The Pride of Chanur cs-1

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  “Just got the characteristic ghost, that’s all. I don’t know. It was farside of system and long ago. No further data; but it fits within our timeline. That close.”

  “Give me the image.”

  Tirun passed it onto the screen. Nadir range and badly muddled pickup: there was too much debris in the way.

  “Right,” she said to Tirun. “No knowing.”

  “Out?” Tirun asked.

  “Out,” Pyanfar confirmed her, and keyed out the image as well, stared morosely at the charts and the figures which, no matter how twisted, kept coming up the same: that there was no way to singlejump beyond Urtur, however reduced in mass they were now.

  That jump-ghost which had just arrived might have been someone successfully running for it. More ships than that one might have jumped from here, lost in the gas and debris of Urtur’s environs.

  But quite, quite likely that ship was kif, a surplus ship moving on to arrange ambush at the most logical jump point that they might use.

  Rot Akukkakk. She recalled the flat black eyes, red-rimmed, the long gray face, the voice very different from the whining tone of lesser kif. A bitter taste came into her mouth.

  How many of them? she wondered, and pulled the scattered charts toward her on the desk and again thought like a kif, wondering just where he might station his ships remaining at Urtur, having figured now, as he must have figured, what they were up to.

  That inward flight which was making the station safer — was also giving this Akukkakk a free field in which to operate. There were a finite number of opacities in the quadrant where the sweep of debris might be concealing The Pride. A diminishing number of other fugitives to confuse him… just them and him, finally, along with whatever other kif ships he had called in.

  Four kif ships had been at Meetpoint. Some or all might have come with him. There might have been as many more at Urtur when Hinukku came in. Eight ships, say. Not beyond possibility.

  She made her calculations again, flexed an ache from her shoulders, and pushed back from the desk, combed her beard with her fingers and flicked her ears for the soothing sound of the rings.

  Huh. So. She at least knew their options — or the lack of them. It was a thoroughly bad game to have gotten into. She levered her aching body out of the chair it had occupied too many hours, stretched again, calculating that they must be about due for Chur and Geran to come on again. And Hilfy: there had not been a word out of her. Possibly the imp had been late getting to sleep after the news which had broken in on her rest. If she had been sleeping, so much the better.

  Pyanfar walked out into the corridor and down it, into the dim zone of the bridge, beyond the archway, where most of the lights were out and the dead screens made areas dark which should have been busy with lights. There was one unexpected bright spot, a counter alight in that ell nook of the bridge around the main comp bank. Someone had come back and left it on, she thought, walking up on it to turn it out; and came on Hilfy there, seated with her attention fixed on the translator, left hand propping her forehead and her right hand poised over the translator keyboard. The screen in front of her was alive with mahendo’sat symbols. Audio brought in a pathetic Outsider-voiced attempt at speech. Pyanfar frowned, walked closer, and Hilfy saw the movement and half turned, turned back in haste to close off the audio from the bridge. Pyanfar leaned on the back of her chair to observe the strings of symbols on the screen, and Hilfy got up in haste.

  Go, the Outsider was trying to say. That was the symbol on the screen at the moment. / go.

  “I thought you were supposed to be resting,” Pyanfar said.

  “I got tired of resting.”

  Pyanfar nodded toward the screen, where the Figure Walking was displayed. “How’s it doing?”

  “He.”

  “It, he, how’s it doing?”

  “Not so good on pronunciation.”

  “You’ve been cutting in on his lessons? Talking to him?”

  “He doesn’t know me from the machine.” Hilfy had her hands locked behind her, ears flat, wary of reprimands. “You can’t work the second manual without help: it’s sentences. He has to have prompts. I’ve got more vocabulary filled in with him. We’re well into abstracts and I’ve been able to figure something about the way his own sentences are built from what he keeps doing wrong with ours.”

  “Huh. And have you perchance gotten a name out of him amid these mistakes? His species? An indication what he comes from? A location?”

  “No.”

  “Well. I didn’t expect. But well done, all the same. I’ll check it out.”

  “Seven hundred fifty-three words. He ran the whole first manual. Chur demonstrated changing the keyboard and the cassette and he ran it all, just like that; and got into the second book, trying to do sentences. But he can’t pronounce, aunt; it just comes out like that.”

