "Gill, d'you remember that dead ship we
found rammed halfway through an asteroid?"

"What about it?"

"Wasn't it the same class as this one?"

"Year or two older."

"But same class. Are you getting at what I
think you're getting at?" Gill asked, brightening.

"Indeed I am, dear lad," Rafik said, grinning
from ear to ear. "And that asteroid belt is also on
our present heading . . . well, with a slight detour."

"We change identities with it?" Calum asked.
"Can we So that?"

66

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"With a little extra help from Uncle Hafiz, that
should be no problemo," Rafik said. "Shall we?"

Gill and Calum made eye contact.

"Well, it's -worth the effort, I think, especially if
Uncle Hafiz can fiddle some updates about where
that ship has been while she was missing."

"He's a whiz at that sort of thing," Rafik said
and began to whistle off-key.

"Sure get Amalgamated off our tail if they
should bother to come looking for us," Calum said,
looking anxiously in the direction of the 'ponies,
where Acorna was working.

"It would at that," Gill said, after finger-
combing his beard. He held up a portion of the
belt-long hirsute appendage. "Well, I wanted to
have a good trim, but I'll bet Amalgamated axed
the barber shop, too."

"I'll give you a trim," Calum suggested suavely.

"No way, mate," Gill said, wrapping his beard
up and stuffing it down the front of his tunic.

"Uncle Hafiz has an excellent barber," Rafik
said soothingly.

"I can't wait to meet this Uncle Hafiz," Gill
said.

"He will amaze you," Rafik said with smug
pride. He then added, in a much less confident
tone, "Only one thing. He isn't to know about
Acorna."

"Why not?" Gill and Calum asked in unison.

"He's a collector."

"Of what?"

"Of -whatever's going, and I'm bloody sure he's
never seen anything like Acorna."

67

"Won't that complicate matters a trifle?"
Rafik cocked his head to one side, then the
other, and shrugged. "I am not my uncle's nephew
for nothing. We will contrive. We can not lose
Acorna."

The physical exchange of their beacon with that of
the wreck took, in the end, three days of sweaty
labor. The first problem was that mining tools
were ill adapted to the task of cutting and welding
ship parts, and their mechanical repair tools were
not designed to function in the vacuum, dust, and
temperature extremes of the asteroid surface.

"Without Acorna to purify the air," Calum
commented at the end of their first shift, "this
cabin would be stinking like the locker rooms at
the TriCentennial Games by now."

"Water, too," Gill agreed. With constant recy-
cling, ship's air and water usually developed a
stale tang that nothing could get rid of. "Acorna,
you're good fortune to us."

Acorna shook her head, sadness filling her
dark eyes as the centers narrowed to slits.

"You are that," Calum insisted. "What's the
matter?"

"You run away. We hide. I ..." Acorna visibly
struggled to put the words together. "If I go back,
you do not have to hide. My fault!"

The men's eyes met over her head. "We've been
talking too freely," Rafik said softly.

"She speaks so little," Calum agreed, "I forget
how much she understands."

68

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Never mind that now," Gill said more loudly.
"The important thing is to explain that she's got it
all •wrong, don't you think?" He picked Acorna up
and hugged her. "Not your fault, sweetie-pie.
Remember the stupid woman Uncle Calum
decked? Not your fault she was such a twit, was it

now?"

Acorna put the fingers of one hand into her
mouth. Her eyes were dark disbelieving pools.

"Listen, Acorna," Rafik said. "We did not like
those people at Base. We did not want to work for
them. If we had never . . . met . . . you, we would
still not work for Amalgamated. Would we,
fellows?"

Calum's and Gill's emphatic "No!" seemed to
halfway convince Acorna; at least, the silvery
pupils of her eyes slowly returned to normal and
she consented to munch thoughtfully on the
spinach stalks Rafik offered her. By the end of the
shift, she was sufficiently recovered to pester them
about why they stayed on an asteroid that she
could tell held no interesting concentration of met-
als.

"This is a carbonaceous chondrite, Acorna,"
Calum explained.

"Simplify it, will you? The kid doesn't know
those big words!"

"Just because basic astronomical chemistry is
beyond you, Gill," Calum retorted, "don't assume
Acorna is as thick as you are. She knows the
words we teach her, and we might as well teach
her the right ones for the Job." He went on
explaining that the hydrogen and oxygen they

69

could extract from this asteroid would provide
them with extra air and water, as well as with the
fuel they would need to reach their next stop.

"/ clean air," Acorna said, stamping a hooflike
foot.

"So you do," Calum agreed easily, "but we
don't know your tolerances yet, see, and we don't
want to have you doing more than you can handle
at this body weight. Besides, we need fuel. . . ."
Every few sentences he had to stop and draw dia-
grams of molecular structures and conversion rou-
tines. Acorna was fascinated, and Calum drew the
teaching session out until she fell asleep in his

arms.

"Whew!" Calum fastened the sleeping child in
her net and stood up, stretching his back. "Okay,
fellows, a few ground rules. We'd better discuss
certain things only when Acorna is asleep. She's
too clever by half; if she knows everything, she'll
carry a load of guilt she doesn't need. That goes
for the beacon switch, too. If she doesn't know?
about it, she won't ask inconvenient questions
about it later. As far as she's concerned, we're just
here to refuel, right?"

"Just as well we never got around to picking a
suit small enough for her out of Stores," Gill com-
mented.

Rafik nodded. "Soon she must be allowed to go
outside with us. She can be inestimably useful in
locating and assessing mineral deposits, and irre-
spective of the benefit to us, Acorna needs to feel
useful. But for now, yes, it is as well to keep her in
ignorance of our real reason for stopping here."

70

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

After that it took even longer to exchange the
beacons, because they had to do the work only
when Acorna was asleep, officially confining their
activities when she was awake to the extraction of
hydrogen and oxygen. Once the onerous task was
completed, Rafik reprogrammed the navigation
computer for the destination he still refused to
reveal, and all three men slept as much as possible
on the way to planetfall.

"Are we to stay on the ship the whole time we're
here?" Gill demanded.

"Rafik's probably afraid you'll be able to iden-
tify this planet's star if we set foot outside the port
area," Calum said. "You can stop worrying, Rafik.
There was really no point in those little games you
played with the navigational computer. I know
exactly where we are."

"How?" Rafik demanded.

"Fuel consumption," Calum said smugly.
"Triangulation on known stars. Time. Course cor-
rections. I plotted the course in my head and
checked the numbers on my wrist unit. We're on
the fourth planet from — "

"Don't say it," Rafik interrupted. "At least let
me swear to Uncle Hafiz that the name and loca-
tion of his hideaway have never been spoken on
board this ship."

"Why?" Calum asked. "What's the big deal?
Anybody could compute — "

"No, Calum, they couldn't!" Rafik rolled his eyes
heavenward. "I could write a book on the hazards of

71

shipping with a mathematical genius 'who hasn't an
ounce of street sense to balance the other side of his
head. There are all sorts and conditions of people
here, Calum, and the one thing they all have in com-
mon is a strong desire for anonymity. A desire," he
added pointedly, "which we share with them, or have
you forgotten already? Now, lets keep this simple.
You stay right here. / visit Uncle Hafiz and see what
sort of a cut he'll want from the profit on our shares
in return for converting them to galactic credits and
fixing the registration of the new beacon."

"He's not going to do it from family feeling,
huh?" Gill asked.

Rafik rolled his eyes again and sighed heavily.
"Just . . . stay . . . here. I'll be back as soon as I
can, okay?"

"If you people are that big on secrecy, why
couldn't we do it all by tight-beam transmission
from low orbit? Why make a personal visit?"

Rafik looked shocked. "All this time working
together, and you two have yet to learn decent
manners. You infidels can cut deals electronically if
you wish, but Children of the Three Prophets meet
face to face. It's the honorable way to settle an
agreement. Besides," he added more prosaically,
"no transmission is so tight that it can't be inter-
cepted."

He was back sooner than they expected, tight-
lipped and burdened down with a quantity of
squashy parcels wrapped in opaque clingfilm.

"You do not look entirely happy. What's the
matter, does Uncle Hafiz want an extortionate cut
of the shares?" Calum asked.

72 - --~'              ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"And how come you stopped off to go shop-
ping?" Gill added.

"Uncle Hafiz," Rafik said, still tight-lipped, "is
more traditionally minded than I am. He -wishes to
meet the other parties to the agreement face to
face before -we begin serious discussions."

"NotAcorna!"

"Port authorities reported four crew members.
He wants to see all four. It'll be all right," Rafik
soothed Gill, "he won't actually Jee Acorna. I've
thought of a way around it. It's a gooi) idea, too;

one we might want to use from now on."

"And it involves yards and yards of white
polysilk," said Calum, investigating the contents of
one of the packages. "Umm, Rafik, don't take
offense, but I've had previous experience with
some of your 'good ideas.' If this is going to be like
the time we tried to slip into Kezdet space to col-
lect that titanium that was just sitting there beg-
ging to be mined and refined ..."

"That was a good idea, too!" Rafik said indig-
nantly. "How was I to know that the Kezdet
Guardians of the Peace had just hired a new hand
who would recognize our beacon from old days at
MME?"

"All I'm wondering," Calum murmured, "is
what crucial factor don't you know this time?"

"It's nothing like that," Rafik said. "Just a
minor costume change. Look, we don't want any-
body noticing Acorna, right? So -we're going to be
more traditional even than Uncle Hafiz. I told him
I'd been studying the Three Books—that made
him happy. Then I explained that I had been

inspired by the First Book to study further, and
that I had been accepted into the Neo-
Hadithians."

"All of which means precisely what?" Gill
asked.

"The theological ramifications are probably
beyond you," Rafik said. "The important point is
that my -wives -wear hijab, which will be the perfect
disguise for Acorna." He took a length of white
polysilk from Calum and held it up with both
hands so that they could see the shape of the gar-
ment: a many-layered hood atop a billowing gown
of even more layers, each individual layer light
and seemingly transparent, but collectively a cloud
of iridescent reflective white. "As an enlightened
Child of the Three Prophets, naturally I know bet-
ter than to adhere to the ancient superstitions
about the veiling of -women. There is actually
nothing in the First Book—-what you unbelievers
call the Koran—that requires -women to be veiled
and secluded. And the Second Prophet absolutely
repudiated that and other barbaric practices, such
as the prohibition against fermented liquors. But
the Neo-Hadithians claim that the Hadith, the tra-
ditional tales of the life of the First Prophet, are as
sacred as the words of the Books. They want to go
back to the worst of the bad old ways. Including
the veil. Uncle Hafiz is disgusted -with me, but he
says he -will respect my religious prejudices -while
•waiting for me to outgrow them. He -will not actu-
ally look upon the faces of my wives, but they
must be present during the agreement."

"Wives?" Calum repeated.

74

ANNE MC.CAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

75

Rafik's eyes sparkled. "That is the really bril-
liant part of the idea. I told Uncle Hafiz that I was
accompanied by my partner, an unbeliever, and by
my two "wives. You see, that neatly accounts for
the four people reported on this ship. And any-
body looking for three miners and a little girl will
probably not think to investigate a neo-Hadithian,
his two wives, and his partner."

"Sounds risky to me," said Calum. "You mean
one of us stays on the ship and you pick up some
local girl to play your second wife? How can you
be sure she won't talk?"

"That—er—was not quite what I had in mind,"
Rafik said. He shook out the second length of
white polysilk and held it up against Calum. "Yes.
I estimated your height quite well. Now, do
remember to take small steps and keep your eyes
down like a proper Neo-Hadithian wife, will
you?"

"I don't believe it," Dr. Anton Forelle said explo-
sively when he read the reports on the KheSive.
"I — don't — believe — it."

"I didn't want to believe it either," said Judit,
"but the reports are quite clear." She had been cry-
ing. "It's so sad. Those nice men, and the little
girl..."

"If it were true," Forelle said, "it would be a
tragedy. The end of my chance for the research
coup of the decade—of the century! But it's not
true. Amalgamated hires fools; I should know, I'm
in charge of inventing the language of the lies they

feed their fools, making up nice-sounding words
for inhumane policy directives." He shot a shrewd
glance at Judit. "You don't like the sound of that,
do you, girl? Don't like me to say straight out
what our department's about. But you're not as
stupid as the rest of them. You must have noticed.
Well, I had my reasons for taking the job—
deplorable, the lack of support for pure research
these days, and no matter what my ex-colleagues
at the university say, I could have completed a
respectable thesis if I'd been able to get funding
for my research. And I suppose you have your
reasons for putting up with Amalgamated, too."

"They pay well," Judit said. "I've a younger
brother on Kezdet. He's not quite through school
yet."

"And when he is," Forelle said, "no doubt
you'll find some other excuse to make to yourself
for taking their money. They buy a few good
minds and corrupt us, and use us to buy as many
fools as they want. Including the idiots who think
the Khedive crashed on an asteroid!"

"The beacon signal—" Judit began uncertainly.

"Faked. I don't know how, I'm no engineer, but
it was faked."

"Too hard. There'd be registration numbers on
the ship body and engines."

"Ha! Nobody went out and actually looked,
did they? They just trusted the computer records."

Judit was silent. Forelle's idea was insane . . .
but it was true, nobody had physically checked the
crash site.

"I'll wager you that ship is not the Khedive. Yes,




76 •-—~'              ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

that's it. The beacon signal is faked, and they're in
some different sector of space by now, laughing at
us all. And Amalgamated "will let the matter drop,
because they know that no matter what legal jug-
gling they indulged in, no sensible court would
uphold their claim to the ship — so rather than pur-
sue it, they'd just as soon write off the ship as a
wreck and the dissidents as dead. But I'm not
going to let it drop!" Forelle glared at Judit as if
she'd dared to think of contradicting him. "That—
that unicorn girl is too conspicuous to disappear
without a trace. Amalgamated has plants and
bases galaxy-wide. I shall put out a standing order
for any mention of a child with those particular
deformities to be routed to my console with top
priority. Sooner or later, they'll slip up. I'll find
her, and we'll get our paper, Judit. And then I'll be
able to leave these fools and take up the university
position I deserve. They'll probably endow a chair
for me. Well, get on with it. Compose the order,
and I'll edit it so that they know? it's urgent and
won't question why, and won't forget it either.
Finally applied psychohnguistics will be good for
something besides keeping Amalgamated's work-
force happy."

Judit thought he was deluding himself, but it
was a delusion she would have liked to share.
However, if the child had by some miracle lived,
she had no desire to see Forelle get hold of her for
his experiments. So she put her best psycholin-
guistic training into composing a memo that would
look urgent enough to satisfy Dr. Forelle, while
actually encouraging anybody who skimmed it to

mentally dismiss the whole matter as "just another
one ofAnton's crazy ideas."

The skimmer that Rafik rented to take them from
the port area to Uncle Hafiz's residence passed
over a trackless expanse of tropical vegetation,
brilliant green sprinkled with blazes of red and
yellow flowers. To the east, an indigo-blue sea
gave off glints of silver in the sunlight; to the west,
they could just see the long blue line of an escarp-
ment that must have discouraged any building of
roads into the interior of the continent.

"The Mali Bazaar," Rafik said as they passed
over a collection of buildings with flat roofs inlaid
in jewel-toned mosaics.

Gill pressed his nose to the window of the
skimmer to get a better view of the pictures delin-
eated by thousands of glazed ceramic tiles.
"Anywhere else," he said reverently, "that would
be a major tourist attraction. Why do they put it
on the roof where nobody can see it? "

"Most travel here is by skimmer," Rafik said,
"and it's a kind of advertisement for their services.
Everybody knows where the Mali Bazaar is.
That's where I bought your hijab, by the way."

"Isn't it a nuisance not having roads to the
port?" Gill asked. "How do you transport heavy
goods and machinery? "

"By sea, of course," Rafik said. "There are, if you
think about it, many advantages in dispensing
with a road network. Most of the residents of La-
boue have a strong preference for personal privacy;

78

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

traveling by skimmer reduces the chances of meet-
ing other travelers who might be curious about
one's errands. It certainly works in our favor,
wouldn't you agree? Then, too, roads require a
degree of cooperation which is difficult for the
strong individualists -who make their homes here.
There's no central government, no taxation, no
centrally supported infrastructure."

"Expensive," Gill murmured. "Inefficient."
Rafik gave him a bright-eyed glance of amuse-
ment. "Can any system really compete with the
massive inefficiencies of a well-entrenched bureau-
cracy? As for expense . . . one entrepreneur did
attempt a network of toll roads, but he couldn't
afford the cost of guarding them."

"You have problems with bandits?"
"Let's say there are residents who find it diffi-
cult to put aside their traditional ways of life,"
Rafik said, banking the skimmer into a smooth
turn that brought them down in a paved square
surrounded by high bougainvillea-covered walls.
He handed Acorna and Calum out of the skimmer
with the care a Neo-Hadithian would be expected
to take of his delicate and precious wives.
"Remember," he whispered to Calum, "Son't talk!
As long as you're wearing that veil, convention
dictates that you are not really here."

The long, multilayered Neo-Hadithian robes of
white polysilk concealed Calum and Acorna mar-
velously; in the brilliant sunlight they looked like
two moving clouds of white iridescence, shapeless
and indistinguishable save that one was somewhat
taller than the other.

79

As Gill made his exit from the skimmer, a sec-
tion of bougainvillea-covered wall swung away
from the rest, revealing a dark man of medium
height in whom Rafik's elegant features were
sharpened to a look of dangerous wariness.

"You and your family and guests are welcome
to this humble abode," he said to Rafik, with a
quick gesture of his right hand from forehead to
lips to chest.

Rafik repeated the gesture before embracing
him. "Uncle Hafiz! You are gracious indeed to
receive us. You are well?" he asked as though
they had not been conversing only a few hours
before.

"I am, thanks be to the Three Prophets. And
you, my nephew? You are well?"

"Blessed be the Hadith and the revelations of
Moulay Suheil," Rafik said, "I am, and my wives
also."

A faint shadow of distaste crossed Uncle
Hafiz s features at the mention of the Hadith, but
he controlled himself and gave properly courteous
answers as Rafik went on to inquire about the
health of innumerable cousins, nephews, and
distant connections. Finally, the initial greetings
finished, Uncle Hafiz stepped back and invited
them, with a wave of his hand, to precede him into
the garden revealed beyond the walls around the
skimmer landing area.

A path of deep blue stepping-stones wound
among flowering shrubs. As Gill stepped on the
first stone, a clear pure middle C sounded in the
air. The next two steps produced an E and a G;

80

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

the sounds lingered on the air and blended in a
perfect chord.

"You like my walkway?" Hafiz asked with a
satisfied smile. "Perhaps you have not before
encountered the singing stones of Skarrness."

"But I thought they were—" Gill choked down
the rest of the sentence. The once-famous singing
stones of Skarrness were virtually gone now, hav-
ing fallen prey to unscrupulous collectors, who
removed so many of the stones that the remaining
ones could not maintain their population. But
Rafik had said Hafiz was a collector of rarities and
had implied that he was not overburdened with
scruples. It would probably not be tactful to com-
plete his thought.

"Quite rare, yes," Hafiz said. "It was my great
good fortune to obtain a perfectly tuned set in C
major, and an even rarer set in the Lydian mode.
Very few complete sets, alas, are available now."

Thanki) to jerk^ like you, Gill thought, but he
managed to keep his thought to himself and his
face composed.

The walk-way led them musically to a high wall
of dark stone which Hafiz identified casually as
Farinese marble. A double gate of lacy, hand-
wrought metal work opened into a second garden,
this one surrounded on three sides by a roofed
gallery with columns of the same Farinese marble.
Through the columns Gill could glimpse openings
into a shadowy interior of polished floors, carved
wooden screens, and silk hangings.

Hafiz clapped his hands and several robed ser-
vants appeared, two carrying cushions of jewel-

81

colored silk, another with a tall crystal pitcher, and
a fourth behind him -with a crystal bowl and a
stack of towels so richly embroidered in gold
thread that only a small silken square was visible
in the center of each.

"We have, of course, completely modern facili-
ties within," Hafiz said apologetically, "but it
delights me to keep to the old customs of offering
guests water with my own hands, and food and
drink in my own garden, as soon as they have
arrived." He took the pitcher and poured a thin
stream of cold water over Rafik's outstretched
hands. Gill copied Rafik's motions and took one of
the embroidered towels to dry his hands. Hafiz
handed the pitcher to Rafik with a bow. "Perhaps
you would prefer to offer water to your wives your-
self. I should not like to insult your new beliefs."

Rafik bowed acknowledgment and held out the
pitcher for Calum and Acorna to wash their
hands, casually moving as he did so that his body
blocked any view Hafiz might have had of
Acorna's oddly shaped digits and Calum's mascu-
line fingers.

Hafiz indicated that they should all seat them-
selves on the silken cushions, mentioned casually
that the pitcher and bowl had each been carved
from a single piece of Merastikama crystal, and told
the servants to take back the washing implements
and bring refreshment for his guests. The place-
ment of brass trays on three-legged wooden stands,
the handing round of minute glasses full of fiery
liquor and delicate bowls of fruit-flavored sorbet,
took what seemed to Gill an inordinately long time

82

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

83

while Hafiz and Rafik chatted of trivialities. Rafik
made a show of refusing the liquor, in keeping with
his pretense of conversion to the strict Neo-
Hadithian sect, which had revived all the prohibi-
tions of the First Prophet and then some. Gill at
first felt glad to be an official unbeliever and free to
enjoy the drinks; then, after one burning swallow,
he began considering the possibility of announcing
an instant conversion to Rafik's tenets. He was
relieved to see that Acorna managed to take a dish
of sorbet under her veil; he'd been afraid that eating
and drinking would tax her disguise too much. But
it seemed the Neo-Hadithians had designed their
women's costumes so that the veils need not be
removed for anything. Gill wondered sourly
whether they removed them in bed.

Finally, as a casual afterthought to a lengthy
discussion of the problems of interstellar trade,
Rafik mentioned that he and his partner had
encountered a small technical difficulty with
which Uncle Hafiz might be able to help them
out—for a consideration, of course.

"Ah, these minor technicalities." Hafiz sighed
sympathetically. "How they plague us, these petty
bureaucrats with their accounting details! What
seems to be the difficulty, son of my best beloved
sister?"

Rafik gave Hafiz a severely edited account of
their difficulties with Amalgamated, leaving out
any mention of Acorna and stressing the basic ille-
gality of Amalgamated's claim to own the Khedive.

"If their claim is entirely without foundation,"
Hafiz asked, as though motivated by idle curiosity,

"why do you not take your case to the courts of
the Federation?"

"It is written in the Book of the Second
Prophet," said Rafik, "'Trust kin before country-
men, countrymen before outlanders, and all before
unbelievers.'"

"And yet your partner is an unbeliever," Hafiz
pointed out.

"Our partnership is of long standing," Rafik
said. "Besides, there is a minor complication in the
matter of money advanced by MME—the com-
pany with which we had previously contracted—
for mining equipment and supplies. The dogs of
unbelievers at Amalgamated claim our ship as
security against the advance, though if they had
credited us with the metals sent back by drone
over the last three years, the debt would have been
paid three times over. However, we left the
Amalgamated base in some haste and the matter
was not resolved."

"It is also written," said Hafiz, '"Be not in such
haste to collect the silver that ye let the gold fall by
the wayside.'"

"A most excellent precept, 0 Revered Uncle,"
said Rafik politely, "but one which I found myself
unable to honor under the circumstances." He
lowered his voice as if to make sure that the veiled
figures on the other side of the brass tray should
not hear. "It was a matter of a woman—you
understand?"

Hafiz smiled broadly. "I begin to see why you
have joined the Neo-Hadithians, my son! It is
their revival of polygamy which appeals to you.




84

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

So, two •wives -were not enough. You had to get
yourself in trouble with some unbeliever on the
Amalgamated base?"

"In confidence," Rafik said, "the taller of my
two wives is so ugly one might imagine her a man,
and I have no use for her as a woman; while the
smaller one is too young yet to be taken to my bed.
Both marriages were made to strengthen my
claims to kinship -within the Neo-Hadithians and
not for carnal desire."

Calum choked under his veil. Gill reached
under the table and pinched some part of his
anatomy through the billowing white layers of
polysilk, hard enough to distract Calum from
whatever he might have been tempted to say.

Hafiz laughed merrily at Rafik s account of his
marital troubles, and seemed more disposed to
help them out if he could get the satisfaction of
teasing his nephew for the bad bargain he had
made in joining the Neo-Hadithian sect.
Transferring registration of their new beacon into
their name, he warned, was a complicated task
and would require facilitation payments to a num-
ber of individuals, not all of them so liberal in their
thinking as he was. He would, however, be happy
to arrange the entire matter, if Rafik could see his
way to putting sufficient credit at his disposal.

"That brings up another minor point," said
Rafik, and showed Hafiz the share certificates
from Amalgamated.

"These can, of course, be converted into Feder-
ation credits," Hafiz said, thumbing rapidly through
the certificates, "although at a substantial discount."

'A.corna 85

"The discount on shares from such a galacti-
cally recognized company, all but certain to rise in
value, should be only nominal," Rafik protested.

Hafiz smiled. "Is it not written in the Book of
the Third Prophet, "Count not the light from a dis-
tant star among your assets, for that star may have
been long dead by the time its light reaches thine
eyes'?" He glanced at Acorna, who had begun
wriggling under her veils in a way that was caus-
ing Calum and Gill grave anxiety. "But your
younger wife is restless. Perhaps your wives
would care to retire to the rooms which have been
made ready for them while we settle the minor
matter of the discount on these shares and the
payments necessary to facilitate reregistration of
the new beacon? Or would they like to stroll in
the outer garden? I can call one of my women to
attend them."

"That will not be necessary," said Gill, rising to
his feet. "I should be honored to escort the ladies."

Rafik smiled seraphically. "I repose complete
trust in my partner," he assured Hafiz. "As he
trusts me to complete the negotiations, so can I
trust him with my honor and that of my women."

"Particularly," Hafiz needled him as the others
left, "since one is, by your own account, too ugly
to bed and the other too young."

"Just so," said Rafik cheerfully. "Now, about
this discount. . ."

As soon as they were concealed among the
flowering shrubs of the outer garden, Calum
shoved back his multilayered veil and took a deep
breath. "I am going to kill Rafik," he said.

86

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Gill snickered. "Remember to take tiny little
ladylike steps," he teased. "And better keep the
veil down. Even with Rafik's warning that you're
as ugly as a man, Hafiz might get suspicious if he
saw that you need a shave."

"I just hope they finish dickering so we can get
back to the ship," Calum said sourly, but he flipped
the veiling back over his face. "I'm tired of fancy
dress."

Acorna tugged at Gill's sleeve and pointed at
the grass that grew around each of the blue
singing stones. "What? Oh, sure, sweetie, go
ahead and nibble if you like. You've been a good
girl. Just remember to cover your head if we hear
anybody coming. The singing stones ought to give
us plenty of warning," Gill said rather defensively
to Calum.

"You didn't let me unveil."

"Modesty, modesty." Gill chuckled. "You don't
need a snack. Acorna's metabolism needs more
than the occasional dish of sorbet, you know. And
if Hafiz expects us to stay for a meal, it'll probably
be mostly meat dishes and she can't eat those."

Acorna, ignoring the argument, had quietly
knelt down within her billowing veils and pushed
the face veils back so that she could see to pluck
the tender tops of the sweet grasses. "Good girl,
good," Gill encouraged her. "Don't make any div-
ots, now."

"Is rude to make holes in grass," Acorna said.

tlv          „

Is a no.

"A very big no, in somebody else's garden,"
Gill agreed. "But the stuff has to be mowed, I

87

assume, so it'll do no harm if you take an inch or
two off the top."

Five notes in a -wailing pentatonic scale
sounded in quick succession. Acorna tried to jump
up, but the swathes of filmy fabric impeded her
movements and she would have fallen if Gill
hadn't grabbed her hand and pulled her upright
by main force. She was still fumbling for her veil
when Hafiz and Rafik came into view.

Hafiz's eyebrows shot up and he came forward
rapidly. "By the earlocks of the Third Prophet!"
he exclaimed. "A rarity indeed! Rafik, beloved
nephew, I do believe we can come to a mutually
agreeable arrangement at a considerably less dis-
count than I had anticipated."

"Uncle," Rafik said in reproving tones, "I beg
of you, do not insult the modesty of my wives and
the honor of my family." But he was too late; Hafiz
was already stroking the short horn that pro-
truded from Acorna's forehead. She stood quite
still, only the narrowing of her pupils showing her
distress and confusion.

"You were complaining that this one was too
young to be of any use," Hafiz said without looking
away from Acorna. "How fortunate that your new
religious friends hold to the old traditions in the
matter of divorce as well as of polygamy and hijab.
Nothing could be easier than a quiet family divorce,
at once freeing you of an undesired entanglement
and allowing me the acquisition of a new rarity."

"Unthinkable," Rafik protested. "Her family
have entrusted her to me; she is my sacred respon-
sibility. "

88 -

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Then they will no doubt be delighted to hear
that she will henceforth grace the home of such a
distinguished and benevolent collector as myself,"
Hafiz said happily. "I am willing to undertake to
respect all the religious prohibitions of your sect.
She can have the rooms which I had set aside for
you and your wives tonight; I will establish them
as secluded women's quarters for her and her ser-
vants alone, so that the Neo-Hadithian scruples
need not be outraged. You will be able to tell her
family that she is kept in every possible luxury."

"I am sorry," Rafik said firmly. "I do not sell
my women. Uncle Hafiz, this touches on my
honor!"

Hafiz waved the objections away with an airy
hand. "Ah, you young people are so impetuous! I
would not be doing my duty as your uncle, my
boy, if I permitted you to refuse in haste what will
upon reflection appear to you as a most advanta-
geous solution to all your difficulties. No, family
feeling dictates that I make sure you have time to
reflect upon the situation at leisure. You will
remain as my guests until you have had sufficient
time to perceive the wisdom of this course."

"We cannot impose upon you," Rafik said. "We
will return to our ship tonight and there discuss
the matter among ourselves."

"No, no, dear boy, I could not hear of it! My
household would be dishonored forever should I
fail to offer you appropriate hospitality. You will
be my guests tonight. I simply insist," Hafiz said,
raising his voice slightly.

There was a rustle among the bushes, and

89

suddenly two robed and silent servants stood
behind each one of them.

"The singing stones, although a great curiosity,
are sometimes inconvenient," Hafiz said cheer-
fully. "There are other ways through the garden
for those who serve me."

Rafik caught Gill's eye and gave a slight
despairing shrug. "We shall be delighted to accept
your hospitality tonight. Uncle. You are too gener-


ous.

Hafiz *s generosity extended to the provision of
separate quarters for them, one set of rooms for
Rafik and his "wives," and another room, on the
far side of the sprawling mansion, for Gill. "You
would naturally wish your women to be housed in
seclusion and far from any man's sleeping place,"
he explained smoothly.

"And that makes it even harder to get away,"
Calum growled as soon as Hafiz had left them on
their own. "How are we going to find Gill and get
to our skimmer?"

"Peace," said Rafik absently.

"You're not thinking of giving in to him!"

"I played in this house as a boy," Rafik said. "I
know every inch of the grounds, perhaps better
than my uncle; it has been some years since he had
the figure to wriggle along the low paths under the
shrubbery, or to swing from cornice to pipe along
the upper stories. But we will temporize for a day
or two, Calum."

"Why?"

"We do," said Rafik sweetly, "want to give
Uncle Hafiz time to fix the registration of our new

90

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

ship's beacon, don't we? Let him think -we're coop-
erating until that is done; then it will be time
enough to get away."

"And how do you think you're going to get him
to switch the registration and launder our shares
without handing over Acorna?"

"Don't worry about a thing," Rafik said. "I'm a
master negotiator. I learned from an expert."

"I know," said Calum. "We're negotiating with
the expert in question, remember?"

coma woke to the dawn-chirping
of birds in the sweet-scented
flowering vines outside the win-
dow. The night had been still and hot and she had
pushed all the covers off her bed; now it was cool,
almost chilly. She wrapped the clinging layers of
white polysilk around herself. The robes were
enough to keep her warm, but she was unable to
recreate the drapery of hood and robe and face
veils that Rafik had arranged about her the previ-
ous day. She looked doubtfully at the sleeping
Rafik and Calum. Would it be a big "no" to leave
the room like this, -without the veils over her head?
She hated the veils anyway; they clung to her
mouth and nose and chafed her forehead -where
the growing horn was still tender. It -would proba-
bly be an even bigger "no" to wake Calum and
Rafik and ask them to dress her, -wouldn't it?

The pressure in her bladder settled the ques-
tion. Tiptoeing so as not to -wake the miners,




92

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Acorna quietly slid the carved •wooden door open
just enough to let her squeeze out. She remem-
bered the -washing-place they had been shown last
night, a -wonderland of blue tiles and jets of hot
and cold -water and minty steam rising up through

•wooden slats. But this morning there -was no one
to make the hot water come out for her, and after
relieving herself she abandoned the washing-place
and tiptoed down two flights of stairs to -where
she could see the garden through an open arch-
way.

The blue stones sang when she stepped on
them, just as they had last night. Entranced by
the sweet pure tones, Acorna dropped her cling-
ing draperies and danced back and forth, impro-
vising a tune by leaping from one stone to another
and accompanying the music of the stones -with
her own singing. She did not realize how loud she

•was getting until a discordant note interrupted
her melody. She -whirled and saw Uncle Hafiz
standing at the beginning of the blue stone
path.

Acorna's song broke off and the sudden still-
ness of the garden shocked her into realizing how
boisterous she had been.

"Too loud?" she asked, penitent. "If I make too
much noise, that is a big no?"

"Not in the least, my dear child," Uncle Hafiz
said. "Your singing was a delightful interruption to
a boring task. No, no—" he forestalled her as she
belatedly tried to -wind the robes around herself
again, "there's no need to trouble yourself with
those things, not among family."

93

"I must be covered. Rafik said."

"On the streets, perhaps," Uncle Hafiz agreed,
"but among your own relatives it is different."

Acorna thought this over. "You are rel-tive?"

"And I hope soon to be a very close relation
indeed."

"You are rel-tive to me?"

"Yes."

"And I am rel-tive to Rafik and Gill and
Calum. So you are rel-tive to Gill?"

Uncle Hafiz was so dismayed at the thought of
claiming kinship with the red-bearded unbeliever
that he didn't even think of asking who Calum
might be. "Ah—it doesn't -work quite like that," he
said hastily.

"How many percent rel-tive to Gill are you?"

"Zero percent," Hafiz said, then blinked.
"Aren't you a little young to be learning fractions
and percentages? "

"I know fraction, percent, decimal, octal, hex-
adecimal, and modulo," Acorna said cheerfully. "I
like numbers. You like numbers?"

"Only," said Hafiz, "when the odds are in my
favor."

Acorna frowned. "Odd is not-even. Even is
not-odd. Odds is not-evens?"

"No, no, sweetheart," Hafiz said. "The boys
have neglected an important part of your educa-
tion. Come along inside. I can't explain without
drawing pictures."

When Rafik came pounding down the stairs an
hour later, sure that Acorna had been kidnapped
while he and Calum slept, the first thing he heard

94

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

95

from Hafiz s study was a familiar piping voice ask-
ing a question.

"That's right!" Uncle Hafiz sounded more
relaxed than Rafik had ever heard him, almost
jovial. "Now, suppose you're making book on a
race where the favorite is running at three to two,
so you offer slightly better odds—like, say, six to
five — "

"Six to five is much better," Rafik heard Acorna
object. "Should not give more than seven to four."

"Look, it's )ust an example, okay? Suppose you
offer seven to four, then. What happens?"

"Many people place bets with you."

"And what do you do to make sure you don't
lose your money?"

"Lay off the bets with another bookmaker?"

"Or," Uncle Hafiz said cheerfully, "make very,
very sure the favorite doesn't win."

That was the point at which Rafik interrupted
them and brought Acorna back to their rooms for
the excellent breakfast Hafiz had ordered sent up
to them. He and Calum •wrangled over the sliced
mangoes and pointed skewers full of grilled lamb
like weapons at one another while Acorna quietly
worked her way through the bowl of leafy greens
Hafiz had ordered especially for her.

"How could you be so careless and irresponsi-
ble?" Calum demanded.

"You were sleeping in this room, too," Rafik
pointed out acidly. "I happen to know that you
slept very well last night. You snore!"

"You should have told her not to go out with-
out one of us!"

"Look," Rafik said, "no harm's been done,
okay? He didn't hurt her."

"From your own account," Calum retorted, "he
was teaching her to gamble! That's not the sort of
education I want for my ward."

"She's mine, too," Rafik said, "and there is
nothing inherently criminal about the profession
of being a turf accountant."

Acorna chose that moment, having finished all
the sweet greens and the sliced carrots, to speak
up. "Nobble the favorite," she said clearly, and
smiled with pleasure at her new word.

"I rest my case," said Calum, arms folded. "And
what's more, you are not getting me back into
those ridiculous garments. If Acorna can run
around unveiled, so can I."

"You will not," Rafik said with quiet intensity, "do
anything to destroy my cover as a Neo-Hadithian.
And that includes raising your voice. We're just
lucky that Uncle Hafiz respects my religious
beliefs enough to order the servants to keep away
from these rooms, or we'd be blown already."

"I think we are blown," Calum said. "Blown clear
out of the water. Now that he's seen Acorna, what's
the point of wrapping ourselves up like white tents?"

"My conversion to Neo-Hadithian tenets,"
Rafik said, "is an essential part of my negotiating
strategy. And it's not such a bad thing that Acorna
has charmed Uncle Hafiz, either. He'll be all the
more inclined to complete the transaction and
speed us on our way."

Calum stared. "You sound as if you actually
mean to give him Acorna!"




96

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Acorna's eyes narrowed until the silver pupils
•were all but obliterated. She leaned across the
table to grab Calum by one hand and Rafik by the
other.

"It's okay, sweetie," Calum soothed her, "we're
not going anywhere without you. Are we, Raflk?"

"Want Gill," Acorna said firmly. "All together."

"We will be together, darling, in just a little
while," Rafik promised.

"Want Gill here now!" Acorna's voice rose.

Calum's and Rafik's eyes met over her head. "I
thought you said she was over the dependency,"
Rafik mouthed.

"Being auctioned off as a curiosity makes a girl
insecure," Calum whispered back.

"Gill!" Acorna wailed on an even higher note.

"Just so you understand," Calum said some time
later, "I'm only doing this for Acorna."

"Darling, I would never ask you to put on hijab
for my sake," Rafik said sweetly. "White isn't your
color."

They were strolling in the garden, Calum and
Acorna decently veiled so that Gill could join them
without outraging Rafik's supposed Neo-
Hadithian sense of propriety.

"Explain to me again," Calum said while
Acorna skipped ahead, holding Gill's hand,
"exactly how wrapping me up in a bolt of polysilk
is an integral part of your negotiating strategy. Am)
Son't giggle!" he added sharply, almost tripping
over some of the lower layers of robes.

97

"Don't hike your skirt up, it's not decent,"
Rafik said. "If you'd take small steps, like a lady,
you wouldn't trip all the time. Ah, Uncle Hafiz!
The benevolence of your smile lights the garden
more brightly than the summer sun."

"What joy can be sweeter than the company of
beloved relatives," Hafiz replied, "beloved rela-
tives and, er, um ..." He looked at Gill's flaming
red beard and freckled skin. "... relatives and
friend," he finished with an audible gulp. "I trust
you have had time and privacy sufficient to confer
with your family and your partner, dear nephew?"

"We accept your offer," Rafik said. "Transfer
the registration of the ship's beacon and sell the
shares for us, and ..." He nodded at Acorna, who
was happily chattering to Gill about the new kinds
of fractions she had learned, such as three-to-two
and six-to-four.

"Excellent!" Now Uncle Hafiz was truly beam-
ing. "I knew you'd be reasonable, dear boy. We're
two of a kind, you and I. If only your cousin
Tapha could do as well!"

Rafik looked slightly queasy at being compared
to his cousin, his uncle s heir. "Where is Tapha, by
the way?"

Hafiz's smile vanished. "I sent him to take over
the southern half of the continent. Yukata Batsu
has been running it long enough."

"And?"

"I don't know where the rest of him is," Hafiz
said. "All Yukata Batsu sent back were his ears." He
sighed. "Tapha never had what it takes. I should
have known when I abducted his mother that she

98

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

99

didn't have the brains to give me a •worthy successor.
Yammer, yammer, yammer, all the time complaining
at me that she could have had a career dancing top-
less at the Orbital Grill and Rendezvous Parlor. Her
and her perky breasts. Yasmin, I told her, all the
girls have perky breasts in zero-g, you were nothing
special, you're lucky a good man took you away
from all that. But would that woman listen?" Hafiz
sighed and brightened up. "However, I'm not too
old to try again. Now that I've found a woman with
intelligence to match my own..." His eyes strayed
to Acorna. "Don't you mind her holding hands with
that dog of an unbeliever?"

"She's only a little girl," Rafik said stiffly.

"Not for much longer," Hafiz said. "They grow
up faster than you think."

A sputtering sound escaped from behind
Calum's layers of white veiling. Hafiz looked star-
tled. "Your senior wife? She is unwell?"

"She suffers from nervous fits," Rafik said,
grasping Calum's wrist and hauling him away
from Hafiz.

"A sad affliction," Hafiz said. "Meet me within
the house when you have calmed your women,
Rafik, and we will pledge faith to our agreement
over the Three Books." He turned away, mutter-
ing, "Ugly, prone to fits, big feet, and what a hairy
wrist! No wonder he is reluctant to give up the
other one . . . but with his ship and his credits, he
can easily buy another wife."

"And just what were you snickering about?"
Rafik demanded in a whisper when Hafiz had
passed back into the house.

"'They grow up faster than you think,'" Calum
quoted. "If he only knew how fast! Would he
believe Acorna was a toddler when we found her
less than two years ago?"

"Let's don't tell him," Rafik suggested. "This
whole deal depends on mutual trust, and he'd be
sure I was a thumping liar if I tried to tell him how
fast Acorna grows. Besides, she's not going to be
here long enough for him to find out."

"But its the truth!" Calum said.

"Truth," Rafik said, "has very little to do with
verisimilitude."

Gill kept Acorna amused in the garden while
Rafik and Calum went into the study to meet
Hafiz. He was seated behind a gleaming, crescent-
shaped desk with the usual consoles and controls,
plus a few that Calum did not recognize, inlaid
flush with the surface so as not to spoil the smooth
lines of the desk. Incongruously stacked atop the
modern equipment were two antique books, the
kind with hard covers enclosing a stack of paper
sheets, and an old-fashioned databox with only six
sides.

"You admire my desk?" Uncle Hafiz said pleas-
antly to Calum. "Carved from a single piece of
purpleheart . . . one of the last of the great stand of
purpleheart trees on Tanqque III."

"My wife prefers not to talk to other men,"
Rafik said sharply.

He'd rumbled lu, Calum thought in despair. He
know,) I'm not a woman. Rafik and hid damn <>dly
gam&f!

"Dear boy," Hafiz said, "surely within a family




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

100

as close as ours, and soon to be united even more
closely by the exchange of wives, even you Neo-
Hadithians can drop some of these ridiculous . . .
oh, all right, all right, I didn't mean to insult your . . .
religion." He pronounced the last word with the
faint distaste of someone directing the servants to
remove whatever it was the cat had dragged in
and failed to finish eating.

Rafik bridled, scowled, and gave what Calum
thought an excellent imitation of a man on the
verge of taking mortal insult.

"Your ship," Uncle Hafiz said, "is now regis-
tered as the Uhuru, originally of Kezdet."

"Why Kezdet?"

"That -was the original registration of the bea-
con you appropriated. It would have been
extremely expensive to delete all traces of the bea-
con's history. I think it suffices that We can now
show an electronic trail of three transfers of own-
ership. Appropriate insignia have been applied to
the body of the ship, along with some . . . ah . . .
cosmetic changes."

Calum choked.

"Every rascal in the galaxy registers under
Kezdet," Rafik protested. "They're a known cover
for all sorts of thieves, desperadoes, con men, and
cheats."

Uncle Hafiz's brows rose. "Dear boy! My own
modest personal fleet has Kezdet registration."

"Exactly," muttered Calum, too low for Hafiz to
hear him. He jabbed Rafik in the side with one veiled
elbow, hoping to remind him of the other problem
with using Kezdet as their port of registration.

101

"And," Rafik said, "as it happens, I have had
an ... unfortunate encounter with Kezdet patrols.
One of those pesky matters of trespassing that can
occur with the best of •will on both sides, but I am
afraid they took it in a poor spirit." There was no
way of knowing for sure, but it seemed a safe bet
that the Guardians of the Peace were still unhappy
about the patrol cruiser he, Calum, and Gill had
crippled and marooned before taking off with that
load of titanium.

"Then," Uncle Hafiz said smoothly, "you will
have an excellent excuse for not returning to your
port of registration, will you not? Now, your
shares have been converted to ..." He named a
sum in Federation credits that made Calum gasp
through his veils.

Rafik actually managed to look disappointed.
"Ah, well," he said sadly, "that would be after your
discount, of course?"

"By no means," said Uncle Hafiz, "but I pro-
pose to take no more than twenty percent of the
gross, which I assure you will barely cover my
expenses in arranging . . . facilitation payments . . .
to all the bureaucracies concerned."

"It was seventeen percent yesterday."

"Delay," said Uncle Hafiz, "increases the
expense. How fortunate that you have come to a
wise decision! It only remains to complete the
transaction. If you will swear on the Three Books
to honor our agreement, then call Acorna in and
divorce her, I shall marry her immediately and you
will be free to depart."

Rafik looked mournful. "If only it were that

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

102

easy!" he said. "But I must warn you that the
Hadith require a -waiting period of at least one
sunset and dawn between a woman's divorce and
remarriage."

"That is not in my understanding of the
Hadith," Uncle Hafiz said sharply.

"It is a new revelation ofMoulay Suheil," Rafik
countered. "He had a dream in which the First
Prophet, blessed be His Name, appeared and
expressed his concern lest women, being weak in
understanding and easily led, might be drawn into
error by too much haste in the matter of divorces
and remarrying. A divorced "woman must spend
one night in prayer, seeking the will of the First
Prophet, before she may enter into any new
alliance."

"Hmmph," muttered Uncle Haflz. "I would
scarcely describe the young rarity out there as
being weak in understanding. I've never seen any-
one catch on so fast to the idea of keeping a dou-
ble set of accounts, one for the Federation and one
for private purposes."

Calum choked and Rafik trod on his foot. This
was no time to resume the argument about whether
Hafiz was teaching Acorna suitable things!

"However," Rafik said, "to allay your anxieties,
I will do better than swearing on the Three Books.
I will swear on this copy of the Holy Hadith them-
selves, authenticated by Moulay Suheil, and most
sacred to me and to all true believers." He drew a
datahedron from his pocket and kissed it rever-
ently before extending it in his cupped hands.
Uncle Hafiz recoiled as if from a snake.

103

"You swear on your Hadith," he said, "and I
will make my oath on the Books of the Three
Prophets. Thus each of us will be bound by that
which one holds most sacred."

"An excellent idea," said Rafik.

Calum's attention wavered during the lengthy
oath-taking which followed, most of -which was
not performed in Basic Interlingua but in the
language of Hafiz and Rafik's culture of origin.
It sounded to him like a group of birds choking
on something unpleasant, but it seemed to make
sense. At one point they called for Acorna to be
brought into the room; she stood quite still under
her veils while more of the unfamiliar language
spouted over her head. At the end Hafiz kissed
the topmost of his Three Books, and Rafik
pressed his lips to the datahedron again, and
both men smiled as if in the satisfaction of a bar-
gain concluded.

"With your permission. Uncle, I will now
escort my former wife to the place set apart for
her, that she may begin her vigil of prayer. I
know you will not wish to delay the final cere-
mony," Rafik said.

"Since I myself am not a Neo-Hadithian,"
Hafiz said, "I see no need at all for this delay."

"I must report to her family that all has been
handled decently and in good order," said Rafik.
"It is a matter touching my honor. Uncle."

Hafiz muttered and grumbled but finally let
them go, after receiving Rafik's assurances that
Acorna's prescribed time of prayer need not inter-
fere with her attending the wedding feast that

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

104

night. "Only family," he promised. "Only our-
selves and your partner."

Rafik looked surprised. "You will break bread
with an unbeliever?"

"You consider him as family and entrust him
with your honor in the persons of your wives,"
said Hafiz, looking as though he had just swal-
lowed something very unpleasant. "In loving
respect to you, my dear nephew, I can do no less."

"What," Calum demanded as soon as they were
safely in the secluded rooms upstairs, "was all that
about?"

"Well, you didn't want me to hand Acorna over
to him then and there, did you? I had to come up
with some reason to delay. Now that the credits
and registration are in order and he's told me the
passwords to access them, we can sneak out
tonight. Have to wait until after this blasted feast,
though." Rafik frowned. "I wish I knew why he
insists on having Gill there. He obviously didn't
like the idea above half."

"Makes it convenient for us," Calum pointed
out.

"That," said Rafik, "is what worries me."

Out of consideration for Rafik's supposedly strict
religious views on the seclusion of women, Hafiz
arranged that no servants should be present at the
celebration feast that night.

"You see, dear boy," he said, gesturing at the
spacious dining hall with its carved lattice-work
screens and colorful silk-covered divans, "all is

105

prepared. The table is, after all, adequately fur-
nished with heating and chilling chambers to keep
food at the proper temperature. What could be
pleasanter than a simple dinner en famlile? The
employment of dozens of servants to carry trays
and pour drinks is merely an outmoded tradition of
conspicuous consumption, something which the
Third Prophet enjoined us to abjure at all times. Do
you not agree?"

Gill was glad that he, as an unbeliever, and
Calum, as Rafik's senior wife, were not expected
to reply to this statement. All he had to do was
keep a straight face as Rafik praised the modesty
and simplicity of Hafiz s arrangements . . . and try
to keep his eyes from wandering over the incredi-
bly lavish display before them.

A long, low table stretched between two rows
of divans covered in emerald and crimson silk.
Dishes covered the table from one end to the
other: bowls of pilau, silver trays of sizzling-hot
pastries, sliced fruits arranged as an elaborate still
life on a specially inset chilling tray, skewers of
grilled lamb, dishes of yogurt with chopped mint,
Kilumbemba shellfish fried in batter, crystallized
rose petals and sugared goldenhearts. . . . Between
the dishes stood tall tumblers frosted with ice, and
a pitcher of some sparkling fruit drink rested in
another cooling tray beside Hafiz's divan at the
head of the table. The far wall of the dining hall
appeared to be a cliff of moss-covered rock with a
veil of water running down its surface and splash-
ing into a recirculating stream at the bottom of the
miniature cliff. From behind the carved lattices, a

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

106

recording of Kitheran harp music provided a
softly tinkling counterpoint to the sound of the
falling -water.

"We shall even pour our own drinks," Hafiz
said, gesturing toward the pitcher. "I have seen
that as a good Neo-Hadithian you follow the First
Prophet's words and abjure wine, rather than
accepting the dispensations of the Second and
Third Prophets. I myself usually enjoy a
Kilumbemba beer with my dinner, but for tonight
I -will share the iced madigadi juice prepared for
my guests."

Rafik nodded, rather sadly. Actually, as both
Calum and Gill well knew, he would have liked a
mug of cold Kilumbemba beer, the other specialty
of that planet, to wash down the fried shellfish.

"Don't even think about it," Calum muttered in
his ear. "If I can wrap myself up like a white bal-
loon to substantiate your conversion, you can
drink fruit juice for one evening and like it."

"Your senior write is disturbed?" Hafiz
inquired. "Not another fit, I trust? "

Rafik tried to step on Calum's foot, but only
succeeded in trampling the hem of his robe. "She
is in excellent health, thank you, Uncle," he
replied, "only inclined to chatter about trifles after
the manner of women."

"Women who are not kept veiled and
secluded," Hafiz pointed out rather acidly, "have
more of a chance to develop Interesting topics of
conversation—oh, all right, all right! I won't say
another word against the revelations of Moulay
Suheil."

