Chanur's Legacy

by C. J. Cherryh

  Fact was, she’d picked him. Her judgment had been that bad. She still tried, on bad nights, to figure out why it had been that dismally bad, or what failing was in herself. And “pretty” about covered his assets. Maybe “stupid” had been another one—because deep down she had wanted a piece of furniture, something decorative, something you didn’t have to justify anything to or argue with, because when her father had died she hadn’t wanted anybody in his place, no real lord in Chanur, just something that would get heirs and not interfere in the politics between her and her aunts.

  Only Rhean, who’d been furious at aunt Py going off from the clan, had had her own ideas how Chanur should face the new age, and what was important, and maybe—no, probably—Rhean had been right: Rhean cared, and Rhean had given up her command and come home and done what needed doing. Mauled her in the doing, granted. She’d been mad as hell about that, and about na Harun, and stung by Rhean’s reaction to her. But truth to tell, Rhean hadn’t been happy to go downworld either. No more than she had been.

  The power … Rhean liked that. It was a warmer blanket than the husband Rhean couldn’t bring home to Chanur, and couldn’t likely get to that often. A continent away was a good political alliance, and what was a continent but a half an orbit when Rhean had come in from space, but things were different now.

  A lot was.

  And she wasn’t coming home often, herself. Could marry again, but had no enthusiasm for the institution.

  There was Meras. Who was on one level like Korin: pretty face, no source of opinions. Amazing how attractive that still was to her. But not fair to a kid with brains; and he’d shown with the kif that he did think, thought right well for a young man, and clearly enough Fala was taken with him, Tarras and Tiar were… .

  But, but, and but. It was the middle of her sleep cycle, thoughts like that were a credit a hundredweight, and gods rot it, she didn’t want to go through the husband business again. He was bright, he would get ideas, and the politics involved at home were already difficult.

  Besides, he’d made irrevocable changes in their operations, he was a liability the kif had used to get her into a face-to-face meeting with unforeseeable consequences. She’d been mad enough to kill him a handful of hours ago, she and Chihin both.

  She grabbed the pillow and buried her head under it, looking for some place void of images.

  Chihin understood what was happening, Chihin had seen it coming before she did, Tiar and Tarras were too good-hearted to space him and Fala was suffering a late puberty. She didn’t know what to do with him, she didn’t know where she was going to unload him—Kefk, maybe. Let him bankrupt the kif.

  At which thought she saw that room, smelled the air, felt the ambient tension kif generated with each other, and remembered there were creatures in the universe to whom the highest virtue was the fastest strike and who didn’t lose a wink of sleep over blowing a shipful of living beings to radioactive dust. There wasn’t evil. She’d studied cultures too thoroughly and learned too many languages to believe in evil. She just knew that she’d tried to arrange her life so she didn’t have to deal with the kif at all … and here she was again; and there it was, the kifish offer … deal with us, learn to strike faster and first, learn to think our way, because we aren’t wired to think yours, we can’t understand hani thoughts …

  You always hoped they could. You were always tempted to believe they might cross that uncrossable gulf and deny their own hardwiring, turn off the triggers that led from impulse to action, the way a hani could turn them on, the way a hani could use instincts that were there, if you wanted to tear up the stones civilization laid over them, worse, you could get into the game, dealing with the kif—the very primal-level game, that had its very primal rewards, that competed with civilization.

  Hilfy Chanur had delved a bit too deeply into kifish minds. Hilfy Chanur had become expert in the language, to understand what she hadn’t understood when it was her alone and Tully, and kif had talked outside the cage. She’d learned words she couldn’t pronounce, lacking a double set of razor teeth, and words she couldn’t translate, without resorting to words of psychotic connotation in every other language she knew.

  But you didn’t say crazy, you didn’t say evil. They weren’t. No more than outsiders were what kif would say, naikktak, randomly behaving, behaving without regard to survival.

