But ker Chihin hadn't said about whether to come back or not. He thought he should; and came quietly back and stopped in the doorway, because Chihin was fixing a case back in the traveling brace, on the pedestal, and it might be fragile.
He waited until she had tightened the bolts and slid the cover off the box, which proved to hold a simple vase. Then he cleared his throat.
"Gods rot you!" Chihin cried, with a start, and knocked back into a bucket of construction trash and another of panel clips.
"I'm sorry, ker Chihin."
"You didn't see this thing."
"Yes, ker Chihin." He honestly wished he hadn't. He thought maybe he was meant to get out, immediately, but Chihin started picking up loose bits and pieces of the scattered debris. He went to help, tentatively, and grabbed up loose panel clips as fast as he could find them, until he had a double handful.
"You be careful you don't miss any of those. If one of those goes whizzing around here under v, you don't want to know what it'd do to a body's head."
"I know, ker Chihin. I'm sorry."
"It was my foot," Chihin muttered, which was fairer than most ever were to him. He went back after more clips, and searched all around the edges of the cabin, and around the cushions and down in them, no matter how remote the chance.
No more of them. He came back and dumped what he had.
"Boy, — what got into you, wanting to come out here?"
"Captain said I could help…"
"I mean here. I mean going to space."
Thatquestion. It always came up. "I wanted to."
"I know that. But what's a nice kid want to come out here and run over tc'a and get arrested for?"
KerChihin didn't think he belonged here. He was used to that. And you couldn't argue with it. He shut up and kept his head down, already knowing the captain was going to throw him off the ship, so there was no use in arguing.
"Kid?"
"I wanted to go to space, that's all."
"Think you couldn't have found yourself a spot on Anuurn? Don't think there's some niche you could have carved out? You're a good-looking kid. You'd have gotten somebody's attention."
"I guess. Maybe. I don't know." He'd been through this too many times, with every ship he applied to, with the one that had taken him, with every member of the Sun's crew, in one form or another.
Sometimes he'd given answers to make them happy. He'd caught himself lying and sworn off it. But he didn't want to argue with Chihin either. The day had already gone wrong enough.
"So what d' you think?" Chihin asked. "Is space what you expected?"
"I don't know." Same stupid answer. He found a piece of debris and brought it back, thinking, and he said it: his back was to the wall and he couldn't lose any more than he had. "But I don't want to go back.
And I'm getting better."
"At what? Parking?" Chihin said, straight to the sore spot. He kept his head down and picked up the container of debris. "You know where to take that?"
"To 'cycling. I guess it's out by the lifts."
"You guess right." Which let him go, so he went out down the corridors and sorted the trash into the right chutes, plastics and metal bits apart, then wiped the bucket down and took it back to the only place he knew to take it.
"Goes in the maintenance locker/’ Chihin said. "That's-"
"Lower Main 2. Next the lift. I spotted it.’‘
Chihin frowned at him and flattened her ears. He didn't know whether Chihin was annoyed at him or not.
"Sharp eyes we have."
"Shall I put it up, ker Chihin?"
"Get,'‘ she said. He got, back to the area he had just been in. The lift was working. One of the crew coming down, he thought. He opened the locker, stowed the bucket, and was just latching the door when the lift door opened. He looked up, to say hello to whatever of the crew it was.
It wasn't.
He saw the stsho in the same moment it saw him. He stared in shock; it let out a warbling shriek and ducked back into the lift.
He ducked back down the corridor. Fast. And around to where its cabin was.
"Chihin!" he stammered. And when Chihin looked at him: "I think it saw me. The stsho. It was in the lift."
Chihin blasphemed in a major way and told him to go to his quarters. So he went there, and shut the door and sat down on the cushion.
He hadn't thought things could get worse, or imagined that he could find another way to foul things up.
Oh, gods, he hadn't thought so.
