Chanur's Legacy (45 page)

He was scared of jump this time. He was really scared. “There were tc’a,” he said. He could only be twice the fool. “In jump. When the alarm went off. I saw them go right through the ship and nobody was moving and I hit the alarm. In my dream, I did. And it was going off when we came out. I know it’s stupid,” he said, when she stood back to look at him in a worried way; and it was more disturbing that she didn’t laugh, didn’t offer the immediately obvious: You were dreaming, stupid kid.

“Nobody was moving,” she said.

“In my dream.”

“Chur dreams like that.”

Chur Anify. On
The Pride.
Chur the map-maker. Chur, that they said could walk through hyperspace and see what kif saw and maybe knnn and tc’a ...

He didn’t believe that. People exaggerated, especially the world-bound ones who didn’t know the limitations. You didn’t expect it out of Chihin, who was Chur’s cousin, if you reckoned it.

“What did you do?”

“I just got up and reached over and hit the alarm. But maybe it went off itself and I just dreamed—“

Chihin was looking at him in all seriousness, maybe thinking she didn’t want to be associated with somebody that crazy.

“It’s my fault, about the tc’a,” he said. “Maybe that was why I dreamed it.”

“Kid. If you punch any more buttons on my board you by the gods be sure what you’re touching.”

“Most adequate,”
gtsta
pronounced, walking on strange bare feet onto the carpet they hadn’t used in the decoration next door. Gods-be
right,
adequate, Hilfy thought, while the seconds ticked down in the count, and bare stsho toes curled into the white pile. “Most curious, the sensation.”

“We assure you
gtst
excellency and
gtst
companion are next door,” Hilfy said, while Fala and Tarras hovered near to prevent falls. “I must caution your holiness to watch your st—“ on the rim, she had been about to say, but
gtsta
put a bare foot on the edge of the improvised bowl-chair, and Tarras made a futile grab as
gtsta
slid down the plastic foot-pad, plump! to what was surely multiple fractures.

Gtsta
sprawled and bounced, a tangle of legs and gossamer.
Gtsta
trilled some note that did not seem of pain and, flailing
gtsta
arms, made another bounce that made the whole mattress quiver.

And a third, while three very time-pressed hani hovered at the edge and tried to assess the damage.

Another bounce, and a quivering like jelly. Is
gtsta
able to get up? Hilfy wondered. But
gtsta
seemed not to be distressed. Crackpot idea, she thought, a bagful of water. But if it didn’t pop and drown the old son during acceleration,
gtsta
had a chance. A water-filled bowl-chair ... and all the essential nutrients they’d been able to pump into
gtsta
fragile veins.

“Pull the nets over,” she said.
Gtsta
had already had the medication, Tarras had seen to that, and it seemed to be taking effect.
Gtsta
lay flat on the ripples and rebounds, waving a languid arm,
gtsta
mouth pursed and
gtsta
eyes half-open, while Tarras and Fala hauled the safety netting over the pit and made it fast with cord.

“Blessing,”
gtsta
holiness said. “Well wishes. I see the tides of the many suns. I see the oneness of them. I shall tell you their names. ...”

The tranquilizer definitely was taking hold. And she for one had rather rely on the navigational computer.

Chihin was saying Meras might be a sleepwalker, that the kid was spooked and seeing tc’a, and that
that
had been the alarm during system drop. They had a clearance from the kif for undock and a schedule they’d agreed to in a star system the kif were clearly touchy about protecting; and, gods save them, they had a Preciousness and a handful of stsho to get to Meetpoint alive to back up No’shto-shti-stlen against the allies of Paehisna-ma-to,—
if the
old son could live through the experience.

They had a contract to declare filled; and get out of there alive and solvent—because they’d been out nearly a year as stationers counted time, and Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian had routed himself straight to Meet-point out of Kshshti, three months ago—as Meetpoint counted time.

“Gtsta
has
gtsta
nutrient packs,
gtsta
is comfortable ...” Hilfy began; and
gtsta
murmured, “The oneness of it all. The ineffable contentment, after the darkness of my voyage. The light, go to the friendly light, for the sake of the peace. ...”

