“Who am I to know what a kif thinks? They let this unfortunate being slip their fingers and expected me to sell him back, plainly illegal. Then they attacked a hani ship which was completely ignorant of the matter. A Handur ship was completely destroyed unless the captain of Mahijiru has better news.”
“No good news,” Goldtooth agreed sadly. “All lost, hani captain. All. I get away quick, come here tell story my port.”
The Personage turned and tapped Goldtooth on the shoulder, spoke to him in one of those obscure mahen languages outside her reckoning. Goldtooth bowed profoundly and backed aside, and Pyanfar looked warily at the Personage. “You know,” she said, to recover the initiative, “what the kif wanted; and you know that there’s no chance of hiding such a prize, not here, not on Anuurn either. No good hiding it at all.”
“I make you—” There was a beep from someone’s pager. A voice followed, and one of the attendants came forward in consternation, offered the instrument to the hand of the Personage Stasteburana. There was talk of knnn: that much passed the local dialect; and the Personage’s dark eyes grew wider. “Where is it?” Pyanfar caught that much of the conversation, and saw distress among the others. “You come,” said Stasteburana himself, not using his Voice for instruction, and swept a gesture to the doorway from which the mahendo’sat had come into the room.
“Come,” Pyanfar echoed to Chur and Tully, and walked along amid the mahe, the attendants and the Voice and the captain of Mahijiru, all in the wake of the Personage, who was hastening with some evident alarm.
The corridor debouched on an operations center. Technicians in the aisles melted aside for the Personage and his entourage. The Voice hissed orders, and the fluff hissed too, in general menace. On the air a tc’a spoke, a sound like static bursts and clicking.
“Screen,” Stasteburana ordered in his own tongue.
The main screen livened in front of them, meters wide and showing a dimly lit dockside. Blues and violets, a horrid light, like nightmare, and a scuttling shape like a snarl of hair possessed of an indefinite number of thin black legs. It darted this way and that, dragging with it, clutched in jaws—appendages under the hair?—something which glittered with metal and had the look of a long-limbed hani body.
With a sinking feeling Pyanfar recognized it. It was a good bet that Chur and Tully did, who had conspired in its construction.
“That’s a knnn,” Pyanfar said to Tully. He said something back, short and unhappy. On the screen the creature scurried this way and that with its burden, eluding the attempts of writhing shapes in the shadows which tried to deal with it: those were tc’a. Something stiltlike joined the commotion, darted at the flitting knnn and tugged at the prize, skittered off again. Chi, by the gods: those manic beggars; the limbs glowed phosphorescent yellow, left confusing trails on the screen in its haste.
Of a sudden a pair of tc’a writhed into the knnn’s way, physically dispossessed the knnn of its burden; and the knnn darted about the harder, wailing with rage or distress or simply trying to communicate. The scene was complete chaos; and suddenly more knnn poured in. The solitary chi fled, a blur of yellow-glowing sticks; and in the mahendo’sat control center, technicians who had been seated stood up to watch what had become riot. Hisses and clicks and wails came from the audio. The knnn began to give ground, a phalanx of hairy snarled masses.
Suddenly one darted forward, seized one of the leathery, serpent-shaped tc’a and dragged it off into their retreating line. There was a frantic hissing and clicking from the mass of tc’a; but apart from a milling about, a writhing and twining of dozens of serpentine bodies like so many fingers lacing and unlacing in distress. . . nothing. Not the least attempt at counterattack or rescue. Pyanfar watched the kidnapping with her ears laid back.
So the knnn had traded, after its fashion, darted onto station and laid down its offered goods—made off with something it took for fair; and now another species had descended to trading in sapients.
“What is it?” a mahe asked distressedly, and fell silent. The main body of the tc’a managed to drag the knnn’s trade goods along, a grotesque flailing of suited arms and legs. A communication came through, and a technician approached the Personage Stasteburana. “Hani-make eva-pod,” that one said, and Stasteburana turned a disturbed glance on Pyanfar, who lifted her ears and assumed her most careless expression.
“I shouldn’t want to disturb you,” Pyanfar said. “All you’ll find in that suit, wise mahe, is a very spoiled lot of meat from our locker; I’d advise you take decontamination precautions before taking that pod helmet off.”
