Chanur's Homecoming

by C. J. Cherryh

  Sirany’s ears went down and struggled bravely erect. “I saw the ring.”

  “Didn’t win it in a fight. Won it sitting the boards doing his job while Haral Araun had her finger on a destruct button. And he’ll take your orders, or mine, or any senior’s. That’s how it is. I want your help, ker Sirany. It’s good we’ve got someone aboard who doubts us. And every word in that log is true. You understand me?”

  Sirany’s ears went half-flat. White showed at the corners of her eyes and her jaw was hard. Then the ears came up. “We’ll worry about that when we’re through this alive.”

  “I’m fighting for the han. They’ll call me a traitor. They’ll put that on my tomb if I get one. You understand me yet? It’s one thing to be a gods-be hero. If we get through this alive, I want someone, I want one hani else to know this crew’s not what they’ll say we are.”

  Fear snowed in Sirany’s face. Undisguised. “What do you want, company?”

  “I want your influence. We got two fights. One’s in space. The other’s with that fool Ehrran and all her ilk. The han tucks its collective head down and the kif have got the axe hanging over it. You hear me, Tauran? I’ll do whatever I have to. If you see what I see, you’ll be with me. Whatever else you think about me.”

  “You’re a lunatic!”

  “I’m doing something. What in a mahen hell has the han done right lately? What has anybody done about it?” A claw popped through the seat-leather as her hand clenched tighter. A second. “Tauran, how long do you think we can sit still while the Compact’s blown to a mahen hell? Humanity’s coming in on us. Mahendo’sat’ve done something stupid, they’ve done something that’s touched off humans and got something started that they don’t understand and I’m not sure the humans do: Tully’s witness to that, and he warned us. Jik’s tried to do something to save us all, and it’s cost him. He at least knows his people’ve been fools. Like the stsho. Like hani. And the kif. And maybe the tc’a, gods save us. And even the humans may know by now. Most of ’em are fools by doing something. Ehrran just got us a brand-new treaty with the stsho, did you know that? And look where they are. Look what we’re into. The kif just took ’em. We got kif backing into hani space. We got Kura not answering here. We got Akkhtimakt in such a mess that hani space is the only thing left he can get to, because Sikkukkut’s sent out ships to every jump-point in reach and blocked his other routes. Meanwhile there’s a major mahendo’sat push coming down out of Kshshti, which if Akkhtimakt’s spies are worth anything, he knows and Sikkukkut doesn’t—he’s been at Kita and up by Kshshti. That bastard’s going to let Sikkukkut take the hit from the mahendo’sat while he pulls off into hani space and comes up again at the mahen underbelly, straight up at Iji. You know the mahendo’sat, you know they’ll fragment if the Personage goes out. They won’t have a defense. And humanity’s going to be right in the middle of mahen territory with a whole lot of ships, ships that can jump short, just like our friends the mahendo’sat and just like the kif, ships that can shorten the time between strikes like nothing we want to imagine. But we won’t worry about it. We’ll be lucky to have a world left. And we’ll belong to whoever wins. With nothing to say about it. If we survive at all. We got one of our men in space. One, and you know how safe this ship is, with half the kif in the universe hunting us and the other half about to. The whole rest of our species is on Anuurn. And it takes one big rock, Sirany Tauran, one C-charged rock, and we’re all widows and brotherless. Forever. You hear me? You know what I’m saying?”

  Tauran said nothing. The ship hurtled on, crossing planetary diameters in every few heartbeats. In silence, all about them, inside the ship, inside the space between them.

  “Tauran.”

  “I hear you. This is all crazy.”

  “Tauran’s a spacing clan. Three generations. You know what I’m talking about. That mess you got into at Meetpoint. Could you even explain to those old old women in the han why you couldn’t take out running? What chances you had getting up to V or what those distances are like? How many of ’em understand a stsho?”

  “Who understands a stsho?”

  “How do they formulate policy with them, make a treaty with them, tell us who live out here that we’re supposed to stand off the kif, do I guess—that they expect us to dispose of the kifish problem, because it’s going to take them ten, twenty years to change their concept of the way kif behave, or what the mahendo’sat are likely to do, and gods save us when they start dealing with the humans and their three governments, all fighting each other? What in a mahen hell are they going to do right now when Akkhtimakt comes into system? Order the Llun to bar them from station? Put hegemony sanctions on them? Study the problem?”

