Chanur's Homecoming

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I mean within his intentions he had no way to stop her.”

  “And those intentions are?”

  Jik spread his hands. “I keep my agreements, hakkikt. And if he has abrogated our partnership—” It was his best argument, his most desperate. His brain fuzzed and the drug meandered through his veins with the force of a tidal bore. “If he has cast me off, hakkikt, I still keep my agreements with you. That’s my job to do; and if I fare better than he does, then that will prove to my Personage which agreement is the better to keep.”

  “Mahen mentality.”

  “I tell you: it’s very like sfik. Give me status and I’ll outweigh him with the Personage at Maing Tol. It’s that simple. It’s not unknown that the mahendo’sat conclude conflicting treaties. And if my course looks wiser than Ana’s, mine will be honored and his will be set aside. If both of us look like fools, our Personage will lean on other agencies—nor can either of us know if our Personage is not concluding a third treaty with the stsho. If all fail him, he will fall and another Personage’s agents will be to deal with. The mahendo’sat is easy to predict and reasonable to deal with. It will always go for its greatest advantage.”

  “Kk-kk-t. And will this Personage of yours stir forth in action or wait for events?”

  “Outcome from the subordinates is always the deciding factor.”

  “Where has Ismehanan-min gone? Where is this human fleet? What agreements has he made with the methane-breathers? What of your own?”

  They returned to old questions, the same questions, bringing the interview in its usual circle. “Again, mekt-hakkik, I don’t know. They may aim at Meetpoint. It’s not impossible the humans might come here. And I don’t know of any agreement with the knnn. I asked the tc’a to come here to assure that there was no panic on methane-side—”

  “Why did the knnn take your tc’a?”

  “I don’t know. Who knows the knnn? Who can make an agreement with them—”

  “Except the tc’a. Except the tc’a, Keia. Tell me what dealings you have had with them.”

  “God help me, none.” He held up a protesting hand. “I never deal with knnn.” And carefully, with his sense in rags from drugs and drink: “That’s Ana’s department.”

  “You wish to alarm me.”

  “Hakkikt, I am alarmed. I don’t know whether Ana is in control of it, or whether the knnn are doing something independent.”

  “In control of it.”

  It did sound stupid. Jik blinked slowly and took another drag at the smoke. “I mean maybe he’s in consultation with them.” The hakkikt feared the methane-breathers. Their irrationality, their technology, their vapors and tempers or whatever it was that sent them into frenzies, made the methane-folk a force no one sane wanted to stir up. “Or they approached him.” That was enough to send the wind up Sikkukkut’s back. “I don’t know, hakkikt. I swear. God witness. I don’t know. I did send a message to Maing Tol. So did Goldtooth. What was in his packet I don’t know.”

  “What was in yours?”

  Jik shrugged. “My deal with you. My urging they accept this treaty. I tell you, hakkikt, I’d urge you—all respect, hakkikt, you let me go back to my ship. I have a personal interest in seeing this agreement of ours flourish. It’ll make me a very powerful man at home.”

  Give the kif something he understood, an ambition within kifish comprehension.

  “You’re attempting to use psychology on me,” Sikkukkut said.

  “Of course I am. It also happens to be true.”

  “What happened to friendship? You know I know words like this. I am not stupid, Keia; I can study up on a concept without having the—internal circuitry to process it. Friendship means that you work in concert with Ismehanan-min. Loyalty means that you might become a martyr—I learned that word of ker Pyanfar. An appalling concept. But there it was in the mahen dictionary. I was curious. Martyr. Martyrdom. The whole of mahen history teems with martyrs. You place value on them. Like the hani. Have you wish to become one, Keia?”

  Jik lifted his brows. “Martyr is another word for fool.”

  “I found no such cross-reference. Tell me: Keia: I want to know this: where do the knnn fit into Ismehanan-min’s arrangements? What arrangements has he made with the stsho?”

  “He would betray them.”

  “And your opinion of them?”

  “They would betray us.”

  “They have. Stle stles stlen is a deadly creature. For a grass-eating stsho. Is he dealing with this person?”

