Chanur's Homecoming (2 page)

Pyanfar was not her usual meticulous self-rough blue spacer-breeches instead of the bright red silk she favored, and not a single one of the bracelets and other gold jewelry she usually wore, just the handful of spacer rings up the sweep of her tuft-tipped ears. Her best pair of red silk breeches had gone for rags, perished of the same calamity which had stiffened her joints, left several knots on her maned skull, and made small puncture wounds all over her red-brown hide, Her niece's deft fingers had tweezed out the metal splinters down in sickbay, with the help of the magnetic scanner, and patched the worst cuts with plasm and sticking-plaster. Haral, her second-in-command, had suffered the same, and limped about her duties on the bridge, running printouts and sitting watch in her turn, while the rest of the crew was in scarcely better shape, hides patched, manes and beards singed, with bandages here and there about their persons. That had been a memorable fight on the docks, indeed a memorable fracas;
 
but Pyanfar could have recalled it with more pleasure if it had come to better success.

Scritch-scratch. Another note went down on the well-worn starchart. She studied it and restudied it, gnawed her mustaches and refigured, though all but the finest decimal exactitudes of current star-distances were in her memory. There were surely answers in that map; and she racked her wits to find them, to discover what the opposition planned and what her allies (treacherous though they be) might be figuring to do, and to juggle all the variables at once. The answer was there, patently there, in the possibilities of that starmap and in the self-interests of eight separate and polylogical species.

Knowing all the options, all those self-interests, and all the capabilities of the ships involved, a hani merchant might conceivably manage to think of something clever. She needed something clever. Desperately.

She sat at Kefk, inside kifish space where no hani of right mind would ever consent to be, allied to kif no hani in her right mind would ever trust; she sat in the same space station with nervous methane-breathers (tc'a and chi) who had lately been raided (reprimanded? attacked? congratulated?) by an intruding knnn ship, which had carried off a tc'a vessel. Gods knew what was in the tc'a's multipartite minds; the chi had no minds that any oxy breather had ever proved; and as for the knnn, no one had any least idea what they were up to. Wherever those black hair-snarls on thin black legs intruded their influence (and the power of their strange ships), things bent. Fast. But the knnn had withdrawn and Kefk occupied itself with its own affairs, like repair of its fire-ravaged docks and placating its new master, the hakkikt Sikkukkut, whose ships now numbered thirty-two (the count was rising). It occupied itself with the hani pirate Dur Tahar, lately at liberty by the hakkikt's grace; with the mahen hunter-ship Aja Jin, lately outside the hakkikt's good graces, and still at dock, sitting beside The Pride and not daring send a compromising query across the dockside communication lines. Kefk had a great deal to worry about, not least of which was the missing hunter-ship Mahijiru and its captain, one Ana Ismehanan-min, aka Goldtooth, and the hani ship that had run with him.

Along with major structural damage, a breached sector,
 
fire, disruption of the lifesupport systems, the remnants of a revolution and other nagging difficulties.

Another flurry of figures and pen-corrections. There was, number one, the mahendo'sat territory to reckon with: a wide sprawl of stars into which at least one message had gone and might have gotten through, knnn and the gods willing. Banny Ayhar would have done her best to get it through, as much as any merchant captain could do: she might have lived to get it to Maing Tol, if the knnn had not stopped her or if the kif had not been laying for her. The mahendo'sat, tall black-furred primates with enough double-turning motives involved to baffle a tc'a's multipartite brain (but antagonism toward their neighbors the kif was always high among them), might have made a move if that message had gotten through. Down the line via Kshshti and out to Mkks might be a good course of action for the mahendo'sat to take, if they hoped to forestall any kifish breakout along that border; but Meetpoint station or Kita Point, critical to all trade routes, was most likely the object of any major push from the mahendo'sat. That effort would have to come via Kshshti if Kita was still blocked; while Kefk, in kifish territory, was not a likely route for them. Not impossible, given the current state of borders in the Compact, just less than likely.

Also reckoning mahendo'sat moves, it was very likely there were one or more mahen hunter-ships escorting the human ships; and they were coming in toward Meetpoint from Tt'a'va'o and tc'a/chi space.

With human ships and human captains; still another set of motives and self-interests, on gods-knew-what orders from their own authorities. (Or lack of them-who knew what human minds were like?)

