The Pride of Chanur

VII

The Pride’s nose went gently into dock, the grapples clanged to and accesses thumped open, and Pyanfar thrust back from the panel with a sudden watery feeling about the joints. Station chattered at them, requests for routine cooperations. “Shut down,” she said curtly, waved a weary signal at Haral and pushed the cushion round the slight bit it could go. “Hilfy: tell station offices. Tell them we’ve got some shakeup. I’ll talk with them when we get internal business settled.”

“Aye,” Hilfy murmured, and relayed the message, with much flicking of the ears in talking with the official and a final flattening of them. Pyanfar shortened her focus, on Tirun, who was running her last few checks. Her hands made small uncertain movements; her ears were drooping. “Tirun,” Pyanfar said, and Tirun’s face when she looked around showed the strain. “Out,” Pyanfar said. “Now.”

Tirun stared at her half a moment, and ordinarily Tirun would have mustered argument. She looked only numb, and pushed back from her place and tried, a faltering effort which got her to her feet, and a reach which got her to the next console. They all scrambled for her, but Hilfy was quickest, flung an arm about her. “She goes to quarters,” Pyanfar said. “Aye,” Haral said, and took charge from Hilfy, replacing Tirun’s support on that side.

Hilfy stood a moment. Pyanfar looked on her back, on the backs of Tirun and Haral as Tirun limped away trying not to limp; and Hilfy straightened her shoulders and looked back.

“I’ll stay on the com,” Hilfy offered.

“Leave it. Let station wonder. Clean up.”

Hilfy nodded stiffly, turned and walked out, quite, quite without swagger, with a hand to steady her against the curvature-feeling of the deck when they were docked. It occurred to Pyanfar then that Hilfy had not been sick, not this time. Pyanfar drew a deep breath, let it go, turned and leaned over the com. “Lowerdeck, who’s at station?”

“Geran,” the voice came back. “All stable below.”

“Clean up. Above all get Tully straightened up and presentable.”

“Understood.”

Pyanfar broke the connection. There was another call coming over com.

“Chanur, this is Tahar’s Moon Rising. Private conference.”

“Tahar, this is Pyanfar Chanur: we have a medical situation in progress. Stand by that conference.”

“Do you require assistance, Pride of Chanur?”

There was, infinitesimal in the tone, satisfaction in that possibility. Pyanfar sweetened her voice with prodigious effort. “Hardly, Moon Rising. I’ll return the call at the earliest possible. Chanur’s respects, Tahar. Out.”

She broke off with abruptness, pushed back and strode off, without swagger in her stride either. All her joints seemed rearranged, her head sitting precariously throbbing on a body which complained of abuses. Her nape bristled, not at kif presence, but at an enemy who sat much closer to home.

Gods. Beg of the Tahar?

Of a house which had presented formidable threat to Chanur during Kohan’s holding? The satisfaction in the Tahar whelp’s voice hardly surprised her. It was a spectacle, The Pride with her gut missing and her tail singed. There would be hissing laughter in Tahar, the vid image carried home for the edification of Kahi Tahar and his mates and daughters.

And from Tahar it would go out over Anuurn, so that it would be sure to come to Kohan. There would be challenges over this, beyond doubt there would be challenges. Some Tahar whelp would get his neck broken before the dust settled, indeed he would: young males were always optimists, always ready to set off at the smell of advantage, the least edge it might afford them.

They would try. So. They had done that before.

That was what Dur Tahar had wind of.

“She’s well enough,” Haral reported at the door of the crew’s quarters on the lower deck. Pyanfar looked beyond and saw Tirun snugged down in bed and oblivious to it all. “Leg swelled a bit under the stress, but no worry.”

Pyanfar frowned. “Good medical facilities here onstation. But it might be we’d have to pull out abruptly; I don’t want to risk leaving any of us behind for a layover, not… under the circumstances.”

“No,” Haral agreed. “No need for that. But we’re wearing thin, captain.”

“I know,” she said.

“You too, begging your leave.”

“Huh.” She laid her hand on Haral’s shoulders. Walked away to the lift, paused there and listened in the direction of Chur and Geran’s post. She walked back that way and leaned in at the door of op, where Geran sat watch, washed and in clean blue trousers, but looking on the world with the dull look someone ought to have who had gone from one on-shift to the next without sleep. “Right,” Pyanfar said simply, recalling that she had given them orders they were following, and leaned an arm against the doorframe. “Tully made it all right down here, did he?”

“No trouble from him.”

“I’m going to have to take him up on that work offer. You and Chur trade off with him, one on and one off. Tirun’s ailing.”

“Bad?”

“G stress didn’t favor that leg. We’ll rest here as much as we can. I’m going to see what charity I can get out of Tahar. Need to find out what damage we’ve got, first off.”

“Got a remote on it,” Geran said, turned about and called it up on the nearest screen. Pyanfar came into the room, looked at the exterior camera image, which was from the observation blister, and suffered a physical pang at the sight. Number one vane had a mooring line snaking loose, drifting about under station’s rotation, and there were panels missing, dark spots on the long silver bar. “That was our fade,” Pyanfar said with a belated chill. “Gods. Could have lost it all coming in with that loose. Going to take a skimmer crew to get that linked back up, no way the six of us can do it.”

“Money,” Geran said dismally. “Might have to sell one of us to the kif after all.”

“Bad joke,” Pyanfar said, and walked out.

Tully, she had thought, with an impulse of which she was heartily ashamed.

But she kept thinking of it, all the way up to her own quarters.

She stripped and showered, shed a mass of fur into the drain; dried and combed and arranged her mane and beard. It was the red silk breeches this time, the gold armlet, the pendant pearl. She surveyed herself with some satisfaction, a lift in her spirits. Appearances meant something, after all. The mahendo’sat were sensitive to the matter, quite as much as the stsho.

