Chanur's Homecoming

Chapter Four

I am writing this in haste at Mkks. Do not hold or compromise this courier. Present crisis compels me to clarify the actions which I have taken in support of Ismehanan-min, since his lines of operation have crossed mine. I trust his report has reached you, but have placed a duplicate in the care of the Personage at Kshshti should the courier have failed. Since Stle stles stlen is not holding to treaty agreements both Ismehanan-min and I are taking measures to support other candidates and to prevent replacement of mahen personnel with hani. Here at Mkks we have retrieved all hostages and have suffered no damage at present. We are requested by Sikkukkut to add support to his candidacy by moving on Kefk. I am not apprised of Ismehanan-min's whereabouts and do not speculate. I advance on Meetpoint by that route. All reports from tc'a sources indicate that Stle stles stlen is proceeding as in the previous report, and reports from our contact inside stsho space are not encouraging. . . .

Tc'a contacts report knnn agitation in urgent terms. . . .

I have given Ehrran a false packet. Evidently this is a stsho agent and I dispense only disinformation into this outlet. Her willingness to participate I am certain is only a means to gather information on our activities which I am sure she has gained through stsho contacts of her own and which she has twice attempted to relay through furtive contact with stsho agents, some of which have eluded the net. Our movements are reported through an efficient system of couriers and I maintain a close watch over Ehrran's transmissions.

Thus far Chanur remains reliable. Support for this agent must be managed with extreme discretion on all levels. I would send her on to Maing Tol but I see no means to do this over Sikkukkut's objections and considering Ehrran's present state of mind. Therefore Chanur remains with us, under utmost priority of protection. Particularly alarming is Sikkukkut's courting of Chanur. Leverage will have to be arranged to counter this. . . .

Pyanfar looked away from the translation on screen, and Jik, sitting in a ring of Chanur at the bridge com station, gave a pained shrug as she flattened her ears. "What kind of leverage?"

"Money," Jik said faintly. "Debt. Like maybe-a, Pyanfar, I not arrange these thing. This gover'ment stuff. They also help. Who repair you ship, a? Who bribe Stle stles stlen get you license back?" He looked around him, at face after face, looked again as Khym leaned a huge hand on the back of the cushion, and gazed up at Khym's glowering countenance before he thought otherwise and turned back to Pyanfar. "No good this read message," Jik said. "Damn, you read mail you going find stuff don't got all the truth. Truth, truth I can't say in letter- What you want, I write to Personage say I want help friend, I say I want them do good to you? No. I do quiet. I push make Personage you friend, I push keep you out trouble, I down on knee ask Personage treat Chanur right-" I le reached and made a backhanded gesture toward the screen. "This, this be evidence in law. You know what I mean say. You don't write down some thing. No want enemies get, not kif enemy, not hani enemy, not mane, not stsho. God, Pyanfar, you know what I try say."

She stared at him bleakly, saw the tremor in his hand and (he pain etched around his eyes and his mouth, saw-maybe she wanted to see past the damning words on the screen.

"I know," she said, and saw the tremor grow worse in his arm before he let it down. Proud Jik, vain Jik, pressed to give accounts he would not have given, not for any threat, except lot hope of help from the friends he had doublecrossed, with Ins ship held hostage and more than his freedom and his reputation at stake. What she saw hurt.. And rang clearer than any protestations. "I know, gods rot it, we both got a mess. Haral, what's status on our allies out there?"

"Aja Jin and Moon Rising both report on schedule. I reported ourselves the same, all well aboard."

"So we've told Kesurinan you're fine," Pyanfar muttered to Jik. "So what was the hope-send me off sideways about the time you made the jump with Sikkukkut to Meetpoint?"

"We not want lose you," Jik said.

"I ought to be flattered," she said in her throat, and looked up at the others. Tully was on the bridge with them. Everyone but Skkukuk. Tully as usual lost all of it. He looked confused. So did the crew, confused and on the edge of anger. "We got a value to the mahendo'sat," she said. "They like their friends to survive. Gods know what else they want. It's fair, I guess. We have certain mahendo'sat we favor more than others. No great wrong in that, as far as it goes. You're offshift. Whole crew. Get a good meal in your stomachs: we got gods know what coming up. We got more than Meetpoint laid into Nav. If we have to."

She looked toward Jik. Jik leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach with something more like his usual ease. His eyes were tired. But the gesture at least looked like Jik, bedraggled as he was and lacking his usual finery.

"You too," she said. And for a moment the lids half-lowered on his eyes, the faintest of warnings.

Don't give me orders, that was to say. I've had enough.

Well, it was Jik, and he was only trying to recover a bit of his dignity. She let her ears dip: all right.

Then he unfolded his arms, pried his stiffening frame out of the chair and gave himself up to Tirun Araun, who indicated the galleyward corridor.

Fool, she told herself again. It was not just Jik she was trusting. It was a mahe the mahendo'sat put ultimate confidence in, one of a few who were turned loose in the field to make decisions across lightyears too many for the central government to be consulted on every twitch and adjustment of policy-places where agents had no time to consult, and a hunter-captain like Jik had to make up his own law and make treaties and direct local ships with the authority of the whole mahen government behind him.

