“Gone when we got here,” Padur said. “And Padur was here before Narn. Rumor is they just boarded ship and took out of here. I won’t bet on any holdouts, but by my experience, they’d Phase if they had to hide: they wouldn’t do it.”
“Which ship took them? Where?”
“The general staff, on Pakkitak, to Meetpoint via Hoas. A rumor—a rumor about certain ones going to Kita on Ko’juit.”
One kifish ship. One mahen ship, to Kita Point. Not unheard of, for stsho to use either species’ transportation. But Padur said it: it was rumor. Everything they knew, was a report they had from the mahendo’sat, namely from the Personage and from Ana-kehnandian.
“We’ve got to find Atli-lyen-tlas. We have a package with that address. Hear anything on that score?”
“The ambassador?” Kaury Narn said. “That gtst excellency and one of the staffers went with the mahen ship.”
“How sure are your sources?”
“Market gossip, no more, no less.” Kaury twitched her ring-heavy ears and settled back, arms folded. “Which means nothing. And if I knew anything else that bears on it, I’d be quick to tell you. I don’t know.”
Information appearing without source, in a hotbed of gossip both true and false, in a market that sailed and fell on rumors and accusations and public perceptions. Wonderful.
“We’re outbound tomorrow,” Padur said. “Fueling in the next watch. You’re on to Kita, then?”
“Not willingly. Certainly not where I’d like to go. If you do run across my aunt’s track—”
“I’ll pass it on what’s happened, where you’ve gone.” Small movements, twitches of the ears, shiftings in the chairs, said that two busy captains were anxious to get back to work: news was welcome, but sparser than they had hoped, and it threatened none of their clan interests.
This captain was the same—at least busy and anxious to get back to the market reports—to safeguard her clan interests. Their on again, off again entry into Urtur market and the (by now) famous encounter in the customs office, had sent the prices of goods in their hold up and down, up and down, and (more than one could play that game) she had had Chihin and Tiar buying current entertainment, fine-grade composites supplies, grain, and a handful of mahen luxuries on the market, saying, if asked, that the Legacy might just go on to Kita to sell its load. Which was an honest possibility—until she had gotten a fair offer and a fair buy option.
Not that she’d have deceived other hani captains: they’d already concluded their deals before the Legacy’s cargo hit the boards; besides that they were coming from the other direction, with different goods; and one being in process of loading and one set for undock, already in countdown.
Dirty tricks on the mahen traders and the handful of kif in port, but traders who relied solely on the rumors that ran the docks were asking for surprises; and those who asked what all of a certain species seemed to be acting on, and how they were selling and buying learned far more. It was the way the game was played, that was all, a stsho game from top to bottom.
Except they had a direct barter offer on the methane load, gods rot the luck: that was the trouble with dealing with the methane docks—they too often wanted to barter, you couldn’t always handle what they wanted to give and you couldn’t talk to a matrix brain to explain your constraints.
Hani, thank the gods, were much more straightforward.
“What’s the situation at Meetpoint?” Padur asked on the way to the airlock.
“Chancy. You want my opinion, if I weren’t carrying what I’m carrying, for a rate I can’t tell you, I’d do a turn-around at Hoas back for here. Something’s going on with the stsho, you’ve guessed that the same as I have, and I don’t have the least idea what, but it would keep me out of Meetpoint if I wasn’t paid real, real well. Possibly the administration there is in some kind of crisis. Possibly the crisis is here. Possibly …” The idea occurred to her on the spot, and she might have censored it, but these were allied captains, of nominally friendly clans. “Possibly it could be a crisis much further into stsho territory. And someone wiser than I am should consider that possibility. I’ve no way to get a message anywhere, except by you.”
Kaury Narn gave her a particularly straight stare. And nodded and left. Padur walked with her down the yellow, ribbed tube, around the curve, the two of them talking together and doubtless more comfortably, with an associate decades older in her friendship than a young upstart Chanur.