Offended prosperity, that was the tack to take with them. They knew The Pride. As long as it seemed that Chanur’s fortunes were intact and that Chanur was still a power to reckon with among hani, that long they might hold some hope of mahendo’sat eagerness to serve.

And there was, she reckoned, smiling coldly at the splendid hani captain in the mirror, there was deadly earnest in this haste.

There was Akukkakk.

Gods rot it all.

Possibly she had embarrassed him enough that his own would turn on him. That would take time to know. A long time out from homeport, keeping her ear alert for rumor.

Get rid of the Outsider Tully… would that the disentanglement were that easy.

She stared into her own eyes, ears flat, and meditated the villainy that any trader seeing the Outsider would think on naturally as breathing; and after a little thinking her lips pursed in a grimly smug smile.

So, so, so, Pyanfar Chanur. There was a way to settle more than one problem. Likely Tully would not like it, but an Outsider who came begging passage could take what he could get, and it was not in her mind to beg from Tahar.

She checked com, found the expected clutter of messages waiting attention. “Nothing really urgent,” Geran said. “Station’s still upset, that’s the sum of them.”

“Chur’s got Tully, has she, cleaning him up?”

“A little problem there.”

“Don’t tell me problem. I’ve got problems. What problem?”

“He has his own ideas, our Tully does. He wants to be shaved.”

“Gods and thunders. Washroom?”

“Here, now.”

“I’m coming down there.”

She started for the door, went back and picked up the audio plug for the translator and headed down in haste. Shaved. Her ears flattened, pricked again in a forced reckoning that customs were customs.

But appearances, by the gods…

She arrived in op in deliberate haste, found the trio there, Geran, Chur, Tully, all cleanly and haggard and drowning their miseries in a round of gfi. They looked up, Tully most anxious of all, still possessed, thank the gods, of all his mane and beard and decent-looking in a fresh pair of trousers.

“Pyanfar,” he said, rising.

“Captain,” she corrected him sternly. “You want what, Tully? What problem?”

“Wants the clippers,” Chur said. “I trimmed him up a bit.” She had. It was a good job. “He wants the beard off.”

“Huh. No, Tully. Wrong.”

Tully sank down again, the cup of gfi in his two hands, looked chagrined. “Wrong.”

Pyanfar heaved a sigh. “That’s reasonable. You do what I say, Tully. You have to look right for the mahendo’sat. You look good. Fine.”

“Same # hani.”

“Like hani, yes.”

“Mahendo’sat. Here.”

“You’re safe. It’s all right. Friendly folk.”

Tully’s mouth tightened thoughtfully. He nodded peaceably enough. Then he reached a hand behind his head and knotted the pale mane back in his fingers. “Right, that?”

“No,” Pyanfar said. The hand.dropped.

“I do all you say.”

Pyanfar flicked her ears, thrust her hands into her waistband. “Do all?” She felt pricklish in the area of her honor, and the Outsider’s pale eyes gazed up at her with disturbing confidence. “It might frighten you, what I want. I might ask too much.”

Some of that got through. The confidence visibly diminished.

“I make you afraid, Tully?” She gestured wide, toward the bow. “There’s a station out there, Kirdu Station. Mahendo’sat species is the authority in this place. There’s a hani ship docked next to us. Stsho species too, down the dock.”

“Kif?”

“Two kif ships, not the same ones. Not Akukkakk’s, not likely. Traders. They’re trouble if we linger here too long, but they won’t make any sudden move. I want you to go outside, Tully. I want you to come with me, out in the open, on station dock, and meet the mahendo’sat.”

He did understand. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I’m crew of this ship,” he said. It seemed a question.

“Yes. I won’t leave you here. You stay with me.”

“I come,” he said.

That simply. She stared at him a moment, deliberately held out her hand toward the cup in his. He looked perplexed for a moment, then surrendered it to her. She drank, subduing a certain shudder, handed it back to him,

He drank as well, glanced at her, measuring her reaction by that look, finished the cup. No prejudices. No squeamishness about other species. She nodded approval.

“Go with you, captain,” Chur offered.

“Come on, then,” Pyanfar said. “Geran, you stay; can’t leave the ship with no one watching things, and the others are off. We’re going just to station offices and back, and it shouldn’t be trouble. I don’t expect it, at least.”

“Right,” Geran said, not without a worried look.

Pyanfar put a hand on Tully’s shoulder, realized the chill of his skin, the perpetually hunched posture when he was sitting. He stood up, shivered a bit. “Tully. The translator won’t work outside the ship, understand. Once out the rampway, we can’t understand each other. So I tell you here: you stay with me; you don’t leave me; you do all that I say.”

“Go to the offices.”

“Offices, right.” She laid one sharpclawed fingertip amid his chest. “I’ll try to get it through to you, my friend. If we go about with you aboard in secret, if we leave mahendo’sat territory with you and go on to Anuurn, to our own world — that could be trouble. Mahendo’sat might think we kept something they should have known about. So we make you public, let them all have a look at you, mahendo’sat, stsho, yes, even the kif. You wear clothes, you talk some hani words, you get yourself registered, proper papers, all the things a good civilized being needs to be a legal entity in the Compact. I’ll get it all arranged for you. There’s no way after you have those papers that anyone can claim you’re not a sapient. I’ll register you as part of my crew. I’ll give you a paper and where I tell you, you put your name on it. And you don’t give me any trouble. Does enough of that get through? It’s the last thing I can tell you.”

“Don’t understand all. You ask. I do it.”

She wrinkled her nose, threw an impatient wave of her hand at Chur. “Come on.”

