Lealikilekua, surface-diving for the less noisy depths of the pool, made sure to splash water high enough to soak Shoshisha.
That made Khiindi brighten up a little, as much as he could, under the circumstances.
Hap approached saying something soothing, and Khiindi hoped his friend would help him, but Hap seemed not to see him, intent instead on the embattled Elviiz. Khiindi could not hear what he was saying because of the screaming.
Khorii and four teachers ran into the bubble.
"Turn it off!" Shoshisha shrieked up at the teachers. "Make her turn that monster off before it kills someone."
Time for an injection of perspective here. Khiindi mewed weakly and tried to drag himself forward, giving Shoshisha and Marl as wide a berth as possible. His back legs would not hold his weight and his tail dragged listlessly behind him. He cried and cried, trying to alert people to his presence there at their feet so they would not injure his poor tail again or squash him.
Finally, he saw Khorii's beloved two-toed hooflike feet, impossibly far away. Once more he was lifted by invisible hands and carried to Khorii's feet, his battered body gently deposited upon them.
He felt small hands caress his head and heard a childish voice saying, "Poor Khiindi Kitty!"
He tried to answer with another plaintive mew but it died before it escaped his throat.
He saw no more of what was going on around him.
Instead, his past lives, none of them lived wholly in the form of a small cat, flashed before him. He had been many places, seen many things, traveled through many times, and sired many many offspring. In fact, what with the siring and the time travel, he was doubtlessly literally his own grandsire. His lives had always been so big, so grand, so full of activity and vitality, that it seemed impossible it took only one mean male-not even an adult at that-to do him in. It seemed incredible that when his people had decided he would assume the small cat form that they intended-that they would allow-him to be killed while in it, small and relatively defenseless. They hadn't been that angry, had they? This was just a punishment, a temporary humiliation which, when he had proved how well he could look after Khorii, they would rescind and he would be allowed to shift shapes, forms, and sizes at will as he always had.
And yet, Khiindi knew that something was broken inside. He felt the breath huff out of himself in one last long sigh as his spirit saw the sun come out and pounced toward it, no longer hurting, ready to bask. He wouldn't have been able to eat that fish anyway.
Khorii had just emerged from the 'ponies garden and was on her way to the cafeteria when she was almost bowled over by stampeding teachers, Calla Kaczmarek, Captain Bates, Steve Reemer, and Headmaster Phador Al y Cassidro himself.
Calla and Captain Bates grabbed her by either arm. "Come along, Khorii."
"Why? What?" She couldn't be in trouble, could she? She had just been minding her own business, trying, in fact, to improve the moonbase food supply.
"Your droid has apparently malfunctioned and injured one of the students," Phador Al y Cassidro told her.
"Elviiz? He didn't! He wouldn't. I don't think he can!"
"Nevertheless, he apparently did," Calla told her. "I first … realized he was an android . . . when I asked . . . who his people had been … and he told me his father .. . was a modified KEN unit . .. I remember from when … I was a child slave . . . before your mother . . . and Mr. Li freed us? . . . that the Piper . . . used KEN units . . . sometimes … to enforce his will . . . They were definitely able … to inflict harm on people … I know . . . from personal . . . experience."
Calla's speech came in short gasps because she was talking as she rushed to keep up with the much faster Captain Bates. As it was, her grasp on Khorii's arm was so far behind Captain Bates's grasp on Khorii's other arm that Khorii felt torn between the two.
On the other side of the iris, the bubble was crowded with students and filled with screams, shrieks, oaths that had to do with excretion and mating, and, from the poopuus, splashing. Khorii was taller than most of the kids, however, and over their heads she saw Elviiz swinging from side to side, brandishing fists reinforced with steel. At his feet someone was moaning, shrieking, and swearing while Shoshisha, who was visible, screeched and ranted. Sesseli was emitting a high-pitched childish scream, and the poopuus were squealing agitatedly to one another in their own language.
Only Hap seemed calm. He spoke to Elviiz in a kind and reasonable voice. Shoshisha squealed suddenly as she was drenched, and something landed on the deck beside her. Khorii edged forward, stopping just behind Sesseli.
She started to speak to Elviiz, but Hap persuaded him to lower his fists first. The teachers closed in. Something wet plopped onto Khorii's feet in all the confusion, but she couldn't see her feet for Sesseli, who suddenly let out her own shrill squeal. "Poor Khiindi Kitty!" she cried, and started wailing again.
Khorii bent down and saw Khiindi. He was sopping wet and so limp and thin without his silvery fur bushing out that he seemed almost transparent. His back legs splayed out oddly and when she touched his tail his front end contracted in a spasm.
At least he was alive. She knelt to lift him, touching him with her horn as she did so. She couldn't let the others see her healing him, but she couldn't let him suffer needlessly either.
There was no time to explain or to argue. She lifted him, feeling through her arms that his pain had abated, and turned to leave the bubble, Sesseli, still crying, following, trying to give comforting strokes to the parts of Khiindi that dangled from Khorii's arms.
"Khorii, where are you going?" Calla asked. "You are a healer like your mother, aren't you? This young man is seriously injured."
"Be back soon," she said, her voice tight with anger.
Sesseli followed still, so, crooning to Khiindi with her face-and horn-against his wet fur, Khorii carried him (purring by then, but she didn't mention that to Sesseli yet) to the 'ponies garden. Nodding to the first shoots of one of the plants whose growth she had been accelerating before she left the garden, she instructed Sesseli to pick it.
The little girl did so and brought it to her.
"Now, you put it on Khiindi while I hold him and we'll see if he gets better," she said, not giving the girl a chance to get a good look at Khiindi, who was wriggling around in her arms, until she put the leaves on him.
Whereupon she raised her face and horn from him and looked down into wide and relieved golden green eyes. "It took you long enough," she could almost hear him say.
Now Sesseli's squeals were of delight as she jumped up and down. "I healed him! I healed him! Is he all better now?"
Khorii nodded. "All better."
"Now do we go back and heal that boy?"
"Ye-es," Khorii said. "But Khiindi is just a little cat and it doesn't take much to fix him. The boy is very large and it will take a lot more leaves to heal him. So let's keep looking."
Finally, they found the leaves, which she ground up using the hard soles of her hoofed feet, and mixed with water. Khiindi watched attentively throughout this procedure, fully recovered and ready to hunt and vanquish the bits of leaf that flicked out from under Khorii's hoof.
Grinding the leaves gave her a chance to work off a little of the anger she was feeling toward Marl and Shoshisha. It was totally ka-Linyaari to be so angry she didn't want to heal someone. Of course, she would heal him, but, she reasoned, when there was more than one person wounded, you had to decide who to do first. Khiindi's injuries had been life-threatening, whereas Marl, from her observation, would mend without her help, though slower and more painfully.
They carried the makings of the poultice in a garden pot back to the pool bubble. Khiindi mewed plaintively before going through the iris, and Sesseli picked him up and held him, stroking his head.