  “Mouth shape is different. Can’t say we can ever do much with his language either; like trying to talk to the tc’a or the knnn… maybe even a different hearing range, certainly not the same equipment to speak with — gods, no guaranteeing the same logic, but the latter I think we may have. Some things he does make half sense.” She lowered herself into the vacated chair, reached and livened a second screen. “Go talk Tirun out of her work down in op, imp; she’s been on duty and she shouldn’t be. I’m going to try to run a translator tape on your seven hundred fifty-three words.”

  “I did that.”

  “Oh, did you?”

  “While I was sitting here.” Hilfy untucked her hands from behind her and hastily reached for the counter, indicated the cassette in the slot of the translator input. “I pulled the basic pattern and sorted the words in. Sentence logic too. It’s finished.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I don’t know, aunt. He hasn’t given me a sentence in his own language. Just words. There’s no one for him to talk his own to.”

  “Ah, well, so.” Pyanfar was impressed. She ran some of the audio of the tape past, cut it, looked up at Hilfy, who looked uncommonly proud of herself. “You’re sure of the tape.”

  “The master program seemed clear. I — learned the translator principles pretty thoroughly; father didn’t connect that so much with spacing. I got to start that study from the first; but / knew what I wanted it for. Like comp. I’m good at that.”

  “Huh. — Why don’t we try it, then?”

  Hilfy nodded, more and more self-pleased. Pyanfar rose and searched through the com board cabinets, pulled out the box of sanitary wrapped audio plugs and dropped a handful of those into Hilfy’s palm, then located a spare pager from the same source. She sat down at main com and ran the double channels of the translator through bands two and three of the pagers. She took her own plug and inserted it in her ear, tested it out linked to the Outsider’s room com for a moment, and got nothing back but bursts of white sound, which were mangled hani words that part of the schizoid translator mind refused to recognize as words. “We’re two, he’s three,” she said to Hilfy, shutting the audio down for the moment. “Bring him up here.”

  “Here, aunt?”

  “You and Haral. This Outsider who tries to impress us with his seven hundred fifty-three words… we find out once for all how his public manners are. Take no chances, imp. If the translator fails, don’t; if he doesn’t act stable, don’t. Go.”

  “Yes, aunt.” Hilfy stuffed the audio units and the other pager into her pockets, hastened out the archway in a paroxysm of importance.

  “Huh,” Pyanfar said after her, stood staring in that direction. Her ears flicked nervously, a jangling of rings. The Outsider might do anything. It had chosen their ship to invade, out of a number of more convenient choices. It. He. Hilfy and the crew seemed unshakeably convinced of the he, on analogy to hani structure; but that was still no guarantee. There were, after all, the stsho. Possibly it made the creature more tragic in their eyes.

  Gods. Naked-hided, blunt-toothed and blunt-fingered… It had had little chance in hand-to-hand
argument with a clutch of kif. It should be grateful for its present situation.

  No, she concluded. It should not. Everyone who got hands on it would have plans for this creature, of one kind and another, and perhaps it sensed that: hence its perpetually sullen and doleful look. She had her own plans, to be sure.

  He, Hilfy insisted at every opportunity. Her first voyage, a tragic (and safely unavailable) alien prince. Adolescence. Gods.

  From the main section of the com board, outside transmission buzzed, whined, lapsed into a long convolute series of wails and spine-ruffling pipings. She jumped in spite of herself, sat down, keyed in the translator on com. Knnn, the screen informed her, which she already knew. Song. No recognizable identity. No numerical content. Range: insufficient input.

  That kind frequented Urtur too, miners who worked without lifesupport in the methane hell of the moon Uroji and found it home. Odd folk in all senses, many-legged nests of hair, black and hating the light. They came to a station to dump ores and oddments, and to snatch furtively at whatever trade was in reach before scuttling back into the darknesses of their ships. Tc’a might understand them… and the chi, who were less rational… but no one had ever gotten a clear enough translation out of a tc’a to determine whether the tc’a in turn made any sense of the knnn. The knnn sang, irrationally, pleased with themselves; or lovelorn; or speaking a language. No one knew (but possibly the tc’a, and the tc’a never discussed any topic without wending off into a thousand other tangents before answering the central questions, proceeding in their thoughts as snake-fashioned as they did in their physical movements). No one had gotten the knnn to observe proper navigation: everyone else dodged them, having no other alternative. Generally they did give off numerical messages, which the mechanical translators had the capability to handle — but they were a code for specific situations… trade, or coming in, a blink code. There was nothing unusual in knnn presence here, a creature straying where it would, oblivious to oxygen-breather quarrels. There still came the occasional ping or clang of dust and rock against The Pride’s hull, the constant rumbling of the rotational core, the whisper of air in the ducts. The deadness of the instruments depressed her spirits. Screens stared back in the shadow of the bridge like so many blinded eyes.