Chur came. Tully did, blindly trusting, at which she scowled and walked along in front of them both to the lock, hands thrust into the back of her waistband, wondering whether station offices had detectors and whether they could get away with a concealed weapon, going where they were going. She decided against it, whatever the other risks.

A watcher stood by the rampway outside, a mahe dock-worker who scampered off quickly enough when they showed outside, and who probably made a call to his superiors… the mahendo’sat were discreetly perturbed, polite in their surveillance. But they were there. Pyanfar saw it, and Chur did; and Tully turned a frightened look toward the sudden movement. He talked at them, but the translator was helpless now, outside the range of the inship pickup, and Pyanfar laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and kept him moving. “Just a precaution,” she said, a quiet tone, and looked beyond to the rampway access of Moon Rising, where a far more hazardous watcher stood, a hani crewwoman.

“Better take care of that business,” Pyanfar said to Chur, and diverted heir course diagonally among the canister-carriers toward Moon Rising.

Another hani showed up outside, on the run: second crewwoman, doubled reflection of the other, same wide stance and steady stare. At a certain distance Pyanfar stopped, and waited, and made a subtle sign to Chur, who strode forward to meet the others.

There was an exchange too quiet for her ears… no friendliness in the postures, but no overt unpleasantness. Chur came back, not in haste, not delaying any either, ears flat.

“Their captain’s asleep,” Chur reported. “She proposes to come aboard The Pride when her nap’s done. Answer, captain?”

“Why should I? I wasn’t advised. But I may let her come. It suits me.” She turned without a glance at the others, put a hand on Tully’s hairless back and steered him away with them.

And if the Tahar captain was in fact sleeping, she would not be by the time those two rag-ears got back inside, to report the Chanur captain had a companion of unknown species, headed for station offices. The Tahar had gotten caught in their own arrogance, and Chanur failed to rise to the insult, simply walked off. Pyanfar threw a little swagger into the departure, for the Tahar and for the gaping mahe dockworkers, some of whom fled in haste to report to superiors or to gather comrades, a dark-furred and scantly clad crowd.

“They noticed,” Chur said.

“That they have.” Pyanfar locked her hands behind her and they strolled along in company, one tall hani captain in scarlet, one smallish hani crewwoman in roughspun₍blue, and improbably between them, a towering wide-shouldered Outsider with naked skin and a beautiful golden mane, excruciatingly conspicuous. Pyanfar suffered an irrepressible rush of the blood, a tightening of the lips as a crowd began to gather, far more people than those who worked the docks. Mahendo’sat, dockers and merchanters and miners and gods knew what else; and a scatter of stsho, pale and pastel among the crowd, their whitish eyes round as moons, holding each others’ hands and chattering together in shock. Of the kif… no sign as yet, but the rumor would draw them, she was well sure of that, and wished in that regard that she had that gun she had thought of taking.

They, reached the lift, pushed the button, mahe giving way about them and crowding back again at every opportunity, a roar of crowd-noise about them. “Captain,” someone asked, one of the mahendo’sat. “What is this being?”

She turned about with a grin which lacked all patience, and mahendo’sat who knew hani backed up, but there was humor in it too, satisfaction at the turmoil. The lift arrived, and a half dozen startled mahe decided to vacate it, whether or not they had planned on getting out on this level. They edged out the door in haste and Pyanfar seized Tully by the arm and put him inside. Chur delayed while she stepped in, and came last, lacing the crowd. The door delayed, time enough for anyone else who thought they wanted to ride up with them, but no one entered. The door closed, and the lift shot upward. Pyanfar let go of Tully’s arm and put her hand on his back, ready to indicate to him to move out. He was sweating despite the chill in the air.

On the other side of him Chur patted his arm. The lift stopped once. Those waiting decided against entering, eyes wide; and the lift went on up.

“Friend,” Tully said nervously, out of his scant hani repertoire.

“Mahendo’sat and stsho,” Pyanfar said. “Friend. Yes.”

The car stopped a second time, a quieter corridor in the office complex. Tully walked with them, out and down the hall, startling other mahe workers.

And stopped, abruptly. A kif came from the offices ahead, stopped and stared, anonymous in gray robes and doleful kifish face. Pyanfar seized Tully’s arm, pulled the claws in when he winced, but the sting got him moving. They passed the kif and the kif turned; Pyanfar did not react to it, but Chur, crew and unburdened with captaincy, faced about with ears flat and a snarl on her face. Likely the kif kept staring. Pyanfar whisked Tully through the welcome office doors ahead and only then turned to cast a look back; but the kif was on its way, robes aswirl in its haste, and Chur, ears still flat, joined them inside the registry office. Tully smelled of sweat. Veins stood out in his arms. Pyanfar patted his shoulder and looked round the gaudy colored room at a frozen officeful of mahendo’sat, most standing.

“I’m Pyanfar Chanur. You requested an interview.”

There was a general flutter, the foremost of the officials dithering about letting them through the general registry area to the more secluded complex behind the doors, with a dozen looks at Tully in the process.

“Come along,” Pyanfar urged him softly, keeping a hand on his elbow, and now she sweated, reckoning the shocks Tully had endured thus far, a kif in the hall, close spaces… one irrational moment and he could bolt; or strike at someone — “Friend,” she said, and he stayed by her.

The official let them through into a luxurious waiting area, thick carpet and pillowlike couches in bright colors, hastened about providing them refreshment as they settled on a facing group of couches. “Sit, sit,” Pyanfar said, providing Tully the example, legs tucked and ankles crossed, and Chur waited until Tully had settled nervously on the facing couch. Chur sank down in relief. The official set the welcoming tray on a portable table in their midst. His dark mahe eyes were alive with curiosity. “Beg understanding, hani captain… this is — passenger?”

