Right now, Hilfy thought, it was the best reason of all; a body wanted company in this crisis. Geran came kiting in and out again with two cups of soup, gods only hope she got one into her own stomach on the way topside; Chur was evidently
awake and willing to try it eating, which was one heart-lightening event among all the bad news. Haral was sitting on the couch opposite with a bit of jerky in one hand and her mouth full, while she raked her damp mane into order with the other. Her eyes had that distracted, glassy weariness jump left in a body. Tully came out of the common bath with a towel over his shoulders, wearing a pair of Khym's trousers, a rust silk pair which he had had to pin at the waist, but Haral was out of spares and the other pair was going through the laundry. He staggered over to the cabinet and got a cup and poured soupmix and water into it, shoved it in the microwave and sat down to towel his head and beard dry. Pale, old scars stood out on white-skinned shoulders; and pinker, recent ones.
"Akkhtimakt's jumped out," came the bulletin from the bridge. And: "We got a general slow-down on Sikkukkut's side, sure enough, 'cept for two of 'em it looks like Sikkukkut's sending out to keep 'em worried, same as he did with Goldtooth's lot. Looks for good and sure like Sikkukkut's going to stay with us. Thought you'd like to know."
"No surprise," Haral muttered. "Couldn't be that lucky. Couldn't be lucky enough to get help out of Goldtooth. Sikkukkut's going to have this place stripped to the deckplates before he gets back."
"Going to do whatever he wants," Hilfy said, "that's sure."
"Lousy mess."
Tully had lifted his face from the towel and looked at them, yellow hair tousled, eyes showing lines of strain about the edges. Sometimes he seemed too tired even to make the effort of speech. Or to listen for the translator's sputtering whisper giving him its mangled version of things around him. The things hardest to get across were the delicate topics, like: How's Chur-honestly? Or: What do you think Jik will do? And: What are we going to do when the kif move into the station? He seemed to go away at times. At others he seemed desperate to say something of too much difficulty to attempt it.
Things like: My people are going. I talked to them. Even if the message didn't get there. I was that close.
/ didn't betray you.
I swear I didn't try.
The microwave bleeped Finished; and Tully got up and got his soup, with a package of shredded meat and a packet of mahen fuyas, which he and Haral thought edible and everyone else aboard loathed. He offered one of the grain-meat sticks to Haral: she took it and stirred her soup with it, and he settled down with the other packets in his agile fingers, cup in both hands and elbows on his knees, to drink a sip and sigh in profoundest weariness.
"I figure," Hilfy said, to fill the quiet, and to answer questions Tully did not ask, "Goldtooth rendezvoused here with the human fleet. That's why he kited out on us at Kefk. He and Ehrran came in here, he got stuck here, in a standoff with Akkhtimakt. Maybe he got Akkhtimakt pried loose from the station. He did that much for the stsho. But Ehrran's on her way to Anuurn. Bet."
"Godsrotted well has to be," Haral muttered. "But with Goldtooth in it we got to wonder, don't we?"
''Like what happened here?'' That bothered her. The whole arrangement of things bothered her. The lack of methane-breathers. And Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut, if they both wanted to be fools, could go on trading that position till the suns all froze. Every few shipboard days, every few ground-bound months, one side could do a turnaround at Urtur or Tt’a’va’o or Kefk or wherever, and come in and strafe the other who had taken possession of Meetpoint. Or Kefk. Or wherever. If ships got to trading positions like that, time-dilation got to stretching lives wider and wider; no in-system passages. No slow-time. Just run and run and run as long as a ship could take it and a body could take the depletion. A merchant ship did its jumps with a lot of slowtime and dock-time in between; and a tradeoff like that could do as much timestretch in a month of their own perception as a trader did in a decade. Before flesh and bone and steel had gone their limits. "Wonder is he didn't come in on Kefk."
"Kefk's got two guardstations. Kefk's got position on him."
Tully stared at them both. He had lost that, probably. But of a sudden the problem had found itself a cold spot in
Hilfy's gut. She took a sip of her cup to warm that cold and licked the soup off her mustaches.
"Sikkukkut's got something in mind. He's sure not going to sit here."
