Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  "Captain," Haral's voice came, "it's sothosi. Library's sending to labcomp right now."

  "We're on it."

  Tirun was on it, a quick move for the comp unit; a glance at the screen and a dive for the medicine cabinet. She broke open a packet, grabbed an ampule and art astringent pad and made herself a clean spot on Jik's arm.

  The stimulant went in. In another moment Jik made another gasp after air, and another, a healthier darkness returning to his nose and lips. "There we go," Tirun said, monitoring his heartbeat. "There we go."

  Pyanfar found herself a chair and sat down, before her knees went. She bent over and raked her hands through her mane, conscious of the uncomfortable weight of the AP at her hip and the prodding of the gun in her opposite pocket. She stank. She wanted a bath.

  She wanted not to have done what she had done. Not to have made the mistakes she had made. Not to be Pyanfar Chanur at all, who was responsible for too much and too many mistakes. And who had now to think the unthinkable.

  "You all right?" Tirun asked.

  She looked up at her cousin, her old friend. At a crewwoman who had been with her from her youth. "Tirun." She lapsed into a provincial hani language and kept her voice down. "He'll stay here. I want this room safed, I want him left under restraint-"

  She tried to keep the cold distance she had had on Harukk. It was hard when she looked into an old friend's eyes and saw that natural reaction, that dropping of Tirun's ears.

  "Tirun," she said, though she had meant to justify nothing; she found herself pleading, found a shiver going through her limbs. "We got a problem. I'll talk about it later. Do it. Can you? Stay with him till he wakes up and make sure he's breathing all right. And for godssakes leave those restraints on him. Can you do that?"

  "Yes," Tirun said. No doubt. No question, from an honest hani who handed her captain every scruple she had and expected her captain was going to explain it all. Eventually.

  "Tell him I'm going to come back down. Tell him it's because we've got a few hours, I want him to rest and I can't think of any other way to make sure he does." She still spoke in chaura, a language no mahendo'sat was going to understand; and that was statement enough how much truth she was handing out. Tirun stared at her and asked no questions. Not even with a flick of her ears. Lock up a friend who had saved their lives and come back in this condition from doing it. Lie to him.

  If she could knock him cold again without risking his life she would do that too.

  She got up and walked out, raked a hand through her mane and felt the stinging pain of exhaustion between her shoulders, the burn of cold decking on her feet. Kif-stink was still in her nostrils.

  She flung the kifish packet onto the counter by her own station on the bridge.

  No one had left post; or if Geran had left to check on Chur she had come back again in a hurry. Solemn faces stared at her: Hilfy, Geran, Khym and Tully; Haral kept operations going.

  "Leave it, Haral," Pyanfar said.

  Haral swung her chair about, same as the others.

  "You know the way we came in here," Pyanfar said, "and took Kefk. We got orders to do it again. At Meetpoint."

  Ears sank. Tully sat there, the human question, hearing what he could pick up on his own and what garbled version whispered to him over the translator plug he kept in one ear.

  "You've heard bits and pieces of it," she said, and sat down on the armrest of her own cushion, facing all of them. "We've got to follow orders the way they're given. Or we've got to blow ourselves to particles here at dock. And that takes out only one kif faction. It leaves the other one the undisputed winner. And by the gods, I'd rather they chewed on each other a while and gave the Compact a chance. That's one consideration. But there's another one. Sikkukkut's threatened Anuurn."

  "How-threatened?" Haral asked.

  "Just that. One ship-if he thinks we're getting out of line. He's not talking about an attack at Gaohn. Nothing like it. He means an attack directly on the world. That's the kind of kif we're dealing with. One large C-charged rock, hitting Anuurn, before Anuurn can see it coming, gods know. It was a threat. I hope it was a remote threat. We're dealing with a kif who knows too gods-be much about hani and too gods-be little: he was a fool to tell me that and maybe he doesn't imagine what we'd do to stop him-before or after the event. But I don't think he's the only kif who'd think of it. I hope they chew each other to bloody rags. We arrange that if we can-but we've got to do what we're told right now or we find ourselves looking the wrong way at one of Sikkukkut's guns, und we don't get the chance to warn anybody, or work our way around this, or save a gods-be thing."

