The Kif Strike Back

by C. J. Cherryh

  This form of regional government proved successful in bringing Enafy province, where the Llun Immune had its seat, to preeminence in the great plains of the Llunuurn River. Enafy province spread its influence through trade into other regions and other amphictionies sprang up, some less benevolent. The concept of amphictiony spread to other continents and races and, while other cultures survived, generally they were small, or so divided that they managed little growth: the Enafy and Enaury of Anuurn’s largest continent spread their culture by trade and occasionally by intrigue and by marriage and alliance.

  Into this situation came the mahendo’sat, who chose for their landing site the Llunuurn basin, as the most extensive river system on the planet and the area with the most developed roads and habitations. Because of this selection, initial contact happened to be with the largest and oldest amphictiony, in the lordship of na Ijono Llun.

  Na Ijono’s sister ker Gifhon Llun went out to meet the intruders, since they were neither hani nor (as Gifhon assumed incorrectly in several cases) male. By the time she understood what she was dealing with, dealing had begun, trade had been offered, and the world, without Gifhon’s clearly realizing it for some years, had forever changed.

  Other amphictionies felt threatened by this relationship of Enafy province to the mahendo’sat and the elevation of the Llun clan from supervisors of the dams of the lower Llunuurn tributaries, to supervisors of a starfaring shuttleport and station. The mahendo’sat played one against the other and snared all the hani leaders into trade.

  The hani amphictionies, however, whether or not it accorded with mahen intentions (and perhaps it was the intent of the mahendo’sat from the start) began to deal with each other in the concept of a much larger amphictiony, one with Anuurn itself as the Resource which had to be protected.

  So the han was created, the council of councils, the heart and center of hani government, microcosm of the world in which alliance, province, clan and Immunity still played their role—as, indeed, han has another meaning as a collective meaning All Hani. Theoretically every hani lord was ceremonially part of the body: some actually attended and addressed the assembly. The seats, one to each clan, belonged to the female heads of household, or, in practice, to any senior female in the vicinity of the several meeting halls, one of which existed and exists in every province. The han is thus composite, and only infrequently holds a true general meeting, the location of which is subject to intense negotiation.

  Hani relations with other starfaring folk were not generally positive. The stsho (qv) were not in accord with the mahendo’sat intervention on Anuurn: their motives might be judged to be several—unwillingness to see the mahen sphere of influence increase; the fact that they and the hani shared a territorial border; their distrust of all virtually exclusive carnivores based on their experience with the kif (qv); their fears of instability in the Compact; or other reasons which like minds might comprehend. The kif understood the arrival of the hani on the scene as opportunity, in the exercise of which they were driven back by mahendo’sat and hani combined. The opinion of the compact’s other species was never solicited nor received.

  Hani territory included originally Anuurn system. The name of their home star is Ahr. The planets of Ahr system are, in order: Gohin, a hot and barren world without atmosphere; Anuurn itself; Tyo, a cold, barren world partially terraformed for a hani colony; the gas giants Tyar and Tyri; and frozen Anfas. Gaohn station was built by mahendo’sat in orbit about Anuurn and turned over to Llun, whose males were the only hani males ever to leave the surface. Kilan station was built in orbit about Tyo, never particularly prosperous; and Harn station was built as a shipyard facility.

  The Chanur Family

  A very old clan of Enafy province, occasionally obscure but more often involved in the amphictiony of Enafy under a series of ambitious leaders, Chanur sprang into considerable prominence as one of the first clans to see the benefits of offworld trade.

  Kohan Chanur is current lord: his principle mates are Huran Faha, Akify Llun, Lilun Sifas. Actual manager of the estate is his aunt Jofan Chanur par Araun. His sisters are Pyanfar, Rhean and Anfy Chanur, whose mates are of clan Mahn, Anury and Quna respectively, and who captain the ships The Pride of Chanur, Chanur’s Fortune and Chanur’s Light. His daughters are: Hilfy, by Huran; Nifas, by Akify, among others; and two sons (exiled).

  Araun is a tributary clan, rated as cousins to Chanur; other cousin clans are Tanan, Khuf and Pyruun. Jisan Araun par Chanur was mother to Haral and Tirun through an obscure tributary clan lord from remote Llunuurny, long since defeated and replaced by a male Haral and Tirun declined to support, leaving him to his numerous if unambitious sisters. Nifany Pyruun, Jofan Chanur’s blood cousin, is birth-mother to Chur and Geran and a son in exile. She is administrator of Chanur offices in the port authority.

  Kohan’s most recent defense of Chanur was against Kara Mahn, son of Pyanfar Chanur and Khym Mahn. Mahn, a nonspacing clan in the Kahin Hills nearby, remains an uneasy neighbor with Kara in Khym’s stead, and his full sister Tahy at the head of Mahn’s financial interests.

  Hani language and religion

  There was not, of course, one language, but the Enafy dialect of the Llunuurn valley became standardized as the language of commerce and diplomacy. With considerable resistance it was adopted as the language of the han and is the only language heard offplanet.

  The language was the vehicle of the spread of Llunuurn culture planetwide and carries it into space.

