Acorna's Rebels Anne Mccaffrey

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RSV

ACORNA

By Anne McCaffrey

^Preface

The space/time coordinate system

they used has no relationship to

Earth, our sun, the Milky Way, or

any other point of reference we could use to find

our way around, and in any coordinate system we

use, they're so far off the edge of the chart that

nobody has ever contemplated going there, even

with the proton drive. So let's just say that they

were somewhere between the far side of nowhere

and the near side of here when their time and space

ran out, and what started as a pleasure cruise ship

turned into a death chamber. They are like us in

many ways besides appearance. They didn't want

to die if they could possibly avoid it; if they

couldn't live, then at least they wanted to die with

dignity and peace instead of in a Khievii torture

cell; and they would happily have thrown away life,

dignity and everything else to save their youngling,

who didn't even know what was about to happen

to them.

2 - ——' ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

And they had time to talk; what amounted to

several hours by our reckoning, while the Khievii

ship closed in on the little cruiser that had run out

of places to flee to.

"We could offer to surrender if they'd spare

her," she said, looking at the net where their

youngling curled asleep. It was a mercy that she

slept so well; she talked well enough that they'd

have had trouble disguising their meaning from

her if she were awake.

"They make no terms," he said. "They never have."

"Why do they hate us so?"

"I don't know that they do hate," he said.

"Nobody knows what they feel. They are not like

us, and we can't ascribe our emotions to them. All

we know? is what they do."

And they both fell silent for a while, unwill-

ing to speak of what the Khievii did to prisoners

of other races. No one had ever survived capture

by the Khievii, but the images of what happened

after capture were broadcast by the Khievii, in

full three-D reproduction, with sound and color.

Was it a calculated ploy to terrorize, or simply a

display of triumph, as members of a more

humanoid race might display the enemy's flag or

captured ships? No one knew, because the same

things had happened to the diplomat-linguists

who went under sign of peace to make a treaty

with the Khievii.

"Cruel ..." she breathed after a long while

•watching their sleeping child.

"Their only mercy," he said, "is that they have

already let us know to expect no mercy. It won't

'A.corna. -^^ 3

happen to us, because we won't be alive when they

reach here."

Since the third broadcast of Khievii prisoner-

torture, shortly after the beginning of -what history

might know as the Khievii Invasion, no ship of

their people had gone anywhere without certain

necessary supplies. The only prisoners taken were

those caught away from a ship or without time to

use those supplies. The others were always far

beyond the reach of pain when the Khievii caught

up with their bodies.

"But I don't like to go without striking even

one blow," he said, "so I have made certain modifi-

cations to our engines. There are some privileges

to being director of Weapons Development; this

system is so recently designed that even the Fleet

has not yet been fitted with it."

His hands were not quite as flexible as ours,

but the fingers worked well enough to key in the

commands that would activate those modifica-

tions; commands too dangerous to be activated by

the usual voice-control system.

"When anything of a mass equal to or greater

than ours approaches within this radius," he told

her, pointing at the glowing sphere that now sur-

rounded their ship in the display field, "the dimen-

sional space around us both will warp, change,

decompose until all the matter within this sphere is

compressed to a single point. They will never

know what happened to us or to their own board-

ing craft." His lips tightened. "We've learned that

they don't fear death; perhaps a mystery will

frighten them somewhat more."

4 -^-? ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"What happens to the space around us when

the compression effect is triggered?"

"No one knows. It's not something you'd want

to test planet side or from a close observation

point. All we know is that whatever exists within

the sphere is destroyed as if it had never been."

She said nothing, but looked at the baby. The

pupils of her eyes narrowed to vertical slits.

"It won't hurt her," he said gently, seeing and

understanding her grief. "We'll take the abaanye

now, and give her some in her bottle. I'll have to

wake her to feed her, but she'll go to sleep after-

wards and so will -we. That's all it is, you know:

going to sleep."

"I don't mind for us," she said, •which was a lie,

but a loving one. "But she is just beginning to live.

Isn't there some way "we could give her a chance?

If we cast her out in a survival pod — "

"If we did it now, they'd see and intercept it,"

he said. "Do you want to think about -what would

happen then?"

"Then do it when the ship explodes!" she cried.

"Do it when we're all dying! Can't you rig those

controls to eject the pod just before they reach the

radius, so that they won't have a chance to change

course and take her?"

"For what? So that she can spend her last

hours alone and scared in a survival pod? Better

to let her go to sleep here in your arms and never

wake up."

"Give her enough to make her sleep, yes," she

said. She could almost feel her wits becoming

sharper in these last moments. "Make her sleep for

A coma •-•—~' 6

more hours than the pod has air. If only she -were

old enough to ... well, she isn't and that's that. If

the air runs out, she'll die without waking. But

some of our people might find her first. They

might have heard our last distress signals. They

might be looking. Give her that chance!"

She held the baby and fed her the bitter

abaanye mixed with sweetened milk to make it

palatable, and rocked her in her arms, and kissed

her face and hands and soft tummy and little kick-

ing feet until the kicking slowly stopped, and the

baby gurgled once and breathed deeply in and out,

and then lay quite limp and barely breathing in her

mother s arms.

"Do you have to put her in the pod now?" she

cried when he stooped over them. "Let me hold

her a little longer—just a little longer."

"I won't take the abaanye until I see her

safely stowed," he said. "I've programmed the

ship to launch the pod as close to the time of det-

onation as I dare." Too close, he thought, really;

the pod -would almost certainly be within the

radius when the Khievii approached, to be

destroyed with them in the explosive transforma-

tion of local space. But there was no need to tell

her that. He would let her drink the abaanye and

go to sleep believing that their baby had that one

chance of living.

She willed her pupils to widen into an expres-

sion of calm content while he was closing the pod

and arming it to eject on command.

"Is all complete?" she asked when he finished.``````

Yes.

6 - -—-' ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

She managed a smile, and handed him a tube

of sparkling red liquid. "I've mixed a very special

drink for us," she said. "Most of it is the same vin-

tage as the -wine we drank on our vows-day."

He loved her more in that moment, it seemed

to him, than ever he had in the days when they

thought they had long years of life together before

them.

"Then let us renew our vows," he said.

At first Gill assumed it was just

another bit of space debris, wink-

• ing as it turned around its own

axis and sending bright flashes of reflected light

down where they were placing the cable around

AS—6-4-B1.3. But something about it seemed

wrong to him, and he raised the question when

they were back inside the Khedive.

"It is too bright to have been in space very

long," Rafik pointed out. His slender brown fin-

gers danced over the console before him; he read

half a dozen screens at once and translated their

glowing, multicolored lines into voice commands

to the external sensor system.

"What d'you mean, too bright?" Gill

demanded. "Star,) are bright, and most of them have

been around a good while."

Rafik's black brows lifted and he nodded at

Calum.

"But the sensors tell us this is metal, and too

8 - -—— ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

smooth," Calum said. "As usual, you're thinking

with the Viking-ancestor part of what we laugh-

ingly refer to as your brain, Declan Giloglie the

Third. Would it not be pitted from minor colli-

sions if it had been in this asteroid belt more than

a matter of hours? And if it has not been in this

part of space for more than a few hours, where

did it come from?"

"Conundrums, is it? I'll leave the solving of

them to you," Gill said with good humor. "I am but

a simple metallurgic engineer, a horny-handed son

of the soil."

