“Maybe I’ll go look up my old buddies then,” Becker said. “I’d like to meet this lady. I was a slave when I was a kid. If it hadn’t been for my adopted dad, I’d probably be dead now.”
Reamer rubbed the red heads of his offspring. “I’ll tell you what, buddy, it sure makes me feel better knowing those places have been shut down. In case anything happens to me, I don’t have to worry about my kids getting sent to the mines or some godawful thing.”
Becker thought for a minute, then pulled out the collection bag, carefully extracted one of the opalescent objects, and kept it concealed in the palm of his hand except to open the hand a little to let Reamer have a look. “While I’m at it, I think I just made a big mistake letting some of this go to a customer. It didn’t come from Maganos, but I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere. Do you know what it might be?”
“Ho-oh-oly hematite!” Reamer said, touching the thing as if afraid it would burn him. “Where 3Q you get that, Becker?” His voice was not very friendly this time, and his blue eyes had gone ice cold. “Kids, I want you to leave the cat alone and go get yourselves some candy,” he said, dropping a credit in each hand.
“But, Dad …”
“Scat!”
They ran off and RK emitted a mournful and, for him, curiously resigned mew, watching his new friends disappear into the crowd.
“That’s why you look different. You were missing an ear the last time I saw you!” Rocky said. It was an accusation.
“What about it?”
“People say the Lady’s horn can heal. Then you turn up with one like it and your ear fixed, so what am I supposed to think?”
“Keep it down, will you? Jeez! I found it, I tell you. Does this lady of yours control everything? Wipes out child labor, closes the pleasure houses, and now you’re about to kill me because she has a horn like mine? So what? Maybe she found hers the same place I did.”
“I don’t think so,” Reamer said coldly.
“No? Why not? She might have.”
“No way. Hers is growing from the middle of her forehead. At least it was, the last time anybody I know saw her.”
The crew of the Baiakiire and the dignitaries among the greeting committee rode the Ancestors into Kubiilikhan with as much pomp and circumstance as the Ancestors could give them. Acorna feared that if dignity was what the Ancestors -wished to impart by having others ride them, in her case it was rather a lost cause. Her long legs dangled below the belly of the Ancestor she rode, so that her feet were almost as low as the unicorn’s cloven hooves.
Riding the Ancestors certainly didn’t make the trip quicker, either. It took almost an hour to ride the two or three miles between the spaceport and the town, which at first seemed to be a tent city of massive gem-hued, gold-trimmed, tasseled pavilions the size of the circus tents Acorna had seen pictured on vids and in the books at Uncle Hafiz’s. Walking would have been much quicker. The ki-iin of legend were supposed to be fleet of foot. If so, you couldn’t tell it by the Ancestors, who kept their pace to a slow, deliberate strut.
Maybe it m because they are ^o ancient, Acorna thought, and immediately felt an impression of reprimand at the notion.
(We’re as spry as we ever were, impudent youngling, and can beat you in a race any time, any place, just try us.)
Oops. She was sure the thought hadn’t been loud or deliberately sent, and no one else seemed to have picked up on it, but the Ancestor she was riding rolled a rather challenging eye back in her direction, and snorted.
The Ancestor’s attendant noticed the eye rolling. He stepped away from his charge for a pace, stroked the Ancestor’s nose, and cast a reproachful glance at Acorna.
By that time their party arrived at the first structures in the Linyaari settlement. She supposed, since the spaceport was nearby and they were being taken to see the vlizaar, this place must be the main city on the planet, but it was not of any great size.