The encounter of old friends was common enough on Meetpoint Station, where half a dozen species came to trade; and one such old friend came walking Pyanfar Chanur’s way when she had no more than put _The Pride_ in dock. She was hani, Pyanfar Chanur, maned and bearded in curling red-gold, sleek of pelt. Her left ear bore the gold rings of successful voyages along its rim, and the bottommost ring had a monstrous gaudy teardrop pearl. Her red blousing breeches were silk, with the faintest striping of orange; and wrapped about the waist was a belt whose dangling ties were finished in precious stones and gold and bronze. She was not quiet, this Pynafar. She exuded wealth and dignity, and drew eyes wherever she went.
And rounding a collection of canisters awaiting dockside pickup, she spied a dark-furred, all but naked shape: mahendo’sat — ordinary encounter anywhere on Meetpoint. But this one flung wide his arms. His eyes lit up, his broad mahen face broke into a charming grin that showed blunt primate fangs all capped in gold.
“Pyanfar!” he cried.
“_You?_” Pyanfar stopped dead in her tracks. “You!” She slapped aside the offered embrace and stalked past at a good clip, to make the mahendo’sat exert himself.
“Ha, hani captain,” the mahe called after her. “You want deal?”
She turned about again, planted hands on hips and let the mahe overtake her against all better judgment. A heavy hand descended on her shoulder and the mahe resumed his gilt-edged grin.
“Long time,” Goldtooth said.
“Gods rot you, don’t grin at me. You want a smile from me, you mahen bastard? How’d you get in port?”
“Just docked. Find my good friend here. Give surprise, a?” He laughed, slapped her on the back, seized her about the shoulders in one lank, coarse-pelted arm and propelled her toward the ship berths. “Got present, hani.”
“Present!” Pyanfar dug claws into the deck-plates, resisting this camaraderie, aware of probable witnesses, of a whole row of grinning mahendo’sat lazing in front of a canister-surrounded loading area. A ship access gaped ahead. _Mahijiru_, doubtless. “You owe me, mahe, owe me for tools and two good welders, for fake repairs, for doublecross–“
“Good friend, Pyanfar Chanur.” A powerful arm shoved her ramp ward through the gathered mahendo’sat, and she spun about and cast an indignant look back before Goldtooth wrapped his arm into a tighter grip and hastened her up the ramp. “Good friend. Remember I save your neck, a?”
“Present,” she muttered, stalking along the accessway. “Present.” But she went, and stopped inside the lock, while some of the mahendo’sat who had trooped after them poured past into the interior corridors. Goldtooth turned sober for the moment, and she liked that less. Her ears were flat. “What _kind_ present, huh?”
The mahe winked, decidedly a wink, this trader who was no trader, who played what he was not, with _Mahijiru_ which was not the slow-moving freighter it looked to be. “Good see you one piece, hani.”
“Huh.” Her mouth pursed in better humor, in deliberate good humor. She slapped the mahe on the arm, claws not quite pulled. “Same good see you, Ana Ismehanan-min. You still play merchant?”
“We trade sometime, keep us same honest.”
“Present, a?”
The mahe looked to his left where the towering black wall of mahe crew parted. Pyanfar looked — and her ears went up and her mouth fell open at the gangling stsho-cloaked apparition in the doorway to _Mahijiru_’s inmost corridors. A mostly hairless face with mane and beard like spun daylight; a face like nothing in civilized space.
“O gods,” she said, and whirled about, heading for the airlock, but the mahendo’sat had it packed.
“Pyanfar,” the human said.
She turned, ears flat. “Tully,” she said in despair, and lost the rest of her dignity as the human hastened to fling his arms about her. His clothes reeked of mahen incense.
“Pyanfar,” Tully said, and straightened up and towered over her, grinning like a mahe and trying to stop it, for he knew better. “_Py-an-far_.” In evident delight.
That was the limit of his conversation. That mouth was never made for hani speech. Goldtooth set his hand possessively on Tully’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Fine present, a, Pyanfar?”
“_Where’d you find him?_”
The mahen captain shrugged. “Come all the way mahen trader name _Ijir_, long time mahen ship, all time want you, Pyanfar Chanur, crazy mad human. Come find you, come find you, all he know.”
She looked up at Tully, who stood there with something brimming over in him, who had no possible business where he was, in mahendo’sat transport, light-years from human territory, in a zone where humankind was banned.
“No,” she said to Goldtooth. “No. Absolutely not. He’s your problem.”
“He want find you,” Goldtooth said. “Friend. Where your sentiment?”
“Gods rot you — gods rot you, Goldtooth. Why? For what? What’s he want?”
“Want talk you. Your friend, hani, good friend, a?”
“_Friend_. You earless, mangy bastard. I just got my papers clear — _You know what it cost?_”
“Trade.” Goldtooth came close and put his arm conspiratorially about her shoulders. She stood like rock, laid back her ears and grinned into his face in chill reception. “Trade, hani. You want make deal?”
“You want to lose that arm?”
Primate fangs gleamed gold. “Rich, hani. Rich — and powerful. You want this human trade? Got. –Look this face–“
“Have I got a choice?”
A wider grin. “Loyal friend. Want you do a thing for me. Want you make this human happy, a? Want you take him to Personage. Want you take him to the _han_. Make all round happy. Got trade, hani. Profits.”
“Sure, profits.” She shoved back at arm’s length and stared up at that earnest mahen face. “Profits like last time, like bills up to the overhead, like hani barred six months from Meetpoint and _The Pride_ out a gods-rotted _year_–“
“Like stsho got lot gratitude hani save their hides, a?”
“Same as the mahendo’sat. Same as the mahe who double-crossed me–“
Black palms lifted. “Not my fault, not my fault. Stsho close Meetpoint, what I do?”
“Snatch the trade, what else? What route you been running?”
“You take him, a?”
“You brought him here. Friend. It’s all yours. So’s the lawsuit. You explain it to the stsho!”
“Got _trade_, Pyanfar-“
“And get embargoed? Gods rot, you earless lunatic! You try to do for the rest of my business? The stsho–“
“Pyanfar.” He took her by both shoulders. “Pyanfar. I tell you, one paper this human got, he read for you this paper. They send him, this humanity. They got trade. Big business, maybe much big thing the Compact ever see. You got share.”
She drew a deep, long, mahe-flavored breath. “Favors, Goldtooth?”
“A,” he laughed, and hugged her shoulder with bone-crushing force. “Promise, hani. I make promise, keep. Got business. Got go. You take this human. Don’t I make promise you get share human trade? I keep. This human come to me, I find my old friend Pyanfar for him. You want share, you take. But you got do this thing.”
“Now we get to it. Why?”
“Got business. Got go fix.”
“Got business — How’d you get here? How’d you just happen to pull in on my tail?”
“Know you come, old friend. I lie off and wait.”
“How’d you know? I didn’t, till the papers cleared at Kura.”
“Got contacts. Know you got that stsho business clear. So you come here soon.”
“Gods rot your hide, mahe. That’s a lie.”
Dark eyes glittered, shifted. “Say then I follow you from Urtur.”
“With _him_? Out of mahen space? No way, egg-sucker. How’d you arrange it?”
The hand dropped from her shoulder. “You sharp dealer, hani.”
“What say instead the stsho kept _Mahijiru_ off Meetpoint docking lists. Say you were here all along, blocked off the lists. Waiting for me.”
“You got lot suspicion.”
“I got gods-rotted plenty suspicion, you earless foundling bastard. Give me the truth.”
“Might say.”
“Might say. Might say — The stsho know he’s here?”
“Know.”
“Then who are you hiding from?” And on a second thought: “_O gods!_”
“Got kif trouble.”
“Gods rot you, then _you_ take him! You take this whole business and–“
“Good, brave friend. Kif spies already here. _Han_ spies too. Got _han_ deputy ship in port. Know we meet. After this they got plenty curiosity. So you got risk already, hani. Don’t want profit too? Besides, you hurt his feeling. Hurt mine.”
She stood still, a long, long time. Her claws flexed out. She drew them in, with a long slow breath. “Gods rot your–“
“Give you fair deal, Pyanfar. Number one fine deal. Know you got troubles. You got _han_ trouble. You promise human trade, you don’t got. Lose face. You got mate troubles–“
“Shut up.”
“I keep promise, Pyanfar. You want share profit, you got share risk.”
“Share suicide. What you think I am?”
“You get human trade, your enemies can’t touch you, a, hani captain? The _han_ — don’t like you lose face. You get rich, keep your brother life, keep your mate. Keep _The Pride_.”
A narrow darkness closed in on her sight, hunter-vision set on Goldtooth. It was difficult to hear, so tight her ears were folded. She deliberately raised them, looked about her, at Tully’s distressed face.
“I take him,” she said to Goldtooth, a small, strangled breath. “If–“
“If?”
“–if we get letter of credit at mahe facilities. Good anywhere. Unlimited.”
“God! You think I Personage?”
“I think you next best thing, you rag-eared conniving bastard! I think you got that power, I think you got any gods-rotted credit you want, like what you pulled on me at Kirdu, like–“
“You dream.” Goldtooth laid a blunt-clawed hand on his breast. “I captain. Got no credit like that.”
“Good-bye.” She faced about, bared teeth at the crowd blocking her retreat. “You going to move this lot? Or do I move them for you?”
“I write,” he said.
She faced him with ears flat. Held out her hand.
He held out his to one of the mahe at his side. “Tablet,” he said, and that one vanished hurriedly into the inner corridor with a spatter of bare mahen feet and non-retracting claws.
“Better,” said Pyanfar.
Goldtooth scowled, took the tablet the breathless mahe brought back to him, removed its stylus and wrote. He withdrew a Signature from the belt that crossed his chest and inserted it; the tablet spat out its seal-stamped document. He held it.
“You one bastard, Pyanfar.” Goldtooth’s grin looked astonishingly hani in his dark mahen face. “One sure bastard. No–” He drew it back as she held out her hand; he turned and handed it instead to Tully, who looked at them both confusedly. “Let him hold. He bring. With other documents.”
“If that paper doesn’t say what it had better say–“
“You do what? Toss good friend Tully out airlock? You no do.”
“Oh, no. No such thing. I pay debts where they’re due, old friend.”
Goldtooth’s grin spread. He thrust the tablet into a crewman’s hands and clapped her on the arm. “You thank me someday.”
“You can bet I will. Everything I owe. I find a way. How you going to get him to _The Pride_? Tell me that! You walk him up to my lock, I fix your ears.”
“Got special canister.” Goldtooth held out his hand. “Customs papers,” he said, and a crewman held out another tablet and stylus. “You take cargo, a? _Shishu_ fruit. Dried fish. Got four cans. One all rigged, number one good lifesupport. Pass him that way.”
She shook her head to clear it, stared at him afresh. “I’m going mad. That trick’s got white hairs. Why don’t you just roll him up in a carpet, for the gods’ sake, and dump him on my deck? Deliver him in a basket, why don’t you? Good gods, what am I doing here?”
“Still good trick. You want this honest citizen, you pay duty, ha?”
She drew her ears down tight, snatched the tablet and furiously appended her own signature, handwritten. She shoved it back at the mahe crewman who dared no expression at her at all.
“Fish,” she said in disgust.
“Cheapest duty. What you want, pay more? I tell you, got thing fixed.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Customs ask no question. Number one fixed.”
“I’ve got questions. I’ve got plenty of questions. You set me up, you egg-sucking bastard. So I take this deal. But by-the-gods you tell me everything you know. _What_ kif trouble? Where are they working? Are they on your tail right now?”
“Always got kif at Meetpoint.”
“Then why come here, for the gods’ sakes? What are you doing here? The kif know what you’ve got?”
Goldtooth shrugged. “Maybe.”
“From how long? How long you been at this?”
A second shrug. “Packet. In packet got paper tell you. Tully bring in canister. You take, you read all. You run fast. Go Maing Tol, go Personage. Get plenty help from there.”
“They on your tail?”
A third shrug.
“Goldtooth, you bastard, how tight?”
“Got trouble,” Goldtooth said.
She weighed that. _Mahijiru_ in trouble. A mahen hunter-ship with more kif troubles than it could handle. “So you got. Where you go now?”
“Best thing you don’t ask.”
“Human space?”
“Maybe deep in stsho territory. Read packet. Read packet. Friend.”
“Rot you.”
“Rot you too,” Goldtooth said soberly. His ears stayed up. There were fine wrinkles round his dark eyes. “God save us. Need you, Pyanfar. Need bad.”
“Huh.” She flicked her ears up with a light chiming of their rings. “I’m not a gods-blessed warship, mahe.”
“Know that.”
“Sure. Sure.” She walked off a pace to get clear breath, looked at Tully, who understood — perhaps a little. Always more than he spoke.
Tully would not lie to her. That much she believed. His silence, his level, unflinching stare now, that vouched for his own honesty in this. “When bring to you?” Goldtooth asked. She turned back to him. “Got an appointment in station office. Got to make that. Got to advise my crew. Got to tell them — You give me lot of problems, hear? And you be careful.” She extruded a claw and poked Goldtooth hard in the chest, so she saw him wince. “You be careful this package. You be gods-rotted careful, hear?” She meant two things.
“Hear,” Goldtooth said, full soberly. He heard both things. She knew.
“Got three days this port,” she said. “Got stall three days with gods-rotted kif sniffing round. I pull _The Pride_ out sooner, big trouble. Lot of attention. When you go?”
“Deliver package, wait awhile, then go. Got no cargo but fake cans I give to you.”
“So.” She turned away, met Tully’s eyes, patted him very gently on his arm, recalling his fragile skin. “_Safe_, understand. You do what they say. No fear. These mahendo’sat bring you to me. Understand?”
“Yes,” Tully said, and looked at her in that way he had, his pale stare desperately intense.
Her ears twitched, her nostrils widened with the scent of something more than Meetpoint-sized amiss, more than a corrupt stsho and closed routes and xenophobe stsho councils back in Llyene, atwitter over humanity that wanted _through_ stsho space. Mahen connivances. Kif greed. She looked back at Goldtooth. “Presents. One fine present. Ha!”
Goldtooth lifted his head, his brown eyes half-lidded. “Tell you this, old friend. Kif don’t forget. They hunt me. Soon hunt you. Not revenge. Kif-thought. _Skikkik_. Hunt me, hunt you. Tully come here — Got one fine trouble this time. This business Tully bring us only — hurry things. Make timetable ours, not kif’s.”
“Huh,” she said. “So I take this gift. I don’t like things coming at my back. You watch yourself. You run far, mahe. You do good. Wish you luck.”
“You got,” Goldtooth said. “Wish you luck, hani.”
She flicked her ears, indecisive, turned and stalked out the airlock through the parting crowd of tall mahendo’sat.
_Luck._
Luck indeed.
Her mind was not in it as she walked on down the dock. It kept sorting troubles past and troubles future — _dangerous_, she thought, catching a whiff of some scent not mahendo’sat nor stsho, but something she could not, in this large, cold space . . . identify.
Cargo, maybe. Maybe something else. It set her nose to twitching and set an itch between her shoulderblades.
She did not look about, here on Meetpoint’s docks, padding along the cold deckplates, beside the gapings of ship accesses, out of which wafted more friendly scents. There were other hani ships at Meetpoint. She had read the list before she had put _The Pride_ into dock: _Marrar’s Goiden Sun_; _Ayhar’s Prosperity_; oh, yes, and _Ehrran’s Vigilance_. That ship. That one, that Goldtooth had mentioned, but not by name . . . that _han_’s eyes, which were doubtless on other business at the moment, but which were capable of catching small furtive moves — like a Chanur captain paying calls on mahen ships.
There were a dozen other mahen vessels in port: _Tigimiransi_, _Catimin-shai_, _Hamarandar_ were some she had known for years. And familiar stsho names, like _Assustsi, E Mnestsist_, _Heshtmit_ and _Tstaarsem Nai_. Round the wheel of Meetpoint, beyond the great lock that separated oxy- from methane-breathers, ships went by stranger titles: tc’a and knnn and chi names, if knnn had names at all. _Tho’o’oo_ and _T’T’Tmmmi_ were tc’a/chi ships she had seen on docking lists before.
And kif. Of course there were kif. She had made a particular point to know those names before she put _The Pride_ in dock . .. names like _Kekt_ and _Harukk_, _Tikkukkar_, _Pakakkt_, _Maktikkh_, _Nankktsikkt_, _Ikhoikttr_. Kif names, she memorized wherever she found them, a matter of policy — to recall their routes, their dockings, where they went and trading what.
The kif watched her routes with as much interest this last year. She was very sure of that.
She did not loiter on the docks, but she made no particular haste which might attract attention on its own. She stared at this and that with normal curiosity, and at the same general pace she strolled up to the nearest com booth along the row of dockside offices, keyed up Chanur credit and punched in the code for the station comlink to _The Pride_’s bridge. She waited. The com whistled and clicked through nine cycles unanswered.
There was a kif on the docks. She spied the tall, black-robed form standing over shipside in conversation with a stsho, whose pale arms waved emphatically. She stood with her back to the plastic wall and watched this exchange past the veil of other traffic, the passing of service vehicles, of pedestrians, mostly stsho, pale-robed and elegant; here and there mahen-do’sat, dark and sleek. Something winged whipped past, small and upward bound for the heights of the tall, cold dock.
Gods only knew what that was.
_Click_. “_Pride of Chanur_,” the voice finally answered. “Deck officer speaking.”
“Haral, gods rot you, how long does it take?”
“Captain?”
“Who’s out?”
“Outside?”
“_I want that cargo inventoried_. Hear? I want all of you on it, right now. No liberties. If anyone’s out, get her back. Right now.”
“Aye,” the voice came back, diffident. “Aye, Captain.” There was question in the voice.
“Just do it!”
“Aye. But — Captain?”
“What?”
“_Na_ Khym’s out.”
“Gods and thunders!” Her heart fell through her feet. “Where’d he go?”
“Don’t know. To the free market, I think — There some kind of trouble?”
“I’m coming back. _Get him_, Haral. I want him found.”
“Aye, Captain.”
She slammed the receiver down and headed back toward the ship in haste.
Khym, for the gods’ sake. Her mate, gone strolling out in fullest confidence that papers in order meant safety … on a stsho trading station, where weapons were banned, as he had gone out of ship at Urtur and Hoas among mahendo’sat; as he had gone wandering wherever he liked through the last two markets — male, and duty-less and bored. Gods. O gods.
She remembered the kif then, looked back, one injudicious glance over her shoulder, breaking the rest of her precautions.
The kif was still there, looking her way beyond the gesticulating stsho, looking black and grim and interested.
She flung around again and moved as fast as a walk could carry her, past _Mahijiru_ behind its darkened (malfunctioning?) registry board, past one berth and the other in the chill, stsho-made air.
She was panting in earnest when she came within sight of _The Pride’s_ berth. Everything was stopped there. The machinery that ought to be offloading stood still with cans still on the ramp. Haral was outside waiting for her, red-gold figure in blue breeches; and spying her, came her way with scurrying haste.
“Captain–” Haral skidded up and braked, claws raking on the plates. “We’re looking.”
“Kif are out,” Pyanfar said. That was enough. Haral’s ears went flat and her eyes went wide. “With Ehrran clan in port. I want him back, Haral. Where’d he talk about going? Doing what?”
“Didn’t talk, Captain. We were all busy. He was there by us at the ramp. When we looked round — gone.”
“Gods rot him!”
“Can’t have gotten far.”
“Sure he can’t.” She took the pocket com Haral offered her and clipped it to her belt to match what Haral had. “Who’s on bridge?”
“No one. I stayed. Alone.”
