“Why, Uncle Hafiz!” Acorna said. “I knew you had wonderful taste, but I had no idea you were an artist as well.”
“Oh, yes, my dearest, and now, with your help and Aan’s, I will create the vision of a lifetime. Meanwhile, the rest of you get to work.”
“We’re on it, Hafiz,” Becker said. “C’mon, folks,” he said, and the KEN unit as well as the crew of the Haven followed him to first the Condor and then, laden with various tools and spare parts, back to the Haven.
Day after day and hour after hour the tortured bodies of the children -were dragged into the bubble-badly bruised, broken, and cut; some with ruptured organs and splintered bone. The Linyaari on the healing rotation did their best for them, working until the healers were past the point of total exhaustion.
And all night long another team worked on Nadhari Kando, healing her flesh and bone, cleansing her spirit of the drugs which caused the disciplined woman warrior to behave in a way her sense of honor otherwise would not have allowed. The Linyaari were reaching their limits and feared they would soon become too exhausted to help.
It would have been different if the Linyaari had been given time to rest between rotations but they were not. Ikwaskwan’s pet scientists were deliberately pushing the unicorn people to the limits.
Melireenya had often been taken to her ship and interrogated again about the computer system. Every Linyaari underwent this, usually in the middle of the night or before a long-delayed mealtime. Not that the meals were in any way adequate. Bales of old hay were all that Ikwaskwan provided for food for the Lmyaan.
After the interrogation, Melireenya had been shoved into the gas chamber. She had needed healing herself afterwards. So depleted had her horn become from the interrogation, it took much longer to purify the air than usual, and she absorbed some of the toxins before her system could purify them. Then it was on to the dismal swamp known among the inmates as “the pool.” It took her hours of lying on her belly with her face almost submerged in scummy, stinking sewage to clear this water.
There were several different gas chambers and several different pools, actually, so that many Linyaari could undergo the same ordeals at once.
Melireenya s joy at seeing Hrronye, her lifemate, again was quickly dampened when others told her in whispers of thoughtspeak that they had been separated from their own families and told they would not see them again until they gave the soldiers the information they demanded. Nobody did, of course. The location of the Linyaari home world and the secrets of the horn were as locked into Linyaari psyches as their own DNA codes. Those who traveled from the planet learned from their superiors how to navigate from memory, and it became a part of them along with their newly white skins and silvery manes.
But she seldom saw Hrronye now, and wished she had dared embrace him, as they were kept apart anyway on the tedious deadly treadmill of torture called the “duty roster.”
By far the worst part of it all was the healing. At first, it was not so bad. The average Linyaari in good physical condition could heal a deep -wound within moments. And there were many Linyaari in the compound. Only four were assigned to heal at the same time, and this was after their resources had been depleted by the other “duties,” lack of sleep, and increasingly, by malnutrition.
Neeva had tried to reason with Ikwaskwan. “This is hardly a fair representation of our skills that you are seeing, General,” she said in her best diplomat’s manner. “We could show you so much more were we properly fed and rested.”
He had actually reached out and run his hand down her horn, a violation of privacy that ran very deep among their people. Neeva had tried to pretend it did not distress her but of course it did. “And we could feed you so much better, dear ambassador, if you would tell us the location of the place where we might find your native grasses and other foods. If you continue to refuse to satisfy our very reasonable curiosity, why then …” He stroked her horn with his fingers again and when she winced away from him, she was forced to stand still by two of the soldiers, and he repeated his repugnant gesture several more times. “The horns will survive all of you, I’m told. Perhaps they alter to their translucent and less useful state because, while on a living member of your species, they are less stable-having to self-heal as it were. It may be that detached horns, having fewer frivolous demands made on their powers, will be of more use to us. I understand these things have aphrodisiac properties. Is that true?”