“I appreciate that,” he said, and tried to quit shivering and most of all not to have Tarras see that he was. Women were allowed to have a temper. If he did, he was unreliable and a danger to everyone around him. “I’m not Sahern. I’m not related to them. Even by marriage.”
“Wouldn’t matter. Captain took you aboard. She would have if you’d been Sahern head of clan. So would we. Don’t try to talk against Sahern. You won’t impress us.”
“I’m not!” Gods, everything got twisted. “I never said that. I never said anything against them.”
Tarras just looked at him a moment, making him wonder if she believed him.
“How’d you get arrested?” Tarras asked. “The straight story.”
He wondered how much was in whatever report they had gotten from the kif. “I was fighting.”
“That’s nothing new. Doesn’t always get you arrested. What was the fight about?”
“Me. Being there. In this bar.”
Surely she could get the idea. Maybe she had. He didn’t want to volunteer more details and he hoped she wouldn’t ask. He didn’t want to remember them.
“Captain wouldn’t leave you in any foreign jail,” Tarras said. “She’s pretty brusque sometimes. But you being here was her idea. Wouldn’t leave anybody where you were. You copy that?”
He had, already. He wasn’t willing to think badly about Hilfy Chanur. He knew that, being Chanur, she was inclined to believe he had a right to be here. Chanur was the clan that stood up for his right to be here. Only, even in Chanur, the attitudes weren’t universal, the change hadn’t changed every mind; and he was used to that. He had to be used to that. Things as they were gave him no better choice and no court of appeal.
He said, while Tarras was there to listen, “I’d not do anything against Chanur. Ever. Tell the captain that.”
Tarras didn’t say a thing, just shut the door. And locked it.
Pumps were thumping away, pouring water and other liquids into the Legacy’s reservoirs. Fueling was in progress. Tiar slid a cup under Hilfy’s inert, poised hand. And reaching the fingers after it seemed a move too much. Hilfy extended a claw, snagged the handle, and dragged it into her weary hand.
“We made it,” Tarras said, dropping her bulk into a chair, gfi in hand. “Every gods-blessed one of those babies.”
“Course comped,” Tiar said.
“Got to be the one that makes it. Pay the ship off and go into the profit column.”
“Somebody feed the kid this time?”
“Fala’s seeing to it.”
“What’s our launch, cap’n, we ever get ’im clear?”
“First watch, topside. We take her through, we get our rest at Urtur.”
“Gods, that’s brutal.”
“Mahendo’sat sniffing around us, this hardship case turns up and No’shto-shti-stlen just happens to want him out of here. I don’t like it. I don’t like it and I wish I hadn’t agreed to take him on.”
Tiar’s ears flattened. “What do you think, he’s some deal of No’shto-shti-stlen’s?”
“I think the old son knows more about why he’s here than gtst is saying. I’m not doubting gtst wants him off this station: the stsho don’t want trouble and he’s trouble. I don’t know whose, that’s the problem. I don’t know who’s behind him.”
“There are coincidences, captain.”
“They become increasingly less when the mahendo’sat show up with deals. That’s what I don’t like. ‘Let us look at it!’ That bastard’s on someone’s payroll.”
“Not ker Py’s.”
It was a thought that had occurred to her. “If he was hers, why not say so?”
“Good question,” Tiar said. “But I don’t think the boy’s involved. It’s perfectly understandable.”
“What? Leaving him in the brig?”
“Understandable that he doesn’t like Sahern clan.”
“That’s what he says. Sahern is not our friend. Other interests aren’t our friends, for my aunt’s sake, for reasons that have to do with decisions she’s made that affect things we have no way to know about. We don’t know who could have hired her, we don’t know who could have hired him, we don’t know what side this Haisi person is on, we don’t even know that No’shto-shti-stlen’s on the up and up or what gtst is up to. The news got to Urtur and this Haisi person had a chance to get here and offer us a bribe for a look at the object. So why hadn’t the news the time to get to Sahern clan, and maybe Sahern lay out some game that would inconvenience us? Ha?”
