“Kif!”
“And four stsho dead like day old fish. Big damn mess.”
She didn’t want to owe Haisi a thing. She didn’t want to have to ask. But the mahe sat there smiling smugly and knowing she had no choice.
“So? Why?”
“Kif big suspect. Or maybe scare to death.”
“Residents here or come in with the ambassador. Don’t string it out, out with it.”
“You so impatient. Got pretty eyes.”
“Who were the stsho?”
“Three resident. One secretary Atli-lyen-tlas.” Another cloud of smoke in the pollution zone. “I got photo, you want see?”
He reached into his pouch and pulled them out. She leaned over gingerly and took the offering, fanned them in her fingers. Not a pretty sight, no, especially the close-ups. “What did they die of?”
“Poison, maybe. Maybe scare to death. Stsho delicate.”
“Where’d you get these?”
“Got cousin in station office.”
“You got cousins everywhere.”
“Big—”
“Big family. You said.”
“Same like Chanur. Big fam’ly. Influ-ential fam’ly.”
“I’m a merchant captain trying to make a living! I’ve got no influence with my aunt, I don’t know her business, she doesn’t know mine, we don’t speak!”
“Hear same. Sad, fam’ly quarrel.”
“None of your business.”
The waiter set the drinks down. Iced fruit for Ana-kehnandian and iced tea for her. Intoxicating tea. She sipped hers carefully.
“What’s the truth?” she asked. “Who’s your Personage aligned with? Who does she do business with? What’s her connection to my aunt or does she have one?”
“A. You want I say my Personage business.”
“Might increase my trust of you.”
Another puff on the smoke-stick. “You long time on The Pride, now you not speak? What story?”
“Not your business either.”
“You clan head.”
“I am. In name. Ker Pyanfar appointed me.”
“You not forgive her for that, a?”
“Maybe not. What’s it to do with anything?”
“Just lot people know you pret’ damn good.”
“Good for them. I’m so pleased.”
A laugh and a puff of smoke. A lot of smoke. Hilfy wrinkled her nose.
“You a lot like the Personage. You same bastard like her.”
“Family resemblance. Family temper. You want a demonstration?”
Another grin. Mahendo’sat and humans did that. Bad habit. Could get you killed, on Anuurn.
“You nice. No bad temper. Just hani.”
“You’re a prejudiced son, aren’t you. You want a deal? You tell me what difference it makes what we’re carrying. You tell me what difference it makes to the stsho and what’s at stake.”
“You not know.”
“We haul cargo. We’re being paid. The stsho didn’t hire mahendo’sat to do what we’re doing. Don’t you think if they’d trusted you very much they’d have let Ha’domaren carry it?”
“Maybe they look for damn fool.”
Point. “So you know so much: what is it? What significance does it have? Convince me you’re our friend.”
“Lot status. Lot status with stsho.” Puff and puff. Sip of fruit drink. “No’shto-shti-stlen number one bastard, want run whole Compact. Stsho all same lot disturb by give this thing.”
“So what does it matter what it is?”
“Same make difference what kind oji. Some got big presence. Some got histor-icity. Some got art. Some make suicide.”
“Make suicide.”
“You get oji, you got respond or you lose big. Number one dirty trick.”
“You mean they have to equal the item.”
“Or lose status big.”
“And Atli-lyen-tlas doesn’t want to receive it?”
“Maybe.” Another sip. “What kind oji?”
“Sorry. Not enough information. Why should I help your Personage? She might not be my friend.”
“We good friend! We number one good friend! Whereby you get idea? Long time mahendo’sat been friend hani. Who get you into space? Who bring ships to you world? Who give you number one help make ships and trade? You damn hani fight each other with sharp sticks two hundred year gone. Now so smart you tell mahendo’sat goodbye, no need help.”
“Well, that’s not a question you ask a merchant captain. Go tell my aunt what she owes you. Tell my aunt tell me tell you what I know, no trouble.”
“You say you don’t speak.”
“Haven’t had a reason. If we had a reason we’d speak.”
