Chanur's Homecoming

Chapter Two

It was not a situation Pyanfar enjoyed, sitting on the bridge and watching on the vid as a pair of armed kif headed toward her airlock. They wore no suits, only the hooded black robes universal with their kind. That meant the kif put some reliance on the jury-patches and the repressurization of this zone of the dock, more than she herself would have liked to put on it-kifish repair crews had been thumping and welding away out there, motes on vid, getting a patch on those areas the decompression had weakened.

So finally the hakkikt seemed to have settled accounts with the rebels inside his camp to the extent that now he could send a message to the friends of the mahen and hani traitors who had made such a large hole in his newly-acquired space station, who had disturbed the tc'a into riot on their side of the station, and incidentally sent over five hundred unsuspecting kif out into space on the wind of that decompression.

Sikkukkut had a very legitimate grievance; even a hani had to admit as much. Though the kif that had gone on that unscheduled spacewalk were many of them Sikkukkut's enemies, a good many had been partisans of his, and while no kif had ever been observed to grieve over the demise of any other kif, and while the incident might even have contributed to stopping the rebellion, still it had embarrassed him-and embarrassing a kifish leader was a very serious matter. It was not an accustomed feeling, to have a sense of wrong on her side when she was dealing with the kif; and to know, the while those black-robed figures cycled through the lock, that The Pride was not in a position, nose to a wrecked dock and outnumbered ten to one in ships and multiple thousands to one in personnel, to negotiate anything at all, not regarding what this mass of ships chose to do, not regarding their own position within the kifish power structure, not even regarding (heir safety or their lives.

So bluff was still the game, status and protocols, which was why she was sitting up here gnawing her mustaches and having her crew meet with an armed delegation that neither they nor she had power to negotiate with. She tried to use kifish manners, which kif understood, and she hoped to the gods the kif did understand the gesture she was making, which meant that Pyanfar Chanur had just abandoned her inclination to meet the hakkikt's messengers on hani protocols, with hani courtesies: now she withdrew to a remoteness which to a kif (she hoped) signaled not fear (a frightened kif would show up to placate the offended party, and thrust himself right into the presence of his potential enemy to try to patch it up) but rather signaled that the captain of this hani freighter turned hunter-ship considered herself risen in the hakkikt's favor, to the extent that she intended henceforth to receive her messages through subordinates. She sensed that self-promotion was the way things worked with kif: she sensed it by experience, and kifish manners, and Skkukuk's inside-out advice: their own much-bewildered kifish crewman alternately shrank and flourished in every breeze of her tempers, crushed by a moment's reprimand, bright-eyed and energetic on her next moment's better humor; and jealous and paranoid in his constant suspicions the crew would undermine him-as he tried to undermine them, of course, but less zealously of late, as if he had finally gotten it through his narrow kifish skull that that was not the way things worked on a hani ship; or that the crew was too firmly in the captain's favor to dislodge; or perhaps the crew's own increasing courtesy with him had sent his mind racing on a new stratagem down some path thoroughly mistaken and thoroughly kif: it was enough to give a sane hani a headache. But Skkukuk had shown her a vital thing: that a kif took all the ground he could get at every hour of every day, and if he made a mistake and got a reprimand, he did not, as a hani would do, cherish a grudge for that reprimand: where a hani would burn with shame and throw sanity and self-preservation to the winds, and where a hani who chastised another hani knew that she was asking for bloodfeud to the second and third generation, involving both clans and affiliate clans to the eighth degree, a kif just accepted a slap in the face with the same unflappable sense of self-preservation that would make him go for his own leader's throat the moment that leader looked vulnerable, at the very moment a reasonable hani might stand by her leader most loyally. Pyanfar had puzzled this out. In a total wrench of logic she could even understand that kif being dead as they were to any altruistic impulse, had to move to completely different tides, and the most urgent of those tides seemed to be the drive to inch their way up in status at every breath if they could get away with it.

It was a good question whether Sikkukkut understood hani half that well, despite his fluency; and upon that thought a logical gulf opened before her, whether a kif could ever truly understand the pride of the lowliest hani hill woman, who would spend the last drop of blood she had settling accounts both of debt and bloodfeud with anyone at all, headwoman or beggar; the kif had not the internal reflexes to feel what a hani felt; and how, good gods, could a hani know the compulsion that drove a kif, lacking whatever-it-was which was as natural to kif as breathing.

Gods help us, if I had enough credit with him to get Jik loose-if anyone did-if I could crack that gods-be code of Jik's, over there in comp, if I knew what Jik was holding out against Sikkukkut, what kind of craziness he passed me at Mkks-is it his will and testament? Something for his Personage? Some gods-cursed plan of attack?

Goldtooth's plan of action?

What do the kif want down there, why come in person, why not use the com?

While the kif arrived in their fire-scarred airlock and prepared to deal with her niece and her cousin, both of whom had gotten scars before this at kifish hands.

Don't foul it, Hilfy, don't give way-Gods, I should have called her up and sent-

-Geran? With Chur shot and Geran in the mood she's in?

-not Haral, I need her.

