Pyanfar turned her chair again and touched the button to bring the long-waiting call through from Rhif Ehrran; listened to Tirun address the Vigilance com officer.
More games of politics and captainly protocols. The com officer insisted on getting response from The Pride's captain before putting her own on.
"I'll take it," Pyanfar said—curiously, pride with Ehrran had just diminished in importance. She failed even to feel a twinge of temper with the Ehrran officer who tried to provoke her and put it on record. "This is Pyanfar Chanur."
Keep Ehrran quiet. Get the essentials done. Tahar was the emergency. Chur was safe. Tully assured her nothing critical had spilled into kif hands. There were things Sikkukkut still needed. And that meant at once a safer and a less predictable kif.
"Vigilance. Com officer speaking. One more moment, captain. I'm afraid the captain's gone off line a moment." Cold arid calculatedly insolent. Games of provocation.
Three human compacts? Fights between them?
One human Compact, Earth, the human home world, trying to counter two rival human powers with new trading routes? Or was it trade they were interested in?
That was a big section of space, if it had room for three starfaring economies . . . correction: two. And one that just wanted to be bigger.
Did Goldtooth know the situation inside human space? Mahendo'sat with their scientists and their mad delving into oddities—always poking and prodding at things, hoping— hoping what? For new species? New alliances?
New situations they could use to deal with their old neighbors the kif?-
Beware of Goldtooth. Thus the stsho, who had double-dealing down to an art.
"Ker Pyanfar, this is Rhif Ehrran. I trust whatever emergency kept you wasn't serious."
"No. It's all handled. No further problem. Unless you have one."
"No. I'm going to relieve you of one. I'm sending a detail over to pick up Tahar."
"Afraid not. I've accepted her appeal for parole. Sorry, Ehrran. She's under a Chanur roof, so to speak. And I'm head of house—out here.''
''This isn't Anuurn and we're not in the age of sofhyn and spears, you hear me, Chanur?"
"No. We play with bigger toys nowadays, don't we? You're fond of quoting the law. Me, I like the old laws right fine: like kinright. The kind of law you can't quote by the book, Ehrran."
"Put Tahar on."
"Maybe you ought to concentrate on her crew. They've got a real problem. They might appreciate your intervention. But Dur Tahar's comfortable enough where she is. Is that all you want?"
Click.
"Log that," Pyanfar said. "Put the other call through."
"Aye," Tirun said.
"Good shot," Haral said with a dip of her ears. Meaning Rhif Ehrran and a genteel stroll to the brink.
"Huh," Pyanfar said. "Why couldn't the kif grab her, huh? Do us a favor."
"Make a trade?" Haral suggested brightly.
"Gods, that's a—"
"Captain." Tirun lifted a hand, signaling quiet. "Harukk's going through real procedures this time—I think they're going to try to put the call through. Maybe—Yes. The captain's waiting, Harukk com, if you can do that. Yes. . . . Right. Captain, Harukk com's compliments, and they'll try to reach the hakkikt if you'll put the request yourself."'
Protocols. Sfik games again. Pyanfar flicked her ears and made an affirmative handsign. Immediately the ready light came on and Pyanfar keyed it. Her claws flexed. She drew in a deep breath and killed all the anxieties, banished them to a cold, far place without a future.
"Harukk," she said calmly, "this is Pyanfar Chanur. I have an urgent message for the hakkikt, praise to him."
"Honor to the hakkikt, he may give you his attention, hunter.''
—So we come up from our obscure beginnings, do we, kif? Provincial boss and chief torturer—to prince? And we by the gods set you there.
She waited. Coldly, calmly. Long. Eventually:
"This is Sikkukkut, ker Pyanfar. What is this urgency?"
"Hakkikt. I appreciate the courtesy. And the gift you sent me. I'd like to talk with you further. I understand you have Moon Rising's crew in your custody. ..." -
"Hunter Pyanfar, your forwardness would daunt a chi. Is my gift too scant for your appreciation?"
"Hakkikt, I see a way to use it to your benefit and mine. There's some urgency in it. If you'll send a courier I can be more specific." ?