“Why would No’shto-shti-stlen give you the boy?”
“Because hani aren’t as frequent here as they used to be. Because if gtst has had a political object dumped in gtst lap, No’shto-shti-stlen is going to want rid of it in the way most guaranteed to absolve gtst of responsibility. Gtst couldn’t dump him on aunt Py, gtst couldn’t return him to Sahern, and here we come, Pyanfar’s close relatives, just so convenient to hand him to … I don’t know that’s the case, but thinking about it is going to cost me sleep, this trip, it’s going to make me uncomfortable until he’s off our deck and out of our lives, and I don’t want him loose gathering data at our boards, hear me?”
“Let me understand—you think Sahern planted him here?”
“I think it’s a possibility. Maybe to create an embarrassment, maybe it’s something else. I think it’s a possibility there’s something more to him than he’s showing us …”
“Captain, he’s a kid!”
“I don’t like where he was, I don’t like anybody dropped into a kif-run jail and I don’t like Sahern dragging him clear to this pit on the backside of the universe to drop him, where, if they wanted rid of him, they could at least have dropped him at Urtur. It smells to me like a captain with a god-complex, but I don’t swear that’s the case; there are all the other possibilities, some of which aren’t pretty and aren’t conducive to good sleep, but that’s the way I see it, that’s the way I know how to call it, and that’s the only way I know to keep this ship out of trouble. We’ve got enough problems going, let’s not take any additional chances, shall we?”
“Trouble?” Fala asked from the doorway to the little galley.
“No trouble. I trust you locked that door.”
“I locked it. I don’t see, begging the captain’s pardon, why he’s—”
Hilfy leaned her forehead on her hand.
“Tell you later,” Tarras said.
“We’re in count,” Hilfy said, leaning back and looking at the clock. “Load’s got to be finished by 2300. Gods, I want out of this port.”
“Have we got a problem?” Fala asked.
Something ticked over, like a piece in a game falling. A roll of the dice. “I want an instrument scan.”
“What?” Tiar asked.
“I want a thorough read-out, I want a camera scan on the hull, I want to know if any skimmers have approached us during our stay here.”
A solemn stare from several pairs of eyes.
“Is something going on?” Fala asked.
The camera scan turned up negative. Nothing had approached their hull. Station skimmers always came and went, on such business as external inspections, catching the occasional chunk of something that escaped a ship’s maintenance systems, things nobody wanted slamming into their hull or catching on some projection, to be accelerated with the ship and boosted to lethal V. Trouble was, such skimmers had legitimate business back by one’s vanes and engines and up near one’s hatches; and if a ship with legitimate reason to worry didn’t have cameras to prove where such little tenders had access, that ship had far more reason to worry.
But being the Personage’s niece had convinced her before the Legacy was outfitted that the camera-mounts were a good idea and that motion-sensors and tamper-alerts were mandatory. So they didn’t have that to worry about—at least so far as they opted prudently to use them.
There wasn’t, of course, a way to monitor everything. But they were sure it was water that had gone i
nto their water-lines and that that water was Meetpoint ice-melt, the sensors above the valve had proved it or that valve would have shut. Being Pyanfar’s niece and having shipped aboard The Pride, she had been in ports where one had good reason to wonder about the lines; absolutely right, being sure was worth the cost.
Unfortunately having solved all the high-tech means of sabotage, one still had to worry about the low-tech means at an enemy’s disposal. Certain things one could solve by carrying all supplies aboard, and by not refueling and not taking on water at certain ports: but carrying extra mass cost a ship, if one wasn’t paying somebody else’s freight plus station-cost getting it to the station. If it was local, you were financially ahead to buy it. If it wasn’t, and it massed much, you were ahead to freight it, and that was the sum-up and pay-out of it: if you operated otherwise you weren’t competitive, in a tightly competitive market.
