"I'm not. And I'm not such a fool I think kif think like hani. Or that a hakkikt of your stature, who wished to contact us, would make two attempts designed to scare us without killing us."
"Kkkt." A motion of Vikktakkht's hand. "You think we have no subtlety?"
"Blowing out a docking port on Kshshti?"
More laughter, that clicked and hissed all around the room.
"Salutation," Vikktakkht said, "from the mekt-hakkikt. Who assured me you would not be diverted by her rival."
By Paehisna-ma-to, he meant; and meant that Pyanfar leaned to the kif, to kifish support, which would always be loyal, while they feared the subordinates that feared her…
She felt queasy at the stomach, having reasoned her way to that truth, having looked at it from all sides, and having decided that this was a place Pyanfar expected her mail delivered — however dark the paths Pyanfar traveled these days.
Maybe Paehisna-ma-to had reason, the thought came fluttering to the surface.
And drowned. Whoever had shot Chihin was not her friend. Whoever had killed innocent stsho and mahen security personnel was not her friend.
"And No'shto-shti-stlen?" she asked.
"An ally with enemies in Llyene. Hence gtst moved to form an alliance with the ambassador to Urtur, of a nature which you doubtless know and Ana-kehnandian does not."
"I don't know."
"You've not seen the object."
Caution held her tongue. Even with this so-named ally of Pyanfar's. "What would that tell me if I could?"
"The nature of the alliance. No'shto-shti-stlen's position within it, which of three."
"You mean sex?"
"An emblem of proposed gender."
She hoped she kept her mouth closed. Kif, fortunately, had no embarrassment in such matters.
"You have come here to present this to Atli-lyen-tlas. Is this not so?"
"Yes, hakkikt,"
"We have provided the ambassador such comforts as we found possible. But I think the ambassador would be far more comfortable on your ship."
"Possibly so, hakkikt."
''Sagikkt aku gtst!''
Bring the stsho! the hakkikt said, and with no delay whatsoever a door opened, admitting the blinding spectrum of a paler sun. There was a moderate commotion in that quarter. Hilfy turned her head cautiously and saw, past Hallan's shoulder, kif moving within that light. A waft of perfume came out, and kif made soft sounds of disgust.
Then came the spindly outline of a stsho body, gtst gossamer robes backlit against the glare in her watering eyes. She was blind, as the stsho seemed to be, hesitatingly as gtst moved; so likewise the kif.
Perhaps, she thought, it was eloquent of the condition within the Compact itself.
But the creature did not seem to get gtst equilibrium in the dark, and had to be guided by gtst kifish attendants. Something's wrong, Hilfy thought, rising from her chair. Something's vastly wrong with this stsho.
"Perhaps," Vikktakkht said, "your care will restore gtst. The practice of medicine is not a priority among our species. One argues for it. But medicine is still a secretive matter, practiced upon oneself. There is not, on this entire station, a medical facility, only a few supplies."
"I would first suggest," she said, she thought politely, "that gtst not be required to walk."
Not in time. Gtst collapsed. Fala made an instinctive move to assist and safeties went off guns all around the room. Fala froze. Hallan lurched for his feet.
"Hakkt!" Vikktakkht said sharply, that untranslatable word that meant something like Off guard, and safeties went back on, a more random clicking.
"And if you would tell your crew to go back on station power," Vikktakkht said, "station central control would be far more easy in its dealings."
"They're coming back," Tiar breathed, and only then realized the degree to which her nerves were wound, when she heard the advisement from Tiraskhti com, on aural-only.
"/'ll trust it when they gel into the airlock, " Chihin said in her ear, on ops com; and Tarras: "They're saying they've got gtst excellency!"
"I'll believe that when I see it," Tiar said. And made up her mind she would start believing it when she heard from the captain's own pocket com, and when there didn't come any of the codewords for coercion that were in the Manual. She sat gnawing her mustaches to ragged ruin, and then got that thin, static-fractured advisement:
"This is Legacy One, You're going to see a transport truck pull up. Only bus this station runs. We 're all right, we 're coming home, we got our addressee, put on a pot of gfi, we could use it."
