Pride of Chanur (14 page)

If they were very, very fortunate, the kif were sorting matters out with a certain knnn who had picked up a bit of salvage at Urtur; and that knnn might not be amused by a hani joke. The great hakkikt Akukkakk would be even less amused . . . but he would have a hard time negotiating with the knnn for a look at its prize; and a harder time with his fellow kif .. indeed he would. She felt, in all, satisfied.

But a knnn had happened through jump with them; had happened to crowd them. Gods ... did they have apparatus which made tracking possible?

Its voice was back, distant and eerie, like that which she had duplicated at Urtur, to use a knnn voice as shield and disguise.

Gods knew what message they had been transmitting to knnn hearing: follow me? Help me? Something far less friendly?

Tc'a might know; but there was no querying that side of Kirdu Station.

They came up on dock, moving in next the Tahar ship: Kirdu wanted its hani problems collected, apparently, giving them berths next each other. In some part that was good, because it gave them private access to talk without witnesses; and in another part it was not, because it made them one single target.

"Where are the kif?" she asked station bluntly, stalling on the approach. "I'm not putting my nose into station until I know what berths they have."

"Number twenty and twenty-one," station informed her. "Mahe and stsho in the between numbers, no trouble, no trouble, hani captain. You make easy dock, please."

She wrinkled her nose and committed them, not without contrary thoughts.

VII

The Pride's nose went gently into dock, the grapples clanged to and accesses thumped open, and Pyanfar thrust back from the panel with a sudden watery feeling about the joints. Station chattered at them, requests for routine cooperations. "Shut down," she said curtly, waved a weary signal at Haral and pushed the cushion round the slight bit it could go. "Hilfy: tell station offices. Tell them we've got some shakeup. I'll talk with them when we get internal business settled."

"Aye," Hilfy murmured, and relayed the message, with much flicking of the ears in talking with the official and a final flattening of them. Pyanfar shortened her focus, on Tirun, who was running her last few checks. Her hands made small uncertain movements; her ears were drooping. "Tirun," Pyanfar said, and Tirun's face when she looked around showed the strain. "Out," Pyanfar said. "Now."

Tirun stared at her half a moment, and ordinarily Tirun would have mustered argument. She looked only numb, and pushed back from her place and tried, a faltering effort which got her to her feet, and a reach which got her to the next console. They all scrambled for her, but Hilfy was quickest, flung an arm about her. "She goes to quarters," Pyanfar said. "Aye," Haral said, and took charge from Hilfy, replacing Tirun's support on that side.

Hilfy stood a moment. Pyanfar looked on her back, on the backs of Tirun and Haral as Tirun limped away trying not to limp; and Hilfy straightened her shoulders and looked back.

"I'll stay on the com," Hilfy offered.

"Leave it. Let station wonder. Clean up."

Hilfy nodded stiffly, turned and walked out, quite, quite without swagger, with a hand to steady her against the curvature-feeling of the deck when they were docked. It occurred to Pyanfar then that Hilfy had not been sick, not this time. Pyanfar drew a deep breath, let it go, turned and leaned over the com. "Lowerdeck, who's at station?"

"Geran," the voice came back. "All stable below."

"Clean up. Above all get Tully straightened up and presentable."

"Understood."

Pyanfar broke the connection. There was another call coming over com.

"Chanur, this is Tahar's Moon Rising. Private conference."

"Tahar, this is Pyanfar Chanur: we have a medical situation in progress. Stand by that conference."

"Do you require assistance, Pride of Chanur?"

There was, infinitesimal in the tone,, satisfaction in that possibility. Pyanfar sweetened her voice with prodigious effort. "Hardly, Moon Rising. I'll return the call at the earliest possible. Chanur's respects, Tahar. Out."

She broke off with abruptness, pushed back and strode off, without swagger in her stride either. All her joints seemed rearranged, her head sitting precariously throbbing on a body which complained of abuses. Her nape bristled, not at kif presence, but at an enemy who sat much closer to home.

Gods. Beg of the Tahar?

Of a house which had presented formidable threat to Chanur during Kohan's holding? The satisfaction in the Tahar whelp's voice hardly surprised her. It was a spectacle, The Pride with her gut missing and her tail singed. There would be hissing laughter in Tahar, the vid image carried home for the edification of Kahi Tahar and his mates and daughters.