"More like a son of the asteroidal regolith,"

Rafik suggested. "Not that this particular asteroid

offers much; we're going to have to break up the

surface with the auger before there's any point in

lowering the magnetic rake . . . Ah! Got a fix on

it." An oval shape, regularly indented along one

edge, appeared on the central screen. "Now what

can the sensors tell us about this little mystery? "

"It looks like a pea pod," Gill said.

"It does that," Calum agreed. "The question is,

what sort of peas, and do we want to harvest

them, or send them gently on their way? There ve

not been any recent diplomatic disagreements in

this sector, have there?"

"None that would inspire the placing of mines,"

Gill said, "and that's not like any space mine / ever

saw. Besides, only an idiot would send a space

mine floating into an asteroid belt where there's no

telling what might set it off and whose side might

be worst injured."

"High intelligence," Rafik murmured, "is not

ftcorna. .--—> 9

inevitably an attribute of those who pursue diplo-

macy by other means . . . close reading," he com-

manded the console. "All bandwidths . . . well,

well. Interesting."

"What?"

"Unless I'm mistaken . . ." Rafik paused.

"Names of the Three Prophets! I mu^t be mis-

taken. It's not large enough . . . and there's no

scheduled traffic through this sector . . . Calum,

what do you make of these sensor readings?"

Calum leaned over the panel. His sandy lashes

blinked several times, rapidly, as he absorbed and

interpreted the changing colors of the display.

"You're not mistaken," he said.

"Would you two kindly share the great

insight?" Gill demanded.

Calum straightened and looked up at Gill.

"Your peas," he said, "are alive. And given the size

of the pod—too small for any recycling life-

support system—the signal it's broadcasting can

only be a distress call, though it's like no code I've

ever heard before."

"Can we capture it?"

"We'll have to, shan't we? Let's hope—ah,

good. I don't recognize the alloy, but it's definitely

ferrous. The magnetic attractors should be able to

latch on—easy, now," Rafik admonished the

machinery he was setting in action, "we don't want

to jostle it, do we? Contents fragile. Handle with

care, and all that. . . . Very nice," he murmured as

the pod came to rest in an empty cargo bay.

"Complimenting your own delicate hands?"

Calum asked caustically.

Acorna 1 1

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"The ship, my friend, the Khedive. She's done a

fine gentle job of harvesting our pea pod; now to

bring it in and open it."

There were no identification markings that any

of them could read on the "pea pod," but a series

of long scrolling lines might, Calum surmised,

have been some sort of alien script.

"Alien, of course," Raflk murmured. "All the

generations of the Expansion, all these stars

mapped and planets settled, and we're to be the

first to discover a sapient alien race ... I <)on't

think. It's decoration, or it's a script none of us

happens to know, which is just barely possible, I

think you'll agree?"

"Barely," Calum agreed, with no echo of

Rafik s irony in his voice. "But it's not Cyrillic or

Neo-Grek or Romaic or TriLat or anything else I

can name ... so what id it?"

"Perhaps," Rafik suggested, "the peas will tell

us." He ran delicate fingers over the incised carvings

and the scalloped edges of the pod. Hermetically

sealed, of a size to hold one adult human body, it

might have been a coffin rather than a life-support

module . . . but the ship's sensors had picked up that

distress signal, and the signs of life within the pod.

And the means of opening, when he found it, was as

simple and elegant as the rest of the design; simply a

matter of matching the first three fingers of each

hand with the pair of triple oval depressions in the

center of the pod.

"Hold it," Calum said. "Better suit up and open

it in the air lock. We've no idea what sort of atmo-

sphere this thing breathes."

Gill frowned. "We could kill it by opening it.

Isn't there some way to test what's in there?"

"Not without opening it," Calum said brightly.

"Look, Gill, whatever is in there may not be alive

anyway—and if it is, surely it won't last forever in

a hermetically sealed environment. It'll have to

take its chances."

The men looked at each other, shrugged, and

donned their working gear before moving them-

selves and the pod into the airlock.

"Well, Calum," Rafik said in an oddly strangled

voice, seconds after the lid swung open, "you were

half right, it seems. Not an aduit human, at any

rate."

Calum and Gill bent over the pod to inspect

the sleeping youngling revealed when it opened.

"What species is it?" Gill asked

"Sweet little thing, isn't she?" Gill said in such

a soppy tone that both Rafik and Calum gave him

an odd look.

"How'd you arrive at the sex of it?" Rafik

wanted to know.

"She looks feminine!"

They all admitted to that impression of the little

creature which lay on her side, one hand curled into

a fist and thrust against her mouth in a fairly com-

mon gesture of solace. A fluff of silvery hair curled

down onto her forehead and coiled down to the

shoulder blades, half obscuring the pale, delicate

face.

Even as they watched, she stirred, opened her

eyes and groggily tried to sit up. "Avvvi," she

wailed. "Avwi!"

2 - —-~' ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"We're scaring the poor little thing," Gill said.

'Okay, obviously she's an oxygen breather like us,

let's get out of the suits and take her into the ship

so she can see we're not metal monsters."

Transferring the pod and its contents back into

the ship -was an awkward business. The "poor lit-

tle thing" wailed piteously each time she was tilted

in the pod.

"Poor bairn!" Gill exclaimed when they set her

down again. The movement of the pod had dis-

lodged the silvery curls over her forehead, show-

ing a lump over an inch in diameter in the center

of her forehead, halfway between the hairline and

the silver brows. "How did that happen? This

thing's cushioned well enough, and Rafik drew it

into the bay as gently as a basket of eggs and not

one of them cracked."

"I think it's congenital," Rafik said. "It's not the

only deformity. Get a good look at her hands and

feet."

Now that he called their attention to them, the

other two saw that the fingers of the hands were

stiff, lacking one of the joints that gave their own

hands such flexibility. And the little bare feet

ended in double toes, larger and thicker than nor-

mal toes, and pointed at an odd angle.

"Avvvi, avvvi!" the youngling demanded,

louder. Her eyes looked strange—almost changing

shape —but she didn't cry.

"Maybe it's not a deformity at all," Calum sug-

gested.

"Still looking for your intelligent aliens?" Rafik

teased.

"Why not? She's physically different from us,

we don't recognize the writing on the pod, and can

either of you tell me what an 'avwi' is?"

Gill stooped and lifted the youngling out of the

life-support pod. She looked like a fragile doll

between his big hands, and she shrieked in terror

as he swung her up to shoulder height, then

grabbed at his curly red beard and clung for dear

life.

"Perfectly obvious," he said, rubbing the child's

back -with one large hand. "There, there, acushia,

you're safe here, I'll not let you go. . . . Whatever

the language," he said, "'awi' has to be her word

for 'Mama.'" His blue eyes traveled from the pod

to Rafik and Calum. "And in the absence of 'awi,'

gentlemen," he said, "it seems that we're elected."

Once she had found that Gill's beard was soft

and tickled her face and that his big hands were

gentle, she calmed down in his arms. Figuring she

might be at least thirsty from being in the pod for

who knew how long, they experimented by offer-

ing her water. She had teeth. The cup would for-

ever bear the mark of them on its rim. She made a

grimace, at least that's what Gill said it was, at the

first taste of the water, but she was too dehydrated

not to accept it. Meat she spat out instantly and

she was unenthusiastic about crackers and bread.