"That means it's really all right,"Tarras said, the edge of excitement beginning to grow in her voice. And the Manual was on the bridge: they'd fed into com voice analysis every codeword that might come through. If Tarras said it was clear it was clear, and there was a next step.
"Chihin, get down to the lock, arm, don't open till they're on it, we don't trust it."
"I'm gone’' Chihin said, and cleared her board to Tarras.
Everybody was all right. There was a little tremor in Tiar's hand as she reached to key aux monitoring over to her two low-level screens.
Everybody was all right. They'd gotten the stsho, ker Hilfy had pulled it off somehow and they could go to Meetpoint with Chanur honor intact.
Please the gods it didn't blow up in their faces.
But she didn't think she should advise gyst excellency yet, stsho being the easily worried creatures they were. She didn't think they should provide any good news until they knew there were no catches.
And even after the captain and the rest of them were secure in the airlock she wasn't going to be able to leave station. According to the Book, which had gotten them through it this far, the senior officer parked herself in the number one station, kept systems up, kept a close monitor on transmissions around them, whether or not they could decode them, the number of coded transmissions versus non-coded: and if anything surged out of recent parameters-Then the senior officer was permitted to panic.
Gtstexcellency Atli-lyen-tlas was not at all in good shape — half-dead, to Hilfy's eyes; and when the driver pulled up in front of the Legacy's berth (most adamantly, she had insisted neither Hallan nor Fala drive) she called on na Hallan to vault down to the deck and stand ready to receive gtst excellency into his arms.
"She is a very large hani," gtst excellency was heard to mutter. "She will not drop us."
"She won't," Hilfy said, and na Hallan shut his mouth and reached up his hands. "She's a very competent person." At which na Hallan gave her a startled look, as if to ask did she possibly mean that.
But she had her hands full of fragile stsho at the moment, and together she and Fala lowered Atli-lyen-tlas into Hallan's arms.
"I have your honor," Hallan assured gtst.
Hilfy clapped Fala on the shoulder, and the two of them jumped down. A whole squad of kif had turned up, with rifles evident, and that was worrisome, but their driver got out and waved a black-sleeved arm toward the ramp and the waiting kif.
"Essscort," the driver said. "The hakkikt's. Sssafe."
It wasn't how she defined safe, but they walked and the kif didn't threaten them and didn't move, so she supposed there were no orders on the part of the hakkikt to try to rush the airlock. "Watch their hands,"
she said to Fala. "Rule of measured threat. You did just fine in there. Let's get home."
Fala didn't say anything but "Aye, captain." The kids were trying to be right. They walked past the kif, with the half-fainting stsho, and up the rampway. The access gate opened for them, which argued somebody was observing from where they'd been ordered to be, and possibly someone was waiting for them downside, which they were supposed to be. That gate shut, meaning, however fragile the tube that connected them to their ship, they were alone behind seal, and there was, one hoped, no kifish guard at their lock.
"Nobody behind us," Fala said, having actually cast a look back to see.
"Bravo, kid, you're learning." She
punched in the pocket-corn. "Tiar, Chihin, Tarras?"
"We're on it, captain, lock's about to open. "
Upon which, it did, pale and inviting light.
Things happened, things happened on schedule and with checks, if the crew had had to do it with the manual in one hand and thumbing from page to page. She found her own anxiety like a spring slowly let go — as if somehow she didn't have to check up, she didn't have to wonder was anything unseen-to: things were getting checked, and when the airlock shut behind them, and the air was cycling, she could feel a queasy confidence someone was monitoring the situation outside, without her — to her giddy relief — having to think of everything at once and give the orders.
She by the gods resented it. Py scored a point, and she was absolutely scowling when the airlock door opened and it was Chihin facing Fala and Hallan with a double armload of stsho.
