There was no access ramp for an insystem workhorse, only a dark tube into a chill and dimly lit interior directly off the dock. The Rau dived in first and shouted to her crew, a thundering and booming of feet on the uncushioned plates. The air was foul, stinging to the nose. Pyanfar came aboard seconds after the captain of the Luck, put a hand on the hatchway as she stooped to enter and drew the hand back damp with condensation-seals leaked somewhere in the recycling systems. Gods knew what the margin was on lifesupport. She worked her way past lockers to the control pit of the probe, trusting Haral and Chur to get everyone else aboard and settled.
“Name,” she asked of the Rau captain, dropping down into the three-cushion pit, waist-high, and ducking under the overhead screens. “Nerafy,” the captain said, nodded back toward her presumed co-pilot and navigator who were dropping into the pit on the other aide. “Tamy; Kihany.”
“Got us an escort,” Pyanfar said. “Mahe’s going to see we get there and back; move it. No groundlings in this lot. Will you give me com?”
“We’re going,” Nerafy said, sinking into her cushion. The hatch boomed shut, deafening. “Kihany: it’s Anuurn we’re headed for; get the captain that link.”
Repulse cut in. Pyanfar hand-over-handed her way around the back of the cushions to the com/navigation board and braced herself with feet and a hand on the rim to lean over the board. “I want,” she said, ignoring the contrary slams of g against which she shifted without thinking, “relay to Aja Jin. Mahe. Get that ship first.”
It took a moment. A mahe voice came crackling through. They lost g as Rau’s Luck executed a wallowing maneuver, acquired it again. “Aja Jin. Have you got us in watch? Track this signal.”
“Got,” the comforting answer returned. “Got. We watch.”
“Out,” Pyanfar said. She broke it off, not anxious to have long conversations with kif to pick them up. The mike in hand, she tapped the harried navigator on the shoulder. “Next call: satellite to ground station Enafy region, area 34, local number 2-576-98; speak to anyone who answers.”
The navigator threw her a desperate glance, shunted her functions to the copilot and started working, no questions, no objections: “What landing?” the copilot was asking; “First we get there,” Narafy said. “Got ourselves a rescue run. Speed counts.”
“Map Coordinates 54.32/23.12,” Pyanfar said, listening to the one-sided com. They were in contact with Enafy. In a moment more the navigator held up a finger and she tucked the plug into her ear and applied herself to the mike. “Chanur,” she said, shaking; but that was from the cold. “Is Chanur answering?”
“Here,” said a voice from the world, distant and obscure by a bad pickup. “This is Chanur Holding.”
“This is Pyanfar. We’re on our way in. Who’s speaking?”
There was a moment’s silence in which she thought the contact was lost. “It’s aunt Pyanfar,” that voice on the other end hissed within the mike’s pickup. “For the gods’ sake, tell Jofan and hurry!”
“Never mind Jofan, whelp! Get Kohan on and hurry up, you hear me?”
“Aunt Pyanfar, it’s Nifas. I think ker Jofan’s coming . . . The Tahar are here; the Mahn have challenged; Kara Mahn has; and Faha’s gone neutral except Huran’s still here; and Araun and Pyruun have called that they’re coming. Everyone’s gathered here. They knew-Aunt Jofan, it’s-“
“Pyanfar.” Another voice assumed the mike. “Thank the gods. Get here.”
“Get Kohan on. Get him. I want to talk to him.”
“He’s-“ Jofan’s voice trailed off or static obscured it. “I’ll try. Hold on.”
“Holding.” Pyanfar rested the back of the hand which held the mike against her mouth, shifted her body in pain: they were under acceleration now. The rim of the pit was cutting into her back. She achieved a little relief, found all her limbs shaking against the strain, the physical effort of the position she maintained. She watched the screens, seeing something else moving on scan. Aja Jin, she hoped. It had better be.
“Pyanfar.” The deep voice, static-ridden, exploded in her ear. Kohan, beyond mistake. “Pyanfar.”
“Kohan. I’m in transit. I’m coming. How much time, Kohan?”
A long silence.
“Kohan.”
“I’ll wait till you get here. I think I can stall it that long?”
“I’m coming in on a direct landing. I want you to stay inside and hear nothing and see nothing. I have something with me. Something you’ll find of interest.” .
“This Outsider.”
“News has got there.”
“Tahar-make charges against you.”
“Already settled. Settled. You understand?”
There was another prolonged silence. “I have my wits about me. I knew you were on your way. Had to be here if this crowd showed up in such graceless haste.”
She let go a long breath. “Good. Good for you. You keep at it.”
“Where’s Hilfy?”
“Fine. Fine and safe. I’m on my way. Now. No more talking. We’ve got business. Hear?”
A breath crackled through the static. “I’ll work that Mahn whelp into a fit of his own.” It began to sound like a reassuring chuckle. “I’ll sit inside sipping gfi and enjoying the shade. -Move, Pyanfar. I want you here.”
“Out,” she said. She handed the mike back, a strain of her arm against acceleration, let the arm fall back and shivered as it sank in how long that conversation had been, how clear it was who was speaking from this shell of a ship. They were on directional to the satellite: perhaps no one had picked it up.
“Got it set up,” Narafy said.
“I’m going back to my crew,” Pyanfar said. She edged her way out of the pit, one foot against the bulkhead. “Safety line,” the captain advised her; she saw it, and tucked down, gained the braking clip on the line and wrapped her hand into it. Launched herself down the long pit of the central corridor, past moisture-dewed metal and aged plastic lighting panels, her own weight and a half on her arm. She reached the barriered recess of cushions where the others had snugged in and Haral snagged her, hauled her with difficulty over the padded safety arm which closed off the compartment, and in several hands, one pair alien, she let herself collapse into the cushions with the rest of them. “Got contact with Kohan,” she breathed, sorting her limbs out from among the rest of them. “He’s going to stall.”
Hilfy’s face. She saw that tight-lipped relief and felt a little dismay for the girl who had come onto The Pride a voyage ago j and the woman who stared back at her, self-controlled and reckoning the odds.
“Got contact with the mahe too,” Pyanfar said. “They’re with us.” She cast a look past Chur and Haral to the Llun, Ginas, who nodded, a flat-eared and anxious stare in return “You don’t,” Pyanfar said, “have to make the return trip There’s no reason for you to, ker Llun. We just get you down safe the one time, that’s all.”
“Appreciated,” the Llun said tautly.
“Captain.” Haral thrust a package of chips into her hands, and a bottle of drink. Pyanfar braced the bottle in her lap and hooked a claw into the package, hands trembling with the prolonged strain, used the claw to punch double holes on the.,; plastic bottlecap and spout. The food helped, however difficult to swallow in the acceleration stress. She offered to the others. 1
“We’ve had ours,” Chur said. Bodies squirmed down the I line, everyone settling. Tully tried to talk, hand signs and mangled words, and Hilfy and Chur communicated with him as best they could, speaking slowly, something to do with the ship and atmosphere. He was cold; they held onto him and settled finally. Pyanfar rolled a strained glance at Haral and then closed her eyes, numbed by misery.