Personage was more than an individual back in Maing Tol and another at Iji. It was the whole concept on which the mahendo'sat concluded anything: when a mahe was right he was right as law, and when he made a mistake he fell from power. His superiors would disown him. And if he made too great a mistake the superior who appointed him might fall: so there might be more than one agent in the field making contradictory arrangements.

The most viable would be acknowledged, the agents who stood too visibly for the nonviable policies would fall from power, and the mahen government went smoothly on.

Doublecross was the standard order of business. Betrayal of each other, of everyone but the superior. That he protected his own agents was Jik's saving honesty, and Goldtooth's, who had run and left Jik because he had to. It took this many years in space for an old hani to understand how it worked and to understand that it worked.

And there was still the question whether Jik might turn back on an agreement he had made, and repudiate it himself.

He had made a hard one, gods knew, with Sikkukkut.

And a contradictory one with her.

She frowned, and walked on the way others had gone, into the galley, where Tirun had gotten Jik seated at table and where Haral and Hilfy and Khym and Tully were all delving into the cabinets and the freezer hunting quick-fix edibles. There was the bitter odor of dry gfi in the air: Tirun was filling a pot. There was the rattle of plastic: disposables. Pyanfar leaned on the table with both hands and looked Jik in the eyes.

"Got a question for you. Say you got two agreements, you, yourself. And the people you made them with-get at odds. How do you resolve that?"

Jik frowned. His eyes still wept. His sweat smelled of ammonia and drug even yet. "You, Sikkukkut?"

"Me and Sikkukkut."

"I keep best agreement."

"The one that serves the mahendo'sat best."

"A." He blinked and gazed at her like a tired child. "Always."

"Just wondered," she said. "In case."

Something else occurred to her, when she turned to the cabinet and took a packet of dried meat out of the storage.

Jik had just, for whatever reason, told the truth. Against his own Personage and all those interests. Which made him, in mahen terms, a dishonest man.

Gods, what's gotten into us on this ship? We got nobody aboard who hasn't gone to the wrong side of her own species' business-Tully, Skkukuk, all us of Chanur and Malm: now Jik's sliding too.

Treason's catching, that's what it is.

She got a cup, wrinkled her nose as Khym dosed his gfi with tofi. She poured her own from the fastbrewer, looked back at their unlikely crew crowded into the galley. At Jik sitting disconsolate and hurting and trying his best to choke down a sandwich and a cup of reconstituted milk; no one in Chanur put off any temper on him, not Hilfy and not Khym either.

So. Crew was going to give him a chance. For their own reasons, which might include latitude for the captain's judgment; but maybe because of past debts.

It was hard, being hani, not to think like one. There were times they had been as glad to see Jik as he had surely been to see her come after him on Harukk. Even if on his side it was all policy and politics. He had saved their skins many a time.

Even if it was always to bet them again.

Chur slitted open her eyes, wrinkled her nose and blinked sleepily at her sister. Her heart sped a bit. She had dreamed of black things in the corridors, had dreamed of something loose on the ship. Noise in the corridors. It felt as if some time had passed.

And Geran had noted that little increase in pulse rate. Geran had this disconcerting habit of taking glances at the monitors while she talked, and whenever she reacted to anything. Geran's be-ringed ears flicked at what she saw now; and it was a further annoyance that the screen was hard to see from flat on one's back.

"We got Jik out," Geran said.

Chur blinked again. So much that came and went was illusion and it was the good things she most distrusted, the things she really wanted to believe. "He all right?"

"Knocks and bruises and the like. Told Tirun he'd run into a wall trying to leave. Likely story. You know you never get the same thing twice out of him. How are you feeling?"

"Like I ran into the same wall. What'd you do to that gods-be machine? You put me out?''

"Got pretty noisy around here. I thought you might need the sleep." •

"In a mahen hell you did!" Chur lifted her head and shoved her free elbow under her. "You want my heartbeat up?"

"Lie down. You want mine up?"

"What happened out there?" She sank back, her head swimming, and tried to focus. "Gods, I still got that stuff in me. Cut it out, Geran. F'gods sakes, I'm tired enough, hard enough to go against the wind-"

"Hey." Geran took her by the shoulder.

"I'm awake, I'm awake."

"You want to try to eat something?"

"Gods, not more of that stuff."

Foil rustled. A sickly aroma hit the air, which was otherwise sterile and medicated. Food, any food was a trial. Chur nerved herself and cooperated as Geran lifted her head on her arm and squirted something thin and salty into her mouth. She licked her mouth and took a second one, not because she wanted it. It was enough.

"Not so bad," she said. It was so. She had missed salt. It did something more pleasant in her mouth than the last thing Geran had brought her. She cautiously estimated its course to her stomach and felt it hit bottom and lie there gratefully inert. She looked up at Geran, who had a desperately hopeful look on her face. "You worried about something, Gery?"

The ears flicked. "We're doing all right."

Lie.

" Where's those gods-be black things?"

"Got 'em all penned up again." Change of subject. Geran looked instantly relieved. And the traitor machine beeped with an increased heartbeat. Geran looked back at it and the facade fell in one agonized glance.

"We under attack?" Chur asked.

"We're prepping for jump," Geran said.

Scared Gods, Gery, you'd send a monitor off the scale-

"Huhn," Chur said. "What're you thinking? That I won't make it?"

"Sure, you'll make it."

"How far're we going?"

