As soon as Becker paid attention, the cat sprang up to his shoulder, lay against his neck and purred with a noise that rivaled that of the rustiest rattletrap engine of an outmoded junker ship. “Aw, RK. I didn’t know you cared.”
RK backed down and proceeded to rub his face all over Becker’s, marking him in one of the less objectionable ways the cat had of performing that task. And it occurred to Becker that he really hadn’t previously actually solicited the cat’s actual affection-theirs had been a more rough and ready relationship. Man-to-man or cat-to-cat as it were, depending on the viewpoint. Of course Roadkill loved him. Otherwise the cat would have found himself new quarters the first time the ConDor docked.
Becker suddenly realized he was also thinking a lot like a cat and he looked at RK suspiciously. The cat, whose fur was lightly coated with white dust from the Linyaari boneyard, blinked back at him three times and intensified the purr.
Thereafter on the journey, the cat spent a little more time on the bridge and after a while so did Aan, asking Becker questions about the things he was learning and trying out words on him, getting his accent corrected. Becker, in return, tried to learn Linyaari words and phrases. The little box, a LAANYE in Linyaari, took only a bit of tampering with on Becker’s part, with the technical assistance of Aari, to translate in both directions.
Meanwhile, they came within shouting distance of narhiiVhiliinyar. “Shall I hail them or will they be less freaked out if you do it?” Becker asked Aari. “My accent isn’t as good as it should be yet.”
“I will speak if only you will not turn on the visual projector,” Aari said. He had stayed with the bones for days on end the first time he got a look at himself in Becker’s shaving mirror. “-I do not wish to frighten my people.”
He did anyway.
Becker got his first visual of a Linyaari female when the communications officer, a white-skinned, white-haired girl with a pretty shiny spiraled horn growing out of her forehead, said, “Please adjust your visual transmission. Condor. We are not receiving you.”
“This is Aari of Clan Nyaarya, narhiiVhiliinyar port,” Aari repeated. “Our visual projector is temporarily out of service. Request permission to land.”
There was silence, while the communications officer presumably conferred with someone else, and then her skeptical voice said, “Aari of Clan Nyaarya was lost to us during the evacuation of Vhiliinyar prior to the Khieevi attack. Please adjust your transmission and properly identify yourself.”
Aari’s voice was tight as he said, “I have been imprisoned on Vhiliinyar by the Khieevi but escaped them, and have been rescued by the captain and crew of the Condor. I have recovered the bones of our forebears from the sacred cemetery, to save them from plundering and bring them back to their children for reinterment. Now please give us permission to land so that I may rejoin my family.”
“Really?‘“The communications officer forgot to use the official language and lapsed into vernacular Linyaari. “You actually escaped the Khieevi after they captured you? I’ll have to apply for official permission but-oh, welcome home, Aari! Everyone ‘will be so happy to see you!”
By the time she came back on screen, the Condor’s fuel supply was running dangerously low.
The communications officer’s face was closed again as she said, “Aari, the ship may land long enough for you to meet a greeting committee who validate your identity, but all nonLinyaari personnel aboard the vessel must remain aboard and the vessel itself must depart immediately after you have been identified.”
“Tell her we’re out of fuel,” Becker said.
“The Condor will need to refuel,” Aari said.
“Permission denied,” the communications officer said.
“Gimme that thing,” Becker said, and took the portable transmitter from Aari. “Look, lady, I know your people have been through a lot,” he said in the best Linyaari he could muster. “Aari explained all that to me. But he’s been through whatever you people use for hell himself, and my crew and I went through a lot to get him here. The least you could do is have the common courtesy not to make us take off again without enough fuel to get to the next stop.”