Once there, the Condor flew over the monster as low as it could while still dodging tentacles and dropped a payload of sap onto it where it had begun to stretch out into the field.

  “Take that!” Uncle Joh said vindictively, after dropping three sap-centered torpedoes into the thing. He dusted his hands together to signify a completed mission, but the inogre did not appear to be dead or significantly changed by the sap.

  “Maybe it has to eat through the shell first,” Mikaaye suggested.

  “I know!” Ariin said. “We should use the crono and go back in time to when the thing was smaller. Maybe then a little sap would do it more harm.”

  “Maybe later, kiddo, when we’ve decided what works. For now I think we should stop screwing around with time and try to come up with something that kills—I mean, puts these things on a reducing diet—once and for all.”

  Khorii looked at the screen, which still showed where the torpedoes had disappeared into the sludgy brown surface. “We can’t tell much from up here. I would like to get closer and see if our gift has altered it at all.”

  “No way!” Uncle Joh said.

  “You can’t get that close to one of those things,” Grandsire Rafik told her.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Ariin replied. “We did it with the one eating the Estrella Blanca—” She started to say more about the location, but Uncle Joh gave her a look. The Blanca had been docked on his secret asteroid. By now probably all of his most special salvage had been absorbed into the inogre.

  “It only likes inorganic food, and if we go bootless, we’ll be fine,” Khorii agreed.

  The Condor set them down in the field near their friends, who watched anxiously as the girls and Mikaaye approached the monster. The undulations that might have signified its respiration or circulation as well as attempts at locomotion swelled and folded in the great gray-brown expanse so that it resembled a sea of mud.

  “I hate to say it, but for one of these things, it looks perfectly healthy to me,” Mikaaye said.

  Khorii noticed that the extension of the creature that had been confined to the road had now puddled over surrounding grass.

  “It’s not supposed to do that, is it?” Ariin asked, poking at the creature. It lifted, and Khorii gasped. Between the underbelly of the creature and the grass was a sea of tiny, sparkling red dots.

  “Come away,” she told the other two urgently. “Come away now. And Ariin, hold still while Mikaaye and I go over you with our horns. And we must warn everyone to stay as far away from here as possible.”

  “Why?”

  Khorii wasn’t surprised at the question, since she was the only one who could see the blue dots indicating the plague. “There were red dots underneath it. I hope I’m wrong, but I think it might be incubating a mutant strain of the plague.”

  Chapter 25

  Khorii told their friends first, Abuelita, Jalonzo, and the throng of children and elders that were all that remained of the population of the once-thriving city of Corazon and the surrounding countryside. She spoke to them from a distance, for safety’s sake, warning the humans not to approach the edge of the monster and that they needed to move their encampment as far from it as they could. Still, she saw the lines in Abuelita’s kind face deepen and a bleakness come into her eyes. Some of the people reflexively crossed themselves in remembrance of old religious beliefs from Terran times.

  “Are we lost then, after all?” one boy asked her. “Will it all be over soon?”

  “Not if we can help it,” she said, that being all the assurance she could offer.

  Then she joined the others in the ship, where Uncle Joh and Grandsire Rafik were already engaging com relays as far as they could reach into populated areas all over the galaxy, warning people of the new threat and asking them to report new illnesses or changes of any sort in the voracious creatures devouring their homes as the plague had already devoured their families.

  Khorii felt ill in a way that she knew had nothing to do with the red dots. They had all fought so hard to try to rescue people and help them get on with their lives, despite the grief and pain they’d already been through. And now it began to look as if it was all for naught.

  Grandsire Rafik pulled her into a hug. “It will be okay, little one. Hafiz is already telling your people to prepare to return and help us through another one if necessary.”

  “They may not be able to help,” she said. “This is a different strain, I can tell by the indicators. What if we can’t find a way to stop it?”

  Khiindi inserted his hard, furry head under her limp hand and forced her to pet him.

