“What are you talking about, for godssakes?”
“You no damn fool. You see. You see clear. Sikkukkut get power by create little hakkikt and take what they got. Let them do work. He lot smart kif. Till he make you hakkikt and try take what you got. You got the Person-thing. He think he got more, he damn lot mistake. We don’t mistake. This kif here don’t mistake. You got whole thing in you hands. Me, I recognize. Same like this kif. Long time.”
“No. My gods, no!” She waved her hand, cast a look at the hani behind her, at her crew and back again.
“War, friend. What I tell you happen? Not war like ground war. War like new kind thing. Like crazy thing.”
“Then send your gods-be human friends home! Out! Turn those ships around, restore the balance, for godssake!”
“How you guarantee Anuurn be safe, a? How you heal stsho? How you ’splain these human we got change mind? How you deal with knnn, a?”
A sense of panic closed in on her. Not alone because it was all logical, and the pieces were there. She looked around again at the hani lines, at her own people, at some faces gone hard and ears gone flat. At others, spacers, who just looked worried. Like her crew.
Like Goldtooth.
And not a sound from the kif.
The politicians would hang her, eventually, when all the furor died down. It was the last shred of Chanur’s reputation they asked for.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, it’s clear, isn’t it? We just tell these humans they have to leave. That you consulted with some high Personage and there’s a lot of trouble and they just have to turn those ships around and get back the other side of that border. Which we can do, can’t we? It just might give Skkukuk here a good chance to go home in style, number one fine—a whole shift in policy, a new mekt-hakkikt, a new directive. I’m not real interested in going into kifish space, Skkukuk my friend: I’m just real pleased for you to be hakkikt over all the kif you can get your hands on. And all you have to do is hold that border tight once the humans cross it outbound.”
“Kkkt.” Skkukuk drew in a hissing breath. “Mekt-hakkikt, you justify my faith in you.”
“You won’t cross into mahen territory.”
“They won’t cross into ours.”
“They won’t.” Looking at Jik. And Goldtooth. Goldtooth lowered his small ears and bowed his head slowly, with reluctance.
“I hear,” he said quietly. And made the same gesture to Jik, and to the Personage as he turned away.
Something’s wrong with him. Something mahen and crazy, and something I don’t know: I’ve done something to him. I’ve beaten him.
Two plans. Two treaties. The mahendo’sat rise and fall on their successes; and they disown the failures.
“If I’ve got to run this business for a while,” she said to Jik, “I want him. What would he think about it?”
Jik’s eyes flickered and something lightened there. “He tell you you got damn fine fellow.”
“This Personage of yours—” She tilted a careful ear toward the robed mahe with the Voice. “Iji?”
“Same. I talk for him. He don’t got good pidgin. Same his Voice. He also Personage, see you got same Person-thing, lot strong. He say—God make Personage. He—” Jik gave a helpless gesture. “He say God make lot peculiar experiment.”
She laid her ears back, trying to put that on one side or the other. “Tell him—gods, just tell him I’ll do what I have to. First thing—” She put her hands in the waist of her trousers. They were icy; her feet were numb from the decking. And it was still raw fear. “Tully.”
“Captain?”
The humans were first. She kept her shoulder to the han representatives and to the Llun; and felt a dull shock to find Skkukuk’s armed presence a positive comfort on her left, where it regarded breaking that news.
“What we do, we talk a little trade, talk up all the trouble they got to watch out for. I figure maybe they’ve seen enough to worry about. Maybe we just tell them it gets worse up ahead.”
* * *
“They go,” Tully said finally, coming out of that small fluorescent-lit room on Gaohn dockside, where mahendo’sat and kif and humans and hani argued. Armed. Every one of them, since the kif were worse without their weapons at hand than with. And they went at it in shifts, till Tully came out in a waft of that godsawful multispecies stale air, and leaned against the doorframe. “They go.” He looked drowned. Sweat stuck his hair to his forehead and his eyes looked bruised. After three days at this back-and-forth, herself out of the room for clean air and a new grip on her temper, agreement was like the floor going away.
