As more and more of her new family returned from the plagued worlds, Ariin met her uncle, Lariinye, her father’s brother, as well as her grandparents on her mother’s side of the family. She visited her parents often by com unit and also got to know “Uncle Joh” Becker and his odd-looking first mate Maak, who seemed to have a screw stuck in the center of his forehead where a horn would be. She also caught glimpses of the father of most Petaybean cats, the bushytailed RK.
She learned about the ways and customs of her people, stopping to wonder now and then that she not only had people but they had customs of their own, an advanced society, and a role in the broader universe much more important, it seemed to her, than the one the Friends played. Her people did a lot of good without kidnapping poor innocent eggs from their mothers’ wombs. Even their scientific probing was done in a more kindly manner.
She was pleased to see that the Others had survived, unchanged, from her time as well, though people referred to them as the Ancestors. Her parents were quarantined in the midst of the grazing grounds preferred by these ancestors, who were apparently unaffected by the plague. Probably because it was gone, she thought.
Which made her all the more anxious to put her plan into action. She was able to do it more quickly and easily than she expected, and with less deception.
“Ariin,” Mother said to her one day while they were chatting on the com unit, “do you remember the first day you met us speaking to Uncle Hafiz and Karina?”
“No,” she said. “I remember you, and Maati, but I have not met these—”
“They were the colorfully dressed humans,” she explained. “Karina was very excited because she had seen in one of her visions that you would be coming to us.”
Ariin, who had had a lot to get used to over the past two weeks, still felt doubtful, though she began to recall some non-Linyaari biped—
“She wears a lot of purple, and an immense amount of jewelry,” Mother added.
The woman’s image swept into Ariin’s memory at once. “Oh, yes, she reminded me of Akasa, only more”—she started to say fleshy, but Mother seemed to be fond of these people so she corrected herself, “purple.”
“Yes, I can see the resemblance although I believe that Karina is a much more well-meaning person than Akasa, from what you’ve told me. At any rate, they would like to invite you to the Moon of Opportunity so they can meet you personally. Uncle Hafiz is one of my human family, and, as you have no doubt heard, has been a great benefactor to our people.”
“So I have to do what he wants?” Ariin asked.
“No, dear, of course not. But you will enjoy MOO, and Hafiz and Karina grow lovely things in their gardens just for us and give entertaining parties. He is interested in you because he considers me a daughter, although I call him Uncle because he is the uncle of Rafik Nadazdek, one of my human foster fathers. He considers you part of his family as well.”
“We have a very complicated family, don’t we, Mother?”
She had heard many stories in many versions since she had been there. Both sets of grandparents had been lost and considered dead at one time, as had her father and Uncle Lariinye. Grimalkin, the creature who had stolen her and given her to the Friends, had been responsible for reunions as well. She wondered if he thought that made what he’d done to her all right. If he did, she didn’t agree.
“I suppose you could say that, yes. If you’d like to go, Maati and Thariinye will take you when they go to prepare for another foray into Federation space to relieve your great-aunt Neeva’s team.”
Reluctance and suspicion were banished from her tone as Ariin responded to her mother this time. “Oh, I’d love that, Avvi!” she said, beaming and using the Linyaari word for “mother.” “When do we start?”
Three sleeps later she boarded a space vessel for the first time. Like the rest of the Linyaari fleet, this ship was egg-shaped and decorated with bright colors, aqua and yellow, and swags of gold with little floral flourishes.
Maati had been teaching her to speak Standard using the LAANYE, an interesting device that, once programmed, taught one a language while one slept. It didn’t always explain idiomatic expressions, however, or proper name references, so Maati expanded on the lessons the next day when Ariin asked her questions—or even thought them.
It was very hard to keep anything hidden from Maati.
The flight did not take long, and they didn’t see a lot of space, which was rather disappointing, since MOO was fairly close, galactically speaking.
