The Personage then took to pinching leaves off the plant on her desk, and paying no attention to either of them.
"Personage not like speak pidgin. Say 'pologize for distress you. Say customs cleared. All fine."
She had to replay that again to believe she'd heard it. But Haisi looked far from happy with the situation.
"Then thank the Personage on behalf of my ship and my passenger."
"She understand fine. She say, Be careful with stsho. Good luck on you deals on station. You need all luck you got."
"Ask her why."
"Not need ask. Ask you: why be fool? Why make damn lot racket, attract notice? Ask you: what benefit you this stsho thing?"
"Money. Money, like making a profit on this trip, like getting hired like any merchant captain—"
"You not merchant. You Chanur."
"Gods-rotted right I'm a merchant! What do you think, I'm rich? I travel from station to station for a hobby?"
"You got aunt."
"The gods-be universe has got Pyanfar Chanur, but I don't! She can't be head of Chanur any longer, she can't sit in the han, she can't hold property and she can't vote on Anuurn— Your informers have been lying down asleep if you think I'm on her payroll! My ship hauls freight to pay the bills and keep our clan's taxes paid. That's all, no politics, no secrets, and no interest in secrets. I'm paid to transport this thing and transport it I will, until I can get the thing off my deck to its legitimate owner. But don't expect my aunt knows. We don't speak!"
Evidently it was not the answer the Voice or the Personage expected. There was another sharp exchange between the two of them. Something — she understood two of the mahen languages — about relatives and assumptions and another Personage of feminine gender.
And Haisi was not pleased. "All you papers cleared," Haisi said. "You go. You put stuff on market, quick as you want. Stsho you want go Kita. Wish you luck find same. Suggest you make nice thank you to busy Personage."
"Thank you," she said, and made two successive bows, to Haisi, and to the Personage who had never once looked her in the eyes. There was a small pile of leaves below the miniature tree. The Personage raked them together with a nail, and seemed perfectly absorbed in this activity. The Voice did not exist when the Personage was speaking for herself. And the Voice stood to the side of the room, hands behind his back, with no more to say to her.
So she left. And hoped the Personage of Urtur had more intense words for Haisi Ana-kehnandian once the door closed.
There was all this banging and sawing again. And the loaders were taking things off the ship, finally. Hall an was puzzled by the former, found the latter comfortingly ordinary, and had himself another snack while he read the tail end of Love in the Outback.
They had moved in a minifridge full of food and snacks and drinks, a microwave, a viewer, a tape player, and a stack of somebody's tapes and books… some of them really embarrassing. But interesting.
He really hoped they hadn't known those were in the stack. Tiar had been in a real hurry when she brought them in, and said something about the captain having been in some dust-up with customs, but everything was all right now, and she was sorry, and she wished she could let him out, but they had a very upset stsho on their hands and if the stsho ran into him gtst would Phase on the spot. So please forgive them.
With which Tiar ducked out again. And the banging and sawing went on, and the loaders proceeded.
Clank-clank. Clank. Bang and thump.
It would have been very tedious, except if anybody was going to come after him he hoped he got to the end of the book first, and he hoped they didn't catch him actually reading it.
If he were on the Sun the book in the stack would have meant one thing.
Here — he was having thoughts he'd never exactly had before… or not thoughts, exactly, but feelings.
Not about Tiar, actually. Just about belonging. Dangerous thoughts — like fitting into an ancient pattern that he didn't want, that he'd rejected for his dreams of traveling and being free, and here he was reading this stupid book, increasingly confused about what was going on with his hormones and his thinking processes. Try to be independent and put up with any crude thing the crew did, and sometimes go along with what they wanted, and he could do that without letting them really get to him; but now here he was, guiltily reading what he really hoped they hadn't meant to be in the stack, and thinking thoughts that meant maybe Mara Sahern was right and instincts were too strong, and he couldn't depend on using his brains — that ultimately, when he got all his size and hormones kicked in for good and earnest, he wasn't going to be worth anything but one thing until he was as old as Khym Mahn and hormones had stopped making him crazy.