Further complication: kifish forces under the rival hakkikt Akkhtimakt had likely moved in to take the mahen/tc'a station at Kshshti. That might stand off any mahen flanking move to Meetpoint, if Akkhtimakt's forces still controlled Kita as well. Akkhtimakt might have Kita, Urtur, Kshshti, or all three, and advance from any or all of those points against Meetpoint and/or Kefk itself, if the report Goldtooth had brought was true and the stsho had been fools enough to invite Akkhtimakt in as hired help.

There was, lure to Akkhtimakt, his greatest enemy Sikkukkut, sitting here at Kefk gathering to his control every ship that came into port. And revenge was always high on any list of kifish motives. Pukkukkta, they called it. Advance retaliation was better than revenge after the fact. Having an enemy know his calamity before he died was best of all.

Yet another move of the pen, another arrow, lurid green: one could not exclude interference from the methane-breathers, whose motives no oxy breather could guess.

And, certainly not to be forgotten, there were the stsho who owned Meetpoint, congenitally noncombatant, but hiring alien, aggressive help right and left and forming reckless associations.

While the han-gods, the hani senate was up to its nose in politics as usual, and Rhif Ehrran was on her way to Meetpoint with evidence enough to outlaw Chanur once and for all.

The Pride of Chanur sat at a kifish dock six to seven jumps from homestar, no matter which way she figured it. Six or seven jumps was a long way, a very long way, measured in stress on ship and on body; and gods knew what would follow on her heels, if she did what she would gladly do now and broke dock at Kefk and ran for their lives, withdrawing herself like a good law-abiding hani from all the affairs of kif and mahendo'sat and multifarious aliens.

But the trouble would surely follow her home; she knew beyond a doubt that it would. She had involved herself in the affairs of kifish hakkikktun and she had acquired their notice. She had made herself a name in kifish eyes. She had gotten sfik, face. And that meant that kif would never let her alone so long as she lived.

Her uneasy partner Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin would never forget her; certainly (gods forbid he should replace Sikkukkut in power) her personal enemy Akkhtimakt would not.

Pyanfar scribbled, flicked her ears, and the rings of forty years of voyages chimed in her hearing. A pearl swung from her right ear, a Llyene pearl from the oceans of the stsho homeworld; she still wore that gift, regardless of the perfidy

of the giver, who was Goldtooth, friend, traitor, flatterer and tenfold liar.

Curse him to his own deepest hell.

Goldtooth was bound for Meetpoint with Rhif Ehrran, beyond a doubt he was, the conniving bastard. He was dealing with the stsho and anyone else who offered his species an advantage, and he was betting opposite to the alliance his own partner Jik had made-to which maneuver Sikkukkut took strongest and understandable exception.

Another scribble.

A quick movement caught her eye, a black blot speeding across the floor, sinuous, small, fast.

She leapt to her feet. "Haral!" she yelled, while paper cascaded off the table and the black thing paused for one beady-eyed stare before it skittered on, faster than her limping dive to stop it.

Haral appeared, hobbling in by the short bridge-galley corridor, and did a fast skip and wince as it dived between her feet and vanished.

Pyanfar snatched up a handful of jumbled papers. "Fry that thing!"

"Sorry, captain. We're setting traps-"

"Traps be bothered, they're breeding, I swear they are! Get Skkukuk on it, they're his by-the-gods dinner. Let him find 'em. Gods-be mess. Vermin!" The hair stood up on her shoulders and she stared at her first officer in bleakest despair. No one in the crew was up to more orders, more duty, or more trouble.

"The things might get into something vital," Pyanfar said. Common sense, covering absolute revulsion. "Gods, get 'em out!"

"Aye," Haral said, in a voice as thin and hoarse as hers. And Haral limped away, to get their own private kif to ferret his dinner out of The Pride's nooks and crannies before something else went wrong. That took a guard, to watch Skkukuk; and gods curse the luck that had set the things free on the ship in the first place. She had heard the story, inspected the burned patch on The Pride's outer airlock seal. And she blessed Tirun Araun's quick hand that had gotten that door shut-vermin and all.

Gods knew how those black slinking pests had gotten up from lowerdeck.

Climbed the liftshaft? The airducts?

The thought of a myriad little slinking black bodies loping along the airshafts and into lifesupport lifted the hairs at her nape.

What were the gods-be things eating?

She scooped up a last couple of papers with a wince and a grimace and sat down again. Rested both elbows on the table and rested her aching head in her hands.

She saw within her mind a dark kifish hall; sodium-light;
 
and a table surrounded by insect-legged chairs-her partner Jik sitting there with one of Sikkukkut's minions holding a gun to his head, and that bastard Sikkukkut starting to ask closer and closer questions.