Pretty gods-be out, Hilfy thought, and squatted down and looked through the net to be certain
gtsta
nutrients pack was still wrapped about
gtsta
frail arm. For the sick and the frail one didn’t depend on the strength to hunt for it: it would feed continually, or as continually as anything happened in hyperspace.

Ask the kid, Chihin said, and was spooked, herself. They had one in the family. And she’d watched Chur go thin and otherly and sometimes as sensible as
gtsta,
when she was tracking something. What do you see? was the logical question.

And gods save them, she recalled with a chill down her back, Chur had talked about the light and the tides...

They were underway, launched, outbound, so fast there was no time to wipe the dust off; and Chihin sat by him at her post, grinned at him, with a twitch of a white-smudged ear.

“I probably ought to tell the captain,” Hallan said, not happily.

“I did,” Chihin said. “It’s all right. It’s all right...”

“That’s
Tiraskhti,”
Fala said. “They’re away.”

“Salutations to the
hakkikt,”
the captain said. “Send it.”

Fala did that. He heard the lisped kifish. “The
hakkikt
says,” Fala reported back, ‘“
hold your exact course.”Ssakkukkta sa khutturkht.’
—Is that right?”

“That son’s going to jump with us, I knew it. Tell him we copy. Gods-rotted payback for our dock at Kefk.”

Surely not for that, Hallan thought. It was dangerous. Even kif cared about their own lives.

“Tarras, Tarras, do you copy?” That was Tiar talking to Tarras, who was down below doing something the captain had sent her after. “You’re clear to move.”

“Aye,”
the answer came back, and in a moment more the lift worked and opened; and Tarras came stringing hand-line, clipping it into recessed rings along the way. So they could move if they had to, Hallan thought, without
g
or against acceleration. It wasn’t something the
Sun
had ever done. It was a scary contemplation. And when Tarras got into her station, the captain ordered the arms board brought up to ready.

“Na
Hallan?” the captain said, startling him, and he was ready for the usual Be careful and keep your hands off things. ‘Na Hallan, config to scan, Chihin, take a stand-down and trank out, I want you on-line when we come out.”

“Aye, captain,” Chihin said, and Hallan punched the requisite buttons to bring the aux board over to scan, his hands wanting to shake quite embarrassingly.

“Good night,” Chihin said to him. “Good luck.”

Panic quickened his breathing. No, not panic, healthy respect for his responsibility. Just a monitor-the-dots problem. But Chihin wasn’t going to be there if anything went wrong this side.

“I’m here,” Tarras said at his other elbow. “Take it easy, do your job, kid. You shouldn’t get any input the computer doesn’t recognize.”

But in another minute or so a dot leaped on to his screen, at Kefk Station rim. His heart jumped. Chihin swore—but she’d just taken the drug. “That’s number 10 berth,” he read
off
his screen, trying to stay calm.
“Mu~Muk-jukt,
captain.”

“Friendly to the
hakkikt
or what?” Fala wondered aloud.

“Ask the
hakkikt,”
the captain said; and Fala did; and said, “He says, quote, he knows...”

Meanwhile another kif left the station. He reported it and he didn’t push buttons.

“Gods-be kif show-outs,” the captain muttered at one point. “They’ve got to see, they’ve got to be there, they’ll cut Vikktakkht’s throat if this goes wrong. His and ours.”

You mean they’re not taking orders? Hallan wondered to himself. It wasn’t any hani way of doing things.

“Up v,” the captain said. “Let’s just put a little more push on it. They’ve got the pillows, below.” They hadn’t taken on cargo. They hadn’t had the time. Or they hadn’t trusted it.

They were just going, and Chihin murmured, drowsily, “Wake me if you see any pretty lights, kid. Otherwise, see you otherside.”

Another one and another one. Fala said, “Na Hallan, I forgive you.”

“What did I do?” he asked, surprised out of his concentration, and between reports. Lines were converging. They were going, gods, they were going ...

“Stand by,” Tiar said sharply. “This isn’t the standard drop, cousins. Let’s not miss a stitch...”

... “Well, well,” aunt Pyanfar said, arms folded, feet set, the very image of herself, “you’ve committed yourself to the kif, have you?”

Hilfy was not surprised at the appearance. She was surprised at herself, that questions leaped into her head, Have I done the right thing? Am I a total fool, aunt Py? ... not angry, not resentful, not any of those things, just wishing she
could
ask across space and warped time ... ask the real Pyanfar, not the one that came and went in her mind ...

