Chanur's Venture cs-2

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  "Vane two red," Pyanfar muttered. "Stop it there."

  "We're a shade off V."

  "What blew?" (Khym, weakly.) "There something wrong?"

  "Regulator in the vane column," Pyanfar said, blinking it all into focus again. Her bones ached.

  "Ship doesn't like all this change of mind. Tirun, I want an interrupt check on that vane."

  "Right." Tirun's voice shook with exhaustion. No complaints. "Sure like to know why it didn't cut off."

  "Solve it from inside."

  "Urtur's no gods-rotted place for a walk."

  "We in trouble?" Khym asked.

  "Just got a little mechanical problem. Still got one backup left on that system. Regulator ought to have shut the vane down short of blowing what blew. I think our problem's there. That's an in-hull problem. No big trouble." But it was trouble. Something made it blow. And Kshshti was a long, long one-jump. Big stress. If that vane went- "What's our transit time?"

  "Got-" Haral said, "-48.4 hours to next jump."

  "We'll find the glitch by then." She powered the chair back, needing room to breathe. Another quarter turn of the chair and she saw Khym sitting there, head leaned back against the cushion, breathing in slow, careful intakes, looking her way with a bleak curiosity. He had not been sick. Was not. Was plainly determined not to be.

  Holding it, she guessed.

  "Tully wants to come topside," Chur said.

  "Fine." She was numb, with a certain insulation between herself and calamities back at Meetpoint, and the one back there on their tail. She looked aside as all number-four screens acquired an image from The Pride's outside eyes, habit when they arrived at a place. Haral had done that, reflex or a statement: no panic. Just routine operations.

  Urtur was spectacle enough, to be sure, one great fried egg of a star and system magnified in their pickup, a yellow star for a yolk that glowed hellishly in the flattened disk of dust that surrounded it.

  Planets swept dark orbits in the disk, accreted rings of their own. Urtur's worlds were mostly gas giants, with a few well-cratered smaller planets buried in the muck.

  No place for a walk indeed. Particles would hole even a hardsuit in short order.

  Mahendo'sat owned Urtur system, doing mahen things like poking about in the dust hunting clues to why Urtur was like it was — for pure curiosity, which was why mahendo'sat did a great many peculiar things. But at the same time and practically, they maintained a case for the methane-breathers, who thought methane-dominant Elaji a fine fair place, with its clouds aglow with the constant flicker of lightnings and meteors making streaks by the minute in an atmosphere already greenhoused by previous impacts. Oxy-breathers got photos of the surface. Tc'a revelled in it, and mined rare metals, and had industry in that hell.

  Knnn too.

  And where, she wondered, considering that deficient scan image, was their own private knnn?

  Blocked off scan the same as they, and out of range of their own pickup?

  Gone, perhaps. Off their track entirely.

  She did not trust that. Not finding the knnn simply meant they had not found it.

  The Pride did a minor course correction, a gentle push at her left. For any ship going crosswise to the dust circulation, Urtur transit was a matter of finding the most useful hole in the debris and presenting as little as possible of the vane surface to the particles during ecliptic transit.

  They had damage enough to contend with, gods knew.

  "Get her set and we go auto for a while. You can do those checks after we get some food in you, Tirun. - Who's on galley?"

  "Me," said Hilfy.

  "Get on it." And not without thought: "Crew-youngest always gets the extra duty. You help her, Khym."

  Khym just stared at her from the oblique, a desperate, half-drowned stare. Hilfy turned her chair, released her restraints and levered herself out of it. Khym moved then, got up like a drunk and held onto the chairback for a moment.

  Work, indeed work.

  And he followed Hilfy without a backward look, by the gods, the ex-lord of Mahn on galley duty, no complaints. She drew a long slow breath and remembered youth, Mahn, its fields, the house with the spring.

  And a tired elder hani who tried to begin all over. At bottom. In a dimension he hardly understood.