Not a place for the menfolk down there either. Hilfy's all right, she's stable, she'll carry it off all right- she knows the kif, knows them well as anyone-knows how to hold herself-

O gods, why'd I ever let her and Chur go off the ship at Kshshti? It was my fault, my fault and she'll never be the same-

-isn't the same, no one's ever the same; I'm not, the ship isn't, Chur isn't, none of us are, and I brought us here, every gods-be step along the way-

Haral cycled the lock and two unescorted kif walked into The Pride's, lowerdeck; while Geran powered the airlock camera about, tracking them, and Khym and Tully hovered over separate monitors. Haral kept cycling her own checks, keeping an eye to the whole godsforsaken dockside, screen after screen at Haral's station shifting images so that they were never blinder than they had to be.

No way they were going to be caught in distraction, even if, gods forbid, the kif tossed a grenade through the lock.

"Record," Pyanfar said. "Aye," Geran said, and flicked a switch, beginning to log the whole business into The Pride's records. Then:

"Those are rifles," Geran muttered.

The kif carried heavy weapons, besides the sidearms. The dim light and poor camera pickup had obscured those black weapons against the black, unornamented robes. But the rifles were slung at the shoulder, not carried in the hand. That much was encouraging. "Polite," Pyanfar said through her teeth, while below, from the spy-eye:

"Hunter Pyanfar," one kif said as he met The Pride's welcoming committee.

''Tirun Araun.'' Tirun identified herself-scarred old spacer with gray dusting her nose and streaking her red-gold mane. She had a way of holding herself that seemed both diffident about the gun she held (surely civilized beings ought not to hold guns on each other) and very likely to use it in the next twitch (there was not the least compunction or doubt in her eyes). "/ trust you've come from the hakkikt," Tirun said. ''Praise to him''-without the least flicker, kifish courtesy.

''Praise to him,'' the kif said. ''A message to your captain.'' It took a cylinder from its belt, with never an objection to the leveled guns or Hilfy's flattened ears. "The hakkikt says: the docks are secure. The matter is urgent. I say: we will stand here and wait for the Chanur captain."

Tirun reached out and took the cylinder. And delayed one lazy moment in a gesture that could not have been wasted, especially on a kif. "Be courteous, Hilfy."

With fine timing, with a little flattening of the ears that might be respect and might be something else again, ambiguous even to hani eyes-Tirun delivered her signal to Hilfy and turned with authority and walked off, at a pace both deliberate and fast enough.

While Hilfy stood there with the gun in her fist and two kif to watch.

Steady, kid. For the gods' sakes, Tirun's done it right, don't wobble.

No one said a thing on the bridge. It remained very, very quiet until the lift worked, back down the corridor from the center of the bridge. Then Pyanfar got out of her chair and went to wait for Tirun, who came down the corridor at a much faster clip than she had used below. While at the boards, Haral and Geran kept to business, monitoring everything round about the ship and inside it and everything coming from station.

"Captain," Tirun said by way of courtesy, and handed over the cylinder.

The cap stuck when she pulled at it. For one awful moment Pyanfar thought of explosives; or deadly gas. "Wait here," she said, left Tirun standing on the bridge, and stepped outside into the corridor, pushing the door switch to close it between them.

She hooked a claw into the seal then and gnawed her lip and pulled the cap. Nothing blew. Nothing came out. It was a message, a bit of gray paper.

The door shot open again in the same instant, which was Tirun; and Tirun stood there aggrieved in the tail of her eye while she fished the paper out and read it.

Hunter Pyanfar: you have made requests. I will give you my response aboard my ship at 1500, expecting that you will came with ranking personnel of allied ships.

"Captain?" Tirun said.

She passed the letter over and cast a second look up at the chrono in the bridge display: 1436.

"It's a trap," Tirun said.

On the bridge even Haral had taken one quick look around.

"Invitation from the kif," Pyanfar said. "Ranking personnel of allied ships. On his deck. Fast."

"My gods," Khym exclaimed.

"Unfortunately," Pyanfar said, and thought of Hilfy down there in the corridor with two kif alone. "'Unfortunately we haven't got a real choice. Get Tahar and get Kesurinan. I'm not taking any of you-"

Mouths opened.

"It's a trap," Khym said, his deep voice quivering with outrage. "Py, Tirun's right, listen to her."

"Not taking any of you," she said carefully, "except our friend the kif. Get to it, Geran, get our friends out there."

"That dock," Geran said.

"We got worse risks than a leaky dock, cousin; one of 'em's being late and one of them's missing a signal with that kif. I'm going down there, I want Tahar and Kesurinan just the way the kif asked, and about the time I clear the lock down there I want The Pride powered up and held that way till I get back again. Make the point with 'em we still got teeth, hear? And that my crew's on full alert."

"Aye," Haral muttered, far from happy.

Neither was Pyanfar happy. She went and pulled one of their APs out of the locker by the bridge exit and headed back down the corridor, with the heavy sidearm and its belt in hand.

Not to the lowerdeck straightway.

First came a stop in her own quarters, for a fast exchange: for a bit of glitter, because appearances counted, a psychological weapon as essential as the gun at her side.

Sikkukkut meant to move now. In some regard.

