Thank the gods… the third gender was the one that dealt with outsiders, business, and stress.
But outsiders didn't meet the sexed genders — or most rarely did.
"I am vastly moved by the trust gtst excellency has bestowed."
"Your tastefulness fulfills my extravagant expectations of a foreigner. If I had not come on this voyage I should never have met Dlimas-lyi. As a result of your hospitality I have… iiii… no, I shall be daring…
affected a person of such exquisite worth as I could not dream of. Gtsto was the offspring of Atli-lyen-tlas, gtsto, ruthlessly abandoned, gtsto, hitherto gtste… who most valorously hid from gtst enemies until Chanur had come to port. Then, seeing my magnificence, and surely to afford me comfort, gtstisi became gtsto…"
So Atli-lyen-tlas' daughter had hid from assassins, and, attracted to Tlisi-tlas-tin had become… call it male. It didn't bear offspring in this hormonal condition. If she presented what gtst had said to the universities at Anuurn or Maing Tol, she could justify a second certificate in Foreign Studies. Scholars would kill, to hear what gtst confided to her… but scholars were not going to hear it. That was the other thing you learned in Foreign Studies — not to sell out your source.
And in Protocols… never to let your source know you had.
"I am overwhelmed," she said honestly. "You are a most gracious guest. Admiration of your virtues has compelled me to personal efforts to fulfill our promises. And I must tell you — we are again frustrated in our attempts to reach Atli-lyen-tlas. The kif ship is here. It will not give us any information about passengers. But we have not abandoned effort."
"They are offensive individuals."
"I concur. Also the mane about whom I spoke, Ana-kehnandian, aboard Ha'domaren, is notable by his presence at this station and his clear intention to meddle in your excellency's affairs."
"What does your honor propose to do about this annoying person?"
"This is Kshshti. We have no confidence in the authorities to do anything. We shall attempt creativity.
Has your excellency any advisement? We would receive it with all attention. Or had your excellency rather wait on further information—" Never press a stsho for decision, " — we should certainly attempt to obtain it."
"As a hani, are you contemplating… iiii… violence of some sort?''
"By no means! But we are dealing with kif. Therefore it is a possibility, if instigated by them."
"The Preciousness must be safe!"
"At all costs."
"I am then willing to wait on your wisdom."
Gods rot the son.
"I have one other… em… distressing piece of information. Your ambassador here is dead."
"Wai! This is beyond all coincidence!"
"Is there possibly any advice your excellency could impart?''
"I will think on it."
"Perhaps… your excellency could step into that lately vacated place, and advise station authorities from that authority that you disapprove the silence of this kifish vessel?"
"Ambitious."
"But within your excellency's scope. Well within your abilities."
Gtstmoon-pale eyes blinked, and blinked a second time, and gtst expression never changed.
Until gtst took a deep breath. "What would your honor do?"
"I admire the extraordinary graciousness of your excellency to consult a foreigner and understand your excellency is merely curious. I would deliver a message to the station of extreme displeasure, assuming the authority of the late ambassador, without leaving this ship, and demand that information on Atli-lyen-tlas be forthcoming at once."
"This is a very sudden step."
"It will startle them. But no more tasteful approach could gain notice from the authorities of Kshshti."
"A bold venture."
"You have been bold in defense of propriety before this."
Tlisi-tlas-tin's eyes were wide. Gtst nostrils flared in rapid breathing. "You instill in me a most curious excitement, distinguished captain."
Emotional imbalance, the book said, is to be avoided at all costs.
"I have never before perceived elegance in such reciprocity of hostility. I feel a poetry in it. Dare I take such advice?"
"Modified of course by your excellency's own wisdom.''
"No, no, these are foreigners! And I have confidence in your honor's elegance. Convey such a message.
I am most displeased with such behavior. I shall certainly relate their answer to the authorities at Llyene!"
"Your excellency most certainly has the right words. Shall I provide your excellency a communications link to station central?"
"Absolutely! I shall execrate their offspring and their dealings!"
For a stsho, Tlisi-tlas-tin was acquiring very hani sentiments.