That reputation for violence was why the stsho was afraid of him. That reputation was why everybody on Meetpoint had panicked when he had panicked and swung on the kif. And that reputation scared him, because there wasn't just the kif to deal with, there was the Chanur, lord Harun Chanur, who would break his neck if he caught him in Chanur territory, the same as there was lord Sahern to object to his presence on the Sun. It was one thing to go to space before he was old enough, quite, to have his adult growth, but after three years he was about there, banging his head on the doorways built for female crews, and finding instincts he'd thought he was immune to — worst of all, to think that, over the next few years, he might progressively lose his self-control and his reason. It just was not true. It would not happen to him, it didn't need to happen, it was, what had Pyanfar Chanur said, that so outraged the han?
— an unscientific belief system; and conforming to it was custom, not hardwiring.
But here he sat on a Chanur ship having thoughts he didn't even want, and wanting to finish the cursed book, and not wanting to, and scared and drawn at the same time.
Was that being crazy? Was that what happened, and was that what had started when he came on board the Legacy, among female people he could really want?
He kept reading. He got to the end and he sat there staring at the wall and wishing he knew what was ahead of him, and whether he was a fool or not, being out here, in this foreign place with a crew he…
Really, really wanted to belong to, in a very absolute and traditional and gut-level way that that book was about.
Which could very definitely get him killed. Which was stupid, intellectually speaking. But not — not when feelings cut in.
The incoming messages were stacked up.
From Haisi, Hilfy presumed, since it had Ha'domaren 's header: You better think who you are.
Dangerous you not know.
From Customs: Customs approved. For the third time. They were over-compensating.
From Padur's Victory and Narn's Dawnmaker, a joint communiqué: We are in receipt of troubling news regarding difficulty with customs and station authorities. We request a briefing at earliest.
That had to be answered, urgently and in the most courteous way, hence the presence of a Padur and a Narn captain in the downside corridor, plain trader captains in workaday blue trousers, out of the midst of their work. And it certainly behooved the bone-tired hani captain in question to meet them personally at the airlock, and invite them into her downside office, and sit down and explain the situation, in spite of the fact she and her sleepless crew were again facing no sleep and snatched meals. Tarras was down there alone, no one was on the bridge, and the offloading was going to go on until the Legacy's holds were empty.
Meaning about 12 more hours.
"There's a ship to watch," she said, "Ha'domaren. If you want my guess what's going on, there's a personage with an agent on that ship who's fairly high up in the hierarchy; that personage assumed I have a direct line to my aunt — which I don't — and somebody on this station tried to blacklist my ship by bringing up old records about The Pride. I wasn't interested in a secret game, I raised a racket, this agent didn't want the publicity, and when the police got involved it bounced the case right where I couldn't get anyone else to send it
— straight to the Personage of Urtur, where I said very definitely I hadn't any contacts with my aunt and all I wanted was trade. After which they gave me my customs clearance and the Personage of Urtur gave the agent a reasonably dirty look.
That's the sum of it."
"We hear," Tauhen Padur said, with a discreet cough, "there's some sort of politically hot stsho cargo."
"Where did you hear that?"
A shrug, a lowering of one ear. "From my crew, indirectly from the market. Where, specifically… I think they'd have said if the source was unusual. Probably just the merchants."
"Same," said Kaury Narn. Old spacer, Kaury was, lot of rings, pale edges on the mane, and a right-side tooth capped in silver — ask where and on what kif pirate she'd broken that one. The Narn captain came from far wilder days. ''Whatever the chaff is, it's drifting up and down the market."
"We didn't talk to anybody in the market. There's only one way that information flew in here ahead of us,"
"This Ha'domaren."
"And one Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian, nickname Haisi, who's operating out of that ship."
"Eastern hemisphere Ijir. At least by ancestry." This from Kaury.
"You know him."
"No," Kaury Narn said. "But the name is eastern. I'll remember it."