107

"We are returning to the pure traditions of our
original faith," Rafik said stiffly.

"Then let us enjoy another tradition tonight,"
Hafiz said, "and drink from the same pitcher in
token of perfect trust within the family." He made
a show of pouring the iced madigadi juice into each
of their cups, finishing with his own and taking a
deep draught from it as proof of the drink's harm-
lessness. Rafik raised his own cup, but a sudden
commotion outside the room surprised him into
setting it down again. There was a babble of
excited voices, then the high-pitched wail of a
woman: an old, quavering voice.

"Aminah!" Hafiz sighed and stood up. "Tapha's
old nurse. She treats each bit of news from the
south as another installment in a vid-drama. I had
best calm her. Forgive the interruption. Please, go
on with your meal; I may be some time." He
strode out of the room quickly, a frown between
his brows.

Gill took a handful of the batter-fried shellfish
and crunched them with enjoyment.

"Well, he did say to go on," he said when Rafik
raised an eyebrow, "and even if the table does
keep these things hot, it can't keep them crisp
indefinitely." He took a deep breath and reached
for his own cup. "Must say, I've never had them
served quite so hot and spicy before."

"Any decent food tastes overspiced to you bar-
barians," Rafik said. "Acorna, what are you
doing?" She kept pushing and pawing at her veils
until they were a tangled mess around her face.

"Here, honey, let me fix that for you," Gill said.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

108

"Any reason why she shouldn't put her veils back
for dinner, Rafik? It's not as if Hafiz is gonna see
anything he hasn't seen before."

"Only that he may wonder why I do not permit
my other wife to unveil," Rafik said with resigna-
tion. "I suppose I shall have to explain that she is
so ugly, I fear the sight would put him off his
food."

Calum kicked him under the table.

"That's odd," Gill said, feeling Acorna's fore-
head.

"Do you think she has a fever?"

"Her skin is cool enough. But look at her
horn!"

Great drops of clear liquid were forming on the
fluted sides of Acorna's horn. She mopped at them
ineffectually with the end of her veil.

"Have a cool drink, sweetie, it'll make you feel
better," Gill suggested, holding her cup for her.

Acorna stared at it blankly for a moment, then
took the cup from Gill and, instead of putting it to
her mouth, dipped her horn into it.

"What the deuce?"

"She does that with the dirty bathwater, too.
Acorna, sweetie-pie, do you think the juice is dirty?
It's okay, that stuff floating in it is just madigadi
pulp."

"Is not dirty," Acorna said firmly.

"Well, that's good—"

"Is baS." She dipped her head again, this time
plunging her horn into Gill's cup. "Now is one
hundred percent good," she informed him.

The three men looked at one another. "He

109

made a great show of pouring all our drinks out of
the same pitcher," Gill said.

"Why would he want to poison us? He
thinks—I mean," Calum said, choosing his words
carefully in case of unseen listeners, "we have
agreed to all his wishes."

"Oh, it's just a foolish fancy of the kid's," Rafik
said easily, but he rose to his feet as he did so and
offered Acorna his cup and Calum's. "Nothing to
worry about. Let's go on with the meal!" At the
same time a subtle head shake warned both the
other men not to take his words literally.

Acorna's horn broke out in drops of sweat
again as she brought her face close to Rafik's cup.
She dipped her horn into the juice for a moment,
then smiled in satisfaction.

"Ah—just a minute," Rafik said as she moved
to repeat the treatment on Calum's cup. He put
that one back on the table and offered Acorna the
cup Hafiz had been drinking out of. Her horn
showed no reaction.

"How did he do it?" Gill mouthed soundlessly.

"The drug must have been in the cups, not in
the pitcher," Rafik replied in the merest thread of
a whisper. Quickly he exchanged Calum's cup
with Hafiz's, then sat and served himself a plate of
rice and pilau. "Come on, wives," he said loudly
and heartily, "let us feast and rejoice!" He piled
Acorna's plate high with fruit and greens just as
Hafiz rejoined them.

"I trust the news from the south is not bad,
Uncle?" Rafik inquired.

Hafiz's thin lips twisted in an unpleasant gri-

110

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

mace. "It could be •worse," he said. "It could be
better. Yukata Batsu has sent back the rest of
Tapha. Alive," he added, almost as an after-
thought. "Aminah cannot decide •whether to
bewail the loss of his ears or celebrate the return
other nursling."

"Felicitations on your son's safe return," said
Gill. "And—er—I'm sorry about his ears."

Hafiz shrugged. "My surgeon can replace the
ears. No great loss; the original ones stuck out too
far anyway. As for Tapha himself..." Hafiz sighed.
"No surgeon can fix -what should have been between
the ears. He, too, expected me to congratulate him
on his return, as if he did not realize that Batsu
freed him as a gesture of contempt, to show how lit-
tle he fears Tapha's attempts against him. He is as
foolish as his mother was." He twirled a ball of
sticky rice on two fingers, dipped it into the pilau,
and downed the combination in a single gulp. "Eat,
eat, my friends. I apologize for allowing this minor
contretemps to interrupt our pleasant family dinner.
Do try the madigadi juice before it loses its chill; as
it warms, the subtleties of the flavor are lost to the
air." He took another lengthy pull from the cup
beside him.

"Indeed," said Rafik, following his uncle's
example, "this particular juice has some subtle,
lingering aftertaste that is unfamiliar to me."

"Almost bitter," Gill commented. "Good,
though," he added, quickly taking a deep drink
before Hafiz could become too alarmed.

Since none of them had any idea what drug
Hafiz had put in the cups or how quickly it was

Ill

supposed to act, they watched him for cues.
Within fifteen minutes Hafiz had all but
stopped eating, as if he had forgotten the food
on his plate. His speech wandered and he began
forgetting what he had said and repeating him-
self.

"Ever hear th' one about th' two racehorses,
the Sufi dervish and the jinn?" He launched into a
long complicated story which Gill suspected
would have been extremely obscene if Hafiz had
not kept losing the thread of his own narrative.

Rafik and Gill ignored their own food, leaned
forward over the table and laughed as loudly as
Hafiz did. Calum leaned back against the wall,
an anonymous white bundle of veiling, and
produced a rattling snore. Acorna's eyes went
from one man to the next, the pupils narrowing
to slits until Gill surreptitiously squeezed her
hand.

"Don't worry, sweets," he whispered under
cover of Hafiz's raucous laughter, "it's just a
game."

Finally Hafiz abandoned the Sufi dervish in
midsentence and slumped forward into his rice.
The other three waited tensely until his snores
convinced them that he had lost consciousness.

"Okay, let's get out of here," Gill whispered,
standing and swinging Acorna to his shoulder.
Calum followed suit, but Rafik bent over his uncle s
form for a moment, fumbling in his stained silk
robes.

"Come on, Rafik!"

Finally Rafik, too, stood, showing them a

112

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

holographic card that flashed a complex three-
dimensional image of interlaced knots.

"Uncle's skimmer key and port pass," he said
happily. "Or -were you planning to walk to the
port?"

Hey, Smirnoff?" Ed Minkus
called to his office mate in the
Kezdet Security office.

"What?" Des Smirnoff
replied without real interest, for he was scrolling
through some routine ID checks as fast as he
could and had to keep his eye on the screen, just
in case something interesting turned up in the
latest haul of dockside indigents.

"Gotta match on an ooooold friend."

"Who?" Smirnoff was still not dividing his
attention.

"Sauvignon," and he immediately had
Smirnoff's complete attention.

"I told you then," and Smirnoff savagely
stabbed the hold key, "that perp wasn't dead. He
may have had to lie low a while. . . . Send the item
over here." He drummed his fingers for the few
seconds it took for Ed to transfer the file to his
screen. "Registered as the Uhuru now? Couldn't




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

1H

change the origin, could he? So the ship's still
Kezdetian."

"I can't imagine a clever perp like Sauvignon
ever returning ..."

"Voluntarily, at least," Ed interjected with a sly
grin.

". . . into our own dear jurisdiction. But you ..."

"Never know, do you?" Ed had a habit of fin-
ishing Smirnoff's sentences for him.

"I can," and Smirnoff's thick fingers stabbed
each key as he typed in a command, "make sure
that we, and our dearest nearest neighbors in
space, are aware that the Uhuru is of great interest
to us here in Kezdet."

He gave the final number of the code sequence
such an extra pound that Ed flinched. Keyboards
suffered frequent malfunctions at Smirnoff's sta-
tion, to the point where both Supply and
Accounting now required explanations. They
always got the same one: "Get a new supplier,
these boards are made of inferior materials or
they'd stand up under normal usage."

Since most of such equipment was made in the
sweat-levels (and quite possibly out of inferior
grade plastics), the ones who suffered were the
unfortunates who eked out a bare living anyhow.
Who cared how many got fired and replaced?
There were always enough eager youngsters with
nimble fingers to take over.

Having instituted a program that would
apprise the office of Lieutenant Des Smirnoff the
instant the beacon was scanned in any of the
nearby systems which cooperated, however

115

unwillingly, with Kezdet Guardians of the Peace
(a piece of this and a piece of that was what the
neighbors said), the proximity of the Uhuru would
now send off bells, whistles, and sirens.

"So the report of Sauvignon s death is greatly
exaggerated," Des said, grinning with evil antici-
pation of future revenge. "How delightful."

"Sauvignon may be dead," Ed suggested. "The
new reg lists three names, and none of them are
Sauvignon's."

"Whose are they?"

"Rafik Nadezda, Declan Giloglie, and Calum
Baird," Ed replied.

" What?" Smirnoff erupted from his chair like a
cork from a bottle of fizzy. "Say again?"

Ed obeyed, and suddenly the names rang the
same bell in his head. "Them?"

Smirnoff punched one big fist into the palm of
his other hand, jumping about the office in what
had to be some sort of a victory gig, waving his
arms and hollering in pure, undiluted, spiteful joy.

"Is everything all right?" and their junior assis-
tant, a female they had to employ to keep the
Sexist Faction satisfied, though Mercy Kendoro's
role in their table of organization began and ended
with taking their messages and supplying them
with quik-sober. On seeing Smirnoff's unusual
antics she had hoped that one, he'd been poisoned,
or two, was having a fatal heart attack or convul-
sion. Sometimes, not even getting out of the barrios
of Kezdet made up for the humiliation she suffered
at their hands.

"I got 'em. I got all of 'em," Smirnoff was

116

ftcorna                                117

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

chanting as he bounced from one large boot to the
other. " Clo^e the Soar!" he roared when he saw
Mercy's head peering in at them. Her reflexes
were excellent and he missed her when his big
boot slammed the door shut.

"Weren't Nadezda, Giloglie, and Baird those
miners who marooned us on an asteroid before
they made off with a fortune in titanium?"

"They were, they are, and they will be ours,"
Des Smirnoff said, rubbing his hands together.
The expression of great gleeful anticipation
intensified on his face. His thick upper lip
curled: a sight that made many timorous souls
tremble in fear. He was not a man to cross and
he had sworn vengeance on these three by all
that he held sacred. Instead of prayers, Smirnoff
had a nightly litany of those who had crossed his
path and on whom he was sworn to take
revenge. This not only kept the names alive, but
topped up his capacity for vengeance, certain in
his own little mind that he would one day cross
paths with every one of those in his bad books.
This mining crew would pay dearly for the
indignity and suffering he had endured at their
hands. He was still paying off his share of the
repairs to the patrol cruiser. Kezdet Guardians
of the Peace were not a forgiving authority and
you ponied up out of your own credits for any
damage above normal wear and tear. And for
rescue and salvage.

In point of fact, he hadn't actually paid out of
his own private account, but out of the public one
into which he had dribbled the credits required for

the monthly payments from his little side business
of protection monies. But he had other plans for
that credit and meant to take it out of the miners'
hides if he ever had the chance.

"So Sauvignons off the hook?"

"Nonsense." Des Smirnoff swiped the racks of
data cubes off their rack. "They've got the ship,
they've got the fines accrued against it." The
thought had him settling at his keyboard again
while he accessed those fines and chuckled at the
amount of interest that had accrued since
Sauvignon's disappearance.

"You'll own the ship, too, at that rate," Ed said,
sniffing enviously. He tried not to show it, but he
did really, honestly, deeply, sincerely feel that Des
kept more than his fair share of the covert rewards
of their partnership. He was waiting for the day
when he found some little inconsistency in
Smirnoff's duties that he could use as a handle to
bargain for a larger percentage.

"What'd I do with a crappy old tub like
Sauvignon cruised? It was all but falling apart as
it was. Amazing he survived. I was sure we'd pen-
etrated the life-support system with that last bolt
we fired at him."

"Yeah," and Ed scratched his head, "sure
looked like a direct hit, if I remember correctly."

"You better remember my aim is always accu-
rate."

"Odd though that the ship survived, isn't it?"

Des Smirnoff held up one hand, his big, blood-
shot brown eyes -widening.

"Wait a nano ..."




118

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

119

"It didn't survive," Ed said. "Those miners
have switched beacons."

"Do we have their IDs?" But he didn't wait for
an answer, his big fingers slamming down the keys
as he completed his own search. Then he flipped
the offending keyboard up, pulling it out of the
desk socket and spinning it across the room,
where it crashed and split against the far wall.
"We don't. We should. They were MME, weren't
they?"

"MME's been absorbed by Amalgamated, I
heard," Ed replied, disguising his sigh as he
opened the corn unit to Mercy Kendoro. "Bring in
a replacement keyboard. Now."

When Mercy entered, she handed the key-
board to Ed rather than approach Smirnoff, who
had his hands tucked up under his arms and was
clearly seething over whatever had caused him to
break the latest keyboard.

"Rack up those cubes, too, while you're in
here. This office must be kept neat and up to stan-
dard at all times," Des said and smiled anew as he
saw the trembling assistant bend to her task.

Later that day. Mercy Kendoro took her midday
meal break at a workers' canteen near the docks,
where the balding owner teased her affectionately
about moving into the tech classes and forgetting
her origins.

"That's right, Ghopal," Mercy replied as
always, "if I'd remembered how terrible your stew
is, there's no way I'd be eating here! What did you

put in it this morning, dead rats? At least three of
them, I'd guess; I've never seen this much meat in
it before."

Ghopal took the teasing in good part and per-
sonally cleared away Mercy's bowl when she had
finished eating. Later, when the midday rush had
petered out, he put in a call to Aaaxterminators,
Inc. "We've found three dead rats in various spots
too near the kitchens for my liking. If you'll send
out a man I'll give him a list of the specific loca-
tions so he can find where the vermin are hiding
and clear them out. And—as usual, no need to
trouble the Public Health office with the matter.
Eh? After all, I'm dealing with it promptly, like a
good citizen."

Ed Minkus came across that transcript when
reviewing the day's tapes of private calls from citi-
zens in whom Security took an interest.

"Hey, Des," he called, "Time to pay a little
semi-official visit to Ghopal. He's having problems
with vermin again, and he'd probably be grateful
not to have the matter called to the attention of
Public Health. About fifteen percent grateful, I
estimate."

"Small-time," Des grunted. "If I catch those
miners—and I will—we won't need to bother
shaking down dockside bistros any more."

But by then the representative of Aaaxtermi-
nators, Inc. had called at the back door of
Ghopal's kitchen and had gone away with the note
Ghopal handed him, promising to take care of the
rat problem.

On his way back to the office, the Aaaxterminators




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

120

121

man stopped at a kiosk and bought a cluster of
happy-sticks, paying in real paper credits from an
impressive wad he kept in his inner coverall
pocket. He flirted outrageously with the girl who
sold him the happy-sticks, which might have
explained why she seemed a bit flustered and took
longer than usual to give him his change.

That evening, as always, Delszaki Li's per-
sonal assistant went out to the same kiosk to buy
a flimsy of the racing form sheets for the next
day. He and the kiosk girl laughed over the old
man's refusal to subscribe to the racing news via
personal data terminal and agreed, as they
always did, that if a nice old man was embar-
rassed by his fascination with this form of gam-
bling and thought that buying flimsies with hard
credits would preserve his anonymity, there was
no need to disturb his illusions. The folded
flimsy sheet Pal Kendoro took back to the Li
mansion was thicker than usual. After he had
unfolded it and read the contents of the inner
page, he dissolved that page in water, poured the
water down the drain, and requested an immedi-
ate interview with his employer.

"Sauvignons ship has been reported in transit,
sir," he said, standing as straight as a military
attache before the old man in the specially
equipped hover-chair. A wasting neuromuscular
disease had rendered Delszaki Li's legs and right
arm all but useless, but the intelligence in those
piercing black eyes was as keen as ever, and with
one hand and voice commands he had remained in
charge of the Li financial empire for fifteen years

sir,

after enemies had predicted his speedy demise. Pal
Kendoro was proud to serve as Li's arms, legs, and
eyes outside the mansion.

"And Sauvignon?"

"I don't know. There is still a party of three
aboard the ship, but the names are not those of
our people. It is now registered to Baird, Giloglie,
and Nadezda," Pal recited from memory.

"Would have been most unwise for Sauvignon
and party to retain same names," Li pointed out.
"Do you think they attempt to make contact with
us again?"

"Unlikely. This information came from a
Guardians' office."

Delszaki Li's black eyes snapped fire. "Then is
most urgent to find them before Guardians do.
Must be you who goes. Pal. Wish I could keep
you here, but who else would be believed as doing
errand for me and at same time reestablish contact
with Sauvignon?"

Pal nodded agreement. Most of the members of
the league were from the underclass, with no visi-
ble means of going off-planet, no obvious reason
to go, and no off-planet passes. The few, such as
Pal, who had risen through the tech schools, were
the only ones who could travel freely without
inconvenient questions being asked. But he didn't
like leaving Delszaki Li with only his regular ser-
vants, at least half of whom were secretly in the
pay of Kezdet Guardians of the Peace—and
secure in the belief that their second source of
income was a secret.

"If I might make a suggestion, sir, you will




122

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

need a personal assistant while I'm gone. My sister
might be able to oblige."

"Mercy?"

"No! She's too useful where she is. My older
sister, Judit; I don't think you've ever met her.
She's brilliant. Finished Kezdet tech schools at six-
teen and scored highly enough on the final exams
to win a scholarship to study off-planet. She's
working in the psych section at Amalgamated's
space base."

"Would be willing to leave this fine job?"

"Like a shot, sir. She hates the place, was only
working there for the money to put Mercy and
me through school so we, too, could escape the
barrios. It should be safe enough for her to return
to Kezdet. Due to leaving so early, she's never
been . . . active," Pal said delicately.

"And therefore is unknown to the Guardians'
offices, except as sister to girl who works as their
assistant." Li nodded his satisfaction. "Could
hardly have a better guarantor." Li chuckled qui-
etly. "Is good, Kendoro. Send word to sister, but
do not wait for her arrival. I shall manage well
enough for few days, and Sauvignon may need
help."

"If it is Sauvignon," Pal said under his breath,
but the old man heard.

"And if is not Sauvignon, then maybe ship
in hands of those who kill our friends. In which
case ..."

"Terrorism is against the principles of the
league, sir. Despite -what they say about us in the
newscasts."

Acorna                          —— 123

"Is extermination of rats," Li snapped. "Is not
terrorism."

So the chain of information from the
Guardians' office to the Li mansion ended as it
had begun, with a discussion of dead rats.

"I want that boy," Hafiz told his trusted lieutenant,
Samaddin.

"With respect, patron, I thought it was a girl."

"What? Oh—the curiosity. Yes, well, of course
I want her, too. But I want young Rafik more. The
son of a camel and a whore outsmarted me!"

"With all respect, patron!" Samaddin bowed
even lower. "Forgive me, but the patron would not
wish, later, to recall that he had spoken of his sis-
ter in such terms."

"Family!" Hafiz said in disgust. "When they
double-cross you, you can't even curse them
properly. Get me that sheep-buggering boy,
Samaddin."

"Consider it done," Samaddin promised. "Er—
you want him with his balls or without them?"

"You idiot! You misbegotten son of a jinn's
meeting with a jackass, may the grave of your
maternal grandmother be defiled by the dung of
ten thousand syphilitic she-camels!" Hafiz
indulged the bad temper resulting from a major
drug hangover and the loss of his prized unicorn
by abusing Samaddin for several minutes, while
his lieutenant's expressionless face grew steadily
closer to purple than its normal creamy tan.
Finally Hafiz calmed down enough to explain that

124 "

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

he wanted Rafik back alive and unharmed, and
especially with his generative capacities intact.

"He'll pay for what he did to me, never fear.
But after he works off his debt, I've got plans for
the boy. Do you know how long it's been since
anybody double-crossed me, rather than the other
way round, Samaddin? He's got the brains and the
guts to take over after me, and I want him to have
the balls to sire more sons, too. I'm going to adopt
him and name him my heir. Well? What are you
staring at? Perfectly normal practice—good fami-
lies, no son to carry on, bring in a young relative."

"The patron has a son," Samaddin murmured.

"Not," said Hafiz grimly, "for long. Not after
the way he screwed up the southern operation.
Soon as his new ears are fixed, I'm sending him
back to do the job right this time."

"Patron! This time Yukata Batsu will kill
him!"

"Sink or swim," Hafiz said with a benign smile,
"sink or swim." He considered for a moment.
"Better not send him until you've got Rafik safely
back here, though. The family is short of young
males at the moment. Tapha is, I suppose, better
than nothing."

"Waste not, want not," Samaddin said help-
fully.

In the curtained room where Tapha lay with his
head wrapped in bandages, old Aminah whispered
with the servant girl she'd sent to dust the lattice-
work outside Hafiz's office. She raised her hands

125

and eyes to heaven in horror when she heard
Hafiz's plans for his own son.

"What shall we do?" she wailed. "If he goes
back to the south, that fiend Yukata Batsu will
surely kill him. And if he stays here, that other
fiend, his father, will kill him. We must smuggle
him away as soon as he has healed from surgery.
There must be some place where he can hide."

Aminah's wailing awakened Tapha, and he
struggled to sit up in his bed. "No, Aminah. I will
not hide."

"Tapha, nursling! You heard me?" Aminah
fluttered to his side.

"Yukata Batsu took my outer ears, not the
brain which hears and understands," Tapha said
sourly, "and a deaf beggar would have been awak-
ened by thy wailing, old woman. Now tell me all
that you know?."

When Aminah had poured out her story, Tapha
lay back on his pillows and considered. His face
was somewhat paler than it had been, but that
might have been from the exhaustion of sitting up.

"I will not hide," he declared again. "It is un-
befitting a man of my lineage. Besides, there is no
place where my beloved father, may dogs defile
his name and grave, could not find me if he
wished. There is only one thing to do." He smiled
sweetly at Aminah. "You will tell my beloved
father that I am not recovering from the restora-
tive surgery, that it is feared I will lose my life to
an infectious fever brought back from the south-
ern marshes."

"But, my little love, you grow stronger with

126

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

every hour! You have no fever; I, -who have
always nursed you, should know."

"Try not to be more stupid than you were
made, Ammah," Tapha said. "Since when is it nec-
essary to declare to my father the exact truth of
what passes in these rooms? Or will you no longer
protect me as you did when I was your nursling in
truth, and you lied to deflect the wrath of my
father over minor escapades?"

Aminah sighed. She had lied for Tapha too
many times to stop now.

"But the deception must soon be discovered,
my darling," she pointed out. "You cannot pretend
to lie abed with the marsh fever forever."

"No. But while my father is staying well away
from these rooms for fear of the infection, I can
get off-planet. I do not think he will kill you when
he discovers the deception," Tapha added after a
moment's thought. "He may not even beat you
very badly, for you are old and weak, and it is
shame to harm one's servants."

"Dear Tapha," Aminah said, "don't worry
about me. My life is as nothing compared to a sin-
gle hair of your head."

Tapha had no quarrel with this assessment.

"And so you will hide after all?"

"By no means." Tapha smiled. "By no means.
Running away and hiding offers only a temporary
safety. There is only one way to make sure that my
position as my father's heir remains unchallenged,
and that he treasures my life as a loving father
ought. I shall simply have to find my cousin
Rafik," he said, "before Samaddin does."

127

The Uhuru was unloading a collection of miscella-
neous minerals on Theloi when Calum was
approached by a courteous stranger.

"I could not help overhearing your discussions
with Kyrie Pasantonopolous," he said. "Allow me
to introduce myself— loannis Georghios, local rep-
resentative for ... a number of businesses. I had
the impression that your dealings with the
Pasantonopolous family had been less than satis-
factory? Perhaps you would allow me to inspect
your cargo. I might be able to make you a better
offer."

"I doubt it," Calum said sourly. "It's the min-
eral resources around Theloi that were unsatisfac-
tory. We had to go all the way out to the fourth
asteroid belt to find anything worth mining, and
then all we recovered from the ferrous regolith
was gold and platinum. Hardly worth the cost of
the journey—"

He stopped abruptly as Rafik stepped on his
foot and interrupted him. "But, of course, the
value of anything depends on how much the buyer
desires it and how little the seller cares for it," he
continued smoothly. "Perhaps one of the busi-
nesses you represent, Kyrie Georghios, would find
some slight use for our trivial and insignificant
cargo. Don't run down our payload in front of a
purchaser," he added to Calum out of the corner of
his mouth as Georghios followed Gill to inspect
the samples they had shown the Pasantonopolous

concern.

128

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

129

"And just "what -were you doing?" Calum
demanded indignantly.

"Being polite," Rafik said. "It's a different thing
altogether. I think your bargaining instincts have
been dulled by too many safe years under contract
to MME. You'd better let me do the talking from
now on."

"He wants to take samples for his own office to
test, and we're invited to dine with him tonight to
discuss an asteroid he wants us to explore," Gill
said, joining them. "He hinted it might be a good
source of rhenium. I suppose you think my bar-
gaining instincts are atrophied, too, Rafik? "

"My dear Gill," Rafik said amiably, "you never
had any talent for bargaining in the first place. We
would do better to hand over the dealing to
Acorna, who, at least, has a flair for numbers."

"Better if she's not seen too much," Calum said.
"She'll have to stay on board the Uhuru tonight."

The other two agreed. Acorna had grown so
fast that she could now pass for a short man, and
in miners' coveralls and with a bulky cap con-
cealing her silver hair and nascent horn, she
could just get away with passing through the
bazaars of Theloi •without attracting too much
attention. But they doubted her ability to pass
for human through a prolonged evening of bar-
gaining and formal dining.

"Better," Rafik said, "if all three of you stay on
board. Then you can't put your foot in your mouth
again, Calum."

"Calum stays with Acorna, I go with you," Gill
decided after a moment's consideration. "We don't

know this Georghios, and I don't think any of us
should be going off alone with strangers at pre-
sent. We've annoyed too many people recently."

"He may not be willing to tell a loudmouth like
you about the rhenium asteroid," Rafik warned.

"No," said Gill cheerfully, "but he won't bop
me over the head in a dark alley, either."

"You're paranoid," said Rafik, but in the end it
was he who recognized the trap Georghios had
laid for them.

"He wants all four of us to dine with him," he
reported after a telecom conversation with
Georghios. "Says he prefers to know that all part-
ners are in agreement before committing to a pos-
sibly hazardous venture like this ... it seems the
rhenium asteroid is closer to Theloi's sun than we
usually work, and we'll need extra radiation
shielding as well as protection from solar flares."

"Partners? Well, that lets Acorna out, anyway."

"He specifically requested all of us," Rafik
said, frowning. "Hinted that if we didn't all show
up, there'd be no deal. Now who does that remind
you of?"

"Sounds like Hafiz," Gill said, nodding. "In
which case we'd better take Acorna along to check
for poison."

"No," Rafik said slowly, "in which case we'd
better leave now. I'll accept his invitation—that will
give us the afternoon to unload our payload, get
what we can out of the Pasantonopolous family,
and take off for Kezdet."

"We don't dare go to Kezdet," Calum pointed
out.




130

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Rafik smiled. "All your survival instincts have
atrophied. I knew it. Kezdet makes as good an
official flight plan as any, don't you think? We
haven't decided where to go next, and I wouldn't
•want to accidentally file a plan for someplace near
where we're actually going."

What they were able to get from the Pasan-
tonopolous concern for their gold and platinum
barely paid their expenses. They had to stop at the
first system with any mineral resources at all. That
was Greifen, where the planetary government was
building a series of orbiting space stations for zero-g
manufacturing and could use all the pure iron the
Uhuru could refine and send back into low planetary
orbit by drone. The profit per load was not much,
since Greifen was only willing to buy space-mined
iron as long as the cost was less than that of lifting
their own planetary iron into orbit. But it was steady
work, and while the mag drive shipped buckets of
iron back, they slowly accumulated a payload of
more valuable metals. They were almost ready to
look for a buyer on Greifen when Calum, who had
been amusing himself during long refining processes
by breaking the security codes on bureaucratic mes-
sages from Greifen, raised the alarm.

"I don't think we'd better try to sell this stuff
on Greifen," he told Rafik when the other two
miners checked the status of the latest processes.
"In fact, I think we'd better leave—now—and sell
it someplace far, far away."

"Why? Getting bored? Another hundred tons of

131

iron and we should have accumulated enough
rhodium and titanium to make the trip seriously
profitable."

"Listen to this." Calum flicked a switch and the
corn unit replayed the results of his last few hours'
eavesdropping on official Greifen business.
"Somebody has landed with a claim against the
Uhuru for debts and damages incurred on Theloi."

"We didn't ()o any damage on Theloi," Gill said
indignantly. "We didn't have time!"

"Would you like to explain that to a court that's
been thoroughly bribed by Rafik's Uncle Hafiz?"
Calum asked. "He must be really mad at us. I
didn't think he'd follow us out of Theloi."

"He didn't," said Rafik, examining the flimsy of
the transmissions Calum had decoded. "At least . .
. this does not have the flavor of my uncle's work.
He prefers to avoid the courts. And look at the
name of the supposed creditor. That's not a
Theloian name."

"Farkas Hamisen," Gill read over Rafik's shoul-
der.

"Farkas," Rafik said, "means 'wolf in the
Kezdet dialect. ... I think maybe it was not such a
bright idea after all, to file a flight plan for Kezdet.
That must be how they caught on to us."

"They'd have no reason to go after this ship,"
Gill protested. "Officially we're not the Khedive
anymore. We're the Uhuru. We've even got the
beacon to prove it."

Rafik shrugged. "Do you really want to stick
around and find out what they've got against us?"

"No way," Calum and Gill said in unison.

132

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

They agreed to forget about their credits from
Greifen for the last drone loads of iron. As for the
payload, as Rafik pointed out, any number of sys-
tems would be happy to get supplies of titanium.
Nered, for instance, was a high-tech and highly
militarized planet suffering from a severe shortage
of mineral resoinces. . . .

"The trouble with selling to Nered," Gill pointed out
gloomily after they had reached that planet and con-
cluded their transaction, "is that there's nothing in this
system for us to mine. We've got an empty ship ..."

"And a great many Federation credits," Rafik
said. "They really wanted that titanium."

"Yeah, but these people are military mad. I bet
there's nothing to buy here except paramilitary
gear and espionage gadgets."

"We'll spend it elsewhere," Rafik said. "Most of
it. Tonight, let's celebrate solvency by taking
Acorna out to dinner in the best restaurant on
Nered."

"Oh, boy," Calum said, "I can hardly wait to
check out Nered haute cuisine. What's the main
course, bandoleers in hot pepper sauce? With gin-
gered grenades for afters?"

"She can't go dressed like that," Gill announced,
gesturing in her direction.

Over the course of the past year, Acorna had
shot up in height until even Gill's coveralls were
short on her. Inside the ship she preferred to relax
•without the binding, too-small clothing. Calum
and Rafik turned and stared now at Acorna,

133

where she rested in a net, happily perusing a vid
on carbonyl reduction techniques for nonferrous
metals. Her silvery curls had grown into a long
mane that tumbled fetchingly over her forehead
and tapered down her spine. Her lower parts -were
covered in fine white fur. She was taller than Gill
and as flat-chested as a child, with nothing of an
incipient mammary development visible.

"I wonder how old she is?" Calum speculated
in a low voice, so as not to attract Acorna's
attention.

"Chronologically," Rafik said, "probably
about three. It's been two years since we found
her. Physiologically, I'd guess around sixteen.
Evidently her species matures quickly, but I
don't think she's come to her full growth yet; look
at the size of her wrist and ankle bones relative to
her height."

"Six feet six and counting," Calum muttered.

And that would shortly pose a serious problem.
The Khedive had been designed for three small-to-
average-size miners. Gill's broad shoulders and
excess height had put a strain on the system; shar-
ing the quarters with a fourth passenger had
necessitated some fancy reshuffling of the interior
arrangements; fitting a seven-foot-tall unicorn into
the small confines of the mining ship was virtually
impossible.

Acorna looked up from her vid. "Calum," she
said, "could you explain, please, how this sodium
hydroxide reduction process forms liquid TiCI^?"

"Umm, that's a late stage," Calum said. He bent
to draw a quick diagram on the vid screen next to

134

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

the explanatory text and pictures. "See, you have
to pump dilute HC1 into the electrolysis cell ..."

"They should have said so explicitly," Acorna
complained. Her language use had asymptotically
approached standard Basic in the last year; only a
slight formality in her speech, and a faintly nasal
inflection, gave any suggestion that she -was not a
native speaker of the galactic interlingua.

"And developmentally," Rafik murmured,
watching Calum and Acorna threshing out the
details of electrolytic metals separation, "she's four
going on twenty-four."

"Yeah," Gill agreed. "She knows almost as
much as we do about mining, metallurgy, and
navigation of small spacecraft, but she doesn't
know anything about, well, you know ..."

"No, I don't know," Rafik said, watching Gill's
face turn as red as his beard.

"You know. Girl stuff."

"You think it's time for one of us to sit her
down and have a little talk about the human
reproductive system? Frankly, I don't see the
point," said Rafik, fighting his own embarrass-
ment at the idea. "For all we know, her race may
reproduce by—by pollinating flowers with their
horns."

"That fur doesn't cover everything," Gill said,
"and anyway, I bathed her as often as you did last
year. Anatomically, she's feminine." He looked
doubtfully at Acorna's long, slender body. "A flat-
chested female, but female," he amended. "And she
can't go on lounging around in nothing but her long
hair and white fur."

Acorna 135

"Why not? Maybe her race doesn't have a
nudity taboo."

"Well, mine does," Gill shouted, "and I'm not
having a half-naked teenage girl parading around
this ship!"

Acorna looked up. "Where?"

She never found out why all three men
exploded in laughter.

They still had the yards of white polysilk that
Rafik had bought at the Mali Bazaar to clothe his
"wives" in approved Neo-Hadithian style. Gill
hacked off a length of fabric, Calum came up with
some clip fasteners, and together they wrapped
the material around Acorna's waist and threw a
fold of it over her shoulders. A second length of
fabric provided a loosely wrapped turban which
disguised her horn , . . well, sort of.

"This is not comfortable," she complained.

"Honey, we're not dressmakers. You can't go
out to a nice restaurant in my old coveralls. You'd
better buy her some clothes while we're here," Gill
said to Rafik.

"You buy the clothes, you're the one who
cares," Rafik retorted, "and you'11 be lucky to find
anything but army fatigues on this planet."

Rafik had maligned the shopping resources of
Nered unfairly. Both men and women at the
Evening Star restaurant were dressed like pea-
cocks: the men elegant in formal gray-and-silver
evening wear, the -women a colorful garden of
fashions and styles from across the galaxy, all

136 -

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

interpreted in brilliant jewel-toned silks and stiff
rustling retro-satins. In such a gaudy gathering
the miners hoped that they would escape notice.
Their own formal wear was respectable, but not
comparable to the silver-flashed suits currently
in vogue on Nered, and Acorna, with neither
jewels nor colorful silks to adorn her, should
have looked quite dowdy next to the fashionable
upper class of Nered. Instead her appearance
had quite the opposite effect. Her height and
slenderness, the tumble of silvery curls falling
down from her improvised turban, and the sim-
plicity of her white polysilk sari made her stand
out in the crowd like a lily in a bed of peonies.
Heads turned as they were shown to their table,
and Rafik could tell from the swift calculation in
the mai'tre d'hotel's eyes that they were being
given a far more prominent table than the one
originally intended for four working miners from
off-planet. Bad luck, that, but there was no sense
in making a fuss over it now; that would only
draw more attention their way. They would sim-
ply have to make it through dinner as best they
could, and he would watch like a hawk to make
sure Acorna's turban didn't fall off. He also
looked around to see if any one else was wearing
a turban, or was as slender as Acorna. You never
knew in an interstellar area what sort of oddities
you'd encounter. Returning Acorna to her own
people would solve a great many problems!

He was so intent on shielding Acorna from
notice that the real danger, when it did come, took
him completely by surprise. A tense young man in

137

dark brown military fatigues thrust his way into
the restaurant, knocked down a waiter carrying a
tray of soup bowls, and took advantage of the con-
fusion to level three bursts of laser fire at Rafik
before making his escape.

Gill knocked over his own chair in his haste to
get to Rafik, but Acorna was faster, kneeling over
an ominously still figure. The shock of the attack
sent isolated nightmare images flitting through
Gill's brain. Rafik wasn't moving; he should have
been screaming in pain—half his face was burned.
Acorna fumbled at her turban. Shouldn't let her
do that. She had to stay covered. Doctor! They
needed a doctor! Some idiot was babbling about
catching the assassin. Who cared about that?
Rafik was all that mattered.

Acorna bent over Rafik, her horn exposed
now, her eyes dark pools -with the pupils narrowed
to virtually invisible silver slits. She—nuzzled—at
him with her horn. It was heart-breaking to
watch; a child mourning a parent. Gill thought
numbly that he should take her away. Let her
grieve in private. Hide her before too many people
noticed the horn. But moving to Rafik's side felt
like swimming through heavy water, as though
time itself had slowed around them, and when he
reached Acorna and Rafik, Calum gripped his
shoulder and held him back.

"Wait," he said. "She can purify -water and air,
and detect poison. Maybe she can heal laser
wounds."

Even as they watched, the charred flesh on
Rafik's face was replaced by smooth new skin

1 38 ---—             ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

wherever Acorna's horn brushed it. She lingered
for a moment -with her horn just over his heart, as
though urging his shocked system to continue
breathing and circulating. Then he stirred and
opened his eyes and said irritably:

"What in the name of ten thousand syphilitic
she-devils happened?"

Calum and Gill tried to tell him at once. Then
those at the tables nearest them came over, now
that it seemed safe to approach, to add their
impression of the assassination attack. Those fur-
ther away, of course, were demanding to know
what had happened. When they saw no visible
damage but overturned chairs and food spilled on
the floor, they turned back to their own tables to
resume their interrupted meal. Calum managed to
put the turban on the back of Acorna's head, and
Rafik pulled it over her horn. Then both he and
Gill had to explain to those nearest that no, Rafik
had not been hit. No, the laser hadn't even
touched him.

Eventually all agreed that an assassin had fired
at Rafik and that the young lady had fortunately
reacted quickly enough to save him by knocking
him out of his chair, so that he was not even singed
by a near miss. A small vociferous group wanted
to discuss their idea that the would-be assassin
had looked remarkably like Rafik. Gill and Calum
let the story of the miraculous near miss stand and
discouraged plans to hunt down Rafik's attacker
who had eluded his pursuer; all they wanted was
to get back to the Uhuru at once. They had
attracted far too much attention this evening!

] elszaki Li and Judit Kendoro
were finishing their evening
meal when the dining room corn
unit beeped in the rising arpeggio that meant a
scrambled message had been received.

"That will be Pal," Li said. He depressed a
button on the left arm of his hover-chair and the
sequence of jagged, screeching noises that consti-
tuted the scrambled message became audible.
After a moment of silence, the corn unit's decoding
module whirred busily and the original message
was heard, Pal's voice somewhat distorted and
metallic due to the limitations of the coding pro-
cess.

"There are four crew, not three, presently
using the Uhuru. None of them is Sauvignon.
They have enemies; one of the crew was the target
of an assassination attempt this evening in a fash-
ionable restaurant. The consensus of opinion is
that the assassin missed his target, but I was

140

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

sitting close by in an attempt to listen in on their
conversation and I believe what actually hap-
pened was quite different—and very interesting.
The miner Rafik was actually struck by three
bolts of laser fire; I saw the burns myself. I also
saw them healed with astonishing speed by the
fourth crew member. This person appears to be a
very tall young •woman with slightly deformed fin-
gers and a small ..." Pal's voice paused for a
moment and only the faint background noise
introduced by scrambling and decoding was audi-
ble. "Sir, you're not going to believe this, but she
seems to have a small horn in the middle of her
forehead. And when she nuzzled the man Rafik
with this horn, his burns healed and he was con-
scious within seconds. Sir, I saw this with my own
eyes; I'm not making it up or repeating gossip."
There was another pause. "These people have no
discernible connection with our friends. But they
are very interesting. I have decided to maintain
contact with them until you send further instruc-
tions."

"A ki-lin!" Delszaki exclaimed as the message
ended. He turned exultantly to Judit, who had
been sitting as still as stone ever since Pal had men-
tioned the horn. "My dear, we have been granted a
portent of inestimable value. This strange girl may
be solution to Kezdets tragedy ... or she may only
portend coming of solution. We must bring her
here!"

"Acorna," Judit said. "They called her
Acorna. ... I thought they had all died; their ship's
beacon was found transmitting from a crash site. I

141

cried for them then, those three nice men and the
little girl. Acorna." There were tears standing in
her eyes now.

"You knew of a ki-lin and did not tell me?"

"Mr. Li, I don't even know what a ki-lin is!
And I thought she was dead. And it was my fault,
because I helped them get away. . . . They wanted
to cut off her horn, you see ..."

"You must tell me all this story," Delszaki Li
said. "But first, you must understand the impor-
tance of the ki-lin and why I need her here."

"Ki-lin ... is that Chinese for 'unicorn'?"

Li nodded. "But our beliefs are somewhat dif-
ferent from your Western tales about the unicorn.
Your people have stories of trapping and killing
unicorns. No Chinese -would ever kill a ki-lin, or
even hunt one. The ki-lin belongs to Buddha; she
eats no animal flesh and will not even tread upon
an insect. We would not dream of trapping the ki-
lin as a gift to a ruler; rather, the wise and benefi-
cent ruler hopes that his rule may be blessed by
the arrival of a ki-lin, who, if she comes to his
court, is received as one sovereign visiting another.
The appearance of a ki-lin among humans is an
omen of a great change for the better or of the
birth of a great ruler."

"And you yourself believe this?"

Delszaki Li cackled at the expression on
Judit's face. "Let us say I do not ^ubelieve it. How
could I? I am scientist first, man of business only
from necessity. No ki-lin has ever appeared in
recorded history, so there is no evidence to prove
or disprove the legends. But I am also man, not

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

142

only scientist, and so I hope. I hope that this ki-iin
will presage the change which Kezdet—and
Kezdet's children—so desperately need. And so I
shall instruct Pal to make these miners an offer
they cannot refuse. They will, in fact, be quite
useful for one of my other projects. And while we
wait for their arrival, you shall tell me what you
know of this Acorna and her friends, and we shall
search the Net for more information about them.
Never go into a bargaining session unprepared,
Judit—even if you are bargaining -with a ki-Un!"

It was Acorna -who suggested they measure her to
know how long the legs of pants and sleeves of
shirts should be, though why she needed to cover
herself, when her fur kept her quite comfortable,
she couldn't understand.

"Didn't you like what the women were wearing
in the restaurant last night?" Rafik asked. "I saw
you looking around like your eyes would pop."

"Her eyes don't pop," Gill said loyally, and
then added, "but your pupils were out to the edges
of your eyeballs."

A sort of dreamy expression crossed Acorna's
face briefly and she gave a resigned sigh. "None of
those things would last a minute crawling down a
conduit or in an EVA suit."

"That's another thing we have to get for
you," Calum said, for he had -worried about that
lack. She could do with some hands-on mining
experience to round out her education in aster-
oid extraction techniques.

\43

"You would need to measure me for that," she
said.

From somewhere they unearthed a flexible
tape in an old mechanic's kit. They made most
measurements using the instrumentation on
board because most of what they needed to mea-
sure was out in space and their EVA suits were
equipped with gauges. So they dutifully took
down what they felt they needed to buy in appro-
priate sizes.

Then they argued over who was to go: Gill
would definitely be useless in a dress shop, or even
a straight women's-apparel outfitter. Calum's taste,
according to Rafik, reposed only in his mouth.
Rafik would have to go.

"Not when there's an assassin out there some-
where waiting to snuff you out and this time we
can't take Acorna with us for emergency first aid."

"You all go," Acorna said reasonably and
before the decision-making turned into one of the
interminable arguments the men all seemed to
enjoy so much. "I am safe in here and will not
answer any summonses."

That was debated, too, but it was finally
decided that with Gill bulking along behind Rafik
and Calum at his side, he would be less of a target
and he would at least not be able to complain
when either of the others came back with what he
felt to be unsuitable raiment.

They got the EVA suit first, since those could
be custom-made and produced within an hour.
They'd collect it on their way back.

Despite Gill's snide comments about the mili-

\AA

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

taristic bias of Nered, it was still a •wealthy planet
•with the usual supply of flea markets, bazaars, and
good used-apparel shops. With proper measure-
ments, they could also find the right sizes of work
clothing for their growing charge. Rafik even
found attractive upper-body wraps, made of an
elasticized material that was guaranteed "to fit any
female form comfortably."

"She'll like that," Rafik announced, and got
three plain colored ones in blue, green, and a deep
purple that he felt would look -well with her silvery
hair, and two figured ones: one with flowers that
might never have bloomed on any planet in the
galaxy, and another with daisies. At least that's
what he told the other two they were.

After looking in several used-apparel shops, he
also found some skirts with elasticized waistbands,
also guaranteed to fit any form comfortably.

"It doesn't say 'female'," Gill said, about to dis-
card a splendidly patterned one.

"Mostly females wear skirts," Rafik said, and
took the skirt from his hand. He found another
that was filmy but opaque, in a misty blue that he
thought Acorna would like for the flow of it—a
saleslady modeled the item—the texture of the
material, and the color.

It was the saleslady, having discerned that the
three attractive miners -were buying for a female
they all knew, decided to inveigle them to buy
accessories, such as "lingerie."

"You men are all alike. Concentrate on the
outer wear," she said teasingly because the big,
bearded redhead blushed to the color of his hair at

145

the first mention of underclothes, "and forget there
has to be something underneath."

Rafik beamed at her. "My niece has just
reached puberty, and I don't know what girls do
wear underneath ..." and he wiggled his fingers in
helpless innocence. "Her parents were killed in an
accident and I'm her only living relative, so we've
sort of inherited her."

"Very good to do so, too, if I may say so,
Captain," Salitana said with more than usual fer-
vor, losing her suave salesperson persona. "When
you think of the traffic in orphaned children in
this curve of the Milky Way, it's nice to know
some will take on responsibility for blood relations
instead of selling them out of hand to who-knows-
what miserable existence."

"Like Kezdet?" Gill asked, having glanced
around first to be sure they were not overheard.

"Out-system visitors call us paranoid," Salitana
said, "but if your planet were this close to Kezdet,
you'd have a major defense budget, too."

The two locked eyes, but Salitana immediately
smiled her salesperson smile and turned to her key-
board, accessing the stock for the sizes the niece
needed: she had the measurements before her.
Rather than embarrass the men any further, she
ordered up what she felt would appeal to a young
girl—what would have appealed to her had she
had any options in what she could wear in puberty.
While those were on their way to her station, she
frowned down at the chest measurement. Poor
child was absolutely flat-chested. Well, maybe a
training or an exercise bra would suffice. She

146

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

ordered several of those and the merchandise
arrived, already wrapped.

"You'll find these suitable, I assure you," she

said, handing them over.

The redhead looked most grateful as the cov-
ered items slipped into the carisak he held open.

"You have been shopping. What about shoes,

now? I can show you — "

"No, that's fine. We got footwear in the
bazaar," Rafik said, and hastily proffered the plas-
tic card used on Nered for purchases. He didn't
like using a card because it could lead back to the
Uhuru more quickly than credits would, but credits
caused delays, since the shop had to check that
these credits were legal and backed by a

respectable credit authority.

"We should get her some shoes somewhere,"
Gill said when they were out on the mall walkway

again.

"The skirts measured long enough to cover her
feet, and you know how she hates constriction,"
Rafik said. He was tired—probably a remnant of
having been dead yesterday for a few minutes—
and he was eager to show her what they'd man-
aged to find for her pleasure and adornment.
"Let's get a hovercraft back to the dock."

"I thought you looked tired," Gill said solici-
tously, and waved his long arm to attract a hire
vehicle from the rank at the end of the mall.

One zoomed in to the head of the rank and
blinked its HIRED sign to show it would take them,
but they had to wait until it could get in the traffic
pattern above the busy area. It was just turning at

147

the far end when the saleswoman rushed out to
them.

"Don't take that one," she cried, and franti-
cally pulled them back into the store. "You've
been followed. Your charges were monitored.
Come with me."

The urgency with which she spoke and Rafik's
so recent problem -with an assassin impelled them
to obey without question. Within the store again,
she led them through the crowd of shoppers in a
circuitous route to the rear, down two flights of
steps, which had Rafik panting from exertion, and
into a clearly marked STORE PERSONNEL ONLY
room, which she had keyed to open.

"I'm sorry to act so presumptuously," she said,
her face pale and eyes dark with worry, "but for
the Sake of your niece, I had to intervene.
Anything to save her if she has been orphaned in
this quadrant of space. I don't know? who's tracing
you, but I do know it isn't Neredian-generated, so
it has to be illegal and you are in danger." She
held up both hands defensively. "Don't tell me
anything, but if you'll trust me just a little longer,
I contacted a friend — "

"From Kezdet?" Gill asked gently.

"How did you know?" she said in a soundless
gasp, one hand to her throat, her eyes wider than
Acorna's last night.

"Let's just say, we know a bit about what hap-
pens on Kezdet from . . . other friends ..." Rafik
said, "and we appreciate your help very much.
Someone is after me and I do not know why. Is
there another way out of here?"

148

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"There •will be shortly," she said, glancing at
the chrono on the -wall. "I cannot linger, or my
absence •will be noted. The . . . party . . . will tap
like this." She demonstrated -with a long index fin-
ger nail on the door. "The . . . party . . . knows the
access code," and she gave a helpless little shrug.
"You need it to get in or out. But the party is abso-
lutely trustworthy."

"A child labor graduate?" Calum asked.

She nodded. "I must go. Your niece is so lucky
to have you! She has the right to have you in good
health and one piece."

She was out the door again so fast they hadn't
time to see what digits she had pressed.

"So, who's after us? Or you, in particular?"
Calum asked Rafik, leaning back against a table.

"She was a nice woman," Gill remarked,
regarding the closed door with a bemused expres-
sion on his face. "Not as nice as Judit..."

"Judit?" Rafik and Calum said in unison, star-
ing at him.

"She came from Kezdet."

"And has a brother still stuck there . . . but
one begins to "wonder about the main occupation
of those lucky enough to leave it," Rafik said,
then shook his head. "Nah, it's more likely to be
Hafiz who's after me . . . but Uncle's style would
be more along the lines of kidnapping me to
take the place of that idiot son who lost his

ears.

"So long as the idiot son didn't lose what's
between them," and Calum inadvertently para-
phrased the subject of his sentence, "maybe it's

149

him who found out and is going to put an end to
Uncle's future plans for you."

"Or it could be our erstwhile friends from
Amalgamated. They're still after us for our ship,"
Gill said.

"Or maybe it's that spurious claim of the
Theloi?" Rafik said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"So who's this Farkas Hamisen who hates your
guts and registered the claim?" Gill asked.

"Possibly my earless cousin," Rafik said, nod-
ding his head, as that fit the parameters of such a
relative.

"Or it could be the Greifen, after the ore ..."
Calum suggested.

"Well, the ore's gone." Rafik dismissed that
option. "Could it have anything to do with our
new beacon? And here Uncle Hafiz was so certain
he was doing us a real favor. ... I -wonder. ..."

"What?" Calum and Gill said in chorus.

"Who died in the wreck?"