“How much you want tell me what is?”
“You can’t buy me.”
“You want know where gone Atli-lyen-tlas?”
She was really tempted. Not to trust this Haisi person. But to trust him more than the stsho. Historically, the mahendo’sat had been more allied with hani than not. But not all mahendo’sat were on the same side. “Not many choices out of here. If it’s Urtur I’ll have your ears. Suppose I said it was a piece of art.”
“Need know more than that, hani.”
She took a sip of tea. Her last. And got up. “I give you something, you give me nothing. Wrong game, mahe. I’m not playing anymore.”
“Kshshti.”
“With the kif.”
“They hire kif. Sit, sit, talk.”
She sank back into the chair, leaned her elbows on the scarred table and gazed at the mane’s eyes. Green neon didn’t improve his complexion. Green shone on his dark fur, on his uncommunicative, flat-nosed face—on the smoke he puffed out of his nostrils.
“So talk. What kif ship?”
“Maybe … Nogkokktik.”
“Why?”
“No’shto-shti-stlen got lot enemy. Plenty old, plenty smart. Enemy want gtst come home, give up be governor. That enough?”
“No’shto-shti-stlen is an old friend of my aunt. Why should I betray gtst interests?”
“No’shto-shti-stlen nobody friend. You know how long live stsho?”
It wasn’t a known fact. There were guesses … in what she’d read.
“How long?”
“Maybe two hundred year. Hard make figure. Stsho change sex, change person, change everything, not remember. How you know when born, when change? Nobody sure. But what make stsho care? You Phase, same you dead. You don’t got memory who you were. Same like dead.”
“Who knows whether they remember who they were?”
“They say don’t remember. You don’t believe stsho?”
“I believe I got paid. And I get real nervous when people start asking questions about my business or about passengers on my ship.”
Another puff of smoke, green in the neon. “You want make contact local stsho?”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll use the station com, like any civilized individual.”
Haisi grinned. “Maybe you don’t get answer. Damn scare’ this stsho.”
“Who is this?”
“Name not matter. Same aide to Atli-lyen-tlas, got real scare’, not go with kif. I got contact. You got oji. And No’shto-shti-stlen messenger.”
“So?”
“So you stsho make this stsho talk damn fast.”
Tempting. “I’m under contract. I can’t say what I can agree to. Interesting idea. I’ll say that. But I have to go back and take a look at the document I’ve signed.”
“Not safe place, Kita. Mahendo’sat upset, stsho upset … kif upset. You want talk new governor at Meetpoint, lot change. Change make money, change lose money. Lot people got lot stress. Bad for health.”
It didn’t make one feel confident, sitting in a mahen bar, with a mahe with unknown interests bankrolling his ship and making deals through him with unknown parties with unknown intentions.
“I’ll get back to you,” she said, and got up and left him the bill.
2980–89 was a phone number. And an address, that being the system on Kita Point Station. Which made it just about as easy to take a walk to the lift and a ride up to the residential levels, up to Deck 2, Section 80.
Not a bad neighborhood, Tiar said to herself, seeing the immaculate paneling and the neat plastic address plates, and the plastic signs that said, in the universal alphabet, Silimaji nan nil Ja’hai-wa.
Meaning, for a mahen maintenance worker who might not speak the pidgin, Through traffic prohibited.
No clutter, no smudges, none of the graffiti endemic on the dockside. Pri-cey.
She rang at number 89, and waited, while optics in the wall doubtless advised the occupants of a hani in spacer blues in the spotless corridor.
“Who? Identify!”
“Ker Tiar Chanur, of the merchant freighter Chanur’s Legacy. I had a notice to call.”
Electronic and manual locks clicked. The door shot wide. A stsho was standing there, taller than most, painted in curlicues of palest lime and mauve, about gtst plumy crest and moonstone eyes. “Chanur, honorable Chanur. Protect us! You must protect us!”
It was hardly a conversation for a hallway. But she had no desire to let a door close her in some stranger’s apartment, either. “In what way? From what?”