  Terms of respect are: ker, title of a high clan woman; na title of a clan lord; par maternal daughter of a clan. Nef is the title of an ex-lord, who is no longer entitled to be called by the name of his clan.

  Hani terms of disrespect involve uncleanness; age (eggsucker implies one too old to hunt moving game); disavowal by clan (bastard is an inaccurate translation, since legitimacy cannot be at issue in a matrilineal descent); the deities; the condition of the ears, which tell a great deal about one’s efficiency in self-defense. More peculiar is the use of feathered, an impious reference to a hani religious debate; and son, as in gods give you sons; since male offspring do no work and are exiled at puberty to return and attempt to take over the estate in their prime, a house with many sons is in constant turmoil.

  The Mahendo’sat

  Among the tallest species of the Compact, tending to ranginess and length of limb, the mahendo’sat have fur ranging from sleek sheened black to curly brown, with all gradations in between. Their claws do not retract, and are more a tool of utility than a weapon. They are omnivores, native to Iji, from which they control a considerable territory. Their neighbors on the one side are the hani, on the other the kif, with whom they share some territory in dispute.

  The mahendo’sat have more than a hundred languages native to Iji. Their own lingua franca is chiso, which not all mahendo’sat speak; and very many mahendo’sat have never succeeded in learning even the simplified pidgin that they popularized during the hani contact. Ironically, this species which pursues both art and science for its own sake and which is continually engaged in research of all kinds, cannot translate either into or out of its own set of languages with any degree of accuracy, which some might suspect indicates more than apparent idiosyncrasies in psychology as well as physiology.

  The fact that the pidgin is mostly hani rests on several facts, most of them having to do with the mahendo’sat’s inability to translate their own tongue. First, mahendo’sat and stsho were already in communication with great difficulty through a bastard tongue involving kif, who spoke stsho. Second, when hani came into the picture, hani proved able to learn kifish and stsho and with their long experience as traders, evolved a pidgin hani that blended with the current pidgin and virtually supplanted it. This proved something even mahendo’sat could handle, and which kif had less trouble with than they did with stsho. So the mahendo’sat took to it with relief.

  As for the inner workings of the mahen culture, even the species name exists in some uncertainty. Ma
he is generally singular, sometimes plural; and mahendo’sat actually seems to stand for the species collective mentality, or the species as an entity, or for some concept which refuses translation as nation or species. The term han in its application as the collective of the hani species is clearly a reflection of mahen influence in the formative phase of hani world government.

  Mahendo’sat are often collectors, which they have in common with stsho; but mahendo’sat are most interested in natural objects and make elaborate gardens, an art which they taught to the hani, whose gardens nevertheless maintain a hani-like plainness and agricultural practicality. Mahendo’sat on the other hand are devoted to design and derive philosophical meaning from the growth patterns of their carefully tended trees. Mahendo’sat also keep pets, a trait they share with stsho and perhaps tc’a (qv) but mahendo’sat are likely to keep difficult ones and to lavish care on exotics.

  The history of the mahen species is one of pocket kingdoms, continual religious ferment, mysticism, leaders with self-claimed credentials rising to some purpose and vanishing in what may have been a tradition of such vanishments. They are greatly concerned with abstracts and courtesies, symbol and hidden meaning.

  Modern and ancient mahen authority rests on Person, involving dignity and charismatic appeal, and interlinking Personages in an elaborate chain of command in which one appoints the next, but in which a higher Personage may be brought down by the malfeasance or error of an appointee. Mahendo’sat set great store by this indefinable quality and esteem it where found, to such an extent that they likewise choose to honor or ignore members of other species with complete disregard of those species’ own concepts of authority. Personages are of either of the species’ two genders, usually of mature years. Personages come in many ranks and levels of authority, but all are attended by a Voice, a person usually of the opposite gender whose apparently self-appointed task it is to represent the Personage and to utter unpleasantness which the Personage is too serene to deal with.

  The mahen social unit is complex, revolving around personage: mating is at apparent random, but Person has a great deal to do with it. Young are traded about with apparent abandon, but this also has to do with the bonds of Person, and the desire to expose the young to good influence or superior instruction.

  The mahen government currently rests with a Personage at Iji whose serenity is untroubled; but in the fashion of mahendo’sat, this and the entire form of government are subject to change without notice.

  The Stsho

  The stsho, native to remote Llyene, are a pale, hairless species, trisexual hermaphrodites, one of each triad bearing young: but that same individual may exist within another triad as a non-bearer. Stsho refuse to explain.

  They are omnivores of great sensitivity and fragility. Their limbs break easily. Their very personalities fragment under stress, which seems to serve as a social absolution. It is very impolite to recognize a stsho who has changed persona, or as stsho call it, Phased. An individual seems to go through many Phases in life.

  They trade. They are aesthetes and enjoy subtle distinctions in taste and sight. They have forty-seven different words, for instance, for white.

  Like hani, they prefer bowl-structures for chairs and beds. Their elaborate architecture is apparently random and universally pastel in color.

  They are the only natives of Compact space who need drugs to survive jump.