Seniority was what they had lost, with Pyanfar out of the picture, and doubly so with Rhean retiring to manage the situation at home. From senior, and important, Chanur had descended to a Who are you? from captains who honestly had to see Hilfy Chanur to know whether they could trust her word or her judgment. Oh, they knew her: they’d recall her as one of The Pride’s crew, once upon a time; but no few of the captains and worse, the crewwomen, gave her that second look that remarked her youth, and wondered what deals she’d cut to obtain of her clan, at her age, the post they’d worked a lifetime for.
Working for her aunt, certain mahendo’sat evidently thought—running the mekt-hakkikt’s errands and serving as decoy.
Having notions, the old women in the han would say of her and of Pyanfar. Delusions of deity. A disdain for Anuurn. A blurring of self—what was hani and what was not. Herself, yes, defiantly she blurred those lines—but blurred lines were definitely not Pyanfar’s attitude: that was the first and foremost of the problems between them.
The loader clanked. She held her breath, stopped in her office door, wondering was it going to balk and stick. It kept on. Tiar passed her, paint-spattered, towing a large carrier full of plastic-wrapped cushions, all white.
“For the gods’ sake watch the—whatever-it-is. Don’t spatter it.”
“Won’t, cap’n,” Tiar panted. Chihin and Fala brought up the rear, with a lamp trailing connections, like some sea creature rudely uprooted. A trail of white dust tracked down the Legacy’s corridor, while gtst honor sat in sheet-draped splendor in the lounge, making personal purchases on the station market and demanding to be back in gtst quarters as soon as possible.
The loader balked again, cl-unk. She looked at the deck as if she could look through it, beseeched the indifferent gods of trade, and the thing limped onward. It worked better on incoming, for some reason known only to those gods. They had the cursed thing on auto at the moment, and trusted mahen passers-by and dockers not to fling themselves gratuitously into the gears and sue while Tarras was working inside.
Impossible. Impossible to get out of here with any dispatch. And a tired crew was asking for accidents to happen.
Wasn’t, however, the only source of brute muscle they had aboard. The stsho was topside and little likely to stir.
She walked down to the laundry, hit the door once, and opened it.
Hallan Meras stuffed something away in a hurry, ears flat, face dismayed, and she surveyed the laundry, that now contained pieces of the crew lounge, the galley, and somebody’s personal library.
“Captain,” Hallan said, scrambling for his feet. He was respectful, commendably so.
“Crew says you say you can work cargo.”
“Aye, captain.”
Sounded sane. Sounded like someone who could take basic orders.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “We’re in a crunch, Tarras is working the loader solo, inside, we’ve got nobody keeping the local kids’ fingers out of the loader—I don’t suppose you brought a coat, did you?”
“No, captain.” Ears flagged. “But I could sort of wrap a blanket around—”
“Unworkable. No boots, no coat, no cold suit, no hold. Can you behave yourself on the dockside? We’re going late. We’re nearly 12 hours behind, we’re unloading and we’re loading, fast as I can get the buy made and the cans on our dock. Nobody’s getting any sleep.”
“I’d love to, captain. I really would!”
She truly didn’t trust enthusiasm in a kid who’d broken up the Meetpoint market. She r
efused to soften her expression, only stared at him with ears flat and nose drawn. “Hallan Meras, have you lied? Can you work cargo? Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I swear to you, captain.”
“You foul up, you break any seals, you scare anybody on this station, Hallan Meras, I’ll sell you to the kif.”
“Aye, captain.”
She hated when people she threatened were overanxious to go ahead.
“At ten percent off,” she said. But she failed to kill his enthusiasm. And it made her remember what he really wanted, which she wouldn’t give, wasn’t about to give, gods rot him. She had a smoothly functioning crew, they understood each other, they were relatives, they had everything they needed.
He was also too gods-rotted handsome and too feckless and too male, confound him, which was the main reason to get him out of here before more than the crew lounge and the galley found its way down here.
“Get!” she said, shoved a pocket com into his hand, and he got, down the main corridor toward the airlock, at a near run.