Hands waved, trying to beckon her inside. “In, in, the danger, the danger, honorable hani.”
“Danger of what?” She backed up, evading the white, beseeching fingers. “I don’t know you. If you want help … come to the ship.”
“Most excellent hani! I have little baggage, very little, please, please, you will bring me safely aboard your ship …”
“I didn’t say that! The captain has to clear any passengers!”
“But if the distinguished captain admits this honest person, where will my baggage be? How shall I live? What should I do? I must have certain things necessary for my existence! All is ready, all is gathered, I need only gather it up, oh, please, please, estimable hani, most honorable …”
“Get the gods-be bags! Hurry, if there’s danger!”
Gtst wailed, gtst dashed back as fast as a stsho could move, and, indeed, gtst dragged out bags and bundles in feverish haste, from lockers, from cabinets, from various quarters of the pastel room, until it made a sizable pile.
“You can’t carry all that.”
“This honest person had hoped, had most earnestly hoped that a strong, a most excellent and trustworthy hani would be kindly disposed to …”
“Gods rot it.” She went in, not without a wary glance about, grabbed up the heaviest bundles by their strings and handles and left the stsho to manage the rest, on her way out the door while gtst was still filling gtst arms.
“I’ll take this lot,” Tiar said over her shoulder, “you take the rest and don’t look like you’re with me, if you don’t want publicity. And if the captain doesn’t like the look of you, you and this whole pile are out on the dock, hear me?”
“Oh, most clever, most wise hani, most excellent …”
“Stow it! Close the gods-be door!” The creature had no concept of intrigue. Gtst shoved a note in an alien stranger’s trousers and never thought an open door might raise questions.
So might a lift full of baggage, a hani, and a panicked, muttering stsho. A mahe with a child in tow got on at Deck One, and rode down with them. The child bounced around the walls, grinning at its own cleverness, and managed to knock into both of them in the short time before the doors opened on the cold grayness of the docks. Perhaps the mahe meant to space its offspring. Perhaps the mahe hoped someone else would do it. Tiar clutched the bundles and dragged them past the overanxious doors, held them for the weak-limbed stsho, and snarled, “Move, kid!” in such a tone the mahe grabbed the brat out of their path.
The stsho was clearly impressed. Gtst pale eyes were very wide. Gtst murmured, “Kindly restrain the offspring. It is very annoying,” and followed her out.
For a stsho toward a stranger, that was amazing. She was impressed. Gtst had more fortitude than seemed evident. “Berth 10,” she said, and led off at a moderate stride, a moving obstruction on the docks, in the abundant foot traffic.
She looked back, just to be sure the stsho was still following. And gtst was, slogging along with gtst swinging, pendant baggage of small bundles, limping on lime-slippered feet.
“Go on, go on,” gtst panted, shaking gtst crest from gtst eyes. “We are in great danger. I shall seem not to know you. It will be a ruse. Please, keep walking!”
She walked. There were kif about. There were mahendo’sat. Not another hani, not another stsho. Of a sudden their dissociation seemed exceedingly naive and dangerous.
“Come on,” she said. “Hurry it! I don’t like this.”
She was ever so glad to see the Legacy’s number on the display board, and to see the first of the transports already arrived. The hold was open, the ramp gate was showing green for unlocked.
“We’re all right,” she panted, hoping for the sight of Tarras or Chihin. There was the stsho, valiantly (for a stsho) struggling after.
There were three kif, just standing, watching them.
She was never so glad to walk up the ramp and find the gate opening to her request. The stsho was gasping at the bottom of the incline, trying to gather up gtst baggage, the cords of which had tangled with gtst robes. One of the kif was headed toward them, with deliberation in its moves.
“Get up here!” she said, regretting the laws that meant the nearest gun they owned was in the locker in the airlock. “Now!”
Gtst stumbled and limped gtst way up. The kif stopped, and for a moment looked straight at her, a stare that made the hair stand up on her nape as she shepherded the struggling stsho into the chill of the ramp.