"Perfectly safe," Hilfy said in her best stshoshi Trade. "I do assure your honor, this is a person who came aboard with references from gtst excellency gtstself…"
"… who lied!" Tlisi-tlas-tin said from the speaker.
Hilfy leaned against the panel, kept her voice calm. "Your honor, occupying the lift is against all safety regulations designed for your comfort and well-being…" She was down to quoting the primer lessons in the Trade. "Kindly bring the lift car back to lower decks and open the door."
Gods rot the creature for taking it on gtstself to wander about the ship.
"Your honor, do you hear me? This is a civilized and well-mannered young person who was assisting a member of the crew in maintenance."
"An immature male person? This ship has immature male persons performing life-critical maintenance?
This ship has entrusted vital junctions to persons known for irrational behaviors and distasteful tendencies toward violence toward uninvolved bystanders?"
"This young male person was disposing of refuse. Kindly bring the car back to this deck."
"We have been betrayed by all pertinent interests. How do we know if anyone is telling the truth regarding anything? How should we have anticipated this desertion? How can we survive this devastation? We are the prey of strangers and persons without discrimination! ''
"Your honor, as the captain of this ship I require you to come to the lower level, for your own protection, your honor, as if there should be an emergency on-station the lift is not a safe place to be."
There was no response. But stsho were not a valorous species where it came to bodily injury.
"Broken bones are possible," she said, "should this station encounter some emergency."
The lift thumped and whirred into motion.
"I think we got the son," Chihin said.
"Don't push our luck," she said.
The lift reached lowerdecks. The door opened. Hilfy pushed the hold button, and bowed to the pale, tremulous creature at the back wall of the lift.
Gtstbowed. She bowed.
Gtstedged outward. And peered past her, cautiously.
"Will your honor view the quarters? Your honor certainly will not want to leave the oji unattended."
A slippered toe edged across the line and into the corridor. Hilfy stood well back as gtst honor looked over the corridor.
And retreated.
"Your honor…"
And advanced again, with a fluttering of gtst long fingers about the vicinity of gtst heart. Moonstone eyes looked toward the corridor, under feathery brows, and gtst honor advanced a pace.
"We are not certain, we are far from certain we can bear this stress. We have been affronted, we have been transported far from tasteful and familiar places, our presence has been assaulted by strange persons of male and violent gender—"
"If your honor please. You will be most favorably impressed by the tastefulness of your quarters. And the Preciousness is absolutely inviolate. Have we not promised?''
Step after step. Chihin backed aside. Hilfy gestured the stsho further and further and around the corner into the appropriate corridor, which gtst was willing to enter only after an advance look.
As far as the doorway at least, gtst advanced. Gtst craned gtst long neck around the doorframe to look left and right, and took a step inside.
And another.
"Spare," gtst said. And advanced another pace, into a white, white, white cabin with white treelike shapes and the Precio
usness enthroned in its case.
"Elegant," gtst said, and sighed and walked further, from object to object, fluttering gtst hands and sighing and sighing again.
"A success," Chihin muttered at Hilfy's shoulder.
"A triumph," gtst breathed. "How can a colored species have achieved it?"
One hardly knew whether to be complimented or not.
"Is your honor then comfortable?" Hilfy asked.
Gtstturned full about, staring at all of it, no little of which was gotten at bid, from an abandoned stsho embassy and abandoned stsho apartments. And two mixed lots of white paneling, the only white paneling they had been able to find.
"Does this… male person share nearby quarters?"
"By no means," Hilfy said.
"Moderately acceptable," gtst said. "Our sensibilities are relieved."
The door shut.
"Put him in the lounge," Hilfy said.
"Captain?" Chihin said.
"I said put Meras in the crew lounge! The crew can socialize in the galley! We can't afford another incident!"
"Aye," Chihin said quietly. And went.
"No question now," Hilfy muttered, over gfi, at supper. "Hoas. Narn's not happy about taking him, but they will. Leaving him here's not a good idea. Let them think about it and somebody'II think up a lawsuit."
