“Does this … male person share nearby quarters?”
“By no means,” Hilfy said.
“Moderately acceptable,” gtst said. “Our sensibilities are relieved.”
The door shut.
“Put him in the lounge,” Hilfy said.
“Captain?” Chihin said.
“I said put Meras in the crew lounge! The crew can socialize in the galley! We can’t afford another incident!”
“Aye,” Chihin said quietly. And went.
“No question now,” Hilfy muttered, over gfi, at supper. “Hoas. Narn’s not happy about taking him, but they will. Leaving him here’s not a good idea. Let them think about it and somebody’ll think up a lawsuit.”
Faces weren’t happy. “I’m against it,” Tiar said, foremost. “We have a responsibility, captain, we didn’t exactly ask for it, but this isn’t an experienced spacer we’re talking about… .”
“We’re all against it,” Hilfy said. “We’d all like to leave him in better circumstances. We’d all like for Sahern to behave like a civilized clan and take care of its responsibilities, but that’s not going to happen. The only question is whether we throw him off our ship or we send him to Hoas where Narn will throw him off theirs. Maybe I can get a legal release out of the station office that’ll make it safer for him coming back through here—I’ll try that, in what time we’ve got, while we’re onloading …”
“Dangerous,” Chihin said. “Rattle a lawyer’s door and you get more lawyers, that’s what I say.”
“I know that. But we’ve at least got some influence to bring to bear, at least I’ve got a foot in the door with the personage of this system—not mentioning aunt Py—and the questions we can settle are questions that have to be answered, by any other ship that brings him back through here from Hoas. And Hoas it has to be. We can’t alter distances. There’s no way he can get back except through here.”
“He’s still safer with us,” Fala said, her young face earnest as might be.
“We’re not taking him.”
“I’ve backed a loader now and again,” Tarras said. “The docker chief was yelling to move it—the boy moved it. There’s not a one of us—”
“That’s fine. So we’re all occasionally guilty. We’re leaving the boy with Narn!”
“What if Ana-kehnandian thinks he knows something?” Tiar said.
And Chihin: “There’s—ah—a complication.”
“What complication?”
“The boy’s seen the vase.”
“What do you mean, ’seen the vase’? Wasn’t it put away? Didn’t I order it taken down until we’d absolutely finished knocking around in there?”
“We were. I thought he’d gone back to quarters. I sent him there. I thought he’d stay. He didn’t.”
“Chihin, —”
“I’m sorry, captain.”
“He disobeyed orders?”
“I didn’t exactly order him to stay there. I sent him there. He came back.”
“Gods. What else? What possibly else can he get into?”
“I don’t know,” Chihin said. “But—being fair, it wasn’t as if he was deliberately doing anything wrong.”
“He’s never doing anything wrong! I’ve never met anybody so gods-rotted innocent. Gods in feathers, why is Meras wherever you don’t want him?”
“It’s a small world down there.”
“Small world. Small gods-rotted one corridor he was told to keep his nose out of!”
“The stsho took an unscheduled walk too.”
“The stsho is a paying passenger. The stsho wasn’t picked out of station detention! The stsho didn’t create an international incident on the docks and have the section doors closed!”
“What I can’t figure,” Tiar said, “is why this Haisi Ana-kehnandian wants to know what the object is. What possible difference could it make?”
“Evidently a major one, to someone.” She stirred the stew around in her bowl, stared at floating bits as if they held cosmic meaning, and thought back and back to this port, and days when one went armed to dockside. When accidents that happened weren’t accidents and you didn’t trust anything for face value. It felt like those days again and she felt trapped.
Fool, she said to herself. Fool, fool, fool. One grew accustomed to high politics, one grew used to breathing the atmosphere at the top of bureaucratic mountains, and one’s vital nerves grew dull to signals of high-level interest and dangerous associations.
One just didn’t by the gods think of it as unusual … when any freight-hauler else would have said Wait, go back, why me?
