Chanur's Venture

  The pale eyes flickered.

  "Fix soon," she said. Fear looked back at her, habitual and patient. She beckoned him and he left the door and walked all the way inside. Mobile blue eyes flicked this way and that, scanning monitors for what they could read, quick and furtive move. They centered on her again.

  "Got talk." He had gotten a little hani. She grew accustomed to his slurring speech. The translator spat useless static. "Got talk, please got talk."

  "Maybe it's time we do." A great uneasiness came over her, things out of joint. Males and tempers and their old friend Tully, whose alien face had that strange, distracted movement of the eyes. Fear of them as well as well as kif? And suspicious reprobate that she was: Lies, Tully? Or plain self-interest from the start?

  "Sure," she said. She stank, reeked; she thought instinctively of baths, of males and quarrels and a thousand lunatic distracted things like impacts at this speed, and the vane that showed intact in the image on Tirun's screens 112

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  (but it was not, inside, and that could be bad news indeed.) Urtur. Docking with, likely, kif about. And not a hope of help. Urtur had no muscle adequate to fend off anything. Poor human fool, we could lose us all here, don't you know? They'd move in, take what they liked, you foremost—

  "Come on," she said to the crew at large, who were all tremble-handed at their work. "Break it off. We eat, get some sleep." She caught Tully by the arm. "You come and tell me, huh?"

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  Chapter 6

  The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds— abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So The Pride exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge.

  Meanwhile—

  Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when na Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym— Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way— misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior). There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays.

  There was silence at table, mostly— a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone. A little "have this," and "try that," from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully's ribs.

  No harrying, no pressure— take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key... the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had— finally— come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go.

  Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little.

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  Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth.

  "Your House send you?" Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully's way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat.

  Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. "Send?" the translator queried, flat-voiced... o gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. "Send me?"

  "I don't know that they have Houses," Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym tried the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew's and hers. "Don't use big words. Translator can't handle them."

  "House isn't a big word."

  "Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don't know how it comes out the other side."

  "Say again," Tully said.

  "I asked who sent you."

  "## send me."

  "See?" said Pyanfar. "You get a word it won't make sense."

  "Name home," Tully said. " Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me."

  "He does talk."

  "So," Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. " Sun, is it?"

  "Where are we?" Tully asked. "Ur-tur?"

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  "Urtur. Yes."

  He drew a great breath. "Go Maing Tol."

  "Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?"

  "Know." He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. "Meetpoint— Urtur— Kshshti— Maing Tol."

  "Huh." He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them.

  "Goldtooth teach?"

  " Mahe name Ino. Ship name Ijir. "

  "Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How'd you find Goldtooth?"

  He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. "Go Goldtooth, yes."

  "You with him long?"

  "#?"

  "Were you long time in Goldtooth's ship?"

  Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce.

  "Where did you meet Goldtooth?"

  "Ino find him."

  It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don't pick a fight, no trouble while Khym's in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves.

  "You come how long ago?" Geran asked.

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  "Don't know," he said, glancing that way. "Long time."

  "Days?"

  "Lot days."

  He could be more precise. He knew the translator's limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence.

  Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so.

  There was not a move at table. Only Tully.

  Their old friend.

  She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.

  His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.

  "Where find?" he asked. "Where find, Pyanfar?"

  "Whose?" She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead.

  " Mahe got?" he asked. "Goldtooth?"

  "Kif gave it to me," she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. "Friend of yours, Tully?"

  "What say this kif?"

  "Said— said it was a message for our cargo."

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  The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right. For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully's eyes and ran down into his beard.

  "Friend, huh?" She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. "Want to get that vane fixed?"

  "Wh
ere get? " Tully asked before anyone could move.

  "Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?"

  His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on. It was too small. He forced it. "Need #," he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now.

  "This kif," she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh.

  "This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you'd come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked. What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?"

  The blue eyes burned. "Friend," he said. "Belong friend stay Ijir. "

  She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. "So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. Where? "

  "Kif got. Kif got # Ijir. "

  "Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you've told us. What do they know, Tully? What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?"

  "They ask help."

  "How much help? Tully— what are you doing here?"

  "Kif. Kif. "

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  "What's going on?" Khym asked from her left. "What's he talking about—kif?"

  "Later," she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym's nostrils.

  "Tully. Tell me what's in that paper. You tell me, hear."

  "You got take to Maing Tol."

  "Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought."

  He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated. "Need you," he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static. "Friend, Pyanfar."

  " I ask him," Khym rumbled.

  "No," she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. "Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are."

  "Ask hani come fight ship take human."

  "Make sense."

  "Want make trade hani- mahe."

  "Truth?"

  "Truth."

  The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut.

  Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the han direct. Trade— was the lure, and there was something in the trees.

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  She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral.

  Haral's ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous.

  But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions.

  Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed.

  "Vane," she said with ulterior motives. "Go."

  "Aye." Haral moved, shoved Chur's shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up.

  "Get the galley cleared," Pyanfar said. "Tully. You just became juniormost. Help Hilfy with the galley. Khym— you fetch and carry on the bridge. Whoever needs it."

  "I want to talk to you," Khym said, unbudged.

  "No time to talk." She turned her head and met his scowl with her own as he stayed put on the bench, still blocking her way out. "Look, Khym, we've got a vane in partial failure. One of us may have to take a walk after it yet. You got a question that tops it?"

  His ears went down in dismay.

  "Out," she said.

  "We could go to Kura, couldn't we?"

