Chanur's Legacy (30 page)

And what was a hani ship saying by
being
out of its normal route these days, or what was a mahen hunter ship doing sniffing about? That there was something different about them? That, being Chanur, there was something other than trade on their minds?

That murdered stsho were significant?

Trust Kshshti to spread the rumors it got. That little business with Haisi was already spreading on a network more efficient than the station news, bet on it.

“Ever been on Kshshti?”

“No,” Tiar said shortly. Tiar had an anxious, distracted look. And she
knew
Tiar hadn’t been here: aunt Rhean hadn’t favored this area of space. Aunt Pyanfar had been the one to run the edges, preferentially, using her experience of foreigners to make
The Pride
profitable.

But aunt Pyanfar hadn’t spoken the languages with any great fluency. And
she
could. She’d gone into that study to give herself an edge in getting into the crew, she’d had an aptitude for words, a mind quick to grasp foreign ideas, and a tongue that didn’t trip on stshoshi ... best bribe she could have offered aunt Py, who couldn’t say Llyene without dropping an essential
l
.

And where had it brought her?

A car swerved near them. “Gods-be
fool!”
Tiar exclaimed.

“Na
Hallan would be right at home here,” she said—nasty joke; but
na
Hallan wasn’t here to hear it, and she was in a joking mood, crazy as it was. Maybe it was discovering Kshshti was a real place, and debunking it of the myth of nightmare ... she hadn’t flinched from coming here, hadn’t let herself, but by the gods, maybe she should have come here years ago, walked the docks, had a look at the place and told herself ...

“Kif,” Tiar said suddenly, and her eyes spotted them at the same moment, a handful of them standing about in the shadows near the
Legacy’s
berth.

Her heart was beating faster. She told herself there was no reason for panic, the station was civilized enough these days that an honest trader could get from the dock office to her ship’s ramp without a gun; and that calling on the pocket com would be an over-reaction.

One of them was walking toward them, strobed in the multiple shadows of the lights and the flash of a passing service track. The matte black of his hooded robe was only marginally different from the skin of the long snout that was all of him that met the light. She couldn’t see his hands, and while what had once been gunbelts were mere ornament these days ... knives weren’t outlawed.

“Captain, ...” Tiar said.

“If something happens, break for cover behind the number two console, call station on com, I’ll take the number one, call the ship ...” She monotoned it, under her breath: her mind was on autopilot, her eyes were on the kif ... all the kif. They were predators, highly evolved,
and fast
over short distances. And no weapons ban covered teeth.

“Good day, captain. What a rare sight ... hani back at Kshshti. How pleasant. Captain Hilfy Chanur, is it?”

“We might have met,” she said flatly, ears back and with no pretense at friendliness. “Have we?”

“That unfortunate incident. I assure you I was light-years away and not involved. Let me introduce myself. My name is Vikktakkht,
ambassador
Vikktakkht an Nikkatu, traveling aboard
Tiraskhti.

Perhaps the
mekt-hakkikt
has mentioned me.”

“I doubt it. If she has, we haven’t been in the same port in years.”

“Ah. And your companion, your chief officer, perhaps.”

“Tiar Chanur.”

“Another name to remember. How do you do, captain? And I won’t ask you such a meaningless question as why you’re here. I know why you’re here, I know where you’re going.”

The hair prickled at her nape. The last she’d seen there were only mahendo’sat back there in front of the office, but there’d been those inside. And she had no inclination to wait here through kifish courtesies. “Nice to meet you, give my regards to the
mekt-hakkikt,
and excuse us if we don’t stand about. We’re running a tight schedule.” She took Tiar’s arm and started around the obstacle, but there were more of them beyond him, between them and the consoles and the ramp.

“Captain,” the kif called after her. “Tell Hallan Meras I’d like to talk to him.”

Dangerous to turn her back. It wasn’t
Pride
crew she was with. “Watch
them,”
she snapped, and turned to see what Vikktakkht was up to.

“Just tell him,” it said, with a lifting of empty, peaceful hands. “We’re old acquaintances.”