“If we leave him,” Tarras said, “somebody’s going to grab him for questioning. Or try to.”
Of course they were. Give them sufficient cause for curiosity and local authorities might trump up some charge to get the boy off any ship that was carrying him: figure that too. She had rather not have that ship be Legacy. But honorably speaking, she could not wish it to be Narn, either.
And customs had come asking about the nature of the cargo. Maybe Ana-kehnandian’s questions had put them up to it, and maybe the Personage of Urtur was innocent as spring rain. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe that angry scene with Ana-kehnandian had been only because Ana-kehnandian had produced no results. Because it had gotten noisy, and public, and Anakehnandian had had his bluff called in a way the Personage of Urtur didn’t like.
She found herself still stirring the stew, like an idiot. And asking herself what Meras could actually say that could do damage. ‘It’s a white vase?’ Stupid piece of information. And what did it mean? What in a reasonable and occasionally logical universe did Ana-kehnandian know or not know about the stsho that could make it valuable or life-threatening or politically important to his Personage, or what in a mahen hell was going on among the stsho? Meras could know something useful or he might not have seen any detail the mahendo’sat could remotely find useful. It might not be that it was a vase. It might be the carving on the vase. It might be that it wasn’t a doorstop, a bag of dried fish or an antique teapot, for all they could possibly know.
She looked up at four sober faces, four sober stares. Fala’s ears went down, Tarras’ did; then Tiar’s did, one ear at a time. Chihin was the only exception, eye to eye with her.
“My fault,” Chihin said. “I thought he’d stay. I didn’t expect the stsho down the lift. —If we could transfer him to Narn secretly—”
“And say somebody gets onto it, they get him anyway, and they’ve got help. Say they might be within one jump of doing something with the information, straight back the way we came. But the ambassador went to Kita so we have to go to Kita. That’s more than one jump from Meetpoint. I wish I knew what in all reason it matters it’s a vase.”
Chihin shrugged perplexedly.
Hilfy took a spoonful of stew, wondering if history would forget one Hallan Meras if she sent him on a spacewalk, say on their way to jump.
“I’ll talk to him,” she said, and ate another spoonful. “With any luck whatsoever, divinely owed us these last five years, there’ll be a hani ship through here outbound from Hoas on its way to somewhere useful. I’ve got a hundred lots of cans, a general mail shipment, twenty cans of medical supplies, the luxury goods, the dupe-rights on the entertainment tapes; and that’s about the best we can do on short notice. High value shippers are spooked. Can you blame them? Lucky we can get better than pig iron this run. Industrials and a load of foodstuffs and a ten can lot of spare parts for some construction company at Kita. Mostly cold-hold stuff. I know you’ve been going shift and shift; and we could carry more. But we need to get out of here. I want us out of this port before somebody files suit.”
“I’ll go with that,” Chihin said. “The sooner the better.”
“I’ll get down to cargo,” Tiar said. “I’ve had the easy stint last watch.”
“We’re going to push till we’re loaded,” she said. “Sleep when you’re off, do anything we can to get turned around. I’ll work hold. Mera
s can stay in the lounge, in the lounge, I don’t care if it catches fire, he’s not to leave it except on my personal order, do we agree on that?”
Nods. “Aye, captain,” from Tiar.
She shoved the bowl back and got up. “I’ll talk to him. And I don’t care how persuasive he is, I don’t care how pretty his eyes are, I don’t care how polite he is, I don’t want that son out of the crew lounge until we’re sealed and we’re sure our paying passenger is staying put! Do I hear Yes, captain?”
“Yes, captain,” the answer came back.
So she left the galley for the lounge.
The captain came through the door with her ears down and her face scowling. Which might mean something else had happened that was his fault, although, before the gods, Hallan had no idea how or what. He stood up in proper respect and ducked his head.
