Chanur's Venture (26 page)

watching everything along the sides.

Pyanfar watched him, among the rest. Friend. Companion. Along with Rhif Ehrran.

The car thumped along, dodged pedestrians.

Jik took out his pistol and thoughtfully took the safety off in his lap, no

small piece like her pocket gun, no, nearly as long as his forearm, with a

black, wicked sheen. The mahe on the other side drew hers and kept scanning the

surrounds, the whisk of gantries past, of lines, machinery, canisters, all

places for ambushes.

Berth five passed. Jik spoke to the driver in something mahen and obscure. "We

go close," Jik said. "Want you go fast up ramp."

"Gods rot it, my whole lower deck's occupied."

He pressed her knee. "Same good get you safe in ship." The car veered: a ship

access and guards loomed into the way and the car veered again, bringing the

door even with the access. The door flew up and Pyanfar scrambled out with Jik

and the crewwoman close behind.

Up the ramp then, a slower pace, the long, chill walk through that yellow gullet

with the L bend to the lock. Pyanfar looked back, looked round again as they

reached the lock and Jik laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Safe. Safe here."

"Sure. The stationmaster's handpicked aides--"

"Listen. I know you safe."

"You know. What's in that ID, Jik? Who are you? Who are you working for?"

Both hands settled on her shoulders. There was nowhere to look but dark mahen

eyes, a plain mahen face. "You got watch on you deck, understand, got number one

good watch."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

Jik's lips went tight. "Mahe take orders somewhere else. Same good tech, a? Not

make mistake."

"Like that aide? Safe like that?"

"I fix."

That left cold after it. Jik lifted his hands from her shoulders, held one

finger up.

"Then," Jik said, "get good sleep."

"Ayhar's jumped," Khym said, who sat monitor on com, and the board checks paused

for the moment. He scribbled furiously on the lightpad and his florid scrawl

came up on screen three as Haral punched it through, a string of numbers

meaningless to him, but he got them down with speed.

Heading, velocity, strength of field.

"It's on its way," Tirun muttered, and Pyanfar felt a twinge of relief as the

full scan input went to the number two: no pursuit.

There was a tc'a out. T'T'Tmmmi. Outbound on the same heading, none too quietly.

TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A

transmission said, with ship-function babble in all its harmonics, a tc'a ship

fully occupied with tc'a business and the speaker thinking only of its/their

jobs. Tc'a did not lie, so the story ran, could not. Once a tc'a began to

output, the underminds had to be there or the harmonics failed and the whole

matrix fell into gibberish.

So someone non-tc'a had reckoned, from what gtst thought tc'a had claimed, a

hundred years ago.

She went back to work, running checks through the systems, resetting failsafes

and running them again and again, putting comp through one and the other

simulation as it re-programmed itself.

"Pride." Khym's low voice, answering some call, in the profound silence, the

click of keys, the sometime shift of a body in a leather seat. "First is busy.

Can you--" The shift of a heavier body. "Ker Tirun. It's Vigilance. They want a

crew member."

Tirun muttered something and took it. "Gods rot," she said. "You don't need to

go up the line for that, Ehrran . . . . That was a crew member."

Pyanfar turned around.

"Fine," Tirun said, and punched the contact out. "That's a confirm on the Ayhar

jump."

Pyanfar said nothing. There was nothing to say. Tell Khym to stand his ground

and ignore a request for higher authority? But next time it might be something

that truly had to get someone more knowledgeable. Log the discourtesy? Who would

read it but the han?

Khym was busy already, a look of concentration on his broad, scarred face the

while he listened to station chatter that flowed past him like so much babble,

sorting for anything of interest, anything of tc'a or knnn, anything of kif or

mahendo'sat. Doing the best he could.

In Hilfy's vacant post.

Pyanfar turned back again, twisted in her seat a third time as she heard the

lift work down the corridor.

"Captain!" Tirun spun her chair as she did, as she came out of her chair

reaching for her pocket and Khym was out of his place.

"Identify." Haral had usurped com function to her panel and keys clicked to

freeze locks, but the lift door opened all the same.

Hani. Hani and smallish and one of their own.

"Geran," Pyanfar muttered, and the gun went back. No rejoicing, not from any of

them. It was not that kind of time, an hour to go and Geran out of place.

"Something wrong?" Pyanfar asked as Geran walked onto the bridge. "Chur all

right, Geran?"

"Left her below, snugged in."

"Gods and thunders!"

Geran shrugged, padded over to main scan, rested a hand on her seatback and

looked round again, ears at half, and obduracy in the stare she gave back.

"Don't like to cross those docks, captain. Scary place out there."

It took a good long moment of even breathing to cope with that.

"Geran--" in a tone quiet enough to warn a chi. "We've got one hour, one

gods-rotted hour to get things sorted out. You two--"

"Captain, please." Geran's voice sank to the same level, but all wobbly. "Chur'd

kill me for saying it, but she's scared. Gut-scared. Being left here -- the ship

and all -- where'd she be? What good's two of us -- here? By ourselves? Where's

home, but The Pride?"

Something superstitious settled into her own gut, nothing reasonable. "Look.

We're not after suicide, hear me? Jik's in port. He's got Vigilance on our side

for what she's worth. We're going to Mkks to do some good. Hear me? Now get Chur

back where she belongs."

"She is. Same as me." Geran's claws sank into the chairback, tendons stark on

the backs of her hands. "What's all this new stuff worth with half a crew, huh?

Chur can walk -- walked across that dock out there from the lift, she did, just

fine."