Alarmed that what was basic to their diet was not

acceptable, Calum rushed down into the 'ponies

section of the life-support module and gathered up

a variety of leafy greens. She grabbed the lettuce

and crammed it into her mouth, reaching for the

chard, which she nibbled more delicately before

\A •-^—' ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

going on to the carrot and the radish. When she

had had enough to eat, she wiggled out of Gill's

arms and toddled off—right to the nearest inter-

esting instrument panel and set a danger sensor

blaring before Gill swooped her out of harm's way

and Calum corrected her alteration.

She looked frightened, the pupils in her silvery

eyes slitted to nothing and her little body rigid.

She babbled something incomprehensible to them.

"No, sweetie pie, no," Gill said, holding up a

warning Finger to her. "Understand me? Don't

touch." And he reached out, almost touching the

panel and pulling his hand back, miming hurt and

putting his fingers into his mouth, then blowing on

them.

The slits in her eyes widened and she said

something with a questioning inflection.

"No!" Gill repeated, and she nodded, putting

both hands behind her back.

"Ah, it's a grand intelligent wee bairn, so she

is," Calum said approvingly, smiling as he stroked

her feathery-soft hair.

"Should we show her the head, d'you sup-

pose?" Rafik asked, regarding her nether regions,

which were covered with a light fur.

"She doesn't have the equipment to use our

head," Gill said, "unless she's a he and he's hiding

what he uses." Gill began fingering his beard,

"which meant he was thinking. "She eats greens

like a grazing animal. ..."

"She's not an animal!" Calum was outraged by

the suggestion.

"But she does eat greens. Maybe -we should

show her the 'ponies section. We've got that bed

we use for the radishes ..."

"And you just gave her the last of the radishes...."

Rafik's tone was semi-accusatoiy.

"She's not feline or canine," Gill went on. "In

fact, sweet-looking kid as she is there's something

almost. . . equine about her."

Rafik and Calum hotly contested that category

•while she became quite restless, looking all around

her.

"Looks to me that she's as close to crossing her

legs as a young thing can get," Gill went on. "We

gottatry dirt."

They did and she bent forward slightly and

relieved herself, neatly shifting loose dirt over the

spot with her odd feet. Then she looked around at

all the green and growing things.

"Maybe we should have brought the dirt to

her," Gill said.

"Let's get her out of here then," Rafik said.

"We've fed and drained her and maybe she'll go to

sleep so we can all get back to the work -we should

be doing."

Indeed, she was quite content to be led back to

the open pod and crawled up into it, curling her-

self up and closing her eyes. Her breathing slowed

to a sleeping rhythm. And they tiptoed back to

their workstations.

The debate about her future disposition, however,

went on through an afternoon of sporadic work,

intermittently adjusting the great tethering cable

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

around the body of the asteroid and placing the

augering tool in a new location. AS—6-4-B1.3 might

be rich in platinum-group metals, but it was mak-

ing them pay for its riches with a higher crushing

coefficient than they'd anticipated. The afternoon

was punctuated by one or another miner taking

his turn to suit up for EVA in order to search out a

slightly better location for the auger, to replace a

drill bit, or to clear the dust that clogged even the

best-sealed tool from time to time.

"Let's call this asteroid Ass," Calum suggested

after one such trip.

"Please, Calum," Gill reproved him. "Not in

front of the infant!"

"Very well then, you name it."

They were in the habit of giving temporary

names to each asteroid they mined, something a lit-

tle more personal and memorable than the numbers

assigned by Survey—if any such numbers were

assigned. Many of their targets were tiny chon-

drites only a few meters across, too insignificant to

have been located and named in any flyby mission,

but easy enough for the Khedive to ingest, crush, and

process. But AS-64-B1.3 was a large asteroid,

almost too large for their longest tether to hold, and

in such cases they liked to pick a name that used the

initial letters of the Survey designation.

"Hazelnut," Gill threw out. Their unexpected

guest was awake again and he was feeding her

another leaf of chard with carrots for afters.

"Wrong initial letters."

"We'll be Cockney about it. 'Azelnut. And you

can allow me a ze for an ess, can't you?"

"If there were any point to it. Why are you so

set on Hazelnut?"

"Because she's a hard nut to crack!" Gill cack-

led and Calum smiled rather sourly. The smallest

of the three men, he -was the only one who could

get inside the workings of the drill while wearing

full EVA gear, and the dust ofAS-64-B1.3 had

sent him outside on this shift rather too often for

him to find much amusement in it.

"I like that," Rafik said. "'Azelnut she is. And

while you're enjoying your way with words. Gill,

what shall we name this little one? We can't just

keep calling her 'the child.'"

"Not our problem," Calum said. "We'll be turn-

ing her over to Base soon enough, -won't we?"

He looked at the suddenly stony faces of his

colleagues. "Well, we can hardly keep her here.

What will we do with a kid on a mining ship?"

"Have you considered," Rafik said gently, "the

probable cost of abandoning operations on

'Azelnut and returning to Base at high delta-V?"

"At the moment," Calum snapped, "I should be

only too happy to leave 'Azelnut for some other

fool to crack."

"And to bring back the KheSive with less than

half a payload? "

Calum s pale lashes flickered as he calculated

what they would make—or lose—on the trip in

that event. Then he shrugged in resignation. "All

right. We're stuck with her until we make our pay-

load. Just don't assume that because I'm smaller

than you, you Viking giant, that I'm naturally

suited to play nanny."

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Ah, now," said Gill with great good humor,

"the creature's walking and toilet trained already,

and she'll soon pick up our language—children

learn easily. How much trouble can one tod-

dler be?"

"Add that to your list of famous last words, will

ya?" Calum remarked at his most caustic when

they found the youngling had uprooted a good

half of the 'ponies vegetation, including the all-

important squashes and rhubarb, whose large

leaves provided much of the air purification.

Rafik ran tests to see how much damage had

actually been done to air quality. She'd gone to

sleep again and had awakened so quietly that none

of them had been aware of her movement until she

wandered back in, flourishing cabbage leaves.

Calum and Gill replanted, watered, and tied up

the pulled plants in an effort to save as many as

possible. The infant had evidently sampled every-

thing, pulling up those she particularly liked

instead of leaving her mouth-sized bite in leaf or

stalk: she had eaten all the half-ripe legume pods,

staples of Rafik's preferred diet. These subse-

quently caused a diarrhea which upset her almost

more than it upset them. They spent a good hour

arguing over a dose sufficient to bind her back to

normal. Body weight was the critical factor and

Rafik used the mineral scales to weigh her and

then the powder. She spat out the first dose.

And the second, all over Gill. The third dose they

got down her by covering her rather prominent

nostrils so that she had to open her mouth to

breathe—and thus swallow the medication. Once

again, she didn't cry, but her silverish eyes

reproached them far more effectively than tears

could.

"We can't have her doing this again," Calum

told Gill when they had finished replanting the

garden. Then Rafik came over, showing them the

readout on the atmosphere gauge.

"It should be down, but it's up," he said,

scratching his head and then tapping the gauge to

see if the needle moved. "Not so much as a stink of

excess COg in our air and we were about due for a

good backwash."

"I remember me mum putting a cage around

me," Gill said, "when I would get into her garden."

They made one out of netting in a corner of the

Khedive's, dayroom, but she was out of that as soon

as they turned their backs on her. So they netted

the 'ponies instead.