"We need the gurney," she said shortly. "We need gtst excellency to the sickbay and we need the medical supplies, probably vitamin and mineral supplements—"
"A bath," gtst breathed, "oh, estimables, a bath, among first things, cleanly light, wai, the distress and the suffering I have endured—"
"Gtstshows improvement," Hilfy said dryly. "Na Hallan, never mind the gurney, just carry gtst, "
"Aye, captain," he said, and walked on.
"Tarras," Hilfy said, "to the dispensary." "She's down there," Chihin said. "She's already setting up."
Good gods, initiative. Right decisions. The crew knew what was going on, the crew all of a sudden knew it was their responsibility to move in advance of orders: it wasn't — it never had been that they didn't know what they were doing. Three of them had come in with experience.
The captain hadn't. And the old women had been right: Rhean had been right: she hadn't had the experience.
Mark another one for aunt Pyanfar. The crew wasn't unhappy, the crew suddenly had the latitude to do what it reasonably thought it ought to, the crew might be a little gods-be scared at the moment, but it was by the ever-living gods functioning ahead of the game for the first time in recent memory.
"I want a—" — thorough check against stsho parameters, she was about to say when she faced Tarras in the lab, but Tarras said to Hallan: "Put gtst excellency there, I've got the tests set up."
She could on the one hand feel superfluous. On the other she had enough on her hands — like getting the entire conversation down as she recalled it, like running it through the kifish translation program, looking for significances and omissions.
The captain wasn't strictly speaking a flight officer on this ship, but the captain with her head clear could make judgment calls that a protocol officer could make — and if there was a time to make them it was now.
Tell gtst excellency Tlisi-tlas-tin that gtst excellency Atli-Iyen-tlas was lying disreputable in sickbay?
Not yet. Not until they knew whether gtst excellency was going to live or die — or whether gtst excellency was still Atli-lyen-tlas.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a time one was superfluous, and Hallan had learned to know it. He hovered near the doorway while Tarras gave orders to Fala, and Fala gave him looks while she was carrying this and carrying that.
"I do like you," he contrived to say, when Fala's fetching and carrying paused her near him. "I really do, Fala, I just—"
Fala retrieved the kit she was after and went across the small surgery to where Tarras was ministering to gtst excellency with small and delicate needles, murmuring words of encouragement, assuring gtst that it was exactly what the computer had said to do.
Fala didn't want to talk to him. He didn't entirely blame her. He didn't feel welcome here, where people who knew what they were doing were trying to save the stsho gentleman's — or lady's — life…
He found it more convenient to edge toward the door, and when no one seemed to notice that fact, to edge out it, and into the main lower corridor.
But ops was down there, and Chihin was working lowerdeck ops, and he didn't want to go down there; and did, desperately…
Except it was too desperate and dangerous a situation to cause anybody more trouble than he had.
He wanted to apologize to Fala; and, really, truly, he wanted to patch it up: yes, he was attracted to Fala, at least she was pretty and she was clever and she was somebody he wanted very much to have like him, except it wasn't anything like the feeling he got when he even thought about Chihin.
Which told him it was the last place in the universe he needed to be when things were at a crisis and Chihin was supposed to be doing her job and there was a problem between them.
No business on a ship, the captain had said; and he didn't want to prove that by creating another problem for the captain. The crew lounge was where the captain had appointed him to go when she wanted him out of trouble and out of sight, and he went down the corridor as carefully as under fire, avoiding Chihin and avoiding any chance of running into the stsho, and got as far as the lift and rode it topside.
Then he could draw an easier breath. Then he could feel as if he wasn't in the way. And he soft-footed it as far as the corridor that led to the lounge.
But it equally well led to the galley and the bridge, too; and he wasn't forbidden to be there: he actually could do something useful; and Tiar was there, she'd been talking back and forth with them from some ops station and he didn't think it was downside.
Tiar was on his side, she'd always been friendly to him, she hadn't made his life difficult — Tiar understood what was going on.