“Hilfy’s out there.”
“First.”
“Lock up. Come with me.”
“Aye!” Haral snapped, spun on her heel and ran.
Pyanfar strode on.
Market, she reckoned. Meetpoint’s famed Free Market was far and away the likeliest place to look. Baubles and exotics. Things to see.
He might have tried the restaurants before the market.
Or the bars of the Rows.
Gods rot him. Gods rot her soft-headedness in ever taking him aboard. On Anuurn they called her mad. At times like this she believed it, all the way.
She was breathing in great side-aching gasps when Haral came pelting back to fall in at her side.
“He’s not here,” Hilfy said — youngest of _The Pride_: her left ear one-ringed, her beard only beginning, her breeches the tough blue cloth of hani crew, though she was _Ker_ Hilfy, Chanur’s someday heir. She met Tirun Araun between two aisles of the dock bazaar, among the stacks of cloth, foodstuffs, the fluttering of stsho merchants. Fluting cries of exotic nonsapients legal here for trade, the shouts of traders and passersby, music from the bars of the Rows alongside the market-echoed off the lofty overhead in one commingled roar. Smells abounded, drowning other scents. Color rioted. “I’ve been down every aisle, Tirun–“
“Try the Rows,” said Tirun, older spacer. Her beard was full; her mane hung wild about her shoulders. Her left ear flicked, clashing half a dozen rings. “Come on. I take evens, you take odds. Hit every bar on the Rows. He might have, gods only know.”
Hilfy gulped air and went, not questioning the orders as Haral herself had not questioned what had happened, except that something had gone wrong. Very wrong. That had been a coded call to get off the docks. At once. Her ears kept lying back on their own; she pricked them up with spasmodic efforts, seeking a hani voice through the din, from out of the row of spacer bars that lined the marketplace.
No sign of any hani in the first bar on the row. It was all mahendo’sat inside, honking music and the raucous screech and stamp of drunken spacers.
She crossed Tirun’s path on the walk on the way out and they split again into the third and fourth bar.
Stsho, this den. But she spotted the red-gold of hani backs clustered about a bowl-table, dived through and slid to her knees on the rim. A senior hani spacer turned round and eyed her; other eyes turned her way, all round the table. She bobbed a hasty bow with hands gripping the rim.
“Hilfy Chanur _par_ Faha, gods look on you — you seen a hani male?”
Ears laid back and pricked in non-sobriety all round the table, six pairs of ears heavy with rings. “Gods — what you been drinking, kid?”
“Sorry.” That was a mistake. She scrambled to her feet and started away; but the spacer swayed erect, waved wildly for balance as she clawed her unsteady way up the plastic bowlseat to catch her arm. “Hani male, hey? Need help, Chanur? Where you see this vision, hey?”
There were derisive laughs, curses — someone was trodden on. The rest of the hani came up on the seat and scrambled out of the pit. Hilfy tore loose and fled. “Hey,” she heard at her back, hani-cough, a drunken roar.
“Pay!” A shrill stsho warble from another side. “Pay, hani bastard–“
“Charge it to _Ayhar’s Prosperity_!”
“O gods!” Hilfy dived for the exit, just as a pair of kifish patrons loomed in the doorway. Black musty robes brushed her with a smell that sent the wind up her back. She did not look back or pause as she dived past them both. “Hard rabble.” she heard hissed behind her, the noise of drunken encounter mingled with kifish voices.
She darted through the outer doors into the light of the market, blinked, hesitating on one foot, hearing above the market noise the sound of hani in full chase behind her — no sight of Tirun. She leaned into a run and plunged into the next odd-numbered bar — stsho again, not a sight of hani. She pelted back out the doors, through the incoming mass of Ayhar clan, who began a turnabout in that doorway in merry disorder.
Still no Tirun. She dived into the next odd-number, another stsho den, saw a tall red shape, and heard the voices, a deeper hani voice than this port had ever heard, the chitter of stsho curses, the snarl of mahendo’sat.
“_Na_ Khym,” she cried in profoundest relief. “_Na_ Khym!” She eeled her way through the towering crowd at the bar and grabbed him by the arm. “Uncle — thank the gods. Pyanfar wants you. Now. Right now, _na_ Khym.”
“Hilfy?” he said, far from focused. He swayed there, a head taller than she, twice her breadth of shoulder, his broad, scarred nose wrinkled in confusion. “Trying to explain to these fellows–“
“Uncle, for the gods’ sakes-“
“He is,” a hani voice cried from the door. “By the gods — what’s he doing here?”
Khym flinched, faced about with his back to the bar, starting with misgiving at the drunken Ayhar spacers.
“Hey!” –A second hani voice, from among the Ayhar. “Chanur! You crazy, Chanur? What are you up to, huh, bringing him out here? You got no regard for him?”
“Come on,” Hilfy pleaded. “_Na_ Khym–” She tugged at a massive arm, felt the tension in it. “For gods’ sake, _na_ Khym — we’ve got an emergency.”
Maybe that got through. Khym shivered, one sharp tremor, like an earthquake through solid stone.
“Get, get, get!” a stsho shrilled in pidgin. “Get out he my bar!”
Hilfy pulled with all her might. Khym yielded and kept walking, through the hani crowd that drew aside wide-eyed and muttering, past the black wall of curious mahendo’sat and the glitter of their gold.
Another black wall formed athwart the brighter, outside light. Billowing robes blocked the path to the door, two tall, ungainly shapes.
“Chanur,” said a kif, a dry clicking voice. “Chanur brings its males out. It needs help.”
Hilfy stopped. Khym had, with a rumbling in his throat. “Don’t,” Hilfy said, “don’t do it — Khym, for gods’ sakes, just let’s get out of here. We don’t want a fight.”
“Run,” the kif hissed. “_Run_, Chanur. You run from kif before.”
“Come on.” Hilfy wrapped her arm tightly about Khym’s elbow. She guided him through the crowd toward the doorway, past the first brush of robes, trying to look noncombatant, trying to watch the whereabouts of dark kifish hands beneath the dusky cloth.
“Hilfy,” said Khym.
She looked up. The whole doorway had filled with kif.
“It’s got a knife!” A hani voice. “Look out, kid–“
Something flew, trailing beer and froth, and hit a kifish head. “Got!” A mahen voice crowed delight. Kif lunged, Khym lunged. Hilfy hit a kif with claws bared and bodies tangled in the doorway. _Yiiii-yinnnnn_! a stsho voice wailed above the din. “_Yeeiei-yi_! Police, police, police!”
“Yaooo!” (The mahendo’sat).
“_Na_ Khym!”
Tirun’s voice, a roar from outside the tangled doorway, inbound. “Hilfy! _Na_ Khym! _Chanur_!”
“_Ayhar, ai Ayhar_.”
“_Catimin-shai_!”
Mugs and bottles sailed.
* * *
“He’s on the Rows! Hurry!” Haral’s voice came from the pocket com; and Pyanfar, delaying for a check of eat-shops outside the market, started to run for all she was worth, past startled mahendo’sat and stsho who leapt from her path, herself dodging round the confused course of a methane-breather vehicle that zigged away on another tack.
Sirens sounded. The three-story bulkhead doors of the market sector were blinking with red warning lights. She put on a final burst of speed and dived through asprawl as the valves began to move. The edges met with a boom and airshock that shook the deck, drowning the din of howls beyond, and she gathered herself up off the deck plates and ran without even a backward look.
The whole market was in turmoil. Merchants or looters snatched armfuls of whatever they could; aisles jammed. Animals screeched above the roar. A black thing darted past Pyanfar’s legs and yelped at being trodden on. She vaulted a counter, scrambled on a rolling scatter of trinkets, found a clear aisle and ran toward the Rows where a moment’s clear sight showed a heaving mass in the doorway. Stsho darted from that crowd, pale and gibbering; drunken mahendo’sat stayed to yell odds — a pair of hani arrived from the other direction: Chur and Geran headed full tilt toward the mass.
She jerked spectators this way and that, careless of her claws. Mahendo’sat howled outrage and moved. A kif-shape darted past her, moving faster than clear sight. She caught at it and got only robe as she broke through to the center of the mob. Plastic splintered. Glass broke, bodies rolled underfoot.
More kif ran from the scene, a scatter of black-robed streaks outward bound at speed.
“Khym!” Pyanfar yelled and flung herself in the path of his wild-eyed rush after the kif. Behind him Haral and Geran added themselves; Chur and Tirun followed. Hilfy jumped last, atop the heap on Khym’s shoulders as it all came down in front of her.
They stopped him. They held him down until the struggles ceased.
There was mahen laughter, quickly hushed. In prudence, mahe drew back to perimeters, while the noise of looting went on in the market, the crash of glass, the splintering of plastics, the polyglot wails of outrage and avarice.
“Gods rot you!” Pyanfar yelled, with a claws-out swipe at anything too near. “Get!”
Mahendo’sat gave her room. A small knot of hani spacers stood facing her. Ears were back. _The Pride_’s crew gained their feet, Haral foremost, ears laid back and grinning. Khym levered himself to his feet with Tirun holding fast to his right arm and Hilfy locked to the other side. The last sounds of combat died inside the bar. A last glass broke.
“Pyanfar Chanur,” a broadnosed hani said in stark, disapproving tones.
“Tell it to your captain,” said Pyanfar. “Tell it proper. He’s my husband. You hear? _Na_ Khym _nef_ Mahn. Hear me?”
Ears flicked. Eyes showed whites. The news had not gotten this far out, what lunacy she had done. Now it did. “Sure,” a younger hani said, backing up. “Sure, captain.”
And Chur, at her back: “Captain — we’d better get out of here.”
She heard the sirens. She looked about past the melting crowd, who sought other bars. Trampled bodies stirred within the doorway.
There were cars coming up the dock, with the white strobe flash of Security.
Chapter Two
The door hissed back and revealed two guards, which at Meetpoint might have been any oxy-breathing kind but stsho, considering the stsho’s congenital distrust of violence. They hired all their security. Fortunately for the peace at present, these were both mahendo’sat.
Pyanfar stopped in her pacing of the narrow room — _waiting area_, they had called it: stsho euphemism. Other species had other names for such small rooms with doorlocks facing outward. “Where’s my crew?” she spat at the mahendo’sat forthwith, ears flattened despite herself. “Gods rot it, where are they?”
“Director wants,” one said, standing aside from the door. “You come now, hani captain.”
She pulled in her claws and came, since something finally seemed in movement, and since neither of the two mahendo’sat were armed with more than nature gave them and showed no desire for confrontation. They would not talk, not this pair; not threaten or swerve from duty: mahendo’sat at punctilious, honest best.
“Here,” was their only other word, at a lift door some distance through the maze.
More traveling. The lift went a long zigzag distance through Meetpoint’s bowels, and let them out again in white, pastel-decorated halls. Lights obtruded here and there in seeming random — stsho, this section, not making apology to other species’ tastes, all pastels and opal colors, vast spaces, odd-angled panels riddled with random holes and alcoves. The tall black-furred, black-kilted mahen guards and the splash of her own scarlet trousers and red-gold hide were equally alien here.
A last door, a last hallway of twisting plasti-form shapes. She flicked her ears so that the rings chimed, flexed her claws with one deep breath as if she contemplated a leap from some height, and let herself be shown into a pearl-toned hall, a splendor of bizarre walls and white-upholstered depressions in the level, gleaming floor. One gossamer-clad stsho stood to meet them, recorder in hand. Another sat serenely important in the central bowl. _Gtst_ –(stsho had three sexes at one time, and neither he, she, nor it was really adequate) _gtst_ was ornamented in subtlest colors ranging into hues invisible to hani eyes, but detectible at the verges, whites with low violet shimmerings on the folds. _Gtst_ tattooings were equally illusory on _gtst_ naturally pearly skin, and shaded off into green and violets. Pearl-toned plumes nodded from augmented brows, shading moonstone eyes. The small mouth was clamped in disapproving straightness and nostrils flared in busy alternation.
Pyanfar bowed before this elegance, once and shortly. The stsho waved a languid hand and the servant-translator, it must be, came and stood near, gist own robes floating free on invisible breezes — stsho-silk and expensive.
“Ndisthe,” Pyanfar said, “sstissei asem sisth an zis–” with the right amount of respect, she reckoned. Feathery eyebrows fluttered. The assistant clutched _gtst_ recorder and drew back in indecision.
“_Shiss_.” The Director motioned with one elegant jeweled hand. The translator stopped in _gtst_ retreat. “Shiss. Os histhe Chanur nos schensi noss’ spitense sthshosi chisemsthi.”
“Far from fluent,” Pyanfar agreed.
The Director drew breath. _Gtst_ plumes all nodded in profound agitation. “Sto shisis ho weisse gti nurussthe din?”
“Did you know–” The translator flung gtstself into belated action. “–the riot in the market took four hours to stop?”
“–ni shi canth-men horshti nin.”
“–Forty-five individuals are treated in infirmary-“
Pyanfar kept her ears erect, her expression sympathetic.
“Ni hoi shisisi ma gnisthe.”
“–and extensive pilferage has taken place.”
“I do share,” said Pyanfar, drawing down her mouth in yet more distress, “your outrage at this disregard for stsho authority. My crew likewise suffered from this kifish banditry.”
That got rendered, with much fluttering of hands.
“Shossmeinn ti szosthenshi hos! Ti _mahen-thesai_ cisfe llyesthe to mistheth hos!”
“–You and your mahendo’sat co-conspirators have wreaked havoc–“
“Spithi no hasse cifise _sif_ nan hos!”
“–involved the kif–“
“Shossei onniste stshoni no misthi _th’sa_ has lies nan _shi_ math!”
“–A tc’a ship has undocked and fled during the riot. Doubtless the chi are disturbed–“
“Ha nos thei no lien llche _knnni_ na slastheni hos!”
“–Who knows but what this may also agitate the knnn?”
“Nan nos misthei hoisthe ifsthen noni ellyes-theme to Nifenne hassthe shasth!”
“–You and your crew within three hours of docking have created havoc with every species of the Compact!”
Pyanfar set her hands at her belt and lowered her ears deliberately. “As well say all victims of crime are guilty of incitement! Is this a new philosophy?”
A long silence once that was translated. Then:
“–I am put in mind of papers lately recovered, hani captain. I am in mind of heavy fines and penalties. Who will recompense our market? Who will see to our damages?”
“It’s true,” Pyanfar said with a direct, baleful stare. “Who dares charge the kif — excepting hani. Excepting _us_, esteemed Director. Tell me, what would happen without hani traffic here? Without mahendo’sat? How would the kif behave at Meetpoint then? Not simple pilferage, I’ll warrant!”
Plumes fluttered. Round eyes stared, dark centered. “–You make threats without teeth. The _han_ does not bend at your breath. Less so the mahendo’sat.”
“Neither will the _han_ look with favor on a hani ship beset, on a hani captain detained — I omit mention of the locked door!”
“–Have you such confidence you will relate to the _han_ how a Chanur captain suffered such embarrassment? I have heard otherwise. I have heard Chanur’s affairs are less than stable with the _han_ in these days.”
Pyanfar drew a long, long breath, wrinkling up her nose so that the translator drew back a pace. “There is no profit in such a wager, esteemed Director.”
“-What profit to any dealing with Chanur? We restore your papers and see how you repay us. Where are our damages? Where will you obtain the funds, who claim to be a terror to the kif? We fine you. You dare take nothing from them.”
“They by the gods steal nothing from _us_ except where we have relied on stsho authority.”
The moonstone eyes acquired wider, darker centers. “–You have brought a male of your kind here. I hesitate to breach this delicacy, but it is well known that this gender of your species is unstable. This surely contributed–“
“This is a hani affair.”
“–Other hani find the state of affairs on your ship disturbing and improper.”
“A hani matter.”
“–A deputy of the _han_ has shown concern. The deputy has assured me that this is not new policy, that the _han_ deplores this action–“
“It’s none of the deputy’s gods-rotted business. Or anyone else’s. Let’s stay to the issue of safety on the docks.”
“–Hani have not found it wise to bring their males into foreign contacts, for which they are naturally unsuited and unprepared. Other hani are shocked at your provocation.”
“The docks, esteemed director. And public safety.”
“–You have violated law. You have brought this person–“
“A member of my crew.”
“–This person has a license?”
“He’s got a temporary. All in order. Ask your own security.”
“–A permit granted at Gaohn station. By a Chanur ally, doubtless under pressure. He is here without permissions–“
“_Since when_ does Compact law require permissions for listed crew?”
“–Since when does listed crew take liberty during unloading and visit bars?”
“This is my ship and my affair!”
“–It became a stsho affair.”
“Indeed it did! And any other question is utter persiflage. Let us stay to the issue: a kif attack on personnel of my ship; _on personnel of my ship_, who relied on the security assured by stsho law and custom. We have suffered outrage; _I_ have suffered personal outrage in being detained for hours while kif assassins doubtless do as they please on the docks, to the hazard of life and property, some of which is _mine_ — and who guarantees the safety of my goods waiting loading, when we are the victims of this outrage? I hold the station responsible. Where are my crew, esteemed Director? And who pays the indemnities we’re due?”
This was perhaps too much. The translator wrung gist hands and stammered on the words, bowed like a reed in the wind on receiving the reply.
“–Why not ask the mahendo’sat you conferred with?”
Pyanfar’s ears went tight against her skull. She brought them up with utmost effort, smoothed her nose and assumed a bland expression. “Would the director mean perhaps the mahendo’sat whose registry board malfunctioned in this well-ordered station?”
Another exchange. The translator’s skin lost its pearly sheen and went dead white. “–The director says _gtst_ knows about this board. A subordinate has been disapproved in this malfunction.”
“It would be impolite to suggest higher connections. It would be stupid to doubt them.”
The translator made several gasps for air and performed, with further hand-wringing. “–The subordinate in question had no inkling of higher complicities, such as you and your co-conspirators arranged. This mahen ship has elected departure during the disturbance. The disturbance reached also to the methane-breathers. The director asks — are you aware of this? Are you aware of hazards with tc’a and chi?”
“Not my affair. Absolutely not my affair.”
“–The director asks — do you want the merchandise this person left?”
Pyanfar took in her breath, feeling an impact in the gut.
“–It is,” the translator rendered the next remark, “perishable.”
“I take it then station will deliver this merchandise . . . recognizing its obligation.”
“–There are entanglements. There is, for instance, the question of our damages. This shipment is impounded.”
“_I refuse to be held to account for thieving kif!_ Take it up with the mahendo’sat you dealt with!”
“I cannot translate this,” the translator said. _Gtst_ eyes were round. “I beg the esteemed hani captain–“
“Tell _gtst_ if I behaved as the kif did _gtst_ would not be speaking to me about damages.”
“_Ashosh!_” the Director said: the translator turned and folded _gtst_ hands on _gtst_ breast, lisped in softest tones, turned with moonlike eyes at widest.
“–We will speak of damages later. Now this merchandise, this — _perishable merchandise_.”
Pyanfar set her hands within her belt, stood with feet set. “In the estimable Director’s personal keeping, I trust.”
“–Four canisters. Am I a menial, to keep such goods personally?”
“Gods rot it-” She amended that, flicking up her ears, trying for a quieter tone. “Considering they are perishable, I trust there is some care being taken.”
The translator relayed it. The Director waved a negligent hand. _Gtst_ eyes were unblinking, hard. “–Customs matters. Unfortunately the consignor in his haste for departure left papers in disarray, lacking official stamps. Have you suggestions, hani captain, that would prevent this property being sold at public auction? There would, I am certain, be interested bidders — some very rich. Some with backers. Unless the esteemed Chanur captain takes personal responsibility.”