“Crew,” Pyanfar said with a prim pursing of the lips. She accepted the glass the squatting mahe filled, two-handed mahe style in her holding of it; and saw to her satisfaction that the mahe had in fact provided three glasses. He filled the second and gave it to Chur, whose manners were impeccable, and with some diffidence, offered to Tully.

Tully took his after the same fashion, keen mimic. Pyanfar smiled to herself and smothered the smile in a sip of mahendo’sat liquor. The official pattered out with effusive and anxious bows, leaving them alone; and whatever Tully thought of the liquor he had the self-possession not to flinch from it.

“Friend,” Tully said again, looking worried. Chur, beside him, put a hand on his knee and he seemed to take reassurance from that. Panic, not quite, but his skin glistened with sweat, his muscles were taut. Steps sounded just outside the door at the side of the room and he would have looked around, but Chur patted his knee and he refrained.

The door opened. A handful of mahendo’sat, important with elaborate bright kilts and collars, came in on them, one of them attended by a small brown and white fluff which scurried about the floor at its feet and bristled at the scent of hani. It hissed and had to be scooped up in the official’s arms; and Pyanfar kept a wary eye on it all the same, rising in respect to the visitors. Chur and Tully followed her lead, and she bowed and suffered the mahendo’sat’s frankly appraising stare at Tully. They chattered among themselves, no little disturbed, and some of that she caught, exclamations of curiosity: the fluff growled, and its owner — an elderly mahe whose dark fur was graying and whose flat face had all the other attributes of age — looked toward her with a lowering of the ears.

“Chanur captain?”

“The same. Have I the honor to know you?”

“Ahe Stasteburana-to, I.”

The stationmaster in person. She made another bow, and the stationmaster did the same, keeping the equilibrium of the pampered creature in his arms, soothing its growls unsuccessfully as he straightened again. And with apparent distraction Stasteburana strolled off, while another of the company made a stiffer bow and launched into them. “You pay, Chanur captain, fines for reckless approach. Fines for bring debris boosted through, danger to all innocent. Fines for reckless haste near station. For bring hazardous situation.”

“I spit at your charges. I dumped the debris at Kita and warned you only in the remote chance there was still some with me, dumped it, I might add, and sustained damage protecting your worthless station from injury. As for fines, you’re brigands, bloodsuckers, to prey off a friendly ship with a long-standing account at this station, when for the preservation of our lives and the protection of the Compact we had to come in for shelter against piracy. A hani, a hani, mind, asks shelter, and when have we ever done such a thing? Are you blind and deaf as well as greedy?”

“We have outrage. We have knnn act crazy out there. We have report—”

The Personage Stasteburana held up his aged and manicured hand. His Voice silenced herself and broke off with a bow, while Stasteburana strolled back, stroking his ball of fluff, which had never ceased to growl. “You make large commotion, honorable Chanur, great hani captain, yes, we know you — long time absent; maybe trade our rival Ajir, but we know you. Good friend, we. Maybe make deal on fines. But serious matter. Where come from?”

“Meetpoint and Urtur via Kita, wise mahe.”

“With this?” An ears-flat look at Tully.

“An unfortunate. A being of great sensitivity, wise and gentle mahe. His ship was wrecked, his companions gone… he cast himself on my charity and proves of considerable value.”

“Value, hani, captain?”

“He needs papers, wise mahe, and my ship needs repairs.”

Again Stasteburana walked away, aloof from the Voice. “Your ship got no cargo,” the Voice spat. “You come empty hand, make big trouble here. You near ask credit, hani captain; what credit? We make you fines, you send Anuurn get cargo, maybe two, three hani ship pay off damages. You got us knnn. You got us kif. We know this. You go talk hani at next berth, ask she pay your fines.”

“Trivial. I have cargo, better than Moon Rising. I make you a deal, indeed I shall, in spite of your uncivilized behavior. I make a deal all mahendo’sat will want.”

The Voice looked at Tully, and the Personage turned about, moved in with a leisurely grace, handed the small noisy animal to the Voice, and frowned. Stasteburana made a further sign to his other three companions, and one of them called to someone in the hall.

It was not easy to make distinctions of mahendo’sat of the same age and sex and build; but about the large and relatively plain fellow who answered that summons… there was an instant and queasy familiarity — particularly when he flashed a broad gilt-edged smile. Pyanfar sucked in her breath and tucked her hands behind her, pulling the claws back in.

“Captain Ana Ismehanan-min of the freighter Mahijiru,” Stasteburana said softly. “Acquaintance to you, yes.”

“Indeed,” Pyanfar said, and bowed, which gesture Gold-tooth returned with a flourish.

“This kif business,” said Stasteburana, folding his wrinkled hands at his middle. “Explain, hani Captain.”

“Who am I to know what a kif thinks? They let this unfortunate being slip their fingers and expected me to sell him back, plainly illegal. Then they attacked a hani ship which was completely ignorant of the matter. A Handur ship was completely destroyed unless the captain of Mahijiru has better news.”

“No good news,” Goldtooth agreed sadly. “All lost, hani captain. All. I get away quick, come here tell story my port.”

The Personage turned and tapped Goldtooth on the shoulder, spoke to him in one of those obscure mahen languages outside her reckoning. Goldtooth bowed profoundly and backed aside, and Pyanfar looked warily at the Personage. “You know,” she said, to recover the initiative, “what the kif wanted; and you know that there’s no chance of hiding such a prize, not here, not on Anuurn either. No good hiding it at all.”