  "Captain," Haral said, "we got a kif up there at zenith. He's got position on us."

  "I know about it. We're not going to take 'em on. We just get out of here. We've got six hours, we're dropping into a Situation at Meetpoint, and the Compact may not survive it in any form we understand it. That's what we've got. That's what we're up against. I don't know what we're going to find at Meetpoint. Tully-are you following this? Do you understand me?"

  "I understand," he said in a faint voice. "I crew, captain."

  "Are you? Will you be, at Meetpoint?"

  "You want me sit with Hilfy at com, speak human if humans be there." His voice grew steadier. "Yes. I do."

  With all he could and could not understand. She gazed on him in a paralysis of will, as if putting off deciding anything at all could stop time and give them choices they did not have.

  Jik, they had locked up below. A kif and a human were loose among them. The human sat in their most critical councils.

  But Tully had given them the warning she had passed to Jik, a warning blurted out in one overcharged moment that Tully had stood between her and Hilfy and she had questioned his motives.

  Don't trust humans, Pyanfar.

  On one sentence, one frightened, treasonous sentence in mangled hani, they bet everything.

  Gods, risk my world on him? Billions of lives? My whole people? My gods, what right have I got?

  "I'll think on it," she said. "I haven't got any answers." She picked up the packet and flung it down again. "We've got our instructions. We've got Tahar with us. We've got Jik's ship. And we've got orders to keep Jik with us and keep that ship of his under tight watch."

  "There's something else," Hilfy said. And took up a piece of paper and got up and brought it to her. It trembled in Hilfy's hand. "Comp broke the code. Maybe he meant us to break it. I don't know."

  She hesitated in the dim doorway of sickbay, with that paper in her pocket; Jik was awake, Tirun had said.

  He was. She saw the slitted glitter of Jik's eyes, saw them open full as she walked in, quiet as she was. She went and laid her hand on his shoulder, above the restraint webbing. Tirun had put a pillow under his head and a blanket over his lower body.

  His eyes tracked on her quite clearly now, gazed up at her sane and lucid. "Come let me go, a? Damn stubborn, you crew."

  But she did not hear the edge of annoyance that might have been there. It was all too quiet for Jik, too wary, too washed of strength. It was-gods knew what it was.

  Apprehension, comprehension-that he might not be among friends?

  That for some reason she might be truly siding with the kif-or that she was operating under some other driving motive, in which they were no longer allies?

  He had for one moment, in that kifish place, drugged and on the fading edge of his resources, answered questions he had held out against for days, answered because she got through his defenses with a warning his mind had been in no

  shape to deal with, and because she had signaled him that he had to do this.

  Now he was clear-headed. Now he knew where he was, and perhaps he recalled, too late, what he had done. That was what came through that faint voice, that failing attempt at humor.

  "Hey," she said, and tightened her hand. "You got nowhere to go, do you?"

  "Aja Jin."

  "Told you about that. Kif'll shoot your head off. We're
clear. Got it all patched up with Sikkukkut. You passed out on me. Missed the good part. I need to talk to you."

  "I got talk to my ship."

  "That can wait. You'll fall on your nose if you try to get up. Don't want you trying it, hear? Tirun fill you in?"

  "Not say."

  "Your ship's fine; the dock's patched; I got you clear and got everything fixed up with Sikkukkut: he's a gods-be bastard, but he does listen. He's still suspicious, but he's put you aboard The Pride, says you've got to ride out the next move aboard my ship and let Kesurinan handle Aja Jin. That was all I could get. We've got to live with that."

  "I got damn itch on nose, Pyanfar."

  She reached and rubbed the bridge of it. "Got it?"

  "Let me go. I walk fine."

  "Haven't got time. We're moving. Going to Meetpoint. You're going to have to ride it out where you are. I'm sorry about that, but we haven't got another cabin we can reach till we undock. And then things are going to go pretty fast."

  He was quiet a heartbeat or two. Then: "Pyanfar-"

  "I got a question for you. I want to know what we're headed into. What did Goldtooth tell you before he left us, huh?"

  A silent panic crept into his eyes. He lifted his head and let it fall back against the pillow, still staring at her. "Not funny."