A blackness closed about the edges of the room, on everything but the graceful nodding stsho.
“–Also,” the stsho continued, “the matter of papers lately cleared. This station is dismayed . . . utterly dismayed at the betrayal of its trust. I am personally distressed.”
“Let’s talk,” Pyanfar said, “about things good merchants like us both understand. Like fair trade. Like _deal_. Like I take my small difficulty out of Meetpoint within a few hours after getting my cargo in order, and I take it elsewhere without a word to anyone about bribes and mahendo’sat. You want to talk trouble, esteemed Director? You want to talk kif trouble, and word of this getting back to your upper echelons? Or do you want to talk about the merchandise, and finding my crew, and letting me take this off your hands — _with_ my permits in order — before it gets more expensive for your station than it already is?”
The translator winced, turned and began to render it in one hand-waving spate.
“Ashosh!” the Director said; and other things. A flush came and went over gist skin, mottlings of nacre. The nostrils flared in rapid unison. “Chanur sosshis na thosthsi cnisste znei ctehtsi canth hos.”
Another flinch from the translator, a rounding of round shoulders as _gtst_ turned.
“Tell _gtst_,” Pyanfar said without waiting, “_gtst_ is in personal danger. From the kif, of course. _Say it!_”
It was rendered. The Director’s skin went white. “–Unacceptable. There is a debt which in your doubtless adequate if unimaginative perception you must acknowledge was incurred by your crew, to have released a member of your species widely acknowledged to be unstable–“
“A member of my crew and my mate, you fluttering bastard!”
Nostrils flared. “–The debt stands. _No_ agreement embraced such damages.”
She drew her own breaths with difficulty, trying to think, hearing words that sent small fine tendrils into quite different territory. _Goldtooth, blast you– There was a setup, all the way_….
And her ears sank, so that the translator edged back a pace, _gtst_ eyes wide and showing the whites about the moonstone round of them. The director’s plumes fluttered, hands moved nervously.
“I make you a deal,” she said. “We get that cargo, we get the money for you.”
“–You will sign affidavits of responsibility.”
“Don’t push it, stsho.”
“–Your visa is canceled,” the answer came back. “And the visas of your crew and this male hani, under whatever pretext you secured civilized permits for this unstable person. You will forfeit your permission to enter our docks and forfeit any Chanur ship’s clearance to dock here until this debt is paid!”
“And this cargo?”
“Do you doubt us? I make you a gift of it. In appreciation for your own damages, of course.”
Pyanfar bowed. _Gtst_ waved a hand at _gtst_ attendant.
“Sthes!”
It was not at all the courteous farewell.
* * *
More corridors. There was an affidavit to be signed, the terms of which set a cold misery at her stomach. She looked up from the counter and the stsho clerk backed all the way around the desk dropping papers as _gtst_ went.
“That do it?” she asked with, she thought, remarkable calm.
The stsho babbled, refusing to come closer.
“–_Gtst_ say got more,” one of the guards translated. She had heard that much. She wrinkled her nose and the stsho dropped more papers, gathered them, gave them to the mahendo’sat to avoid bringing _gtst_ self closer.
“Customs release, hani captain. All fine you sign this.”
“Wait, hani captain. Must secure permission to leave.”
She drew small even breaths, signed this, signed that, kept directing no more than baleful stares at the stsho official and _gtst_ fluttering aides.
At last: “No more forms?”
“No, hani captain. All got.”
“Crew,” she demanded, for the third time and this time with a broad, broad smile.
“Ship, hani captain; they long time got release. Same got release Ayhar clan. We go you ship now.”
“Huh,” she said then, and took the open door, stalked out, with her mahen escort to key the lift for her.
No other word. None seemed apt. She stared at the uninteresting pearl-gray of the lift doors while the lift zigged and zagged its way through Meetpoint station.
She thought, during that interval. Thought very dark wordless thoughts that involved stsho hides and a certain mahe’s neck, until the lift stopped and opened its doors on the cold air and noise of dockside.
She oriented herself with a quick glance at the nearest registry board, a black, green-lit square above the number 14 berth: _Assustsi_. She drew a cold, wide-nostriled breath of the dockside taint-oil and coolants, cargo and food-smells and all the mongrel effluvium of Meet-point, like and unlike every other station of the Compact.
Leftward was _Vigilance’s_ berth, number 18. Ehrran clan ship. Doubtless someone of the deputy’s staff was nosedeep in reports, writing it all up for the _han_ in the worst possible light. Gods knew what that white-skinned bastard had spilled to willing ears.
Or what Ayhar had had to say, to save its own skin. Gods-be-bound that _Prosperity_ and Ayhar would never claim responsibility, financial or otherwise.
Chanur’s enemies in council would pounce on it, first chance.
She started walking, constantly aware of the two dark shadows that stalked behind her, but ignoring them. Gantries towered and tilted in the curved perspectives of the station wheel. The dock unfurled down off the curtaining horizon as she walked, and she made out _The Pride_’s berth, counting down from fourteen to six.
There should have been canisters outside _The Pride_’s berth. She made out none, and thought further dark thoughts, still not looking back.
She passed berth 10, which had been _Mahijiru_. That berth was sealed completely, the gantry drawn back with its lines in store-position. Number ten board remained dark, not listing the name or registry of the outbound ship.
Malfunction. Indeed, malfunction.
Connivances, mahendo’sat with stsho-with stsho who ran before every wind that blew — and now, with _Mahijiru_ on the run and Goldtooth unable to break the director’s neck in person — was the prevailing wind kif-tainted?
It rankled, gods, it rankled, that stsho had dared confront her, stsho, that she could break with one swipe of her arm. And dared not. That was the crux of it. Stsho showed one face to the kif, one to the mahendo’sat-yet a third to hani: _non-spacing_, stsho law had regarded hani till a century ago, because (though hani preferred not to recall the fact) it was the mahendo’sat had given hani ships. _An artificially accelerated culture_. Hani were still banned from stsho space, on their very border. Trade was at Meetpoint only, or inside non-stsho space.
And hani in their good nature were patient with these fluttering dilettantes who bought and sold-everything. They backed Chanur to the wall. It was stsho doing. Everything. And the _han_ being political, and the _han_ being shortsighted, and most of all because she was a fool who expected otherwise, Chanur was in trouble at home. Of course the stsho knew it, sure as birds knew carrion-had gotten news even a hani ship like Prosperity had not; and threw it up in her face at first chance.
Gods, that the _han_ fed stsho bigotry and wielded it for a weapon–
_A deputy of the _han_ has shown concern_–
Or — a cold, fully sensible fear got past the outrage: the stsho had independent sources and played everyone for a fool — Goldtooth, the _han_, even the kif. They were capable of that. Thoroughgoing xenophobes and slippery as oiled glass. Lately the stsho had a new xenophobia to keep them busy. They had humankind to worry about, with concerns and motives world-bound hani had no least idea of.
_Goldtooth, rot you, how much does _gtst_ know? How much the bribe? Nothing holds a stsho that’s already paid_.
_Nothing persuades one against _gtst_ own profit_.
She walked past nine, eight, seven. She saw no activity outside _The Pride_. No sign of any loaders, the cargo ramp withdrawn, the canisters missing. The cans were inside, she hoped. She kept alert for any sight of kif on the docks and found none. The few passersby with business on the dock were mostly stsho, a few mahendo’sat, no hani. If they noticed the rare spectacle of a hani captain being trailed by two hulking mahendo’sat station guards, they gave no sign of it. This was Meetpoint, after all, where folk minded their business, knowing well how trouble tended to travel down line of sight. At the upward-curved limit of the horizon, only its bottom third visible, the great seal of the market zone was still shut, on gods knew what kind of damage. Money was being lost while that market was out of action. Hourly the tab went up.
_The Pride_’s ramp access gaped ahead, berth six. She ignored her escort, not even looking back at them as she took out the pocket com. “Haral. I’m coming in.”
No answer.
“Haral.” She walked up the rampway into the chill, yellow-lighted access, hearing no footsteps behind — walked warily, thinking of kif ambush even here. Ambush and stsho treacheries.
She met a shut hatch beyond the bend of the tube. She had expected that, and hit the bar of the com unit in the accessway. “Haral. Haral, gods rot it, it’s Pyanfar. Open up.”
The hatch shot open at once, with a waft of warmer, familiar air. Tirun was there; and Chur, appearing armed from the lower-deck ops room down the corridor. Both showed the plasmed seams of recent wounds on their red-brown hides, Chur with a stripe of plasm visible across the leather of her nose, a painful kind of cut.
“Huh.” She walked in past the lock. “Close that. Everyone aboard?”
“All accounted for, nothing serious.”
She came to a stop and gave Tirun one long stare. “Nothing serious. _Gods and thunders_, cousin!”
Tirun’s ears fell. “On our side,” Tirun said.
“Huh.” She turned and stalked for the lift, with their company as the inner lock hissed shut at her back. “Where’s Khym?”
“_Na_ Khym’s up in his quarters.”
“Good.” She shoved that distress to the hindmost, swung about in the lift as they got in with her. Chur anticipated her reach for the button, tucked her arm behind her again in haste when she had pushed it. Pyanfar glared at her. “What else is wrong? What’s Haral doing up there?”
“Got a lot of messages in,” said Tirun. “Still coming. Board’s jammed.”
“Huh.” The lift slammed upward. Pyanfar studied the door in front of her till it opened and spat them out on main, then strode for the bridge with a cousin on either side. “Who’s called in?”
“Stsho, mostly,” Chur said. “One message from _Ayhar’s Prosperity_. Banny Ayhar requests conference at soonest.”
“And some mahen nonsense,” said Tirun. “No ship code.”
She gave Tirun a second hard look, caught the lowered ears, the tension round the nose. She snorted, walked on into the bridge where Haral stood to meet her, where Hilfy got up from com– _o gods, Hilfy_ –with her side patched in bandages. Geran with her right ear plasmed along a rip.
“You all right?” Haral asked. “We got a message from stsho central . . . said you were coming.”
“How courteous of them. They give you any trouble?”
“Kept us locked up filling out forms,” said Geran. “Sent us out about an hour ago.”
“Huh.” She sat down in her own place, at _The Pride_’s controls, swung the chair about in its pit to look at the solemn row of faces. Hilfy, her niece, young and white about the eyes just now. Haral and Tirun, tall, wide shouldered, daughters of an elder Chanur cousin; Geran and Chur, wiry and deft, daughters to Jofan Chanur, her third cousins. A row of earnest, sober stares. She gazed last and steadily at her brother Kohan’s favorite daughter, at Hilfy Chanur _par_ Faha with a scratch down her comely nose and her ears, gods forfend — plasm on a nick in the left one. Heir to Chanur’s mercantile operations, while-and-likely-after Kohan Chanur ruled at home. On the last edge of adolescence. Fearfully proud. Once and silently she wished Hilfy safe at home, but she did not say that. Home was a long, long way away and Chanur interests were at stake.
“I want a watch on com,” she said. “I want scan set to alarm if something comes in, if something budges from this station. I don’t care what it is. I want to know.”
“Aye,” said Haral.
“Tally’s back.”
Ears went up. Eyes went wide. Hilfy sat down.
“Good gods,” Chur said.
“_Mahijiru_’s here. Was here. Goldtooth’s cut loose and run.” There were other things to break to them, like being backed into agreements, like a fool of an aging captain who had believed for one moment in a way out of what she had gotten Chanur into, a way into human trade and all it meant. “He was going to slip us a canister with a special cargo. Don’t blame me–” She waved a hand. “Goldtooth’s originality, gods help us. But the stsho are playing power games. That can’s tied up in red tape in customs. I _think_ I’ve got it fixed.”
Chur and Tirun sank into seats where they were, ears back.
“Sorry,” Pyanfar said tautly. “_Sorry_, cousins.”
“Got a chance?” Haral asked. Meaning lost trade. Lost chances. A whole variety of things, in loyalty too old to be completely blind. “The mahendo’sat’ve come through?”
“Don’t know. They just headed out and left us the package. There’s worse news. The kif are onto it.”
“Gods.” Geran leaned onto the back of Chur’s couch. “And the bar fight–“
“Set up. Absolutely it was a set-up.” She recalled with chagrin the kif watcher while she had been on the docks. “Maximum confusion. Goldtooth kited out. Under what circumstances- gods know. Messages were going up and down that dock like chi in a fire drill. Maybe it was a kifish smash-and-grab. Maybe not. Likely it was targeted at the stsho. They’ve sure got the pressure on.”
“The kif know about that can?” Tirun asked.
“Gods-rotted mahe shoved a shipment out in the middle of bolting dock like their tail was afire — what else could they guess? Gods know who’s been bribed. Gods know how long the bribes will hold. –Khym all right, is he?”
Silence for a moment. Haral shrugged uncomfortably. “Guess he is,” Haral said.
“He have anything to say?”
“Not much.”
“Huh.”
“Said he’d be in his quarters.”
“Fine.” She bit it off. They were blood kin, she and the crew. All Chanur. All with the same at stake, excepting Khym, Mahn-clan, male, past his prime and his reason for living and belonging anywhere. Her brother Kohan Chanur relied on her, back home. Meetpoint in ruins. Kif on the loose. Stsho facing her down. _The Pride_ nose-deep in it again. She had gone softheaded as well as softhearted. Hani everywhere muttered to that effect. Only her long-suffering crew would not say it, even yet. And Hilfy, of course Hilfy. Worship shone undimmed in those young eyes.
_Fool kid_, she thought. And to the crew at large: “What happened with our cargo out there?”
“Cans on the dock were gone when we got back,” Tirun said. “We filed a theft report with station. Cans still inside are safe.”
“Kif are _fast_. Power her up. We go on using station’s hookups, but we keep our own online. Look sharp, hear? Don’t ask me how long this goes on. I don’t know. Contact customs. I want to know where that incoming shipment is.”
No one mentioned costs or what the stsho might do. No one mentioned licenses, and the docking rights and routes it had cost too much to regain. No one mentioned Khym, a private folly that had long since become a public one. Not a backward look. No protests. Just a quiet moving toward stations, the whine of chairs receiving bodies all about her as she powered her own chair about and keyed in the old com messages.
From a mahendo’sat, unidentified: “I leave paperwork, leave cans same station office. Good voyage. Got go quick. Same you.”
She drew one long, quivering breath.
From _Ayhar’s Prosperity_: “Banafy Ayhar to Pyanfar Chanur: We have a matter between us. I suggest we keep it private. I suggest you bring your witnesses to my deck. Expecting immediate reply.”
“In a mahen hell.”
“Captain?”
She restrained herself from violence to the board. “Reply to Ayhar: Tell it to the kif.”
“Captain–“
“_Send it._”
Geran ducked her head and bent to the keys. Other messages crawled past, mostly stsho: a dozen threats of lawsuit from irate bazaar merchants; two scurrilous letters from stsho vessels in port, impugning Chanur sanity; others were rambling. Four were anonymous congratulations in mahen pidgin, some sounding inebriate, one babbling obscure mahen religious slogans and offering support.
From _Vigilance_, not a word.
“Tirun,” said Chur behind her. “Got that customs contact.” And a moment later:
“Captain,” Tirun said. “Got the customs chief on. Claims the papers aren’t in order on that shipment.”
She spun the chair about. “The Director cleared that! Tell _gtst_ so.”
“The customs chief says you have to come and sign.”
“_I signed that god-rotted thing!_”
Tirun relayed as much, politely phrased. Amber eyes lifted. Ears flicked. “_Gtst_ says that was the customs release. Now they want a waiver against claims by the consignor–“
She punched it in on her own com. “This is Pyanfar Chanur. If I come over there I bring my whole ship’s company. Hear? And you can explain _that_ to the Director, you flat-bottomed bureaucrat!”
Silence from the other end.
She broke the contact. “Tirun: you and Geran get across that dock to that office and watch those cans all the way.”
“Kif,” Tirun said.
“Gods-rotted right the kif. They’ve got their bluff in on the stsho.”
“Customs is back on,” Chur said. “Give it to five.” She punched it in. “Well?”
“I have schedule, hani.”
“You just put us at the head of it. Hear? I’m sending my own security. I’ve been robbed once at this forsaken station. Not again!”
She broke the connection, leaned back and exhaled a long, long breath, staring at Tirun. “Get!”
“Aye!” Tirun and Geran scrambled up and headed for the door.
“_Arm and take a pocket com!_” she shouted after them. “And be gods-rotted discreet about it!” She spun the chair left to Haral. “I want that forward hold warmed and pressurized.”
“How long’s Tully been in there?” Hilfy asked.
Pyanfar shot a glance at the chronometer overhead. “Figure six hours. At least.”
“How good’s that lifesupport?”
“The way Goldtooth’s set up the rest of this mess — who knows?” She shoved her chair around and keyed up comp, hunting cargo lists, mass records. “This list updated?”
“No,” Hilfy said.
“I _need_ that list, gods rot it, niece.” “I’m on it,” Chur said, “Scan to your number four, captain.”
She smoothed her nose with an effort, twitched her ears and heard the jingling of the several rings. Experience, they meant. Wealth. Successful voyages. She sat and watched for anything untoward, monitoring station corn, scan, every pulse and breath of information Meetpoint central let them have. Their own systems showed live in a series of amber lights.
“Pressure’s coming up,” Haral said.
“Estimate of mass loss to three, captain.”
She shunted it to Records. Comp brought up the revision. “Fine that down, Chur. Navcomp’s taking main five.” “You’ve got them.”
Nav’s five segments unified themselves in comp and shunted other programs to different banks: command screens acquired nav’s displays. Maing Tol. From Meetpoint that was Urtur to Kita Point to Maing Tol at best.
“We can’t singlejump.” she said at last. “Not with the cargo we’ve still got, not anything like it.”
Silence all round. “Aye,” –finally, from Haral.
She sat staring at the graphs. “Aunt,” Hilfy murmured, and turned her chair with a wide-eyed look and the comset pressed in her ear. “Aunt, it’s Geran. Says customs has those cans loaded and out already; they have a bunch of mahen security on it, too.”
“Good gods. Something’s going right. How long?”
“How long?” Hilfy relayed; and her eyes flickered as she listened. “They’re coming now.”
“How’s that pressure?”
“Pressure’s good,” Haral said.
“Captain–” Chur. “Someone’s down at the access com — It’s Banny Ayhar, captain. She wants to talk to you.”
“Gods rot!” She punched in all-ship com. “Ayhar, get clear, hear me!”
“_Who is this?_”
“Pyanfar Chanur, rot your eyes, and clear my dock! There’s an emergency in progress.”
“What emergency? Chanur, I’m not in a mood for more connivances. You hear me, Chanur–“
“I’ve got no time for this.” She spun the chair about and left it. “Haral, stand by to open up that hold. And tell Ayhar get herself out of the way. Hilfy, Chur, come on.”
They heeled her down the corridor at an almost run, into the lift for downdecks. She hit the button.
Com snapped from the panel above the lift controls, at the first lurch of the car down. “Captain.” Haral’s voice. “Geran’s on. They’ve got kif out there.”
She put a claw in the slot before the lift had a chance to pass the next level and stopped the car right there, on a level with the airlock. “Hilfy!” she said in leaving, before Hilfy had a chance to follow her and Chur. “Go on below and get that bay opened up.”
“Aunt–” One youthful protest, hands lifted, before the door closed between.
They ran all-out, she and Chur, stopping only for the weapons-locker and the com-panel in the hall.
“Get that hatch open!” Pyanfar yelled at Haral, and headed for the lock.
Chapter Three
They hit the access tube running and came round the bend headon into hani coming up the accessway, a broad, scarred hani captain flanked by two senior crew.