"There are fools in the universe," Haral said. "What if he isn't? What if he's not sitting still here? What if he's got something else in mind?"
But Goldtooth was out on the Tt’a’va’o vector. Methane-breather territory. Logical choice: the stsho feared the humans like plague. Stsho would deal with Ehrran; they would deal with the kif before they dealt with Goldtooth and his human allies. They would go with the known villains.
Stsho had no armaments. No capability for that kind of stress. Stsho would run if they could. Evade it all.
Tc'a and chi and-gods save us- knnn-they're not here, they're always here. Where are they? Knnn aren't afraid of anything. They won't run. Avoid, maybe; run in panic-not the knnn. Ever.
"Methane-breathers," Hilfy said. "Gods rot it, Haral. It's a trap. Sikkukkut's and Goldtooth's both."
Haral's ears flagged and lifted again, and a thinking look got through the exhaustion in Haral's eyes.
"Hilfy." Tully held his cup between his knees and his brow furrowed with worry under its fringe of pale wet hair. "Goldtooth not go Tt’a’va’o."
"You mean you know that?"
"I think. He come-turn, go whhhsss, like Tt’a’va’o Not."
"You mean he faked a jump? Stopped out there in deep space? You think he can do that?"
Tully might or might not have gotten all of that. "Mahe," he said. "Human do."
"Stop a jump short?"
"Same."
"Good gods."
"Makes sense," Haral said. "If they've got the stuff to do that. If they got it from humans- He waits here to fake a run."
"And Ehrran runs for good and real and leaves hani here to catch it when Sikkukkut came through? Gods-be, she's got a treaty with the stsho!"
"Give her credit. What could she do-if Akkhtimakt was here first. Goldtooth wanted Akkhtimakt intact. He's shoving the two kif into a fight, by the gods, that's what he's doing!" Haral rubbed her graying nose and it wrinkled up again. "Let them weaken each other before he throws the humans at them and before the mahen forces come in here. That's what he's up to. Let Jik hang; let Jik keep at least one gods-be kif halfway tame if he can while Goldtooth sets it up so he can take out both kif. That's what the mahendo'sat would really like. Throw the humans at 'em. Let the humans get shot up. That's why he left Jik behind at Kefk."
"No mahen workers left here onstation, I'll bet on that."
"Gods-rotted sure. Goldtooth could have had the word out long before this. Routed everything out of here. Cleared it all out when the stsho broke that treaty."
"Eggs to pearls Goldtooth's left a spotter here."
"No contest."
"It's still insystem," Hilfy said. "It's still in position to get whatever happened here, maybe there's more than one of them, huh? Maybe a couple of spotters, one drifting out slow, going to fire up when it's outside normal pickup, just sneak out of here. And if Goldtooth's out there in the deep and those fool kif that were tailing him jump all the way to Tt’a’va’o-"
Haral's ears lifted. The exhaustion melted from her eyes and replaced itself with a hard, hard look. "Keep going."
"Goldtooth might wait for news. Before his turnaround. If he makes one. He may have put more than one or two spotters on the outside of this system. He's used up all his credit with Sikkukkut himself, he's out there in the dark with the humans, with the tc'a that Jik was working with, he's got some credit with the han, maybe some with the knnn. What if he decided there wasn't any choice and he just lets the kif fight it out?"
"Maybe that's the safest thing we could
all do."
"But-"
"I'm listening."
"But-you know the mahendo'sat are going to save their own hides. Ehrran's left him. We can't speak for the han. We got kif going to go head-on against each other with the humans on their backside. If both of them get busy, if the mahendo'sat hit them in the back-neither Akkhtimakt nor Sikkukkut can stand for that chance. They're in a mess. They can't leave the mahendo'sat armed at their backs. They're kif, and Goldtooth's going to attack and they know it. My gods, we got one kif making a threat against Anuurn. What's Akkhtimakt going to threaten, huh? Or is he just going to turn around and send a ship apiece at every mahen world and station?"
Haral's ears were all but flat. She was still listening.
"Ask Skkukuk," Tully said suddenly.
"Ask him what?" Hilfy asked.
''He kif. Ask what kif do."
"He's not on Sikkukkut's level. If he'd outthought him, we'd have Skkukuk to worry about."
