Chanur's Homecoming

by C. J. Cherryh

  —prisoners?

  All round the table backs stiffened. Except Jik’s, to look at him; he sat there concentrating on his smoke, with a cloud of it round his head.

  “Sit still,” Pyanfar said in hani; and Haurnar Vrossaru and Vaury Shaurnurn turned their heads to look toward their escorts, the only two who did.

  But maybe they knew their crew.

  “Is the hakkikt disposed?” Pyanfar repeated.

  “The hani captain may push too far,” Ikkhoitr’s captain said out of his silence. “Be careful of it.”

  “Makes me nervous,” Pyanfar said. “This place. We’re exposed sitting here at station. If I were Akkhtimakt—” She rested her elbow on her knee, easy pose, though her heart was hammering away fit to take her breath: thank gods for the incense that masked the sweat. Her nose itched and ran. She ignored it. “This place smells of trap, hakkikt.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m an old trader, hakkikt. And stsho may cheat you one way and five more, but I never knew them to plot violence.” Phrase it so the bastard has salve for his pride. A trader can know merchant-things. He isn’t expected to understand grasseaters, is he? “But they’ll buy violence, without understanding what they’ve bought. They’ve made mistakes before. This is a big one. They’ve involved the han. Technically, hani are allied with Akkhtimakt, because of the stsho treaty, which gave him what he never would have had. Support on the far side of the Compact. All of a sudden you don’t hold the majority of Akkhtimakt’s territory. He’s just quadrupled his holdings. And he’s on the other side of an uncrossable gulf. No jump-points, hakkikt, no bridge between hani space and here. It’s a narrow neck and one where he can interdict you if hani abide by that treaty.”

  There was deathly quiet in the room. No kif moved. Then a nervous shift from the Faha. Ears were flat, all in that section of the table.

  And Jik shot her a carefully frowning glance. Sucked in a great deal of smoke and let it go. “A.” Drawing Sikkukkut’s attention to himself.

  “Is it so.”

  “He go Urtur. Damn sure not go Kita.”

  “You have ships at Kita.”

  Another slow draw at the smoke. “I don’t swear. Good guess. We send message Maing Tol. My Personage make move on Kita. Where he go? Here? Got no cross-jump but Tt’a’va’o, damn bad choice. Methane-breather, human, lot mahendo’sat. Damn bad choice. You no do. He no do.”

  “Should I wonder that that is then precisely what I should do?”

  Go off toward Tt’a’va’o and possible ambush, and involve himself with everything Jik had listed? Go home to Akkht and consolidate his hold? Or to Llyene and terrorize the stsho in a raid every kifish pirate must have dreamed of?

  They were all good choices for the Compact as a whole. If they cast themselves totally on hope of rescue from the mahendo’sat.

  Who had their hands full already, saving their own hides.

  “Masheo-to,” Jik said. And something more involving Akkhtimakt and ship IDs, rapidly. While Sikkukkut’s black eyes fixed on him.

  “Kkkt,” Sikkukkut said. “Interesting thought. Do you follow that? No? Keia proposes that Akkhtimakt may have faked identification in his ship ID. That he may not be among that group we dispersed, but already at Urtur. We will both have taken precautions: my ships will reach all the jump-points that lead out from here in time to prevent escape from insystem or to prevent any ships not already launched from arriving here. But Keia favors us with another interesting proposal. I tell you I value you both.”

  Gods, he means it. The absolute, thorough-going bastard. He’s dead inside. He doesn’t know what he’s done. He doesn’t know Jik’s his enemy. Or if he knows it he doesn’t know it, from the gut. He hasn’t got the equipment. He theorizes. You can revise a theory, but never gut-knowledge, never instinct.

  He’s naïve as Skkukuk in some ways. He mimics our ways. Even friendship. And he can’t feel it. He can’t ever understand us: just logic his way through our motives; and that won’t always work for him.

  “Not know where he be,” Jik said. Another puff of smoke. “Maybe even hani space.”

  Hani bodies all about the table stiffened.

  “Maybe already there, a?”

  Gods look on us all. Let it go. Let him think his way into it. Slowly, slowly.

  “Kkkkt. Kkkkt.” Sikkukkut’s tongue flicked in the gap of his teeth.