Pyanfar evaded collision.
“Gods rot you–” Banny Ayhar yelled, and Chur cursed; there was the thump of impact.
“Gods rot you!” Pyanfar yelled, whirling about, outraged, as Chur recovered from her stagger and spun about at her side. “I told you clear my dock!”
“What’s it take to bring Chanur to its senses?” Banny Ayhar yelled. “When’s it stop, hey? — You listen to me, _ker_ Pyanfar! I’ve had enough being put off–“
“We’ve got _kif_ after my crew, blast your eyes.”
“_Chanur!_”
She spun and gathered Chur and ran, with the thump of running Ayhar at their heels at least as far as the passageway’s exit onto the downward ramp.
“_Cha-nur!_” Banny Ayhar roared at her back, waking echoes off the docks; but Pyanfar never stopped, down the rampway and past the frozen cargo ramp and the gantry that hel$I _The Pride_’s skein of station-links.
“_Chanur._” Far behind them.
There was a curious absence of traffic on the chill, echoing docks, and that silence itself was a warning. Trouble was in sight even from here, around a big can-loader grinding its slow way beside the ship accesses four berths distant.
An odd crowd accompanied it — a half dozen mahendo’sat in station-guard black strode along beside. Two red-pelted hani in faded blue breeches rode the flatbed with the tall white cans, while a dozen black-robed kif stalked along in a tight knot; and if any stsho customs officer was involved at all gist was either barriered inside the cab or fled for safety.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said to Chur — no encouragement needed there. Chur kept beside her as they crossed the space at a deliberate jog, not out to provoke trouble, not slow to meet it either. Her hand was in her spacious pocket, clenched about the butt of the gun she tried to keep still and out of sight, and her eyes were constantly on that knot of kif, alert for anything kif-shaped that might show itself from ambushes among the maze of gantries and dock-side clutter to the right and the office doors to the left.
“Hai,” she yelled with great joviality, when they were a single berth apart. “Hai, you kif bastards, about time you came out to say hello.”
The kif had seen them coming too. Their dozen or so scattered instantly all about the moving can-carrier, some of them screened by it. But from the carrier’s broad bed, from beside the four huge cans, several mahen guards dropped down to stand at those kif’s backs.
“Good to see you,” Pyanfar gibed, halting at a comfortable distance. Kifish faces were fixed on her in starkest unfriendliness. “I was worried. I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“Fool,” one hissed.
She grinned, her hand still in her pocket, her ears up, her eyes taking in all the kif. Two moved, beyond the moving can-carrier, and she shifted to keep them in sight. The smell of them reached her. Their dry-paper scent offended her nostrils with old memories. The long-snouted faces peering from within the hooded robes, the dark-gray hairless skin with its papery wrinkles, the small, red-rimmed eyes — set the hair bristling on her back. “Do something,” she wished them. “Foot-lickers. Riffraff. Petty thieves. Did Akkukkakk turn you out? Or is he anywhere these days?”
Kifish faces were hard to read. If that reference to a vanished leader got to them, nothing showed. Only one hooded face lifted, black snout atwitch, and stared at her with directness quite unlike the usual kifish slink. “He is no longer a factor,” that one said, while the carrier groaned past under its load of canisters and took itself from between them and four more kif.
More soft impacts hit the deck beside her. From the tail of her eye she saw a red-gold blur. Tirun and Geran had dropped off the flatbed rear. They took up a position at her left as Chur held the right.
“Get back,” she said without looking around at her two reinforcements. “Go on with the carrier. Hilfy’s in lower ops. Get that cargo inside.” The mahen station guards had moved warily into better position, several dark shadows at the peripheries of her vision, two of them remaining in front of her and behind the kif.
“You carry weapons,” that foremost kif observed, not in the pidgin even the cleverest of mahe used. This kif had fluency in the hani tongue, spoke with nuances — _dishonorable conceaied weapons_, the word meant. “You have difficulties of all kinds. We know, Pyanfar Chanur. We know what you are transporting. We know from whom it comes. We understand your delicate domestic situation, and we know you now possess something that interests us. We make you an offer. I am very rich. I might buy you — absolution from your past misjudgments. Will you risk your ship? For I tell you that ship will be at risk — for the sake of a mahendo’sat who is lost in any case.”
She heard the carrier growling its way out of the arena, out of immediate danger. Chur had stayed at her side. So had the six mahendo’sat station guards. “What’s your name, kif?”
“Sikkukkut-an’nikktukktin. Sikkukkut to curious hani. You see I’ve studied you.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
“The public dock is no place to conduct delicate business. And there are specific offers I would make you.”
“Of course.”
“_Profitable_ offers. I would invite you to my ship. Would you accept?”
“Hardly.”
“Then I should come to yours.” The kif Sikkukkut spread his arms within the cloak, a billowing of black-gray that showed a gleam of gold. “Unarmed, of course.”
“Sorry. No invitation.”
The kif lowered his arms. Red-rimmed eyes stared at her with liquid thought. “You are discourteous.”
“Selective.”
The long gray snout acquired a v-form of wrinkles above the nostril slits, a chain slowly building, as at some faint, unpleasant scent. “Afraid of witnesses?”
“No. Just selective.”
“Most unwise, Pyanfar Chanur. You are losing what could save you . . . here and at home. A hani ship here has already witnessed — compromising things. Do I hazard a guess what will become of Kohan Chanur — of all that Chanur — precariously — is, if anything should befall _The Pride_? Kohan Chanur will perish. The name will have never been; the estates will be partitioned, the ships recalled to those who will then take possession of Chanur goods. Oh, you have been imprudent, _ker_ Pyanfar. Everyone knows that. This latest affair will crush you. And whom have you to thank, but the mahendo’sat, but maneuverings and machinations in which hani are not counted important enough to consult?”
The transport’s whining was in the distance now. She heard another sound, the hollow escaping-steam noise of the cargo hatch opening up, the whine of a conveyer moving to position and meshing; old sounds, familiar sounds: she knew every tick and clank for what they were. “What maneuverings among kif?” she asked the gray thief. “What machinations — that would interest me, I wonder.”
“More than bears discussion here, _ker_ Pyanfar. But things in which a hani in such danger as you are would be interested. In which you may — greatly — be interested, when the news of Meetpoint gets to the _han_. As it surely will. Remember me. Among kif — I am one who might be disposed toward you, not against. Sikkukkut of _Harukk_, at your service.”
“You set us up, you bastard.”
The long snout twitched and acquired new wrinkles in its papery gray hide. Perhaps kif smiled. This one drew a hand from beneath its robe and she stepped back a pace, the hand on the gun in her pocket angling the gun up all at once to fire.
It offered her a bit of gold in its gray, knobbed claws. She stared at it with her finger tight on the trigger.
“A message,” it said, “For your — cargo. Give it to him.”
“Probably has plague.”
“I assure you not. I handle it. See?”
“Something hani-specific, I’m sure.”
“It would be a mistake not to know what it is. Trust me, ker Pyanfar.”
It was dangerous to thwart a kif in any whim. She saw this one’s pique, the elegant turn of wrist that held the object — it was a small gold ring — before her.
She snatched it, the circlet caught between her claws.
“Mistrustful,” said Sikkukkut.
Pyanfar backed a pace. “Chur,” she said, and with a back-canted ear heard the whisper of Chur’s move back.
Sikkukkut held up his thin, soot-gray palms in token of non-combatancy. His long snout tucked under. The red-rimmed eyes looked lambent fire at her.
“I will see you again,” Sikkukkut said. “I will be patient with you, hani fool, in hopes you will not be forever a fool.”
She backed up as far as put all the mahen guards between herself and the kif, with Chur close by her. “Don’t turn your backs,” she advised the mahendo’sat.
“Got order,” said the mahe in charge. “You go ship, hani. These fine kif, they go other way.”
“There are illicit arms,” said another kif in coldest tones. “Ask this hani.”
“Ours legal,” said the mahe pointedly, who had heard, perhaps, too much of mahendo’sat involvement from this kif. The mahendo’sat stood rock firm: Pyanfar turned her shoulder, taking that chance they offered, collected Chur in haste and headed across the dock, all the while with a twitch between her shoulderblades.
“They’re headed off,” said Chur, who ventured a quick look over her shoulder. “Gods rot them.”
“Come on.” Pyanfar set herself to a jog, not quite a run, coming up to _The Pride_’s berth, to the whining noise of the cargo gear. The loader crane had a can suspended in midair, stalled, while three hani shouted and waved angry argument at her crew beside the machinery.
“Ayhar!” Pyanfar thundered. “Gods rot you, _out_.” She charged into the midst and shoved, hard, and Banny Ayhar backed up with round eyes and a stunned look on her broad, scarred face.
She knew what she had done. She stood there with the crane whining away with its burden in fixed position, with Tirun and Chur and Geran lined up beside her as the two Ayhar crew flanked their captain. Thoughts hurtled through her mind, the _han_, alliances, influences brought to bear.
“Apologies.” It choked her. “Apologies, Ayhar. And get off my dock. Hear?”
“You’re up to something, Pyanfar Chanur. You’ve got your nose in it for sure, conniving with the mahendo’sat, gods know what — I’m telling you, Chanur, Ayhar won’t put up with it. You know what it cost us? You know what your last lunatic foray cost us, while ships of the _han_ were banned at Meetpoint, while our docks at Gaohn were shot up and gods be feathered if that mahen indemnity covered it–“
“I’ll meet you at Anuurn. We’ll talk about this, Banny, over a cup or two.”
“A cup or two! Good gods, Chanur!”
“Geran, Tirun, get those cans moving.”
“Don’t you turn your back on me.”
“Ayhar, I haven’t time.”
“What’s the hurry?” A new ham voice, silken, from her side: Ayhar crew’s impudence, she thought, and turned on it with her mouth open and the beginnings of an oath.
Another captain stood there, her red-gold mane and beard in curling wisps of elegance; gold arm-band; gold belt; breeches of black silk unrelieved by any banding. Immune Clan color. Official of the _han_. “Rhif Ehrran,” that one named herself, “captain, _Ehrran’s Vigilance_. What’s the trouble, Chanur?”
Her heart began slow, painful beats. Blood climbed to her ears and sank toward her heart. “Private,” she said in a quiet, controlled tone. “You’ll excuse me, captain. I have an internal emergency.”
“I’m in port on other business,” the _han_ agent said. “But you’ve almost topped it, _ker_ Chanur. You mind telling me what’s going on?”
She could hand it all to the Ehrran, shove the whole thing over onto the _han_’s representative in port.
Give Tully to her. To this. Young, by the gods young, ears un-nicked, bestowed with half a dozen rings. And cold as they came. Gods-rotted walking recorder from one of the public service clans, immune to challenging and theoretically nonpartisan.
“I’m on my way home,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Ehrran’s nostrils widened and narrowed. “What did the kif give you, Chanur?”
A cold wind went down her back. Distantly she heard the crane whining away, lifting a can into place. “Dropped a ring,” she said, “in the riot. Kif returned it.” The lie disgusted her. So did the fear the Ehrran roused, and knew she roused. “This what the _han_’s got to? Inquisitions? Gathering bad eggs?”
It scored. Ehrran’s ears turned back, forward again. “You’ve about exited private territory, Chanur. You settle this mess. If there are repercussions with the stsho, _I’ll_ become involved. Hear me?”
“Clear.” Breath was difficult. “Now you mind if I see to my business, captain?”
“You know,” Ehrran said, “you’re in deep. Take my advice. Drop off your passenger when you get back to Anuurn.”
Her heart nearly stopped while Ehrran turned and walked away; but it was _Khym_ Ehrran had meant. She realized that in half a breath more, and outrage nearly choked her. She glared at Banny Ayhar, just glared, with the reproach due someone who dragged the like of Ehrran in on a private quarrel.
“Not my doing,” Ayhar said.
“In a mahen hell.”
“I can’t reason with you,” Ayhar said, flung up her hands and stalked off. Stopped again, to cast a look and a word back. “Time you got out of it, Pyanfar Chanur. Time to pass it on before you ruin that brother of yours for good.”
Pyanfar’s mouth dropped. Distracted as she was she simply stared as Ayhar spun on her heel a second time and stalked off along the dock with her two crewwomen; and then it was too late to have said anything without yelling it impotently at a retreating Ayhar back.
The first can boomed up the cargo ramp into the cradle; Tirun and Geran kicked their own balky Loader around with expert swiftness, raised the slot’s holding sling and snagged it into the moving ratchets that vanished into _The Pride_’s actinic-lighted hold. The can ascended the ramp, while Chur, beside the crane operator on the loader, shouted at the aggrieved mahe, urging her to speed.
“Chur!” Pyanfar yelled, headed for the ramp-way and the tube beyond. Chur left off and scrambled after, leaving the docksiders to their jobs. Pyanfar jogged the length of _The Pride_’s ramp and felt a stitch in her side as Chur came up beside her in the accessway.
A _han_ agent on their case.
A chance to get rid of Tully into the keeping of that same agent and she had turned it down.
Gods. O gods.
They scrambled through the lock, headed down the short corridor to the lift, inside. The door hissed shut as Pyanfar hit the controls to start the car down, rim-outward of _The Pride_’s passenger-ring.
“Got it?” Haral’s voice came to them by com.
“Gods know,” she said to the featureless com panel, forcing calm. “Keep an eye on those kif back there — hear me?”
“Looks as if the party’s broken up for good out there.”
“Huh.” It was a small favor. She did not believe it.
“Aye,” Haral agreed, and clicked out of contact. The lift slammed into the bottom of the rotation ring and took a sudden jolt afterward for the holds.
“Know which can?” Chur panted beside her, clinging to the rail.
“Gods, no. You think Goldtooth labeled the gods-rotted thing? Couldn’t use the small cans, no. Couldn’t consign it direct to us. Had to trust the stsho. Gods-rotted mahen lunatic.”
The lift accelerated full out, lurched to a second stop and opened its door on a floodlit empty cavern of tracks below the operations platform where they stood. Their breaths frosted instantly. Moisture in the hold’s lately acquired air formed a thin frost on all the waiting cans and the machinery. The cold of the deckplates burned bare feet. The gusting blasts of the ventilation system brought no appreciable relief to unprotected hani skin and nose linings.
“Hilfy?” Pyanfar shouted, leaning on the safety railing to look down into the dark. _Hilfy-Hilfy-Hilfy_ the echo came back in giant’s tones.
“Aunt!” A figure in a padded cold-suit crouched far below the operations scaffold, a glimmer of white in the shadow of the first can to reach its cradle at hold’s end. “Aunt, I can’t get this cursed lid off! It’s securitied!”
“Gods fry that bastard!” Pyanfar ignored the locker with the coldsuits and went thumping down the steps barefoot and barechested. The air burned her lungs, froze her ribs. She heard noise behind her, a locker-door rattle. “_Get those suits!_” she yelled at Chur, and her breath was white in the floodlight glare.
Another can locked through with a sibilance of pressurized air and a resounding impact with its receiving cradle as she came down beside the can-track rails that shone pewter-colored in the general dark. The incoming can rumbled past like a white plastic juggernaut and boomed into the cradle-lock as she arrived. Hilfy scrambled to the side of it and jerked the lever that secured the lid. Internal-conditions dials glowed bright and constant on the top-plate.
“Locked too,” Hilfy said in despair, rising, her voice muffled by the cold-mask she wore, overwhelmed by the crash of another arriving can headed up the outside ramp. “That Goldtooth give us any key-code?”
“Gods know. The stsho might have it.” Pyanfar shivered convulsively as Chur came pelting up with coldsuits and masks and thrust a set into her numb hands. She stared distractedly as the third can locked through, ignoring the coldsuit, thinking of stsho treachery the while the can rode the hydraulics down and jolted into the third cradle. She shouldered aside Hilfy’s move to check its lid and tried it herself. Locked too.
“Gods-rotted luck,” Pyanfar said, rising, fumbling the slot-apertured cold-mask into place with fingers that refused to set their claws. The pads of her feet felt the burn of the decking plates. She stared helplessly at Chur, who had gotten her own mask on and held out the cold suit she had dropped. “It has to be the last one, that’s all.”
“What if there _is_ a key?” Hilfy asked. Her teeth chattered fit to crack, despite the cold-suit. “And the stsho have got it.
“Number four’s coming in,” Chur yelled over the rising thunder of machinery, and the fourth can locked through and rumbled down the track toward them as they scrambled to meet it. Chur got to it first, crouched down and tugged fruitlessly at the lid. “It’s locked too.”
“_Gods and thunders!_” Pyanfar yanked her pistol from her pocket and fired past Chur into the lid mechanism, stalked down the row and fired at the next and the next and the next. Maintenance lights on the lids went out. The smoke of burned plastics curled up in the actinic light, mingling gray with their breaths. “Get torches if you have to! Get those lids off.”
“It’s coming!” Chur cried, tugging at the smoking lid, and Hilfy dived to help, past Pyanfar’s own numb-footed advance on the can.
It was fish, a flood of dried fish, that sent its stench into the supercooled air; the next one, dried fruit. The third–
“This is it,” said Chur, pawing past the cascade of stinking warm _shishu_ fruit, for a second white lid showed through the spilling cargo. She reached it on her knees and wrenched the lock lever down, tugged with all her might at the lid and tumbled back as it came free.
A form like some insect in its cell lifted a pale, breather-masked face in a cloud of steam as the inner air met outer. With a muffled cry Tully began to writhe outward, in a frosting stench of heat and human sweat that almost overcame the fish and fruit. Chur helped, kneeling — seized Tully’s white-shirted shoulders and dragged him free in a tumble and slide of fruit, in a cloud of breath and steam from his overheated body.
He gasped, struggled wild-eyed to his feet, hands flailing.
“Tully,” Pyanfar said-he was blinded by the lights, she thought; he looked half-drowned in the heat that narrow confinement had contained. “Tully, it’s us, it’s us, for the gods’ sake.”
“Pyanfar,” he cried and threw himself into her arms. “Pyanfar!” — losing breather-cylinder and hoses and stumbling through the stinking fruit in which he had slid outward. He pressed his steaming self against her, his heartbeat so violent she felt it through his ribs.
“Easy,” she said. Hunter instincts. Her heart tried to synch with his. “Careful, Tully.” She kept her ears up all the same, carefully disengaged his shaking arms and pushed him back. His eyes were wild with fear. “You safe. Hear? Safe, Tully. On _The Pride_.”
He babbled in his own tongue. Water poured from his eyes and froze on his face. “Got,” he said. “Got–” and abandoned her to dive back into the can, pawing amid the tangle of discarded breathing apparatus and trampled fruit, to stagger up again with a large packet in his grasp. He held it out to her, wobbling as she took it from his hands.
“Goldtooth,” he said, and something else that did not get past his chattering teeth.
“He’s going to freeze,” said Chur, throwing one of the two coldsuits about his thinly clad, hairless shoulders.
And perhaps he only then recognized the others, for he cried “Chur,” and staggered a step to fling his arms about her, shivering visibly as the cold disspated the last of his heat. “Hilfy!” –as Hilfy unmasked herself; he reached for her.
But his legs went and he slid almost to the ground before Hilfy and Chur could save him. “Hil-fy!” –foolishly, from a sitting posture on the burning cold deck, with Hilfy’s arms about him.
“Get him up,” Pyanfar snapped at them both. “Get him to the lift, for the gods’ sakes!” –waving them that way with the packet in one hand, for her feet were freezing and Tully’s wet clothes were stiffening, with crystals in his hair.