  “The sap didn’t work,” Uncle Joh said.

  “We think that may be because it is an organic substance, Joh,” Father said. “Once we synthesize it so it is wholly inorganic, if may be better absorbed by the creature and have greater effect.”

  They all stood in the hangarlike building while the sap was decanted and examined by the techs and elder scientists.

  “Also, Odus used a viral vector to give the proteins he simulated from the serpent creatures the ability to infect different species and serve as a reproductive base for the creatures,” Hora said. He looked less arrogant and slightly more anxious about the problem than he had before.

  “Why the frag didn’t you stop him from doing a fool thing like that?” Uncle Joh demanded.

  Hora shrugged. “We did not wish to be forced to deal with all of those serpents. Odus seemed to know what he was doing.”

  “Well, you found out that was a crock, didn’t you?” Uncle Joh said. Even his usual energy had been replaced by a tone of bitter regret.

  “We have been constructing an antiviral agent, a salt,” Father said. “A mineral rather than biological form. With the synthesized sap, it may be able to stop the creatures from spreading.”

  “The problem is the way they’re changing,” Khorii said. “The very thing that made Odus and Akasa want them to begin with is letting them create this new form. It’s starting the life cycle over again according to the way Odus set it up, and who knows whether your salts will kill everything it can become?”

  “Odus did say he was going to impart some of his own vigor to the thing,” one of the female scientists said in a maddeningly admiring tone.

  Although it seemed to take forever for the new formula to be synthesized in sufficient quantities to use on the massive monster covering the remains of Corazon, in truth the process was far shorter than it would have been anywhere else in the universe. The scientist Friends might not have been very clever about blending themselves with the Ancestors, and they might have been downright dangerous trying to mutate another life-form, but, fortunately, making formulas to kill things was something at which they excelled.

  When the Condor released its first “feeding tubes,” as Uncle Joh had dubbed his sap-and-antiviral-salt-cocktail-filled torpedoes, they watched breathlessly on the new telescopic zoom the captain had hooked up to one of the com screens.

  Three metal tubes hit the sludge, were sucked in, then exploded, which they knew because the sludge suddenly expanded with a globby splash that made more ripples in it than usual.

  They cheered and hugged each other as first darker places, then definite holes, appeared in the mass, spreading and deepening until they could see broken tree trunks and strips of dirt that had previously been covered. The three holes widened and deepened until they connected.

  Khorii, Ariin, and Mikaaye jumped up and down, hugging each other so hard it hurt, and Ariin was pushing in a most ka-Linyaari fashion. “Die, murderous monster, die.”

  Grandsire Rafik watched the screen with a veiled, neutral expression that reminded Khorii of Uncle Hafiz about to close a business deal, but his posture was so watchful that had he a tail, he would have looked like RK or Khiindi stalking prey.

  In fact, RK and Khiindi sat, for once not fighting with each other, on the backs of the command chairs, crouched and tails lashing, whiskers twitching, ears pricked forward as if waiting to hear cries of distress from the miles of monster before they pounced on it to finish it off.

  Then the sludge seeped back over the strip of dirt separating it from the tree trunk and began creeping over the trunk from another direction. In a separate area, the wooden fence exposed by the second hole was slowly covered and gradually, although there was an unmistakable dip in the surface of the creature, the hole refilled itself.

  The Condor retreated; the crew’s collective moan of dismay, both heartfelt and verbalized, was so loud the people huddled in the fields below might have heard it.

  “Is that all you got?” Captain Becker asked when the Condor had landed on Odussia and all of the crew, even the cats, had joined Mother, Father, Elviiz, and Maak in the hangarlike laboratory. The elder scientists shrugged.

  “It didn’t work?” Mother asked.

  “Almost, but not good enough,” Uncle Joh told her. “I think we hurt it, but it healed itself while we flew over it waiting for it to die.”

  “It’s that vigor of Odus’s,” the female scientist said with what, on a less-august being, might have been a giggle.