And from Tahar it would go out over Anuurn, so that it would be sure to come to Kohan. There would be challenges over this, beyond doubt there would be challenges. Some Tahar whelp would get his neck broken before the dust settled, indeed he would: young males were always optimists, always ready to set off at the smell of advantage, the least edge it might afford them.

They would try. So. They had done that before.

That was what Dur Tahar had wind of.

"She's well enough," Haral reported at the door of the crew's quarters on the lower deck. Pyanfar looked beyond and saw Tirun snugged down in bed and oblivious to it all. "Leg swelled a bit under the stress, but no worry."

Pyanfar frowned. "Good medical facilities here onstation. But it might be we'd have to pull out abruptly; I don't want to risk leaving any of us behind for a layover, not... under the circumstances."

"No," Haral agreed. "No need for that. But we're wearing thin, captain."

"I know," she said.

"You too, begging your leave."

"Huh." She laid her hand on Haral's shoulders. Walked away to the lift, paused there and listened in the direction of Chur and Geran's post. She walked back that way and leaned in at the door of op, where Geran sat watch, washed and in clean blue trousers, but looking on the world with the dull look someone ought to have who had gone from one on-shift to the next without sleep. "Right," Pyanfar said simply, recalling that she had given them orders they were following, and leaned an arm against the doorframe. "Tully made it all right down here, did he?"

"No trouble from him."

"I'm going to have to take him up on that work offer. You and Chur trade off with him, one on and one off. Tirun's ailing."

"Bad?"

"G stress didn't favor that leg. We'll rest here as much as we can. I'm going to see what charity I can get out of Tahar. Need to find out what damage we've got, first off."

"Got a remote on it," Geran said, turned about and called it up on the nearest screen. Pyanfar came into the room, looked at the exterior camera image, which was from the observation blister, and suffered a physical pang at the sight. Number one vane had a mooring line snaking loose, drifting about under station's rotation, and there were panels missing, dark spots on the long silver bar. "That was our fade," Pyanfar said with a belated chill. "Gods. Could have lost it all coming in with that loose. Going to take a skimmer crew to get that linked back up, no way the six of us can do it."

"Money," Geran said dismally. "Might have to sell one of us to the kif after all."

"Bad joke," Pyanfar said, and walked out.

Tully, she had thought, with an impulse of which she was heartily ashamed.

But she kept thinking of it, all the way up to her own quarters.

She stripped and showered, shed a mass of fur into the drain; dried and combed and arranged her mane and beard. It was the red silk breeches this time, the gold armlet, the pendant pearl. She surveyed herself with some satisfaction, a lift in her spirits. Appearances meant something, after all. The mahendo'sat were sensitive to the matter, quite as much as the stsho.

Offended prosperity, that was the tack to take with them. They knew The Pride. As long as it seemed that Chanur's fortunes were intact and that Chanur was still a power to reckon with among hani, that long they might hold some hope of mahendo'sat eagerness to serve.

And there was, she reckoned, smiling coldly at the splendid hani captain in the mirror, there was deadly earnest in this haste.

There was Akukkakk.

Gods rot it all.

Possibly she had embarrassed him enough that his own would turn on him. That would take time to know. A long time out from homeport, keeping her ear alert for rumor.

Get rid of the Outsider Tully . . . would that the disentanglement were that easy.

She stared into her own eyes, ears flat, and meditated the villainy that any trader seeing the Outsider would think on naturally as breathing; and after a little thinking her lips pursed in a grimly smug smile.

So, so, so, Pyanfar Chanur. There was a way to settle more than one problem. Likely Tully would not like it, but an Outsider who came begging passage could take what he could get, and it was not in her mind to beg from Tahar.

She checked com, found the expected clutter of messages waiting attention. "Nothing really urgent," Geran said. "Station's still upset, that's the sum of them."

"Chur's got Tully, has she, cleaning him up?"

"A little problem there."

"Don't tell me problem. I've got problems. What problem?"

"He has his own ideas, our Tully does. He wants to be shaved."

"Gods and thunders. Washroom?"

"Here, now."

"I'm coming down there."

She started for the door, went back and picked up the audio plug for the translator and headed down in haste. Shaved. Her ears flattened, pricked again in a forced reckoning that customs were customs.