The entire surface was covered with large, rounded pavilions like the ones her people slept in. Though they were white on the outside, she quickly saw as soon as she entered the terminal that from the inside it looked as if she were on a planet with proper atmosphere, a sky, buildings, just like back on Vhiliinyar, only grander and more full of the sort of details Akasa would have liked.
In person, Karina Harakamian reminded Ariin of Akasa less than she had on the com unit. While Karina, like her husband, looked shrewd and as though she knew how to get what she wanted, she also looked as though one of the things she very much wanted was to be liked. In fact, she looked as if she wanted Ariin to like her, which was rather a new experience for the girl. Her Linyaari relatives could read her mind and judge her feelings and so were not unsure of how she felt about them, but although Karina could sometimes see things others could not, she couldn’t read thoughts the way Linyaari could, though she believed otherwise, or pretended to.
Karina’s conceit, however, could prove useful, Ariin noted.
The Harakamians received her, Maati, and Thariinye in a distractingly luscious surrounding—a garden layered with bursts of succulent grasses and blossoms among rows and ranks of other delicious greenery. Unlike the reception halls of the Friends, where guests approached through sterile and intimidatingly vast corridors, the Harakamians sat at the culmination of a meandering journey through outdoor rooms, roofed with boughs of graceful trees, and floored by mosses and blue, pink, and lilac ground-hugging flowers. Small waterfalls and splashing fountains tiled in colors that rivaled the flowers furnished these spaces, while streamlets bridged with filigreed arches laced the landscape together. The end of the pathway was paved with stones that emitted intricately intertwined melodies with each footfall.
Hafiz Harakamian himself was shorter than any Linyaari and much rounder in all respects. His cummerbund formed a band around his middle much like the stripe on a ball. His golden shoes had curling toes that would never have fit a Linyaari foot but would have pleased Akasa, Ariin knew. His trousers, of royal blue silk, billowed about his ankles before being concealed by the hem of a long vest striped with blue, rose, and lilac overlaid with a golden relief that resembled the stylized feathers of a peacock. Over this he wore a longer robe of fabric that shimmered from gold to red to purple with the same sort of figures as the vest, only larger. His head was wrapped with a magnificent twist of scarlet, bejeweled with a golden stone that looked very like a cat’s eye, set in an elaborate structure of blue and red stones, into which a lilac plume had been placed so that it fluttered with the slightest movement.
His face was dark and the plump cheeks and chin somewhat masked by a dark, closely trimmed beard and flowing mustaches, both a startling black. His eyes were small and shrewd and slightly shifty, and when she touched his mind, she quickly withdrew, overwhelmed by a labyrinth of knowledge, contacts, power and resources, motives, reasons, plots, and schemes. He was the first human she had encountered in person. She hoped they were not all so complicated.
Karina, whose clothes and jewels were in the same style but different colors from those she had worn on previous occasions, felt almost as tricky.
One other characteristic of both that Ariin noted was that each had committed acts in the past that would hardly fit in with the Linyaari code of ethics. Hafiz’s aura was not without undertones of violence. Karina had had no one to look after her as a child, and consequently had looked out for herself and no one else for a long time after. Perhaps the Linyaari had healed both of them so that they no longer required their less acceptable defenses, or perhaps it was that they had each other now. Ariin found them both extraordinary and didn’t quite know what to make of it. These two could easily have been the same sort of beings as the Friends, though without the power to shapeshift.
Instead, they opened their perfumed arms and greeted her with affection and genuine relief that she had come to them apparently unharmed. She curtsied, as the Friends always wished her to do when they were wearing particularly grand aspects.
“Dear child, welcome to our humble Moon of Opportunity,” Hafiz said, rising to meet her.
“Thaakew,” she said, trying to speak Standard for the first time in public. It wasn’t a good fit. She tried again, “Thaank yew.”
