Markel was grinning with delight at whatever he was hearing on his earphone. He kept listening, but occasionally would whisper at what was going on.
“They found Hoa missing first, then checked the rest of the cells. They haven’t a clue how he and Calum got away, and they got into an argument about it and haven’t yet checked to find out that you’re gone, too, Acorna. That’s as well. Gives us more time to figure. …” The boy paused, pushed the device more securely into his ear, his eyes blinking angrily. Then he relaxed and smiled again.
“I got to meet someone. And fast,” he said, taking out the listener and carefully restoring it to its pouch on tube wall. “You stay put and stay quiet,” he murmured to Acorna and Calum. He glanced over at Dr. Hoa, shrugged his shoulders, and crawled away with the speed of a spider after an intruder in its web.
Acorna saw that Dr. Hoa was asleep, the water bottle securely clutched against his chest with both hands. Briefly she remembered the swollen, distorted knuckles and torn, burned skin she had seen before her healing touch had soothed them. She shivered and tried not to imagine what deliberate cruelty had inflicted those injuries.
“I don’t much like this,” Calum muttered. “How do you know we can trust the kid? “
Acorna gave him a chilly look. “For starters, he just saved us both from imprisonment and you, at least, from torture. Then there’s the fact that his father was killed resisting the coup that put these people in power-”
“So he says. How do you know he’s telling the truth?”
“Well, we’re free, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” Calum stretched until one elbow banged into either side of the tunnel where they crouched.
“Damn!” Acorna exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of asking Markel to send a message to either Shenjemi or Maganos-or better, both?”
Whatever could Market have heard that had produced first fury and then humor? Acorna pondered that for a moment. No way to tell now. While waiting, she might as well restore her strength. She took a careful mouthful of water and munched on another carrot as quietly as one can munch a carrot. But they were not vegetables that dissolved even when mixed with her saliva. She swallowed hard, forcing down the half-masticated bits of carrot, so that she could listen once again.
After an interminable wait she heard slight noises coming toward them-but they sounded like the movements of a large man, not like Markel’s quick, delicate crawl. She threw a blanket over Dr. Hoa in the faint hope of concealing him from whoever had discovered their hiding place, and looked at Calum with wide, frightened eyes. He squeezed her hand reassuringly-at least, she assumed he meant it to be reassuring.
With her acute hearing, she registered before Calum did that there were two people approaching them, the smaller one in front.
“It’s all right,” she whispered to Calum, “Markel’s bringing someone.”
“That,” Calum whispered, “is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Acorna?”
She lifted her head, identifying Markel’s whisper. The much larger person behind him looked vaguely familiar, yet the feel of him was completely strange … she felt sure she had never been in his presence before, yet his face raised some chord of recognition in her.
He caught sight of her, goggled and gulped and pointed. Markel looked around, then at Acorna, and he, too, goggled.
“Damn,” Acorna said out loud. In her hasty attempt to conceal Dr. Hoa, her hat had come off. And her horn was visible.
Calum began chuckling. What was so funny about the situation? A moment ago he’d been sure Markel had betrayed them, now he thought it was funny that her horn was in plain sight?
“It’s all right, Acorna,” Calum said, “and so is Markel, ifhe’s hanging out with this worthless space drifter.”
The man with Markel chuckled in his turn. “Might have known if there was trouble, you’d be mixed up in it somehow, Calum. But what were you thinking of to get young Acorna into it?”
Acorna gasped in surprise, and the man turned to her. “No, you don’t know me, but I’ve heard plenty about you.”