"Kif mind. Lot dark. / go ask."
"Man's got a point," Haral said. "But no way we talk to the kif. Better we talk to the captain. Py-an-far, you understand me, Tully?"
"You think I'm right?"
"I been in space forty some years, kid, I never been real close to kif on their terms. You have. And you speak main-kifish. Which I still don't, not real well. But I've had a look at our passenger, 'bout enough to get an idea or two. And between the mahendo'sat and that kif, I'm real anxious. We got that other bomb aboard. And sorry as I am for him, he scares me worse'n Skkukuk."
"Jik," Hilfy murmured. And took another sip that failed to warm her gut.
'He's got a lot on him," Haral said, "and much as we owe him and he owes us-first, he's hurting; second, he's been hurt, by the kif and by his own partner and by us on top of it all; and thirdly, he's mahendo'sat and seeing his whole species in danger, and maybe he's got more information than we've gotten out of him. What's he going to do?"
The cold got worse. For one uneasy moment Hilfy could not even look at Tully. For one uneasy moment he was like Jik, alien and full of strange motives and unpredictabilities.
And she was female and he was not, with all the craziness on that score. No place for him to be sitting. Listening to us. Gods, what if he was only waiting, all this time? He's alien. Isn't he? Same as Jik. And we've been through so gods-be much-and I don't know what's in his mind right now. My friend. My- She gave a mental shiver, looked at the time. "Gods," she said, "we better get topside. Tirun-"
"Yeah," Haral said. And: "You want me to talk to the captain?''
"She listens to you more than me."
"Hey," Haral said. And fixed her with a lazy, flat-eared stare. Reprimand for that small remark. Hilfy dipped her ears.
"Kif," Tully said.
"No," Haral said. "We let that son sleep. You stay here. Rest. Understand. You go down that hall to talk to that kif, I'll skin you. Hear?"
"I understand," Tully said. His mouth had that set it got in unhappiness. "Not right, Haral. I sit here."
"Argues," Haral said. "Huh."
"He wasn't juniormost on his ship," Hilfy said. "I know that. He's not a kid, Haral."
"Who is, on this ship? Tully. You want to come? Talk to the captain?"
He had a few bites left. He made it one, drank the cup dry and got to his feet, still trying to swallow what he had.
"How's it going?" Pyanfar asked quietly, leaning shower-damp and exhausted over Tirun's chairback. Khym had come back to his post, far from skilled enough to relieve Tirun, but there, at least for support. Tirun looked back at her with flagging ears and a desperate weariness. Tirun had not had a chance at the showers. That was evident.
"No answers yet," Tirun said. "Na Jik's asleep, I think. Stopped stirring around down there after I heard the safety-web go." She tilted an ear generally downships and down below. "We got our routine instructions, I just fed it into auto. All the kif are on schedule, Sikkukkut's pair's in final just now and the stsho're sweating it."
"Huhhhh." Pyanfar had an eye on the scan from her vantage; ships proceeding sedately on course. No one out there had done anything definitive. And she leaned closer to Tirun's ear, her elbow on the chairback. "Get out of here, huh? I'll take it."
"Haral'll be here." The voice came out hoarse. "You want to go catch a bite? I c'n take a little longer, 'm not doing anything but sit."
"Neither am I. Get. I'll hold the boards." She shoved off from the chair back and paused half a heartbeat considering her husband, who had never looked away from the screen in all this time. Covering, while she distracted Tirun, though the board was audio-alarmed, and her own eye had automatically held on that screen the minute Tirun looked her way. Tirun had known where she was looking-experience, decades of it. Bridge rules. But Khym covered. That was bridge rules too. She gave Khym's chairback a pat, approval, with a little unwinding of something at her gut. Closer and closer to reliable. On the standard of the best crew going. An impulse came to her; she unclipped one of her earrings.
"Hey," she said, and leaned next to him where her breath stirred the inner tuftings of his ear. "Huh," he said, as if it were some intimacy.
"Hold still. Don't flinch." She nipped right through the edge of his ear. "Owwh!" he grunted, and did flinch, turning half about in indignation and then-perhaps he thought it was some bizarre test of his concentration-jerked his gaze right back to the boards.