They tried to find toys to amuse her with, but

pots and pot lids to bang together and an array of

boxes to nest and bright colored cups and bowls

did not divert her long. She had to be attached to

someone, somehow, which generally made doing

their separate tasks difficult, if not impossible.

"Dependence transference," Rafik suggested

pompously.

"This is not in my job description," Gill said in

a soft voice when she had finally fallen asleep,

small arms limp around his neck. Rafik and Calum

helped to remove her as gently as possible.

They all held their breaths as they managed to

lay her in the open pod, which remained her noc-

turnal cradle.

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"And that's another thing," Gill said, still whis-

pering, "she's growing by the hour. She's not going

to fit in that much longer. What the hell species is

she?"

"Born more mature than human babies are,"

Rafik said. "But I can't find out a damned thing in

the Concordance or the Encycio, not even in the alien

or the vet entries."

"Look, guys, I know we'll waste time and fuel,

and we haven't got enough of a payload to resup-

ply if we go back to Base, but do we have the right

to keep her out here with us when someone might

be looking for her? And Base might be able to

take care other better?"

Rafik sighed and Calum looked away from Gill,

everywhere else but at the sleeping youngling.

"First," Rafik said, since he usually did this sort

of logical setting out of facts, "if anybody's looking

for her, they'd be looking in this sector of space,

not at Base. Second, since we've agreed she is of

an unknown alien species, what possible expertise

can Base supply? There aren't any books on how

to look after her, and we're the only ones with

hands-on experience. And finally, we Bon't have

enough of a payload to refuel. We do have what

looks like a real find here, and I'm not about to let

any hijackers take it away from us. We did catch

that ion trail last week, and it could very well be

Amalgamated spies, just checking up on us." Gill

growled and Calum sniffed his poor opinion of the

competition. "Well, we'll just have to include her

in the duty roster. An hour on, two hours off. That

gives us two crew working ..."

Acorna ——•> 21

"And one going off his nut..." Gill said, and

then volunteered to take the first duty.

"Ahahaha," Rafik waggled a slim finger at his

crewmate, "we all work while she sleeps."

Somehow or other the scheme worked a lot better

than any of them had any reason to expect. In the

first place, she learned to talk, which kept her, and

her current minder, occupied. She learned also to

respect "no" and brighten at "yes" and, when she was

bored with sitting still, would "yes" and "no" every

object in the dayroom. She never again touched a

"no." The third day, it was Rafik who brought out

the markers and "dead" computer printouts. He

showed her how to hold the implement and, while

she could not manage her digits as he did, she was

very shortly drawing lines and squiggles and looking

for approval at each new design.

"You know," said Calum, when called upon to

admire her handiwork, "looks a lot like the stuff

on her egg. How mature was she born, d'you

think?"

That sent all three comparing her efforts with

the egg inscription, but they finally decided that it

was pure chance and how would a youngling

know script at such an early age. So they taught

her to print in Basic, using the now-standard fig-

ures. She outdid them shortly by repeating the

computer printout programming language.

"Well, she prints what she sees a lot of."

The big discovery, and the treat could take up

to an hour, was bathing her.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"You gotta bathe all kids regularly. Hygiene,"

Rafik said, pausing to grin at her as she splashed

the water in the big galley sink. She still fit in it at

that point. "I know that much."

"Yeah? With water on board for three and she

makes four and drinks a lot, we'll be in deep kim-

chee on water quality soon," Gill said sourly.

"All sink water's recycled," Calum reminded

them just as the youngling dipped her face in the

bathwater and blew bubbles. And then drank the

bubbles. "No, sweetie, don't drink the bathwater.

Dirty."

"Actually it isn't," Rafik remarked, looking at

the clear liquid in which their charge sat.

"Has to be. I soaped her good." Calum peered

in and the metal bottom was clearly visible. "That's

impossible. There should be lather and she'd got

her kneecaps dirty crawling on the floor and she

got her fingers messed up drawing before that.

They're all clean now, too."

"Just a jiff," Rafik said, and went off for one of

his many diagnostic tools. He inserted it in the

bathwater and gawked at the reading. "This stuff

is one hundred percent pure unadulterated H^O.

In fact it's a lot purer than what I used to make

coffee this morning."

"But you saw me soap her," Calum said in a

defensive tone. "I washed her because she w<u dirty."

"Which neither she nor the water is now."

Rafik immersed the diagnostic tool again. "I

dunno."

Calum got a crafty expression on his face.

"Done a reading on our air lately?"

Rafik grimaced. "In fact I did, like I'm sup-

posed to this time of day."

"Well?" Gill's voice rose in a prompt when

Rafik delayed an answer -while scratching his

head.

"Not a sign of excess carbon dioxide, and with

four of us breathing air, there should be some

traces of it by now. Especially as we don't have

quite as many broad-leafed plants in 'ponies

because she," he pointed at her, "likes them better

than anything else."

The three men regarded their small charge,

who was bubbling her crystal clear bathwater,

greatly enjoying this innocent occupation.

"Then there's that sort of horn thing in the mid-

dle of her forehead," Gill remarked. "Unicorns

were supposed to purify water."

"Water maybe," Calum agreed as he had been

brought up with some of the same fairy tales as

Gill, "but air?"

"Wa-ter?" the youngling said, dropping her jaw

in what they now recognized as her smile. "Air?"

she added, though it came out in two syllables, "a-

yir."

"That's right, baby, water and air. The two

things both our species can't live without," Rafik

said, sighing at the puzzle of her.

"Let's call her Una," Gill suggested suddenly

into the silence.

"I don't like it," Rafik said, shaking his head.

"We're in the As, you know, not the Us."

"Acorna?" Calum. "Sure beats 'baby' and

youngling' and 'sweetums.'" He glanced sideways

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

at Gill, whom he had overheard addressing his

charge with what Calum thought a nauseating

euphemism.

"Acorna?" Rafik considered. "Better than

Una." He picked up a cup, dipped it in the clear

bathwater, and as he made to pour it over her

head. Gill grabbed it out of his hand.

"You ain't even Christian," he said—and, pour-

ing the water over her head, "I dub thee Acorna."

"No, no, you twit," Calum said, taking the cup

from his hand and dipping it in. "I baptize thee

Acorna. I'll stand as godfather."

"You -will not. I will."

"Where does that leave me?" Rafik demanded.

Acorna stood up in the sink, and only his quick

movement kept her from falling out of the impro-

vised bath.

"Holding the baby," Gill and Calum said in

unison. Calum handed him the towel.

They had learned to dry off as much moisture

as possible because, once set on her feet again,

Acorna tended to shake herself and there was too

much equipment about that did not need daily

sprinklings.

The Khedive had cracked and digested 'Azelnut and

was on her way to DF—4-H3.1, a small LL-

chondrite that should have a high enough concen-

tration of valuable metals to make up the payload

for this trip, when the first announcements from

Base reached them.

"Summary of proposed adjustments to share-

holder status ..." Gill scowled at the reader. "Why

are they sending us this garbage? We're miners,

not pixel-pushers or bean-counters!"

"Let me see that." Rafik snapped his fingers at

the console. "Hardcopy, triple!"

"Wasting paper," Calum commented.

Acorna needs more scratch paper to mark

on," Gill said.

"And if this is what I think it is," Rafik added,

you two will be wanting to read it for yourselves,

not to wait for me."

"Whatever it is," Gill said in disgust after peer-

ing at his printout, "it's wrapped up in enough

bureaucratic double-talk that we'll have to wait for

you to interpret anyway, Rafik."

