Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Jik had just, for whatever reason, told the truth. Against his own Personage and all those interests. Which made him, in mahen terms, a dishonest man.

  Gods, what's gotten into us on this ship? We got nobody aboard who hasn't gone to the wrong side of her own species' business-Tully, Skkukuk, all us of Chanur and Malm: now Jik's sliding too.

  Treason's catching, that's what it is.

  She got a cup, wrinkled her nose as Khym dosed his gfi with tofi. She poured her own from the fastbrewer, looked back at their unlikely crew crowded into the galley. At Jik sitting disconsolate and hurting and trying his best to choke down a sandwich and a cup of reconstituted milk; no one in Chanur put off any temper on him, not Hilfy and not Khym either.

  So. Crew was going to give him a chance. For their own reasons, which might include latitude for the captain's judgment; but maybe because of past debts.

  It was hard, being hani, not to think like one. There were times they had been as glad to see Jik as he had surely been to see her come after him on Harukk. Even if on his side it was all policy and politics. He had saved their skins many a time.

  Even if it was always to bet them again.

  Chur slitted open her eyes, wrinkled her nose and blinked sleepily at her sister. Her heart sped a bit. She had dreamed of black things in the corridors, had dreamed of something loose on the ship. Noise in the corridors. It felt as if some time had passed.

  And Geran had noted that little increase in pulse rate. Geran had this disconcerting habit of taking glances at the monitors while she talked, and whenever she reacted to anything. Geran's be-ringed ears flicked at what she saw now; and it was a further annoyance that the screen was hard to see from flat on one's back.

  "We got Jik out," Geran said.

  Chur blinked again. So much that came and went was illusion and it was the good things she most distrusted, the things she really wanted to believe. "He all right?"

  "Knocks and bruises and the like. Told Tirun he'd run into a wall trying to leave. Likely story. You know you never get the same thing twice out of him. How are you feeling?"

  "Like I ran into the same wall. What'd you do to that gods-be machine? You put me out?''

  "Got pretty noisy around here. I thought you might need the sleep." •

  "In a mahen hell you did!" Chur lifted her head and shoved her free elbow under her. "You want my heartbeat up?"

  "Lie down. You want mine up?"

  "What happened out there?" She sank back, her head swimming, and tried to focus. "Gods, I still got that stuff in me. Cut it out, Geran. F'gods sakes, I'm tired enough, hard enough to go against the wind-"

  "Hey." Geran took her by the shoulder.

  "I'm awake, I'm awake."

  "You want to try to eat something?"

  "Gods, not more of that stuff."

  Foil rustled. A sickly aroma hit the air, which was otherwise sterile and medicated. Food, any food was a trial. Chur nerved herself and cooperated as Geran lifted her head on her arm and squirted something thin and salty into her mouth. She licked her mouth and took a second one, not because she wanted it. It was enough.

  "Not so bad," she said. It was so. She had missed salt. It did something more pleasant in her mouth than the last thing Geran had brought her. She cautiously estimated its course to her stomach and felt it hit bottom and lie there gratefully inert. She looked up at Geran, who had a desperately hopeful look on her face. "You worried about something, Gery?"

  The ears flicked. "We're doing all right."

  Lie.

  " Where's those gods-be black things?"

  "Got 'em all penned up again." Change of subject. Geran looked instantly relieved. And the traitor machine beeped with an increased heartbeat. Geran looked back at it and the facade fell in one agonized glance.

  "We under attack?" Chur asked.

  "We're prepping for jump," Geran said.

  Scared Gods, Gery, you'd send a monitor off the scale-

  "Huhn," Chur said. "What're you thinking? That I won't make it?"

  "Sure, you'll make it."

  "How far're we going?"

  Geran's ears went flat and lifted again. There was a drawing round her nose, like pain. "Home, one of these days."

  "Multiple jump?"

  "Don't think so."

  "Maybe, huh?"

  "Gods rot it, Chur-"

  / haven't got the strength. I can't last it out. Look at her. Gods, look at her. "Listen. You mind your business up for'ard f'godssakes, what d'you want, me make it fine and you marry this ship up with a rock? You pull it together. Me, I'm fine back here. Back here feeding me-" The monitor started going off again. She let it. "When'd you eat, huh? Take care of yourself. I got to worry whether you're doing your job up there?".

  "No " Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. "I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can."

  "Don't trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I'll try to eat. Hear me?''

  "Stays the way they set it."

  The monitor beeped again.

  "Gods fry that rotted thing!" Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.

  "Quiet," Geran said.

  She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.

  / can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.

  That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark-she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.

  / can think the way home. Bring us all home.

  "Chur?"

  "I'll be with you," she said. "No worry. Wish they could move this godsrotted rig onto the bridge." She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. "When?"