She slipped the ring right into the wound and clipped it. "Uhhhn," he said, and felt of what she had done. Never looked around.
"Good." She patted his shoulder, remembered then that he had once upon a time reacted with temper over that gesture of shoulder-patting. But maybe it felt different somehow. He did not object. And she went off to her own station, sat down and brought in the scan images and the com.
Sikkukkut was still on course. Ikkhoitr and its partner were docking ahead of them, and The Pride was on a course right down lane-center, neat and precise.
They were going to have some specific docking instructions very soon. The Pride and Aja Jin and Moon Rising were about to put themselves where the kit could get at them.
And where Sikkukkut could make demands of them. Jik, for instance. Jik, for a very large instance. Or even Tully. Or Dur Tahar. All of which items Sikkukkut might want back. She sat and gnawed her mustaches, wishing she dared talk back and forth with Dur Tahar over there, who assuredly knew something about kifish mentality. But absolute com silence seemed the best policy at the moment. Gods knew she wanted no questions out of Aja Jin, where Kesurinan still followed her orders. And did not ask, as Kesurinan might well have asked: How is my captain? Is he recovered? Why do I have no instructions from him?
Kesurinan believed she knew the answers to all these things, perhaps. And stayed patient. So far.
But on that dockside Kesurinan was bound to ask questions that needed direct lies. And inventive ones.
Goldtooth, gods curse you, what have you set up here?
Made an agreement with someone, have you?
Or have we got something else lurking out there, outsystem, that we're going to find out about when our wavefront gets to them and they get themselves run up to attack speed?
Gods, gods, this is no situation to be in. What's Sikkukkut doing? Is that son really depending on us, for godssakes? Are we the backup he thinks he has?
Fool, Sikkukkut. Can a kifmind be that tangled, to trust us now?
Or are you no fool at all?
Com beeped. "Py," Khym said, and cut it in from his board.
"I got it." It was station, talking to them in effusive jabber. A stsho told them that they could, if they wished, have any free berth, but suggested numbers twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Which the lord captain of Ikkhoitr had suggested, praise to the hakkikt.
"Affirm," she said, and with a flattening of her ears: "Praise to the hakkikt."
"No real choice, do we?" Khym asked.
"Life and not. We got that."
"What are we going to do?" There
was the faintest note of despair there. A man asking his wife for reassurance. Tell me there's something you can do. Tell me it's not that bad, not that hopeless. A man lived within the small borders of his estate-never tell a man a thing: never worry him with problems he had no capacity to deal with. And no power. Old habits, Khym, gods rot it, grow up!
No. It's crew talking to captain. That's all. Get off him, Pyanfar.
"Feathered if I know what we're going to do," she muttered. No mercy, Khym. "Got an idea?"
"He's going to ask for Jik."
"I'm afraid he is."
''What are we going to do?''
"I'll make something up."
Nothing to do but watch it unfold. Obey instructions, take the berth.
You got it, husband. There isn't an answer. I haven't got a miracle to pull off. I don't know what in a mahen hell we're going to do and most of all I don't know how we're going to get out of here.
Thank gods Ehrran's headed home to warn the han. Even if she goes for Chanur in the process. Better the clan goes down than the whole world. Better a whole lot of things than that.
But, gods, Ehrran's a fool. What's a fool going to tell them? What's a fool going to persuade those fools to do? Gods, give her good sense just once and I'll go religious, I swear I will. I'll reform. I'll- Haral startled her, settling ghostlike into place beside her.
"Captain," Haral said. "What we got?"
She turned the chair half-about, saw Tirun out of her place and Tully and Hilfy settling into theirs, ghostlike silent under the noise of operating systems. "We got our docking instructions. Give Tirun time to get herself down to quarters. We can brake a little late. Meetpoint sure as rain isn't going to file any protest on us for violations." She swung the chair about again and punched in com. Two veteran crewwomen in their places arid two novices. But it was a routine docking, whatever else was proceeding. "Geran," she said. "Five minutes."
"I'm on my way," Geran answered back from somewhere.
"Captain," Haral said, "Hilfy's got this idea-"
"Tahar acknowledges recept on docking instructions," Hilfy said. "They're on our lead."
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