  “I don’t know. No. Yes.” God help him, the drug was fuzzing up his mind again. For a panicked instant he lost all the threads and got them back again, remembering his story. “But not at depth. Ana doesn’t trust the stsho. It’s mutual. Of course. The humans will come to Meetpoint—eventually. I think they’ll come there. And Stle stles stlen will Phase when gtst sees it. No sts-stsho can withstand that kind of blow to gtst reputation. Ana will take advantage of the confusion and seize the station. If he can.”

  “And Akkhtimakt will allow this.”

  “Ana will have to anticipate him there. Perhaps—perhaps, hakkikt, Ana moved so quickly because he knows something of Akkhtimakt’s intentions. That there was no more time—in Ana’s estimation.”

  “And why would he go with the hani?”

  “Look for advantage.” That questioning made him nervous. It was a new tack; he tried to think his way through it and in desperation went back to old answers. “I think—think he hopes to use Rhif Ehrran to get into Meetpoint itself without having stsho techs Phase and bring the systems down. Now you doubt this. I well know. But stsho react badly to surprises; from kif, they expect threats. Even from hani. But mahen threats unbalance them. They’re unaccustomed. Ehrran has a treaty with them. That’s all I can guess about it. She’s a key. That’s all. A fool and a key.”

  “To do what?”

  “Hakkikt, I’m not privy to his plans.”

  Upon that, they were back to old matters. He sat and smoked while Sikkukkut thought that reply over once more, hunched faceless within the hooded robe, on his insect chair, the silver emblem of his princedom among kif shining on his breast stained with sodium-glow. Now and again from the shadows about them came the rustling of other robes, the restless stirring of subordinates who waited on their prince’s pleasure.

  In a moment Sikkukkut would negligently lift his hand and those waiting about the room would close in, to bear their prisoner back downship and belowdecks to a different sort of questioning, now that he was sufficiently muddled and drugged. Jik did not let himself doubt that. He did not let himself hope that his argument might sway the hakkikt; least of all did he hope that his hani allies on The Pride of Chanur and his own crew back on Aja Jin would effect a rescue. That was the core of his defense here among the kif, the hard center to his resistance that let him sit here so placidly taking his smokestick down to a stub and watching heavy-lidded while Sikkukkut an’nikktukktin meditated what next to do to him; it was the center of all secrets he held, that he counted himself already dead, from which position it was possible to be quite patient with all manner of misery, since, dead, he was enjoying a degree of sensation and occasional pleasant interlude no one dead had a right to. Even when the pain was extreme, it was better than not feeling anything at all. Ever.

  Besides, he was mahendo’sat, and curiosity was second nature to him: he was still picking up information, skilled as Sikkukkut was. He had learned, for instance, that Aja Jin, The Pride of Chanur, and Tahar’s Moon Rising were all at dock and all seemed free: that was very pleasant news. That Pyanfar Chanur was at hand to lend her experience to his own second in command was very good news; that Pyanfar still had credit enough with Sikkukkut to keep Dur Tahar’s throat uncut was excellent news as well, and if there was still enough hani left under Tahar’s red-brown hide, the pirate would adhere to her old enemy like burr to fur: hani paid their debts, if nothing else; and Tahar owed Chanur enough to stick to hell and back.

  All of
this he had learned in these sessions, as he knew that the human Tully was indeed safe aboard The Pride of Chanur, so Sikkukkut evidently valued Pyanfar more than he wanted the human to question and for other purposes, which was a mighty great deal of value for any kif to put on anon-kif. This was a double-edged benefit, of course: knowing kifish mindset, value-as-ally could turn with amazing swiftness to high-status-target. Friend in a kif’s doubletoothed mouth had no overtones of loyalty or self-sacrifice at all, was in fact nearly the opposite. Ally-of-convenience, rather. Potential rival, rather. Or poor fool.

  The hani knew these things; and he knew well that his second in command knew. So they would both keep one finger to the wind; and he hoped that heads would stay cool if, as seemed possible and even likely, portions of himself turned up as decoration on Sikkukkut’s ship-ramp. He loathed stupidity, himself; he had sinned in that regard or he would not be here. But he truly abhorred the thought that he might singlehandedly serve as trigger to the undoing of the Compact. That was the one thing even a dead man could fear, the legacy he might leave the living for generations to come. That thought was the crack in his defense: Sikkukkut, being kif, taking no thought to posterity, was not capable of reaching that chink without a strong hint.