  And they were out here drifting with kif and rocks and a knnn who had no idea of the matters at issue. “Captain,” Tirun’s voice broke in. “Hearing you.” “Got a knnn out there.”

  “Hearing that too. What are Hilfy and Haral doing about the Outsider?”

  “They’ve gone after him; I’m picking that up. He’s not making any trouble.”

  “Understood. They’re on their way up here. Keep your ear to the outside comflow; going to be busy up here.”

  “Yes, captain.”

  The link broke off. Pyanfar dialed the pager to pick up the translator channel, received the white-sound of hani words. Everything seemed quiet. Eventually she heard the lift in operation, and heard steps in the corridor leading to the bridge.

  He came like an apparition against the brighter corridor light beyond, tall and angular, with two hani shapes close behind him. He walked hesitantly into the dimness of the bridge itself, clear now to the eyes… startlingly pale mane and beard, pale skin mottled with bruises and the raking streaks of his wound, sealed with gel but angry red. Someone’s blue work breeches, drawstring waisted and loose-kneed, accommodated his tall stature. He walked with his head a little bowed, under the bridge’s lower overhead — not that he had to, but that the overhead might feel a little lower than he was accustomed to — he stopped, with Hilfy and Haral behind him on either side.

  “Come ahead,” Pyanfar urged him farther, and rose from her place to sit braced against the comp console, arms folded. The Outsider still had a sickly look, wobbly on his feet, but she reached back to key the lock on comp, which could only be coded free again, then looked back again at the Outsider… who was looking not at her, but about him at the bridge with an expression of longing, of — what feeling someone might have who had lately lost the freedom of such places.

  He came from a ship, then, she thought. He must have.

  Hilfy stood behind him. Haral moved to the other aisle, blocking retreat in that direction should he conceive some sudden impulse. They had him that way in a protective triangle, her, Hilfy, Haral; but he leaned unsteadily against the number-two cushion which was nearest him and showed no disposition to bolt. He wore the pager at his waist, had gotten the audio plug into his ear, however uncomfortable it might be for him. Pyanfar reached up and tightened her own, dialed the pager to receive, looked back at him from her perch against the counter. “All right?” she asked him, and his face turned toward her.

  “You do understand,” she said. “That translator works both ways. You worked very hard on it. You knew well enough what you were doing, I’ll reckon. So you’ve got what you worked to have. You understand us. You can speak and make us understand you. Do you want to sit down? Please do.”

  He felt after the bend of the cushion and sank down on the arm of it.

  “Better,” Pyanfar said. “What’s your name, Outsider?”

  Lips tautened. No answer.

  “Listen to me,” Pyanfar said evenly. “Since you came onto my ship, I’ve lost my cargo and hani have died — killed by the kif. Does that come through to you? I want to know who you are, where you came from, and why you ran to my ship when you could have gone to any other ship on the dock. So you tell me. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you have to do with the kif and why my ship, Outsider?”

  “You’re not friends to the kif.”

  Loud and clear. Pyanfar drew in a breath, thrust her hands into her waistband before her and regarded the Outsider with a pursed-lip smile. “So. Well. No, we’ve said so; I’m not working for the kif and I’m no friend of theirs. Negative. Does the word stowaway come through? Illegal passenger? People who go on ships and don’t pay?”

  He thought that over, as much of it as did come through, but he had no answer for it. He breathed in deep breaths as if he were tired… jumped as a burst of knnn transmission came through the open com. He looked anxiously toward that bank, hands clenched on the cushion back.

  “Just one of the neighbors,” Pyanfar said. “I want an answer, Outsider. Why did you come to us and not to another ship?”