She clenched her jaw and started cataloging things, fast, things that wanted doing. In case she had just said goodbye to her crew and her husband.

Gods, Khym had just stood there and took an answer for an answer. Her heart did a little painful thump of pride when she realized belatedly what that had cost him: he was not the gentle ignorant she had married, not the feckless man who had walked out on the docks at Meetpoint and run straight into a kifish trap. If she died today at kifish hands he would not act the male; would not rush out there like a lunatic to take the kif on hand to hand-he had grown a lot on this voyage, had Khym, when he was no longer a boy and no longer young at all. He had finally found out what lay outside his limits and what the universe was like-had found friends, b'gods, female friends and one who was even male, friends which she suddenly realized in grief that Khym had never had in all his adult life, excepting her and his other wives, and I them but scarcely: clan-lord, shielded from all contact with the world by his wives and his sisters and his daughters, he had finally come out into the real world to find out what it was, and he was not just her Khym anymore; or even Khym lord Mahn; he was something more than that, suddenly, long after he should have gone to die in Hermitage, outworn and useless-he grew up and became what he always could have been; discovered the universe full of honest folk and scoundrels of all genders, and learned how to win respect, how to ignore the barbs and become ship-youngest and work his way out of a second youth, with utterly different rules. That was more change than most women had the fortitude to take in their lives; but by the gods he had made it complete back there; he would do his fighting from that bridge and that board, under Haral's command if something went wrong, part of the crew that drove a ship of mass enough and internal power enough to turn Kefk and Sikkukkut and all his ambitions into one briefly incandescent star.

The docks were the shambles she had expected, gray metal still supercooled under her bare feet, with a good many of the lights out-blown when the pressure went and when this dock had opened to space. Gantries loomed up down the righthand side of the docks, subtly tilting in the positive curvature of the deck, which was the torus-shaped station's outermost edge, to anyone who saw it as a wheel, from the outside. Here that rim was down, and floored in bare metal-Kefk had mining, metal-rich in the debris that floated around its double stars; therefore Kefk was gray and dull, except for the dirty orange of the sodium-lights kif preferred-because it never occurred to the colorblind kif to paint anything for decorative purposes, only for protective ones: they literally had to use instruments to determine what color a thing was, and gods knew whether their homeworld Akkht had ever offered them dyes other than black-though it was rumored that they had learned their color-taste from the pastel opalescent stsho, who disparaged the riot of color which hani and mahendo'sat loved about themselves; having discovered a range of distinctions beyond their senses, having the pale example of the stsho before them, and flinching before the stsho's concept of value (such affluent consumers they set the standard for the whole Compact's economy) and further daunted by the stsho's disparagement of species who put strong color with color, the kif were all very insecure in their own dignity before the stsho and before others: above all no kif wanted to be laughed at. True black was one distinction they could make, true black and true white: so they naturally chose the dark that matched their habitat and their desire to move unseen, and became aesthetes of only one color, the blackest black. They valued silver more than gold because to their eyes it shone more; and they valued texture above other things in aesthetics, because they were more tactilely than visually stimulated in their pleasure centers: in fact they must be virtually blind to sight-beauty, and loved to touch interesting surfaces-that was what she had heard from an old stsho once upon a time, when the stsho had gotten quite giddy on a tiny cupful of Anuurn tea (it had a substance in it which reacted interestingly with stsho metabolism, which did nothing at all to a hani: such were the oddities of vice and pleasure between species). The kif in earliest days, this stsho said, had been victims of mahen practical jokes, who sold them clashing colors; and the kif did not forget this humiliation.

Kif were vastly changed, that was the truth, even from a few years ago: then they had been scattered and petty pirates, dockside thieves a hani could bluff into retreat, kif whose style was to whine and accuse and frequently to launch lawsuits in stsho courts which might make a freighter pay out of court settlement just to get the matter clear. That was the style of kifish banditry before Akkukkak.

Now she walked onto this dock in the company of a prince's escort, and had her own bodyguard-Skukkuk walking along with her, armed with the gun he had taken from a kif in the fighting, looking like every other kif in his black robe and his hood and the plainness of his gear: if she looked about and if Skkukuk and one of her escort had changed places, she would not be able to tell them apart at any casual glance. That was another effect of kifish dress: of black hoods that deeply shaded the face and left only the gray-black snout in the light; it made targets hard to pick.

And from Aja Jin's berth-nothing of that ship was visible nor any of the others, only the tangle of lines and gantries that held those lines aloft to the several ports that valved through to the ship-from behind that tangle came another pair, mahen, one of them male. The other was Soje Kesurinan, Jik's second in command. Kesurinan was a tall black mahe, scarred and missing half an ear, but handsome in the way she carried herself-dour as Jik was cheerful, but she lifted her chin as she saw Pyanfar, and her diminutive mahen ears, whole and half, flicked in salutation.

"Kesurinan," Pyanfar said quietly, as Kesurinan walked up to her. And: "Kkkkt," from her kifish escort. "Tahar is on her way. An escort is going to pick her up; we can go on down."