“What you do?” Stasteburana spoke in anger without his Voice, and waved his Voice off when she attempted to intervene. “What you do, Chanur captain?”
“The knnn seems to have intercepted a gift of mine meant for the kif. It’s confused, I’m sure. Probably it’ll return the tc’a. It was, at the time, a matter of necessity, revered mahe.”
“Necessity!”
“Only spoiled food, I assure you. Nothing more. We were on the point of discussing repairs to my ship. . . which are urgent. You’ll not want me sitting at your dock any longer than you have to. Ask the honest captain of Mahijiru.”
“Outrage!” the Voice proclaimed. “Extortion!”
“Shall we discuss the matter?”
The fluffball suffered another transfer, to the nearest of the dignitaries, and the Voice looked to be preparing for verbal combat; but the Personage lifted a placid and silencing hand, motioned the group back down the corridor, delaying to give an instruction regarding the tc’a. Then the Personage led the way back into the comfortable room down the corridor.
“Profit,” Pyanfar said quickly and soothingly when the elder mahe and his entourage turned to face her and hers.
“Trouble first with kif and now with knnn and with tc’a. Deceptions and hazards to this station.”
“A new species, revered mahe. That’s the prize that has the kif disturbed. They see the hope of profit the like of which they’ve not known before; and I have the sole surviving member of his company, a spacefaring people, communicative, civilized, wise mahe, and fit to tilt the balance of the Compact. This was the prize at Meetpoint. This was the reason of the loss of the Handur ship, and this was the part of my cargo I refused to jettison. Surely we agree, revered mahe, what the kif meant to do if they had gotten this information first. Shall I tell you more of my suspicions. . . that the stsho knew something about what was going on? That kif meant to annex a large portion of adjacent space. . . having intimidated the stsho? That having done so, they would then be in a position to expand their operations and rearrange the map of the Compact to suit themselves—an acquisition from which the other members of the Compact would be positionally excluded, except the stsho. . . who would lick the kif’s feet. And what future for the Compact then? What of this Compact which holds all of our very profitable trade together? What of the balance of things? But I shall tell you what I have: a tape, a tape, my good, my great and farsighted mahe elder, for a symbol translator. . . . a tape which the kif spent sapient lives to obtain and failed to get. We aren’t selfish; I make this tape available to mahendo’sat as freely as hani, in the interests of spreading this knowledge as far as possible among likeminded people. But I want my ship repaired, the fines forgotten, the assurance that Chanur will continue in the friendship of this great and powerful station.”
The Personage laid his ears back, his eyes dilated. He turned away, leaving his Voice to face the matter. “Where come this creature? How we know sapient? How we know friendly?”
“Tully,” Pyanfar said, and put a hand on his arm and drew him forward. “Tully, this is the Voice of the stationmaster. . . friend, Tully.”
For a terrible moment that arm was tense, as if Tully might bolt. “Friend,” he said then obediently. The Voice frowned, peered this way and that at Tully’s face. . . on a level with the mahe’s own. “Speak hani?” the Voice asked.
“I go on Pyanfar ship. Friend.”
/> Gods. A sentence. Pyanfar squeezed the arm and put him protectively behind her. The Voice frowned; and behind the Voice the Personage had turned back with interest. “You bring this trouble to us,” Stasteburana said. “And knnn. . . why knnn?”
“A resident of Urtur. I claim no understanding of knnn. It’s become disturbed. . . but not of my doing, noble mahe. The safest thing for Kirdu Station in all events is to have me safely on my way. . . and to have that, I fear, there’s a matter of certain essential repairs—”
The elder flared his nostrils and puffed breaths back and forth. He consulted with his Voice, who spoke to him rapidly involving kif and knnn. The Personage turned back yet again. “This tape deal—”
“—key to another species, revered mahe. Mahendo’sat will have access to this development; meet ships of this kind—assured peaceful meeting, full communication. And mind, you deal with no stranger, no one who will cheat you and be gone. Chanur expects to be back at Kirdu in the future, expects—may I speak to you in confidence—to develop this new find.”
Stasteburana cast a nervous glance at Tully. “And what you find, a? Find trouble. Make trouble.”
“Are you willing to have the kif do the moving and the growing and the getting? They assuredly will, good mahe, if we don’t.”