“Go? Leave? They say yes?”
Gods, who threatened them? What happened? What went wrong? Belligerence was not the strategy she chose. Discouragement was. She had hammered this home with Skkukuk until the deviousness and the advantage of the tactic slowly blossomed in his narrow kifish skull, and his red-rimmed eyes showed a distinctive interest, which, gods help them all, might turn up as something new in kifish strategy.
“They say yes,” Tully said, and made a ship-going motion with his flat hand. “Go way home. Kif and mahendo’sat go with. First mahendo’sat, then kif, with few hani. You got find hani ship go. Make passage ’long kif territory.”
“That bastard.” Meaning Skkukuk, who had ulterior motives in running a parade of exiting humans right through kifish territory. It was also the shortest route. And Tully just hung there against the wall blinking in his own sweat and smelling godsawful no matter how much perfume he dosed himself with. He picked it up off the others. They all did. But overheated human still had its own distinctive aroma.
“Good?” he asked.
“Gods.” She drew a deep breath and took him by the shoulder on her way to the door. He had to go back in. They still needed him. The mechanical translators were a disaster. And he looked all but out on his feet. “Yes. Good. Thank gods. Can you go a little longer? Another hour?”
“I do.” Hoarse and desperate-sounding.
“Tully. You can go with them. You understand. Go home.”
He blinked at her. Shook his head. He had that gesture back. “Here. The Pride.”
“Tully. You don’t understand. We got trouble. We’re all right now. After this—I can’t say. I don’t know that Chanur won’t be arrested. Or worse than that. I have enemies, Tully. Lot of enemies. And if something happens to me and Chanur you’d be alone. Bad mess. You understand that? I can’t say you’ll be safe. I can’t even say that for myself or the crew.”
He did not understand. The words, maybe. But not the way the han paid off people like Ayhar, like Tahar, who was still not in a mood to come in. Gods knew what they reserved for Chanur.
“I friend.”
“Friend. Gods. They owe you plenty, Tully. But you got to get out of here with somebody.”
His mobile eyes shifted toward the door, the same as a hani slanting an ear. They. “Not good I go with.”
It made sense then. Too much. “They got the han’s way of saying thanks, huh? Same you, same me with the hani. Gods-rotted mess, Tully.”
He just looked at her.
And they went in one after the other. To get down to charts and precise routes.
Across the table from a tired, surly lot of humans.
Tully talked again, from his seat halfway down the table. In a quiet, colorless tone.
What came back sounded heated. But not when Tully rendered it. Simply: “They go. Want us come home with.”
“No,” the Llun said, before the mahen Personage got a word in. Skkukuk just sat and clicked to himself.
“This isn’t a good time,” Pyanfar said. Being an old trader. Tully rendered that in some fashion. “Knnn out there.” And he rendered that, which got surlier frowns.
“Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said, lifting his jaw, which they probably failed to understand.
Tully said something. It was probable that Tully did understand.
They were disposed to go to their ships after that.
/> * * *
“We’ve got it,” she said to the Llun, after, herself and Tully outside in the corridor again with the Llun guard, when it was all adjourning. They were somewhat kin, she and the Llun senior. They kept it remote: the Immunes cherished their neutrality.
“We expect,” the Llun said, “that the mahendo’sat may come up with some reparations.”
Pyanfar’s ears went down. Her jaw dropped. “My gods, we just got the kif and the mahendo’sat settled—”
“You have a peculiar position.”
She went on staring at the Llun.
“Unique influence,” the Llun said.
Trading instincts took over. In a blinding flash. My gods. They need something, don’t they?
Gods save us. The mahendo’sat.
I can get The Pride running again. Maybe get clear of this port. Bluff them out of arresting us.
“It occurs to the han and the Immunes collectively,” the Llun said, “that if you can do this, you can do other things. You have an extreme influence with the mahendo’sat.”
