Gods rot the kif.
And then she thought of the uruus’ solemn long face, so benignly stupid, and of the deadly pride of the great hakkikt of the kif, and her nose wrinkled in laughter which had nothing to do with humor.
Supper was on, a delicious aroma from the galley topside, Hilfy and Geran having stirred about for some time in that quarter and in the larger facilities below. It was a real meal this time, one of the delightsome concoctions Geran was skilled at, the penultimate contribution of the uruus to their comfort, prepared with all the care they lavished on food on more ordinary voyages, when food was an obsession, a precious variance in routine, an art they practiced to delight their occasional passengers and to amaze themselves.
Now dinner came with as great a welcome, aromatic courage wafting the airflow from that corridor, and Pyanfar set her com links to the bridge and did what wanted doing there to secure the place, at the last with her hands all but trembling from hunger, and with an aching great hollow in the middle of her. There had been nothing dire so far, only nuisance coming over com, no indication of trouble more than they already had; and the suited uruus waited in the lock, melting and still… she checked the airlock vid… on its somewhat altered feet against the outer hatch. She cut that image and checked the galley/commonroom link again, picked up Hilfy’s voice and shunted the flow the other way, vowed a great curse on any kif who might interrupt such an hour as they had earned. But the link was there if needed and the unit in the commonroom would carry any business it had to. She got the word from Geran and passed it over allship, finally left the bridge and walked on round to dinner, clean again and full of anticipation.
She grinned inside and out at the sight, the table lengthened so that it hardly gave them room to edge around it, the center spread with fantastical culinary artistry, platters of meat, by the gods, no stale freeze-dried chips and jerky and suchlike; gravies and sauces in which tidbits floated, garnished with herbs and crackling bits of fat. The sterile white commonroom was transformed, and Hilfy and Geran hastened about to lay cushions with bright patterns, Chanur heraldry, red and gold and blue.
“Wondrous,” Pyanfar pronounced it, inhaling. Places for seven. She heard the lift and looked toward the corridor. In short order came Haral and Chur with Tully in tow, and Tirun limped along behind them, using her pipe-cane. “Sit, sit,” Pyanfar bade them and Tully, and they sorted themselves and edged along as they had to in the narrow confines, took then-places shoulder to shoulder. Pyanfar held the endmost seat bridgeward, Haral the endmost galleyward, and Tirun and Chur sandwiched Tully between them, while Hilfy and Geran took the other side. It presented a bizarre sight, this whitegold mane between two ruddy gold ones, hairless shoulders next to redbrown coated ones, and Tully hunching slightly to try to keep his gangling limbs out of his seatmates’ way… Pyanfar chuckled in good humor and made the health wish, which got the response of the others and startled Tully by its loudness. Then she poured gfi from her own flask by her cup; the whole company reached for theirs and did the same, Tully imitating them belatedly, and for a moment there was nothing but the clatter of knives and cups and plates as Geran’s and Hilfy’s monuments underwent swift demolition. Tully took snatches of this and that as the dishes rotated past him on the table’s rotating center, small helpings at first, as if he were not sure what he had a right to, and larger ones as he darted furtive glances at what others took, and ladled on sauces and laid by small puddles of this and that in the evident case it might not come round a second time. No questions from him.
“Uruus,” Chur said wickedly, crooking a claw onto his arm to catch his attention, gestured at the steaks. “Same thing, this, the animal we give the kif.”
Tully looked momentarily uncertain, poked at the steak with his knife and looked up again at Chur’s grin. “Same, this?”
“Same,” Chur confirmed. Tully took on an odd look, then started eating, laughed to himself after a moment in a crazed fashion, shoulders bowed and attention turned wholly to the food, darting only occasional glances to their hands, trying to handle the utensils hani-style.
“Good?” Pyanfar broke the general silence. Tully looked up at once, darted looks at them in general, helpless to know who had spoken. The translator speaking into his ear had no personality.
“I, Pyanfar. All right, Tully? This food’s all right for you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m hungry.” Hungry, the translator said into her ear, dispassionately; but the look on his face for a moment put a great deal more into it. The bruises showed starkly clear in the commonroom’s white light; the angularity of bones reached the surface on his shoulders and about his ribs.