There was no more that she could do for either situation, the one on the ground or the one on station. Kohan’s nerves would be on the ragged edge by now. This go-and-stop-again psyching for challenge would wear at him by the hour. Like nerving oneself for a jump and walking back from it. The second effort was a harder one. A from-the-heart effort. Gods knew how long the situation had been sawing at Kohan’s nerves. Months. Since the night Hilfy left. Since before that- when he saw Khym Mahn likely to fall to challenge. There was a point past which he would heave up any food he tried to eat, awake all night, wearing his strength down with pacing, with the constant adrenalin high which would wear him to skin and bone within days. Huran and some of the other mates had stayed. There were his youngest couple of sons, who had run for the borders if they had any sense, not to linger within his reach. There were a score of daughters, who might muster worth enough to see he ate and slept as much as possible approaching this time. Daughters, mates, and with the captains % in, several more half-sisters, who were most reliable of the lot. But there were grown Chanur males who might come straying back from exile to key up the situation further-returned from Hermitage, from wandering, from gods knew what occupations which filled the lives of males in the sanctuaries. Always, at challenge, there were those, hopeless, keyed up, and dangerous, hanging about the fringes.
As for young Kara Mahn, he was probably good. He had taken Khym, who had survived thus far more by wit than by strength. Kara had promised both size and intelligence, the last time she had seen him. Chanur blood, after all, Chanur temperament. She cursed her own stupidity, in seeking after a mate like Khym, a quiet and peaceful domicile, a mountain hideaway and Khym, a resting place, a garden like a dream. Khym had listened to her stories, soothed her nerves, made her laugh with his wit; an ideal mate, without threat to Chanur’s interests. But gods, she had never thought what she left behind in that place, her own Chanur-blooded offspring, larger than Khym’s daughters and sons of local wives; larger; and stronger; and-if such things could be inherited-quarrelsome and demanding.
Nothing like family loyalty. Her son yearned after his Chanur heritage so much he wanted to take it for his own.
Betterment of the species, hani philosophers had called it. Churrau hanim. The death of males was nothing, nothing but change happening: the han adjusted, and the young got sired by the survivors. One man was as good as another; and served his purpose well enough.
But by the gods it was not true; there were the young and the reckless who might, on a better opponent’s off day, win; there were challenges like the one shaping up against Chanur, which involved more than one against one.
And sometimes-gods-one loved them.
She slept somewhat, in the steady acceleration, in sensations so uncomfortable numbness was the best refuge; and in the confusion of jump and time, her body was persuaded it was offshift or perhaps the shift past that.
A new sensation brought her out of it, weightlessness and someone hauling her out of a drift as a light flashed. “About to make descent,” Haral said, and Pyanfar reached for a secure hold in preparation.
It was a rough descent: she expected nothing else. She had no idea of the shape of the lander, but it was not one of the winged, gliding shuttles. The lander hammered its way down after the manner of its kind, vibrating stress into the marrow of living bones and vibrating skin and tissues and eyes in their sockets, so that there was nothing to do but ride it down and wish desperately that there was a sight of something, something to do with the hands, some sequence which wanted thinking about and managing.
There was a time she simply shut her eyes and tried to calculate their probable position; she had, she decided, no love of riding as a passenger. Then the sound increased and the stresses changed-gods, the noise. She heard what she fervently hoped was the landing pods extending.
They were in straight descent now, a vibration of a rhythmic sort.
Touch, one pod and then the others, a jolt and a series of smaller jolts, and silence.
Pyanfar flicked her ears with the sudden feeling that she was deaf, looked about her at her shaken comrades. Down was different than before: the gimbaled passenger section had reoriented itself and the central corridor was flat and walkable. “Out,” Pyanfar said. “Let’s see where they set us down.”
Hilfy unlocked the padded safety barrier, and they went. Hydraulics operated noisily and when they had come as far as the control pit, daylight was flooding in onto the metal decking from the open lock.
The others descended. Pyanfar delayed for an instant’s courtesy, a thanks for the Rau crew who were climbing out of their pit, their ship secured. “If you come,” Pyanfar said, “well; you’re welcome in Chanur land. Or if you stay here-we’ll be bringing more passengers as quickly as we can.”
“We’ll wait,” Nerafy Rau said. “We put you close, Chanur. We’ll have the ship ready for lift; we’ll be waiting.”
“Good,” she said. That was her preference. She ducked under the conduits and swung down onto the extended ladder, scrambled down to the rocky flat where they had landed, in the generally wedge-shaped shadow of the lander. The air smelled of scorch and hot metal; the ship pinged and snapped and smoke curled up from the brush nearby.
Midday, groundtime. The shadows showed it. Pyanfar joined the others and looked where Chur pointed, to the buildings which showed on a grassy horizon: Chanur Holding; and Faha was farther still. And the mountains which hove up blue distances on their right-there lay Mahn Holding. Close indeed.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said. She had made herself dizzy with that outward gaze, and shortened her focus to the rocky stretch before her. Horizons went the wrong .way; and the colors, gods, the colors. . . . The world had a garish brightness, a plenitude of textures; and the scents of grass and dust; and the feel of the warm wind. One could get drunk on it; one had enough of it in a hurry, and the sight filled her with a moment’s irrational panic, a slipping from one reality to the other.
“Not so far,” Hilfy panted, latest from the world. “They’ll have heard that landing. He’ll know.”
“He’s got to,” Haral agreed.
So will others, Pyanfar thought, deliberately slowing her pace. Rushing up exhausted-no; that was not the wise thing to do. Tully checked his long strides as they did; the Llun who had trailed behind them caught up. Manes were windblown, Tully’s most of all. The sun beat down with a gentle heat: autumn, Pyanfar realized, looking about her at the heavy-headed grasses, the colors of the land. Insects started up in panic, settled again.
“They’ll surely send a car,” Chur said. “If they’ve spotted us.”
“Huh,” Pyanfar said; it was her own hope. But none had showed thus far, no plume of dust, nothing of the sort. “They may,” she said, “have their hands full. No good any of them leaving, not if things are heating up.”
No one answered that. It called for nothing.
She kept walking, out to the fore of the others. Familiar ground, this. She had known it as a child. They reached a brook and waded it ankle deep, came up the other side, and by now Tully was limping-“He’s cut his foot,” Chur said, supporting him while he lifted it to examine it. “You come,”
Pyanfar said unforgivingly, and he nodded, caught his breath and kept going.
Not so far now. They joined the road that led to the gates, easier going for Tully, for all of them. Pyanfar wiped her mane from her eyes and surveyed the way ahead, where the gold stone outer walls of Chanur Holding stretched across the horizon, no defense, but a barrier to garden pests and the like-the open plains lapped up against it in grassy waves. Beyond it-more buildings of the same gold stone. There would be cars . . . the airport was behind them, down the road; they would have come in from there, all the interested parties and the hangers-on, save only the adventurers from the hills, from Hermitage and sanctuaries, who would come overland and skulk about the fringes; vehicles would have driven in along this road, gone through the gates, parked on the field behind the house . . . that was where they always put visitors.
When their uncle had fallen to Kohan-
The years rolled back and forward again, a pulse like jump, leaving her as unsettled. Homeward . . . with all the mindset which took things so easily, so gods-rotted eagerly.
Nature. Nature that made males useless, too high-strung to go offworld, to hold any position of responsibility beyond the estates. Nature that robbed them of sense and stability.
Or an upbringing that did.
The grillwork gates were posted wide, flung open on a hedge of russet-leaved ernafya, musky-fragrant even in autumn, that stretched toward the inner gates and the house, an unbroken and head-high corridor. She passed the gate, looked back as the others overtook her, and in turning-
“Pyanfar.” Someone came from among the hedge, a rustling of the leaves; a male voice, deep, and she spun about, hand to her pocket, thinking of someone out of sanctuary. She stopped in mid-reach, frozen by recognition a heartbeat late-a voice she knew, a bent figure which had risen, bedraggled and disfigured.