Gill's eyes popped and his mouth dropped.

"You mean," and Calum recovered more
quickly, "we got people we haven't even annoyed
after us, too?"

The tap startled them in the silence that fol-
lowed this observation.

The door opened and a slender youth, with
dark eyes that were wiser than his countenance,
gestured imperiously for them to follow him.
Though they did, Rafik hissed a bombardment of
questions at the boy's back as they had to jog to
keep up with him.

"Shush," he said, holding up one hand, which

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

150

Gill then noticed pointed at a spy-eye in the corner
of the corridor.

They shushed and he hunched over the pad of
a heavily plated metal door at the end of the corri-
dor. It opened slowly, because it was ten centime-
ters thick at least, Rafik estimated as he slipped
through when the space was wide enough. They
had to wait a few seconds longer for Gill to
squeeze through. Their guide had judged it finely
enough—he'd already tapped in the close
sequence, hauling Gill's leg out of the way. The
door closed a lot faster than it opened. The youth
then gestured to a goods van, thumbed open its
back doors, and pushed the three inside.

They could feel it rising on its vertical pads and
then it moved forward. Very shortly they were all
aware that they were in a traffic pattern of some
kind, for the van was not soundproof. What it had
originally carried was moot since there was nothing
in it but three sweating miners. Rafik slid down one
wall and onto his rump and mopped his forehead.

"Dying takes more out of you than I ever real-
ized," he said. "I'm bushed."

"Are we a/w-bushed, I want to know?" Calum
asked, hunkering down on his heels. Gill sat, too,
as his head was brushing the ceiling of the van.

"No, you would have been," a new tenor voice
said softly. "Salitana said you have taken a niece
from Kezdet..."

"No, that's not correct," Rafik said. "She has
been our charge for nearly four years. She needs
new clothes."

"Ah! But you know of Kezdet?"

r

151

"Yes," Gill answered, "we met someone who
got out of there. Still trying to get her brother off
that damned planet, too."

"Really?" Surprise more than a prompting to
continue colored that one word. "Now, we are out
of the mall. Where do I take you that you may
safely descend?"

"The docks," Rafik said.

"We should pick up Acorna's EVA suit first,"
Gill said, and cowered at the dirty looks the other
two gave him for mentioning her name.

"At which chandlers?" the youth asked in such
a natural tone of voice that some of their fury at
his indiscretion was dispelled.

"The one on Pier 48B," Rafik answered, still
glaring at Gill.

"Can do." And they all felt the van make a left-
hand turn.

That was right, Rafik thought and sneezed.
Gill and Calum did, too. In fact they all were in
such a paroxysm of sneezing that they inhaled a
more than sufficient quantity of the sleep gas that
circulated through the rear of the van.

Some very astringent substance was being held
under his nose and Rafik roused to avoid it. To his
utter surprise, a slim hand was held out to him.

"I am Pal Kendoro and it is my sister Judit
who was working at Amalgamated who had paid
for an education that would lift me out of the bar-
rios of Kezdet. Are my bona fides sufficient to
restore me to your good graces?"

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

152

Rafik glanced over at the still unconscious
forms of his two friends.

"All of you -would overpower me. One I can
handle," Pal Kendoro said, tilting his head—evi-
dently a family trait; Rafik saw the resemblance to
his sister in that pose. "I apologize for ..." and he
waved his hand toward the front of the cab,
". . . the necessity, but I was seeking another
whom I thought might be you."

Rafik straightened up. He'd a crick in his neck
from lying in an uncomfortable position, but the
back door of the van was open and, while the air it
let in smelt of fish and oil and other unpleasant
odors, the last of the gas was dissipating.

"And -who might that be?" Rafik asked in a
droll tone. "There's a waiting list."

Pal grinned. "So I have discovered."

"How long were -we out?" and Rafik rubbed at
his neck. "Oh migod ..."

"She will not worry," Pal said, reaching out a
hand to steady Rafik when he tried to leap to his
feet. "I sent a message to your ship. . . . She
believes you have stopped to eat."

"How the devil did you access our security
codes . . . ? Oh." He groaned. "I think I know.
You're looking for the legal owners of the beacon
•we borrowed. Believe me, the ship was split like a
nut when we found it wedged in an asteroid.
Nothing could have lived."

"Would you at least remember where you found
the derelict?" Pal asked, his dark eyes intent.

"Sure can, but I don't know what good that'll do."

"We ... I ... would be obliged."

ftcorna. 153

"We ... I ... owe you one," and Rafik left off
rubbing his neck.

Pal Kendoro got off his haunches now and
went to wave his restorative under Calum's nose
before he handed the bottle to Rafik to tend to
Gill. Rafik chuckled at Kendoro's innate caution.
Gill did indeed come out of his inadvertent nap
ready to do mischief to whoever did that to him.
A few brief explanations and harmony was
restored, thanks for their escape offered and dis-
missed.

"Can we get back to — "

"Our ship," Rafik hurriedly interjected.

"Yes, and with one stop at the chandlers on
Pier •48 B," Pal said, exiting the van and adding as
he closed the sides, "this time I let you see where I
am driving you."

He was as good as his word, for the opaque
panel between the goods section and the driver's
turned transparent.

"I have had fresh words with Salitana," he told
them as he eased the van out of the side road and
into a busy traffic pattern, "and there was consid-
erable interest in you which she was unable, of
course, to answer, since you were strangers buying
clothing for female friends and she, naturally,
wanted no part of the offers you made her."

"She wouldn't have imparted to you a descrip-
tion of the interested parties, -would she?" Rafik
asked -with a -weary smile.

Pal Kendoro slid three quik-prints through a
small slot in the panel.

"She is efficient."

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

154

"Hey, that looks like ..." and Gill closed his
mouth on "the assassin."

"No, but there's a resemblance to the uncle,"
Calum said, "and if I'm not mistaken this shot
shows quite new ears on him."

Rafik had also noticed that.

"He is registered at the port as Farkas
Hamisen," Pal Kendoro said over his shoulder.

"She's not the only efficient one," Calum mur-
mured.

"Okay, why have you involved yourself with
the cause of utter strangers, and don't tell me
because we have succored a minor female?" Rafik
said. He was getting very tired of being chased
and helped and then chased again.

"I have also had a word with my sister, Judit,
who is currently assisting my employer during my
absence on the mission to discover who caused the
death of our friends who owned the ship whose
beacon you have appropriated for use in yours."

Rafik was not the only listener who blinked at
the long and involved and grammatically correct
sentence.

"And ..." Rafik prompted when Pal seemed to
take a long time to make up his next sentence.

"Would your niece be a young female of
unknown origin with a curious protuberance on
her forehead?"

Rafik exchanged glances with his mates. Gill
nodded solemn approval, but Calum looked wary.

"I think this lad is in an ... efficient . . . posi-
tion to help us on a number of vexing matters,"
Rafik murmured. "Yes, that is our niece, and Judit

155

has already helped us save her. She isn't still with
Amalgamated, is she?"

"No, and one of the reasons is your ward."

Rafik raised his eyebrow over that term, but it
was more accurate than "niece" had ever been,
technically speaking.

"Here's the EVA shop," Gill said, pointing to
the right.

"So it is," Rafik said and started to move.

"Oh, no you don't," Calum said, pushing him
back down. "I'll get it. No one's been killing me."

"You are both wrong," Pal said, twisting
around. "You will undoubtedly have a chit that
indicates the merchandise has been paid for." He
paused to don a cap that said clearly NERED MES-
SENGERS GMBH, INC & LTD on the peak. He held
his hand at the slot and Rafik slid the receipt
through.

Pal got out whistling and entered the shop
while the three miners watched . . . and watched
all corners for anyone watching Pal's activities.
But by then he was out of the shop, still whistling,
the EVA suit in its protective covering thrown
over his shoulder in a careless fashion. He threw it
through a barely adequate opening at the back of
the van, winking as he did so, and slammed the
door shut before resuming his position as driver.
His forward motion could scarcely be called either
furtive or fast. Clearly he was a messenger deter-
mined to increase the time of his errand for a
larger fee.

Clearly he -was also very adept at inconspicu-
ous trips because, although the three miners

156

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

observed the twists and turns he made, they
almost did not recognize the Uhuru -when the van
stopped at its closed hatch.

Then a lot of things happened all at once: Pal
Kendoro grabbed the EVA suit, jerked them out of
the van -when they didn't appear to move quickly
enough to suit him, and said that -whoever had the
command to open the Uhuru's, hatch had better
activate it right now because "they" -were here and
•waiting for them.

Rafik activated it and the hatch opened just
enough for them all to get inside, even Pal, though
he had to be pulled through with the suit encum-
bering him.

Acorna was at the pilot's controls. "We have
cleared for take-off, just as you asked. Uncle
Rafik," she said as he slid into the second seat.

"I did?"

"You did!" At the sound of his own voice so
cleverly imitated, Rafik turned around to see Pal
behind him. "And I advise the most speedy depar-
ture this ship can make and an even quicker )ump
to these coordinates." He laid a flimsy beside
Acorna.

"Well, go ahead, Acorna," Rafik said, waving
his hand in submission.

"Where?"

"To a place of absolute safety," Pal said, trying
very hard not to stare at the slender figure with
the mane of silver hair who was in control of the
ship.

"I trust him," Rafik said, uttering what would
soon be added to the list Calum kept of his

157

Famous Last Words. "He's Judit Kendoro's
brother."

Acorna had no more than finished keying in
the course than Rafik began to sneeze again. So
did Calum, Gill—who tried to reach out to Pal,
who held a mask over his face—and Acorna.

Seven

In the end, it was Judit who con-
veyed Delszaki Li's invitation to the
Uhuru -when the ship reached Kezdet
"Pal can negotiate with the miners," she'd pointed
out, "but if you want Acorna to come and stay with
you — "

r,

"She must," Li insisted. "I may not know? how
or why yet, but this I do believe: the ki-Un is vital
to our goals!"

"I have met these men," Judit said. "They have
been betrayed before; they will not entrust Acorna
to strangers again. To me, perhaps, but not—for-
give me—to an unknown businessman on a planet
that has not treated them well."

"Name of Li is scarcely unknown in "world of
business and finance," her employer remarked
dryly.

"They would probably trust your financial
expertise," Judit agreed, "but will they trust you
to care for ayoung girl?"

159

She was not entirely sure, herself, that she
trusted Delszaki Li to recognize that Acorna was a
little girl as well as a kl-lin. Pal had described her
as a young woman . . . but that was ridiculous;

after all, Judit had seen the child herself, only a
year ago.

And, with the image of that drugged child in
her mind, she was taken aback at first by the tall,
slender young woman in a sophisticated deep pur-
ple body wrap and misty blue flowing skirt who
greeted her when at last she received permission
to board the Uhuru. For a moment she wondered
wildly if there could be two Acornas, if this could
be the mother or older sister of the child she
remembered.

On her part, Acorna stared at Judit as soon as
she spoke, and her silvery pupils narrowed to ver-
tical slits.

"I think ... I know you," she said in confusion.
"But how?"

"She saved you from surgery at Amalgamated's
space base," Gill said. His big hand briefly
enveloped Judit's; she felt a wave of warmth and
security emanating from his touch. "But you were
unconscious at the time, drugged for the opera-
tion. You can't remember."

"I remember the voice," Acorna said. She
looked thoughtfully at Judit. "You were very
much afraid . . . and very sad. You are not so sad
now, I think."

"Then it i) you!" Judit exclaimed. "But you
were so tiny..."

"It seems my people mature more rapidly than

160

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

do yours," Acorna said. "Not, of course, that we
know anything about my people. . . ." Her pupils
narrowed to slits again, then widened as she
turned her silvery gaze on Judit and dismissed
that subject. "So you are Judit. Gill and Rafik and
Calum have told me often of your heroism."

"Then they have exaggerated wildly," Judit
said. "I didn't do anything, really."

"You will allow us to differ about that," Gill put
in, still holding Judit's hand clasped inside his.

"And you were not harmed afterwards?"

Judit smiled. "Oh, no. They bought the
hostage story ... I think Dr. Forelle had some
doubts, but nobody else could quite believe that a
barrio girl, even one who'd made it through uni-
versity, would have the brains or independence to
go against so many rules. And to keep them from
thinking it, I made sure to act very stupid for some
time thereafter. I think they were glad to get rid of
me when Mr. Li offered me a position as his assis-
tant."

"Ah, yes," Rafik said. "Your famous Mr. Li. Pal
has been telling us all about him, and his fortune,
and his great plans — "

Judit felt the blood draining from her face.

"Pal, how could you?"

How could Pal have trusted these men with
such dangerous secrets! Oh, Gill, she would trust,
but these other two ... no doubt they were good
men, but Pal didn't have the right to risk the lives
of children on his intuitive judgment of them.

"—plans to establish lunar mining bases on
Kezdet's moons," Rafik went on, and Judit breathed

161

again. "He seems very eager to give us a contract to
oversee the establishment and development of the
work ... a remarkably lucrative contract to offer
three independent asteroid miners."

"As I've explained to you," Pal cut in, "Kezdet
is a technologically underdeveloped planet. We
have planetside mines, of course, but they are of
the crudest sort, dependent on manual labor for
nearly everything. And there is no local expertise
in low-g mining. Kezdet's moons are far richer in
valuable metals than the planet itself, but up to
now we have lacked the capital and the technology
to exploit the mines. Mr. Li proposes to provide
the capital, but he needs men like you to consult
on all the problems of mining in space—protection
from solar flares, high-friction coefficients, lack of
the usual reagents for extraction, and so forth."

"You seem tolerably well informed on the prob-
lems, anyway," Calum remarked.

Pal flushed. "I've studied a few vid-cubes. That
doesn't make me a space mining expert. That's
where you come in."

"I should perhaps point out," Rafik said softly,
"that hijacking our ship and taking us, uncon-
scious, to a planet we have every reason to avoid is
not the most persuasive of bargaining maneuvers."

"Pal," Judit said sorrowfully, "you coulf) have
tried explaining to them!"

Pals flush deepened and he rounded on his sis-
ter, palms out. "A minute ago you thought I ha<)
explained to them, and I was in deep kimchee for
that, too. Can't I do anything right? "

"Not with a big sister, kid." Gill chuckled.

162

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Rafik, Pal, both of you calm down. Whatever the
rights and wrongs of it, we're here now, and it
won't hurt us to listen to Mr. Li's offer . . . and
personally, I'm dying to hear the explanations."

"I think Mr. Li would prefer to present his case
to you personally," Pal said, "and he very seldom
leaves his mansion. Will you trust me so far as to
accompany me there, where we can discuss the
matter in greater comfort?"

Gill glanced at the others, smiled wryly and
shrugged. "What the heck . . . we're already on
Kezdet, how much worse can it get? Just lay off
the sleep gas this time."

"Kezdet," Pal said somberly, "can get much,
much worse than any of you can imagine."

Just before dawn there was a subtle change in
the quality of the darkness of the sleep shed.
Unrelieved blackness faded slightly, revealing the
slumped outlines of what looked like piles of rags
on the earthen floor. After three years •working
Below, Jana could sleep through the twenty-
four-hour rumble and thump of the slagger, but
the faint light in the shed woke her, most morn-
ings, before the call. That was the good thing
about being on day shift. Night shift, you didn't
have that bit of warning. It worked today; she
was on her feet, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes,
when Siri Teku came through the shed with his
bucket of icy water, splashing it on the heaps of
rags until the children underneath stirred. He
grinned at Jana and aimed the last of the bucketful

163

at her, but she dodged so that he only got her
bare feet.

"Thanks," she said, "I was meanin' to wash my
feet today anyway."

She dived into the corner and caught little
Chiura by the arm, hauling her upright and clap-
ping one hand across her mouth before the kid
could wail and earn a slash from the long, flexible
rod Siri Teku held in his other hand. The other
kids knew better than to cry about a little thing
like cold water, or to take too long scrambling to
their feet, but Chiura was new, the only new one
their gang had got from last week's intake. The
others had grumbled when Siri Teku shoved her
into their shed.

"How we gone keep up our allotment with
babies on the soojin' gang?" Khetala demanded.

Khetala, two years older than Jana, broad-
shouldered and black-browed, was the unofficial
leader of their gang. She kept the rest of the kids
in line with pinches, slaps, and threats to tell Siri
Teku on them. But she also kept their ore carts full
and the draggers moving so that they weighed in
with a full allotment most shifts. That meant sup-
per. Gangs that didn't earn supper didn't last long;

the kids got tired too easily, then they couldn't
keep up their allotment, they started getting sick,
pretty soon the sick ones disappeared and the ones
that were just puny got sold off to other gangs. Or
worse, Kheti said darkly, but Jana wasn't sure
what could be worse than being a dragger on a

gang.

"She's too little to go Below," Jana said.

16-4 -^             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Chiura's bare legs -were dimpled 'with baby fat; her
round, full face was tilted upward to Jana and
Khetala as if she expected them to pick her up or
something. She'd learn soon enough that there
wasn't any time at Anyag for playing with babies.

"No backtalk!" Siri Teku's rod whistled against
the backs of Jana's legs. She didn't jump, so he
lashed her a couple more times until tears stood in
her eyes. "She's not going Below. Not yet, anyway.
She can help Ganga and Laxmi sort."

Jana and Khetala looked at each other. They
needed another sorter. Siri Teku had taken
Najeem away right after wake-up a couple of days
ago, when he noticed Najeem's morning cough.
But how were they going to teach a baby who
couldn't be more than four, maybe only three, to
sort ore?

"She wants to eat, she'll learn," Siri Teku said.
"You'll teach her." He left the shed to fetch their
scanty morning meal.

Now Jana knelt beside Chiura, dipped a cor-
ner of her own kameez in the water bucket and
wiped the kid's face clean. She'd been crying again
in the night, there -were dried tears and snot caked
around her upper lip. A bruise was starting to
show on her cheek.

"Who hit you, Chiura? "

Chiura didn't answer, but she glanced toward
Laxmi and back, a quick, darting, furtive glance
that she'd learned in this first week at Anyag.
Jana glowered at Laxmi.

"The brat kept me awake with her snuffling,"
Laxmi said.

"We all cried at first," Jana said. "You hit her
again, Laxmi, and I'll break your arm. See how
long Siri Teku keeps you on the gang when you
can't work!" She wiped Chiura's face as gently as
she could and ran her fingers through the curly
dark hair, trying to work a few tangles out of the
matted ringlets.

"You're wasting your time," Laxmi said. "She'll
hafta get clipped like the rest of us, or she'll get
lice. I donno why Siri Teku hasn't done it yet."

"You mean there's something you don't know?"
Jana jeered. "An' here I thought you -was the
Divine Fountain of Wisdom come down to Anyag
to instruct and save us all."

Sin Teku kicked the door open and set down a
round platter of bean paste )ust inside the shed.
Beside it he dropped a stack of patts, letting them
fall on the dirt so the bottom ones would be all
gritty. He said it trained the kids to grab their food
fast and not waste time, but Jana figured it was
just meanness. She'd never seen anybody who
wasn't hungry enough to bolt their patts and bean
paste so fast they hardly chewed.

The first day, Chiura had wrinkled up her face
and spat out the gritty patt and bean paste Jana
rolled for her. She was hungrier now; she
would've dived right under the trampling feet of
the older kids if Jana hadn't held her back.

"It's okay," she told Chiura. "Kheti sees to it,
there's fair shares for everyone."

"More," Chiura wailed when the rush had
slowed and they got their patts and beans, one
apiece.

166

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

167

"Fair shares," Jana said firmly, but she tore her
rolled patt in half and slipped it to Chiura when
nobody -was looking. And while the rest of the
gang shuffled off to the shaft, she lingered to ask
Laxmi how the baby was doing.

"Plays too much, less'n I clout her," Laxmi
said. "Doesn't know good rock from bad. She's
bringin* down our count."

"Don't hit her," Jana said. "She won't learn if
she's scared. Let her watch what you're doing.
She'll learn." She knelt by Chiura and hugged
her. "You'll watch Laxmi, won't you, sweetcake?
Watch and learn how to tell good ore from rocks.
Watch for Mama Jana."

"Sweetcake?" Chiura repeated. "Mama?"

"Aah, she's too dumb to know what you're say-
ing," Laxmi whined. "Only way to teach her . . ."
She doubled over in a silent cough. Her thin face
turned dark with the effort to hush the convul-
sions that shook her body.

"You don't hit her," Jana said, "and I don't tell
Siri Teku you got Najeem's cough. Deal?"

Laxmi nodded in between convulsions, and
Siri Teku's rod came down across the backs of
Jana's legs. This time Jana yelled good and loud,
to give Laxmi a chance to let some of the coughing
out. And Siri Teku was so busy telling her off for
lingering behind the rest of the gang, he didn't
even notice the way Laxmi wheezed for breath.
She hoped.

Going Below was the part Jana hated worst, the
sickening drop in the cage full of scared kids. It was
usually all right, if the minder was awake and pay-
ing attention to his engine. If he let it run a few sec-
onds too long, the cage would slam into the pit floor
like a dropped basket of eggs. Coming back up was
just as dangerous; an inattentive minder could drag
the cage and all into the engine to be chewed up
like a lump of ore in the slagger, but you didn't
think about that so much—by the end of shift, all
you could think of was getting Above again. Above
belonged to light and flowers and Sita Ram, whom
Jana imagined like a mother who smiled and
hugged you close and wanted to keep you forever.
Below belonged to Old Black and the Piper, and if
you prayed to Sita Ram or even thought about Her,
they'd maybe get angry and send one of Their mes-
sengers for you: a rock falling from the tunnel roof,
a flood of water when the hewers broke through
into old workings, or the stinking air that made
your chest forget how to breathe.

The cage rattled to a stop, thudding on the pit
floor but not falling, and the gang moved off to
their places under Siri Teku's direction.

"Buddhe, Faiz, you boys are dragging for Face
Three today. Watch how Gulab Rao handles the
compressor, Buddhe. You're getting too big for a
dragger and I just might put you to work on the
face pretty soon if you show me you can get a load
of ore without spraying the gallery with rock
splinters. Israr, you trap for Face Three. You girls
go to Five. Khetala and Jana drag, Lata trap."

Buddhe and Faiz set off at a run down the
opening that slanted down to the tunnel to Three,
but Kheti called them back and made them strap
on their knee and arm pads.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Girl stuff," Buddhe said scornfully, flexing his
skinny ten-year-old arm •while Kheti tried to tie on
the pads she'd made out of old rags. "When I'm a
hewer, I -won't fool with stupid girl stuff like
padding myself."

"Wear the pads, maybe you don't get so many
cuts, maybe you live long enough to make hewer,"
Khetala snapped.

Jana didn't argue about putting her own pads
on. They were another of Kheti's good ideas.
Other gangs, when they got new kameezes, sold
the ragged bits of their old ones to a picker for a
cornet of curried peas or some other luxury. Kheti
made them save the old cloths to make these pads
that protected their knees and elbows from the
sharp rock floors of the tunnels. While the pads
lasted, their gang didn't come down with half as
many scrapes and cuts and infections as the other
gangs. The only trouble was, they never could get
enough cloth. Kheti said she was going to talk to
Siri Teku some day when he wasn't drunk or
angry and point out how much the pads saved
them, try and talk him into giving them some extra
cloth. But it could be a long time waiting until Siri
Teku was in a mood to be approached.

The hewers had been working at Five since
well before first light; they went on shift and off
shift earlier than the draggers, so that the kids
could find full corves of ore -waiting -when they
started work and could finish off the hewers' last
production of the day before they went off shift.
This morning there were three full corves -waiting
for them. You couldn't hear anything over the

•whine of the compressors, but one of the hewers —
Ram Dal, it was—-wasn't -wearing his face mask,
and Jana could guess from his scowl what he -was
saying to them. If the draggers got behind, then he
wouldn't have an empty corf to pile his ore into,
his production -would go down and the gang
wouldn't meet their allotment. It -wasn't her and
Khetala's fault that Face Five had turned into an
easy vein that the hewers could strip faster than
Siri Teku had expected, but they'd be the ones to
get the stick if Ram Dal told Siri Teku that they
were holding up the line. Jana buckled the belt
about her -waist, straddled the chain attached to
the first corf, and set off back up the long slope of
the tunnel without a -word or a nod to Khetala.
Halfway up the tunnel, Lata pulled the ventilation
fan back so that they could drag the corves
through.

"Come back soon," she begged. "It's dark here.
I'm scared the Piper -will get me."

"Don't worry about the Piper," Jana said as
she passed. "I left an offering for Him at the face.
And -we'll be back in a minute."

It -was always dark in the tunnel, and they
always came back as fast as they could. Lata really

•was simple; you could see it in her face, the funny
tilted eyes and the moon-round cheeks. She could
never remember anything from one trip to the
next. But being so simple, she didn't get bored and
fall asleep, either. Jana liked having Lata as trap-
per and didn't mind saying, every trip, that she

•would come back in a minute.

"Liar," Kheti -whispered -when they were past

170

ANNE MCCAfFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Lata and the hum of the fan blocked out their
•words. "You never. Piper's gonna get you."

"Huh. Piper won't -want me, I'm too skinny.
Piper's gonna take you, Kheti—your chest getting
big now."

The first trip wasn't so bad, except for being in
a hurry because the hewers were getting ahead
this morning. Jana figured about the third trip
was the -worst; by that time everything was bug-
ging you. Your thighs ached from the pull of the
loaded corf, you had scrapes on the places your
pads didn't protect, the chain between your legs
chafed and sweat dropped down into the chafed
places and made them sting worse than ever. In
some ways Jana reckoned it was better later on in
the shift, when you were too tared to care, almost
too tired to remember that there'd ever been
anything but pulling loaded corves, tipping them
into the cage basket, and drawing the empty boxes
back. Finally the hewers quit for the day, and then
they knew end of shift was almost there and all
they had to do was clear the last loaded corves.

Then there was the creaking cage again, this
time taking up draggers and trappers instead of
baskets of ore, and cool clean air and the first stars
of evening, and shivering because your kameez
was soaked with sweat and you weren't used to
the coolness. Jana helped Khetala to herd the
other kids of their gang over to the pump that
spewed out water from the lowest mine workings,
nagged them all to pull off their kameezes and
wash. The littlest ones, Lata and Israr, were so
tired they were about to fall asleep, even though

171

they had been sitting still all day instead of hauling
corves. They gasped and crowed indignantly at
the shock of the tepid water. That helped; Buddhe
and Faiz wanted to show? they "were tougher than
the little kids, so they splashed rowdily under the
pipe. Jana and Khetala took the last wash. Faiz
tried to pinch Khetala's chest and she splashed
water into his eyes and everybody had a good
laugh.

"I wish we had spare kameezes, and spare
pads, too," Kheti said as they trudged back to the
shed. "Then we could wash our clothes and pads
and leave them to dry next day."

"Yeah? Long as you're wishing, why don't you
wish for the moon to hang in our shed and a cloud
to fly through the tunnels on?"

"The better we keep clean," Kheti said firmly,
"the less we fall sick."

Jana didn't see the connection herself.
Everybody knew that sickness was caused by
annoying Old Black and the Piper so that they
laid a cough in your chest. She'd been at the mines
five years now, since she was only a little bigger
than Chiura. Kheti was all the time setting herself
up as some kind of know-it-all because she'd only
come to the mines two years ago, when she was
eleven already, and she claimed to know all sorts
of things about the -world away from the mines.
But she did know a lot of good stories to tell at
night, and it was true that since she'd joined them
they had only lost two kids from the gang to ill-
ness. Besides, if you argued, she hit and slapped,
and Jana had taken enough blows that day from

1 72 "--"''             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Siri Teku and Ram Dal—she didn't need a fight

•with Kheti to finish the day off.

The sorters had come in when it got dark.
They -were supposed to light a fire and heat

-water to cook the evening beans and meal por-
ridge, but half the time the sleep shed was dark
and cold when the rest of the gang got there.
This evening -was one of those times. Laxmi and
Ganga were bickering about -whose turn it was
to fetch sticks for kindling. Khetala waded in
and sorted the argument with a couple of brisk
slaps, sending Laxmi for kindling and Ganga to
fill the bucket.

"What about her7" Laxmi jerked her head at
the pallet where Chiura lay, chubby arms and legs
flung out in exhausted sleep. "She don't sort her
share, she don't help fix the fire ..."

"She's little," Jana said. "She'll learn. Give her
a chance."

"I say, if she doesn't work, she doesn't eat!"

"That's dumb," Jana said. "If she doesn't eat,
she'll just get sick. I'll help you get the dinner
ready if you'll give her a share."

Her legs ached all over from hauling corves of
ore all day, but walking and carrying kindling was
a different kind of work anyway. It probably did
her some good to stand upright for a while. Some
of the older hewers hobbled around half bent,
unable to straighten up after years of lying on
their sides in wet tunnels to hack out the last ore
in a narrow vein.

When they got the fire going and the water
began to bubble, Khetala made Laxmi stir, even

though Buddhe and Faiz complained that she
would cough all over their food.

"Never mind them," Kheti told Laxmi.
"Steam's good for the breath-sickness. You stir
every night for a while, and lean over the bucket
while you stir, hear? Breathe in that steam."

"Why? " Laxmi whined.

"Easy," Jana said before Khetala could lose her
temper and slap Laxmi, which was how she usu-
ally settled disagreements. "Steam goes up, right?
Sita Ram is Above, Old Black and the Piper are
Below. Chest cough comes from Old Black and
the Piper. Steam carries it up to Sita Ram."

Khetala rolled her eyes but didn't argue. "Just
do it, Laxmi. Breathe the steam, and hope Siri
Teku keeps you on sorting for a while and doesn't
make you drag a corf."

"Right," Jana agreed. "She goes Below, it'll
just give Old Black and the Piper another chance
to lay a curse on her."

Jana took Chiura to sleep beside her that night.
She wouldn't mind if Chiura cried, and she
wouldn't hit the kid the way Laxmi did. Anyway
Chiura didn't cry much; she snuggled in between
Jana's arm and body and burrowed her head into
Jana's armpit like a kitten butting its mother for
milk. There'd been a litter of kittens once, all soft
and fuzzy . . . but that was before the mines. . . .
Jana blinked away tears. It didn't do no good to
think about before. That was the first lesson any-
body learned. You were bonded to your gang-
master, Siri Teku or whoever, and he took the cost
of food and clothes out of your wages and kept the

174

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

rest to pay off the advance your family had gotten
for bonding you, and "when you were paid off, you
could go home or you could stay at "work and send
the money back to your family. It took a long time
to get paid off, though. But it must happen for some
kids. Sometimes kids just disappeared, and they
weren't sickly or anything, and you never saw them
around the mine again, not working the other shift
or working in another gang or whatever. Like
Surya. She'd been a year older than Khetala, but
she wasn't on the gang anymore. So she must have
earned out her bond and been sent home. Jana
wasn't sure what she would do when she earned
out. She didn't know how to find her family. She'd
been too little when they bonded her—she only
knew it was a long way off. They maybe wouldn't
want her back anyway; there were too many kids
and not enough to eat. Maybe she'd go to the city
and find some easier work. Anything had to be eas-
ier than dragging corves. . . . She fell into an uneasy
dream of dragging bigger and bigger corves up a
worse slope than any in the mine, with the Piper
behind her dark and faceless and threatening, and
her legs jerked and twitched all night as the over-
strained muscles tried to remember how to rest. But
whenever she woke up there was Chiura's little
body warm against her, and that was some comfort;

almost as good as having a kitten of her very own.

The miners were tense as they followed Pal into
the Li mansion, unsure what to expect. The house
was darkened against the heat of the Kezdet sun,

175

•with cool, scented currents of air fanning though
high-ceilinged rooms. They were still blinking
with the sudden change from brilliance to shad-
ows when the soft whir of a hover-chair heralded
Delszaki Li's arrival.

While Pal and Judit made introductions,
Calum hung back, studying the man whose power
and influence had brought them here. A wasted
body was largely concealed under stiff, brocaded
robes; all that he could see was the man's wrin-
kled face, with sharp, intelligent eyes. Those eyes
lit up when Acorna was introduced, and Calum
tensed.

She u what he want^, he thought. The r&ft itjiut an
excuse.

But his suspicions were lulled by the long,
intense discussion that followed the introduc-
tions and ritual offering of food and drink. Li
had evidently studied and anticipated all their
tastes; there was Kilumbemba beer for Gill,
chilled fruit juice for Acorna, and a variety of
cold and refreshing drinks for Calum and Rafik.
But the man was obviously eager to be done
with social niceties and get on with his business;

the clawlike fingers of one hand trembled over
the hover-chair buttons while they made polite
conversation. He seemed relieved when Gill
downed his beer and said bluntly, "Now, Mr. Li,
we have been promised some explanations.
Exactly what made you so eager to bring us
here, and -why are you so sure we will accept
your offer?"

"Require your assistance," Li said, "to destroy

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

176

illegal but well defended system of child slavery on
this planet."

"There are unpleasant rumors about the fate of
unprotected children on Kezdet," Rafik agreed.

"The reality," Judit said, "is •worse than the
rumors."

Gill put one arm around her shoulders.

"And exactly how will the establishment of
lunar mining bases help to eradicate the current
system?" Calum demanded. "And why UJ?"

"Second question is more easily answered than
first," Li replied. "I have chosen you because of
personal reports from Judit Kendoro, also sub-
stantiated by reading of classified files of
Amalgamated. Men who will break contract and
incur wrath of intergalactic company to defend
one child might be willing to take some further
risks to save many children."

Calum had the feeling that Li was not revealing
all his thoughts, but then, the head of a multi-
billion-credit financial and industrial empire sel-
dom did reveal everything he was thinking.

"For answer to first question," Li went on,
"small introduction to current system is neces-
sary." He paused for a moment, his bright black
eyes darting around the table until he was sure
that he had everyone's attention. "Kezdet, like
Saturn, eats its children. Small population of
highly paid technical workers, bureaucrats, and
merchants rests at top of a pyramid of underpaid
and exploited human labor. And at bottom of
pyramid are children—those of Kezdet, and the
unwanted children of many other planets. Kezdet

177

labor contractors visit an overpopulated, impover-
ished world where planetary government is
already struggling to provide basic social services.
They make promises of employment and educa-
tion for homeless children, training in basic job
skills, and the chance for a better life. Reality is
sadly different. Training? Yes—employers claim
child is 'in training' for long years during which no
wages at all are paid. Employment? Yes—as much
as twenty hours a day in some cases. And educa-
tion?" Li smiled sadly. "All most of these children
learn is that if they do not work, they will not eat.
And they learn that lesson very well. Illiterate,
half-starved, separated from their families if they
ever had any, they are utterly dependent on their
employer's good will. Enslaved children are back-
bone of Kezdet economy."

"Child labor and slavery are both violations of
Federation law," Rafik said. "Surely the law
applies on Kezdet as elsewhere?"

Li's smile was infinitely sad. "Inspections are
always announced in advance, to give factory
owners time to hide children or pretend they are
only working in allowed roles such as carrying
water and snacks to adult workers. Kezdet
Guardians of the Peace are paid, what you say,
under the console?"

"Under the table," Rafik supplied.

"Sometimes Child Labor League makes public
some company's violation of law. But judges are
also paid off. Small fine, company continues busi-
ness as usual."

"It doesn't make sense," Calum protested.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

178

"Adult workers are stronger and do more. I'm sure
conditions are terrible for the few children who
have to work, but you make it sound as though
they are the entire workforce."

"Kezdet has specialized in industries where
children are especially useful," said Li. "In primi-
tive mines, their small size is convenient. In glass
factories, they can run faster than adults and cal-
culate a path more intelligently than 'bots, bring-
ing molten glass to blowers. Small nimble fingers
are useful in match factories, where sulfur poisons
them, and in carpet factories where children are
crippled from hours of sitting in a cramped posi-
tion and half-blinded from working in the dark.
Adults," Li said dryly, "might protest such condi-
tions. Children provide cheap, uncomplaining
labor. And Kezdet industrialists too tight-fisted
and short-sighted for kind of capital investment it
would take to modernize industries and improve
appalling conditions. Children do here what
machines do in more civilized places—and is
always cheaper to buy another batch of children
from a labor contractor than would be to automate
a factory. System perpetuates itself. And children
themselves are kept in perpetual slavery by system
of financial juggling. Most bonded child laborers
incapable of calculating 'debt' they owe for trans-
portation to Kezdet and fee of contractor who
brought them here. As legal fiction," he explained,
"debt is owed by adult head of child's family, if
such exists. Everyone knows debt is to be paid
only by child—but cannot prosecute on basis of
what 'everyone knows,' especially on Kezdet,

179

where entire legal and peace-keeping system is
corruptly in pay of factory owners. Meanwhile,
employers cheat children in every possible way,
charging food and clothing at ridiculous sums
against their wages, docking for breakages, keep-
ing high rate of interest on original debt. All bond
laborers hope someday will work off bond. Very
few ever achieve that."

"I was lucky," said Pal. "I had a sister who won
her freedom with a scholarship, then spent years
working hardship posts on space stations and
sending back every penny of her salary until
Mercy and I were bought free as well."

"Success of Judit required brilliance, tenacity,
and luck," Delszaki Li said. "First element of luck
was that she was not sent to Kezdet until she was
fourteen, when she and Pal and Mercy were
orphaned by a war that left their home planet bur-
dened with thousands of displaced children. She
fell into barrios of Kezdet later than most, with
good health, a basic scientific education, and—-
most important of all—knowledge that a better
way of life was possible. But none of that would
have saved her if she had not been an exception-
ally brave and intelligent young woman."

"You don't need to tell me that," Gill rumbled.
"Remind me to tell you sometime about the first
time I met this girl."

"But for every Judit who escapes the Kezdet
system are hundreds of children who do not escape.
Too poor, too weak, too ignorant to fight..."

"But what happens when they grow up?" Rafik
demanded.

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

180

"Mostly," Pal said, "we don't. Grow up. What
do you expect, with poor food, hellish conditions,
no medical care? The healthiest and best-looking
children are regularly bought from the labor con-
tractors for city brothels, and even they don't last
long there. The rest work until they get sick, and
then they die. And the few who survive to adult-
hood are too weak to do much besides breed more
children whom they can sell to the labor contrac-
tors for a pittance."

Calum looked about him at the luxurious fur-
nishings of the room where they sat: windows of
high-tech Kyllian solar glass, walls draped in
sound-absorbing Theloi silk, an entire -wall covered
with shelves of expensive antique flatbooks.
Delszaki Li intercepted and interpreted his glance.

"No, this is not paid for by labor of children,"
he said, "although you would be hard put to find
another such house in all of Kezdet." He sighed.
"This humble person was young and idealistic
when inherited family holdings on Kezdet. Swore
never to employ child labor or any bonded labor-
ers. Have devoted a lifetime to demonstrating that
is possible for businesses to flourish—even on
Kezdet-—without exploiting children. Experiment
has gained me many enemies, but has had no other
effect. In recent years have turned to more direct
action. Child Labor League achieved some suc-
cesses at first, but now has been made illegal by
order of Kezdet government, which has accused
members of terrorist action." Li smiled. "This
means, among other things, that contributions to
the league not tax deductible."

181

"It also means that his house is watched, his
assistants questioned, and his projects ruined
wherever the corrupt Guardians of the Peace can
find out what he is doing," Pal put in.

"If this room is bugged," Rafik pointed out,
"this entire conversation is extremely indiscreet."

"Is indiscreet anyway," Li said calmly, "but I
have made decision to trust you. As for other lis-
teners, I believe my off-planet technology is still
better than their off-planet technology. Guardians
of the Peace are just as cheap as any other group
on Kezdet; they buy second-rate espionage equip-
ment and have it copied in barrio factories where
workers do not know what they are supposed to
be doing and hence make many mistakes. . . .
Actually, it is remarkable how many mistakes they
make on contracts for Guardians of the Peace;

suspicious man might think someone were alerting
them and suggesting subtle ways to sabotage
equipment."

"I like the way this man thinks," Rafik
announced.

"You would," Calum said, "he's almost as
twisty as your Uncle Hafiz." He glanced at Li.
"No offense intended, sir."

"If you are referring to Hafiz Harakamian," Li
said, "no offense taken. He is brilliant man with
admirably subtle mind. Your people sometimes
find subtlety morally suspicious; mine do not."

"About the mines?" Gill prompted.

"Peaceful demonstration has failed," Li said.
"Education efforts on Kezdet have been ham-
pered by Guardians of the Peace, who destroy

182

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Acorna

183

corn systems belonging to Child Labor League
and break up schools established to teach bonded
children how to read and calculate, so that they
may know how much their employers are cheat-
ing them. Now I try third approach: direct
action. Remove children from Kezdet. Only two
problems: how to find children who have been
well trained to hide from strangers, and what to
do with them when found."

"Just two little problems, huh?" Rafik drawled.
"You will solve second problem. Li consortium
owns mineral rights to all three of Kezdet's moons,
sold to me personally by stupid government offi-
cials who thought moons too expensive to mine.
Not willing to make capital investment, train mod-
ern workers. Li consortium has plenty of capital.
You three men have expertise. You will establish
first lunar base city on primary satellite, Maganos.
You three will train freed children to operate
equipment. Judit will be head of school system
and medical services. Children will work, but will
also learn."

Gill blinked at the scale of the project pre-
sented in these few clipped words. "Mr. Li, I think
you don't realize how many trained personnel it
takes to run an efficient lunar mining base. We're
contract miners, independents. We know how to
strip an asteroid and ship the separated metals
where we'll get the most money for them. What
you're proposing is a much bigger operation."

"I know that," Li replied. "You do not realize
how many children are enslaved on Kezdet. I will
supply personnel. You will train them."

"It's going to be extremely expensive," Calum
warned. "Setting up shielded living quarters,
importing equipment from other systems ... it
could be years before you see any return on your
investment."

Li waved his one working hand disdainfully.
"Li consortium has capital. Initial return on invest-
ment will be lives saved. In fifty, maybe hundred
years, will be fully working concern. Li descen-
dants will be rich and happy. I will be dead, but
will be one happy ancestor."

Rafik asked Li for the chance to sleep on the
proposition and Li smiled, murmuring something
erudite about prudent men. Pal was designated as
guide for the men while Judit took charge of
Acorna.

As the three miners watched their ward make
her graceful way up the anachronistic flight of
stairs to the second level of this amazing house,
they each experienced a sense of moment.

"She's grown up ... all of a sudden," Calum
said plaintively.

"She belongs in a place like this," Rafik
remarked, beaming with pride at the look of her,
courteously inclining her body to the shorter Judit
and smiling at something said.

"She's grown out of us, that's for sure," Gill
said with a sad sigh, and then focused his attention
on Judit.

She ^o criei) when dhe thought we were ail oeao ana
gone. WhoVve thought it? They'd met so very briefly.




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BAIL

184 —

'A.corn.a.

185

He hoped Rafik and Calum would be willing to go
along with Li's scheme. He'd have a lot more
chance to be with Judit and he found he wanted
that, suddenly, at his time of life. Well, he wasn't
that old, after all was said and done. Time he gave
a thought to settling down. Mining was a grand
life when you were young, but it was isolating and
he'd had enough of the females available for short-
term liaisons. Would Judit mind that he'd played
around a lot? He'd been careful: always insisted
on seeing an up-to-date cert before he did anything.

"You're right on that count," Rafik said with a
wistful expression on his face. Ah, well, they were
due for a change.

Calum had entirely different thoughts, though
they were centered on Acorna. They had man-
aged to bring her to her species' maturity, or close
to it. But they hadn't done -what they ought to
have done a long time ago: found out who and
•where her people were. Caring for her was one
thing. He couldn't fault any of them on that, but
they really should now, especially with the
resources available to them if they picked up on
what Li was suggesting, be able to employ the
experts they needed—discreetly, of course—to
find her home system. They owed her family that.
They owed her that. She was female and shouldn't
be deprived of a mate because a proper member
of her own species wasn't immediately available.

Pal showed them into a suite of rooms, three
bedchambers off a spacious, beautifully furnished
lounge, and each bedroom had its own bath facil-
ity.

"Boy! Have we come up in the world!" Calum
said, pivoting on one heel with his arms wide
open, taking in the luxurious appointments.

Pal smiled at such an ingenuous remark. "You
are very welcome guests. I do hope that you can
find it in your hearts and minds to forgive my
actions, but perhaps you see why such cautions
had to be taken."

"If Li's up against an entire planet, I suppose
he's got to be doubly, triply careful," Rafik said as
he settled himself into a wide chair that immedi-
ately conformed itself to him. "Hey, I can get to
like this!"

Pal stepped to the nearest wall, pressed an
ornate button, and a panel slid back to reveal not
only a well-stocked bar but other supplies.

"In case you require sustenance or refreshment
before the morning. In the meantime, I will wish
you a comfortable night's rest. And if you have
any requirements, speak into this grill and the
house of Li will supply whatever you lack."

"I believe it could," Rafik said with a grin.

Pal left and closed the door quietly behind him.

"I think -we ought to ..."

"This is the chance of a lifetime ..."

"Be our own bosses ..."

They had spoken all at once and broke off,
laughing. Gill and Calum found chairs, which they
pulled closer to Rafik's semithrone so they could
have a good natter about their amazing new-
prospects.

"First," Rafik said, taking charge and ticking
off the points he wanted to make, "I think we'd be




186 -—-'             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

stupid not to take Li up on the offer because we're
not getting any younger and mining asteroids for
huge corporations like Amalgamated is no longer
the -wide-open, friendly game it used to be." The
others nodded. "Exploiting the riches of a moon . . .
and nonexploiting our employees at the same
time . . . much less not having to -worry about
what'11 happen at our next port of call ... I won-
der ..." Rafik paused, "... if Li can find out who
else is after us and why."

"Whaddaya wanna bet that's already being
handled?" Calum said. "But, look, fellas—"

"Look, there must be hundreds of techies and
experienced men who're as cheesed off with
Amalgamated as we are. We take our pick of gooS
men to start this project up: builders, engineers,
environmentalists, medics ..." Gill's eyes gleamed
with such rosy prospects. "We could hold out for
the best there is."

"Not to mention the fair Judit." Rafik shot a
sideways look at Gill, -who blushed to the beard
and beneath.

"Now..."

"Ease off. Gill," Calum said, holding up his
hands between them. "Before we get our heads all
warped with plans, there's one other thing we have
to do."

"What?" They both turned on him in surprise.

"Find out where Acorna comes from. We ought
to have done something about that a long time ago."

"Yeah, when we've had so much free time,"
Rafik began, and then stopped. "That kind of
search could take a lifetime."

"Not if Li will let us hire a metallurgic special-
ist and get us the spectroanalyses of primaries."

"All of them?" Even Rafik goggled at that.

"Naw, we can narrow it down," Calum said.
"She hadn't been in that pod very long—the oxy-
gen supply wasn't down by as much as half— "

"But she could have kept it clean," Gill put in.

"It took a few weeks to do ours, remember,"
Calum said. "Any way, we go back to the old
'Azelnut group and use the evaluation of primaries
in that area, -widening the search. She can't have
been from that far away. Besides -which, I'll bet
anything that some of her people visited Earth, or
that sort of a legend wouldn't have grown."

Gill frowned at him and -waved his hand in dis-
missal of the idea.

"Now, -wait a minute, Gill," Rafik said, holding
up one finger. "A lot of those old legends did have
bases in fact -when modern science took a look at
them. There's no reason Acorna's people didn't
start that one. Just remember how beautifully that
escape pod ... a mere escape pod . . . was
designed. They've been in space a lot longer than
we have."

Gill stroked his beard. "Yeah, I guess it's possi-
ble."

"That would be a real coup," Rafik said.
"Furthermore," and he settled back into his chair,
locking his hands behind his head as he stretched
out, "I think Li -would really go for the research."

"At least he's respectful of Acorna," Gill said.
"Not like others I could name," and he shot a
glance at Rafik.

188

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Or that awful surgeon -who was going to
remove the 'disfigurement,'" said Calum, who had
never forgotten his outrage over that and by what
a slim margin they had saved her. If they'd been
just a fraction of a moment later ... he shook him-
self.

"So we broach that tomorrow, too?" Rafik
asked.

"Look, let's get an idea of what we're going to
neec)," Gill said, "draw up a plan of attack—"

"A visit to the moon?" Rafik put in, grinning.

"Among other things." Gill was opening cup-
boards to find out where the computer terminal
was hidden.

Rafik removed one hand from behind his head
and laid it on the edge of the table beside him. It
lifted and exposed a state-of-the-art system that
made him sit up and whistle. He rolled the chair
around the corner of the table, toggled it on, and
raised his hands over the keypads.

"Okay, what's first?"

When they had revised their order of the prior-
ities half a dozen times and finally reached one
they could all agree (mostly) on, which did include
a visit to the moons, which headhunter to contact
for the most essential personnel, and what Calum
would require for his search, they did "sleep" on it.




ake up, Jana!" Somebody
was shaking her, dragging
Jana out of the lovely second

sleep she'd fallen into after she woke at dawn and
Siri Teku didn't come. The sleep shed door was
locked and nobody brought them food, so Jana
went back to sleep so she wouldn't think about
how hungry she •was.

Kheti's face was gray with fear. Jana'd never
seen her like that, not even that real bad time
when Siri Teku got so drunk he was seeing
demons here Above and started whipping all the
kids, screaming that he would drive Old Black and
the Piper out of them. Kheti'd kept her head then,
helping the little kids to scramble into hiding
places, making Buddhe and Faiz throw rocks to
distract Siri Teku until they all got out of reach,
keeping them safe until the gangmaster threw up
and fell down on the ground to sleep it off. She'd
taken a lash across the face that would mark her

190

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

for life, but she hadn't been frozen by fear the -way
she was now.

"I got to get out of sight," she whispered. "I'm
too big now, she'll take me for sure." She tugged
her ragged kameez up, trying to bunch it up over
her chest where she was bumpy now, but there
wasn't enough fabric to cover her top and bottom,
too. Buddhe snickered and pinched her on the
butt, and Faiz yelled that he could see some hair
that wasn't on her head.

"Who'll take you?" Jana demanded.

"Didn't you hear the whispers? Didi Badini's
coming."

DQi meant big sister. "Your family?" But why
wouldn't Khetala want to go with her sister?
Nobody's family ever came for a kid. Only the real
little ones, like Chiura, even thought it would hap-
pen.

Khetala tried to laugh. It came out like a grind-
ing fall of rocks.

"Oh, Didi Badini's everybody's big sister,
didn't you know? Piper sends her at night to take
the pretty little kids, boys and girls both, and the
girls that're getting too big to be draggers, like
Surya . . . didn't you ever wonder what happened
to Surya?"

"She worked out her bond," Jana said slowly.
"She went home. Didn't she?"

Khetala laughed again. "Don't you know any-
thing? Nobody ever works out their bond. Does
Siri Teku ever show you how much you owe, how
much you're earning, how much he takes out for
your keep?"

191

Jana hung her head. "I don't know my num-
bers so good."

"Well, I do," Khetala said, "and the first time I
asked to see my records, he knocked me across the
shed." The color was coming back to her face now,
her eyes were sparkling; she loved to instruct peo-
ple. "The second time, he said I'd have to come to
his room, he kept the datacubes there. Huh! He
didn't even have a reader. Had somethm' else he
wanted to show me, though. So I know all about
what Didi Badini's coming for."

"You said she comes at night. It's not night."

"I can't help that. Dunno why she's coming in
the daytime this time, but I heard the whispers.
Besides, why else would Siri Teku keep us locked
in here? Missing a half day's shift "work, we are."

Khetala's fear was infecting Jana, but she
didn't want to show it. She yawned and turned
over on her side.

"So what? Me, I get a chance to sleep, I'll take
it. ... Besides, whatever Didi Badini wants kids
for, can't be worse than this place."

"Can't it? She works for the Piper, dummy."

"Piper's a story to scare kids down Below." Or
maybe not. But they were Above now, even if they
had been locked in the sleep shed since before
dawn. They were in Sita Ram's realm of sky and
sun. Piper couldn't have power here.

"Piper's real, and he takes kids to the bonk-
shops in the city. You catch worse things than
chest-cough that way, too. You get the burnies,
and the scale, and if they don't kill you by doing it
to you too much, then your nose falls off and your

192

193

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

crotch rots and they throw you out on the street to
beg."