  "/ need to know, friend. For your sake, for that ship of yours, gods know, for mine. What are we headed for? What's he doing?"

  "We talk on bridge."

  Bluff called, she stared at him and he at her and there was a knot at her gut. "You know how it is," she said.

  "A," he said. "Sure."

  "I got this thing to ask you. I want to know the truth. You understand me."

  He ran his tongue over his lips. "What this deal with humans?"

  "Tully told me-told me flatly not to trust them. You know Tully; he's not too clear. But what he said, the way he said it-I think they're going to doublecross your partner. I think they're not the fools Goldtooth thinks they are. And they're not taking his orders."

  "Maybe you do better talk to Tully."

  "I have. We've got a problem. Sikkukkut wants Meetpoint. He wants us three to go in first, The Pride, Aja Jin, and Moon Rising. You see how much he trusts us. He wants us to go in there and shake things up and crack Meetpoint so he can walk right in easy."

  "Akkhtimakt maybe be there."

  "So's everyone else. Aren't they? I got one more question. What about the methane-folk? What's the real truth?"

  "Lot-lot mad." Another pass of Jik's tongue across his lips. "I try talk to tc'a. They want keep like before. Knnn- different question. Goldtooth said-said got maybe trouble."

  "Who's Ghost?"

  Jik blinked. His eyes locked on hers, pupils dilated.

  "When you were in trouble," Pyanfar said, "I hauled out that little packet you gave me at Mkks and started it through comp. We got a number one good linguistics rig. The best. Mahen make, a? Why'd you ever give me that packet, huh?-to carry on for you. In case something happened here at Kefk? So I could get through to Kshshti or Meetpoint? Gods-be careless job of encoding if we could break it-but then, then it might have had to go to a mahen ship way out from your Personage, mightn't it? Someone like Goldtooth, maybe? And the real code's in the language- isn't it?"

  "Maybe same-want you to have."

  "You knew gods-be well we'd have to go to mahen authority to read it? You by the gods knew we'd have to run to your side when it got hot-we'd be held to being your courier again, that's what you knew, that's what you set us up for, rot your conniving, doublecrossing hide?"

  He lay there and blinked at her.

  "Was it because you thought something might happen to you, Jik? Or did you already plan to do what Goldtooth did for you here at Kefk? Blow the docks and run and leave me to get anywhere I gods-blessed could, with your confounded message? Was it you who gave Goldtooth the orders to break dock?"

  "Hani, you got damn nasty mind."

  "I'm dead serious, Jik."

  "You crazy." He gave a wrench at the restraints. "Damn, Pyanfar?! walk fine."

  "Answer me."

  "What you think, I run out on you, leave you talk to kif? / on that damn dock myself!''

  "You weren't in the zone that blew! That's by the gods close timing, Jik!"

  "I not do!"

  "Didn't you? I think you knew with Chur sick I wasn't free to run for it. That it'd kill her and I wouldn't move if I had a chance in your coldest hell. Goldtooth gave us that med unit-fine, so I could run. You gave me that gods-be packet back at Mkks before we knew we'd find him here-you gave it in case something happened to you, a packet we'd have to take to mahen authorities. And what does it talk about? People reneging on agreements, that's what; it talks about contingencies, talks about supporting some candidacy-whose? Sikkukkut's? What agreements?"

  "Sikkukkut. Same. You know agreement."

  "You're lying, Jik. By the gods, you show up at Kshshti and help me out of one mess, then you help me all the way here, deeper and deeper you helped me, you and your godsforsaken partner, you and your gods-be deals-"

  ''I come out on that dock save you damn neck!''

  "Where were you planning to ditch us? Where, huh? Here? Or later, at Meetpoint? Where was it I was supposed to find this gods-be packet was the only currency I had, where was I supposed to go? Kshshti? Back through kif territory, get my ship and my crew shot up one more time, end up on mahen-charity because there's no gods-be help else when you've got through using me and mine for every gods-be gods-rotted piece of mahen politics you've got going? Or maybe I get to Meetpoint and find you'll drop me to politic with the stsho to save them from the kif-some mahen squeeze play, throw one kif at them from Kefk, another from Kita and Kshshti, catch them between your ships and the humans and haul the whole gods-be Compact into your lap, with me and the han left the way you left us the last time, out in the cold with our ships shot up, our station in ruins, and nothing this time to do but come crawling to your gods-be charity! Is that the way your favors go? Am I what you think you're buying with this little packet that tells your authorities how to deal with me?"

