It came to Khorii suddenly that they needed a distraction, and she flashed a message to Captain Bates, hoping that Marl was too full of his own plots to intercept hers.
On the way down to the surface the ship began bucking and jerking as if it were a lightweight flitter. Everyone not seated fell to the deck.
"I thought you knew how to fly this thing," Marl said.
"Turbulence," Captain Bates said, and shrugged. "Sorry. I don't make the weather."
"Again," something told Khorii, and she told the captain.
"The device is strapped to his inner left forearm," something or someone told her. The voice was as familiar to Khorii as her own, yet she had no idea whose it was.
But the information did them no good at all. Marl was the only one besides Captain Bates who was strapped into a chair.
They landed, and Marl said, "I can't really wait around while the menial stuff gets done before I see my new digs. Come on, Khorii. You can clear my path with pure air and uncontaminated luxuries. The rest of these folks, if they wish to leave when I say the word, can unload my cargo."
Her heart sank. Marl pushed her out the hatch ahead of him. She was alone with him on the ground, while aboard the ship she imagined the others going to the cargo bay for the loaders.
She also imagined, because she sort of heard it from the same familiar and yet totally strange source as before, that it was entirely possible that there was no longer anything for the detonator to detonate.
There was an uncertain comfort if ever she had heard of one. Khorii couldn't take the chance that the mystery voice was wrong, however, so she kept going, waiting for her chance to escape.
She did as Marl told her, clearing the way up through the wilted, unwatered gardens to the great carved doors of the home. She led him through the halls to the bedrooms with the mattresses forty inches thick, hoping he might decide to fall asleep so she could escape, but of course that didn't happen. In two of the beds lay corpses, and she purified the air there. Like the other places where she had seen the plague, the air was filled with the specks that fled before her horn. It wasn't quite so bad here though, since the rooms were so large and airy.
"You'll have to remove those bodies later," he told her.
He saw the baths made of rock crystal, some of which were golden, some of which were pink. Unfortunately, recent neglect had allowed scum to settle in the perpetual pools flowing over the sides of the bath from waterfalls that fell across gemstone cliffs. The falls were reduced to a trickle now, clogged with dead flowers and leaves from the untended gardens.
And last, she entered the kitchen with him. It stank of rotten food, but the freezers had not fully defrosted, and there were dried stores as well.
"Yes," he said, "this suits me fine. Let's see if they've unloaded my cargo yet."
They walked back through the ruined flowers and weeds just as Jaya and Elviiz drove the loaders back into the docking bay.
"Is that it?" he asked.
"That's it," Jaya said. "Now, let Khorii go so she can see her parents."
"I don't think so. Like I said, I need her. The rest of you can go though. Give my regards to the moonbase!"
They headed back toward the mansion as the ship lifted off and disappeared into the atmosphere. Then, as they walked into the kitchen, before Khorii could stop him, Marl pressed his right hand against his left forearm.
"What did you just do?" she demanded.
"Got rid of witnesses and evidence," he told her. "Get over it. You didn't really think I was going to let them go, did you? And the crowd management was getting to be stressful. Now come on and fix us something to eat."
"Can't make me," she said. She expected to be overcome with grief and fury, but actually, felt her insides freeze to an icy calm. "You've just done your worst, you vicious, stupid boy. Why do you think I'd ever do what you say now?"
"How about because I'm bigger, older, smarter, and meaner than you, and I can make you afraid in ways you cannot imagine?" he said, advancing on her as she backed toward the door, not in a hurried or frightened way, but slowly and deliberately.
"You had it the right way around before," she told him. "You need me. I don't need you. This entire house, except for the very steps I took and the very places I touched my horn to, is infested with organisms that will make you look exactly like those bloated bodies in the beds. If you set a foot wrong or try to go anywhere I didn't go before you, you will die just like them." And while he was thinking that over and trying to decide when to pounce, she sent images of herself in three other places in the room. She sent images of the plague germs everywhere, of bodies lying as thick on the marble and carpeted floors of the mansion as they had on the beaches of LoiLoiKua. When he started spinning around the room trying to decide which one of her to attack, she slammed out of the kitchen, running through the house by a different path than they had come and out into another garden.
An inarticulate howl of rage rose from the house, and Khorii looked back to see Marl burst out of the house and race after her, his face a snarling mask. Although Khorii was light on her feet at the best of times, she still hadn't fully recovered from the healing she had performed on the poopuus' planet, and her energy flagged almost immediately. She heard the older boy panting over the slap of his feet on the ground, and knew that he had closed the distance between them. Then fear lent her speed, and she practically flew down the rest of the hill, heading back to the landing dock.
Rounding a corner of a building, Khorii staggered and nearly fell. She didn't see anyone who could help her. The streets were still completely deserted.
"Stop-Khorii-stop right now!" Marl yelled from behind her. She kept going, looking for someone, anyone.
Her legs buckling, her sides aching, Khorii reached the dock just as a large shadow passed over her. She looked up to see the Nako-mas descending from above, interposing itself between her and Marl, who screamed in frustration. The shuttle hatch opened and she leaped inside, relief making her knees feel like sap. Elviiz was in the pilot's chair, and Khiindi hopped onto her shoulder.
"The others are undamaged," Elviiz told her. "Hap escaped his bonds and the engine room. Then he located all of the explosives Marl Fidd set. Hap spaced them, using the airlock from the docking bay, while the Mana orbited Rio Boca and the shuttle was on the ground. The detonator Marl wears is out of range of those explosives. As soon as all our friends were out of Marl Fidd's reach, Khiindi and I brought the shuttle to fetch you."
Even though Elviiz never really liked to be hugged, she hugged him anyway.
Back aboard the Mana, Captain Bates coached Jaya in setting a course for the coordinates of the Condor, still orbiting Paloduro.
In another relatively short commuter hop they were within boarding distance of the ugly, awkward-looking patchwork ship. Khorii thought it had a certain style and distinction she had failed to notice before, an individuality that made it rather homey.
She could read the distress of her parents even before she left the Mana. But until she was safely aboard the Condor, she could not read Uncle Joh Becker or RK at all.
She expected her parents to rush up to embrace her, but she did not see them. However, over the ship's intercom, her mother's voice said, "Khorii, yaazi, we cannot come out and meet you, but you have come just in time. Go to Uncle Joh's cabin. There you will find him and RK still alive, we hope. They were a few seconds ago."
"Where are you?" Khorii asked, bewildered. "Aavi? Mother? Mom? Papa? Daddy?" she said, using some of the words she had learned on Maganos Moonbase. "Why aren't you here?"