Faces weren't happy. "I'm against it," Tiar said, foremost. "We have a responsibility, captain, we didn't exactly ask for it, but this isn't an experienced spacer we're talking about…"
"We're all against it," Hilfy said. "We'd all like to leave him in better circumstances. We'd all like for Sahern to behave like a civilized clan and take care of its responsibilities, but that's not going to happen.
The only question is whether we throw him off our ship or we send him to Hoas where Narn will throw him off theirs. Maybe I can get a legal release out of the station office that'll make it safer for him coming back through here — I'll try that, in what time we've got, while we're onloading…"
"Dangerous," Chihin said. "Rattle a lawyer's door and you get more lawyers, that's what I say."
"I know that. But we've at least got some influence to bring to bear, at least I've got a foot in the door with the personage of this system — not mentioning aunt Py — and the questions we can settle are questions that have to be answered, by any other ship that brings him back through here from Hoas. And Hoas it has to be. We can't alter distances. There's no way he can get back except through here."
"He's still safer with us," Fala said, her young face earnest as might be.
"We're not taking him."
"I've backed a loader now and again," Tarras said. "The docker chief was yelling to move it — the boy moved it. There's not a one of us—"
"That's fine. So we're all occasionally guilty. We're leaving the boy with Narn!"
"What if Ana-kehnandian thinks he knows something?" Tiar said.
And Chihin: "There's — ah — a complication."
"What complication?"
"The boy's seen the vase."
"What do you mean, 'seen the vase'? Wasn't it put away? Didn't I order it taken down until we'd absolutely finished knocking around in there?"
"We were. I thought he'd gone back to quarters. I sent him there. I thought he'd stay. He didn't."
"Chihin, —"
"I'm sorry, captain."
"He disobeyed orders?"
"I didn't exactly order him to stay there. I sent him there. He came back."
"Gods. What else? What possibly else can he get into?"
"I don't know," Chihin said. "But — being fair, it wasn't as if he was deliberately doing anything wrong."
"He's never doing anything wrong! I've never met anybody so gods-rotted innocent. Gods in feathers, why is Meras wherever you don't want him?"
"It's a small world down there."
"Small world. Small gods-rotted one corridor he was told to keep his nose out of!"
"The stsho took an unscheduled walk too."
"The stsho is a paying passenger. The stsho wasn't picked out of station detention! The stsho didn't create an international incident on the docks and have the section doors closed!"
"What I can't figure," Tiar said, "is why this Haisi Ana-kehnandian wants to know what the object is.
What possible difference could it make?"
"Evidently a major one, to someone." She stirred the stew around in her bowl, stared at floating bits as if they held cosmic meaning, and thought back and back to this port, and days when one went armed to dockside. When accidents that happened weren't accidents and you didn't trust anything for face value. It felt like those days again and she felt trapped.
Fool, she said to herself. Fool, fool, fool. One grew accustomed to high politics, one grew used to breathing the atmosphere at the top of bureaucratic mountains, and one's vital nerves grew dull to signals of high-level interest and dangerous associations.
One just didn't by the gods think of it as unusual … when any freight-hauler else would have said Wait, go back, why me?
"If we leave him," Tarras said, "somebody's going to grab him for questioning. Or try to."
Of course they were. Give them sufficient cause for curiosity and local authorities might trump up some charge to get the boy off any ship that was carrying him: figure that too. She had rather not have that ship be Legacy. But honorably speaking, she could not wish it to be Narn, either.
And customs had come asking about the nature of the cargo. Maybe Ana-kehnandian's questions had put them up to it, and maybe the Personage of Urtur was innocent as spring rain. Or maybe she wasn't.
Maybe that angry scene with Ana-kehnandian had been only because Ana-kehnandian had produced no results. Because it had gotten noisy, and public, and Ana kehnandian had had his bluff called in a way the Personage of Urtur didn't like.