Pause. "Hunter Pyanfar, you interest me. But I see no reason why one of my skkukun should come from my ship to yours and back again, when your own look to be in good health. And I have nothing to say to your crew. I made you a proposition at Meetpoint, you may recall, which you declined. I make it again—a rare offer. Come to my deck this time. If this offer has the merit you say. I trust it does. I'll; expect you—within the hour."
Click.
She leaned back in the chair.
"Captain," Haral said, beside her, "good gods—"
She turned a look in Haral's direction. "That didn't go right."
"Now what? We call Jik?"
"Call Jik to mop up?—We just got a challenge, cousin. / got it. Sfik. The bet just got taken and doubled."
"They want to get their hands on you, good ,gods, they can't get Goldtooth in reach—they want you! You just heard Tully say what that son is and you said yourself what Sikkukkut wants most—Goldtooth was just here, talking to you. The kif have to know that. They know he could have passed us what they want to know—"
"They'll kill the prisoners. They'll kill them sure now if I fail that appointment, and they'll let us know about it. If that weren't enough, our credit with the kif hits bottom. Hard."
"You can't do it!"
"I can't duck it either. No. Sure that earless bastard is going to try us. One way or the other. And I think I'm starting to think in kifish; I think I read him. I'm perfectly safe to walk in there—if I can keep him wondering. I'm going to need company out there. Want to take a walk?"
"Oh, sure," Haral said with a despairing shrug. "Gods, why not?"
XII
The air of Kefk hit like an ammonia-tainted wall. Haral coughed even on the ramp; Pyanfar sneezed and felt the sting of her eyes in spite of the antiallergents. Haral had put on her portside finery, dark spacer blue with a collection of gold earrings, a set of bracelets, an anklet with a bangle, a belt with silver and gold chains that rattled right along with a monstrous black AP gun and a belt-knife. Pyanfar wore the red silk trousers, gold bracelets and belt and gold-earrings aplenty; a knife and a pocket-gun besides the AP slung low on her hip.
"We look a right set of pirates," Haral had said before the lock sealed them out. "It's the pirates outside worry me," Tirun had retorted to them both, there in the lock.
And Khym had said other things, while Geran and Hilfy fretted and gnawed their mustaches sparse—"Huh," Geran had said, with exhaustion and worry in her eyes. "I'll go with you—"
Haral: "My job."
And Tully later: "Where she go—where go, Py-anfar?"
She avoided answers with Tully. "Out," she had told him in that unwanted encounter in the downside corridor. "I got business, Tully. I'm in a hurry."
"Careful," he had said, anxious-looking. Frightened, doubtless from the time he heard that inner lock open, preparing to expose The Pride to the kifish docks. She reckoned the crew would tell him where they had gone after she was well on her way. Or better yet, when she and Haral got back.
When.
They walked the dockside, she and Haral, in a sodium-light hell of clinging smokes and ammonia-reek and a moist chill like a swamp at sundown. Kif moved, black wisps in the dimmer shadow along the far wall of this section of warehouses and factory fronts. There was no color anywhere about Kefk docks but the sickly sodium-glow, no brightness but the stark white of some argon spotlight on a round steel doorway.
"Kkkkt. Kkkkt," the sound came to them, as they walked past kifish ships. Kif, doubtless some of their erstwhile companions—had seen them walk outside a
nd gathered in clusters to whisper—and perhaps, Pyanfar thought, to wonder whether the two hani walking down the docks of Kefk had lost their collective minds.
("Look at you," Khym had cried in dismay while she dressed for this foray. "Wear that into a den of thieves? Py, for godssakes!")
Crazy to wear that much gold into a kifish den if one had not the sfik to hold onto it. "So we look like trouble," Pyanfar had said to Haral when they laid their plan. "A lot of trouble, by kifish lights. That's the idea."
Advertise their presence and hold it under kifish noses till they smelled it and looked at the gold and the weapons and remembered that The Pride's crew had no general reputation for being fools.
Therefore they must be the other kind. Dangerous.
They were also the hakkikt’s invited guests. At least on the way to the meeting.
"Marvelous thing about kif," Pyanfar muttered in a moment when she and Haral were well out of earshot of kif, between one gloomy ship-berth and another. "It occurs to me that these types out here on the dock aren't any more secure than we are. We're high on the wave and so are they and kif sail a rotted choppy sea. Always wondering when the wind's going to shift."
