This time their walk through the bowels of the Temple was friendlier, and where it was possible they walked side by side. As in the other Temples, there were holes high in the walls that let in light and allowed the guardians to jump in and out. At one bend in the path, RK poked his head through a hole and his body followed with a soft plop onto the path. He took a quick hop up to Acorna's shoulders. She idly tickled his tail and he flipped it under her nose.
"He is devoted to you, your guardian. I have never seen one like him."
"Haven't you?" Acorna asked. Her heart was beating very rapidly in anticipation of what the old priest had to show her, and yet she feared to be disappointed again, to come upon another dead end and find a trace of Aari, but no way to reach him. It seemed safer to talk about cats. They enjoyed being talked about, and people who liked them always had things to say about them. "But Captain Becker told me he found RK on a ship from your planet."
"How can that be? We have had no space vessels since many years before the Space Cat came to us."
"Time warp?" Acorna asked, looking thoughtfully up at RK.
He licked his paw. (Don't ask me. I don't remember anything about another ship before the Condor.)
They had once again reached the statue of Aari, now bathed in the reddish suns-shine pouring through the holes in the walls and ceiling.
It looks so like him. Shrugging RK off her shoulders, Acorna stepped across the water and onto the pedestal of the statue. She put her arms around the cold stone, feeling a tear that ran down her cheek cooling as it touched the statue. Then, realizing the priest was waiting for her, she stepped back across the water again. "Sorry," she said. "I had to do that. I miss him so much."
The old priest said, "Your coming raises many questions, but it has also brought many answers. You have saved us, as was foretold."
"Not really," she said. "Mostly that was my friends. And the person who was foretold in your stories could have been any of us Linyaari, as you surely see now."
"You are modest. You are the one foretold, the beloved companion of the Companion. He knew you would come and that you would come when you were desperately needed, just as he was when he came to us. And so you have. Perhaps it is true that you could not have saved us alone, but you were not alone, for your friends and kinsmen came to help us for love of you."
She wanted to tell him it was an accident, but she knew he wouldn't believe her. After all that had happened, she didn't really believe it herself.
"First I would show you the gift left for us by your Aari, for that was the name of the Companion in the scriptures, though it is too holy to speak of in the normal course of events."
She giggled. "I'm sorry. I think he would find it funny that his name is too holy to speak. Even after the Khleevi hurt him so badly, once he recovered a little he had a sense of humor-he was always dressing up in these weird outfits that concealed that he didn't have a horn. They-the Khleevi-took it from him and… and…"
Her hand closed around the little disk at her throat and she found she couldn't go on. The priest patted her shoulder and then walked behind the statue and knelt to show her something just below water level.
She in turn knelt and peered at it.
"Even when the evil men poisoned our lake, this water stayed pure because of this. If your friends had not been here to purify it, eventually the lake would have become pure again because of this. The Companion gave us this of himself so that we would never again face dying of thirst because all of our water was tainted."
He was indicating a small piece of what could only be horn, just a sliver. For Aari to do that to himself when the Khleevi had used it as a way to torture him-his horn only recently grown… Acorna shuddered. Although she herself had done something similar on Rushima, her own horn had never been threatened as Aari's had. She reached out but it was too far. So she lay on her stomach and stretched out over the water to touch it. Instantly she felt not just the horn, but his arms warm and strong around her, his lips on her face, his horn against her own. She saw him in all of his favorite postures, doing all of the things she remembered so well, his face set in those beloved, wry expressions as if he were standing before her.
She didn't want to move, ever again. She just wanted to stay there where she could feel him and touch him. To stand up would not be to rejoin the universe, but to lose contact again with the most precious person in it.
The old priest's finger tapping her shoulder caused her to stare stubbornly at the horn, trying to hang on to the images of Aari the horn invoked.
But the old man was used to disturbing visionaries. His efforts were aided by RK, who yowled at Acorna and sank his claws into her hip.
Tears rolled down her face to join the artesian waters the horn purified in perpetuity. She turned back to them, pulling herself back across the watery chasm, breaking contact, losing Aari all over again.
The priest indicated something in the wall behind them, behind the statue, beyond the water. It was a huge chrysoberyl. But the priest spun it on its base and she saw that the back of it had been hollowed out. Within it lay a black box, the sort that recorded the last moments of crashed ships, the computer archives that left a record for those finding the wreckage. "He meant this for you," the old priest was saying, oblivious to her rebellious and angry mood. "It isn't very pretty, but I thought it might be one of those gadgets you off-worlders like. Something that has a message?"
She clasped it to her. "Yes, a message. Yes, oh, yes."
Now she couldn't wait to leave this place, to return to the Condor or the Balakiire, wherever she could decode the message he'd left for her.
Fortunately, this time when she emerged from the depths of the Temple with the priest and RK, she saw a stream of people, mostly Linyaari, coming from the foliage where flitters could be docked.
" Mission accomplished, padre," Captain MacDonald told the priest. "We got every lake, river, stream, well, and mud puddle in the known world."
Neeva said, "The people who saw what we were doing asked that we thank you for thinking of their welfare. They seemed surprised that someone should do so."
Becker said, "I guess this kinda blows the Linyaari cover about the horns not doing the healing and unpolluting."
"No harm done," Nadhari told him. "My people are not a space-traveling nation who can tell others what has occurred here."
"You say 'we.' I guess that means you're staying to be the queen mother, like the high priest said, doesn't it? Hafiz is going to be really pissed."
"I know that, but I have to, Jonas. Comfort Hafiz by telling him that we will be happy to keep the Wats with us. We can always use good guards."
"That ought to make the old man almost happy enough to make up for losing you," Becker said, giving her a hug.
When good-byes had been said all around, the high priest made a gesture and a procession of priests bearing the largest and finest of the cat's-eye chrysoberyls began handing them to the guests and conveying them to the flitters.
"But these are your sacred stones!" Acorna said.
"They are our gifts to you," the priest said.
"They're worth a fortune. Hafiz would buy these from you for enough funds to do anything for the planet you wanted done."
The old priest smiled. "You and your friends have already done what I wanted for the planet. There is not enough money in existence to repay you, but if these may be used to help rebuild the homes of your people, then take them with our blessing. The Mulzarah is in agreement, as are her regents."
"Miw-Sher?" Acorna asked, and the girl nodded so gravely that Acorna set down the precious black box and the chrysoberyls and knelt to give her one last hug. Then Grimla needed a pat, and then the kittens had to be produced one at a time for cuddles.