Chanur's Venture

by C. J. Cherryh

  "What have we got aboard?" Tirun asked.

  "Message from humanity to Maing Tol and Iji. Translator. Message from Goldtooth to his Personage. Gods know what that is. About the knnn—most likely." She drew a deep breath and considered the chance it involved the han. Alliances. Doublecrosses. "All systems to number two and we jump to Kshshti on schedule. Tell Chur and Geran what we're doing when they come on duty."

  "Not the menfolk?"

  "Gods, don't worry them. Tell them we fixed it all."

  "What—" Hilfy asked ever so quietly, "what about Tully if we go lame at Kshshti? We'll be stuck at dock. Gods know the kif—"

  "What we do, imp— we get ourselves to Kshshti and whatever happens, by the gods, we put him in mahen hands. Let them worry about him. Hear?

  They've got two hunter-ships to their account. Let them take it." She stood up again. "Get some rest. All of you this time."

  "Aye," Tirun murmured in what of a voice she had left. Hilfy stared at her open-mouthed.

  "Nothing else to do," Pyanfar said to her. " Nothing else. He's worth too much to take chances with. That message is. Understand? We've had it.

  That vane's got us."

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  "We go in like this we could be down a week!"

  "So we take our damage. We can cover the bill. We've got that. We're done, imp. Finished."

  "I could make it," Hilfy said, "up that column and we'd have that unit replaced."

  "Wrong. Chur would have to do it. She's smallest. And she's not fool enough."

  There was silence but for that. That and the dust.

  She got up and walked away, staggered a little as she reached the corridor and The Pride corrected course again.

  She had another, chilling thought and turned, pointed at Haral. "No way this kid tries it. You sit on her. Someone goes up that column I'll space her. Hear?"

  "Aye," Haral said.

  No one followed her. Presumably they were clearing up the paper. Closing down. Her eyes blurred with exhaustion and she refrained from rubbing at them as she passed Khym's cabin.

  She thought of going to him. She had not— not since Hoas. It was not her time; had not been, then. Such niceties went by the board with them as they had in her world-visits. But sleep would not come easy with the dust, the small shifts of g that went on constantly: and he might be asleep; and there would be questions if she waked him.

  Did you fix it, Py?

  She opened her own door and walked in, sat down at the desk and methodically cleared the clutter of her own work away.

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  Course-plottings. Calculations every way she could make them in hopes of getting another dump-and-turn that would turn them off toward Kura and hani space, without breaking them down at Urtur and stranding themselves here with the kif.

  None were feasible. And if they were— if they were, knnn notice fell on hani thereafter.

  Goldtooth, you mahen bastard. Seeing to the safety of his own, that was sure.

  So she handed the package back again: Here, fool mahe, you take it. Good luck. Run fast.

  And Tully—

  She rested her head against her hands. Gods, gods, gods.

  Knnn.

  And the failsafe that was Ijir, whatever else it had been, with its humanity aboard, and just gone backup.

  Kif had it, gods help them. Kif would take them apart, mahe, humans, everyone. Tully knew, who had spent time in kifish hands, who had gone to hani for help because he heard them laugh once, across Meetpoint docks.

  Gods rot Sikkukkut and all kifish gifts.

  They were out of it, that was all. Whatever gain or loss there was yet to be made, The Pride had gone her limit. So they should be glad to be out of it.

  A vane down. They could not jump The Pride again. They rolled the dice for Kshshti. That was gambling all their lives. At Maing Tol the odds went up, that it would not hold for braking.

  Hero's a short-term job, kid.

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  So what was stung, that they had to give up and lay back and let others do what hani failed at?

  And hand Tully on alone to mahendo'sat?

  * * *

  "All secure," Haral said, beside her, at her post. "I take her, captain?" "I'll take this one," Pyanfar said, and reached and settled her arm into the brace. She glanced up at the reflection of the rest of the bridge, crew in place, Khym in his observer's post.

  Fixed, they had told him. And his face had lightened, trusting them.

  Fixed, they had told Tully, who was harder to lie to, being spacer himself.

  And he had drugged himself into a haze by now, as his kind had to do.

  "Star-fix positive, Maing Tol," Haral said.

  The dust whined over the hull, constant but thinner now. "Going to dust up Kshshti a bit," she said. "Can't be helped."

  Haral rolled a glance in her direction, a stark, stark stare. "Can't be helped," she said.

  Sudden silence then, as the jump field began to build and the shields came up.

  They rode their luck this time.

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  Chapter 7

  There were hazard lights blinking urgent alarm, and Haral's voice protesting—

  "— Captain—"

  — Plaintively, as if she had not heard the beeps and already begun to reach. There was perhaps some mercy in being human and drugged out of one's mind....

  "Got it," Pyanfar coughed, though her throat had gone to stone in the long slow leak of time past the instruments, in the inside out of jumpspace.

  "Location?" One went lethargic, grew fatally tranquil in that dizzy flow where one could do nothing, nothing but watch and take a subjective day moving a finger. There was an itch at the tip of her nose just as important as their collective lives....

