Captain Becker, look,” Acorna said, when he arrived on the bridge for his watch. She pointed out to him their present course back to narhiiVhiliinyar, and a slightly altered one. “If we deviated here slightly, -we would intersect with the coordinates the Niriians mentioned in their vid. The ones where the escape pod was seen. Do you wish to make that detour? From the looks of the vid, at least one person survived. Even if that’s no longer the case, perhaps you would find the pod valuable salvage?”
Becker beamed and patted her on the shoulder. “You’re gonna make a junker yet, Princess. That’s a great idea. While we re at it, we’ll see if there’s anybody there who can tell us more about the wrecked Niriian ship, and if so, we’ll see if they d like a ride. If not, “we have salvage that looks like something your people would like to have back. Even if they don’t, bet your uncle Hafiz knows somebody who would want to view it as a curiosity.”
Slight as the course change was, it had a profound effect on Aari, who stared at the pliyi broadcast continually while he was on the bridge, and particularly focused on the picture of the pod.
He had gone over the broadcast so many times that Acorna was surprised he could still stand to look at it. He didn’t even flinch away from the scene of his own torture anymore. True he went into an apparent trance while watching, but since he could be distracted from it if necessary, Acorna decided he was simply thinking deeply about his experience, trying to face up to it and process it, which surely meant he was growing stronger and healthier and better able to deal with it? She hoped so.
Becker rolled his eyes now whenever he looked at Aari. He had tried some conversational gambits with no success. Aari would answer a polite “Yes, Joh” or “No, Joh” and return to staring at the screen. Acorna usually met with the same response.
Had it not been for the cat and the KEN unit, the situation might have never been resolved.
Once his initial curiosity about the pliyi had been exhausted, RK paid no attention to it for several days. As the same images playing over and over on the screen meant that Aari, who was one of the cat’s favorite people, would be on the bridge, RK started spending more time there. But enough, in RK’s opinion, was enough. When Aari refused to focus exclusively on the cat, RK, tail lashing, began watching the screen, too. Acrorna noticed that every time the Khieevi appeared on screen again with Aari at their mercy, the cat -would enlarge himself to twice his already considerable size, flatten his ears, and hiss. The first time Becker had witnessed RK’s reaction, he’d laughed until he fell out of his chair. The cat then hissed at Becker, too.
Even Aari couldn’t help laughing.
But RK, as his apparent understanding of what he was watching grew, became even more agitated when the scene appeared on the screen. One day, when they -were all on deck and the scene appeared, the cat flung himself at the screen, claws and teeth bared. The force of his collision with the hard, smooth, and totally uninjured surface of the screen knocked RK onto the deck, where he lay for a moment. Then he sat up and licked the fur on his left side as if that had been his intention all along.
Aari picked the cat up, stroked his fur, and laughed. “You got yourself a defender there, Aari,” Becker said. Acorna reached over and scratched RK under his chin. The cat graciously permitted her ministrations, though he did not go so far as to actually purr.
During the long hours when she was not on watch and the others were busy or sleeping, Acorna undertook to “educate KEN,” as Becker put it.
The android was being underutilized, she told Becker. Though he was programmed essentially as a servant or at least an employee, he had a vast amount of unused memory.
“It would greatly expand your ability to collect salvage, Captain,” she told Becker. “If you landed on a world rich in salvage but with an unbreathable atmosphere, for instance, the android could collect your salvage for you long after the limited oxygen supply in your pressure suit forced you to return to the ship.”