"Haisi," Tauhen said. "Which personage?"
"Not the Personage of Urtur. Somebody named Paehisna-ma-to."
"Not familiar."
"Not to me."
"Is there any way," the Narn asked, "you can get in touch with your aunt?''
"No. That's the truth." Touchy question, under other circumstances; but this was with obvious reason.
"What I hear, she's somewhere…" She censored that."… inconvenient; and I don't know where.
Possibly Ana-kehnandian's personage is shaking the tree, so to speak, to see what falls out; certainly somebody wanted to use me to get to her, and I couldn't if I wanted to. So if your trail and hers should cross, let her know. But meanwhile I hope I've settled this mahe and got him off my tail. What I want to know— are there any stsho hiding on this station?"
"Gone when we got here," Padur said. "And Padur was here before Nam. Rumor is they just boarded ship and took out of here. I won't bet on any holdouts, but by my experience, they'd Phase if they had to hide: they wouldn't do it."
"Which ship took them? Where?"
"The general staff, on Pakkitak, to Meetpoint via Hoas. A rumor — a rumor about certain ones going to Kita on Ko 'juit."
One kifish ship. One mahen ship, to Kita Point. Not unheard of, for stsho to use either species'
transportation. But Padur said it: it was rumor. Everything they knew, was a report they had from the mahendo'sat, namely from the Personage and from Ana-kehnandian.
"We've got to find Atli-lyen-tlas. We have a package with that address. Hear anything on that score?"
"The ambassador?" Kaury Narn said. "That gtst excellency and one of the staffers went with the mahen ship."
"How sure are your sources?"
"Market gossip, no more, no less." Kaury twitched her ring-heavy ears and settled back, arms folded.
"Which means nothing. And if I knew anything else that bears on it, I'd be quick to tell you. I don't know."
Information appearing without source, in a hotbed of gossip both true and false, in a market that sailed and fell on rumors and accusations and public perceptions. Wonderful.
"We're outbound tomorrow," Padur said. "Fueling in the next watch. You're on to Kita, then?"
"Not willingly. Certainly not where I'd like to go. If you do run across my aunt's track—"
"I'll pass it on what's happened, where you've gone." Small movements, twitches of the ears, shiftings in the chairs, said that two busy captains were anxious to get back to work: news was welcome, but sparser than they had hoped, and it threatened none of their clan interests.
This captain was the same — at least busy and anxious to get back to the market reports — to safeguard her clan interests. Their on again, off again entry into Urtur market and the (by now) famous encounter in the customs office, had sent the prices of goods in their hold up and down, up and down, and (more than one could play that game) she had had Chihin and Tiar buying current entertainment, fine-grade composites supplies, grain, and a handful of mahen luxuries on the market, saying, if asked, that the Legacy might just go on to Kita to sell its load. Which was an honest possibility — until she had gotten a fair offer and a fair buy option.
Not that she'd have deceived other hani captains: they'd already concluded their deals before the Legacy'? cargo hit the boards; besides that they were coming from the other direction, with different goods; and one being in process of loading and one set for un-dock, already in countdown.
Dirty tricks on the mahen traders and the handful of kif in port, but traders who relied solely on the rumors that ran the docks were asking for surprises; and those who asked what all of a certain species seemed to be acting on, and how they were selling and buying learned far more. It was the way the game was played, that was all, a stsho game from top to bottom.
Except they had a direct barter offer on the methane load, gods rot the luck: that was the trouble with dealing with the methane docks — they too often wanted to barter, you couldn't always handle what they wanted to give and you couldn't talk to a matrix brain to explain your constraints.
Hani, thank the gods, were much more straightforward.
"What's the situation at Meetpoint?" Padur asked on the way to the airlock.