  The hawk-nosed elder took off his lab robe and flung it to one side for a tech to pick up. “Well then, I think even Narhii can see that we’ve done the best we can, and everything you asked, to undo this thing. But as Nasia said, Odus was behind this, purely with the best intentions and, as usual, ended up doing things entirely too thoroughly. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a ball to prepare for this evening.”

  Ariin gave Khorii a look that said, as clearly as thought-talk, “you see what these people are like now.”

  The adults were all clearly thinking the same thing, but also felt it was futile trying to get any further concessions out of such callous beings.

  Khorii could think of one more thing she wanted, however. “You’re just going to run off and say, ‘oops, too bad about humanity. Sorry, but we have to go to a dance?’ You know, the only good thing I can think of that any of you did was to give me my cat, Khiindi, and even he came to me because you punished one of your own for being better than the rest. Maybe you can never ever make up for this plague, but the least you could do is turn Khiindi back into Grimalkin. Maybe he could find a way to help us if he had his original powers back because at least he cares.”

  “An interesting viewpoint,” Hora said. “But this sort of thing—when one of us is killed or altered in a profound way—cannot be undone. I see that you have illegally obtained a crono from somewhere. I suggest that all of you return to an earlier, happier time for your race and allow Grimalkin to return to the time before he became entangled with your family. He can be himself then. In this time, however, he will live out a feline lifetime and go the way of mortal flesh. That will release him from cat form though what he’ll become after that I really couldn’t say. His case is unique.”

  He began walking away. One of the techs said, indicating rows and rows of gourdlike containers, “What shall we do with all this if it doesn’t work, milord?”

  “Load it aboard the Condor,” Uncle Joh said. “Maybe we can’t kill that big beastie with it, but it might make more of an impression on some of the smaller critters. It’s worth a try at least.”

  He shot a look at the backs of the retreating lords and ladies that should have done to them what the sap bombs tended to do to the creature. But they were oblivious, and Hora just waved his hand in assent.

  The last of the containers had been sealed in the cargo hold when the com unit came on.

  Khorii cringed, fearing it was word from some of their friends that more people had fallen ill to the new strain of plague.

  But it was only Sona.

  “We saw you land,” Sona said. “How went the mission?”

  Mother, in the copilot’s seat, gave her the dismal news.

  “I’m very sad to hear that,” she said. “However, since you’re here, Lady Akasa would like you to return to her island and give her another treatment with your horns. She is much improved since your last show of solicitude and hopes that if you give her more of the same, she might even feel well enough to rejoin her fellows, perhaps in time to attend the upcoming ball.”

  Mother gave an uncharacteristic low growl. “And to think I used to like dancing,” she told the family and Mikaaye. But to Sona she said, “I suppose we could, especially if she has no objection to us telling her what we did and perhaps trying to think of any further lines of action we could pursue.”

  Sona smiled. “She might object privately to me, but she’ll do it. Her hair has grown back since you were here, and her skin is smoother.”

  “We do not promise to be able to restore youth,” Mother warned.

  “The elders are a special race with unusual vi—”

  “Don’t tell me. Vitality, vigor, and longevity.” Mother sighed, and said sweetly, “We’ll do what we can, and if she thinks it helps her, then that fact alone may make her feel better.”

  They flew back to the island and landed on the beach.

  “Look there,” Ariin said, pointing to a familiar edifice rising almost as tall as the ship and spreading across the entrance to the woods, its windows shining, its sills and doorframe gleaming with bright colors. “Looks like she changed her mind about her house.”

  But that was not exactly the case.

  Sona met them outside the hatch of Akasa’s purloined Linyaari vessel. “Akasa is inside,” she said.

  “Isn’t the house ready yet?” Ariin asked.

  “She still refuses to live in it, but if I am not to have my own ship or the companionship of my own kind, I decided I would like somewhere comfortable to live instead, so I am going to tailor it to my own taste. It isn’t one of the diseased ones, after all.”

