Chanur's Legacy (35 page)

That was somewhat Tiar’s own opinion, but: “Whatever we’re doing we better all do it,” was her second one. And Chihin, who had read the whole thing, had muttered a surly, pain-infected obscenity and declared
The Pride’s
crew obviously had to bolt everything down and double-check the readouts because
The Pride’s
captain was crazy.

But that was the ship’s-manual ops section, and every spacer in the clan knew Pyanfar Chanur was a stickler for neatness, double and triple checks, and logging every sneeze. The part about arms maintenance, about who went armed and where and when and when not to fire, who in a group was to watch what and who was to break for help, what the ship would stand good for and what the captain would not tolerate ... all that, in Tiar’s estimation, was a piece of good sense. The instructions might violate five separate Compact laws and two Trade office regulations Tiar could immediately think of, not mentioning local ordinances, but it was comforting to think that there was a standing order for a rescue, that station police no matter with what warrant were not going to take a crew member from the dockside for any reason whatsoever, and that the ship would seal up and leave dock at any moment to protect its crew, disregarding cargo and disregarding station central control. That was against the law. That would get them barred from trade unless they had a good story for the tribunal.

But Hilfy Chanur said that the new rules were the rules and she was going to follow them. It was a major lot of trouble if they ever had to do what was set down here: lawsuits, blacklisting, the various fines and penalties and loss of license Compact law threatened them with evidently didn’t matter, if they had another incident like the one yesterday—because
ker
Hilfy said that was the way it was, and in Tiar’s experience, Hilfy meant it, come fire come thunder.
Ker
Chanur had no few faults, but if she promised something this drastic, she wouldn’t back down if it went operational.

No wonder they didn’t want a copy leaving the ship. They weren’t trade rules. They were a manual for ...

A manual for, it occurred to Tiar Chanur as she thought about it, a
hunter
ship, an outright privateer ... as, at least in the speculation of some in Chanur clan, that was what cousin Pyanfar had been for certain forces in the
han,
for years before it became official and war broke out and the
han
tried to bring her under control.

If we ever do any of these things, Tiar thought, we’ll go over that same edge. At that point we’ll no longer be a trading ship: ports won’t treat us as one. We might get into port—but no knowing who’d trade with us.

And if the
Legacy
goes over the edge, if Chanur has two ships operating like this ... how can we claim we’re still just another clan? The
han
won’t stand for it.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The captain was upset, she’d picked that up clearly enough. She’d seen it in Chihin, who was in pain, and had a right to be, but she could read Chihin, and it was more than the pain in the wounded arm, Chihin was rattled, ambivalent about this business, and mad as she’d seen her in years.

Because the kid had saved her neck? Maybe. Chihin really, honestly, didn’t approve of the boy being here, particularly on this voyage ... even if Chihin had grudgingly called him a nice, cooperative kid— (“Too gods-be nice,” Chihin had put it. “Mincemeat in a month, at home, at his age.”)

So it probably wasn’t the kid, probably not even the stsho. Chihin was walking around this morning with a head of steam built up and a set to her jaw that said the pain was only an aggravation, she was holding it in, and the wise wouldn’t cross her opinions.

Cargo was getting moved—Hallan Meras was back working on the dockside, where Hilfy had sworn he wouldn’t be, but Chihin was out there, unstoppable as a star in its course, and Fala was working the pre-launch checks and Tarras was making calls after cargo, running comp and turning a page now and again, a frown on her face.

That was all right, Hilfy thought. She didn’t expect expressions of delight when crew found out they were getting less sleep and more work. And that the standing orders amounted to outlawry. She went back to her office to fill out forms for the station legal office, not something she had rather do, but if they had a hope of recovering what they’d just paid out, those forms had to get in before any undock.

Which might come sooner than later.

And there was the matter of the contract, which now, in printout, could fill three of those cabinets. She’d given up on printout. She asked the computer to search
borders/international
and
flight/unwillingness/refusal.

Search
borders/international
negative,
it said with idiot cheerfulness.

And reported ... In the event of the refusal of the party accepting the contract to deliver the cargo to the designated recipient , . .

She knew that part. Double indemnity.