  But the intellect knew what the will forgot. The mind was primed with a sequence of things she had waited two months to do. The right hand reached the control she had meant two months ago to reach and brought the field up while they still had power, long before they had gotten buoy signal. The eyes sought instruments, diverging lines that had to meet—

  The fields of Mahn, yellow in the sun, the woods, the dappled shade....

  The vine outside the wall of Chanur, that branched like a river, from one great gnarled trunk; and generations of Chanur had climbed it, branch to branch to branch—

  "We're on." That was Geran's mumble confirming destination. "We're in the jump range."

  Location: need the vector.

  "We're alive," Hilfy murmured. "We're going to make it, going to make it—"

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  — as if she were utterly surprised.

  There it was, that red line trued right on.

  "Huh." Pyanfar coughed her throat clear and blinked away the haze.

  "Of course we did," Geran said. "Have any doubt, kid?"

  There were safety procedures for a ship to follow when coming in from dust-ringed Urtur and they were not following them. They were coming into a system with c-charged dust in their company. Some of it would slip the smaller field of their dump and go through Kshshti system like a hard-radiation storm.

  "One more dump," she murmured, pleaded with the ship. "Stand by"—thinking of a ship she had seen die— of a ship which had had a vane shot to flinders, and jumped without a chance in a mahen hell of slowing down.

  Nothing to do then but capsule the crew and hope—

  She shoved the dump in and felt her eyes roll as the field cycled up....

  come on, come on, ship, hold it—

  More failure lights blinked and held steady.

  Branches on the wall....

  "Got to be that Y unit," she muttered to Haral, to no one in particular, and had visions of that dying ship again.

  None of that crew was alive now. Those the mahendo'sat had hauled down in their capsule and saved—
they had died at Gaohn, standing off the kif.

  She moved an arm and did a third dump, watching in bleary-eyed fascination as the lines on the scopes crept together and merged like silken threads, red and blue, as The Pride dragged at the interface and let the bubble go.

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  Down again, and the wail of alarms calling her back to life.

  "Still over mark," Haral muttered. "That's twenty."

  "I know. We've got it, we've got it left with the mains." She shoved the jump drive off and sent The Pride into an axis roll, canceled g and threw the mains on to finish the job the drive had failed. There was margin left.

  "Kif. Are there kif? Look alive back there."

  "Scan's clear," Chur's voice returned. "Kshshti positive; got the beacon.

  Stand by course input."

  Monitors changed priorities. The course change flashed in, very little off their present heading. She put the bow down and trued up.

  "That's luck," Haral said of the course they had been handed.

  "Huh," she said. "That's priority for you." Rotational g picked up again as the vector change took effect. "Find out what we lost."

  "Stand by," Tirun said.

  There was long silence, while comp ran diagnostics under Tirun's hands.

  "It didn't hold?" Khym's voice, sounding plaintive and a bit shaken. "Did we lose that vane again?"

  "Didn't hold," Geran said. "But we're all right."

  "Not leaving here real quick, are we?"

  He was trying. And getting harder to deceive. Pyanfar swallowed hard, and took the damage summary as it came flickering to the screen. "We're all right," she heard Hilfy say, which was probably into the com, for Tully.

  "We're through. We just had trouble with that unit. Sit still down there."

  "Blew two holes in final-backup," Pyanfar muttered to Haral, in conversation-tone.

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  "Gods," Haral said. That was all. And sent Kshshti system image her way, onto all the screens. "Not much, this place."

  "Huh."

  It was not. A dull orange sun with only moons for company, moons and a station. Small mining, sufficient for its needs. Some trading. Mostly mahendo'sat maintained it because it would be someone's, situated as it was; and best it should be theirs, when it was a connection on a route straight for Maing Tol from Kefk, inside kif space. With a shipyard facility, thank the gods.

  "Lot of traffic," Pyanfar muttered, picking up the com chatter. "Gods-rotted lot of traffic to be out here at this hole."

  "Kita," Haral reminded her.

  "Kita for sure. Word got spread uncommon fast, didn't it? Or we lost more time than we ought in that jump."

  "Huuuhn." No comment. Not here, not now. Not with Khym on the bridge.

  Twenty stars were The Pride's regular ports of call. Not Kshshti. It was not a port any hani sought.

  "Nasty little place," Geran muttered from back along the counter. "Real nasty."

  * * *

  There was time. There was time for a great many things as The Pride came limping in toward Kshshti— Time to hear the chatter of the station before their wavefront reached station and station's then-wave reached them: the chitter and wail of methane-breathers in confused conference, the clicking sounds of kif 143

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  whose uncoded remarks were on ordinary kifish business, terse and uninformative. No hani voices. No sign of hani at all.

  "Station answering," Hilfy said as that wave came in. The feed was routine, coldly businesslike transmission. It might have been any approach to a mahen station, less lively than some.

  "Queer quiet," Haral muttered. "I'd've expected a curse to a mahen hell and back again, the way we came in."

  "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Bet you to a mahen hell all of this is set up from the start. We're expected and they're not rattling this thicket, no."

  That got a look from Haral. Not a happy one.

  So they glided closer and closer to Kshshti with the noise of methane-breathers whispering over com.