  ''I not do!'' Jik fell back from a convulsive shout, breathing hard, and they stared at each other for a moment.

  "Then who's this Ghost? What's the rest of it?"

  Silence. Jik only stared and breathed.

  "It's another doublecross. Isn't it? They've threatened my world, you hear me?''

  He blinked. That was all.

  "Gods rot you-" She snatched the paper from her pocket and waved it in his face. "What's this thing mean? What's this gods-be message worth if the humans doublecross you?" And when his mouth only clamped the tighter: "Jik-"

  "My nose itch, Pyanfar." Quietly. With full self-possession. And when she lost the breath to shout with: "Damn miserable, Pyanfar, damn ridic'lous situation, you and me. You come get me. Now what we do? What you think do?"

  She took the paper and folded it, absorbed in that meticulous task.

  "You got too good heart deal with kif," Jik said.

  "What's our choice? What gods-be choice have we got? Your whole plan's blown up, we've got the Compact coming apart around our ears-"

  "Same you, me, a?" He made a grimace, blinked sweat and strained to see her. "What we do, a? How far we want go, you, me?"

  "I don't know." She shoved the message into her pocket and leaned into his view, close, ears flat and a shaking in her knees. "How far do I go, huh, Jik? How far'd you go? This

  mess you put in motion is threatening to take my world out. We talk about friendship now? We talk about what you'd do in mahendo'sat interests? About two mahen bastards who'd doublecross every friend they got, all for the Personage?"

  "You want try drug next?"

  "Don't push me."

  "What we got, huh? Damn Anuurn hani sit and wait, good friend? You longtime got mind like rock, Pyanfar, whole damn han got own interest, let mahendo'sat fight kif pirate, let mane do, hani too damn busy make politic-" />
  "Why blame us? You created the han, take the poor hani bastards, teach 'em spaceflight, shove 'em into your own gods-rotted politics with the stsho, and to a mahen hell with the clans-"

  "What you want? Sit on world, be sit there when politic in the Compact roll over you heads like wave in the sea? Be sit there when kif eat our heart and come find hani? Maybe all time you like sit on world, Pyanfar, maybe you get old, want go sit in damn dirt and wait for kif?"

  "So what d'we get? The kif or you?"

  "You got choice."

  "Gods blast you!"

  "If we want you damn world, Pyanfar, we one time got, first time we land on Anuurn you got nothing but point' sticks. You forget? You ask us leave, we go."

  "Sure, you went. You never turned loose of us. Manipulate our trade, shape our government, let us here and let us there and don't let us get beyond ourselves-"

  "Fine. You make fine deal. Maybe you like kif lot better. Wish you luck, Pyanfar. Or you got trust me-"

  "Trust you!"

  "Damn, you come, I crazy drunk, talk kif, you say; I do, I do, Pyanfar, I got so much trust in you, I do. All diff rent, you say; got human louse things up, got bad trouble-'Talk, Jik: tell the kif what he want, I get you out-' God! what kind fool I be with trust?"

  "I should let you loose on my ship? Let you loose with my crew? Jik, I got you out of there. I did that for you. If you trusted me you'd tell me what's in this paper, but you won't do that. You can't do that, and I know why, like you know why I don't dare let you go. I've got to survive. I have to stay alive in this gods-rotted mess you handed me. I've got to hold a position where I can still do something. You understand me? I'm going to do something."

  "I tell you paper." Jik's voice came faintly, almost inaudible. "You know mahendo'sat-know I got power to make agreement for my Personage. I make now-with you. With hani."

  "Same as you make with Sikkukkut, huh? Same as you make with Akkhtimakt and set them at each other's throats."

  "Same I keep. Same I give him Kefk, same I fight with. You same know mahendo'sat. I keep agreement. I don't say Personage keep. But-" Jik blinked again and licked his lips, eyes lively as if he had already won his point. "-if. you get this kif, we got deal with you fair, a?"