  She looked at the delegation. Uncle Joh, Grandsire, the two cats, and five Linyaari.

  “It may be a bit cramped in there. Perhaps the humans, the created humans, and the cats could wait in my house? I’ve prepared refreshments for all species, hoping to see you again. Though truly, I hoped you’d be leaving because your mission was a success.”

  “That makes—one, two, three, four, five—nine of us,” Uncle Joh said. “Counting the cats.”

  Khorii entered with the others and greeted Akasa, who did indeed look better. Her white hair was now wavy and shining, and her skin was less lined, her eyes brighter. Recalling the group of her own friends huddled and frightened in the field outside Corazon, Khorii found she couldn’t enjoy the effects of her healing on this arrogant woman who had been so instrumental in causing the death and suffering of others.

  Nor did she have the inclination to challenge her, as Ariin did. And, in the confines of the ship, there wasn’t room for five horns to—well, horn in closely enough to do healing.

  “Excuse me. I am suddenly famished,” she murmured aloud for Sona’s and Akasa’s sake rather than her family’s. “I think I’ll go out and graze for a while.”

  She didn’t really want to graze, but she didn’t want to go inside the mutable dwelling either.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have to. Khiindi came flying out of the door with RK and Elviiz hot on his tail. “Khiindi, bad cat!” Elviiz scolded. “Stealing is antisocial behavior.”

  “Leave him alone, Elviiz,” Khorii said crossly, and knelt to pick up the former elder who would always be her kitty now. He had something short, cylindrical, and metallic clenched carefully in his jaws. The moment she opened her palm he uncharacteristically opened his mouth and dropped the item.

  “Hmmm,” she said, turning it over. Khiindi growled a warning. “I don’t think this is just some shiny object he decided to pilfer. Look at him. His ears are back, and all the fur along his spine is bristling, and his tail is fluffed. And he isn’t even looking at RK. Whatever it is, this thing is dangerous.”

  Chapter 26

  Maak was about to take Khindii’s shiny prey from her when the ship’s hatch opened and Ariin emerged, followed by Mother and Sona. Father and Mikaaye supported a wobbly but ambulatory Akasa between them.

  “Khiindi found something in Akasa’s old house,” she told her family and Mikaaye. “He seems to think it is dangerous, but he wanted me to have it. I think maybe it is his Grimalkin self that took the thing instead of just Khiindi playing with a shiny object.”

  “Show me,” her parents said together.

  Khiindi continued to growl and bristle as she carried it to them and at an urgent hiss from the cat, she laid the thing gently into her father’s outstretched hand. His other arm and hand were taken up with Akasa, who saw the thing and frowned. “I haven’t seen that in a while,” she said in a voice close to her old one. “I’d forgotten I still had it. No! No! Be careful. Don’t point it at me, or I’ll never recover from this state I’m in.”

  “Why would that be?” Ariin asked, plucking it from Father’s hand.

  “Careful, Narhii! Be careful handling that.”

  “But why, milady? What is it? What was it doing in your house if it was so dangerous, and why would Khiindi bring it to my sister?”

  “He probably thinks she can return him to his Grimalkin form with it, but of course she can’t. It can only freeze forms. It cannot unfreeze them.”

  “Is that a fact?” Uncle Joh asked. “This is the thing you people used to turn old Grimalkin into Khorii’s kitty, is it?”

  “Yes, have I not said so?”

  “How does it work?”

  “Joh, are you thinking what I am thinking?” Father asked, which was not fair since he wasn’t letting any of the rest of the family know what he was thinking.

  “I think so,” Uncle Joh replied. “Well, lady, we ain’t any of us getting younger while we’re waiting on you, and some people could be dying. Can this thing help us or not?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she replied. “I’m not accustomed to dealing with your sort of problems.”

  Ariin said, “We don’t need her to find out. Sona knows the last time Grimalkin was himself. We can set the cronos for then and ask him why he brought it out.”