My gods, my gods, they don’t see yet! The mahendo’sat, the mahendo’sat are all they can see. The stsho and the mahendo’sat. Their precious trading interests. She walked away, stared off down the corridor where her own multispecies escort waited, rattling with weapons. Like the knnn and the tc’a out there, which Jik and Goldtooth swore was a tolerably friendly presence. And a pirate ship which was lying very quiet, but assuredly listening. She knew Tahar, that she would go on listening till she knew it was time to run for it. I’m dangerous. I’m a plague and a danger to them. But they’re mistaken what the danger is.
“Chanur. The han is offering you your land back.”
She turned around, blinked and stared at the Immune. “You mean my son is giving it up. Surrendering the land? Or the han is just confiscating it?”
“They’ll work something out. They’re disposed to work something out.”
“Gods-be greedy eggsucking bastards! What are they asking? What are they buying? Who in a mahen hell do they think they’re trading with?”
“I don’t think they know either. I don’t think they imagine. I do. The spacer clans do. They’re saying they’ll fight if the han lays a hand on you. They know what it would mean with the kif and the mahendo’sat. I know.”
“They’re crazy!”
“You’re in a position. What will happen if you aren’t? Tell me that.”
Skkukuk being what Sikkukkut wanted to be. Jik discredited. Shakeups in the mahen government. More craziness.
It was not what she wanted to think of. It lay there day and night in her gut like something indigestible.
So did the solution.
“So the han just wants me to come down there and play politics and pay the bar tab, huh? Cozy up with the Naur.”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t say the Naur won’t try.” The Llun looked as if she had something sour in her mouth. “I don’t say you’ll have to listen to them. You’ve got friends. That’s what I’m trying to say. Unofficially.”
“Because I won in there.”
“I’ll be honest. Some clans would have stood by you. The Llun couldn’t have. We have other considerations. I’m not talking to a political novice. I’m not one either.”
“Meaning you know what I could do.”
“You’re hani. You came back here. You came back here like Ayhar did. Like all the rest. That’s some assurance what you’ll do.”
“The land’s the rest, is it?”
“Some accommodation can be worked out.”
Her heart hurt. Acutely. It took several breaths to dispel enough of the pain to talk. “I’m too honest, Llun. I’m too gods-be honest to take that deal. I’m too honest to do that to the han, and I mean us, not what sits on its broad backside down in that marble mausoleum and tries to play politics in a universe it doesn’t by the gods understand. I’m the best education they’re ever likely to get. You’re right. You and your guards don’t lay a hand on me or mine. You know what it would set off.”
The Llun’s ears had gone flat. “Is that a threat? Is that what I take it for?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not Ehrran. Or Naur. I don’t keep notebooks. And I’m going to be a lousy houseguest. You understand that? I can’t drag that kind of politics into the han. I can’t sit in the han and handle the kif. Or the mahendo’sat. Or the stsho. That isn’t what the kif and the mahendo’sat created. I don’t have any kin anymore. I can’t have. I can’t pay those kinds of debts. Come on, Tully.”
She walked past the Llun, away from her and down the corridor without a backward look. She hurt inside. There were only foreigners waiting for her. And the crew she had to face. And explain to.
“Wrong?” Tully asked.
“No.” She felt better, having said that. Having decided it. She laid a hand on his shoulder as they walked. “Friend,” she said, and discovered that felt better too.
“Pyanfar.” He stopped, faced her, pulling something from his hand and, taking hers palm up, pressed that something into it. She opened her fingers. It was the little gold ring. The one from lost Ijir. From some other friend of his. “You take.” He reached out and touched the side of her ear. “So.”
It was the most precious thing he owned, the only thing he really owned, the only link he had with his dead. “My gods, Tully—”
“Take.”
She clenched her hand on it. He seemed pleased at that, even relieved, as if he had let something go that had been too heavy to carry.
“You want to stay or go? Tully?”
“Stay. With The Pride. With you. With crew.”