  Which said something about how kif thought of hani … and about the frame of mind in which Vikktakkht had asked na Hallan to ask him questions.

  Asked a hani male, who was notorious for unpredictable and aggressive behavior.

  Respect for the aggression? Possibly.

  Curiosity? Possibly. Kif had a very active curiosity. Kif could be artistic, imaginative, and curious. All these dimensions. They valued such attributes.

  But Hallan Meras …

  Using him as bait to get her closer, that made sense. That was very kif.

  But refusing to talk to her, insisting na Hallan do the business they’d clearly come for …

  It snapped into focus. Gamesmanship. Provocation aimed at her.

  Why?

  She was Pyanfar’s relative, but kif didn’t understand kinship, not at gut level. They weren’t wired for it. They’d understand it as potential rivalry, but the ones that knew outsiders were too sophisticated to make that mistake. That wasn’t what Vikktakkht was doing. It felt too gods-be personal.

  She rolled onto her back and mangled the pillow to prop her head, staring at the profitless dark. This was what she did instead of sleeping, too many hours of free association. Why couldn’t the mind come to straight conclusions? Why did she have to think about Hallan Meras, her unwarranted temper, and kif, all rolled into one package with Vikktakkht’s odd gods-rotted motives? Her mind was trying to put something together out of spare parts. And it wouldn’t fit together.

  What was the kif—

  —after, by the gods?

  Hunt. Prey. Run or fight and you got their attention. Stand still and you got eaten.

  She’d escaped the kif. That story was probably famous among kif. But this kif had been right there at Meetpoint, set up with a prisoner guaranteed to get a hani’s attention …

  In jail for hitting a kif. One wondered how far that was a set-up.

  Any hani might have done. But he’d just missed Pyanfar, who’d just gone through there. Pyanfar went through, the Preciousness suddenly became an urgent matter that No’shto-shti-stlen had to get to Atli-lyen-tlas, and Atli-lyen-tlas ran off with the kif while the mahendo’sat ran in panicked desperation to find out what No’shto-shti-stlen had sent.

  No’shto-shti-stlen was guarded by kif. So Vikktakkht had either had access to information or had been pointedly excluded from information.

  Atli-lyen-tlas had either run to the kif for transport or fallen into their hands as a prisoner. And who even knew which kif? Allies of Vikktakkht? Allies of Pyanfar Chanur?

  It was No’shto-shti-stlen who’d rather urgently wanted Hallan Meras in her hands. That urgency might have been stsho anxiety about having a hani male on their hands—stsho didn’t understand hani touchiness about their menfolk (stsho were no more constitutionally certain what ‘male’ meant than hani were about the stsho’s third gender) but an old diplomat like No’shto-shti-stlen certainly understood that they were touchy, and that it was an issue that could come back and cause trouble of unforeseen dimensions.

  So had Vikktakkht given Meras that odd promise at No’shto-shti-stlen’s urging … or had he outmaneuvered the stsho to get into the jail and set a trap for her?

  And had he set it up for any hani ship they could get, or had the fact that a second Chanur ship had shown up … either suggested to Vikktakkht a connection between events that wasn’t connected, or had it offered him a second chance to involve Chanur in this mess?

  He certainly would know who she was. He certainly would know she’d had an experience with kif. That she’d survived and come back to Meetpoint with a ship meant, in kifish eyes, s
he’d increased in rank, not diminished. In kifish eyes, aunt Py hadn’t thrown her out, she’d promoted her or been unable to prevent her rise. She was Chanur clan head, and one could bet the average kif knew what she was.

  So Vikktakkht had ignored her in that interview and let himself be interrogated only by na Hallan. If she were kif, she might have casually shot na Hallan and insisted he talk to her. That would have gotten his respect. But he was too sophisticated a kif to expect a hani to do that, or to consider it in purely kifish terms that she didn’t. He was sophisticated enough, like the Meetpoint stsho, to know that hani didn’t tolerate affront to their menfolk, and probably to know that it was indecent for hani males to deal with outsiders, except when sex was directly at issue.

