Khiindi looked up and Hap sat down, hard, on the deck. Bending to help him up, Khorii brushed his hair with her horn and the organisms fled again. That was very odd. These microscopic attackers were not large enough for her to see, they did not attack her so that she could feel them, but she nonetheless had a sense of them deserting Hap, then being-well, indecisive, if such tiny things could make decisions. They seemed trapped, unable to invade the other cats, or Sesseli, unable to transfer to Jaya or Elviiz. They shimmered in the air for a moment, then, as Khorii lifted her head, they disappeared. When they were alone, she'd have to talk to Elviiz about it. Maybe there was something in his data banks about similar phenomena.
It was interesting, though, that the organisms did not wish to attack Sesseli, Elviiz, Jaya, or the other cats. If her-well, vision, she supposed it could be called-psychic insight perhaps?-proved reliable, it might help her discover something about who was immune to the plague and how it spread.
Elviiz carried Jaya's parents and the other stricken crew members to the room containing the first two victims. Hap offered to help, but although Khorii thought that probably would be safe enough, Elviiz was less susceptible and much stronger.
Instead, Hap manned the helm while Jaya took her on a tour of the ship, so that she could cleanse it of the taint of disease. And also, as Sesseli reminded her, find cat food for the four feline crew members, two of whom were in Sesseli's lap as she sat on the deck. The kitten stood on her shoulder. Khiindi paced back and forth across the console, "assisting" Hap.
Although the ship was a large one, it was not very complex. The engine room was quite straightforward and the drives built for reliability and a modicum of speed so that the ship could make its rounds efficiently. The crew quarters were neither spartan nor luxurious, the cabins situated near the various duty stations rather than in a block. The cabins for the engineers were adjacent to the engine room, those for the captain and first mate and their daughter near the bridge, and so forth. The seven people aboard the ship when it hailed the Moonbase were the only ones required to run it. The vast majority of the vessel was taken up by a cavernous, warehouselike cargo hold that also contained three tractorlike machines used, Jaya told her, for loading, lifting, and positioning the cargo containers.
"First we should see how the other animals are doing," Jaya told her.
"There are others? Besides the cats?"
"Oh yes, we transport livestock, companion animals, service animals, and breeding stock from time to time as well as foodstuffs, building materials, tools, machinery, and whatever else the various worlds cannot or do not manufacture themselves," Jaya told her with some pride. "They are always very glad to see us."
"I can imagine. I don't know how the Moonbase plans to get along without your supplies. That worries me more than our own situation right now. Food supplies there are extremely low, and who knows how long this plague will last? Speaking of which, have you a 'ponies garden or some seeds and soil where I might start one? If we're going to be on your ship for a while, I would like to be able to grow my own food. My people are vegetarian and grazers."
While Jaya located the supplies Khorii would need, Khorii, under the guise of curiosity, poked her head and horn into everything she could reach as she went about the work of cleaning the hold and its cargo of contamination.
"What are you doing?" Jaya asked, descending from the lifter, at the foot of which was a neat stack of various seed sacks, fertilizers, and other gardening supplies.
"Decontaminating the ship," she said.
"I heard you say you could do that, and I wondered what you meant exactly," Jaya said. "How do you know how to do that?"
"How do you know how to run that equipment?" she asked in return. "It's what my people do."
"What? Be like some sort of sentient two-legged Lysol?"
"What's Lysol?"
"It decontaminates things, too, "Jaya replied. "And stinks to high heaven-not that you do because, you know, you don't. You smell good, actually."
"Thank you," Khorii said, sincerely appreciating the compliment from the so far rather thorny girl. "You do not stink, either."
Jaya grimaced. "Thanks. So, do you ever think you might want to do something else? I mean, something your people don't do?"
"I do not understand. My people do many things. Do yours not?"
"Well, sure. Hobbies, like. Or at least, things that didn't turn out to be what they did for a living. Mom was a scholar before she met Dad. And Dad had wanted to play nine-dimensional chess professionally but when my grandpa died, he took over the business instead. He still plays though-" Her voice shrank to a whisper as she corrected herself. "Played."
Khorii, who had continued prowling the containers as they talked, turned back to Jaya and reached out her hand. "I am so sorry."
Jaya blinked hard. "Me, too. Me, too. It's still not real, you know? And-I'm sorry if I made it sound like it was your fault for not being faster. I mean, I know it takes a certain amount of time to get someplace, I just . . . well, I'm sorry, okay?"
"Of course." She cast around for something else to talk about. Grief was not an emotion familiar to her, and seeing Jaya's made her feel helpless. It was good to know that her own mother and father were saving other parents so their children would not be left alone like Jaya. Like most of the kids on the Moonbase. "Do you know what you will do now? I mean, after the plague is over? Will you continue working for the Krishna-Murti Company or is there something else you'd like to do?"
"I'm a musician," she said, sounding as if she were trying on the term for the first time. "I would like to work at that. Maybe go to school for it."
"Do you-play an instrument?"
"Yes, sitar sometimes and drum, but also I sing and dance. I learned the traditional dances from the vids Mom brought for studying cultural history. She says I am very good. Said." Again, the reluctant correction.
"Maybe you would show us sometime? I know this is not a good time now, but perhaps while we are waiting for the quarantine to lift?"
"No, I would like to do it. I would do it in my mom and dad's honor."
"I understand that my people also sing when someone leaves this life."
"If you know the songs, I think my parents would like that too . . ."
"I do not know them, but Elviiz does. I will have him teach me. He sings very badly."
"Which one is Elviiz? The cute white-haired boy with the cats and the little girl or the one with the funny screw-looking horn?"
"The one with the horn. Elviiz is my foster brother, made by his father to be my companion. His father is a very good friend of my parents."
"Oh? I thought he was a droid."
"He is, and so is his father. That is why Elviiz did not need to have a mother. But he considers my mother to be his parent as well. He lives with us instead of with his father Maak, so his own father is more like an uncle to him, whereas my father is like his own."
"They must have more advanced droid technology where you come from, "Jaya said. "Nobody I know would ever consider a droid to be a relative, like a real person."
"Elviiz is a real person. He simply has some electronic and mechanical components in his physical and intellectual makeup. At times his extensive knowledge is very annoying, but at others I confess it is helpful."
"How about the white-haired boy?"
"That is Hap Hellstrom. He has befriended us since we arrived at Maganos Moonbase. He is not an android, but he is a highly intelligent boy and seems to have many practical skills as well."