“I make you—” There was a beep from someone’s pager. A voice followed, and one of the attendants came forward in consternation, offered the instrument to the hand of the Personage Stasteburana. There was talk of knnn: that much past the local dialect; and the Personage’s dark eyes grew wider. “Where is it?” Pyanfar caught that much of the conversation, and saw distress among the others. “You come,” said Stasteburana himself, not using his Voice for instruction, and swept a gesture to the doorway from which the mahendo’sat had come into the room.

“Come,” Pyanfar echoed to Chur and Tully, and walked along amid the mahe, the attendants and the Voice and the captain of Mahijiru, all in the wake of the Personage, who was-hastening with some evident alarm.

The corridor debouched on an operations center. Technicians in the aisles melted aside for the Personage and his entourage. The Voice hissed orders, and the fluff hissed too, in general menace. On the air a tc’a spoke, a sound like static bursts and clicking.

“Screen,” Stasteburana ordered in his own tongue.

The main screen livened in front of them, meters wide and showing a dimly lit dockside. Blues and violets, a horrid light, like nightmare, and a scuttling shape like a snarl of hair possessed of an indefinite number of thin black legs. It darted this I way and that, dragging with it, clutched in jaws — appendages — under the hair? — something which glittered with metal and had the look of a long-limbed hani body.

With a sinking feeling Pyanfar recognized it. It was a good J bet that Chur and Tully did, who had conspired in its construction.

“That’s a knnn,” Pyanfar said to Tully. He said something I back, short and unhappy. On the screen the creature scurried I this way and that with its burden, eluding the attempts of writhing shapes in the shadows which tried to deal with it: those were tc’a. Something stiltlike joined the commotion, darted at the flitting knnn and tugged at the prize, skittered off again. CM, by the gods: those manic beggars; the limbs glowed phosphorescent yellow, left confusing trails on the screen in its haste.

Of a sudden a pair of tc’a writhed into the knnn’s way, physically dispossessed the knnn of its burden; and the knnn darted about the harder, wailing with rage or distress or simply trying to communicate. The scene was complete chaos; and suddenly more knnn poured in. The solitary chi fled, a blur of yellow-glowing sticks; and in the mahendo’sat control center, technicians who had been seated stood up to watch what had become riot. Hisses and clicks and wails came from the audio. The knnn began to give ground, a phalanx of hairy snarled masses.

Suddenly one darted forward, seized one of the leathery, serpent-shaped tc’a and dragged it off into their retreating line. There was a frantic hissing and clicking from the mass of tc’a; but apart from a milling about, a writhing and twining of dozens of serpentine bodies like so many fingers lacing and unlacing in distress… nothing Not the least attempt at counterattack or rescue. Pyanfar watched the kidnapping with her ears laid back.

So the knnn had traded, after its fashion, darted onto station and laid down its offered goods — made off with something it took for fair; and now another species had descended to trading in sapients.

“What is it?” a mahe asked distressedly, and fell silent. The main body of the tc’a managed to drag the knnn’s trade goods along, a grotesque flailing of suited arms and legs. A communication came through, and a technician approached the Personage Stasteburana. “Hani-make eva-pod,” that one said, and Stasteburana turned a disturbed glance on Pyanfar, who lifted her ears and assumed her most careless expression.

“I shouldn’t want to disturb you,” Pyanfar said. “All you’ll find in that suit, wise mahe, is a very spoiled lot of meat from our locker; I’d advise you take decontamination precautions before taking that pod helmet off.”

“What you do?” Stasteburana spoke in anger without his Voice, and waved his Voice off when she attempted to intervene. “What you do, Chanur captain?”

“The knnn seems to have intercepted a gift of mine meant for the kif. It’s confused, I’m sure. Probably it’ll return the tc’a. — It was, at the time, a matter of necessity, revered mahe.”

“Necessity!”

“Only spoiled food, I assure you. Nothing more. — We were on the point of discussing repairs to my ship… which are urgent. You’ll not want me sitting at your dock any longer than you have to. Ask the honest captain of Mahijiru.”

“Outrage!” the Voice proclaimed. “Extortion!”

“Shall we discuss the matter?”

The fluffball suffered another transfer, to the nearest of the dignitaries, and the Voice looked to be preparing for verbal combat; but the Personage lifted a placid and silencing hand, motioned the group back down the corridor, delaying to give an instruction regarding the tc’a. Then the Personage led the way back into the comfortable room down the corridor.

“Profit,” Pyanfar said quickly and soothingly when the elder mahe and his entourage turned to face her and hers.

“Trouble first with kif and now with knnn and with tc’a. Deceptions and hazards to this station.”

“A new species, revered mahe. That’s the prize that has the kif disturbed. They see the hope of profit the like of which they’ve not known before; and I have the sole surviving member of his company, a spacefaring people, communicative, civilized, wise mahe, and fit to tilt the balance of the Compact. This was the prize at Meetpoint. This was the reason of the loss of the Handur ship, and this was the part of my cargo I refused to jettison. Surely we agree, revered mahe, what the kif meant to do if they had gotten this information first. Shall I tell you more of my suspicions… that the stsho knew something about what was going on? That kif meant to annex a large portion of adjacent space… having intimidated the stsho? That having done so, they would then be in a position to expand their operations and rearrange the map of the Compact to suit themselves — an acquisition from which the other members of the Compact would be positionally excluded; only the stsho… who would lick the kif s feet. And what future for the Compact then? What of this Compact which holds all of our very profitable trade together? What of the balance of things? But I shall tell you what I have: a tape, a tape, my good, my great and farsighted mahe elder, for a symbol translator… a tape which the kif spent sapient lives to obtain and failed to get. We aren’t selfish; I make this tape available to mahendo’sat as freely as hani, in the interests of spreading this knowledge as far as possible among likeminded people. But I want my ship repaired, the fines forgotten, the assurance that Chanur will continue in the friendship of this great and powerful station.”