  Can we go too far? Make him lose sfik in front of his servants?

  And beside the hakkikt the captain of Ikkhoitr leaned over and spoke rapidly and quietly. Sikkukkut answered a word or two back.

  Gods rot him. That one’s no good news.

  Worse and worse.

  Ikkhoitr’s captain got up from table. And left. While Sikkukkut looked their way again. “You will have noticed the dispatch of certain ships. They are not the first. From Meetpoint, from Kshshti, from Mkks and Kefk. Continually my messengers have gone to inform my ships. And ships have moved. You have never seen all I have. Nor is this all of Akkhtimakt’s company. You are quite correct. Kkkkt. From you, Keia, I expect a certain astuteness in such matters. But the hani are also hunters. And you’ve talked to them, have you, Keia?”

  Jik frowned. And said nothing at all.

  “Not quite by his wish,” Pyanfar said. “Say that friendship has other uses. He was confused when we got him. He talked rather too much to us. That simple.” We’re lying, Kesurinan. Trust me. Sit still. “It’s what I said. Nothing Jik wants. He knows something Goldtooth doesn’t. That made the difference. Tully doesn’t know what the humans are up to, but a thought occurs to me that I don’t like, hakkikt. That the trouble inside the Compact is weakening us as a whole. That the humans may not wait until the trouble’s settled. Just delay their attack till the most advantageous moment. Because they will push at us.”

  “Is this so, Tully?”

  Tully made an uncomfortable shift of position. A shrug. Turned a worried look Sikkukkut’s direction, hers.

  “He has trouble understanding sometimes. Tully. The hakkikt asked: will the humans fight the mahendo’sat?”

  “Not know.” Tully’s eyes fixed on hers, shifting minutely as if they hoped to read a clue.

  “You told me. Tell him what you told me. Do it, Tully.”

  “Human—” He looked back toward Sikkukkut. Toward this kif who was more than all others his personal enemy. “Come. Got three—” He held up fingers. “Three human—”

  “Governments,” Pyanfar said.

  “Three,” Tully said. “Fight. Push one humanity to here.”

  “Kkkkt.”

  “I belong The Pride. Crew-man!”

  Keep your hands off me, you bastard.

  And implicit in a glance her way: Captain, don’t let them take me.

  “He doesn’t know much more than he’s said, mekt-hakkikt. But he understands methane-breathers. I don’t think the rest of his people do. He had no importance among his people. They got what information from him they wanted to hear and they shoved him aside without listening to the rest of what he had to say. They didn’t want him to say the rest. We think. Gods know he might not understand as much as I think. We might not understand him. I think he’s tried to tell the truth, but I don’t think he was in on the planning. Just a crewman. That’s all he ever was. That’s what he still is.” Her hands wanted to shake. If the kif took him, there was nothing she could do to stop it. I got their attention on him. Gods, get it off!

  “But,” Sikkukkut said, “we have other sources to question. The stsho will not hold back information. They bend to any wind. And I have sufficient of them to gain an excellent picture of what happened here—they will lie to a mahendo’sat, they will lie to a hani, but they will not lie to a kif. And they have very large eyes. Two of my least skkukun are on the station at this moment; and so are three hundred thousand stsho.” Again Sikkukkut lifted the cup and drank, a quick dart of his dark tongue. “They are apprised of the possibility that I will decide to remove this station. And
that they will not be allowed to leave—”

  My gods.

  “I have told my skkukun the same. They will find information. They will cause the stsho to find it. We have already identified responsible individuals. My enemy destroyed the station datafiles. After doubtless sucking them into his own records. So there is nothing to learn there: I expected as much. But we have direct resources. Ksksi kakt.”

  A servant moved. Fast. Hani shifted anxiously as an inner door opened, as kif rearranged themselves, arustle like leaves in a midnight forest.

  “Sit still,” Pyanfar said again. In case any of them forgot. Her ears were flat, her muscles had a chill like fever in them that was going to start her shivering. She reached, ears flat and scowling, and picked up her cup and drank.

  The parini went down like fire. And held her caught in that minor, eye-watering misery when a gibbering outcry rang out from the opened door.

