Chanur's Homecoming (25 page)

"That's friendly of them," Haral murmured as their own position at station vanished from the other display. "At least they're catholic when they blank the scan."

The ramp access doors opened, above the once-teeming docks: deserted now, mostly. Bits of paper. Trash. Abandoned machinery. Burn-scars on the paints. Arid cold, which the Meetpoint docks always were, too much size and too little free heat from the dull, dead Mass about which the station orbited. There were abundant kif-not far away, black shapes in robes. Skkukun, likely, quasi-slaves on Ikkhoitr. Expendables and dangerous as a charged cable.

And there were stsho, fragile-looking pale figures huddled over against the far side of their own docks, scurrying like pale ghosts, out of doorways and shelter, the dispossessed owners of Meetpoint. A mass of them surged toward the foot of the ramp, indecisively retreated, bolted again toward them in utter chaos, a crowd all spindle-limbed and gossamer-robed in opalescent whites and pearl, stsho of rank, with their feathery, augmented brows, their moonstone eyes struck with panic. They gibbered and wailed their plaints, their effusive pleas for protection-

And they came to one collective and horrified halt, and gasped and chittered for dread. Of the kif, perhaps.

Or perhaps it was the first sight of Tully that did it.

"Stay close," Pyanfar muttered to Tully. "Not friends."

"Got," he said under his breath. And kept close at her elbow as they descended, Jik trailing behind her; and Tahar; and Harun and all the rest. Kif waiting below formed a black wedge as they went down into that mass of stsho, and the stsho gave way before that like leaves before a wind, gibbering as they went, down a dock on which many of the lighted signs, indicating ships at dock, showed stsho names. Too timid to break dock, helpless in the advent of armed ships sweeping in out of Kefk inbound vector, which was unhappily also the outbound vector for the nearest stsho port, at Nsthen-they could do nothing in their unweaponed state but cower and wait, while their appointed kifish defenders did the smart thing and ran like the devils of a mahen hell were on their heels.

"Lousy mess," Pyanfar said; and hitched the rifle she carried to a more conspicuous attitude, while they walked along an aisle of kif with Ikkhoitr's black-robed captain, and stsho retreated and stared at them from concealment with terrified, moonstone eyes.

Then a kifish name showed in lights above a berth: and the ramp of Harukk gaped for them.

She hitched her gunbelt up and tried to calm her stomach. Her nose had begun to prickle and she searched after another pill in her pocket, never minding the timelapse. Metabolism did peculiar things after jump. She was strung tight and getting tighter, on the raw edge of fatigue.

Walking up that ramp was very much not what she wanted to do, if her body had had its choice in the matter; but brain began to assert itself as cold terror ebbed down to a different kind of wariness.

Gods, we got to think, Pyanfar Chanur, we got to think about all those stationfolk, dithering stsho though they be, and gods help any hani and any mahendo'sat-the hakkikt's just taken himself another spacestation, and this time he's got his blood up and he's got a point to make. Gods help 'em all, think, think, get the mind wide awake.

Gods-be pills make you sleepy, curse 'em.

I haven't got the strength for this. I'm not any kid anymore. The knees are going to go. I'm going to fall down right on this godsforsaken rampway, and if I do it's all unraveled, we're all going to die and the gods-blessed Compact is going to go all to pieces because I can't keep my knees from wobbling and my gut from hurting and my eyes from fuzzing.

Ten more steps, Pyanfar Chanur, and then ten more, and we get to rest a while, we can lean on that lift wall, can't we? They won't notice.

Down the corridor, the bleak, black, ammonia-reeking corridor past Harukk's airlock; and Jik and Kesurinan walking side by side behind her- No knowing what signals they've passed, gods rot the luck-

Tully, where's Tully, f'godssakes-

She caught sight of him, shouldered back by Skkukuk as she entered the lift with Ikkhoitr's captain and Jik and Kesurinan and Tahar. "Tully!" she snarled, and he dived forward and made the door before it closed on the first group, leaving the others for a second lift, and gods only hope they ended up in the same place.

Herself and Jik and Tully and Skkukuk, with Tahar and the kifish captain and his lot: the lift let them out in Harukk's upper corridor, in a chill, damp closeness and the stink of ammonia and incense.

They'll die if we foul it up. All these people on Meetpoint. My crew. Us on this ship. How do you reason with a kif?

Kif waited for her at the other end, kif dressed in skintight suits and robes modified for freefall work. Sodium-light glared and tinted gray-black skins, the glitter of weapons, of wet-surfaced eyes as they waited to welcome the hakkikt's guests.