But appearances, by the gods. . . .

She arrived in op in deliberate haste, found the trio there, Geran, Chur, Tully, all cleanly and haggard and drowning their miseries in a round of gfi. They looked up, Tully most anxious of all, still possessed, thank the gods, of all his mane and beard and decent-looking in a fresh pair of trousers.

"Pyanfar," he said, rising.

"Captain," she corrected him sternly. "You want what, Tully? What problem?"

"Wants the clippers," Chur said. "I trimmed him up a bit." She had. It was a good job. "He wants the beard off."

"Huh. No, Tully. Wrong."

Tully sank down again, the cup of gfi in his two hands, looked chagrined. "Wrong."

Pyanfar heaved a sigh. "That's reasonable. You do what I say, Tully. You have to look right for the mahendo'sat. You look good. Fine."

"Same # hani."

"Like hani, yes."

"Mahendo'sat. Here."

"You're safe. It's all right. Friendly folk."

Tully's mouth tightened thoughtfully. He nodded peaceably enough. Then he reached a hand behind his head and knotted the pale mane back in his fingers. "Right, that?"

"No," Pyanfar said. The hand .dropped.

"I do all you say."

Pyanfar flicked her ears, thrust her hands into her waistband. "Do all?" She felt pricklish in the area of her honor, and the Outsider's pale eyes gazed up at her with disturbing confidence. "It might frighten you, what I want. I might ask too much."

Some of that got through. The confidence visibly diminished.

"I make you afraid, Tully?" She gestured wide, toward the bow. "There's a station out there, Kirdu Station. Mahendo'sat species is the authority in this place. There's a hani ship docked next to us. Stsho species too, down the dock."

"Kif?"

"Two kif ships, not the same ones. Not Akukkakk's, not likely. Traders. They're trouble if we linger here too long, but they won't make any sudden move. I want you to go outside, Tully. I want you to come with me, out in the open, on station dock, and meet the mahendo'sat."

He did understand. A muscle jerked in his jaw. "I'm crew of this ship," he said. It seemed a question.

"Yes. I won't leave you here. You stay with me."

"I come," he said.

That simply. She stared at him a moment, deliberately held out her hand toward the cup in his. He looked perplexed for a moment, then surrendered it to her. She drank, subduing a certain shudder, handed it back to him,

He drank as well, glanced at her, measuring her reaction by that look, finished the cup. No prejudices. No squeamishness about other species. She nodded approval.

"Go with you, captain," Chur offered.

"Come on, then," Pyanfar said. "Geran, you stay; can't leave the ship with no one watching things, and the others are off. We're going just to station offices and back, and it shouldn't be trouble. I don't expect it, at least."

"Right," Geran said, not without a worried look.

Pyanfar put a hand on Tully's shoulder, realized the chill of his skin, the perpetually hunched posture when he was sitting. He stood up, shivered a bit. "Tully. The translator won't work outside the ship, understand. Once out the rampway, we can't understand each other. So I tell you here: you stay with me; you don't leave me; you do all that I say."

"Go to the offices."

"Offices, right." She laid one sharpclawed fingertip amid his chest. "I'll try to get it through to you, my friend. If we go about with you aboard in secret, if we leave mahendo'sat territory with you and go on to Anuurn, to our own world- that could be trouble. Mahendo'sat might think we kept something they should have known about. So we make you public, let them all have a look at you, mahendo'sat, stsho, yes, even the kif. You wear clothes, you talk some hani words, you get yourself registered, proper papers, all the things a good civilized being needs to be a legal entity in the Compact. I'll get it all arranged for you. There's no way after you have those papers that anyone can claim you're not a sapient. I'll register you as part of my crew. I'll give you a paper and where I tell you, you put your name on it. And you don't give me any trouble. Does enough of that get through? It's the last thing I can tell you."

"Don't understand all. You ask. I do it."

She wrinkled her nose, threw an impatient wave of her hand at Chur. "Come on."

Chur came. Tully did, blindly trusting, at which she scowled and walked along in front of them both to the lock, hands thrust into the back of her waistband, wondering whether station offices had detectors and whether they could get away with a concealed weapon, going where they were going. She decided against it, whatever the other risks.