  A gleam of white showed in the doorway, where kif parted, where dark-robed kif shoved stsho forward, through the shadowed rows of their own kind. Stsho white, stained with sodium-light, marked with darker smears, their pitiful, spindly limbs all bruised from kifish handling.

  So fragile. A breath could break such limbs.

  Jik turned his face in that direction, slowly. The smoke curled up from the stick in his hand. He did not move, himself, beyond that; the other captains turned in their chairs; and Tully—on her other side—she had no way to observe. She guessed.

  “Now,” said Sikkukkut, “let us ask some questions.”

  * * *

  “Translator’s not making sense of it,” Hilfy murmured, gnawing her mustaches and monitoring kifish transmissions. Harukk was talking to its minions off-station. Talking a great deal. “I don’t like it, gods, I don’t like this.”

  “Takes a decision somewhere,” Geran said, “to get that ship that talkative. You’d think Sikkukkut’d be busy. You’d hope he’d be.”

  “Calling more of them in?” Khym said.

  “They got a worry about something,” Geran said. “No. They won’t pull ships in while there’s a chance of something coming in and catching them nose to station. That’s some kind of bulletin. Instruction. Gods know what.”

  “Still talking,” Hilfy muttered. And remembered Harukk’s dark bowels. The transmission went on at some length.

  Likely Haral remembered Harukk, too. She had seen it, when they pulled the Tahar crew out of there.

  “Hostages,” Hilfy said. “That’s what he’s got Gods-be, Haral, I could make a routine query over there, take the temperature.”

  “Just sit still,” Haral said. “Captain’s got enough trouble. Let it be.”

  * * *

  They flung the larger of the two stsho at the table, between Pyanfar’s chair and Haroury Pauran’s. Gtst collapsed all in a nodding huddle of white, delicate limbs, of swirling pearlescent draperies at the table edge. Gtst shuddered and shivered and bubbled.

  While Pyanfar looked at the designs of pastel paints on gtst brow and her heart thudded in shock.

  It was Stle stles stlen. Or it had been. Gods knew what personality the wretch had fragmented to when the second wave of kif invaded gtst station.

  “You recognize this creature?” Sikkukkut asked. “Or do they still look alike to you?”

  “I know gtst.”

  Gtst—or gstisi: it might well be Phasing—wrung gtst hands and wailed something about noble kif and noble hani. Moonstone eyes looked her way, liquid with pleading, and Pyanfar’s stomach turned over. Gtst stank of oil and perfume and something indefinable, doubled when the kif flung the other stsho down beside it.

  “Talk,” Sikkukkut said to the stsho. “Or we begin to hurt something, perhaps one of these others; perhaps your translator. And then if you don’t, we will hurt you. Do you understand, creature?”

  The stsho bubbled and babbled at each other; the one clung to the person which had been Stle stles stlen, fingers locked in gtst robes. Do it, do it, the translator was crying, and the erstwhile Stle stles stlen poured out a sudden flood of wails and words.

  “—The Director is not responsible,” the translator cried then. “Gtst was another person—”

  “That’s very well. We don’t care which of you we skin.”

  “—But! But! noble, esteemed friend—this wretch Akkhtimakt—”

  “You begin already to make a lie. Tell us about the treaty and about what happened here.”

  More babble. The translator turned gtst face about again, moonstone eyes wide, gtst mouth a tiny, trembling o. “It was a mistake, it was—”

  “Report what you did!”

  “We are not a violent people, we had need—”

  “This translator is useless. We can send for another.”

  “—but! but! in our foolishness we listened to agents of the other hakkikt, we had need of ships to defend us and in our foolishness—”

  “What of your bargains with mahendo’sat; with hani; with the methane-folk; with humans?”

  “Mahendo’sat are with these creatures, these—” The translator looked Tully’s way with a visible shiver that made all gtst plumes tremble. “Creatures! We ejected them. We sought accommodation with the hani. But hani have no great ships. What can we do now but shelter with the most powerful? We were fools to think this was Akkhtimakt: we see very well now: we will make treaty with you, at once, at once, estimable! Defend us!”

  “Kkkkt. What an offer! And what will you do for me, little grasseater?”

  “We have science! We have—unique objects—”

  The whole of stsho culture—open to kifish piracy.

