Thus far Chanur remains reliable. Support for this agent must be managed with extreme discretion on all levels. I would send her on to Maing Tol but I see no means to do this over Sikkukkut’s objections and considering Ehrran’s present state of mind. Therefore Chanur remains with us, under utmost priority of protection. Particularly alarming is Sikkukkut’s courting of Chanur. Leverage will have to be arranged to counter this. . . .
Pyanfar looked away from the translation on screen, and Jik, sitting in a ring of Chanur at the bridge com station, gave a pained shrug as she flattened her ears. “What kind of leverage?”
“Money,” Jik said faintly. “Debt. Like maybe—a, Pyanfar, I not arrange these thing. This gover’ment stuff. They also help. Who repair you ship, a? Who bribe Stle stles stlen get you license back?” He looked around him, at face after face, looked again as Khym leaned a huge hand on the back of the cushion, and gazed up at Khym’s glowering countenance before he thought otherwise and turned back to Pyanfar. “No good this read message,” Jik said. “Damn, you read mail you going find stuff don’t got all the truth. Truth, truth I can’t say in letter— What you want, I write to Personage say I want help friend, I say I want them do good to you? No. I do quiet. I push make Personage you friend, I push keep you out trouble, I down on knee ask Personage treat Chanur right—” He reached and made a backhanded gesture toward the screen. “This, this be evidence in law. You know what I mean say. You don’t write down some thing. No want enemies get, not kif enemy, not hani enemy, not mahe, not stsho. God, Pyanfar, you know what I try say.”
She stared at him bleakly, saw the tremor in his hand and the pain etched around his eyes and his mouth, saw—maybe she wanted to see past the damning words on the screen.
“I know,” she said, and saw the tremor grow worse in his arm before he let it down. Proud Jik, vain Jik, pressed to give accounts he would not have given, not for any threat, except for hope of help from the friends he had doublecrossed, with his ship held hostage and more than his freedom and his reputation at stake. What she saw hurt. And rang clearer than any protestations. “I know, gods rot it, we both got a mess. Haral, what’s status on our allies out there?”
“Aja Jin and Moon Rising both report on schedule. I reported ourselves the same, all well aboard.”
“So we’ve told Kesurinan you’re fine,” Pyanfar muttered to Jik. “So what was the hope—send me off sideways about the time you made the jump with Sikkukkut to Meetpoint?”
“We not want lose you,” Jik said.
“I ought to be flattered,” she said in her throat, and looked up at the others. Tully was on the bridge with them. Everyone but Skkukuk. Tully as usual lost all of it. He looked confused. So did the crew, confused and on the edge of anger. “We got a value to the mahendo’sat,” she said. “They like their friends to survive. Gods know what else they want. It’s fair, I guess. We have certain mahendo’sat we favor more than others. No great wrong in that, as far as it goes. You’re off shift. Whole crew. Get a good meal in your stomachs: we got gods know what coming up. We got more than Meetpoint laid into Nav. If we have to.”
She looked toward Jik. Jik leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach with something more like his usual ease. His eyes were tired. But the gesture at least looked like Jik, bedraggled as he was and lacking his usual finery.
“You too,” she said. And for a moment the lids half-lowered on his eyes, the faintest of warnings.
Don’t give me orders, that was to say. I’ve had enough.
Well, it was Jik, and he was only trying to recover a bit of his dignity. She let her ears dip: all right.
Then he unfolded his arms, pried his stiffening frame out of the chair, and gave himself up to Tirun Araun, who indicated the galleyward corridor.
Fool, she told herself again. It was not just Jik she was trusting. It was a mahe the mahendo’sat put ultimate confidence in, one of a few who were turned loose in the field to make decisions across lightyears too many for the central government to be consulted on every twitch and adjustment of policy—places where agents had no time to consult, and a hunter-captain like Jik had to make up his own law and make treaties and direct local ships with the authority of the whole mahen government behind him.
Personage was more than an individual back in Maing Tol and another at Iji. It was the whole concept on which the mahendo’sat concluded anything: when a mahe was right he was right as law, and when he made a mistake he fell from power. His superiors would disown him. And if he made too great a mistake the superior who appointed him might fall: so there might be more than one agent in the field making contradictory arrangements.
The most viable would be acknowledged, the agents who stood too visibly for the nonviable policies would fall from power, and the mahen government went smoothly on.
Doublecross was the standard order of business. Betrayal of each other, of everyone but the superior. That he protected his own agents was Jik’s saving honesty, and Goldtooth’s, who had run and left Jik because he had to. It took this many years in space for an old hani to understand how it worked and to understand that it worked.