“Khym,” she murmured. The others had stopped, a haze beyond her focus. The sight hurt: impeccable and gracious, that had been Khym; but his right ear was ripped to ribbons and his mane and beard were matted with a wound which ran from his brow to chin; his arms were laced with older wounds, his whole body a map of injuries and hurts, old and new. He sank down, squatting on the dust half within the hedge, his knees thrusting out through the rags of his breeches. He bowed his filthy head and looked up again, squinting with the swelling of his right eye.
“Tahy,” he said faintly. “She’s inside. They’ve burnt the doors down ... I waited-waited for you.”
She stared down at him, dismayed, her ears hot with the witness of her crew and of the Llun-on this wreckage which had been her mate. Who had lost that name too, when he lost Mahn to their son.
“They’ve set fires in the hall,” Khym stammered, even* his voice a shadow of itself. “Chanur’s backed inside. They’re calling on na Kohan-but he won’t come out. Faha’s left him, all but-all but ker Huran; Araun’s there, still. They’ve used guns, Pyanfar, to burn the door.”
“Kohan will come,” Pyanfar said, “now. And I’ll settle Tahy.” She shifted her weight to move, hesitated. “How did you get to Chanur? Kohan knows?”
The whole eye looked up at her; the other ran water, squinted almost shut. “Walked. Long time ago. Forget how long. Na Kohan let me ... stay. Knew I was here, but let me stay. Go on, Pyanfar. Go on. There’s no time.”
She started away, down that road which led to the house, not without looking back; and Hilfy walked beside her, and Chur and the Llun, but Tully-Tully had lingered, stared down at Khym, and Khym reached out a hand to stay him, only looking. . . .
Khym, who had delighted in the tales she brought him, of strange ports and Outsiders, and he had never seen a ship, never seen an Outsider, until now-^-
“Tully!” she called, and Haral caught him by the arm and brought him quickly. And then: “Khym-“ she called. For no reason. For shame. Kohan had been as soft . . . when Khym had strayed here in his exile, hunting some better death than strangers.
He looked up at her, a slow gathering of hope. She nodded toward the house, and he picked himself up and came after them: that much she waited to know. She turned on the instant and set a good pace down the dusty road, eyeing the hedges which followed its bending. Ambush, she thought; but that was an Outsider way, something for kif and mahe, not hani on Gathering.
Still. ...
“Scatter,” she said, with a wave of her arm to her crew. “The garden wall: get there and we’ll settle this daughter of mine. Hilfy: with Haral; Tully-Chur, you take him. Ker Llun, you and I are going through the gate.”
Ginas Llun nodded, her ears flat with distress, and while the others scattered in opposite directions through the hedge, Pyanfar thrust her hands into her belt and strode along at a good pace around the bending of the road and toward the inner gates. A step scuffed behind her, and that was Khym: she turned to look, to encourage him with a nod of her head, herself in gaudy red silk; her companion in official black; and Khym-grimy rags that might once have been blue. He came near her, beside her, limping somewhat; and gods, the waft of infection in his wounds-but he kept their pace.
They could hear it now, the murmur of voices, the occasional shout of a voice louder than the others. Pyanfar’s ears flattened and pricked up again; a surge of adrenalin hit fatigued muscles and threatened them with shivers. “It’s not challenge,” she muttered, “it’s riot.”
“Tahar’s here,” Khym said between breaths. “Na Kahi and his sisters. That’s second trouble. It’s set up, Pyanfar.”
“I can bet it is. Where’s our son’s brains?”
“Below his belt,” Khym said. And a few steps later, with the sounds of disorder clearer in the air: “Pyanfar. Get me past Tahy and her crowd and I can make a difference in this . . . take the edge off him. That much, maybe.”
She wrinkled her nose, gave him a sidelong glance. It was not strict honor, what he proposed. Neither was what Tahar intended. Their son-to end him by such a maneuver-
“If I can’t stop it,” she said, “-take him.”
Khym chuckled, a throaty rattle. “You always were an optimist.”
They rounded the last curve, the gate ahead, wide open toward the gardens, the aged trees, the vine-covered goldstone of the Holding itself. A crowd surged about the front of the house, trampling the plantings and the vines. They shouted, taunts and derision toward Chanur; they rattled the bars of the windows.
“Rot them,” Pyanfar breathed, and headed for the gate. A handful of Mahn spotted her and set up an outcry, and that was all she wanted: she yelled and bowled into them with/ Khym at her side, and the Mahn retreated for reinforcements in the garden. “Hai!” she yelled, and of a sudden there were Hilfy and Haral atop the wall, and a peppering of shots into the dirt in front of the Mahn, who scrambled for cover.
“Get the door,” Pyanfar yelled, waving at them, and they jumped and started running: more of the Mahn and some of their hangers-on were on the colonnaded porch, and of a sudden Chur and Tully were on the low garden wall which flanked that, Chur yelling as if encouraging a whole band of supporters. The Mahn darted this way and that, herdwise, and scattered from the door in the face of the three-way charge. Pyanfar raced up the steps and converged with Haral and Chur, gun in hand, burst through the doorway half a step ahead of them, into dimmer light and a chaos of bodies and the reek of smoke. It was a huge room, lit from barred windows, the wreckage of double doors at the end: hani there turned and faced their rush in a sudden paralysis, a hundred intruders who stared at leveled Chanur guns.
Some moved; young women put themselves into the fore of things. Others shifted about the fringes, carefully. Voices echoed deep within the halls. Pyanfar kept the pistol braced in her two hands, her eyes wide-focused, taking in all the movements.
That young woman-her own image, red-gold mane and stature more than her Mahn sisters: Tahy. Her focus narrowed. The young man-gods, tall and straight and broad-shouldered . . . years since she had seen them. Longer years for her planetbound daughter and son, growing-up years; and they had allies ... a score of Mahn youths, male and female; and about the walls of the room-Kahi Tahar, na Kahi, the old man, Chanur’s southern rival; and others-senior women of holds she suspected as Enaury and others of Tahar’s hangers-on, here for the scavenging.
“Out of here,” Pyanfar said. “Out of here, all of you.”
“Guns,” Tahy spat. “Is that the way of if? We have our own. Is that what you choose, while na Kohan hides from us?”
“Put them away,” Pyanfar said. She pushed the safety back on, pocketed hers. In the tail of her eye Haral did the same, and the others followed suit. “Now,” Pyanfar said. “You’re somewhat strayed from the field, son of mine. Let’s walk this back out where it belongs.”
“Here,” Kara said.
A movement in the corridor behind the Mahn: Pyanfar noted it and drew in her breath. Chanur. A good score of the house. And Kohan, a head taller than the others.
“Hold it,” Pyanfar shouted, moved suddenly to the side, distraction: the invaders shifted in confusion and hands reached for weapons, a moment’s frozen confusion and suddenly Chanur at the Mahn’s backs. The Mahn retreated in haste, backing toward the wall that had been at their left, but Tahy and her companions who thrust themselves between Kara and Kohan quick as instinct; Pyanfar dived for the other side, Haral and Chur and Hilfy moving on the same impulse, interposed themselves. She touched Kohan’s overheated arm. He was trembling. “Back,” she said. “Back off, Kohan.” And to Tahy: “Out. No one wins here. If Kohan delayed-it was my doing; and I’m here. With Ginas Llun, who’ll back up what I say. With an Outsider, who’s proof enough we’ve got trouble. We’ve got kif at the station: they’ve called the captains in ... to defend Gaohn. It’s like that up there. We can’t afford a split in the han.”
Tahy gave a negative toss of her head. “We hear a different story-all the way. No. You want to settle something on our own-we’ll oblige you. Kohan need help, that you had to drag him up out of the brush? We’ll settle that.”
