"Maybe it's not as bad as you think," Khorii said, raising a handful of soiled silk to her face and almost gagging on the cat musk. Her horn, as if accidentally, touched the affected garments and the smell went away. "I think if we put them through the swash right away they'll be good as new," she said, using the students' term for the sonic wash they all used to bathe and do laundry.
Shoshisha's lips clamped together to show that she didn't believe it.
"May I try or not?" Khorii asked.
Shoshisha shrugged irritably and flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture.
Khorii carried the garments into the lav between their room and the adjoining one. Khiindi's interest in the clothing had not lessened, but he carefully kept Khorii between him and Shoshisha.
Khorii closed the door behind her. The walls automatically glowed with light by which she saw that the horn touch had turned the cat urine as clear and odorless as water. She stuck the underclothes into the sonic wash-seven pairs of silk panties and lacy bras, plus an extra sleep shirt, all of the finest quality, soft and sheer as moth wings. Shoshisha might be an exiled and orphaned princess, but she was evidently not a poor one.
"You are very lucky that I am your friend, Khiindi Kaat, or that girl would have your pelt for her knickers," Khorii scolded. "And after what you did to her knickers, she'd need it." Khiindi wound himself around her ankles. When she pulled the underwear out of the swash he mewed for her to return it to him for further destruction.
She held the silken bundle out to Shoshisha. "See? Good as new."
Shoshisha snatched it away from her, unbelieving. Then sniffed it, looked surprised, and stuffed it back in her drawer. "This is a school, you know, Khorii. I'll bet if your grandfathers were here, they would never allow you to bring that-that-livestock in here."
"Well, he can't go outdoors. There's no atmosphere," Khorii said reasonably.
"A very good reason to put him out if you ask me," Shoshisha said.
Of course, nobody had asked her, but Khorii decided to change the subject. She was, after all, training to be a diplomat.
"I wonder how the grandfathers are doing and if the baby is all right."
"I'm surprised they haven't contacted you before now," Shoshisha said, clearly meaning to wound Khorii by reminding her she was being neglected.
"I don't think they're able to right now. Besides, everybody is probably busy with the baby," Khorii said. "I sure hope they're all right. Are you going to sleep now?"
"If I'm allowed to, yes," Shoshisha replied.
"We will, too, but I have something to do first. Don't worry. I'll take Khiindi with me."
She decided to have a late snack and left the dormitories, taking the hubbub down to the 'ponies gardens. The garden appeared much depleted from when she had first arrived. Khorii knew she hadn't eaten that much since she'd arrived. There was always plenty on the Condor, where the garden was much smaller and there were two other Linyaari and a human to share the harvest. Of course, the school used the 'ponies garden for fresh nourishment for the other students in addition to the starches and proteins they had from different sources.
Leaving the gardens, she decided to try to contact Kezdet and headed to the computer lab and holo suites.
Chapter 10
At the lab Khorii found Hap and Elviiz building a holo-model of a very futuristic-looking structure she assumed was a space station or vessel of some sort. Or perhaps it was simply a cat toy. Khiindi had great fun jumping through it several times and getting scolded by Elviiz until Hap scooped the cat into his arms and held him, belly and paws up. Khiindi struggled, and Hap tickled the fur of his tummy until the cat relaxed and started to purr.
Khorii sat at the console and input the hospital's code. Elviiz asked her what she was doing, and she told him, whereupon he said, "You will receive no answer. I have tried many times today on my personal unit."
"But it doesn't take a relay to contact Kezdet," she said.
"No, but if one is trying to contact the hospital, it may be that the communications personnel are incapacitated. If they are lucky, they are no longer there. I do not think a hospital would be a very healthy place to be at this time."
He was speaking in Standard out of courtesy to Hap, and she answered in the same language. "No. I suppose not. The whole idea seems very odd, doesn't it? Having children born in the same place where plague victims might come to be healed? Especially when the plague and some of the other illnesses aren't something the people at hospitals can cure anyway. If only the baby could have waited until we arrived, we could have seen to its safe delivery . . ."
Hap snorted. "You? What could you have done? You may be a uni-a Lin-whatchamacallit . . ."
"Linyaari," Elviiz told him.
"A Linyaari, but you're just a little girl. What do you know about delivering babies?"
"What's there to know?" she asked, puzzled. "You just encourage the mother, and the baby comes out all by itself."
"Ha!" Hap said. "What if it's turned wrong or has the cord wrapped around its neck? Do you know how to fix that?"
"Well, no. But why would that happen?"
"You really don't ask when it does, you just have to get the baby turned or the cord unwrapped. With big animals it's hard enough, but with humans-well, and Linyaari, too, I'd think, since you look a lot like us-it often takes surgery."
"And I suppose you know how to do that?" she asked, feeling a little outclassed.
"No," he said, sounding a little miserable. "Not how to do surgery. But I helped deliver calves and colts a lot back home. It's just part of life on an agro colony. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but they don't have classes for that here. Khiindi here is the only four-footed critter around, actually."
"Yes, and according to some people he shouldn't be here either," she said. She told them about Khiindi's encounter with Shoshisha's wardrobe, leaving out the part her horn played in salvaging the garments. Elviiz would know what she'd done without her having to say, and Hap ought not to know. She had been warned many times by her parents, grandparents, and others that the healing and purifying power of Linyaari horns was a secret. Of course, the secret was only known to every single Linyaari, Uncle Joh, Maak, the human grandfathers and their wives, Uncle Hafiz and Aunt Karina, and other people Mother had helped before she knew to keep the horn's abilities secret. But it was a secret from everyone else in the universe who didn't already know.
The secret was safe from Hap. "Wow," he said. "What was it like? Shoshisha's underwear, I mean?"
"Smelly," Khorii said, wrinkling her nose, "once Khiindi got done with it. But fortunately I got it clean in the swash. She was really mad."
"She's pretty sensitive," Hap said, dreamily.
"Oh, yes," Khorii said. "To anything that seems counter to her own interest, she's very sensitive. But she doesn't care at all that Khiindi is far from home and other cats and was only trying to mark as his territory something he thought would make a nice nest."
"She's not a cat person," Hap agreed, reluctantly admitting this small fault in his otherwise perfect dream girl.
Khorii rolled her eyes, and Elviiz, seeing this, rolled his, too.
Khiindi stood on Haps lap with his paws on the boy's shoulder and rubbed his face against Haps lovingly. How could anyone not be a cat person, he seemed to be saying, when he was so adorable?
Elviiz said, "Since we cannot make contact with Kezdet or the Condor, there is no need for you to violate your sleep cycle any longer, Khorii. You should return to your room and rest."