  “It’s too much—”

  “I’m asking another clan to damn itself. With me. I’m asking all the rest of you. I’m asking those who know what I’m talking about to do something about it. We’re not dealing with scattered pirates anymore. Hani out here’ll do the right thing. I’m betting all we’ve got on that. Traders’ll have stripped down, some go home, some scatter like seeds on a high wind. Everywhere. They’re warned. But it won’t save us from a rock. It won’t protect us if some kif decides to take our species out. I can’t get to the han to tell them what I’m telling you. I can’t explain what happened at Meetpoint—gods know what’s happened at Meetpoint. Or what’s going to follow us. Or when. If Sikkukkut sent a ship out we don’t know about, and some bastard’s tailing us, they might pick up our directional transmissions. We can’t do anything but what we’ve done.”

  “I read your running orders. I got your message from Sif. And I’m not a fool.”

  “I never took you for one. I got that impression early on. And I’ve got to go on walking the track I’ve been walking. Inside. Same as Jik’s done. Till we’ve got Akkhtimakt stopped. There aren’t enough hani ships in all space to do what we have to do, against hunter-ships and gods know what. We need the kif’s firepower, even at the risk we’re running. That’s the game I’m playing, Tauran, and you know what I’ll hear from the han if I can even get to ’em. Illegal contacts. Violation of treaties. Illegal personnel for the eternal gods’ sake, on my ship. If somehow we live through this and the han’s still operating, they’ll probably hit us both with a charge of registry violations. That’s how much they understand. You know who we’re dealing with. Those old women are up with every twitch and power shift in the insystem markets, they know who’s leaning where in the vote, they know every move and current in Anuurn affairs, and every dustup in history between the River Hegemony and the Amphictiony of Pesh and every other gods-be particle of past history that isn’t going to matter a whole lot, Tauran, if one incoming rock kills every living thing on the planet back to the bugs and the worms, is it? A whole lot of expertise that’s by the gods useless in the only question that matters, which is what are we going to by the gods do, Tauran, with what we know and where we are, and what we got behind us and ahead of us that we know about and they don’t?”

  “I’m hearing you,” Sirany said. There had been a quiet stir about. Chanur crew was up. Tauran crew was still in place. But it was very quiet now. “I’m hearing you. I’m agreeing with you. But I’ve still got to think about this, Chanur.”

  “Think all the way to Kura Point. I’m going to send you Sifeny and Fiar back to your shift; let you all work it out. Take my own back to the boards. Human and my husband and the kif and all. With my thanks, ker Sirany. They’re good. I don’t like to mess with teams that work. Yours or mine. And we need some crew rested full. For contingencies.”

  “You got it.” Sirany released restraints and climbed out of the chair. “Get you a sandwich back here,” she said then, and gathered up her crew, galleyward bound. Pyanfar stared at her retreating back, still hanging onto the seat. In case. The way any spacer held onto things in a moving ship. She looked at her own crew, at sober faces of Chanur who had arrived around her.

  Ears lifted. “Good,” Haral said.

  “
I hope,” she said, and slid a glance Geran’s way, at a face that showed trouble. “How is she?”

  Geran shrugged. The woman had gone so gaunt herself that her ribs showed. Her worry was tautly held, made a darker spot above her nose, an indentation in her brow that had gotten to be part of her expression.

  “You’re a mess yourself. We need you. Get in there with Sirany’s crew, get some food down you; Tully’ll run some back to Chur. Don’t argue with me, gods rot it, I’ll have your ears. Chur’ll have mine if I get her there without you. Hilfy, get the rest of us up here.” The assigned crew was all there, all settling in as Hilfy’s voice began calling Tully and Khym and Skkukuk on the general speakers.

  “Mess,” Pyanfar said, and flung herself into her chair. Haral was beside her, already in control of things. “No sign of Moon Rising.”