"How do you know all that? "

"I know what Siri Teku did to me in his room,"
Khetala said, "and I got away from Ram Dal a
couple of times when he wanted to do the same.
And I been in the city, too, before my mum died
and her boyfriend sold me here. You can see the
beggars all over the place . . . and pictures of kids
outside the bonk-shops. Why do you think she
takes the prettiest kids? And Siri Teku and the
other gangmasters, when a girl gets too tall to
drag, they practic'ly give her to Didi Badini . . .
and I'm going to be tall. You'll be okay for a while,
Jana, you've been living on parts and bean paste
since you were a baby, you'll always be a little
shrimp. Me, I had eleven years of good food and
standing up straight before I came here. I've got
big bones. I won't be able to drag much longer.
You know that."

Jana nodded slowly. Sometimes Kheti got
stuck in the narrowest tunnels, the ones leading to
Face Three. That was one reason she usually
worked Five now. And if she grew much more,
she -wouldn't be able to get through the low pitch
on the tunnel from Five.

"You're not pretty, though," she said slowly.
"Not since ..."

Kheti rubbed the pink weal that crossed her
right cheek.

"I know. But I'm big. That's bad enough. If I
thought gettin' my face messed up would keep Didi
Badini from takin' me, I'd go stand by the compres-
sor and let the flying chips cut me to pieces. But that
won't make me small again."

A new fear struck Jana. "Chiura!" Her face
was burning up, but her hands felt icy cold. "She
wouldn't take ..."

"I reckon that's why Siri Teku didn't clip her
curls," Khetala said. "He never figured to train her
for a sorter. She's a little sweetcake of a kid, spe-
cially the way you been keeping her washed and
her hair combed so good. He figured it was worth
feeding her for a few weeks, then sell her to Didi
Badini. He'll make lots of creds off that one. He
won't get much for me though. Maybe if I can keep
out of sight..."

Jana didn't hear the rest. She darted to where
Chiura was playing with a pile of cast-off rocks
and snatched her up, ignoring the baby's wails of
protest.

"Come on, sweetcake. We got to get you fixed
up good for the visitors. Faiz, give me your knife."

Faiz rolled his eyes. "Who me? Got no knife,
got nothing."

"I seen you stroppin' that bit of steel," Jana
said. "Give it here. You can have it back when I'm
through."

"You going crazy," Faiz said. "Old Black eating
your brain."

But he fumbled in his pallet and came up with
a thin band of metal, gleaming sharp along one
edge and rusty dull on the other.

Chiura cried when Jana pulled her hair to
hack off the curls, and she'd only got one side of
the kid's head when they heard steps outside.




194

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALI

"Sita Ram, help me!"

Jana rubbed her hands in the dirt and smeared
it over Chiura's face. The tears and snot mixed with
the dirt until Chiura's round little face looked truly
revolting. Jana rubbed some more dirt into the
long ringlets she hadn't had time to cut, spat on
the dusty hair and patted it into muddy strings
that hung down over the side of Chiura's face.
That was good—she looked almost ugly now,
probably worse than if Jana'd had time to finish
cutting her hair. She tossed the knife back toward
Faiz and pushed Chiura into a corner.

"You sit there and don 't make a. noiiel" she hissed
at Chiura.

The little girl pulled her knees up and sat rocking
back and forth, eyes wide- She was probably scared
to death that "Mama Jana" had been so rough with
her. All the better, if it would keep her quiet.

"I'll give you a honey sweet when they're
gone," Jana whispered, though she had no idea
where she'd get one. "Just keep quiet now,
Chiura, sweetcake, you don't want them to notice
you." She squatted in front of Chiura, shielding
her with her body.

There was a clanking noise —that would be Siri
Teku unlocking the door. Then light flooded in. It
was full day. Jana felt a cold sweat of fear over
her body. She didn't want to believe in Kheti's
panic, but Siri Teku had to have some good reason
for wasting all this work time. Time was credits,
he always said, and here he'd lost a lot of time
keeping them in the shed—how much she hadn't
realized until the door opened and she saw all that

195

light. The golden rectangle of the open doorway
hurt her eyes; she had been working day shift so
long she couldn't remember when she'd last seen
so much sunlight. It had to be something big to
make it worth his losing all those hours at work.
Just for a moment she believed all Kheti's horror
tales about Didi Badini, and more, too.

The man and woman who followed Siri Teku
into the shed didn't look evil, though. The man
was a pinch-faced little gray fellow, no fangs or
nothing, so Jana reckoned he couldn't be the
Piper. And she didn't have much attention to spare
for him after she caught sight of the woman.
She was the most beautiful thing Jana had seen
since she'd been brought to Anyag as a bondchild.
To begin with she was clean, with no dust dulling
the sheen of her smooth brown skin. And instead
of being skinny and bony, she was plump and
solid. And her clothes! The kameez was all pink
and gold, and it was made of something so light and
gauzy that it seemed to float over her body and
caress her full curves like a cloud of butterflies;

below the gold-embroidered hem of the kameez
Jana could see the cuffs of deep pink shalwar, half
hidden under gold anklets. Without meaning to,
Jana made a small sound of longing and reached
out, then snatched her hand back. She wanted to
feel the fine stuff of the kameez, but she'd get it
dirty. She was just a dirty little girl of the mines
and Siri Teku would beat her if she messed up this
fine lady. Maybe d he'll take me, Jana thought, anS I'll
wear ^ilk. shalwar unSer my kameez an.3 eat every i)ay
am)...

196

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Didi Badinl's eyes met Jana's for a moment.
The eyes were not beautiful like the rest of her;

they -were cold and dark and hard, as if Old Black
had sneaked up Above to look through the beauti-
ful lady's face. And when she saw the eyes, Jana
remembered seeing Didi Badini before. Only
she'd thought it -was a dream. She'd come at night
last time, inspecting the children by lamplight.
Jana had rolled over and buried her head in her
pallet, too tired to care about the dream-people
talking and moving the lamp; in the morning

Surya had been gone.

"Too skinny, too plain," Didi Badini said now
to Siri Teku. "If that's your best, you're wasting

my time."

"I've a big girl here, getting too big to drag the

tunnels. Where's Khetala?" Siri Teku demanded of

the children.

Jana hadn't noticed where Khetala had gone,
she'd been too busy with Chiura. But Israr's eyes
flicked toward the corner farthest from the door,
where several pallets of rags seemed to have been
heaped up together, and simple Lata said, "She's

playing hidey, but I saw her."

Siri Teku kicked the pallets with all his force.
Something gasped. He reached into the heap of
rags, fumbled for a moment, and pulled out

Khetala by one arm.

"She won't want me," Khetala sobbed. "I'm too

ugly. Look!" She stood in the sun and turned her
face up so that the pink weal crossing one cheek

showed.

"Mmm," said Didi Badini. "Stand still, girl."

197

She ran one hand over Khetala's chest, felt her
buttocks, and reached in between her legs.
"Marked and used," she said "And no more use
here, as you said yourself. I'll take her as a favor."

"She still owes on her bond," Siri Teku said.

Didi Badini looked amused. "Don't they all?"

She and Siri Teku haggled for a moment and
agreed on a sum in credits that left Jana gasping.

"No! I won't go!"

Siri Teku had let go of Khetala to wave both
his hands during the bargaining; now she ducked
between the adults and made for the door. Didi
Badini's fat brown arm flashed out, quick as a
snake, and caught the fat braid of dark hair that
hung down Kheti's back. Kheti hit the floor on her
knees, only the hand on her braid holding her
upright.

"Please," she sobbed. "I'm ugly, see, you don't
want me."

Didi Badini's smile was full of Old Black.
"Some of my clients like them that way," she told
Kheti. "You'll have more marks soon enough." She
nodded at Siri Teku. "Put the fight out of her. I'm
not wrestling a screaming cat all the way back to
Celtalan."

Siri Teku casually punched Kheti on the side of
the head. Her head bobbed limply from the braid
that Didi Badini still held. He hit her again and
her whole body hung limp. Didi Badini let go the
braid and Kheti fell onto the mud floor. Siri Teku
slung her over his shoulder and carried her out the
door.

"That is not what I came here to see," the gray

198

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

199

man said in a voice like dry leaves blowing in the
•winter -wind.

"Your mister told me there was something
worth coming here for," Oidi Badini said to the
rest of the children. "Where is it? A pretty child,
he said, something really special, and too young to
be worth training for -work."

Jana looked at the floor. Maybe if she didn't
look up, if she didn't see Old Black peeping out of
Didi Badini's eyes, maybe the woman wouldn't see
her and -wouldn't question the way she was
crouched awkwardly in front of the corner where
Chiura sat.

"Was it you he meant?" Didi Badini tipped up
Faiz's head with one finger under his chin. "Sweet
brown eyes, but the teeth are hopeless and you
look old enough to be a good worker. Not you."
She moved on to Lata, who looked up with a
vacant smile and tried to focus her one good eye
on Didi Badini. "If he meant this one, he's wasting
my time." Her chubby brown feet moved on with
a tinkling of the little gold bells that were attached
to her golden sandal straps, until she stood in front
of Jana. "Look at me, child 1"

The sweet cloud of perfume that wafted from
the folds of Didi Badini's kameez almost choked
Jana, it was too much, too sweet.

"Nice," said a little voice behind her. "Pretty."

"Ahhh," Didi Badini breathed on a long satis-
fied sigh. She bent and took Jana by the nape of
the neck. Her fingers were surprisingly hard and
strong; she threw Jana onto her side without even
breathing hard. "So this is the prize."

"Pretty lady," Chiura said, looking up. She
grasped Didi Badini's kameez with muddy fingers.

"A lovely child, indeed, if she were clean."

"No," Jana gasped, coming up to her knees
and pushing Chiura back. "No, lady, you don't
want her, she's simple, and sick already, she's got a
bad sickness, she'll make you sick, too." If only
Kheti were there, Kheti who knew so many words
and knew all about the city! She'd be able to think
of a good story. But Kheti was gone, head lolling
against Siri Teku's back, sold to the pretty lady
with Old Black in her eyes and her smile.

"Don't talk nonsense, girl." Didi Badini
slapped Jana aside with a backhanded blow. Her
hands were covered with rings; the ornate settings
cut Jana's cheek. "I suppose you're the one who
tried to make her ugly? A right mess you've made
of her, too, half cutting her hair and all that mud.
But I can still tell she'll clean up fine. You come
with Didi Badini, little one," she crooned to
Chiura. "Come and live in the city, sleep on silk
and have sorbet to drink every day."

Chiura lifted her muddy arms to Didi Badini,
then looked over her shoulder. "Mama Jana? "

"Your mister will take care of Mama Jana,"
Didi Badini said. "She's not coming with us. Not
this time." The cold black eyes flicked a scornful
glance over Jana, sitting on the mud with blood
running down her grimy face. "Maybe the mister
will give her away when she gets too big for a
dragger."

"No. Don't take her. Ple<ue," Jana begged. Siri
Teku had come back in; she clasped his knees.




201

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

200

"I'm teaching her to sort, she'll be a good worker,
I'll take care of her, she won't be any trouble."

Siri Teku kicked Jana away. His boot landed
in her stomach and knocked the air out of her. She
lay on the floor and listened to her own breath
whistling like something far away and unimpor-
tant, while Chiura babbled in Didi Badinis arms
and somebody counted out credits. Then Didi
Badini and the silent gray man were gone with
Chiura. And Siri Teku had raised his cane.

"I'll teach you to try and hide my stock," he
said before the first blow landed, burning across
Jana's chest.

There was something about waking up on a planet
that always excited Acorna. Maybe it was the fla-
vor of the air: not dead-pure as on the ship, but
mixed with an infinite variety of scents and the
tantalizing hint of exotic goodies to eat—tender
new leaves, sweet crunchy roots, hectares of grass
blowing in the wind instead of the carefully tended
blades grown for her in the ship's 'ponies system.
This morning she woke with her head filled with
vague dream-images of a sunny garden full of
flowering shrubs and the music of trickling
streams . . . and another music, too, from little ani-
mals that danced in the treetops and sang in sweet
harmony. Was that a real place, or something she
had concocted in her dream? The images were so
strong, she could almost imagine they were a true
memory of something she had seen when she -was
a child. A long, long time ago, because she'd been

quite small in the dream/memory . . . before
Nered, before Greifen, before Theloi, even before
Laboue . . . hadn't there been a garden where the
grass was soft and blue-green, and a pair of arms
that held her up to see the singing-fuzzies? But
when she tried to chase down the elusive memory,
it vanished like a bubble on the water, leaving her
with only the feeling that nice things happened on
planets if you went for a walk in the early morn-
ing.

There was some vague discomfort and guilt
associated with the clearer memory of the gardens
on Laboue with their singing stones, though.
Hadn't Rafik and Calum and Gill been angry with
her for going out? Oh, yes—she had forgotten to
wear those robes that were supposed to cover up
her horn. Well, she'd been a silly baby then. She
was grown up now. They'd said so last night. And
she certainly knew better than to make that mis-
take again!

Feeling quite proud of her forethought, Acorna
donned not only the clinging body wrap and long
skirt Gill now insisted she wear, but also a scarf of
filmy green to match the skirt which could be
draped casually across her head so that instead of
a horn, she seemed only to have a bouffant hair
style from which a few silver curls escaped. Thus
fully prepared, she slipped out of the mansion
where they'd been brought by skimmer and pre-
pared to explore Kezdet's capital city of Celtalan
in her own way, by walking.

The restricted life of a mining ship left Acorna
with few chances to stretch her long legs. She




202

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

203

•worked out daily in the ship's exercise room—
exercise closet was more like it, she thought, admir-
ing the broad open spaces before her—but it
wasn't the same as having a good run on nice
hard-packed dirt.

Not that the immediate prospect from Delszaki
Li's house offered any good opportunities for a
run. Already, early though it -was, the open space
between rows of town houses was filled with peo-
ple in skimmers darting back and forth on urgent
errands. They flew low, obviously not expecting to
have to dodge pedestrians, and Acorna prudently
kept to the narrow stone-covered strip just along-
side the houses. She congratulated herself on her
intelligence and forethought in keeping away from
the skimmers. Gill and the others were all wrong
when they said she didn't know how to take care
of herself dirtside. True, she'd never been alone on
a planet before. She'd gone out only on those care-
fully chaperoned shopping trips where they
stopped to sell their payloads. But how dangerous
could it be? This wasn't like EVA from the Uhuru,
where a slight mistake could leave you without air
to breathe or send you spinning dizzily away from
the ship into space. Planets were e<uy; they had
gravity and atmosphere. What more did she need?

But this part of this planet was boring—row
after row of faceless walled houses with metallic
grills across their windows, and the only people
awake -were locked away in their skimmers and
darted past her with no chance for interesting con-
versations. Acorna raised her head, looking to the
horizon for something more amusing, and her

sensitive nostrils caught a -whiff of something
green and growing not too far away. She followed
the scent along stone pedestrian strips, her feet
clacking on the smooth-worked stone, until she
reached its source.

Though Acorna did not know it, the
Riverwalk was Celtalan's glory of city planning—
at its western end—and its shame at the eastern
end, where the river that gave the park its name
had long been allowed to degenerate into a pol-
luted, half-choked stream. She entered by the
arches cut through hedgerows on the -western
side of Celtalan, where everything -was neatly
manicured and controlled to a fare-thee-well. The
view through the first arch gave the illusion of
spacious countryside with rolling hills; it was
only after Acorna had walked through the
entrance-way that she realized how clever land-
scaping and tricks of perspective had made this
park surrounded by city buildings seem so much
larger than it really was. Little streams (carefully
purified before they -were guided into their pre-
formed channels) trickled over miniature water-
falls of moss-covered boulders; half-size gazebos
and follies, perched atop grassy mounds, gave the
illusion that one was looking down vistas of limit-
less space laid out by a landscape architect of
infinite means. Acorna beguiled half an hour in a
flowering maze before the sweet smell of the
fresh green buds next to the flowers became
unbearably tempting. Rafik and Gill had
impressed upon her strongly that it -was consid-
ered a social faux pas to eat other people's gar-




204

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

dens. If she went back to the big house, that nice
Mr. Li would probably find her something she
could eat. But she wasn't tired yet, and at the far
side of the maze she could see that the careful
landscaping of the Riverwalk began to degener-
ate into something wilder and less carefully mani-
cured. Instead of the gravel path that hurt her
feet, there was a path of hard-packed earth, a
perfect surface for running on. . . . Acorna
glanced around, saw no other early risers who
might be surprised or offended by her actions,
and carefully kilted up her long flowing skirts to
above her knees. After all, she assuaged her con-
science, she had only promised Gill that she
would wear the skirt; she was still doing that,

wasn't she?

Two Kezdet Guardians of the Peace, observing

the park from overhead scanners, saw the tall girl
take off at a galloping run down the dirt path that
led to the river on the eastern edge of the
Riverwalk Park. They shrugged and continued
sipping their morning kava. Most members of the
wealthy technoclass -who inhabited the west-side
mansions knew better than to go anywhere east of
the river without an armored skimmer and armed
bodyguards. Doubtless this girl would turn back
before she reached the river bridge. And if she
didn't—well, there might be a reward in it for
them if they got her out of trouble and saw her
safely home. Before she got into trouble, there was
no reason to bestir themselves.

Pounding down the dirt path, her horn-
covered feet landing solidly on the earth, Acorna




Acorna

205

felt more alive than she could ever remember.
Some atavistic instinct deep inside her told her
that thm was what she was born for—not the ster-
ile confines of a ship, but long glorious runs up
grassy slopes and down the other side, effortless
leaps over the ragged brambles that impeded her
way after she left the path, the morning breeze
blowing through her tangled curls. The blood
throbbed in her veins and she increased her speed
until she felt as though she were flying over the
grass and bushes, flying down a long weed-
infested downhill slope. . . .

The same instincts that had urged her into a
run saved her from a fall into the stinking river at
the bottom of the slope. Without consciously
thinking about the obstacle, she shortened stride,
collected her balance, and launched herself from
the bank in a long, glorious arc that carried her
safely over the ten-foot expanse of stinking, gray-
green water.

On the far bank the park ended abruptly and
the expanses of pavement resumed, but with a dif-
ference. Instead of long regular rows of tall, face-
less houses there were clusters of humbler
dwellings, with dirt paths winding off between the
buildings. Instead of businessmen in skimmers, the
main road was full of people: stalls and carts sell-
ing bangles and snacks and fruit and vegetables, a
knife grinder squatting in the corner made by two
mud walls, a huddle of street urchins playing some
game that involved mad rushes in pursuit of some-
thing Acorna couldn't quite see. She grinned hap-
pily. This was interesting. She would explore a




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

206

little, get an apple or some other snack from one of
these stalls, and be back at the house before any-
body else woke up.

Overhead, in the scanner tower, one of the
Guardians of the Peace nudged the other one.
"D'you see that?"

"See what?"

"That girl. She jumped the river!"

"You've been burning too many happy-sticks,"
grunted his partner. "River may be down to a mis-
erable trickle, but it's still too wide to jump.
Besides, why would anybody take the risk of
falling in there when there's a perfectly good
bridge upstream?"

"Maybe she didn't want to detour. Maybe she
didn't want to explain her business to the bridge
guards. This could be interesting. Let's take out a
skimmer and follow her."

The fried meat pies being hawked from the first
rolling stall didn't appeal to Acorna, but the
second wagon held a tempting display of fruits
and vegetables . . . rather more tempting from a
distance, she realized with regret, than on
closer inspection. The apples were soft and
wrinkled, the madi-fruits covered with brown-
ish spots.

"Do you not have anything fresh?" she
demanded of the owner.

"All fresh, gracious lady, picked just this morn-
ing from my cousin's farm."

"Huh!" the meat pie seller grunted, just audibly,

207

"just fell off the back of your cousin's skimmer,
more likely."

Acorna did not wish to get embroiled in the
men's bickering. She pointed at random to a
cluster of ruta roots. They looked slightly limp,
but ruta aged well, and they'd be something to
nibble on while she walked back through the
park. She tasted one -while the stall-keeper
wrapped the others in a scrap of plastifilm for
her; the insides, at least, were still sweet and
crunchy.

"That'll be five credits," the stall-keeper said,
holding out the package.

From the way his neighbor's eyebrows shot up,
Acorna guessed that she -was being charged at
least double the going rate for a bundle of slightly
overage rutas. But that wasn't important. What
WOJ important was that this blasted skirt had no
pockets, and she hadn't been thinking of money
when she left the house that morning.

"Charge it to the account of my guardian,
Delszaki Li," she said.

The stall-keeper's face turned ugly. "Look,
techie, we don't run charge accounts this side of
the river. Credits in hand is my rule."

"Then keep the rutas," Acorna said, "they
weren't that fresh anyway."

"You'll pay me for the one you've eaten! I
been robbed already once this morning by one
of them thieving street brats, I'm not having
some techie come along and make a free meal
off my stall on pretense of sampling the
goods!"

209

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

208

"Hey, Punja, we got the little thief for you!"
called one of the street urchins whose game
Acorna had noticed just before she inspected the
stall.

Now, with a sinking heart, she realized that
the quarry in their "game" was not a youngling
from their group, but a much smaller child,
bruised and bleeding from a cut lip, who strug-
gled madly as the larger boys hauled her bodily
toward the stall.

"And a lot of help that is," Punja snarled, "you
can tell by looking that she hasn't a clipped credit
to pay me back."

"What did the child take?" Acorna interrupted.

"Three of me best madi-fruits. Gobbled them
down on the run, she did. I suppose you'll be
wanting that placed to the account of your
guardian, too, will you?" the man asked Acorna
with heavy sarcasm.

"You could give us a reward for catchin' her,"
one of the boys holding the child grumbled.

"What good's it to me that you caught the
brat? You can give her a good beatin' if you like,
teach her not to steal from respectable mer-
chants," Punja suggested. "That should be
enough reward for you. Have a little fun before
you turn her loose."

The boy's heavy-browed face lit up with an
expression of sickening glee, and he slammed a fist
into the child's stomach before Punja had finished
speaking.

"That's just for starters," he told the gasping,
white-faced child. "Now you can come along wif

me and me mates and see if you haven't got some-
thing to pay us back for our effort."

"Scrawnier'n a bondworker," one of his pals
demurred.

"But free," the first boy pointed out, "or did
you suddenly get rich enough to patronize a bonk-
shop, huh? Now me, I'm ..."

He never got a chance to finish articulating
his philosophy of life. All that had delayed
Acorna's intervention was the need to tuck her
flowing skirt farther out of the way. Now she
executed another leap from her perfectly bal-
anced standing position, came down with one
foot on the first boy's stomach and swung the
other to crunch into his mate's nose. Rather
pleased with the results of her self-defense
classes with Calum, she recovered her balance
and pulled the starving child up by one wrist
while the rest of the gang of boys, seeing what
had happened to their biggest and strongest
members, melted away into the network of dirt
paths behind the main thoroughfare.

"You," she told the child, "had much better
come with me. No one shall beat you again."

The child struggled feebly and tried to pull
away from Acorna's hand.

A skimmer settled in the dusty roadway, and
two uniformed Guardians emerged.

"What's all this?" the first one out demanded.

A chorus of voices informed him, variously,
that the girl was a techie out to make trouble
on the wrong side of the river; that the child was a
thief and ought to be bonded to honest labor; that




210

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

the girl -was a foreigner who had viciously
attacked two innocent boys who just happened to
be standing by the stall.

"And who's to pay for the damage to my
stock?" wailed the stall-keeper, virtuously holding
up a handful of bruised fruit which he reckoned
he could blame on Acorna's part in the brief fra-


cas.

"My guardian, Delszaki Li, will cover all
charges," Acorna said.

"Aye, she keeps naming Li, as if she thought
the sound of his name would carry all before!"
said the stall-keeper virtuously. "Y'ask me, she
ought to be confronted -with Li himself. If, as is no
more than I suspect, she's lying, he'll know how to
deal with impostors. Why don't you make her go
there now?"

"I should like nothing better," declared Acorna,
"but this little girl comes with me!"

"You'd best be telling the truth," one of the
Guardians warned her, "Kezdet doesn't treat
impostors and thieves lightly. Maybe you'd rather
step off with me and we'll . . . ahh . . . see if we
can't work something out, hmm?" He eyed the
long shapely legs, which were by now almost fully
exposed by the way Acorna had tucked up her
skirts for battle. Strange kind of furry stockings
the girl wore under her skirts . . . some new techie
fashion, no doubt. Never mind, he'd soon have
those off her.

"Not without me, you don't go nowhere!" the
stall-keeper interrupted. "I got a right to me dam-
ages."

'A.corna. 211

Acorna's prompt willingness to call on Delszaki
Li had given him second thoughts. If the girl w(U
telling the truth, he should be able to get more
"damages" out of Li than his entire stall -was
worth; Li was far beyond the need to count credits
when appeasing a poor man.

No one had yet missed Acorna
when the two Guardians of
 the Peace brought her back to
the Li mansion, one holding Acorna's left elbow
firmly in his right hand, while she supported the
waif against her "with her right arm, Punja dancing
behind this quartet. None of the street children
had been able to keep up with the skimmer as it
set about on its lawful errand, but they followed as
far as they could: right up to the rancid water.

"Jeesh, how'd she get across this?" the leader
of the group wanted to know. "She dint come by
the bridge, like."

One of Delszaki's many discreet servants
peered through the spy hole before exclaiming and
calling for the nearest girl to summon the master.
Trouble was on the doorstep. Then he flung the
door open, kowtowing before Acorna until his
nose nearly touched his knees.

"Missy, missy, why are you here? You have not

213

arisen from your bed as yet," he said, bobbing in
his consternation.

"Will you please inform Mr. Li that I am here
and not in my bed and need him. If he is in his
bed, I am truly sorry to disturb him ..."

Pal and Judit came down the massive stairway
as if it had turned into a slide.

"Acorna!" cried Judit, and then exclaimed
more loudly when she saw the bedraggled girl
Acorna was protecting.

"Mr. Li is on his way this very moment,
Guardians," Pal said, gesturing for them to enter.
"If you "will be so good as to step inside. ..." and,
with a very deft push of his rear against the front
door. Pal closed it right in the stall-keeper's face.

Oblivious to the howls outside and impreca-
tions which could be heard, if muted, through the
thick panels of the door. Pal courteously guided
the Guardians of the Peace, who were exchanging
bemused and gratified glances, while Acorna was
trying to get the child's arms from around her
neck so that Judit could take charge. The child
was moaning and weeping in the desperate way of
her age: all the more effective since such "lost"
noises demonstrated that she had been bereft of
comfort for long enough not to expect any to come
her •way.

"You know this . . . this . . . person," the first
Guardian said, for by now the kerchief on
Acorna's head had been pulled off and the distinc-
tive horn was visible.

"Of course we know her," Pal said so stoutly
that both raised hands in defense of their query.

21-4

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"She is the Lady Acorna, beloved ward of Mr.
Delszaki Li, who is surely known to the Bureau of

Guardians ..."

"Indeed he is, and very generous he is to our
retirement and the vacation funds," the second
man said, bobbing not unlike the doorman but not
as deeply, as much because he couldn't have
folded his paunch as because Guardians are not
supposed to show respect to any but their superi-


ors.

"Are you all right, Acorna?" Pal asked, taking
her by the arm and leading her to the nearest
chair. She looked very shaky indeed to him.
"Where did you go? Why have they brought you
back?" he whispered.

"I wanted to run on the grass," she said in a

very tiny voice.

Just then Rafik, Calum, and Gill entered the
room, having obviously thrown on the nearest

clothes to hand.

"Now, Guardians, just what is the problem?"
"Well, the . . . the . . . female there . . . said she
•was Mr. Li's ward and she got into a bit of a spot,
so -we thought we'd better check it out."

"You mean, you did not believe the word of a
gently bred girl who is obviously well dressed and
clearly not the sort of person who gets into spots?"
Rafik said, but the look he shot Acorna indicated
to her, at least, that he 'was going to have a few

choice words with her.

She got very interested in brushing the dirt off
her hands and then her arms. She could do little
about the stains on her lovely skirt right now, but

215

she did straighten her head covering. Not that it
mattered.

Delszaki Li appeared in his hover-chair, and so
the reception room became quite cramped.

"Now, Acorna, my dear, why did you go out
without someone to escort you wherever you
•wished to go?" He turned to the Guardians.
"Cordonmaster Flik and Constable Grez, what
seems to be the trouble?"

In the background, someone "was kicking the
door steadily. To the rhythm of the blows,
Cordonmaster Flik, who was extremely gratified
to realize that Mr. Li knew both his name and
that of his partner, explained the circumstances.
Since the cameras on the exterior of the house
had taken pies of the two Guardians and their
identities had been verified by Central Guard
Headquarters, the knowledge surprised only the
two Guardians.

The matter was shortly resolved and Punja
paid exactly what his merchandise was worth—
and the look given him by Pal as he handed over
the half credits made Punja very certain that this
was not the person to haggle with—and sent his
way. A junior servant very quickly appeared to
remove the scuff marks of Punja s plastic shoes on
the fine wood of the door so that when the
Guardians, invited to have some refreshment, left,
there was no mark remaining of the morning's
fuss. They also left with sufficient credits, yet not
too many, to ensure that the incident would be
"suitably" reported in their log as a "lost child
returned to her home."

2 1 6 -^->             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Whatever possessed you, Acorna?" Rafik
demanded •when the Guardians had been sent on
their •way, well, but not overly, paid for their res-
cue •work.

"I -wanted to run on the beautiful grass," she

said, gulping back a sob.

"Now, now." Judit was back and slid into the
seat beside her. "It's all right, dear. No one is mad
at you. Just terribly upset that you had such a

fright."

"I -wasn't exactly frightened," Acorna said, rais-
ing her delicate chin, her eyes slits of remorse, "I
•was furious to see a little child beaten like that for
taking damaged fruit." She had clenched her fists
and brought them down so hard on her knees that
Calum •winced. "Where is she? She was so terribly
frightened and hurt and hungry."

"She's fine, dear," Judit said. "She's being fed,
carefully, because she hasn't had any food in quite
a few days and to eat too much would be unwise.
Then we shall bathe her and make sure she sleeps.
Although," and Judit's delightful laugh eased the
tension in the room, "I have a suspicion that once
her tummy is full, she •will fall asleep before we

can clean her up."

"So why did you go out? Why so early? Didn't
you know how dangerous it is out there?" Calum
demanded. He turned to the rest of them. "She's
not JtupQ; I've never seen anybody pick up the
basic concept of Fourier transforms so fast. I can't
understand why she would do such a stupid

thing."

"How would she know Kezdet could be danger-

217

ous?" Gill leapt to her defense. "She's never been
planetside for more than a day or two, and always
•with one of us."

"The park was beautiful," Acorna said. "It was
like the one in my dreams. ..." She realized that
was a lame excuse. But maybe no one would real-
ize that the park was so far from the house that
she couldn't have known about it when she ven-
tured out.

"Your dreams?" asked Mr. Li in a coaxing
voice and waved Rafik and the others away. "You
men, stop harassing the child. Will make her more
afraid of you than of Kezdet!" While Calum and
the other men took the seats he indicated at a good
distance from Acorna, he turned his attention back
to her. "Tell me about these dreams . . . while
Judit fixes you a refreshing drink. I think you
may need one."

Acorna sipped something cool and green and
tangy and then told him about the dream, and how
the park had seemed so like it.

"At least the first part of the park -where it was
truly lovely," she said, ending lamely.

"No, -we will not try regression, Mr. Li," Judit
said suddenly. "The method produces enough
problems -with cortices we are beginning to under-
stand."

"It was but a thought."

"I think her . . . adventure, though, has proven
a thing or two to the others," Judit said, smiling at
her employer.

"Has it. Well, that is advantage then," and he
leaned over to pat Acorna's arm, below the mud.

218

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

219

"No action -without some profit, if the eye can see
it. You rest now, later we talk again."

Acorna stood. "I am very sorry for any trouble

I caused."

"Must make errors in order to learn," Mr. Li
said understandingly and pulled his hover-chair

aside so she could leave the room.

"Do you need any assistance, Acorna?" Judit

asked gently.

She shook her head. Distress still narrowed her

pupils to vertical slits. "I must think. It is sad ... I
have never seen such terribly poor people."

The two watched her make her way in slow
repentant steps up the stairs and to her quarters.

"Reality has touched Acorna," Delszaki said
with a heavy sigh of regret.

"Kl-liiu must know of reality, sir," Judit said as
gently as she had spoken to Acorna.

"A rude awakening," and he sighed again.

"She had healed the child," Judit added. "I
hope that the Guardians of the Peace did not

notice."

"They have been taken care of," Delszaki said.

"Their interest has been redirected into useful

paths."

"So what is next to be done?"

"Meet with the miners and discuss the Moon
Project and this dream world of Acorna's."

It was Delszaki who noticed that Rafik and Gill
did most of the talking, while Calum seemed more
intent on covering the notepad in front of him with

light-pen doodles: most of which were primaries
with satellites whirling around them in impossible
astronomical patterns.

"What is it that you see in those patterns,
Calum Baird?" Delszaki asked, pausing the con-
versation on double domes versus linked units.

Calum sat straight up and pretended he had
been listening to every word said. Rafik glared at
him, but Gill looked surprised at his inattention.
Last night he'd been full of good suggestions.

"I think we have got to find Acorna's home
world first," he said, letting the sentence out in a
rush, then he colored as redly as Gill could.

"How can we possibly find what the child only
remembers as a dream?" Delszaki asked.

"But she does remember something. I was just
thinking ..." and he ran dots on the primaries,
"that every star has its own spectroanalysis. And
every star throws out satellites, if they do generate
planets, that are made up of their constituents.
Maybe a bit more metal on that one, maybe just
gases on another, but if you knew what metals a
primary had to disperse, you could find the right
one," he waved a hand heavenward, "and find
Acorna's."

Rafik shook his head. "There's not enough dif-
ference in constituents. Stars are all basically
made of the same stuff—at least, all the ones that
generate Earth-type planets are going to look
pretty much alike to spectroanalysis. Certainly
they'll all have the conventional metals."

"The pod Acorna came in," Calum said stub-
bornly, "is not composed of conventional metals.




220

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

221

Not entirely, anyway. We never did figure out
exactly what-all was in the alloy, but it's not like
anything we—humans—use for space and indus-
trial construction. Lighter. Stronger." He waved
his hands. "I'm a mathematician, not a physicist.
It's worth studying, don't you think?"

"You have original spacegomg container?" The
fingers of Li's left hand tensed over the corn pad
on his chair. "And have not mentioned the artifact

before?"

"Well, it scarcely came up in conversation,

after all," Calum said apologetically. "We always
meant to study it one day."

"Ah, well, it takes but a little arrangement..."
and, even as Delszaki turned to Pal, the young
man -was tapping out an access code, "... to make
appointment to discover what -we may from it."

Actually, it took considerably longer because
Raflk, Gill, Calum, and Pal had to bring a col-
lapsible crate to the Uhuru so that anyone watch-
ing would not see what they were unloading. Of
course the vehicle Mr. Li could put at their dis-
posal for the transfer was state of the art and
undoubtedly left a number of watchers gawking
at its speed and maneuverability so that the pre-
cious pod was at its destination before they had
managed to achieve altitude in the traffic pat-
tern.

Delivered to the impressive cube of one of Mr.
Li's business acquaintances, it was taken by grav-
lift down to the bowels of the cube, through several

alert and noncurious security checks and into the
appropriate room for its closer examination.

"You can call me Zip," said the white-coated
older man who greeted them there. He had an
oriental cast to his features and olive skin, but he
spoke in an accent that suggested he had learned
many other languages before the Basic he now
used. He was also minus the first joint of both
small fingers and the tip of one ring finger. "Mr.
Li says you have a puzzle for me. Pal. I love puz-
zles."

The three miners decided they liked his style
and, with Pal, quickly uncrated the pod for him.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, raising both hands in awe,
and his eyebrows and letting his mouth hang open.
Then, he prowled around it, kneeling down to see
the underside of the ovoid and standing on tiptoe
to look over it. "Ah!" he said again, seeing the
inscriptions and delicately tracing them with an
index finger as lovingly as a mother would trace
the features of a child. "And you've done nothing
to discover if this language is known?"

Rafik looked at Gill and Cal and they all
shrugged. "We're miners, not linguists."

"What about the occupant? Well, there was
one, -wasn't there?" Zip said testily. "Or so I -was
given to understand. I do have Mr. Li's complete
confidence, you know. But I need some clues."

"I thought . . . well . . . maybe," Calum stut-
tered, no longer so sure of his premise.

"That if we had some idea of what metals com-
prise this alloy, we might use the spectroanalysis
of stars to find out which ones are more likely to




222

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

223

have produced satellites •with similar material," Pal
said with a polite nod to the tongue-tied Calum.

"Not very likely," Zip said briskly. He repeated
Rafik's argument.

"Then there's nothing we can do?" Calum
looked cast down.

"How come you believe him and not me?"
Rafik muttered.

"I did not say there was nothing to be done."
Zip looked at them severely. "You must listen
more carefully if you wish to be true scientists.
The avenue of approach you suggested is not
likely to succeed . . . but there are some other
things we can play with. Cosmology has advanced
slightly since the days of planetbound observato-
ries," he said with a slight sneer. "Have you ever
heard of upsilon-V testing? Planetary emissions
separation? Mass diffusion imaging? Do not tell
me how to do my job." He tapped the pod and ran
his hands across the top, around the sides. "Come,
come, gentlemen, it is enough of a puzzle by itself
•without me having to waste time discovering the
opening mechanism."

"We wouldn't," Calum said sweetly, "want to
interfere -with the expert."

"But we wouD want to cooperate. Wouldn't we,
Calum?" Rafik reached over and showed how the
pieces slipped into each other, then the lid slowly
opened upward.

"Ah!" Once again Zip threw up both hands in
delight at the furnishings "within. He was feeling
over every inch of it while the four watched and,
bored by his diligence, began to shift their weight

from one foot to another. Rafik finally gave a little
cough •which interrupted the tactile examination.
"Ah, yes. This is not something that can be solved
in a trice. Or even a nonce. Go," and he flicked
one hand at them in dismissal while, -with his
other, he reverently felt the lining in •which the
baby Acorna had once lain. "I will report when I
have discovered anything of interest. My respect-
ful greetings to Mr. Li," he said to Pal, and turned
back.

They were passed through the various check-
points and back to the roof where their vehicle
awaited them.

"Say, I thought the ID was 87-99-20-DS?"
Calum said, pointing to the craft. "And I'd've
sworn blind it was blue."

"I smell fresh lacquer," Gill said as they closed
the gap to the machine.

"It's the same type," Rafik said, because he
hadn't noticed the ID nor the color.

"A little precaution that might, or might not, be
necessary," Pal said as he opened the door. "The
color is dry."

Calum entered, perplexed. Gill was frowning,
but Rafik began to like Delszaki even more. A
cautious as well as a prudent man.

As Judit had predicted, the child Acorna had res-
cued fell asleep before she had finished eating,
clutching a piece of bread so tightly that it could
not be removed from her chubby fist without
reducing it to crumbs.




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

224

"Maybe we can just sponge her off while she
snoozes," Judit suggested, but Acorna resisted the
suggestion fiercely. "Let her sleep! She must be
exhausted, poor little thing. I'll bathe her when
she wakes up."

Acorna sat over the sleeping child for the rest
of the morning, watching the gentle rise and fall of
her chest under the light blanket Judit had
thrown over her. She wcu filthy, but that could be
remedied; too thin, too, but regular good food
would take care of that. The bruises and scratches
she had borne after the scuffle in the street were
slowly fading, encouraged by an occasional gentle
nuzzle from Acorna's horn to heal into clean new-
flesh.

"She's only a baby!" Acorna thought indig-
nantly. "Why isn't somebody taking care other?"

She did not realize she had spoken her thought
aloud until Pal Kendoro answered her.

"Someone is, now," he said. "You are."

He had been silently watching for some time,
entranced by Acorna's rapt attention to the sleeping
child and the tender look on her face as she nuzzled
the baby's scratches with her horn. Some people, he
realized, might have found the scene outlandish or
alien. To him it was simply the most perfect expres-
sion of motherly love he had ever seen. It didn't
matter that Acorna was of a different species, that
she might never have children if they couldn't
locate her home, or that those children would be
physically very different from the starving beggar
she had snatched up out of the streets of East
Celtalan. The bond of love was there.

225

"But how could she have been simply aban-
doned to starve?" Acorna smoothed the ragged
curls away from the right side of the child's face.
On the left side of her head the hair had been
crudely hacked short. "She must belong to ^ome-
bo<hf."

"I don't think she was abandoned," Pal said.
"She's a beautiful child. The way her hair was
hacked off, it looks as if somebody was trying to
make her look ugly. Probably the same person
helped her to run away."

"What is wrong with beauty? And what would
she be running away from?" Pal sighed and pre-
pared to recapitulate Delszaki Li's lecture on
Kezdet's system of child labor, bondage, "recruit-
ing," and outright kidnapping. What Li had told
Acorna and the miners had probably been too
much for Acorna to take in all at one time. Calum
went into rhapsodies about the speed with which
Acorna absorbed mathematical and astronautical
theories, but learning emotional facts was some-
thing else again.

"There are many children on Kezdet with no
one to look after them," he said. "Some are
orphans, some are unwanted children from other
planets -who have been brought here to work in
mines and factories, some are bought from their
parents to do the same work. If they don't work,
their only alternative is to starve in the street." He
frowned. "She doesn't look young to have run
away, though. Mostly it's the older children who
have the gumption to escape and the wit to make
some sort of plan. Perhaps when she wakes we

226

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

can find out more about her, at least get some idea
what -workplace she was bonded to."

"Not to send her back!" Acorna said, flinging a
protective arm over the little girl.

"No. We won't send her back. And if. . ." Pal
had been about to say that if the child's bond-
owners traced her, Delszaki Li would surely buy
her freedom. But he decided not even to mention
that possibility in the face of Acorna's fierce pro-
tective instincts.
"If what?"

"If we can find out her name," Pal improvised,
"she might have parents who are looking for her."
Personally he doubted it; most children who ended
up in Kezdet's labor system did so precisely
because they had parents so desperately poor they
had no option but to sell their children. But he
found himself wanting to put the best possible face
on the child's situation for Acorna's sake.

Acorna's eyes narrowed to slits, then she took a
deep breath and deliberately widened them again.

"Yes," she said sadly, "all lost children like to
think that their parents are searching for them. If
this one has not traveled too far, perhaps her peo-
ple may be found."

Pal could have kicked himself for his clumsy
words. How could he have forgotten, even for an
instant, that Acorna too had been a foundling, and
one who did not know even where her race was to
be found, let alone her own parents? No wonder
she identified so instantly and protectively with
this little waif. He stammered, trying to find some
words of apology that would not deepen Acorna's

227

pain, and was saved by the abrupt awakening of
the waif.

"Mama!" she wailed, and pushed Acorna away
when she would have cradled her in her arms.
"Mama Jana. Chiura wants Mama Jana."

"There, you see," said Pal, deftly catching up
the flailing child and carrying her toward the bath-
room before Acorna could realize how thoroughly
she had been rejected, "she knows her own name
and that of her mother. We're making progress
already."

Most of the progress they made in the next
half-hour consisted of transferring large quantities
of warm water from the tub and onto the carpets,
draperies, and themselves. Finally Chiura calmed
down, exhausted by her hysterical sobbing, and
sat quietly patting the remaining few inches of
water in her tub and watching the soap bubbles
that formed and popped under her hands. Pal took
advantage of the peaceful moment to question
Chiura gently. Did she know how she came to the
city? In a skimmer? Who piloted the skimmer?
How did she come to be alone? Where was she
before she came to the city?

Chiura babbled and wandered from topic to
topic while Pal tried to make sense of her words
and kept her going with questions, always sheer-
ing away when Chiura's eyes crinkled up and she
started to look upset again. Acorna wrapped
Chiura in a towel, took her on her lap, and tried to
comb out the long ringlets that had been caked in
mud before the bath and the first three rinses.
Chiura babbled that "a bad man" had piloted the

228

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

skimmer and they had come from "the bad
place". . . and Acorna "was pulling her hair, and she
"wanted Mama Jana now!

"It's no use," Acorna said despairingly.
"Oh, I •wouldn't say that," Pal said. "You don't
know enough about Kezdet to -work out the clues,
but I'm getting a pretty fair idea where she -was
before she was brought to the city . . . and why she
was wandering the streets alone." It was as he had
suspected when Acorna cleaned her up and he
saw how lovely the child was.

"Kheti ,faQ," Chiura piped up. "Said when she
made Didi Badini busy, run, run away, hide.
There was a little fire." She thought it over.
"Maybe big fire. Didi Badini was mad, but Chiura
hid quiet-quiet under the stinky sacks." Her eyes
crinkled and a tear plopped down her cheek. "Didi
Badini hit Kheti, but Kheti didn't tell. Then Kheti
jumped on Didi Badini and they roll around and
get all muddy and Chiura ran, long way, got lost.

Chiura bad?"

"No, darling," Acorna said, hugging her and

kissing her tangled curls. "Whoever this Didi
Badini was, she does not sound like a nice person
at all and I am sure Kheti would not have wanted

you to go back to her."

"You see," said Pal, "we're getting somewhere.
It's not as hopeless as it seems. And I'd like to meet
this Kheti," he added. "Anybody who'd set a bonk-
shop on fire to give a kid a chance to get away ..."

"Hopeless? Oh—I meant her hair," Acorna
explained, ruefully lifting a rat's nest of tangles in
one hand. "It will all have to be cut."

'A.c.orna. 229

"Would have had to be anyway," Pal pointed
out, "to match the other side. Or did you want her
to go around looking lopsided?"

Acorna managed a smile at that. Chiura
bounced up and down on Acorna's knee and cried,
"Lop-side! Lop-side!" until both adults were
laughing helplessly. And Pal managed to put off
explaining what he had deduced of Chiura's fate
until after she had demolished a bowl of sweet
patts and beans and had fallen asleep again.

"The name of Didi Badini is a dead give-away,"
he explained then. "Didi" literally means "older
sister" in the original language, but in Kezdet chil-
dren's slang it means a woman who procures young
girls for . . . um ..." He blushed under the unblink-
ing gaze of Acorna's wide silver eyes. "For immoral
purposes," he finished in a rush.

"You mean, so that men can have sexual
intercourse with them?" Acorna translated
calmly. Then, at Pal's look of surprise, "Calum
and Rafik and Gill have an extensive library of
vid-cubes on the ship, and I have watched many
of them—and not only the interactive training
cubes on mining techniques! I do not think I was
supposed to know about the others, but some-
times it was very boring when they were all
working outside and there was not yet any
crushed ore for me to run through the refining
processes. Those vid-cubes that Calum kept
behind his bunk were boring, too," she added
reflectively. "I do not understand why anybody
would want to do such uncomfortable and
undignified things—and over and over, too!

230

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

231

Except that I gather from the EncycL) that it is nec-
essary to make babies. Still, some of the actors in
the vid-cubes seemed excessively enthusiastic

about their •work."

"The enthusiasm is something that . . . um . . .
develops as one matures," said Pal, making a men-
tal note to tell the miners that their charge had a
rather more extensive education than they real-
ized. Then he had to explain to Acorna that, yes,
some men were so enthusiastic they paid females
to partner them in this undignified activity—and
some •were so perverted that they preferred the use
of very young females.

"But Chiura is only a baby," Acorna protested.
"It would hurt her!"

"The men who buy the use of children," Pal
said grimly, "don't care if it hurts them. Mercy—

He stopped. Mercy had made him promise
never to tell Judit what had happened to her
after Judit won the scholarship to get off-planet.
Neither Pal nor Mercy wished to burden her
with unnecessary guilt about things she couldn't
have stopped anyway. "Well, this little one seems
to have been lucky. Apparently this Kheti went
to a lot of trouble to give her a chance to run
away. It probably wasn't as easy as Chiura makes
it sound, either."

"Lucky? To beg and starve on the street!"
"Better," Pal said. "Believe me . . . better."
"Then we have to find this other girl, this
Kheti, and get her free, too."

"And what," Pal inquired, "do you plan to do
about the hundreds of others in like situations?"

"Saving one is better than saving none," Acorna
said firmly.

Pal could hardly disagree -with this statement,
but neither could he believe that Acorna would
accomplish much by starting a crusade against the
Didis of East Celtalan and that mysterious power-
ful figure, the Piper, who was said to support the
brothel industry and to be supported in wealth by
its proceeds.

Delszaki Li had been trying for years to iden-
tify the Piper, and when Pal joined him he had
brought the Child Labor League's network of gos-
sip and spies to bear on the problem. But not one
of their covert sympathizers had turned up a whis-
per of the man's identity. Even Mercy, ideally situ-
ated as she was in a Guardians of the Peace office,
had been unable to give them a clue; even the
Guardians, it seemed, did not know who the Piper
really was. All they knew was that he was wealthy,
powerful, and absolutely ruthless in crushing any
opposition. There were rumors that he reserved
some of the children bought by the Didis for his
personal use, and that these children were the
ones found strangled and floating in the river from
time to time . . . unable to bear -witness against
him. Pal imagined Acorna's long silvery body
mangled and tossed into the polluted water, and
felt physically sick.

All things considered, it was almost a relief
when Chiura woke up crying for "Mama Jana"
again and Acorna was distracted into trying to
identify Chiura's mother. To take her mind off the
plight of the children in the brothels. Pal enthusi-




232

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

233

astically tackled the task of decoding the clues
they could extract from Chiura's baby recollec-
tions ... a little too enthusiastically, he realized, as

they neared success.

"This Jana can't be her real mother," he said
after another lengthy questioning session, inter-
spersed with games of stacking vid-cubes, rolling a
"wheel that had fallen off a household trolley, and
other improvised amusements. "Look at what she
played with the vid-cubes." Chiura had built a
completely enclosed space, then went around the
room putting all the small objects she could find
inside the space and naming each one. "Lata. Faiz.
Buddhe. Laxmi. Jana. Chiura. Khetala."

"She was telling us that all these people were
on the same level, all trapped."

Chiura had reacted vigorously when Acorna
tried to lift the little bronze box representing Jana
out of the enclosure.

"No, no, no!" she shrieked. "NO, run away!

Siri Teku beat!"

Then, in an abrupt change of mood, she had
swiped at the stacked vid-cubes, scattering the
"walls" she'd built all across the room, and moved
every one of the figures out onto the open floor.

"She was confined with a group of other chil-
dren, probably all bonded laborers," Pal inter-
preted. "Jana must have been one of the older
ones, like Khetala, who tried to take care other."

He tried to get some idea of where Chiura had
been kept, but she had only the vaguest notions of
place. There had been a big hill -with no trees, only
rocks. The sun went down behind the hill. Chiura

had not been sent to work with the other children
and had no idea what they did, only that they came
back dirty and tired. What had Chiura herself
done?

"Stupid Chiura," she said, her face puckering
up. "Laxmi hit Chiura."

That night Pal consulted Delszaki Li's exten-
sive atlas of Kezdet.

"I think it must be someplace relatively close to
Celtalan," he explained his reasoning to Acorna,
"because Chiura says they were not very long in
the skimmer—and anything over an hour's flight
would be 'long' to a child that young."

He drew a line out from the depiction of
Celtalan on the screen, representing the distance a
skimmer could fly in an hour, and requested
detailed overlays of the region. Then he narrowed
the search by looking for treeless mountains "with
factories situated on the eastern side of the moun-
tain. There was only one. "It has to be the
Tondubh Glassworks," he concluded, "Unless . . .
no. That's the only mountain that fits her descrip-
tion. "

"Then we will go there tomorrow?," Acorna
said, "and find Jana."

"I don't think that's such a great idea," Pal
demurred. "Mr. Li is working on his own plans for
freeing the bonded children. We could mess things
up for him by going out and making a fuss at the
glassworks."