  "Bring him, captain?" It was not Tirun Araun's way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun's ears and put a little stammer in Tirun's mouth. "That is to say-"

  "Skkukuk's not the one I'm worried about," Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, auto-rigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader's honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great deal; and Tirun's worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. "How many rings you got, cousin?"

  "Oh, I don't know." Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. " 'Bout many as proves I've got good sense, captain."

  "We get out of this one, cousin, I'll buy you a dozen more."

  "Huh." Tirun said. "Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I'll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most."

  "All of our allies will,"
Pyanfar said. "Skkukuk's safe. He's on this ship, isn't he? Kif don't understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we'd really blow the ship? Couldn't figure why you'd do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He'll think it's a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk's no different, I think. Tell the son I'm going to give him a job to do: he'll handle kif-com. I'm putting him under Hilfy's orders."

  "My gods, cap'n."

  "Tully's sitting com too, this jump. No choice, is there? You've got to handle armaments-this time for real, I'm very much afraid; and back up Haral, and keep an eye on scan: I'm putting Jik in Chur's seat, but his board stays locked, whatever condition his hands are in; and sure as rain falls down I'm not giving him com. While we're at Kefk we've got one excuse; at Meetpoint we may have to contrive another. But I don't want to put him between his ethics and our survival. Gods know, maybe it'll take something off his shoulders, in some bizarre turn of the mahen mind. He wants to help us; he wants to carry out his own orders; he probably wants to save Goldtooth's neck in spite of what the bastard did to him, he wants a whole lot of things that are mutually exclusive. Or that may turn that way in a hurry. And gods know I don't want him in reach of your board and the guns."

  "He won't like Skkukuk there."

  "He'll know why, though. I figure he'll know inside and out why that is."

  "Him knowing the kif and all, yes."

  "Him knowing the kif and knowing what his own side wants from him, gods save him-gods save us from mahendo'sat and all their connivances. And watch Goldtooth, cousin, for the gods' own sakes, if we do spot him, keep us a line of fire there. I don't like the rules in this game either, but we didn't make them up. They're his, they're that bastard Sikkukkut's, and gods know who else has a finger in it. Watch them all."

  "Aye," Tirun said in a hoarse, faint voice. "Them and Ehrran."

  "Everyone else for that matter. I don't know a friend we've got."

  "Tahar," Tirun said.

  "Tahar," she recalled.

  A pirate and an outlaw.

  And: "I've got Skkukuk?" Hilfy said. Her jaw had dropped, her ears were flat.

  Pyanfar nodded. They stood where she had caught up with Hilfy, in the galley. And Tully sat sipping a cup of gfi, his blue eyes following their moves and his human, immobile ears taking in the whole of it. His com-translator would whisper it to him.

  "Luck of the draw. He's sitting down by Tirun on the jumpseat, but he'll be working off your board. Just keep your finger by the cutoff. If we have to. And get your wits about you when we come out of the drop. I have to ask you this: how good are you on kifish nuance?"

  "I'm good."

  "Objective assessment: good enough to pick up the subtleties in a kif's transmissions?"

  Hilfy paused, and gathered her cup off the counter. She glanced Tully's way and back again. There was clearest sanity in her golden eyes. "I know what you're saying. No. But Skkukuk can do it. What I've got to do is watch what he-'s saying. And be fast on the cutoff."

  "You tell me this: is a kif going to damage a ship he's on?"

  Hilfy thought about that one too. Her ears dropped and lifted again. "No," she said. "Not when you put it that way. But there is a point he'd turn on us."

  "He'd be alone. Crew wouldn't go along with him the way it might on a kifish ship. Kifish crew'd turn on their captain and mutiny. Hani won't. I think maybe Skkukuk's got a glimmering of that. It'll make him behave."

  Again a dip of Hilfy's ears. One ring swung there. But the eyes were not that young any longer. "I tell you what that son's thinking. He's thinking the crew's conserving its own position and it's rallied around you out of fear of him. That's what he's thinking. He's thinking if we got into trouble we'd do a real stupid thing, standing by you just for fear of him. He thinks if we prove tough enough other hani will join us on Sikkukkut's side. It's all very simple to him. One thing I've found the kif astonishingly free of is species-prejudice."

  "I think you're right."

  That seemed to soothe some raw spot in Hilfy. The ears came up again, pricked in an expression that made her look young again. And they flagged when she looked at Tully.

  So you're not a fool, Pyanfar thought. Thank the gods great and lesser. And did not miss that distracted look that passed between those two. No species-prejudice there either. Too little species prejudice. O Hilfy, you're a long way from home and gods-be if I care if you're two outright fools in that regard. I ought to be shocked. I can't even find it anymore. Gods save you both, I hope you've done what I don't even want to think about. I hope you've had a little bit of what I've had forty years of.

  And what kind of thinking's that?