“Station’s fallen,” a voice said out of Chanur ranks, and one of the captains thrust herself forward, Rhean, with crew in her wake. “Word’s on the com: they’ve called for help-it’s no lie, ker Mahn.”
Noise broke out in the room, a ripple of dismay through all those present. The Llun strode into it, neutrality abandoned. “How long ago? Chanur . . . how long?”
“Message is still going.” Kohan answered, self-controlled, though his breath was coming hard. “Kara Mahn. I forget all this. It’s over. Leave now. We’ll not talk about it.”
Kara said nothing. There was a glassy look in his eyes. His ears were back. But Tahy looked less sure of herself, motioned the others back.
“You’ve got your chance,” Pyanfar said quietly, evenly. “Listen to me: you’ve got Mahn. Tahar’s not your ally. You go on with this challenge, and Tahar’s here to take on the winner: worn down, you understand me. To take two Holdings. Their ambition’s more than yours. The Llun can tell you that-a Tahar captain, dealing with the kif-“
“Rot your impertinence,” Kahi Tahar shouted, and one of his sisters interposed an arm. “A lie,” that one said.
“Perhaps,” Pyanfar said levelly, “a misunderstanding. An . . . excess of zeal; a careless tongue. Back out of here. We may not pursue it.-Tahy . . . out of here. The Compact’s close to fracturing. It’s not the moment. Get out of here.”
“Na Mahn,” Kohan said. “It’s not to your advantage.”
“You’ll lose Mahn,” Khym said suddenly, thrusting past Hilfy. “Hear me, whelp-you’ll lose it ... to Kohan or to Kahi. Use your sense.”
Kara was past it. The eyes were wide and dark, the ears flat, nostrils wide. Of a sudden he screamed and launched himself.
And Khym did. Pyanfar flung herself about, bodily hurled herself at Kohan as her crew did, as Hilfy and Huran Faha and Rhean and her crew. He backed up, shook himself, in possession of his faculties: Pyanfar saw his eyes which were fixed on the screaming tangle behind her-herself spun about, saw Khym losing the grip that would keep Kara’s claws from his throat.
“Stop it,” she yelled at Tahy, and herself waded into it, trying to get a purchase on either struggling body, to push them apart. An elbow slammed into her head and She stumbled, hurled herself back into it, and now others were trying to part the two. “Tully!” Hilfy shouted; and suddenly a fluid spattered them, straight into Kara’s face, and over her, stinging the eyes and choking with its fumes. Kara fell back with a roar of outrage; and she did, wiping her eyes, coughing and supported by friendly hands. Chanur had hold of Tully, she saw that through streaming eyes-his arms pinned behind him, and Khym was down; and Kara was rubbing his eyes and struggling to breathe, She caught her breath, still coughing, shook off the hands which helped her, She knew the aroma; saw the small vial lying empty on the floor-the smell of flowers got past her stinging nasal membranes. “Tully,” she said, still choking, reached out a hand and pulled him to her by the back of the neck, shook him free of the Chanur who had seized him-patted his shoulder roughly and looked across at her son, whose eyes were still running water. “Break it off, na Kara. You have Mahn. Call it enough.”
“Off my land,” Kohan said. “Tahar. Be glad / don’t challenge. Get clear of Chanur Holding. Na Kara: a politer leave. Please. Priorities. I’ll not come at you now. I could. Think of that.”
Kara spat, turned, stalked out, wiping his eyes and flinging off offered help, dispossessed of his impetus, his dignity, and his advantage. Tahy remained, looked down at Khym, who had levered himself up on his elbows, head hanging. She might have flung some final insult. She bowed instead, to Pyanfar, to Kohan, last of all to Khym, who never saw it. Then she walked out, the other Mahn before her.
Tahar lingered last, na Kahi and his sisters.
“Out,” Kohan said, and the Tahar’s ears flattened. But he turned and walked out of the hall, out the door, and took his sisters and his partisans with him.
Kohan’s breath sighed out, a gusty rumble. He reached for Hilfy, laid his arm about her shoulders and ruffled her mane, touched the ring which hung on her left ear-looked at Pyanfar, and at Khym, who had struggled to his knees. Khym flinched from his stare and gathered himself up, retreated head down and slouching, without looking at him.
“Got no time,” Pyanfar said. “Well done. It was well done.”
Kohan blew a sigh, nodded, made a gesture with his free hand toward the rest. Nodded toward the door. “Ker Llun.”
“Na Chanur,” the Llun murmured. “Please. The station-“
“Going to be fighting up there?”
“No small bit,” Pyanfar said.
“You handle it?”
“Might use some of the house.”
“I’ll go,” Kohan said. “/’// go up there.”
“And leave Tahar to move in on the boys? You can’t. Give me Rhean and Anfy and their crews; whoever else can shoot. We’ve got to move.”
Kohan made a sound deep in his throat, nodded. “Rhean; Anfy; Jofan-choose from the house and hurry it.” He patted Hilfy on the shoulder, went and touched Haral and Chur in the same way-lingered staring at Tully, reached and almost touched . . . but not quite. He turned then and walked back. “Hilfy,” he said.
“My ship,” Hilfy said. “My ship, father.”
It cost him, as much as the other yielding. He nodded. Hilfy took his massive hand, turned and took the hands of Huran Faha, who nodded likewise.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said. “Come on, all of you. Move. -I’ll get her back, Kohan.”
“All of you,” he said. The others gathered themselves and headed for the door in haste, some delaying to go back after weapons. Pyanfar stayed an instant, looked at Kohan, his :eyes, his golden, shadowed eyes; his ears were pricked up, he managed that. “That matter,” she said, “this Outsider of mine-I’ll be back down to explain it. Don’t worry. Get Chanur back in order. We’ve got an edge we haven’t had before, hear me?”
“Go,” he said softly. “I’ll get it settled here. Get to it, Pyanfar.”
She came back and touched his hand, turned for the door, crossing the room in a dozen wide strides and headed off the porch, where no sign remained of the attack but the trampled garden and a passing of vehicles headed down the road beyond the wall, clearing out in haste.
And Khym. Khym was there, by the gate, crouched there with his head on his folded arms. Fresh wounds glistened on his red-brown shoulders. He survived. He went on surviving, out of his time and his reason for living.
“Khym,” she said. He looked up. She motioned toward the side of the house, that pathway which the others had taken to the back, where they could find transport. He stood up and came, limping in the first steps and then not limping at all. “I’m filthy,” he said. “No polite company.”
She wiped her beard and smelled her hand, sneezed. “Gods, I reek for both of us.”
“What is he?”
“Our Outsider? Human. Something like.”
“Huh,” Khym said. He was panting, out of breath, and the limp was back. They came along the side of the house, down the path by the trees at the back, and latecomers from the house reached them and fell in at their pace, carrying rifles. Khym looked back nervously. “It’s all right,” Pyanfar said. “You want to go, Khym? Want to have a look at station?”
“Yes,” he said.
They reached the bottom of the hill, where Haral and Chur had started up two of the trucks, where a great number from Chanur were boarding, a good thirty, forty of them, besides those ten or so behind. Tully was by the side of one, with Hilfy. Pyanfar reached and cuffed Tully’s arm. “Good,” she said. “Up, Tully.”
He scrambled up into the bed, surprisingly agile for clawless fingers. Hilfy came up after him, and Khym vaulted up with a weight that made the truck rock. Others followed.
