“You okay, buddy? ” Becker asked Aari gently. With great effort, Aari said, “Yes.” And in a moment, after several deep breaths, added, “My left foot now, please, Joh.”
Maati had buried her face against his mane and Acorna felt that he was more concerned about her reaction than about the pain, which was dulled by their contact and quite brief compared to what he had endured walking around -with misaligned bones, twisted tendons, and atrophied, overly strained muscles. Each break and healing found him breathing easier, though all of them, especially Aari and Becker, had sweat running from every pore. Worse yet was that the sound of Aari’s crunching bones was drowned out only by the high, eerie keening of the Makahomian Temple Cat, who cowered beneath the table.
The process took hours and Acorna was very weary, as was Grandam. Acorna could see that Grandam’s horn and those of the doctors were all becoming translucent, as hers had when she had cured the wounded following the battle between Rushima and the Khieevi.
Aari opened his eyes only after he had healed from the last break. Becker, )SLW set, functioned like a machine but his voice was always controlled, and always gentle and concerned when speaking to Aari or any of them. He knew that he was hurting to help the healing and had to keep a firm grip on himself so that each blow did not cause him almost as much pain as it did Aari.
When at last they were done and Aari sat up, straight and five inches taller, Acorna went to Becker and laid her horn against his forehead.
“Thank you, Khornya,” Aari said. “I wish I was able to do that, too. You are spent.”
“We are all spent,” Grandam said.
The cat shot from beneath the table. Maati caught and held him, soothing him with a touch of her horn that soon had the beast purring.
Bidiila said, “We have been thinking about your horn, Aari. It is a new problem, as I said, but did you not say your brother perished on Vhiliinyar and that you have brought his bones back for reburial? Do you feel that his spirit would be offended if we took a small piece from his horn, which would have similar DNA to yours and therefore be less likely to be rejected, and tried to coax it to grow on the root of your own horn?” This was done, with Aari’s and Maati’s agreement. “Now you can come back with us,” Maati told her brother. He put his hand up to the bandaged place where the horn implant had been. “I don’t think so. I’ll still be an outcast.”
Acorna said, “Maybe you could wear a prosthetic hidden by a horn-hat.”
“A what?” Becker and Aari asked together. Acorna explained and Becker said, “Yeah, we could give
you a fake horn inside to stiffen it. Nobody would know if you didn’t want them to.”
“Aside from the people all over the planet who already do, thanks to those who were here earlier,” Aari said.
“Never mind them. You want to see your old friends, and what this new world is like, or not?”
Acorna thought it was a good thing Becker didn’t really wait for an answer.
The corn unit came on again and the officer on the other end said, “Captain Becker, the people have gathered to rebury the bones of our dead.”
“Okay. We’ll get them onto the robolift and send them down load by load.”
“I will need to supervise,” Aari said. “I am the only one who still knows who was buried where and remembers the clan designations of each body. Where would I find a-horn-hat?”
Bidiila reached into her lab coat pocket. “Take mine,” she said. “I have several others. They come in handy when you spend the day listening to minor complaints from patients who should have had the sense not to overgraze.”
Becker had gone to work with a torch and hammer on a piece of lightweight alloy and in no time fashioned it into the semblance of a horn. A slot on either side held a band that slid beneath Aari’s mane to hold it in place. With Bidiila’s horn-hat, it was difficult to tell him from another Linyaari.