And there was still the question whether Jik might turn back on an agreement he had made, and repudiate it himself.
He had made a hard one, gods knew, with Sikkukkut.
And a contradictory one with her.
She frowned, and walked on the way others had gone, into the galley, where Tirun had gotten Jik seated at table and where Haral and Hilfy and Khym and Tully were all delving into the cabinets and the freezer hunting quick-fix edibles. There was the bitter odor of dry gfi in the air: Tirun was filling a pot. There was the rattle of plastic: disposables. Pyanfar leaned on the table with both hands and looked Jik in the eyes.
“Got a question for you. Say you got two agreements, you, yourself. And the people you made them with—get at odds. How do you resolve that?”
Jik frowned. His eyes still wept. His sweat smelled of ammonia and drug even yet. “You, Sikkukkut?”
“Me and Sikkukkut.”
“I keep best agreement.”
“The one that serves the mahendo’sat best.”
“A.” He blinked and gazed at her like a tired child. “Always.”
“Just wondered,” she said. “In case.”
Something else occurred to her, when she turned to the cabinet and took a packet of dried meat out of the storage.
Jik had just, for whatever reason, told the truth. Against his own Personage and all those interests. Which made him, in mahen terms, a dishonest man.
Gods, what’s gotten into us on this ship? We got nobody aboard who hasn’t gone to the wrong side of her own species’ business—Tully, Skkukuk, all us of Chanur and Mahn: now Jik’s sliding too.
Treason’s catching, that’s what it is.
She got a cup, wrinkled her nose as Khym dosed his gfi with tofi. She poured her own from the fastbrewer, looked back at their unlikely crew crowded into the galley. At Jik sitting disconsolate and hurting and trying his best to choke down a sandwich and a cup of reconstituted milk; no one in Chanur put off any temper on him, not Hilfy and not Khym either.
So. Crew was going to give him a chance. For their own reasons, which might include latitude for the captain’s judgment; but maybe because of past debts.
It was hard, being hani, not to think like one. There were times they had been as glad to see Jik as he had surely been to see her come after him on Harukk. Even if on his side it was all policy and politics. He had saved their skins many a time.
Even if it was always to bet them again.
* * *
Chur slitted open her eyes, wrinkled her nose, and blinked sleepily at her sister. Her heart sped a bit. She had dreamed of black things in the corridors, had dreamed of something loose on the ship. Noise in the corridors. It felt as if some time had passed.
And Geran had noted that little increase in pulse rate. Geran had this disconcerting habit of taking glances at the monito
rs while she talked, and whenever she reacted to anything. Geran’s be-ringed ears flicked at what she saw now; and it was a further annoyance that the screen was hard to see from flat on one’s back.
“We got Jik out,” Geran said.
Chur blinked again. So much that came and went was illusion and it was the good things she most distrusted, the things she really wanted to believe. “He all right?”
“Knocks and bruises and the like. Told Tirun he’d run into a wall trying to leave. Likely story. You know you never get the same thing twice out of him. How are you feeling?”
“Like I ran into the same wall. What’d you do to that gods-be machine? You put me out?”
“Got pretty noisy around here. I thought you might need the sleep.”
“In a mahen hell you did!” Chur lifted her head and shoved her free elbow under her. “You want my heartbeat up?”
“Lie down. You want mine up?”
“What happened out there?” She sank back, her head swimming, and tried to focus. “Gods, I still got that stuff in me. Cut it out, Geran. F’gods sakes, I’m tired enough, hard enough to go against the wind—”
“Hey.” Geran took her by the shoulder.
“I’m awake, I’m awake.”
“You want to try to eat something?”
“Gods, not more of that stuff.”
Foil rustled. A sickly aroma hit the air, which was otherwise sterile and medicated. Food, any food was a trial. Chur nerved herself and cooperated as Geran lifted her head on her arm and squirted something thin and salty into her mouth. She licked her mouth and took a second one, not because she wanted it. It was enough.
“Not so bad,” she said. It was so. She had missed salt. It did something more pleasant in her mouth than the last thing Geran had brought her. She cautiously estimated its course to her stomach and felt it hit bottom and lie there gratefully inert. She looked up at Geran, who had a desperately hopeful look on her face. “You worried about something, Gery?”
The ears flicked. “We’re doing all right.”
Lie.
“Where’s those gods-be black things?”
“Got ’em all penned up again.” Change of subject. Geran looked instantly relieved. And the traitor machine beeped with an increased heartbeat. Geran looked back at it and the facade fell in one agonized glance.
“We under attack?” Chur asked.
“We’re prepping for jump,” Geran said.