Geran's ears went flat and lifted again. There was a drawing round her nose, like pain. "Home, one of these days."

"Multiple jump?"

"Don't think so."

"Maybe, huh?"

"Gods rot it, Chur-"

/ haven't got the strength. I can't last it out. Look at her. Gods, look at her. "Listen. You mind your business up for'ard f'godssakes, what d'you want, me make it fine and you marry this ship up with a rock? You pull it together. Me, I'm fine back here. Back here feeding me-" The monitor started going off again. She let it. "When'd you eat, huh? Take care of yourself. I got to worry whether you're doing your job up there?".

"No " Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. "I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can."

"Don't trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I'll try to eat. Hear me?''

"Stays the way they set it."

The monitor beeped again.

"Gods fry that rotted thing!" Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.

"Quiet," Geran said.

She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.

/ can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.

That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark-she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.

/ can think the way home. Bring us all home.

"Chur?"

"I'll be with you," she said. "No worry. Wish they could move this godsrotted rig onto the bridge." She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. "When?"

"Bring him, captain?" It was not Tirun Araun's way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun's ears and put a little stammer in Tirun's mouth. "That is to say-"

"Skkukuk's not the one I'm worried about," Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, auto-rigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader's honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great deal; and Tirun's worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. "How many rings you got, cousin?"

"Oh, I don't know." Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. " 'Bout many as proves I've got good sense, captain."

"We get out of this one, cousin, I'll buy you a dozen more."

"Huh." Tirun said. "Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I'll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most."

"All of our allies will," Pyanfar said. "Skkukuk's safe. He's on this ship, isn't he? Kif don't understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we'd really blow the ship? Couldn't figure why you'd do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He'll think it's a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk's no different, I think. Tell the son I'm going to give him a job to do: he'll handle kif-com. I'm putting him under Hilfy's orders."

"My gods, cap'n."

"Tully's sitting com too, this jump. No choice, is there? You've got to handle armaments-this time for real, I'm very much afraid; and back up Haral, and keep an eye on scan: I'm putting Jik in Chur's seat, but his board stays locked, whatever condition his hands are in; and sure as rain falls down I'm not giving him com. While we're at Kefk we've got one excuse; at Meetpoint we may have to contrive another. But I don't want to put him between his ethics and our survival. Gods know, maybe it'll take something off his shoulders, in some bizarre turn of the mahen mind. He wants to help us; he wants to carry out his own orders; he probably wants to save Goldtooth's neck in spite of what the bastard did to him, he wants a whole lot of things that are mutually exclusive. Or that may turn that way in a hurry. And gods know I don't want him in reach of your board and the guns."

"He won't like Skkukuk there."

"He'll know why, though. I figure he'll know inside and out why that is."

"Him knowing the kif and all, yes."

"Him knowing the kif and knowing what his own side wants from him, gods save him-gods save us from mahendo'sat and all their connivances. And watch Goldtooth, cousin, for the gods' own sakes, if we do spot him, keep us a line of fire there. I don't like the rules in this game either, but we didn't make them up. They're his, they're that bastard Sikkukkut's, and gods know who else has a finger in it. Watch them all."

"Aye," Tirun said in a hoarse, faint voice. "Them and Ehrran."

"Everyone else for that matter. I don't know a friend we've got."

"Tahar," Tirun said.

"Tahar," she recalled.

A pirate and an outlaw.

And: "I've got Skkukuk?" Hilfy said. Her jaw had dropped, her ears were flat.

Pyanfar nodded. They stood where she had caught up with Hilfy, in the galley. And Tully sat sipping a cup of gfi, his blue eyes following their moves and his human, immobile ears taking in the whole of it. His com-translator would whisper it to him.

"Luck of the draw. He's sitting down by Tirun on the jumpseat, but he'll be working off your board. Just keep your finger by the cutoff. If we have to. And get your wits about you when we come out of the drop. I have to ask you this: how good are you on kifish nuance?"

"I'm good."

"Objective assessment: good enough to pick up the subtleties in a kif's transmissions?"

Hilfy paused, and gathered her cup off the counter. She glanced Tully's way and back again. There was clearest sanity in her golden eyes. "I know what you're saying. No. But Skkukuk can do it. What I've got to do is watch what he-'s saying. And be fast on the cutoff."

"You tell me this: is a kif going to damage a ship he's on?"

Hilfy thought about that one too. Her ears dropped and lifted again. "No," she said. "Not when you put it that way. But there is a point he'd turn on us."

"He'd be alone. Crew wouldn't go along with him the way it might on a kifish ship. Kifish crew'd turn on their captain and mutiny. Hani won't. I think maybe Skkukuk's got a glimmering of that. It'll make him behave."

Again a dip of Hilfy's ears. One ring swung there. But the eyes were not that young any longer. "I tell you what that son's thinking. He's thinking the crew's conserving its own position and it's rallied around you out of fear of him. That's what he's thinking. He's thinking if we got into trouble we'd do a real stupid thing, standing by you just for fear of him. He thinks if we prove tough enough other hani will join us on Sikkukkut's side. It's all very simple to him. One thing I've found the kif astonishingly free of is species-prejudice."

"I think you're right."

That seemed to soothe some raw spot in Hilfy. The ears came up again, pricked in an expression that made her look young again. And they flagged when she looked at Tully.