  Khym was sleeping when she came into their quarters. She dropped the trousers on the floor, quietly, pocket-gun and all; and came and got into the bowl-shaped bed, down in the middle of it where he was, a huge warm lump all hard with muscle and tucked up like a child. She put her arms around his back, buried her head against his shoulder. He turned over and nuzzled her shoulder.

  Sleep, she wished him, with a bit of regret. Among pleasures in life a warm bed and a nap in her husband's arms was not the least. She had not the heart to wake him, not when he was this far gone.

  "Py," he murmured, in that breathy rumble of his voice at whisper. And bestirred himself, perhaps for his own sake, perhaps just in that way a man would who knew he was wanted: matter of kindness, for a tired wife who came to him for refuge. What they did had nothing to do with time of year. That would have shocked the old gray whiskers back home. Wives and husbands were a seasonal matter: men were always in and wives got around to it when they were home, by ones and twos and, in spring, a confounded houseful of women with hairtrigger tempers and demands on a single, harried man; then the house lord got round to driving out all the young men who had overstayed their childhood, before some scandal happened: young women went to roving, older sisters heaved out any near-adult brother the lord happened not to take exception to. It was housecleaning, annual as the spring rains.

  A spacer missed the seasons. She just came home when she got the chance, and tried to make it coincide with spring, a little visit to her brother Kohan, who was glassy-eyed and distracted with affairs in Chanur at such a time, she paid a little courtesy to his wives and any sister or cousin who lived in the house or just happened to be home-

  -then it was up in decent leisure to Mahn in the hills, where Khym and his groundling wives held court. His other wives had never much gotten in her way: they were outfought and knew it, and hated her cordially in that way of rivals who knew she would be gone within a week or two, back to her ship and her gadding about again: if one had to have a rival one could not shove out, best at least she be the sort who was seldom home.

  Now where were those wives? Hating her still, because she had him to herself at last and he was not decently dead, in his defeat? They would pity him and hate her, and call it all indecent, as if he himself had not had a choice in the world about being snagged up onto a Chanur ship and carried away to a prolonged and unnatural preservation. It ruined his reputation. It touched on their honor. Likely they imagined just such lascivious and libertine unseasonal things as she had led him into, or worse, that he was the prize of all the crew.

  She thought about that. "What do you think," she said into his ear, "do you think you'd object to one of the crew now and again? How do you feel about that?''

  "I don't know," he said. "I mean- they're-" He was quiet a long time. "They're friends."

  "I don't mean you should." She brushed his mane straight, dragged a clawtip along beside his ear. "I never meant that. I was asking if you ever wanted to."

  ''They're your friends.''

  She felt his heart beating faster. Like panic. And cursed herself for bringing it up at all. "They never asked. Gods, what a mess. Don't even think about it. I'm sorry I said it. I just felt sorry for them."

  "So do I. I'd do it. Tell them that if you want to. Like friends. I think they'd be sensible about it. I thin
k I could be."

  Ask sensible of a man. Trust him. Gods, that's what's changed, isn't it? He's steady as a rock. He wouldn't play games about it. They wouldn't, with him. They respect him. They'd treat him like a sister-in crew matters. Not one of them is petty and not one is the sort that has to prove a point in bed or after. You know that about women you work with for forty years; and they'd know he was a loan. I'd take that risk for them.

  But what's good for him, that matters; that, they'd never question. Gods know I wouldn't.

  "I think you could trust them," she said. "It's all of them if it's one, you understand that. I'm just telling you it's all right with me. Won't make me happy or unhappy. I just thought- well, if it ever does happen, you don't have to slip around about it."

  "I never-!"

  "I know that. I'm just telling you how I feel. If it's ever one, it's all. Remember it. Gods, back home I'd drop in on you for a hand of days and shove your other wives out; been the longest five days yet, hasn't it? I'm feeling guilty about hanging onto you so long. It's getting obsessive. I thought maybe, if things settle down again-" Thoughts crowded in that made it all remote and hopeless and stupid even to talk about it; but it was peace that she had come here for: she shoved Meetpoint aside and pretended. "Well, I thought I ought to give you a little breathing room. I shove you into my room, I don't give you much choice, do I? I want you to know you've got a berth on this ship. On your own. As much as you want to be. Or where you want to be. You want not to share my bed a while, that's fine. I'd miss you. But I don't want you ever to think that's what you're aboard for."

  "I'm aboard because I'm a total fool." A frown was on his face, rumpling up his brow. "The rest came later. Py, don't talk like this."

  "Gods, you don't understand."

  "I don't own this ship. It's Kohan's. I can't come here, bed his kin-"

  Male thinking, hindend-foremost and illusionary. Downworld thinking. It infuriated her in him, when so much else was extraordinary. "This ship is mine, gods rot it,. Kohan's got nothing to do with it. And if you want to bed down with Skkukuk, he's mine, too. I'll also shred your ears."