“If the gods are good, a hani ship will come through here at the last moment bound directly for hani space and take you off our hands. If the gods are less well-disposed, you’ll be on to Kita with us. And if—” The captain’s first claw extruded. “If you do one more thing to screw up, if you walk out of this lounge without my express permission, if you startle our passenger again, if you assume any gods-be need to go anywhere, if you bat your eyes at one of my crew or land in anyone’s quarters, you’re going to find yourself chained in the laundry for the duration of this voyage, which may last another year! Does this order get through to you?”
“Yes, captain.”
“Do you believe I’m joking?”
He looked the captain in the face, a very pretty face it was, and a very serious and dangerous one. “No, captain.”
“Do you want to spend a year down there?”
“No, captain. But if I could help in any way—”
“You don’t help!” She jabbed the forefinger in his direction and he backed up. “You don’t offer to help me, you don’t offer to help my crew, you don’t offer to help our passenger. You never saw anything, you will never remember that you saw anything in the stsho’s cabin, and if you ever do remember you saw anything you’ll forget it forthwith. Do you follow that?”
“Yes, captain.”
“With luck someone will come through here and I can send you home.”
He hoped not. He truly hoped not. He knew that the captain was angry and that she had absolutely good reason.
“I want more than anything,” he said, “to help. I don’t want to go back to Anuurn. I never want to go back to Anuurn.”
“We can do better,” she said, “without your help. Stay out of it, do you hear me?”
“Yes, captain.”
With which she walked out. And shut the door. He sat down again. It was not an uncomfortable place to be. And he didn’t get his hopes up. She’d said—there might be another ship. He truly hoped not. He hoped he would have another chance.
He sat down and thought and thought how he might have done differently about the accident; and the stsho; and how he could, still, if he could just get one break, prove to the captain that he was qualified—if they would just let him work cargo. He wouldn’t back up any more trucks. But they wouldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t be in any corridors he wasn’t supposed to be in. But Chihin had told him go there. So he’d thought it was safe… .
Maybe Chihin had set him up. But he didn’t want to think so. She’d been fair, about him startling her. She’d taken shots at him, but everybody did. He didn’t want to think Chihin had done it to him. And she certainly hadn’t been responsible for the truck. That was all his doing.
Tiar brought him supper soon after, which was stew. Tiar asked him if the captain had explained things to him and he said that she had.
Tiar said don’t take the captain too seriously, and said that the captain yelled when she was upset, but that she was fair when she calmed down.
“I’m sorry about scaring the stsho,” he said, and Tiar said it wasn’t hard to scare the stsho, the harder problem was keeping it happy, which they had to do. And Tiar said he’d done all right, except not to take any chances, even if it seemed people were yelling at him—don’t let them rattle him or make him move faster than he could think.
In other words, he thought, Calm down. It was what women said to misbehaving boys, stupid boys, who at about thirteen started having shaking mad temper fits, and their sisters said, ‘That’s all right, just calm down, Hallan,’ and papa got irritable and refused to have him around any more, and youngest sister said, ‘Try to think, Hal, just use your head about things, everybody feels like that.’
(Then oldest sister said, after he was sixteen, ‘He thinks too much. He can’t survive out there.’ Or at home either: papa had told him get out, the girl his sisters had tried to fix him up with said he wasn’t a match for her brothers, and his sisters had spent all their savings to get him a ticket to station, to a place they’d never seen, and hadn’t any interest in going to; but it was everything he wanted, and they gave him that very expensive chance—for which he adored them. He couldn’t come back and be sent down in disgrace they’d know about, to an exile he’d die in, because he’d trained himself to be here, that was all, and he’d rather die here than there.)
He didn’t have much appetite for the stew Tiar left him. But he told himself that was male temper too, upsetting his stomach. He told himself stop it and think how he was going to feel in an hour or two; and how if they were going for jump this soon, he had to get the food down, as much as he could make his stomach take.
So he finished it down to the last, and set the dishes by the door.
There were vid tapes to watch. There were books to read. He wished they would let him bring his things from below.