  It was very easy for species to misunderstand each other, particularly when it came to abstracts.

  It was possible, for instance, that he and Pyanfar had persistently misinterpreted Sikkukkut’s lack of metaphysics as a lack of emotional abstracts and irrational desires. He had come to know the kif with unwanted intimacy, and now suspected Sikkukkut of a kifish sentimentality, a preference for intimate targets for his most personal satisfaction, while Akkhtimakt was less personal in his mayhem, and more catholic in his attacks.

  Akkhtimakt operates with the fist, Sikkukkut was wont to say, and I with the knife.

  It was kifish poesy; it was also a profound statement of styles which might, if a mahendo’sat were well-educated in kifish mentality, say more than its surface content, and delve into those deep things language barriered away from translation between species.

  He smoked the butt down to the last possible remnant, and carefully pinched it out instead of stubbing it, spacer’s affectation. Fire never hurt if one’s moves were definite and one’s mind was set firmly on the extinguishing and not on the fire. Spacer’s affectation, because when the fingers could bear it comfortably, it was safe to put away. He dropped the butt into the side of the pouch reserved for that and laid the pouch on the table. They never let him keep it. The pouch, with the liquor and Sikkukkut’s good humor, was delivered only in this room. So he let it lie, and met Sikkukkut’s eyes with lazy amusement.

  Perhaps he perplexed the hakkikt with his attitude, a coolness between defiance and alliance and certainly not the behavior of a kif; perhaps that was what kept his head off the spikes outside. Sikkukkut gazed at him a moment in what seemed interest, then lifted his hand as he had done before, and signaled his removal.

  * * *

  “There it goes,” someone cried down the hall, and footsteps went thundering past Chur Anify’s door, disturbing her convalescence. “Kk-kk-kt,” something else called out, and that brought Chur’s eyes open and set a little quicker pulse into her heart, so that needles jumped on the machine to which she was bound by a large skein of tubes, indicating an increase in pulse rate; in response to that, a flood of nutrients and appropriate chemicals came back into her bloodstream, automatically supplied.

  Living bound to a machine-extension which thought it knew best what a body ought to feel was bad enough; lying there while riot went on in the corridor was another thing, and Chur edged her way off the bed, carefully (the spring extensions on the skein of tubings made it possible for her to reach the bathroom and saved her some indignities). In this case she gripped the various tubes in one fist to keep the extension from jerking painfully at the needles and padded over to the bureau where she had her gun, hearing the kifish clicking going on out there. Her head spun and her heart raced and the gods-cursed machine flooded her veins with sedative when it sensed her elevated pulse, but she made it to the door and pushed the button with the knuckle of her gun-hand.

  The door shot open. She slumped lazy-like against the wall and stared at a kif who turned up directly opposite her and her pistol; then her eyes went strange-focused and her mind went here and there again, so that she had difficulty recalling where she was or why there should be a kif in The Pride’s corridor looking as horrified as a kif could look (not extremely) and why the peripheries of her vision informed her there were her cousins and a human standing there in shock and in company with this kif. It was a great deal to ask of a drugged hani brain, but the kif had its hands up and she was not crazed enough to go firing off a gun in a ship’s corridor without knowing why.

  And while her brain was sorting through that crazy sequence, something small and black ran right over her foot on its way into her room. “Hyaa!” she yelled in revulsion, and the kif dived for the wall beside her as she swung to keep a bead not on the thing but on the kif. A hurtling mass of her friends overtook her from behind—not to help her, to her vast bewilderment: they grabbed her and the gun, while the kif flinched and pasted himself tight to the wall, making himself the smallest possible target.

  “Chur,” her sister Geran was pleading with her, and she supposed that it was Geran prying the gun loose from her fingers: she was dizzy and her vision fuzzed. She heard her cousin Tirun’s voice, and human jabber, which was her friend Tully; and she dazedly let herself be dragged one step and another into the room, someone else taking the skein of tubes. A bell was going off: the infernal machine was telling off on her, that she was stressed.