He made shift to walk when they had pulled him up. He hung on them the long, long course down the tracks to the platform stairs, and labored the metal steps with them supporting him on either side and Pyanfar shoving from behind. He faltered at the top, recovered as they heaved him up with his arms across their shoulders.
“Hang on.” Pyanfar reached the lift and punched the button for them, held the door open on that blast of seeming heat and the glare of light while Hilfy and Chur between them dragged Tully in and held him on his feet. A dull white frost formed on the lift surfaces.
“Paper,” Tully mumbled, lifting his head.
“Got.” She closed the door after her and sent the car hurtling forward. Chur held Tully tight against her body and Hilfy pressed close on the other side as the car reached the forward limit and started its topside climb.
“Get him to sickbay,” Pyanfar said as it went. “Get him warm and for the gods’ sakes get him washed.”
That brought a lifting of Tully’s head. His beautiful golden mane was wet with melting frost and clung to the naked skin about his eyes. He stank abysmally of fish and fruit and scared human. “Friend,” he said. It was his best word. He offered that, and that frightened look. In distress Pyanfar reached out and patted his shoulder with claws all pulled.
“Sure. Friend.”
Gods, not to be sure of them. And to have come this far on hope alone.
“Got — Pyanfar, got–” His teeth chattered, no improvement to his diction. “Come see you — Need — need–”
The lift stopped on lower decks, hissed its doors open. “Take care of him,” Pyanfar said, standing firm to stay aboard. “And do it fast. I want you on other business. Hear?”
“Aye,” said Chur.
“Pyanfar!” Tully cried as they dragged him out. “Paper–“
“I hear,” she said, and held the packet as the door closed between them. “I got it,” she muttered to herself; and remembering another matter, put a hand into her pocket and felt the ring beside the gun barrel, a ring made for fingers, not for ears. Only mahendo’sat and stsho wore finger rings, having no under-finger tendon to their non-retractile claws; having one more joint than hani had. Or kif. Not to mention t’ca and knnn and chi.
A human hand was mahe-like. Tully had been in kifish hands once. They had gotten him from them. And gods knew he would not forget it.
Gods-rotted Outsider. A few minutes dealing with him and she was shaking all over. He had a way of doing that to her.
“He’s all right?” Haral asked as she arrived sore-footed on the bridge.
“Will be. Shaken. I don’t blame him.” She settled to her chair, filthy as she was, and curled her frost-singed feet out of contact with the floor. Haral, immaculate, had the diplomacy not to wrinkle her nose. “You hear that Ehrran business?”
“Some.”
“Got ourselves one fat report going home, I’ll bet. Tirun and Geran in?”
“They’re dumping out that fish and fruit. Getting rid of the stuff. Spoiled cargo, we call it. Send it out as garbage.”
“Huh.” She leaned back into the chair, hooked a claw into the plastic seal of the packet and ripped it open.
“What’s that?”
“Expensive,” she said.
The fattish packet yielded several clips of papers, a trio of computer spools. She read labels and drew a deep breath at finding the document Goldtooth had given into Tully’s hands — virtually indecipherable mahen scrawl, a printed signature, and hand-printed at the top: _Repair authorization_ in crabbed Universal Block.
“. . . good repair . . .”, she made out. That the rest of it was unreadable gave her no comfort at all.
Another document, pages thick, swarming with neat humped type in alien alphabet. She flipped through the pages with further misgivings.
Human? She guessed as much.
The third document (typed):
_Greeting_, it said. _Sorry go now, leave you this. Got lot noise on dock, got kif, got trouble, got one mad stsho give me trouble. I send can customs, trust stsho Stle stles stlen not much far. He Personage on this station, got faint heart, plenty brain. If, Stle stles stlen, you reading this I promise cut out you heart have it for last meal._
_Tully come big trouble. Mahen freighter Ijir same find his ship, human give him come. “Bring Pyanfar,” he say, all time “Pyanfar” not got other word. So I bring. One stubborn fellow._
_I know he ask hani help. Also I know the _han_, like you know _han_, lot politic, lot talk, lot do nothing. Lot make trouble you about this mate business — forgive I mention this, but truth. You stupid, Pyanfar, one stupid-bastard hani give jealous hani chance bite your ankles. That translate? I know what you do. You too long go outworld, got foreign idea, got idea maybe hani male worth something. You sometime crazy. You know Chanur got personal enemy, know got lot hani not like mahendo’sat, same got lot hani got small brain, not like change custom, same got hani lot mad with stsho embargo. What you try, save time, fight all same time? Hope you get smart, eat their hearts someday. But someday not now. You go _han_ they make big mess. I know. You know. You go _han_ they turn all politic. Instead go mahen Personage like good friend, take Personage message in number one tape. Sorry this coded. We all got little worry._
_Now give bad news. Kif hunting you. Old enemy Akkukkak sure dead, but some kif bastard got ambition take Akkukkak’s command. We got another hakkikt coming up, name Akkhtimakt. I think this fellow lieutenant to Akkukkak, got same ugly way make trouble, want prove self more big than Akkukkak. How do this? Revenge on knnn not good idea. Revenge on human another kind thing; same revenge on you and me. Ship in port name _Harukk_, captain name Sikkukkut. This number one bastard claim self enemy this Akkhtimakt, want offer deal. This smell many day dead._
_You add all same up, run mahen Personage. Paper good. You make number one deal mahendo’sat this time. You got big item. Forget other cargo. Be rich. Promise. You hani enemies not touch._
_Wish all same luck. I got business stsho space. Got fix thing._
_Goldtooth Ana Ismehanan-min a Hasanan-nan, same give you my sept name._
She looked up, ears flat.
“What’s it say?” asked Haral, in all diffidence.
“Goldtooth wished us luck. Promises help. He’s bribed the stsho. _Someone_ got those papers fixed to get us here and gods-be if any of it was accident.” She gnawed a filthy hangnail. It tasted of fish and human. She spat in distaste and clipped the papers into her data bin. “Tell Tirun and Geran get out cargo unloaded. Get Chur on it. Fast.”
“All of it?”
She turned a stare Haral’s way. It was a question, for sure; but not the one Haral asked aloud. “All of it. Call Mnesit. Tell them get an agent down here to identify what’s theirs. Tell Sito sell at market and bank what’s ours.”
“They’ll rob us. Captain, we’ve got guarantees; we’ve got that Urtur shipment promised — We’ve got the first good run in a year. If we lose this now–“
“_Gods rot it, Haral, what else can I do?_” Embarrassed silence then. Haral’s ears sank and pricked up again desperately.
So they prepared to run. Prepared — to lose cargo that meant all too much to Chanur in its financial straits, trusting a mahen promise . . . for the second time. And for the first time in memory Haral Araun disputed orders.
“I’m going for a bath,” she said.
“Do what with the incoming cargo?” A faint, subdued voice.
“Offer it to Sito,” she said. “Warehouse what he won’t take. So maybe things work out and we get back here.” Likely the stsho would confiscate it at first chance. She did not say what they both knew. She got out of the chair and headed out of the bridge, no longer steady in the knees, wanting her person clean, her world in order; wanting–
–gods knew what.
Youth, perhaps. Things less complicated.
There was one worry that wanted settling — before baths, before any other thing shunted it aside.
She buzzed the door of number one ten, down the corridor from her own quarters, down the corridor from the bridge. No answer. She buzzed again, feeling a twinge of guilt that set her nerves on edge.
“Khym?”
She buzzed a third time, beginning to think dire thoughts she had had half a score of times on this year-long voyage — like suicide. Like getting no answer at all and opening the door and finding her husband had finally taken that option that she had feared for months he would.
His death would solve things, repair her life; and his; and she knew that, and knew he knew it, in one great guilty thought that laid her ears flat against her skull.
“Khym, blast it!”
The door shot open. Khym towered there, his mane rumpled from recent sleep. He had thrown a wrap about his waist, nothing more.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Sure. Fine.” His pelt was crossed with angry seams of scratches plasmed together. His ears, his poor ears that Gaohn Station medics had redone with such inventive care and almost restored to normalcy — the left one was ripped and plasmed together again. He had been handsome once . . . still was, in a ruined, fatal way. “You?”
“Good gods.” She expelled her breath, brushed past him into his quarters, noting with one sweep of her eye the disarray, the bedclothes of the sleeping-bowl stained with small spots of blood from his scratches. Tapes and galley dishes lay heaped in clutter on the desk. “You can’t leave things lying.” It was the old, old shipboard safety lecture, delivered with tiresome patience. “Good gods, Khym, don’t . . . _don’t_ do these things.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it as he did all the other times.
She looked at him, at what he was, with the old rush of fondness turned to pain. He was the father of her son and daughter, curse them both for fools. Khym once-Mahn, lord Mahn, while he had had a place to belong to. Living in death, when he should have, but for her, died decently at home, the way all old lords died; and youngsters died, who failed to take themselves a place — or wander some male-only reserve like Sanctuary or Hermitage, hunting the hills, fighting other males and dying when the odds got long. _Churrau hanim_. The betterment of the race. Males were what they were, three quarters doomed and the survivors, if briefly, estate lords, pampered and coddled, the brightness of hani lives.
He had been so beautiful. Sun-shining, clear-eyed-clever enough to get his way of his sisters and his wives more often than not. And every hani living would have loved him for what he did at Gaohn, rushing the kif stronghold, an old lord outworn and romantically gallant in the eternal tragedy of males–
But he had lived. And walked about Gaohn station with wonder at ships and stars and foreignness. And found something else to live for. She could not send him home. Not then. Not ever.
“It was a good fight,” she said. “Out there.”
His nose wrinkled. “Don’t patronize, Py.”
“I’m not. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t your fault. I don’t care how it started, it wasn’t your fault. Kif set it up. Anyone could have walked into it. Me, Haral, anyone.” His ears lifted tentatively. “We’ve got one other problem.” She folded her arms and leaned against the table edge. “You remember Tully.”
“I remember.”
“Well, we’ve got ourselves a passenger. Not for long. We take him to Maing Tol. A little business for the mahendo’sat.”
The ears went down again, and her heart clenched. “For the gods’ sakes don’t be like that. You know Tully. He’s quiet. You’ll hardly know he’s here. I just didn’t want to spring that on you.”
“I’m not ‘being like that.’ For the gods’ sakes I’ve got some brains. What ‘business for the mahendo’sat’? What have you gotten yourself into? _Why?_”
“Look, it’s just a business deal. We do a favor for the mahendo’sat, it gets paid off, like maybe a route opens. Like maybe we get ourselves that break we need right now.”
“Like the last time.”
“Look, I’m tired, I don’t want to explain this all. Say it’s Goldtooth’s fault. I want a bath. I want — gods know what I want. I came to tell you what’s happened, that’s all.”
“That kif business . . . have anything to do with this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t _know?_”
Aliens and alien things. He was downworlder. Worldbred. “Later. It’s under control. Don’t worry about it. You going to be all right?”
“Sure.”
She started then to go.
“I was remarkable, Py. They arrested me and I didn’t kill even one of them. Isn’t that fine?”
The bitterness stopped her and sent the wind up her back. “Don’t be sarcastic. It doesn’t become you.”
“I didn’t kill anyone, all the same. They were quite surprised.”
She turned all the way around and set her hands on her hips. “Gods-rotted stsho bigots. What did they say to you?”
“The ones in the bar or the ones in the office?”
“Either.”
“What do you expect?”
“I want an answer, Khym.”
“Office wouldn’t speak to me. Said I wasn’t a citizen. Wanted the crew to keep me quiet. They wanted to put restraints on me. Crew said no. I’d have let them go that far.”
She came back and extended a claw, straightened a wayward wisp of mane. He stood a head taller than she; was far broader-they had at least put weight back on him, from that day she had found him, gone to skin and bones, hiding in a hedge outside Chanur grounds. He had been trying to find his death then, had come to see her one more time, in Chanur territory, with their son hunting him to kill him and Kohan apt to do the same . . . if Kohan were not Kohan, and ignoring him for days: gods, the gossip that had courted, male protecting male.
“Listen,” she said. “Stsho are xenophobes. They’ve got three genders and they phase into new pysches when they’re cornered. Gods know what’s in their heads. You travel enough out here and you don’t wonder what a stsho’ll do or think tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Hear?”
“You smell like fish,” he said. “And gods know what else.”
“Sorry.” She drew back the hand.
“Human, is it?”
“Yes.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I won’t kill him either. See, Py? I justify your confidence. So maybe you can tell me what’s going on. For once.”
“Don’t ask.”
“They think _I’m_ crazy. For the gods’ sakes, Py, you walk in here with news like that. Don’t kill the human, please. Never mind the kif. Never mind the gods-be-blasted station’s going to sue–“
“They say that?”
“Somewhere in the process. Py — I don’t put my nose into Chanur business. But I know accounts. I was good at it. I know what you’ve put into this trip, I know you’ve borrowed at Kura for that repair–“
“Don’t worry about it.” She patted his arm, turned for the door in self-defense, and stopped there, her hand on the switch. She faced about again with a courtesy in her mouth to soften it; and met a sullen, angry look.
“My opinion’s not worth much,” he said. “I know.”
“We’ll talk later. Khym, I’ve got work to do.”
“Sure.”
“Look.” She walked back and jabbed a claw at his chest. “I’ll tell you something, _na_ Khym. You’re right. We’re in a mess and we’re short-handed, and you gods-rotted took this trip, on which you’ve gotten precious few calluses….”
The eyes darkened. “It was your idea.”
“No. It was yours. You gods-rotted well chose new things, husband: this _isn’t_ Mahn, you’re on a working ship, and you can rotted sure make up your mind you’re not lying about on cushions with a dozen wives to see to the nastinesses. That’s not true anymore. It’s a new world. You can’t have it half this and half that — you don’t want the prejudice, but you gods-rotted well want to lie about and be waited on. Well, I haven’t got time. No one’s got time. This is a world that _moves_, and the sun doesn’t come round every morning to warm your hide. _Work_ might do it.”
“Have I complained?” The ears sank. The mouth was tight in disaste. “I’m talking about policy.”
“When you know the outside you talk about policy. You walk onto this ship after what happened in that bar and you walk into your quarters and shut the door, huh? Fine. That’s real fine. This crew saved your hide, gods rot it, not just because you’re male. But you sit in this cabin, you’ve sat in this cabin and done nothing-“
“I’m comfortable enough.”
“Sure you are. You preen and eat and sleep. And you’re not comfortable. You’re eating your gut out.”
“What do you want? For me to work docks?”
“Yes. Like any of the rest of this crew. You’re not lord Mahn any more, Khym.”
It was dangerous to have said. So was the rest of it. She saw the fracture-lines, the pain. She had never been so cruel. And to her distress the ears simply sank, defeated. No anger. No violence. “Gods and thunders, Khym. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“Maybe take me home.”
“No. That’s not an option. You wanted this.”
“No. You wanted to take on the _han_. Myself — I just wanted to see the outside once. That’s all.”
“In a mahen hell it was.”
“Maybe it is now.”
“Are they right, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s not _natural_. It’s not–“
“You believe that garbage? You think the gods made you crazy?”
He rubbed the broad flat of his nose, turned his shoulder to her, looked back with a rueful stare.
“You believe it, Khym?”
“It’s costing you too much. Gods, Py — you’re gambling Chanur, you’re risking your brother to keep me alive, and that’s _wrong_, Py. That’s completely wrong. You can’t stave off times. I had my years; the young whelp beat me.”
“So it was an off day.”
“I couldn’t come back at him. I didn’t have it, Py. It’s time. It’s age. He’s got Mahn. It’s the way things work. Do you think you can change that?”
“You didn’t see the sense in another fight. In wasting an estate in back and forth wrangling. Your brain always outvoted your glands.”
“Maybe that’s why I lost. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Still running.”
“Maybe because you’ve always known it’s nonsense and a waste. What happened to those talks we used to have? What happened to the husband who used to look at the stars and ask me where I went, what I’d seen, what outside the world was like?”
“Outside the world’s the same as in. For me. I can’t get outside the world. They won’t let me.”
“Who?”
“You know who. You should have seen their faces, Py.”
“Who? The stsho?”
“Ayhar.”
“Those godforsaken drunks?”
“Last thing they expected — me in that bar. That’s what the stsho owner said. ‘Get away from me, get away from my place, don’t go crazy here.’ “
“Gods _rot_ what they think!”
“So? Did I teach them anything? Stsho didn’t want to serve me in the first place. And I’d had — well, two. To prove I wouldn’t, you know — go berserk. And then the riot started. What good’s _that_ going to do you — or Kohan?”
“Kohan can take care of himself.”
“You’re asking too much of him. No, Py, I’m going back downworld when we get back.”
“To do what?”
“Go to Sanctuary. Do a little hunting.”
“–be the target of every young bully who’s honing up his skills to go assault his papa, huh?”
“I’m _old_, Py. It catches up with a man faster. It’s time to admit it.”
“Gods-rotted nonsense! You’ll go back to Anuurn with a ring in your ear, by the gods you will.”
He gave a smile, taut laugh, ears up. “Good gods, Py. You want my life there to be short, don’t you?”
“You’re not going downworld.”
“I’ll beg on the docks till I get passage, then.”
“Gods-rotted martyr.”
“Let me go home, Py. Give it up. You can’t change what is. They won’t let you change. Gods know they won’t let me. Whatever you’re trying, whatever grandstanding nonsense you’ve gotten into — give it up. Stop now. While there’s time. I’m not worth it.”
“Good gods. You think the sun swings around you, don’t you? Ever occur to you I have other business than you? That I do things that don’t have a thing to do with you?”
“No,” he said, “because you’re desperate. And that’s my fault. Gods, Py–” A small, strangled breath, a drawing about the mouth. “It’s cost enough.”
“You know,” she said after a moment, “you know what’s kept the System in power? The young expect to win. Never mind that three quarters of them die. Never mind that estates get ruined when some young fluffbrain gets in power over those that know better and tries to prove he’s in charge. The young always believe in themselves. And the graynoses flat give up, give up when they’ve got the estate running at its best — They get beaten and it’s downhill again with a new lord at the helm. All the way downhill. You know other species pass things on, like mahendo’sat: they train their successors, for the gods’ sakes–“
“They’re not hani. Py, you don’t understand what it feels like. You can’t.”
“Kohan ignored you right well.”
“Sure. Easy. I wasn’t much. He still ignores me. How do you think I’m here?”
“Because _I_ say so. Because Kohan’s too old and too smart to hold his breath till I give in. And by the gods the next time some whelp comes at him with challenge we’ll tear the fellow’s ears off. First.”
“Good gods, Py! You can’t do that to him–“
“Keep him alive? You can lay money on it. Me. Rhean. Even his Faha wife. Not to mention his daughters. Maybe some son, who knows? — someday.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“Py. You remember the fable of the house and the stick? You pull the one that’s loose and it gets another one–“
“Fables are for kids.”
“–and another. Pretty soon the whole house comes down and buries you. You start a fight like that in the _han_ and gods know — gods know what it’ll do to us.”
“Maybe it might be better. You think of that?”
“Py, I can’t take this dealing with strangers. I get mad and I can’t stand it, I _ache_, Py. That’s biology. We’re set up to fight. Millions of years — it’s not an intellectual thing. Our circulatory system, our glands–“
“You think I don’t get mad? You think I didn’t want to kill myself some kif out there? And I by the gods held my temper.”
“Nature gave you a better deal, Py. That’s all.”
“You’re _scared_.”
He stared at her, eyes wide in offense.