For a hani, she was acquiring a very curious empathy for a flat-toothed, group-following stsho.
Gtstexcellency certainly rattled the appropriate doors.
“I am outraged to learn of the demise of gtst excellency and gtst staff! This is villainy! I demand recompense! I demand the immediate cooperation of station authorities! I demand serious inquiry into the kidnapping of gtst excellency of Urtur! I demand serious action against the harassment perpetrated against us by the mahen ship Ha'domaren! Failure to comply instantly will jeopardize trade with all stsho!"
Strange to say, the Voice of the Personage of Kshshti immediately surrendered the mike to the Personage himself.
And strange to say, the Voice was quickly thereafter on the com, in person, to expedite customs for the Legacy, and to declare that officials were on the way to make serious inquiry into the issues raised by gtst excellency.
"Mostefficacious!" Hilfy said, and restrained herself from slapping Tlisi-tlas-tin on the back, gtst was so pleased with gtstself… positively beaming as gtst leaned back from the ops room com console.
"Let them reflect upon the consequences I have named! Nothing is idle threat!"
The futures market, on the number two screen, showed an immediate five point rise in strategics and necessities. One could predict an active bidding for the Legacy's cargo.
One could also predict a message from Ha'domaren…
"You damn lot ignorant hani! You don't listen, this no place to act like fool! I want talk! Now!"
"I'll bet you do," she said, stroking her mane into order.
Old nightmares, old sounds, remembered smells… now and then traded places in rapid succession.
Kshshti docks hadn't changed that much. It was still a raffish, rough place of bare metal, cheap plastics, leaking pipes and condensation that made rainy weather in the high cold chill of the towering overhead, obscured in the multiple suns of the lamps — hydrogen and sodium spectra that gave everything multiple shadows in bilious colors. It might have been years ago. It might be The Pride at dock behind her instead of the Legacy, and it might be those dark and dangerous times.
But it wasn't Tully walking beside her, it was Tiar, who hadn't said a word about old history, or anything of the sort, only pounced on her in the airlock with: "You're not going out there alone, captain. And you're not meeting that son by yourself."
So she hadn't gotten away. Orders be damned, Tiar would follow her. Two of them wandering around out there solo was asking for trouble. The dockside office, Haisi had finally agreed — which was line of sight. Haisi refused to come to the Legacy, she wouldn't come to Ha'domaren, not even close to it: the registry office, where one of them had to go anyway to get the loaders scheduled, was as close a compromise as they could arrive at, and she didn't have that much to say to Haisi anyway.
A couple of lines, like Stay off my tail, and Tell me who you're working for or we're through talking.
"More bars than restaurants," Tiar muttered.
"By actual count, probably." She was trying not to let her nerves get the better of her. It was her personal nightmare, this dockside: kif waiting in ambush, an alley that promised safety turning into a trap…<
br />
They'd fought, she and Tully had. But there'd been too many of them. And they'd ended up on a kifish ship, a prize aunt Py had to buy back at cost—
— at a cost that might have changed the Compact forever; or might have had no bearing on the outcome: she could never reason it out. Her wits went down too many tracks when she even tried to figure it, and it was more than meeting a mahen agent that brought her out of the Legacy and onto this dockside: she had to go. She had to walk out here and see the place again, and, now that she was here, she could tell herself it was a place no different than other places, and that if things were equal, they would take a liberty here, disgrace their species in several of the bars, and leave Kshshti as they left any port in the Compact, maybe better, maybe worse.
Nothing mystical about this place, at least. And nothing that remarkable about the tall mahe who stood with arms folded outside the station office.
"Go on," she said to Tiar, "take care of our business. I'll talk to this son."
"Bad language," Haisi said. "Shame. Shame you lie."
"Got you, did they?"
"No, just make damn mess."
"Listen, mahe bastard, you ride my tail one more time in jump I'll have your ears! I don't care how good your pilot thinks he is—''
A hand landed on Haisi's dark chest, fingers spread. "I. I pilot."