She found herself still stirring the stew, like an idiot. And asking herself what Meras could actually say that could do damage. 'It's a white vase?' Stupid piece of information. And what did it mean? What in a reasonable and occasionally logical universe did Ana-kehnandian know or not know about the stsho that could make it valuable or life-threatening or politically important to his Personage, or what in a mahen hell was going on among the stsho? Meras could know something useful or he might not have seen any detail the mahendo'sat could remotely find useful. It might not be that it was a vase. It might be the carving on the vase. It might be that it wasn't a doorstop, a bag of dried fish or an antique teapot, for all they could possibly know.
She looked up at four sober faces, four sober stares. Fala's ears went down, Tarras' did; then Tiar's did, one ear at a time. Chihin was the only exception, eye to eye with her.
"My fault," Chihin said. "I thought he'd stay. I didn’t 't expect the stsho down the lift, — If we could transfer him to Narn secretly—"
"And say somebody gets onto it, they get him anyway, and they've got help. Say they might be within one jump of doing something with the information, straight back the way we came. But the ambassador went to Kita so we have to go to Kita. That's more than one jump from Meetpoint. I wish I knew what in all reason it matters it's a vase." Chihin shrugged perplexedly. Hilfy took a spoonful of stew, wondering if history would forget one Hallan Meras if she sent him on a spacewalk, say on their way to jump.
"I'll talk to him," she said, and ate another spoonful. "With any luck whatsoever, divinely owed us these last five years, there'll be a hani ship through here outbound from Hoas on its way to somewhere useful.
I've got a hundred lots of cans, a general mail shipment, twenty cans of medical supplies, the luxury goods, the dupe-rights on the entertainment tapes; and that's about the best we can do on short notice.
High value shippers are spooked. Can you blame them? Lucky we can get better than pig iron this run.
Industrials and a load of foodstuffs and a ten can lot of spare parts for some construction company at Kita. Mostly cold-hold stuff. I know you've been going shift and shift; and we
could carry more. But we need to get out of here. I want us out of this port before somebody files suit."
"I'll go with that," Chihin said. "The sooner the better."
"I'll get down to cargo," Tiar said. "I've had the easy stint last watch."
"We're going to push till we're loaded," she said. "Sleep when you're off, do anything we can to get turned around. I'll work hold. Meras can stay in the lounge, in the lounge, I don't care if it catches fire, he's not to leave it except on my personal order, do we agree on that?''
Nods. "Aye, captain," from Tiar.
She shoved the bowl back and got up. "I'll talk to him. And I don't care how persuasive he is, I don't care how pretty his eyes are, I don't care how polite he is, I don't want that son out of the crew lounge until we're sealed and we're sure our paying passenger is staying put! Do I hear Yes, captain?"
"Yes, captain," the answer came back.
So she left the galley for the lounge.
The captain came through the door with her ears down and her face scowling. Which might mean something else had happened that was his fault, although, before the gods, Hallan had no idea how or what. He stood up in proper respect and ducked his head.
"If the gods are good, a hani ship will come through here at the last moment bound directly for hani space and take you off our hands. If the gods are less well-disposed, you'll be on to Kita with us. And if—" The captain's first claw extruded. "If you do one more thing to screw up, if you walk out of this lounge without my express permission, if you startle our passenger again, if you assume any gods-be need to go anywhere, if you bat your eyes at one of my crew or land in anyone's quarters, you're going to find yourself chained in the laundry for the duration of this voyage, which may last another year! Does this order get through to you?"
"Yes, captain."
"Do you believe I'm joking?"
He looked the captain in the face, a very pretty face it was, and a very serious and dangerous one.
"No, captain,"
"Do you want to spend a year down there?"
"No, captain. But if I could help in any way—"
"You don't help!" She jabbed the forefinger in his direction and he backed up. "You don't offer to help me, you don't offer to help my crew, you don't offer to help our passenger. You never saw anything, you will never remember that you saw anything in the stsho's cabin, and if you ever do remember you saw anything you'll forget it forthwith. Do you follow that?"
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