The Pride of Chanur

XIV

The Pride opened accesses while Mahijiru eased into dock beside her, and Jik’s Aja Jin stood watch toward that quarter of the system out of which some stray kif might still come… not expected, but they took precautions.

The Outsider ship came in more slowly still, permitted docking, but having to accomplish it without understanding the language, the procedures, and without compatible equipment: “Beside us,” Pyanfar had told them simply. “You got vid? You see four grapples: airlock placed in center, understand? You go slow, very careful. You have trouble, you stop, wait, back off: small ship can come from station, help you dock. All understood?”

“Understand,” the answer had come back through the translator. And the Outsider arrived, cautiously… wondering, doubtless, at the holed carcasses of kif ships nearby; at the signs of fire which pitted the adjacent section of the station torus.

Someone on the dock got a direct line hooked up. “Captain,” Geran cried, her eyes shining amber. “Captain, it’s Chur and Hilfy. They’re there, both of them!”

“Huh,” Pyanfar said judiciously, because there was a docking Outsider chattering in her other ear at the moment; but relief jellied her gut, so that she heard very little of the Outsider’s babble at all. She looked at her crew, and at Tully, whose eyes had lighted at the news.

“They’re safe,” he asked, “Chur and Hilfy?”

“We’re going out there,” Pyanfar said, thrusting back from the controls. “All of us, by the gods.” She stood up, remembered the tape they had duped on the way in and pocketed it. “Come on.”

They came, off the bridge and long-striding down the corridor, Tully too, rode down the lift and marched out the lock. If there was eve— a time for running for joy, it was that last walk down the rampway; but Pyanfar held herself to a sedate walk down the ramp, into the wide, fire-scarred dock where ha stood with weapons.

Chur and Hilfy and some of the other Chanur — o gods, Hilfy, with a bloodstained bandage round her side and leaning on Chur who had one arm in a sling. They smiled, in shape to do that, at least. Chur hugged Geran one-armed, and Pyanfar took Hilfy by both shoulders to look at her. Hilfy was white about the nose, with pain in the set of her mouth, but her ears were up and her eyes were bright.

“We got them,” Hilfy said hoarsely. “Got behind them at the dockside while others came through the core and pushed them out to us. And then I think they got some kind of order because they went frantic to get to their ships. That was the big trouble. One got away. The rest — we got.”

“Khym.”

Hilfy turned with some evident stiffness, indicated a figure, crouched against the far side of the dock, small with distance “Na Khym got the one that got me, aunt, thank the gods.”

“Hit them hand to hand, he did,” Chur said. “Said he never could shoot worth anything. He came across that dock and hit that kif, and gods, five of them never more than singed his fur I don’t think they ever saw a hani of his size — gods, it was something. They bailed out of cover and we got the leftovers.”

Pyanfar looked, at once proud and sad, at that quiet, withdrawn figure. Proud of what he had done — Khym, who had never been much for fighting — and sad at his state and his future.

Gods, if they could only have killed him — given him what her son had not had the grace to give…

Or perhaps Kara had sensed he could not kill him; it* Khym Mahn backed to the wall was a different Khym indeed.

“I’ll see him,” she said. “We’re going to get you two to station hospital.”.

“Begging pardon,” Hilfy said, “station hospital’s got its hands full. Rhean’s got someone hit bad; and Ginas Llun-she’s none too good either; and a lot of others.”

“Hilan Faha,” Chur said, “and her crew — they’re dead, captain. All of them. They led the way in for the core break-through. They insisted to. I think it was shame — for the company they’d kept.”

“Gods look on them, then,” Pyanfar said after a moment.

“The Tahar—” Hilfy said bitterly, “got Moon Rising out and ran for jump. Ran for it. That’s what they’re saying on station. But the Faha wouldn’t go with them.”

“That’ll be the end,” Pyanfar said. “When that tale gets back to Enafy province, Kahi Tahar and his lot won’t show their faces in Chanur land or elsewhere.”