"Got," Kesurinan said, which was agreement, economical and expressionless in a woman who had to be worried. Very worried. But they had to play everything to the kif who watched them, and give away nothing. Pyanfar nodded to the escort, and they started walking then, along the dock, the belt of the AP gun heavy about her hips, a pocket pistol thumping against her leg on the other side. Kif went armed to the teeth and so did she and so did Kesurinan, and, kifish taste and kifish eyesight notwithstanding, she had used that trip to her room to put on a pair of dress trousers, silk and not the coarse crewwoman's blues she had taken to wearing aboard; silk trousers, her best belt, the cord-ends of which were semiprecious stones and ui, polyp skeletons from Anuurn seas, and worth more than rubies off Anuurn: hani were not divers, as a rule, but they were traders, and knowing the substance, had suspected the stsho would prize this pale rarity-quite correctly, as it developed. In this splendor and with a couple of gold bracelets and a silver one, not mentioning the array of earrings, she headed for a meeting with the self-appointed prince of pirates, in all the arrogance a hani captain owned.

She had gotten out the door in good order, had gone down the lift, joined Hilfy in the short lock corridor and informed the kif that she was expecting her own escort, while Haral used the intercom and the central board's unlock-commands to release Skkukuk from his prison and to direct him to the lift by the farside corridor, where Tirun brought his gun to him-all managed so that it saved Skkukuk's dignity. The ammonia-smelling rascal had come strolling up on them from the direction she had come, armed and suitably arrogant with his fellow kif: after all, his captain had an appointment with the hakkikt and he had just been chosen over all the other crew as her escort: he was positively cheerful.

Hilfy, on the other hand-

Hilfy's ears had gone flat when she saw what was toward, and there had been starkest horror in her eyes, which the kif might well have attributed to seeing herself shunted aside for a kifish escort-correct; but for the wrong reasons.

But the kid, in fact, had kept her mouth clamped shut and taken it all in grim silence. Gods knew Hilfy would probably say something considerable when she got topside, which was probably where she had gone the moment that lock shut, topside so fast the deck would smoke.

A strobe light began to flash behind them, pulses hitting the gantries and the girders; she knew what it was, knew when Kesurinan turned, and when the kif turned in one move- "Kkkt," one said, "kkkt--"

And looked back at her again as the others did, head lifted in threat, tongue darting in nervousness: his rifle slid to his hands.

Pyanfar only stood there. Grinned at him, which was not humor in a hani as it was in a mahendo'sat or a human; but which at this moment approached it. The Pride of Chanur had just powered up and the sensors on the gantry-fed power lines had just shut off the flow and triggered an alarm, the same alarm that would have sounded when Goldtooth's Mahijiru and Ehrran's Vigilance had powered up to leave dock-if the station had not been too occupied for anyone to react to it. "We're not leaving," she said to the kif quite cheerfully. "It's honorific. So you know who you're dealing with-Praise to the hakkikt."

Kif might be blind to a great many things: not to sarcasm and not to arrogance and not to a gesture made to the whole of Kefk station and the whole of the hakkikt's power. They would not rally to their hakkikt in the sense that hani would rally round a leader; she bet her life on that; he was just The Hakkikt and there might arise another without warning. Kif would not defend him against someone of status enough to make that kind of gesture to him: such a status only made them uneasy, in the absence of orders which might have told them how the hakkikt would play the matter. They could anger the hakkikt by creating him a problem, too. She faced a pair of very uneasy kif. And grinned in something very like primate humor as she turned and walked down the dock as she had already done, with the kif at her back, with Kesurinan at her side and Skukkuk guarding her flank, armed and deadly. That was perhaps another very worried kif: his own hakt'-mekt, his great captain, had just defied the highest power in local space.

She had just served notice to that Power what the stakes were, by the gods; and what her life was worth to her crew.

That was power of a sort no kif wielded, of a sort no kif could easily foresee.

Martyrdom was a concept that had gotten a shiver even out of Sikkukkut.

"Word from Harukk," Hilfy said, coldly and calmly as she could, though her hand trembled as it hovered over the com console: "Quote: We demand cause for this violation of regulations."

"Reply:" said Haral Araun, her low voice quite calm, "We have obeyed instructions from our captain."

The hair rose on Hilfy Chanur's spine. She was more fluent in main-kifish than most hani, than most communications officers far senior to her, in fact. And what Haral was telling the kif was precisely the correct response, a very kifish thing to say, whether or not the old spacer knew it: Hilfy would have bet her scant possessions that Haral had calculated it, not by book-learning, but by decades of dockside give and take with the kif. She punched in and rendered it in main-kifish to the hakkikt's communications officer, who let a considerable stark silence ride after it.

Click.

"Harukk-com just went offline," Hilfy said, still calmly, though her heart was slamming away at her ribs. Beside her, Tully and Geran and Khym sat keeping an eye on scan, on the limited view they had with their nose into station and the scan output from station. Tirun Araun ran Haral's copilot functions from her post over by the aft bulkhead, the master-alternate, acting as switcher and sequencer, Haral's usual job; and Tirun had armaments live back there too. In case.

"Haa," Khym muttered suddenly.

"We just lost station output," Geran said.

Sikkukkut's officials had just blinded them, at least insofar as station could. Doubtless someone was on the com to Sikkukkut personally, to tell him that there was a hani ship live, armed, and with its powerful nose stuck right into Kefk's gut.

