Chanur's Legacy (31 page)

“I’ve been trying to understand what he meant, captain. I don’t. I can’t imagine what he’s talking about. It doesn’t make sense. It didn’t then.”

“What would be important to ask him?”

“I don’t know ...”

“Like in the myths, Meras. You get one wish. What would help us?”

His ears went down and lifted again, tentatively. “Knowing where the stsho is. Getting hold of him...”

“Gtst. Not him. They’re quite touchy on that score. But, yes, that’s the question—unless you think of a better one.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t—“

“I’m sure if you think of one, you’ll tell me. I’ll find this Vikktakkht. And if we meet him, if knives or guns come out, you take orders, and you don’t act the fool. Do you hear me? Do you absolutely, beyond any question, understand?”

“Aye, captain,” he said faintly. But if she had said the local star is green, she had the uneasy feeling that
na
Hallan would have agreed.

Give him credit, he would have tried to see the star that way. But it didn’t make Yes the best answer. And it didn’t tell you what he’d do when the shots started flying.

She stared at him long enough to let him think about it. “I’ll see if this Vikktakkht is by any chance in touch with his ship.”

“You,” Hilfy said to Fala, in the lower deck main corridor, “work the hold. Can you handle that?”

“No trouble,” Fala said, “but ...”

“No ‘but.’ I
need
you handling the loader.” Ears went down. “Because I’m the—“

“Because I have things on my mind, Fala! Gods!” She headed down the corridor toward the airlock, where, if Chihin and Tiar had gotten Hallan downside, their expedition was organizing.

The dockers had lost no time: the
Legacy’s
cargo lock was open, and Tarras, in the requisite coat, was out there going over the final customs forms.

There was no graceful way for a hani to wear a cold-hold coat on dockside: Tarras could justify it by going back and forth inside, and perspiring by turns. But they couldn’t. So that meant the lightest arms, lousy for accuracy, but they fit in a formal-belted waist with no more than a slight bulge ... and it was their office-meeting, formal reception best they wore.

Except
na
Hallan, who went in ordinary spacer blues. But when they walked down the ramp to the dock, there was no question where the stares went— straight to the hani a head taller than any of them, the one with the shoulders and the mane that matched.

Work stopped. A transport bumped the one in front with a considerable jolt. Hallan watched his feet on the way down. She watched their surroundings and said, under her breath, “I don’t expect it, but watch left and right and say if you see anything untoward.
Na
Hallan, if there should be trouble, you do understand that getting your head down doesn’t necessarily cover your rear. There’s a lot of you. Wherever we go, I want you to have somewhere in mind that you could get to that would be a solid barrier; and where you’d duck to if you had to fall back. I want this whole dock to be a map like that in your head, do you follow me?”

“Yes, captain. I do, thank you.”

He might. Boys learned hunting, bare-handed; boys learned tracking and hiding and all such games as fitted them for defending their lives. It was heroics she worried about. Boys learned to show out, and bluff, and trust the other side most often to follow the rules, although
na
Kohan had said once, reflectively, that men learned to cheat in the outback, because some did, and once that was true—you couldn’t assume.

So with Chihin and Tiar. The rings in their ears meant a lot of ports and each one of those rings a risky situation, in space or on the docks. But they weren’t
Pride
crew, and they hadn’t studied this together. She just trusted they were thinking now, better than Tiar had been when she had felt that cross-up of signals.

They walked through the traffic of transports and past the towering gantry that held the power umbilical, took that route for the next three berths, before they tended around the off-loading of another ship, mahen, as happened.

There were stares. Hallan cast an anxious look back at them and stumbled on a power cable.

“Feet,” Chihin said.

“Sorry,” he said.

There was the kifish trade office, number 15, opposite berth 28, as listed—an unambitious and functional looking place, conspicuous by the orange light behind the pressure windows; but beyond the section doors was a district where that lighting was the norm, where kifish bars, restaurants and accommodations mingled with gambling parlors where kif played games no outsider would care to bet on, and where bloodletting was not an uncommon result, at least ... it had been that way.

Maybe they had cleaned it up. One reminded oneself these were civilized times.