“Hani,” a mahen voice bellowed, and here came Goldtooth and crew, a dozen dark-furred, rifle-carrying mahendo’sat flooding toward them, towering over them. Goldtooth grabbed Pyanfar’s hand and crushed it till claws reminded him to caution. He grinned and slapped her on the shoulder. “Got number one help, what I tell you?”

Hani were staring at this mahe-hani familiarity. Her crew was. Pyanfar laid her ears back in embarrassment, recalled then what they owed Goldtooth and his unruly lot and pricked the ears up at once. More, she linked arms with the tall mahe, and gave the hawkers on dockside something proper to stare at. “Number one help,” she said.

“Got deal,” said Goldtooth. “Got friend Jik repair, same you get at Kirdu. Chanur fix, a?”

“Rot you—”

“Got deal”

“Got,” she admitted, and suffered another slap on the shoulder. She looked at Tully, thinking of Chanur balance sheets, debits and credits. Looked at him looking at her with those odd pale eyes full of worship. Behind him an accessway had opened. His own kind had come, gods, a bewildering assortment, pale ones and dark ones and some shades in between. “Tully,” she said, signed with her eyes that he should look, and he did.

He froze for the instant, then ran for them, hani-dressed and hani-looking, ran to his assorted comrades, who were clipped and shaved and clothed top and bottom in skintight garments shod besides. Hands reached out to him; arms opened. He embraced them all and sundry and there was a babble of alien language which echoed off the overhead.

So he goes, Pyanfar thought with a strange sadness — and with a certain anxiety about losing a valuable contact to others — to Llun, by the gods, who would be eager to get their own-claws in; and Kananm and Sanuum and some of the other competitors in port. Pyanfar shed Goldtooth’s arm and crossed the dock toward the knot of humans, her own companions following her. Tully brought his people at least halfway when he saw her, came rushing up and grabbed her hand with fevered joy.

“Friend,” he said, his best word, and dragged her reluctant hand toward that of a white-maned human, whose naked face was wrinkled as a kif’s and tawny-colored like a hani’s.

The captain, she thought; an old one. She suffered the handclasp with claws retracted, bowed and got a courteous bow in return. Tully spoke in his own language, rapidly, carrying some point — indicated one after another of them and said” their names his way — Haral and Tirun, Geran and Chur and Hilfy; and the mahendo’sat at least by species.

“Want talk,” Tully managed then. “Want understand you.”

Pyanfar’s ears flicked and lifted, the chance of profit within her reach after all. She puckered her mouth into its most pleasant expression. Gods, some of them were odd. They ranged enormously in size and weight and there were two radically different shapes. Females, she realized curiously; if j Tully was male, then these odd types were the women.

“We talk,” Goldtooth interposed. “Mahe make deal too.”

“Friend,” Pyanfar told the humans in her best attempt at I human language. Tully still had to translate it, but it had its effect. “I come to your ship,” she said, choosing Tully’s small j hani vocabulary. “Your ship. Talk.”

“I come too,” Goldtooth said doggedly, not to be shaken. Tully translated.

“Yes,” Tully rendered the answer, grinning. “Friend. All friend.”

“Deals like a mahe,” Pyanfar muttered. But that arrangement was well enough with her. She suddenly conceived plans — for the further loan of two mahe hunter ships on a profitable voyage.

“Captain,” Haral said, touching her arm and calling her attention to a cluster of figures coming out of the dockside corridor.

Llun were on their way — Kifas Llun herself in the lead of I that group, come to answer this uncommon call at Gaohn Station, a score of black-trousered officialdom trailing after her.

They would demand the translator tape, that was sure. Pyanfar thrust her hands into her waistband. “Friends,” she assured Tully, who gave the approaching group anxious looks, and he in turn reassured his comrades.

“Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, “Chur, no need for you to stand through this. Go to the ship. Geran, you go and take care of them, will you?” — “Right,” Geran agreed. “Come on, you two.”