"They're different, that's a fact," Haral muttered in her turn. "No lasting grudges—and, gods be feathered, nothing they won't trade. Flighty folk. I don't think hani ever have got the right of them. Maybe we should have brought our friend Skkukuk on this trip, huh?"
"I did think about it. But I've got an uneasy feeling that one's a little crazy even for a kif. I don't want him near guns and knives."
"Huh. Me either, now I think on it."
A waft of something reached them down the dock. Blood. Even through the ammonia. Pyanfar hissed and cleared her throat. "Good gods," Haral swore in disgust. "That's enough to kill your appetite."
"We're nearly—"—there, Pyanfar started to say and suddenly lost the thread of her thought as she caught sight of the kifish numerals for 28: Harukk's berth. Kif traffic was thick hereabouts and the blood-smell grew stronger.
It worsened rapidly, the closer they walked. The steel rampway rail had a series of metal poles chained to its stanchions, and a dark object sat atop each.
"Gods and thunders," Pyanfar muttered, "Haral, don't flinch."
The heads were kif. Kif came and went on that number 28 ramp, past the awful watchers; she and Haral headed that way among the rest, waiting for challenge from some guard or other.
None came. They passed the first stanchion up and Pyanfar gave the gory object atop it a cold and curious glance.
"So much for the opposition," Haral said.
"Sure ought to keep the new converts in line," Pyanfar muttered. Every kif that came into Harukk had to see it, victory for some, grim warning for the others.
At least, she thought in profoundest relief, none of the heads was hani.
Kif turned and stared at them as they passed, upward-bound like all the rest who had business aboard Harukk. A knot of kif who stood at the accessway clicked and hissed as they passed but made no offer to delay them.
There were, finally, guards inside the large airlock.
"Hakktan," one said in kifish. Captain?
"Ukt," Haral answered with a nod at Pyanfar. Yes. Pyanfar stood by with her arms folded, arrogant to the slant of her ears, and let Haral do the talking. Two of the three kif kept their hands tucked within their sleeves , doubtless concealing weapons besides the guns they wore openly. They stood blocking other traffic into the lock from either direction, while the third reported their presence to the monitor above.
The answer came, orders for their admittance. The guard at the inner hatch stepped aside; and the third guard bowed with that hands-empty gesture: "Inside," that one said.
"Huh," said Pyanfar; bowed and slanted her ears back when she did it. Haral stayed close as they passed the hatch to Harukk's ammonia-smelling interior.
More kif waited in the inside corridor—one who turned out to be merely delayed traffic, who stalked on; and four tall kif rattling with weapons.
"Follow," one said, and stalked off in the lead without looking back. Three walked behind, while two stayed. And not a word of objection about the array of weapons their visitors brought aboard. Not a word of any kind. They passed kif in these dim corridors that stank of ammonia and machinery and blood and other, unidentifiable things, and no one gave them a second glance.
Kifish manners, Pyanfar thought. Don't notice the hakkikt's odd guests, don't stare, don't give offense. The aura of fear and fierceness throughout the place was infectious. It bristled the back, set the pulse beating faster, sent fight-flight impulses coursing the nerves.
Hilfy knows this place, Pyanfar thought at sight after sight, with an involuntary tightening of her gut. Hilfy was in this awful place.
Hilfy had stood silent by Khym's side when she had broken the news to them where she and Haral proposed to go. Khym had had his opinion of it all. Like Geran. But Hilfy's ears just went flat and her nostrils drew taut; and: "Huh," Hilfy had said. "Why?" With a darkness of memory in her eyes; and an estimation, and nothing else readable. 'You know it's a trap."
"I know," Pyanfar had said. "At this point there isn't a better choice."
Hilfy knew the ways of kif better than any. And gave her no argument. No offer to come either. The situation wanted cold steadiness and as little as possible chance of provoking the kif. And that put the job, by seniority and by disposition, on Haral Araun.
Haral walked along beside her now as warily easy as on a trek down one of the Compact's rougher docksides—kept her ears up and her face serene during the ride pent in a lift with the pair of kifish guards.