  Rimstation. Border station. Kif claimed the star; mahendo'sat had built the station and held it with the tc'a and chi, whose mining had no particular profit. Nothing at Kshshti did... except its nuisance value to kif ambitions across the line.

  "Where's that shiplist?" she asked of Hilfy. "I want names, imp."

  "I'm still trying," Hilfy said. "Station says they've got computer trouble."

  "Sure they do. Like the board at Meetpoint."

  "Beg pardon, aunt?"

  "Gods-rotted lot of malfunctions lately. Get that list. Tell them read it off by voice and cut the nonsense."

  "Don't know what we can do," Haral muttered beside her. And that was truth. The vane systems boards flickered steady disaster under Tirun's probes. It was all down. Everything.

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  "We'll manage," she said, "something—" but her gut was knotted up in one unceasing panic. She fished the repair authorization out of safekeeping and shifted to put that in her pocket, braced for arguments with mahen officials. There would be outcries, howls, delays if she could not face them down.

  And if there was no ship for Tully, if there were the wrong kif, and no help—

  Not leaving here real quick, no.

  "List is in," Hilfy said.

  "To your one," Haral said and put it to the screen.

  14 Iniri-tai: Maing Tol

  9 Pasunsai: Idunspol

  7 Nji-no: Maing Tol

  30 Canoshato: Kshshti: insystem

  29 Nisatsi-to: Kshshti: insystem

  2 Ispuhen: Maing Tol: repair

  32 Sphii'i'o: V'n'n'u

  34 T'T'Tmmmi: N'i'i

  40 A'ohu'uuu: T t'a'va'o

  49knnn

  50knnn

  51knnn

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  52knnn

  10 Ginamu: Rlen Nle

  20 Kekkikkt: Kefk

  21 Harukk: Akkt

  22 Inikktukkt: Ukkur

  8 Ehrran's Vigilance: Anuurn

  15 Ayhar's Prosperity: Anuurn

  3 The Pride of Chanur: Anuurn: enroute

  "Gods," Haral muttered.

  "Party, huh?" She drew down her mouth as at a bad taste.

  " Kekkikkt. Remember that one?"

  "Couldn't forget. A whole list of good news, isn't it?"

  "Got help, at least."

  "Got help." She scanned the mahen section again. "Insystemers and short-hoppers. Ever hear of Iniri-tai? "

  "No."

  "Pasunsai?"

  "No. Neither of them."

  "Gods rot, there's supposed to be a hunter ship here."

  "Got Vigilance, " Haral said dryly.

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  "Huh." She rose to the humor, but there was ice at her stomach.

  "What do we tell them?"

  She remembered what she had told them at Meetpoint, the final message.

  Kif on our trail. No explanation possible. "Something inventive. We'd better."

  "Ayhar," Tirun muttered between her teeth. And that was the second good question.

  "That scrapheap never beat us here on the Urtur route, that's sure."

  "How'd they know?"

  "Want to guess?"

  Haral made a sound in her throat, not a pleasant one.

  "Rhif Ehrran's got a lap pet."

  "What do we do?"

  "Huh. I'm thinking about it." Meaning she did not know. Meaning there was nothing they could do but bluff and Haral already knew that much.

  Vigilance had gathered itself a witness, that was what— footed the bill to divert a merchant carrier like Prosperity off its normal run.

  They had dumped cargo at Meetpoint, same as knew where to intercept them. Same as Harukk had known.

  Gods, were they the only ones running blind in this business?

  Stsho? Stle stles stlen?

  Gtst k
new Goldtooth's plans.

  If gtst had talked—

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  "Captain," Hilfy said. "Tully's asking to come up."

  More questions. Pointed ones. She drew a deep breath and downed the panic. "Tell him yes. Tell him—" — watch his step. But he knew how to move in a ship underway. He had felt the uncertainty in their dump, had understood more surely than Khym had that they were in trouble, and what kind they were in— that they had escaped dying outright. But they were lame— at Kshshti. With the kif.

  Now what, now what we do, huh, Py-an-far?

  Tully did not take long about it. Pyanfar turned her chair from his reflection overhead to the solidity standing in the doorway.

  He looked worried. He glanced about him, scanned the monitors with an eye that knew what it was looking for, that could read more off the graphics than he could understand in words.

  "Safe," she said to him. "We're safe in Kshshti. Got help here. Big hani ship."

  He nodded. He did hope. That was in the look he gave her. But something else was in the slump of his shoulders as he turned and sought the seat Hilfy offered him, observer, beside her post.

  Quiet, thank the gods. She was ashamed of herself, remembering that he never did go to masculine extremes. Professional. It was hard to remember that, that Tully, whatever else he was, was not prone to hysterics. There, she thought, Khym. That's how. That's how it's done. You can do it—

  The way she had believed it once, having voyaged with Tully, so that she hoped—

  Khym was looking at her now, one hard, unforgiving stare.

  Sure, Khym. It's fixed.

  Tully, perhaps, had never fallen for that lie in the first place.

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  And Khym had, perhaps, just seen that shiplist.

  She turned back to controls. Blinking lights and mahen chatter had no accusations.