No protests from them. Chur and Hilfy started away in Geran’s keeping and Tully delayed them to take their hands one by one as if he expected something might keep him from further good-byes.

Gods, she had no desire to deal with the Llun or anyone at the moment. Her knees ached, her whole body ached, from want of sleep and from strain. She felt a span shorter than she had come across that blink from Kirdu. They all must. Tully too. She wanted—

She wanted to have time… to talk to her own; to find out who else of Chanur was hurt; to call Kohan…

And somehow — to talk to Khym. To do something, anything for his misery, in spite of what others thought and said.

“Geran,” she called out at the retreating group. “Khym too. Get him aboard and tend to him. Tell him I said so.”

A small flick of the ears. “Aye,” Geran said, and went off in Khym’s direction while Chur and Hilfy made their own way back. Pyanfar turned to the arriving Llun with a dazzlingly cheerful smile, fished the tape from her pocket and turned it over to Kifas at once with never a fade of good humor.

“We register these good Outsiders, our guests, at Gaohn nation,” Pyanfar said, “under Chanur sponsorship.”

“Allies, her Chanur?” There was a frown of suspicion on Kifas Llun’s face. “Nothing the Tahar said weighs here now with us… but did you send for them?”

“Gods no. The knnn did that. Knnn who got a bellyful of kif intervention in their space, I’d guess; who found these Outsiders near their space and decided in their own curious fashion to see to it that they met reputable Compact citizens of a similar biology — snatched them,up in synch, they did, and they took the hakkikt out the same way, may they have joy of him. They’re traders, you know, ker Llun, after their own lights. I’ll wager our human friends here don’t know yet what’s happened to them or how far they are from home or how they got here. They’ll have drugged down and ridden out the jumps it took to get them here; and gods know how many that was or from where.”

“Introduce us,” the Llun said.

“I’ll remind you,” Pyanfar said, “that we and they have gone through too many time changes. We’re not up to prolonged formalities. They’re Chanur guests; I’m sponsoring them and I feel it incumbent on myself to see that they get their rest… but of course they’ll sign the appropriate papers and register.”

“Introductions,” the Llun said dryly, too old and too wise to be put off by that.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said, “you got too rotted many friends.”

It was what she expected, grueling, a strain on everyone’s good humor, and entirely over-long, that visit to station offices. There was some restraint exercised, in respect to family losses, in respect to frayed and lately high tempers; in respect to the fact that for one time out of a hundred, hani had worked together without regard to house and province, and the cooperative spirit had not entirely faded.

There was gratitude to Goldtooth and the mahe ships who got station privileges and repair. Gaohn Station was all too anxious to share the bill with Chanur, aching to get Aja Jin into the hands of Harn Shipyards, to be studied and analyzed during the course of the work. The mahendo’sat were evidently satisfied with the situation — smug bastards, Pyanfar thought, bristling somewhat as all hani did, at the unhappy truth that the mahendo’sat were always ahead of hani, that mahendo’sat technology which had gotten them into space in the first place was responsible for keeping them there. The mahendo’sat were apparently ready for their allies to see the hunter-ships, at least. Rot the Personage and his small fluff with him.

Station was eager too for a look at the human ship; and doubtless the humans entertained some suspicions about that and everything else, but it was a fair question what they had in their power to do about it.

They were, at least for the moment, effectively lost.

“We find home,” Tully said, “not far from Meetpoint. Know this. Your record, your ship instruments — help us ”

“Not difficult at all,” Pyanfar said. “All we have to do is send your records through the translator and get our charts together, right? We come up with the answer in no time.”

“Mahendo’sat,” Goldtooth said, “got number one good reckoning location human space. Number one good charts.”

All too many friends indeed, Pyanfar reflected.