The lift stopped; one guard exited and the rest hung back as they had done below. And it was one more long walk down the dimly lit corridor aft from the lift; then an open doorway, and a dim chamber where a handful of kif waited attendance on one seated on an insect-legged chair, a kif who wore a silver medallion, whose black robe and hood were edged in silver that shone dimly in sodium-light.
"Hakkikt," Pyanfar said, approaching this grim magnificence. And bowed with a carefully rationed measure of respect and self-importance.
"Kkkt." Sikkukkut flourished his thin, dark-gray hand. "Ksithikki." Kif scurried to the corners of the room and carried back two chairs and a low table, all at a virtual run.
"Ksithti."
Pyanfar nodded and sat down in one, feet tucked. Haral took the other. More orders from Sikkukkut, and a wave of his hand in a silver-bordered sleeve. Kif scurried after pitcher and cups with as great haste; and hurried to put a cup into Sikkukkut's outstretched hand before it had had time to tire of waiting. A cup went to Pyanfar; a third to Haral. A kif had
poured for Sikkukkut; and came quickly to pour for them from the same pitcher.
It was, thank the gods, parini. Liquor. Strong and straight and likely to go straight to the head; but it was nothing objectionable. Pyanfar sipped gingerly and tried not to think of obvious things like whether the off-taste was the ammonia in her nostrils or something in the drink.
But they were sitting in Sikkukkut's hall, on Sikkukkut's deck; in his starstation; in kif space; and drugged drinks here seemed as superfluous as removing their weapons, which no one had offered yet to do. Haral followed her lead and drank: Haral, whose stomach was redoubtable in station bars from Anuurn to Meetpoint and who always made her duty schedules without a hangover. For the second time she was glad it was Haral by her and not Khym.
"You turned down this invitation once at Meetpoint," Sikkukkut said.
"I remember." A sneeze threatened her dignity. And their lives. She fought it back with an effort that made her eyes water. It was psychological, this aversion to kif. She had taken the pills. And gods, those pills made a hazardous combination with the liquor, dried her mouth, dulled her perceptions. And her nose still prickled.
"I told you then I looked for a change of mind someday." Sikkukkut dipped his nose into the ornate cup and drank. "And here it is. Kkkt.
After an emergency on your ship. What sort of emergency, do you mind?"
Wits, get your mind working, Pyanfar Chanur. "There was a medical difficulty; but the emergency call to the mahendo'sat was a matter of convenience." She looked straight at the hakkikt and prayed the gods greater and lesser for no sudden sneezes. Attack the matter straight on. Rob the bastard of all his carefully laid traps and surprises. "Actually it was an excuse for consultation with two of my allies—without the nuisance of a third, speaking plainly. On several matters. Your gift, hakkikt— gives me options to deal with that nuisance. That's why I came. It may rid you of one too—since I think my annoyance and yours has one source."
"Kkkkt." Another sip, and a shadowed glance within the shadowing, silver-edged hood, black eyes reflecting the glare of sodium-light. "I take it then you don't intend to kill this Tahar hani."
"No. I don't."
"So you have asked for the crew as well as the captain. This would be a rather large gift on my part. They are unusual—kkt. Ikkthokktin. A mild rarity. Amusing. I don't say I'm personally interested, but certain of my skkukun would be pleased to have one or another of them. Is it perhaps a certain—ethical reluctance—on your part? Should your desires mass more than others of my captains?"
Think. "I have reasons more than amusement." Kifish logic. Pukkukkta. Let him lead himself astray. When outclassed in wit, create plausible complications and let the enemy think himself to death. "You have to understand, hakkikt, I'm sure you do—that Rhif Ehrran is no particular friend of mine. I don't doubt you've heard from her, wanting them released to her."
"And from Keia and even from Ismehanan-min. These Tahar hani seem to be a matter of some excitement in your faction. A sfik-item, you say. But why should I give the whole prize to you?"
"Tahar interests quite a few people, particularly hani. They're a big family, they've got wide holdings in the same continent as Chanur, as well as being spacer-hani, which also makes them valuable in some quarters. No. I'm going to ask an even larger favor of you, hakkikt—trusting Moon Rising got through the station takeover undamaged. I want that crew handed over to me—and I want their ship."
The Kif Strike Back cs-3 Page 23