So you're not a fool, Pyanfar thought. Thank the gods great and lesser. And did not miss that distracted look that passed between those two. No species-prejudice there either. Too little species prejudice. O Hilfy, you're a long way from home and gods-be if I care if you're two outright fools in that regard. I ought to be shocked. I can't even find it anymore. Gods save you both, I hope you've done what I don't even want to think about. I hope you've had a little bit of what I've had forty years of.

And what kind of thinking's that?

Khym was sleeping when she came into their quarters. She dropped the trousers on the floor, quietly, pocket-gun and all; and came and got into the bowl-shaped bed, down in the middle of it where he was, a huge warm lump all hard with muscle and tucked up like a child. She put her arms around his back, buried her head against his shoulder. He turned over and nuzzled her shoulder.

Sleep, she wished him, with a bit of regret. Among pleasures in life a warm bed and a nap in her husband's arms was not the least. She had not the heart to wake him, not when he was this far gone.

"Py," he murmured, in that breathy rumble of his voice at whisper. And bestirred himself, perhaps for his own sake, perhaps just in that way a man would who knew he was wanted: matter of kindness, for a tired wife who came to him for refuge. What they did had nothing to do with time of year. That would have shocked the old gray whiskers back home. Wives and husbands were a seasonal matter: men were always in and wives got around to it when they were home, by ones and twos and, in spring, a confounded houseful of women with hairtrigger tempers and demands on a single, harried man; then the house lord got round to driving out all the young men who had overstayed their childhood, before some scandal happened: young women went to roving, older sisters heaved out any near-adult brother the lord happened not to take exception to. It was housecleaning, annual as the spring rains.

A spacer missed the seasons. She just came home when she got the chance, and tried to make it coincide with spring, a little visit to her brother Kohan, who was glassy-eyed and distracted with affairs in Chanur at such a time, she paid a little courtesy to his wives and any sister or cousin who lived in the house or just happened to be home-

-then it was up in decent leisure to Mahn in the hills, where Khym and his groundling wives held court. His other wives had never much gotten in her way: they were outfought and knew it, and hated her cordially in that way of rivals who knew she would be gone within a week or two, back to her ship and her gadding about again: if one had to have a rival one could not shove out, best at least she be the sort who was seldom home.

Now where were those wives? Hating her still, because she had him to herself at last and he was not decently dead, in his defeat? They would pity him and hate her, and call it all indecent, as if he himself had not had a choice in the world about being snagged up onto a Chanur ship and carried away to a prolonged and unnatural preservation. It ruined his reputation. It touched on their honor. Likely they imagined just such lascivious and libertine unseasonal things as she had led him into, or worse, that he was the prize of all the crew.

She thought about that. "What do you think," she said into his ear, "do you think you'd object to one of the crew now and again? How do you feel about that?''

"I don't know," he said. "I mean- they're-" He was quiet a long time. "They're friends."

"I don't mean you should." She brushed his mane straight, dragged a clawtip along beside his ear. "I never meant that. I was asking if you ever wanted to."

''They're your friends.''

She felt his heart beating faster. Like panic. And cursed herself for bringing it up at all. "They never asked. Gods, what a mess. Don't even think about it. I'm sorry I said it. I just felt sorry for them."

"So do I. I'd do it. Tell them that if you want to. Like friends. I think they'd be sensible about it. I think I could be."

Ask sensible of a man. Trust him. Gods, that's what's changed, isn't it? He's steady as a rock. He wouldn't play games about it. They wouldn't, with him. They respect him. They'd treat him like a sister-in crew matters. Not one of them is petty and not one is the sort that has to prove a point in bed or after. You know that about women you work with for forty years; and they'd know he was a loan. I'd take that risk for them.

But what's good for him, that matters; that, they'd never question. Gods know I wouldn't.

"I think you could trust them," she said. "It's all of them if it's one, you understand that. I'm just telling you it's all right with me. Won't make me happy or unhappy. I just thought- well, if it ever does happen, you don't have to slip around about it."

"I never-!"

"I know that. I'm just telling you how I feel. If it's ever one, it's all. Remember it. Gods, back home I'd drop in on you for a hand of days and shove your other wives out; been the longest five days yet, hasn't it? I'm feeling guilty about hanging onto you so long. It's getting obsessive. I thought maybe, if things settle down again-" Thoughts crowded in that made it all remote and hopeless and stupid even to talk about it; but it was peace that she had come here for: she shoved Meetpoint aside and pretended. "Well, I thought I ought to give you a little breathing room. I shove you into my room, I don't give you much choice, do I? I want you to know you've got a berth on this ship. On your own. As much as you want to be. Or where you want to be. You want not to share my bed a while, that's fine. I'd miss you. But I don't want you ever to think that's what you're aboard for."

"I'm aboard because I'm a total fool." A frown was on his face, rumpling up his brow. "The rest came later. Py, don't talk like this."

"Gods, you don't understand."

"I don't own this ship. It's Kohan's. I can't come here, bed his kin-"

Male thinking, hindend-foremost and illusionary. Downworld thinking. It infuriated her in him, when so much else was extraordinary. "This ship is mine, gods rot it,. Kohan's got nothing to do with it. And if you want to bed down with Skkukuk, he's mine, too. I'll also shred your ears."

