“Well, this one seems to be addressed to you,” Judit said, picking a flimsy at random from one of the boxes. “Don’t you want to read it?”
“Let Karina, Psychic Healer, make your fortune?” Acorna read aloud. “What is this about? I do not know any Karina, and if I did, why would I wish to join in partnership with her to sell my healing abilities at so much for each millisecond of time expended? It sounds like a most immoral notion to me!”
“It may not be the most immoral notion you come across today,” Judit said softly. “Read some more.”
By the time Acorna had worked her way through half a box full of requests for money, suggestions for a line of gilt plastiflex visors called “Acornas,” offers of partnership, and demands that she submit herself to some research institute or other for immediate examination, she began to understand why Gill and Pal had been so protective.
Judit, for her part, silently blessed the men for leaving all the heartrending pleas for help and healing at the bottom of the heaviest box, where with any luck Acorna would never see them. She would never be able to resist those cries for help … yet to heal even one percent of those who needed her would so sap her, energy that she would be unable to do anything else. We miutfim) a better eolation for her, thought Judit. We cannot go on hQing her from the worl^-the war 13 L) catching up with her, aru) it will destroy her.
But, of course, Judit realized, with a catch in her breath and a queer ache in her heart, the solution was there-had been there all along. If they hadn’t been interfering with Acorna’s desire to go and find her people, she would long since have left Maganos Moon Base to explore distant regions where even junk mail had not yet penetrated. And now that one of these messages had been acknowledged, whoever had sent it was sure to be on his or her way to Maganos … to be followed by newscasters, charlatans, and the terminally ill. The fiction that Acorna’s healing abilities had faded as she matured would be exploded the first time Acorna’s soft heart was touched and she touched her horn to an ill or injured person.
The only solution, after all, was for Acorna to leave Maganos before she was tracked down here. And even if she never came back … she would come back. Judit blinked away incipient tears and set about the task of persuading the lost youngling of an alien species, whom she had come to love like a younger sister, to leave immediately.
It was not, after all, much of a task. So, feeling as if she was doing something heinous, she contacted Pal’s missile-defense supplier and told him that Mr. Li wished that the installation would take longer.
Mendaciously, she also told Pal that she had received a call to that effect: there was some difficulty in supply. She told Calum, who exploded, and Acorna, who gratified her by assuming the most rebellious expression ever seen on that lovely, tranquil face. Judit decided that frustration would have the desired result.
It did. Calum and Acorna made discreet plans, stowed the few items they wished to take with them on this history-making voyage, and took off without waiting for permission. The AcaSecki had been “ready” for all practical purposes for weeks. The hydroponics tanks had even been replanted since the original plants had gotten out of control in size or disuse, and some of Acorna’s favorites had gone to seed. The alfalfa had had to be harvested three times already and was back to lawn height.
Since the Acaoecki had long been in one of the Dehoney takeoff bays, it had been no trouble at all to board her. Nor had the Tower seen anything odd in a request for her launch, since the Acaoecki was constantly being taken out for trial runs on this, that, or the other new ramification to its engines, corn units, whatever. Calum and Acorna were up, up, and away and into the star-studded sky while those nearest and dearest to them slept.