  So was it some bizarre kifish joke? Or the careful playing of a Chanur’s desire for specific information against her awareness that if she interrupted the game or refused his rules she might not get everything he would give if she didn’t?

  Interesting question.

  She punched the pillow, battered it with her fist and tried for a comfortable spot in the tangled bedclothes, on a mental hunt through tangles of information. Too many weeds and not enough substance. The merest shadow of what she was looking for. Clearly enough, the kif wanted her to cross the kifish border.

  Another punch at the pillow, which refused to take a convenient shape. She wanted to sleep. Please the gods, she could dump it now and not think through what just didn’t have an answer.

  But what in a mahen hell made all these various pieces add up?

  Chapter Fourteen

  You could manage to read printout and work cargo. The cold-suit mittens had a spike on the thumb next the first finger that you could use to turn pages, and Tiar read on, with the loader banging and booming overhead, the giant cannisters fuming from their passage out of the cold-hold into the pressurized so-called heated hold, on their way to the docks.

  Chihin had the dockside post, with her arm in a sling and a button-fuse on her temper. (“Gods-rotted nitpicking doesn’t gods-be make a difference, half this stuff! She says she’s going to enforce this? She’s serious?”)

  That was somewhat Tiar’s own opinion, but: “Whatever we’re doing we better all do it,” was her second one. And Chihin, who had read the whole thing, had muttered a surly, pain-infected obscenity and declared The Pride’s crew obviously had to bolt everything down and double-check the readouts because The Pride’s captain was crazy.

  But that was the ship’s-manual ops section, and every spacer in the clan knew Pyanfar Chanur was a stickler for neatness, double and triple checks, and logging every sneeze. The part about arms maintenance, about who went armed and where and when and when not to fire, who in a group was to watch what and who was to break for help, what the ship would stand good for and what the captain would not tolerate … all that, in Tiar’s estimation, was a piece of good sense. The instructions might violate five separate Compact laws and two Trade office regulations Tiar could immediately think of, not mentioning local ordinances, but it was comforting to think that there was a standing order for a rescue, that station police no matter with what warrant were not going to take a crew member from the dockside for any reason whatsoever, and that the ship would seal up and leave dock at any moment to protect its crew, disregarding cargo and disregarding station central control. That was against the law. That would get them barred from trade unless they had a good story for the tribunal.

  But Hilfy Chanur said that the new rules were the rules and she was going to follow them. It was a major lot of trouble if they ever had to do what was set down here: lawsuits, blacklisting, the various fines and penalties and loss of license Compact law threatened them with evidently didn’t matter, if they had another incident like the one yesterday—because ker Hilfy said that was the way it was, and in Tiar’s experience, Hilfy meant it, come fire come thunder. Ker Chanur had no few faults, but if she promised something this drastic, she wouldn’t back down if it went operational.

  No wonder they didn’t want a copy leaving the ship. They weren’t trade rules. They were a manual for …

  A manual for, it occurred to Tiar Chanur as she thought about it, a hunter ship, an outright privateer … as, at least in the speculation of some in Chanur clan, that was what cousin Pyanfar had been for certain forces in the han, for years before it became official and war broke out and the han tried to bring her under control.

  If we ever do any of these things, Tiar thought, we’ll go over that same edge. At that point we’ll no longer be a trading ship: ports won’t treat us as one. We might get into port—but no knowing who’d trade with us.

  And if the Legacy goes over the edge, if Chanur has two ships operating like this … how can we claim we’re still just another clan? The han won’t stand for it.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The captain was upset, she’d picked that up clearly enough. She’d seen it in Chihin, who was in pain, and had a right to be, but she could read Chihin, and it was more than the pain in the wounded arm, Chihin was rattled, ambivalent about this business, and mad as she’d seen her in years.

