Chanur's Venture cs-2

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  By the gods, Mahn's ex-lord, ex-legal counsel. In his element.

  She grinned at the mike and listened to more blather. "Simply put," she said to the director, once Stle stles stlen, "you sign ours, we sign yours, we get our papers clear and our cargo sold for top going rate, and you can show the High Director at Nsthen you got full compensation, right? Otherwise you report unpaid damages. Which do you want?"

  "The director relays to you gtst profound distress that Chanur should have been slandered by fools. Gtst is sending you the papers at once and further sends you a gift to make amends for this misunderstanding."

  "Chanur will reciprocate in acknowledgment of the director's wisdom in detecting these slanders." She searched rapidly through the data bin for the appropriate forms, copied those, snagged the one that Harai thrust into her hand, fully printed, bilingual in stshoshi and ham and ready for signature.

  "Profound gratitude, yes." She broke the contact and flipped the documents looking for key clauses.

  "Watertight?"

  "Full release," Khym said.

  "It had better be." She gathered up all the papers, spun the chair on its mechanism. "Eyes back to that scan, hear?"

  "You need escort, captain?" Haral asked.

  "You stay here. Tell Hilfy meet me at the lock. I gods-rotted don't need protection from the stsho and I want you at controls. In case." She flung herself out of the chair and headed for the door.

  Tully was inbound, in great haste. "Pyan-far!" he cried.

  "Sorry, Tully, no time." She brushed past, or tried. He caught her arm.

  "Got talk! Pyanfar!"

  "No time, Tully. Haral — see to him."

  "No # listen I # go #!" He snatched again when she broke the grip and tried to overtake her in the hall. "Pyanfar!"

  As she left him behind.

  "Pyanfar- "

  She made it into the lift and shut the door between. She punched com. "Haral. Get Tully under wraps. Get him his drugs for jump. And stay by those controls!" Not the most logical series of orders.

  Gods, Tully and Khym loose on the same level of the ship, Haral busy-

  The lift stopped on lower deck. The door opened, on Tirun, Chur and Geran, standing at the lift. Haral's voice rang through the lower corridor — "Who's free down there?"

  "Get topside," Pyanfar said, coming through them, papers in hand. "Move it, hear?" Their fur was draggled, dark-tipped with sweat. They smelled of it. "Get Tully put somewhere."

  "Aye."

  The door closed and they went up. She headed down the corridor at a long stride, where Hilfy waited at the lock, slant-eared and with the whites showing round her eyes.

  "Calm down, imp," she said, meeting that look. "It's just the stsho this time."

  But she still had the gun in her pocket. It lately seemed a good idea.

  The Pride's area of the dock was quiet now, ghostly quiet, with the giant doors to the market still sealed, with the cargo access shut and the station's cargo ramp drawn back and dark. No cans stood about the dock. Only the gantry remained, the huge air ducts socketed to the vent panel beside the water in- and outflow hoses, but those were in shutdown inside. The sensor-bundle, the sextuple power cables and the com lines: that was all that tied The Pride to station now, those and the access tube, the station personnel ramp, and the probe and grapples that, behind that triple-thick wall, added failsafe to The Pride's own steel-armed grip.

  Not much, compared to the truck-wide cargo ramp. Not much to hold them now that that link was free. A ship could break away from grapples if it had to, taking damage and trusting station valves and gates to shut. Not even kif had done such a thing, reckless as they were of life, but stsho in their paranoia might think of such possibilities.

  Pyanfar cast one narrowed look at that contact with their docking probe and thought such lawless thoughts. Like turning pirate.

  Like what a desperate hani could do, if she lost a gamble with the mahendo'sat and the han and there were nothing left at home. Her crew would stay loyal and to a mahen hell with the han if Kohan Chanur died.

  Good gods. The thought chilled. It came of advancing age.

  Of having a male aboard. Put the mind in different modes. Like hunt and nest and kill the intruders instead of the polite surrender to the han on which civilization rested. Pulling sticks, Khym called it. Hani ships going far and wide across Compact space with males aboard and all the attendant mindset in the crews. Riot on station docks, interHouse brawls, crews at odds with other crews and hani born in space, never knowing Anuurn under their feet at all, with no Hermitage in reach.