“Says he’s cold most of the time,” Chur said. “He doesn’t have our natural covering, after all. I tried a jacket on him, but he’s too big. He still wants it, asks to cut it. Maybe better to start with something of Haral’s in the first place.”
“Still too small for those arms,” Haral judged. “But I’ll see what I can find.”
“Cold,” Tully said, in his limited understanding of the discussion.
“We’re trying, Tully,” Chur said. “I ask Haral, understand. Maybe find you something.”
Tully nodded. “#” he said forlornly, and then with a bright expression and a gesture at the meal: “Good. Good.”
“Not complaining, are you?” Pyanfar commented. “Don’t — Gods.”
The com broke in, a knnn-song, and Tully jumped. Everyone looked up reflexively toward the speaker, and Pyanfar drew a deep breath when knnn was all it turned out to be. Tully alone kept staring that way.
“That’s nothing,” Pyanfar said. “Knnn again. It’ll shut up in a moment.” She looked soberly at the others, now that business was on her mind. “Got ourselves a course laid, in case. It’s in the comp when we need it. And we will. Got ourselves a decoy rigged too, Chur and Tully and I — a gift for the kif that’s going to cost them critical speed if they want to pick it up; got it fixed so it’ll look good to their sensors.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“All right to talk?” Hilfy asked.
Pyanfar nodded without comment.
“Where?” Hilfy asked. “If we’re running — where? Meet-point again?”
“No. I considered that, to be sure, throwing the kif off by that. But figuring it and refiguring — we came close enough not making it when we came in with all Urtur’s mass to fix on; and there’s not a prayer of doing it in reverse with only Meetpoint’s little mass to bring us up. I’ve worked possible courses over and over again, and there’s nothing for it — twojump, to Kirdu. It’s a big station; and there’s help possible there.”
“The kif,” said Geran, “will have it figured too. They’ll intercept us at Kita.”
“So we string the jumps,” Pyanfar said, taking a sip of gfi. “No other way, Geran, absolutely no other.”
“Gods,” Chur muttered undiplomatically. Hilfy’s expression was troubled, quick darts of the eyes toward the others, who were more experienced. Tully had stopped eating again and looked up too, catching something of the conversation.
“Consecutive jump,” Pyanfar said to Hilfy. “No delay for recovery time, no velocity dump in the interval and gods know, a hazard where we’re going: we’re bound to boost some of this debris through with us. But the risk is still better than sitting here while the kif population increases. There’s one jump point we have to make: Kita. Past Kita Point, the kif have to take three guesses where we went — Kura, Kirdu, Maing Tol. They might guess right after all, but they still might disperse some ships to cover other possibilities.”
“We’re going home,” Hilfy surmised.
“Who said going home? We’re going to sort this out, that’s what. We’re going to shake a few of them. Get ourselves a place where we can find some allies. That’s what we’re doing.”
“Then the Faha — we could warn them.”
“What, spill where we’re bound? They’ll figure too… the best hope’s Kirdu
. They’ll likely go there.”
“We could warn them. Here. Give them a chance to get out.”
“They can take care of themselves.”
“After we brought the trouble here—”
“My decision,” Pyanfar said.
“I’m not saying that; I’m saying—”
“We can’t help them by springing in their direction. Or how do you plan to get word to them? We’ll make it worse for them, we can only make it worse. You hear me?”
“I hear.” The ears went back, pricked up with a little effort. There was a silence at table, except for the knnn, who wailed on alone, rapt in whatever impulse moved knnn to sing.
And stopped. “Gods,” Haral muttered irritably, shot a worried look the length of the table. Pyanfar returned it, past Hilfy, past the Outsider.
“Pyanfar.” Tully spoke, sat holding his cup as if he had forgotten it, something obviously welling up in him which wanted saying, with a look close to panic. “I talk?” he asked. And when Pyanfar nodded: “What move make this ship?”
“Going closer to home territory, to hani space. We’re going where kif won’t follow us so easily, and where there’s too much hani and mahendo’sat traffic to make it easy for them to move against us. Better place, you understand. Safer.”