Tully went to his own, not without hugging her and Haral and Tirun, and shaking hands energetically with Goldtooth and with Kifas Llun and others — an important fellow among his people now, this Tully, surely; a person who knew things; a person with valuable and powerful friends. Good for him, she thought, recalling the wretched, naked creature under the pile of blankets in the washroom.

She made the call to Kohan, a quick call — her voice was getting hoarse and her knees were shaking; but it was good to hear that things on the world had settled down, that Kohan had gotten himself a good meal and that the house was back in some order.

While the world had been under kif guns, they had tidied up the house, cooked dinner, and started replanting the garden. Pyanfar lowered her ears at the thought, how little real the larger universe was to downworld hani, who had never thoroughly imagined what had almost happened to them; who heard about the terrible damage to the station as they might hear about some earthquake in a remote area of the globe, shaking their heads in sympathy and regretting it, but not personally touched — worried for their own kin, of course worried; and there would be hugging and sympathy at homecoming. But they set the world in order by replanting the garden and seeing Kohan fed.

Gods look on them all.

She went on the last of her strength to the hospital, to visit the Chanur wounded, because she was first in Chanur and it meant something to them; because she owed courtesy to Rhean, who sat with her mending crewwoman; because the news from home would do them good, these downworld Chanur not of the ship crews, who understood the necessity of planting gardens.

She checked with station command, that the Rau had found a way back to their ship, which another mail freighter had managed to secure for them.

And then she and Haral and Tirun walked the long way back to The Pride, all of them hoarse and exhausted and finding the limit of their energy simply in putting one foot in front of the other. She limped, realized she had somehow broken a claw; thought with longing of a bath, and bed, and breakfast when she should wake.

But on The Pride, one thing more she did: she stopped by sick bay and looked in on Geran’s charges, found Hilfy and Chur comfortably asleep on cots jammed side by side into the small compartment, and Geran drowsing in the chair by the door.

Geran woke as her shadow crossed her face, murmured bleary-eyed apology. Pyanfar made a shrug. Tirun and Haral looked in at the door, leaned there in the frame, two worn ghosts.

“Khym,” Pyanfar said, missing him.

“Cot in the washroom,” Geran said. “By your leave, captain. He wouldn’t accept Hilfy’s quarters, but she tried to insist.”

“Huh.” She edged through to see to Chur and Hilfy, saw their faces relaxed and their sleep easy, walked out. “Orders?” Haral asked in apparent dread: “Sleep,” she said, and the sisters went their way gladly enough.

For herself, she walked on down the corridor to the washroom and opened the door.

Khym was safely tucked in bed, nested in blankets on a comfortable cot. One eye was bandaged. The other opened and looked at her, and he moved to sit up — clean, his poor ears plasmed together such as they could be, the terrible scratches on his arms and shoulders treated. Patches of his coat were gone where the scabs had been; his beard and mane were haggled up, doubtless where snarls had had to be snipped out.

“Better?” she asked.

“Ker Geran shot enough antibiotics into me, I should live forever.”

Rueful humor. She sank down on the end of the cot, refusing, as Khym refused, to abandon a cheerful face on things. She patted his knee. “I hear you put a wind up the kif s backs.”

He shrugged, flicked his ears in deprecation.

“You got your look at station,” she said. “What do you think of it?”

Ears pricked up. “Worth the seeing.”

“Show you the ship when you and I get some sleep.”

“I can’t stay up here, you know. You’re going to have to find me a shuttle down tomorrow.”

“Why can’t you stay up here?”

He gave a surprised chuckle. “The Llun and others will say, that’s who. Not many lords as tolerant as na Kohan.”

“So station’s their territory. So, well. I thought you might consider taking a turn in mine. On The Pride.”

“Gods, they’d—”

“—do what? Talk? Gods, Khym, if I can carry an Outsider male from one end of the Compact to the other and come out ahead of it, I can rotted well survive the gossip. Chanur can do anything it pleases right now. Got ourselves a prize in this Outsider; got ourselves a contact that’s going to take years to explore. I can deal with Tully; and with the mahendo’sat — a whole new kind of deal, Khym. Who’s to know — if you stay on the ship; who’s to question — when we’re not in home territory? What do you think the mahendo’sat care for hani customs? Not a thing.”