  There had been a chance. There was less and less. It was four months back at Meetpoint, as hyperlight ran down the starlanes, but not by the way they traveled; whatever had happened there was four, five months old and about to get older.

  “Long time back,” she said, while the data flowed past her.

  “Kura’s alive,” Haral said. “Just not talking. Kif’s scared them plenty. They shut down everything. They got no ships here or they’re all lying silent.”

  They had been a long time away from home. And far from the han. “Gods know what the stsho taught us, huh?”

  Years the way homeworld saw it. That was the way of spacers. To stay young while the worlds aged, and groundlings connived and contrived their little worldly plots and made their gains in the intervals when spacers were strung out between the stars, lost in dreams.

  “Kif’s not having any trouble out there. Real fine piece of navigation, that.”

  “We got troubles, Skkukuk’s gods-be dinner’s loose again. Got careless with his door open.”

  “Or we missed a couple of ’em.”

  “What’s it eating, that’s what Sirany wanted to know. That’s what I want to know.”

  “Maybe it’s gotten acclimated to electric shock,” Hilfy said, breaking in on station-to-station. “Adaptive, Skkukuk said they were. Akkhtish life.”

  She looked straight across at Haral with a sinking feeling about her stomach.

  “Lifesupport,” Haral said.

  “Check it. Those godsforsaken things eat plastics.”

  “We’ll get it.” Haral was out of her seat and headed. “Hilfy, get the menfolk on it. Get Skkukuk!”

  “We can’t leave our gods-be schedule. Can’t. We got no way to recalc this thing and get word to all the ships back there fast enough. Gods rot it—” They were off auto-pilot see-and-evade while crew was coming up. It put the ship at some risk of damage. Not doing it was worse in terms of fragile flesh and bone. They had lives at stake back there. She punched a button to usurp com. “Ker Sirany, we’re staying stable a good half hour. I’m taking your advice on the vermin. We’re trying to track them down.”

  “Understood,” Sirany’s voice came back, clear above the quiet of other voices in the galley. And, politic, not one other word.

  Second jab of keys tied into com. “Skkukuk, this is the captain speaking, you hear me, son? Your gods-be dinner’s loose again, I want ’em counted, I want to know where it is, I want it out of our way, or I’ll have your hide for a wallhanging, you hear me?”

  “Kkkkt,” the answer came back, dopplered from pickup to pickup. “Hakt’, I let nothing escape, this is not my doing, not my doing, mekt-hakt’—I am on my way, at once, at once— Fools, fools, hold the lift!”

  He doubtless believed it about the wallhanging. She ducked her head between her hands and raked her claws through her mane. Tell the Tauran they were sane and this cut loose. It was ludicrous. It was deadly serious. No telling what systems the things could take out. The whole ship was infested. She had lost her reputation already. She stank, the whole ship stank, was acrawl with kifish vermin and gods knew what else, the whole clean, well-ordered universe was turned inside out and the vermin were the last, grotesque insult. The gods’ own dark humor, that was what it was; just a final, ugly joke on the species. Take out the ship that might save them, with a mucked-up lifesupport, filters ruined, gods knew where they could get in and short something out with their wickedly sharp little teeth.

  How many of them?

  Breeding during jump? Something that lived so gods-be fast it just went on living and breeding even in hyperspace, generations upon nasty, squealing little generations?

  Nothing could do that. Most animals did well to breed at all on shipboard, with all the noise and the clatter and clank that kept them upset; nothing could shift its metabolism like that and live realtime in hyperspace.

  Even kif couldn’t.

  Could they?

  She stared at the situation on the screens in front of her, she kept the ship on course while one crew had its necessary meal in the galley; and Geran came back to tell her she had just reassigned Khym and Tully from galley to the hunt and she was, by the captain’s leave, taking a cup of soup to her sister, by the captain’s leave. Please. In spite of her specific orders.

  “Gods. Yes.” Pyanfar took another desperate swipe at her disordered mane and part of it came out on her claws, the way a body always shed during jump, but no one on ship had had a bath in over four realspace months and six or so subjective days. “How is she?”

  “Just real still. Says—says there’s a trouble at home. Says there’s kif going there. Says Moon Rising’s behind us. Akkhtimakt’s ten days up on us. She says.”