That struck him funny. And wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"I didn't consult with Kohan," she said. "I don't consult. You know gods-be well how the System works, how it always worked, your sweat and your blood and you never owned a gods-be thing. Now you really do. Something you can't lose. You can do as you godsblessed please, and you do it, husband. Forty years I've been out here. You've been here two and already your thinking's skewed. You at least listen to my craziness. All those years in Mahn, you used to ask me what the stars were like. Now you know what I come from, why I didn't get along with the rest of the women . . . why I never could make our daughter understand me. Tahy thinks I'm crazy. Some kind of pervert, probably. Kara knows I am. I just can't get excited about what they think down there. I don't have those kind of nerves anymore. Their little laws don't seem important to me. That's dangerous, I think. I don't know how to get back to where I was. None of us do. Haral's got a bastard daughter off in Faha; Tirun's got a son somewhere still alive, left him in Gorun. Gods know they usually take precautions. But they've never married; they never will; they just take their liberties down in Hermitage with whatever takes their fancy, and I don't ask. You know why they do that? I was lucky. My sister Rhean-one spring that we coincided down in Chanur I asked her how her husband was, you know, not a loaded question. But she got this look like she was dying by inches: 'Pyanfar,' she said, 'the man doesn't know where Meetpoint is. He doesn't know what it is. That's how my husband is.' And I never asked her. That's lord Fora she was talking about."

"He's not stupid, I knew him in Hermitage."

"No, he's not stupid. Rhean just can't talk to him. Her world isn't where he lives. His isn't where she lives. Nowadays she comes home as little as she can. If she could go to Hermitage and do her planettime there, I think she would far rather. A man you pick up in the hills, he'll pretend you're all his dreams, won't he?"

"You ever do it?"

She hesitated. Which was as good as yes. She shrugged. "Not after we were married."

"A Morhun found me like that; and left me a week later. Me, a kid out in the bush, hoping for an ally. Playing games with a boy like that-that's cruel."

"I was honest about it. I said I was down on leave. When I was. When I was younger than that I was honestly looking."

"No boy of that age'd know you meant gone in the morning. No boy would know that that ship's worth more to you than he ever could be. No boy would know he couldn't follow you where you'd go, that the territory you want isn't- isn't something he could take for you. And he'd want to lay the whole world in your lap, Py, any man would want to, and he'd try to talk to you and maybe learn by morning he couldn't give you anything you cared about. That's a hard thing, Py. It was hard for me."

"You were lord of Mahn!"

"I was lord of the place you used to go hunting, the house you lived in when you wanted a rest. I was a recreation. I never could give you anything. And I wanted to give you everything."

"O gods, Khym. I said I was lucky."

"But I could never give you anything. And I wanted to. When I went up to Gaohn to fight for you, gods, it was the first time I ever felt I was worth anything. When you wanted me to go with you-well, I followed you off like some boy out of Hermitage, didn't I? Go off and fight our way up in the world like two teenaged kids? Didn't know then the size of the farm you had picked out for me to take. Gods, what an ambition you've got! Give you a spacestation or two, shall I?"

"Gods, I wish you could." For a moment Meetpoint was back in bed with them. The room felt cold. His arms tightened. He gave her what he had, and she still did not know whether it was out of duty or out of his own need; but at least it was a free gift, not something she demanded by being there. That was what she hoped they had won, after all these years, and this far removed from all the rules.

"You never were a recreation," she said. "You were my sanctuary. The place I could go, the ear that would listen."

"Gods help me, my other wives always knew who I was waiting for. Who I was always waiting for. They took it out on Tahy and Kara. I tried to stop that. Py, I spent thirty-odd years buying my other wives off our kids' backs and it didn't work."

It was like a light going on, illuminating shadow-spots. Corners of the old house at Mahn she had never seen. The reason of so many things, so evident, and so elusive. "You never told me, rot it."

"The times you were home-were too good. And you couldn't stay. I knew that. I did what I could."

Gods, I poisoned the whole house. All the other marriages. Ruined my kids-hurt Chanur in the long run, when my daughter turned on Khym and took our staunchest ally out. My doing. All of it mine.

He sighed, a motion of his huge frame against her. "I didn't mean to say that. Gods blast, Py, I just fouled it up, is all."

That was his life. That was why he walked on eggshells round those women, lost the kids. O gods. Lost Mahn alone, finally. And came back to Chanur like a beggar when I finally came home. Alienated his sisters. Everything. His sisters-for an outsider. They couldn't forgive that. And the wives' clans too. All for one wife. That's crazy.

But, gods, what I've done-for a husband. I think I love this great fool. Isn't that something? Love him like he was clan and kin. Like he was some part of me. It's gotten all too close. He needs someone else for balance. Some sense of perspective. So do I. And I'm not interested. Handsomest man on Anuurn could walk in stark naked, I'd rather Khym. Always would. And he'd rather me. I never saw that part of it. I never saw that that was always what was wrong with us, and look what it did. We did so much damage, never meaning to; I did so much to him. Gods, I wish I could turn him over to the others.

They wouldn't know how to treat him but they'd try. Even Tirun.

He wants so much to be one of them. That's what he really wants. And they'd forget that. They'd forget because I can't tell them any way I could make them understand what goes on in him.