“Scared and spoiled,” she said. “Scared because you’re doing what no male’s supposed to be able to do; and guilty that maybe that makes you unmasculine; and gods-rotted spoiled by a mother that coddled your tempers instead of boxing your ears the way she did your sister’s. He’s just a son, huh? Can’t be expected to come up to his sister’s standard. Let him throw his tantrums, and keep him out of his father’s sight. Makes him potent, doesn’t it? And gods, never let him trust another male. Rely on your sister, huh?”
“Leave my family out of this.”
“Your sister hasn’t done one gods-rotted thing to back you. And your worthless daughters-“
“My sister did back me.”
“Till you lost.”
“What’s she supposed to do? Gods, what’s it like for her, living in Kara’s house with me running about as if I were still–“
“So she’s uncomfortable. Isn’t that too bad? Spoiled, I say. Both of you, in separate ways.”
His ears were back, all the way. He looked younger that way, the scars less obvious.
“You want,” she said, “the advantages I have and the privileges you used to have. Well, they don’t go together, Khym. And I’m offering you what I’ve got. Isn’t it enough? Or do you want some _special_ category?”
“Py, for the gods’ sake I can’t work on the docks!”
“Meaning in public.”
“I’ll work aboard.” A great, gusting sigh. “Show me what to do.”
“All right. You clean up. You get yourself to the bridge and Haral’ll show you how to read scan. It’s going to take more than five minutes.” She sucked at her cheeks. She had not meant to make that gibe. “You can sit monitor on that. Our lives may depend on it. Keep thinking of that.”
“You’ll do fine.” She turned and punched the door button with a thumb claw. “I know you will.”
“It’s revenge, that’s what it is. For the bar.”
“No. It’s paying your gods-rotted bar bill same as any of us would.”
She stalked out. The door hissed shut like a comment at her back.
Chapter Four
Tully was at least on his feet — seemed to be _feeling_ like Tully, which meant insisting on cleaning himself up if he wobbled doing it, crashing about the lowerdecks washroom talking to himself (or thinking that he was being understood) and generally insisting on his privacy from females even if they were of different species. Hilfy dithered between communications from Haral topside via the hallway com panel, frantic requests from Chur in the op room down the corridor (Tirun and Geran were busy down in cargo offloading canisters, with attendant booms and thumps up through the deck plates), and the barricaded washroom into which disappeared a pair of Haral’s blue trousers and out of which issued steam and the indescribable mingle of human-smell, fruit, fish and disinfectant soap.
“You all right?” Hilfy asked, when a hairless arm snaked the offered trousers from around the corner of the door. “Tully, hurry it up. We’ve got other problems. Fast? Understand?”
A mumbled answer came back and the door went shut as if he had leaned on the control as soon as she had gotten her arm out. Hilfy looked round in desperation as Chur came trotting back from ops waving a pair of pocket corns and with a third clipped to her drawstring waist. “Got it,” Chur said. “Translator’s up and running.”
“Thank the gods.” She pounded on the door again, whisked it open as Chur thrust a pocket com and earplug around the corner to their passenger and drew her arm back. “Tully–” she said to the unit Chur gave her. She put the earplug in with a grimace. “Tully? You hear me now?”
“Yes,” the sound came back, mechanical, from the com loop to the translating computer. “Who talk?” The translator’s syntax was far from perfect.
“Tully,” Chur said, “it’s Chur talking. Hilfy and I got other work, understand? Got to go. You hurry it up; we take you to quarters, get you settled in.”
“Got talk to Pyanfar.”
“Captain’s busy, Tully.”
“Got talk.” The door opened. He leaned in the doorframe, wearing blue hani trousers, which fit, but barely; and shirtless like themselves. His all but hairless skin was flushed from the heat inside and his mane and beard were dripping wet. “Got talk, come # # talk to Pyanfar.”
“Tully, we’ve got troubles,” Hilfy said. “Big emergency.” She took him by the arm and Chur took the other, drawing him along despite his objections. “Got cargo troubles, all kinds of troubles.”
“Kif.” He went stiff and stopped cooperating. “Kif are here?*’
“We’re still at dock,” Hilfy said, keeping him moving. “We’re sitting at Meetpoint and we’re as safe as we’re going to be. Come on.”
“No, no, no.” He turned and seized her arms with his bluntfingered hands, let her go and shook at Chur. “# No # # #”
Hilfy shook her head at the static breakup. The translator missed those words. Or never had them.
“Hilfy, Chur — mahen # take # ship # human. I bring papers from #. They ask # hani make stop these kif. Got danger. We’re not safe # Meetpoint.”
“What’s he mean?” asked Chur, her ears gone lower, up again. “You catch that?”
“Go get hani fight these kif,” Tully said.
“Good gods,” Hilfy said.
“Friend,” he said again, the hani word, that sent garble through the translator, less forgiving of his mangled pronunciation. His strange blue eyes were aflicker with fear and secrets. “Friend.”
“Sure,” Hilfy said. She felt a cold lump at the pit of her stomach, hearing the clank and whine of cargo at work below. Things clicked into place of a sudden, that her aunt had committed them to something more than running an illegal passenger — being desperate, with Chanur’s financial back to the wall.
It was more than human trade Tully brought. _Trade_ might save their hides.
But entanglements with kif, deals with a mahendo’sat who was not the trader he gave out to be–
And the likes of Rhif Ehrran breathing down their backs all the while — she had heard it all from Chur.
The _han_ would have their ears.
Pyanfar took the com to the shower with her, hung it on the wall outside. On the day’s record so far, she expected calamities.
The first call brought her dripping from shower to the mat outside undried, mane and beard and hide cascading suds.
“Captain.” Haral’s voice.
“Trouble?”
“_Na_ Khym’s here. Says you said he should sit scan monitor.”
“Show him what he needs.”
Dead silence from the other end. Then: “Aye, captain. Sorry to bother you.”
Back to the shower then, to wash the suds off. She slicked the mane back, flattened her ears and squinched her eyes and nostrils shut, face-on to the water-jet for one precious self-indulgent second. She sneezed the water clear and cycled from water to drier, fluffing out her mane and beard, enjoying the warmth.
The com beeper went off again.
“Gods rot.” She left the heat and stood damp and shivering by the hook, fumbling the answer slot. “Pyanfar.”
“Captain.” Haral again. “Got a kifish message couriered in. From one Sikkukkut. Says it’s for you personally.”
“Open it.”
A long silence. “He’s offering partnership.”
“Good gods.” She forgot the physical cold for a deeper shock.
“Says he wants to talk with you face to face. Says — gods —he’s talking specifics here. He names ships he says are after us. Says we have mutual enemies. He gets into kifish stuff here — _pukkukkta_.”
“Gods-rotted _pukkukkta_ changes meaning in every context — get linguistic comp on that. Get it on the whole thing — Keep alert up there.”
“Aye, captain. Sorry.”
“All right.” She sneezed and cut the com off, returned to the shower and recycled the dryer.
“Captain. Captain.”
She left the staff and snatched up com. “_For the gods’ sake, Haral_–“
“–Captain, sorry. That request for scheduling — It seems we’re being sued. Got six lawsuits against us and station says it can’t give clearance without–“
She shut her eyes a moment, composed her voice and kept it very calm. “Get the station-master online. Tell _gtst_ to issue orders.”
“By your leave, I’ve tried, captain. Call won’t go through. The stationmaster’s office says _gtst_ is indisposed. The word was _gstisi_.”
_Personality crisis_.
“That gods-rotted white-skinned flutterbrain isn’t going to Phase on us! Countersue the bastards and start prep for manual undock as soon as they get that cargo clear. Get everyone on it down there. And send a message to the director and say if _gtst_ doesn’t get this straightened out I’ll give _gtst_ new personality more damages to worry about, some of them to _gtst_ person.”
“Aye,” Haral said.
She threw clothes on, her third-best trousers, green silk with moire orange stripes in the weave; a belt with bronze bangles; the pearl for her ear. Her best armlet, the heavy one. The alien ring was on the counter, from the pocket of the red breeches. She considered, dropped it indecisively into her pocket, pocketed the gun again, clipped on the com and pattered out into the hall in haste, claws clenched, headed for the bridge.
“Captain.” The pocket com again, this time from her belt. “Captain, I got the stationmaster on.”
“I’m coming,” she said, and hastened, down the corridor into the open door. Haral looked about; Khym sat at the righthand station, intent on the scan, the light flickering off his dutiful, martyred scowl.
Haral handed her the transcription. “_Gtst_ is out. A new individual is in power. I think it’s still the last one, in a personality shift. The new Director wants payment in full. Says we got the better of the last director, drove _gtst_ into a crisis that wasn’t due for twenty years, and this one’s determined to get _gtst_ money up front. Intends to impound all offloaded cargo.”
“_Gods rot_–” She swallowed it, seeing the movement of Khym’s all-too-hearing ears backward at her voice. She read the demand for payment. “Four hundred million–“
“Nine hundred with the lawsuits. I think that’s the problem. Someone important has sued and _gtst_ has to do something.”
“I could guess who.”
“Gods. Kif. Possible.” Haral rubbed her scarred nose, looked up from under her brow. “You thinking of breaking port?”
“Maybe.”
“If we do it they’ll blackball us. Every stsho port. Every stsho facility. They’ll never lift the ban.”
“Same if we don’t pay.”
“Aye, captain,” Haral said morosely. And lifting her ears: “Captain, we could _offer_ them the profit. Earnest money, like. Offer to give them more’on next trip. Gods know how we’ll pay off the shippers — but that’s tomorrow. And it’ll be tied up in litigation anyway, soon as it hits Site’s warehouse.”
“Maybe.” Pyanfar combed her beard with her claws, looked distractedly toward Khym’s broad back. Shook her head as at some heavy blow.
“How’s that unloading going?” She missed the sound of the conveyors of a sudden. “Finished down there?”
“Sounds like.”
“Rot their eyes.” Meaning stsho. She sucked in her mustache ends and gnawed at them. “_Pukkukkta_.”
“Captain?”
“_Pukkukkta_. What did comp say it meant?”
“Like trade of services.” Haral snatched up a printout and offered it to her hand. “Like revenge. This is the item. Over regular channels, it was.”
_Greeting_, the message said, _Chanur hunter. Beware Parukt; Skikkt; Luskut; Nifakkiti. Most of all beware Akkhtimakt of Kahakt. These aspire; that one aspires most. I Sikkukkut am with you in pukkukkta for this cause and speak to you in words which precisely describe kif, therefore ambiguity of translation lies at your feet._
_I Sikkukkut know about your passenger and likewise say this: wisest to give this passenger to me. You would then be rich. But I Sikkukkut know the sfik of hunter Pyanfar that this passenger has sfik-value and will be defended. Therefore I Sikkukkut say to the sfik of Pyanfar Chanur that she must give this word to this passenger: I Sikkukkut will speak with him at an appropriate time._
_Shelter by my side, hunter Pyanfar. Together we might make a fine pukkukkta, and the cost is less today than tomorrow._
_Signal me and I Sikkukkut shall come to the dock where we shall find a quiet place to talk._
“Kif bastard,” Pyanfar said, and crumpled the paper. “He wants Tully. That’s what he wants. _That’s_ what would buy him status.”
She looked at Khym, who sat listening to it all, saying nothing; but his ears were back. “Consign a can at random to _Harukk_. Tell them and then tell the stsho.”
“To the _kif_?” Haral gasped, and Khym turned round at his post with the whites of his eyes showing.
“As a gift. To one Sikkukkut, captain of _Harukk_. Let the stsho sue _him_.”
A thoughtful, wicked look came into Haral’s eyes, bewilderment to Khym’s.
“No one sues the kif,” Khym said.
“No,” Pyanfar said, “they won’t. And let Sikkukkut _and_ the station worry what’s in that can, whether it’s valuable or not. If he won’t take it he’ll have to wonder. If he does and finds nothing but trade goods — kif have remarkably little sense of humor, where face is involved. _Sfik_. And gods know if he has one of his cronies pick it up he’ll have to wonder whether he got all that was in it. Kif don’t trust each other. They can’t.”
“But–” Khym said.
“No time. Do it, Haral.”
“Aye.” Haral sat down at com, stuck the receiver in her ear and punched out a blinking light. “Captain, that’s Tully again. He’s called up here a dozen times. Keeps asking something about a packet of papers. He wants to come up here and discuss it with you.”
“Gods.” She raked at her beard distractedly and stared round her at the bridge, at Khym’s broad back as he kept dutifully to the board, proving — proving things to her. Deliberately. Stubbornly.
Then she realized what she was thinking and thrust the thought away. Male and male, same space. Old ways of thinking died hard. _He’s not hani, for the gods’ sakes. And they’re on the same ship_.
“Tell him come up,” she said. “Tell everyone get up here soon as they secure the hold. Prep ops for undock. And send that message.”
“Aye.” Haral’s voice droned the communications in sequence. She punched from one to the other channels without amenities. Then in snarling stsho: “Meetpoint Central Control, this is the hani ship _The Pride of Chanur_, berth 6, responding to your notification regarding cargo: must inform you can 23500 has already been consigned to berth 29, _Harukk_–“
“Get through to Sikkukkut,” Pyanfar said to her back. “Tell him there’s a shipment for him in the hands of the stsho.”
“You can’t afford to lose that cargo,” Khym said, swinging round. “To stsho or to kif. Pyanfar–“
“Captain,” she said, folding her arms. His eyes burned. She stood her ground. “You’re on the bridge. It’s _captain_. _Eyes to that board._”
He visibly trembled. The sigh gusted through his nostrils like the breath of a furnace. And he turned back to the board.
“Huh,” she said, her worst anticipations overturned.
“The stationmaster wants to talk to you,” Haral said. “I think it’s _gtst_ interpreter.”
“I’ll take it.” She sat down in her place at controls and stuck a com plug in her ear, leaned toward the board pickup and punched the blinking light. “This is Pyanfar Chanur. Have you a question, esteemed director?”
“The director informs you–” the reply came back “–this high-handed threat will not suffice. We have your signed acknowledgment of responsibility, but this does not cover lawsuits and our liabilities. We wish payment now.”
“Is that so?” Her lips drew back as if she had the director in sight. “Tell the director _gtst_ new Phase is a scoundrel, a liar and a pirate.”
A pause. “–Our demand is just. The damages of four hundred million must be paid and the lawsuits must be settled–“
“Collect it from the kif.”
“–If _The Pride of Chanur_ undocks without payment it will violate treaty and application for reparations will go to the hem. Now this message would be more convenient than usual to deliver.”
She sucked in her breath. Gods. For a stsho, the old bastard had a certain flair.
“–Your response.”
“Bargain. On the one hand we will countersue. If we lose we will appeal to the court at Llhie nan Tie, to Tpehi, to Llyene, and the case will go on for years — while _gtst_ remain legally responsible for holding our goods in warehouse while litigation proceeds.”
“–This might be acceptable.”
“On the other hand-on the other hand, esteemed director–“
“–Get quickly to this other hand.”
“If the request for payment were otherwise phrased, and if Meetpoint makes itself responsible for all present and future lawsuits out of the settlement, money might be forthcoming.”
“–Please restate. Was this an offer of payment?”
“The station assumes full financial responsibility for present and future suits and reparations arising from the riot, releases all cargo claims, trades with our factors at listed station exchange rates, and provides us one unified bill for _The Pride_’s damage repair.”
“Please restate, Chanur captain. This translator understood ‘ship damage repair.'”
“You have it right.”
A delay. “–This smacks of illegality.”
“Absolutely not. We will swear to damages suffered by _The Pride_ during the disturbances. Never mind what kind. I’m _sure_ you have the talent to word it so we can both sign it.”
“Please; please, this translator must be correct”
“You’ve got it. You clear our record, expedite us out, and pad that gods-rotted bill as much as you want. I’ll meet you on the dock with the credit authorization in a quarter hour.”
“–This is subterfuge. Chanur is known destitute.”
“Revise your information, esteemed director. Chanur just called in a debt.”
Prolonged silence.
“Well?”
“Excuse, esteemed Chanur captain. This will take consideration.”
“You by the gods get me out of here.”
More silence. “Please be discreet.”
“Would the esteemed director contact me on an unsecure channel? The esteemed director is no fool. It would not be profitable for _gtst_ to appeal to the _han_, in whatever form. This would surely tie up the funds in litigation.” She turned and motioned furiously at Haral. “_Legal release_,” she said into the pickup; and to Haral, and her eyes fell on Khym once-lord-Mahn, on a tense expression turned her way. She motioned at him, listening with one ear to stsho dithering. _Do it_, she mouthed. “–Listen, I told you, pad the bill all you want. I’m _not_ coming to the office again. You’re coming to the docks and you’re going to sign a release for all damages, hear that?”
There was frantic activity to her right. Haral had comp reeling up legal forms and Khym was leaning over her shoulder muttering corrections and wordings.
By the gods, Mahn’s ex-lord, ex-legal counsel. In his element.
She grinned at the mike and listened to more blather. “Simply put,” she said to the director, once Stle stles stlen, “you sign ours, we sign yours, we get our papers clear and our cargo sold for top going rate, and you can show the High Director at Nsthen you got full compensation, right? Otherwise you report unpaid damages. Which do you want?”
“The director relays to you _gtst_ profound distress that Chanur should have been slandered by fools. _Gtst_ is sending you the papers at once and further sends you a gift to make amends for this misunderstanding.”
“Chanur will reciprocate in acknowledgment of the director’s wisdom in detecting these slanders.” She searched rapidly through the data bin for the appropriate forms, copied those, snagged the one that Harai thrust into her hand, fully printed, bilingual in stshoshi and ham and ready for signature. “Profound gratitude, yes.” She broke the contact and flipped the documents looking for key clauses. “Watertight?”
“Full release,” Khym said.
“It had better be.” She gathered up all the papers, spun the chair on its mechanism. “Eyes back to that scan, hear?”
“You need escort, captain?” Haral asked.
“You stay here. Tell Hilfy meet me at the lock. I gods-rotted don’t need protection from the stsho and I want you at controls. In case.” She flung herself out of the chair and headed for the door.
Tully was inbound, in great haste. “Pyan-far!” he cried.
“Sorry, Tully, no time.” She brushed past, or tried. He caught her arm.
“Got talk! Pyanfar!”
“No time, Tully. Haral — see to him.”
“No # listen I # go #!” He snatched again when she broke the grip and tried to overtake her in the hall. “Pyanfar!”
As she left him behind.
“_Pyanfar_– “
She made it into the lift and shut the door between. She punched com. “Haral. Get Tully under wraps. Get him his drugs for jump. And stay by those controls!” Not the most logical series of orders. Gods, Tully and Khym loose on the same level of the ship, Haral busy–
The lift stopped on lower deck. The door opened, on Tirun, Chur and Geran, standing at the lift. Haral’s voice rang through the lower corridor — “_Who’s free down there?_”
“Get topside,” Pyanfar said, coming through them, papers in hand. “Move it, hear?” Their fur was draggled, dark-tipped with sweat. They smelled of it. “_Get Tully put somewhere_.”
“Aye.”
The door closed and they went up. She headed down the corridor at a long stride, where Hilfy waited at the lock, slant-eared and with the whites showing round her eyes.
“Calm down, imp,” she said, meeting that look. “It’s just the stsho this time.”
But she still had the gun in her pocket. It lately seemed a good idea.
_The Pride_’s area of the dock was quiet now, ghostly quiet, with the giant doors to the market still sealed, with the cargo access shut and the station’s cargo ramp drawn back and dark. No cans stood about the dock. Only the gantry remained, the huge air ducts socketed to the vent panel beside the water in- and outflow hoses, but those were in shutdown inside. The sensor-bundle, the sextuple power cables and the com lines: that was all that tied _The Pride_ to station now, those and the access tube, the station personnel ramp, and the probe and grapples that, behind that triple-thick wall, added failsafe to _The Pride_’s own steel-armed grip.