Acorna gave him a disgusted look. "Naturally
we will tell Mr. Li. But he will not stop us. That
child has already lost her home, her parents, and




234 ——-             ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

her trust in the rest of humanity. Now you want to
deprive her of the only person who cared for her
and completely destroy her? I know -what it feels
like to be separated from the people who take care
of you," she said, remembering the terror of the
barren, chemical-scented corridors of Amalgam-
ated space base and the mean lady who would not
take her back to Gill and Calum and Rafik. But
they had come for her. Who -would come for
Chiura? They haS to find this Jana.

After the beating Siri Teku gave her for trying to
hide Chiura, Jana lost her position as dragger on
Face Five. Her partner Khetala was gone, and
anyway she couldn't drag. That last kick Siri Teku
gave her had crunched something in her right
knee; she could no longer put any -weight on that
leg at all, and she certainly couldn't crawl up the
narrow shafts dragging a full corf of ore behind
her. Buddhe and Faiz took over the lucrative Face
Five work. By way of apology for taking her
place, Faiz appropriated a slat from the roof -which
he -whittled into the shape of a rough crutch, so
that at least Jana could drag herself outside to the
sorting slopes and the latrine trench. She sup-
posed it was kind of him, but she didn't much care
any longer. She hurt all the time since Siri Teku's
beating, and the weals were hot and swollen and
not healing properly. Kheti -would have fussed
about bad food and dirt, would have made her
-wash the -wounds and choke down nauseating
stews of the -weeds growing on Anyag's mountain-

'A.corna 235

ous slag heap to supplement the unvarying diet of
patts and bean paste. Without Khetala to nag her
into it, though, Jana just couldn't bring herself to
take the trouble. She was tired and achy and there
didn't seem to be much point in making herself
even more miserable with cold water and weed
stew.

Siri Teku had cursed when he saw that she was
temporarily crippled, but her unfeigned wince
•when he drew back his foot to kick her bad knee
again restored his good humor.

"Knew I'd break that cheeky spirit of hers
someday," he exulted, not even troubling to
address her directly. "She can take Chiura's place
sorting ore until she can walk again."

Laxmi grumbled that Jana -wasn't much more
use sorting ore than "that baby" had been, and it
was true. She -wasted long hours just sitting on the
ore heap, watching clouds drift across the sky,
watching the evening shadows lengthening in
front of the slag heap that blocked off half the sky,
desultorily turning over bits of broken rock in her
fingers from time to time. Laxmi made a point of
separating her work from Jana's so that Siri Teku
would be in no doubt about who had done what at
the end of the day.

"You can be lazy and starve if you -want to," she
warned Jana, "I'm not -working double for both of
us. Hafta move fast if you -want to earn your
dinner."

"Who cares?" said Jana.

Choking down the gritty patts was just another
pointless thing that seemed more trouble than it




236

Acorna

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

237

was -worth. She had to concentrate harder than
she liked to make the connection between missed
dinners and the constant, gnawing knot of pain in
her middle. It wasn't the worst pain anyway, noth-
ing near as bad as the throbbing of the infected
whip marks on her skin, or the sharp pain when-
ever she dragged her bad knee somewhere. She
knew, somewhere in the back of her fever-ridden
mind, that if she didn't eat she would get even
weaker and die soon, but that didn't seem to mat-
ter anymore, either. Without Kheti to bully them
all into taking care of themselves, the whole gang
wouldn't last long; already Faiz had a festering
sore on one hand, and Laxmi's cough was worse
than ever. Anyway, what was the point of working
so hard just to keep alive? Nobody cared whether
Jana lived or died, and since they took Chiura
away there was no little soft warm kitten-girl to
cuddle and love. If Jana had been given to putting
her thoughts into words, she might have told
Laxmi that without someone to love, there was no
reason to live. But talking was too much trouble.
She listlessly pitched another ore-bearing rock
into her sorting box, to shut Laxmi up, and went
back to her dreamy contemplation of the clouds.

Pal had half hoped that Delszaki Li would flatly
refuse Acorna's request to visit the Tondubh
Glassworks in search of Chiura's "Mama Jana," or
at least would insist that she go surrounded by a
small army of House Li servants and bodyguards.
Acorna had in mind to go unannounced and

unescorted, except by Pal, and pointed out that
bringing a large group would almost certainly
cause the supervisor of the glassworks to treat
their visit like an official inspection, hiding all the
children.

"I think he will do so anyway," Delszaki Li
said, his eyes twinkling at Acorna, "but if you
wish, shall go with only Pal and one other." He
tapped one of the buttons on the corn pad of his
hover-chair.

"One?" Pal began in outrage. "But that's totally
inadequate to protect—" He stopped and took a
deep breath at the sight of the woman who had
answered Li's button.

"I think you will find Nadhari adequate to any
emergency," Li said dryly.

Pal nodded, dumbstruck. Nadhari Kando was
an all but legendary figure in the Li household.
Rumors said that before coming to work for
House Li, she had been one of the infamous Red
Bracelets of Kilumbemba, or possibly a comman-
der of one of Nered's elite shock troops, or maybe
she had personally created and led the Army of
Liberation that freed Anrath from its despotic
rulers. Logic said a woman who looked no more
than thirty could not possibly have done all those
things, but when Pal looked at Nadhari, he could
never decide which stories to discount; she
appeared capable of having done all three before
breakfast. Whatever she had once been, though, it
had ended in an episode whose truth was
unknown to anybody in House Li. She had been
dismissed in disgrace for a savage combat action,




238 ——             ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

or she had been sent to assassinate Delszaki Li
and instead had fallen under the spell of his
uniquely personal charm, or Li had saved her
from summary execution at the hands of the
Kezdet Guardians. Again, all three stories seemed

perfectly possible.

Five feet six inches tall in her bare feet, lean

and as tough as a length of braided leather,
Nadhari Kando was expert in three forms of knife
fighting and six forms of unarmed combat— none
of 'which she had many chances now to use in the
line of duty, since she went everywhere armed
with an arsenal of miniaturized state-of-the-art
weapons that could appear in seconds from her
tight black braids, her gleaming skin-tight red
boots, or ... Pal gulped and tried not to think
about the other places where she probably con-
cealed weapons. Rumor also said that Nadhari
could read minds and that was -why she always
appeared somewhere where her opponent was not
expecting her, just outside of his blows or behind
his laser fire. But of course, nobody could read
minds. That was just a superstitious story.

He hoped.

"I shall be honored to accept Nadhari Kando's
escort," Pal said through lips suddenly gone dry.
"If . . . that is ... if you are sure you can spare
her?" Nadhari's primary duty was to accompany
Delszaki Li on all public appearances.

Li waved his good hand. "Nadhari is bored. Do
not go out often enough or encounter enough

assassins to amuse her."

The silent, black-braided woman in the door-


way nodded once in confirmation of this state-
ment.

"Mission?" she queried tersely.

"Ah . . . the Tondubh Glassworks," Pal said.
"Acorna will tell you all about it as we are going
along."

Acorna's sunny mood gradually dimmed as they
moved into the gray, dry industrial district east of
Celtalan proper, and by the time they reached
Knobkerrie Mountain she was hardly talking at all.
The desolate landscape, spoiled by decades of
dumping industrial waste and punctuated by walled
compounds enclosing factories and housing, seemed
uglier and more barren to her than any airless aster-
oid.

"Does it have to be like this?" she -whispered as
the skimmer banked and hovered over the com-
pound bearing the Tondubh Glassworks logo.

"Kezdet," said Pal, "is ruled by the bottom line
and the quarterly balance sheet. In any given
quarter there is more profit in spoiling the land
than in preserving it, just as there is more profit in
buying new bond laborers than in keeping those
you already have happy and healthy. If you don't
care whether your workers live or die, and if they
are too ignorant and frightened to complain, then
why bother to give them decent lodgings or attrac-
tive surroundings?"

The skimmer settled gently into the space set
aside for official visitors to the Tondubh facility,
and Pal jumped out, ready with the story he had
prepared to cover their interest in the facility. He
spun the security guards a story about an off-

240

Acorna

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

2A\

planet vid-artist who wanted to feature Tondubh
as one of Kezdet's success stories, a concern that
had contributed to giving this resource-poor
planet one of the higher gross planetary products

in the sector.

"No vid equipment allowed in the plant," the

guard said.

Pal gave in on this point after minimal arguing,
since he had no idea what he would have done if
they hadn't insisted on this restriction; there
hadn't been time to procure the kind of recording
equipment an intergalactically known vid-artist
would expect to use. The guard reciprocated by
unbending slightly and allowing as how they could
arrange a brief guided tour for the lady, if she and
her companions would just wait an hour or so.

"No time," Pal said, "her time on Kezdet is
measured in hours. Of course, if it's not conve-
nient for us to see this facility, I'm sure the
Gheredi Glassworks would do just as well. If
you'd just give me a note of your name and num-
ber, so that I can explain to InterVid exactly why
Tondubh proved unsuitable . . ."

The mention of Tondubh's biggest competitor
on Kezdet, plus Pal's veiled threat that he would
see the guard took blame for letting this publicity
opportunity go to the competition, got them inside
the glassworks without more ado. As they passed
the second security wall, Pal caught sight of a pair
of slender, scarred bare legs winking out of sight

around the corner.

"Damn kids," the guard said genially, "they're
all over the place, bringing messages to the workers,

begging a bite of the hot meals Tondubh provides
to the hands, generally getting in the "way." The
roar of the furnaces within the main manufactur-
ing facility almost drowned out his words. They
picked their way over a floor covered with shards
of broken glass. The heat from the open furnaces
was like a blow? in the face; all the signs pointed to
a factory in full production, yet the immense room
was curiously empty. Only a handful of emaciated
adults squatted in front of the furnaces.

"Do you not employ children, then?" Acorna
asked.

The guard looked shocked. "'Deed, no. Why,
that would be in violation of the Federation Child
Welfare Statutes! Mind you, I'm not saying an
occasional one as is underage may not sneak onto
the payroll; these people breed like flies and don't
keep no records. But Tondubh has always done its
best to abide by Federation standards, madam.
Get out of the way, there," he roared at a boy who
trotted into view with an iron rod taller than him-
self, the end covered with a blob of molten glass.

"P-please, sir, I was just bringing the glass to
my gang leader," the boy stammered, the end of
his sentence all but drowned out by another out-
raged roar from the guard. "Don't you know you
kids aren't allowed to do anything but carry
water? Now put that glass down! You could get
hurt, messing with hot glass!"

The little boy dropped his rod with a clang.
Molten glass spattered into the air; Pal and
Acorna had to jump back to save themselves.

"Sorry about that, madam. You see why it




2-42

Acorna                              245

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

-would be better for you to -wait and take a proper
tour," the guard said. "It's hard enough to enforce
proper safety regulations here at the best of times,
and with these brats infesting the place for what
they can pick up, well, it's no place for a lady like
yourself, and that's a fact. I'll just escort you back

to the skimmer now."

Nadhari glanced at Pal and raised one brow
inquiringly while she shifted her weight in a man-
ner he found ominous.

"No," Pal said under his breath. "We will go as

requested."

Looking disappointed, Nadhari relaxed

slightly.

The guard watched while Pal took off and

cleared the factory airspace.

"That," Pal said grimly, "is just one of the prob-
lems we have to solve. Not employ children,
indeed! That factory is ninety percent child-oper-
ated, and everybody knows it. But they have
guards and gates and delaying tactics, and the
children are trained to hide when any strangers
come. I had hoped that a party of three would not
be enough to alarm them. I was wrong."

"/ could have alarmed them," Nadhari said in
her gravelly voice, with a smile that sent a cold
breeze along the back of Pal's neck.

"I am sure you could take on the entire security
force ofTondubh Glassworks," said Pal tactfully.

"Piece of cake," Nadhari confirmed. "Soft
slugs. Poor defensive position."

"But I think Mr. Li might be annoyed if we

started a private war."

Nadhari nodded sadly.

"I do not understand why the children hide,"
Acorna said. "Don't they want to come out and
ask for help?"

"They do not have much experience with
strangers who make their lives better," Pal said.
"Usually its the other way."

"That poor little boy. The guard was lying
about his not working there. Did you see his feet?
They were covered with burns and scars. If he
hadn't run away, I could have healed them."
Acorna sighed. "I suppose, if they do not admit to
hiring children at all, it is useless to ask if they
have a bonded child laborer named Jana?"

Pal agreed. He could have predicted this out-
come to the trip, but it had appeared the only way
to convince Acorna of the enormity of the task
was to let her see for herself the kind of obstacles
they faced. Now, however, he felt her disappoint-
ment as keenly as if it were his own.

"There is one other place we might try," he
said. "I've been thinking . . . it's true that
Knobkerrie is the only treeless mountain this
near Celtalan that has a factory beside it. But to a
little girl like Chiura, who's to say what counts as
a mountain?"

"There isn't much else that couQ be considered
a mountain," Acorna said, looking down at the fea-
tureless landscape below the skimmer.

"Some of the pit mines have pretty high slag
heaps near the sorting bins," Pal said, banking the
skimmer slightly. "And one of the oldest mines—
with one of the biggest slag heaps—is not too far




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

244

245

from here. It wouldn't hurt to pay a visit to Anyag.
This time, though, -we're going to think up a better

story."

"We are?" Acorna had been tremendously
impressed by the speed and fluency with which
Pal had spun his tale at the Tondubh Glassworks.

"We'll have to," Pal said. "The children at
Tondubh had plenty of time to hide while I was
convincing the guard that they couldn't afford to
alienate a galactic vid-artist. This time we're going
to use a story that will make them want to keep
the children for us to inspect." He glanced at
Acorna. "Good thing you dressed up this morning.
But you need to be a little gaudier." He guided the
skimmer down toward a walled compound of
courtyards and gardens, brilliant in the surround-
ing near-desert as an emerald in the sand. "Wait in
the skimmer," he said over his shoulder as they

landed.

A slim, pretty girl with long black hair ran out
of the nearest arcaded passageway, calling excited
greetings to Pal. He met her too far from the skim-
mer for Acorna to hear what they said, but there
was no need; his exuberant kiss of greeting and
the way he picked the girl up and spun her around
in his arms told her all she needed to know about
their relationship. They disappeared together into
the maze of buildings and Acorna slumped in her
seat, feeling remarkably foolish. Of course Pal had
a girlfriend. She'd seen enough story-cubes to
understand that this was the normal arrangement
of human society. They spent twenty years or so
growing, and then they were ready to mate. Gill

was showing every sign of preparing to mate with
Judit, and that didn't bother her; why should she
feel so depressed at seeing that Pal was in the
same situation? Probably because there was
nobody for her to mate with. Not that she had the
least interest in the kind of sexual acrobatics dis-
played in Calum's secret vid-cube collection, but it
would have been nice to have somebody to share
secrets and jokes with, somebody who came run-
ning out with a joyful face when you came to their
house, somebody who would hug you and spin
you around like that.

Ridiculous to feel sorry for herself, just because
she was the only one of her kind, when so many
people had worse problems. Acorna glanced at
Nadhari, who was sitting upright and watchful in
the backseat. Nadhari was alone, too, and it didn't
seem to bother her. She didn't even need to talk to
people except about her work.

Acorna shivered. She didn't -want to be quite
that self-sufficient. How lucky she had been to be
found by Gill and Rafik and Calum, instead of by
somebody who would have sold her to a labor fac-
tory on Kezdet! Acorna sat up very straight and
concentrated on remembering how lucky she was
and what a good life she had. She managed to
such good effect that when Pal reappeared and
climbed into the skimmer, the first thing he said
was, "What's the matter?"

"Not a thing," Acorna said. "Not a thing. I
don't need to know what your plans are. I just do
what I'm told."

Pal tightened his lips to conceal a smile. So




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

247

Acorna could take a huff, just like any other young
girl, -when she felt left out and ignored! She might
look different, but she -was completely and glori-
ously female. And that thought pleased him inordi-
nately. He couldn't quite figure out why he should
be so pleased to see her displaying signs of jeal-
ousy, but . . . well, it was nice to know that at least
emotionally she was very human, indeed.

"Irodalmi Javak's family is very wealthy," he
said, "and her father would not approve if he knew
that she was a secret sympathizer with the Child
Labor League. He doesn't approve of me either,
but pretending to be a penniless and unacceptable
suitor for her gives us an excellent cover for an
occasional secret meeting—even if anybody found
out, they'd just think I was sneaking into the com-
pound to steal a few kisses."

"Oh." Acorna digested this. "Then it's just . . .
pretense? You two certainly looked happy enough

to meet!"

"I am very fond of Irodalmi," Pal said truth-
fully. "She is a good, brave girl and she risks a lot
for the movement. But she has no use for
boyfriends; she wants to get off-planet and study
to become a starship navigator."

"That must be very sad for you."

"Nothing to do with me," Pal said so cheerfully
that Acorna began to feel much happier. "She's got
her life planned out, and I am developing plans of
my own. Our 'courtship' is a convenient cover,
that's all. I didn't want her to see you because the
less she knows, the safer for all of us. But she lent
me enough of her jewelry to deck you out in the

necessary style." Both his hands were fully occu-
pied now with lifting the skimmer and piloting it
back toward Anyag. He nodded at the dark green
case he had brought out of Irodalmi's house.
"Open that, will you, and put the stuff on."

Acorna was dazzled by the sight that met her
eyes when she lifted the lid of the case. A profusion
of rings, bracelets, chains, and stick pins glittered
in the sunlight that filtered through the skimmer
windows. Most of the jewelry was in a heavy,
ornate style of gold work that would suit neither
the slender Irodalmi nor Acorna with her silvery
coloring, but there -was one ring of blue starstones
set in platinum, and a matching chain with a very
large starstone pendant. She put these on and
longed for a mirror in which to check the effect.

"How do I look?" she demanded of Pal.

He glanced sideways and grunted. "I said, put
it on. All of it."

"I do not know much of fashionable dress,"
Acorna said, "but I think that to wear all this gold
at once would constitute a vulgar display of
wealth, as well as being mwt unattractive."

"Yep," Pal agreed, "that's Javak Seniors style, all
right. Irodalmi doesn't care for the stuff herself. Says
that if she -wore her father's gifts, she'd look like the
senior Didi in a high-class bonkmg-shop. Which is
what made me think of her. That's precisely the effect
we're after. Now put the Jewelry on. Please."

Acorna did her best to follow his instructions,
but most of the rings designed for human fingers
would not fit on her less-supple digits, and she ran
out of room for bangles on her arms.




248

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

249

"The larger bangles are for your ankles," Pal
instructed without taking his eyes from the skim-
mer's instrument panel, "and can't you thread
some of the rings through that turban kind of
thing you wear on your head?"

"Try not to crash this thing in a lake," Acorna
said after following his instructions. "I'd sink like a
stone. I'm not even sure I'll be able to walk with
this much jewelry hanging off my body."

"Excellent," Pal said. "We want you to look
extremely rich and extremely vulgar. Too bad you
don't wear scent. A heavy dose of musk and jas-
mine essence -would finish off the picture nicely."

" What picture?" Acorna demanded.

"Just came to me," Pal said, "in a sudden flash
of inspiration. We geniuses often work that way. If
Did! Badini is welcome at Anyag to inspect the
children, why not Didi Acorna? Explains
Nadhari, too," he added. "Any Didi as rich as
you're pretending to be would naturally travel

with a bodyguard."

"You want me to pretend to be a Didi!" Acorna
exclaimed. "That's a truly revolting idea."

"It's a truly brilliant one," Pal said. "Just leave
the talking to me, and nothing can go wrong this

time."

Acorna regarded him with some suspicion.
"Sometimes," she said, "you remind me very

much of Ratik."

"Act arrogant," Pal warned her just before they
reached Anyag, "and leave the talking to me."

Acorna had no trouble following either of these
instructions. Shock at the sheer unrelieved ugliness
of Anyag, the gigantic slag heap and the piles of
separated ore and the endless roar of crushers,
kept her silent. The stench of the latrine trench
behind the sleeping sheds kept her nose up in the
air, and the unaccustomed weight of jewelry on her
body forced her to move slowly. The effect was all
Pal could have wished: she appeared to be an
incredibly -wealthy young -woman -with vulgar taste,
slow dignified movements, and too much pride to
speak a civil -word to the mine superintendent. It
was easy for him to believe that she -was a new and
unprecedentedly successful Didi looking for fresh
young stock to build up her expanding network of
houses. He all but fell over himself apologizing for
the poor condition of most of the children in the
mine and issued no orders at all to hide them.

Pal demanded curtly to be shown to where
Siri Teku's gang slept, and the superintendent
showed some relief. He had heard that Siri Teku
had scored a coup from a labor contractor just
last month, picking up a curly-headed, fair-
skinned girl child -who looked like just the sort of
fresh young thing a Didi -would buy off him at
twice or three times what he'd paid for her. He
started to apologize that Siri Teku's crew was on
day shift and would be unavailable right now,
then stumbled to a halt as he decided that Siri
Teku wouldn't have been fool enough to send a
pretty piece like that baby girl Below. He'd have
her working Above on some easy task like sorting
ore or sweeping tailings to not spoil her looks. . . .




250

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Pal interrupted him. "Just point out the sleep
shed. We won't need your company."

The superintendent was disappointed; he'd
expected a cut of the profits from any sale made
on his shift. A discreet transfer of credits salved
his disappointment and bought Pal and Acorna
privacy while they picked their way through the
debris of the mine to the area where Siri Teku's
gang sorted the ore they had dragged to the sur-
face.

There were only two children on the sorting
bench. One of them was working so fast her fin-
gers seemed to fly as she picked through the bro-
ken rocks and assessed them with an expert eye.
The other stared through them with blank, empty
eyes that made Acorna's own eyes narrow in
anguished sympathy.

"Jana?" she asked, expecting the active child

to answer.

"I'm Laxmi," said the girl who was working so
hard. "She's Jana." She jerked her chin toward the
other child. "She don't talk much, not since ..." A
rattling cough interrupted her •words.

"Get her some -water. Pal!" Acorna said.

" 'S okay. 'S nothing," Laxmi croaked, wiping
her chin. "Don't tell 'm . . . I'm not sick!" There
was desperation in her cry. "Not!"

"Of course you are not sick," Acorna agreed
soothingly. "You are a fine, strong worker."

Laxmi edged suspiciously away from her as
Acorna came closer, until she was on the far side
of the bench with a pile of broken rocks between
her and the visitors. Acorna sat down beside Jana

251

and put an arm around her. Jana winced away
•with a gasp of pain.

"Best not touch 'er," Laxmi warned from a safe
distance. "She ain't healed from that beatin' Sin
Teku give 'er."

Jana's ragged gray kameez was stuck to her
back and sides in several places. When Pal came
back with a bucket of scummy water, Acorna
looked at it in despair, then deftly stripped off the
scarves that swathed her head. Laxmi gasped and
fell into another coughing fit at sight of the small
white horn in the middle of Acorna's forehead.

Acorna dipped her horn into the water for a
moment, then used her silk scarf to dab the now-
clean water onto the worst of Jana's marks. When
she was finally able to lift the kameez without
pulling at the broken skin underneath, she laid her
forehead against each swollen, infected -weal.
Laxmi edged closer and closer, eyes round as she
saw clean new skin replacing the raw stripes on
Jana's back and sides.

"Please, lady," she whispered, "I dunno what
you're doing . . . but could you do her knee, too?
That's what hurts her the worst. Can't walk •with-
out a stick. ..."

Acorna bent her head to the swollen knee for a
long moment. Jana sat unmoving and unrespon-
sive, but the swelling visibly -went down.

"Come to me," she said, and Laxmi, a look of
surprise on her face, slowly moved toward
Acorna.

"If you c'n fix me, too," she said hoarsely,
"reckon I'll go with you. Kheti allus said gom'

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

252

•with a Did! was worst thing as could happen to a
girl . . . but Kheti dint see you.."

Acorna laid her face against Laxmi's throat and
slowly moved the horn down along her chest.
Laxmi drew in a deep breath and hardly coughed
at all; she took another breath and another, and
color crept into her face.

"What you think you're doing, bint?"

The angry roar came from the mouth of the
shaft behind them. A moment later a tall, lean man
in brown robe and turban leapt out of the cage-lift,
brandishing a long, flexible rod in one hand.

Quickly swathing her horn, Acorna lifted her

head.

"I have a use for these children," she said. "You
will be compensated for them."

Siri Teku's eyes narrowed in crafty speculation.
It must be Laxmi the Didi wanted; Jana wasn't
much use to anybody now. She was trying to con-
fuse him by pretending an interest in both children.

"I might consider letting you have that one," he
said, nodding at Jana. "'T'other's too valuable to
me. Last trained sorter I got, see."

"I need them both," Acorna replied firmly.

Siri Teku mentally evaluated the worth of this
new Didi's gold jewelry and decided to take a
gamble. It was true that he needed Laxmi's ser-
vices. He wouldn't have pretended not to notice
her cough for so long if he'd had anybody else half
so good at sorting ore. But a month would give
him time to buy some new children and have
Laxmi train them. And if this Didi was really so
interested in Laxmi, Old Black knew why, she'd

253

come back at the end of that month . . . by which
time he should be able to trade, steal, and buy
enough really handsome children to make her a
constant customer of his.

Besides, he thought he recognized the silent
bodyguard who stood behind the Didi. Was
House Li getting into the bonk-shop business?
And if so, did old Li himself know, or was the old
man so senile that his employees were able to take
off on their own? He needed time to check the
rumors so that he could figure out how to turn the
maximum profit from this situation.

"This un's not for sale yet," he repeated, grab-
bing Laxmi's arm and jerking her away from
Acorna and Pal. "Come back next month, after
I've had time to train some new sorters. And for
the other, it'll be fifty credits."

"Who're you kidding?" Pal demanded, using a
rough accent Acorna had not heard from him
before. "We'd be doing you a favor to take her off
your hands. Ten credits, no more."

"You wish to rob an honest working man of his
livelihood? Besides, I will have to give a percent-
age to the mine superintendent. Thirty-five."

"Fifteen," Acorna said.

Siri Teku hesitated, and Acorna turned on her
heel.

"Come," she snapped to Pal. "My time is too
valuable to spend haggling over one child."

"Seventeen and a half!" Siri Teku cried.

"Very well," Acorna said, "seventeen it is." She
dropped a bundle of credits in the dirt and turned
toward the skimmer.

ISA

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

255

"And a half?"

Acorna laughed and kept walking.

"Remember," Siri Teku called after them as Pal
carried Jana toward the skimmer, "come back
next month! I'll make it worth your while!"

Laxmi's eyes followed the skimmer as it rose
over the mountainous slag heap of Anyag and
banked west, into the afternoon sun, toward
Celtalan.

Pal tarried long enough at Irodalmi's house to
return the jewelry, which Acorna was only too
happy to remove, despite the surprise that it

caused Jana.

"I am no Didi, little one," Acorna told Jana,

stroking her no longer sore back. "I am taking you
to Chiura, who has been crying for her Mama

Jana."

"Chiura?" Jana exclaimed. Miracle upon mira-
cle this day had for her. Not only had her pains
been soothed and she had been taken from
bondage with Siri Teku, but Chiura was at her
destination. Furthermore, her well-honed instincts
told her that this marvelous lady with the funny
horn in the middle of her forehead was good, and
Jana had had so little of "good" in her life, she
wondered that she could believe in any. Yet why
heal her when she wasn't pretty like Chiura or
useful like Khetala? That name sprang from her
lips. "Khetala? You will find and free her from

Didi Badini?"

The man who drove the skimmer groaned.

"One rescue a day is all I can cope with right now,
and there'll be a lot of explaining to be done for
this day's work—that I can assure you."

"But surely. Pal, we must save these children.
The other one who coughed ..."

"Laxmi?" Jana asked hopefully.

"Mr. Li has a large house, but there are limits
to what hospitality he can extend. That is why we
must make the moon colony. Then -we will have a
safe place for all the abused and misused children
in those mines. First things must come first,
Acorna." He spoke as severely as he could, and yet
the melting look in Acorna's eyes over Jana's head
was almost more than he could bear. What amaz-
ing powers this most unusual female had!

In December 1936, the English king, Edward
VIII, abdicated his throne to marry an American
divorcee, Wallis Simpson. Before Christmas of
that year, schoolchildren from Land's End to John
o'Groats were chanting, "Hark, the herald angels
sing, Mrs. Simpson's pinched our king." No one
ever figured out how the song spread so quickly; it
certainly hadn't been part of a BBC broadcast.

The tale of a silver goddess with a horn in the
middle of her forehead, come to Kezdet especially
to heal and help children, spread with similar
rapidity. As with the song about Mrs. Simpson,
the only certainty is that it wasn't disseminated by
anyone in authority.

When the rest of Siri Teku's gang came up from
their twelve-hour shift Below, Laxmi told them




256

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

that Sita Ram, Lady of the Sky and Above, had
visited Anyag disguised as a Didi, had healed her,
and had taken Jana to live with her in the sky. The
other children might have scoffed, but it was a fact
that Laxmi's racking cough was gone; she breathed
as easily and deeply as any of the newest arrivals.
A child sold from the mines to Czerebogar took the
story and the hope of that healing with him.

In the carpet works at Czerebogar, where the
children squatted on hanging benches and tied
knots in the famous Kezdet carpets until their fin-
gers bled, Laxmi's Sita Ram was transmuted into
Lukia of the Lights, and they whispered that the
unicorn's white horn shed a magical healing light
that restored the sight of squinting, half-blind car-
pet weavers. An itinerant teacher from the Child
Labor League, entering Czerebogar in disguise,
found her way made easier by this legend and sug-
gested to her colleagues that they spread it as a
way of overcoming the children's ingrained fear
and distrust of all strangers.

"Should -we try to overcome it?" one of the
other part-time teachers asked. "Most of the time
they're right to fear strangers."

"Not us," said the young woman who'd slipped
in and out of Czerebogar, bringing counting games
and stories and taking away the legend of Lukia.
"If they fear us, we can't help them."

In the Tondubh Glassworks, the story became
part of the legend of Epona, the horse-goddess
who bore tired glass-runners on her back and gal-
loped from furnace to blower with the molten
glass to spare the children's weary legs.

257

Everywhere on Kezdet, where there was a
mine or factory keeping children at work in
cramped, poisoned, miserable conditions, there
was also some legend of a rescuing goddess, spun
out of the older children's hazy memories of a
mother's arms and given strength by the younger
children's need for hope. But never before had one
of the legendary goddesses taken mortal form and
given solid, practical healing to a sick child. All the
legends suddenly took on new life; hope flourished
like an underground stream of pure water running
through all the dark factories; overseers -wondered
why the children had begun to sing and laugh, and
worried about the change.

The repercussions from Acorna's adventure were
less than Pal had feared. Judit was frankly
relieved to have Jana take over the care of Chiura,
who had never ceased wailing for the older child
whom she evidently regarded as a mother.

Delszaki Li and the miners were somewhat
more vocal. "You did what?" Rafik bellowed when
Acorna proudly reported the results of her trip to
him.

"I told you that I was going to look for Chiura's
'Mama Jana,'" Acorna said.

"Yes," said Calum unguardedly, "but we didn't
think you'd succeed, or we wouldn't have let you
go off with just Pal and one bodyguard."

Nadhari Kando shifted her weight slightly, from
one foot to a balanced pose on the balls of both feet.
The slight movement should have gone unnoticed,

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

258

but instead it drew everyone's attention. She looked
straight at Calum until his eyes dropped.

"That is ..." he mumbled, "of course you were
perfectly safe with Nadhari. After all, if Mr. Li
entrusts his own life to her. ..."

"Quite correct," Nadhari said. Her low, grating
voice was almost without expression.

"Don't you want Jana?" Acorna put her arm
around the bewildered child.

"Sure we do," Gill said heartily. He dropped to
one knee before Jana, who shrank back involun-
tarily at the approach of this red-bearded giant.
"We need you here, Jana. Chiura needs you. We
all do. Plenty of room in this house for another lit-
tle girl." He glanced at Delszaki Li and received
an approving nod. "We were just . . . surprised
that Acorna found you so quickly."

"We underestimated her," Rafik said gloomily.

"Probably not for last time," Delszaki Li
chirped. His dark eyes were bright with amuse-
ment.

Pal's private nightmare, that the Guardians of
the Peace would somehow trace him and "Didi
Acorna" back from Anyag to the Li mansion and
accuse him of procuring children for immoral pur-
poses, never came true. He was not sure whether
that was because they had not been traced, or
because the Guardians were too bright to try to
shake down so powerful a figure as Delszaki Li, or
because they simply accepted as a matter of course
that any man who was so inclined might buy him-
self a few girl children for private use whenever he
felt the urge. He suspected the last.

259

Even Acorna, after a few -wistful comments
about the amount of room there was in those
upper stories and how many beds they could fit
into the long parlor, seemed to accept Pals strict
injunction against collecting any more children
before Delszaki Li had started the safe haven of
the lunar colony. She didn't even promise Jana to
go out and look for Khetala— thank goodness! Pal
sweated when he remembered the risks he had
already allowed Acorna to run in their mad
escapade. The last thing he needed was to have
her opening those wide silvery eyes at him and
politely requesting a tour of the East Celtalan
brothels. Especially since he had a terrible suspi-
cion he would give in. The urge to give Acorna
everything she wanted was only growing stronger
the more time he spent in her company.

All things considered, he should have felt
relieved when, after a few? days spent quietly with
Chiura and Jana, her only request was to go shop-
ping with Judit.

"I am sure you must have many more impor-
tant things to do," she apologized to Judit, "but
you see, I have promised Mr. Li not to go out
alone again. There are a few things I need from
the stores, and somehow I do not think that
Nadhari..."

"Of course," Judit said. "You're quite right.
I'm pretty sure Nadhari doesn't have a black belt
in shopping. And I have been quietly going mad
with inactivity while I wait for Delszaki and your
friends to come up with something for me to do.
Really, if he's going to spend all his time locked in

260

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Dr. Zip's lab or cruising the Lattice on his corn
unit, Delszaki hardly needs one personal assistant,

let alone two!"

"I'll go with you," Pal volunteered, and felt
unreasonably annoyed when Acorna stammeringly

refused his help.

"Don't be silly. Pal," Judit said in her best
bossy elder-sister tones. "One of us must stay here
in case Delszaki comes out of his brown study and
-wants something." Adding, after she sent Acorna
off to get a heavier wrap on the pretext that there
were cold winds coming in from the north, "I
expect the child wants to buy feminine fripperies,
Pal. She'd only be embarrassed to have you tag-
ging along. Nadhari will come, and she'll be quite

protection enough."

Nadhari cleared her throat, and Pal hastily
agreed that no one could want more protection

than she could supply.

Relief though it must be to have Acorna safely-
occupied, Judit could not repress a slight scorn
when she saw the girl counting the credits in her
purse before they set out. Was all the -work of the
Child Labor League to be set aside for Acorna's
convenience? Here was Delszaki Li off on a wild-
goose chase to find Acorna's home planet, instead
of completing the plans for his lunar colony;

Acorna herself, it seemed, was perfectly happy to
go shopping for the latest fashions. It was true that
Delszaki had advanced the credits to her himself,
saying that he wished his "ward" to be dressed as
befitted the House of Li, rather than continually
washing and -wearing the same three outfits the

261

miners had casually picked out for her. And it was
true that the plans of the Child Labor League
were in much more danger from hasty enterprises
such as Acorna's rescue of Jana than from a few
days of neglect. Still, Judit could not keep from
fretting over all the problems remaining: the lunar
colony yet to be designed, let alone set up; how the
children -were to be gathered together -when every
factory owner had trained them to hide whenever
strangers approached; "worst of all, how to neutral-
ize the shadowy, malevolent figure known only as
the Piper, whose fortune derived entirely from the
worst forms of child labor and who was supposed
to be behind most of the official and unofficial
bedevilment the league members had suffered.
The Piper would surely find some -way to stop Li's
latest and boldest plan if he got word of it, as he
•was sure to do sooner or later in Kezdet's spy-
riddled society.

She was further surprised when Acorna first
proposed that they should walk, then stopped not
five minutes from the house and hired a skimmer,
directing the pilot to take them to the Gorazde
Bazaar.

"Acorna, are you sure that is where you wish to
go?" Judit remonstrated as the skimmer rose and
hovered over the heart of Celtalans wealthiest dis-
trict. "The Gorazde is not at all fashionable.
Respectable, yes, but it is the sort of place where
Delszaki's servants buy their daywear. It is not
equipped to cater to a young lady of fashion."

"I am not a young lady of fashion," Acorna said
calmly, "and I inquired of the house staff before

262

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

263

making my decision. I am confident that I shall
find exactly -what I need at the Gorazde."

"And -why rent a skimmer?" Judit -went on.
"We could have used one of the House Li skim-
mers."

Acorna hung her head. "I -wanted to do this

myself," she said, "with my own credits from the
work I have done for Calum and Rafik and Gill."

"Do "what, for heavens sake?"

"That little boy at Tondubh," Acorna said, "his
feet were all burned and cut from running over
hot and broken glass. I thought ... he could use a

pair of sandals."

"What a nice thought!" Judit approved.
"And all the other children there," Acorna said.
"That is why I thought of the Gorazde, you see.
They say it is a good place to find cheap but

durable clothes."

She proceeded to occupy the few minutes
required for the skimmer to cross the city by ask-
ing Judit about her brother. Judit played down
the misery of the first years on Kezdet, when she
and Pal and Mercy had been bond-laborers with
no hope of freedom, by saying truthfully that they
had all three been sent to different places and she
really knew very little of Pal's life during those
years. Instead she concentrated on tales of Pal's
progress through technical school and the stories
he had told her about his work with Delszaki Li.
It -was a pleasure to talk at length about her
beloved little brother to such an attentive audi-
ence, and Judit was almost sorry when they
reached the Gorazde. She had been meaning to

ask Acorna a few things about Gill . . . subtly, of
course, so as not to betray how much more inter-
ested she was in him than in the other two miners
who composed Acorna's foster family.

Once the skimmer pilot had set them down and
had been requested to wait, Acorna changed from
passive audience to taking charge of the expedi-
tion once again.

"I think thLf is exactly the place I have been
looking for," she said, walking past a handful of
clothing stalls to enter Sopels Sandalarium -with
its flashing lighted sign proclaiming, WHOLESALE,
DISCOUNT SALE, AND GOING-OUT-OF-BUSINESS
SALE EVERY DAY.

A clerk hurried forward to serve them, every
line of his demeanor announcing that he had never
hoped to see two well-dressed young ladies from
West Celtalan in Sopel's Sandalarium. When he
offered to measure their feet, Acorna informed
him that this would not be necessary, as she knew
what sizes she wanted. Judit gave a small internal
sigh of relief; they really did not need the kind of
attention that a close inspection of Acorna's
unusually shaped feet would draw. Acorna speci-
fied a range of sandal sizes that would fit anything
from a toddler to a child of ten and selected a
cheap and long-wearing style in recycled syntho-
foam. When the clerk mentioned a price that Judit
thought far too high, Acorna glanced at her and
immediately counter-offered for little more than the
wholesale cost of the sandals. She pointed out the
advantages of good relations with someone who
was prepared to buy in bulk, gave the impression




264

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

265

that she might be a buyer for some large consor-
tium -who could be enticed back by a very low
price on this first order, and eventually acquired
the Sandalarium's entire stock in the requested
sizes at less than half the price originally men-
tioned.

"You see," Acorna said -when a slightly dazed

clerk left to order porters to carry their purchases
to the waiting skimmer, "I told you I would
require some help with my parcels."

Almost as dazed as the clerk, Judit said the
first thing that came into her head. "Where did
you learn to bargain like that? "

Acorna gave her an impish smile. "I have
spent two years listening to Calum selling pay-
loads of ore and drone buckets of iron all over
this quadrant. The basic principles are not dis-
similar—and I have always liked working with

numbers."

"Working with numbers is hardly an adequate

description," Judit said with feeling. "Anybody
who can juggle all those prices and quantities in
her head ought to be looking at a career in gam-
bling."

"Seven to four," Acorna murmured, smiling at a

private memory, "'Nobble' the favorite ... I think
we had better watch the sandals being loaded, don't
you? Mr. Sopel is not making as much of a profit as
usual on this transaction; he may try to redress the
balance by making a few slight mistakes during

loading."

In fact, Acorna discovered no fewer than three
"minor discrepancies" between her receipt and the

goods being loaded on the skimmer in the first few
minutes. With the discovery of the third shortage,
she instructed the porter to inform Mr. Sopel that
any more discrepancies would cause her to lose
faith in his ability to conduct a business and would
force her to take her credits elsewhere. Thereafter
all proceeded smoothly.

When the skimmer was fully loaded, Acorna
directed the pilot to take them to the Tondubh
Glassworks, with a sidelong glance to see if Judit
would countermand her orders.

"You promised Delszaki not to collect any
more children," Judit murmured with a warning
shake of her head.

Acorna lifted her long chin slightly. "I did not
promise not to help them. Surely no one can object
if I give a few things to make their lives easier?"

And in fact, when Acorna swept into the
Tondubh compound with the imperious air she
had been practicing, she met with almost no oppo-
sition from the startled overseers. Judit was rather
surprised to find that the Tondubh staff suffered
from the illusion that Acorna was a galactically
famous vid-star come to film a complimentary doc-
umentary on Kezdet's "economic miracle," but she
said nothing to dispel the idea.

"We do not film today," Acorna said loftily, "so
I amuse myself by bringing a few gifts for the chil-
dren I saw here the other day."

The manager started his practiced spiel claim-
ing that no children worked in the glass factory,
but Acorna cut him off.

"Of course, I understand perfectly, they do not




266 •--—'            ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

work here," she agreed -with a complicitous smile

and wink at the manager.

"Exactly," said the manager, returning the
wink. "They are only hanging about here to run
errands and beg meals from the generosity of the
management. As long as that is understood, there
can be no objection to the lady's kind gifts."

"They will perhaps 'run errands' more swiftly if
their feet are protected from the hot glass and bro-
ken shards in the factory," Acorna said. "Let them
come to me here and select sandals to fit each

one."

The manager frowned. "I think they will not

come. They are shy of strangers, gracious lady. It
would be best if you left the sandals here for me to

distribute."

Already he was calculating how much he could

get from Sopal's Sandalarium if he returned the
merchandise still in its original wrapping — not full
price, of course, but even a percentage of the dis-
counted cost would make a nice little addition to

his salary.

But, although the child workers in the factory
had scattered as usual when Acorna's skimmer
arrived, they were not that far away. A few of the
braver and more curious ones had lingered to
learn what they could of the new arrival, and they
spread the word to the others that the whispered
rumors were true: the Lady Epona had come to
Tondubh! Who else would care to bring sandals to
protect their burned and blistered feet?

At first slowly, by ones and twos, the children
crept out of concealment to receive their gifts from

267

the Lady Epona. At the sight of the first boys'
burned feet, Acorna's eyes narrowed to silver slits.

"Distract that man," she murmured at Judit,
nodding at the greedy manager.

Judit smiled sweetly at the manager, flirted
shamelessly, and persuaded him to take her inside
for a restorative cup of kava. The other overseers,
not to be left out, crowded after her, and Acorna
was left alone with the children for a few precious
moments.

As soon as the adults were gone, Acorna pulled
off the scarf wound about her head. At the sight of
the white horn rising from the tumble of silvery
curls on her forehead, the children murmured in
awe. A few of them dropped to their knees, all
doubt removed; the younger ones clung to her
skirts and begged her to take them away.

"I cannot take you now," Acorna said, her eye-
slits narrowing until they were almost invisible. "I
have promised . . . and I have no place for you yet.
But I will come back. And when I come, you will
not hide? You will come to me?"

The children were awed into silence as Acorna
knelt before the first boy to claim his sandals and
touched her horn to his scarred feet. When they
saw the blisters and infected cuts disappearing
under the touch of the horn, they were momentar-
ily frightened. But little Donkin jumped and
shouted in happiness.

"They doesn't hurt! They doesn't hurt any-
more ! Come on, noodle-tops, get yours!"

"Shh, shh," Acorna cautioned Donkin, and the
children quieted immediately.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

268 -

They were so pale, so quiet, so obedient! There
was hardly any pushing and shoving as they lined
up to receive their sandals and, an even greater
gift, the healing touch of the Lady Epona's white
horn.

By the time the last child had been cared for,
Acorna was exhausted and shaking. She was
relieved by Judit's prompt reappearance from the
manager's quarters and hardly noticed Judit's
disheveled, flushed look.

"Take me home," Acorna whispered to Judit,
"I am so tired."

"With the greatest of pleasure," Judit said
between her teeth. She gave Acorna a hand into
the skimmer and leapt in after her, accidentally
stepping on the manager's hand as he reached in
to wish them farewell. "West Celtalan Riverwalk,"
she told the skimmer pilot. That would put. them
within an easy walk of the Li mansion—or a hun-
dred other wealthy homes, so anybody question-
ing the skimmer pilot later would not be sure just
where they had gone.

But Acorna fell into an exhausted slumber on
the flight back, and with resignation Judit altered
her orders and told the pilot to take them to
Delszaki Li's private landing pad.

"With pleasure," said the pilot, "and -won't
nobody find out from me where you went, nei-
ther! I thought as it must be somebody from the
CLL."

"Delszaki Li has no connection with the Child
Labor League," Judit said.

"Righty-ho," the pilot said with a cheerful

269

wink, "and I'm the president of Kezdet. Don't you
worry none, little lady. Truth to tell, I was just
fixin' to go in and get you, claiming some kinda
emergency, when you come on out of the offices.
Nice girl like you hadn't ought to be alone with
the kind of scum they use to run those factories."

"You're telling ine," Judit said with feeling. She
straightened her tunic and twisted her hair back
into its usual severe knot.

"Pulled you about some, didn't they? Like me
to go back and beat 'em up?"

Judit chuckled. "If you want to be helpful, my
friend," she said, "let's not start by getting you
thrown into a Peacetower. An anonymous skim-
mer could be useful from time to time."

"Here's my call sign," the pilot said. "Any time
you want me, just take the nearest public corn
unit and put out this sign. Double the last two
digits and I'll know it's you, see; then I'll be there
soon's I can. If it's an emergency, triple the last
two digits and I'll ditch my passengers and be
there sooner."

The children were not the only ones to hear about
Sita Ram, Lukia of the Light, and Epona: Didi
Badini did, too, and she was livid. She asked a few
questions of various informed sources and learned,
to her astonishment, that no, there was no new
bonk-shop opened with a Didi named Acorna. She
was even more annoyed to learn that' In fact, she
became obsessed with this Didi Acorna personage
and traveled all the way to Anyag to question Siri

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

270

271

Teku at length. He knew only that she had come
in a rented skimmer —

"To keep us from knowing her location, no
doubt!" Didi Badini said, tapping her elegant foot
and forgetting that the mud -would get between
her painted toes, done only that morning in silver:

a color she intended to take off the moment she
got back. Silver was definitely "out."

"Quite possibly, Didi Badini," Siri Teku said,
bobbing continuously in his desire not to alienate
one of his better customers—although in the back
of his mind -was the thought that if the mysterious
new young Didi could, indeed, heal his sickly chil-
dren, it would be worth more to cultivate her
patronage than placate this old fiend.

More aggravated than ever, Didi Badini paced her
apartment, ignoring the cool drinks and tasty tid-
bits offered to her. Only the news that a new
patron awaited her inspection diverted her from
her annoyance.

The customer introduced himself as Farkas
Hamisen, an off-planet merchant who had, he
said, been told that Didi Badini's house would
show? him the best Kezdet had to offer.

He was a handsome young man, if one over-
looked the ears that sat rather oddly on his head
and did not seem to quite match the cafe-au-lait
tone of his face. Didi Badini was far more inter-
ested in Hamisen's expensive clothes and the jew-
eled ring that twinkled on his hand; she had no
problem at all ignoring the ears, especially when

he initiated the conversation by flattering her
shamelessly. He could well believe that an estab-
lishment with such a lovely proprietor was the
finest on Kezdet, he said, but it was hard to
believe the owner did not outshine her merchan-
dise. Perhaps she would do him the honor of an
evening's conversation, just to get acquainted,
before they discussed business?

Didi Badini smilingly agreed. Surely she could
serve him better, she agreed, if she knew his tastes
and personality.

A few more fulsome compliments gained him
entree into her private rooms, where poufs of silk-
covered cushions invited visitors to relax at their
ease. Hamisen praised the room as well and said
that surely no establishment on Kezdet could
boast such a lovely lady and such luxurious set-
tings. He almost dared to confess the secret fan-
tasy that had never yet been satisfied.

"On Kezdet," Didi Badini said, smiling, "any-
thing is possible . . . for a price."

Hesitantly, almost shamefacedly, she thought,
Farkas Hamisen confessed to a fascination with
unusual girls. After some beating about the bush
Didi Badini established that "unusual" meant
deformed rather than very young.

"You have come to the right planet, my friend,"
she said, searching her memory for the children
she'd recently rejected as too odd to appeal to her
customers. There was that one-eyed child at
Anyag...

Still acting shy, Hamisen said that there was a
particular deformity that had always excited him




272

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

beyond measure, although he had only seen it in a
dream. A Didi in the next street had attempted to
satisfy him by offering a girl with an obviously
false horn pasted onto her forehead, but of course
he had been revolted by the trickery.

"You -want her7" Didi Badini gasped unguard-
edly. "I don't believe it!"

"You know of such a girl?" Farkas murmured.
"Truly I was well guided by those who recom-
mended your establishment." In fact he had been
touring the bonk-shops of Kezdet in no particular
order, amusing himself with a girl at each one -while
at the same time he pursued this inquiry for
Acorna, who -would lead him to Rafik. "Do tell me

about her."

"There are rumors of such a one," Didi Badini
said, thinking quickly. If she told Hamisen that the
horned freak was setting up as a Didi on her own
account, he would go straight to Didi Acorna and
she herself -would lose the lovely profits promised by
his clothes and ring ... as well as the pleasurable
caresses -with -which he -was entertaining her -while
they talked. She never "went" with clients anymore,
but that didn't mean she -was averse to affectionate
fondling of the kind that knowledgeable men and
women exchanged. Just now he was stroking her
hair, which she felt was her best feature: soft, silky,
curly, and without a single -white hair. He knew just
how to do it, too, -without catching his fingers or his
nails, -which she had noticed he kept properly mani-
cured.

"Only rumors?" he repeated, withdrawing the

caressing hand.

273

Then again, Didi Badini thought, if she pro-
fessed too much ignorance he might leave and
pursue his interests elsewhere. That must not be
allowed to happen! Not only would she lose the
money and the pleasure he promised, but the half-
formed plan which was floating in her mind would
never come to fruition.

"Only rumors to most people," she said, "but /
have seen her, and I ... might be able to find her
again." The thought ,of delivering her impudent
new rival to Farkas Hamisen, drugged into a state
of compliance, gave her far more pleasure than
anything Farkas Hamisen could do with those ele-
gant, long, brown hands.

"Really? You must let me know if you learn
anything else," Hamisen said in a bored tone. The
underlying message -was clear: she would have to
do better if she -wanted to retain his interest. Didi
Badini searched her memory for some scrap of
information that -would intrigue Hamisen and keep
him close to her, -without giving him enough of a
clue to actually locate this girl.

"Her bodyguard used to -work for the Li con-
sortium," she said reluctantly. "There may be some
connection there . . . but you -would be well
advised not to pursue it, my dear. Delszaki Li is
powerful, corrupt, and utterly ruthless. It -would
be too dangerous for someone who does not know
the -ways of Kezdet to inquire into House Li
affairs."

"A man does not shelter behind a -woman's
skirts," Hamisen said firmly. "How are you going
to find out about the girl?"

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

27 A

Didi Badini smiled and stroked his arm -with
one long, elegantly oval fingernail. "I have my
friends . . . here and there. Amuse yourself -with
some ordinary girls tonight, Farkas—on the
house, of course," she added hastily, "and come
back to me in a few days for more information."
She treated him to the sleepy smile that had
beguiled the elder Tondubh into parting with more
jewels than the glassworks could afford, back in
the days when she still did her own work. "You
will come back . . . won't you?"

