Third Watch, page 14
He could, however, manipulate the cronos Khorii carried. Ariin kept the one she had stolen on her wrist and up her sleeve, but Khorii still had Pircifir’s in her pocket. Khiindi had a very light paw as a cat burglar, although Khorii had never been aware of that particular talent. He’d had to shelter the child from a few of his more unsavory accomplishments, but she knew who he was now, and, besides, she had to grow up sometime.
As she engaged in earnest discussion with Neeva and Jaya while Ariin coached Elviiz on the finer points of plotting their course, Khiindi snaked a paw into Khorii’s shipsuit pocket. It closed with a tab in the middle but he easily slipped his paw into the wristband and pulled it out the side without her noticing.
To find the right time, he focused on the ship that would have landed here, and the place it landed. He narrowed his search to that single vessel and tried not to include any other features of the planet. Pircifir’s ship, the only other ship from Vhiliinyar that they knew for sure had landed here, lacked the distinctive egg shape and fanciful decorated hull featured on the Linyaari ships. A VL58PK was egg-shaped, and the hulls tended to be particularly gaudy for some reason. His mind blurred that image a bit, concentrating on such a ship landing here at some point in the past.
A point without Khleevi, he fervently hoped.
It would be really helpful as well if it were a point farther back than when he had been frozen in small cat form, but there was no way to guarantee that.
“Jaya? Neeva? Where are you?” Khorii asked. Then she asked Elviiz, “Where did they go?”
Ariin exclaimed, “We’re time traveling. That blasted cat!” She lashed out with a kick that should have sent Khiindi flying across the room but only succeeded in grazing Grimalkin’s shin as he reached for Pircifir’s spare robe, still hanging from a hook near the hatch.
“Tsk, tsk, Ariin, I’m surprised at you. After all, isn’t this what you wanted in the first place?” Grimalkin asked as he shrugged into the robe.
“So I can time travel?” Elviiz asked. “Father will be so pleased!”
Grimalkin studied the viewport. The egg-shaped ship was just landing. No Khleevi were evident.
He hailed the ship, “Linyaari vessel, identify yourself immediately. You are in grave danger and if you proceed, will bring even worse danger to the entire universe.”
“Grimalkin, you wily cat.” Odus’s smug face appeared on the com screen. “You’re only saying that so you can keep the secret of our dwellings to yourself. On our new world there is room for much grander homes, so I’ve come to acquire more of the creatures to serve us.”
Before Grimalkin could utter another word, Ariin snatched the crono, which he still held only on the tips of his fingers in the same way his paw had held it in cat form. The viewport blurred, cleared, and Neeva’s voice demanded, “Where are you?” followed immediately by, “Oh, there.”
But her voice was muffled by the folds of Pircifir’s robe covering Grimalkin/Khiindi’s ears as it settled on top of him.
Ariin scooped him up roughly and tossed him off the bridge into the corridor, then closed the hatch.
Khiindi turned to scratch at it, and had opened his mouth to utter his most heartrending, plaintive, offended meow when the hatch irised open again and Khorii scooped him up, cuddling him, kissing him between the ears and petting him. “Even though you only do it part-time, you are the cleverest cat in the universe, Khiindi. My sister didn’t even give you time to explain that you knew we could go back in time while in orbit without risking the plague, and we both heard Odus, so now we know he was here. He must have had something to do with it. He’s such a nasty man.”
“Stop that,” Ariin said. “Honestly, you and that—that being—are making me ill. You know what he is—how can you coo to him as if he were a sweet little animal instead of a wicked, manipulating, cunning, selfish, scheming shapeshifter.”
Khorii looked levelly at her sister, “You need to be more linyaari, twin girl. You hold a grudge far longer than is customary or healthy. Khiindi as a cat has never done you any harm, and the harm Grimalkin did you is long over.”
“That’s easy for you to say, you with the loving family and the normal childhood frolicking through the fields and grazing at will, not being questioned about your every movement or thought.”
“I can see why you would be annoyed about that. However, that’s no excuse for mistreating Khiindi when he’s just trying to help. Even as Grimalkin, he has only done his best to keep us safe and has never raised a finger or a paw to you in any form. He’s sorry for what he did. He’s trying to make it up to you, but you just keep being nasty to him. If you can’t forgive someone who is only trying to help undo the harm he was compelled to do to you and all of us—we were deprived of you after all, and now that we have you, you’re too angry to be much fun—then we will never solve the problem and find a cure for our family and everybody else.”
After glowering at Khiindi so hard his little cat body trembled in Khorii’s arms, Ariin’s face shifted moods, her eyes lowered for a moment, and when she looked back up there were tears in them. Khiindi knew she had been reading her sister as well as listening to her. The truth—that they were all in this together and the plague was more than an obstacle to keep Ariin from her family—was finally sinking in.
“I’m sorry, Khiindi, Grimalkin. But you shouldn’t have stolen the crono.”
“Two of the cronos are his,” Khorii pointed out. “And the other one was his brother’s.”
Khiindi mewed. He really did miss Pircifir, but there was no harm in vocalizing it to emphasize to Ariin that she was not the only one with feelings.