Pyanfar went around to the cab, climbed in. “Go,” she said to Haral, and the truck lurched into motion, around the curve and onto the road, toward the outer gates, flinging up a cloud of dust as they careened between the hedges, jolting into near-collision with the far post of the outer gate before they headed off across the field on the direct course toward the waiting ship.
Gods help us, Pyanfar thought, looking back at the assortment which filled the bed of the truck, young and old Chanur, armed with rifles; and a one-time lord; and Tully; and the Llun, who had decided to come back with them after all.
The ships had gotten off station to keep the kif there, and the kif were still there, indeed they were; were running the halls of station-kif loose with revenge in mind, a hakkikt who might see his own survival doubtful and revenge very much worth having.
She faced about again, feet braced against the jolts as the truck lurched over uneven ground. Haral fought the wheel with desperate turns and reverses, following the track they had walked now, the beaten line of their own prints in the tall grass, where there would be fewer hidden pits and hummocks.
“Hope Aja Jin’s still in place,” Haral muttered.
“Hope Hinukku and the rest are,” Pyanfar said, bracing her hand against the dash. “If we’ve got more kif than we had-if they’ve gotten a call out for reinforcements. ...”
“Lagtime’s on our side.”
“Something had better be,” Pyanfar said. “Gods, for a com.”
Haral shook her head and gave all her strength to the wheel, slowed as they jolted toward the slope of the stream. The truck lumbered its way over the grassy bank, clawed its way over muddy bottom and rocks, slewed about and found purchase on the other bank, headed up again, with the ungainly wedge that was Rau’s Luck growing closer and closer.
A light was flashing, sun-bright against the ship. Pyanfar pointed to it, and Haral nodded. The Rau saw them coming. Running lights began to flash, red and white, blink code.
It was the message they already had. Haral flashed the headlights, a desperate snatch back at the wheel.
Planetary speeds. In the time it had taken them to get this far from the house, a jumpship could cross an interworld distance. And perhaps some were doing that. The han was intact, the structure of Holdings which could decide policies; but the loss of Gaohn Station-
She cursed herself, to have assumed any revenge would be too great for Akukkakk’s pride; to strike at stations-he had done that; no one struck at worlds, not in the whole history of the civilized powers.
Except the kif... it was rumored that they had done so, in their own rise off their native world, in the contests for power. They had once struck at their own.
The engines put on thrust, a hollow roar of the downworld jets, and the Luck lifted. Pyanfar dropped into the rear of the dark control pit as the deck came up, hit heavily and crouching and tucked down, straightening the blanket and pillow she had gotten to pad her back in that nook, on the pit floor behind the Rau’s three cushions. The captain lifted her hand, signal that her presence was noted, and reached at once back to the board in front of her. The Luck went on rising; the gear thumped up into the housings and the pressure mounted. Pyanfar discovered a pain in her shoulder and struggled a little against the blanket to relieve it.
Not so steep a lift compared to the angle at which they had landed: the lander flew, of sorts, vertical lift at first, and then an angled flight which still had aft for downside, g-wise. The primaries cut in with a thrust which settled all her gut differentially toward her spine.
Some of their company were well off, aft, in the padded passenger shell: Tully and Khym and Ginas Llun were settled there, in thick cushions; and Haral, to keep them company and settle problems. The unlucky rest rode the boards, tilting cushioned partitions expanded from the next bulkhead-blind, dark misery, packed in like fish, four across, the back of the next cushion tilting back and forth almost in one’s face . . . gods, gods, to ride like that with the ship going into trouble aloft-she felt guilt for being where she was, in what relative comfort she had.
The copilot let an object fall to her. She reached with difficulty and gathered the plastic-wrapped article from the angle of the pit where it stayed fast, unwrapped the earplug and thrust it in. No information was coming in during their ascent, only static, but having the contact helped.
Station had gotten that one message off, had still been sending it out when ascent began, which meant that the station central command had been in hani control and that stationers had their hands full, sparing no one to answer questions. It kept going, meaning that the kif had not gotten to it to silence it-or that they had had no critical interest in doing so.
But the docks-She pictured the workers fled in panic, disorganized, having no preparation against such an action as the kif had taken. Attacking stations was not a thing hani would do; therefore it was not reasonable; therefore there was no contingency.
Gods blast such thinking, and the complacency which fed it. Gods blast her own; and hani nature, that they ran each for their own fragmented concerns, because all the world was set up that way. She had had no choice in going home to Chanur, because a hani would go on with challenge while the house caught fire, until the fire singed his own hide. Hani always went their own way, disdaining Outside concerns, pricklish about admitting they would not be in space at all but for the mahendo’sat explorers who had found them-but that was so. And hani went on doing things the old way, the way that had worked when there were no colonies and no outside trade; when hani were the unchallenged owners of the world and hani instincts were suited to the world they owned.
But, gods, there were other ecosystems. They had another one going, in the Compact itself; and they dealt with distances wider than the grassy expanses of Anuurn’s plains; and with creatures of instincts which had proven equally capable of being right in other ways.
In one unimagined hell, the kif way had worked best; and gods, even the chi way had worked somewhere, lunatic as they seemed, incomprehensible to Outsiders. And Tully-who sometimes made half sense, and at other times made none at all.
Had Goldtooth despised her for her desertion, because being hani she had had no choice but to go, in the face of every reason to the contrary? Shame pricked at her, the suspicion that all hani-kind had failed a mahen hope, that hope which had lent those two ships; and that somewhere up above might be the wreckage of her mahen allies and The Pride itself, with a kif waiting to blow this shell of a lander to vapor and junk, along with the hani brain who had just figured out something critical to the species, far too late.
Madness. The angle had her brain short of oxygen. There was a grayness about her vision. She felt nothing any longer in her backside and her arms and her legs, and the pressure kept j on building.
Engine sound changed. They were leaving the-envelope of I air, still accelerating. She blinked and struggled to move her neck, saw through a blur telltales winking in the darkness, saw j a flare of light as the scan screen cleared. She blinked again, trying to see past the silhouetted arm of the copilot, making out something large and close to their position.
“... Luck,” a voice snapped through the plug into her ear, I “this is The Pride of Chanur. We’ll match with you and lock on.”
Tirun.
If she could have leaped up and shouted for joy she would I have done so. Pinned by the g force, it was all she could do to smile, a strained and difficult smile, with her heart hammering against her ribs and the blood bringing pain to her extremities.
Then the Luck’s engines stopped, and she gasped a reflexive breath in the sudden relief. The invisible hand which had pressed her to the deck was gone, and she reached in a practiced hand-over-hand to the com board, drifting feet toward the overhead and tucking down again to reach the mike. “Hurry it, Tirun, for the gods’ sake. And to the Rau: “Where are the kif? Can you pick them up?”
“Station’s scan’s off,” the Rau navigator said. “Not just Gaohn’s: Harn and Tyo too, completely down. We’ve got our own, that’s all.”
“Put on the rescue beeper,” Pyanfar said, thrusting that dire news to a far recess of her mind. “The Pride can home on it. Let her automatics take you.”
“Advice,” the captain said. “Your job now, her Chanur. Gods help us, we’re stone blind to any jumpships moving out there.”
“Keep her trimmed and constant and watch out for the shock.” Pyanfar aimed herself back to the shelter of her padded nest in haste. “Those grapples will do the fine matching, don’t try the jets. She’s moving under comp.”
“Gods, it’s on us,” the copilot said.
“Closing,” Geran’s voice sounded through the com plug. “Stand by, Luck.”
A proximity alarm started, quickly silenced from the board. Scan broke up.
“O gods,” said the navigator.
Pyanfar tucked, clenching the cushion support with all her strength.