But that might be fatal thinking.

“This is the place. If there’s trouble, have your spots picked and don’t look after anyone but yourself—at least you know what you’re thinking and where you’re going.”

“Too gods-be close to the kif section,” Chihin said.

“We’re dealing with kif,” Tiar said.

Now she was nervous. Now the hair down her backbone must be ridged, and her claws kept twitching in their sheaths.

But not notably scared. It was like sleepwalking, saying to herself, I’ve done this before, this is the life I chose for myself, this is the way the Compact is, not— not the safe, law-hedged half-truths the treaty made. Safe, as long as you’re within twenty lights of Anuurn, civilized, as long as it’s only hani you deal with, altruistic, as long as you’re not dealing with species who have to have that word explained to them.

A methane-breather wove past, in its sealed vehicle; a bus followed, humming along its mag strip.

Never
could
convince the tc’a to rely on the magnetics. Something about their sensitivities. You couldn’t get that clear in translation either.

That was the truth out here. It wasn’t law that got you by. It was good manners. It was giving in on a point that wasn’t fatal to you, and might be to them.

There were kif about the door—not unnaturally. And it said something strange, that these kif showed less surprise at them than the mahendo’sat had done ... these kif simply made soft clicking sounds of attention and backed away to allow them the door. There had been a time when kif didn’t share information, when one kif knowing a fact didn’t guarantee that other kif did.

Was that a change Pyanfar had wrought, the
mekt-hakkikt,
the leader of leaders, the power over powers, that had unified the kif for the first time in their existence?

Maybe they were all Vikktakkht’s. Those were the kind of kif to watch out for, the ones that came in large, strongly-led groups.

The doors opened. They walked into dim sodium light, into ammonia stink that stung the nose, and Hallan did sneeze, loudly in the silence. Black-robed kif kept nothing like a mahen office. It might have been a bar, a restaurant. There were tables, and one was in among them, and at the end of the room a kif with a silver-bordered robe beckoned to them.

That was Vikktakkht. She would lay money on it. As she would lay money there were guns beneath no few of these black robes.

They walked that far. “Good day,” the kif prince said. “So pleased you could come.”

“Admirable fluency on your side too.”

“I even have a little hani. Not much. But enough to resolve differences.”

It was disturbing to hear her own native tongue slurred over with kifish clicks and hisses. And one who learned your language might not be doing so for peaceful reasons.

“This is—“ she said, “Chihin Anify. And HaIIan Meras you know.”

“Delighted. Kkkkt.
Na
Hallan.”

“Sir.”

“You’ve done as I hoped—served as my introduction. My character witness, I believe your term is. I behaved well toward you, did I not? You’ve no cause to complain of me?”

“Not of any kif, sir.”

“Not of any kif.” A soft snuffling that set Hilfy’s nape-hairs up. Kifish laughter. Kifish mockery. They knew no other humor, that she had found. “You’re such a soft-spoken hani. Yet they do insist you’re quite aggressive.”

“No, sir, not by choice.”

“Don’t try him,” Hilfy said sharply. “You don’t understand us that well. Between species, one can make fatal assumptions. What do you want?”

There was a soft clicking, a stir of cloth, all about them. The orange light glistened wetly on an analytical kifish eye, black as space and as deep in secrets.

“I said that you would want to ask me a question,” Vikktakkht said quietly. “Kkkt. Do you have one,
na
Hallan?”

“Yes, sir,” Hallan said. “What are kif doing, transporting the stsho ambassador?”

Hallan’s question. Her wording. Don’t give the bastard a question he could answer with yes or no.

And Vikktakkht made a soft hiss and wrinkles chained up the leathery snout.

“Following
gtst
request,” the kif said. “And I will be more informative. I will answer a second question. —From
na
Hallan.”

Gods rot the creature. It was his territory, his terms. And if he spoke hani he likely knew what he was doing, insulting Meras, insulting Chanur.

Hallan stayed silent two, maybe three breaths, and she opened her mouth to say they were leaving; but Hallan said,

“What do you gain by doing that?”

Gods, good question, Meras.

“The good will of the stsho ambassador. Next question?”