  Gods, what am I doing here? — standing by Hilfy, gun in pocket, watching a stsho official car come humming up the dock. Somehow she had gotten into this. The steps to it eluded her at the moment, but the steps that led from it-

  A kif offered alliance — and for one fleeting moment it truly looked attractive. She was running out of friends.

  The car rolled up and stopped humming; hummed again in a different key as the door slid down and Stle sties stlen's current persona put out a pink-shod foot. The translator got out the other door and hastened round with a flurry of robes like rainbow light, to offer gtst hand to the director.

  Stle stles stlen (or whatever gtst called gtstself this hour) straightened to gtst feet and waved gtst limp-wristed, long-fingered hand. "Shoss."

  A paper appeared from some depth of the translator's robes. Gtst offered it, gtst mooncolored eyes fluttering in wide nervousness.

  "Take it," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, assuming the loftiness the stsho understood: assistants traded papers, perused them.

  "Bill," Hilfy read in a small strangled voice, "for 1.2 billion credits, aunt."

  "I figured. Let me see that."

  Hilfy handed it over. Document-reading proceeded to a higher level as Stle sties stlen took the release forms into gist own pearly hands.

  A long rustling of pages while the gantry lines thumped and hissed overhead.

  "All right," Pyanfar said.

  "Hesth," said Stle sties stlen, and in hani: "Where is this money?"

  She held out the appropriate paper. Stle stles stlen took it in gtst own hands, and gtst

  head came up and gtst eyes went wide.

  "Well?" Pyanfar said, keeping her ears up, her expression confident and bland.

  "— This is an extravagant power," the translator rendered.

  "Of course it is. And I'm sure the esteemed director will want to file that copy. I keep the original."

  "Esteemed hani friend," said Stle sties stlen.

  "Got a pen?"

  Stle stles stlen snatched it from the translator and offered it gtstself. If gtst had had external ears they would have pricked far forward.

  She signed; gtst signed; documents changed hands and Chur and the translator signed.

  Hectic flushes almost to pink chased nacre across Stle sties stlen's pearly skin.

  Gtst looked up with adoration in gtst eyes, waved gtst hand and out of the inexhaustible rainbow robes, the translator brought a smallish presentation box, which Stle sties stlen proffered gtstself.

  "Accept this trifle."

  "Munificent." Pyanfar pocketed the box. "Your files have my manifest: do select a case of Anuurn honey for your table."

  "Excellent hani."

  "I go first on the departure list."

  "Oh, yes." Gtst bowed, fluttered. "At earliest." Gtst backed toward the car and stopped, looking wide-eyed, then ducked inside.

  The translator saw the director inside and the door raised, whisked gtst rainbow self around to gtst own side.

  The car hummed to life, opaqued its windows, and hummed a quick u-turn, off down the docks.

  "Aunt-" Hilfy said.

  She turned, expecting one of the crew had come outside.

  She saw instead a kit between them and the lock, and her hand twitched toward her pocket —

  prudently stopped with a mere twitch. She stood stiff-legged, hearing Hilfy sotto voce beside her,
the belt-com doubtless thumbed: "Haral, for the gods' sakes — Haral — there's a kif out here-"

  The kif flourished a hand among its robes, billowing the hem like the edge of some dark wing.

  It sauntered forward with the ease of an old, old friend.

  "That you, Sikkukkut?"

  "Strange. I can tell hani apart."

  "Get off my dockside."

  "I came to follow up my message. The ring. How did your passenger receive it?"

  "I forgot. Frankly, I forgot."

  "Can it be he couldn't receive it? Damaged in shipment, might he be? That would distress me."

  "I'm sure it would. Get out of my way."

  "Your crewwoman's calling help, is she?"

  "You won't want to stay around to see."

  The thin wrinkled snout acquired a chain of wrinkles. "So you're putting out. Beware of Kita Point."

  "Thanks."

  More wrinkles. "Of course. There are such limited ways out of Meetpoint. Except for those the stsho permit. Except for us — who go where we like. I wonder where Mahijiru is."

  "Don't know, then? Good."

  "Your sfik will kill you."