In a hospitality both Jik and Tully had abundant cause to remember.

Chapter Seven

The hakkikt waited for them in his audience-chamber, deep within Harukk's well-shielded ring, and, thank all the gods, there was a place to sit, a chair at a low table, the captains and Jik and Tully all offered chairs at the table with Sikkukkut, and the captains' escorts left with the skkukun, standing about in the dim sodium light and the smoke of incense. Pyanfar took the little cup of parini they offered her as she sat: her hand shook when she did it, and if the cup was not drugged, it was as dangerous on her queasy and pill-shocked stomach as if it had been. She had rather food, she had far rather food at the moment.

But not on a kifish ship.

And: "Tully," she said. "Be careful of that. Hakkikt, I don't know if he can drink."

"Kkkt. Indeed. Can you, na Tully?"

"Yes," Tully said in perfect hani. And answered the hakkikt face to face, after all his evasions and his stratagems. He sipped a bit from his cup, and what went on behind those strange, shyly down-glancing eyes was anyone's guess.

So with Jik, who drank his own cup, carefully. And if there was raw hate inside him, if there was shock and a still-raw wound, it did not surface. Kesurinan sat beside him, at this different, jointed table with the hollow center, in which a kifish servant squatted ungainly with a serving-flask and waited for someone's cup to empty. Harun and Tauran, Vrossaru and Pauran and Shaurnurn, Faha and Kesurinan and Jik and scar-faced Dur Tahar; Tully and Skkukuk side by side; and the captain of Ikkhoitr, if she had not lost track of the kif in the shuffle, sitting by his (her?) prince's elbow.

Gods save them all from the Ikkhoitr captain's talebearing. The long-snouted bastard had indeed been whispering and clicking away, nose to Sikkukkut's hooded ear.

"Kkkkt," Sikkukkut said then, and looked at his senior captain with-it might be-curiosity. "Indeed." He turned then and extended a thin tongue briefly into the metal-studded cup which rested like a silver ball in his black hand. "Is there unanimity among you?"

"Enough," Pyanfar said; and in coldest blood: "Hani methods, hakkikt. Hani will always dispute. Even when they agree. A sfik-thing. Mine and theirs. It's satisfied and they're here. In fact they're glad to see you."

"Kkkkt. Are they?"

"We weren't fond of Akkhtimakt," Harun said in a low voice, before Pyanfar could mull it over.

Gods, be careful. Speak for yourself and you become a Power, Harun. He may ask what you don't know how to answer. Watch it, for godssakes watch it, you don't know what that sounds like in kifish.

"Hani understatement," Pyanfar said. "Akkhtimakt, a curse on his name, moved in here and dealt with the stsho. That was one thing. He disturbed hani interests. That was another."

"There were, of course, the mahendo'sat. And this other group of ships. Humans? Were those humans?"

"Yes," Harun said.

"Interesting." Another sip at the cup, a glance Tully's way and back again. "Close but not close enough. The mahendo'sat have pulled off, doubtless to try again. Hence my watchers about the system. A fool would linger on these docks. We might have another Kefk here. In an emergency. There might even be sabotage, kkkt? Did the mahendo'sat touch here?"

"No," Harun said.

"Who is this captain?"

"Harun of Harun's Industry," Pyanfar said.

"Ah. Your cousin."

Cold went through her nerves. "Distant," Pyanfar said. "Our clans have a distant tie." O gods, I hope he doesn't have our kinships in library. "Ceremonial." The lie wove itself wider and wider. "Hani place sfik on kinships. And blood-debts. Harun has ties to some of these. I have ties to Harun and Faha, there. It's really quite simple. And blood-debt to Jik and Kesurinan." Not to forget that business. Add it in. Secure Jik much as I can. "We can have that even to non-hani." Change the subject. Hold out possibilities to the bastard. "There's sfik-value on that too."

And if hani around the table did not know now that every other word she said to the kif was a lie, they were deaf and blind.

"Has he talked to you?"

"Somewhat." She took a chance, reached and took a sip of parini. "I'm going to keep him on my ship as advisor. I'm sure Kesurinan understands, ummn? But he misses the smokes, hakkikt. He truly does."

"The smokes," Sikkukkut repeated in a flat tone, as if she had gone quite mad. "Do we still have such a thing?"

The skku in the center of the tables searched anxiously among its robes. Efficient, by the gods. Foresight covering all sorts of hospitality. It brought out the little sack, eyes aglitter with triumph.