Smug. Oh, so smug.

“Good day, then, Vikktakkht an Nikkatu.”

“You have a very good accent.”

“Practice,” she said succinctly, and turned her back and swept up Tiar on a walk for the ramp access, past the kif who attended Vikktakkht.

The bastard thought she’d panic. The bastard thought she’d still twitch to old wounds. Wrong, kif.

Dangerously wrong.

“What’s he want with
na
Hallan?” Tiar asked, glancing over her shoulder. “What’s he talking about?

Do you know him?”

“Not yet.”

“What’s the kid possibly got to do with him?”

“That’s what I want to ask
na
Hallan.”

They were down on several spices, they’d run low on tissues, and they were out of shellfish, but they certainly had enough staples from here to Anuurn.

“Ker
Chihin,” Hallan said.
“Ker
Chihin, I’ve got the-“

Straight into the captain’s presence.

“—inventory,” he said. But by the captain’s frowning, ears-down look, by Tarras and Tiar Chanur standing behind her likewise ears-down and frowning, he didn’t somehow think they wanted the inventory. He didn’t
think
anything he’d done in the galley could have fouled anything else up, unless maybe he’d messed up the computer somehow.

Maybe dumped their navigation records ... something that bad...

“Vikktakkht,” the captain said, and his heart skipped a beat. Or two. He remembered the jail. He remembered the kif he’d talked to every day. He remembered the richly dressed one who’d said ...

... said, “Remember my name. ...”

“Meetpoint,” he managed to say.

“Where on Meetpoint? Was he the one you hit?”

“I—don’t know.”

“But you know this name.”

“He said ... ‘Someday you’ll want to ask me a question.’ “

“What question?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head in utter confusion. “That was all he said. I was in the jail. And that was what he said.”

“You know him from there.”

“The day they ... brought me to this ship.” He didn’t know whether what he’d answered was enough. He tried to think if there was anything else, any detail he could dredge up from memory, but nothing came clear to him, nothing had made sense then and nothing made sense now.

“That’s all he said, captain. I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t. I don’t know what question he’s talking about. I don’t know what he wants.”

“What
would
you ask him?”

“What he means. What he wants. I don’t know!”

He was scared, really scared. He hadn’t thought about the jail. He had put that place behind him. He trusted them, that there was no way he was going back to that place. But he’d found the way to foul up, it seemed. The captain just stood there looking at him, and finally said, “Are you willing to go out there, Meras?”

“Yes, captain,” he said. But the prospect scared him of what else he could find to do wrong, “Whatever you want.”

“It’s what
He
wants that worries me. Go back to work. I’ve got some calling around to do. I’ll let you know.”

He was through with what they’d assigned him to do, but it didn’t seem a good moment to bring that trivial matter up with her. He said quietly, “Aye, captain,” and took his list and his pocket computer back to the galley to create something to do.

“Captain?” Fala slid a cup of gfi under Hilfy’s hand, and she murmured thanks without looking. Her eyes were on the screen, while the search program located the most recent of the letters for Pyanfar, the ones that had just missed her at Meetpoint, the ones that had been backed up at Hoas and Urtur and Kura and Touin. A lot from mahen religious nuts who wanted to tell the
mekt-hakkikt
about prophecies (one never understood why they were never good news) and a handful who had an invention they wanted to promote, which they were sure the great Personage of Personages would find useful (no few hani were guilty of this sin.) There were a few vitriolic communications from people clearly unbalanced. The prize of that lot was from a mahe who had “written four times this week and you not answer letter. I tell you how solve border dispute by friendly rays of stars which make illuminate our peace. You make power color rainbow green and make green like so ... when Iji orientate in harmony with rainbow color red with orange. Please take action immediate.” (With illustrations, and important words underlined.)

But nothing, so far, no hint of aunt Pyanfar’s business in this stack.

A question Hallan Meras would like to ask Vikktakkht.

There
was
no question that she knew of ... except the whereabouts of Atli-lyen-tlas.

And had the kif known that would be a question, back on Meetpoint, before a kifish guard handed Meras over to the
Legacy?