He set down the cup, made a vague gesture of a flat nailed long-fingered hand. “Two jump.”
“Yes.”
“#. Need #, captain. #.”
He was sorely, urgently upset. Pyanfar drew in a breath, made a calming gesture. “Again, Tully. Say again. New way.”
“Sleep. Need sleep in jump.”
“Ah. Like the stsho. They have to, yes. I understand; you’ll have your drugs, then, make you sleep, never fear.”
He had started shaking. Of a sudden moisture broke from his eyes. He bowed his head and wiped at it, and was quiet for the moment. Everyone was, recognizing a profound distress. Perhaps he realized: he stirred in the silence and clumsily picked up his knife and jabbed at a bit of meat in his plate, carried it to his mouth and chewed, all without looking up.
“You need drugs to sleep,” Pyanfar said, “and the kif took you through jump without them. That’s what they did, was it?”
He looked up at her.
“Were you alone when you started, Tully? Were there others with you?”
“Dead,” he said around the mouthful, and swallowed it with difficulty. “Dead.”
“You know for sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Did you talk to the kif? Did you tell them what they asked you?”
A shake of his head.
“No?”
“No,” Tully said, looked down again and up under his pale brows. “We give wrong # to their translator.”
“What, the wrong words?”
He still had the knife in his hand. It stayed there with its next morsel, the food forgotten.
“He fouled their translator,” Tirun exclaimed in delight. “Gods!”
“And not ours?” Pyanfar observed.
Tully’s eyes sought toward her.
“I thought you ran that board too quickly,” Pyanfar said. “Clever Outsider. We, you said. Then there were more of you in the kif s hands at the start.”
“The kif take four of us. They take us through jump with no medicine, awake, you understand; they give us no good food, not much water, make us work this translator keyboard same you have. We know what they want from us. We make slow work, make we don’t understand the keyboard, don’t understand the symbols, work all slow. They stand small time. They hit us, bad, push us, bad — make us work this machine, make quick. We work this machine all wrong, make many wrong words, this word for that word, long, long tape — some right, most wrong. One day, two, three — all wrong.” His face contorted. “They work the tape and we make mistake more. They understand what we do, they take one of us, kill her. Hit us all, much. They give us again same work, make a tape they want. We make number two tape wrong, different mistake. The kif kill second one my friends. I — man name Dick James — we two on the ship come to station. They make us know this Akukkakk; he come aboard ship see us. He—” Again a contortion of the face, a gesture. “He — take my friend arm, break it, break many time two arms, leg — I make fight him, do no good; he hit me — walk outside. And my friend — he ask — I kill him, you understand. I do it; I kill my friend, # kif no more hurt him.”
The silence about the table was mortal. Pyanfar cleared her throat. Others’ ears were back, eyes dilated.
“They come,” Tully went on quietly. “Find my friend dead. They # angry, hit me, bring me out toward this second ship. Outside. Docks. I run. Run — long time. I come to your ship.” He ducked his head, looked up again with a wan, mahendo’sat smile. “I make the keyboard right for you.”
“That kif wants killing,” Haral said.
“Tully,” Pyanfar said. “I understand why you’re careful about questions about where you come from. But I’ll lay odds your space is near the kif — you just listen to me. I think your ship got among kif, and now they know there’s a spacefaring species near their territories, either one they can take from — or one they’re desperately afraid is a danger to them. I don’t know which you are. But that’s what the kif wanted with you, I’m betting — to know more about you. And you know that. And you’re reluctant to talk to us either.”
Tully sat unmoving for a moment. “My species is human.” She caught the word from his own speech.
“Human.”
“Yes, they try ask me. I don’t say; make don’t understand.”
“Your ship — had no weapons. You don’t carry them?”
No answer,
“You didn’t know there was danger?”
“Don’t know this space, no. Jump long. Two jump. # we hear transmission.”
“Kif?”
He shook his head, his manner of no. “I hear—” He pointed to the com, which remained silent. “That. Make that sound.”
“Knnn, for the gods’ sake.”