“It’s not the same! It won’t be the same! Gods rot it, Tully, I can’t make you understand what you’re walking into. The crew may leave. Hilfy will have to. I don’t know where we’ll be. I don’t know how long this will last before it gets worse.”
“Need me.”
She opened her mouth and shut it. Of all the crew she reckoned might be steadiest, she had never even reckoned him. Like the ring, it was too profound a gift.
“Come on,” she said.
* * *
“We’re doing all right,” she said, on a full stomach, in the crowded galley—the Tauran had gone, with Vrossaru, aboard Mahijiru, trailing the humans out. There was a matter of getting back to Meetpoint and picking up their ships and cargoes. Ayhar’s Prosperity had a guaranteed run in that direction too, with a full hold, which Meetpoint might direly need. And, good or bad news, one never knew, the knnn had disappeared with the tc’a, off on a vector which ought to get it lost in limbo, if it were not a knnn, and capable of making jumps that other ships could not. Toward stsho space, it looked like. At best guess.
“We got word from Tahar,” Haral said. “They got the message.”
“What’d they say about it?”
“Said thanks. They said they’ll believe in a han amnesty when they get it engraved, but they say they plan to shadow us awhile. Till the word gets around.”
“Huh.” It was prudent. Dur Tahar was that. She let go a small sigh. “We got some business at Meetpoint too, soon as they get our tail put back together.” She took a sip of gfi. There was a vacancy at table. Hilfy was off doing Chanur business. Which was the way it had to be. Married, within the year: that was what Hilfy had to do, find herself some young man strong enough to take her cousin Kara and pitch him clear back to Mahn territory.
In that choice she had burned to give advice; but what was between her and Hilfy had gotten too remote for that, too businesslike. It was her own hardheaded, closemouthed pride. She saw it like a mirror. Hilfy knew everything; more than Hilfy might ever know when she was a hundred.
Then: “Hey,” Hilfy had said to her when she left, not captain-crew formal, but a level, adult look eye-to-eye. “I’m not going hunting round in Hermitage. I’m just putting the word out I’m looking. Me. Heir to Chanur. And the winner gets a shuttle ticket up to Gaohn. I don’t care if he’s handsome. But he??
?s by the gods going to have to have the nerve to come up here and meet my father.”
“Huh,” she had said to that. Since she had resolved to disentangle herself from clan business as long as the Personage business persisted. She did not, likewise, offer advice to Rhean or Anfy or any of the others.
“I’m telling you,” she said now, to the crew, to her cousins, her husband, and a human, “you don’t have to go out on this one. You want some ground time, gods know you’ve got it coming.” With a look under her brows at Chur, who had it coming doubly. “Or station. Or discharge. To Fortune; to Light. Anywhere. I’m the gods-be Personage of Anuurn, I can get you any post you want, it ought to let me do some things I want to do.”
Long silence. “No,” Haral said. And: “No,” like an echo from Tirun.
“World’s not safe,” Chur said, and shrugged uncomfortably. “But I met this Llun fellow. Immune. Quiet. Real quiet.”
“You want your discharge. Or just some leave time?”
Chur sighed, a heave of her shoulders. “Gods, I want till we get the tail fixed, that’s all.”
Geran had looked worried. Terrified for a moment. The shadow passed.
Khym looked Chur’s way. And back to her, with a quiet and considerate expression. Sometimes the thoughts went through his eyes so plain she could read them. After all these years.
Epilogue
The docks reeked of foreignness, of metal and oil and machinery, and they echoed with announcements and the snarls of monstrous machines; it was a frightening place for a boy from a land of blue sky and golden grass. Hallan heard the PA thundering advisements the cavernous gray spaces swallowed and gave back garbled in echo. He looked about him and saw groups of black-trousered Immunes moving down the docks in a cordon across the whole dockside: what little he did catch from the PA was alarming, snatches of advisories to clear some area, but he had no idea what section four green was or why the lights were flashing blue down there and red where he was.