Like what was going on at Kefk, that kif kept Pyanfar’s doings behind a screen, a whole unguessed power that wasn’t just
The Pride,
wasn’t just one ship and a well-reputed hani who mediated the Compact’s trade and treaty disputes ...

Like: aunt Pyanfar, what have you gotten yourself into? Who
are
you, since you threw me out, down-world?

The
mekt-hakkikt,
indeed, the leader the kif could never find to unite them; the Personage of the mahendo’sat, with whatever religious mandate that conveyed—until some rival like Paehisna-ma-to came along; the President of the Amphictiony of Anuurn, no gray-nosed, doddering grandmother to quibble about two thousand year old privilege or ceremonial inheritance; that was not what was based at Kefk.

They were committed. They were beyond recall but not beyond disaster.

“Good luck,” Tully said, remote from her. And she had too much on her mind, too much on her hands, to play those games of make-believe. He’d been right to walk away. He wasn’t the property of some teen-aged child: it wasn’t Tully’s obligation to set her life in order, or to provide her some strange halfway creature to be, instead of hani: Take care of Chanur, Pyanfar had said, shoving her out of their midst, and wrapping time and black space about herself.

Who
are
you, aunt Pyanfar?

And what are you doing, in deep space, where the methane-breathers go?

Humans live in that direction. They don’t come to trade. They might have; but they insisted we take sides in their war—thank you, we have enough trouble, aunt Pyanfar had said, and drawn a firm line, verbally at least.

But perhaps it was more substantial than one guessed; and vaster and more needful— of force? Of hunter ships at Kefk? Of spies and assassinations of hapless stsho and bombs on Kshshti dock?

... “Coming down,” she heard Tiar say.

So they were there. Over the edge. In it up to their ears.

The song wavered, there and not there and there again. It seemed he’d heard it for a very long time; and he’d been anxious entering jump, but it was only the dream of a guilty conscience ...

He only heard them now. And it wasn’t a threatening song, just very different.

He tried to watch the screens, but they were garble. The ship was riding the fabric of space-time, skittering along the interface, to fall into the next dimple, that only a stellar mass could make, and he could see that interface going on and on and skirling anti-mass along the disturbance they were.

Maybe it was only, after all, a dream, ...

“Going down,” he heard Tiar say , . .

He tried to capture it. The moment of dropping out of the interface. But a vast disturbance sheeted down around them, and he heard tc’a voices, or what passed for it ... Heard a machine-voice saying: Proximity alert, proximity alert.”

“Around us!” he tried to say, his eyes full of vision and dark, but Chihin said calmly, “Got it, got it, aux; Tiar, the system buoy’s gone nuts and we got a heavy surplus on hunter ships out here. ...”

“I saw ships,” he said, “ten, twenty—off in the dark-“

“Dark of where?” the captain snapped. “This side, that side, where?”

“Otherside,” he said, but he knew he was wrong, the ships were here, around them, arriving one after the other.

Twenty sleek kifish hunters, suddenly another one dropping in—and never, under these circumstances, believe all that the system buoy schema showed you, Hilfy thought, seeing what unfurled itself on her flanks. It wasn’t a position she’d ever hoped or wanted to be in—center position in a fleet of kif, aimed at Meetpoint ... a Meetpoint the station buoy showed busy with shipping: hani ships, stsho ships, mahen traders, kif, and tc’a and chi, as ordinary as she’d ever seen it, and deader emissions-wise than she’d ever heard it.

“Fala,” she said, “all channels input. Stats. Percent. Who’s who. It’s too quiet for what they’re showing.”

“Aye,” Fala said. Stats be feathered, the number of contacts flickering through com told her it was way down. And not due to the kifish presence: they were an hour out from station, light. The station had an hour yet to wait before Meetpoint learned they were here, and what was here with them and what maneuvers they were performing. An hour before station could react. But not before something might react that was lying silent and closer.

“Arms live,” she said to Tarras, heard the acknowledgment, saw another set of lights come on her own board. They were now breaking the law. Several laws. Lane violations, safety violations, the disarmament treaty, the Station Immunity Act ...

“Captain,”
na
Hallan said faintly. “When you’ve a moment.”