"Why?" Hap asked. "She's alive, she has us. Life goes on. Besides, it's not like her parents really had much to do with her, you know. People like her are raised by nannies and servants. And her brothers and sisters were all kids by other women in her father's harem. She says they were always plotting to kill each other anyway. No big loss."
Khorii disagreed. It surely must have been some sort of loss. How could it not be? Even if Shoshisha hadn't been close to her parents, it must have been quite a blow to lose them and have to leave the only home she'd ever known and a position of power and privilege to come to Maganos Moonbase, where she was just a student, like everyone else.
By the time Hap related Shoshisha's background, they had stepped onto the walkway and climbed beyond the computer sector to the third level, whence came the aromas of cooked food.
"Come on," Hap said. "I'll introduce you to some of the others in this bubble. Everybody here is more or less your standard-issue humanoid, like me, with a few variations. But there's a more exotic breed housed in the adjoining bubble."
"How are they exotic?" Khorii asked. She had no doubt that she was pretty exotic to most of these kids.
"Well, we call them poopuus-short for pool pupils, because they live in a big salt-water pool that takes up most of the bubble. They don't have a hub like we do, and they don't have a kitchen because they only eat what they grow in their pool-not vegetarian like you. They like fish and some kinds of seaweed."
"How did they come to be here?" Khorii asked. "And how many live in the pool? Do they study the same subjects as the rest of you?"
"Some of the same ones, but they are also studying what's known about oceans on other worlds. I don't know all the reasons behind it. They don't mix much with the rest of us. I've tried to strike up a conversation and, you know, make friends, but they just dive and won't talk to me. There's sort of a language barrier, too. They study Standard but they don't use it among themselves."
"How do they study if they can't leave their pool?" Khorii asked.
"By computer-only theirs are behind the walls in their waterways."
His whiskers and ears both twitching thoughtfully while the end of his tail traced curves on the shining plascrete tile of the floor, Khiindi looked up at Hap. It was as if the cat were thinking, thinking very hard. Suddenly his ears pricked up and he lowered himself to a tail-lashing squat, as if stalking prey, then galloped away from them, back down the spiral walkway, bounding off of it from the second level to land on the central street of the bubble. He ran off straight down the street toward the next bubble. The only time he slowed down was when he looked back once to see if they were following him.
"Khiindi!" Khorii called after him as she ran in full pursuit. "Come back, silly cat!"
"We'd better catch him," Hap said. "They're not used to animals around here, I'm afraid. Things are kidproofed to some degree, but not critterproof. There's all kinds of stuff that could hurt him or that he might damage. Your grandpas would not be pleased."
Although they had stopped at the entrance to the dining hall, it vanished behind them as they chased Khiindi. Khorii called to Khiindi as she ran down the corridor, while students stopped, goggled at her, and moved off to the side to avoid being trampled, finally staring after her as she passed them.
Hap and Elviiz stampeded after her, and at the end of the street they all stopped, panting, seeing Khiindi waiting by the circular doorway into the next bubble as if he were waiting for some vermin to bolt from the hole. The cat looked highly satisfied, as if he'd done something exceptionally clever.
But it was a man, not a mouse, who emerged from the doorway as it irised open. And Khiindi had no interest in him at all. Instead, the cat leaped through the open doorway and was long gone again by the time Khorii, Elviiz, and Hap passed through it after him.
Hap laughed. "Does Khiindi speak Standard?"
"I don't know," Khorii said. "I think he understands it well enough when he wants to. But when he doesn't . . ."
"He is a sentient being on some level," Elviiz continued. "He seems to comprehend a great many simple words or phrases, though only those that are not addressed to him as direct commands. He is developmentally challenged in recognition of the simple negative."
"That's not unusual in cats," Hap pointed out. "But are you sure it isn't more than that?"
"Why do you ask?" Khorii wanted to know.
"Because I could swear he understood exactly what I was telling you about the poopuus and that they had fish in their tanks. He took off the instant I said it."
"But he has never met a fish," Elviiz told him. "He would not know what one was."
"Maybe not, but it sure looked like he knew where he was headed and what he wanted to me. I bet he could smell the fish from where we were and went to find some. I never met a cat who didn't like fish. I think that there's more to that cat than meets the eye."
Khorii laughed. "He is not very good at grazing, it's true. And he seems to form his own ideas about what he likes on his menu. My mother says that his sire, RK, is a completely sentient being. Who knows what a cat thinks? I only know that he can be a rare handful."
As they entered the bubble, the smell of water freshened the air, and a scent Khorii would come to identify with fish and the poopuus who swam in the pool and through the waterways that occupied most of the interior of the bubble. In place of the hubbub moving walkway, water flowed upward to another pool, then, on the other side, back down in a playful waterfall.
"It not only serves as a playground for the pool kids, it also helps aerate and recirculate the water," Hap told them.
But Khorii could barely hear him for the shrill noises and splashing coming from the pool.
The poopuus were much larger than she had expected, very young but with rounded bodies that floated nicely. Their bare skin was the color of a roan Linyaari youngster not yet star-clad, and glistened in the light of the bubble. All of them had flowing hair of a black that was almost purple in its density, and they had very large, prominent dark eyes.
Oblivious to their latest visitors, they leaped from the surface of the pool and dived back into it again. As she drew nearer, she realized that some of the shrill noises were laughter.
"There he is!" Elviiz said, pointing. "There's Khiindi!"
And indeed, he was there, soaking wet, a fish in his jaws, and carefully borne aloft on the back of a swimming student. The student deposited the sodden cat on the edge of the pool, where Khiindi tried to shake himself while keeping a grip on his fish. His water taxi lingered at the pool's edge, watching the cat with dark eyes round with fascination. Khiindi stood with his front paws on his flopping fish, shook himself vigorously, and head-butted the nose of his rescuer before ravaging the fish.
The language the poopuus used among themselves reminded Khorii somewhat of that of the sii-Linyaari back home, the ancient beings who were forerunners of her own race. Her parents had saved the sii-Linyaari from extinction by bringing them forward in time, and now they lived in the newly reborn oceans of Vhiliinyar, a development that did not please many of the traditionalists, which Khorii thought was stupid. The sii-Linyaari were not the prettiest people, it was true, having tiny horns all over their heads sometimes instead of just the one in the middle, and they did not have the healing power of her own people, but they were great swimmers and good friends of her parents. They had also taught her to swim when she was just a baby. She pulled off her shipsuit.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Hap asked, sounding shocked.
"I am going to go meet these students," she said, and dived in. She was happy for a change to be taking the initiative herself instead of being herded here and there, even by someone as friendly and well-meaning as Hap. The water felt wonderful, cool but not too frigid, and though it had been a bit murky when she first jumped in, almost immediately it became as clear as glass. Beneath the surface many students-schools of them, she supposed you might say-swam through the deep waters. The bottom contained a veritable jungle of aquatic plant life, including lacy palaces of some shell-like substance that glowed with rainbows of color.