Chanur's Legacy (44 page)

Which might be too much for
gtst
heart, or the system that passed for one.

The lift engaged, upward bound. And it might be the captain coming back topside, or it might be Tarras or Fala; but Hallan, polishing the chromalic of the galley to a fine gloss, paid attention, paid heart and mind and hope of finding it was Chihin.

And maybe it was the way the whole day had been going—it was.
Ker
Chihin came wandering onto the bridge by the outside corridor saying to Tiar something about a rest break, could she monitor downside ops; and Tiar saying—he eavesdropped shamelessly— that that was all right, everything was quiet, there wasn’t a need for her down there, and why didn’t she get a sandwich or something and take a break and then relieve her?

Ker
Tiar knew he was topside,
ker
Tiar knew he was here, oh, gods, he wasn’t quite ready to think and talk ...

But Chihin walked in, did this little flick of the ears as a hello and looked into the fridge.

“Can I make you something?” Hallan asked in a small voice.

“I thought you weren’t speaking.”

“I don’t—I didn’t—I never meant you should think that.”

“Oh?” Chihin said.

He was totally desperate. He said,
“Ker
Chihin, were you joking or not?”

“No,” she said plainly. “Not really.”

“I wasn’t,” he said.

Chihin’s ears did a back and forth and finally didn’t know where to settle.

His didn’t.

“I really like you,” he said desperately. “I really do.”

He’d rather have faced his father with that intimacy. And that was the most dangerous hani he personally knew.

Hilfy pressed the button, signaled her presence, said, to the intercom:
“Your
excellency, I have the honor to present
gtst
excellency Atli-lyen-tlas of Urtur, would you kindly cause the door to be opened?”

There was silence.

“
Your
excellency?”

Gods
rot
the son.

She pressed the button.

On a nestful of pillows and cushions, covered with a sheet, which showed—

One preferred not to think.

“What is
this?”
asked Atli-lyen-tlas.

There was movement beneath the sheet. She had given, she was sure, adequate time for whatever was going on decently to cease.

But Dlimas-lyi’s head popped up.
Gtsto
went wide-eyed; and
gtst
head popped up beside, in a blossoming eruption of pillows.

While Atli-lyen-tlas fell back into Tarras’ arms, murmuring, “Oh, the beauty, wai, the elegance of this appearance...”

She
found no elegance. But
gtsta
breathed, “This is my offspring. This is my offspring. I have no further to see, I have no further to know. Wai, what ambition have you? Wai, the magnificence of this nest you have made!”

While Dlimas-lyi and Tlisi-tlas-tin scrambled up clutching the sheet about
gtstselves
and floundering among the pillows.

“Atli-lyen-tlas!”
gtst
said, and
gtsto
bowed profoundly, again and again. Hilfy stood ready to catch Atli-lyen-tlas should
gtsta
fall. But
gtst
excellency of Urtur seemed to draw strength from the encounter:

“Do not take distress of my presence,” Atli-lyen-tlas said. “How is my offspring now known?”

“Dlimas-lyi,”
gtsto
whispered, “may it add distinction to your excellency.”

“I have resigned Urtur,” Atli-lyen-tlas said. “And I have no more attachment to this time.” “You are
gtsta!”

“Just so. Nor need distress my serenity with what is beyond my reach. The
oji
is not for me now. This person Dlimas-lyi is not for me. I am free.”

“Your holiness,” Tlisi-tlas-tin whispered. “Please utter assurances of your good favor in our condition.”

“I do so. Please,” Atli-lyen-tlas said, reaching a trembling hand toward Hilfy. “Please convey me to a place where I may rest. My course is clear now. I am without obligation of any tasteful sort and would not struggle to achieve more. I am completed.”

Try
that
one through the translation program, Hilfy thought in dismay. There were things which one did not ask a stsho. Sex was right in the same class as Phasing.
Gtst
excellency and Dlimas-lyi stood naked as they were born and she now had a holiness of some kind on her hands, an aged stsho, resigned, retired, unmarriageable and sexless; and
therefore
not eligible to receive the Preciousness. Gods save them.

“We will find your holiness suitable and tasteful quarters immediately adjacent. It will take a time to prepare. Is this acceptable?”