"Good gods."

"The plasm took; the wound won't tear. Got her packed in real good and the

time-stretch'11 give her a good few days to heal. Might be on her feet by the

time we get to Mkks--"

"The gravity-drop'll kill her."

"No. Not Chur."

She folded her ears down and Geran stood her ground, meant to stand it, gods

knew. And they needed that pair of hands. Needed hands that could fit

hani-specific controls, fit a hani crewwoman's space. "Gods rot,",she muttered

and walked off the other way with a wave of her hand. "Bring her topside. Put

her in my cabin. Put her close to us. Pack a med kit in there."

"My cabin," Khym said. "She can have mine."

"Do it."

"Thanks," Geran said, all heartfelt. "Thanks, captain."

"And get yourself back here. We've got a tight schedule, huh?"

"Aye!" Geran scrambled and took Khym with her.

Pyanfar looked at Tirun and Haral. Tirun's face carefully showed nothing;

Haral's was toward the boards, occupied with business.

"Odds just went up," Tirun said, "captain."

"We need crazy people on our side?" She threw herself into the chair, powered it

about again, feeling a shameful comfort to know one more seat was filled. The

lift hummed, Khym and Geran going down to see to the transfer.

"Getting a confirmation from Aid /in," Haral said, who still had com. "Getting a

readoff on course, They're putting us out gods-rotted deep in the well."

She looked at the figures that flashed onto monitor one. "Huh." She keyed that

data set into the simulator and watched the lines tick across the screen,

affirmative, affirmative, can-do. It was still The Pride's boards, but something

alien answered from aft, up the circuit-synapses through the metal spine. "Huh."

It made her nervous, in a way that camera-view did not, that picked up the wider

vanes, the rakish lines of the vane-columns. That was plain to inspection. The

heart and core of it was not, that added some twenty percent to their unladed

mass and threw varied percentages into the figures of moving that mass. Old

familiar reckonings went by the board. They had to lean on comp entirely, trust

it without the dead-reckoning knowledge what the answers ought to be, when it

told them The Pride could make a jump that she could never in a mahen hell have

survived half a week before.

"We go with it," she said.

Continued in

THE KIF STRIKE BACK

Appendix Species of the Compact

The Compact

The Compact is a loose affiliation of all trading species of a small region of

stars who have agreed by treaty to observe certain borders, trade restrictions,

tariffs, and navigational procedures. It is an association, not a government,

has no officials and maintains no offices, except insofar as all officials of

the various governments are de facto officers of the Compact.

The hani

Native to Anuurn, hani may be among the smaller species of the Compact, but the

size range, particularly among males, is so extreme that individual hani may

overreach and outbulk the average of other, taller species. Their fur is short

over most of their bodies except for manes and beards. It ranges in color from

red gold to dull red brown with blackish edges, and in texture from crimped

waves to curls to coarse straightness.

Hani were a feudal culture divided into provinces and districts a few centuries

previous to the events of The Pride of Chanur. They had well-developed trade and

commerce when they were contacted by the spacefaring mahendo'sat (qv) and flung

from their middle ages, with its flat-earth concept and territoriality, into

interstellar trade.

The way of life previous to that age had been this: that individual males carved

out a territory by challenge and maintained it with the aid of their sisters,

currently resident wives, and female relatives of all sorts, so long as the male

in question remained strong enough to fend off other challengers. Actual running

of the territory rested with a lord's sisters and other female relatives, at

least a few of whom, if he was fortunate, would prove skillful traders, and

whose marriages with outclan males would form profitable links with the females

of other clans. Such males as lived to become clan lords were sheltered and

pampered, kept in fighting trim at the urging of their female relatives, and

generally took no part whatsoever in interclan dealings or in mercantile

decisions, which were considered too exacting and stressful for males to cope

with. The male image in most households was that of a cheerful, unworldly fellow

mostly involved in games and hunts, and existing primarily for the siring of

children and, in time of challenge, idolized for those natural gifts of

irrational temper and berserker rage which would greet the sight of another

male. The females stood between him and all other vicissitudes of life. Much of

hani legendry and literature, of which they are fond, involves the tragic

brevity of males; or the cleverness of females; or the treks and voyages of

ambitious females out to carve out territory for some unlanded brother to

defend.

Under the management of certain great females, vast estates grew up. Certain

estates contained crucial trade routes, shrines, mountain passes, dams -- things

which were generally the focus of ambition. Certain clans formed amphictionies,

associations of mutual interest to assure the access of all members to areas of

regional importance, which was usually done by declaring the area in question

protected. Out of such protected zones grew the concept of the Immune Clan; that

is, a clan whose hold over a particular resource must not change, because of the

need of the surrounding clans to have that resource managed over the long term

by a clan with experience and peculiar skill: such clans devoted themselves to

public service and dressed distinctively. Immune males enjoyed great ceremonial

prestige and were generally cloistered and pampered, while the sons of Immune

houses were without hope of succession except by the death of the lord by

natural causes. To attack an Immune male was a capital offense, bringing all the

area clans to enforce the law.

This form of regional government proved successful in bringing Enafy province,

where the Llun Immune had its seat, to preeminence in the great plains of the

Llunuurn River. Enafy province spread its influence through trade into other

regions and other amphictionies sprang up, some less benevolent. The concept of

amphictiony spread to other continents and races and, while other cultures

survived, generally they were small, or so divided that they managed little

growth: the Enafy and Enaury of Anuurn's largest continent spread their culture

by trade and occasionally by intrigue and by marriage and alliance.