Scared. Gods, Gery, you’d send a monitor off the scale—
“Huhn,” Chur said. “What’re you thinking? That I won’t make it?”
“Sure, you’ll make it.”
“How far’re we going?”
Geran’s ears went flat and lifted again. There was a drawing round her nose, like pain. “Home, one of these days.”
“Multiple jump?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Maybe, huh?”
“Gods rot it, Chur—”
I haven’t got the strength. I can’t last it out. Look at her. Gods, look at her. “Listen. You mind your business up for’ard, f’godssakes, what d’you want, me make it fine and you marry this ship up with a rock? You pull it together. Me, I’m fine back here. Back here feeding me—” The monitor started going off again. She let it. “When’d you eat, huh? Take care of yourself. I got to worry whether you’re doing your job up there?”
“No,” Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. “I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can.”
“Don’t trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I’ll try to eat. Hear me?”
“Stays the way they set it.”
The monitor beeped again.
“Gods fry that rotted thing!” Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.
“Quiet,” Geran said.
She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.
I can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.
That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark—she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.
I can think the way home. Bring us all home.
“Chur?”
“I’ll be with you,” she said. “No worry. Wish they could move this gods-rotted rig onto the bridge.” She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. “When?”
* * *
“Bring him, captain?” It was not Tirun Araun’s way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun’s ears and put a little stammer in Tirun’s mouth. “That is to say—”
“Skkukuk’s not the one I’m worried about,” Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, autorigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader’s honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great deal; and Tirun’s worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. “How many rings you got, cousin?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. “’Bout many as proves I’ve got good sense, captain.”
“We get out of this one, cousin, I’ll buy you a dozen more.”
“Huh,” Tirun said. “Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I’ll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most.”
“All of our allies will,” Pyanfar said. “Skkukuk’s safe. He’s on this ship, isn’t he? Kif don’t understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we’d really blow the ship? Couldn’t figure why you’d do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He’ll think it’s a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk’s no different, I think. Tell the son I’m going to give him a job to do: he’ll handle kif-com. I’m putting him under Hilfy’s orders.”
“My gods, cap’n.”
“Tully’s sitting com too, this jump. No choice, is there? You’ve got to handle armaments—this time for real, I’m very much afraid; and back up Haral, and keep an eye on scan: I’m putting Jik in Chur’s seat, but his board stays locked, whatever condition his hands are in; and sure as rain falls down I’m not giving him com. While we’re at Kefk we’ve got one excuse; at Meetpoint we may have to contrive another. But I don’t want to put him between his ethics and our survival. Gods know, maybe it’ll take something off his shoulders, in some bizarre turn of the mahen mind. He wants to help us; he wants to carry out his own orders; he probably wants to save Goldtooth’s neck in spite of what the bastard did to him, he wants a whole lot of things that are mutually exclusive. Or that may turn that way in a hurry. And gods know I don’t want him in reach of your boar
d and the guns.”
“He won’t like Skkukuk there.”
“He’ll know why, though. I figure he’ll know inside and out why that is.”
“Him knowing the kif and all, yes.”
“Him knowing the kif and knowing what his own side wants from him, gods save him—gods save us from mahendo’sat and all their connivances. And watch Goldtooth, cousin, for the gods’ own sakes, if we do spot him, keep us a line of fire there. I don’t like the rules in this game either, but we didn’t make them up. They’re his, they’re that bastard Sikkukkut’s, and gods know who else has a finger in it. Watch them all.”
“Aye,” Tirun said in a hoarse, faint voice. “Them and Ehrran.”
“Everyone else for that matter. I don’t know a friend we’ve got.”
“Tahar,” Tirun said.
“Tahar,” she recalled.
A pirate and an outlaw.
* * *
And: “I’ve got Skkukuk?” Hilfy said. Her jaw had dropped, her ears were flat.
Pyanfar nodded. They stood where she had caught up with Hilfy, in the galley. And Tully sat sipping a cup of gfi, his blue eyes following their moves and his human, immobile ears taking in the whole of it. His com-translator would whisper it to him.
“Luck of the draw. He’s sitting down by Tirun on the jumpseat, but he’ll be working off your board. Just keep your finger by the cutoff. If we have to. And get your wits about you when we come out of the drop. I have to ask you this: how good are you on kifish nuance?”
“I’m good.”
“Objective assessment: good enough to pick up the subtleties in a kif’s transmissions?”
Hilfy paused, and gathered her cup off the counter. She glanced Tully’s way and back again. There was clearest sanity in her golden eyes. “I know what you’re saying. No. But Skkukuk can do it. What I’ve got to do is watch what he’s saying. And be fast on the cutoff.”
Chanur's Homecoming Page 11
