“What?” she asked. Becker was better at reading thoughts than she’d realized.
“What your own folks were like, what it would have been like to be with them, you know. I knew my mother a little-she was a scientist someplace, I’m not really sure where. I was about three “when there were a lot of explosions and gunshots and she fell down with blood all over her and then I was taken to the slave farm on Kezdet. Maybe it’s because I -was only three then, but what I remember most about it was, it was boring being with my mom. And one thing about Dad-Dad Becker, I mean-there was nothing boring about him. I don’t reckon I’ve missed anything, come to think about it.” But she saw, in his heart, where that creek in him “was still dry, ‘waiting for the dam to break and water it. ,
And she knew that in spite of all of her friends and her adopted parents and her real Linyaari kinfolk, she had a similar dry creek inside herself. But dwelling on such things was pointless. Besides, she had work to do. She looked out at the stars and asked, “Where to now, Captain?”
For the Balakiire, tracing the signal to the blue planet -was not difficult. The coordinates had been on the piiyi, and the NiikcLavri’s ion tracings led straight to the planet. But none of the crew was prepared, as the Kalakiire began to home in on the beach where once the Condor had landed, for the site of the Niikaavrl’s broken shell, lying open to the elements as if some massive chick had hatched from it and abandoned it there.
They saw wreckage bobbing in the sea as well, and washing up onto the beach. After a closer look at it, Neeva recognized some of the fragments as coming from a Khieevi vessel. A quick trip back to the ship to consult the scanners gave no indication of a continuing Khieevi presence on the planet. From there it was just a matter of figuring out exactly what had happened. Beginning at a debris-littered indentation in a sand dune, they followed a trail of Khieevi excrement. Liriili was given the honor of walking in front, which she did with the poor grace Neeva expected of her. The broken trees, the large, coagulated pool of blood surrounded by many other blood-stained fronds and ruined trees and crushed leaves, drew a low, painful groan from all them. They followed the trail further up a hill, until they came to a place where a tree was surrounded by broken heaps of the solidified dung. They searched farther still, and found that beyond this last hill, the woods thinned once more into a low marshland of reeds, and beyond that stretched the “wide blue sea. Only a few pieces of debris bobbed on the -waves on this side of the landspit. But tucked up next to the trees, in a small clearing that showed signs of occupation, lay an eggshaped vessel covered with a symbolic design. Liriili gasped as if this came as a surprise to her, which of course it should not have done.
The Linyaari made their way to the shuttle and examined it.
“This is the design registered to the … the ship Kaarlye and Miiri took when they went in search of their sons?” Neeva asked.
Liriili nodded reluctantly.
“You are sure?”
Liriili’s eyes were reddened and slightly bulging, as they had been since the return of the pilgrims and the ancestors. She had not been a pleasant shipboard companion. No number of Linyaari horns could cleanse the atmosphere of her energy field, which was so discordant as to upset the harmony of even such a close-knit crew as the Balaklire’s.
“I should know,” she said hollowly. “I watched that transmission and checked over the information Thariinye had gathered from the files over and over again. It’s not as if I made my decision lightly, you know. I was doing as I always have done, acting with the good of our people in mind, and this is the …”
“Yes, yes,” Khaari, who was not a diplomat, said shortly. “Thariinye and Maati’s ship lies in pieces, and we have found traces that indicate the Coru)or, containing Khornya and Aari, was in the vicinity of the armed Khieevi ship that wrecked the Niikaavrl. Khieevi spoor is all about, and here is the pod belong ing to Kaarlye and Miiri, but this -whole situation is still all about how badly misunderstood you. are.”