  "My ego, is it? — Come on, Hilfy." She started forward, picking a course to The Pride just out of kifish long-armed reach. But he moved to intercept them.

  "We are both hunter-kinds, hunter Pyanfar." And with a twitch of that long hairless nose: "Kif are better."

  "Hani are smarter." She had stopped, hand in pocket. "I have a gun."

  Sikkukkut's long black nose gained wrinkles and lost them. "But being hani — you dare not use it unless I prove armed. This is the burden of a species its hosts fear not."

  "It's called civilization, you earless bastard."

  A dry kifish sniffing, like laughter. "The stsho are grass to us. You will not join with me."

  "In a mahen hell."

  He lifted both hands, palm outward. "I do not challenge, hunter Pyanfar."

  Her hand tensed on the gun, to be quick; but the tall kif turned his black-cloaked back and walked off with that peculiar stalking gait.

  "Sfik," Hilfy muttered, who was the linguist among them. "Means like pride, like honor, if the kif had any."

  "If," Pyanfar said, staring after the kif and not forgetting a sweep about to see if there were confederates lurking: there were not. "That mouth may speak hani; that brain's pure kif. Move it. Get out of here."

  "I have a gun," Hilfy said, backing away as she was told. "Come on, aunt. Let's both get out of here."

  "Huh." She backed, turned, grabbed Hilfy by the arm and both of them hastened up the rampway into the access, headon into Tirun and Chur who were coming out.

  "Good gods," she said when her heart had restarted.

  "Sounded like you had trouble," Tirun said.

  "It walked off," she said, and gathered them all up, marched them ahead of her past the safety of the airlock. Chur shut the door.

  "Kif?" asked Tirun then.

  "Kif," she said, and looked around sharply at movement to her left, where Geran stood, with Tully.

  "Got talk," he said.

  "Geran, for the gods' sakes I said settle him."

  "It's urgent, captain."

  "Everything's urgent. Get in line."

  "Aunt," Hilfy said, with that kind of look Hilfy could get when something was utterly out of joint.

  "Got paper," Tully said, breathless. "Got-" The translator garbled over mangled hani words.

  "Get me a plug, will you?" One materialized out of Hilfy's pocket, and she put the audio into her ear. "Tully, what are those papers?"

  "Got paper say human come fight kif # # need hani."

  "Rot that translator. I'm losing that." "Human come fight kif." A very cold lump settled to her stomach. "Why, Tully?"

  "Make kif #. Friend, Pyanfar. Bring lot human come fight kif." The cold grew colder still.

  "Sounds like," said Tirun, "more than one ship involved."

  "They want help," said Hilfy. "That's why he came. That's what I think he's saying. It's nothing to do with trade."

  "Gods," she muttered, and looked up, at an earnest human face, at four crew-women with iaces taut with the same kind of thoughts. "Kif know this, Tully?"

  "Maybe know," he said. He drew a great breath and let it go, held out his hands as if appeal could get past the translator. "Come long way find you. Kif — kif make trouble # one time fight Goldtooth friend."

  "Goldtooth," she said. The name was a bad taste in her mouth. "What am I supposed to do with you? Huh?"

  "Go Maing Tol. Go Anuurn."

  "Gods rot it, Tully, we got kif up to our noses!"

  His pale eyes locked on hers, desperate. "Fight," he said. "Got make fight, Py-an-far."

  She lowered her ears and brought them up again, glancing round at her crew. Scared faces.

  Looking to her for answers.

  "Ought to give him to Vigilance," she muttered, "and advertise it to the kif."

  No one said anything. She imagined the consequences for herself if she did that. The fragile Compact broken wide open, kif chasing a han deputy ship.

  Or Ehrran leaving him on a stsho station, where not a hand would be raised to prevent kif from walking in and doing what they liked. Kif would do anything, if profit in doing it outweighed the profit in restraint.

  "Where we taking him?" Tirun asked. "Maing Tol, Goldtooth says."

  "Captain — We do that and that blackbreeches'll have our ears. Begging the captain's pardon."

  More questions of her orders. She stared at Tirun, at a cousin, an old comrade; at another Chanur whose life was at risk.

  "You want to turn him over to Ehrran, Tirun?"