She needed more practice. Her mouth and vocal cords were shaped awkwardly for this language. Her parents, Maati, and Thariinye managed well enough, so she should be able to as well. Her mother spoke Standard as well as the humans. However, the Harakamians were used to the Linyaari accent and found it charming, so Ariin didn’t feel the need to try too hard to lose hers.
“Telepathy is so much more convenient, isn’t it, my dear?” Karina sympathized. “However, my beloved husband is—telepathically challenged, shall we say—so we must speak aloud out of courtesy to him.”
“Yezz,” Ariin said, then, determinedly trying to force her tongue to mimic Karina’s. “Yez-s.”
It grew easier the more she practiced, and with the help of the LAANYE while she slept, Ariin found that her conversations the next day were almost effortless.
Finally, the time came for Maati and Thariinye to take their leave.
“Don’t leave me!” Ariin cried, rising from the table they all had been dining at so quickly she knocked it sideways. Cutlery, dishes, and ornaments slid off onto the ground. Bowls of food overturned, and one dumped into Karina’s lavender lap, making her squeal. A servant scuttled forward to sponge at the clothing, but Karina waved the woman aside.
“Zhorry,” she apologized and bent to pick up the fallen objects, half-expecting a blow. The Friends had never beaten her, but they had occasionally cuffed her when irritated. As they seemed oblivious to their own strength compared to her size and relative fragility, she had quickly learned to duck.
Maati and Thariinye turned to her, but it was Hafiz who touched her and guided her to her feet. “There, there, child. We thought you might want to stay with us while your relatives are on their mission. You have yet to see all of the diversions and games we have to offer, all entertaining and educational, I assure you, with many young people of your own age, both Linyaari and human, to befriend you. Or, if you are not yet ready for so much novelty, a ship can return you to Vhiliinyar if you prefer.”
“You really should stay here, Ariin,” Maati encouraged, her. “It’s a wonderful place. We have a mission to perform, and we must go. The sooner we all do our part, the sooner all of us can return home.”
“Yezs,” Ariin said, still in Standard and aloud, “but I need to go with you. I will find Khorii my twin and help her so that our parents can be healed.”
Thariinye looked puzzled. “We did not know that was what you wished,” he said. Of course he didn’t. If he and Maati had known, they would never have brought her this far. They would have probed her thoughts and found what they would have considered questionable motives and forbidden her to come. In front of the powerful and more easily fooled humans, speaking aloud for their benefit, she had a better chance of getting what she needed.
“But it is very dangerous, my child,” Uncle Hafiz said. “And you are very young and unused to the wider universe.”
“I can learn,” she said. “Khorii learned.”
He was wavering. He was not actually averse to potentially putting innocents in harm’s way if there was a point to it, or a profit to be made. But she needed something more compelling to convince him, something that would make him insist that Maati and Thariinye take her with them.
Karina, who had risen to see the damage to her gown, now swayed, a tidal wave of lavender veils rippling. Uncle Hafiz was by her side at once, supporting her and attempting to lower her into a chair. Karina was having none of that.
“They walk!” she cried, her voice echoing and deep as if she were speaking from the bottom of a well. “The dead walk. They destroy all, enslave the living. Everyone, everyone in terrible danger. Khorii—oh no, must warn Khorii! Only her twin can save her!”
Staggering, she allowed herself to be lowered to her chair. Ariin tried not to look triumphant as she stole a peek at Maati and Thariinye. Compared to the friends, humans were so very easy to persuade. Karina suddenly straightened and, looking quite focused and alert, said, “That settles it. Ariin really must go with Maati and Thariinye. But do be careful, dears. What is lurking out there is something the likes of which none of you have ever encountered before.” Despite the others’ questions, Karina couldn’t supply any more information.
Even though she had succeeded in continuing her mission to find Khorii, Ariin couldn’t help shuddering at the human’s words. Enslave the living—it sounded like what she had suffered at the hands of the Friends. And that was something she was determined never to go through again.