“We should be very honored,” said Tlisi-tlas-tin.

“Most profoundly,” said Dlimas-lyi, “we beg your holiness to do so.”

A flutter of fingers. “I am beyond needs. But yes, this would be pleasant. I have no cares. Free. All free.”

Whereupon
gtsta
indicated
gtsta
would walk back in the direction from which
gtsta
had come.

Tarras and Fala offered tentative support; but
gtsta
said, “I am free of needs.”

Fall on his holy rump, Hilfy thought distressedly. But whatever reserve of strength Atli-lyen-tlas had found, still held.
Gtsta
fingers had been burning hot when they had touched hers.
Something
metabolic was going on, whether healthy or not—the stsho medical diagnosis program would have to tell them that one.

Gtsta
walked ahead of them, wandering a little in
gtsta
steps, taking time to examine the texture of the walls of the corridor, the wall-corn at the corner,
gtsta
fingered dials and button sockets
gtsta
had no claws to access, or there would have been loud-hail all over the ship, providing a most unwelcome and tasteless startlement to
gtstself.

Holiness seemed to have a direct and negative effect on the brain, Hilfy decided. And on the tendency to push buttons and take walks, and the holiness’ door was going to be
locked,
the minute they had
gtsta
inside.

“Guard
gtsta,”
she muttered to Tarras and Fala. “Keep
gtsta
away from buttons and sharp objects.”

“What do we do if
gtsta
wants something?” Tarras asked. “What’s wrong with
gtsta?
What’s going on?”

Tarras and Fala hadn’t followed a word of it. One forgot.

“That’s a holiness,” she said. “Don’t ask me whether
gtsta
is Phasing or what. I don’t know. And I’ve read every gods-be book on the species.”

“Nobody knows?” Fala asked.

“Nobody but the stsho,” she said. “And they’ve refused to talk.”

“I... you know.” Hallan didn’t feel he was doing well. Chihin just kept watching him, the two of them standing in the galley, Chihin leaning back against the counter, himself with nowhere reasonable to put his hands. “I just ... well, I didn’t know what you thought.” He didn’t want to say that Chihin’s own best friends had warned him: that wasn’t kind. “I just wasn’t sure you were really meaning what I thought you meant, so I didn’t want to talk to you until I could sort of figure out ...”

“Same,” Chihin said. “You want to go back to the quarters? Sort it out where we don’t have to be proper?”

“I—“ He was going to hyperventilate. He wanted to take the invitation and he was unaccountably scared to, because it would change things, and change them all of a sudden and too fast. “I—“

“Don’t trust me?”

He thought about what Tiar had said. That he wouldn’t always understand her. But, Do you want a rescue? Tiar had asked; and he’d said no.

“All—“ he began.

“
Chihin. Report downside. Pull the white paneling out of storage—move it, we’re on short schedule.”
Chihin scowled and said a word. “I was going to say all right,” he said desperately. But the captain said hurry and Chihin left.

“ Hallan, Report downside. We need some equipment moved. Be extremely quiet. Remember the passengers. “

If he ran he might make the lift.

Thehakkikt Vikktakkht an Nikkatu to captain Hilfy Chanur, the hani merchant , at dock at Kefk, by courier: Has the stsho survived in any use-fid way? Ships arriving from Meetpoint say that the stsho of Llyene are creating sedition and division. We must soon deal blood upon the leaders of this movement. Give us an estimated time of departure.

The hani ship, to the hakkikt Vikktakkht an Nikkatu, of Tiraskhti, at dock at Kefk: We are making modifications necessary for the transport of this person. We are finding more rapid recovery than we had thought. What is a holiness? We lack reference.

Thehakkikt Vikktakkht an Nikkatu by courier to captain Hilfy Chanur, the hani merchant , at dock at Kefk: A stsho incapable of the reproductive act. A holiness has no ability to make the alliance on which our mutual ally has placed all gtst expectation. The agents of the rival Personage will immediately take advantage and by information lately come to us, have already moved against the mekt-hakkikt. Advise us of your departure and we will delight to accompany you. Peace is advantageous. We will eat the hearts and eyes of the enemy.