"Not all of it," Calum said slowly. "This para-

graph—" he tapped his own hardcopy—"says that

our shares in Mercantile Mining and Exploration

are now worth approximately three times what

they were when we left Base."

Gill whistled. "For news like that, they can

wrap it up any way they please!"

"And thLt paragraph," Calum went on, "says

that they have become nonvoting shares."

"Is that legal? Oh, well, for three times the

money, who cares? We didn't have enough shares

between us to make a difference anyway."

Calum was blinking furiously as he translated

the announcement into numbers without bother-

ing to consult the voice calculator. "The net worth

of our shares has increased by a factor of three-

point-two-five, actually. But if -we had ever voted

our shares in a block, our interest in MME would

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

have been sufficient to influence a close-run policy

decision."

"I believe," Rafik said in an oddly strangled

voice, "that if you two will stop jingling your

pocket change and look at the last page, you will

observe the important part of this announcement.

It seems MME has been acquired. By Amalgam-

ated."

Gill flipped through his hardcopy. "Says here

it's a merger, not an acquisition."

Rafik shrugged. "When the tiger executes a

merger with the goat, which one walks away?"

"Ah, it's nothing for us to be concerned about,"

Gill said. "We hadn't enough shares to be worth

the voting anyway, Calum, and besides, we were

never around for their AGMs when we could vote.

And it says right here that nothing is going to

change in the way the company is run."

Rafik shrugged again. "They always say that.

It's a sure sign that heads are about to roll."

"Back on Base? Sure. But that won't affect us."

"Not immediately, no."

"Oh, quit spouting doom and gloom, Rafik.

Since when do you know so much more about the

ways of big business than the rest of us? Like I

said, we're miners, not pixel-pushers."

"My uncle Hafiz," Rafik said demurely, "is a

merchant. He has explained some of these matters

to me. The next announcement should follow

within twenty-four to thirty-six hours Standard.

That will be the company's change of name. The

restructuring and the first revised organizational

chart will occur somewhat later, but still well

before we reach Base—especially if you still

intend mining Daffodil before our return."

"I'm beginning to think we should rename

DF-4-H3.1 Daffy, in your honor, Rafik," Gill said.

"You can't possibly predict all that."

"Wait and see," Rafik suggested. "Or to make

it more amusing, how about a small wager? I'll

give you odds of—umm—three to two that you'll

not recognize the old MME by the time we bring

the Khedive, in again."

Calum grinned. "Not very good odds, Rafik,

for someone who claims to be as certain as you are

of the outcome!"

Rafik's brown lashes swept down across his

face as demurely as any dancing girl in his ances-

tors' harems could have looked. "My uncle

Hafiz," he murmured, "also kept racing horses.

He instructed me never to bet on longer odds

than I had to."

"And even if they do reorganize," Gill went on,

"we're independent contractors, not staff employ-

ees. It won't affect us."

"Remembering some of your other famous last

•words, Gill," Calum said unhappily, "I rather wish

you hadn't said that."

The Khedive stayed out much longer than their

original prospecting plan filed -with MME. A case

of finding Daffodil nearly as lucrative as 'Azelnut

and covering a wider area. Since their water

remained pure and their air remarkably clear of

CO;, they really were not at all pushed.

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

Acorna also supplied diversion enough to keep

all three men from feeling any need to seek

fresher companions. Though their arguments

about her upbringing slowly verged on the

"•what'11 we teach her today" rather than physical

concerns, the debates usually occurred while she

was sleeping. She did require a good deal of sleep,

growing out of nap times to at least ten hours in

the hammock they devised as her sleeping accom-

modation. Once asleep, she was impervious to

noise — except for the one time a thruster misfired

and set off the hooter and she was wide awake in

an instant and standing by her assigned escape

pod. (Rafik had put her original pod in it, "just in

case" he'd said, and the others had concurred. As

there were only three pods on the Khedive, and

Calum was the smallest of the miners, he would

share hers.) So they would discuss her lessons

quite freely and sometimes at the top of their

lungs.

Such EVA work as was needed was generally

accomplished when she was asleep, or so involved

with her "studying" she didn't notice that one of

them was gone.

"We're going to have to train her out of such

dependence, you know," Rafik said one night. "I

mean, when we get back to Base, we'll each have

duties that will separate us, and she's got to learn

that having just one of us around is okay, too."

"How do we do that?" Calum wanted to know.

"Start doing short EVAs while she's awake, so

she sees us going and coming back. I think once

she realizes that we f)o come back, she'll settle

down more," Rafik said, shaking his head and

casting a sorrowful glance to where she swayed

slightly in her hammock. "Poor tyke. Losing her

family to who knows what. Small wonder she

needs to see all of us all the time."

They'd been giving her lessons in Basic, nam-

ing everything in the KheSive for her. At first she

had reciprocated—at least they thought that -was

what she was doing—with sounds in her own lan-

guage. But since her words sounded like nothing

they'd ever heard before and their efforts to repeat

them were dead failures, she soon began accepting

and using their vocabulary.

"Just as well," said Gill.

"A pity for her to lose her original language,"

Calum said, "but she's so young, I doubt she had

that much command of it anyway."

"Well, she sure knew how to say ..." and Gill

spelled the word out rather than upset Acorna by

hearing it spoken.

"Awi?" she said aloud in response. The look of

expectancy in Acorna s eyes as she looked toward

the airlock of the KheSive nearly had the tender-

hearted Gill in tears.

"She can spell?" Rafik exclaimed, grasping the

important facet of that incident. "Hey, there,

Acorna baby, what does R-A-F-I-K spell?"

Diverted, she pointed her whole hand, the

digits closed as was her habit, at Rafik and said his

name.

"And G-I-L-L?"

"Gill." She made the odd noise through her

nostrils which the men had identified as her laugh.

Acorna

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"C-A-L-U-M?" demanded the last of her par-

ent figures.

"Calum!" Now she drummed her closed hands

on the table and her feet on the floor, her expres-

sion of high happiness.

A good bit of that day's segment went into a

spelling lesson. That evening produced the knowl-

edge that she had assimilated the alphabet, and

with only a little help from her friends, she began

to print what she spelled.

"In a ten-point type, gentlemen, if you will

examine the evidence," Calum said, holding up

one of the sheets she had covered with her deli-

cately wrought script.

"What's so amazing about that?" Rafik asked,

turning the sheet to the other side where the print-

out words were also in ten point type.

"How much has she absorbed?"

"Damn," Acorna said very clearly as the writing

implement she was using ran dry.

"I'd say more than enough, mates," Gill said,

"and he who uses foul language will pay one half

credit to the box for every foul-mouthed syllable

uttered from this point onward." He picked up an

empty disk box, started to write FOUL MOUTH on

it when Acorna, reading it, repeated the legend.

He erased it hastily and wrote FINE instead.

"What is 'fine'?" Acorna asked.

That's when they showed her how to access the

Khedive's, reference programs. She had a bit of trou-

ble getting her oddly shaped fingers to hit just the

keys she wanted until Rafik made up a keyboard

with spacings appropriate to her manual dexterity.

If improving this new skill kept her occupied so

that they could get on with their professional work

and more beneficiated ore was sacked and stored

in the drone carrier pods that festooned the exte-

rior of the Khedive, she totally confounded them

three days later.