He tended cautiously up the corridor in the direction of the bridge. The captain was in her office. The door was shut and the light was on the lock panel that meant she was there and the door wasn't locked, if you wanted to risk your neck. He didn't. He walked softly past and through the galley and onto the bridge where, sure enough, Tiar was sitting guard over the boards, with most of hers live and the screens showing the docks outside, and the station's scan-feed, and the station's docking-schema, and inputs he didn't recognize, but they were analytical, he thought, probably running system checks on the engines or something he wasn't familiar with.
He went and sat down very quietly in Fala's usual place, next on Tiar's right, the other side being the captain's place, where to save his life he wouldn't dare trespass.
She glanced at him, and looked back at the boards. So there was silence for some few moments.
"Can I help?" he asked softly, so as not to break her concentration.
"We're getting a little warm-up in a circuit. Not ops-critical, but we've put a load on us this trip. It's just symptomatic of a long run with very little sitting time."
"Dangerous?" Getting lost in hyperspace wasn't a thought he wanted even to entertain.
"No."
He was anxious, all the same. He was just generally scared, of a sudden, or it was easier to worry about a remote chance of breakdown in subspace than to worry about things that were definitely wrong, and he recognized that mental diversion for what it was. He'd nerved himself to walk in here, Tiar wanted to talk machinery, and now he'd lost his opening, which went something like…
"How's the stsho doing?" she asked.
"Pretty weak. Excited about being here. Glad to get into clean air. I don't blame him."
Tiar wrinkled her nose, a grimace. "It does sort of cling to you."
He hadn't washed. Nobody had had time below. And he was embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was that bad."
"Not. Stay. I want to talk to you anyway."
Oh, gods. Everything was out of control.
"What did I do?" he asked.
Tiar's ears flicked, an impressive flicker of rings. "Nothing you did."
"Oh."
"What's the score with you and Fala and Chihin?"
The blood drained to his feet. His brains went with it. He sat there a moment trying to think how not to offend anybody, or look like a thorough fool.
"Do you think Chihin likes me?"
Tiar t
ried very hard to keep a straight face. It wasn't quite, for a moment, and then she got it under control, quite deadpan. "I'd say it looked that way at Kshshti. Is she being a problem? Is that what's going on?"
"I—" Everybody wanted to blame Chihin. Everybody thought she was taking advantage. Which maybe ought to tell him that was the case.
Except he just didn't pick that up from her. He hadn't. He didn't, below, he had just made himself scarce, which he thought everybody appreciated, since they were busy and thinking about saving their lives, and following the captain's orders.
"You tell her back off," Tiar said. "There's no way she's going to vote for or against a berth on this ship for you on that basis. She's a bastard, but she's an honorable bastard — she just doesn't play the game like that. She's made Fala mad. But that's happened before. Mostly Fala's mad at Chihin playing games."
"You think so."
"Hey. You're not hard to look at, Fala's smitten, doesn't mean she's got proprietary rights. Tell her back off, if that's the way you feel. Then you can have her and Chihin annoyed at you for at least a week.
They'll live."
It sounded like good advice. Except it sat on his heart like lead where it came to Chihin; and he wasn't used to talking back to people, not at home, not on the Sun. He just hadn't mastered the art of saying no.
Hadn't grown up before he'd left home. And maybe hadn't yet, he thought. In spite of banging his head on shipboard doorways, and sitting in the chair he was in with more of him than the chair was designed to hold.
He just felt awkward. At everything. And he didn't know if he could say that to Chihin. Or even Fala. In which case things could only get worse.
"You don't like that advice," Tiar said.
He didn't know what to say. He shrugged, knew he wasn't going to follow her advice, which was stupid, and maybe could lose him his place on board. But he couldn't do it.
"I'm not good at telling people no," he said.
"You want me to tell them?"
That was cowardly. And it would hurt Chihin's feelings, in a major way, he kept thinking that, even when everybody else told him Chihin was having a joke at his expense. And it would last until about the next time the two of them were in the same area of the ship.
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