The Personage laid his ears back, his eyes dilated. He turned away, leaving his Voice to face the matter. “Where come this creature? How we know sapient? How we know friendly?”

“Tully,” Pyanfar said, and put a hand on his arm and drew him forward. “Tully, this is the Voice of the stationmaster. friend, Tully.”

For a terrible moment that arm was tense, as if Tully might bolt. “Friend,” he said then obediently. The Voice frowned, peered this way and that at Tully’s face… on a level with the mahe’s own. “Speak hani?” the Voice asked.

“I go on Pyanfar ship. Friend.”

Gods. A sentence. Pyanfar squeezed the arm and put him protectively behind her. The Voice frowned; and behind the Voice the Personage had turned back with interest. “You bring this trouble to us,” Stasteburana said. “And knnn… why knnn?”

“A resident of Urtur. I claim no understanding of knnn. It’s become disturbed… but not of my doing, noble mahe. The safest thing for Kirdu Station in all events is to have me safely on my way… and to have that, I fear, there’s a matter of certain essential repairs—”

The elder flared his nostrils and puffed breaths back and forth. He consulted with his Voice, who spoke to him rapidly involving kif and knnn. The Personage turned back yet again. “This tape deal—”

“—key to another species, revered mahe. Mahendo’sat will have access to this development; meet ships of this kind — assured peaceful meeting, full communication. And mind, you deal with no stranger, no one who will cheat you and be gone. Chanur expects to be back at Kirdu in the future, expects — may I speak to you in confidence — to develop this new find.”

Stasteburana cast a nervous glance at Tully. “And what you find, a? Find trouble. Make trouble.”

“Are you willing to have the kif do the moving and the growing and the getting? They assuredly will, good mahe, if we don’t.”

The Personage made nervous moves of his hands, walked to the one of his companions who held the angry ball of fluff and took it back, stroking it and talking to it softly. He looked up. “Repairs begin,” Stasteburana said, and walked near Tully, who stood his ground despite the growling creature in the mahe’s arms. The growling grew louder. The mahe stood and stared a long moment, gave a visible twitch of the skin of his shoulders and lifted a hand from his pet to sign to his Voice. “Make papers this sapient being. Make repairs. All hani go. Go away.” He looked suddenly at Pyanfar. “But you give tape. We say nothing to kif.”

“Wise mahe,” Pyanfar said with all her grace, and bowed. The Personage waggled fingers and dismissed them in the company of the Voice, and the fluff growled at their backs.

So, Pyanfar thought, as they delayed at the desks outside, as nervous mahendo’sat officials went through the mechanics of identifications with Tully. So they had promises. She kept her ears up, her expression pleasant, and smiled with extraordinary goodwill at the deskdwellers. Chur kept her hand hovering near Tully’s arm, at his back, constantly reassuring him at this and that step, answering for him, keeping him calm when they wanted his picture, urging him to sign where appropriate. Pyanfar craned forward, got a glimpse of a signature of intricate regularity which could not be an illiterate’s mark in anyone’s eyes.

“Good,” she said, patted Tully on the shoulder as the document went back into the hands of mahendo’sat officials — looked about again, nose wrinkling to a scent of perfume, for two stsho had just come into the offices. They stood there with their jeweled pallor looking out of place in mahendo’sat massive architecture, the huge blocky desks and the garish colors. Moonstone eyes stared unabashedly at Tully and at them. Capacious stsho brains stored up a wealth of detail for gossip, which stsho traded like other commodities. Pyanfar bared her teeth at them and they wisely came no closer.

The papers came back, plasticized and permanent, with Tully’s face staring back from them, species handwritten, classification general spacer semiskilled, sex male, and most of the other circles unfilled. The official gave the folder to Pyanfar. She gave it to Tully, clapped him on the shoulder, faced him about and headed him for the door, past the gawking stsho.

Elsewhere, she trusted, orders were being passed which would get a repair skimmer prioritied for The Pride. The mahendo’sat’s prime concern had become getting rid of them at utmost speed: she did not doubt it.

There would be a mahe official demanding that tape before all was done: that was beyond doubt too. There would be some little quibble which came first, repairs or tape; repairs, she was determined. The mahe had little choice.

They walked the corridor to the right from the office doorway, toward the lift, the three of them, past occasional mahendo’sat office workers and business folk who either found reason to duck back into their doorways or anxiously tried to ignore them.

But the three who waited before them at the lift… Pyanfar stopped half a step, made it a wider one. “You,” she said, striding forward, and the foremost mahe stood out from his two companions, gilt teeth hidden in a black scowl.

“Bring trouble, you,” said the captain of Mahijiru.

“How you live, mahe? A? Sell information every port you touch?”

“My port, Kirdu. You make trouble.”

“Huh. Trouble found me. Got crew shot getting you your rotted welders to keep our deal. Do I say anything about pearls you owe me? No. I give you a gift, brave mahe. I ask no return.”

Goldtooth frowned the more, looked at Chur and walked closer to Tully, tilted his round chin and looked Tully up and down, but kept his hands off him. Then he threw a glance at Pyanfar. “This you pick up on the dock.”

“You ask questions for the Personage? Same you gather information at Meetpoint?”

For the first time the mahe flashed that sharpedged gold grin. “You clever, hani captain.”

“You know this Akukkakk.”

The grin died, leaving deadly seriousness. “Maybe.”

“You really merchant, mahe captain?”

“Long time, honest hani. Mahijiru longtime merchant ship, me, my crew, longtime merchanter, sons and daughters mer-chanters. But we know this Hinukku, yes. Longtime bad trouble.”