It came up with three similars and a couple of other irrelevancies. Then:
End of search.

Tarras put her head in the door, with the same worried expression. “Captain. I have a question.”

Crew was touchy, crew was upset, crew had a right to be. It wasn’t convenient, she was trying to logic her way through subclauses and obligations and Vikktakkht an Nikkatu’s behavior, but crew was a priority above priorities. It had to be.

“About what?” she asked, and Tarras eased her way through the door, the Book a rolled-up and well-thumbed set of pages in her hands.

“First off, I was calling the police yesterday. I was trying to get them in there ... that’s why I didn’t answer you right off. ...”

“This thing isn’t to assign fault. You weren’t at fault. The police got there. That’s not what this is aiming at. Absolutely not. If you think I’d better have a word about that ...”

“I understand what I should have done, by this. But if I’d done that, if I’d threatened station ...”

“You’re
authorized
to threaten station. That’s in there. It doesn’t mean you open with that bid, cousin. You use your well-known sense. I don’t fault you that you were talking to the police. I hoped you were talking to the police. I’d rather you were talking with them, I was a little gods-be busy at the time.”

“If we did this, we’d be outlawed. It breaks the law, captain. We’d be blacklisted in every port...”

“We’d be alive.”

There was silence in the office. A shadow in the corridor. So Tarras hadn’t quite come alone. Fala was listening, too, juniormost and without Tarras’ disposition to ask the dangerous questions.

Tarras was thinking about the last one, and maybe thinking alive and outlawed wasn’t the career she’d planned for herself.

“I’m not qualified,” Tarras said, “to make a decision like that. I’m not a lawyer, I’m the super-cargo.”

“You’re also the weapons master. Don’t tell them you’re a lawyer. Tell them you’re the gunner and you’re left in charge and if somebody doesn’t do something you will ... if I were stationmaster, I’d listen.”

Another silence. “You mean bring the weapons up.”

“If you have to. Yes. And there’s no stationmaster going to enforce a warrant on you. That’s not a thing we’ll accept.”

“There’s treaty law! There’s the treaty Chanur helped make, Chanur can’t break it—“

“You’re right,” she said, “you’re
not
a lawyer. You respect a treaty. They won’t.”

“I didn’t sign on for this!” Tarras said, which she supposed might mean Tarras was resigning, which she would regret to the utmost, but Kshshti was the wrong place to do that. Then Tarras said, in a quiet voice, “Are you under Pyanfar’s orders? Is that what we’re doing?”

Far leap of logic. But Tarras wasn’t a shallow thinker. And couldn’t be led off.

“Honestly, no. I don’t say Pyanfar’s not crossed the path of this deal, but there aren’t any orders, I don’t know where she is—No’shto-shti-stlen, may he rot, said she was off in deep dark nowhere, and
would
we take this boy and
would
we take this marvelous deal he had? It was my judgment to take it. It looked reasonable at the time. It isn’t. But that gods-cursed thing has a double indemnity clause, for value
and
shipping fee. We’re stuck. We are quite thoroughly stuck, Tarras, it’s my fault, my bad decision to deal with that son,
knowing
he’s a canny old stsho and a politician, and here we are. If we get out of this alive and untarnished, I’m taking no contracts but steel plate and frozen foodstuffs, I’m through with exotics, and you can write that one down to the captain’s youthful foolishness. I don’t want to lose you. I for gods-rotted certain don’t want you to walk off the ship here: it’s not a safe place.”

Tarras stood there looking troubled, ears sinking to a backward slant. “I’m not walking out,” she said, as if she’d been misunderstood all along. “I’m not complaining about the deal, I just wanted to know if there was something we didn’t know.”

“I’m not Pyanfar’s. I never was Pyanfar’s. Does the crew think that?”

“It was my question. I don’t say you’d want to lie to us. But, yes, there’s been a little question. In some quarters.”

“How I got the command, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Py’s guilty conscience.”

“Huh?”

“How I got this ship.” Things came clear to her even while she was talking, absolute clear insight.