But he didn’t ask. He didn’t use the com. He didn’t make himself a problem to them. He found himself a blanket in the storage locker in the lounge and he tucked up and watched bad vids while the loader worked. Clank. Clank-clank.
It didn’t stall. So they had listened to him. And Tarras at least knew he’d been right.
Chapter Nine
The Legacy eased out of dock and away—put her bow to solar nadir in the dusty environs of Urtur system and took a leisurely start-up, a leisurely acceleration at G-normal for their stsho passenger. The Legacy’s hold was not full, the cargo was light-mass, the crew on watch was minimal to the safety requirements, and as soon as they hit their assigned lane for the outward run, the crew was snug in beds, sound asleep, except for the captain, who had the sole watch, who was propping her eyes open and seeing ghosts in the shadows of the bridge.
She never had done such a turnaround since she came to the Legacy, never hoped to do another. And when they had gotten out past the worst of the dust, and the rocks that attended the planetary vicinity, the captain set autopilot, tilted the cushion to flat relative to the accel plane and wrapped herself in a blanket for a rest.
Musing on tc’a and outraged stsho, wandering in a mental wilderness of white on white… .
Thinking of The Pride and the human aboard her, thinking of a friendly face and eyes of unhani color. Tully wouldn’t have turned on her, Tully wouldn’t have attacked poor cousin Dahan and broken his head. She hated her late husband; and hated cousin Harun. If she’d had her way, Harun Chanur wouldn’t be lounging his oversized body in her father’s chair, sitting by her father’s fire, and slapping the younger cousins around; Rhean would be back in space aboard Fortune where she wanted to be; she, for her part, would be on The Pride, with Tully, clear of all of it: the gods only knew who’d be managing the clan’s business, then. Which showed how impractical it all was.
But she wouldn’t be thinking of the Meras kid, then, and thinking how his expression had reminded her all too much of Dahan’s, kind and confused, and upset and hurt when she’d yelled at him. She had never thought she agreed on principle with Chihin, she’d stood more with Pyanfar on the question of culture versus instincts; but she found herself with Chihin this time: Meras didn’t belong in space, Meras didn’t think, didn’t think
first, at least. Like backing the truck, because some mahen foreman yelled do it. That the foreman hadn’t meant him just hadn’t tripped a neuron in his brain.
Imagine cousin Harun in a position of responsibility. Imagine Harun having to use his head rather than his hands.
Men that did think had gotten killed, for thousands of years, that was the way biology had set up the hani species. Other species were luckier, maybe, and other species might be better at handling politics between the sexes, but hani hadn’t been civilized long enough to sort out mate-getting by any other means. Nobody had told her when she was growing up that every attitude and opinion she had learned was going to be obsolete when she was twenty-five. Nobody had told her the whole world was going to be set on its ear and the way hani did business with outsiders was going to change. Evidently nobody had told the rest of the home planet, either, because they were still doing things the old way. Same with the kid in the crew lounge … nobody had told him things were going to change, until aunt Pyanfar had lured him off in the promise of a miraculous change in the universe.
(Wrong, kid. It doesn’t work that way. Narn won’t have you, Padur won’t have you, we don’t want the complications you pose and the crew that took you aboard in the first place wasn’t looking at your resume, were they, kid? Hani are hani. People with power aren’t going to give it up. Fair isn’t fair, not among hani, not elsewhere. And no sister ever taught you to think before you jump.)
Nice-looking boy. That’s all anybody had thought. That’s all anybody would ever think. She had no personal illusions about changing the way hani were, or worked, or thought: that was aunt Pyanfar’s pet project, not hers, she had never asked to carry any banner for reforming anything, or anyone, except that hani shouldn’t be so gods-be xenophobic and so set on their own ways.
And don’t say Pyanfar Chanur got beyond biology when it came to personal choices either. Pyanfar had dumped Chanur in her lap and run off to do as she pleased, free as she pleased, with na Khym—It’s your turn, niece. You go be responsible.