Impact. The Luck rang and leapt and her body left the deck, grip scarcely holding; hit it again, shoved back as the grapples grated, shifted.
Held. There was a comforting silence. Weightlessness.
“Got trouble,” Tirun’s voice said. “Blow that lock out; we’ve got a tube the other side. For the gods’ sake board, abandon ship. We can’t defend you.”
“Haral!” Pyanfar yelled down the core corridor. “Everyone! get forward!”
“Captain,” Nerafy Rau said.
“Come on,” Pyanfar said, hauled herself to the captain’s cushion and hung there one-handed, staring down at her. “All of you . . . gods, come with us. We’ll get you back to your ship if there’s a chance of it. If not that, there’s kif to settle with, and those people on the stations-will you die here with no shot fired?”
“No,” the Rau captain said, and started unbuckling. The others did. Pyanfar completed the somersault and looked aft down the corridor, at a white-shirted human sailing up it narrowly in advance of a flood of armed hani. The Rau captain handed her way up from the pit and headed for the nearby lock and Pyanfar grabbed for the board and the mike as the crew left it. “Tirun! Where are the kif?”
“Gods know. Mahijiru’s running far-guard; tell you the rest when you get here.”
The bodies of her companions tumbled about her. The lock powered inward and airshock rammed through in a cold gust. “Coming,” Pyanfar said, and let the mike go, kicked at the nearest conduit and flung herself into the stream of bodies, into the dark and numbing cold of The Pride’s ship-to-ship grapple-tube. Extremities went numb. Breath stung in the lungs and moisture threatened to freeze her eyeballs. It hurt, gods, it hurt. A light glowed green as she arrived in The Pride’s null-g outer frame, a safety beacon, a guidance star far across the dark, marking the location of the personnel lift. A blue chain of glowlights dotted across the blackness toward it, the safety line. “Khym!” Pyanfar shouted, thinking of his inexperience, “blue’s the guideline, Khym . . . Tully! go to the blue lights!”
“Got him,” Hilfy’s young voice shouted up ahead. “Got them both.”
A door opened onto the lift. Someone had gotten to it. A distant rectangle opened, blinding white, with a score of dark bodies hurtling and struggling along the blue dotted course toward it, large and small with distance, some like swimmers in the air, some using the rope and propelling the swimmers along. Bodies collided and caught each other and kept going, one after the other, into that lift chamber, where they took on color and identity. Pyanfar found herself slung along the final distance, hauled into the lift; and among the last came the Rau, into that blinding glare.
“We’re in,” Chur was shouting into com. Haral shouted a warning and closed the lift door, and suddenly all the floating bodies tended floorward as the car moved. “Brace!” Pyanfar snapped at the novices, but experienced spacers grabbed them, and of a sudden the car thundered and slammed into synch with the rotating inner cylinder. There was full g, and the lift slammed upward again, with a queasy rear-of-the-car acceleration stress as The Pride put on a gingerly movement. Something banged in the distance.-“Grapple’s clear,” Haral said. The lift went on rising, past lowerdeck, to main. Feet found the floor; bedraggled groundlings hugged those who had a hold on them, ears flat and eyes wild.
The car stopped and opened on main. Pyanfar thrust herself through and out, raced down the main corridor for the archway of the bridge, claws scrabbling on the decking against the gentle thrust. Haral was hard on her heels. “Lowerdeck,” Chur shouted behind them. “Ride it back down where there’s secure space.” The door closed; the lift hummed into function again. Pyanfar did not look back. She hurled herself the last difficult distance, past Geran and Tirun at the number three and two posts as Haral found her place and slid into it. Pyanfar reached her own vacant cushion and flung herself into it without a word. Scan images were coming up on her screens, their position relative to the world and the station-a dot that was knnn-symboled, hovering off apart from the chaos of other dots, two marked mahe, and the horrid hazard near the station, a horde of unidentifieds, debris sweeps that marked the death of ships and the course of their remains.
“Aja Jin took damage,” Tirun said steadily. “Kif invaded traffic control on the station and knocked the scan out. Llun had their hands full; everyone was boarding any ship at all. We broke out of dock and ran with the rest . . . figured they were screening incoming ships. Strike came in three quarters of an hour ago. Outbound now. We’re headed back in to station, present course: Fortune got a landing party in. Several others got in after them. Proceed?”
“Keep talking. Go as we bear.” She reached and hit the motion warning. “We’re moving,” she said over allship. “Brace; I’m going to keep the com open from our end. We’ve got troubles and I don’t want any stirring about down there.-Tirun, what’s the comp on that kif movement? Got a course plotting?”
The data flashed to the screen. “All stations have killed scan output. Some of the kif are out of dock but we don’t know which. Only good thing in it, with station’s scan stopped a good bit before the strike, they had only our last-known position to go on and the attack missed most of us. Aja Jin got it, being posted stationary; at least one freighter was hit and we think some of the kif, but we don’t know who got hit, because no one’s outputting much chatter and a lot of the freighters are scan-blanked and hiding. I figure they’ll go for the fixed targets on the next pass-the station, Aja Jin’s last position ...”
“Anuurn, maybe.”
Tirun threw her an ears-flat look.
“You’ve got it going,” Pyanfar said. “I’ll go with it. Give me the rest of your reckoning. Where do you reckon Akukkakk is?”
“I think he was one that got off station; and he can’t have boosted fast enough to have run with the strikers. I figure he’s one of those ships out there, quiet like all the rest of them. And we find out just which one he is when that strike force comes sweeping back in.”
Pyanfar nodded. To take the maneuver they had handed him-the undocking of the freighters-and to turn it to his own advantage . . . that was very probable. That was Akukkakk’s style, for which she had begun to acquire a sense: a pattern of movements, a tendency to up the stakes when challenged.
“He’s going to go on sending them in against the station,” she judged, “hammer it into junk. That, for a lesson for us. But he knows rotted well which one we are, cousins: we’re all too conspicuous, and I’ve a notion which way he’ll go when he can-even odds between us and Mahijiru. And since Mahijiru’s got Jik by him ...” She cast a glance at scan, where the mahe rode as a double blip hard by the kif position at station. “They’ll be overriding their own scan, that strike force, but Akukkakk’s going to have a good identified image for them. Gods rot him.”
“We drop our people at station,” Haral said from the fourth cushion, “and pull a tight turn, maybe; go sort that crowd out.”
“Got to do something, that’s sure.-Tirun: to you.” She shunted back what activity her board had received. “Take us in. I’m going to talk to the others.-Going to need all the rest of you up here. Stay put, Haral.”
“Right,” Haral muttered.
Pyanfar turned the cushion, slid out of it, headed out of the bridge at a dead run into the direction of thrust, digging in for traction. She skidded to a collision with the wall at the lift, hit the call button and caught her breath while it came.
It arrived; she stepped in and waited while it sped her to the lowerdeck, tremors in her muscles, a tendency to shiver in what ought not to be a chill.
Lowerdeck main corridor. She found the Chanur gathered there, braced sitting in the passage, rifles in laps, the best security they could find near their exit. They scrambled up as she came . . . and there was Chur among them, and Khym; and Tully, with Hilfy; and the Llun and the Chanur captains and their crews. She went among them, caught Chur’s arm and looked at the others. “You’ve understood?”
“Understood,” Rhean Chanur said. “We try to get the stationers rounded up and if we have to ride through another strike-we get to core and try to wait your pickup after it’s past. Gods help us.”