"Cargo pods are nearly two-thirds full. What. . .

when they are three-thirds full?"

"Say what?" Rafik asked, blinking at her.

"I think she's trying to ask what we'll do then.

We take the three-thirds full pods back to Base,

get paid for them, resupply the ship, and come

back for more," Calum replied, trying to speak in a

nonchalant tone.

"But Daffodil is more than three-thirds cargo

pods."

"Well, you know, we send the iron and nickel

back by the mag drive. The ship's own payload is

merely the metals too valuable to send that way,"

Calum explained, as if he really expected Acorna

to understand him.

"Platinum is val-uble."

"That's right."

"Then palladium and rhodium and ruthenium

is val-uble."

"Are," Calum corrected absently.

Rafik had straightened. "Did you hear that?

She knows the platinum-group metals!"

"And why not?" Gill retorted. "Doesn't she

hear us talking about them all the time?"

Acorna stamped her foot to get back their

attention. "Osmium is val-uble. Iridium is val-uble.

Rhenium is not val-uble."

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

"Rhenium isn't one of the platinum group,"

Calum corrected her, "but at the moment, thanks

to the boom in proton accelerometers, it is very

valuable indeed."

Acorna frowned. "Not mining rhenium."

"We would if there was any on Daff, I assure

you, honey."

"Rhenium is. Deep."

"No, love. Daffodil's regolith is rich in plat-

inum-group metals, but low in iron and the minor

metals, including rhenium. We could tell that from

spectroscopic analysis and . . . um, other instru-

ments," said Gill, who left the technical task of

deciding which asteroids were likely candidates to

Calum whenever he could. "That's why we're min-

ers, hon. This is our job. And we are very lucky to

have found Daffodil. 'Azelnut was good, but the

Daff's been better for us."

"Deep!" Acorna insisted. "Use auger. Drill. Find

rhenium, go back soon. Then go somewhere new?"

"To find your folks?"

Acorna's eyes narrowed and she looked down

an elegant but definitely equine nose at her closed

hands.

"Honey, one of the reasons we've stayed out so

long is to make enough money to do a real good

galactic search for your folks. Your Awi. Was

Awi the only one in your ship?"

"No. Lalli there, too."

"Your mother and father?" Gill asked, hoping

that now her comprehension of Basic was so good,

she might be able to make the leap to translating

her mother tongue.

"No, Awi and Lalli."

"Nice try. Gill," Rafik said, laying a sympa-

thetic hand on his arm.

"By the way, hon, three-thirds full is all full.

Three-thirds make one," Calum said, seeking to

distract her from her sad contemplation of her

hands. "Thirds are fractions."

"Fractions?" Her head came up.

"Parts of a whole. There're all kinds of frac-

tions, halves and quarters and fifths and sixths and

lots and lots, and when you have two halves, you

have a -whole. When you have four quarters, you

have a whole."

"And five fives is a whole, too?" Her eyes were

wide again as she grasped the concept. "What is

the smallest? One and one?"

"We also got us a mathematical genius," Rafik

said, throwing up his slim fingered hands in

humorous awe.

One mathematical concept led to another, and

it wasn't long before Acorna was accessing alge-

braic equations. Calum, muttering something

about leaving no regolithic grain unturned, bullied

the others into using the tether and auger to go

beneath the fine, friable rubble of Daffodil's outer

layers.

"Why not teach her something useful? Like

how to watch the catalytic converter gauges and

switch over at the right temps?" Rafik asked.

"Then I'd get to go out with you guys on EVAs

and she'd have less of this dependency thing."

"I think," Calum said in awed tones, "she was

born knowing more useful things than we can

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

imagine." He was inspecting the latest drilling

samples by remote control. "Look at this analysis,

will you?"

"Rhenium and hafnium," Rafik said slowly,

bending over the screens. "High concentrations,

too. If the drill keeps bringing up this quality of ore,

we can make our payload and be back at Base

sooner than if we keep working the surface regolith

for platinum. And the load will be richer by~"

"Forty-two point six five percent," Calum said,

blinking absently. "She dalS) there was rhenium

down deep, you know."

"Daffodil shows as an undifferentiated aster-

oid. There've been no atmospheric processes to

move deposits. Logically, the deep rock should be

the same metals, in the same concentration, as the

surface regolith . . . just harder to get at."

"Logically," Gill retorted, "looking at this anal-

ysis, it isn't. There just may be a few things the

cosmologists don't know yet. But I'd give a pretty

penny to know how you knew, Acorna acushla. I

think we'd better teach her the rest of the metals,

gentlemen, so she knows what to tell us about

from now on. And as for dependency ..." Gill

snorted. "Once you made her her own keyboard,

she undepended herself, or hadn't you two

noticed?"

"Some are born to be hackers, and some ain't,"

Rafik said.

"Well, it won't hurt to try, now •will it?" was

Gill's retort, but he was as proud of Acorna as

they all were. "We're not doing so bad as parents,

?„

are we.

"How mature was she born?" Calum asked,

almost plaintively. "She's only been aboard for ..."

He had to access the log for the date she'd been

recovered. "Hey, twelve months and fifteen days!"

"A year?" Rafik repeated astonished.

"A year!" Gill cried. "Hell, we forgot her birth-

day!"

The other two, tight-lipped with anger, pointed

to the FINE jar, which hadn't actually been fed for

some time.

Purely superficial changes," Gill

said as the Khedive arrived •within

visual range of the old MME

Base. "You'll not claim your winnings on the

basis of a few cosmetic details, will you now,

Rafik?"

"I should be delighted," Rafik said, "not to

claim them at all."

No announcement of any reorganization had

reached them, but the MME logo that had once

decorated both sides of each docking gate had

been replaced by a much larger sign reading,

AMALGAMATED MANUFACTURING. Instead of

Johnny Greene's cheerful greeting, they had

been read into position by something with a dry

mechanical voice that refused to give its name

and complained about their failure to introduce

themselves with "the Amalgamated protocol,"

whatever that might be.

The docking bay itself was much the same,

but immediately within the double airlock doors

leading to the interior of Base they were met by

the owner of the dry voice, still complaining

about their failure to use the Amalgamated proto-

col.

"Look, mate," Gill said, "like the pilot here

told you—" he nodded toward Calum "—we're

the Khedive, on contract to MME, and we didn't

get word of any new approach and docking pro-

tocol. If you chaps wanted us to use something

new, why didn't you send us the rules?"

"Violation of regulations to send classified

company protocols via unsecured space transmis-

sions."

"The ancient Americans had a phrase for it,"

Rafik said, smiling slightly. "Something about a

twenty-two catch, I believe."

"And where's Johnny Greene?"

"Redundant."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"

Gill's voice had grown loud enough to echo

down the corridors. A young woman in a pale

blue coverall, her fair hair drawn back into a

bun, hurried forward with one hand raised.

"Eva Glatt," she introduced herself, holding

out one small hand, "TT&A—that's Testing,

Therapy, and Adjustment Department. The con-

solidation of MME with Amalgamated has

resulted in a number of organizational changes

for efficiency, Mr.—Giloglie, is it? I've come to

take charge of the child."

"She is in our charge," Gill said.

"Oh, but surely you won't want to be bothered

-' 39

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

with her while you're filling out the docking pro-

tocol forms and reregistering the KheSive as an

Amalgamated ship. I've prepared everything,

though your message did not give us much time

to make ready."