Haral would. Haral might make a dent in Tirun, the old reprobate: gods, Khym, if you knew what good behavior Tirun's been on-not laid a hand on you, has she? Because you're mine. She'd go off and get drunk with you and take you home nice as milk, she would, because she's onship and you're offlimits and gods know she likes you, thinks you're something special. I don't know. She might be the real lady with you, you're so much the gentleman. Funny what a crooked line we walk.

No, if you knew either side of Tirun, really knew her, you'd like her.

Geran and Chur-Gods. I wish you'd known them before this mess. So pretty. But deep water, both of them. And dark. You don't ever pick a fight with either. But they've got a godsrotted broad sense of humor . . . never told you those stories. Not planetside. They don't go down so much. Not comfortable around groundlings. That's the awful thing: sometimes you want the land under your feet and the sun on your back, and then you've got to deal with the people that live there.

And Hilfy-you see what's going on, her and Tully? My poor, conservative, ex-groundling man-not a flicker. We're too well-bred. We don't see. We don't know what to do about it, so we don't see; and we wish them by the gods well, because you and I, Khym, we're on the downside of our years and we've got enough to do just to do for ourselves, in the mess we're in.

You couldn't sleep with Hilfy; never her. She's the odd one out. Species she can get across. But the generations she can't bridge. Can't figure me out; gods, she can't figure herself out. You'd confuse everything. And you're uncle to her, you always will be, even if you haven't a corpuscle in common. You're her substitute for Kohan. She loves her father so much. That's why she fusses over you like a little grandmother.

Bring her out here, never give her a stopover at home, and her in the growing years-She takes what she can. It was all so pat for us. And we wasted so much time. Good for her, I think. Good for Hilfy.

Thank the gods you're here.

2342 and The Pride was stretching muscles, electronic impulses sending tests down to systems aft and bringing internal support up full, while lights on the bridge flickered and instruments blipped, routine departure-prep.

Given a kifish ship still stationary over station axis, bow-down so that its guns were constantly in line with every ship on the rotating station, but most notably the ones whose systems were now live, the ones full of non-kif who thought non-kifish and unpredictable thoughts.

But they kept com flowing naturally between The Pride and station central, which was partly Harukk personnel. And com operations went on likewise between The Pride and Aja Jin and Tahar's Moon Rising, nothing compromising in any fashion, just the necessary coordination of three ships which planned to put out close together. There was still the coder they might have used. There were languages the kif might not understand.

There was also that ship over their heads, and mindful of that and of the firepower here gathered, they refrained from all such options.

"Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "take message on your three: first thing at Meetpoint, auto that escape course out to both our partners."

"Aye," Hilfy said. "Understood."

Hilfy and Haral and Tully were all settled in, Khym was settling. Haral was still running Geran's station from the co-pilot's board, but that was all perfunctory: there was not

one gods-be thing scan could tell them at this point. If the kif decided to fire, they fired. That was all. And lost part of their station doing it.

"Geran come," Tully said, doing- gods witness, the service Hilfy had drilled him on at that board: he had a pick to use where his poor clawless fingers had not a chance, he stuck it into the right holes in the right sequence, and he was at least adequate to keep an ear to internal operations. Even trusting him with that was taking a chance: Tirun was downside with Skkukuk and Jik was loose, but Pyanfar got a firm grip on her nerves and figured that (gods save them from such insanity) Tirun and Skkukuk between them could handle Jik if he had something inventive in mind.

While Tully, in a good moment and with the gods' own luck on his side, might handle an emergency call down there: The Pride's autorecognition was set on the word Priority, which no one let past their teeth during ops if it was not precisely that: Priority got flashed to Hilfy's board and Haral's simultaneously, and Tully would have to make an unlikely sequence of mistakes to take the lower corridors off wide open monitor.

Geran arrived, she saw that in the conveniently reflective monitor, a shadow arriving from the main topside corridor, larger and larger until the bridge lights picked out Geran's red-brown coloring and the glint of the gold in her ear-rims. "H'lo," Geran said. After putting Chur to bed, and walking out of that room. With all the chance of finality. H'lo, to Hilfy, when Geran normally said nothing at all when she walked on-shift. I'm all right, that meant. Don't doubt I'm on.

"We're routine right now," Hilfy said quietly. Which was the right tack to take with Geran. No fuss. No emotional load. Pyanfar kept an ear to it all and keyed an acknowledgment to dockside's advisement they were about to withdraw power.

"Tirun," Tully said.

"I've got it," Khym said, second-com, picking that up; and: "Right. I'll tell him. Na Jik, you'll come topside now; Tirun's on her way."

"Geran," Pyanfar said on bridge-com, "Jik's in your charge. Best I can do." There was the matter of Jik's hands, which would heal of injuries in the several day subjective transit before systemfall; but recuperation and jump was not a matter she wanted to open up with Geran at the moment. "I don't much want him on your elbow, but I haven't got a place else to put him."

"I'll watch him."

Enough said, then. If Geran buckled there was still Tirun on Jik's other side. And that left Tully down at that end of the boards with Skkukuk. She might have put Khym in that seat. But Khym was getting used to the com board; he was actually worth something with it in a pinch. Putting Khym at Tirun's confusing second-switcher post handed him a system that had a completely different set of access commands, Tully could learn a sequence from scratch; Khym, jump-muzzy and in emergency, might touch a control he thought he knew. Disastrously.