“The Pride will be back, Rhean; that’s your ship that forced the breach: your crew, gods look on them. I don’t know what damage she may have taken: you’d better plan for any pickup that comes for you.-Anfy: same goes; any ship. Got in-systemers filling jumpship posts, anything we can get. Gods know who’s where.-The rest of you: if you use those guns, you pair up with the crews and give backup fire. Hit the wrong target and you’ll kill your own allies, hear? Or blow a seal; keep your wits straight and know what’s behind what you’re shooting at. You go shooting on a station, hear me, you put your shots on the decking and work up their legs.”
Young ears lowered in distress; eyes stared, black-centered. Hilfy’s look was something else again, ears pricked, sober. Pyanfar stared at her, at once pleased and heartsick. No way to pull her out of it. No need. Those who went onto station and those who stayed with The Pride were in equal danger. Maybe more, for them on the ship. Akukkakk would see to it, given the chance.
“Approaching dock.” com said. “Stand by for braking.”
“We’ll not waste time,” Pyanfar said quietly, to those about her. “Chur; Hilfy; you’re all The Pride can send: do it right and get back; all of you-Khym ... go with my crew, hear?”
He nodded. There was a pricklishness in the air. No one else would have been glad to take him. In Chur’s and Hilfy’s eyes there was no flinching. He glanced toward them and the remnant of his ears lifted in the look they gave him.
For her sake, she thought. Gods help them-if he got one of them killed, rushing into something blind-crazy.
Braking started. They braced against the corridor wall-hard thrust, and miserable for the approach. Pyanfar shut her eyes a moment, slid down to a crouch with the rest of them, content for the moment to be where she was and wishing to all the gods she could go with them.
Tully-squatted down close to Hilfy; Pyanfar turned her head, tightened her mouth in consideration. That was the one who might bolt. That was the one, deaf to instructions, crazy with anger. Khym crouched farther down, shamed, she knew, by his condition; by the distrust about him, the expectation that he would be more danger than help to his own side, prone to take his own way, prone to male temper and instability- Khym, who had saved all their necks and given them the chance to get aloft in time. Like Kohan, fretting in agony downworld, because he was trapped in Chanur Holding; and gods, he had won.
They lost g, made the shifts, such that bodies leaned against one another in the nudgings of the docking jets, and those who had a hold braced those who did not.
Contact. The last direction of g confirmed itself and the grapples clanged home, the access thumped into position. “Got contact with a hani force out there,” Geran said. “You’ve got a clear exit.-Luck to you.”
“Have some yourself,” Chur called up at the com. “Hai, up there,” Hilfy shouted, and the lot of them scrambled up in readiness to rush to the lock.
Pyanfar rose with the rest of them. ‘”Tully,” she said, and beckoned him. His face which had been eager took on an apprehension of what she wanted; she beckoned a second time, with the Chanur forces beginning to head down the corridor toward the lock, and when he did not come she went after him and took him by the arm, while Chur and Hilfy delayed.
“Go,” Pyanfar said to the two. “Take care.”
They went, in orderly haste, with the others, down the corridor toward the lock. Pyanfar laid her ears back, felt Tully pull at her hand.
“Ask,” he said. “Fight them, Pyanfar.”
“No,” she said. “You can’t hear orders out there, understand? Come with me. Come up to the bridge.”
If his pathetic small ears could have moved they would have lain down, she thought; it was that kind of look. “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “Understand.”
The lock opened and shut again shortly after. “Coming up,” she called to the open com. “Easy on the undocking.”
Tully came with her, running beside her. She got him into the lift and he leaned against the wall with his eyes on hers, with pain in those eyes, like Kohan’s pain-shadowed eyes, his bright mane tangled, his whole body shrunken with exhaustion and unhappiness.
“We go,” she said as the lift opened onto the bridgeward corridor. “We get the kif, friend, find Akukkakk and settle a score, ship and ship.”
“There?” He made a wide gesture, infinity.
“This system. All too close.” She strode through the archway onto the bridge, grabbed Tully’s arm and thrust him for the auxiliary seat next Haral’s post, none so safe there, but nothing was. She slid into her own well-worn cushion and fastened the restraints while Tirun ungrappled; took the controls as The Pride acquired her own g, sent them out narrower than she would have cut it with station authorities in a position to protest.
“Situation as-was?” she asked Tirun.
“Figure we’ve got a little under a half hour on that strike,” Tirun said.
“Haral: to all ships; got kif among us; broadcast ID’s, now-house and origin-and get our own signal going.”
“Right.” She put them over station. Vid showed the two mahe ships clear enough, a scattering of ships which had never made it away from dock, some wrecked, some trailing debris that streamed in the station’s rotation.
Kif ships, three of them, still at dock, with their tails singed: Mahijiru had done that much.
From the mahe . . . nothing, neither signal nor output. But they started to move, one after the other.
“We’ve stirred something,” she said. “Our friends have some notion they’re not talking about.”
“Getting ID input,” Geran said. “
Scan started acquiring data, positive ID’s on hani ships. The knnn zigged and darted at some velocity, throwing off small ghosts that indicated boosts. Pyanfar ran her tongue over her teeth, refusing that distraction, watching the pattern of those ships as yet unidentified, as more and more identifications came in and The Pride increased her own speed. Another ship was moving in on dock, and another one behind, insystem haulers, at a standstill compared to their own building velocity. Ships were moving in random directions, not to be caught when the strike came in-at least that was their hope.
“Rot them!” Haral exclaimed. “Crippled even-look at that speed.”
Jik, Haral meant. Aja Jin trailed debris; but the two mahe kept accelerating with no apparent impairment . . . straight into the thickest concentration of ships.
She eased up, shut down altogether. The mahe had given up flexibility, launched themselves into the heart of things, deliberate and less and less able to veer off and handle a turn. “Maintain our options,” she said quietly.
Suddenly a freighter designated hani blossomed into chaff.
“Captain,” Tirun said. Three unidentifieds in the vicinity acquired the enemy designation. Mahijiru and Aja Jin swept toward the group.
“Keep out of our way, rot you,” Pyanfar muttered. Haral was on com, advising all ships in the area to head off the kif movement.
“Going to have the mahe in line of fire if they do a straight turnover,” Geran said. “Fire headon-“
“Going to let the kif pass our zenith,” Pyanfar said grimly. “That’s our best side anyway.”
“I’ve got it,” Tirun advised her, throwing the safety off the armaments of the upper frame.
“Knnn’s coming up,” Geran said sharply, and the proximity alarm beeped as the high-velocity ship ripped from tail to bow, nadir, gone into the developing mahe/kif confrontation so fast scan developed them a line of likely course.
“Mahijiru’s compliments.” Haral relayed.
Scan showed debris, hani, mahe, or kif was uncertain: positions were too close. Dots coincided and split as the kif moved toward them. Someone was hit; and suddenly the fight was headed The Pride’s way.
“Akukkakk’s there,” Pyanfar said, beyond doubt what kif would rate The Pride his prime target, disregarding the mahe who had just attacked.
“Two ship now,” Tully exclaimed. Scan showed the mahe still paired, no longer accelerating and probably braking for their return; showed hani moving on the kif from points of the sphere; and two active kif ships. The third was involved with a debris-track, near the knnn’s erratic blip. “That kif they get.”
“This pair we got,” Tirun muttered. The double image was closing with them, less and less interval, with their own impetus added to the kif s oncoming velocity. The knnn was on the return now, streaking out of the vicinity of the debris-track. Mahijiru and Aja Jin were farther and farther away, obliged to lose velocity before they could make way on the kif s heading, too close to traffic for jump pulses to assist.
“Which one?” Tirun asked.