Not mentioning what those engines back there could do if they cycled the jump vanes sitting at dock. Some of their particles would stay in realspace, mightily agitated; others, in their random way, would enter hyperspace, and stream for the depths of the local gravity wells, the greatest of which was Kefk's main star. Everything would part company in a rather irretrievable fashion, either turning into a bright spot or a failed attempt at a black hole, stripping its own substance down, since it had no directional potential except the station and the star's own motion through the continuum. Probably not enough to prevent implosion. Hilfy activated a keyboard in her idle moment, fed in The Pride's mass and her best guess at total station mass, adding in the number of ships tied into the station, a moment of black self-amusement, filling her mind with numbers and schoolbook calculations.

It was significant that the kif had not immediately demanded that they shut down the internal power: the kif knew they had no power to enforce that until they had Pyanfar in their hands.

And Hilfy did not want to think about that at the moment. She simply ran the numbers on their own possible dissolution, and whether they would actually form the hyperspace bubble, and whether with all those ships and that station and all that mass, they might actually have a hyperspatial effect on the largest star when they plowed into it.

She sent it into Nav, since the bubble variables resided there in standard equations; and of a sudden her comp monitor blinked, beeped, and came up with output too soon to have responded to that complex query: TRLING/PR1, it read, PSWD.

Password?

Nav query?

Those were the two thoughts that hit her brain while her eyes were in motion back to the top of that screen where the program name was listed: they found that PRIORITY ONE code and the Linguistics Path Designator as the implication suddenly hit like a wash of cold water.

YN she typed, which was the shortest city name on Anuurn and the standard password for their lightly coded systems: fast keys to hit.

Syntax achieved, the screen said. Display/Print?/Tape?/All?

She hit D and P; the screen blinked text up, full of gaps and mangled syntax: it was running a code-cracker set in the assumption it was mahensi, but it was not mahen standard, it was some godsforsaken related language, though the computer was making some sense of it on cognates. Jik's message. The coded packet he had dropped in their laps back at Mkks.

Dialect. Which?

She punched more buttons, desperately, asking for the decoded original. It came up, vaguely recognizable as mahen phonemes. "Gods be," she muttered, "Haral, Haral, the comp just spat out Jik's message but it's still hashed up, it's got a string of words together but it's still sorting-we got a breakthrough here."

The screen blinked with a red strip across the top, which was Tirun using her keyboard to snatch information across to her board and probably to Haral's. "Keep on it," Haral said. "Tirun, monitor com."

"Aye," Tirun said, and "Aye," Hilfy muttered, punching keys, with the hair bristling on her neck and her ears flicking in half-crazed vexation with the computer, which had thrown her a half-solved problem in her own field here on the very edge of oblivion.

Kif could call our bluff any second now. Haral could push that button.

We could go streaming for that sun and the gods rot it what language is he using that comp hasn't got? O gods be! when's that alarm going to come? We're going to die, gods rot it, and it's giving me something to chase, and gods rot it, Haral, let me finish this gods-be silly problem before you push the godsforsaken button, it's a rotten thing to die with a question in your head, if this thing's got the whole why and wherefore of it, all Jik's conniving, all his secrets-hold off the button, Haral, tell me when we go, I don't want to die till I get this-

The computer beeped and sorted and ticked away, launched on a new hunt with a little hani shove in a certain direction for its research. It blinked away to itself and Hilfy clasped her hands in front of her mouth and stared at the screen in mindless timestretch.

Probably a letter to his wife. Gods know. Has he got a wife? Kids?

We're going to die here and this stupid machine can't go any faster and what can we do anyway? Pyanfar's already out there with the kif. And we can't get to her. Whatever happens.

Harukk occupied a berth well around the rim, beyond the weakened section, but not beyond the damage: wreckage lay about them, walls and decks were fire-blackened and pocked with shells and laser-hits.

And the approach to the hakkikt's ship was more ghastly than before, hedged with a veritable forest of poles and stanchions on which he had put the heads of enemies and rebels against his power.

Pyanfar had seen the display before; so had Kesurinan. Hope he changes them off, was the wisp of thought that leapt into Pyanfar's distressed mind. M'gods, putrefaction. The things life-support has to put up with on this station-filters must be a gods-be mess.

-in a distracted, callous mode because she had gotten used to such horrors, and only her heart flinched in a forlorn, pained recollection that there were places where such things did not happen, where naive, precious folk went about their lives never having seen a sapient head parted from its body and hung up like a traffic warning.

This kif is going to expand beyond Kefk. Going-gods know how far. Gods help the civilized worlds.

A sneeze hit her. She stifled it, turned it into a snarl and wiped her nose. She was allergic to kif-had taken another pill when she changed clothes, but the air was thick hereabouts. Her eyes watered. Lives rode on her dignity and she was going to sneeze, the very thought that she was going to sneeze made her nose itch and the watering grow worse. But she squared her shoulders and put the itching out of her mind, eyes fixed on the ramp, on the access which lay open for them.