But even if you did all of that, and even if you absorbed the cost of being as self-contained as possible, you were still vulnerable to your own cargo and to the legal claim of your ship to use a port and the station’s legal right to charge you for being there, and, after that was said, to a bank’s obligation to honor the claim of other banks on the funds you had in that all-important record you carried that the bank alone allegedly could access.
But banks themselves were not without their compromised accesses, where stsho were concerned, since stsho had set up the banking system, all through Compact space: stsho technology, stsho procedures, stsho rules of accounting and the stsho system of transfers and debits.
Hilfy Chanur preferred an old hani tradition: cash … and cargo; and as little as possible of the former, since it was not going to be drawing interest for the month you were in transit, but your goods were acquiring value during that transit, simply by moving closer to where they were in shortest supply.
Which left you vulnerable to piracy, but you always were; and at least that answer was in your own hands, and in the quality of the armament you carried and your skill to use it.
The hose connections clanked free, and that was one less problem on Hilfy’s mind. The Legacy was on its own power, cargo in its hold, and the cash from the station bank was on its way … hand-carried, the bank insisted, since the bank did not trust any outsider either, and wanted a signature at the Legacy’s lock by the Legacy captain that said the money had transferred, all outstanding debts were paid, and the bank was legally absolved of claims against Chanur clan.
And at the same time, they were conveying the Cargo, the oji, No’shto-shti-stlen’s precious object, along with the funds. Logical enough.
So … about time to get one’s self down to the lock, looking presentable.
She dusted off her breeches, clawed her mane to be sure no hair was standing on end, and took a wet-fingered swipe at the mustaches and the (cursedly) juvenile beard. Impressions counted, especially with the banks, which one could need some dark day. Knees were clean, belt was straight. She picked up Tarras and Tiar for escort, and was still fussing with the beard when they cycled the lock and a blast of chill air from the temperature differential came rushing up the rampway and blew her fur and fluttered the fabric of her silk breeches—
Just as a kifish guard was about to punch the call button outside, within the tube, a scant pace from the Legacy’s own deck. She did not snarl, did not acknowledge the presence, which she vaguely registered as bowing respectfully in realization of her arrival, she simply focused on the stsho approaching in the frost-coated tube and ignored the dark-robed guards … fancy, the stsho were, the group from the bank, with the tablet the nature of which she recognized at a glance, and the group with boxes and cases, in one of which might be—surely was—the precious Object. One could hardly pick out any outline, so extreme were the garments in that lot, a drift of pearlized gossamer, of white fronds and feathers. She bowed, they bowed, her crewwomen bowed, everybody bowed again, even the kif. It was supremely ridiculous.
“Of course the esteemed captain’s word would suffice,” the banker was constrained to say, in pidgin.
“We can only regret that your honor did not have sufficient time to take tea,” she answered, not in the pidgin, and augmented eyebrows shot up and the stsho in question clutched the signed tablet against gtst heart, or thereabouts, within gtst robes.
“Your most esteemed honor is inadequately recompensed in the press of time which requires our most distressing haste. At another moment we would achieve distinction by accepting your honor’s offer.”
“Your honor has impressed us with outstanding courtesy.”
“Allow us however to present the honorable Tlisi-tlas-tin, most esteemed adjunct of gtst excellency No’shto-shti-stlen. The excellency has afforded us the most extreme honor of conveying gtst adjunct and the preciousness of gtst entrusted burden to this ship and into your most capable hands. We are abundantly satisfied of your honor’s most excellent character and elegance.”
The leader of the second band of stsho came fluttering across the threshold into the airlock, with an engraved case clutched to gtst heart—anxious, by the pursing of gtst small mouth, and the three increasingly agitated bows.
“We are so inexpressibly relieved, most honored captain, that you speak the civilized language. We have far less anxiousness to entrust ourselves and this preciousness into your ship.”