  She had gotten his attention back. He looked at her with a thoughtful gnawing of a lip, a movement finally which might be a shrug. “You sit far from the kif ship. And you laugh.”

  “Laugh?”

  He made a vague gesture back toward Hilfy and Haral. “Your crew work outside the ship, they laugh. They tell me no, go ####no weapons toward me. ### I come back ###.”

  “Into the rampway, you mean.” Pyanfar frowned. “So. What did you plan to do in my ship? To steal? To take weapons? Is that what you wanted?”

  “##### no ####”

  “Slower. Speak slower for the translator. What did you want on the ship?”

  He drew a deep breath, shut his eyes briefly as if trying to collect words or thoughts. Opened them again. “I don’t ask weapons. I see the rampway… here with hani, small afraid.”

  “Less afraid of us, were you?” She was hardly flattered. “What’s your name? Name, Outsider.”

  “Tully,” he said. She heard it, like the occasional com sputter, from the other ear… a name like the natural flow of his language, which was purrs and moans combined with stranger sounds.

  “Tully,” she repeated back; he nodded, evidently recognizing the effort. She touched her own chest. Pyanfar Chanur is my name. The translator can’t do names for you. Py-an-far. Cha-nur.”

  He tried. Pyanfar was recognizable… at least that he purred the rhythm into his own tongue. “Good enough,” she said. She sat more loosely, linked her hands in her lap. “Civilized. Civilized beings should deal with names. Tully. — Are you from a ship, Tully, or did the kif take you off some world?”

  He thought about that. “Ship,” he admi
tted finally.

  “Did you shoot at them first? Did you shoot at the kif first, Tully?”

  “No. No weapons. My ship have no weapons.”

  “Gods, that’s no way to travel. What should I do with you? Take you back to what world, Tully?”

  His hands tightened on the back of the cushion. He stared at her bleakly past it. “You want same they want. I don’t say.”

  “You come onto my ship and you won’t tell me. Hani are dead because of you, and you won’t tell me.”

  “Dead.”

  “Kif hit a hani ship. They wanted you, Tully. They wanted you. Don’t you think I should ask questions? This is my ship. You came to it. Don’t you think you owe me some answers?”

  He said nothing. Meant to say nothing, that was clear. His lips were clamped. Sweat had broken out on his face, glistening in the dim light.

  “Gods rot this translator,” Pyanfar said after a moment. “All right, so somebody treated you badly too. Is it better on this ship? Do we give you the right food? Have you enough clothes?”

  He brushed at the trousers. Nodded unenthusiastically.

  “You don’t have to agree. Is there anything you want?”

  “Want my door #.”

  “What, open?”

  “Open.”

  “Huh.”

  His shoulders sagged. He had not expected agreement on that, it was evident. He made a vague motion of his hand about their surroundings. “Where are we? The sound…”

  The dust brushing past the hull. It had been background noise, a maddening whisper they lived with. Down in lower-deck, he would have heard a lot of it. “We’re drifting,” she said. “Rocks and dust out there.”

  “We sit at a jump point?”

  “Star system.” She reached and cut on the telescope in the observation bubble, bringing the image onto the main screen. The scope tracked to Urtur itself, the inferno of energy in the center of the dusty lens-shaped system, a ringed star which flung out tendrils the movement of which took centuries, ropy filaments dark against the blaze of the center. The image cast light on the Outsider’s face, a moment of wonder: Urtur deserved that. She saw his face and rose to her feet, moved to the side of this shaggy-maned Outsider — a calculated move, because it was her art, to trade, to know the moment when a guard was down. “I tell you,” she said, catching him by the arm — and he shivered, but he made no protest at being drawn to his feet. He towered above her as she pointed to the center of the image. “Telescope image, you see. A big system, a horde of planets and moons — The dark rings there, that’s where the planets sweep the dust and rocks clear. There’s a station in that widest band, orbiting a gas giant. The system is uninhabited except for mahendo’sat miners and a few knnn and tc’a who think the place is pleasant. Methane breathers. But a lot of miners, a lot of people of all kinds are in danger right now, in there, in that center. Urtur is the name of the star. And the kif are in there somewhere. They followed us when we jumped to this place, and now a lot of people are in danger because of you. Kif are there, you understand?”