  "Going to be one lot of mad shippers," Tirun muttered. "Remember that rush order from that factor?"

  "Bet Ayhar nabs it," Chur said.

  Pyanfar released her restraints and got to her feet. Her joints ached and there was fire down her back.

  She stopped in midstretch. Tully was there in the doorway, ghostlike silent in the white noise of The Pride's working. He rested one arm on the doorframe, and stood there, barefoot, in simple crew-woman's breeches and nothing else, looking wan and cold. No more friend, no more Py-anfar.

  Just that bruised, cornered look that wondered if anyone had time for him.

  "I know," she said. "We get you fed."

  "Safe?" he asked. He knew ships, enough to feel The Pride faltering-and himself alone and knowing all too much. "Ship-" He made a helpless motion. "Break?"

  "Got it under control," she said. "Fine. Safe, all fine."

  The pale eyes flickered.

  "Fix soon," she said. Fear looked back at her, habitual and patient. She beckoned him and he left the door and walked all the way inside. Mobile blue eyes flicked this way and that, scanning monitors for what they could read, quick and furtive move. They centered on her again.

  "Got talk." He had gotten a little hani. She grew accustomed to his slurring speech. The translator spat useless static. "Got talk, please got talk."

  "Maybe it's time we do." A great uneasiness came over her, things out of joint. Males and tempers and their old friend Tully, whose alien face had that strange, distracted movement of the eyes.

  Fear of them as well as well as kif? And suspicious reprobate that she was: Lies, Tully? Or plain self-interest from the start?

  "Sure," she said. She stank, reeked; she thought instinctively of baths, of males and quarrels and a thousand lunatic distracted things like impacts at this speed, and the vane that showed intact in the image on Tirun's screens (but it was not, inside, and that could be bad news indeed.) Urtur. Docking with, likely, kif about. And not a hope of help. Urtur had no muscle adequate to fend off anything.

  Poor human fool, we could lose us all here, don't you know? They'd move in, take what they liked, you foremost - "Gome on," she said to the crew at large, who were all tremble-handed at their work.

  "Break it off. We eat, get some sleep." She caught Tully by the arm. "You come and tell me, huh?"

  Chapter Six

  The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds-abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So The Pride exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge.

  Meanwhile-

  Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when na Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym — Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way — misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior.) There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays.

  There was silence at table, mostly — a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone
. A little "have this," and "try that," from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully's ribs.

  No harrying, no pressure — take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key. . the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had — finally — come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go — Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little. Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth.

  "Your House send you?" Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully's way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat.

  Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. "Send?" the translator queried, flat-voiced. . O gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. "Send me?"

  "I don't know that they have Houses," Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym tried the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew's and hers.

  "Don't use big words. Translator can't handle them."

  "House isn't a big word."

  "Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don't know how it comes out the other side."

  "Say again," Tully said.

  "I asked who sent you."

  "# # send me."

  "See?" said Pyanfar. "You get a word it won't make sense."

  "Name home," Tully said. "Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me "

  "He does talk."

  "So," Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. "Sun, is it?"

  "Where are we?" Tully asked. "Ur-tur?"

  "Urtur. Yes."

  He drew a great breath. "Go Maing Tol."

  "Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?"

  "Know." He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. "Meetpoint — Urtur — Kshshti — Maing Tol."

  "Huh." He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them. "Goldtooth teach?"

  "Mahe name Ino. Ship name Ijir."

  "Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How'd you find Goldtooth?"

  He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. "Go Goldtooth, yes."

  "You with him long?"

  "#?"

  "Were you long time in Goldtooth's ship?"

  Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce.

  "Where did you meet Goldtooth?"

  "Ino find him."

  It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don't pick a fight, no trouble while Khym's in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves.

  "You come how long ago?" Geran asked.

  "Don't know," he said, glancing that way. "Long time."

  "Days?"

  "Lot days."