“What’s this ‘ourselves’?” For an instant all command of stshoshi language deserted her; but Tiar and Tarras hadn’t understood a word thus far. Only that. She said it in stsho: “Would your honor clarify the matter regarding one’s illustrious self and one’s presence on my ship?”
Another bow. “As gtst excellency’s most honored representative, of course, as guardian of the preciousness which foreign hands must not touch.” A wistful curtsy. “I do hope the excellency did not omit the doubtless inconsequential matter of this absolute necessity, and that some provision has been made for my lodging and my meals of sufficient taste and decorousness not to offend my status as the excellency’s emissary.”
Possibly she did not control her surprise. Certainly her vision suffered that tunnel focus her ancestors used in hunting, and at the same instant the stsho officials and escort backed an identical number of paces—while in the gray fringe of her vision the kif reached for weapons. Consequently so did Tiar and Tarras.
But she did smile, a hani pursing of the mouth, not to show the teeth. And her ears did not flatten, nor her claws extend. Nor did her escort or the kif, fortunately, open fire. She said, sweetly, because they had the contract, and they had a hold full of cargo bought with its proceeds, “How extraordinary the excellency’s trust in our ability to adapt to unusual situations. How much baggage do you have?”
Chapter Four
There was an amazing lot of coming and going next door, when Tiar had called down on com maybe an hour ago saying they were going to undock soon. Hallan put his ear to the wall, then backed off as someone began hammering and banging. It sounded as if someone were tearing into the paneling, and maybe taking the whole cabin apart.
That was a peculiar kind of thing to do, on a ship that was supposed to be in count to undock. He began to wonder if they had a malfunction of some kind, and if maybe the access to the conduits or something more critical was there.
But it was certainly an odd place to put an access.
Something had leaked, maybe? The plumbing had given way?
It kept up a very long time. He heard them moving equipment in, he heard thumping and banging and hammering and hissing. He listened again, thinking maybe the whole compartment had flooded. Maybe—
His door opened. A very dusty, contamination-suited Tiar Chanur put her head in and raked her hood back. “Kid?” All of Tiar came in and shed white dust on the floor. He had had his ear to the wall and could find no plausible excuse for himself standing in the corner.
“Captain’s compliments and we got a very important passenger right next. She really wants me to impress on you be careful.”
r /> He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I understand.” He was used to the idea foreigners were afraid of him. Every foreigner he had met was.
“Kind of short on space,” Tiar said. “We’d like to sort of move you. Except it’s not quite as comfortable. But there’s facilities.”
“All right,” he said, wanting to be accommodating. Really it didn’t matter that much. It would be nice to have another set of walls to look at.
“It’s kind of—minimal,” Tiar said.
“That’s fine.—There’s nothing to do here. There’s nothing to look at. I’d really like some books or something.”
“We can get you books,” Tiar promised. “I—don’t suppose you have to pack.”
“This is it. Except the kit.”
“The clothes came. We have those. We just haven’t had time—”
“That’s all right.” Anything was all right if it made them happy. And if it proved to the captain that he was obliging and knew how to take orders.
“You want to come with me? We’re between coats. I can set you up.”
“Sure,” he said, and went and got the kit she had given him. When he reached the corridor, Tiar had shed the contamination gear, and there was still a great banging and clattering coming from the closed door of the cabin next door.
“Stsho passenger,” Tiar said. “Important deal. Got to change the color, change the sleeping arrangements …”
It must be an important passenger, for sure. He followed Tiar past that area, and into the main downside corridor, and to a door there, which Tiar opened.
He truthfully had expected more of a cabin. At least a cot. It did have more to look at. And a blast cushion, with a swing track against the after wall. Otherwise it was a kind of a—laundry, he supposed. Or bath. There were facilities. That was about all. Bare conduits. Water-pipes. Whatever.
“Gods,” Tiar said, and pulled his shoulder down. “Watch your head.”
“It’s all right.” He was used to being tall, on ships built for women.