"Your skku is amazing," Pyanfar murmured, making a low-status kif very happy in its neurotic zeal; and took another minuscule sip of parini.

"I might bestow you another gift," Sikkukkut said. And scared two kif and a hani at the same time.

"Huh." She kept her calm. With difficulty. "We hardly have formalities enough to keep another skku occupied- Nothing so splendid, hakkikt."

"But you want another gift."

Bluff called. She looked up, lowered her ears and got them up again, heart hammering. "Is the hakkikt disposed to talk policy?''

"Ah." Sikkukkut set down his cup, hands in his lap as he sat crosslegged in the insect-chair. "Shikki," he said sharply; and the skku eeled its way over to lay the smoke-pouch on the table in front of Jik.

Jik picked it up carefully, felt of it and carefully extracted a smokestick and a lighter. "You mind?"

Sikkukkut gave a wave of his hand and Jik put the stick in his mouth and carefully lit it. His hands were shaking, but only a little, limned in the fire that lit his face. The light died. He drew a long breath of smoke in as if it was life itself.

"Foul habit," Sikkukkut said as the smoke went up to mingle with the ammonia-stink and the incense. He rested an elbow on the raised insect-leg of his chair and leaned his chin on that hand. "But you and I remain friends. Kkkt. Good. That is very well. Kotgokkt kotok shotokkiffik ngik thakkur."

-prisoners?

All round the table backs stiffened. Except Jik's, to look at him; he sat there concentrating on his smoke, with a cloud of it round his head.

"Sit still," Pyanfar said in hani; and Haurnar Vrossaru and Vaury Shaurnurn turned their heads to look toward their escorts, the only two who did.

But maybe they knew their crew.

"Is the hakkikt disposed?" Pyanfar repeated.

"The hani captain may push too far," Ikkhoitr's captain said out of his silence. "Be careful of it."

"Makes me nervous," Pyanfar said. "This place. We're exposed sitting here at station. If I were Akkhtimakt-" She rested her elbow on her knee, easy pose, though her heart was hammering away fit to take her breath: thank gods for the incense that masked the sweat. Her nose itched and ran. She ignored it. "This place smells of trap, hakkikt."

"In what way?"

"I'm an old trader, hakkikt. And stsho may cheat you one way and five more, but I never knew them to plot violence." Phrase it so the bastard has salve for his pride. A trader can know merchant-things. He isn't expected to understand grasseaters, is he? "But they'll buy violence, without understanding what they've bought. They've made mistakes before. This is a big one. They've involved the han. Technically, hani are allied with Akkhtimakt, because of the stsho treaty, which gave him what he never would have had. Support on the far side of the Compact. All of a sudden you don't hold the majority of Akkhtimakt's territory. He's just quadrupled his holdings. And he's on the other side of an uncrossable gulf. No jump points, hakkikt, no bridge between hani space and here. It's a narrow neck and one where he can interdict you if hani abide by that treaty."

There was deathly quiet in the room. No kif moved. Then a nervous shift from the Faha. Ears were flat, all in that section of the table.

And Jik shot her a carefully frowning glance. Sucked in a great deal of smoke and let it go. "A." Drawing Sikkukkut's attention to himself.

"Is it so."

"He go Urtur. Damn sure not go Kita."

"You have ships at Kita."

Another slow draw at the smoke. "I don't swear. Good guess. We send message Maing Tol. My Personage make move on Kita. Where he go? Here? Got no cross-jump but Tt'a'va'o, damn bad choice. Methane-breather, human, lot mahendo'sat. Damn bad choice. You no do. He no do."

"Should I wonder that that is then precisely what I should do?"

Go off toward Tt'a'va'o and possible ambush, and involve himself with everything Jik had listed? Go home to Akkht and consolidate his hold? Or to Llyene and terrorize the stsho in a raid every kifish pirate must have dreamed of?

They were all good choices for the Compact as a whole. If they cast themselves totally on hope of rescue from the mahendo'sat.

Who had their hands full already, saving their own hides.

"Masheo-to," Jik said. And something more involving Akkhtimakt and ship IDs, rapidly. While Sikkukkut's black eyes fixed on him.

"Kkkt," Sikkukkut said. "Interesting thought. Do you follow that? No? Keia proposes that Akkhtimakt may have faked identification in his ship ID. That he may not be among that group we dispersed, but already at Urtur. We will both have taken precautions: my ships will reach all the jump-points that lead out from here in time to prevent escape from insystem or to prevent any ships not already launched from arriving here. But Keia favors us with another interesting proposal. I tell you I value you both."