The Personage made nervous moves of his hands, walked to the one of his companions who held the angry ball of fluff and took it back, stroking it and talking to it softly. He looked up. “Repairs begin,” Stasteburana said, and walked near Tully, who stood his ground despite the growling creature in the mahe’s arms. The growling grew louder. The mahe stood and stared a long moment, gave a visible twitch of the skin of his shoulders and lifted a hand from his pet to sign to his Voice. “Make papers this sapient being. Make repairs. All hani go. Go away.” He looked suddenly at Pyanfar. “But you give tape. We say nothing to kif.”
“Wise mahe,” Pyanfar said with all her grace, and bowed. The Personage waggled fingers and dismissed them in the company of the Voice, and the fluff growled at their backs.
So, Pyanfar thought, as they delayed at the desks outside, as nervous mahendo’sat officials went through the mechanics of identifications with Tully. So they had promises. She kept her ears up, her expression pleasant, and smiled with extraordinary goodwill at the deskdwellers. Chur kept her hand hovering near Tully’s arm, at his back, constantly reassuring him at this and that step, answering for him, keeping him calm when they wanted his picture, urging him to sign where appropriate. Pyanfar craned forward, got a glimpse of a signature of intricate regularity which could not be an illiterate’s mark in anyone’s eyes.
“Good,” she said, patted Tully on the shoulder as the document went back into the hands of mahendo’sat officials—looked about again, nose wrinkling to a scent of perfume, for two stsho had just come into the offices. They stood there with their jeweled pallor looking out of place in mahendo’sat massive architecture, the huge blocky desks and the garish colors. Moonstone eyes stared unabashedly at Tully and at them. Capacious stsho brains stored up a wealth of detail for gossip, which stsho traded like other commodities. Pyanfar bared her teeth at them and they wisely came no closer.
The papers came back, plasticized and permanent, with Tully’s face staring back from them, species handwritten, classification general spacer semiskilled, sex male, and most of the other circles unfilled. The official gave the folder to Pyanfar. She gave it to Tully, clapped him on the shoulder, faced him about and headed him for the door, past the gawking stsho.
Elsewhere, she trusted, orders were being passed which would get a repair skimmer prioritied for The Pride. The mahendo’sat’s prime concern had become getting rid of them at utmost speed: she did not doubt it.
There would be a mahe official demanding that tape before all was done: that was beyond doubt too. There would be some little quibble which came first, repairs or tape; repairs, she was determined. The mahe had little choice.
They walked the corridor to the right from the office doorway, toward the lift, the three of them, past occasional mahendo’sat office workers and business folk who either found reason to duck back into their doorways or anxiously tried to ignore them.
But the three who waited before them at the lift. . . Pyanfar stopped half a step, made it a wider one. “You,” she said, striding forward, and the foremost mahe stood out from his two companions, gilt teeth hidden in a black scowl.
“Bring trouble, you,” said the captain of Mahijiru.
“How you live, mahe? A? Sell information every port you touch?”
“My port, Kirdu. You make trouble.”
“Huh. Trouble found me. Got crew shot getting you your rotted welders to keep our deal. Do I say anything about pearls you owe me? No. I give you a gift, brave mahe. I ask no return.”
Goldtooth frowned the more, looked at Chur and walked closer to Tully, tilted his round chin and looked Tully up and down, but kept his hands off him. Then he threw a glance at Pyanfar. “This you pick up on the dock.”
“You ask questions for the Personage? Same you gather information at Meetpoint?”
For the first time the mahe flashed that sharpedged gold grin. “You clever, hani captain.”
“You know this Akukkakk.”
The grin died, leaving deadly seriousness. “Maybe.”
“You really merchant, mahe captain?”
“Long time, honest hani. Mahijiru longtime merchant ship, me, my crew, longtime merchanter, sons and daughters merchanters. But we know this Hinukku, yes. Longtime bad trouble.”
Pyanfar looked into that broad dark face and wrinkled her nose. “Swear to you, mahe captain—I didn’t think to bring trouble down on you. I give you the trade goods, make no claim for return. You saved our hides, put us onto that kif bastard. Owe you plenty for that.”
The mahe frowned. “Deal, hani. They make you repair, you get quick leave. . . danger. Tell you that free.”
“Mahijiru took no damage getting out of Meetpoint?”
