Her heart was beating faster. She told herself there was no reason for panic, the station was civilized enough these days that an honest trader could get from the dock office to her ship's ramp without a gun; and that calling on the pocket com would be an over-reaction.
One of them was walking toward them, strobed in the multiple shadows of the lights and the flash of a passing service track. The matte black of his hooded robe was only marginally different from the skin of the long snout that was all of him that met the light. She couldn't see his hands, and while what had once been gunbelts were mere ornament these days… knives weren't outlawed.
"Captain…" Tiar said.
"If something happens, break for cover behind the number two console, call station on com, I'll take the number one, call the ship…" She monotoned it, under her breath: her mind was on autopilot, her eyes were on the kif… all the kif. They were predators, highly evolved, and fast over short distances. And no weapons ban covered teeth.
"Good day, captain. What a rare sight… hani back at Kshshti. How pleasant. Captain Hilfy Chanur, is it?"
"We might have met," she said flatly, ears back and with no pretense at friendliness. "Have we?"
"That unfortunate incident. I assure you I was light-years away and not involved. Let me introduce myself. My name is Vikktakkht, ambassador Vikktakkht an Nikkatu, traveling aboard Tiraskhti.
Perhaps the mekt-hakkikt has mentioned me."
"I doubt it. If she has, we haven't been in the same port in years."
"Ah. And your companion, your chief officer, perhaps."
"Tiar Chanur."
"Another name to remember. How do you do, captain? And I won't ask you such a meaningless question as why you're here. I know why you're here, I know where you're going."
The hair prickled at her nape. The last she'd seen there were only mahendo'sat back there in front of the office, but there'd been those inside. And she had no inclination to wait here through kifish courtesies.
"Nice to meet you, give my regards to the mekt-hakkikt, and excuse us if we don't stand about. We're running a tight schedule." She took Tiar's arm and started around the obstacle, but there were more of them beyond him, between them and the consoles and the ramp.
"Captain," the kif called after her. "Tell Hallan Meras I'd like to talk to him."
Dangerous to turn her back. It wasn't Pride crew she was with. "Watch them," she snapped, and turned to see what Vikktakkht was up to.
"Just tell him," it said, with a lifting of empty, peaceful hands. "We're old acquaintances."
Smug. Oh, so smug.
"Good day, then, Vikktakkht an Nikkatu."
"You have a very good accent."
"Practice," she said succinctly, and turned her back and swept up Tiar on a walk for the ramp access, past the kif who attended Vikktakkht.
The bastard thought she'd panic. The bastard thought she'd still twitch to old wounds. Wrong, kif.
Dangerously wrong.
"What's he want with na Hallan?" Tiar asked, glancing over her shoulder. "What's he talking about?
Do you know him?"
"Not yet."
"What's the kid possibly got to do with him?"
"That's what I want to ask na Hallan."
They were down on several spices, they'd run low on tissues, and they were out of shellfish, but they certainly had enough staples from here to Anuurn.
"KerChihin," Hallan said. "Ker Chihin, I've got the-"
Straight into the captain's presence.
"— inventory," he said. But by the captain's frowning, ears-down look, by Tarras and Tiar Chanur standing behind her likewise ears-down and frowning, he didn't somehow think they wanted the inventory. He didn't think anything he'd done in the galley could have fouled anything else up, unless maybe he'd messed up the computer somehow.
Maybe dumped their navigation records… something that bad…
"Vikktakkht," the captain said, and his heart skipped a beat. Or two. He remembered the jail. He remembered the kif he'd talked to every day. He remembered the richly dressed one who'd said…
… said, "Remember my name…"
"Meetpoint," he managed to say.
"Where on Meetpoint? Was he the one you hit?"
"I — don't know."
"But you know this name."
"He said… 'Someday you'll want to ask me a question.' "
"What question?"
"I don't know." He shook his head in utter confusion. "That was all he said. I was in the jail. And that was what he said."
"You know him from there."
"The day they… brought me to this ship." He didn't know whether what he'd answered was enough. He tried to think if there was anything else, any detail he could dredge up from memory, but nothing came clear to him, nothing had made sense then and nothing made sense now.
"That's all he said, captain. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't. I don't know what question he's talking about. I don't know what he wants."
"What would you ask him?"
"What he means. What he wants. I don't know!"
He was scared, really scared. He hadn't thought about the jail. He had put that place behind him. He trusted them, that there was no way he was going back to that place. But he'd found the way to foul up, it seemed. The captain just stood there looking at him, and finally said, "Are you willing to go out there, Meras?"
"Yes, captain," he said. But the prospect scared him of what else he could find to do wrong, “Whatever you want."
"It's what He wants that worries me. Go back to work. I've got some calling around to do. I'll let you know."
He was through with what they'd assigned him to do, but it didn't seem a good moment to bring that trivial matter up with her. He said quietly, "Aye, captain," and took his list and his pocket computer back to the galley to create something to do.
