Chanur's Homecoming (13 page)

"Tully say this?"

"By bits and pieces. Yes. That's what he's told me. We've just got the tail of the creature. When it turns around-"

"God."

"If you and your earless Personage had told the same truth twice in a day we might not be in this mess. You understand me?"

"If we not got damn hani traitor, if we not got the han screw up-we both got damn fools, Pyanfar, both kind. We got be fools too? Let me go. You got one of you crew sick. You want damn good pilot, you want me sit boards, you got. You want chain me to damn chair, you got. Pyanfar. I don't want lie down here in dark!"

She stood there on yea and nay, reached as far as the release and took her hand back. "Agreement?"

"You got."

She pulled the first release; and the second.

And stood there remembering the power there was in a mahen arm. And the wit there was in this mahendo'sat, and all his twists and turns: make a simple move against her he would not-until it was profitable.

Fool, a small voice said, while Jik slowly lifted his hands to his face and wiped the sweat, while he groped for the edge of the table and gave every indication of weakness and disorientation. He looked apt to pitch onto his face. She made a grab for him and steadied him as he got his feet over the edge and sat there blinking and grimacing as if his head hurt considerably. He put a hand up to his brow, wiped his eyes and looked at her.

As well admit Skkukuk to the bridge during jump. Much rather admit Skkukuk-who was on their side.

Of all the things I've done, she thought to herself, staring into Jik's alien eyes, this is the one I'll deserve to die for. I know I'm making a mistake. I'm wrong. I'm going to foul up and the kif'll launch that ship, that ship no one can stop and no one can catch, and there won't be hani left except those of us who happen to be in space, that the kif will hunt down one by one. All because there's this chance that we need him, and Tully, and that gods-be kif who thinks I'm his ticket to kifish glory; because I'm an old fool of a hani who's been out in the dark too long and I can't shake if off and think clear of it any longer.

"Pyanfar," he said gently, "you be damn bastard."

"Got you out, didn't I?"

"You got."

"You know you're not sitting a post on this ship."

"What you want?" He held out his hands together. "Chain to chair? Do! I want be on bridge. Want talk to my ship. Want hear my ship."

"Hear them, I'll give you."

Fool, Pyanfar. This isn't Anuurn. He isn't hani. Parole means nothing to him weighed against his orders.

And how do I treat him like this and trust him again, ever?

"Agreement, Jik. You put this one in my hands. You stay on the bridge, but you keep your mouth shut and you keep your hands off controls."

He turned his hands, showed blunt mahen claws which nature had never made retractable, or fine enough for the smaller controls on hani boards; and they were broken and bloody, the fingertips swollen and coated with plasm from Tirun's caretaking: it was sure the kif had done no good for them.

She felt a cold shiver inside, a sympathetic twitch of her own claws in their retractile sheaths. But she set her face all the same. "Is that all the answer I get? Or do you give me those codewords and give us some honest help?"

He looked at her straight from under his dark brow, a hard glitter in his eyes. "I do, Pyanfar. Now you got believe what I say, a?"

Chapter Four

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We not want lose you," Jik said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a contradictory one with her.

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

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

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

"Me and Sikkukkut."

"I keep best agreement."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even if it was always to bet them again.

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

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

"We got Jik out," Geran said.

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

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

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

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

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

"Lie down. You want mine up?"

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

"Hey." Geran took her by the shoulder.