"Fine! I'm glad to know who I'm insulting! You're a damned fool, I've seen better, and I by the gods resent your taking chances with us! I don't care who your Personage is, you have no gods-be right to risk my ship!"
"No risk. I damn good."
She jabbed a claw at said chest. "I mean it! I'll sue you for endangerment. My passenger will sue you!"
"Where damage?"
"My nerves, mahen bastard! I'm carrying a stsho and you by the gods know it! You don't do it again!"
"Maybe same you use sense don't make trouble with stsho. Maybe now you talk deal what kind oji. "
"No deal!"
"Oh, now we big confi-dent! Now we got make trouble honest mahe station—"
"Gtstisn't kidding, mahe! You want trade shut down, you want that on your Personage's doorstep, you push me."
"You damn fool! You listen me! You want make friend kif? I think you got same real dislike with kif!"
"Kif aren't giving me any trouble right now. You are!"
"Kif give you big lot trouble a'ready. Who got Atli-lyen-tlas?"
"You, for all I know."
"Not true. Kif got."
A blunt mahen claw jabbed her in the chest, and she batted at the offending hand. "You listen," Haisi said. "True No'shto-shti-stlen send Tlisi-tlas-tin go you ship?"
"So?"
"True you go visit No'shto-shti-stlen?"
"So?"
"True same got kif guard?"
"You got a point, mahe? Get to it!"
"You like kif guard?"
"I said get to it!"
"All same No'shto-shti-stlen got lot kif. Kif got No'shto-shti-stlen. Same in bed like old friend.
No'shto-shti-stlen want be number one stsho and here come stupid hani—" A wave of a dark, blunt-clawed hand. "Believe everything gtst excellency got say. Take contract. You hold damn grenade, Chanur! Thing go bang in you face."
"Same like be friend with damn mahe reckless no-regard-for-life!"
"Same like be smart mahen accent. Chanur protocol officer not damn polite."
"I'm always that way with navigational hazards. I have an allergy to fools!"
"You calm down. You listen. You want go bed with kif, you like fine No'shto-shti-stlen. You listen! You aunt be damn fool, all time 'ssociate with kif bandit. Oh, real polite, real nice. But same call you aunt mekt-hakkikt, great leader, like real fine… All same kif pirate. All same kif steal, kill, lie, I no got tell Hilfy Chanur about kif—"
"You can sit in your own hell, mahe, you're way past the limit with me. What I am and what I know, what I did and what I'll do… aren't your damn business, they haven't been your damn business, and I absolutely resent your trying to manipulate me! No luck, no luck, mahe, and you can tell that to the Personage that sent you to maneuver Chanur against itself. ''
"I try help, hani fool!" "Stay out of my way!" "You listen—" "No."
"You listen, hani! You want kif be number one power in the Compact, you keep go what you do!"
''Fine. What' s my choice? A smart-mouthed mahe?"
"Don't be fool!"
"I wasn't born one and I won't be made one. Good afternoon, Ana-kehnandian. And our regards to your Personage. Maybe she'll send someone polite next time she wants favors from a hani!"
"Fool!"
"Twice a fool!" Shouting was drawing an audience… mahendo'sat, a wall of brown and black, no sign of the stsho one might have expected here. "This isn't a place to discuss anything."
"Fine, we go my ship."
"I don't go near your ship. And it's no good you coming to mine because you're not going to get what you want. We're drawing a crowd. Forget it!"
"Hani!-"
"Forget it, I said!" She walked away, shouldered a couple of mahendo'sat on her way to the registration office door, walked through into the brighter light— with some satisfaction in Haisi's discomfiture at being what no hunter-ship captain ever wanted to be: public. He didn't follow her in. There were stares all about them, mahendo'sat, mostly, and the inevitable (at Kshshti) clutch of black-robed, cowled kif, whispering in their own language of clicks and hisses.
Hani, was one word her ears caught. Chanur, was another.
Tiar was at the desk. She walked up to Tiar's elbow and waited while the mahen clerk processed the information.
"Not a real happy mahe," she muttered into Tiar's canted ear. "He claims he pilots that ship. Cocky son, says he'll miss us, we don't have to worry about collision."