"Chancy. You want my opinion, if I weren't carrying what I'm carrying, for a rate I can't tell you, I'd do a turn-around at Hoas back for here. Something's going on with the stsho, you've guessed that the same as I have, and I don't have the least idea what, but it would keep me out of Meetpoint if I wasn't paid real, real well. Possibly the administration there is in some kind of crisis. Possibly the crisis is here. Possibly
…" The idea occurred to her on the spot, and she might have censored it, but these were allied captains, of nominally friendly clans. "Possibly it could be a crisis much further into stsho territory. And someone wiser than I am should consider that possibility. I've no way to get a message anywhere, except by you."
Kaury Narn gave her a particularly straight stare. And nodded and left. Padur walked with her down the yellow, ribbed tube, around the curve, the two of them talking together and doubtless more comfortably, with an associate decades older in her friendship than a young upstart Chanur.
Seniority was what they had lost, with Pyanfar out of the picture, and doubly so with Rhean retiring to manage the situation at home. From senior, and important, Chanur had descended to a Chanur had descended to a "Who are you?" from captains who honestly had to see Hilfy Chanur to know whether they could trust her word or her judgment. Oh, they knew her: they'd recall her as one of The Pride's crew, once upon a time; but no few of the captains and worse, the crewwomen, gave her that second look that remarked her youth, and wondered what deals she'd cut to obtain of her clan, at her age, the post they'd worked a lifetime for.
Working for her aunt, certain mahendo'sat evidently thought — running the mekt-hakkikt's errands and serving as decoy.
Having notions, the old women in the han would say of her and of Pyanfar. Delusions of deity. A disdain for Anuurn. A blurring of self — what, was hani and what was not. Herself, yes, defiantly she blurred those lines — but blurred lines were definitely not Pyanfar's attitude: that was the first and foremost of the problems between them.
The loader clanked. She held her breath, stopped in her office door, wondering was it going to balk and stick. It kept on. Tiar passed her, paint-spattered, towing a large carrier full of plastic-wrapped cushions, all white.
"For the gods’ sake watch the — whatever-it-is. Don't spatter it."
"Won't, cap'n," Tiar panted. Chihin and Fala brought up the rear, with a lamp trailing connections, like some sea creature rudely uprooted. A trail of white dust tracked dow
n the Legacy's corridor, while gtst honor sat in sheet-draped splendor in the lounge, making personal purchases on the station market and demanding to be back in gtst quarters as soon as possible.
The loader balked again, cl-unk. She looked at the deck as if she could look through it, beseeched the indifferent gods of trade, and the thing limped onward. It worked better on incoming, for some reason known only to those gods. They had the cursed thing on auto at the moment, and trusted mahen passers-by and dockers not to fling themselves gratuitously into the gears and sue while Tarras was working inside.
Impossible. Impossible to get out of here with any dispatch. And a tired crew was asking for accidents to happen.
Wasn't, however, the only source of brute muscle they had aboard. The stsho was topside and little likely to stir.
She walked down to the laundry, hit the door once, and opened it.
Hallan Meras stuffed something away in a hurry, ears flat, face dismayed, and she surveyed the laundry, that now contained pieces of the crew lounge, the galley, and somebody's personal library.
"Captain," Hallan said, scrambling for his feet. He was respectful, commendably so.
"Crew says you say you can work cargo."
"Aye, captain."
Sounded sane. Sounded like someone who could take basic orders.
"We've got a problem," she said. "We're in a crunch, Tarras is working the loader solo, inside, we've got nobody keeping the local kids' fingers out of the loader — I don't suppose you brought a coat, did you?"
"No, captain." Ears flagged. "But I could sort of wrap a blanket around—''
"Unworkable. No boots, no coat, no cold suit, no hold. Can you behave yourself on the dockside?
We're going late. We're nearly 12 hours behind, we're unloading and we're loading, fast as I can get the buy made and the cans on our dock. Nobody's getting any sleep."
"I'd love to, captain. I really would!"
She truly didn't trust enthusiasm in a kid who'd broken up the Meetpoint market. She refused to soften her expression, only stared at him with ears flat and nose drawn. "Hallan Meras, have you lied? Can you work cargo? Do you know what you're doing?"
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