“We are the ones borrowing the devices from him, not the other way around,” Khorii said judiciously. Khiindi purred with satisfaction. She was such a fair girl. Sometime when he was back in two-legged form again, he must remember to compliment her on that.
“So Odus is the one behind the plague?” Ariin asked. “It figures.”
“Actually, we don’t know that. We just know that he was here after the Khleevi and before we learned about the plague. Shall we continue talking to Neeva and our friends and decide what our next move should be?”
Ariin nodded. Elviiz looked at her expectantly, and she said, “Yes, that will no doubt be helpful.” Khiindi, absolved and vindicated, decided it was time to lick himself back into shape again.
“What happened to you?” Jaya asked.
Knowing that his sisters were still a bit upset, Elviiz answered for them, “It is nothing, really, Jaya. My sister’s feline companion Khiindi is actually a time-traveling shapeshifter from one of the two races that created the Linyaari. He took it upon himself to take us back in time while still in orbit here to determine if the ship I had detected belonged to the person he suspected. This person is of his own race, and apparently has been known to exercise poor judgment in the past. It was indeed this person, but before Khiindi could remonstrate with him, Ariin became alarmed and returned us to this time.”
“That certainly explains it,” Captain Bates said.
“Yeah,” Hap said from behind her. “I was going to guess that next.”
Sesseli smiled proudly. “Khiindi is such a smart kitty.” Khiindi gave a little purr. Sesseli was his favorite human. Khorii, of course, was his favorite Linyaari, but humans did not come any better than the little girl who had once used her telekinetic gift to save him and who had always understood him better than anyone else, even Khorii. She had always simply accepted that he was the most splendid and admirable creature she had ever encountered. He could accept any amount of childish mauling from someone like that.
“So who is this character your cat suspects?” Captain Bates asked.
“Odus the Odious,” Ariin answered. Now that she had decided to be nicer to Khorii and Khiindi, the full weight of her scorn and disgust went into pronouncing the name of the being who had been, she realized now, not her mentor, as he’d liked to claim, but her tormentor. “He was there. We saw him and heard him on the com unit.”
“Can you go back to that time and stop him from doing it?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t see how we could without landing or making direct contact that might also infect us or our ship.”
“If you think he didn’t do it intentionally, you could use the com to warn him of the consequences of his actions,” Neeva suggested.
“Odus? Excuse me if I scoff, Mother-sister, but he doesn’t listen to anyone ever.”
To Khiindi’s amazement, Ariin turned to him, and asked, “Am I right, Khiindi, or do you think we ought to go back?” She held out the cronos. “We will go if you want to, and I won’t interfere this time.”
Khiindi stared at the device, considering. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but the child, however misguided about his own noble intentions, was correct in her assessment of Odus, never a favorite of his among his brethren. Perhaps she had some potential after all. He turned his back on the cronos, raised his foot, and proceeded to cleanse the area under his tail.
Chapter 15
I don’t imagine it’s worthwhile to try to find this Odus now,” Neeva said. “He probably died of the plague, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps not, if he was the one who deliberately engineered it,” Ariin replied.
“Ariin, I agree he was totally odious,” Khorii said, “but I don’t think he was actually evil. Why would he do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. He probably didn’t know he had until it was too late to undo. But I very much doubt he suffered by it. His sort never do.”
Since Odus’s sort was the only sort Ariin had known until recently, Khorii decided that although her sister’s viewpoint might be a bit warped in some instances, she was probably generally correct.
“In that case, we should find him and see if he can help undo this latest scourge,” Neeva suggested.
“Okay, but where do we look?” Jaya asked.
“His race left Vhiliinyar long ago,” Neeva said. “Well, most of them anyway. I am unsure how to explain the continuing presence of Khiindi’s alter ego.”
“Khiindi is part of our family,” Khorii said. Khiindi looked up from his bath and blinked twice before returning his attention to his tail. “Grimalkin is the name of his alter ego, and he befriended my father. It got—well, complicated, and as Ariin will tell you, sometimes what he did didn’t work out very well, but—”
“But he was your family, just like he’s your kitty now,” Sesseli said, having apparently no problem with the change in her feline friend’s status.
“About like how the tribes were my family,” Captain Bates said, with a wry twist to her mouth. “Although my mother was the only blood relative I had, sometimes I thought my adopted ones screwed up my life so much I’d have been better off as an orphan.”
“But no matter how good they are, sometimes you feel that way anyhow,” Jaya said. “Sometimes I wanted to believe my parents—and my aunts and uncles and cousins, who were other crew members on the Mana—”
“I didn’t realize that, Jaya!” Khorii said. She felt bad that she had failed to understand, or even sense, that part of Jaya’s predicament as the sole survivor of the Mana’s crew.
Jaya nodded. “Yes, there were a lot of them. They all had opinions about everything I did, everything I said or wore. Sometimes I used to just feel smothered and as if there was nobody left for me to be because they were so overpowering. And they did things that upset my plans and hurt my feelings and embarrassed me. I never had any privacy.”
“But you really miss them all now and wish like anything they were all back again,” Sesseli said, with a sigh.