He touched his ear. “Say again. Don’t understand.”
“Knnn. A name. A species. Methane breather. You were in knnn territory. Worse and worse news, my friend. Knnn space is between stsho and kif.”
“Captain,” said Geran, “I’d lay bets with a chi the stsho had a finger in this too. Their station, after all… where the kif felt free to move him about the dock in public… I daresay the kif didn’t get any questions at all from the stsho.”
Pyanfar nodded thoughtfully, recalling the stsho official, the change in that office or that officer. A smiling welcome, impassive moonstone eyes and delicate lavender brows. A certain cold went up her back. “Stsho’d turn a blind eye to anything that looked like trouble, that’s sure — Imp,” she said, seeing Hilfy’s laidback ears and dilated eyes, “pay attention: this is the way of our friends and allies out here. Gods rot them. — Eat your dinner.”
Tully stirred his plate about, turned his attention back to that, and Pyanfar chewed another bite, thoughtful.
Knnn, kif, stsho… gods, the whole pot had been stirred when this Outsider, this human, dropped into the middle of it. An uncomfortable feeling persisted at the back of her neck, like a cold wind of belated reason. The whole dock at Meetpoint, zealously trying not to hear or see anything amiss, with a fugitive on the loose and the kif on the hunt…
There was no particular evil in the stsho — except the desire to avoid trouble. That had always been the way of them. But they were different. No hani read past the patterns. No hani understood them. And, gods, if the knnn were stirred up — along with the kif…
She swallowed the dry mouthful and washed it down with a draught of gfi, poured herself another cupful. Tully ate with what looked like appetite. Food disappeared all round the table, and the plates rotated for second helpings.
“I’m going to put Tully on limited assignment,” she said. “He can’t read, sure enough. But some things he can do.” He had looked up. “Niece,”
she said, “you’re no longer junior-most on The Pride, this run. Ought to make you happy.”
Hilfy’s brown study evaporated into disquiet. “He’s junior-most?”
“A willing worker,” Pyanfar said, with a wrinking of her nose. “Your responsibility in part, now.”
“Aunt, I—”
“I told you how it was, niece. Hear? You know what we’re dealing with, and what stakes are involved?”
“I hear,” Hilfy said in a faint voice. “No, I don’t know. But I’m figuring it out.”
“Kif,” Geran spat. “They’re different, when the odds go against them.”
“Once—” Haral said, and winced. The knnn song was back again, shriller. “Rot that.”
“Close,” Pyanfar judged. It was exceedingly clear reception. She met Haral’s eyes facing her down the length of the table, more and more uneasy. The song continued for a moment, too loud to talk above it, then wailed away, gibbering to itself into lower tones.
“Too rotted close,” Haral said. “Captain—”
Pyanfar started to push herself back from table, surrendering to anxiety.
“Chanur Captain,” com said far more faintly, a clicking voice speaking the hani tongue. “Chanur Captain — don’t trouble to acknowledge. Only listen…”
Pyanfar stiffened, looked toward com with a bristling at her nape and a lowering of her ears. Everyone was frozen in place.
“The bargain you refused at Meetpoint… is no longer available. Now I offer other terms, equal to the situation. A new bargain. A safe departure from this system, for yourself and for the Faha ship now at dock. I guarantee things which properly interest you, in return for one which doesn’t. Jettison the remnant of your cargo, hani thief. You know our ways. If you do the wise thing, we will not pursue you further. You know that we are the rightful owners of that merchandise. You know that we know your name and the names of your allies. We remember wrongs against us. All kif… remember crimes committed against us. But purge your name, Pyanfar Chanur. More, save lives which were not originally involved in your act of piracy. Give us only our property, Pyanfar Chanur, and we will take no further action against the Faha and yourself. That is my best offer. And you know now by experience that I mahe no empty threat. Is this matter worth your sure destruction and that of the Faha? Or if you think to run away again, deserting your ally, will you hope to run forever? That will not improve your trade, or mahe you welcome at stations who will learn the hazard of your company. Give it up, thief. It’s small gain against your loss, this thing you’ve stolen.”
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