Or was it some other thing, something Meras didn’t remember or was afraid to say? Pyanfar had passed through Meetpoint not so long before: No’shto-shti-stlen had said so, and the huge stack of messages assumed she would come back through that port.

Hilfy sat, and sat, sipped gfi and stared at the blinking lights that meant incoming messages. The computer was set for the keywords Atli-lyen-tlas, stsho, ambassador, Ana-kehnandian,
Ha’domaren,
Pyanfar, hani, and Vikktakkht. She figured that should cover it.

But a quick scan of what arrived in the priority stack were mostly inquiries from various mahen companies asking about conditions at Kita. Not a word from the kif. If kif were talking to each other out there, they were not talking to her. Possibly they were occupied with the local investigation.

Possibly they were couriering their messages to each other around the rim, not using com at all.

“Fueling’s complete,”Tarras reported from downside ops. “ I’ve got a good bid on the goods. The market could go a point higher, could sink a little. My instinct says take it. “

“Do it. Very good. —Tarras, when the loaders get here, go ahead and open the hold, but keep someone monitoring the cameras. Whoever’s going out, wear a coat, stuff the pistol in your pocket, never mind the regulations.”

She still wasn’t panicked about the threat, and she kept asking herself whether she were really this calm, or whether she was operating in a state of flashback. Kshshti was the site of her nightmares, and things were going wrong, but she found herself quite cold, quite logical. She could wish aunt Py were here, she could wish her crew had had some experience beyond the years-ago skirmish at Anuurn. Out there on the docks— her one split second of panic was realizing she had to tell Tiar which way to look:
The Pride’s
crew had known, at gut level, which side to step to, who would do what, who was likeliest to cover whom. They’d done it before. They’d worked out the missteps. Paid for a few of them.

But aunt Py wasn’t here. Sorting the mail stacks, even with computer search, for some answer to what was going on ... could take weeks: the people with the real information were less likely to dump their critical messages in among the lunatic communications the stations collected in general mail, unless there was some code to tell
The Pride’s
computers to pay attention; and she didn’t know what keywords to search. Meanwhile it was her ship, her crew. It was her responsibility to get them through alive, and that included telling them when to break the law, violate the peace, the treaties, and the laws of civilized behavior.

It was up to her to decide a course of action on a kif who had gotten his claws into someone on her ship—before they signed the contract. Surmise that the stsho contract was the kif’s interest: if it was, surmise that it had known about that contract, it had expected them to get it, and that it was up to its skinny elbows in the disappearance of Atli-lyen-tlas.

They had guns enough aboard—only prudent, never mind where they had bought them, or how, but it had involved a mahen trader; while weapons were such a cultural necessity among the kif, such a part of life-sustaining self-esteem, that the Compact peace treaty had had to except knives and blades from the weapons ban, figuring that kifish teeth were no less dangerous, and that it was far better to have the kif signatory to the peace than not...

Of course, it had taken considerable efforts in translations and cross-cultural studies to explain the word
peace
to all the several species. Granted,
war
did not translate with complete accuracy; but kif had understood neither idea. Kif weren’t wired to understand war, since they were at constant odds with each other, cooperated when hani least would, betrayed when hani would be most loyal, and hit the ground at birth competitive, aggressive, and (some scholars surmised) having first to escape their nest before they were eaten.

As to the last ... that was speculation. But she did understand their minds better than most hani. It wasn’t to say she was forgiving. The kif weren’t either. Circumstances either changed or they did not. They had that in common.

She got up from the console, she walked back to where
na
Hallan was puttering about in the galley, and said, with a queasy feeling,

“Na
Hallan,—how do you feel about talking to the kif?”

“If you want me to,” he said.

“You take orders?”

“Aye, captain.” Dubiously.

“You foul this up, Meras, and I’ll shoot you myself. Lives are at risk, yours, mine, more than that, do you understand? You go out on the docks. And I’ll suggest a question you can ask this Vikktakkht—that is, if you can’t think of one of your own. Nothing comes to you yet, what he might have meant?”