"Hmm, and they're gonna be pretty helpless trying to run a planet without sturdy young adults to manage things," Becker said. He started to scratch his chin and felt a wave of nausea wash over him.
"Not entirely," Acorna said. "The elders have much accumulated knowledge of how their city works, and from what we saw the youngsters are very bright and resourceful. We met one very impressive boy who wants us to make the university's laboratory safe for him to work in so he can begin finding a cure. As soon as we have rested enough that our horns are back to normal, I think we should do that."
Becker, one hand covering his mouth, held up his other hand for her to wait and ran from the room with his thighs locked together. Without the benefit of their horns' air-purifying powers, the Linyaari caught a disagreeable odor from the wind in his wake.
This dissuaded both Aari and Acorna from finishing the rest of their meal and both flopped back against their berth and fell deeply asleep before their heads hit their respective pillows.
Khiindi stalked back and forth in front of the viewscreen yowling his head off. He was very upset indeed and didn't care who knew about it. The screen was filled with the huge blue-green wet planet veined with red-and-black craters and chock-full offish. How could both Khorii and Elviiz have gone off and left him aboard the Mana? They did know he liked fish, didn't they? And they knew that they were leaving him with Marl Fidd, who was just biding his time until he could get ahold of Khiindi again when there was no Linyaari girl around to heal him.
Sesseli was sweet, but she was not big enough to protect him from Marl. She could not pilot a shuttle down to the fishy planet. And worst of all, she had been seduced away from him by the feline wiles of the VES, those sexless and superior-acting animals with whom he could converse, but who had no more sentience in the lot of them than the average turnip.
Forced to find other suitable company, he had tried Jaya next. She had petted him initially, but was a little thick when it came to his signals for treats. Now she was upset with him, holding her ears and squinting her eyes tightly shut as if his quite legitimate protests made her head hurt. If Khorii had stayed here where she belonged, she could have fixed that.
Jaya hailed the shuttle. "Elviiz, any sign of Khorii yet? Will you be returning soon?"
"Is that Khiindi's voice I hear?" Elviiz asked. "My auditory sensors can barely read your voice patterns, Jaya, but Khiindi's are transmitting quite clearly."
"I'll bet! He's driving me completely nuts. If he doesn't stop, I'm going to lock him in one of the cabins or in the cargo hold."
"Here, Jaya," Marl Fidd said smoothly. "Pop him into this bag, and I'll get rid of him for you."
Sesseli heard that and jumped up, dumping kittens from her lap. "No!"
Marl fell back onto the deck as if he'd been shoved, and Khiindi found himself suddenly sailing through the air, though not in his normal jumping posture at all. He landed behind Sesseli in the middle of the senior VCS, who smacked his face and hissed at him, so his position, though improved, was still not ideal.
Marl gaped at Sesseli in surprise, then grinned, baring lots of teeth in a way that would horrify most well-brought-up Linyaari. "Whattaya know? The infant is telekinetic."
"Only when I get really mad," Sesseli said, jutting out her lower jaw. If she were a cat, her ears would have been flat and her back up.
"I guess I'll have to be careful not to let you know if I do anything I think might make you mad then," Marl said.
Khiindi decided to stay near Sesseli. Not that he disliked Hap. Hap was large. Hap would protect him. But Hap had discovered the engine room, which was full of smells that offended Khiindi's sensitive nostrils. So Sesseli had suddenly become his best bet for protection until Khorii returned.
"This is the Nakomas calling the Mana. Do you read me, Mana?"
"Jaya here, Elviiz. Yes, we read you. When are you coming back?"
"We're preparing to leave now. The LoiLoiKuans swam back with Khorii a few minutes ago, and I just strapped her in."
"How was the mission?"
"Oh, it was successful. The LoiLoiKuans are as pleased as a race that has lost a third of their population can be. But Khorii isn't well. I think we should try to contact her parents again, since we're somewhat closer now."
"I'll get right on it, if you'll give me the data. What's wrong with Khorii?"
"The problem is that she ended up not only healing the sick LoiLoiKuans, but also purifying the ocean here when she dived in. There aren't many boundaries, and it's a lot of water."
"She can do that?" Jaya said.
"Something like that," Elviiz said. "This is the Nakomas en route."
"So that's how she does it," Marl said. "Duh. It took a while to sink in, but I knew that damn poultice didn't do any good. It's the horn, right? Her handy little all-purpose tool for making everything all better. Well, well, well."
Khiindi did not like the way he said that.
"And the android's horn is just because he's a silly ass, right? He wants to look like her. I notice he never does any of the actual healing even though she always says 'we' are going to decontaminate something or other."
The scaredy-cat part of Khiindi afraid for his own tail and pelt faded into the background, and the older, more intelligent, if not wiser part took over. This fellow could be a threat to more than him. Something should be done about him, and soon. Khiindi sat and considered, his tail lashing back and forth. Marl had caught him by surprise once, but the truth was that a bully like him was no match even for merely a smart cat, much less a cat who was only apparently a cat and had Khiindi's background. The thing about bullies was, you had to stand up to them, even if you only came to the middle of their shins. Cats could leap, claw, bite, tear, ride, jump, and do many other things to protect themselves if necessary. But very few possessed the wits that Khiindi did, at least when he remembered to use them. It was alarming, really, how being frozen in cat form was causing him to sink into the bestiality of his nature, rather than remembering who he really was and using the skills that had always stood him in good stead. The mental ones anyway. He was an empath by nature and he had not even attempted to figure out why Marl hated him so much. All he could sense was that the fellow loathed felines, or maybe just didn't like HIM. He did not seem particularly bent on destroying the VES at all, did not send them the sneers and narrow-eyed threatening looks he cast at Khiindi.
That was not the point now, however. The point was that this- what was the word? Punk? Young thug?-showed signs of being a threat to Khorii. Most of the time, Khiindi let Khorii protect him, even though he was actually with her to protect her. Ordinarily if she needed protecting, Elviiz did it, and often irritated her when he did.
But while Marl had been lazy, annoying, and insensitive, he had not done anything dangerous to anyone since the incident with Khiindi at the pool room. Meanwhile, Elviiz had been shamed by his violent reaction to Marl back on Maganos. He might process twice before acting against Marl again, and that would not be good for Khorii.
Khiindi rose and stretched, putting a paw on Sesseli's leg just to remind her he was there. He would be as vigilant as the VES were at a mousehole. More vigilant, since Khorii and the secret of the Linyaari people were at risk.
Khorii drifted in her sleep, strange, deeply resonant sounds reverberating through her mind, echoing off something far away, or perhaps they were answered? This was the far talk, she realized, the LoiLoiKuan adaptation of the ancient speech of whales from millenniums ago on a world long dead. Like the whales, LoiLoiKua's people spoke to each other across the miles of water separating one community, or pod, from another. But now she thought it might be going even farther.