Not much, compared to the truck-wide cargo ramp. Not much to hold them now that that link was free. A ship could break away from grapples if it had to, taking damage and trusting station valves and gates to shut. Not even kif had done such a thing, reckless as they were of life, but stsho in their paranoia might think of such possibilities.
Pyanfar cast one narrowed look at that contact with their docking probe and thought such lawless thoughts. Like turning pirate.
Like what a desperate hani could do, if she lost a gamble with the mahendo’sat and the _han_ and there were nothing left at home. Her crew would stay loyal and to a mahen hell with the _han_ if Kohan Chanur died.
_Good gods_. The thought chilled. It came of advancing age.
Of having a male aboard. Put the mind in different modes. Like _hunt_ and _nest_ and _kill the intruders_ instead of the polite surrender to the _han_ on which civilization rested. Pulling sticks, Khym called it. Hani ships going far and wide across Compact space with males aboard and all the attendant mindset in the crews. Riot on station docks, interHouse brawls, crews at odds with other crews and hani born in space, never knowing Anuurn under their feet at all, with no Hermitage in reach.
_Gods, what am I doing here?_ — standing by Hilfy, gun in pocket, watching a stsho official car come humming up the dock. Somehow she had gotten into this. The steps to it eluded her at the moment, but the steps that led _from_ it–
A kif offered alliance — and for one fleeting moment it truly looked attractive. She was running out of friends.
The car rolled up and stopped humming; hummed again in a different key as the door slid down and Stle sties stlen’s current persona put out a pink-shod foot. The translator got out the other door and hastened round with a flurry of robes like rainbow light, to offer _gtst_ hand to the director.
Stle stles stlen (or whatever _gtst_ called _gtst_ self this hour) straightened to _gtst_ feet and waved _gtst_ limp-wristed, long-fingered hand. “Shoss.”
A paper appeared from some depth of the translator’s robes. _Gtst_ offered it, _gtst_ mooncolored eyes fluttering in wide nervousness.
“Take it,” Pyanfar said to Hilfy, assuming the loftiness the stsho understood: assistants traded papers, perused them.
“Bill,” Hilfy read in a small strangled voice, “for 1.2 _billion_ credits, aunt.”
“I figured. Let me see that.”
Hilfy handed it over. Document-reading proceeded to a higher level as Stle sties stlen took the release forms into gist own pearly hands.
A long rustling of pages while the gantry lines thumped and hissed overhead.
“All right,” Pyanfar said.
“Hesth,” said Stle sties stlen, and in hani: “Where is this money?”
She held out the appropriate paper. Stle stles stlen took it in _gtst_ own hands, and _gtst_ head came up and _gtst_ eyes went wide.
“Well?” Pyanfar said, keeping her ears up, her expression confident and bland.
“–This is an extravagant power,” the translator rendered.
“Of course it is. And I’m sure the esteemed director will want to file that copy. I keep the original.”
“Esteemed hani friend,” said Stle sties stlen.
“Got a pen?”
Stle stles stlen snatched it from the translator and offered it _gtst_ self. If _gtst_ had had external ears they would have pricked far forward.
She signed; _gtst_ signed; documents changed hands and Chur and the translator signed. Hectic flushes almost to pink chased nacre across Stle sties stlen’s pearly skin.
_Gtst_ looked up with adoration in _gtst_ eyes, waved _gtst_ hand and out of the inexhaustible rainbow robes, the translator brought a smallish presentation box, which Stle sties stlen proffered gtstself.
“Accept this trifle.”
“Munificent.” Pyanfar pocketed the box. “Your files have my manifest: do select a case of Anuurn honey for your table.”
“Excellent hani.”
“I go first on the departure list.”
“Oh, yes.” _Gtst_ bowed, fluttered. “At earliest.” _Gtst_ backed toward the car and stopped, looking wide-eyed, then ducked inside.
The translator saw the director inside and the door raised, whisked _gtst_ rainbow self around to _gtst_ own side.
The car hummed to life, opaqued its windows, and hummed a quick u-turn, off down the docks.
“Aunt–” Hilfy said.
She turned, expecting one of the crew had come outside.
She saw instead a kit between them and the lock, and her hand twitched toward her pocket — prudently stopped with a mere twitch. She stood stiff-legged, hearing Hilfy sotto voce beside her, the belt-com doubtless thumbed: “Haral, for the gods’ sakes — _Haral_ — there’s a kif out here-“
The kif flourished a hand among its robes, billowing the hem like the edge of some dark wing. It sauntered forward with the ease of an old, old friend.
“That you, Sikkukkut?”
“Strange. I can tell hani apart.”
“Get off my dockside.”
“I came to follow up my message. The ring. How did your passenger receive it?”
“I forgot. Frankly, I forgot.”
“Can it be he couldn’t receive it? Damaged in shipment, might he be? That would distress me.”
“I’m sure it would. Get out of my way.”
“Your crewwoman’s calling help, is she?”
“You won’t want to stay around to see.”
The thin wrinkled snout acquired a chain of wrinkles. “So you’re putting out. Beware of Kita Point.”
“Thanks.”
More wrinkles. “Of course. There are such limited ways out of Meetpoint. Except for those the stsho permit. Except for us — who go where we like. I wonder where _Mahijiru_ is.”
“Don’t know, then? Good.”
“Your _sfik_ will kill you.”
“My ego, is it? — Come on, Hilfy.” She started forward, picking a course to _The Pride_ just out of kifish long-armed reach. But he moved to intercept them.
“We are both hunter-kinds, hunter Pyanfar.” And with a twitch of that long hairless nose: “Kif are better.”
“Hani are smarter.” She had stopped, hand in pocket. “_I_ have a gun.”
Sikkukkut’s long black nose gained wrinkles and lost them. “But being hani — you dare not use it unless I prove armed. This is the burden of a species its hosts fear not.”
“It’s called civilization, you earless bastard.”
A dry kifish sniffing, like laughter. “The stsho are grass to us. You will not join with me.”
“In a mahen hell.”
He lifted both hands, palm outward. “I do not challenge, hunter Pyanfar.”
Her hand tensed on the gun, to be quick; but the tall kif turned his black-cloaked back and walked off with that peculiar stalking gait.
“_Sfik_,” Hilfy muttered, who was the linguist among them. “Means like _pride_, like _honor_, if the kif had any.”
“If,” Pyanfar said, staring after the kif and not forgetting a sweep about to see if there were confederates lurking: there were not. “That mouth may speak hani; that brain’s pure kif. Move it. Get out of here.”
“I have a gun,” Hilfy said, backing away as she was told. “Come on, aunt. Let’s both get out of here.”
“Huh.” She backed, turned, grabbed Hilfy by the arm and both of them hastened up the rampway into the access, headon into Tirun and Chur who were coming out.
“Good gods,” she said when her heart had restarted.
“Sounded like you had trouble,” Tirun said.
“It walked off,” she said, and gathered them all up, marched them ahead of her past the safety of the airlock. Chur shut the door.
“Kif?” asked Tirun then.
“Kif,” she said, and looked around sharply at movement to her left, where Geran stood, with Tully.
“Got talk,” he said.
“Geran, for the gods’ sakes I said settle him.”
“It’s urgent, captain.”
“Everything’s urgent. Get in line.”
“Aunt,” Hilfy said, with that kind of look Hilfy could get when something was utterly out of joint.
“Got paper,” Tully said, breathless. “Got–” The translator garbled over mangled hani words.
“Get me a plug, will you?” One materialized out of Hilfy’s pocket, and she put the audio into her ear. “Tully, what are those papers?”
“Got paper say human come fight kif # # need hani.”
“Rot that translator. I’m losing that.” “Human come fight kif.” A very cold lump settled to her stomach. “Why, Tully?”
“Make kif #. _Friend_, Pyanfar. Bring lot human come fight kif.” The cold grew colder still.
“Sounds like,” said Tirun, “more than one ship involved.”
“They want help,” said Hilfy. “That’s why he came. That’s what I think he’s saying. It’s nothing to do with trade.”
“Gods,” she muttered, and looked up, at an earnest human face, at four crewwomen with iaces taut with the same kind of thoughts. “Kif know this, Tully?”
“Maybe know,” he said. He drew a great breath and let it go, held out his hands as if appeal could get past the translator. “Come long way find you. Kif — kif make trouble # one time fight Goldtooth friend.”
“Goldtooth,” she said. The name was a bad taste in her mouth. “What am I supposed to do with you? Huh?”
“Go Maing Tol. Go Anuurn.”
“Gods rot it, Tully, we got _kif_ up to our noses!”
His pale eyes locked on hers, desperate. “Fight,” he said. “Got make fight, Py-an-far.”
She lowered her ears and brought them up again, glancing round at her crew. Scared faces. Looking to her for answers.
“Ought to give him to _Vigilance_,” she muttered, “and advertise it to the kif.”
No one said anything. She imagined the consequences for herself if she did that. The fragile Compact broken wide open, kif chasing a _han_ deputy ship.
Or Ehrran leaving him on a stsho station, where not a hand would be raised to prevent kif from walking in and doing what they liked. Kif would do anything, if profit in doing it outweighed the profit in restraint.
“Where we taking him?” Tirun asked. “Maing Tol, Goldtooth says.”
“Captain — We do that and that blackbreeches’ll have our ears. Begging the captain’s pardon.”
More questions of her orders. She stared at Tirun, at a cousin, an old comrade; at another Chanur whose life was at risk.
“You want to turn him over to Ehrran, Tirun?”
Tirun stood there with her ears down, with rapid thinking going on behind her eyes. “We could send another can to _Vigilance_,” she said. “Let that kif bastard wonder.”
The idea struck her fancy. But: “No,” she said, thinking of those same consequences. “Can’t risk it. Come on.” She seized Tully by the arm and dragged him into motion, then abandoned the grip as she headed for the lift. “Get Tully settled. Get his drugs for him and get up to the bridge.”
“Go?” Tully asked, close at her heels. “Pyanfar go Hoas?”
“Urtur,” she said, reaching the lift. She looked back as Chur and Hilfy took him by the arms. Tirun punched the door and held it. “Going to Urtur. Going fast. Take the drugs. Stay out of the way. Understand?”
“Got,” he said, and let them pull him off down the hall. She stepped into the lift and Tirun got in and pushed the buttons.
One worried look from Tirun. That was all.
“I know,” she said, which summed it up. She pulled the presentation case from the pocket where she had put it, opened it as the car shot upward.
A note. _Beware Ismehanan-min_, it said.
Meaning Goldtooth.
She handed it to Tirun.
The door opened on the upper corridor.
Chapter Five
There was quiet on the bridge, a great deal of calm and quiet, considering the situation, Khym brimming with questions, and a handful of exhausted crew. No one said a word. Six pairs of eyes were on her, expecting her to come up with something remarkably clever.
1.2 billion credits. Hilfy still looked to be in shock.
“Got a few problems,” Pyanfar said, sinking into her chair, which was turned to face the bridge at large. “I think we’d better take that docking clearance the stsho promised and get ourselves our of here before they change their minds. Chur, Hilfy, you sure Tully’s set, got his drugs, knows to stay put.”
“Aye,” Chur said.
“I don’t promise we get a calm ride out of here. And we’re going to push it hard. We’re headed for Urtur. We’re stripped. We can one-jump it. When we come in there we keep our ears pricked and get the news. Gods send it isn’t kif. — Questions?”
Dead quiet.
She picked up a courier cylinder from the document pocket on the side of the chair. “Chur.”
“Aye.”
“Get one of the docking crew to shoot that through the pneumat. Fast.”
Chur took it, whirled and headed out of the bridge with a scrape of claws. So that was seen to. If Stle sties stlen did not have all their messages intercepted, rot his pearly hide.
“Crew to stations. — Khym–” She stood up and in the general mill of crew taking seats she took Khym’s arm and took him into the small nook of quiet in the corridor outside.
“For this one I recommend the tranquilizer,” she said. “Tully takes it. Topside med kit still has it.”
“I don’t need it,” he muttered, his ears gone down. “I don’t need–“
“Listen to me. Old hands lose their stomachs in this kind of thing. _G_ like planetary lift; we’ll be cycling the vanes–“
“I’m not going to my cabin. Look, you wanted me on the bridge, work, you said–“
“You’re _not_ staying on the bridge.”
“There’s the observers’ seats.”
“No.”
“Please, Py.” His voice sank to its lowest pitch. His amber eyes were quick and large. “_Captain_. Win a ring, you said. In front of them, for the gods’ sake, Py. I won’t make trouble. Won’t.”
Her ears fell; her heart went over. “Gods rot it, this isn’t a simple hop from port to port.”
“Part of the crew. Isn’t that what you meant?”
“This isn’t a question–“
“Pride’s pride, Py. You put me there; you by the gods leave me there. Or do you think the crew won’t have it?”
Soft-headed, that was what.
“You take number one observer,” she said. “You watch Geran watch scan and if you get sick in the cycles you by the gods reach the bags undercabinet, I don’t care what else is going on. If you haven’t ridden through a high-v vector change with someone heaving up you haven’t seen a mess. Got it?” She jabbed him with one sharp claw, saw him go tight around the nose. “Besides, it fogs the screens.”
Without a word he ducked back into the bridge.
She went back behind him, while he set himself into the first of the three observer posts, at Geran’s elbow: Geran gave him a look, betraying no dismay, but a look all the same. He fumbled after belts and began fastening them-not nervous, no. He only missed the insert twice.
She slipped into her own place, snapped the restraint one-handed and powered the chair about all in one smooth sequence, because she could, and failed to realize why she did it until she had.
She argued him onto the bridge for one reason and turned surly when he put himself there. And knew it. Gods.
“Ready to disengage the probe,” Haral said. “Chur’s still down there. Hilfy, advise Vigilance they’ve got a message coming.”
“Aye.” A small delay. “They acknowledge. That’s all.”
She gave Rhif Ehrran that, she was not prone to destructive chatter.
Advise you, that couriered message said, kif on our trail. Stop at nothing, even attack on _han_ deputy. Do not attract interest. Station at hazard. Ours more. We take evasive measures, best possible. No explanation possible.
Well to be out of port when that hit Ehrran’s lap.
A series of thumps rang up from the bow, _The Pride_’s own language of clangs and bumps, reliable as her telltales: docking probes had retracted; vents were sealed. Outside the station hull, the grapples disengaged.
“Gantry’s clear,” Haral said, busy with the prep sequences.
“Where’s Chur? She make it?”
Com relayed. “She’s coming,” Tirun said. “All clear.”
“Give me out-schedule.”
“Up,” Tirun said, and: “Huh.”
Banny _Ayhar’s Prosperity_ was on the list, outbound for Urtur via Hoas Point. So was _Marrar’s Golden Sun_.
There went gossip on its way to Anuurn, fast as a loaded merchant ship could travel and carry an Ehrran message.
Likewise a stsho ship had gone outbound half an hour ago, one _E Mnestsist_, Rhus flisth’ ess commanding. Hoas-bound for Urtur.
So every ship bound from Meetpoint to mahen-hani space had to go to Urtur via Hoas. Unless they were doing it cargo-stripped, to make Urtur in a single jump. _The Pride_’s own course showed Urtur-via-Hoas, which was a lie.
There were other possibilities from Meetpoint: Nsthen in stsho space, where only stsho and methane-breathers were allowed. The tc’a border-port of V’n’n’u; the tc’a port of Tt’a’va’o: methane-breather/stsho again. The kif port of Kefk, the one kifish corridor to Meetpoint; Kshshti in the Disputed Territories. Messages could go a great many ways from Meetpoint, that being the nature of Meetpoint in its conception.
And a tight-beamed lightspeed message could get to an outbound ship like _E Mnestsist_ before it had time to jump. It could still do a vector change … if one Stle sties stlen had something _gtst_ wanted relayed.
Conniving bastard.
_The Pride_ of Chanur was listed departure —–, without a time. They had been bumped up ahead of Prosperity and Golden Sun.
That would not sweeten Barmy Ayhar’s mood, no question at all.
And there was not a single kif listed.
“No telling what’s been delayed off that list,” she muttered. “Could have a raft of kif leaving ten minutes behind us. Station that can’t keep its registry boards running dockside, gods know what it does with out-schedules when money changes hands- Power up, Haral: keep us null for outbound.”
“Up,” Haral said; she heard the distant sound of the pumps delivering their load; the electric whump! of startup normally followed by the louder crash of cylinder-lock going off; but it stayed locked. They would have no G but after-thrust on this system transit. Safer that way. It made sudden moves safer.
She heard the sound of running feet scramble into the bridge at her back; heard a body hit a seat.
“Chur’s in.”
“Message went,” Chur said over the com, above the noise. “Saw it go into the slot.”
“Helm to one.” Helm to her own board. She pushed buttons, let the auto-interlock stay in during the undock, the computer reckoning their mass and how hard to push to stay inside legal parameters. The holds were empty. The thrust-indicator was way down. The ordinary mark would have hit _The Pride_ like a hard kick at an empty can.
“Aunt.” That was Hilfy at com one. “Question.”
“Ask it.”
“That bill–“
“What about that bill?”
“Mahendo’sat paying that?”
“Huh. Yes.”
“They know it?”
“Tell you something, imp. There’s two strong reasons for one-jumping this. One of them’s the kif.”
“Gods, aunt–“
“Tirun, you teaching the kid to swear?”
“_How do we pay it?_”
“It’s paid. Goldtooth paid it. He just doesn’t know it yet. Stand by the vector shift. We’re not going out of here like last time. By the book, at least till we get running room.”
They reached the l-zone limit, two-vectored as they were with station’s spin and their own bow-thrust, headed tailfirst across the invisible mark. She gave the port thrust a ten-second burn that slewed the bow about in the same line as spin and gave comp its heading.
“But, aunt–“
The comp did the next burn, trueing up. “Put it this way. All of you listening? There’s a little matter with the mahendo’sat. They’re paying the bar bill. Hear? — Put her zero two on mark, Haral. Get the cameras working port-side.”
“Want a look at that kif?”
“Number one right, cousin. Geran, handle that.”
“Got it. Image to your four.”
The image came to fourth screen on her board, clear, fine color, the outside of Meetpoint Station, a portion of its torus shape, the huge painted dock numbers obscured here and there by ships nose-on to station. “Main that,” she said. The drifting image went to all stations, the strange shape of a stsho trader, the sleek, wicked silhouette of kif, leaner than they had to be; and one, one with uncommonly large vanes and a series of tanks about the waist.
“Those tanks will blow off real easy,” she said. “Take a good look, Hilfy, Khym. A real good look.”
“Hunter-ship,” Hilfy said.
“No trader. That’s for sure. Gods-rotted kif hunter. That’s _Harukk_, no need to look for numbers.” She keyed the safety systems to *ADVISE ONLY* and pushed the mains in hard.
_G_ hit, pressed her elbow into the brace and triggered the over-arm lock that held her hand within reach of the board. New system. It worked. She had rigged _The Pride_ with what protections they could afford, since Gaohn; handholds, line-rigs, braces at all boards. A few extra firearms, quietly acquired.
“That’s the kif reason,” she said against the _G_. “And the other one for putting a little hurry on — I’d like to beat a certain check to the bank.”
“Can we cover it?” Tirun’s voice, over com. “-Later?”
“Huh. That’s _still_ Goldtooth’s problem.”
“What’s going on?” asked Khym.
Silence, except for ship noise, the long misery of acceleration.
“What’s going on?” he asked again.
“Just a business arrangement,” she said. “Hold onto your stomach. We’re coming up on two-range. Going to give ourselves a boost.”
