“Don’t be so cagey,” Jana had said when Maati tried to play innocent. “We know all about how you can heal people. Acorna healed all of us when we were in the mines and other bad places. If it hadn’t been for her, most of us would be crippled. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want people to know what you can do. It’s wonderful! I wish I could do that. I -want to be a doctor.”
“I’m going to create holograms, just like Mr. Harakamian,” Annella, a redheaded girl from the Haven, said. “He’s shown me a lot of what goes into it. It’s not as hard as you’d think but then, he says I have a natural talent for it.” Then she realized they weren’t talking about careers, they were talking about Acorna’s ability to heal and she added, “But it must be wonderful to be able to heal the way your people can.”
Maati made a wry face. “It comes in pretty handy, like when the Khieevi attacked us. Thariinye got hurt real bad trying to save me and Khornya. He probably would have died if he wasn’t Linyaari and we hadn’t been there. Or at least lost a hand.”
“That was really brave,” Jana said. “Kheti is brave like that. And Acorna is, too.”
“My brother was the bravest though.”
“Which one is your brother? Thariinye?” Annella asked.
“Oh no-Thariinye is a friend, sort of, when he isn’t being a hdnye.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Jana said, “But I bet it’s not good.”
“No, it’s not, but he’s not that way as much anymore. My brother is the one -who doesn’t have a horn. The Khieevi, um,” Maati found she had trouble saying it, even now, “When they captured him they tortured him and, you know-”
“We get the picture,” Jana assured her hastily, hearing the choke in the voice of the Linyaari girl. “Your brother must be very brave. We heard he tackled that monster bare-handed.”
“He did. But the monster was about to get Khornya. That was a fatal mistake,” Maati said with satisfaction unbecoming a member of a nonviolent race.
“I’ve seen how Lady Epona looks at him,” Jana said with a sigh.
“Everybody sees but him!” Maati said. “He is so smart and so brave but he just thinks because he doesn’t have a horn, Khornya would be getting a bad deal-that she might not accept him, even though everybody can see she really likes him.”
“Why doesn’t she tell him?” Annella asked.
“Cause she’s afraid that even though he likes her, he would still maybe reject her and I think, well, actually, I sort of peeked. She is afraid that rejecting her would cause him more pain and she doesn’t want to do that. Grownups are sooooo complicated.”
“You’d think they’d realize that life is pretty short to be so backward about good stuff,” Jana said wistfully. “Everybody is being so careful of everybody else’s feelings they’re never gonna get together.”
“That’s what Thariinye said,” Maati agreed, heaving a deep and dramatic sigh. “He was talking about ‘some male with a large nose who did the talking for some other male to a female they both cared for. Do males with long noses play the role of go-betweens in your society? Are there any of them here we could get to talk to Khornya for Aari-or the other way around?”
“Nooo,” said Jana. The other kids shook their heads too.
Their educations on Maganos Moonbase had tended to the practical and technical and neglected the arts. Their former masters hadn’t exactly provided them with cultural opportunities either.
However, Annella’s mother, before she had been spaced by the invaders, had been very fond of theater. “He’s talking about a character named Cyrano, Maati. It’s from an old earth tale.”
“I see,” Maati said wisely. But she didn’t.
“I think he’s hit on something,” Annella said. “Maybe they need a go-between.”
“A matchmaker,” put in Markel, another of the kids from the Haven who had been listening carefully to what -went on. He considered himself a very special friend of Acorna’s, since it was with his help she was able to save herself, Calum Baird, and Dr. Hoa and help the youngsters of the Haven overthrow the hijackers. “Only, it sounds like a lot of people have tried to be one from what you say, Maati.”