Chanur's Legacy (4 page)

“Na
Meras. Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you,
ker
Chanur. I’m very grateful to be here.”

“I don’t doubt. I hesitate to ask why your ship found it necessary to leave.”

“I don’t know,
ker
Chanur.”

“Captain will do. And don’t you?”

Ears lowered. The boy found a spot on the deck of interest. “I don’t remember what I did. They say I broke some pottery. And hit a kifish gentleman.”

“A kifish gentleman.” The boy
was
delicately bred.

“I don’t remember that part,” he said. Add
new to drink and bars.

“You weren’t in communication with your ship.”

“No, captain.”

“Not since?”

“No, captain.”

“And you’ve no notion why your captain suffered a lapse of memory either.”

“No, captain.”

“Na
Meras, that answer could get very tiresome over the next several months. Possibly even by tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, captain.”

“What’s your
name, na
Meras?”

A glance up, ears half-lifted. “Hallan, captain. From Syrsyn. —I—I met your aunt once, on Anuurn dock. And
ker
Haral ...”

Her ears went down. She remembered a dockside, at Anuurn, too, a parting with the crew. A handful of bitter words.

There was absolute adoration on the boy’s face-not, she was sure, cultivated on any Sahern ship. And sensitivity enough to realize he had just trod on dangerous ground. Bewilderment ... confusion. He had the sense to shut up, give him that.

“Are you married in Sahern, lateral kin, ... what’s the relationship?” It was a measure of how often and how long she had been downworld that she did
not
track the lineages any longer. He could be related to the Holy Personage of Me’gohti-as for all she knew.

“No relation,” he said, managing to locate that spot on the deck again.

So a tasteful person would stop asking. Look at the boy. Figure a kid wanted a berth. And Sahern gave him one.

She shot a glance up at Tiar. “I think the lad could stay in passenger quarters.”

“I can work maintenance. I have my license.”

“That’s to prove. In the meanwhile—“ Practicalities occurred to her. “I don’t suppose you came with baggage.”

“Everything—“ The boy made a despairing gesture. “Everything’s aboard the
Sun.
“

“Sun Ascendant? —TellunSahern?”

“Yes, captain.”

More bad news. “We’ll get you caught up to your ship, or drop you where you can make connections ...”

“I want to stay
here.”

“On Meetpoint?”

“No, captain. On this ship. I want to stay with
you.’
‘

“The
Legacy
has a full complement. No berths.” She saw the ears go flat, the frowning attitude of not quite resignation, and ticked down a Watch this boy, a little sense of resistance there. Of ... one was not certain what. “You want
my
long-term advice? Ship home. Go back, work insystem cargo if you’re so dead set on space.”

“No,
captain.”

A little flare of temper. A set of the mouth. Gods-rotted fool kid, she thought, and glared. What did I do to deserve this?

The stack from the translator was 532 pages thick ... counting the alternative translations successively rendered. That was the first pass the comp had made. The legal advisement program advised that its analysis of the translation would be 20588 pages in length and did the Operator want it simply to summarize?

“Apparently the thing is a vase,” Hilfy said. Four hani faces, four worried hani faces, stared back, and blinked in near unison.

“A ceremonial vase,” Tiar said.

“Somebody’s grandmother buried in it?”

“Not from what I figure. I’ve run
oji
through every cognate and every derivation I can find. It means ‘ceremonial object with accumulated value’ and it’s related to the word for ‘antique’ and ‘relic.’ Its transferred meanings and derivatives seem to mean ‘ceremonial object with social virtue,’ ‘communal high tea,’ ...”

“You’re kidding.”

“... and ‘inheritance.’ “

“No’shto-shti-stlen’s going to die?” Fala asked.

“Who knows?” A shrug was not politic, but it was close company, here. “Maybe
gtst
is designating a successor. Maybe the old son
is
going home to die.”

“They do that,” Chihin said. “Stsho won’t die in view of strangers. Bad taste.”

“It’s pay in advance.
Gtst
can’t change
gtst
mind.”

“That’s for certain.”

Hilfy stared at the stack. “Pay in advance. Gods, it pays. You just keep asking yourself why.”

“What can go wrong?” Fala asked, and got a circle of flat-eared looks and a moment of silence.

