Heir to a financial empire tnat rivaled that of Hafiz Harakamian, Delszaki Li had first freed his own interests of any connection -with the Kezdet child-labor system, then had begun working secretly to help the enslaved children in any way he could. Although physically disabled by a wasting neurological disease which had almost totally paralyzed him, he -was still brilliant and wealthy and was able to recruit others to his cause-among them Pal Kendoro and his two sisters, Mercy and Judit. The Kendoro siblings had been among the orphans brought to Kezdet for slave labor, but Judit had escaped by winning one of the scholarships established by Delszaki Li to encourage education among the bonded children, and by hard work she had soon earned enough to buy her young brother and sister free. Now grown, all three were determined to take whatever risks were necessary to free the children who remained in bondage.
Their attempts to effect peaceful change by educating the enslaved children and helping them to demand better conditions were continually frustrated by the wealthy class that controlled Kezdet s government, and by the time he encountered Acoma, Delszaki Li was on the verge of despair. It seemed as though nothing short of a revolution would free the children-and it would take a miracle to overthrow the solidly entrenched government of Kezdet.
In Acorna, Delszaki Li thought that he recognized that miracle. Half-Chinese, he saw in her a ki-lin-the legendary unicorn of China, whose appearance is an omen of great and beneficent change. The fact that she came accompanied by three asteroid miners only increased his belief that she was sent by the heavens to bring good fortune to his enterprise, for it happened that he was in particular need of such expertise as they might supply. Before he met Acoma, Mr. Li had subtly acquired the mineral and mining nghts to Kezdets three moons-Maganos, Saganos, and Tianos-seeing in them a possible place for the children he wished to rescue from Kezdet s factories and mines. None of the planetary mining companies wanted to bother with the problems of building moon bases when it was so cheap to use child labor on … or rather below .. . the surface of the planet. But Li’s plan was ambitious as well as altruistic. He meant to use his great fortune to create mining bases on the three moons, where the children he freed could work part-time and be schooled part-time. With love and care and decent nourishment, upon reaching adulthood they should be ready to take over the mining bases and make them truly self-sufficient. But until he met the three asteroid miners and their “ward,” the mysterious unicorn girl, Acorna, Mr. Li’s plans had moved so slowly that he despaired of their coming to fruition in his lifetime. There were too many problems for one man to overcome: the entrenched opposition of the wealthy families of Kezdet, the bureaucratic obstacles which the Kezdet government threw in his path, and, most of all, the fears of the children who had been taught from arrival on Kezdet to flee strangers-even benevolent ones. When the factory owners would not admit to employing children, and the children themselves had been trained to hide, how could they be found and freed?
Once it was clear that Calum, Gill, and Rank had not caused harm to his friend, but had merely exchanged identities with the wrecked and derelict spacecraft in an effort to evade their own pursuers, Li recruited them as his allies and offered to adopt Acorna as his own ward. Recognizing that the child they had raised was now maturing to the point where she needed a permanent home and an education in the ways of “normal”-i.e., planetside-civilization, the miners agreed to help Mr. Li with his project. But when Acoma learned of the plight of Kezdet s enslaved children, she precipitated a crisis that affected all of Delszaki Li’s slow and careful plans. Unable to wait and do nothing where she saw obvious cases of need, she became entangled in any number of projects that aroused the wrathful attention of Kezdet s ruling class-rescuing one child from a brothel, another from begging on the streets, giving shoes to the barefoot slaves of a glass factory and using her hom to heal their wounds. The furor aroused by her actions forced the Child Liberation League to forgo their years of patience and incremental improvements in favor of a bold stroke for freedom.