  They permit no intrusion of oxygen-breathing species within their territory, but they are utterly incapable of enforcing this except through their relationship with the unpredictable methane-breathers who divide them from kif territory. They share one border with the hani; methane-breathers come and go within their space; and to their considerable distress they have discovered humans are at their backs, on the side of stsho space nearest Llyene, which is a mysterious and forbidden world.

  They were among the first spacefarers in the region, anomalous, because their primary policy seems to be to acquire the widest possible area about their homeworld from which strangers are excluded. Certainly they did not seem to go to the stars to make contact with outsiders. Or perhaps some experience lies in their past which has made them what they are. Stsho allow no real information about stsho to leak out of their space, which greatly vexes the curious mahendo’sat.

  Legendarily Llyene is a treasure world of fantastical wealth. It is certain that stsho trade is lucrative in all directions, and that they are the source of a great deal of technology that the mahendo’sat turn to various purposes.

  The Kif

  Kif are tallest of the species of the Compact, very lean and having virtually no body fat. They are mostly hairless, except for a close-growing strip down the midline of their elongated, long-snouted skulls—which is seldom visible, as kif go robed and hooded and seldom bare their heads. The skin is gray and soft, if very tough and much wrinkled, and hot to the touch of hani or mahendo’sat. They are agile and strong; their claws are retractable and very sharp. Their eyes are usually red-rimmed: they prefer very dim light. What their genders are is a matter of guesswork. They may have two, but outsiders often use it of a kif in complete uncertainty, and he by convention which the mahendo’sat began: kif use he and occasionally she of themselves, but whether this precisely reflects a mahen/hani style gender distinction or something more like the stsho is still uncertain. Kif give few clues to aid the guesswork.

  Kif got into space independently, through an arms race, and acquired starflight through contact with tc’a, whose wisdom in this other species question.

  Kif are totally carnivorous, incapable of swallowing anything very large. Two independent sets of jaws exist within the snout, one to bite, another to reduce the intake to pulp and fluids. They prefer live food, and actually have rather delicate appetites: they are repulsed by carrion and could not easily handle cooked meat.

  Color does not play a part in their decor, which is generally utilitarian and often black and gray. The light in their dwellings is quite dim. They have keen night vision, and indeed much of their homeworld dwelling is underground, though some mahen scientists have disputed on the basis of the kifish eye (smaller than the eyes of other nocturnals on other worlds) whether the species did not in fact originate as a diurnal hunter and change its lifestyle in the remote past. As kif do not share data with mahendo’sat, and stsho and hani have no interest in the question, it goes unanswered. Curiously kif do practice art, which seems confined to objects of ordinary use, weapons, cups, boxes and containers, which are embellished in tactile patterns. They place little value on mass-produced goods and great value on objects they believe to be unique, or on consumables such as rare and endangered species or uncommon liquors. They do appreciate intoxicants of various kinds but are the most moderate of known species in their consumption: individual kif who have become intoxicated have been killed outright by their companions.

  Kif are facile linguists, great mimics, and in particular speak fluent hani, as well as their own several languages. Their homestar is Akkt, their homeworld Akkht, which outsiders often confuse, and reputedly both mean home or homebase, since home as understood by kif has the connotation of a place to which one repairs to gather one’s forces for the next season. When they discovered outsiders, the shock and subsequent period of organization enabled a few leaders to seize power on Akkht, and eventually let the spacefaring kif seize power over Akkht entirely.

  Kif have historically had little organization, usually engaged with each other in disputes and continual snatching of property from weaker kif. They have the concept of sfik, or face, in which the stronger will hold to a thing and defy all comers. The more attractive and unique the prize, the greater the sfik. Their interest in art perhaps revolves around this; of particular sfik-value are consumables or perishables which may be destroyed or used at any moment and for calculated purpose to frustrate the enemy. Taking such a thing is difficult and of great value, and there are also legendary destructions of great and valued objects.

  Along with
sfik there is also pukkukkta, which has no true translation except as a devastating blow to a rival.

  Usually the kif operate as individuals or as crews, in which one kif is supreme, and weaker kif, if not protected from this one, are at least protected from other kif.

  Sometimes a kif rises to a position of supremacy in which others fear to challenge him and in which he gathers great fear and support from those about him. Such a kif is a hakkikt, which kif say means prince. A hakkikt’s existence usually means a period in which outsiders will have trouble with kif. There is a growing expectation among kif that a hakkikt will arise to unite all kifish worlds into a power the rest of the Compact cannot withstand.

  Tc’a

  Tc’a are serpentine beings, leathery gold, methane-breathers, native to’ Oh’a’o’o’o. They have a multipartite brain that thinks in matrices and communicates in harmonics. The mouthparts are toolusing. They can bulk a dozen times the weight of a mahendo’sat and bear several young at once, without apparent attention to the process, which has happened in the middle of conversations. They do trade, and mine, and what they think remains tc’a business. They usually run the methane side of stations in the Compact, since so far as anyone knows they are the only methane-breathers interested in doing so. They are associated with chi and knnn (qqv), and while a great deal is known about tc’a comings and goings and while they take no aggressive action against any species, virtually nothing is known about the tc’a mind or the history of the species, except that they were in contact with the chi before they met the stsho, and were extremely early spacefarers.