Another small pause on Hallan’s part. Hallan might have exhausted the permutations of the question she had suggested. And
she
was curious what he would ask.

“Is that—all you want?”

“Kkkt. It would be very valuable.”

“But,” Hallan repeated quietly, respectfully, “is

“No,” the kif said. What else could a kif say?

But then Vikktakkht added: “The ambassador is at Kefk. Next question.”

It was beyond bizarre. In honor, she ought to object and pull
na
Hallan out of this game. But Hallan did not seem to need rescue.

“Are you a friend of the
mekt-hakkikt?”

Gods, that was a mistake. Kif had no word for friend.

“My alignment, you mean?
With
the
mekt-hakkikt.
Next question.”

“What are you asking my captain to do?”

“To go to Kefk, where / have allies. There, I will have custody of the ambassador. There, you may ask me one more question.”

Hallan flicked an ear in her direction. It was not a time to dispute the matter. There was silence all around them. This is a dangerous kif, she thought.

“Yes, sir,” Hallan said.

“Chanur.”

“Hakkikt?”
Hilfy asked, sure that was what she was dealing with.

“You flatter me.”

“I doubt it.”

“Kkkt. You’re free to go. At Kefk, Chanur.”

There were arguments possible with mahendo’sat. None with this. A quality called
sfik
was life and death. And
sfik
in this case meant swaggering out of here on equal terms.

“At Kefk,” she said, that being the only choice. She turned abruptly and walked out, praying to the gods her crew did the same, and that
na
Hallan, good heart that he was, didn’t linger to push a point.

All the way the kif were estimating them, testing them with soft clicking sounds, the threat of their presence, and cleared their path only at the last moment. They lived as far as the door, and as far as outside, and no one had said anything and no weapons were out. They crossed the traffic pattern of the docks quickly now, toward the cover of the gantries and the shadows beneath the structural shapes.

“Was it all right?” Hallan asked. Now she could hear the nervousness in his voice.

“Good job,” she said. “Good job, Meras.” Because it had been. It still was. They were out of there.

But in the shadows, in those places where the girders and the double lights overhead made eye-tricking shadows, it was too easy to imagine black, robed figures.

“Kefk,” Tiar panted distressedly.

Kefk was across the border, kifish territory. If they were anxious here, doubly so there. Hani were theoretically free to use that port, theoretically safe there, the way kif were theoretically safe at Anuurn, but neither hani nor kif had tested the treaty in regular trade.

Ally of Pyanfar’s, was he? Kif could lie. Kif were quite good at it.

“I tell you what,” Chihin said. “We sell
our
stsho to the kif.”

“I could be tempted,” Hilfy muttered. Chihin didn’t say the contract had been the stupidest deal they had ever gotten into. Chihin was being polite.

But it was true. And there was no way out of it, at this point. To cut and run wasn’t even a remote option, that she could see, not if they hoped to have a reputation left, not if they hoped to have their trading license, not if they hoped the whole gods-be Compact would hang together. Threads were unraveling. Two, now three, mahen stations had lost their whole stsho population to violence.

And they were in it up to their—

Something popped, with that nasty sound of exploding tissue. Chihin stumbled against her, and she yelled, “Cover!” on a half a breath, trying to hold on to Chihin and drag her out of fire if she could figure where it had come from. She saw the red dot on a girder, knew it was from across the dockside, and flung herself behind a pump housing, Chihin actively trying to tuck her legs into shadow and to get up on an elbow.

“How bad?” Hilfy panted.

“Don’t know,” Chihin said. “Arm. Feels like I was punched; but it works. Sort of.” The shock was setting in, and Chihin’s supporting arm began shaking, her breathing to shorten. Hilfy had her pocket com out, made a breathless call to the
Legacy:

“Tarras! Sniper fire! Get to cover.”

She was shaking now, light tremors, which was no good. She put a hand on Chihin, and risked a look out where they had been, where none of her party still was, which was good news. Everyone had made cover of some kind.

“Tarras!”

“Aye! I hear,”the welcome voice came back. “I’m calling the police.””

Police, for the gods’ sake! “Tiar, Tiar, do you read?”