Then she heard him say something about “Khieevi” and turned to look. She had never seen a Khieevi. She was curious, in a horrified sort of way. What did such vicious and voracious beings look like?
She turned her chair around to view? the screen over Thariinye’s shoulder. The bug-like Khieevi were only visible as feelers and legs and shell-like carapaces around the margins of the vid. In the center of the screen was the main subject of the transmission. His face was distorted with blood, sweat, and agony, and his body was even more broken than it had been when she had first seen him. But she could not mistake her brother.
“Thariinye,” she said, her voice tight with emotion, “that’s Aari! The Khieevi have Aari! What can we do? Are we too late? We have to help him. Where are Khornya and Captain Becker? Have they been killed already?”
Thariinye turned slightly and looked at her, his face as serious as she had ever seen it, and perhaps a bit green, too. “This is an old vid, Maati. Probably a Khieevi broadcast to the Niriian ship. The Khieevi like to do that-send pictures of old tortures to the people they plan to make their next victims. Nobody knows why. But that’s what this is. Look there-see-Aari still has part of his horn. Long slices have been carved away, but it’s there. This is what happened to him before you saw him.”
She didn’t recognize the emotion that was making Thariinye’s voice sound so strangled. Perhaps he was trying not to throw up. Abruptly, he switched off the visuals.
Maati felt as if her heart had been clutched in a tight fist and then suddenly released to fall thudding to the floor. Her breath came out in a rush. “That’s horrible. Horrible. Are the Khieevi-are they coming-h-h-here?” She was stuttering now through chattering teeth and felt cold all over, a reaction that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room, and everything to do with what she’d nist witnessed.
“No. I told you. It’s an old vid. They sent this to the people aboard the ship that carried this pliyi. Any luck on that registration design?”
“Not yet,” she said, and turned back to her task with a new sense of urgency, widening the parameters of her search. The ordinariness of looking for information steadied her and gradually her hands stopped shaking. And, at last, there it was-the design, the number, and the name of the ship that had carried that pod. And the names of the people aboard when it shipped out on its last flight. A chill engulfed her again.
“Th-Thariinye?”
“I’m almost done, Maati.”
“B-but-Thariinye. I found it.”
“Good. Just a moment.”
“No, now. It’s important. The ship the pod was on? It was registered to my parents. To mine and Aari’s parents. The people on the Niriian ship found them. I thought they were dead-but if the Niriians are correct, maybe they’re not. At least, not both of them, at least not when this pod -was found.”
“That is ‘wonderful,” Thariinye said. “We need to let Liriili know at once. I thought this piiyl was bad news, but it seems we have at least one cause for celebration among the information it brought us!” He put the final touches to his translation and uploaded it to the vlizaar.
“We have to tell Aari and Khornya and Captain Becker,” Maati said. “They can go get our mother and father.”
“Yes, yes, but first Liriili must know. It’s procedure,” he said, going all adult again. Thariinye turned back to the com station.
He hailed Liriili and told her what they had discovered.
I just thought it prudent,” he finished, “to let you know the contents of the message before transmitting my interpretation to the Condor.”
Thank you, Thariinye. That is very interesting. In light of your information, I think that tomorrow I shall send an emis^ry to the Ancestors to let them know what has been discovered. However, there will be no further transmissions from the Gom station. Not to the Condor or anywhere else.”
But, honored lady! Aari, at least, should know immediately-the pod is apparently that of Aari and Maati’s parents, to have been missing-”