"Yes, Harukk-com," Hilfy said. "That data is current. Captain, they're inquiring again on departure time and routing."

"It stands as instructed."

Uncoupling began, a series of crashes as The Pride disengaged itself from dock under Haral's signal to the other side of that station wall, and Haral's touch at the controls of her board. There was the low drone of Khym's voice, making routine advisements to the dockers and station com, and Hilfy's voice talking quietly to Aja Jin and Moon Rising. "Captain," Tully said, "Tirun come."

"Got that," Pyanfar murmured.

If Tirun was on her way, that was the last and they were going to make schedule easily. So much the better with nervous kif all about. Pyanfar flicked her ears and settled her nerves, while The Pride's operating systems made noise enough to mask the lift and rob them of other cues to movement in the ship. There were the telltales on the board-if she chose to key the matrix over to access-monitor. Her nose twitched at the mere thought of Skkukuk in proximity. She dared not take the allergy pills. She needed her reflexes. She rubbed her itching nose fiercely with the back of her hand, curled her lip, and looked up at the convenient reflection in a dead monitor as the gleam of the lift's internal light reflected a motley assortment of silhouettes in the distance down the corridor at her back.

Her eyes flicked to the chrono.

2304.

"Moon Rising reports all ready," Hilfy said.

"Got that," Haral said.

Tahar was showing off. Flouting the schedule on the short side. Which took work.

Tahar clan was Tahar clan, even when it owed Chanur its mortgaged hide.

The lift door had closed back there. The shadows in the reflective glass had come closer. Pyanfar slowly rotated her chair to face the last-comers. Courtesy. Tirun walked beside Jik, Jik beside Skkukuk's dark-robed shape. They had washed Jik's clothes for him, had not even dared have clean ones couriered over from Aja Jin, for fear of rousing kifish suspicions. And someone of the crew must have lent him the bracelet on his arm. The kif had robbed him of the gaudy lot of chain he usually wore.

"This person," Skkukuk said the moment he got through the door, "this person refuses your order, hakt'."

"He means the gun," Tirun said.

"We don't carry firearms up here," Pyanfar said patiently. With spectacular patience, she thought. "Nor do we change captains under fire." With an internal shudder and a thought toward Jik: / hope. "Tirun will give you instructions. If you're that good, prove it.''

So much for kifish psych.

But the son moved. Jik was still looking at her.

"How my ship?" he asked, very quiet, very civilized. She would not have been that restrained, under similar circumstances.

"Hilfy, give his station that comflow on receiving only."

"Aye," Hilfy said. "It's in."

"That's scan two," Pyanfar said, meaning seat assignment; and he gave a short, more than decent nod of his dark head and went to belt in, wincing a bit as he sat down. He spoke quietly to Geran; and Pyanfar found her claws clenched in the upholstery: she released her grip, carefully; and turned her seat around again.

2313.

"We're on count," Haral said. "Aja Jin reports ready. We're on."

"Stand by."

''We going to show the hakkikt punctuality?''

She considered the potential for provocation. Considered the kif. And considered another possibility as she put their engines live. There was another set of switches by her hand, safety-locked by a whole string of precautions which they had a program now to bypass. Input three little codes and that set of key-slots would light. And The Pride would have a last chance to take out a space station full of kif, a handful of innocent methane-breathers; a doublecrossing allied ship that held one of two plans for a mahen hegemony over the Compact; a kif who was very close to having a kifish hegemony, and who with cold intent, threatened the whole hani species. Half the whole problem in the Compact was sitting right here at this station, with the solution within reach of her hand; and for one ship to take out half the problems in the immediate universe was not a bad trade, as trades went.

It also assured by default the immediate success of their rivals, whose intentions were also mahen and kifish hegemonies, maybe a human one, a methane-breather action, and the immediate collapse of the stsho and then the han into the control of one or the other hegemonies. Which meant years of bloody fighting. Not taking into account humanity, which was already at odds within its own compact, and whose ships they knew were armed.

Take out one set of contenders here or make Jik's throw for him and play power against power.

She was not even panicked in contemplating that sequence of bypasses. She felt only a numb detachment: she could give it, and only Haral would know; Haral would look her way with a slight flattening of the ears and never pass the warning to the crew. Just a look that said: / know. Here we go.

Perhaps Haral was thinking the same thing about now, that it was one last chance, while their nose was still into the station's gut and they were an indisputable part of station mass. Haral went on flicking switches, the shut-down of certain systems no longer necessary, along with the check of systems-synchronization and docking jets.

2314.

"We break on the mark," Pyanfar said in the same tone in which they threw those checkout sequences back and forth. "Advise them down the line. Advise station."

"Aye," Haral said. "Hilfy."

"I got it," Hilfy said.

The minute ticked down.

2314.46.

"On mark," Pyanfar said. "Grapple."

Clang. The station withdrew its grip.

Thump. They withdrew their own as the chrono hit 2315; and Pyanfar hit the docking jets. Precisely. And hard. G shifted, momentum carrying them in a skew the jets corrected, and more so, as The Pride left the boom and the hazard of collision with the kifish ship down-wheel from them.

Another G shift, no provision for groundling stomachs, as she sent The Pride axis-rolling on a continual shove of the docking jets.