  A chill went up Pyanfar’s spine, and right down again to the gut. “She could be right.” For a moment she had a conviction Chur could well be right: crack scan tech and sometime navigator, Chur knew how much time determined hunter ships could gain on a band of freighters. Then she saw it the way Geran had to see it. Chur was a practical woman. And she was babbling prophecies across lightyears. Jump could do that to a mind. There were casualties who never came in out of the dark. She had seen them, sitting in the sun at hospital, with Anuurn’s blue sky above them forever and not a realization in the world where they were.

  They were everywhere, that was their delusion. They would always be everywhere. If there was anything mystical about it, the thing that was themselves had just reached infinity and stayed there, like a machine with a broken cutoff switch.

  “She wants to work,” Geran said.

  “Tell her—” Pyanfar drew a breath. “Can she?”

  “No.”

  “Get her fed. We got an hour insystem here. I’m taking you offshift; you stay with her.”

  “No.” Geran’s ears went flat. “No, captain.”

  “You want one of the Tauran? Tully, f’godssakes? You do it. We got Tirun to take scan. We can run this one short or I can haul Sif back in. Stay there.”

  Geran’s face went hard and desperate. Ears flicked and struggled up again. “Tully,” she said. “I mean, he’s not going to do anything, is he? Sleeps with us below. They’re friends. Aren’t they?”

  “Yeah.” Less said on that the better. “The good of the ship. Good of—a whole lot of people. Yes. I want you on the boards if you got your mind there.”

  “It’ll be there,” Geran said. “Do her good. She can’t argue with Tully. I’ll feel better about it.” And she went, with a solid purpose in her stride.

  Pyanfar settled into her place, listened to the chatter insystem, ran checks, took a cup of gfi when Fiar came bringing cups round. Charity. Out of their own galley.

  The hunt went on, upper decks and lower. And the system they were running through stayed far quieter than it ought to be.

  “They got the upperdecks filter changed out,” Hilfy said. “Caught three of those things. Skkukuk swears they didn’t slip from his collection. Old stuff, he says. They’re coming from somewhere.”

  “Great. Wonderful.” She clicked through changes on the comp. “That’s fine news.” Ought not to snap. Crew has enough on their minds. “Sorry.�
�

  “Aye, captain.”

  You’ve grown a lot, Hilfy Chanur. Can’t tell you that. Grown woman never wants to hear that. Can’t tell you anything anymore.

  “First escort’s jumped,” Tirun said. “We’re on—”

  The fifteen-minute warning sounded, a double pulse. “That’s fifteen,” Hilfy’s voice rang out through the halls.

  Pyanfar punched in on the same channel. “Leave it, whatever it is. Give us an easy trip, get yourselves to stations and quarters, wherever they are, forget the gods-be mess, I want you where you’re going on the five. Tully, you go to Chur’s room. Now.”

  “Got,” that lone human voice came back. And other acknowledgments. Perhaps no one had broken it to Tully until now where he was spending the jump.

  He would not object. He understood. Would do anything for Chur. Friend, he would say.

  What Chur would say about Tully in her bed was another matter.

  Annoy her. Make her mad. Get her mind back. That was what might work. Of a sudden she saw Geran’s logic, clear and plain.

  * * *

  “He’s what?” Chur murmured, and blinked at her sister, and at Tully standing all diffident at the foot of her bed.

  “Taking care of you,” Geran said. “Mind your manners. You take advantage of him the captain’ll skin you. Hear?”

  Chur blinked again, deciding finally that this was funny. The worried look on Tully’s face was funny. There was a time she would have worried. Had been a time—yesterday, it seemed—when she had wanted no more of anything but hani. It was strange how all that had washed away, as if jump had left it behind, left her washed out, new, all things and everywhere. A god would feel this strange sensation, as if all space was her body and her brain, the stars so many particles. She might be a god. She laughed at them both, and flexed the fingers on the arm so long stiff it had gone beyond pain. Machinery ticked away. She had learned how to cheat it, how to keep her heart quiet and not trigger its anesthetizing flood through the tubes. She felt the pulse increase and settled it down again, deliberately.