“She trained me. She knew how I’d react. She wanted me as clan head, at least enough to counter Rhean, who’s good where she is.” She was perfectly aware she was talking to one of Rhean’s former crew. And maligning a closer kin to Tarras than she or Pyanfar was. “I’m a radical lunatic. Rhean’s solid conservative. She hates the
han
but she’d back it against the universe. And I’ve peculiar foreign tastes, Anuurn knows that. As long as I’m clan head, the
han
knows Chanur’s led by a depraved young radical. They cooperate with Rhean. Anything, so long as Hilfy Chanur doesn’t come home.” She shrugged. “Rhean and I get along fairly well, actually. We agree on finances. We agree I should be out here. That’s quite a lot.”

Tarras might have taken umbrage at that. Tarras merely tightened her lip in irony, acceptance of a Situation neither of them could mend: that was the way Hilfy read it, and she generally could read Tarras.

“Aye, captain,” Tarras said. “That’s all right.”

“I want you,” she said, lest there be any mistaken doubt whatsoever. “I
need
you, Tarras. But I respect your other obligations.”

“I’m all right,” Tarras said. “The rest of us are. It’s just—we needed to know we know.”

Ker
Chihin was hurting, Hallan could tell that. But she wouldn’t stay out of action on the dockside. She kept walking back and forth, overseeing everything, talking to the mahendo’sat in the pidgin, which Hallan couldn’t speak, beyond a few words.

He only tried to anticipate what she was going to want, and what was right and what was wrong. He personally, with gestures and his lame command of the Trade, insisted the loaders park on the mark, and the loader kept going without jamming. That was the best help he knew how to be, and
ker
Chihin didn’t disapprove it. She finally sat down on the ramp way railing and watched, and he took over watching the mahen foreman’s check-off on the manifest—brought it back for her approval when they had completed the number two cold hold, and Chihin looked it over minutely and cast looks at the cans last on the truck.

“All right,” she said grudgingly, signed it, and he took it back to the docker chief and the customs representative, full of the excitement that came of
doing
something real and useful, and actually dealing with the mahendo’sat himself, talking and being talked to by outsiders—a very queasy, scary situation, if he believed what he’d been taught at home; but it was what he had to do if he ever hoped to find his place among spacers, and the
Legacy
gave him his first real chance.

“You not damn bad,” the docker chief admitted. “Not crazy.”

“No, sir,” he said. “I’m a licensed spacer.”

They said something among themselves. Not all of them spoke the pidgin. But they didn’t laugh at him, so far as he could detect. And he felt it a delicious wickedness, to be actually making sense to them, and answering a point of debate, which ordinarily a sister would step forward to do in his stead.

He took the completed form back to Chihin and then went back and told them to signal the next load, which was the number three cold hold, and listed for ... he could make it out ... Ebadi Transshipped. “All fine, do,” the foreman said without quibble, and shouted at his workers. He trekked back to Chihin to say that was what he had just done—she growled at him, but not angry at what he had done, he felt that, only at being asked a needless neo question.

“You’re going to wear a track in the deck,” she said. “Sit down. They’re doing all right. They understood you about parking on the line.”

“You speak it?”

“I understand it,” she said, and indicated the spot beside her. “Sit. Stay out of their way.”

He sat. Chihin didn’t sound annoyed, only tired. She said, “We’ve got cargo coming in. It’s Kefk we’re going to. You know about Kefk?”

“I know it’s on the kifish side.”

“It’s not a good place. I’ve never been there. But it’s not a place I ever wanted to go.”

“I’d go anywhere,” he said, consciously pleading his case with her. “If there’s a chance I won’t come back ... that’s better than home.”

“Is it?” Clearly Chihin didn’t think so.

“I’m not a fighter. I’m really not. Not for—for what I’d have to fight for if I stayed on Anuurn.”

“Is this better?” Chihin asked. He was surprised at Chihin talking seriously with him at all. But it wasn’t asking if Chihin was going to reason long with him. He said only the short answer.

“I want to be here.”

Chihin was quiet after that. He thought he had exhausted her patience and his welcome, and he should get up and go be useful, somehow. But Chihin reached out and caught his wrist with the hand that worked.

He didn’t know what she wanted. He stared at Chihin for what felt like a long, uncomfortable time, and Chihin said, “You kept your head. You did all right under fire.”