... it shall be the reasonable obligation of the party accepting the contract to ascertain whether the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 shall exist in Subsequent or in Consequent or in Postconsequent, however this clause shall in no wise be deemed to invalidate the claim of the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 or 2, or in any clause thereunto appended, except if it shall be determined by the party accepting the contract to pertain to a person or Subsequent or Consequent identified and stipulated to by the provisions of Section5 ...

Hilfy tapped a claw on the desk, glared at the monitor, and asked the library: Atli-lyen-tlas who is the recipient has become a holiness. What is the result to the terms of the contract?

It took an entire cup of gfi for the computer to run that request through translations, permutations, legal definitions, Compact law, stsho custom references, and the cursed subclauses.

Then it said: Answer to print? File? Both?

File,
she said, having learned.

The answer, when it came up, said briefly: The person accepting the contract must designate a second recipient who exists as the nearest degree of consequence to the first named recipient; if, on the other hand, the party issuing this contract disapproves this recipient, the person accepting the contract is obligated to double indemnity and the return of the cargo.

Hilfy stared at it and stared at it, then got up and blazed a direct path down to
gtst
excellency’s white, expensive nest, signaled her presence and opened the door without waiting—there being little of Tlisi-tlas-tin or Dlimas-lyi she hadn’t seen.

“Your excellency, forgive a most hasty but necessary declaration! You must become the recipient!”

A tousled crest and wide moonstone eyes appeared from beneath the sheet.

“Of course,” said Tlisi-tlas-tin. “Of course. Was this not understood?”

It was white. It was clean. There was carpet over the deck tiles and they’d contrived a plastic frame and some bent struts to improvise a stsho bed; they’d
made
a mattress out of plastic sheeting Chihin said she hoped to the gods didn’t give way, but it held air, and it held water, and when they’d covered it in white drapery it would at least protect the old stsho, Hallan was sure it would. He crawled backward out of the pit with utmost care not to put a claw out and create a disaster.

Chihin gave him a hand on the escape, and sprawled, sitting, with a swipe of stiffened paint on her sore arm and plaster bits in her mane. She leaned against him, he leaned, they were all over with spatters and the way she looked at him, brow to brow and a little out of focus, said she was as tired and sore as he was.

And they had one thought, both, in that moment, it didn’t take that much reading—his went something like a dread and an anxiousness to find out, and a fear of getting into what took time to discover and being called up short.

She said, “There’s the downside shower. We can clean up, catch a snack ...”

She wasn’t young and rushing at things. He had that figured now, it wasn’t on again, off again signals, it was just a sane sense of how things worked; and he didn’t know where they could go to figure out the rest of it, but he tried to slow down his breathless haste and use his wits the way Chihin did and tell himself if they got involved in
this
room and didn’t report in, the captain was going to ship them to the kif...

“Wonder if the mattress works,” Chihin said. But he thought he could read her now, when she was serious, when she was being outrageous.

“I don’t want to walk from Kefk,” he said; and he must have guessed right, because she put her arms on his shoulders then and laughed and got up.

“Shower,” she said, and left him with his burning haste to be a fool, a sense things could always go wrong from here, there might not be another chance ... Chihin could come to her senses and decide something else, or they could die and chances might not come again.

“Tiar,” she said, talking to the intercom. “Tiar, we’re about finished. Give us a chance to get our objectionable selves out of the passenger corridor and you can ferry the old fellow in...”

“Thank the gods. Captain says get up here, we’re in count, we’re just about to clear the umbilicals.”

Chihin’s ears went flat. “In
count!
Gods
rot,
what kind of schedule does the captain think we’re up to? We got a dying stsho, we got us so tired we can’t see straight ... what in a mahen hell
in gods-be count.
...”

The thump and clang was the umbilical bundle coming clear. Chihin was upset, besides mad. She stopped arguing, cut off the com, and looked at him, and he didn’t know what help to be, but that Chihin was worried, worried him about this departure they were making, the haste they were in.

“Are we running from the kif?” he asked.

“From dead stop at dock?” She put her arms around him a moment. Stupid question, he thought. Totally stupid question, but he’d thought the situation might be more complicated than that. Maybe it was and she knew and wouldn’t tell him, they never told you anything ... it’s not your business, boy, we’ll take care of it, don’t worry yourself ...