  “Gods rot it,” she cried, remembering. “There’s something in here.” And then she remembered that she had seen little black things before, on the bridge, and could not remember whether they were hallucinations or not, or whether her sister took her seriously. It was embarrassing to see hallucinations. And the cursed machine kept pouring sedative into her, so that they were going to leave her alone in here and drugged, with whatever-it-was: she did not want that either.

  “Look under the bed,” Geran said, while Geran was putting her back into it, and she could not remember where the gun had gotten to, which was against ship’s rules, which was against all the regulations, to lose track of a firearm; and there was a kif trying to crawl under her bed. A sweat broke out on her, cold on her ears and nose and fingertips. “Where’s my gun?” she asked hazily, trying to sit up again; and “There it is!” someone shouted from the floor.

  “My gods,” Chur murmured, and her sister put her flat on her back again. She blinked, blinked again in the crazed notion that there was a kif on his hands and knees at her bedside and people were trying to get her hallucination out from under her bed.

  “Sorry,” Geran said fervently. “Stay down. We’ve got it.”

  “You’re crazy,” Chur said. “You’re stark crazy, all of you.” Because none of it made sense.

  But something let out a squeal under her bed, and something bumped against the secure-held braces, and there was an ammonia smell to the room which was no illusion, but a kif’s real presence.

  “He got,” said Tully’s voice, and he loomed up by her bedside. “Chur, you all right?”

  “Sure,” Chur said. She remembered at least where she was now, tied to a machine in na Khym’s cabin because she was, since the kif had shot her on a dock at Kshshti, too sick to be down in crew quarters; and Goldtooth had given them this fine medical equipment when he had met them here at Kefk, which was before the docks blew up in a firefight and she had been holding the bridge single-handed when the little black things started coming and going like a nasty slinking nightmare. There was a kif aboard, his name was Skkukuk, he was a slave and a gift from the hakkikt and he stood there with his black snout atwitch and his Dinner clutched in both bony hands as he stared at her. She curled her lip and laid her ears back, head scantly lifted. “Out!”

/>   The kif hissed and clicked and retreated in profound offense, teeth bared, and Chur bared hers, coming up on her free elbow.

  “Easy,” Geran said, pushing her back; and Tirun chased the kif on out, Haral’s sister Tirun, big enough to make a kif think twice about any argument, and owing that slight limp to a kifish gun some years back: Chur felt herself safe if Geran was by her and Tirun was between her and the kif. She looked up at Tully’s gold-bearded face and blinked placidly.

  “Gods-be kif,” Geran said. “Readout jumping like crazy—Tully, here, get this gun out of here.”

  “No,” Chur said. “Drawer. Put it back in the drawer, Tully.”

  “Out of here,” Geran said.

  “Gods rot,” Chur yelled, “drawer!” Living around Tully, a body got to thinking in pidgin and half-sentences. And the voice came out cracked. Tully hesitated, looking at Geran.

  An even larger figure showed up in the doorway, filling it. Khym Mahn, male and tall and wide: “What’s the trouble?”

  “No trouble,” Geran said. “Come on, close that door, everyone out before another of the gods-be things gets in. Who’s watching the godsforsaken kif?”

  “Put the gun in the drawer,” Chur said firmly. “Tully.”

  “You leave it there,” Geran said, getting up, as Khym vanished. She stood looking down a moment, while Tully did as he was told. Then the two of them stood there, her sister, her human friend; if there was ever truly such a thing as friendship between species. And the gods-be kif down the hall—Was that thing a friend, and did they have it running loose on the ship now? Had the captain authorized that?

  “O gods,” Chur murmured, too tired and too sick for thoughts like loose kif, and for uncharitable thoughts toward Tully, who had done his unarmed best to save all their hides more than once. But it was in her heart now that she would not see home again, and that this was her last voyage, and she wanted to go home more than anything, back to Anuurn and Chanur and to have this little selfish time with things she knew and loved, familiar things, uncomplicated by aliens and strangeness—wanted to be young again, and to have more time, and to remember what it was to have her life all in front of her and not behind.