“Pyanfar–“
“Tell you later. Haral, set her up.”
“Captain, got another ship undocked,” Chur said from scan.
“Gods rot. Who?”
“Can’t tell yet. Station’s not talking. Stand by.”
They were not yet far enough and fast enough for _C_ to play havoc with information: not far enough and fast yet by far to be out of range of that sleek kif ship back there.
_That_ ship could start out a day late and be waiting for them on Urtur rim. No question. She drew quiet small breaths against the _G_ and calculated. A rush after them made no sense, for a ship that fast.
It was not kif that had undocked. She was willing to bet not kif. It had no need to race, being able to guess their course.
“Ship is _knnn_.”
“Oh, good gods.”
“What’s the matter?” (Khym.)
Knnn. Methane-breathing, dangerous and lunatic in their moves. _No one_ wanted the knnn stirred up.
And kif trouble might. Any trouble might.
“What’s the matter?” (Khym again).
“Long explanation,” Pyanfar muttered. “Hold the questions, Kyhm. We’re busy.”
“Com coming up,” Hilfy said.
An insane wailing came over com, knnn-song, which announced to the universe and other knnn whatever it was the knnn thought good to say.
Or it was simply singing for its own amusement, and putting it out on com out of thinking as obscure as the rest of its logic.
“Bearing zero two by fourteen.”
Askew for them. That meant nothing. Knnn ships obeyed different laws.
“Stand by that cycle,” she said, and listened for Haral’s acknowledgment. “Take it twice. We’re getting out of here.”
Vanes cycled in, a brief, stomach-wrenching lurch to a higher energy state. Nausea threatened. Instruments recycled with a flurry of lights, recalibrating. She checked the nav fix on Urtur.
“Knnn no change,” Chur said.
Second pulse.
“Helm to one.” Controls flashed live under her hands as Haral handed it over. They were up to _V_, outbound. “Stand by jump. Fix on that knnn to the last gods-rotted second.”
Knnn had policy, somewhere in their moves. Black hair-snarls animate on long thin legs, they built good ships — far better ships than oxy-breathers could survive, unless things also went on in them that played games with stress. Nothing could talk to knnn but the leathery, serpentine tc’a, and tc’a brains were manifold matrices.
Nothing could reason with knnn but tc’a. Time was, knnn took anything they liked, stripped ships in midcourse, raided the earliest stations: so stsho said. It was before the hani came. Tc’a got through the concept of trade — at least so knnn left _something_ in their forays. Now they darted manic-fast into methane-breather sectors, deposited some object, which might be anything, and skittered off again with whatever they wanted — which might, again, be anything.
Tc’a coped. Chi did, one supposed; but chi, looking like a collection of yellow, rapid-moving sticks, were crazier than knnn. And tc’a themselves were hazy on trade-concepts. Gods knew how they ran their worlds. No outsider did.
“Mark to jump: five minutes.”
“How’s that knnn?”
“Still– It just cycled, captain.”
“I want better news. That’s four and counting.”
“Continuing to cycle. That’s into our lag-time–” Meaning that in the lag of lightspeed information the knnn might be doing other things.
“Rot the book.” She shoved the jump cycle in.
–dropped
–seatfirst–
–topside down–
–rightside up
–back again in here and now, and the stomach still wanting to turn itself inside out–
There was that wretched halfway-there, while senses swam, fingers took an hour clenching on controls, instruments underwent a slow ripple of lights that took a subjective day arriving at nothing special at all —
Solidity then, with one focus, sharp-edged and dreadful as the soft uncertainties before, with endless fascination in the angles of counters, the colors, the textures. A mind could get lost in the endless detail of a counter-edge.
Pyanfar swallowed against the dry mouth and copper taste that came with compressed time, flexed hands that had not flexed for three-odd weeks local. The chronometers showed a dubious 3.2 days. The body reacted: would shed hair and old skin within the hour as if entropy had hit, not quite three days’ worth, but some: and Tully’s drugs would wear off, while the bowels and kidneys had other, later consequences, and blood sugar went through loops and dives, obscuring sense and hazing senses and doing things to the stomach.
_Beep_ went controls.
She shoved the Dump down hard.
Second phasing in and out of hyperspace, bleeding off velocity in the process.
Third.
Her stomach heaved. She held her jaw clenched. The copper taste was worse.
Automatic alarms went off in her skull, memories she had forced there weeks ago. “Geran! ‘ware of kif. Do we have company?”
“Checking.”
Three subjective days since she had done out-bound at Meetpoint and she felt the ache in her shoulders. “Khym. You all right?”
An incoherent answer; he sounded alive.
“Got Urtur beacon,” Haral said. “Tirun. Sort it.”
“Aye.” That was Urtur beacon information coming in, constant-send, giving incoming ships the exact position of objects insystem so far as known. Course assignment would come, as soon as bounce-back time had delivered their presence to Urtur’s robot outrange beacon and its automated systems computed them a lane.
“Advise Beacon,” Pyanfar said, “that we’re through-traffic. Get your star-fix.” Her hands shook. Crew would be in no better state. She wanted a drink, imagined floods of liquid, iced, deluges of flavors. Even tepid. Brackish. Anything.
“Fix on Kirdu,” Haral said. “Affirmative. Laying course for Maing Tol via Kita Point.”
“Message sent,” Hilfy said.
“How long to station signal?”
“About two hours,” Tirun said. “That’s 2.31. Beacon doesn’t show any ship in the range. It’s not picking us up.”
“Beacon signal,” Hilfy said. “Aunt — We’re getting a code-call off beacon. We’ve got a message waiting. Stand by.”
“Huh.” A cold feeling settled to Pyanfar’s stomach. “Put it through on one.” The beacon robot had output something triggered by _The Pride_’s automatic ID, like a tripline. They came into system, beacon affirmed their identity and spat out what it held memory-stored for them. Expensive mail. Very.
And the robot scan was still not showing them added to image of Urtur system. It was not direct scan-image. It was computer-generated; and the computer failed to put their existence on the screen.
“We’ve got an error,” Haral said. “Bastard beacon’s giving us Kshshti heading, wants us to take starfix on Maing Tol. Put that lane request through again, Hilfy. It’s gone crazy.”
“Hold that.” Pyanfar stared at the message coming up on her number one screen. She keyed the Print on: it hummed and spat out hardcopy into the documents bin. Strings and strings of codes. More codes. Theirs . . . _Ana Ismehanan-min_, it said, _to good friend. Advise you got bad trouble Kita Point. Beacon give you now new heading. I fix with Urtur authority, number one good_.
_Go Kshshti route. Know got close kif, but Kita got too many kif. Mahen ship, kif ship, got two hand number ship. Mahen ship not got be everywhere too quick. Sorry this trouble._
_You one-jump Kshshti number one fine, no trouble, no stop middle of dark like Kita. You reach Kshshti you give authorization code *Hasano-ma*._
_You do good; Know you number one quick thinker. Kif not catch._
“You egg-sucking bastard!” The restraint held her seated and half cut off her wind. She took a clawed swipe at the tray and slammed the printout onto the clearspace of the panel; but the screen kept on feeding codes and the printer kept on going in idiot persistence.
“Message from beacon,” Hilfy said, carefully unperturbed. “Blinker alarm advises us acknowledge and accept new heading.”
She cut the screen output. The printer, undefeated, hummed and spat out yet another sheet.
Second message. More codes. _Urtur station advise you course change big urgent. You not be register on system scan. Beacon blank you image give you cover. Go quick._
“Beacon’s not malfunctioning,” she muttered. “It means it. That bastard Goldtooth set something up with Urtur. They’re routing us to Kshshti.”
“Kshshti’s half kif,” Geran protested. “We go in there–“
“It’s a one-jump. He’s right in that, if Kita’s blocked. At least we won’t be out in the dark nowhere with the kif . . . Call up Records: what’s Kshshti got for muscle?”
“Searching,” Chur said. “. . . .Got two hunter-ships assigned from Maing Tol; stats show ten percent stsho calls, sixteen t’ca-chi, thirty-two kif, fifty-one mahendo’sat-I don’t get any assurance on those hunter-ships being there. Based there, it says.”
“Fine.” She gnawed at her mustaches and twitched her ears while the beacon went into its Acknowledge-comply routine and com flashed warning lights. Tick-tick. Tick. Tick-tick-tick. Haos was still possible. So was Kura. The stsho. The _han_. “We go with it. Don’t see what else to do. Beacon’s going to blow a circuit otherwise.”
“We’re pretty deep in the well,” Haral said, understated caution. The star had them firmly now: vector shift meant total dump. Meant a rough reacquisition, fighting to get more V back than a star wanted to give them.
“Got no choice, have we? Advise Tully. Can’t wait around.”
Hilfy relayed. “Tully’s coherent. He says go.”
“Set it,” Pyanfar said, and raked the last printout from the bin.
And stared. It was not the comp readout she had expected. That was on the bottom of the tray. Another beacon-sending had come in, autoed into the printout bin.
No codes this time. Perfect hani.
_Hani ship _The Pride_ of Chanur: avoid Kita. Akkhtimakt has established watchers there. You will not come alive through that space._
_Be no fool._
A shiver went over her skin.
“Hilfy.”
“Aunt?”
“You read that number-three message?”
A silence. Hilfy searched her bin.
“Who sent that?” Hilfry wondered, quiet and hoarse.
“Someone fast,” she said.
“Brace for dump,” Haral said.
The vanes cycled in, a dizzying pulse half-forming their hyperspace bubble, a ripple like vision through oil.
It let them go and Haral began their realspace course-change then, a long sickening hammering of correcting directionals and mains. _G_ hauled at an already outraged gut.
“Got the Maing Tol fix,” Haral said. And a long, long while later, when the engines reached null-_V_ and kept burning: “We just passed null.”
And later, as bodies ached in one long misery: “Closing on mark.”
“Go when ready,” Pyanfar said. Urtur’s dust had not hit the hull yet, but the place always sent the wind up her back.
Blanked off station scan, for the gods’ sake. A ship hurtling dark and unreported through Urtur system with Urtur Station’s collusion, a risk to other ships–
Fearing what? Kif insystem?
“Stand by the pulse.” Haral’s voice cracked with fatigue.
“Want me to take it?”
“I’ve got it set. Stand by.”
Another pulse, another queasy moment neither here nor there. There was the bloody smear of a red light on the board.
“Vane two red,” Pyanfar muttered. “Stop it there.”
“Regulator in the vane column,” Pyanfar said, blinking it all into focus again. Her bones ached. “Ship doesn’t like all this change of mind. Tirun, I want an interrupt check on that vane.”
“Right.” Tirun’s voice shook with exhaustion. No complaints. “Sure like to know why it didn’t cut off.”
“Solve it from inside.”
“Urtur’s no gods-rotted place for a walk.”
“We in trouble?” Khym asked.
“Just got a little mechanical problem. Still got one backup left on that system. Regulator ought to have shut the vane down short of blowing what blew. I think our problem’s there. That’s an in-hull problem. No big trouble.” But it was trouble. Something made it blow. And Kshshti was a long, long one-jump. Big stress. If that vane went– “What’s our transit time?”
“Got–” Haral said, “–48.4 hours to next jump.”
“We’ll find the glitch by then.” She powered the chair back, needing room to breathe. Another quarter turn of the chair and she saw Khym sitting there, head leaned back against the cushion, breathing in slow, careful intakes, looking her way with a bleak curiosity. He had not been sick. Was not. Was plainly determined not to be.
Holding it, she guessed.
“Tully wants to come topside,” Chur said.
“Fine.” She was numb, with a certain insulation between herself and calamities back at Meetpoint, and the one back there on their tail. She looked aside as all number-four screens acquired an image from _The Pride_’s outside eyes, habit when they arrived at a place. Haral had done that, reflex or a statement: no panic. Just routine operations.
Urtur was spectacle enough, to be sure, one great fried egg of a star and system magnified in their pickup, a yellow star for a yolk that glowed hellishly in the flattened disk of dust that surrounded it. Planets swept dark orbits in the disk, accreted rings of their own. Urtur’s worlds were mostly gas giants, with a few well-cratered smaller planets buried in the muck.
No place for a walk indeed. Particles would hole even a hardsuit in short order.
Mahendo’sat owned Urtur system, doing mahen things like poking about in the dust hunting clues to why Urtur was like it was — for pure curiosity, which was why mahendo’sat did a great many peculiar things. But at the same time and practically, they maintained a case for the methane-breathers, who thought methane-dominant Elaji a fine fair place, with its clouds aglow with the constant flicker of lightnings and meteors making streaks by the minute in an atmosphere already greenhoused by previous impacts. Oxy-breathers got photos of the surface. Tc’a revelled in it, and mined rare metals, and had industry in that hell.
Knnn too.
And where, she wondered, considering that deficient scan image, was their own private knnn?
Blocked off scan the same as they, and out of range of their own pickup?
145
C. /. Chenyh
Gone, perhaps. Off their track entirely.
She did not trust that. Not finding the knnn simply meant they had not found it.
_The Pride_ did a minor course correction, a gentle push at her left. For any ship going crosswise to the dust circulation, Urtur transit was a matter of finding the most useful hole in the debris and presenting as little as possible of the vane surface to the particles during ecliptic transit.
They had damage enough to contend with, gods knew.
“Get her set and we go auto for a while. You can do those checks after we get some food in you, Tirun. — Who’s on galley?”
“Me,” said Hilfy.
“Get on it.” And not without thought: “Crew-youngest always gets the extra duty. You help her, Khym.”
Khym just stared at her from the oblique, a desperate, half-drowned stare. Hilfy turned her chair, released her restraints and levered herself out of it. Khym moved then, got up like a drunk and held onto the chairback for a moment.
Work, indeed work.
And he followed Hilfy without a backward look, by the gods, the ex-lord of Mahn on galley duty, no complaints. She drew a long slow breath and remembered youth, Mahn, its fields, the house with the spring.
And a tired elder hani who tried to begin all over. At bottom. In a dimension he hardly understood.
“Going to be one lot of mad shippers,” Tirun muttered. “Remember that rush order from that factor?”
“Bet Ayhar nabs it,” Chur said.
Pyanfar released her restraints and got to her feet. Her joints ached and there was fire down her back.
She stopped in midstretch. Tully was there in the doorway, ghostlike silent in the white noise of _The Pride_’s working. He rested one arm on the doorframe, and stood there, barefoot, in simple crewwoman’s breeches and nothing else, looking wan and cold. No more _friend_, no more _Py-anfar_. Just that bruised, cornered look that wondered if anyone had time for him.
“I know,” she said. “We get you fed.”
“Safe?” he asked. _He_ knew ships, enough to feel _The Pride_ faltering-and himself alone and knowing all too much. “Ship–” He made a helpless motion. “Break?”
“Got it under control,” she said. “Fine. Safe, all fine.”
The pale eyes flickered.
“Fix soon,” she said. Fear looked back at her, habitual and patient. She beckoned him and he left the door and walked all the way inside. Mobile blue eyes flicked this way and that, scanning monitors for what they could read, quick and furtive move. They centered on her again.
“Got talk.” He had gotten a little hani. She grew accustomed to his slurring speech. The translator spat useless static. “Got talk, please got talk.”
“Maybe it’s time we do.” A great uneasiness came over her, things out of joint. Males and tempers and their old friend Tully, whose alien face had that strange, distracted movement of the eyes. Fear of them as well as well as kif? And suspicious reprobate that she was: Lies, Tully? Or plain self-interest from the start?
“Sure,” she said. She stank, reeked; she thought instinctively of baths, of males and quarrels and a thousand lunatic distracted things like impacts at this speed, and the vane that showed intact in the image on Tirun’s screens (but it was not, inside, and that could be bad news indeed.) Urtur. Docking with, likely, kif about. And not a hope of help. Urtur had no muscle adequate to fend off anything. _Poor human fool, we could lose us all here, don’t you know? They’d move in, take what they liked, you foremost_– “Gome on,” she said to the crew at large, who were all tremble-handed at their work. “Break it off. We eat, get some sleep.” She caught Tully by the arm. “You come and tell me, huh?”
Chapter Six
The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds-abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So _The Pride_ exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge.
Meanwhile–
Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when _na_ Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym — Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way — misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior.) There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays.
There was silence at table, mostly — a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone. A little “have this,” and “try that,” from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully’s ribs.
No harrying, no pressure — take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key . . . the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had — finally — come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go — Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little. Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth.
“Your House send you?” Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully’s way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat.
Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. “Send?” the translator queried, flat-voiced . . . O gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. “Send me?”
“I don’t know that they _have_ Houses,” Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym _tried_ the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew’s and hers. “Don’t use big words. Translator can’t handle them.”
“House isn’t a big word.”
“Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don’t know how it comes out the other side.”
“Say again,” Tully said.
“I asked who sent you.”
“# # send me.”
“See?” said Pyanfar. “You get a word it won’t make sense.”
“Name home,” Tully said. “Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me “
“He _does_ talk.”
“So,” Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. “Sun, is it?”
“Where are we?” Tully asked. “Ur-tur?”
“Urtur. Yes.”
He drew a great breath. “Go Maing Tol.”
“Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?”
“Know.” He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. “Meetpoint — Urtur — Kshshti — Maing Tol.”
“Huh.” He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them. “Goldtooth teach?”
“Mahe name Ino. Ship name _Ijir_.”
“Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How’d you find Goldtooth?”
He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. “Go Goldtooth, yes.”
“You with him long?”
“#?”
“Were you long time in Goldtooth’s ship?”
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce.
“Where did you meet Goldtooth?”
“Ino find him.”
It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don’t pick a fight, no trouble while Khym’s in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves.
“You come how long ago?” Geran asked.
“Don’t know,” he said, glancing that way. “Long time.”
“Days?”
“Lot days.”
He could be more precise. He knew the translator’s limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence.
Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so. There was not a move at table. Only Tully.
Their old friend.
She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.
His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.
“Where find?” he asked. “_Where find, Pyanfar?_”
“Whose?” She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead.
“Mahe got?” he asked. “Goldtooth?”
“Kif gave it to me,” she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. “Friend of yours, Tully?”
“What say this kif?”
“Said — said it was a message for our cargo.”
The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right. For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully’s eyes and ran down into his beard.
“Friend, huh?” She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. “Want to get that vane fixed?”
“Where _get_?” Tully asked before anyone could move.
“Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named _Harukk_. Who did it belong to, huh?”
His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on.
It was too small. He forced it. “Need #,” he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now.
“This kif,” she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. “This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you’d come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked. What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?”
The blue eyes burned. “Friend,” he said. “Belong friend stay _Ijir_.”
She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. “So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. _Where?_”
“Kif got. Kif got # _Ijir_.”
“Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you’ve told us. _What_ do they know, Tully? What are you up to, your _hu-man-i-ty_?”
“They ask help.”
“How much help? Tully-what are you doing here?”
“Kif. _Kif_.”
“What’s going on?” Khym asked from her left. “What’s he talking about — kif?”
“Later,” she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym’s nostrils. “Tully. Tell me what’s in that paper. You tell me, hear.”
“You got take to Maing Tol.”
“Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought.”
He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated. “Need you,” he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static. “Friend, Pyanfar.”
“_I_ ask him,” Khym rumbled.
“No,” she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. “Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are.”
“Ask hani come fight ship take human.”
“Make sense.”
“Want make trade hani-mahe.”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the _han_ direct. Trade — was the lure, and there was something in the trees.
She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral’s ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous.
But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions. Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed.
“Vane,” she said with ulterior motives. “Go.”
“Aye.” Haral moved, shoved Chur’s shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up.