He answered her question with one of his own.
"You will find the unicorn girl for me . . . won't

It was Gill who brought home news of the legends
that permeated Kezdet through kava shop to
bazaar and even to the sacred rooms of the
Miners' Guild. He had all he could do to keep
from pounding a few faces in for the smutty sug-
gestions about horn-nuzzling that went on. What
had Acorna done to generate such speculation?
Well, it would have to stop right now! Mr. Li's
house was impregnable, but Acorna had lately
been given to such bizarre . . . escapades . . . even
when she was supposedly being guarded and/or
chaperoned by Pal and Judit.

Then it occurred to him that maybe he had best
join any more outings, to guard Judit as well as

Acorna.

The high-pitched laughter of happy children
greeted him as he palmed his entrance to Mr.

275

Li's mansion. He stood for a moment, listening to
the enchanting mirth. Laughter was a lovely
sound and suddenly he realized that he could not
make Acorna suspend her lifesaving activities.
But the sooner they initiated the Moon project,
the better . . . the safer.

Rafik was busier than he had ever been in his life
in the spacious office which Mr. Li had given over
to him, and the use of state-of-the-art communica-
tions devices that allowed him to speed messages
to an incredible number of destinations. He was
not a member of his particular family without hav-
ing an innate natural instinct for trading. He often
wondered why he hadn't gone into that
respectable profession as his mother had wanted.
Not that he felt himself at any loss in the bargain-
ing and badgering that were part and parcel of
making successful deals. In the odd moments he
had, he decided that as a callow youth he had only
been kicking over the traces to go a-mining. And
yet, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to do
this now if he hadn't done that. Kismet!

He had managed to make contact, again
through Mr. Li's amazing network of contacts,
with a lunar engineer: an elderly man, one Martin
Dehoney, now retired, who had been responsible
for the ingenious structures that were almost com-
pulsory on moon mining installations for their
high safety factors and low budget requirement.
He was also said to be a treasure chest of innova-
tive ideas which conservative agencies, such as

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

276

large corporations and governments, -would not
consider. So, when Rafik contacted him, at first
the Architect Dehoney had demurred by virtue of
his age and debility, but Rafik's gentle persua-
sion—and the explanation that the plan would
ruin the system of Kezdet's child-bondage sys-
tem—won him over. He allowed that he had quite
a few novel ideas for moon installations which he
felt might be eminently suitable, and which some-
one of Rafik's breadth of understanding might
appreciate more than bureaucracies. To know that
some of his best work would see the light of a sun
would be very nice indeed before he slept. It took
a moment for Rafik to realize he meant the "long
sleep" of death.

To his and Mr. Li's intense gratification, a veri-
table harvest of plans, complete with specifications
(although some of these were improvements and
annexes to some of Dehoney's existing lunar facili-
ties—fascinating in themselves) arrived by special
courier three weeks later.

"It's not just the innovative design for integrat-
ing living facilities and life-support hydroponics,"
Calum marveled. "The man has an incredible
instinct for mining engineering problems! Look at
this bootstrap proposal. It's so elegant it's beauti-
ful!" He was looking at Dehoney s projected Phase
II of the lunar base. In Phase I the lunar regolith
would be raked for metal grains, which would then
be reduced to their component elements by the
gaseous carbonyl process. At the same time, a
related chemical vapor deposition process "would
be used to fabricate large-sized, ultra-hghtweight

177

mirrors from the carbonyls of iron and nickel. In
Phase II, when the regolith had been raked down
to the underlying rock, these mirrors could be used
to concentrate solar heat and break up the rock
without the use of explosives, which would have to
be imported, or mechanical drills, which as Calum
knew all too well were subject to frequent dust
clogging and friction wear in near-vacuum condi-
tions.

"And he uses by-products of the regolith benefi-
ciation to provide shielding from solar flares in the
first habitats," Gill pointed out, "then, in Phase II,
we can construct extensive living quarters in the
rocky areas we excavate. So there's very little
added cost for habitat construction and radiation
shielding." They were poring over the doubled-
domed, lock-connected habitat and hydroponics
design when Judit interrupted them to turn on
Universal News and the report of Dehoney's
demise: in his sleep.

"He must have just sent the plans off to us,"
Rafik said, awed and chagrined. Had his urgency
contributed to a fatal fatigue?

"I wouldn't have thought you could care about
such things," Judit said, giving him an odd look.

"You malign me," Rafik said, though he knew
that she had overheard him dealing rather ruth-
lessly with some suppliers. He laid one hand on
his heart, allowing his hurt to show. "I would be
callous indeed to work an old man to death. Even
if children are being done so daily here, until -we
can get this underway."

Mr. Li regarded Judit over his nose as he had a

279

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

278

habit of doing when he wished her to do some-
thing that she did not wish to do.

"My apologies, Rafik."

"We will name the main dome 'Dehoney' after
his inestimable contribution to the project," Rafik
announced, though he looked at Mr. Li for confir-
mation of this sudden •whimsy. Then, with a deep
sigh, which could be interpreted in any way she
chose, he unrolled the rest of the plans and studied
them.

With such detailed plans, even to the environ-
mental shifts as the population increased, Rafik
was able to send out tenders to the construction
firms which Gill had been checking out for
integrity and the reputation of finishing jobs on
time and within budgetary parameters. They sent
the tenders out -with a return address of the Uhuru,
so that Mr. Li's privacy -would not be invaded by
the importunate. When word of the size of this job
got out, they would be besieged by every penuri-
ous subcontractor looking to make more than his
•work was worth. Better that the office of record
be a space ship so that dock security could be
tipped to see that the worst did not gain entrance.

That meant that Rafik and Gill would have to
have a discreet and secure modem link to Mr. Li
so he could supervise affairs.

"Rafik has the energy this project has needed,"
Mr. Li said, smiling beneficently at Judit and pat-
ting her hand, "-while I can still supply the wisdom
of experience -which his young head has not yet
had time to accumulate."

Judit had just discovered the packet of disks,

part of the consignment, and, exclaiming with
delight, loaded them into the computer. Almost
instantly, the sketches became three-dimension
drawings, moving as the strained voice of Marty
Dehoney added explanation to his vision of a
lunar mining station that could also vie for use as a
holiday resort, so complete were the amenities.

"And look at this!" Gill exclaimed as Dehoney
went into his expansion plans. "To cut down the
hazard of fire, he suggests we capture small car-
bonaceous asteroids and release their nitrogen."

"Not to mention we can get sulfates and phos-
phates from the same source, if needed, to supple-
ment the lunar minerals," Calum pointed out. "If
you hadn't been so single-minded about collecting
valuable metal payloads, you'd have thought of
that yourself. We passed up plenty of carbona-
ceous chondrites in between E-types."

"I didn't notice you coming up with the sugges-
tion, either."

"Didn't need it to support a crew of four,"
Calum said smugly. "If we'd been trying to sta-
bilize life-support and atmospheric systems for
an entire colony, naturally I would have men-
tioned it."

"Oh, naturally," Gill drawled with heavy irony.

They were still viewing the comprehensive
disks when Pal came to announce that dinner was
ready. On noticing their intent faces, he very
quickly called down to ask the butler to hold the
meal for at least half an hour.




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

280

Tapha's tongue stuck out between his pinched lips
as he -worked his -way through the cipher program
built into his personal corn. His father was so
stupidly old-fashioned, requiring all his operatives
to use a cipher that depended on recalling large
chunks of the Books of the Three Prophets from
memory. He'd probably have a fit if he knew that
Tapha had reprogrammed his personal corn to gen-
erate enciphered messages automatically, always
using the First Verse of the First Book as the key . ..
and even so, there was more hands-on labor
involved than Tapha cared for. When he took over
the organization, one of the first changes he'd make
would be to modernize the communications sys-
tem, using an automatic encryptor instead of this
cumbersome system. Hafiz was overly concerned
about security, anyway. Why, Tapha had been
using the same encryption key for every message
he sent from Kezdet, and there was no sign that
any of them had been broken.

Nor was there any sign that any of them had
been received, though he knew they must have
been. Hafiz was just being mean and petty, refusing
to advance the credits necessary for Tapha to live in
the style befitting the heir to the Hafiz Harakamian
empire, forcing him to sell off one by one the jewels
he'd collected when he fled. Well, all that would
change now. With satisfaction Tapha completed the
encrypted message telling his father that he had
located his prized unicorn girl and would return
her . . . for a price. He could not resist adding the
cryptic comment that he had also found the way to
solve another family problem here on Kezdet.

281

Without help! Well, without very much help, any-
way. Didi Badim's mention of House Li had been
enough of a clue for Tapha to locate Acorna and
Rafik on his own. He wouldn't need to go back to
her for information . . . though he might go back for
his own amusement.

After handing in his message at one of the
public comsuites on the main streets of Celtalan,
Tapha went on his way to arrange the solution of
that nagging family problem. How proud his
father would be when he learned that Tapha had
not only recaptured the unicorn girl but had also
revenged the trickery practiced on their house by
Cousin Rafik! More to the point, with Rafik safely
out of the way, there would be no more plots to do
Tapha out of his rightful position as his father's
heir apparent. This time Tapha did not intend to
make any stupid, impulsive moves, such as the
attack at the restaurant . . . although that dhouQ
have worked; he still couldn't figure out how
Rafik could have moved fast enough to avoid tak-
ing even one blast of laser fire. No matter. This
time his disguise would allow him to get close
enough to make absolutely sure that Rafik was
quite thoroughly dead.

And once that little matter had been cleared up,
he had only to wait until his father's emissaries
arrived with enough credits to make it worth his
while to tell them where the unicorn girl was. No
need to put himself to the effort of capturing her;

that was work for subordinates. He, Tapha, was the
mastermind behind the plan, and that was quite
enough. No, he would simply relax at Didi Badini's

282

283

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

until Hafiz responded to this latest news. The old
bat would give him anything for a few kisses and
sweet words . . . and when he was ready for some-
thing fresher, he would offer to help train this new
acquisition, the scarred girl from the mines. An
enjoyable way to wile away the days of waiting, and
one advantage accrued to this child, since she was
already marked, was that presumably the Didi
•wouldn't care if she acquired a few more scars dur-
ing "training." There'd be no need to be careful as he
had been ever since that unfortunate accident with'
the joy-toy girl on Theloi.

As was routine on Kezdet, Tapha's latest message
and all other messages with off-planet tags were
routed through a Guardians of the Peace office on
their way to their final destination. Ed Minkus
browsed through the day's mail list with a casual
eye out for any interesting anomalies or potential
profits, stopping at the obviously encrypted mes-
sage purporting to concern differing religious
interpretations of the First Verse of the First

Prophet.

"Hey, Des," he called to his partner, "here's
some more crap from that Tapha guy. You know?
The one with the funny-looking ears who keeps
writing home for money and uses the same
encryption key every time."

"So?" Des grunted. "Unless he actually geU
some money, he's no use to us."

"This one is something different." Ed activated
the decryption program and scanned the cleartext

as it appeared on the screen. "He's found some-
thing valuable . . . might be worth a cut of the
action . . . oh, and it looks as if he's planning to
assassinate some guy named Nadezda."

"Nadezda?" Des rolled out of his chair and into
a standing position over Ed in one savage move-
ment. "Nadezda! He can't do that! That triple-
timing, two-tailed miner is mine! Nobody kills
Nadezda before I get mine back on him!"

Delszaki Li's payment of the "fines" owed by
Calum, Gill, and Rafik to Kezdet had left Des
"without official excuse to persecute the miners,
but with none of his original lust for vengeance
diminished in the slightest.

"Well, then," Ed replied mildly, "we'll just have
to stop this Tapha before he gets there, won't we?"

The vid-screen in a corner of Didi Badini's luxuri-
ously furnished sitting room transmitted only a
jagged pattern of neon flashes that made the Didi's
head hurt.

"Drop the bloody scramble, can't you? It hurts
my eyes—and it's not as if I'd never seen you
before." Immediately she made that last comment,
the Didi regretted it. It was not wise to remind the
Piper that you were one of the few people on
Kezdet who had seen his face . . . even if you had
no idea where in the ranks of Kezdet's techno-
aristocracy he led his "real" life.

"I have already been careless enough," a dry voice
whispered from the speaker grill surrounding the
screen, "accompanying you to that mine. And for




284 --—^             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

what? First sight of a pretty girl-child whom you
managed to lose before she was back in your house!"

Didi Badini cringed at the anger in the whisper-
ing voice and forbore to remind the Piper that he,
too, had been in the skimmer when that little beast
Khetala distracted them and gave Chiura her chance
to run away. Never mind. She dared not express her
anger at the Piper, but she could take it out on
Khetala later. The brat had been locked below long
enough to take the fight out of her; now she would
turn her over to Tapha to break her.

"A thousand apologies, master," she said, swal-
lowing her rage at this unfair criticism. "How may

I serve you now?"

"There are rumors—" the voice whispered,

while neon-green and bile-yellow stripes crawled
and writhed across the vid-screen, "rumors that
the goddess of some children's cult walks the soil
of Kezdet. She has a thousand names but only one
face, long and narrow, with a horn like a unicorn's

sprouting from her forehead."

"Didi Acorna!" Did! Badini sat upright on her
pile of cushions. "I knew she was no true Didi, for
none of the sisterhood knew of her!"

"Didi, goddess, what does it matter?" the Piper
interrupted her. "The tales they are spreading of
her healing powers are gross exaggeration, but that
does not matter, either. What matters is that the
children believe. The Child Labor League and that
malcontent Li are stirring up enough trouble now;

•we do not need some goddess cult serving as the
focal point for more resistance. This horned freak
must disappear. And I must not be seen to be

285

involved in it. I will not have my official position
compromised."

Didi Badini's plump, powdered face creased in
an unpleasant smile. "Nothing," she assured the
Piper, "would give me more pleasure. And there
need be no hint of politics about the removal,
either. For impersonating a sister without paying
dues to our guild, she has already earned punish-
ment. And there are those who would pay well for
that horn of hers; powdered unicorn's horn is an
aphrodisiac of unparalleled power."

"But will removal of the horn kill her?" asked
the voice, like dry leaves rustling.

"I think we can be sure of that little point," said
Didi Badini, smiling as the vid-screen display
abruptly went gray.

Then her face sagged with relief. She might not
be able to see the Piper, but she knew he could
watch and interpret every change of expression on
her face. A little longer, and she might have been
rash enough to let him find out exactly how she
proposed to locate this Didi Acorna. She saw no
need to tell him that she counted on young Tapha
to lead her to the girl. The Piper might think that he
could more profitably deal with Tapha directly . . .
and Didi Badini had not been lying when she
mentioned the resale value of a unicorn's horn.
She had customers whose natural powers were
failing, to be revived only by some special treat
such as a very young virgin or the whipping of a
recalcitrant girl; they would pay handsomely for
this by-product of Acorna's death.




Tapha gave his borrowed dock
workers coveralls a last nervous
hitch and strode through the
workers' gate to the spaceport, giving the security
guard a jaunty wave as he passed. He could
scarcely conceal his jubilation. The disguise had
worked! The coveralls were a gift from Didi
Badini, who had bought them from a lower-class
Didi whose establishment of aging ladies was
patronized by the poorer dock mechanics and by
transients who knew no better. It had been a sim-
ple matter for Didi Hamida to slip a trank into one
of her clients' drinks, remove his uniform while he
slept, and subsequently remove his unclothed
body to a gutter some distance from her establish-
ment.

Women helped him, Tapha thought as he
paced down the cavernous hangar where ships in
for repairs were being disassembled and worked
on. He definitely had a way with women . . . and

Acorna 287

once this little job was taken care of, he looked
forward to returning to Didi Badini's establish-
ment to have his way with the new girl.
Experienced women were all very well, but there
was nothing quite like the young and untouched . . .
and if they were frightened as well, that added
spice to the encounter.

"Hey, you!" a real mechanic bawled at him.
"Get me a hydraulic splitter! Not that way, you
idiot," he went on as Tapha sauntered on his way.
"Stores are the other side of the hangar!"

Tapha waved and mouthed something intended
to be totally unintelligible. The mechanic shrugged
in disgust, said something to his mates about
fardling idiot foreigners who didn't even speak
Basic properly and what was the Guild coming to,
and went to get his own hydraulic splitter—-what-
ever that might be. Tapha neither knew nor cared,
but he quickened his pace so as to reach the
Uhlirus, docking space outside the hangar before
anybody else could delay him. It would be a real
pity if the fiendish cunning of his new disguise and
improved weaponry were spoiled by encountering
somebody who expected him to actually know
about mechanicals. Tapha patted the sagging
pocket of his coveralls and grinned. This time
there would be no possibility of a miss.

From a borrowed office high on the hangar
wall, Des Smirnoff and Ed Minkus watched
Tapha's sauntering progress. "Idiot thinks he got
through the security check by dressing up like a
mech," Ed commented. "He doesn't even guess
that we had the weaponry and retinal scanners

288

Acorna                               289

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

turned off and told the guard not to check IDs
when the little guy with the funny ears showed up.
Why 3Q we let him through the check, anyway?
Would've been easier to've picked him up there.
Or did you change your mind about letting him off
Nadezda for you ? "

"Hell, no," Des replied, "but he hasn't done any-
thing illegal yet. He hasn't even cheated the scan-
ners, since they were turned off. It would be
exceeding our charter as Guardians of the Peace to
stop a man who, for all we know, is paying an inno-
cent family visit."

"And very nice that'll sound if there's an
inquiry," Ed applauded. "Now what's the real rea-
son?"

Des gave a wolfish grin. "It won't hurt to put a
bit of a scare into Nadezda before we take this one
out. Besides, if we stop a suspicious-looking char-
acter at the gate and Find unlawful arms on him,
we're just doing our duty. If we shoot him down
just in time to prevent an assassination attempt,
we're Heroes of the Republic."

Ed sighed. "You already got your money back.
Now you want revenge on Nadezda a,n3 a Hero of
the Republic medal? Ever hear the story of the
fisherman's wife who wished to be pope?"

"Pope who?"

"Never mind. He's coming into range now; let's
see if the scanners can pick up just what he's car-
rying in that bulging left pocket." Ed activated the
beams, focused them, and gave a long, low whistle.
"Holy Kezdet . . . we shouldn't have disabled the
weapons scanners at the main gate."

"We didn't want him stopped for carrying a
pocket laser or something like that," Des reminded
him.

"Pocket laser! Ha! The idiot's got a tungsten
bomb in there!"

"You're kidding!"

"Wish I were. Here—take a look at the read-
ing."

Des glanced at the scanner screens and
blanched. "He didn't mention this was a suicide
mission. If that thing goes off, he won't only get
Nadezda. He'll blow up the bloody ship!"

"He'll blow up the •whole bloody hangar," Ed
corrected him.

"Maybe the whole spaceport."

"A chunk of West Celtalan."

"Hero of the Republic," Ed said, "is not what
they're going to hang around your neck for letting
this one through, boyo."

"If we don't stop him," Des said tersely, "I
won't have a neck left for them to hang me by.
And if he sees us, he might panic and set the thing
off prematurely. . . . Hell, he's so dumb he might
set it off by accident anyway!"

Both men were jogging down the internal secu-
rity hall by the middle of this conversation, so well
attuned to each others' thoughts and reactions that
they didn't even need to discuss what to do next. If
they could round two sides of the hangar and cut
off Tapha before he reached the Uhuru, if one of
them could get a clear shot at him, they just might
be able to save themselves and a largish chunk of
West Celtalan from molecular disintegration.




290 --~'             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Alarm?" puffed Ed as they passed a security

station.

"Nope. Don't "want to startle him." Des was in
no better shape than his colleague, but his
adrenaline high was enough to keep him from feel-
ing out of breath yet.

They made it to their target corner with sec-
onds to spare, Ed leading. He drew his stunner,
peered around the wall, and swore. "Too many
fardling workers in the way. I can't get a clear

shot."

"Screw? the workers," Des said. "They'd rather

be shot in passing than disintegrated by a tungsten
bomb, wouldn't they?" He leaned over Ed's
crouching form, utilizing every advantage of his
superior height and reach, and squeezed off a
series of narrow-band stunner shots without even
seeming to pause to take aim.

"Got him," he said with satisfaction, and
sprinted for Tapha's fallen form to defuse the
bomb, Ed close behind. "Let's hope it's a standard
arming device," he said, reaching into the baggy
pocket they had spotted as containing the •weapon.
"Be a damn shame to lose the hands that have
such perfect aim to a misfired tungsten bomb."

"This thing goes off," Ed said sourly, "you'll
never have time to miss your hands." He knelt
over Tapha and watched, breath held, as Des
twirled the combination detonator on the tungsten
bomb without a trace of nervousness. Three clicks,
an agonizing pause, and then the bones of Ed's
skull registered the cessation of the almost sublim-
inal buzzing that had signaled an armed tungsten

291

bomb ready to detonate on signal. Now for the
first time he noticed the people around them; the
crowd of mechs shouting misinformation at one
another, and two of the miners pushing their way
through the crowd. Rafik Nadezda was the first to
reach them.

"Hey," Rafik said, looking down, "that's—"

"A tungsten bomb," Des Smirnoff said, rising
to his feet with the dismantled halves of the bomb,
one in each hand. "Whoever this was really didn't
like you, Nadezda—even more than I don't like
you. You owe me one. Another one," he said •with
heavy meaning.

"I was about to say," said Rafik with dignity,
"that's my cousin, Tapha."

"You got the tense -wrong," Des said with a
tight-lipped smile. "That w<u your cousin Tapha. I
set my stunner on max when I got a maniac with
an armed tungsten bomb wandering around the
port, Nadezda, and he took half a dozen shots to
the head. Fried his brains." He thought that over.
"His hypothetical brains."

"How did he get past security?" somebody
wondered aloud.

"These terrorists are fiendishly cunning," Des
said, raising his voice to roar over the noise of the
crowd.

"Terrorists?" Gill repeated. "I thought it was a
personal — "

"The Guardians of the Peace have been watch-
ing this man for some time," Des said loudly. "We
have reason to believe he is closely associated with
the Child Labor League, those notorious terrorists




292

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

293

who are doing their best to •wreck the economy of
our happy, peaceful, and productive planet."

Gill's face turned as red as his beard. Rafik
stepped backward and landed heavily on his toe.

"A happy end to an unfortunate situation," he
said over Gill's rumblings of anger. "Allow me to
congratulate you on your prompt handling of the
crisis. Guardian Smirnoff. And—er—that little
episode on the asteroid was a mistake. We had no
idea you would be marooned there for any length
of time. I owe you an apology for that incident."

Smirnoff's face darkened. "You owe me more
than an apology," he said under his breath, "and I
still intend to collect, Nadezda. Later!"

"How about a formal report and recommenda-
tion that you be nominated as a Hero of the
Republic?" Rafik suggested in equally low tones.
"You've definitely earned it today."
Smirnoff paused, visibly undecided.
"And no inquiry as to how this . . . terrorist . . .
made it through security," Rafik added.
"You can pull that off?"

"An off-planet miner may not have that much
influence," said Rafik, "but the heir to the
Harakamian Empire has."
"You?"

Rafik stood looking down at Tapha's body, his
face expressionless. "I am now. You'll permit me to
collect his personal effects?" he added after a
moment's silence. "I should have something to
send to his father."

"Go right ahead," Des offered. "And—"
Rafik's lips curved slightly. "I won't forget the

report, no. Congratulations—Hero of the
Republic!"

Calum missed the excitement of Tapha's second
assassination attempt, as he had missed most of
what was going on around him since Dr. Zip pro-
duced the results of his study. Zip had concen-
trated on the sector of space nearest where Acorna
was found and had been downcast to report that
the upsilon-V studies of stars in that sector
showed a very low chance of any primary produc-
ing planets rich in the precise mix of metals used
in the pod, a report that was borne out by the
mass diffusion imaging of the nearest JM-type stars
and their planets.

But Calum rather thought Zip, in his pride at
being able to report the constituents of distant
planets through new technology, had overlooked a
few things. The one sure thing they knew about
Acorna's people was that they had a sophisticated
space-faring system. If he and Gill and Calum
could take rhenium from the asteroid Daffodil to
make solar thermal-thrust chambers on Theloi,
why couldn't Acorna's people also have mined a
number of systems to collect the metals for this
alloy?

That concept turned the problem of locating
Acorna's home world from a straightforward task
of astrophysical analysis to a complex optimization
program requiring sophisticated operations
research techniques.

"You see," Calum had explained to Gill when




294

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

he started working on the program, "we are also
going to assume, going from what we know of
Acorna, that her people are not stupid or wasteful.
They wouldn't go farther than necessary to get
their metals. So first I have to use Zip's data to
design a program to find all the subsets of stars
within a given volume of space that would, collec-
tively, provide the necessary substances, then, for
each such subset, find the M-type planet that most
nearly approaches an optimal location for all the
required mining missions."

"Hey," Rafik said, "if Zip can come up with
planetary emissions studies for all these systems,
why don't we use him to locate good mining areas

for us?"

"Costs too much," Calum said. "You wouldn't
believe what Li has spent on this problem already."

He quoted figures until even Rafik reluctantly
agreed that it wouldn't be cost-effective to retain
Zip's services as a prospector.

"But," he said, brightening, "he has already
produced all this data in search of Acorna, has he
not? Surely there would be no objection to our
using it for other purposes?"

"Probably not," Calum agreed. He was rather
annoyed at the way his friends kept missing the
point. Who cared about mining? He wanted them
to appreciate his elegant approach to the problem
of identifying Acorna's home. "I'm treating the
entire collection of stars as overlapping subsets,
each containing one or more M-types. By the
Axiom of Choice, there must be — "

Rafik had left abruptly then, muttering some-

295

thing about mad dogs and mathematicians.
Calum was a bit surprised that Rafik didn't share
his joy in the beauties of applied linear program-
ming, but then it took all sorts, didn't it?
Whistling under his breath, he commandeered
one of the parallel-processing units used by the
banking branch of the Li consortium, raided
another branch for statistical analysis software
that could be perverted to serve his ends, and
proceeded to put together his very own astro-
nomical and mining optimization program. For
the past weeks his conversation at mealtimes had
been limited to cryptic statements such as, "I'd
have it done if I didn't have to put the data struc-
tures from all these different bloody star charts
into canonical form first," or, "No, the fact that
it's in an infinite loop doesn't mean the program
doesn't work; it just entered a state with which I
was previously unfamiliar." And whenever Judit
would let him get away with it, he skipped meals
altogether in favor of a quick snack that he could
eat one-handed while gliding through visual dis-
plays of his program in the windowless room
dedicated to the project.

Now, at last, he was getting results. Inconclu-
sive, maybe, but results. He barely heard Gill's
excited account of the assassination attempt and
its aftermath. "Tapha's dead? Good, that's one less
person after us."

"And I think Rafik's squared Des Smirnoff. So
the Guardians of the Peace won't be bothering us,
either. Calum, you should have seen Smirnoff
defusing that tungsten bomb! The man may be a

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

296

corrupt cop, but he can take a place on my bomb
squad any day. Talk about nerves of steel!"

"Mmm. Good job he defused it," Calum said,
nodding over the latest printout. "A bomb like that
could've caused a power outage as far as here,
couldn't it? I could've lost a lot of data."

Gill suggested that Calum take his data and do
something anatomically improbable -with it, then
stomped off to find a more appreciative audience.
Calum barely registered his disappearance; he was
thinking about ways to narrow down the long list
of possible planets to check out. The trouble with
his brainstorm was that they'd gone from zero
possibles to over a hundred, none of them conve-
niently close. Of course, they wouldn't be clwe. He
snorted at his own na'i'vete. If they were nearby weVve
met Awrna J people by now. And he might not be able
to rule out any of this long list of possibles, but he
could rank them for the search by running a sec-
ond optimization, this time minimizing the total
travel time and distance required. It would be a
simple variant of the classic traveling-salesman

problem.

The only trouble was, then what? Calum
longed to test his results, and the only way he
could see to do that was to go and look for him-
self. Delszaki Li would probably be willing to
retrofit the Uhuru with superdrives that would
minimize the travel time. But it would still be a
tive-year project just to check out the nearest
group of possible planets. How could he abandon
his buddies and take their ship for five years?
Rafik and Gill nee3e3 him; neither of them was

297

enough of a mathematician to manage subspace
navigation on his own.

Calum came out of his particular haze when he
realized he had not seen Rafik and, at breakfast,
asked if Rafik was living aboard the Uhuru.

Acorna giggled. "I told you that eventually he
would notice," she said to Mr. Li, who was smiling
benignly on her.

"Well? Is he?" He addressed this query to Gill.

"In a manner of speaking, he is," Gill replied
around a mess of kippered herrings which Mr. Li
had imported especially for him. Though Calum
was as British in origin as himself, the mathemati-
cian did not like kippered herrings.

Waiting for Gill to continue, he even wrinkled
his nose as the reek of the delicacy wafted in his
direction.

"He's on a sorrowful mission," Acorna said,
giggling again.

Calum wished she wouldn't giggle. It wasn't
like his Acorna. She had never been silly, but
maybe it was part of the girlish things that Judit
was teaching her. Although he couldn't remember
Judit giggling.

"What?" and Calum addressed this inquiry to
Mr. Li as the only sensible member at the dining
table.

"His cousin, Tapha," Mr. Li supplied.

"Can no one give me a straight answer?"
Calum complained.

"Considering that all we've had out of you

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

298

recently has been either statistical probabilities or
astronomical variables," Judit said, a touch pee-
vishly, "a straight answer is improbable, isn't it?"
Then she relented as Calum did indeed look hurt
and had been trying so hard to locate Acorna's
home world. "He decided he'd better take Tapha's
ashes back to Uncle Hafiz and explain how he met

his death."

"Oh!" Calum digested this along with several
mouthfuls of a delightful breakfast omelet before
he let his fork fall from his hand. "But he's now his
uncle's heir."

"We know," Judit replied.

"Will he come back at all? Gill said something
about Rafik Rnally finding his element in all the
trading he's had to do for the Moon Mines."

Gill glowered at him. "He won't leave us until
he's finished that, because that will prove to
Hafiz that he's really sown his wild oats and is
ready to settle down and represent House Hara-

kamian."

"Oh!" Calum said, digesting that before he
picked up his fork. "Yes, it would rather, wouldn't
it? But Rafik wouldn't do that, would he? Not yet,
when we haven't finished the moon base or found
Acorna's planet."

"I don't think he would," Gill said, half his
mind on getting the last flake of kippered herring
onto his fork and into his mouth.

Pal entered, looking concerned. "I just heard
that Hafiz Harakamian's fastest ship docked here
this morning, in fact, in the berth the Uhuru •was,
using."

Acorna

299

"Uh-oh," Gill said, looking at Acorna. "That
idiot son of his must have told him you're here."
"How could he know?" Acorna was dismayed.
"How could he know?" And Gill went falsetto
in mimicry. "Because you've been doing your Lady
of the Lights and the healed -wounds and purified
water act all over Celtalan is how he knows. How
many unicorn horns are there on Kezdet?" He
stood, throwing down his napkin, the bristles of his
beard trembling with sincerity. "And I'm going to
stick as close to you as your shadow."

"Oh, good, when Calum goes back to his com-
puters, we can go out. I have just a little errand to
do. I would have asked Pal, but he's doing some-
thing for Mr. Li, and I have a call in to Pedir," she
spared a glance at the elegant antique carriage
clock on the mantelpiece, "and he will be here
shortly. Do say you'11 come?"

"You better go," Calum said, "because I haven't
spent hours, days ..."

"Weeks?" Judit put in, grinning from him to
Gill.

". . . trying to locate where you came from, to
let Uncle Hafiz get you first."

"So Pedir found out where she is?" Judit
asked.

Acorna nodded. "He's been so helpful."

Judit looked as if she were about to add some-
thing, then saw the belligerent look on Gill's face.
"I can't come this morning." She turned to Mr. Li.
"We have that appointment with the head of the
Public Works about proving the moon base design
meets code."

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

300

301

"That sounds like an engineering problem,"
Gill objected.

"It's politics," Judit said. "He knows the base
design is safe, and he knows -we know it. At this
stage, Delszaki doesn't need an engineer to reiter-
ate the facts and get red in the face. He needs a
psycholinguist to maneuver the talks the right

way."

"You mean, Kezdet's objecting?" Gill asked, for
he'd heard rumors which Rafik had discounted.

"Nothing that can't be discreetly settled, my
boy," Mr. Li said, and moved his hover-chair back
from the table. "Come along, Judit. Gill, I'd rather
you accompanied Acorna and Nadhari since Judit
cannot."

"As you wish, Mr. Li," Gill said, but he wasn't
looking forward to it. Nadhari Kando wasn't his
idea of a pleasant female companion for an excur-
sion. "You'll be safe with me." Actually, he didn't
think they needed Nadhari at all, but it was better
to be safe than sorry.

He could add that to Calum's list of famous last
words. Climbing into Pedir's skimmer—he'd met
the man previously, since his vehicle seemed to be
constantly in use by Judit and Acorna for their
"shopping trips"—he had no idea where they were
going. Pedir started right in telling Acorna about
some very useful items he heard were going for
nothing in the market which he thought she
should check out. That ought to have warned Gill,
but he was thinking about Tapha and Rafik and

worrying that Rafik's wily uncle might somehow
hold him on Laboue, and the Li Moon Mining
Company Ltd. might grind to a halt. Rafik had so
much in his head and not on paper that it would
take Gill months to catch up if Rafik didn't return
in a timely fashion.

He was roused out of his contemplation when
Pedir landed the skimmer, and Gill was astonished
to find themselves in the very -worst possible
neighborhood.

"You will wait in the skimmer," Nadhari told
Acorna. "I will fetch the girl."

"She won't come to you," Acorna said.
Nadhari bared her teeth. "She will if I tell her
to." She slipped out of the skimmer, which barely
fit in the narrow courtyard where they had landed,
and trod through puddles of slime to where a short
flight of stairs led to a basement door in the wall.
She tapped a special sequence; the door opened a
crack, then swung shut again.

"Wait, wait!" Acorna cried, scrambling after
Nadhari. "They don't know you! She's afraid!
You'll have to go back to the skimmer!"

"Delszaki Li ordered me to protect you."
Nadhari planted her booted heels firmly in the
mud and glared at Acorna. "You go, I go."
"Nobody's going in," Acorna said patiently.
Gill thought it was time he joined the discus-
sion. "Acorna, acushia, this is not exactly a shop-
ping trip, is it? Want to tell me what's going on?"
Acorna looked at her feet. "Not really."
"Not good enough," Gill said sternly.
Acorna drew a deep breath. "Well..."




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

303

302

The door creaked on its hinges. "You talk too
long!" whispered a woman. She put her face to the
open crack, where the daylight cruelly illuminated
the shiny red burn scars that disfigured the right
side of her face from cheekbone to chin. "Someone
will come! The lady must come in and pay the
price. No one else."

There was a moment of tense bargaining, as
both Gill and Nadhari initially refused to allow
Acorna to go into the dark rooms at all, and the
person on the other side of the door wanted them
to go back to the skimmer, and Nadhari clearly
wanted to blast her way into the rooms and take
whatever it was Acorna had come for with no
more talking. Finally a compromise was reached:

Nadhari and Acorna were allowed in while Gill
waited outside.

"We are only women here," the veiled figure
had said. "Only women come in."

"And if they think that makes them safe," Gill
muttered, pacing the short length of the courtyard
and back again, three strides each way, "they obvi-
ously don't recognize dear Nadhari."

There was a cry from inside, then the door bolt
snicked, the door was flung back, and Acorna s
arm pushed a very young girl out of the entry. Her
arm did not follow? as he hoped, but was yanked
back inside.

"They'll kill her," the child squeaked, and man-
aged to jam her foot in the door. She cried out
with pain as the closing door compressed her foot,
but only for a heartbeat; then Gill had his shoulder
to the door, forcing it open again.

The sudden change from light to darkness star-
tled him. He had a confused impression of figures
struggling in the confined space. Was that
Acorna? He was afraid to move for fear of hurting
her or Nadhari.

An elbow jammed into his solar plexus and Gill
backed up two steps, banging into the door. "Be
some use, can't you!" Nadhari's low rough voice
excoriated him. "Open the fardling door!"

Gill pulled the door open, and the daylight
showed him that at least two of the figures he'd
seen were going to give nobody any trouble. Two
men lay on the floor, one with a trickle of blood
coming from his open mouth, the other staring
wide-eyed and blank at the ceiling. Acorna was
breathing hard. Nadhari was not. In the light from
the open door, her right hand flicked and sent a
knife into the shoulder of the young woman who'd
insisted that Acorna come inside.

"Don't hurt her!" Acorna cried.

"It was a trap," Nadhari s toneless voice grated.
"You have paid the price. Now come, before there
is more trouble."

Gill could see that the woman's face, though
contorted with pain, was now smooth with new
clean skin where the burns had disfigured her
before. "I didn't mean for you to be trapped," she
cried to Acorna. "They must have followed me."

Nadhari made a sound of disgust and took
Acorna's arm, pushing her out of the door.

The child in the courtyard had been trying
to get back in to help, but now she was hinder-
ing their escape by blocking the door. Gill




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

304

swooped her up in one arm, pushed Acorna
toward the stairs with the other, and was up the
stairs, down the alley, and into the skimmer in
seconds.

They were actually in and Pedir was making a
hasty lift out of the courtyard when more figures
erupted out of the basement. The child started
shrieking, clinging to Acorna.

"They'll get me. They'll get me," she cried.

"Who?" Then Gill did a double-take on one of
the male figures who had joined in the futile
attempt to catch the rising skimmer. "By all the
saints, that's Uncle Hafiz!"

"Uncle Hafiz?" Acorna swiveled round, but the
courtyard and its occupants were now out of sight
and Pedir had pushed the speed bar as far forward
as it would go, kicking the skimmer into full
power.

"So, after all, Tapha told him you were here?
And there's Rafik trying to make a good impres-
sion on Uncle!" Gill gave a snort of exasperation.
"Where was that? And who's this?" He decided
these were safer topics than speculating about
Rafik's annoyance when he discovered that Hafiz
was here and might even know that his son had
been trying to kill his nephew. Or maybe that
wouldn't surprise him.

"This—" Acorna smiled proudly down at the
young girl who -was hugging her rescuer's waist in
a stranglehold, still chanting her litany, "she'll get
me/he'll get me" "—this is Khetala, who saved
Jana and so many of the children and guarded
them as best she could until Didi Badini took her

305

away. And we've taken her away from Didi

Badini!"

"That won't help now," Khetala blurted. "He's

after you and the Piper always kills those he's after."
"The Piper?" Pedir said, noticeably blanching.
"The Piper?" Acorna's tone held contempt and

^m

scorn.

"The Piper?" Gill asked, wanting to under-
stand the diverse reactions.

"He's the one who's supposed to be behind the
child bondage schemes here on Kezdet . . ."
Acorna began.

"He is," Pedir said in an awed tone, jiggling the
controls to get more speed out of the skimmer as
he aimed it toward the nearest congregation of
vehicles exactly like his.

"But we have Khetala now and she's safe with
me," Acorna said.

"I'm not sure I am," Gill said, and sucked his
bloody knuckles.

"Did you have a chance ... I mean ..." Pedir
floundered and craned his head around to look at
Acorna.

"Of course, I did. That was the bargain, wasn't
it?" Acorna said stoutly.

Gill decided that since Pedir seemed to care
what happened to the scarred girl, it might not be
tactful to mention that they had left her with a
knife through her shoulder and suspected her of
setting them up. Nadhari and Acorna seemed to
be working through the same thought processes,
for they were both silent on the trip back. For
Acorna, at least, that was unusual.

306

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

ficorna.

307

They reached Delszaki Li's home to discover that
the population had been augmented by one that
very morning, and a three-way fight was raging in
the entrance hall.

"Now what?" Pal demanded, taking in their
disheveled condition and the girl clutching Acorna
like a life-preserver. "Oh, never mind, don't tell
me. I've got enough trouble this morning already,
what with Mercy running out on her job."

"I'm Mrry, Pal," said the slender young woman
facing him. Her delicate yet firm features and the
thick braid of dark hair that hung down her back
reminded Gill of Judit, though this girl wasn't half
as pretty. Her dark eyes didn't flash like Judit's,
and she didn't have Judit's way of tilting her chin
up just before charging into battle. "I know you—
we—need the information I was getting from the
Guardians' office. But there wasn't going to be
much more information that way. Not through me.
Even Des Smirnoff noticed eventually that there
were too many people named Kendoro around
him. You and Judit haven't exactly been keeping a
low profile, you know. Smirnoff and Minkus
started being careful what they said around me last
week. Today I came in to find they'd changed the
passwords on all their files . . . and then I saw one
of those windowless skimmers from Interrogation
on the landing pad. I had to get out. I'm not brave
like you and Judit, you know that. If they took me
to Interrogation, I don't know what I might have
told them."

Surrounded by unknown people, Khetala
clung with bruising fingers to Acorna. She quietly
led the child away to the kitchen, hoping that the
probably unusual experience of having all she
wanted to eat would soothe and reassure her.

"Stop apologizing!" Calum snorted. He put one
arm round Mercy's shoulders, as if to hold her
upright. "I've heard about some of the methods
Interrogation uses. One jab of the needle and you
spill all, no matter how you try to keep from talk-
ing. I doubt I could stand up against them myself.
You did exactly the right thing—not just for your-
self, but for all of us—by getting out before they
could take you." He glared at Pal. "What were you
thinking of, to let the kid stay there at all after
they started suspecting her?"

"I had no reason to think she was under suspi-
cion," Pal said stiffly, "and the inside information
she has provided on Guardians of the Peace activi-
ties has been invaluable. She's warned three of our
field agents to get out before the Guardians could
break up the hedgerow schools they were running
for factory children and arrest our people."

"With that kind of record, even the Guardians
would have had to figure out there was a fly on
the office wall somewhere," Calum exclaimed.
"What was your plan: save the field agents and
sacrifice the local one?"

"There was no need for any suspicion to have
fallen on Mercy if she had been discreet," Pal said.

"Discreet? Didn't you listen to the girl? It was
her name, not her actions, that got her in trou-
ble," Calum said, blithely reversing his previous




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

308

argument. "If you two hadn't been taking Acorna
all over Kezdet to stir up trouble, maybe it
•wouldn't be so dangerous for her to be a Kendoro."
"Were you followed here. Mercy?" Pal asked,

ignoring Calum.

The girl shivered. "I don't know. I don't think
so. ... I used the old route, through East Celtalan,
and then the tunnels under the Riverwalk Park."

"Let's hope you haven't compromised it, then."

Calum snorted. "Pal, if the Guardians are
watching out for people named Kendoro, you can
be sure they've got a watch on this house. What
difference does it make whether Mercy was fol-
lowed? The house is already under surveillance.
But they're hardly likely to break into Delszaki
Li's private residence to get a girl who's committed
no crimes . . . are they?"

At this point Judit returned from her appoint-
ment with the head of Public Works and entered
the fray.

"Pal, leave Mercy alone!" Judit commanded.
"She's had the hardest job of any of us, and if she
says it was time for her to clear out, the least you
can do is trust her judgment."

Pal threw up his hands. "I give up! Two big sis-
ters in one household is more than any man should
be expected to take."

"Fine," Judit retorted, "next time you can go
and talk to the Public Works Department. Tumlm
Viggers is refusing to certify our base on Maganos
for colonization. He says it's an untried technology
and the architect needs to come to Kezdet to
explain his plans in person."

Acorna

309

"The architect happens to be dead!" Gill
exclaimed.

"Precisely. It's a stalling maneuver." Judit
frowned. "Usually that means they want more
bribes. But Viggers didn't hear any of Delszaki's
hints in that direction. Maybe he really doesn't
understand the base design. It is a radical depar-
ture from standard practice in some ways . . . and
Kezdets Public Works Department doesn't even
have any experience with standard space environ-
ment designs."

Delszaki Li had steered his hover-chair in
behind Judit and had been watching the argument
with quiet amusement.

"Perhaps would be wise for some people to go
to Maganos," he suggested. "Report, please, on
how lunar base construction progresses; demon-
strate success of habitat and ecological system."

"I'll go," Gill said. "Rafik may not be back for a
while, and heaven forbid we should tear Calum
away from his astronomical optimization pro-
grams." He looked at Acorna. "And ... I didn't
have a chance to tell you yet, but we spotted Hafiz
this morning. Three guesses what he'<f doing here!
I think Acorna had better come with me. That'll
keep her out of his way." Am) out of trouble, he
added silently to himself.

"I'll go with her," Pal said immediately. He shot
a dirty look at Mercy, who didn't notice. Her
attention was all on Calum, who was talking
quietly with her in a corner. "This house is entirely
too full of sisters."

"Judit," Delszaki Li said while Pal and Gill

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

310

started discussing how they would produce a con-
vincing report for Public Works, "I wish you
would accompany them."

"Why me? Not that I mind," Judit said hastily,
"but you need an assistant." She glanced at Gill.
For some reason the idea of studying a half-
completed lunar colony with Gill sounded as
attractive as a month-long holiday on the rainbow
beaches of Erev Ba.

"Also need someone with sense to keep these
children out of trouble," Li said, which made
Judit feel like the aging spinster governess in a
Victorian household. Or the maiden aunt. "As for
assistant. Mercy can take over in your absence.
Continue tradition of a Kendoro as my personal
assistant." He cackled under his breath. "You and
Pal need to get busy, produce next generation of
Kendoros before this old man -wears out all three
of this generation." His glance at Gill was full of
meaning.

Judit blushed and tried to think of some way
to disguise her eagerness to go.

"Seems hard on Pal," she murmured. "He's
going to Maganos to get away from his big sisters,
and now you're sending one of us along to keep
tabs on him."

Li cackled again. "I think maybe Pal has other
reason for wishing to go to Maganos." He looked
meaningfully at Pal, who was staring at Acorna
with an expression his loving older sister could
only categorize as goopy in the extreme. "Just
when I have an assistant who understands my
mind," he sighed with pretended disappointment,

311

"his gets bent in another direction. You will go to
Maganos, Judit," he said firmly, a little too soon
for Judit to be sure that his previous complaint
had been meant to apply only to Pal. "Mercy will
stay and take care of poor old man in his declining
years."

"If you're sure she can do it. . ." Judit began
doubtfully.

"You people don't appreciate Mercy!" Calum
reentered the conversation with a bang, still clasp-
ing Mercy's shoulders. "For years she's had the
hardest job of any of you, working undercover for
the Guardians of the Peace. Wasting her intelli-
gence on pretending to be a secretary and carrying
trays ofkava! It's criminal. Do you realize this girl
has an advanced degree in linear systems opti-
mization theory? She's coming down to the base-
ment now with me to see the programs I've
developed to search for Acorna's home world."

Li sighed as they left, but his dark eyes were
twinkling.

"At least is not etchings," he murmured, "but is
getting harder and harder to keep good help these
days!"

313




Brantley Geram, the subcontractor
in charge of building the living
quarters and life-support systems
for Maganos Moon Base, was only too happy to
have representatives of Delszaki Li coming to look
at the work in progress. He was in general a
happy man, working on Maganos in almost com-
plete autonomy, developing the last designs of the
legendary Martin Dehoney, and with the financial
backing of the Li consortium allowing him to
make sure that for once everything was done
exactly as it should be, no corners cut in construc-
tion processes and no inferior materials used.

This did not, he hastened to assure Pal and
Acorna, imply any extravagance. Quite the
reverse. Mr. Dehoney's plans were far-reaching,
ambitious, futuristic, perhaps, but not impractical
or extravagant.

"As you see, we started with minimal living
quarters, due to the expense of lifting shielding

materials into orbit. But as soon as the beneficiation
and reduction processors for the regolith were in
place, we -were able to expand significantly, using
the dust and by-products of reduction as our radia-
tion shield."

Acorna looked over the one large room he was
showing them.

"Is this all?" she asked.

"We will, of course, be able to expand the liv-
ing quarters even more as the processing of
regolith continues," Geram said, "but there's no
need for that at present. We have ample space for
the contractors and work crews here."

"You'll need more space," Acorna said. "How-
fast can you expand the quarters? We'll need dor-
mitories, schoolrooms — "

"Schoolrooms ? "

"Children may take up less space than adults,"
Acorna said, "but they must be educated. Or did
you think Delszaki Li had gone into the business
of exploiting child laborers like the rest of
Kezdet?"

Brantley Geram sputtered unintelligibly and
finally managed to convey that nobody had told
him anything about children.

"That's why Mr. Li wants all the machinery
designed for easy maintenance and operation by
people with little upper-body strength," Pal told
him. "But I suppose you weren't involved with the
mining machinery contract."

"No," Brantley said, with a regretful glance
down the tunnel leading to the processing section
of the base.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

314

315

Gill had disappeared almost immediately upon
arrival to Inspect the technical -workings, taking Mr.
Li's other assistant—strange how all of Li's assistants
seemed to be named Kendoro—along with him and
reducing Brantley's audience to two. The funny-
looking girl didn't even seem to be interested in the
technical obstacles they had overcome to get this
much of the lunar base operational in such a short
time. Women! Let them into a place and they were
mentally hanging curtains and planting flowers
before you even had a decent oxygen-nitrogen bal-
ance established.

"And don't start turning the "whole space into
communal living quarters," young Kendoro added
to the girl. "Remember, we'll have adults here, too,
and they'll want some privacy. Make sure there
are some shielded bedrooms for staff."

Young men, Brantley thought, were even
worse than women. All they thought about was
bedrooms. Too bad that middle-aged miner, Gill
something, hadn't stayed to inspect the base living
quarters. He had looked like a sensible man.

"Privacy is necessarily a low priority in this
phase of the project," he said. "Later on, when the
miners start excavating below the regolith, the
tunnels should provide enough living space to sat-
isfy everyone's needs. In fact, it will be quite luxu-
rious. With solar power from the hyper-mirrors
that we're now constructing, we will have abun-
dant energy. And by incorporating Mr. Nadezda's
suggestion of capturing a cometary asteroid for its
ice core, we will be able to maintain a large base of
water which can be passed through a swimming

pool, a series of decorative ponds, and the hydro-
ponics facility before it is purified for reuse."

"Excellent," Acorna said. "You're quite right,
privacy isn't important now. We need to provide a
safe habitat for as many children as possible. We
can wait as long as necessary for the luxuries."

Pal sighed. "I'm -willing to -wait as long as I
have to," he said.

Acorna, of course, didn't notice his double
meaning. At the moment, she was so entranced
with the vision of refuge for Kezdet's children that
he wasn't sure she had even noticed his presence.
Well, he could only keep trying . . . and waiting.

"Perhaps you'd like to view the hydroponics
section," Brantley suggested, trying to regain the
attention of his wandering audience. "Maintaining
an even ecological balance is, of course, the other
limiting factor in our expansion, as well as the
need for shielded quarters. We could import food,
but in the long run it's better to grow it here; if
enough plants are grown to provide food, they will
automatically meet the oxygen demands of the
people. That means approximately three hundred
square meters of growing area per person, and a
photosynthesis energy requirement of thirty kilo-
watts per person. If we increase the demand for
oxygen faster than we build up the 'ponies, the
whole ecosystem will go out of balance and we'll
have serious problems. Same thing if we expand
the growing area significantly beyond the needs of
present personnel. Balance is the key to success in
any closed ecological system," he said earnestly.

"Mmm," said Acorna as they ducked through the




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

316

low tunnel to reach the hydroponics area. No space
•wasted here! She and Pal had to crouch to make it
through; it was a relief to stand up in the spacious
dome allocated to hydroponics, with its moist atmo-
sphere and reflected solar light. She sniffed the air.
"You have a little problem with excess nitrogen."

"Why, yes," Brantley said, surprised. How had
the girl managed to read the gauges from all the
way across the dome? "We're increasing the num-
ber of soybean tanks; they're our principal nitrogen-
fixing legumes. Later we'll add peanuts, too, for a
more varied diet."

"Good. That should take care of it. It's a little
much for me to manage on my own," Acorna said.

Brantley shook his head. "On her own"?
Something about this conversation . . . These peo-
ple seemed to be speaking Basic, but some of the
things they said made no sense at all.

While he was trying to regain his momentum,
Acorna plucked a leaf of chard from the nearest
tank and chewed it daintily, a thoughtful expres-
sion on her face.