Raflk and Calum had convinced Gill that it

would be tactful to tell Base something about the

enigma they were bringing back from this latest

expedition, but they had all waited until they

were on the way back from Daffodil, just in case

Base had any ideas about issuing an immediate

recall.

"And Dr. Forelle himself wishes to inspect the

pod in 'which she was found and your tapes of the

initial contact," Eva went on. "I'll just have that

material brought off the ship and taken to him

while you're reregistering yourselves, shall I?

And you can come with me, you poor baby." She

knelt and held out her hand to Acorna, who put

both hands behind her own back and stepped

back a pace, narrowing her pupils to vertical

slits.

"Not," she said with emphasis.

"Complete sentences, Acorna acushia," Gill

said with a sigh.

"Now, dear," Eva Glatt said brightly, "you'll

be very bored staying here with your nice uncles

while they do all that tedious paperwork.

Wouldn't you like to come along to the creche

and play some nice games?"

Acorna glanced at Rafik. He gave a small nod

and she relaxed her guarded pose slightly. "Will

go," she said. "Short!"

"There, you see," Eva Glatt said, straighten-

ing, "it's just a matter of elementary psychology.

I'm sure she'll be quite docile and trainable."

"That woman," said Gill as Eva led Acorna

off, "is an idiot."

"She said something about a creche," said

Rafik. "Acorna might enjoy being with some

other children for a change. And I do have a pre-

sentiment that the next hour or so will be boring

in the extreme."

While Gill, Raflk, and Calum worked their way

through questionnaires demanding everything

from grandmother's middle name to preferences

in basic food groups. Dr. Alton Forelle skimmed

through the ship's log of Acorna's first utterances

half a dozen times.

"Again!" he snapped, and his assistant, Judit

Kendoro, obediently replayed the first segments

of that haunting cry.

"Idiots," Forelle said cheerfully. "Why

couldn't they have recorded everything she said?

Why did they have to interfere by an attempt to

overlay Basic Universal speech patterns? There's

not nearly enough data here to analyze."

"There's enough to tell that she was just a lost

baby crying for somebody she knew," said Judit

softly. She thought she might be reduced to-tears

herself if she had to listen to that wail of "Awi,

awi!" any longer.

Forelle shut off the player. "You're anthropo-

morphizing, Judit," he said. "How can we presume

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

to interpret an alien speech merely from inflec-

tion and situation? We shall have to make a thor-

ough syntactic and semantic analysis before any

conclusions at all are valid."

"And just how are we going to do that," Judit

said, "when she's been with these people for over

a year, exposed to Basic Universal and forgetting

her own speech patterns?"

"We'll regress her to the time when she was

found, of course," Forelle replied, as if that

should have been assumed. "The technique is

simple enough, and with the right drugs, no one

resists a regression. From the number and

sequence of sounds she was making when they

found her, she must have had some mastery of

her native language at that time. The information

is still there, simply overlaid by recent experi-

ences. We have only to strip off the overlay."

Judit made a small, involuntary gesture. Even

adults who had volunteered for the process found

a full regression terrifying. What would it be like

for this child? "You'll halt the process, of course,

if she appears traumatized?"

"Of course," Forelle assured her. "But you

mustn't be so tender. We must have as much evi-

dence as possible to back up this discovery. If she

is a sapient alien, speaking a language totally

unrelated to any human tongue, whatever we can

learn of that language will be of inestimable sci-

entific value. We can't let individual concerns

stand in the way of Science."

"And publication," Judit said dryly.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Forelle said. "If

Acorna 41

you help me with the child, I shall certainly list you

as one of the coauthors. And you must bear the

other possibility in mind, too. If she's just a

deformed mutant gabbling some known tongue in a

way we didn't recognize from the log, what fools we

should look, announcing the discovery of the first

true alien language! We can't risk that, can we?"

He smiled into space and went on, more to himself

than to Judit, "Its high time linguistics came into

its own as a scientific discipline. We've been ridicu-

lously hobbled all these years by a squeamish reluc-

tance to experiment on human beings. Why, the

entire critical-period theory of language learning

could have been settled generations ago if someone

had just had the fortitude to isolate a few dozen

babies from human speech for ten or twenty years.

It would be a beautifully controlled experiment,

you see—take a child out every six months and

expose it to language, and when they stop respond-

ing, you know the critical period has passed. Of

course, one wouldn't want to contaminate the test

subjects by returning the exposed children, and one

has to allow for sickness, and the need to duplicate

results, so rather a large initial test group would be

required. I'm sure that's why my request for fund-

ing was turned down. Governments are so short-

sighted about pure research. But this time I won't

need to wait for a grant. I've got the subject right

here, at least I <fhall have as soon as that Glatt female

is through with her puerile tests, and Amal-

gamated's psycho-socialization lab is perfectly

equipped for the examination."

Judit Kendoro bit her lip and reminded her-

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

self that she had been lucky to get out of the fac-

tories of Kezdet, lucky to win one of the very few

technical school scholarships set aside for indi-

gent students, even luckier to have a good job

with Amalgamated that had paid off her sister

Mercy's bond and would, given just a few more

months, see her little brother Pal through school

and into a job of his own. Even forgetting the

other considerations that kept her at Amal-

gamated, no one could possibly expect her to

throw away all those years of hard work just

because some foundling child might be scared by

reliving a traumatic incident of her past. Besides,

what could she do?

"I'll )ust see how they're getting on with the

child at TT&A," she said.

Dr. Forelle smiled. "Good idea. They've had

her quite long enough. And you might bring the

test results with you . . . not that I expect much

from the clumsy, outmoded instruments that

Glatt woman uses."

"We've completed the forms," Gill said, leaning

over Eva Glatt's desk, "and we've come for

Acorna. If you could just show us the way to the

creche?"

Eva looked surprised. "Oh, you can't take her

now!"

"Why not? She may be enjoying the chance to

play with the other children, but I'm sure she will

be wanting to see us by now."

"Playing? Other children? I'm afraid you

have misunderstood. We've just begun testing

her mental and psychological capacity. She'll be

in tests most of this day. Most of the week, prob-

ably. You wouldn't be spending any more time

with her in any case."

"We would not?" repeated Rafik. "I am sorry,

that is not acceptable."

"She is used to us," Calum said hastily, trying

to smooth things over, "and . . . we're kinda used

to her, too. We figured, unless you located her

people, she could just stay on with us. She's

already lost her parents. She doesn't need to lose

us, too."

Eva Glatt laughed merrily. "How sweet! But

you really couldn't expect to retain care of her,

could you? Three mining engineers, isolated for

years at a time . . . I'm sure you've done your

best, but you hardly have the training and exper-

tise to solve her special problems."

"Acorna doesn't have any special problems,"

Calum said angrily. "She's a perfectly delightful

little girl, and we Like taking care of her. Oh, I'm

not saying we might not have handed her over to

a Company creche if we'd been able to at the

beginning. But she's been with us nearly two

years now. We're her family. Of course we expect

to continue taking care other."

Eva laughed again. "Don't be ridiculous. Even

if the situation were not obviously unsuitable,

your PPPs would invalidate any application for

formal guardianship."

"PPPs?" Rafik repeated.

"Personal Psychological Profiles," Eva

ANNE McCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

deigned to elucidate. "I pulled up the Amalgam-

ated psych files on you. All three of you are clas-

sified as maladaptive personalities who are drawn

to a lonely, high-risk profession such as asteroid

prospecting by a combination of self-destructive

traits and romantic thrill-seeking — "

"Excuse me," Rafik interrupted, "I do not,

myself, recall that this company has administered

any psychological tests to me. Calum? Gill?"