“There’s an encyclopaedia entry,” Hilfy said, “under
oijgi,
related substantive, to the effect that an object like that can’t be paid for, that it just transfers, and money can’t touch it directly. Mustn’t touch it directly. It’s all status. Of some kind. It could account for the extravagance.”

“We could outright ask somebody,” Tarras said.

“No. Not when we don’t know what we’re dealing with—or how explosive it is. No’shto-shti-stlen has ears in every wall in this station.”

“Electronically speaking,” Tiar said.

“I certainly wouldn’t bet the contract against it.”

“So you’re leaning toward signing?”

“Once every quarter hour. Elsewhen I’m inclined to take our cargo on to Hoas and forget I ever heard about it. Why in a mahen hell does this thing have to go rush-shipment to Urtur? Why not a slow trip via Hoas in the first place? Does the governor have to be difficult? Does the thing explode on delivery?”

“You want my opinion?”

“What?” she asked.

“I say
if
we take the contract, we get all our cargo buys nailed down in advance. And stall signing to the very last moment. Gossip’s going to fly the moment that check hits the bank. They’ll jack the prices on us.”

“Give the old son
no
time,” Tarras said, “to frame us for anything. Because you can bet the next trip’s take that bastard No’shto-shti-stlen is thinking how to get that money back before it hits our pockets. On
gtst
deathbed
gtst
would make that arrangement.
Gtst
isn’t the richest son this side of space for no reason.”

“Trouble is,” Chihin said, “—we’ve got to take certain cargo
for
Urtur if that’s where we’re going. And unless old No’shto-shti-stlen’s been uncommonly discreet, there are stsho on this station who know what the deal is; and if they know, security’s already shot. If we’re going to deal, we’d better deal fast, because I’ve got a notion if this thing is that important to the stsho, it could be important to No’shto-shti-stlen’s enemies, too. If it is, figure on spies reporting what we buy, and what we deal for, and what we’ve got contracts on—if we sneeze, it’s going into somebody’s databank and right to No’shto-shti-stlen’s ears for a starter.”

“And elsewhere simultaneously,” Hilfy said. Aunt Py had dealt with the stsho. And still did; what was aunt Py’s expression? Never trust the stsho to be hani? They weren’t. They wouldn’t be. No more than hani would play by stsho rules; or mahen ones; and the stsho had been cosmopolitan enough to know that single fact before the
han
or the mahendo’sat ever figured it out. Add to it, that a hani who happened to be fluent in stsho trade tongue and its history might deceive herself in special, personal blind spots related to the interface between languages and world-views.

“I want,” Hilfy said, extruding claws one after the other to signify the items: “an estimate on a list of things I’ve left on file, under ‘Urtur.’ I’m betting on goods that originate from beyond Meetpoint, that no one’s going to bring in from the other direction. Things we know Urtur’s short on. And I want a search on the manifests for ships going out of here. We can’t account for what might come in from Kshshti—so let’s concentrate on stsho and t’ca goods.”

“Gods, not another methane load.”

“It pays. It pays and they have their own handlers.”

“It’s who else might be interested in it worries me,” Tiar said.

“It’s a straight shot to Urtur. If we just do a fast turnaround here, and get ourselves out of port ...”

Tiar made a visible shudder, and waved a hand in surrender. “It pays.”

“So we agree?”

A murmured set of agreements. Hilfy watched the expressions, wondering whether they might be agreeing against better judgment, because of kinships, because of loyalty.

“I want
opinions!”
she snarled. “I want someone to disagree if they’re going to disagree!”

No one moved. She waited. And no one said anything.

“No opinions to the contrary.”

“No, captain,” Tiar said, with a flat, unmoved stare. And added: “I’ll check methane ship departures. See what their trade’s been. If it looks like there’s a niche for us, aye, we do it. We’ll pay out the ship on this run. That’s worth a chance.”

“Do it tomorrow,” she said, with the weight of the day on her shoulders. “I want that Hoas cargo done, too, who’s going out we can dump it on. Again, quietly.”