  Tirun stood there with her ears down, with rapid thinking going on behind her eyes. "We could send another can to Vigilance," she said. "Let that kif bastard wonder."

  The idea struck her fancy. But: "No," she said, thinking of those same consequences. "Can't risk it. Come on." She seized Tully by the arm and dragged him into motion, then abandoned the grip as she headed for the lift. "Get Tully settled. Get his drugs for him and get up to the bridge."

  "Go?" Tully asked, close at her heels. "Pyanfar go Hoas?"

  "Urtur," she said, reaching the lift. She looked back as Chur and Hilfy took him by the arms.

  Tirun punched the door and held it. "Going to Urtur. Going fast. Take the drugs. Stay out of the way.

  Understand?"

  "Got," he said, and let them pull him off down the hall. She stepped into the lift and Tirun got in and pushed the buttons.

  One worried look from Tirun. That was all.

  "I know," she said, which summed it up. She pulled the presentation case from the pocket where she had put it, opened it as the car shot upward.

  A note. Beware Ismehanan-min, it said.

  Meaning Goldtooth.

  She handed it to Tirun.

  The door opened on the upper corridor.

  Chapter Five

  There was quiet on the bridge, a great deal of calm and quiet, considering the situation, Khym brimming with questions, and a handful of exhausted crew. No one said a word. Six pairs of eyes were on her, expecting her to come up with something remarkably clever.

  1.2 billion credits. Hilfy still looked to be in shock.

  "Got a few problems," Pyanfar said, sinking into her chair, which was turned to face the bridge at large. "I think we'd better take that docking clearance the stsho promised and get ourselves our of here before they change their minds. Chur, Hilfy, you sure Tully's set, got his drugs, knows to stay put."

  "Aye," Chur said.

  "I don't promise we get a calm ride out of here. And we're going to push it hard. We're headed for Urtur. We're stripped. We can one-jump it. When we come in there we keep our ears pricked and get the news. Gods send it isn't kif. - Questions?"

  Dead quiet.

  She picked up a courier cylinder from the document pocket on the side of the chair. "Chur."

  "Aye."

  "Get one o
f the docking crew to shoot that through the pneumat. Fast."

  Chur took it, whirled and headed out of the bridge with a scrape of claws. So that was seen to. If Stle sties stlen did not have all their messages intercepted, rot his pearly hide.

  "Crew to stations. - Khym-" She stood up and in the general mill of crew taking seats she took Khym's arm and took him into the small nook of quiet in the corridor outside.

  "For this one I recommend the tranquilizer," she said. "Tully takes it. Topside med kit still has it."

  "I don't need it," he muttered, his ears gone down. "I don't need-"

  "Listen to me. Old hands lose their stomachs in this kind of thing. G like planetary lift; we'll be cycling the vanes-"

  "I'm not going to my cabin. Look, you wanted me on the bridge, work, you said-"

  "You're not staying on the bridge."

  "There's the observers' seats."

  "No."

  "Please, Py." His voice sank to its lowest pitch. His amber eyes were quick and large.

  "Captain. Win a ring, you said. In front of them, for the gods' sake, Py. I won't make trouble. Won't."

  Her ears fell; her heart went over. "Gods rot it, this isn't a simple hop from port to port."

  "Part of the crew. Isn't that what you meant?"

  "This isn't a question-"

  "Pride's pride, Py. You put me there; you by the gods leave me there. Or do you think the crew won't have it?"

  Soft-headed, that was what.

  "You take number one observer," she said. "You watch Geran watch scan and if you get sick in the cycles you by the gods reach the bags undercabinet, I don't care what else is going on. If you haven't ridden through a high-v vector change with someone heaving up you haven't seen a mess. Got it?"

  She jabbed him with one sharp claw, saw him go tight around the nose. "Besides, it fogs the screens."

  Without a word he ducked back into the bridge.

  She went back behind him, while he set himself into the first of the three observer posts, at Geran's elbow: Geran gave him a look, betraying no dismay, but a look all the same. He fumbled after belts and began fastening them-not nervous, no. He only missed the insert twice.

  She slipped into her own place, snapped the restraint one-handed and powered the chair about all in one smooth sequence, because she could, and failed to realize why she did it until she had.