Couldn’t fault that. She looked for ways. She went into the laundry, looked around for signs of mayhem or misdeed, found nothing out of order except one unfolded blanket, the viewer, the Manual of Trade, for some gods-only-knew reason, and …
She bent and drew from under the blast cushion the printed book Hallan Meras had put there.
And who gave him that? she wondered.
Chapter Seven
You didn’t run on the rampway link, you respected that perilous connection, that icy cold passage that gave a ship pressured access to station.
But Hallan walked it very fast, and, via the pocket com, called Tarras to report in: he figured that was the first test, whether he could use it and whether he knew what to do next.
“What are you doing out there?” Tarras snapped at him, probably cold, certainly surprised.
“The captain said I should, she said you could use some help.”
“Gods-rotted right I could use some help, but don’t scare the dockers! Are you on pocket com?”
“Aye.”
“You keep near the access ramp. And don’t he sightseeing!”
“I’m at the bottom now. Have you got a cam-link?” That, he figured, would tell Tarras he had some notion what his job was. “We’ve got space for one more can on the transport, we’ve got a fourteen canner moving up. Have we got a destination list?”
“Your display, code 2, check it out. Docker chief’s a curly coated fellow, and just hold it, I’ll call him and tell him who you are. For godssake, bow, be polite, you’ll scare him into a heart seizure.”
“Aye, I do understand. Tell me when it’s clear.” He used his time taking stock of the surroundings, feeling the cold near the access and wishing that he could move away from the draft. The pocket com had a display: keyed, it scrolled the offload, 142 of the giant containers gone to their various buyers, the loader with, one reckoned, 10 more in its grip, outbound, and the transport sitting there with 15, which meant that particular hold was probably approaching empty, and Tarras was going to have to initiate the number two hold, which—
“You’re clear,” Tarras said. “His name is Pokajinai, Nandijigan Pokajinai, he speaks the trade, mind your manners.”
“Got it.” He spotted the mahe docker chief, flipped the com to standby and strolled over. He saw the apprehensive expression, too, and made his most courteous bow. “Sir.” In case they thought hani males went homicidally for anything of like gender. “Hallan Meras. Na Pokajinai?”
A nervous laughter from the rest of the dockers.
“Name Nandijigan, call Nandi. You Meras.”
“Meras is fine.” His father would have his ears. “Ker Tarras is working inside, I’m her eyes out here.”
“Not hear Chanur ship got male,” somebody muttered. He was undecided whether to hear it or not. He decided not. He simply flipped the com to active and advised Tarras he’d made peaceful contact.
It was wonderful. It was the best thing in all the universe, being out here, trusted, with the smells and even the cold, and the noise of foreign voices—the clangs and bangs of machinery, and the romance of the labels that the docker chief had to give mahen customs stamps to, and write on, and sign for.
They were a lot less likely to have a miscount with one of the Legacy crew out here. It was a real position of trust the captain had given him—she had listened to the other crew on his case, so there was still hope of pleasing her and becoming indispensable and permanent.
“How’s it going?” Tarras asked, breathless, teeth chattering, he could hear the rattle over the com.
“Everything’s clear,” he said. “Ker Tarras, are you all right?”
“Cold. Just cold.”
There were transports coming, a lot of them, and there was nobody else loading at this section of the docks. The 16-carrier moved out with a whine of its motor, and the 14 moved in. Another 16-carrier moved into the waiting line and the automated handlers moved can after can out, instantly frosting on the surfaces, internally heated, but the insulation was so efficient they could sit in a cold-hold and keep their necessary conditions within parameters. Tarras had been scrambling about the latticework of walkways in the hold unhooking the connections and the hoses from the temperature-controlled cans. Alone, the captain said. No wonder she was out of breath.
Where had everybody else gone? He had no idea what time it was. He didn’t think it was a good idea to ask questions, especially on the comlink, outside—just do his job.
Maybe Tarras would get some relief in there.
