Chanur's Homecoming cs-4

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  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.

  / 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. / 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.

  Epilog

  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.

  It was a confusing arrival for a downworld lad, laboring along with his pass and all his worldly possessions in a brand new spacer's duffel. He had spent two bewildered hours in immigration, then taken what turned out to be the wrong lift up from the shuttle dock; then into an administrative office for directions, and down another lift, then, which went side­ways as often as it went down and came to dead stop on the main docks, resisting all his attempts to get it to go up. So he had ventured out into the docks of Anuurn, which dazed him with echoes and its true size and its reality after so many dreams. It was a dangerous place, his sisters had warned him; it was wonderful; it overloaded his senses with its noise and its echoes and its foreign smells. It was too huge a place, its few people too hurried or too rough-looking to bother with a newcomer's foolish questions. The docks ran all the circum­ference of the station: he was sure of that, and surely, if he started walking in the up-numbers direction, section four could not be too far from the section seven he was hunting. He walked along where there was no traffic at all, in the shadow of the gantries, and went from berth 14 where he had come in to berth 15; 16 was a working berth, all its lights lit with a glitter which stirred his sense of the beautiful-white and gold, a hundred lights to shine on the lines and the gantry and the whole surrounds. The ramp access looked to be open. The dockers were driving their vehicles away, and no one noticed if a boy kept walking, so he might pass by as close to his dreams as he had ever come in his life.

  But now-CLEAR THE AREA the speaker overhead said while he panted along at the foot of the towering machinery, there by the lights. CLEAR THE AREA, and something more that he could not hear in the garble. He looked around desperately and saw the Immunes moving and the docks suddenly deserted. His heart began to beat in panic: he won­dered was it a decompression warning, whether something had gone dangerously wrong on this dock or somewhere near-he had heard horror tales from the war years.

  But in his casting about for direction he spied a spacer, a graynosed woman whose ears had, gods, a whole fistful of voyage-rings, who sat on the skirt of some huge piece of machinery, just sitting, observing the whole furor, arm around one knee, her ears backslanted in the racket; suddenly she was looking straight at him.

  He dropped his ears at once in politeness: and in outright awe at the spacer rings and the easy assurance of this veteran who was everything he was not and longed with all his heart to be. He would never have come her way on his own; but she was staring at him as if he were somehow more interest­ing than the chaos and the goings-on with the Immunes. He thought he detected an invitation, a summons in the twitch of a many-ringed ear: and he hitched up his duffel and all the courage of his seventeen years.

  "H'lo," he said, walking up-his smile and his friendli­ness had won him a great deal in his life, and he relied on it

  now, when he was afraid, slanting an ear toward the commo­tion behind him. "Lot of noise, isn't it?"

  The spacer nodded.

  Not a word. Not the least ear-twitch of friendliness. He was left a fool, twice desperate. His blue breeches were brand new. His ears were ringless. His duffel still had package-creases and he swung it back behind him and dropped it where it was less conspicuous, figuring he had mistaken her invitation: he was suddenly anxious only to get his directions and go, before he found himself in something he could not handle.

  The eyes raked him and down in lazy ease, flickered with some kind of interest. "Wrong side of that line, you know."

  He cleared his throat, looked nervously over his shoulder. "What are they doing down there?"

  "What are you doing up here?"

  "I-" He looked back again full into the spacer's lazy stare, that stripped him down to the bones and the truth; there was not even a lie he knew how to tell. "I'm new here," he said; and dropped his ears in deference when her mouth pursed in dour amusement. "What's all the commotion down there?"

  "The Pride's in port."

  He could not help himself; he looked back again toward the distant lines and drew a large breath. The station, for godssakes, he had truly come to the station, where fantastical species came and went; where fabled ship-names were ordinary on the freighting lists, and many-ringed spacers sat about ordi­nary as could be. And on the very day he came up from the world, The Pride of Chanur just happened in, with no ad­vance notice in the newsservices, nothing at all to tell the world it was coming. He saw nothing for his looking but a solid line of black-breeched Immunes in the distance, practi­cally no one on the docks there or near at hand; and nothing at all of the ship-boards down there: gantries obscured the view. He looked back and tried to catch his breath. "Gods, I'd like to see it."

  "You don't see a ship, son, they stay out there." She was laughing at him, all dour-faced. "But you could go up to the observation lounge, the cameras'll give you a view."

  "I want to see them."

  "Who?"

  "Them."

  "The Personage? Gods-ro
tted lot of nonsense."

  He caught a quick breath. His ears went flat. Nonsense. My gods!

  "Nonsense," the spacer said again. "No different than you and me. What d'you think, boy? Blackbreeches scurrying around like chi in a fire, shut down the whole gods-be dockside-"

  "Well, oughtn't they?" He was indignant. One of the old ones, this, one of the surly old-timers, just blowing off. She doesn't like a boy being up here, doesn't like me being on any ship, ever. Walk off, that's what I ought to do. She probably has a knife somewhere, even a gun in that pocket, gods know what. "I'm going to go have a look." He grabbed up his duffel again.

  But the spacer patted the machine-skirt. "Tssss. You won't get anywhere through that line. Just a lot of trouble. Have a seat, boy. All bright-eyed and new, are you?"

  He was off his stride. He delayed. And knew himself a fool when the old spacer took on a friendlier, amused look. Turn about for his pretense of being what he was not, that was what she had given him. Fair and fair.

  "Sit. Crew's going to be down here in a bit. What ship are you going to?"

  "Not to a ship. Yet. School. I'm Meras. Hallan Meras. From Syrsyn." Confession once started, tumbled out in the old spacer's unchanging stare, and his ears burned with em­barrassment; she had known even when she asked, but she did not ridicule him. "I want to be a spacer." It was his dearest dream. He saw it coming true and she did not laugh when he said that either. One of the old ones. "Have you-" He cast another look down the dock, leaning forward, and saw nothing of ship names at this angle either. "Have you ever seen the Personage?"

  "Lots of times."

  He looked back in awe. "Are you a friend of hers?"

  "What's the matter with you, boy, what do they teach you nowadays, all this fuss to see some Personage, what's seeing do, anyway? Makes me worry, that's what. Hani I knew'd spit in the eye of somebody that wanted all that bowing and guarding. You ought to."