Chanur's Legacy cs-5

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Then it said: Answer to print? File? Both?

  File,she said, having learned.

  The answer, when it came up, said briefly: The person accepting the contract must designate a second recipient who exists as the nearest degree of consequence to the first named recipient; if, on the other hand, the party issuing this contract disapproves this recipient, the person accepting the contract is obligated to double indemnity and the return of the cargo.

  Hilfy stared at it and stared at it, then got up and blazed a direct path down to gtst excellency's white, expensive nest, signaled her presence and opened the door without waiting — there being little of Tlisi-tlas-tin or Dlimas-lyi she hadn't seen.

  "Your excellency, forgive a most hasty but necessary declaration! You must become the recipient!"

  A tousled crest and wide moonstone eyes appeared from beneath the sheet.

  "Of course," said Tlisi-tlas-tin. "Of course. Was this not understood?"

  It was white. It was clean. There was carpet over the deck tiles and they'd contrived a plastic frame and some bent struts to improvise a stsho bed; they'd made a mattress out of plastic sheeting Chihin said she hoped to the gods didn't give way, but it held air, and it held water, and when they'd covered it in white drapery it would at least protect the old stsho, Hallan was sure it would. He crawled backward out of the pit with utmost care not to put a claw out and create a disaster.

  Chihin gave him a hand on the escape, and sprawled, sitting, with a swipe of stiffened paint on her sore arm and plaster bits in her mane. She leaned against him, he leaned, they were all over with spatters and the way she looked at him, brow to brow and a little out of focus, said she was as tired and sore as he was.

  And they had one thought, both, in that moment, it didn't take that much reading — his went something like a dread and an anxiousness to find out, and a fear of getting into what took time to discover and being called up short.

  She said, "There's the downside shower. We can clean up, catch a snack…"

  She wasn't young and rushing at things. He had that figured now, it wasn't on again, off again signals, it was just a sane sense of how things worked; and he didn't know where they could go to figure out the rest of it, but he tried to slow down his breathless haste and use his wits the way Chihin did and tell himself if they got involved in this room and didn't report in, the captain was going to ship them to the kif…

  "Wonder if the mattress works," Chihin said. But he thought he could read her now, when she was serious, when she was being outrageous.

  "I don't want to walk from Kefk," he said; and he must have guessed right, because she put her arms on his shoulders then and laughed and got up.

  "Shower," she said, and left him with his burning haste to be a fool, a sense things could always go wrong from here, there might not be another chance… Chihin could come to her senses and decide something else, or they could die and chances might not come again.

  "Tiar," she said, talking to the intercom. "Tiar, we're about finished. Give us a chance to get our objectionable selves out of the passenger corridor and you can ferry the old fellow in…"

  "Thank the gods. Captain says get up here, we're in count, we're just about to clear the umbilicals."

  Chihin's ears went flat. "In count! Gods rot, what kind of schedule does the captain think we're up to?

  We got a dying stsho, we got us so tired we can't see straight… what in a mahen hell in gods-be count. …"

  The thump and clang was the umbilical bundle coming clear. Chihin was upset, besides mad. She stopped arguing, cut off the com, and looked at him, and he didn't know what help to be, but that Chihin was worried, worried him about this departure they were making, the haste they were in.

  "Are we running from the kif?" he asked.

  “From dead stop at dock?'' She put her arms around him a moment. Stupid question, he thought. Totally stupid question, but he'd thought the situation might be more complicated than that. Maybe it was and she knew and wouldn't tell him, they never told you anything… it's not your business, boy, we'll take care of it, don't worry yourself…

  He was scared of jump this time. He was really scared. "There were tc'a," he said. He could only be twice the fool. "In jump. When the alarm went off. I saw them go right through the ship and nobody was moving and I hit the alarm. In my dream, I did. And it was going off when we came out. I know it's stupid," he said, when she stood back to look at him in a worried way; and it was more disturbing that she didn't laugh, didn't offer the immediately obvious: You were dreaming, stupid kid.

  "Nobody was moving," she said.

  "In my dream."

  "Chur dreams like that."