"Needs potassium," she said. "Better check
your mix."

"I'd do it if I were you," Pal said cheerfully at
the blank look on Brantley's face. "She has great
intuition about these particular things ... no intu-
ition whatever about some others, though, so it
balances out."

"What do you mean, no intuition?" Acorna

demanded

Great. She might be annoyed with him, but at

least it was attention. Pal grinned.

Acorna

317

"Don't you ever think about the future?"

Brantley Geram sidled off to activate the water
testers. It would take a few minutes to verify that
the girl had been talking off the top of her head
when she claimed the 'ponies tanks were low on
potassium-, but the satisfaction would be worth it.
He knew this system; he'd built it, he maintained
it. No pretty girl could do a better job than his
AI-driven automatic ingredient-balancing system!

"Of course I think about the future," Acorna
snapped at Pal. "That's practically all I think
about—how many children can we house up here,
and how soon we can start bringing them up."

"I meant your personal future," Pal said
patiently.

"Calum is "working on that."

"Finding your home? Yes, but that's not all
there is."

Acorna's pupils narrowed to vertical slits.
"Without other people like me," she said, "I have
no personal future."

"That," said Pal, "is what I mean about your
impaired intuition, Acorna. There are other people
like you right here and you never even noticed.
Don't we want the same things? Don't we care
about the same things? Do I have to grow white
fur on my legs before you'll notice me? Or is all
your love reserved for small, helpless people?
Maybe I should break my leg. Would you notice
me,then?"

"I would not recommend that," Acorna said. "I
do not know if I can heal broken bones." They had
already discovered some limitations to her healing

318

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

319

power, Delszaki Li's nerve paralysis "was too far
advanced for her to do more than relieve some of
his minor symptoms.

Pal threw up his hands. "You're impossible!
You're deliberately missing the point!"

Acorna took his hand. "Had it occurred to
you," she said softly, "that maybe this particular
point had better be missed? "

"No, it hadn't, and I don't see why," Pal said.

Acorna took a deep breath.

"Pal. We don't know anything at all about my
genus. Your people take twenty years to reach
physical maturity; I've done it in four. For all we
know, I could be old in another four years."

"I don't care," Pal interrupted her. "And even if
it were so, is that any reason for not living now?"

"We don't even know if our species are inter-

fertile."

"I'd be willing to run some tests. We wouldn't
even need a laboratory—" Pal smiled "—and I'd
be happy to repeat the experiment over and over."

"Don't you want children?"

"Dear lady of my heart," Pal said, "we're going
to have children. Several hundred of them, for

starters!"

As he checked the results of the water test with
unbelieving eyes, Brantley Geram heard them
laughing and thought they must have been run-
ning their own tests on the tank mix. Okay, so the
girl had been right: potassium levels -were down. A
lucky guess, that was all. A lucky guess.

Ed Minkus took the call which came into the
Guardians of the Peace offices. When he realized
the origin of the call, he covered the mouthpiece
and hissed across the room at Des Smirnoff.

"We've got the inspector on our neck. Over
that dock shooting. The grieving parent is on his
way here and we have to prove it wasn't our negli-
gence that caused his death."

"Negligence? Negligence?" Des said, bluster-
ing because any call from the inspector was
startling—and dangerous. One day the man was
going to figure out just how little he knew about
this department. When he started taking an inter-
est in things, there would be an awful lot of
"things" that would need to be rapidly "lost."

"Yes, sir, we certainly will, sir. All the files
ready and the tri-d documentation of the ... ah ...
regrettable incident," Des was saying, almost
falling into the phone to project earnest, and inno-
cent, sincerity. "Yes, yes. I got the name: Hafiz
Harakamian." He put the unit down as if it car-
ried skin-eating plague.

"Harakamian the father is coming here?" From
his surfing of the trade nets the name was instantly
familiar to Smirnotf, and suddenly he realized who
the man known as "Farkas Hamisen," with his
connection to Rafik Nadezda, must really have
been. The planet seemed to grow aliases the way
some people grew . . . ears. "Did we save the files?
I thought we gave the stuff to Nadezda?"

"He got copies, but our files sure show the
tungsten bomb, and that'll save our liver and
lights."




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

320

Smirnoff glowered at his subordinate. "You

hope!"

Then the door to their office swung open and
in came their new clerk, Cowdy, a very shapely
young woman, herded inside, back first, by the
prodding finger of the man who -was barging in

without proper introduction.

"How many times must I tell—" Smirnoff
switched gears the moment he saw their visitor, who
was unctuously backing Cowdy into the room. "Oh,
sir, we didn't expect you so quickly," and he rose, as
gracious as if he had never started to ream his
underling out of her tights. "May I, and my partner,
express our deep sympathy and regret for the unfor-
tunate way in which your son met his end?"

"I want to <>ee the records," Hafiz Harakamian
said in an absolutely expressionless voice, taking a
seat at the vid-screen and looking from it to

Smirnoff expectantly.

Minkus nearly fell over his own feet and
Smirnoff's to key up the necessary file. And there
it was: the perp's unswerving progress toward a
certain ship, the scanners' discovery of the tung-
sten bomb, their race to intercept him, and then
their neat skewering of him with stunner shots.
Then the all-important close-up of Des defusing

the tungsten bomb.

"He couldn't have been that stupid," Hafiz was
heard to mutter, at which point both Minkus and

Smirnoff began to relax.

"You see, Honorable Harakamian, how little

option there was! For that device to have been
planted . . ." Smirnoff shrugged eloquently.

Acorna. 321

"Yes, I see." He rose from the desk and turned
with a very cold and distant expression to face
them. "I have come to collect his remains."

"There were none. He was cremated," Ed
blurted out.

"Cremated? You donkey! You horse's ass, you
camel's slime spit..."

"Rafik said that was the way — "

"Rafik?" Hafiz lowered the arm with which he
was dramatically gesturing. "Rafik here?" Relief
flooded his features. "Then it was done as the
Prophets have ordained?"

"Of course. How could you doubt our effi-
ciency in such a detail?" Smirnoff said. "And, of
course, we had Nadezda to direct the ceremonies.
But, he is on his way to you. He felt it only neces-
sary."

Hafiz's expression altered and he regarded
Smirnoflf as one would camel's green cud on formal
attire. "So the bomb was meant for my nephew!"

"It was?" Ed Minkus looked innocently at the
Honorable Harakamian.

"There was bad blood between them, that is
true," Harakamian said, dropping his head as if in
deep sorrow. Then, tilting his head a trifle, he
asked, "I don't suppose you would know where
the ward of my nephew would be? On the ship
with him, returning my son's ceremonially blessed
ashes?"

"No, he went by himself. The others are still at
Mr. Li's," Ed replied, and managed a sickly grin as
Smirnoff's expression told him he should probably
have reserved that information for a price.




322

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

323

"Not Mr. Delszaki Li?" Hafiz exclaimed.

"The very man," Smirnotf replied.

"Thank you. And good day," Hafiz said, and
made as speedy a departure as his arrival.

"You stupid twit! You ninny-hammered log-
head! You anvil-pated numskull. Have you any
idea how much that information would have
meant in good House Harakamian credits? And
you gave it to him?"

Ed Minkus drooped. It would take him a long
time to get over that.

It did not, however, take Hafiz Harakamian very
long to reach the house of Mr. Delszaki Li. And
there he sat, observing who came and went. When
the skimmer pilot seemed restless, Hafiz reminded
him that he had agreed to the hire of his vehicle
and if he, Hafiz, wished to spend all day across
from the house of Mr. Li, the meter was ticking
and what difference did it make to what the vehi-
cle did with its time?

"Who was you looking to find?" the driver
asked. "Lotsa people go in and out of that house."

"Well, why not?" Hafiz said to himself. "Would
you have noticed a female with silver hair and ..."

The driver swung to face his client, his eyes
wide with surprise. "How wouldja know anything
about the Lady of the Lights? I only picked you
up at the spaceport."

"Lady of the Lights? My sweet little Acorna
has achieved the distinction of a title?" Hafiz said.

"You better believe it. Cured my sister of a

birthmark which uglified her to the point no
decent man would look at one so cursed. And,
without the stain, she's not that bad lookin'." The
transformation seemed to have surprised the
driver.

Hafiz sighed. He had thought it might be easy
to smuggle her back to his ship and away. But if
she had achieved this sort of adoring notoriety, the
odds had turned astronomical. The Didi had sug-
gested that the girl had acquired unusual protec-
tors.

"Anyway," the driver went on, all affability
now, "she ain't here. She and the big red-beard
and the littler guy went off to Maganos two days
ago. To see the moon installation. But they're goin'
to have trouble with that," he added, frowning.

"Oh?" Hafiz said encouragingly.

"Yeah, only they haven't figgered it out yet. If
I'd of been the one to take them to the spaceport,
instead of a House Li pilot, I'd of told them a thing
or two." He laid an oily, broken-nailed finger
along the side of his nose and winked at Hafiz.
"You wanna know anything around here, you ask
drivers. They hear a lot even if they do sit up
front, pretending they're deef."

"Do tell," Hafiz said, making a paper plane out
of a large denomination credit note which, with a
practiced flick of his wrist, lofted over the parti-
tion, where it flew straight into the driver's quick
hand.

"That I can, because we're all wantin' the Lady
Epona to get the better of the Child Bonders and
clean up Kezdet's reputation. Why, just the other




324 -—'             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

day, there was some kinda fanatic trying to blow

up the docks with a bomb!"

"Really! Is there some place nearby •where a
man like yourself and I might have a quiet meal

and discreet conversation?"

The driver revved the engine of the skimmer in

answer. "Know the very place!"

Judit listened politely. Gill with growing enthusi-
asm, to the mining subcontractor's description of
the simple three-drum drag scraper which was
already in operation as they tested feasibility of
Dehoney's first-stage designs.

"This is one of DPWs stated objections to the
Maganos proposal," Judit told Gill and the sub-
contractor. "They say the drag scraper is an out-
dated twentieth-century technology."

Provola Quero, the subcontractor, sneered.
"They should talk! Kezdet's mines aren't just out-
dated, they're medieval! Besides, haven't they ever
heard of the saying, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'?"
She jammed both hands deep into the pockets of
her coveralls and paced to the next viewing win-
dow, talking nonstop. "The scraper i) outdated for
planetary use; it's inefficient and inflexible. And it's
not worth setting up for quick in-and-out asteroid
jobs. But as a starter system for Maganos, it is
ideal. It's simple, rugged, and required very low
mass to be lifted up here. When we scale up, of
course, we'll replace this with more efficient, high-
volume methods . . . using equipment fabricated
right here on Maganos, in the pressurized repair

325

shop we have already set up to deal with scraper
repairs and working with the high-purity struc-
tural metals we reduce from the first batches of
lunar regolith. Dehoney planned this operation to
bootstrap itself from the git-go. He always said that
the whole point of lunar industrialization was to do
what you couQn 't do dirtside, not to throw away
credits lifting machinery designed for gravity and
atmosphere into orbit and then fixing the inevitable
problems."

Gill's eyes lit up. "You knew Dehoney person-
ally?"

"Studied with him for five years," Provola said,
running a hand through her yellow crewcut.
"Helped assemble the designs for his prize-
winning solar greenhouse habitat." She tapped the
stud in her nose, which Gill now recognized as a
miniature version of the space-station icon that
was the famed Andromeda Prize, worked in black
enamel and diamonds. "/ plan to be the next
Andromeda prizewinner," she added, "and
Maganos is going to do it. Just tell me what you
need to make DPW happy, and I'll bury them in
documentation proving the worth of Dehoney's
plans . . . and my implementation."

She and Gill moved happily into a discussion
of duty cycles, component replacement, and mod-
ular design, -while Judit stared out the viewport at
the monotonous drag, scrape, lift of the cable-
driven machinery. She didn't need to follow? the
engineering discussion in detail to be reassured
that both Gill and Provola knew what they were
talking about; years of working with Amalgamated




326

Acorna                              327

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

had given her a sixth sense for which engineers
knew their field and -which ones were shooting out
clouds of technical terminology to disguise their
incompetence and laziness. Gill and Provola
Quero were both in the first class. If they were
satisfied that this three-drum whatsit was the best
way to initiate lunar mining on Maganos, she had

no doubt they were right.

What she did doubt—very seriously—was the
usefulness of any engineering argument to con-
vince Tumim Viggers of the Public Works
Department. Accustomed to reading nuances of
speech and slight gestures of body language in
order to survive with Amalgamated, Judit had
picked up far more from that brief, inconclusive
meeting than diggers had actually dau). The man
•wasn't really concerned about the technical speci-
fications for Maganos; he'd thrown out those
objections almost casually, as if he were only play-
ing for time. More disturbing, he had evinced no
interest in Delszaki Li's hinted bribes either. When
a Kezdet bureaucrat didn't take a bribe, you knew

you were in real trouble.

She tried listening more carefully to the techni-
cal argument, to take her mind off what she sus-
pected were their more dangerous political
problems. Gill was querying the need for the
large-scale pressurized repair shop. It had been
relatively low on Dehoney's original list of priori-
ties; why had Provola chosen to make it the first

major construction?

"Because -we need it now, and we're going to
need it more every day!" Provola tugged at the

one long braid dangling at the side of her short,
bristly haircut. "Sure, some of this work can be
done suited and on the surface, but why should
we? Give me one good reason for rewinding an
electric motor in a vacuum! You've worked aster-
oids; you should know that dust is the worst prob-
lem oflow-g, low-atmosphere environments." Even
you, her contemptuous tone implied.

"We managed our repairs on the ship," Gill
said.

"You," Provola flashed back, "had to be
portable. We don't. We're going to need an indus-
trial-sized shop soon enough to fabricate the next
generation of mining machinery, so why not build
it now and save the cost of expanding later? "

Gill put up his hands to register capitulation.
"All right, all right," he said pacifically. "You're
right; I'm used to small, quick operations, not to
permanent base construction. I wouldn't mind
learning, though."

Provola gave him a sudden, flashing smile. "And
/," she admitted, "have more theoretical than practi-
cal experience. Are you going to hire on to the
Maganos project? We'd make a good team . . .
unless you have problems with a woman supervi-

n „

?"

sor

"I like women," Gill said.

"That doesn't answer the question. I wasn't
asking what you like to do with your hands when
you're off duty."

Gill reached out for Judit and pulled her close
to him. "My hands, and my off duty, are already
committed, lady," he said, "and I wouldn't object to




328

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

329

working for any student of Martin Dehoney's ... if
that answers your question. Unfortunately, I'm not

free to stay on Maganos."

"Why not?" Judit cried. She had just begun
spinning a picture of how pleasant their life here
could be. Delszaki Li had already shown her plans
of the private living quarters he intended to allo-
cate to the woman in charge of welfare and educa-
tion for the rescued children and had hinted
strongly that he would like her to be that woman.
If Gill took a job on the mining side of the project,
he could share those quarters . . . and he loved
children. There couldn't be a better man to restore
the children's faith after the horrendous experi-
ences some of them had been through.

But, of course, he hadn't actually dale) he
wanted to stay -with her. He had only been putting
an arm round her at every opportunity, and want-
ing her to go with him wherever he went, and . . .
Judit swallowed her disappointment.

"Can't ditch my buddies," Gill said. "We've
always been a team, the three of us. Calum and
Rafik need somebody with some muscle to do the
heavy jobs, and somebody with some common
sense to get them out of the crazy complications
they're always getting into. I'd be a real jerk if I
asked them to buy out my third of the Uhuru just
because I'm a little older than they are and feel like
settling down in a cushy construction job." The
words were directed at Provola Quero, but his blue
eyes -were on Judit, begging her to understand.

She swallowed again and nodded slowly. Of
course he wouldn't break up the partnership. She

should have understood that was why he never said
anything about the future, even when he was most
enthusiastically demonstrating his desire for her
company in the present. "I wouldn't want a real jerk
to ... work on the project," she said in a small voice.
"But perhaps you'll visit occasionally."

"As often as I can arrange it," Gill said, a wistful
look on his broad face. "Oftener."

It was cold comfort, but it was better than noth-
ing, Judit told herself. Anyway, what did she have
to complain about? She had been incredibly lucky
in her life so far. And now, at only twenty-eight, she
was being offered the chance to do what she loved
most: working with children, designing their educa-
tion, overseeing their welfare, and healing the invis-
ible wounds that she herself knew all too well. It
would be asking too much for the fates to throw in
a fortyish, broad-shouldered, red-bearded Viking
throwback as a life's companion in that work.

Hafiz Harakamian found the skimmer driver an
invaluable source of information. Not only did he
know the day on which Acorna was due to return
from Maganos, he claimed to know the very hour of
her return. But he also warned Hafiz that waiting
for her at the shuttle port would not be a good idea.

"Too many folks wants to see our little Lady of
the Lights, now that word's getting out about her,"
he warned. "Goin' to be a crowd at the port. If she
comes out in it, you'll never get to her; if she's smart
and gets Security to let her take a back exit, you'll
miss her like the rest of 'em."




330

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

331

He suggested that he bring Hafiz back to the Li
residence at the exact time -when Acorna was
scheduled to return.

"I have always preferred to be in place well
before anybody else is expected," Hafiz said with
the firmness of a man who had survived the
thirty-year Harakamian—Batsu feud and had
negotiated a partitioning of the planetary business
without, like the two elder Harakamians, losing his
head . . . literally. "We will take our position out-
side the Li mansion two standard hours before the

arrival."

At the time, this had seemed like an excellent
idea. Before the two-hour safely margin was even
one-third past, though, Hafiz Harakamian recog-
nized that his tactical instincts had been impaired
by too many years in the tropical clime of his home
planet. Nobody had mentioned to him that Kezdet's
rainy season was about to begin. Or that the rainy
season was accompanied by a biting cold wind from
the northern mountains. And, since it had been
warm and sunny until this morning, he hadn't
noticed that this particular skimmer had a leak in
the roof and allowed an irritating draft to whistle
through from one ill-fitting window to the next. He
shifted his position so that the worst of the drip
would fall on the driver and told himself philosoph-
ically that it was always a mistake to rely on hired
equipment and staff, he should have brought his
own people and transportation. But after the way
young Rafik had cheated him over the unicorn girl,
he had rather wanted to pull off this coup single-
handed—the way he'd done in the old days, before

he became head of House Harakamian. Just to let
Rafik see that the old man wasn't past it yet.

The iron-studded front doors of the Li residence
swung open, revealing the fantasy of thin-sliced,
colorful Illic self-lighting crystals that illuminated
the inner doors. Hafiz admired the play of lights
and colors while at the same time registering that no
other skimmer had pulled up; somebody was com-
ing out, not going in. No need to do anything except
slump down in his seat and be inconspicuous. . . .

A light tapping on the window beside him was
the end of that notion. When he pushed a button to
make the glass sound-permeable, it stuck. Cheap,
rented equipment! He had to physically open the
window. A fine cold rain slanted in, accompanied
by a yellow hand holding a holo-card.

"Mr. Li sends his compliments," said the ser-
vant, who, Hafiz noted irritably, was protected by a
rainshield extending at least a foot around his body,
"and suggests that the head of House Harakamian
might be more comfortable keeping him under
surveillance from iiu'u)e the house."

At least Delszaki Li knew how things should be
done between equals. It would probably be insult-
ing to hint that the sudden disappearance of Hafiz
Harakamian would cause untoward repercussions
upon several branches of the Li consortium. Hafiz
insulted the servant anyway, and received a grace-
ful reassurance that this was merely a social invita-
tion, nothing more. Of course, the man would have
said that anyway. . . . Hafiz grunted agreement and
climbed stiffly out of the rented skimmer.

"Wait here," he told the driver.




332

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

333

He could perfectly well have called up another
and better-quality skimmer when he was ready to
leave, but after the miserable hour he'd just spent, it
suited him to think of the skimmer driver sitting
and shivering in his drafty vehicle. Besides, in deli-
cate business negotiations, there was always the
possibility that one might have to depart in haste,
omitting the usual polite formalities of leave-taking.

The servant extended his personal shield to
cover Hafiz on the short walk across the street.
Once inside the double doors of iron and crystal, he
was invited to hand over his lightly sprinkled tur-
ban and outer robe for drying while he took kava
with Delszaki Li.

The head of the Li consortium was older than
Hafiz had expected, considering the energy with
which he directed the galaxy-wide network of the
varied Li manufacturing and financial interests. He
looked -with interest at the shriveled, yellow-faced
man in a hover-chair, a blanket covering the wasted
body whose absolute immobility betrayed his grow-
ing paralysis, only the snapping black eyes still
showing the life that burned brightly inside. The
man was older than Hafiz by a generation or
more, older than any living member of House
Harakamian. Hafiz's sense of danger went up a
notch. Unlike some people, followers of the Three
Prophets knew better than to underestimate the
aged. In his long and successful life, Delszaki Li
had undoubtedly used, analyzed, and countered
every trick Hafiz knew, and then some.

While they sipped the first small cups of hot, fra-
grant kava and murmured conversational nothings

at one another, Hafiz felt his brain working furi-
ously. There was no point in clinging to his first
plan of snatching Acorna, claiming she was his wife
by the Books of the Prophets, and removing her
from Kezdet while the Guardians of the Peace were
still asking the religious courts for a ruling. Not
only had he lost the advantage of surprise, but he
doubted his ability to fool Delszaki Li as easily as
one could fool or bribe the Guardians. A straight-
forward, honest approach was more likely to be
successful . . . that is, a reasonably straightforward
and honest approach. His ancestors would recon-
stitute their corporeal substances if he let down
House Harakamian by laying all his cards on the
table at once.

After the necessary exchange of condolences
from Li on the loss of Tapha and apologies from
Hafiz for the boy's idiotic behavior, he made his
first oblique approach.

"Regrettable though the death of my son may
be," said Hafiz, reflecting on the matter with little
internal regret whatsoever, "it is -written in the
Book of the Second Prophet, 'When you embrace
your wife or child, be aware that it is a human being
you are embracing; then should they die, you will
not be unreasonably grieved.' As is enjoined upon
me by my faith, therefore, I have put aside care for
the dead and am now concerned tor the living.
Before his death, Tapha informed me that my
nephew, Rafik, had brought to this planet my
young ward, Acorna, a child whom he kidnapped
from my home last year. These rash young men!"
Hafiz sighed with a conspiratorial smile at Li.




334

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"They will be the death of us with their escapades
and exploits,-will they not?"

"On contrary," said Li, his black eyes twinkling,
"I find escapades of young people most rejuvenat-
ing force in this ancient life. But Rafik has brought
no child named Acorna here."

"Perhaps he changed her name," Hafiz sug-
gested. "She is unmistakable—a rarity, deformed,
some would say, but in a most attractive way. Tall
and slender, with silver hair and a small horn in the
middle other forehead."

Li's face creased into a smile and Hafiz let out
the breath he had not been aware of holding. Thank
the Prophet, the old man was going to admit
Acorna's presence!

"Ah, you are speaking of the one our people of
Kezdet call the Lady of Lights. But she is not a
child. She is a mature woman and no man's ward."

"That's impossible!" Hafiz protested. "I tell you,
I saw the child less than two standard years ago.
She seemed to be about six, then — I mean, she w(U
six," he corrected himself firmly, remembering that
she was supposed to be his ward and that he would
be expected to know? her exact age. "Even on
Kezdet, are children of seven considered adults?"

"Ah. There is concept of chronological age, and
there is concept of developmental age," Li said
serenely. "The one whom I know as Acorna is most
assuredly a grown woman. Allow me to show you."

For a wild moment Hafiz thought that Acorna
had been smuggled into the house by a back way and
that Li was actually going to have her brought in;

then the holo-paintings on the far wall dimmed, to be

Acorna

335

replaced by obviously home-made vids. The image of
a graceful, six-foot-tall Acorna moved, life-sized,
across the wall, plucking flowers in a walled garden,
playing with a toddler, gracefully lifting a long, full
skirt to run up a flight of golden limestone stairs.

"Perhaps," Li suggested, eyes twinkling at the
astounded expression on Haftzs face, "is not the
one you know as Acorna? Perhaps is coincidence of
name and appearance?"

"Impossible," Hafiz said. "There can't be two
like that."

Nor could she possibly have grown so fast. The
vids must be some trickery. He decided to forget the
argument about Acorna's age and press on to his sec-
ond point. He had the skimmer driver to thank for
the gossip that gave him this additional argument.

"It was most irresponsible of my nephew to
bring her to this superstition-riddled place," he
said, "and I shall speak severely to Rafik when I
see him. She is in danger from hired assassins,
some possibly actually in government pay. It is my
duty to take her back to a place where she will be

kept safe, loved, and cherished as the unique being

she is."

"Perhaps is not wishing to be 'safe, loved, and
cherished' in museum of rarities." Li smiled.
"Perhaps prefers danger and important -work which
only she can do."

Hafiz took a deep breath and counted to thir-
teen slowly. It would be most impolitic to accuse his
host of talking nonsense. But what important -work
could a child like that be doing? This was just
another lie to delay him, like those faked vids.

336

AlMNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

337

He had only reached ten when the door burst
open and a short, fair-haired young man burst in.

"Delszaki, I think we've got it!" he exclaimed.
"Probabilities on this latest run show a ninety per-
cent chance that it's somewhere in the Coma
Berenices area—" He halted and stared at Hafiz
with an expression of horror-struck recognition.
"Ah, that is, never mind, I'll come back later. ..."

"Please." Li stopped him with a single word.
"Do be seated. I feel sure that Mr. Harakamian will
be as interested as I in the results of your research."

The young man bowed and tried to surrepti-
tiously brush the crumbs off his wrinkled coveralls.
His eyes were red-rimmed, as though he'd been
working "without sleep for several nights.

"Delszaki," he said, "I don't think you under-
stand. This guy tried to kidnap Acorna once

already."

"Excuse me," Hafiz said, "I do not believe I have
the honor of your acquaintance."

"Calum Baird," the young man said. He wasn't
so young, now that Hafiz looked at him closely: late
thirties, perhaps. It was the awkwardness and the
exuberance that had misled Hafiz. "And -we have
met... at your home on Laboue . . . although you
may not recognize me. I was Rafik's senior 'wife,'"
he said with a demure smile. "The ugly one."

Hafiz burst into uninhibited laughter. "That ras-
cal, how he has tricked me again and again! Truly a
worthy successor to House Harakamian! How did
he persuade you to put on a hijab? You do not look
like the sort of man who takes a secret delight in
putting on women's clothing . . . although appear-


ances can be deceiving. / certainly was deceived."

"Rafik talked me into it," Calum said. "Rafik, as
you may have noticed, can talk anyone into almost
anything."

"Of course he can," Hafiz nodded. "He is my
nephew, after all. The Harakamian strain runs true
in him, at least." Tapha, on the other hand . . . Oh,
well, Tapha was no longer a factor. "But I interrupt.
You wished to tell Mr. Li something?"

An almost imperceptible nod from Delszaki Li
reassured Calum that it was indeed all right to go
ahead.

"I think we've pinpointed Acorna's home
world, sir. Once I normalized the astronomical
data bases ..."

"Home world?" Hafiz interrupted in spite of
himself.

"Yes. Where her people come from. Of course,
she wants to get back to her own race," Calum said.

"Her own race? But I thought..."

"That she was human?" Calum shook his head.
"No way. We don't know much about her back-
ground, but the pod she was found in shows that
she comes from an advanced space-faring race with
technology far beyond our own in some ways."

"The pod she was found in," Hafiz repeated. He
seemed to be reduced to repeating phrases all the
time. He didn't like the feeling that everything was
shifting and changing under his feet. "You mean
there are others like her?"

"I doubt," Calum said, "that it would be possible
to sustain a high-tech, space-faring civilization with
a population of less than, say, several million at the




338

Acorna                               339

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

absolute lowest estimate. The need for specializa-
tion alone would preclude any smaller grouping."

"Several million." By the Three Prophets, he was
repeating himself! Hafiz pulled himself together.
"You could have told me this before," he said
severely. "It might have saved us all a lot of trouble."

"I didn't know where her planet was until this
morning," Calum protested. "Where it probably is,
I mean. There's only one way to be sure. Someone

will have to go and see. ..."

The look of naked longing on his face surprised
Hafiz, but he did not have time to consider what it
might mean. Another person had entered, as uncer-
emoniously as Calum.

"I might have known you'd be here," Rafik
snarled at his uncle as he barged into the room. "I
turned around as soon as I heard a Harakamian
ship had applied for clearance into Kezdet space. It
didn't take you long to track down where Acorna
was staying, did it? Well, it won't work! She's not
here, and you're not getting her back to add to your

museum!"

"I am delighted to see you, too, my beloved

nephew," Hafiz said urbanely. "As for the matter of
Acorna . . . perhaps -we can come to some arrange-
ment that will be satisfactory to both of us."

"Tapha's ashes?"
"Better a live nephew than a dead son," said

Hafiz with his benign smile.

Rafik's whole body tensed slightly. "Well, then.
I was going to give them back to you anyway, you
know. And the cremation was performed according
to the orthodox rituals."

"I know that," Hafiz said "Just as I know that
you have not really let that Neo-Hadithian non-
sense rot your brain and supplant your decent reli-
gious upbringing."

"How ..." Rafik croaked.

Hafiz smiled and gestured at Calum.

"Well, now, boy. You would hardly be letting
your senior 'wife' run around without a hijab if you
were truly a Neo-Hadithian, would you? I must
admit, you completely took me in at the time," he
went on. He felt he could afford a little generosity,
since Rafik was so completely off balance. It would
soften the boy up for the final agreement. "But I
hold no grudge. You have shown me that you have
the true Harakamian mentality."

As Rafik only goggled at him, Hafiz continued,
looking away from the boy so that his words would
not seem too pointed.

"Having lost my only son, I am in need of an
heir. A worthy heir," he emphasized, "one of my
own blood, one almost as clever as I am myself.
Such a one would, of course, have to be trained in
the complex affairs of the House. Training him
would be very nearly a full-time occupation for me.
I suspect I would have very little time left to pursue
my hobby of collecting . . . rarities."

Rafik gulped audibly. "I am committed to finish-
ing the Maganos Moon Base project," he said at
last.

"House Harakamian honors its commitments,"
Hafiz said.

"My partnership with Calum and Gill— "

"Is it a lifetime contract?"




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

340

"It's not a formal contract at all," Rafik said. "It
just, well, things just worked out well for the three

of us together."

"Perhaps," Hafiz suggested, placing each word as
delicately as a surgeon cutting out overgrown flesh,
"it is now time for the three of you to work apart."

Rafik glanced at his partner. "Calum?"

"Actually," Calum said, "I wouQ rather like to go
check out my findings on Acorna's home planet
myself."

"Gill. . ."

"If Gill can be compensated for loss of partner-
ship," Delszaki Li said, "is offer of Mr. Harakamian
acceptable to you?"

Rafik looked sternly at his uncle. "You'll leave

Acorna alone?"

"I will swear on the Three Books," Hafiz said.
"Well, then." All the tension seemed to drain out
of Rafik s slender body. "If it suits you ... I, too, will
swear on the Three Books to return to Laboue for
training in the ways of House Harakamian—as
soon as I have completed Maganos Moon Base . ..
if you will compensate my partners appropriately."

After some formal haggling, they agreed that
Hafiz Harakamian would buy out Rafik's and
Calum's shares in the Uhuru from Gill and would
provide Calum -with a subspace-equipped scout
ship from the Harakamian fleet for his search.
Rafik and Calum left, limp with exhaustion from
the bargaining session, to revive their energies with
something stronger than kava, while Hafiz and
Delszaki relaxed with the satisfaction of old men
who have seen matters properly arranged.

Stcorna

341

As soon as they were well out of earshot, Rafik
began chuckling to himself.

"Uncle Hafiz drives a hard bargain ... he
thinks! But if you're really okay with breaking up
the partnership, Calum ..."

"I've been dying to get out to the Comes
Berenices and check my results in person," Calum
said, "but I didn't like to say anything to you and
Gill. Anyway, we're getting a bit old for this aster-
oid-hopping life. Gill, too. I think he's about ready
to retire into a planetside Job . . . especially if it's a
planet Judit Kendoro is on!"

"And I," Rafik said with satisfaction, "have dis-
covered considerable talent for trading during the
process of setting up Maganos on a commercial
basis. I had already been thinking what fun it would
be to have the Harakamian assets to play with.
We'll go on letting Uncle Hafiz think he's driven a
sharp bargain, though. It makes the old man
happy."

Meanwhile, Delszaki Li and Hafiz Harakamian
were enjoying their own interpretation of the bar-
gain over their third cups of kava.

"My nephew is sharp," Hafiz chuckled, "sharp
enough to cut himself. If he had not been in such a
hurry to extract a promise from me, he would have
seen what I think you had already noticed."

Li's face crinkled. "That you had no more inter-
est in Acorna, now that she is believed not to be
unique after all?"

Hafiz nodded. "When this Calum finds her
home—and he strikes me as the sort of obsessed
fanatic who will not rest until he has solved the

342

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

problem—unicorn people will be as common as
Neo-Hadithians. What a fool I should have looked,
collecting and announcing one as a rarity, when
shortly thereafter they would be walking the streets
everywhere. But it is well as it ends. I have an heir
of the blood to carry on the affairs of my house, and
young Rafik has a settled position in life. I keep
thinking of him as a boy, but he's not getting any
younger, you know."

"None of us are," Li said calmly.
"Yes, but you and I have done our work. Rafik
needs a wife—a real wife," Hafiz smiled, "to give us
another generation of traders for House
Harakamian. I will settle the matter as soon as he
comes home."

"I have no doubt you will," murmured Li, "but
might be wise not to announce plans to Rafik just
yet. Leave him illusion of choosing his own woman.



The team of four returned from
Maganos early that afternoon,
with vids, datacubes, construc-
tion records, air and water quality analyses, and
every other bit of evidence they could think of to
support their contention that Maganos Moon Base
was not just potentially habitable but already habit-
able.

"Why must we wait for Phase II?" Acorna
demanded of Oelszaki Li before she was well in
the door. "The base is in use now. The construction
crews are living there; how can this Tumim
Viggers say it is not safe? And there is much space
available within the pressurized sectors. Provola
Quero has caused to be built the very large repair
and manufacturing facility which will be wanted
later, only she does not need it at ail yet•—well,
only a tiny bit of it," she said with a reproachful
glance at Gill's choked-off expostulation. "We
could wall off a small section for repair work and

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

344

put children's bunks in the rest—use it for a dor-
mitory until the proper living quarters are com-
pleted. Why should they live so miserably any
longer than is absolutely necessary? Further,
Brantley Geram now understands how he can
expand the 'ponies system rapidly enough to cope
with a sudden increase in population."

"Acorna is responsible for that," Pal put in.
"While we were there, she found a nitrogen imbal-
ance in the air, identified a potassium deficiency in
the water, and showed Geram how to triple 'pon-
ies production practically overnight without
destroying the atmospheric balance."

"The first two things were data that could have
been read from instruments, and I am sure Mr.
Geram would have thought of the ecobalancing
system on his own if he had had time," Acorna
murmured. "All that is not important, Pal—please
do not interrupt!" She turned back to Delszaki Li,
her pale face glowing with the cool silvery light
that showed when she was excited, her eyes
opened so wide that they were silver orbs in her
face. "Truly, Mr. Li, there is no technical problem
•with beginning to use the base immediately—not
one!"

"Unfortunately," Delszaki Li said, "technical
problems are not the only ones. The Kezdet
Authority has forbidden us to go forward with
Maganos Moon Base, or to add any more person-
nel, until is completely satisfied by report of inde-
pendent commission that all construction meets
Kezdet building codes."

Pal snorted. "If the match factory where I used

345

to work meets the building codes, Maganos is so
far beyond that it's not even applicable!"

"Match factory has probably never been
inspected by building commission," Li said
gravely.

"Who's on this independent commission?" Gill
demanded. "We can meet with them right now,
show them the data. I'll convince them Maganos
meets code, if I have to ram the cubes down their
throats!"

"Members of commission have not yet been
appointed," Li said. "Informed sources within
Department of Public Works say selection and
appointment of commission may take several
years." He regarded the four young people—from
his perspective they were all children—benignly.
"Is not technical problem. Is political. Someone
does not intend plan to succeed."

"Who?"

Li's left hand lifted slightly, his approximation
of a shrug.

"Many people profit greatly from exploitation
of children on Kezdet. Could be any of them. Or
all of them. But at this time, is still mystery. We
know, for instance, that owner of Tondubh
Glassworks has bought two judges and a subin-
spector of Guardians. Very well. I pay them bet-
ter bribe than Tondubh, now I have them. Child
Labor League has list of other corrupt govern-
ment officials, paid by this factory or that to
ignore abuses of Federation law. But even if we
buy off all minor officials, is still blocked from
top. Someone with much power and position in

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

346

347

government is stopping plan. Someone so
respectable, and so -well concealed, that even
Child Labor League does not know true identity
of man called the Piper."

Gill's shoulders sagged. "Then what can
we do?"

"Dp not despair," Li said. "You have on your
side Delszaki Li, veteran of many years political
and financial double- and triple-crossing. Also
have now secured independent services of consul-
tant -with even more experience than Li in han-
dling corrupt governments, because has run
seriously corrupt organization himself. Hafiz
Harakamian."

Gill turned white. "Get Acorna out of here!"

"Harakamian no longer wishes to acquire
Acorna," Li said. "Talk to Calum and Rafik. They
have much news for you."

But the talk had to wait, because Chiura got
wind of Gill's return. At this point she came flying
down the lift-chute, squealing happily, "Monster
Man! Monster Man!"

"He's big and ugly, all right," said Calum, who
had entered the hall just in time to catch Chiura
executing a flying leap far too soon to reach her
objective, "but don't you think it's a bit over the
top to call him a nwiuter?"

Gill's face was almost as red as his beard.

"It's ... uh ... a game we play," he explained.
By now Jana had arrived after Chiura and the
girls were tugging Gill by both hands toward the
lift-chute. "Umm . . . maybe we can talk upstairs?"

The talk was again delayed until Gill had been

exhausted by chasing Chiura and Jana around the
suite on his hands and knees, roaring like a bull
and occasionally reaching out one large hand to
snatch at flying hair or the hem of a kameez, while
they squealed in pretended terror. Even Khetala,
who at thirteen considered herself too old for such
games, got caught up in the excitement and
laughed and giggled like the other two.

"He is giving them back their childhood," Judit
murmured under cover of the noisy game. There
were tears in her eyes. "I don't know how to do
that."

"You never had a childhood." Pal put an arm
around his sister's shoulders and hugged her. "You
had to grow up too fast, to save Mercy and me."

She looked up at the "little brother," who had
shot up so fast in the last years that now he stood
half a head taller than her.

"Oh, Pal, we neei) Gill at Maganos. The chil-
dren need him. Can't -we persuade Calum and
Rafik-"

"That," said Rafik, grinning, "was what we
wanted to talk to you about."

"You want to talk business while Chiura's
crawling all over him and climbing his beard?"
Calum muttered under his breath.

"Safest time," Rafik replied out of the side of
his mouth. "He won't turn violent while he's fes-
tooned with kids."

They explained their arrangement with Hafiz
Harakamian, somewhat apprehensively, and were
relieved when Gill's broad face broke into a beam-
ing smile.




348

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"That," he said cheerfully, "simplifies everything."

"We were, um, hoping you'd see it that way,"
Rafik said.

Gill looked at Judit.

"That's a nice living suite Delszaki Li has put
into the Maganos design for you. Plenty of space
for two people, wouldn't you say? Think Li -would
hire a couple to work -with the children, instead of
leaving it all on you ? "

"The proposition would have to be put to him,"
Judit said, lowering her eyes.

"Well, then!" Gill made to get up, but he was
too weighted down with children to make it on the
first try.

"And first," Judit said, very demurely, "the
proposition would have to be put to me. I'm old-
fashioned about these things."

Gill looked at her.

"Me, too," he said, "and I draw the line at
proposing to you in front of two miners and a gag-
gle of giggling kids."

"Then we'll have to do it for you," said Calum
and Rafik in unison.

Calum went down on one knee in front of
Judit. Rafik laid his hand on his heart. Gill started
turning red.

"Dear Judit," Calum said, "would you do us
the immense favor — "

"—and Gill the great honor," Rafik put in.

"Of providing a home and family for this poor,
old, arthritic—"

"I am not arthritic!" Gill bellowed. "That trou-
ble with my right knee is an old sports injury."

349

"—broken-down, lonely, unloved—" Rafik
continued over Gill's protests.

"Oh, stop it, you two!" Judit interrupted them.
"He is by no means unloved." She looked melt-
ingly at Gill, -who was now more purple than red.
"But I think he might have a stroke if you don't
knock it off."

"Then you'd better accept him," Calum said
promptly. "You wouldn't want to be responsible
for the poor old fellow's demise from apoplexy,
would you? A kind-hearted girl like you?"

"We'll ask Li to name that suite at Maganos
after you," Rafik suggested. "The Judit Kendoro
Home For Stray Miners."

"Get out of here," Gill roared, having finally
divested himself of children, "and let me propose
to my girl in my own way and my own time!" He
shooed Calum, Rafik, and all three children out of
the room. "And no eavesdropping!"

That the two former partners did not, spoke vol-
umes for their self-discipline and the fact that they
had both decided Gill and Judit were exactly
suited to each other.

Each went down the lift-chute with a much
lighter heart to see what they could do to solve the
major problem now facing the Maganos Moon
Base scheme.

"Bribery will only get you so far," Rafik said. "I
suspect there is more at stake than money or pres-
tige or mere power."

"There's nothing 'mere' about power, Rafik,"

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

350

351

Calum said in a sudden fit of depression, brought
on as much by the happy scene being enacted in
the children's quarters as anticipation of facing an
unknown quantity of opponents.

It couldn't just be this mysterious Piper person,
not when Mr. Li -was confounded by the machina-
tions behind the scenes.

"Well, what Mr. Li can't find out. Uncle Hafiz

can.

"Don't you mean Papa Hafiz?" he said almost
snidely.

"Uncle, smunckle, papa doppa," Rafik said,
shrugging indifferently, "we are both Harakamians
and nothing will daunt us!" He raised a fist in
respect of his determination as they reached the
door leading to Mr. Li's domain. The fist altered
and its knuckles rapped most circumspectly for
admission.

During their absence in the children's suite,
Uncle Hafiz had joined Mr. Li, and so had the
scruffy man they identified as Pedir, the auxiliary
skimmer driver who had attached himself,
limpetlike, to Acorna and Judit for their excur-


sions.

"Ah, is good you have returned," Mr. Li said.
"You know Pedir?"

After Rafik and Calum had exchanged greet-
ings and seated themselves, Mr. Li continued. "Is
source of much local knowledge and gossip."

"Knows where a lot of bodies have been
buried, you might even say," Uncle Hafiz added,
stroking the chin beard he was cultivating.

"We," and Mr. Li's delicate hand gestured to

Uncle Hafiz, "who feel is time to introduce Lady
Acorna to society — "

"—such as it is," Hafiz put in.

"—are inviting," and he gestured now to
Mercy who was seated at the console and furi-
ously typing away, "every person of wealth and
standing in city to splendid gala banquet and
dancing the night away."

"Anyone who is anyone in Kezdet will come,"
Hafiz said, "because it will borne in on them that
not to be invited would indicate social or industrial
inferiority to those also on the guest list."

"But Acorna," Rafik and Calum were instantly
on the qui vive, "would be in jeopardy."

Hafiz flapped his hand dismissively, grimacing
away their caution.

"Not from this house," Mr. Li said. "Not with
so many watching her all night long with eyes of
hawk and claws of tiger."

Hafiz leaned back in the conformable chair, at
almost a dangerous tilt, steepling his fingers and
staring up at the ceiling, a slow smile creasing his
face.

"She will be clad in raiment fit for a princess, a
queen, an empress ..." he extended one hand ceil-
ingward, opening his fingers at the apex, indicating
magnificence beyond imagining, ". . . bejeweled . . .
and also," he pulled his eyes down to his nephew,
"warded from every possible danger by the built-in
systems hidden in the jewelry."

"Ah, ingenious!" and Rafik relaxed into a chair,
stretching out his legs, hooking his thumbs in his
belt and preparing himself for whatever pearls of




353

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

352

wisdom and crafty conniving were sure to be
revealed.

Calum, with a droll smile, wandered over to
Mercy's desk position and perched on a stool.

"There will be music ..." Uncle Hafiz went on.

"Several groups," Pedir said, "for I am
promised to promote three groups and undoubt-
edly, once this is noised about, I will have to help
others. All worthy and all good musicians ..."

"Only good musicians," Mr. Li said, raising a
slim finger.

"Only the very best," Pedir nodded, "for there
ain't no bad guys around here as play well. Get
you good extra boys, girls for serving, too."

"I'm doing that, Pedir," Mercy said, looking up
from her screen.

"No problemo," Pedir said, wriggling both
hands to assure her he would not interfere. "What
about a skimmer strike? Would that be any help?"

Mr. Li shook his head with more vigor than he
usually displayed for poor ideas.

"Strike is ours to do," he said. "A different
strike. All will see." Now he raised his frail arm,
closing the fingers to a point, retracting his arm,
then darting it forward in an unmistakably reptil-
ian strike.

Uncle Hafiz pretended to recoil in terror, his
eyes sparkling with amusement. But no more was
said. In fact, Pedir was excused, and so were
Calum and Rafik, though they were enjoined to
have the skimmer driver transport them to the
most prestigious tailor in Kezdet, to be measured
for masculine finery.

'To talk of the sumptuousness of the coming
evening of Mr. Delszaki Li's prestigious house,"
Uncle Hafiz said. He buffed his nails on his lapel.
"I have already commissioned elegant evening
attire. Unless you wish me to deprive you of
acceptable female companionship for the entire
evening, you had best look less like camel drivers
than you do now."

Rafik snorted. He had hurried without chang-
ing from his usual shipboard gear to Mr. Li's, and
Calum had come dressed as he was because he
was uncomfortable in anything but the casual
clothing he was now wearing.

"Come, Calum," said Rafik, rising, "let us do as
we are bid, for if my dearly beloved uncle has
commanded us to appear in sartorial elegance, he
will certainly be willing to pay for the best there is
to be had."

While Hafiz was sputtering about impudent,
improvident imps, the two made their escape,
pushing the laughing Pedir ahead of them as Mr.
Li cackled in appreciation of the taunt.

"I have finished the list, Mr. Li," Mercy said,
instantly diverting them to the more important
task of contriving a most exhaustive guest list.

Mr. Li's house was more than adequate for such a
social evening, but rooms long unused for enter-
tainment had to be turned out, refurbished in the
newest fads, decorated in the latest color schemes,
and exotic viands ordered from all over the galaxy.
"Is going to be a legend in this time, this




354

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

355

evening," Mr. Li often said while Uncle Hafiz fer-
vently seconded him, but had to be discreetly
restrained from providing a few bizarre entertain-
ments. "Is not to distract guests from main purpose
of all this, good friend Hafiz."

"True, true." Though Hafiz sighed, remember-
ing the most amazing contortionist act he had hap-
pened to catch at one of the more elegant of the
casinos on Kezdet, stimulating jaded tastes and
appetites.

The invitations, miracles of calligraphy and
illustration in their own right, were dispatched to
the recipients, and shortly it became difficult to
manage necessary calls from Mr. Li's house to sup-
pliers, merchants, and even acquaintances.

Acorna, accompanied by a glowing Judit and a
more sedately excited Mercy, made many trips to
the couturier -who had been chosen, of the many
available, to supply their gowns. Excitement was
high in that establishment, which had made cer-
tain that every other couturier in Kezdet realized
how much they had lost by not securing these
commissions. Acorna was often so besieged by
those wishing her miracles that Rafik and Calum
joined them at the dressmaker's.

Rafik was actually helpful, for he had inher-
ited, among other things, Calum said sourly, the
Harakamian dress sense and was able to comment
knowledgeably about fit, line, and color.

The jewels were, however, left to Uncle Hafiz,
who had sent for skilled craftsmen as -well as the
raw materials of precious metals and uncut gems,
and supervised the styles and elegance of what

each girl would wear. That special adornments
were also being made for Mr. Li's evening banquet
•was discreetly mentioned and several invitees
finally decided to attend upon hearing that news.

Calum and Gill had been busy, too, with elec-
tronic and engineering effects which would guard
the already well-guarded Li household. They even
did their best to protect against such ingenuities as
contact poisons, sleepy powders, and other deadly
elements. Special beams could render the most
popular of these substances neutral. Not that
Acorna could not neutralize venom but they
wished to avoid such problems in the first place.

And so the great day arrived, and the coiffeurs
came with their preparations and oohed and aahed
over Acorna's magnificent mane. Her gown had
been cut to free her hirsute splendor and a tiara
had been designed to crown that silvery glory.
(One of the many jealous females was later heard
to swear that Mr. Li's ward had had to be glued
into her costume, for how else could it have stayed
anchored so firmly when she gyrated on the dance
floor.) The dark hairs of both Judit and Mercy
were also teased into fetching styles, but nothing
outre, since quiet elegance suited them better, and
as a foil for Acorna's unusual appearance.

Khetala, Chiura, and Jana watched, almost as
glued to their vantage seats in the "tiring room,"
speechless with the beauty they were seeing, and
the subtle ways which natural loveliness could be
enhanced. They had received permission to watch
the guests arrive and were to receive the same
foods that would be served for dinner.




356

fftc-orna                                  357

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"So you can feast even as we do," Judit
explained. "There •will be so many people, small
persons like yourselves would get lost and that

might be scary."

Khetala had agreed. She still liked lots of space
around her and felt safe around strangers only if

her "uncles" were nearby.

Chiura had put behind her all the terrible
memories which still woke Jana, sweaty and trem-
bling in the night. She was forever leaving her lit-
tle bed and creeping in with Kheti for comfort.
But she was truly excited about the party and
knew exactly where she could crouch, unseen, on
the first landing of the great stairs and see every-
one arriving.

Finally the ninth hour came, an hour which the
fine clocks in their niches, corners, and surfaces
celebrated with melodious, arrogant, or demure
chimings. At precisely the third stroking of the
hour, the front door -was opened to receive the first
guest, a very minor official and his wife, splendidly
garbed for the occasion. Jana didn't think much of
her dress: the color was garish and the flickering
light display adorning the neckline made her look
like a washed-out sketch. On the stroke of the
ninth, another minor official, his wife, oldest son
and daughter, were admitted. Jana liked -what the
daughter -was wearing—the very prettiest shade of
pale blue—though it didn't really suit the girl. Her
shoes, with their very high heels, studded -with
sparkling jewels, and straps that started at her toes
and -went up to her knee, were nice.

The trickle of guests became a rivulet and then

a river, with no time to close the door between
their comings. Kheti and Chiura got bored with
looking at what people were wearing, but Jana
feasted her eyes on the colors, the patterns, the
combinations, the swags and the trimmings, the
feathers and the furs. She could not quite believe
there could be so many variations of dress and
suit: she, who had lived much of her life in dark-
ness, in a black to gray environment, lapped up all
the colors as a desert dweller would drink from an
oasis.

Then, he stood in the doorway. Jana was
frozen with fear. Kheti and Chiura had left their
positions -when the undermaid had called them to
eat their share of the banquet. Not that Jana could
have uttered a word. She could only stare at him,
seen in the bright lights, in a deep blue suit which
gave off subtle glitters, with a white-white shirt
collar barely showing at the neck of it. But it -was
he, and he was here where she thought she could
be safe.

Rigid with terror she watched as Mr. Li
greeted him and introduced him to Uncle Hafiz,
who introduced Acorna, who smiled and made
Judit and Mercy and Pal known to him in this
silly ritual they had been performing for every
guest that entered the house. Nearly fainting, she
saw Gill and Judit usher him into the main salon,
where he passed from her sight. Then she col-
lapsed in a little heap.

That is how the undermaid found her when she
went to collect the third of her charges for the
evening.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

358

"He's coming for us," was all Jana could say when
she first recovered from her faint. "We've got to
hide Chiura."

"Who?"

"He's here. I ^aw him. They invited him."

There could be only one "him" who would
elicit that terrified note from Jana. Kheti's face
went gray. "The Piper?"