"It's coming, it's coming," Hilfy murmured, as the screen came up with more and more whole words, as it broke the code on a few key ones and spread the pattern wider: a makeshift job of encoding, a kind of thing one ship's computer could do and another one could unravel, if it had a decoding faculty; and The Pride's did. The Pride's fancy-educated communications officer had taken her papa's parting-gift in the form of the same system she had studied on by com-net back on Anuurn; it cost; and it worked, by the gods, it sorted its vast expensive dictionaries for patterns, spread its tentacles and grabbed every bit of memory it could get out of the partitionings, and sorted and cross-checked and ran phonemic sorts, linked up with the decoder-program in the fancy new comp-segment the mahendo'sat had installed in The

Pride back at Kshshti-gods knew what all it did. While no one who wanted to keep a document in code was going to be fool enough to drop proper names through it or use telltales like /' or -to, or -ma extensions, it had the advantage of that mahen code program it sorted in as a crosscheck. The result was coming out in abbreviated form, truncated, dosed with antique words and code phrases no machine could break, but it was developing sense.

Prime writes haste* not * runner/courier accident* eye/see.

Events bring necessity clarify actions take* prime/audacity....

She added a hani brain's opinion what the choice ought to be in two instances. The computer flicked through another change.

Number one writes hastily {?} Do not hold this courier or risk disclosure. Events compel me to clarify actions which Number One has taken--

"Haral," she said, and felt a shiver all over as she added another suggestion to comp.

. . . since {ghost?} is not holding to agreements support will go {to?} opposition all efforts supporting candidacy-

"We got some stuff here," Tirun muttered. "Jik's talking doublecross of somebody."

"Who's Ghost?" Hilfy said. "Goldtooth?"

"Akkhtimakt?" Tirun wondered in her turn.

"Ehrran?" Geran wondered, which possibility of double-dealing sent a chill down Hilfy's back.

"Maybe some human," Haral said, and the hair bristled all the way down.

O gods, Pyanfar needs to know this.

And may never know it.

If they lay a hand on her; if we blow this place; gods know what we're taking out-if we have to. If they make us do that.

Good gods, we're talking about conspiracy all the way to Maing Tol or wherever-Candidacy, who in creation has a candidacy anyone out here worries about-

-except the hakkikt.

The corridors of Harukk would haunt her dreams-ammonia-smelling and dim, with none of The Pride's smooth pale paneling: conduits were in plain view, and bore bands of knots on their surfaces that, Pyanfar suddenly realized in a random flash, must be the kifish version of color-coding. The codings added alien shadows to the machinery, shadows cast in the ubiquitous and horrid orange of sodium-light and the occasional yellow-green of a coldglow. Tall robed shadows stalked ahead of them and others walked behind, as a door opened and let her and Kesurinan and Skkukuk into the hakkikt’s meeting-room.

Sikkukkut waited for them, in a room ringed with black kifish shadows. Two incense-globes on tall poles gave off curls of sickly spicy smoke that curled visibly in front of the sodium-lights mounted to the side of the room, while another light from overhead fell wanly on Sikkukkut's floor-hugging table, himself and his chair, the legs of which arched up about him like the legs of a crouching insect. Sikkukkut sat where the body of the insect would be, robed in black edged with silver that took the orange light, with the light falling on his long, virtually hairless snout and the glitter of his black eyes as he lifted his head.

"Hunter Pyanfar," he said. "Kkkt. Sit. And is it Kesurinan ofAja Jin?'

"Same, hakkikt," Kesurinan said. And did not say: where is my captain? which was doubtless the burning question in her mind.

Pyanfar settled easily into another of the insect chairs and tucked her feet up kif-style as one of the skkukun brought her a cup, one of the ball-shaped, studded cups the kif favored, and another poured parini into it. Kesurinan had hesitated to sit: "You too," Sikkukkut said, and as Kesurinan took another of the chairs, next Pyanfar, he looked in Skkukuk's direction. "Kkkkt. Sokktoktki nakt, skku-Chanuru."

A moment's hesitation. It was courtesy; it was invitation to a kifish slave to sit at table with the hakkikt and his captain. "Huh," Pyanfar said, sensing Skkukuk's crisis; and her flesh shrank at the sudden purposeful grace with which Skkukuk came around that table and assumed the chair beside her-he slithered, on two feet: was, she suddenly recognized those moves, not skulking, not slinking-but moving with that fluidity very dangerous kif could use; very powerful kif; kif whose moves she instinctively kept an eye to when she saw them dockside and met them in bars. This was a fighter, among a species who were born fighting. And all hers, for the moment.

She sipped her parini. Sikkukkut sipped whatever he was drinking while a skku served the others in turn.

"Tahar," Sikkukkut said, "is on her way in. And your ship is live, hunter Pyanfar. Have you noticed this?"

"I've noticed," she said, and kept all her moves easy.

Sikkukkut's long tongue exited the v-form gap of his teeth and extended into the cup, withdrew again. "So have I. Your crew claims they're following orders. Is this so?"

"Yes."

"Kkkt." Silence a moment. "While you are on the dock."

"I hope," Pyanfar said ever so softly, "that nothing's been launched toward my ship-bearing in mind there might be agencies still on the station that would like to damage the hakkikt's ally. I hope the hakkikt will protect us against a thing like that."