  Chur Anify. On The Pride. Chur the map-maker. Chur, that they said could walk through hyperspace and see what kif saw and maybe knnn and tc'a…

  He didn't believe that. People exaggerated, especially the world-bound ones who didn't know the limitations. You didn't expect it out of Chihin, who was Chur's cousin, if you reckoned it.

  "What did you do?"

  "I just got up and reached over and hit the alarm. But maybe it went off itself and I just dreamed—"

  Chihin was looking at him in all seriousness, maybe thinking she didn't want to be associated with somebody that crazy.

  "It's my fault, about the tc'a," he said. "Maybe that was why I dreamed it."

  "Kid. If you punch any more buttons on my board you by the gods be sure what you're touching."

  "Most adequate," gtsta pronounced, walking on strange bare feet onto the carpet they hadn't used in the decoration next door. Gods-be right, adequate, Hilfy thought, while the seconds ticked down in the count, and bare stsho toes curled into the white pile. "Most curious, the sensation."

  "We assure you gtst excellency and gtst companion are next door," Hilfy said, while Fala and Tarras hovered near to prevent falls. "I must caution your holiness to watch your st—"

  — on the rim, she had been about to say, but gtsta put a bare foot on the edge of the improvised bowl-chair, and Tarras made a futile grab as gtsta slid down the plastic foot-pad, plump! to what was surely multiple fractures.

  Gtstasprawled and bounced, a tangle of legs and gossamer. Gtsta trilled some note that did not seem of pain and, flailing gtsta arms, made another bounce that made the whole mattress quiver.

  And a third, while three very time-pressed hani hovered at the edge and tried to assess the damage.

  Another bounce, and a quivering like jelly. Is gtsta able to get up? Hilfy wondered. But gtsta seemed not to be distressed. Crackpot idea, she thought, a bagful of water. But if it didn't pop and drown the old son during acceleration, gtsta had a chance. A water-filled bowl-chair… and all the essential nutrients they'd been able to pump into gtsta fragile veins.

  "Pull the nets over," she said. Gtsta had already had the medication, Tarras had seen to that, and it seemed to be taking effect. Gtsta lay flat on the ripples and rebounds, waving a languid arm, gtsta mouth pursed and gtsta eyes half-open, while Tarras and Fala hauled the safety netting over the pit and made it fast with cord.

  "Blessing," gtsta holiness said. "Well wishes. I see the tides of the many suns. I see the oneness of them.

  I shall tell you their names…"

  The tranquilizer definitely was taking hold. And she for one had rather rely on the navigational computer.

  Chihin was saying Meras might be a sleepwalker, that the kid was spooked and seeing tc'a, and that that had been the alarm during system drop. They had a clearance from the kif for undock and a schedule they'd agreed to in a star system the kif were clearly touchy about protecting; and, gods save them, they had a Preciousness and a handful of stsho to get to Meetpoint alive to back up No'shto-shti-stlen against the allies of Paehisna-ma-to, — if the old son could live through the experience.

  They had a contract to declare filled; and get out of there alive and solvent — because they'd been out nearly a year as stationers counted time, and Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian had routed h
imself straight to Meet-point out of Kshshti, three months ago — as Meetpoint counted time.

  "Gtstahas gtsta nutrient packs, gtsta is comfortable…" Hilfy began; and gtsta murmured, "The oneness of it all. The ineffable contentment, after the darkness of my voyage. The light, go to the friendly light, for the sake of the peace…"

  Pretty gods-be out, Hilfy thought, and squatted down and looked through the net to be certain gtsta nutrients pack was still wrapped about gtsta frail arm. For the sick and the frail one didn't depend on the strength to hunt for it: it would feed continually, or as continually as anything happened in hyperspace.

  Ask the kid, Chihin said, and was spooked, herself. They had one in the family. And she'd watched Chur go thin and otherly and sometimes as sensible as gtsta, when she was tracking something. What do you see? was the logical question.

  And gods save them, she recalled with a chill down her back, Chur had talked about the light and the tides…

  They were underway, launched, outbound, so fast there was no time to wipe the dust off; and Chihin sat by him at her post, grinned at him, with a twitch of a white-smudged ear.