“Small damage. You take advice, hani.”
“I take it.” She pressed the lift button, took a second look, to remember the face of this mahe beyond doubt. “Come,” she said as the lift arrived empty. She shepherded Chur and Tully through the door and turned once inside. Goldtooth/Ismehanan and his companions showed no inclination to go with them. The door closed between and the lift started down. She looked back, at Tully and at Chur, and gathered Tully by the elbow as the car, unstopped this time by other passengers, made the whole trip down and let them out on the docks.
The crowd had dispersed somewhat, thank the gods; but not enough. It gathered quickly enough as they crossed the dock, and Pyanfar watched on all sides, flicking quick glances this way and that, reckoning that by now, trouble had time to have organized itself.
And it was there. Kif—by the gantries, watching. That presence did not at all surprise her. Tully failed to spot them, seeming dazed in the swirl of bodies, none of which pressed too closely on them, but stayed about them.
The rampway access gaped ahead. A group of mahendo’sat law enforcement stood there, sticks in hand, and the crowd went no farther. Pyanfar thrust her companions through that line, with her own legs trembling under her—want of sleep, gods, want of rest. Chur was in the same condition, surely, and Tully was hardly steady on his feet, unfit mentally and physically for this kind of turmoil. She sighted on the rampway and went, hard-breathing.
But among the gantries beside them. . . hani shadows. Moon Rising’s folk, none of her own, had spilled over from the next berth, behind the security line. “Come on,” she said to Chur and Tully. “Ignore them.”
She headed into the rampway’s ribbed and lighted gullet, had led the two of them up the curving course almost to the security of their own airlock when she heard someone coming behind. “In,” she said to her companions, and turned to bar the intruder who appeared around the curve. Her ears were flat; she reached instinctively for the weapon she had left behind—but the figure wa
s hani, silk-breeched and jeweled, striding boldly right up the rampway.
“Tahar,” she spat, waved a dismissing hand. “Gods, do we need complications?”
“I’ve done napping.” The Tahar captain stopped just short of her, took her stance, hands at her waist, a large figure, with a torn left ear beringed with prosperity. Broadfaced. . . a black scar crossed her mustache, making it scant on the left side, and giving Dur Tahar no pleasant expression. Her beard was crisply rippled and so was her mane, characteristic of the southerners, dark bronze. Two of her crew showed up behind her, like a set of clones.
“We’ve managed,” Pyanfar said, “without troubling your rest.”
Dur Tahar ignored her, looked beyond her shoulder—at what sight, Pyanfar had no trouble guessing. “What’s that thing, Chanur? What creature is that?”
“That’s a problem we’ve got settled, thank you.”
“By the gods, settled! We’ve just been ordered off the station, and it’s all over the dock about this passenger of yours. About hani involved with the kif. About a deal you’ve made—by the gods, I’ll reckon you’ve settled things. What are you, trading in live bodies now? You’ve found yourself something special, haven’t you? That fracas that sent you kiting in here with your tail singed—involved with that?”
“That’s enough.” Her claws came out. She was tired, gods, shaking on her feet, and she stared at Dur Tahar with a dark tunnel closing about her vision. “If you want to talk about this, you ask me by com. Not now.”
“Ah. You don’t need our help. Are you planning to stay here in dock with your tail hanging. . . or did you and the mahendo’sat come up with a deal? What kind of game are you proposing, Chanur?”
“I’ll make it clear enough. Later. Get clear of my airlock.”
“What species is it? Where from? The rumor flying the docks says kif space. Or knnn. Says there’s a knnn ship here that dropped a hani body.”
“I’ll tell it to you once, Tahar: we got this item at Meetpoint and the kif took out Handur’s Voyager for spite, no survivors. Caught them sitting at dock, and they and we hadn’t even been in communication. We dumped cargo and ran for Urtur, and the kif who followed us struck at Faha’s Starchaser with no better reason. Whether Starchaser got away or not I don’t know, but they at least had a run at it. The kif want this fellow badly. And it’s gotten beyond simple profit and loss with them. There’s a hakkikt involved, and there’s no stopping this thing till we’ve got him. Maybe we did, at Urtur. He looked bad, and that may settle it. But if you want to make yourself useful, you’re welcome to run our course.”