Then she saw that it was her parents sending a message to her through space. They were swimming through a sea of the little motes that Khorii had come to associate with the plague as they called out to her. But though their faces were straining with the effort and their mouths moving, no sounds came out. She studied their faces to try to read their lips and listened as hard as she could with her mind, but all she heard was "purrrr purrr purr." She was no longer swimming, she knew, because most cats disliked water and soft, heavy, furry weight seemed to be piled all over and around her.
"She's waking up," Elviiz said. "And she's feeling better, too. Young Linyaari recover from overexertion much faster than their elders, I've been told. See? Her horn is already translucent, and you can detect the golden color now."
"Elviiz!" Khorii said, sitting up and dumping cats everywhere. "You aren't supposed to emphasize that kind of thing to-you know?"
"Oh? You have not been very subtle about it at all," he replied. "It is not as if they can fail to see the changes in your horn, Khorii. It was right there for everyone to see."
"Of course it was but . . ."
"And these are all our friends," he said, waving to Asha, Jaya, Hap, Sesseli, and the cats. It was a sweeping gesture that even included Marl. "They will not ask questions."
"I have a few," Marl said, holding up his hand. Elviiz gave the arm, the one he had broken, a meaningful look, and Marl quickly tucked it behind him.
Khorii observed this with amusement. She was still quite tired, but also felt light and rather cheerful. "I just saved a whole planet full of people, didn't I?" she told, rather than asked, her crew mates. "Really, I did very well. Mother and Father should have taken us with them, Elviiz. We could have helped."
"Yes, we could have," he agreed. "But you must remember to heal people out of the water next time. Healing an ocean that covers an entire planet is rather ambitious."
She yawned and stretched and leaned over to pet Khiindi. "It wasn't all that big a planet really. I'm fine. And I didn't have to swim all the way out to touch the people near the reef because, when I purified the water, it carried the healing with it even to the sick poopuus far away. I must have killed all of the organisms that were in the water, and therefore in the people breathing the water."
"Too bad you can't do it with people who don't breathe water," Asha said. "That could come in handy. As it is, I don't know if anything can really be done to check the spread of this plague now."
Chapter 24
Aari and Acorna were awakened by a strange sound. A slow, rhythmic pounding shook the door of their cabin. Calling for the pounder to come in evoked no response, so Aari rose and opened the door.
Maak stood there, something limp and furry draped over one arm. "We are broken," he said in a slow, slurred voice much like a recording played on a damaged machine. Aari hurriedly took the raglike form of RK from the android. Maak was emitting sparks from his oral cavity, and the arm that had been holding RK stayed upright, as if carrying something invisible.
"Where is Joh?"
"Broken," Maak said.
Acorna was now fully awake. Neither of their horns had returned to full opacity yet, but she felt a little better. "Who is on the bridge, Maak?"
"Brokennn," he repeated, his already slowed voice deteriorating further into unintelligible noises.
"I'll go, Aari. Here, give me RK."
"He's very-"Aari started to say, but when Acorna felt the cat's body she gasped in alarm.
"His life is nearly gone!" she said, and immediately lowered her horn into the cat's fur while she carried him to the bridge.
To her chagrin, RK didn't immediately rally as she had expected, though he did give a miserable mew and coughed. His eyes were crusted shut with discharge, and the fur of his tail and hindquarters was matted and filthy.
How long had she and Aari slept anyway? The last time they'd seen RK he was his usual boisterous, bouncing, and bossy self. His sickness looked like a feline version of the plague, but how could that be? She and Aari had thoroughly decontaminated the ship before they left. All of the Condors crew had been in good health then.
Her horn was not functioning fully yet. She could smell the foulness of RK's illness, and it was growing stronger rather than weaker. She saw the side of Captain Becker's head and his arm in the command chair.
"Captain, RK is very ill and Maak appears to be malfunctioning. He said the Condor was also malfunctioning. I came to help. We are so sorry we've rested for so long when you needed us. You should have awakened us."
But there was no reply from Becker. She laid RK in the copilot's seat and knelt beside the captain. His head lolled, and the hand she had thought was merely relaxed actually flopped back and forth when she raised it.
The smell had been coming from him, not RK.
"Oh, Captain Becker, Joh, why did you not call us?" she asked, still reeling from her weariness.
Laying her horn alongside Becker's face did no good. It did not even take away the smell of illness. Unzipping the neck of his soiled shipsuit, she laid her ear against his chest and felt it rise a little and fall back as if taking in oxygen was too much effort, each slight breath he took wheezing through his clogged passages as he exhaled. His heartbeat was loud but quite irregular, as if it was beating any way it could to try to pump his blood, but had to make an extremely difficult effort to do so.
She looked away from him long enough to see that he had set the Condor on autopilot, but that their fuel was low.
Aari came out. "I shut Maak down," he said. "I am giving him a fresh energy charge until we can solve what is wrong with his organic components. Where is RK?"
She nodded to the very quiet cat in the copilot's seat.
"Joh, too? Yes," he said, wrinkling his nose. Automatically, he lowered his horn to his friend's head, but shook his own head when he received no response. "You tried your horn already, also?"
"Yes, but we are not yet recovered enough to be able to cure even RK. We must take them to the captain's cabin and clean them and try to make them comfortable as we saw Jalonzo and Abuelita do with the victims who were waiting for us to treat them."
"Fine. I will clean the captain while you clean RK and monitor the Condor's instruments."
"When you have finished cleaning him, try to sleep again so that your horn will regain its strength, my love. Otherwise I fear …" She did not finish saying it, because she could not bear to, and although she tried to hold it back, a single tear welled in her eye.
"Yes," he said briskly. She knew he ached for their friends, but his eyes held the same steely glint and his jaw the same stubborn set as they might have shown when the Khleevi had tortured him so long ago. In some ways, this had to be worse, for there was no enemy here to be spotted and fought against, only an insidious invader that seemed to threaten them time after time.
"I cannot sleep. Right now I feel about as helpless as I have ever felt in my life. We cannot even pilot the ship back to Vhiliinyar so that other Linyaari could heal them. I do not know what humans do to help each other in these situations. Without horns, they have to rely on other methods, and I have never learned what those are. If I can make Joh somewhat comfortable, I will ransack his library and try to find a way to help him and Riidkiiyi."
"That is a very useful idea, but we still must continue to rest, yaazi, so our horns will recover their power. Nothing humans have done for the plague so far seems to work very well. I don't know if they've ever had to deal with such a disease before. There have been other plagues, but never one so widespread. I fear what those books can tell you may be of limited use. Rest . . ."