Chapter Thirteen
"Captain?" Fala slid a cup of gfi under Hilfy's hand, and she murmured thanks without looking. Her eyes were on the screen, while the search program located the most recent of the letters for Pyanfar, the ones that had just missed her at Meetpoint, the ones that had been backed up at Hoas and Urtur and Kura and Touin. A lot from mahen religious nuts who wanted to tell the mekt-hakkikt about prophecies (one never understood why they were never good news) and a handful who had an invention they wanted to promote, which they were sure the great Personage of Personages would find useful (no few hani were guilty of this sin.) There were a few vitriolic communications from people clearly unbalanced. The prize of that lot was from a mahe who had "written four times this week and you not answer letter. I tell you how solve border dispute by friendly rays of stars which make illuminate our peace. You make power color rainbow green and make green like so… when Iji orientate in harmony with rainbow color red with orange. Please take action immediate." (With illustrations, and important words underlined.) But nothing, so far, no hint of aunt Pyanfar's business in this stack.
A question Hallan Meras would like to ask Vikktakkht.
There was no question that she knew of… except the whereabouts of Atli-lyen-tlas.
And had the kif known that would be a question, back on Meetpoint, before a kifish guard handed Meras over to the Legacy?
Or was it some other thing, something Meras didn't remember or was afraid to say? Pyanfar had passed through Meetpoint not so long before: No'shto-shti-stlen had said so, and the huge stack of messages assumed she would come back through that port.
Hilfy sat, and sat, sipped gfi and stared at the blinking lights that meant incoming messages. The computer was set for the keywords Atli-lyen-tlas, stsho, ambassador, Ana-kehnandian, Ha'domaren, Pyanfar, hani, and Vikktakkht. She figured that should cover it.
But a quick scan of what arrived in the priority stack were mostly inquiries from various mahen companies asking about conditions at Kita. Not a word from the kif. If kif were talking to each other out there, they were not talking to her. Possibly they were occupied with the
local investigation.
Possibly they were couriering their messages to each other around the rim, not using com at all.
"Fueling's complete,"Tarras reported from downside ops. “ I've got a good bid on the goods. The market could go a point higher, could sink a little. My instinct says take it. "
"Do it. Very good. — Tarras, when the loaders get here, go ahead and open the hold, but keep someone monitoring the cameras. Whoever's going out, wear a coat, stuff the pistol in your pocket, never mind the regulations."
She still wasn't panicked about the threat, and she kept asking herself whether she were really this calm, or whether she was operating in a state of flashback. Kshshti was the site of her nightmares, and things were going wrong, but she found herself quite cold, quite logical. She could wish aunt Py were here, she could wish her crew had had some experience beyond the years-ago skirmish at Anuurn. Out there on the docks— her one split second of panic was realizing she had to tell Tiar which way to look: The Pride's crew had known, at gut level, which side to step to, who would do what, who was likeliest to cover whom. They'd done it before. They'd worked out the missteps. Paid for a few of them.
But aunt Py wasn't here. Sorting the mail stacks, even with computer search, for some answer to what was going on… could take weeks: the people with the real information were less likely to dump their critical messages in among the lunatic communications the stations collected in general mail, unless there was some code to tell The Pride's computers to pay attention; and she didn't know what keywords to search. Meanwhile it was her ship, her crew. It was her responsibility to get them through alive, and that included telling them when to break the law, violate the peace, the treaties, and the laws of civilized behavior.
It was up to her to decide a course of action on a kif who had gotten his claws into someone on her ship — before they signed the contract. Surmise that the stsho contract was the kif's interest: if it was, surmise that it had known about that contract, it had expected them to get it, and that it was up to its skinny elbows in the disappearance of Atli-lyen-tlas.
They had guns enough aboard — only prudent, never mind where they had bought them, or how, but it had involved a mahen trader; while weapons were such a cultural necessity among the kif, such a part of life-sustaining self-esteem, that the Compact peace treaty had had to except knives and blades from the weapons ban, figuring that kifish teeth were no less dangerous, and that it was far better to have the kif signatory to the peace than not…
Of course, it had taken considerable efforts in translations and cross-cultural studies to explain the word peace to all the several species. Granted, war did not translate with complete accuracy; but kif had understood neither idea. Kif weren't wired to understand war, since they were at constant odds with each other, cooperated when hani least would, betrayed when hani would be most loyal, and hit the ground at birth competitive, aggressive, and (some scholars surmised) having first to escape their nest before they were eaten.
As to the last… that was speculation. But she did understand their minds better than most hani. It wasn't to say she was forgiving. The kif weren't either. Circumstances either changed or they did not. They had that in common.
She got up from the console, she walked back to where na Hallan was puttering about in the galley, and said, with a queasy feeling,
"NaHallan, — how do you feel about talking to the kif?"
"If you want me to," he said.
"You take orders?"
"Aye, captain." Dubiously.
"You foul this up, Meras, and I'll shoot you myself. Lives are at risk, yours, mine, more than that, do you understand? You go out on the docks. And I'll suggest a question you can ask this Vikktakkht — that is, if you can't think of one of your own. Nothing comes to you yet, what he might have meant?"
"I've been trying to understand what he meant, captain. I don't. I can't imagine what he's talking about. It doesn't make sense. It didn't then."
"What would be important to ask him?"