"'What did he want?"
"Oh, the usual, warn us about a plot to take over the universe, that sort of thing. What else is new?"
Tiar's ear flicked. "Captain, somebody might speak hani.''
Dear, literal-minded Tiar. For the first time in a decade she felt alive, felt—
— by the gods, ahead of the situation instead of chasing after it.
Didn't know what she was going to do, precisely, but she knew what she was doing — and whoever was against them, didn't: that was the name of the game; and quite comfortably she turned her back to the counter, leaned her elbows there, and simply stared back (smiling pleasantly, of course) at the mahendo'sat and kif staring at her.
Crazy as the rest of the family, she thought. It probably onset with age. Aunt Py had been relatively stable until she became captain of The Pride.
The business at the desk concluded, Tiar putting in her bid for loaders to their dockside, no, they hadn't sold the cargo yet, but they'd put in a destination when they agreed with the loaders, so much per section the load had to go around the rim of Kshshti, and no, they didn't need provisioners soliciting them.
Everything was fine.
Meanwhile she watched the room in the remote but not impossible chance someone might turn up with a weapon or some sort of trouble might come through the door.
Somebody like Haisi. Somebody like a few of his crew. Probably Haisi was thinking hard what to do about troublesome hani. And if he was connected to anyone responsible, gods rot him, he could have produced credentials from people she knew. She didn't need any, to prove to him who she was.
"I think we're ready," Tiar said.
"Let's walk back," she said. "Sort of watch it.’’
The crowd at the door moved and let them out onto the dingy, multiple-shadowed docks. "Haisi's left," Hilfy said under her breath.
"Wasn't highly helpful?"
"You could say that." Another time-flash, on the smells and the sights and the sounds of the dock, a bus passing, on its magnetic guide strip, rattling the deck plates at a service access. And not a hani in sight…
just not a place hani had gotten to, lately. Peace might have brought prosperity… bu
t merchant ships tended to establish quiet, regular routes. There weren't the disruptions, the wild incidents, the rumors, that tended to send the timid running and the foolhardy kiting in on the smell of profit: and, absent those motives, a merchant ship tended to carve out a route it followed and stick to that route for fear of someone moving in to compete… from a cooperative, rumor-trading free trade, they'd become misers, close-mouthed on information, jealously protective of their routes and resentful if somebody moved in on them or undercut their prices — a mercantile age, it was, a greedy, tight-fisted age.
And what was a hani ship saying by being out of its normal route these days, or what was a mahen hunter ship doing sniffing about? That there was something different about them? That, being Chanur, there was something other than trade on their minds?
That murdered stsho were significant?
Trust Kshshti to spread the rumors it got. That little business with Haisi was already spreading on a network more efficient than the station news, bet on it.
"Ever been on Kshshti?"
"No," Tiar said shortly. Tiar had an anxious, distracted look. And she knew Tiar hadn't been here: aunt Rhean hadn't favored this area of space. Aunt Pyanfar had been the one to run the edges, preferentially, using her experience of foreigners to make The Pride profitable.
But aunt Pyanfar hadn't spoken the languages with any great fluency. And she could. She'd gone into that study to give herself an edge in getting into the crew, she'd had an aptitude for words, a mind quick to grasp foreign ideas, and a tongue that didn't trip on stshoshi… best bribe she could have offered aunt Py, who couldn't say Llyene without dropping an essential l.
And where had it brought her?
A car swerved near them. "Gods-be fool!" Tiar exclaimed.
"NaHallan would be right at home here," she said — nasty joke; but na Hallan wasn't here to hear it, and she was in a joking mood, crazy as it was. Maybe it was discovering Kshshti was a real place, and debunking it of the myth of nightmare… she hadn't flinched from coming here, hadn't let herself, but by the gods, maybe she should have come here years ago, walked the docks, had a look at the place and told herself…
"Kif," Tiar said suddenly, and her eyes spotted them at the same moment, a handful of them standing about in the shadows near the Legacy's berth.
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