Jana nodded. She snatched up Chiura, elicit-
ing a wail of protest as the little one was seriously
involved with the tray of sweets, and wrapped
both arms around her as though to shield her with
her own body.

"We have to get away," she whispered. "The
lift-chute's too dangerous, it lets out in the front
hall. The windows — "

"Wait!" Khetala sank down on the floor, not
quite as gracefully as she had been trained to do
by Didi Badini; her knees were trembling too hard
for that. "Let me think."

Jana crammed sweets into Chiura's mouth ran-
domly, to keep her happy while Kheti thought. She
was shocked, though, when Khetala reached for a
jellabie and bit into the sweet, crystallized-honey crust.

"Is this a time to be stuffing your face?"

"Sugar helps when you got the shakes,"
Khetala said. "You eat something, too. Even if we
do run — "

"We have to. Now!" Jana interrupted.

"Even if we do, you won't run far on an empty
belly. You eat. I'll think."

359

Khetala washed down the jellabie with a long
drink of iced madigadi juice while Jana obediently
picked at a witifowl pastry. Each crumb seemed as
if it would choke her.

"Now then," Khetala said at last. "I been think-
ing. The Lady Acorna is gooS. She wouldn't invite
the Piper here."

"I tell you, I ^aw him! The gray man who came
to the mine with Didi Badini. Ain't he the Piper?"

Kheti nodded and folded her hands to conceal
the shaking of her fingers.

"Oh, yes. I heard him talking to Didi Badini,
many and many a time, when she had me locked
in that closet where they keep — Well, never mind
that," she interrupted herself hastily. Jana didn't
need to know about Didi Badini s dark closets and
the means she employed to make sure new girls
would be docile when she finally let them out. "I
got to hear him talk again to make sure, though. If
it Li him ..." she shivered ". . . it's bad. Very bad.
See, I don't think they know who the Piper really
is. He's got himself another name for this side of
Celtalan. I heard them talking about it the other
day. It's a big secret, the Piper s real name. Maybe
the biggest secret in Celtalan. If he finds out we've
seen him here—" She mimed slitting her throat.
"Best we could hope for is he kills us quick. He
ain't taking us back to the mines, Jana. He ain't
taking us anywhere. Did he see you?"

Jana shook her head. " He went straight into
that big room with all the lights and pretty ladies."
"Did the Lady Acorna go with him?"
Jana shook her head again.

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

360 -

361

"Good," Kheti murmured. "She should be all
right here, anyway. He wouldn't do anything to
her here, where he's passin' under his real name."

"What would he do to her?"

Khetala looked at Jana pityingly.

"He wants her killed, too. He told Didi Badini
she's making too much trouble here on Kezdet,
getting the bond kids and the Child Labor League
all stirred up."

Jana stiffened and squeezed Chiura so hard
that the sleepy child cried in protest. "You didn't
tell me that before!"

"Told Delszaki Li," Khetala said. "He knows.
He's been seeing that the Lady's safe. Why do you
think he sent her off to Maganos? I heard them
talking about that, too. I hear a lot."

Jana went unerringly to the weak point in
Khetala's argument.

"But he doesn't know the Piper is that dressed-
up man I saw downstairs. Nobody knows. You
said that yourself. So he doesn't know the Piper is
here, in this house. How can he keep the Lady
safe if he doesn't know?" She felt more frightened
than she ever had in her life, more than when Siri
Teku came at her with the whip that last time.
She'd thought she might as well die then, she was
hurt so bad and Chiura was gone. But the Lady
Acorna had made her live again and had brought
her back to Chiura. Debts had to be paid. Jana
forced the next words out. "We got to warn her."

"We'll find Air. Li. Or somebody -we can trust,"
Kheti said sharply to force down her fear at the
idea of going among all those strangers. "But I still

think he won't move against her now, in this
house, -where everybody knows him by his real
name!"

"He could put poison in her food or something."
As none of the children had experience with
Acorna's ability to detect poisons, this seemed all
too probable to Khetala as well as to Jana. "Or
maybe he's going to lure her out into the garden
and there'll be a bomb. Or ..." Jana's invention
failed. What did it matter? She only knew that the
Lady Acorna, her lady, was in terrible danger and
she had to do something about it. Even if she was
so scared all she wanted to do was hide and cry.
"Come on. We got to warn her!"

She stood up with some difficulty, because
Chiura had become frightened by the older girls'
evident tension and was refusing to let go of her
"Mama Jana."

"He sees us," Khetala said, "we're dead. You
know that?"

"I know that," Jana said, wishing her voice
wouldn't wobble so much. "But I got to go. She
took me out of Anyag." She gave Khetala a scorn-
ful look. "You want to, you can stay here. Maybe
the Lady didn't take you out of Didi Badini's
bonk-shop. Or maybe you forgot already? "

But Kheti was on her feet now.

"You're an idiot, Jana," she said, sighing, "but I
can't let you go and be an idiot all by yourself. Got
in the habit of taking care of you little kids too long
ago, I guess. Come on. Let's go and get ourselves
killed, if that's what you gotta do. Only let's leave
Chiura here. He don't need to know about her."




362

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

363

But Chiura -wound her arms tighter about
Jana's neck -when Jana tried to set her down, and
screwed up her pretty face in the grimace that
they knew was preparatory to one of her ear-
piercing screams.

"All right, all right," Jana hushed her, "you can
stay with me. But you got to be real quiet, you
understand? Quiet like a ghurri-ghurri, like a
shadow, like you're not even there. Or Piper'11 get

you."

To Chiura, the Piper was just a name used to
frighten her into acquiescence, like Old Black,
who lived down in the bottom of the mines and ate
little girls for breakfast. So she was scared enough
by the threat to hush up, but not scared into
screaming hysteria.

Acorna was in fact in the garden, where (under
the watchful eye of Hafiz Harakamian) she had
retreated from the noise and social chitchat of the
party to talk with some of Delszaki Li's distin-
guished guests about matters of more importance
to her.

"Is not only social occasion," Li had instructed
all his people. "Is testing of the waters. Must talk
little, listen much, try to find source of high-
government secret opposition. Perhaps head of
Public Works says, 'Is not my doing, gracious lady,
is warning from Orator of the council that would
be unwise for political appointee such as myselt to
further projects undesirable to certain of his con-
stituency.' Perhaps orator of the council says,

'Having duty to protect interests of glass-working
and related industries.' Then perhaps we say, 'Aha!
Is looking closer at Tondubh Glassworks.' Only
example, you understand," Li had said, almost
purring. "Personally, do not expect to find source
of opposition in Tondubh. Have already bought
most of judges and public servants bribed by
Dorkamadian Tondubh. He is cheap man, does not
pay workers, does not even make good bribes. But
perhaps you find some other thread. Listen!
Listen! And if must talk, then be obnoxious."

"Why?" Pal had queried.

"How?" That was Calum, who looked more
interested than alarmed at this suggestion.

"Accuse justicers of taking bribes, claim that
politicians are put in office by industrial interests,
hint that civil servants are in second service of the
Piper. See who looks nervous and changes sub-
ject. All people here are wishing to be seen as
respectable, good people, personally obeying
Federation law? as well as Kezdet local law.
Someone is not. Be offensive, my children." He
smiled seraphically. "Someone already hates us.
Be charitable. Give him good reason to hate and
fear us."

Acorna did not feel that she had any real talent
for offending people, so she had been dutifully fol-
lowing Li's first directive and listening. But she
doubted she would learn anything from this par-
ticular conversation except that Dork Tondubh
lived up to his nickname and that Tumim Viggers,
head of Public Works, and the politician Vidra
Shamali were equally smug, self-satisfied, and




364

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

365

impervious to suggestion. All three of these social
and political leaders of Kezdet society -were more
than happy to stroll in Li's exotic gardens -with a
lovely young lady, even if she did have an odd pro-
tuberance in the middle of her forehead. Acorna
had followed Li's suggestion and, instead of trying
to disguise her physical differences for this party,
had accentuated them. Her tight sheath of Illuc
spidersilk showed off the lean, flat planes of her
body; a spiral of jeweled ribbons accentuated her
white horn. The result had been exactly as Li had
predicted: after a few surprised looks, the haut
moni)e of Celtalan had decided that anything so
flamboyantly displayed must be an asset, not a
deformity. ("It's a feature, not a bug," Calum had
said sardonically, and when questioned, added,
"Old Earth saying. I'm not sure exactly what it
means.")

Unfortunately, the avuncular tone adopted by
Dork and Tumim was not likely to give Acorna
any results except extreme boredom and a grow-
ing desire to turn around and kick them where it
would do the most good with her sharp, hard feet.
As for Vidra, at least she wasn't accompanying her
lecture with the sleazy looks and surreptitious
touches Dork added to his talk, but the bossiness
of her manner more than made up for that.

At present all three were happily "explaining" to
Acorna exactly why it was impossible to eradicate
Kezdets practice of child labor and why employers
should be considered charitable guardians rather
than slave owners.

"Of course there are children around the glass-

works," Dork said. "It's hot work, there among the

furnaces. The workers need water; the children
bring it to them."

"I saw a little boy running among the furnaces
with a seven-foot iron rod loaded with molten
glass," Acorna said.

Dork made a mental note to ream out the secu-
rity guards at Tondubh for ever letting this pretty
thing inside the compound. She hadn't just been
giving away shoes; she'd been noticing things. He
shifted to his second line of defense.

"Alas, yes, there have been some lapses. You
must understand, my dear, Kezdet is an under-
capitalized economy. Our people must work to
eat. What can we do when parents bring their
children to the factory and beg for work? Should
we let them starve?"

"Don't wrap it up in pretty ribbons. Dork," said
Vidra in her harsh voice. "The glass industry on
Kezdet requires children. Adults can't run so fast
with the molten glass. If Dork and others like him
didn't hire children, not only would those poor
families starve, but production would go down."

"That's true," Dork said with more animation.
"Profits might drop by as much as thirty percent. I
have a duty to my shareholders, you know."

"Yes, it if expensive having -workers whom you
have to pay and provide medical care for." Acorna
smiled agreement. "Still, most industrial planets
manage it." She thought she could get to enjoy Li's
instructions on being offensive, after all. "What's
wrong with Kezdet, that you people can't figure
out how to run a factory without slave labor?"




366

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

367

"Now, now, dear, do not upset yourself," Tumim
Viggers counseled her. "You are young and a
stranger to our -ways, and perhaps those terrorist
zealots of the Child Labor League have been telling
you misleading stories. The fact is that the few chil-
dren working on Kezdet are very "well treated. They
are fed and lodged at their employer's expense,
have years of free training in their chosen career,
and enjoy the knowledge that their earnings are
sent home to help support their beloved families.
Why, if you sent a team of Federation inspectors to
any of our mines or factories, I do believe the chil-
dren would run away and hide rather than be taken
away! They love their work, you see, and the over-
seers are like parents to them."

"Possibly," Acorna agreed. "I understand that
some parents also beat their children."

Tumim Viggers sighed. "There may have been
excesses. It is no easy matter to train and disci-
pline young children, but I assure you, they are
learning lessons which "will be invaluable when

they grow up."

"How many of them c>o grow up?" Acorna

asked in a tone of bright interest.

Tumim Viggers chose to ignore that question.
"Child labor is one of the harsh realities of life on
an overpopulated, underdeveloped planet.
Extremist groups like the CLL only make matters
worse. Why, if we were to eradicate all child labor
on Kezdet tomorrow?, what do you think would

happen?"

"I don't know," said Acorna brightly. "Why not

try it and find out? "

She rose, then. "I must really circulate, but it
has been so nice to get to know you better. Do
enjoy the garden. The night-blooming scented
plants are in that corner."

"Do show us exactly where?" Tumim said and
reached for her arm, a maneuver she evaded by
swaying away from him and out of reach.

As she walked back toward the house, she hap-
pened to glance up at the windows and saw three
figures hurrying down the staircase: three figures
that ought to have been fast asleep in their beds,
stuffed with all the food and sweets she had asked
to be sent to them. Where -was the undermaid who
was supposed to watch out for them? If they
should be seen . . .

She hurried inside and spotted Calum, who
had a desperate look on his face: the anorexic
daughter of the shipping magnate she had met in
the receiving line was clinging to his arm with a
death grip. Acorna gave him the old EVA danger
sign. He peeled the girl off him and, muttering
some sort of an apology, he made his way quickly
to Acorna.

"The children are up. They must not be seen,"
she said in an urgent undertone. "On the stairs. If
I go up . . ."

"Leave it to me."

The skeleton had clattered after Calum, but
Acorna intercepted her, taking her by the arm.

"I do hope you are enjoying yourself this
evening, Kisia," she said, fortunately recalling her
name and steered her toward the refreshment
table, where a new display of subtleties and




368

'A.corna.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

369

delights had just been arranged. "With your father
so prominent in the shipping industry, do you get
a chance to travel to far-off planets and places? Or
are you forced to remain here in a dull school?"

Kisia stiffened and almost sneered up at
Acorna. "Fraggit, but you know nothing, do you?
School? I've been a qualified navigator for three
years. The only reason I'm at this party at all is
because the whole family got invited. And then
you have the nerve to skive off with the only inter-
esting chap here."

"An errand only he could do for me," Acorna
said, "and see, here he is back."

However, Calum grabbed Acorna by the hand
and pulled her so close to him that Kisia swore,
more as a deckhand than a navigator might, and
flounced off to find another target for her atten-
tions.

"They're terrified. They've seen the Piper
here."

"They have? They could identify him?" Acorna
looked around the room for Mr. Li's hover-chair
or Uncle Hafiz, trying to hide the terror she felt.
Calum peeled her hands off his arm.

"Khetala and Jana are both certain, but they're
terrified for your sake. They're afraid he's here to
kill you."

"Here? In front of everyone?" Acorna ridiculed
the notion. "Not likely."

"You'd still be dead, sweetie pie," Calum said
soberly. "Besides which, very few people here are
enchanted with your interference with their prof-
itable operations employing child labor."

"Then why did they come?" she asked,
annoyed as •well as frightened. Dreadful people.
Smile at your face and pull a stunner once your
back -was turned. Although, where many of those
present could hide anything in the sleek, tight-
fitting garb that was currently fashionable, she did
not know. Very little was left to the imagination,
and one could count spine ridges and ... all sorts
of things. She could have appeared at this dinner
clad in only her own skin and given away nothing
of her gender, but these people covered it all up
and then flaunted what they covered.

"They came for the food and to say they had
been here tonight. Mr. Li is excessively pleased
with the turnout, but I must go tell him that the
children can identify the Piper. That will be one
more obstacle out of our way, so we can find out
where you really belong." Calum grinned up at her
and then squeezed her hands. "I'll go tell them.
You circulate."

He gave her a little push toward the nearest
clutch of chattering men and women. Kisia inter-
cepted her.

"My father wishes to speak with you, Acorna.
He says you've been avoiding him all evening."

There was a remarkable strength in her skele-
tal arms as she towed the taller girl past the near-
est group and toward a quartet, which mercifully
included Uncle Hafiz. Acorna stopped resisting.

Hafiz rose and kissed her cheek. "You are more
beautiful every time I see you, Acorna. Here is
Baron Commodore Manj'ari and his wife, Ilsfa,
wanting to meet you. The baron claims he ships




370

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Acorna

371

anything and everything, anywhere in the known
galaxy. And, as I'm sure you realize, Acorna, the
baroness's family, the Acultanias, were one of the
first to settle Kezdet and recognize its importance
in this sector."

The baroness smiled a social smile, while stuff-
ing her face with the dainty petit fours on the table
beside her. Baron Manjari rose courteously to his
feet and, removing his hand from his pocket, pat-
ted his lips before he reached for Acorna's prof-
fered hand. He didn't look very impressive, Acorna
thought: medium height, spare build, which might
account for his daughter's anorexic-looking body.
He had very piercing eyes and a gaze that wished
to penetrate her skull. She managed to suppress a
shudder as he brought her hand to his mouth.
Instead of miming a kiss above the skin, he planted
a very moist one on the back of her hand.

"Charmed," he said, drawling in an oddly dry
voice, almost a whisper, as if he had some impedi-
ment in his throat. "I have been waiting all
evening to have a few words with you."

As he released her hand, she began to feel
unwell and, with the pretext of mending her coif-
feur, brushed her hand to her horn. She could feel
it tingle through her forehead and the poisonous
kiss, for that was what it had been, -was neutral-
ized. Baron Manjari might have ships that tra-
versed the known galaxy and be able to find
contact poisons undetectable by Li's guard beams,
but he had never encountered one of her species.
Her problem now was how to react to having just
been given an undoubtedly "lethal" dose of poison.

She noticed that he now brought out a handker-
chief to blot his treacherous lips, and then a small
pill box, explaining as he withdrew a tiny white
oval, that it was time for his medication.

"I did not mean a discourtesy," Acorna began
with social civility, nodding to the baroness, who
was having a hard time deciding which small deli-
cacy to try next. "The littlest ones are filled with
raspberry liqueur," she said, and got a blank look
from the woman and almost a sneer from the
baron. "I think I should sit for a few moments,"
Acorna said abruptly to Uncle Hafiz, who immedi-
ately handed her into the chair he had just
vacated.

She began to rub her hand, as if unconscious of
what she was doing. She caught the avid expression
in the baron s eyes and the tension in his wife's bare
shoulders. "Uncle, a glass of something cool,
please?" she said making her voice rise with
urgency.

"Of course."

Acorna used the ornate fan that dangled from
her left wrist. "I don't know what's come over me."

"Why," Ilsfa leaned toward her, one hand out-
stretched to touch her knee, but Acorna managed
to avoid the contact, "I expect it's no more than any
young girl experiences during her introduction to
society. Why, my Kisia was a nervous wreck until

the evening had started, and then she danced all
night."

"Really?" Acorna managed politely in a soft
voice. Should she be feeling weak so soon?

"Here you are, m'dear," Hafiz said, offering her




372

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

373

a glass of the madigadi juice he knew she liked, so
cold the glass was beaded with moisture.

She drank it all down, hoping thirst was one of
the symptoms of the poison -working. The baron
looked so satisfied that she was sure it must be.

"Just what I needed," she said gaily, and rose.
"So nice to have had a chat with you but, before I
find I have inadvertently ignored some one else, I
really must circulate. Come, Uncle Hafiz, there is
someone I want you to introduce me to ..." and
she pulled him away despite an initial protest.

"That man just tried to poison me," she mut-
tered in Hafiz's ear. "Keep walking. Do I fall down
in a faint, or just collapse somewhere? A contact
poison. He had a very slimy kiss."

"By the beards of the Prophets!" Hafiz began,
and tried to pull loose from her to deal suitably
with Baron Commodore Manjari.
"No, he may be the Piper."
"Oh!"

"Where is Mr. Li? We must inform him."
"Who identified him? There are many people
here who might wish to poison you."

"Khetala and Jana. They watched the guests
entering and saw the Piper among them. They've
been quaking with terror ever since, but they
overcame their fears to warn me. Well, actually,
they found Calum and he told me. Who else would
want to poison me?" Acorna demanded.

"Just about every man and a good many of the
women here tonight," Uncle Hafiz said, and sig-
naled the butler.

Acorna wondered if the man had been cloned,

or was one of triplets, for he had been so assidu-
ous in his duties.

"Hassim, no one is to leave yet," Uncle Hafiz
said in an undertone. "And where is Mr. Li at this
moment?"

The butler indicated the card room with a dis-
creet gesture and glided toward the front door,
deftly opening the panel and tripping a switch that
would close every exterior door and the garden
exits.

Mr. Li's hover-chair was surrounded by some
of the loveliest women at the party and not a single
man. He was obviously enjoying himself, and the
women were laughing at some joke when Hafiz,
smiling to see the quality of the company he was
about to join, approached.

"Ah, but ladies, your glasses are empty. Come
to the table and I will pour for you all."

That left Acorna free to inform Mr. Li of her
suspicions as well as the children's ability to iden-
tify the dread Piper.

"Take them to my study. Tell Hassim to
secure the house. Immediate confrontation now.
Who?" And Mr. Li stared at her as he suddenly
assimilated the information he had just been
given. "Not . . . how extraordinary! Is most
remarkable. Is last man this person would sus-
pect."

"That's often how it is, isn't it? But how do we
entice him to the study? I am supposed to be
dying of his poison. Will he not suspect?"

"Is my job. Get children. Get to study. Hafiz?"
and he drifted his chair. "You forgive?" He




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

374

375

beamed back at the ladies even as he was moving
out of the room, -with Hafiz almost running after
him. "I give beep call and assemble cavalry."

Acorna had already disappeared up the stair-
case, Calum taking the steps two at a time -with
Rafik trying to keep up.

Judit intercepted them at the stairs. "What is
the matter?"

"Oh, is nothing. Keep guests happy," Mr. Li
said. "Is that not Baron Manjari I see? No chance
yet to show him my new acquisitions. Is now the
time."

Judit -was too well trained to ask what new
acquisitions, and obediently followed the hover-
chair to where the baron commodore, wife, and
daughter, were now standing, his expression
slightly smug, theirs rebellious.

"Ah, dear Mr. Li," the baron said as suave as
ever. "We were about to take our leave of you.
Your lovely Acorna has only just left us to our
own devices."

"She asks me to show? you mine, is all," Mr. Li
said and, laying one finger along his nose, winked
at his guests. "Have only just acquired." His finger
now bridged his lips to indicate secrecy. "You travel
much and can advise me on how to keep all safe."

"Surely, Mr. Li, you have no need of my
advice?" the baron commodore said.

"Ah, but is to see my treasure first and then
advise. We go now. Ah . . . some devices not suit-
able for ladies, you understand?" Li added in an
undertone. "My Judit will entertain lovely wife
and daughter while you come with me."

There was something in the tone of the old
gentleman that made it impossible for Baron
Commodore Manjari to refuse. With an apologetic
shrug toward his womenfolk, he followed Li's
hover-chair to the study, at the far end of the
house from the glittering party. Hafiz unobtru-
sively followed to make sure the baron was cut off

from any possible allies who might notice their
exit.

The children were gathered in the study,
Chiura half asleep in Acorna's lap and the other
two holding tightly to her dress. When the baron
entered after Li, Khetala gasped and backed
behind Acorna, but Jana jumped in front of her
protectively. "Don't hurt her!"

"My dear little girl," the baron said in his
slightly hoarse tone, "why would I wish to harm
this lovely young lady?"

At the sound of the dry, husky voice, Khetala
gripped Acorna's shoulder.

"It's him," she said, her own voice no more
than a thread. "He always whispered before. But I
know him. I do!"

"So do I," said Jana.

Chiura woke up, looked at the baron's face,
and wailed in fright.

"Piper!" she shrieked, trying to burrow into
Acorna's lap.

"The Piper," Jana said. "You came -with Didi
Badini and took my Chiura away—but we got her
back!"

"The Piper," Khetala confirmed. "You came
with Didi Badini and took me to her bonk-shop."




376 --"^             ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

The baron sputtered, gobbled, and turned red.
"Nonsense!" he finally managed to rasp. He
turned to Li. "You'd take the -word of these raga-
muffins from the mines against a man of good fam-
ily? I've never seen these children before."

"You spoke -with Didi Badini many times,"
Khetala said firmly. "I remembered your voice.
There -was not much to think about in the closet
•where she kept me. I remember all the words you
have said, from the day when Siri Teku sold me to
you until the day the lady rescued me. Do you
want me to repeat all I heard you say? "

"Ridiculous!" Baron Manjari said. "This is a
tissue of fabrications, and I can prove it! The child
at Anyag had a whip scar on one cheek ..."

His voice rustled to silence, like a pile of dry
leaves when the wind ceases to stir them. Delszaki
Li and Hafiz Harakamian, one on each side of

him, let the silence draw out.

"Interesting," Li said finally, "that you know

these children came from Anyag."

The baron made a gesture of denial. "I must
have seen them ... a business trip . . . arranging

shipping discounts. . . ."

"A clerk's task, one would think," Li said.
"The Lady Acorna healed my scar," Khetala

said. "But she cannot heal you."

Chiura twisted round to face the man who had
haunted her baby nightmares, the man who had
played with her and tormented her in the skimmer
that took her away from Mama Jana. She kept
one hand firmly twined in the silvery curls of the
Lady Acorna, who had brought Mama Jana back

577

to her. All three children stared unblinking at the
Piper, their eyes a silent accusation.

Finally, Baron Manjari looked away. "No one
will believe this story!"

"You wish to make experiment? " Li asked.

"Be seated, Baron," Hafiz invited. "We have
some serious discussion to do." He nodded at the
children. "Should not these little ones be in their
beds, Delszaki? It offends me that they should
continue to breathe the same air as this camel-
sucking filth."

None of the children felt safe away from
Acorna, so she too left, taking them upstairs,
where she and Gill told stories and sang songs and
promised a thousand times over that the Piper
would never come near them again.

"Why didn't you tell us at first you had seen
the Piper at the mine?" Gill asked at one point.
"You could have identified him from a vid without
ever coming near him."

"Wasn't sure until I saw him and heard the
voice," Khetala said.

"What's a vid?" Jana asked.

"Poor little mite." Gill stroked her forehead. "I
keep forgetting, there's so much you've never seen.
We'll get a vid player up here for you. You'll love
Jill and the Space Pirated. I've got all the episodes.
Acorna loved it when she was a little girl." Jlut two
year<> ago, he thought sadly. Well, those days were
gone forever. How could Acorna's people stand
seeing their children mature so quickly? You
scarcely had time to love them before they had
become tall, independent strangers.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

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379

When all three girls -were finally asleep, the
lower floors of the house were dark, the lights in
the hall and gardens dimmed. Acorna rose stiffly.

"I wonder what's happening? We shouldn't
have left. What if he poisoned them?"

"Calum and Rafik were with them," Gill
pointed out. "I don't think the Piper was prepared
for violence ... at least I hope not. I'll be very
annoyed if Calum and Rafik got a chance to beat
the living daylights out of him and I didn't get my
share." He gently disentangled Jana from his coat
and beard and laid her down in her cot, brushing a
gentle kiss against her forehead.

"Has been no violence," said Delszaki Li,
appearing at the entrance to the suite in his hover-
chair. "Has been some serious negotiation, but all
is resolved peacefully."

Hafiz, behind him, was wearing the beatific
smile of a man who has just sold thirteen blind and
lame camels for a bale of Illic silk.

"If I could ever feel sorry for that bastard,"
Calum said, "I would now. Anybody caught
between Hafiz and Delszaki. . ." He whistled. "I
just hope you two gentlemen don't team up and
form the Harakamian-Li consortium. You'd be
ruling the galaxy in no time."

Hafiz and Delszaki glanced at one another.
"Interesting idea," they said simultaneously.

"Uh-oh," Gill murmured to Acorna, "I think
•we've created a monster. Come on. Let's leave the
kids to get their sleep and find out what kind of
deal these two cut with the blessed baron."

Once more in Mr. Li's study, Acorna listened

intently, but the results of the negotiations were
not entirely satisfactory to her. The price of Baron
Manjari's cooperation was their silence. If he was
allowed to retain his social position, if no whispers
of his peculiar habits and his extra sources of
income got out, then they would find that all offi-
cial constraints on Maganos Moon Base would be
quickly removed. Furthermore, Manjari Shipping
would subsidize the lunar colony by providing free
transport for all materials brought to the moon
and all minerals mined there in the next five years.

"Must give to get," Li said patiently to Acorna.
"If we destroy Manjari, have no hold over him. If
we keep silence, can ensure success of lunar
colony, make safe place for children."

"It's logical," Calum said.

"But not satisfactory," said Gill.

Rafik grinned. "Well, think about this. The
baron just lost three-fourths of his income—or
will, when we take all the bonded children away—
and his shipping company is going to be in the red
for five years, if Maganos is as productive as I
expect it to be. And he won't be able to tell the
baroness and that ratty daughter why they're sud-
denly broke. Does that help?"

"It's a start," Gill allowed.

"We will finish," Li said softly, "when children
are all safe. Old family motto: 'The best revenge is
revenge.'"

"I have some ideas," Acorna said.

"You," Hafiz informed her sternly, "will stay
out of sight until we have the necessary permits.
Remember, you've been poisoned. You're




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

380 "

ficorna

381

extremely ill and your life is despaired of. You may
even have to die for a -while." Acorna looked
shocked and then smiled. "That's right. We don't
•want Manjan tempted to have another try at you."

Baron Manjari -was hardly able to conceal his rage
and fury after leaving Delszaki Li's party. Indeed,
he hardly bothered to conceal it. His wife and
daughter had learned from long and painful expe-
rience how to survive his dark moods. The
baroness thought he was angry because she had
eaten too many sweets again, the girl because she
had been chasing after that blond miner instead of
making a push to attach somebody who could be a
useful business connection for Manjari Shipping.
The baroness babbled nervously. Kisia sulked, but
stayed well out of range of her father's hand; she
had had to explain away too many bruises as
"accidental falls" already. That, she considered,
was the price she paid for the money that had put
her through nav training and now paid for the col-
lection of top-of-the-line fliers and small spacecraft
she enjoyed for her private use. She couldn't actu-
ally work as a space navigator; that would be
beneath her family's status. So she accepted the
baron's heavy moods, occasional casual blows, and
tight hold over her allowance as the inevitable
inconveniences of life. And she controlled -what
she could control: the flight patterns of her ships,
and -what she put into her body, and how much
fear she displayed when her father went into one
of his black spells. She despised her mother, who

stuffed herself with sweets and then apologized
that she "couldn't help it," almost as much as she
despised the baron himself. At least ifhe had some
discipline, Kisia thought.

The baron, brooding over the insults he had
just suffered, was all but unaware of his women-
folks' feelings. They were afraid of him; good,
they would not question him. Not now, anyway.
Even if he had to retrench and retire to the
country for a few seasons, his wife would be
afraid to ask what had happened to their lavish
income. Kisia, though—Kisia would raise hell
when she found out that he could no longer sup-
port a hangar full of private small craft for her
personal amusement. He would have to find
some way to shut her up. ... If it came to that!

But then, Manjari thought, what were the odds
that Li's insane plan would succeed? He -would
have to ensure that official blocks to the develop-
ment of Maganos Moon Base were removed, but
that did not mean the project would be a success.
If Li never managed to get the lunar mining facil-
ity in operation, his own expenses in providing
free shipping would be minimal. And Li would
never make a go of the moon base, because he
meant to staff it with the bonded children of
Kezdet. Children who had been well trained to
hide themselves whenever anybody unknown to
their supervisors came to a compound.

Let him collect a few <>tray^, Manjari thought.
Much gooc) it will f)o him I

The system on Kezdet was too well entrenched,
the children too well trained in fearful, unquestioning




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

382

383

obedience, for any one man to overthrow it. That
pathetic Child Labor League had not even managed
to keep schools going near the factories to teach the
children their letters and numbers. Literate, numer-
ate -workers could read their contracts and calculate
their indebtedness and their -wages. Couldn't have
that sort of nonsense. Manjari hadn't even had to
quash the schools himself; a -word here and there in
the ears of the factory owners most directly affected,
and buildings were torched, teaching-vid machines
•wrecked, maybe a young idealist beaten up or "acci-
dentally" killed from time to time to warn anybody
else who might have such ideas.

So Li would make his gesture and collect a few
stray children, and he would think himself tri-
umphant for a little while . . . and finally he would
understand that his plan would not work, could
not work. The children would never trust a
stranger.

As for that deformed girl who was getting some
sort of reputation as a miracle worker, who might
have been a figurehead for organized resistance—
<<he would be dead by morning. By this time the
slow-acting contact poison would make her feel
headachy and sleepy. She would go to her bed and
fall into a sleep from which she never woke, and
by the time her body was discovered, the traces of
poison would have dissipated.

Man^an was almost relaxed by the time his
personal skimmer reached the heavily guarded
compound where his family and servants lived in
walled luxury. He need not worry overly much.
All he had to do was wait . . . oh, and dispose of

those three children. Without his witnesses, Li
could prove nothing. And children were fragile;

they died every day in the mines and factories of
Kezdet. It should be easy enough to get rid of
those three. Better to wait a little while, though,
until Li thought himself quite safe.




385




As good as his word," Judit said
the very next afternoon, as the
 sheets of permits from every
reluctant inspector streamed from the printer.

"Is not good his -word," Mr. Li said. "Is good as
his fear of disclosure. That works well for men
such as this baron commodore. Is there all that are
necessary?"

"I think so," Judit said, scanning the first
sheets. "Pal's doing something on the other unit,
though. Nothing from the baron; just a routine
legal search, he said."

Rafik reached for the last one to emerge from
the printer and worked backward, moving toward
her as he glanced at the official permits, mumbling
about which department and what sector and
which quadrant. Then he gave a burst of laughter
as he cavorted about, wrapping himself in the
sheets and tearing some of the peripheries with his
antics.

"Stop it, Rafik, oh stop it. You'll ruin them and
we've waited for long to get them," Judit exclaimed.

"They came?" Gill burst through the study
door, Acorna behind him and the three girls fol-
lowing her like the train of a bridal gown.

"We got 'em!" Rafik held the sheets up over
Judit's head, wheeling around. "We got 'em! For
once, the baron commodore is as good as his
word."

"His word is not good," Mr. Li repeated, but he
was beaming. "His fear is."

Judit slapped at Rafik, trying to get him to sur-
render the rest of the permits. Gill reached up and
deftly nipped them from Rafik's hand. He deliv-
ered the slightly creased sheets, pressing the wrin-
kles out, into Judit's eager grasp, and she went
back to the console.

"I'll enter them into our records, and send
timed and dated confirmations to the respective
departments," she said.

"My, there were a lot needed," Acorna said,
moving with her three shadows to observe Judit
as she dealt with the necessary procedures. "How
much longer must I stay dead?"

"But you aren't dead. Lady Acorna," Khetala
said, confused.

"I am as far as the Piper is concerned, sweetie
pie," Acorna said, hugging Khetala to her side.
Chiura crept in under her arm, as well, while Jana
was content to stand within arm's reach. "Did you
not help Hassim hang the mourning banners?"

"Is not to let the little ones out of the house!"
Mr. Li exclaimed, anxious.




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

386

"Hafiz, Gill, and Calum were with them all the
time, and they were crying most piteously."

"Kheti pinched me," Chiura said, rubbing her
bottom.

"All I had to do -was think of Siri Teku's whip
and I could cry for weeks," Jana said, rather
proud of her performance.

"But won't I have to be buried?" Acorna asked.

Hafiz shook his head. "Cremated as befits the
first wife of the scion of House Harakamian," he
said, grinning. "I shall carry the urn with me to
repose next to that of my son on my ship when
Rafik and I return to Maganos tomorrow. And you,
little ones," and he patted the heads of the three little
girls, "will be among my baggage: the very first to
enjoy the hospitality and safety of the Li Moon
Mining Company."

Khetala clung more closely to Acorna, and
Chiura sniffled.

"But I shall be carrying you," Gill said, wag-
ging a finger at them, "and I want not a whimper,
a tear, or a gasp from you when you are supposed
to be miners' clothing in my sacks."

Jana giggled at playing at being "clothing" and
even Kheti smiled, for all three girls loved Uncle
GUI.

"But you can't tell stories to clothing?" Chiura
asked, her eyes wide with regret.

"Who says I can't?" Gill responded, scowling
fiercely, and she giggled as he swooped down and
tickled her neck with his red beard.

"I've work to do and must concentrate," Judit
said.

Acorna                          --— 387

"Is, after all, office-study," Mr. Li said, trying to
look severe. "Rafik must now call suppliers A to M
to be sure they have received permit. Judit do M to
Z." He clapped his hands together to suggest
urgency.

"Come, girls," Acorna said. "We must pack the
clothing just so in the sacks."

Li's assistants quickly learned that there was no
hope of keeping Acorna safely in the house while
they completed the long task of collecting bonded
child laborers from Kezdet's factories, mines, and
brothels. Without Acorna, they could not even
begin; the children had been too well trained to
hide when strangers approached the compound,
and what with the recent rumors of a horned god-
dess coming to liberate the children, most over-
seers were more stringent.

After the first frustrating day, Judit and Pal
conferred with Delszaki Li. As Calum, Rafik, and
Gill all reported the same inability to get children
to come out of hiding, Li reluctantly agreed that
Acorna might go with them the next day.

"But she is not to waste energy with too much
healing," he instructed. "Is already long task, one
person to visit all places. If she exhausts herself
with healing every child, will never complete the
work. I send medical team with you."

"I'm not worried about Acorna burning herself
out," Gill said, "as much as I am about the baron.
If she starts collecting children from the factories,
you know, he's bound to notice she's not dead."




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

388

389

"And we went to so much trouble with the
funeral banners!" Judit sighed.

"Will speak personally to Baron Manjari," Li
said. "No trouble there. But you watch Acorna!"

And, with those somewhat contradictory reas-
surances, they all went together on the second day.
Acorna was eager to go to Anyag first, but Calum
had overnight produced a revised skimmer sched-
ule showing the optimal path to allow them to
clear mines and factories sequentially while mak-
ing the best use of their skimmers. Anyag was far
from first on the list.

They began at the Czerebogar carpet-weaving
factory, where on the previous day Pal had found
only empty sheds, quiescent looms, and vague talk
from the supervisor of some kind of holiday for
the workers—all adults, of course!

Today, as soon as Acorna stepped out of the
skimmer, pale children began collecting silently in
the central compound. They seemed to come out
of nowhere, from cracks in the walls, from shad-
ows. The supervisor cursed them and told them to
get away, that they had no business in his factory.
The children seemed not even to hear him. They
moved slowly forward until they encircled Acorna.
The nearest ones reached timidly to touch her
with cut and bleeding fingers.

"It is Lukia of the Lights," one whispered.

Others repeated, "Lukia! Lukia!" on rising
tones until the word became a song of praise cir-
cling the courtyard.

"My brother," a ragged girl said. She pushed a
taller boy forward, guiding him with both hands.

"Can you give back his sight, Lukia of the Lights?
He had an infection of the eyes and we had only
water to wash them, but it was not enough."

Acorna caught her breath on a sob, but before
she could reach out to the boy, Rafik had gestured
for a med-tech to see to the lad.

"The infection is reversible, with proper treat-
ment," the tech said. She straightened and glared at
the overseer. "You would have let the boy go blind
for want of a five-credit jar of antibiotic ointment! I
am ashamed to be of Kezdet. But I did not know,"
she said to Acorna, "one hears whispers, always
whispers, but I did not know ... I did not want to
know."

By the time the flight of hired skimmers, led by
Pedir, had collected the last of the children from
the Czerebogar Carpet Factory, the medical tech-
nicians hired by Delszaki Li had all volunteered
their services, )ust as the skimmer pilots had done
after a little encouragement from Pedir.

At Tondubh Glassworks, the news of Acorna's
visit to the Czerebogar factory had preceded them.
They were met by a furious Dorkamadian
Tondubh, threatening to obtain an injunction from
Judge Buskomor against any attempt to remove
workers who were legally bonded to work for the
glass factory in payment of their debts.

"I wouldn't even try," Pal said pleasantly. He
ruffled through the papers he had been printing
out from the corn unit two nights earlier. "I
recently performed a routine legal search. We




ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

390

391

have here . . . no, that's the Vonzodik statement. . .
ah, here we are. This is your sworn statement,
attested by palm-print before Judge Buskomor
himself, that no children under the age of eighteen
are employed by any Tondubh concern. Clearly,"
he said, looking at the children who had come out,
as at Czerebogar, when the word of Acorna's visit
spread, "these children, being well under eighteen,
do not work here and hence cannot possibly be
bonded to you."

Acorna looked at him with delight. So this was
what Pal had been quietly working on! How clever
he was! But she didn't have a chance to tell him so
just then; children in filthy rags and clean, nearly
new, cheap sandals were pressing all around her.

"You came back. Lady Epona," one of them
breathed.

"Epona, Epona," the others repeated in a low
rhythmic chant that filled the compound and
echoed from wall to wall until Dork Tondubh cov-
ered his ears and made no more protest against
their removing the children.

The skimmer pilots were busy through the day,
flying loads of thin, pallid children from east of
Celtalan to the spaceport, where Judit and Gill
awaited them. When the first children were
brought in, Judit gave a triumphant glance at
Baron Commodore Manjari's portside manager.

"Now do you believe that there are passengers
to transport to Maganos?" she demanded.
"Where's the transport the baron promised?"

"I see you want transport," the manager said,
"but the baron din't tell me nothing about laying it
on. 'Sides, our ships are all busy with real cargo."

"Call him," Judit said.

The manager grinned and spat to one side.
"Told you, lady. I din't have no orders, and I don't
have no ships."

Gill took the man's arm.

"I strongly advise that you accede to the lady's
request," he said. The tone was mild enough, but
there was something in the look of his blue eyes—
not to mention the size of the hand grasping the
manager's arm—that suddenly made using the
portable corn unit to page Baron Manjari seem
like a very, very good idea.

When Manjari answered, Judit took the corn
unit.

"You were told that ships would be required
today to shuttle passengers to Maganos. Will you
honor your undertaking, or ... shall Mr. Li honor
his promise to you?"

The Baron Commodore refused to believe that
Judit and Gill really had passengers for Maganos
until the manager confirmed their statement. Very
shortly thereafter his personal skimmer touched
down at the Manjari private pad.

His face first turned gray when he saw the
crowd of waiting children, then slowly suffused
with color as he grasped the meaning of their chat-
ter about the lady whom some called Lukia and
others Epona.

"She's dead," he insisted, his voice a gravelly
protest "Everybody saw the funeral banners ..."




392

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

393

Gill raised his eyebrows. "The funeral ban-
ners? Those were a sign of respect from House Li
to House Harakamian in their mourning for the
heir."

"Whatever could have made you think they
were for Acorna?" Judit added with a slight smile.

"Acorna is alive and -well," Gill emphasized.
"And Mr. Li suggests that it would be best for
everybody if she stayed that way." He lowered his
voice. "The children you met the other night are
already in a safe place. You cannot get at them, but
they can be brought back to tell all Kezdet who you
really are . . . and if Acorna is harmed in any -way
you can be very sure we will bring them back."

The baron's face sagged, as if the muscles had
been suddenly cut, leaving only unsupported,
aging flesh.

"The Manjari ships are employed elsewhere,"
he said. The dry voice was once again level and
betrayed no emotion. "I will make . . . alternative
arrangements."

He spoke into his corn unit at some length.
Shortly thereafter several things happened. First,
obsequious men in Manjari uniforms arrived to
invite Gill, Judit, and the children to Baron
Commodore Manjari's personal storage hangar.
Next, a second Manjari skimmer discharged two
women: one short and plump, the other gaunt to
the point of emaciation. The older woman wore a
bejeweled robe and had a look of pleased
expectancy on her round face. The younger one
was dressed in unrelieved black and began shriek-
ing before she even got out of the skimmer.

"Father, how dare you commandeer my personal
ships! They're mine, you said so! To make up for not
letting me have a real job as a navigator, because it
was supposed to be an unsuitable occupation for the
Manjari heiress. Anything I wanted, you said, and
when I said I wanted my own collection of private
spacecraft, you said yes. You can't go back on that
bargain now!"

She stared, suddenly speechless in horror, at
the dirty, ragged children being led into her per-
sonal skiff with its luxurious interior fittings.

"Hush, Kisia," Manjari snapped. "I am only
borrowing your ships. I would not do so if it were
not absolutely necessary, I assure you!"

"They're mine," Kisia repeated.

"Then, Kisia, if you want to keep them, you
will allow your father the use of them for as many
days as this takes," Manjari said so firmly that
Kisla's narrow mouth closed on her next com-
plaint. "You have no conception of the difficulties
I face."

"How should I? You never tell me anything!"

"Well, I'm telling you now. We face ruin, girl.
The House of Manjari is going to lose three-
quarters of its income for years to come. Maybe
forever."

"Manjari, what is it?" The baroness touched
his sleeve. "What is the trouble?"

"Oh, don't bother me. You've never been any
use—one child, and that one a scrawny girl—and
you certainly can't help now. Go watch one of
your romance vids and eat a box of sweets and
stay out of our way!" Manjari turned back to




394

Acorna

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

395

Kisla. "You will help me out in this crisis. And -we
will rebuild the fortunes of House Manjari. You
and I, together, as many years as it takes."

"By letting these stinking beggars on my
ships?" Kisla s thin face twisted in disgust. "Forget
it! You go too far. Father. They'll get bugs on the
upholstery."

"Quite likely."

"They'll get space-sick."

"Almost certainly."

"They're dirty, and they stink, and some of
them are bleeding. They are absolutely disgusting,
and I'm not having any more of them anywhere
near my ships. Stop them, do you hear me? Stop
them boarding! Now!"

The baron cocked his right hand back over his
left shoulder, but the baroness was beside him
before he could strike his daughter.

"Wait a moment, Manjari," she said calmly.
"While I do believe that this once I sympathize with
your desire to beat Kisla, there is something she
must know first—and you, too." She looked at the
gaunt young woman with something approaching
pity. "Kisla, you would have been one of those chil-
dren."

"I?" Kisla gasped. "You're crazy! I'm your
daughter! No child of House Manjari was ever
even close to one of those filthy beggar brats!"

"No child of House Manjari, true," the
Baroness Ilsfa agreed, "but you see, Kisla, I
learned of some of Manjari's more disgusting
habits very shortly after our marriage. There was a
little maidservant . . . well, never mind. I vowed




then that I, an Acultanias, descended from the
First Families of Kezdet, would never bear a child
to him. But he would not leave me alone until I
produced an heir, so ..." She shrugged her plump,
white shoulders. "While he was away on one of his
half-year business trips, I made a small payment to
a Didi in East Celtalan for a relatively new baby.
The ... ah ... donations to the Celtalan Medical
Center to certify that you had been born to me and
that I would never be able to have another child
were considerably more expensive. I had to sell a
lot of my dowry jewels—gaudy things; I never
liked them anyway, and Manjari certainly never
noticed they were gone. So you see, Kisla, it
becomes you ill to sneer at children whose fate—or
worse—you might well have shared."

Baron Manjari and Kisla stared at the baroness
m shocked silence.

"Which Didi?" Manjari finally asked.

"One of those you hired to procure children for
your filthy habits, Manjari dear," the baroness said
sweetly. "How else would I have known where to
find a Didi? So you see, there is even a possibility
that Kisla is your own daughter. Although it seems
unlikely to me, since you always preferred chil-
dren too young to become pregnant—"

Baron Commodore Manjari had lowered his
hand during her disclosure and, with an insou-
ciance that was almost laudable under the circum-
stances, had slipped it into his pocket. Now he
withdrew that hand. There was a glint of metal;

Gill sprang forward with a warning cry, but he was
too late. The plasknife had neatly sliced through




396

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

397

the baroness's neck. Blood spurted over Manjari's
hands.

"No, Father! Don't kill me, too!" Kisia shrank
away from him.

"I had to stop her talking. Surely you see that,"
Manjari said in a conversational tone, his dark
eyes glittering and staring. "If people found out
that you -were a brothel foundling, it -would ruin
our position in society."

He looked around him at the horrified faces of
Judit, Gill, and half a dozen Manjari Shipping
employees. "Stop talking . . . stop them all talk-
ing. . . . It's too late for that, isn't it?" he asked
Gill, like a child. "Isn't it too late?"

Gill nodded heavily.

"I was afraid of that," Manjari said heavily, and
turned the plasknife upon himself.

They had tried to keep the children from seeing the
removal of the bodies, but Kisia s piercing screams
attracted all eyes until she, too, was removed, under
restraints and shot full of tranks.

"The Piper's dead," one child reported to those
already on the shuttle.

"The Lady Lukia killed him for us."

"How could she? She ain't here!"

"She can do anything. Prolly she put malojo on
him to make him kill hisself."

Gill shook his head as the children calmly took
their places on the shuttle.

"I thought they'd be upset," he muttered.

"They have always known death," Delszaki Li

said. He had come upon them silently, in his
hover-chair, and Gill jumped half a meter at the
unexpected sound of the old man's voice. "Death
is no stranger. Now it is for you and Judit to teach
them about life." He looked down, where the
Manjaris blood stained the floor of the port, and
sighed. "But it is great pity about the baron com-
modore."

"I don't see why," said Judit. She was some-
what pale, but she was no longer leaning against a
wall and fighting nausea. "He was an evil man. He
deserved to die."

"Judit, Judit." Li sighed. "Have I taught you
nothing of business? Now? will have to pay own
shipping costs instead of extorting from Manjari.
Is great pity," he repeated.

Acorna, still east of Celtalan, heard nothing of the
happenings at the spaceport. The enormity of the
task was exhausting her—so many places to visit,
so many children hidden away and -working as
slaves! But it grew easier as the day -went on. The
same secret, subterranean channels of communica-
tion that had once spread tales of Epona, of Lukia,
of Sita Ram, now carried the -word that the
promised day of freedom had arrived. Those who
hid would not be taken away into the sky; they
would have to remain as slaves. And so the chil-
dren began coming out even before they saw
Acorna.

"Tomorrow you won't have to do it all," Pal
said cheerfully. "Anywhere they see a Li consor-




ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

398

399

tium skimmer, they'll come to us. You should go
home and rest now."

"The skimmer pilots have been flying all day,"
Acorna said. "If they can keep on, so can I." She
beckoned to Pedir. "Can you and your friends man-
age one more flight today, Pedir? Good. There is one
place more that I must visit now. For Jana and
Khetala."

At Anyag, the news of some crazy woman who
•was taking away perfectly good bond-laborers had
reached the overseers as well as the servants. Some
locked their gangs in the sleep sheds. Since Siri
Teku's gang was just coming off shift at the end of
the day, he simply told them to stay Below. There
would be no off-shift until this Acorna person had
come and gone. She wouldn't find Anyag as easy to
ruin as those city-type factories with their soft man-
agers !

But the news had not mentioned a small army
of skimmer pilots, medical technicians, and House
Li guards coming along with Acorna. While
Delszaki Li's people swarmed over the Anyag
workings, breaking open sleep sheds and escort-
ing the dazed, blinking children to skimmers,
Acorna looked and looked for the faces she
remembered.

"You won't find 'em," Siri Teku taunted her,
grinning. "They belong to me and Old Black."

Mention of the underground demon whose
name was used to terrorize the children was all the
clue Acorna needed. She stopped briefly at each
open shaft, delicately testing the air with her horn
until she came to the one where the air -was heavy

with the breathing of many small people left all
alone in the darkness of Below.

The engines that moved a cage up and down
the shaft were stilled, but there were emergency
ladders at the side.

"Laxmi," Acorna called down into the dark-
ness. "Faiz. Buddhe. Lata."

There was a shuffling sound deep in the shaft
and a scuffling noise behind Acorna, as Siri Teku
moved toward her and three pilots joyfully sat on
his chest. Acorna took no notice; all her attention
was concentrated on the slender thread of her own
voice, drawing the children toward her. "Ganga,
Villum, Parvi," she called.

As she named the children, they slowly, fear-
fully, climbed the long ladders to the top of the
shaft. Laxmi was first.

"Sita Ram." She sighed. "You did come back!"
She fell to her knees and kissed Acorna s skirts.

Acorna gently lifted her. "I will need your help
with the younger ones, Laxmi," she said. "Lata,
Ganga, Parvi?" she coaxed again.

"These are the last ones at Anyag," Pal said
tensely beside her. "Now will you come home and
rest? If only so you can come with us tomorrow??"

"Yes," Acorna said. "Come, Faiz, Villum,
Buddhe," she called. "We are going home. We are
all going home."

That the home she would eventually go to—if
Calum's researches were true—would be many
light-years, and possibly many subjective years, of
travel from Kezdet was not important now. And
certainly not to be mentioned to these children




400 ——'             ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

until she saw them happy on Maganos under the
care of Judit and Gill. Perhaps she and Calum
•would wander the stars without success, but, in
helping these children, was she not earning the
right to find her own people? Had she not made
good her vow to the destitute and abandoned of
Kezdet?

Smiling, she swung Lata up into her arms and
walked toward Pedir's skimmer, trailed by chil-
dren, whose grimy hands clutched her skirts and
her long silver hair.

No one at Anyag dared to stop them.