  Pyanfar coughed, and the stsho mistook it and trembled the more, lifting gtst hands to the kif.

  “Save us! Estimable!”

  “This thing is a fool,” said Sikkukkut. “Where is Ismehanan-min? What bargains have you made with him and with his Personage?”

  Jik, Jik, for godssakes don’t make a move, gtst’ll talk, O gods, we can’t help it and we don’t need craziness right now, we need wits, we need the sharpest gods-be dealing any trader ever made.

  The stsho once Stle stles stlen waved gtst hands and babbled.

  “Hakkikt,” the translator lisped. “Hakkikt, Ismehanan-min dealt with us, he is the other side of a conspiracy, pernicious, pernicious, most honorable hakkikt—” The stsho waved gtst hands, rocking and tearing with nervous fingers at gtst robes; gtst cast an anxious look back where the kif stood with guns all about them; toward Jik, who had no restraint on him. “We are not a violent people. What are we to do? Mahendo’sat crowd upon us, they force their way into our offices—we need guards to secure our privacy, but we are not a violent people—”

  “And we are not a patient kind,” Sikkukkut said, and Stle stles stlen said something lengthy and urgent.

  “—The mahendo’sat left us. They left these few they said must close out certain business, menials, functionaries, persons of no import— Lies. They attempted bribery—”

  “To which you surely listened.”

  “—Akkhtimakt had betrayed our agreements!”

  “What are the mahendo’sat up to?”

  “—They are making you fight each other, hakkikt. One mahe aids you; the other dare not aid your enemy, but he leads and lures him.”

  O thank gods.

  “Kkkkt, is this so, Keia?”

  Jik was relighting his smoke, which looked to be reluctant to stay lit. He capped the fire. “Sure. Same we always like you best. You win, hakkikt, we glad deal with you. I think maybe you do win. Right now I not much happy ’bout humans. So same I convince Ana, he switch tactic fast. Maybe come you side, a? Meanwhile got this hani problem.”

  “A ship of mine has gone to Kshshti. If it finds no resistance it may find other sympathetic kif and send them out from there. I tell you that we will cover all of space. We are already close to encounter with your partner. At Tt’a’va’o. Or wherever he is.”

  Pyanfar sat still, forced herself to sit still. O gods, god
s, how much does he know? How much can these hunter-ships do? If kif can match the mahendo’sat, all bets are off, what Akkhtimakt may be doing, what he’s doing— Would the kif ever have started this mess, with inferior ships?

  “We sit here,” Sikkukkut said, “attempting to preserve three hundred thousand fools. Why this is, I wonder. Perhaps I shall lose patience with it. In a very little time any outsystem spotter will be receiving our early movements down his timeline. Once he knows Harukk has docked, he will know it is too late: I will not have stayed here overlong. Or if he is a fool and does not know that, still I will not be here, kkkkt?” Sikkukkut took a sip from his cup. “As for incursions from system-edge in general, that is all anticipated. If some of Akkhtimakt’s ships exist out there, which I still doubt. Only a fool would annoy me and pen himself into the system with me, a fool or a very formidable enemy. Or my friends Keia and Pyanfar, kkkkt? But I am not vastly worried. On the one hand I am not anxious to lose the station itself; on the other anything that brought Akkhtimakt’s ships within my reach would please me, and likewise,” Sikkukkut said, and turned a glance on the two stsho before which they wilted like grass in the fire. “Likewise anything that brought the perfidious Ismehanan-min to an interview with me. Do you understand me, kkkt?”

  “Yes. Yes, honorable.”

  “He dislodged Akkhtimakt. And the hani ship with him?”

  “—Yes, yes. He hung off and waited, the hani went to Urtur. Discovering Akkhtimakt here, these perfidious scoundrels abandoned us, each, yes, honorable.”

  “And sent you nothing?”

  “—Nothing, nothing, O, Honorable, we would tell you. They waited and then these creatures came out of hiding! Waiting at the limits of our system! We were shocked, we were dismayed, we cannot understand how they penetrated our net—”

  “Akkhtimakt here,” Jik said lazily. “Ana know you come. He do thing I say. He wait. Wait you come. Maybe you fight these bastard kif, he come in. He got these human on short chain.”