“Na Kohan—”

“What’s it to Kohan? You’re my business, always were; he let you stay on Chanur land, didn’t he? If he did that, he’d care less about you light years absent on a Chanur ship. And right now, what I want — Kohan’s going to have a lot of patience with.”

He was listening, ears up and all but trembling. “Think so, do you?”

“What’s downworld got to. offer you? Sanctuary? Huh. Think you’d go crazy on a ship? Unstable? Make trouble with the crew?”

“No,” he said after a moment. And then: “Oh, gods rot it, Pyanfar, you can’t do something like that.”

“Afraid, Khym?”

Ears went down. “No. But I have consideration for you. I know what you’re trying to do. But you can’t fight what is. Time, Pyanfar. We get old. The young have their day. You can’t fight time.”

“We’re born fighting it.”

He sat silent a moment. The ears came up slowly. “One voyage, if the crew doesn’t object. Maybe one.”

“Be a while in port, getting our tail put back together again. Getting navigational details worked out. Then we go out again. A long voyage, this time.”

He looked up under his brow.

“It’s different out there,” she said. “Not hani ways. No one species’ way. Right and wrong aren’t the same. Attitudes aren’t. I’ll tell you something.” She crooked a claw and poked it at him. “Hani downworld want their houses and their ways unquestioned, that’s all. They don’t ask much what we do while the goods come in and don’t cost outlandish much; they don’t care what we do either, so long as we don’t visibly embarrass the house. Kara’s going to be upset. But he’ll live with it… when The Pride’s light years out of sight and mind. Might start a fashion. Might.”

“Dreamer,” Khym said.

“Huh.” She got up, flicked her ears and waited to see him settled again. She walked out then, weaving a bit in her steps and figuring she had about strength enough to get to her own cabin and her own bath and her own bed, in that order.

Tully came and went, among his human comrades, and on The Pride. He did not, to Pyanfar’s surprise, cut his mane and shave his beard and walk about in human clothes: he did go shod, but no more change than that.

For the sake of appearances, she thought; in respect of her one-time advice and the opinion of the Llun (and of Chanur too, that brief time they paid a downworld visit, to afford Kohan time with his favored daughter and a view of their sponsored guests). Tully flourished — grinned and laughed and moved with a spring in his step quite strange in him. He brought a solemn trio of humans off their ship to take notes aboard The Pride — Goldtooth attended with his own records — to ask questions and to exchange data until they had some navigational referents in common.

They frowned suspiciously, these humans, but they stopped frowning when they learned precisely where home was — some distance beyond knnn space and kif.

“Got between,” Tully said enthusiastically, jabbing the chart which showed hani and mahendo’sat territory, cupping one hand on the hani-mahendo’sat side and one hand on the human side, with the kif neatly between. The hands moved together slowly, clenched. “So.”

So, so, so, Pyanfar thought, and her lips drew back and her nose wrinkled cheerfully.

In time, he went, back to his own… that last sealing of the lock which marked the separation of the human ship from Gaohn. Ulysses, its name was, which Tully had said meant Far-Voyages. Nearly fifty humans lived on it, and whether they were related or not, she could not determine.

They prepared to go. She started back across the docks to The Pride, to follow — with a smallish cargo, nothing of great mass, but items of interest to humans. There might be a chance to see Tully at voyage’s end, but it would hardly be the same. He belonged with his own, that was what, and she did not begrudge him that.

She planned to have use of that acquaintance, Tully — and the captain of this Far-Voyages. So, of course, did Goldtooth, with his sleek refitted ship, going with them, while Jik carried messages back to the Personage, no doubt, and the mahendo’sat tried to figure out how to cheat an honest hani out of exclusive arrangements.

But the odds in that encounter were even.