Meanwhile he consulted with the mahendo’sat and relayed Tarras’ suggestions about sequencing the offload, to minimize shifting the cans about from loader arm to loader arm. He was cold. He didn’t want to think how it was for Tarras.
Cl-ank. Cl-l-l-l-
Tarras said a word over com you weren’t supposed to say on com.
The loader chain had stopped. The loader arm was half extended.
“Can you back it up?” he asked Tarras. “If you can sort of rock it—”
“I know that!”
“It’s those 14-can transports.”
“What?” Tarras snapped.
“The 14-can—”
“What’s that to do with the gods-forsaken chain?”
“The loader arm. When it extends full out.”
“What’s that to do with anything?”
“It has to. The 14-can jobs, the old ones are a little low. The loader arm has to extend out, it cramps the leads, and it just—ties up. You back the loader arm up.”
“Are you serious?”
“It works with the Sun’s loader, ker Tarras. The loader arm tells the driver the chain’s hung. But it isn’t. The loader just thinks it is. Back the arm up and set it down about a hand short. —Wait a minute. You’re going to—”
Bang.
Into the carrier cab.
“Not that far,” he said.
“That’s where it goes!”
The mahen driver was getting out, yelling in his own language, and when people did that it scared him, like at Meetpoint, like when the fight started, and he didn’t want to fight anybody. He made a fast approach to the docker chief, but all the mahendo’sat were yelling, and the docker chief screamed, “Move damn cart! How for park there?”
He thought the chief meant him. He was by the single-can cart, it was no more than a lift vehicle they had to hoist the inbound cans, but they didn’t need it yet. He just stepped aboard and backed up out of the can-transport’s way so it could adjust position with the arm.
“Move damn thing!” the transport driver yelled at him. “Damn stupid park there!”
He didn’t know who had. He wanted to save his ship fault in the matter. He whipped it smartly around; and bang!—
Brought up short, with a transport there filling his view that just hadn’t been there before, a transport that was flashing yellow lights and shrieking alarm, with a writhing shape inside
the purple-lit glass.
Methane transport… . Explosive as hell.
He tried to go forward. The bumpers were hooked.
He cut the motor. He had that much presence of mind. Lights were flashing everywhere. Sirens were shrieking. The ten-story-tall section doors were moving shut, walling off their whole area of dock.
“Ker Tarras?” he said into the com. “Help.”
“Captain?” came the call on all-ship.
“Lower main,” Hilfy said, got the message, and something like three seconds later was on the downward access.
Colored lights were everywhere, sirens were blowing, there was a tc’a vehicle and a cargo lifter clearly in mortal embrace, with rescue techs swarming over the scene, and a knot of Urtur station police clustered about Hallan Meras, who was out of his vehicle and answering questions with the gods only knew what legally complicating admissions.
She drew a breath and strode down into the mess, answered the inevitable, “You captain this ship?” with the lamentable truth, and fixed Hallan with a flat-eared look. His ears twitched downward, and he winced, but he did not look down.
“Is the methane truck leaking?” she asked. If the tc’a vehicle was leaking its atmosphere into flammable oxygen, this was a bad place to be standing. Procedure was to evacuate the passenger into a rescue pod, pump the methane atmosphere into a sound container, and get the victim methane-side for medical treatment, rather than to pry the wreckage apart—but nobody had told the docker who was bouncing on the oxy-vehicle bumper trying to disengage it. “Stop that!” she shouted. “Fool!”
The police and the rescue workers started yelling, and maybe the tc’a in the cab was distraught too: it started writhing about, its serpentine body bashing the windows of the cab with powerful blows, and wailing—wailing in a tc’a’s multipartite voice its distress. Its companion chi was racing about—a wonder that the convulsions didn’t smash the sticklike creature to paste, and the whole cab was rocking, rescue workers were shouting at the tow-truck, something about come on, hurry up.
Then the thrashing grew quiet. The rescue workers climbed up on the cab and peered inside, and Hilfy held her breath. There was a lot of dialectic chatter, a lot of muttering and one of the workers got down off the cab and began motioning the tow-truck to move in.