“Take the best target,” Pyanfar said. “I can’t tell.” Hani jumpships were on the near-scan now, several of them, hammering toward intercept with the kif, but not in time for The Pride, No place for a freighter, a race with the swift hunter-ships, even cargo-dumped. No way to win.
“Now!”
The kif ripped past them, zenith, and they fired. Screens broke up. Explosion slammed The Pride askew and red-lighted the boards. Pyanfar reached in an adrenalin timestretch, fought the pitch and wobble. In the screen’s clearing a new rapid image bore down on them, a high knnn wail in com.
It went past them, zenith. Pyanfar spun The Pride one hundred eighty degrees in a tail roll, anticipating a kif turnover and return pass, hoping to get a shot off. Mahijiru and Aja Jin would come; were coming; might get back in time. The Pride fired back as the guns came in line: the kif had proceeded into turnover as their respective momentum separated them, and fire came back, broke up screens, red-lighted remaining clear boards.
“Got one,” Geran yelled. “Look at that bastard wobble. By the gods we got him!”
Fire from the other kept up. The interval was still increasing between them, but at a slower rate. It would be coming back . . . soon.
“Goldtooth,” Pyanfar said, punching in the com, “rot you, hurry it a bit, someone out there hurry it.”
The knnn was pulling about in a tight turn, one of those maneuvers a knnn could survive and hani could not. It zigged into the interval, into the line of fire.
“Good job,” Goldtooth’s voice reached The Pride. “Got-“
Com broke up. Scan suddenly went berserk, all the sensors blind . . .
. . . jump field. Gods, a jump field-in crowded space.
“Captain!” Tirun yelled, far away and suddenly close as the field let them go. Tully cried out, a miserable wail.
Something was there-where nothing had been; a massive presence, a vast blip on scan as it cleared, a monster located to starboard zenith. They were off their heading, displaced. Everyone was. Comp was flickering wildly trying to compensate. Pyanfar keyed into the system, trying to get sense out of it. Gods, the newcomer was huge. Scan had the other blips, that were the kif and the mahe and the hani and the solitary knnn-
“Captain.” Haral’s voice. Corn went on broadcast again, a wailing chorus which overburdened the audio, noise vibrating above and below hearing, wounding the ears.
The huge blip broke apart, fragmented, not debris, but discrete parts of which one stayed central and the rest sped outward.
“Knnn,” Pyanfar breathed. “Traveling in synch. Gods help us all.”
“Hani-“ Com crackled through the static, a familiar, kifish voice. “Pyanfar Chanur-“
The knnn ships moved together, a cloud of them, headed for the kif; and all at once the kif s outgoing velocity began to show increase-Akukkakk had way and he was throwing everything he had into it. Retreating. Unable to boost up: the knnn were too close, and closer yet.
The solitary knnn ship zigged and darted and joined the chase.
“Chanur!” Goldtooth said.
Pyanfar watched the screens, frozen in place. Hani voices came over com, panicked, questioning. The chase on scan gathered more and more velocity.
Of a sudden came another output, a signal which made no sense to comp: scan started blinking on the ship-sized object the knnn had left behind, asking operator intervention.
An alien voice came over com, Tully-like and frightened.
Pyanfar cast a glance at Tully, who clung sweating and jump-shocked to the edge of the com counter, whose eyes stared wildly as the voice kept going.
“## ship,” translator rendered the transmission from the newcomer. “## ship ## you.”
“Com!” Pyanfar yelled at Haral and got it. Her heart pounded against her ribs. “This is the hani ship The Pride of Chanur. You’re in hani space. Friend, hear?”
“Captain,” Tirun cried, “Captain, the knnn-“
The translator response droned in her ears. Pyanfar stared at the screen, at a narrower and narrower gap between the knnn and the fleeing kif. “Tully,” she said without looking around. “Haral-give him com. Give it to him.”
The translator voice went out, cut. She flung an instant’s look back, at Tully, who had gotten himself together, who had the mike in hand and talked a wild-eyed rapid patter at these creatures who had arrived in knnn synch, in a ship which had come in hauled like so much freight, unable to communicate with the knnn-
“Captain-“
She looked about again. Knnn closed with Hinukku, surrounded the kif, became one mass about it, as they had been massed about the Outsider ship at its arrival.
“Gods,” Tirun muttered.
“They’re trading,” Pyanfar said incredulously. “Like at Kirdu-gods, they’re making a trade. An Outsider ship-for Hinukku. For Akukkakk.”
“Pyanfar!” Goldtooth’s voice came over com. “You got sense these bastard?”
“Human ship,” Pyanfar said, punching in her still-active link. “The knnn just dropped a live cargo on us. Tully’s kind.-They’re still going, by the gods, the knnn are still going, outbound.”
“Kif ship leave station,” Jik cut in. “He go.”
A solitary kif, of the crippled three at station ... it was so: a lame kif without a tail, headed out on the course of the other lame kif, inching his way into retreat. “Right down the incoming strike track, that’s their course,” Pyanfar said, fairly shaking with excitement. “By the great and lesser gods, they’re pulling out, they’re going to run.”
There was a sudden and major vacancy on scan, the characteristic scatter-ghost of a ship departed into jump-where the mass of knnn had been, enveloping Hinukku. A vast ghost, a ripple in space-time; and hard after it-a smaller ghost, their own knnn. Vanished.
The two remaining kif kept going, realspace and realtime, headed for the far dark and sending out a steady signal, telling of disaster.
Running for their lives.
“We got,” Goldtooth said. “Got, Pyanfar.”
“Got.-Gods know what we’ve got.” She heard Tully still chattering back and forth with the newcomer, heard lilts and tones in his speech she had never heard. She looked back at him, who had all but usurped Haral’s com board. He saw her. His face was wet. “Friend,” he said to her in her own language. “All friend.”
Gods knew what there was to say to the newcomers that the translator could convey without foulup. Gods knew how to cope with a dozen other Tullys equally confused and upset as he had been in his arrival.
“They come,” she said slowly, distinctly. “Tell them they come to station.”
“Come, yes.”
She spun about again, toward the screens, started putting on thrust for a stationward course. Other ships were proceeding on that heading, the hani jumpships who had never slackened speed; hani who had kin on station; hani who had crew from station or who had dropped landing parties on the docks to try to assist the Llun.
Anything might be happening there, even now, with kif elsewhere in rout.
A hundred Outsiders plated in gold could not have interested her at the moment.
“Captain-“ Geran said; and of a sudden new data came up on the screens, and a familiar steady signal came over audio. “Station’s broadcasting again, captain.”
She heard the mahe advise them of the obvious, heard the alien chatter from the Outsider, who must have picked it up, and the voices of hani sending anxious queries to station.
“Station is entirely secure,” the answer came back. “This is Kifas Llun speaking; resistance has ended and the station is entirely secure.”
Pyanfar kept up the thrust, reckless of the lights which advised of damage. That rotted number one vane was hit again; gods knew what else was gone, but the fine control was still there; and likewise their ability to brake: no limping in; no lanes established yet: they were all see-and-avoid.
Other signals came in. Harn Station was back on output; and then Tyo, reporting minor damage, minor casualties.
Hilfy, Pyanfar kept thinking; and Chur.
And Khym: at the bottom of her thoughts, Khym, for whom she had no hope.
But that was what he had come looking for, after all.
A sweat prickled on her nose. Breath came hard under the acceleration. The mahe traveled with them, and for its own reasons and in its own purpose, the Outsider ship came, outstripping slower insystem haulers for whom that voyage was the work of hours.
By the time they could get there, Gaohn Station might have some reckoning of the casualties.
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 eve1- 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 hi1 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, with’ drawn 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.