"Show those bastards," Haral muttered beside her. AsThe Pride finished her roll with never a wasted motion, precisely angled the jets and underwent outbound impulse.

"Aja Jin's cleared on mark," Geran said. "Precisely." Pyanfar flicked her ears, rings jingling, and her heart picked up.

Show these bastards indeed. That was a fancy new engine rig The Pride carried, the ratio of those broad jump vanes to her unladed mass was way up since Kshshti; and any kif who saw The Pride and Aja Jin move out in close tandem, would remark the peculiar similarity between their outlines, give or take the cargo holds which were firmly part of The Pride and which were stripped off the hunter-ship's lean gut and spine.

"Tahar's away."

Routine out to startup. The mains cut in on mark; Aja Jin was on the same instant, and Tahar, playing the same insolent game.

It was quiet on the bridge. No chatter, none of the talking back and forth between stations that was normal, all of them , kin and all of them knowing their jobs well enough to get them done through all the back-and-forth. They were not all kin on this trip. And none of them were in the mood. Only she looked over at Haral, the way she had looked a thousand times in The Pride's voyages; it was reflex.

Haral caught it and looked back, a little dip of one ear and a lift of her jaw, a cheerfulness unlike Haral's dour business-only blank.

Same face she might have turned her way if she had decided to blow the ship. Pyanfar made a wry pursing of her mouth and gave the old scoundrel the high sign they had once, in their wilder days, passed each other in bars.

They had a word for it. Old in-joke. Meet you at the door.

She drew a wider breath and flexed her hands, reached across and put the arm-brace up, when they would need it.

She had never been so outright scared in her life.

"Coming up," Haral said finally. But she knew that. The numbers kept ticking off to jump. They took the outbound run with less haste than they could use, on the mark the kif gave them. There was a little leisure, a little chance for crew to stand up and stretch and flex minds as well as bodies; but no one left the bridge. Not even Geran.

She's asleep, Geran had said when Pyanfar offered her the chance to leave scan and take a fast walk back to Chur's cabin while they were inertial and under ordinary rotation. So that was that. Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and offered no comforts; Geran was not one to want two words on a topic where one had said it, and she was focussed down tight; took her little stretch by standing up beside her chair, and kept her eye still to her proper business; answered Jik's rare comments with a word or two.

"Tully," Pyanfar said, "get ready."

"I do," he said. He had his drugs with him, the drugs that a human or a stsho needed in jump. He prepared to go half to sleep in his chair, sedated so heavily he could hardly stay upright.

Interesting to contemplate-a horde of human ships, all of them that automated. Like facing that many machines.

Set to do what? React to buoys and accept course without a pilot's intervention?

Defend themselves? Attack? A horde of relentless machines whose crews had committed themselves to metal decisions and a computer's morality, because their kind had no choice?

Stsho did that, because stsho minds also had trouble in jumpspace; but stsho were nonviolent.

Gods, so gods-be little he says, so little he's got the words for.

"Tully. Are human ships set to fire when they leave jump?"

He did not answer at once.

"Tully. You understand the question?"

"Human fire?"

"Gods save us. Do their machines- fire after jump? Can they?"

"Can," Tully said in a small voice. "Ship be ##."

Translation-sputter.

"Captain," Hilfy said, "he's got to go out now. Got to." His mind was at risk. "Go to sleep," Pyanfar said, never looking around; his back would be mostly to her anyway, the bulk of the seat in the way.

"Not trust human," Tully said suddenly.

"Go out," Hilfy said sharply. "You want me to put that into you? Do it.''

While the chronometer got closer and closer to jump. "Tully," Pyanfar said. "Good night."

"I go," he said.

"He's got it," Tirun said. "He's all right."

"We're on count," Haral said.

"You give me com we come through," Jik said.

"Aja Jin has its orders." They had talked through that matter already. Jik made a last try. And: "You got anything last minute you want to own up to?" she asked. "Jik?"

"I damn fool," he said.

"Count to ten," Haral said, and the numbers on the corner of the number-one monitor started ticking away.

"Take her through," Pyanfar said. They did that, traded off; and she suddenly decided on the stint at exit.

"Got it," Haral said. That section of the board that pertained to jump was live. "Referent on, we got our lock."

Star-fixed and dead-on. It was a single-jump to Meetpoint from dusty Kefk, with its armed guardstations and its grim gray station-

-to the white light and opal subtleties of a stsho-run station.

If that was what was still there.

"Going," Haral said.

Down. . . .

They stopped being at Kefk.

. . . .Gods save us, Pyanfar thought, which thought went on for a long long timestretch.

She dreamed of ships in conflict in their hundreds, burning like suns.

Of strange gangling beings that had walked the dock once at Gaohn, sinister in their numbers and their resemblance to a creature she had befriended (but too many of them, and too sudden, and with their Tully-like eyes all blue and strange and malevolent). They carried weapons, these strangers; they talked among themselves in their chattering, abrupt speech, and laughed their harsh alien laughter out loud, which echoed up and down the docks.

What do they want? she asked Tully then, in that dream.

Look out for them, he said to her. And one of them drew a Hun and aimed it at them both.

What does it say? Pyanfar asked when it spoke.

But the gun went off and Tully went sprawling without a sound; in slow motion the tall figure turned the weapon toward her-