“Not all of them, no,” Jaya said. “But my mom and dad I miss all the time. And—well…”
Hap silently patted her shoulder. Sesseli buried her face in the fur of the kitten she was carrying.
Moonmay said, “It’s true kinfolk can be a trial and a tribulation at times, but I miss mine just the same, and I’d miss them more if I knew I’d never again have an opportunity to be peeved with their antics.”
“Fine,” Ariin said. “I already apologized. Now what we need is a way to find Odus and make him stop the plague. If he’s able.”
Elviiz nodded sagely. “My fleeting impression of this individual, based on both data collected and my newly acquired intuitive powers, is that he is perhaps overly optimistic about the extent of his intellect and does not think his hypotheses through to all of their possible logical conclusions before acting on them.”
“That sounds exactly like him. So what do we do about it?” Ariin asked.
“We have two points of reference with which to work,” Elviiz replied. “One is that Odus visited this planet and apparently left it again. The other point is the Estrella Blanca, originating in the Rio Boca region of the Solojo system.”
“But the plague may have come from a passenger more likely to have been traveling from Dinero Grande,” Khorii said. “The people on the Blanca were all very well-off, so unless the carrier was a crew member, it could have originated on the passengers’ homeworld.”
“Dinero Grande sounds like this Odus bird’s style,” Hap said.
Captain Bates nodded, “He does sound like he considers himself a high roller.”
“He could have been on Dinero Grande, I suppose,” Khorii said. “We might have missed him.”
Ariin snorted. “He wouldn’t let anyone miss him. I doubt he’s there anymore, if he ever was, but if he was, you can bet there will be some trace of his magnificent presence other than the plague.”
“Would all of the Friends have moved together to the same place, do you think?” Khorii asked her sister. She wished Khiindi could be Grimalkin again at least long enough to help them figure out where the others of his race had gone. “The only one I’ve ever heard much about is Grimalkin, and we know where he is and that he and Pircifir were more inclined to go their own way than the others.”
“It may not be necessary to find the rest of them as long as we find Odus,” Elviiz said. “I will change course immediately for the Solojo system, and suggest that the Mana and the Balakiire do the same.”
“I have a better idea,” Ariin said.
Elviiz looked up inquiringly and with some incredulity.
“You aren’t familiar enough with the time device to have thought of it, brother,” Ariin told him. “None of us have searched it for the whereabouts of Odus and his people because we didn’t realize there would be a problem. But it should tell us when they left Vhiliinyar for the last time, and I’m sure if we look hard enough, there would be some data concerning their destination if they had one when they left.”
Elviiz beamed. “That is an excellent idea, sister. We will have to travel backward to a time before the Khleevi, but if we avoid them and eliminate other time periods in which we know the Friends still inhabited our world, we should be able to find what we seek very quickly.”
“In no time, you might say,” Captain Bates said.
“Can we come, too, this time?” Sesseli asked. “Please?”
“Sorry, Sess,” Khorii told her, “but it’s best if we split up now. The Mana should go ahead with the original plan and look for Odus or clues about him on Dinero Grande while we search the timer.”
The little girl looked sullen for a moment, but Captain Bates said, “That works for me. Besides, we can check up on Jalonzo and the others in Corazon. If there’s still a city there after the crawly things eat their way through it.”
“The Balakiire will assist the Mana,” Neeva told her. “Other Linyaari will be available on Vhiliinyar if my sister’s daughter’s children require help. You may be in need of our skills to make some of the quarantined areas safe for exploration, and many of our rescue teams have returned home already.”
When the Pircifir returned to Vhiliinyar once more, Ariin pulled back her cuff to reveal the crono. Then, before consulting it, she looked at Khorii, Elviiz, and, finally, reluctantly, at Khiindi.
Digging into her pocket, she extracted the crono she had taken from Grimalkin and held it out. “I still don’t trust you,” she told him. Khiindi blinked his large gold-green eyes at her twice, then cautiously stretched out a forepaw and snagged the device with his claws, pulling it back to rest between his front legs and his belly.
“That is a very good idea, sister,” Elviiz complimented her.
Khorii added, “Brilliant! For all his faults, Grimalkin has done more time travel than either of us, especially in the time before his people left Vhiliinyar. Having him choose when we visit will—er—save time.”
“He was apparently near when the VL58PK was manufactured. Otherwise, how would he have acquired that particular model?”
“Oh, Elviiz, you’re new to time traveling, or you wouldn’t ask,” Khorii said, with a sigh. “It gets very complicated. But you’re right in saying that it is a lead—and perhaps the first one we should follow. Khiindi?”
She picked up the robe Grimalkin had worn and held it up while, outside the ship, time blurred by.
The ship remained docked in Vhiliinyar’s new docking bay. The port had been constructed not where the original one was, Khorii knew, but close to the site of the original techno-artisans’ complex. The current complex was being built up around the port. This made sense, since most of the goods modified by the artisans arrived in the port and also, particularly for the shipsmiths, would need to leave from there.
When time stopped blurring, the viewport was level with the top of one of the huge pavilions in which the work of the techno-artisans took place.