"I don't know…"
"Like in the myths, Meras. You get one wish. What would help us?''
His ears went down and lifted again, tentatively. "Knowing where the stsho is. Getting hold of him…"
"Gtst. Not him. They're quite touchy on that score. But, yes, that's the question — unless you think of a better one."
"I'm sure I wouldn't—"
"I'm sure if you think of one, you'll tell me. I'll find this Vikktakkht. And if we meet him, if knives or guns come out, you take orders, and you don't act the fool. Do you hear me? Do you absolutely, beyond any question, understand?"
"Aye, captain," he said faintly. But if she had said the local star is green, she had the uneasy feeling that na Hallan would have agreed.
Give him credit, he would have tried to see the star that way. But it didn't make Yes the best answer.
And it didn't tell you what he'd do when the shots started flying.
She stared at him long enough to let him think about it. "I'll see if this Vikktakkht is by any chance in touch with his ship."
"You," Hilfy said to Fala, in the lower deck main corridor, "work the hold. Can you handle that?"
"No trouble," Fala said, "but…"
"No 'but.' I need you handling the loader." Ears went down. "Because I'm the—"
"Because I have things on my mind, Fala! Gods!" She headed down the corridor toward the airlock, where, if Chihin and Tiar had gotten Hallan downside, their expedition was organizing.
The dockers had lost no time: the Legacy's cargo lock was open, and Tarras, in the requisite coat, was out there going over the final customs forms.
There was no graceful way for a hani to wear a cold-hold coat on dockside: Tarras could justify it by going back and forth inside, and perspiring by turns. But they couldn't. So that meant the lightest arms, lousy for accuracy, but they fit in a formal-belted waist with no more than a slight bulge… and it was their office-meeting, formal reception best they wore.
Except na Hallan, who went in ordinary spacer blues. But when they walked down the ramp to the dock, there was no question where the stares went— straight to the hani a head taller than any of them, the one with the shoulders and the mane that matched.
Work stopped. A transport bumped the one in front with a considerable jolt. Hallan watched his feet on the way down. She watched their surroundings and said, under her breath, "I don't expect it, but watch left and right and say if you see anything untoward. Na Hallan, if there should be trouble, you do understand that getting your head down doesn't necessarily cover your rear. There's a lot of you.
Wherever we go, I want you to have somewhere in mind that you could get to that would be a solid barrier; and where you'd duck to if you had to fall back. I want this whole dock to be a map like that in your head, do you follow me?"
"Yes, captain. I do, thank you."
He might. Boys learned hunting, bare-handed; boys learned tracking and hiding and all such games as fitted them for defending their lives. It was heroics she worried about. Boys learned to show out, and bluff, and trust the other side most often to follow the rules, although na Kohan had said once, reflectively, that men learned to cheat in the outback, because some did, and once that was true — you couldn't assume.
So with Chihin and Tiar. The rings in their ears meant a lot of ports and each one of those rings a risky situation, in space or on the docks. But they weren't Pride crew, and they hadn't studied this together.
She just trusted they were thinking now, better than Tiar had been when she had felt that cross-up of signals.
They walked through the traffic of transports and past the towering gantry that held the power umbilical, took that route for the next three berths, before they tended around the off-loading of another ship, mahen, as happened.
There were stares. Hallan cast an anxious look back at them and stumbled on a power cable.
"Feet," Chihin said.
"Sorry," he said.
T
here was the kifish trade office, number 15, opposite berth 28, as listed — an unambitious and functional looking place, conspicuous by the orange light behind the pressure windows; but beyond the section doors was a district where that lighting was the norm, where kifish bars, restaurants and accommodations mingled with gambling parlors where kif played games no outsider would care to bet on, and where bloodletting was not an uncommon result, at least… it had been that way.
Maybe they had cleaned it up. One reminded oneself these were civilized times.
But that might be fatal thinking.
"This is the place. If there's trouble, have your spots picked and don't look after anyone but yourself — at least you know what you're thinking and where you're going."
"Too gods-be close to the kif section," Chihin said.
"We're dealing with kif," Tiar said.
Now she was nervous. Now the hair down her backbone must be ridged, and her claws kept twitching in their sheaths.
But not notably scared. It was like sleepwalking, saying to herself, I've done this before, this is the life I chose for myself, this is the way the Compact is, not—
— not the safe, law-hedged half-truths the treaty made. Safe, as long as you're within twenty lights of Anuurn, civilized, as long as it's only hani you deal with, altruistic, as long as you're not dealing with species who have to have that word explained to them.
A methane-breather wove past, in its sealed vehicle; a bus followed, humming along its mag strip.
Never could convince the tc'a to rely on the magnetics. Something about their sensitivities. You couldn't get that clear in translation either.
That was the truth out here. It wasn't law that got you by. It was good manners. It was giving in on a point that wasn't fatal to you, and might be to them.
There were kif about the door — not unnaturally. And it said something strange, that these kif showed less surprise at them than the mahendo'sat had done… these kif simply made soft clicking sounds of attention and backed away to allow them the door. There had been a time when kif didn't share information, when one kif knowing a fact didn't guarantee that other kif did.
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