  He could be more precise. He knew the translator's limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence.

  Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so. There was not a move at table. Only Tully.

  Their old friend.

  She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.

  His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.

  "Where find?" he asked. "Where find, Pyanfar?"

  "Whose?" She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead.

  "Mahe got?" he asked. "Goldtooth?"

  "Kif gave it to me," she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. "Friend of yours, Tully?"

  "What say this kif?"

  "Said — said it was a message for our cargo."

  The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right.

  For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully's eyes and ran down into his beard.

  "Friend, huh?" She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. "Want to get that vane fixed?"

  "Where get?" Tully asked before anyone could move.

  "Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?"

  His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on.

  It was too small. He forced it. "Need #," he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now.

  "This kif," she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. "This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you'd come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked.

  What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?"

  The blue eyes burned. "Friend," he said. "Belong friend stay Ijir."

  She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. "So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. Where?"

  "Kif got. Kif got # Ijir."

  "Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you've told us. What do they know, Tully?

  What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?"

  "They ask help."

  "How much help? Tully-what are you doing here?"

  "Kif. Kif."

  "What's going on?" Khym asked from her left. "What's he talking about — kif?"

  "Later," she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym's nostrils. "Tully. Tell me what's in that paper. You tell me, hear."

  "You got take to Maing Tol."

  "Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought."

  He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated.

  "Need you," he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static.

  "Friend, Pyanfar."

  "I ask him," Khym rumbled.

  "No," she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. "Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are."

  "Ask hani come fight ship take human."

  "Make sense."

  "Want make trade hani-mahe."

  "Truth?"

  "Truth."

  The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the han direct. Trade — was the lure, and there was something in the trees.

  She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral's ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous.

  But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions. Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed.

  "Vane," she said with ulterior motives. "Go."

  "Aye." Haral moved, shoved Chur's shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up.

  "Get the galley cleared," Pyan
far said- "Tully. You just became juniormost. Help Hilfy with the galley. Khym — you fetch and carry on the bridge. Whoever needs it."

  "I want to talk to you," Khym said, unbudged.

  "No time to talk." She turned her head and met his scowl with her own as he stayed put on the bench, still blocking her way out. "Look, Khym, we've got a vane in partial failure. One of us may have to take a walk after it yet. You got a question that tops it?"

  His ears went down in dismay.

  "Out," she said.

  "We could go to Kura, couldn't we?"

  "No. We can't. Can't shift course again this side of Urtur — we're in the dust; we've got a vane down. . The last course change gods-rotted near killed us, you understand that? I haven't got time to discuss it." She shoved and he moved. She got up and looked back at him, at Hilfy and Tully who were gathering dishes at furious speed. But Khym lingered, a towering hurt. She gathered up her patience, took him by the arm, walked him to the privacy of the bridgeward corridor. "Look, Khym — we've got troubles."

  "Somehow," he said, "I figured that."

  "Kshshti's mahen-held," she said. "Barely. If the kif have Kita watched they've likely got something in at Kshshti. But there's help there or the mahendo'sat wouldn't send us that direction."

  "You trust what they say?"

  She looked behind him, where one stark-pale human hastened to hand dishes off the table and close doors.

  "I don't know," she said. "Go."

  "You don't put me off, Py."

  She gave him one long burning look.

  "Chanur property," he said. "I do forget."

  "What do you want, Khym? I'll tell you what I want. I want that gods-rotted vane fixed. I want us out of here. Are you helping?"

  He drew a long, long breath and cast a look over his shoulder in Tully's direction. "Pet?"

  "Shut it up. Right there."

  The ears that had half-lifted sank again. "All right. That was low. But for the gods' sake, Py, what have you got yourself into? You can't make deals outside the han. They'll have your hide. That Ehrran ship"

  "Noticed that, did you?"

  "Gods, Py!"

  "Hush."

  He coughed. Caught his breath. "Chanur property. Right."