  "I probably ought to tell the captain," Hallan said, not happily.

  "I did," Chihin said. "It's all right. It's all right…"

  "That's Tiraskhti," Fala said. "They're away."

  "Salutations to the hakkikt," the captain said. "Send it."

  Fala did that. He heard the lisped kifish. "The hakkikt says," Fala reported back, ‘“ hold your exact course.”Ssakkukkta sa khutturkht.' —Is that right?"

  "That son's going to jump with us, I knew it. Tell him we copy. Gods-rotted payback for our dock at Kefk."

  Surely not for that, Hallan thought. It was dangerous. Even kif cared about their own lives.

  "Tarras, Tarras, do you copy?" That was Tiar talking to Tarras, who was down below doing something the captain had sent her after. "You're clear to move."

  "Aye,"the answer came back, and in a moment more the lift worked and opened; and Tarras came stringing hand-line, clipping it into recessed rings along the way. So they could move if they had to, Hallan thought, without g or against acceleration. It wasn't something the Sun had ever done. It was a scary contemplation. And when Tarras got into her station, the captain ordered the arms board brought up to ready.

  "NaHallan?" the captain said, startling him, and he was ready for the usual Be careful and keep your hands off things. 'Na Hallan, config to scan, Chihin, take a stand-down and trank out, I want you on-line when we come out."

  "Aye, captain," Chihin said, and Hallan punched the requisite buttons to bring the aux board over to scan, his hands wanting to shake quite embarrassingly.

  "Good night," Chihin said to him. "Good luck."

  Panic quickened his breathing. No, not panic, healthy respect for his responsibility. Just a monitor-the-dots problem. But Chihin wasn't going to be there if anything went wrong this side.

  "I'm here," Tarras said at his other elbow. "Take it easy, do your job, kid. You shouldn't get any input the computer doesn't recognize."

  But in another minute or so a dot leaped on to his screen, at Kefk Station rim. His heart jumped. Chihin swore — but she'd just taken the drug. "That's number 10 berth," he read off his screen, trying to stay calm. "Mu~Muk-jukt, captain."

  "Friendly to the hakkikt or what?" Fala wondered aloud.

  "Ask the hakkikt," the captain said; and Fala did; and said, "He says, quote, he knows…"

  Meanwhile another kif left the station. He reported it and he didn't push buttons.

  "Gods-be kif show-outs," the captain muttered at one point. "They've got to see, they've got to be there, they'll cut Vikktakkht's throat if this goes wrong. His and ours."

  You mean they're not taking orders? Hallan wondered to himself. It wasn't any hani way of doing things.

  "Up v," the captain said. "Let's just put a little more push on it. They've got the pillows, below." They hadn't taken on cargo. They hadn't had the time. Or they hadn't trusted it.

  They were just going, and Chihin murmured, drowsily, "Wake me if you see any pretty lights, kid.

  Otherwise, see you otherside."

  Another one and another one. Fala said, "Na Hallan, I forgive you."

  "What did I do?" he asked, surprised out of his concentration, and between reports. Lines were converging. They were going, gods, they were going…

  "Stand by," Tiar said sharply. "This isn't the standard drop, cousins. Let's not miss a stitch…"

  … "Well, well," aunt Pyanfar said, arms folded, feet set, the very image of herself, "you've committed yourself to the kif, have you?"

  Hilfy was not surprised at the appearance. She was surprised at herself, that questions leaped into her head, Have I done the right thing? Am I a total fool, aunt Py?… not angry, not resentful, not any of those things, just wishing she could ask across space and warped time… ask the real Pyanfar, not the one that came and went in her mind…

  Like what was going on at Kefk, that kif kept Pyanfar’s doings behind a screen, a whole unguessed power that wasn't just The Pride, wasn't just one ship and a well-reputed hani who mediated the Compact's trade and treaty disputes…

  Like: aunt Pyanfar, what have you gotten yourself into? Who are you, since you threw me out, down-world?