Deathly stillness. At last the hakkikt lapped at his cup again and blinked with, for a kif, bland good humor. "You have been foolish, hunter Pyanfar. There's far too much opportunity for error. And you have delivered far too much power into the hands of subordinates. We will talk about this."

Another weighty silence, in which perhaps she was expected to reply. She simply sat still, having achieved a position in which she could sit and stare thoughtfully at the hakkikt.

Eggsucking bastard, she thought. Where's Jik, you earless assassin?

She tried not to think of what kind of demonstration Sikkukkut was capable.

"We will have a discussion on the matter," Sikkukkut said; and there was the subtle, soft whisper of arrival in the outer corridor. "Is that Tahar? Yes. Alone except for my escort. I wonder at this new tactic."

Tahar hesitated in the doorway, then ventured close-a quiet step, a quiet settling into place when the hakkikt gestured her to sit at the table: a rippled-maned, bronze-pelted southern hani with a black scar across her mouth that gave her a grim and raffish look.

"So all the ships in your hand," Sikkukkut said, looking at Pyanfar, "are in mine."

"/ am in your hand," Pyanfar said, with as steady a voice as ever she faced down a dockside official bent on penalties. But never suggest I don't control those ships, no, not to a kif. Status, Pyanfar Chanur. Status is all there is with him. "It's a complex situation, hakkikt. Hani minds are not, after all, kifish. But that's my value to you.''

"Godsawful gibberish," Haral said from her station. The printout was ten pages long, and full of code words that only Jik and his Personage might know. Hilfy Chanur stared at the same set of papers and flipped this way and that, trying to get some idea what they applied to.

-Ghost is proceeding on the course suggested in her previous report.

Pieces and bits of information depending on other information.

-reports from inconvenience/Inconvenience? are negative.

"I think Inconvenience is another codename," Hilfy said.

"We knew," said Tirun, from the end of the consoles, "that that son was in connivance up to his nose."

"Who are we?" Haral wondered. "Could we be that Ghost?"

"Inconvenience," Hilfy suggested. "If-"

"Priority," Geran exclaimed, atop a sound from Tully. "Priority, engine live, coming over station rim vicinity berth 23-"

Harukk's neighborhood. Kif ship.

"I am glad to know your value to me," said Sikkukkut carefully. "It's always helpful to have those things explained." His fingers moved delicately over the projections on the cup he held, restless, sensual movement. "I have held such a discussion with my friend Keia. He has tried to explain. I'm not sure with what success."

"He's very valuable," Pyanfar said, her heart thudding the harder against her ribs. Careful, careful, don't tie the crew and all we've got to him. "He's a force we'd miss. Against Meetpoint."

"You assume Meetpoint."

"Hakkikt, I've expected the order hourly."

"Is that why your ship's engines are live?"

She grinned, honest hani grin, a gentle pursing of the mouth. "I'm quite ready to go."

"Kkkt. Skku of mine."

"Congruent interests."

And do your subordinates share your enthusiasm?"

"They'll follow."

"They've followed you here. Meetpoint might be far more dangerous."

"They're well aware of that."

"What is their motive, do you suppose?"

"Self-interest. Survival."

"They think then that your guidance will advance them."

"Evidently they think that. They're here."

"You see outside my ship the results of miscalculation."

"I noticed, hakkikt."

"You still consider Keia Nomesteturjai a friend, hunter Pyanfar."

"Hakkikt, when you use that word it makes me nervous. I'm not certain we understand each other."

"When you say subordinate I suffer similar apprehensions. What is that ship of yours doing?"

"Following my orders."

"Which are?"

"Are we to Iater? I'm willing to discuss it if we are." In the hakkikt’s stony silence she sipped at the cup. "On the other hand, we were talking about Meetpoint. That is where we're going."

"Do be very careful, hunter Pyanfar."

She lowered her ears and pricked them up again. But a kif might not read that hani apology; and galling as retreat was: "I retract the question then."

"Nankt." The kif waved a hand; a door opened and someone moved; it was a name he had called. It sounded like one. The hand flourished and took up the cup again from the table. "Well that you learn caution, hunter Pyanfar."

"It's holding stationary," Geran said, and Hilfy watched the development on her own number two monitor, where the limited sweep of their scan picked up a ship which had risen to station zenith, hanging where it had a free shot at everything.

"That's Ikkhoitr," Haral said. "One of the hakkikt's oldest pets."

"If they're not talking," said Tirun, "and they're not moving, that means they're at the limit of their orders."

"Move and countermove," Haral said.

Hilfy flexed her claws out and in again with an effort at control. Her stomach hurt. She felt a shiver coming on at the thought of that button near Haral's hand. You going to tell us before you push it? Or just surprise us all, cousin?

With a mental effort she shifted her eyes back to the translation problem and got herself busy, leaving the ship over their heads to Haral's discretion.