“I’ll check on that,” Chihin said. “We’ll just pull a big general dataload from the station ... costs, but nosy neighbors can’t tell anything out of one big request. “

“Do that,” Hilfy said. Specific records-searches
would
tip off the curious. 15,000 credits. Minimum, for that datadump. But they could re-sell it at Urtur, get back five, six thousand, as moderately comprehensive information. Maybe 10,000. They stood to own the highest currency of information coming in. With a full dataload. She found herself thinking, with increasing solidity:
at Urtur.
Not Hoas, as they had been bound. At Urtur. They had the advantage of having just been through there, they had the uncommon situation of having the funds to buy their own cargo. That meant the profit was
theirs,
not some shipping company’s.

And Hallan Meras still had a chance to catch his ship. Gods. One more problem than they needed.

“You’re not staying on watch,” Tiar said.

“No.”

“I’d better.”

“Get some sleep, I said. I want a crew with brains tomorrow. Good night.”

“ ‘Night, cap’n.” From Tiar. At the door, hindmost. Still registering objection, in that backward glance.

But Tiar went.

Tiar was right. If they were half practical they would keep one of them on watch from now on until they parted company with Meetpoint. If they had enemies, things would develop in files on their off watch and proliferate through their sleep. Anyone who had prospects had trade rivals here, and they could have plenty, if No’shto-shti-stlen’s shipment was general knowledge ... which, of course, they could not ask to find out.

But all that had proliferated into their files thus far was mail, the stack of which, even from ships that had long since left port, equaled the translation. And with the comp set to rouse them for fire, collision, and interstellar war, she reckoned they knew enough. She added one more alarm word from her console:
contract,
and on a stray thought,
added No’shto-shti-stlen.

And headed for her own quarters and for bed, tired, gods, yes.

Until her back met the mattress and her head hit the pillows. Then every detail of the day wanted to come back and replay itself behind her eyelids.

Kifish guards. That brought her eyes open, and she tried to think of something else, anything else, bright tilings, full of color, like the clan estate on Anuurn, with the golden fields and green forest and rolling hills.

But that did no good. She wound up thinking about family politics, remembering her father,
wishing
that the time-stretches that spun out her star-jumping youth had somehow reached planetside, and extended Kohan Chanur’s life. But the years had caught up with him— not a fight with some upstart, thank the gods. His daughter and his sisters and his nieces had kept the young would-bes away, had given him a peaceful old age.
No
one but time had defeated him. He had just not waked one morning.

Meanwhile
her
husband,
no,
Korin nef Sfaura, thought
he
was going to move into Chanur. Pick a husband with brains
and
muscle and you got the hormones that went with it, you got a husband with ideas, and Hilfy Chanur had spent sleepless nights telling herself there were reasons to abide by the old customs, that shooting Korin Sfaura, while a solution on the docks at Kshshti, was not a solution on Chanur’s borders, with a neighboring clan.

Not unless one wanted to crack the amphictiony wide open, and see war on Anuurn.

Gods-rotted bastard he had turned out to be. But the male-on-male fighting men learned for territory had a few things still to learn from Kshshti docks. Korin had limped out of Chanur territory, half-wed and vowing revenge, and by the time he’d made another try, cousin Harun had come in as lord Chanur ... big lad, Harun. Rhean had searched the outback to find him and get him home, out of his wilderness exile. Best fighter they could find, best lord of household, for a clan taking a lot of challenges. Of all the lads that had come home at Kohan’s invitation, and some of them even settled inside Chanur walls, Harun ... was not one of that liberal, easy-going number. Ask any of the males he had sent packing, including the ones born to Chanur. A hani of the old school—hair-triggered— thick-skulled ...

But it had taken him to rid the clan once for all of what
she
had brought home, and detest and despise
na
Harun Chanur as she did, and know, as she did, that Rhean had brought him home precisely to counter aunt Py’s influence ... she had to think that he might be the right hani for the times; because Pyanfar’s gallivanting about and Pyanfar’s naming
her
head of clan had certainly raised the hair on a number of conservative backs. Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms.

And there were all the victims of that change—dead, like poor bookish Dahan Chanur, who had died for nothing more than wanting to collect his notebooks. Gods-rotted thick-headed Harun had ordered him out, Dahan had said something about his notes, headed back for his room, and Harun had flung him into a wall.