The other two men shook their heads.

"You just filled out the personnel forms," Eva

said patiently. "The computer analysis was routed

to my mailbox immediately, since your personal-

ity problems may have a bearing on the child's

psychological problems. The results are much as

I expected."

"Psychology! When we contracted with

MME," Gill said", "we reported to the Director of

Alining Engineering, who was more interested in

whether we knew how to handle an ultra-low-

temp vacuum blasting unit than in what we saw

in the inkblots."

"An outmoded attitude," Eva said. "Amalgam-

ated considers it of vital importance to see that

only socially well-adapted personnel are retained

in the trying conditions of space."

"And exactly how," Rafik inquired sweetly,

"did you come to this . . . conclusion . . . about

our personalities?"

"It's self-evident," Eva said. "Why else would

you expose yourselves to the risks and loneliness

of such a career, when you all score high enough

in SGIQ—Stabilized Generalized Intelligence

Quotient—and have more than enough education

to obtain much better-paid administrative posi-

tions right here at company headquarters?"

"More money," Calum agreed gravely, "and

the benefits of psychologically designed decor.

Why indeed?"

Eva looked at him uncertainly. "I . . . I'm glad

you agree with me. You understand, then. The

child is severely deformed and probably retarded

as well — "

A hissing noise distracted her for a moment,

until Rafik took Gill by the elbow. "Do not inter-

rupt, my friend," he said. "We are all most inter-

ested in the lady doctor's evaluation of Acorna,

are we not?"

"By height and weight charts, she is a reasonably

well-nourished six-year-old," Eva said, "but on the

SLI—Standardized Language • Interaction—she

scored as a low two."

"By my own experience," countered Gill, "she

was an infant when we found her, and that was

less than two years ago. She can't be more than

three or four years old."

"And her understanding of language is excel-

lent," Calum added. "If she's lagging in expres-

sive speech, it is probably because her brain is

not wired for human language; she's having to

learn it analytically, not naturally as a human

infant would."

"I'm glad to see you admit she has brain prob-

lems," Eva said quickly.

"Differences," Calum said, "not problems."

Eva fussed with her desk console for a

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

moment. "Given the degree of language retarda-

tion, -we next administered the Colquhoun Color-

Matching Test, which is of course designed for

much younger children. She displayed notable

clumsiness in operating the cursor—"

"Her fingers are lacking a joint," Rafik

pointed out. "Of course she has trouble with

equipment designed for human hands. What are

you testing for, intelligence or manual dexter-

• rt „

ity?

"The two have long been shown to be linked,"

Eva retorted. "Every fool knows that a child is

not ready for reading or computation until he can

hop a straight line on one foot; it's one of the

standard creche-readiness tests."

"Aye, I'm sure that is one of the things every

fool knows," Gill agreed with a heavy irony that

escaped Eva. "Du> you test her intelligence at

all?"

"Did you ask her to write a simple program

for carbonyl reduction?"

"Or to calculate the concentration of platinum-

group metals in the regolith of an E-type chon-

drite?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Eva snapped. "Even if

the child could perform such tasks, she must

have learned them by rote. Doing such extremely

age-inappropriate things is another sign of the

social maladjustment -we will cure after her defor-

mities have been corrected. If she is to develop

into an adaptively competent personality, her

upbringing must be entrusted to experts who will

understand how to help her compensate for her

disabilities without requiring excessive achieve-

ment from her."

"And exactly -what did you have in mind?"

Rafik inquired politely.

"Well, I—she must be tested more thoroughly

first, of course—but I see no reason why she

should not be trainable to hold a minimum-

responsibility position in a sheltered workspace."

"Stacking trays in the company cafeteria," Gill

said.

"Or folding linen," Calum suggested.

Eva flushed. "I'm not a miracle worker," she

snapped. "You've brought me a deformed,

retarded child who has already suffered the

effects of nearly two years in a socially maladap-

tive environment."

"I would not, myself, be so quick to be assum-

ing the child is retarded," said Calum. "Once you

take your eyes away from the psychological tests

long enough to observe that she is not human —

which any competent biologist could verify for

you—perhaps you will begin to understand that

differences are not the same as defects. And yes,

she has some problems with language and with

manipulating equipment designed for humans.

So? In any other field. Dr. Glatt, the expert is the

one who knows how to solve problems, not the

one who wails that they're unsolvable."

A gleam of triumph appeared in Eva Glatt's

eyes. "As a matter of fact," she said sweetly, "I am

already preparing to solve some ot the child's

problems. There's no known surgical correction

for the hand problem, but that disfiguring excres-

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

cence in the middle of her forehead can easily be

removed."

"That—you mean you want to cut off her

horn?" Gill exploded. "Woman, have you lost

your wits? That's not a deformity; it's an integral

part of her."

"Amalgamated's on-site med team is quite

capable of administering a local anesthetic and

tying off any blood vessels that have infiltrated

the deformity," Kva said primly.

"I think you do not understand." Rafik leaned

over Eva's desk, his dark eyes flashing with

intensity. "Acorna is ... not . . . human.

Differences are not deformities. And her race Uife^

that horn. We've already learned that she can use

it to purify air and water, and we suspect it's inte-

gral to her metal-sensing abilities."

Eva sighed. "I think you three have been Iso-

lated too long. You're beginning to hallucinate.

What you suggest is not scientifically possible."

"We speak from our own experience," Calum

said.

Eva fapped at her desk console. "In my capac-

ity as head of TT&A, I shall recommend

extended leave and a course of psychological

adjustment for all of you before you are allowed

to take out company property such as the KheSlve

again. My evaluation shows that you are not only

socially maladaptive but seriously delusional."

Gill began to hiss through his clenched teeth

again, but Rafik stopped him.

"Never mind the minor insults, Gill. The first

priority is to stop this nonsense of surgery on

Acorna. The horn is an integral part of her.

Without it she would be crippled ... or worse.

We will absolutely not, under any circumstances,

give permission for an operation."

"I think you don't understand. Acorna is no

longer your problem. After surgery and remedial

training, she is to be transferred to an orphanage

pending identification of the parents who aban-

doned her."

"The devil she is!" Gill roared. "We're taking

her back. Now. Are you going to send for her, or

do we go and get her?"

"She was scheduled to go into surgery at 133C

hours," Eva Glatt said. She glanced at her wrisi

unit. "It's too late for you to make a fuss now."

"Relax, Gill," Calum said after checking his

own unit. "It's only 1345 now. They'll still be fid-

dling around with the anesthesia." He perched on

the corner of Eva Glatt's desk, one arm casually

draped over her console. "But I do think you had

better tell us how to get to Surgery. Now!"

A young woman with a wrist-thick braid of

dark hair hanging over one shoulder stepped into

the office. "I believe I can help you gentlemen

with that," she said. Her chest rose and fell as

though she had just been running, but her man-

ner was calm enough. "I'm going that way

myself, as it happens."

"That," said Gill, "would be very helpful.

We're in rather a hurry, though. ..." He steered

the girl out into the hall, blocking her view of

Eva Glatt's desk, while Calum slipped behind the

desk and stopped Eva from reaching for one of

ANNE MCCAFFREY AND MARGARET BALL

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