Pyanfar looked into that broad dark face and wrinkled her nose. “Swear to you, mahe captain — I didn’t think to bring trouble down on you. I give you the trade goods, make no claim for return. You saved our hides, put us onto that kif bastard. Owe you plenty for that.”

The mahe frowned. “Deal, hani. They make you repair, you get quick leave… danger. Tell you that free.”

“Mahijiru took no damage getting out of Meetpoint?”

“Small damage. You take advice, hani.”

“I take it.” She pressed the lift button, took a second look, to remember the face of this mahe beyond doubt. “Come,” she said as the lift arrived empty. She shepherded Chur and Tully through the door and turned once inside. Goldtooth/ Ismehanan and his companions showed no inclination to go with them. The door closed between and the lift started down. She looked back, at Tully and at Chur, and gathered Tully by the elbow as the car, unstopped this time by other passengers, made the whole trip down and let them out on the docks.

The crowd had dispersed somewhat, thank the gods; but not enough. It gathered quickly enough as they crossed the dock, and Pyanfar watched on all sides, flicking quick glances this way and that, reckoning that by now, trouble had time to have organized itself.

And it was there. Kif — by the gantries, watching. That presence did not at all surprise her. Tully failed to spot them, seeming dazed in the swirl of bodies, none of which pressed too closely on them, but stayed about them.

The rampway access gaped ahead. A group of mahendo’sat law enforcement stood there, sticks in hand, and the crowd went no farther. Pyanfar thrust her companions through that line, with her own legs trembling under her — want of sleep, gods, want of rest. Chur was in the same condition, surely, and Tully was hardly steady on his feet, unfit mentally and physically for this kind of turmoil. She sighted on the rampway and went, hard-breathing.

But among the gantries beside them… hani shadows. Moon Rising’s folk, none of her own, had spilled over from the next berth, behind the security line. “Come on,” she said to Chur and Tully. “Ignore them.”

She headed into the rampway’s ribbed and lighted gullet, had led the two of them up the curving course almost to the security of their own airlock when she heard someone coming behind. “In,” she said to her companions, and turned to bar the intruder who appeared around the curve. Her ears were flat; she reached instinctively for the weapon she had left behind — but the figure was hani, silk-breeched and jeweled, striding boldly right up the rampway.

“Tahar,” she spat, waved a dismissing hand. “Gods, do we need complications?”

“I’ve done napping.” The Tahar captain stopped just short of her, took her stance, hands at her waist, a large figure, with a torn left ear beringed with prosperity. Broadfaced… a black scar crossed her mustache, making it scant on the left side, and giving Dur Tahar no pleasant expression. Her beard was crisply rippled and so was her mane, characteristic of the southerners, dark bronze. Two of her crew showed up behind her, like a set of clones.

“We’ve managed,” Pyanfar said, “without troubling your rest.”

Dur Tahar ignored her, looked beyond her shoulder — at what sight, Pyanfar had no trouble guessing. “What’s that thing, Chanur? What creature is that?”

“That’s a problem we’ve got settled, thank you.”

“By the gods, settled! We’ve just been ordered off the station, and it’s all over the dock about this passenger of yours. About hani involved with the kif. About a deal you’ve made — by the gods, I’ll reckon you’ve settled things. — What are you, trading in live bodies now? You’ve found yourself something special, haven’t you? That fracas that sent you kiting in here with your tail singed — involved with that?”

“That’s enough.” Her claws came out. She was tired, gods, shaking on her feet, and she stared at Dur Tahar with a dark tunnel closing about her vision. “If you want to talk about this, you ask me by com. Not now.”

“Ah. You don’t need our help. Are you planning to stay here in dock with your tail hanging… or did you and the mahendo’sat come up with a deal? What kind of game are you proposing, Chanur?”

“I’ll make it clear enough. Later. Get clear of my airlock.”

“What species is it? Where from? The rumor flying the docks says kif space. Or knnn. Says there’s a knnn ship here that dropped a hani body.”

“I’ll tell it to you once, Tahar: we got this item at Meetpoint and the kif took out Handur’s Voyager for spite, no survivors. Caught them sitting at dock, and they and we hadn’t even been in communication. We dumped cargo and ran for Urtur, and the kif who followed us struck at Faha’s Starchaser with no better reason. Whether Starchaser got away or not I don’t know, but they At least had a run at it. The kif want this fellow badly. And it’s gotten beyond simple profit and loss with them. There’s a hakkikt involved, and there’s no stopping this thing till we’ve got him. Maybe we did, at Urtur. He looked bad, and that may settle it. But if you want to make yourself useful, you’re welcome to run our course.”

“Suppose you make yourself generous. Give this thing into my hands. I’ll see it gets safe to Anuurn.”

“No, thanks.”

“I’ll bet not. You can deal with the mahendo’sat, after all, but not with a rival. Well, Chanur’s not going to sit on this one, I’ll promise you that, Pyanfar Chanur. And if this turns out to be the fiasco it promises to be, I’ll be on your heels. That brother of yours is getting soft. Back home, they know it. This should do it, shouldn’t it?”

“Out!”

“Give me the information you traded the mahendo’sat. And we may view things in a better light.”

“If you were mahe I’d trust you more. Look him over, Dur Tahar. But anything else you want to know… I’ll decide on when I’ve got this straightened out. Never fear; you’ll get the same data I gave the mahendo’sat. But if you leave this in our laps, then by the gods, we’ll settle it our way without your help.”

Dur Tahar laid her ears back and started to go, lingered for one poisonous look beyond, toward the airlock, and a focus snapped back on center. “I’ll ask you at Anuurn, then. And you’ll have answers, gods rot you. You’ll come up with them.”

“Nothing personal, Tahar. You always did lack vision.”

“When you beg my help — I might give it.”

“Out.”

