As nighttime fell, the inquisitor was very full, but unsatished. It had a need to smell alien onehorn blood. To see it flow. /vs it ate its way downhill into a little valley, it saw how to lulhll that need, too. Leaning against a tree, apparently sleeping, was a onehorn. The inquisitor closed on its prey.
The healing retreat in the hills of the Ancestors, under their gentle, probing care, was meant to erase all pollution, all contamination, all taint, all pain, all shame left behind from the dreadful ordeal the Linyaari spacefarers had faced. The process could go on for days, weeks, months, years, by Standard reckoning; a ghaanye or many, by Linyaari reckoning.
However, the deep healing had barely begun when personal attendants began handing the supplicant pilgrims their wraps and saying, “Go home. You are needed in Kubiihkhan.”
Grandam had never known of such a thing to happen in all her life.
Have -we done something wrong?” one of the younger crew members from the liliura asked. “Are we being cast out because our taint is too great?”
‘Don’t talk nonsense, child,” the personal attendant said. Didn’t you hear Us? You are needed. And as for being cast °ut, how can We possibly be casting you out when We are coming with you?”
Back in town, Liriili had been fidgeting, forgetting to graze, pacing until her feet were quite rough and sore, walking up and down the road to and from the spaceport. The viizaar had no messenger since Maati had vanished, though she had little to do for the moment except wait. Wait for the Khieevi to find them again. She did not know what to do. Now recovered from her anger, she told herself she had done a service to Thariinve and Maati. When the Khieevi came here, those younglings at least would be spared. If they hcu)n’t alreaSy been coruumeS, a small voice inside her head pointed out. She ignored it.
Walking down the road from the spaceport, where she had once more been checking with the comshed officer of the day, refusing to believe that the remote reports to her office were frequent or rapid enough to alert her in time for an attack, she saw the stream of her people, two footed and four footed, flowing down from the hills on the opposite side of the bowl-shaped valley containing Kubiilikhan.
Alarmed, disturbed, frightened, and yet, somehow, relieved as well, she returned to her office to await the return of the pilgrims-and of the Ancestors.
The thought of questioning of the Khieevi prisoner bothered Acorna. Despite her fear and loathing, she knew she would not be able to watch without wishing to heal any hurts inflicted upon the Khieevi in the line of questioning. She also knew that trying to heal the destructive monster was not reasonable.
She could, however, feel its pain from two decks away. Despite Becker’s threats to the contrary, no one had touched it since it had been brought aboard and .its net locked into place where cargo nets were normally strung up. It hadn’t been necessary to lay a hand on the creature. It was answering their questions sporadically, in between spasms of pain. But it was dying. She could feel it dying.
The feeling was so intense, it was as if she could feel herseli dying, too. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to leave she’d be forced to interfere with what Becker was doing. A^J they needed the information he -was extracting. She abandoned the bridge for the robolift, stopping on the way to tell the others what she was doing-that she was going to see if the tide was out yet, and if it was, she’d load some more cargo. She’d also continue calling for Thariinye and Maati while she was at it.
She got a “Yeah, ummm hmmm, okay,” from Becker. Aari and Mac were totally absorbed by the Khieevi’s rapid-fire klickklacking’.
The door edged open for a moment and the impression of the pain within staggered her. RK pushed himself through the door, flipping his tail up along his back as the hatch automatically snapped shut behind him. With a light leap, he was on her shoulder.