  Because the kid had saved her neck? Maybe. Chihin really, honestly, didn’t approve of the boy being here, particularly on this voyage … even if Chihin had grudgingly called him a nice, cooperative kid— (“Too gods-be nice,” Chihin had put it. “Mincemeat in a month, at home, at his age.”)

  So it probably wasn’t the kid, probably not even the stsho. Chihin was walking around this morning with a head of steam built up and a set to her jaw that said the pain was only an aggravation, she was holding it in, and the wise wouldn’t cross her opinions.

  Cargo was getting moved—Hallan Meras was back working on the dockside, where Hilfy had sworn he wouldn’t be, but Chihin was out there, unstoppable as a star in its course, and Fala was working the pre-launch checks and Tarras was making calls after cargo, running comp and turning a page now and again, a frown on her face.

  That was all right, Hilfy thought. She didn’t expect expressions of delight when crew found out they were getting less sleep and more work. And that the standing orders amounted to outlawry. She went back to her office to fill out forms for the station legal office, not something she had rather do, but if they had a hope of recovering what they’d just paid out, those forms had to get in before any undock.

  Which might come sooner than later.

  And there was the matter of the contract, which now, in printout, could fill three of those cabinets. She’d given up on printout. She asked the computer to search borders/international and flight/unwillingness/refusal.

  Search borders/international negative, it said with idiot cheerfulness.

  And reported … In the event of the refusal of the party accepting the contract to deliver the cargo to the designated recipient …

  She knew that part. Double indemnity.

  It came up with three similars and a couple of other irrelevancies. Then: End of search.

  Tarras put her head in the door, with the same worried expression. “Captain. I have a question.”

  Crew was touchy, crew was upset, crew had a right to be. It wasn’t convenient, she was trying to logic her way through subclauses and obligations and Vikktakkht an Nikkatu’s behavior, but crew was a priority above priorities. It had to be.

  “About what?” she asked, and Tarras eased her way through the door, the Book a rolled-up and well-thumbed set of pages in her hands.

  “First off, I was calling the police yesterday. I was trying to get them in there … that’s why I didn’t answer you right off… .”

  “This thing isn’t to assign fault. You weren’t at fault. The police got there. That’s not what this is aiming at. Absolutely not. If you think I’d better have a word about that …”

  “I understand what I should have done, by this. But if I’d done that, if I’d threatened station …”

  “You’re authorized to threaten station. That’s in there. It doesn’t mean you open w
ith that bid, cousin. You use your well-known sense. I don’t fault you that you were talking to the police. I hoped you were talking to the police. I’d rather you were talking with them, I was a little gods-be busy at the time.”

  “If we did this, we’d be outlawed. It breaks the law, captain. We’d be blacklisted in every port… .”

  “We’d be alive.”

  There was silence in the office. A shadow in the corridor. So Tarras hadn’t quite come alone. Fala was listening, too, juniormost and without Tarras’ disposition to ask the dangerous questions.

  Tarras was thinking about the last one, and maybe thinking alive and outlawed wasn’t the career she’d planned for herself.

  “I’m not qualified,” Tarras said, “to make a decision like that. I’m not a lawyer, I’m the super-cargo.”

  “You’re also the weapons master. Don’t tell them you’re a lawyer. Tell them you’re the gunner and you’re left in charge and if somebody doesn’t do something you will … if I were stationmaster, I’d listen.”

  Another silence. “You mean bring the weapons up.”

  “If you have to. Yes. And there’s no stationmaster going to enforce a warrant on you. That’s not a thing we’ll accept.”

  “There’s treaty law! There’s the treaty Chanur helped make, Chanur can’t break it—”

  “You’re right,” she said, “you’re not a lawyer. You respect a treaty. They won’t.”

  “I didn’t sign on for this!” Tarras said, which she supposed might mean Tarras was resigning, which she would regret to the utmost, but Kshshti was the wrong place to do that. Then Tarras said, in a quiet voice, “Are you under Pyanfar’s orders? Is that what we’re doing?”