She had not had a way to help him. She had been lucky to get her own crew out of there alive; and to keep herself and her ship as free as it was, under kifish guns at a kifish dock.

Send another appeal to Sikkukkut to ask for Jik's release? Sikkukkut's patience with her was already frayed. Perhaps it was personal cowardice not to send another message. Perhaps it was prudence and saving what could be saved, not to push Sikkukkut into some demonstration of his power-at Jik's expense. Kifish heads adorned the stanchions of Sikkukkut's ship-ramp. That image haunted her rest and her sleep. A moment's off-guard imagining set Jik's head there beside the others.

She opened her eyes abruptly when that vision hit, focusing instead on the maps and charts and printout, where the answer had to lie, where she was convinced it was, if she could cudgel her aching skull and battered brain just a little farther through the maze.

Jik had left them another legacy: a coded microfiche which even Soje Kesurinan, in command of Aja Jin, might not know existed. And The Pride's computers had been running on that, trying to break that code, ever since they had gotten back to the ship and had a chance to feed it in.

"Again," said Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin, hakkikt and mekt-hakkikt, lately provincial boss and currently rival for ultimate authority among his kind; while Jik, Keia Nomesteturjai, kif-hunter, captain, and what other rank among mahendo'sat this kifish pirate would earnestly like to know-focused his eyes with difficulty and managed a twisted grin. That tended to confuse hell out of the kif, who knew facial expressions were a second and well-developed language especially among mahendo'sat, and who had never quite learned to interpret all their nuances.

"Again," said Sikkukkut, "Keia, my old friend. Where are the human ships? Doing what? Intending what?"

"I've told you," Jik said. He said it in mahensi, being perverse. Sikkukkut understood that language, though many of his listening subordinates, standing about their table in this dim, sodium-lit hall, were not as educated. Sikkukkut, on the other hand, had a good many talents.

Interrogation was one of those. Sikkukkut had performed that office in the service of Akkukkak, of unlamented memory. All these questions, each pacing and each shift of mood Sikkukkut displayed, were calculated. It was, at the moment, the soft touch. Have a smoke, my old friend. Sit and talk with me. But now the frown was back, a slight drawing-down of Sikkukkut's long black snout. Hooded and inscrutable he sat, on his insect-legged chair, in the baleful light of the sodium-lamps, while Jik smoked and stared at him eye to eye. There were numerous guards about the shadowed edges of the hall, always the sycophants and the guards. In a little time the order would come to take him back to lowerdecks; and they would try the harder course again. Constant shifting of strategy, the hard approach and the soft, Sikkukkut usually the latter. Usually.

Jik kept himself mentally distant from all these changes, observed the shifts and absorbed the punishment with a professional detachment which was Sikkukkut's (surely, Jik reckoned) intention to crack. And he looked Sikkukkut in his red-rimmed eyes with the sure feeling that the kif was analyzing his every twitch and blink, looking for a telling reaction.

"Come now, Keia. You know my disposition, how patient I am, of my kind. I know that you had ample time to consult with your partner before the shooting started. We've been over these questions. They grow wearisome. Can we not resolve them?"

"My partner," Jik said, silken-slurred: Sikkukkut afforded him liquor, and he pinched out a dead smokestick and took a sip from the small round footed cup, and drew a long, long breath. Pleasures were few enough. He took what he could get. "I tell you, hakkikt, I wish / knew what my partner's up to. God, you think I'd have been out on that dock if I'd known what he was about to do?" He fumbled after his next smoke and his fingers were numb. Doubtless the drink was drugged. But there were enough of them to put the drug into him another way, so he took his medicine dosed in very fine liquor and quietly gathered his internal forces. He was deep-conditioned, immune to ordinary efforts in that regard: he knew how to self-hypnotize, and he was already focused on a series of mantras and mandalas into which he had coded what he knew, down paths of dialectic and image no kif could walk without error. He smiled blandly, in secret and bleak amusement that Sikkukkut's methods had incidentally eased the aches and the pains of previous sessions. His thoughts swayed and wove, moved in and out of focus. The docks and fire. His crew. Aja Jin. Friends and allied ships were just down the dock and as good as lightyears away. "Let me tell you, mekt-hakkikt, I know Ana's style. Think like a mahendo'sat who knows kif, hakkikt. If he'd asked you for leave to operate on his own you'd never have given it."