  The mekt-hakkikt, indeed, the leader the kif could never find to unite them; the Personage of the mahendo'sat, with whatever religious mandate that conveyed — until some rival like Paehisna-ma-to came along; the President of the Amphictiony of Anuurn, no gray-nosed, doddering grandmother to quibble about two thousand year old privilege or ceremonial inheritance; that was not what was based at Kefk.

  They were committed. They were beyond recall but not beyond disaster.

  "Good luck," Tully said, remote from her. And she had too much on her mind, too much on her hands, to play those games of make-believe. He'd been right to walk away. He wasn't the property of some teen-aged child: it wasn't Tully's obligation to set her life in order, or to provide her some strange halfway creature to be, instead of hani: Take care of Chanur, Pyanfar had said, shoving her out of their midst, and wrapping time and black space about herself.

  Who are you, aunt Pyanfar?

  And what are you doing, in deep space, where the methane-breathers go?

  Humans live in that direction. They don't come to trade. They might have; but they insisted we take sides in their war — thank you, we have enough trouble, aunt Pyanfar had said, and drawn a firm line, verbally at least.

  But perhaps it was more substantial than one guessed; and vaster and more needful—

  — of force? Of hunter ships at Kefk? Of spies and assassinations of hapless stsho and bombs on Kshshti dock?

  … "Coming down," she heard Tiar say.

  So they were there. Over the edge. In it up to their ears.

  The song wavered, there and not there and there again. It seemed he'd heard it for a very long time; and he'd been anxious entering jump, but it was only the dream of a guilty conscience…

  He only heard them now. And it wasn't a threatening song, just very different.

  He tried to watch the screens, but they were garble. The ship was riding the fabric of space-time, skittering along the interface, to fall into the next dimple, that only a stellar mass could make, and he could see that interface going on and on and skirling anti-mass along the disturbance they were.

  Maybe it was only, after all, a dream…

  "Going down," he heard Tiar say,

  He tried to capture it. The moment of dropping out of the interface. But a vast disturbance sheeted down around them, and he heard tc'a voices, or what passed for it… Heard a machine-voice saying: Proximity alert, proximity alert."

  "Around us!" he tried to say, his eyes full of vision and dark, but Chihin said calmly, "Got it, got it, aux; Tiar, the system buoy's gone nuts and we got a heavy surplus on hunter ships out here…"

  "I saw ships," he said, "ten, twenty — off in the dark-"

 
“Dark of where?'' the captain snapped. “This side, that side, where?"

  "Otherside," he said, but he knew he was wrong, the ships were here, around them, arriving one after the other.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Twenty sleek kifish hunters, suddenly another one dropping in — and never, under these circumstances, believe all that the system buoy schema showed you, Hilfy thought, seeing what unfurled itself on her flanks. It wasn't a position she'd ever hoped or wanted to be in — center position in a fleet of kif, aimed at Meetpoint… a Meetpoint the station buoy showed busy with shipping: hani ships, stsho ships, mahen traders, kif, and tc'a and chi, as ordinary as she'd ever seen it, and deader emissions-wise than she'd ever heard it.

  "Fala," she said, "all channels input. Stats. Percent. Who's who. It's too quiet for what they're showing."

  "Aye," Fala said. Stats be feathered, the number of contacts flickering through com told her it was way down. And not due to the kifish presence: they were an hour out from station, light. The station had an hour yet to wait before Meetpoint learned they were here, and what was here with them and what maneuvers they were performing. An hour before station could react. But not before something might react that was lying silent and closer.

  "Arms live," she said to Tarras, heard the acknowledgment, saw another set of lights come on her own board. They were now breaking the law. Several laws. Lane violations, safety violations, the disarmament treaty, the Station Immunity Act…

  "Captain," na Hallan said faintly. "When you've a moment."

  "Query, aux one?"

  "I've got something. I recorded it — I think I did..."

  Frightened neo. He didn't know how to give a report or switch images. Tiar had her hands full.

  "Fala," she said, "advise station we're inbound for dock and take the feed from Hallan."

  It popped over from Fala's number one: matrix-com, raw transcript.

  Chanur advise Paehisna-ma-to mistake No 'shto-shti-stlen