“Oh, the cold!” it breathed.
“Kif,” she said. “Move!” She dropped the baggage in the rampway, on the Legacy’s side of the doors, and ran for the airlock and the locker. The stsho shrilled a protest at the desertion. She heard it attempting to run, wailing and gasping.
She hit the airlock controls, waited through the cycle and, inside, used her first and third claws in the sockets that opened the locker. She seized the gun inside, clicked the safety off, and scared ten years of life out of the stsho that came gasping and struggling through the airlock.
“I’m going back after the baggage,” she said. “You stay in the airlock.”
Gtst wailed, gtst gasped, gtst sobbed. “Let us through! Let us through! Oh, murder, oh, vilest murder on us …”
Gtst was still wailing as Tiar walked back to get the baggage. The fragile tube was no place to start shooting; but her eye was toward the gates down there, that anyone with a key could open. And if a kif did, he was in dire trouble, by the gods, he was.
… it shall be the obligation of the ship’s captain to secure the item and to maintain its safety and its confidentiality from all unauthorized persons …
… the representative of the person issuing the contract shall be the final arbiter of the disposition of the object unless the person who has been the representative of the person issuing the contract shall be determined to be no longer in substance or in fact the same individual entrusted and declared by the contract to be the individual representing the person issuing the contract.
Gods.
Hilfy raked a hand through her mane, stared at the screen. Final arbiter of the disposition of the object. The representative of the person issuing the contract.
Meaning Tlisi-tlas-tin representing No’shto-shti-stlen. Meaning ask Tlisi-tlas-tin, as the final arbiter.
She keyed out, got up from the desk in lower deck ops, and went to see the representative of gtst excellency … who, one hoped, was capable of assuming responsibility, or at least of discussing the matter in a sane and reasonable fashion.
She should tell gtst about Ana-kehnandian. She had never contemplated working in any close way with a stsho. No one contemplated working closely with a stsho. They were only preferable to the methane-br
eathers, in reason.
But if she had an ally now who could explain anything it was Tlisi-tlas-tin.
She went to the door and signaled her presence. “Your honor? Ker Hilfy Chanur. A word with you.”
It took a little for a stsho to respond—a little longer to rise and arrange gtstself and walk to the door. In unusually short order the door slid back and gtst honor Tlisi-tlas-tin gave a languorous ripple of gtst fingers in respect.
“Most honorable captain.”
She didn’t even have time to break the news. The lock cycled, and a shrill warbling entered the main corridor. Gtst honor’s eyes went wide and gtst ducked back within the doorframe.
“Who is that?” gtst cried. “Oh, murder, oh, mischief! What distress is that?”
She had not a thing in her hands. It sounded like murder, and something was in the ship that did not belong there.
Something turned out stsho, and disheveled and woefully frightened, a figure hung about incongruously with parcels and strings and tangled pastel garments.
And behind that apparition, cousin Tiar, gun in hand.
“Refuge!” the stsho cried. Tlisi-tlas-tin’s door shut, quickly, and Tiar got between, motioning the panicked stsho to stay still, casting a disturbed and hasty look in Hilfy’s direction.
“What’s going on?” she demanded of Tiar. Guns, for the god’s sake, and a stranger on their deck.
“Kif,” Tiar breathed. “Captain, I’m sorry. I was out on the docks—this … person … wanted help… .”
Her heart was thumping doubletime. But seeing a stsho, finally, proved they did exist here, stsho seemed on the receiving end of the trouble in mahen space, and this one was no threat … terrified, rather, distraught, exhausted, at the visible limit of gtst resources.
“Help for what?” Kif was still echoing in her ears, but if the inner hatch had opened, the outer hatch had shut; and no kif was getting in here.
“Oh, great hani, kindly hani person … please, refuge from this terrible place, please, violence, terrible violence …”
Four stsho dead, Haisi had said.
And beside her the door opened and Tlisi-tlas-tin put gtst head out. “Oh, woe! Oh, distress! Is this the person? Is this the one?”