  "No. We can't. Can't shift course again this side of Urtur— we're in the dust; we've got a vane down.... The last course change gods-rotted near killed us, you understand that? I haven't got time to discuss it." She shoved and he moved. She got up and looked back at him, at Hilfy and Tully who were gathering dishes at furious speed. But Khym lingered, a towering 120

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  hurt. She gathered up her patience, took him by the arm, walked him to the privacy of the bridgeward corridor. "Look, Khym— we've got troubles."

  "Somehow," he said, "I figured that."

  "Kshshti's mahen-held," she said. "Barely. If the kif have Kita watched they've likely got something in at Kshshti. But there's help there or the mahendo'sat wouldn't send us that direction."

  "You trust what they say?"

  She looked behind him, where one stark-pale human hastened to hand dishes off the table and close doors.

  "I don't know," she said. "Go."

  "You don't put me off, Py."

  She gave him one long burning look.

  "Chanur property," he said. "I do forget."

  "What do you want, Khym? I'll tell you what I want. I want that gods-rotted vane fixed. I want us out of here. Are you helping?"

  He drew a long, long breath and cast a look over his shoulder in Tully's direction. "Pet?"

  "Shut it up. Right there."

  The ears that had half-lifted sank again. "All right. That was low. But for the gods' sake, Py, what have you got yourself into? You can't make deals outside the han. They'll have your hide. That Ehrran ship—"

  "Noticed that, did you?"

  "Gods, Py!"

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  "Hush."

  He coughed. Caught his breath. "Chanur property. Right."

  "Did you expect different?" She jabbed him hard. It took a lot to get through a male's skin when he had that look in his eyes. "Are they right?"

  "Who's right?"

  "The stsho in that bar."

  His nostrils dilated, closed, dilated, and his nose went pale round the edges. "I don't see what that has to do with it."

  "Hilfy back there. You hear a question out of her?"

  He looked over his shoulder, where Hilfy was closing cabinet latches, click, slam, click, one after the other; and Tully was folding the table up.

  He looked round again and his ears were flat.

  "Go help Tirun," she said.

  "I asked a question."

  "No. You questioned, and by the gods that's different. You want Haral's rights, you by the gods earn them."

  He brushed past her and stalked off bridgeward. And stopped, about half a dozen paces on— faced her, to her relief and her dismay. At least he had not retreated to his cabin. And gods, not more argument.

  He stood there. Cold, deliberate protocol.

  "Help Tirun and Haral," she said. "The rest of us haven't got a deathwish.

  That vane's got to be fixed."

  That was the way, mention the word. Dead, dead. Death. Hit him between the ears with it. Her stomach churned.

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  "Fine," he said, bowed, turned and walked off, a massive shadow against the lights of the bridge beyond.

  She spun on her own heel and walked back into the galley proper, to Tully and Hilfy, who stood idle. "Out," she said to Hilfy, and Hilfy scrambled past her. Footsteps pelted bridgeward.

  Tully stood trapped against the cabinets, leaned there with elbows on the counter behind him.

  "All right," she said, "Tully, I want the truth."

  "Maing Tol."

  "I scare you, huh? Maing Tol, Maing Tol. Listen to me. You don't play stupid. You gods-rotted well understand me. You wanted to talk. You wouldn't give me peace of it. So talk. And keep talking."

  Maybe the translator garbled that. He had that look.

  "Talk, Tully. You want to be friends, by the gods you deal straight with me."

  "I sit," he said, and ebbed down onto the mess table bench as if his legs would no longer hold him.

  "Truth." She came closer in his silence, leaned both hands on the table and glared into his face. " Now, hear?"

  H
e flinched. He smelled of fear and human sweat, like when she had held him, when his heart had beat so hard she could feel it like hammer-strokes.

  She reached out pitilessly and pinned his arm with claws out. "You risk my crew, Tully. You risk Chanur. By the gods you don't lie to me. Where you come from, huh?"

  "Friend," he said.

  "You want I rattle your brain?"

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  He drew several rapid breaths. "Maing Tol. Go Maing Tol."

  She stared, at arm's length from his face, stared a good, long while. "You come find me. Need, you say. Need what? You talk, now you talk, Tully.

  Need what? Number one fool? Where you been, Tully?"

  "Human space. Want come. Want, Pyanfar."

  "So you come to the mahendo'sat."

  " Mahe come human space."

  "Goldtooth?"

  "Name Ino. Ijir. "

  She drew a long, long breath. "Doublecrossing bastard." Meaning Goldtooth, mahen trade and a towering great lie.

  "Say again." Blue eyes looked at her with vast worry.

  She lifted her hand from his arm and patted his face ever so gently, claws pulled. "Keep talking. More. How did this Ijir come into the business, huh? Was it trading in human space?"

  "Human ship—" He made diagrams on the tabletop. "Human. Kif. Mahe.

  Not good go so— kif. Three human ship. Gone. Not see. Not come home.

  Try go stsho. Mahe come-go." He drew route-pictures, mahen traders reaching human space. " Ijir come. Say want bring human come talk mahe.

  Want I come. I, Tully." His mouth twisted in a strange expression. "I small, Pyanfar. Human lot mad. They same send me. I small. Mahe think me big. Want. Take. Human think me make trouble. Shut up, Tully. What you know?" Another intersecting line as Ijir moved out of human space toward the Compact. "Goldtooth come. Lot talk, Ino, Goldtooth.

  Goldtooth want talk me, not talk lot other human, other human lot mad."