From Khym and Tully, not a word; silence; Chur had not cut in her monitor: Geran had gone back to Chur's room briefly when it all started, and pushed a button on the machinery, ordering sedative, putting her sister out cold before it got to the noise of locks opening and the ship powering up. Or other things Chur might want to listen in on; and learn too much of situations that she could do nothing about. Geran quietly put her sister out, turned her back and walked back to the bridge to do her job, which she sat doing, businesslike and without a shake or a wobble in her voice or a trace of worry on her face.

Gods-be coward, Hilfy Chanur, do your own job and quit thinking about it.

It was Jik they brought into the hall-Jik, a dark, dazed figure between two kif who held him by either arm: who had to go on holding him on his feet after they brought him to the table. Jik lifted his head as if that took all his strength. Pyanfar's stomach turned over; her ears twitched against her determination not to let them flatten, and then she let them down anyway: any hani smelling that much drug-laden sweat and pain would wrinkle up the nose and lay the ears down, even if it was not a friend held there in such condition before her eyes.

"Keia," said Sikkukkut. "Your friends have come to see you."

"Damn dumb," Jik said thickly; and Kesurinan climbed slowly to her feet, stood there with her hands at her sides, a bolstered pistol brushing one of them. Kesurinan had the cold good sense to go no farther than that. Tahar tensed in her seat, but she made no further move either, and Pyanfar nodded in Jik's direction.

"You don't look too good."

"Lot drug," Jik said, head wobbling. "You damn fool. Go ship. Private, huh?"

"It is the drug," said Sikkukkut. "I forgive his discourtesies. Do you want to cede him your place in our council, Kesurinan? Or not, as you please."

Do you repudiate your captain? Do you want his post?

Perhaps Kesurinan had no idea what was being asked. She moved and took Jik's arm from the kif who held it, flung her arm about him and gently eased him down onto the chair.

"Kkkt. Mahen behaviors." Sikkukkut lapped at his drink while Jik leaned on one of the upraised insect-legs of the chair his first officer had yielded him and stared through a pair of them at Pyanfar.

"H'lo," he said. "Damn mess."

"Godsrotted mess for sure. What've you been telling the hakkikt, huh? You going to go with us to Meetpoint?"

"I dunno," he said. He shut his eyes as if he had gone away a moment and opened them again. They shone dark and desperate in the orange light, spilling water onto his black skin and black fur. His nostrils widened and sucked in air. "Go ship, Pyanfar."

"You see," said Sikkukkut, "we are moving at some deliberate speed. Kesurinan, Tahar, I tell you what I have told my other captains: follow your orders. You came here, which is very well. Now you will go to another room; and you will stay there. Until I release you. Tell them they will do this, hunter Pyanfar; and dismiss this skku of your own ship.''

"Do it," Pyanfar said. It was protocols. Or a demonstration of power. There was no choice, not even with all of them armed. She looked at Tahar as the scar-nosed pirate got upkand stared back at her with that expressionless calm that had carried her through two years of close dealing with kif. Skkukuk got to his feet on the same order.

And:

"You go," Jik murmured on his own, speaking to Kesurinan.

"A," Kesurinan agreed.

"Kkkt," Sikkukkut said, not missing that little distinction, it seemed, of control in that exchange. He waved his hand: kif cleared a way and one of the ranking skkukun motioned to Tahar and to Kesurinan and Skkukuk. There was, Pyanfar noted with some relief, no question about the weapons they wore, and Skkukuk had not signaled any warning. If he had not changed sides altogether when he sat down at that table.

"Would you," Sikkukkut said, when the others had gone, "like something to drink, Keia?"

"No," Jik said thickly.

"He still has his wits," Sikkukkut said, turning his head slightly to Pyanfar. "And he still has all else he was born with, by my strict order. In consideration of an old friendship, kkkt, Keia? But you don't then order Aja Jin, hunter Pyanfar. Nor order this one. He makes that quite clear, doesn't he?"

"He'll do what I ask him. As an ally."

"If he does what you ask, as an ally, do you then do what he asks?"

"I have in past. I think he owes me one."

"Merchants. But Keia professes not to be a merchant at all. I don't think he will trade. Will you, Keia?"

Silence. Long silence.

"Stubborn. He is very stubborn." Another lap at the cup. "Tell me, Chanur-skku, what am I to think about that ship of yours?"

"That we're ready to go to Meetpoint, hakkikt.'"

Sikkukkut's long jaw lifted. It was not a friendly gesture, that shift of the head that stared more nearly nose-on: that was threat, the eyes glittering cold black with the sulfurous highlights of the lighting. "Ismehanan-min went to Meetpoint, skku of mine: now, I am not patient of this. By now there is a ship of mine over the station axis with its guns aimed at your ship. And we are at impasse."

"Hakkikt, when I go back to my ship I'll power down. My crew has its orders until then."

"That's a very stupid bluff, hunter Pyanfar "

"I'm not bluffing. We can all die here. You're not dealing with a kif, hakkikt. I'm hani. Remember?"

There was a stir all about the hall. Clicks and subsequent red gleams of weapons ready-lights. And Jik pushed his hands against the insect-leg and lifted his head slightly.

Your ship isn't moving on mine," Pyanfar said, "since you don't want your station damaged. And mine won't move. Leaving dock isn't what I ordered them to do. I told them if I die here, or if they're attacked from your side, to cycle the jump vanes."