"Off-comp!"
Sound stopped. And Meras was still twitching, but be hadn't left his chair, his eyes were dilated, but the ears were trying to come upright — he was paying attention, he was listening, he wasn't crazy.
"Captain.”Tiar — on the bridge. Magnificent timing.
"I'm hi my office, Tiar. What's the problem?"
"Just got a blip on station feed.Sun Ascendant's just entered system.''
The answer to prayers, it might be.
Hallan looked upset. Shook his head and shaped No with his mouth. Said something else.
"Thanks, cousin. Glad to hear that.'’
"I don't want to go, captain. I don't want them—"
"You signed with them. You sat at their table, you slept in their shelter, they got you your license, and I don't know what made diem leave you at Meetpoint, Meras, but so far as what I've seen they may have run for their lives."
Made him mad, that did. Good.
"If you want to go back to the laundry, you stay there. If you want to go back to the passenger cabins and help Chihin paint and patch, feel free. I'm not turning you over to station police, and being the righteous fool I am, I'm not identifying Sun Ascendant to the tc'a. We'll handle it. But I've done everything I'm obliged to do for somebody I gathered out of a jail he by the gods got himself into. I've got 41 messages in ship's files for my aunt at this station; I've got 156 for me, most of them from people trying to use me to get to my aunt for favors they want; and here comes one of my aunt's devoted admirers who just really badly wants into my crew, because he just really badly wants it, that's why.
— Well, so does half the universe, Meras. And I'd suggest you give up and go home if meeting my aunt is what you want; or if being a spacer is what you want, focus down and use your head on problems before you kill somebody. I'd suggest you give up on the Manual of Trade and start reading the licensing and operations manual. It may keep you out of the next hot spot you land in. — And give my regards to Tellun Sahern. Minute your ship makes port you're going over there."
Ears were flat. Really mad. Better. Maybe he'd survive in Sahern, in far space.
"Go on," she said. And he got up and bowed and left.
Which didn't make her happy. Nobody could be happy, who had a 200,000 credit charge pending against her ship, a cargo half unloaded, a distraught stsho dignitary in the crew lounge, and a course change pending to Kita Point, a gods-forsaken dot in the great empty, after which, as she had said to Meras — limited options.
"Ker Chihin," Hallan said, hesitating in the open doorway. "The captain suggested I help."
"I don't need anything backed into," Chihin said shortly, and Hallan winced. The room was all white.
The furniture was gone. You walked up steps to the floor and there was a depression full of white cushions. Besides there was a pedestal with braces going out to it, but nothing on it.
"You can vacuum," Chihin said. "Floor, walls, everything. Steam vac. All the dust. Height could help.
Are your feet clean?''
He looked. They weren't, exactly. "I'll go wash," he said meekly.
"Packaged wet towel, right there by the steps." Chihin frowned at him as he sat down on the steps and reached for it. He tried not to look at her face. He felt sick, he had felt sick ever since he had backed into the tc'a, but he couldn't go back to that closed room, he couldn't stand it. So he washed his feet off so no one could complain of a smudge and he looked for a place to dispose of the towel.
"Over there," Chihin said, indicating a plastic bucket. He went and dropped it in. "You know how to use the steam vac?''
"Yes, ma'am." He was too well acquainted with it. It was all Sahern had let him do for his first weeks aboard the Sun. He went and checked the prime, checked the water and pulled the filter screen, which he figured he ought to clean before someone else found fault with him. "Is there a sink, ma'am, or should I—"
"Bath's in there. Sink works just like ours — it's the fixture on the left."
He went and washed the filter. It was different plumbing. Ordinarily he would have been intrigued, but the lump in his throat would not go away and he just tried to go moment by moment and not to think about what the captain had said, one way or the other. The captain had a right to be mad, gods, he couldn't pay back the damage he'd cost — probably nobody in Meras clan history had ever fouled up so egregiously, so consistently.
But the docking chief had said to move the cart.