Dur Tahar had made her offer. Perhaps she expected a different answer. She flinched, managed a lazy indifference, smoothed her rippled beard, turned and looked back toward the airlock a last time, slowly, before she stalked out, gathering her two crewwomen as she went.

“Gods,” Pyanfar muttered through her teeth, put a hand wearily to the rampway wall and turned about to the airlock, feeling suddenly older. That was muffed. She should have been quicker on her mental feet, slower of temper. The Tahar might have been talked into it. Maybe wanted to be talked into it. If a Tahar could be trusted at their backs. She hated the whole of it, mahe, Tahar, Outsider, all of it — winced under Chur’s stare. Not a word from Chur the whole way back, regarding the business she had conducted, this tape — selling, trust-selling.

And Tully’s face… of a sudden he jerked away from Chur’s grip and went into the airlock, Chur hastening to stop him. Pyanfar broke into a run into the hatchway, but Chur had got him. Tully had stopped against the inside wall, his back against it, his eyes full of anger.

“Captain,” Chur said, “the translator was working.”

Pyanfar reached into her pocket and thrust her audio plug into her ear, faced Tully, who looked steadily toward her. “Tully. That was not a friend. What did you hear? What?”

“You’re same like kif. Want the same maybe. What deal with the mahendo’sat?”

“I saved your miserable hide. What do you think? That you can travel through Compact territory without everyone who sees you having the same thoughts? You didn’t want to deal with the kif — good sense; but by the gods, you haven’t got a choice but us or the kif, my friend Tully. All right. I traded them the tape you made — but not that I couldn’t have gotten the ship repair without that: they’re anxious to get rid of us; they’d have come round tape or no tape, you can bet they would. But now everyone’s going to know about your kind; gods, let the mahendo’sat make copies of it; let them sell it in the standard kit. It’s the best deal you can get. I’m not selling you, you rag-eared bastard; can I make you understand that? And maybe if your ships meet our ships… there’ll be a tape in the translators that may keep us from shooting at each other. We meet and trade. Understand? Better deal than the kif give you.”

A tremor passed over his face, expressions she could not read. The eyes spilled water, and he made a move of his arm, jerked at Chur’s grip on it and Chur cautiously let him go.

“You understand me?” Pyanfar asked. “Do I make myself understood?”

No response.

“You’re free,” Pyanfar said. “Those papers let you go anywhere. You want to walk out the rampway, onto the dock? You want to go back to station offices and stay with the mahe?”

He shook his head.

“That’s no.”

“No. Pyanfar. I #.”

“Say again.”

He reached to his waist and drew out the papers, offered them to her.

“Your papers,” Pyanfar said. “All in order. Go anywhere you like.”

He might have understood. He pointed toward the door. “This hani — want me go with him.”

“Her. Dur Tahar. No friend of mine. Or to this ship. Nothing that concerns you.”

He stood a moment, seeming to think it over. Finally he pointed back toward the inner hatch. “I go sit down,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I go sit. Right?”

“Go,” she said. “It’s all right, Tully. You’re all right.”

“Friend,” he said, and touched her arm in leaving, walked out with his head down and exhaustion in his posture. “Follow him?” Chur asked.

“Not conspicuously. Docking’s got his quarters out of commission. Get a proper cot for the washroom.”

“We could take him into crew quarters.”

“No. I don’t want that. There’s nothing wrong with the washroom, for the gods’ sake. Just get him a sedative. I think he’s had enough.”

“He’s scared, captain. I don’t much blame him.”

“He’s got sense. Go. Tell Geran if she doesn’t hear something about that repair crew within half an hour, come get me.”

“Aye,” Chur murmured, and hastened off in Tully’s wake.

So. Done, for good or ill. Pyanfar leaned against the wall, aching in all her bones, her vision fuzzing. After a moment she walked out, down the vacant corridor toward the lifts, hoping to all the gods Geran could find no incident to put between her and bed.

No one stopped her. She rode the lift up, walked a sleep-drunken course down the central corridor to her own door.

“Aunt,” Hilfy’s voice pursued her. She stopped with her hand against the lockplate and looked about with a sour and forbidding stare.

“Repair crew’s on its way,” Hilfy said ever so quietly. “I thought you’d want to know. Message just came.”

“You’ve been sitting watch topside?”

“Got a little rest. I thought—”

“If Geran’s on, it’s waste to duplicate effort. Get yourself back to quarters and stay there. Sleep, gods rot you; am I supposed to coddle you later? Take something if you can’t. Don’t come complaining to me later.”

“Captain,” Hilfy murmured, ears back, and bowed.

Pyanfar hit the bar and opened the door, walked in and punched it closed before the automatic could function. Belatedly the look on Hilfy’s face occurred to her; and the long duty Hilfy had spent at com through transit, and that she had intended to say something approving of that, and had not.

Gods rot it. She sat down on the side of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Gods, that she had staggered through the requisite interview with the mahendo’sat, bargained with them, offended the Tahar — and Tully… she had traded off what three of his shipmates had died to keep to themselves.

In such a condition she gambled, with Chanur and Tully’s whole species on the board.

She dropped her hands between her knees, finally reached for the bedside drawer where she kept a boxful of pills. She shook one into her hand and put it into her mouth — spat it out in sudden revulsion and flung the open boxful across the cabin. Pills rattled and circled and lay still. She lay down on the bed as she was, drew the coverlet over herself, tucked her;arms about her head and shut her eyes, flinging herself into an extended calculation about their routing out of here and refusing to let her mind off that technical problem. She built the numbers in front of her eyes and fended off the recollection of Tully’s face or Hilfy’s, or the scuttling figure of the knnn with its prize, or the kif which skulked and whispered together out on the docks.