He put the vacuum back together. He took it to a corner and started there, with a racket that made conversation impossible. But he was aware of Chihin staring at him from time to time: maybe she expected the vac to explode or something; or him to do something she could fault. Of all the crew, Chihin was not in any way friendly, and he supposed by now the rest of the crew was ready to kill him. Except maybe… at least Tarras had tried to speak for him. Fala and Tiar had looked upset, as well they might, but they hadn't hated him. Chihin — didn't want him here. Which was why the captain had sent him to work with her, he supposed. But it was still better than sitting alone in the laundry and remembering backing into that truck, and that thing snaking back and forth in pain and battering itself against the windows, leaving bits of skin and fluid on the glass…
At least it hadn't exploded. Nobody had gotten killed- Quite the opposite. Somebody had gotten created. He wondered how the tc'a felt.”
"The kid was trying to straighten out the loader," Tarras said. There was still ice in her beard, melting and glistening in the heat of the downside office — Hilfy had called her up, ordered her to trade places with Fala, and the way to the dock lay through the lower main corridor and past her office. So she had both of them, Tarras and Fala, arguing with her, the loader was in temporary shut-down, pending the switch, and no cargo was moving. But she figured she might as well listen and be done with it.
"All right," she said. "Voices on Meras' behalf… while we're at it." She pushed the call button.
"Cousin. Listen in."
"Aye,"Tiar answered from the bridge. "What's up?"
"The loader jammed," Tarras said, and sat down, while Fala edged a half a step further into the office, in the doorway. "The kid knew the equipment— Sun Ascendant must use the same model. Anyway, it pulled its usual stunt, and the kid said it was the 14-can truck, when the arm positions itself: he says it's a false signal, there's nothing to do with the chain, it's the arm overextending. This one model of truck has a slightly lower bed. It reaches down to get it, the arm jams, jams the chain, you back the chain — it fixes it.
So if you move the truck a little farther—"
"The docker chief said he's heard of it," Fala said. "It's something they say on the docks but the companies won't investigate. Doesn't happen until the equipment gets a little wear on it, and then it'll happen if the play that gets into the joint works far enough to the right where the sensor bundle runs through, and that bias only happens when you get a whole lot of fifteen-year-old Daisaiji 14-canners in a row. Which you get on Urtur, they got more of them than anywhere, because they made them here. And it only happens if some driver parks short. That's why it comes and it goes." She couldn't help but be interested in the purported olution to the loader glitch, if it was the answer — it sounded iffy to her; but most of all she didn't want to hear it was Meras who had the information. She'd worked up a perfectly good, justified fit of temper, from which Meras could learn something that might keep him alive, and she didn't want any extenuating circumstances.
"So the thing jammed," Tarras said, "and the docker crew wanted to move the truck, and somebody'd parked a can-hoist in the way—" "Probably why the truck parked short," Fala said. "And the kid said it was the truck, so the chief started yelling about moving the truck," Tarras said.
"He was pretty hot, so the kid — just got in and backed it up."
"Without a license."
"Captain," Tarras said, "the length of the truck, it had to move. Isn't a spacer working freight hasn't stepped
aboard and moved a hoist a few—"
"I haven't. I don't want my crew doing it. You let the dockers do their job, you don't lay a hand on their equipment, we got a special handicap, f godssake, Chanur's got too many enemies who'd like to sue the hide off us, you understand?"
"Understood," Tarras said sullenly. "But," Fala said, "it was only cosmic bad luck the tc'a was back there—"
"Luck! Methane loads come in on oxy side all the time at Urtur, and we got tc'a going back and forth on business oxy side, and it had business which is now complicated by an offspring! We can only hope we don't get company our next trip out. Luck be damned!"
"Aye, captain."
"Captain,"Tiar said, "begging your pardon, but he's young. Haven't any of us made mistakes? ''
“He can make them on Sahern 's deck, and welcome to him. Enthusiasm is one thing. We can't afford his enthusiasm. Besides, his ship is here—"
"They didn't do him any favors, cap'n. That's their teaching? They take a kid on for an apprentice, and he's got a little of this, a little of that? I asked him stuff on ops. He knows this board real well, doesn’t 't know how it relates to the main board. That's 'Sit here and watch the colored lights, kid,' that's what they gave him "
"It's not our problem! He's not signed with us, he signed with them."
Silence from Tarras and Fala. Glum stares.
"Aye,"Tiar conceded from the bridge, not happy.
So no one was. She wasn't. Meras wasn't. But neither, one could suppose, was the tc'a.
Meanwhile Sun Ascendant was inbound, in contact with Urtur control. "To work," she said, and, in peace, composed a polite message for merchant captain Tellun Sahern, to rest in her message file.
From to Sahern's Sun Ascendant, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Tellun Sahern, her attention: We are pleased to report that—
No, scratch that. Sahern would find a way to take it wrong.
Meetpoint authorities, having dropped all charges against Hallan Meras, requested us to ferry him as far as Urtur where he might rejoin his ship. We will be glad to escort him to your dockside at your earliest convenience or to turn him over to your escort here if that is your wish.
FromSahern's Sun Ascendant to, the hand of Tellun Sahern, to Hilfy Chanur, her attention: We trade for a living, we don't take secret money or run without cargo. It's clear you had a motive in buying him free of the stsho. As you've surely learned by now, he has no data on our ship to give you. I doubt he could even falsify credible numbers. Chanur has made its bargains. We will not rescue you from your folly.
The message slipped into the tray in printout. It burned on the screen. Hilfy pushed the button to capture to log, took the printout and slipped it into physical file.
The message she thought of sending was: Earless bastard, I thought your reputation had hit bottom.
The message she sent was:
From to Sahern's Sun Ascendant, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Tellun Sahern, her attention: We require a release from apprenticeship signed by you, under Sahern seal, and we will seek passage or assignment for him elsewhere.
FromSahern's Sun Ascendant to, the hand of Tellun Sahern, to Hilfy Chanur, her attention: Too late, Chanur. We've been following the news since we entered system. We accept no legal liability for the actions of a fool we left in stsho custody and you conveyed here and let loose on Urtur docks.
You bought him. He's yours.
Although I thought your personal preferences lay outside your species.
From to Sahern's Sun Ascendant, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Tellun Sahern, her attention: Daughter of a nameless father, if this young man wishes to file a complaint against you for desertion in a foreign port, I will swear to particulars.
As to my personal tastes, at least I have preferences.
Possibly she had made a mistake. Temper had gotten the better of her. She should not have offered legal backing. She sat contemplating the screen, and thinking black and blacker and blackest thoughts.
"Captain?" Tiar asked from the bridge. "We got all that on log.''
"Good."
"Kid never got a fair break, captain."
"The universe doesn't guarantee fair breaks, and I don't want any apprentice under any circumstances!
Something's gone wrong with this whole business, we've got a nervous stsho on our hands and Kita is no place to take a novice. I want you to contact Narn and Padur — no, never mind. / will."
"Captain. Can I say a word?''
"I know what you're going to say, and I'm not listening."
"Captain, on behalf of the crew…"
"We're not taking any apprentice! His apprentice papers are over on a Sahern ship, they're not going to give them to Chanur, they're out to cause us whatever trouble they can, the whole radical right is looking for a Cause against Chanur, and I was a fool ever to agree to take him aboard — I thought Sahern would be reasonable, but clearly not."
She beeped off the contact, and composed another message — thought about couriering this one over to avoid public commotion and public pressure, and thought about the hazards of sending Legacy personnel alone and within reach of station police, angry merchants — or Ana-kehnandian.
No. No such chances.
From to Padur's Victory, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Tauhen Padur, her attention: We have advised Sahern of the presence of their apprentice crewman, Hallan Meras, on our ship. They have refused responsibility for this young man, who has been cleared of all charges which caused him to be detained by stsho authorities, and further, they have refused him access to their ship in harsh terms, preferring to recall an ancient feud with Chanur, no fault of this young man of Meras clan, a licensed spacer, who has traveled under our protection.
While Padur has no obligation, Chanur would be obliged if Padur could take this young man under its protection and possibly find a berth for him.
FromPadur's Victory to, the hand of Tauhen Padur, to Hilfy Chanur, her attention: Padur while friendly to Chanur and altogether desirous of maintaining Chanur's good will, under the circumstances of the recent accident on Chanur dock-side must regretfully decline to incur the possibility of legal liabilities under mahen law.
From to Narn's Dawnmaker, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Kaury Narn, her attention: We have advised Sahern of the presence of their apprentice crewman, Hallan Meras, on our ship. They have refused responsibility for this young man, who has been cleared of all charges which caused him to be detained by stsho authorities, and further, they have refused him access in harsh terms, preferring to recall an ancient feud with Chanur, no fault of this young man of Meras clan, who has traveled under our protection.
While Padur has declined our solicitation, we hope and Chanur would be obliged if Narn could take this young man, a licensed spacer, under its protection in any sense whatsoever.
FromNarn's Dawnmaker to, the hand of Kaury Narn, to Hilfy Chanur, her attention: I have my sister's young daughter aboard: I could not in good conscience expose her or Meras clan to the consequences of taking on this young man. Nor do we have passenger facilities. However, Narn is willing, under appropriate safeguards, and at Chanur's request and assumption of all consequent responsibility to Meras, to convey the young gentleman under close supervision as far as Hoas, where he may await a ship with familial connections.
Read that: lock him in the laundry and turn him over to Hoas authorities. At least no worse accommodation than he had, and a station where (gods hope!) he had no legal problems. But going to Hoas took him back toward Meetpoint, and he would have to come back through Urtur again.
Where that ship might find legal problems waiting for them, unless they could get a release, and she knew the mahen politics waiting for them.
Hilfy sat and contemplated the screen; and sent back:
From to Narn's Dawnmaker, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Kaury Narn, her attention: Thank you for your offer. We fully understand. We will hold your proposal in reserve while we seek other safe disposition for—
— him.
The pronoun itself was unaccustomed out here. Ten, fifteen years ago, you didn't by the gods use the male pronoun in a message between clans. It still felt queasy and indecent. It felt indecent to have one's decades-senior aunt ahead of one's self in pushing the conservative limits. When had she become the defender of hani propriety?
— the gentleman, she finished. If we don't get back to you, we wish you a safe voyage.
And to Padur:
From to Padur's Victory, the hand of Hilfy Chanur, to Tauhen Padur, her attention: We are seeking other solutions. Please bear witness that we have attempted the honorable discharge of our reasonable obligations to Sahern and to Meras. Safe voyage.
She sat. And sat.
She wished she had not used the com in the approach to Sahern. Aunt never used com for clan to clan business if she could help it. Good, on the one hand, that the initial business with Sahern was on public record and overheard by two other clans. She did not regret that. But… mahendo'sat who did not speak hani certainly had translators. So did the kif, of whom there were fifteen in system.
She had a prickly feeling all down her back, the same feeling the whole atmosphere at Urtur gave her—
since the dust-up in customs, and the Personage's too-easy dismissal of Ana-kehnandian, and every gods-be stsho on the station running for elsewhere when she had the Preciousness just itching to be delivered to somebody.
It had the feeling of powers at war, somewhere. And powers at war always went for the soft spots, the joinings between uneasy allies, the bribes, the coercions— the cooperations.
The feuds.
Chapter Eight
Ker Chihin passed finger-pads over the panel surface, stooped and passed the same inspection over the floor, and evidently she found no fault with the job. Hallan put the vac away; and ker Chihin inspected that, too, then told him to take it to the laundry and stow it in the number 3 locker.
Then Chihin said, "Good job, kid."
He looked back from the doorway, and bowed, hands full and all. He didn't think he was called on to say anything, just to keep quiet and do what he was told; so he went and stowed the vac.
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