Foster, Alan Dean - Wolfstroker
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2024-11-19
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file:///G|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Alan%20Dean%20Foster%20-%20Wolfstroker.txt
ut of her capacious pocket. Parini. Pyanfar took it and gestured with a move of her jaw back the
way Haral had come. Haral went.
And Pyanfar turned back toward the bridge, where Jik sat quietly in his chair, caring not to turn
it when she came up on him. She walked back to the fore of the bridge, and stood there looking
back. "I want to talk to you. Private." Only Tirun was left with the boards; and she herself was
not up to a hand-to-hand with a taller, heavier mahendo'sat, even if he was jump-wobbly too. Fool,
she thought. But some courses had to be steered. Even at risk to the ship.
"Come on," she said again. "Jik."
He got to his feet. She walked away, deliberately taking her eyes off him, though it was sure
Tirun was alert to sudden moves.
But he came docilely after her, and followed her through the short corridor to the galley.
Tirun being Tirun, she would both monitor it all on the intercom and pass the word to all aboard
that the galley had just gone offlimits.
She turned when she had gotten as far as the counter and the cabinet with the gfi-cups.
"Captain," Tirun said via com. "Pardon. Goldtooth's group has started shifting out, first one just
went. Before AOS on Kesurinan's message. Close, but they're not going to get it. Thought you'd
want to know."
"Huh," she said. "Pass that to the crew."
''Aye." The audio cut out. The com stayed live, its telltale still glowing on the wall-unit.
And Jik stood there, just stood, with a slump in his shoulders and a set like stone to his face.
"Sit down," she said, and he did that, on the long bench against the wall, elbows on the table.
She got a glass from the cabinet, the flask from her pocket, poured a shot of it and set it in
front of him.
"No," he said.
"That's prescriptive. You drink. Hear?"
He took it then, and took a sip and shuddered visibly. Sat there looking nowhere. Thinking of
friends, maybe. Of Goldtooth, outbound and not to return for months.
Of his ship, so close and himself helpless to reach them.
"Take another," she said. He did, shuddering after that one too, and that shudder did not stop.
Liquor spilled out onto his hand, pooled on the table as he set the glass down. He put the hand to
his mouth and sucked at the knuckle where it had spilled. His eyes glared at her.
She sat down, opposite him. If Tirun wanted her, there was the alarm. Her own aches could wait.
She was prepared to wait. For whatever it took.
It was a long time before he moved at all, and that was to lift the glass and take it all down in
one long stinging draught. He shuddered a third time, set the glass down empty and she filled it.
Got a crate of the stuff in storage. Pour it all down him if we have to.
"Hao'ashtie-na ma visini-ma'arno shishini-to nes mura'ani hes." Whoever he was talking to, she did
not follow it. Something about dark and cold. It was that dialect he spoke with Kesurinan. "Muiri
nai, Pyanfar."
"Mishio-ne." I'm sorry.
'Hao. Mishi'sa." -Yes. Sorry. "Neshighot-me pau taiga?" What the hell good is it?
'None. I know that. Species-interest, Jik. I warned you of that. Now you can try to break my neck.
It won't get you our access codes. What it will get you is a lot of grief. You don't want it; I
don't want it. We're old friends. And you know down that one way's a lot of trouble and no good at
all and down the other's a hani whose interests might be a lot the same as yours in the long run."
For a while he said nothing. After a while he picked up the glass again and took a tiny sip.
"Merus'an-to he neishima kif, he?"
Something about damned kif, himself, and bargains.
"I want my people safe, Jik."
"You damn fool!" His hand came down on the table, jarring the liquid. "Give me com."
"So you can doublecross me again? No. Not this time. Too many lives here."
While pacifist stsho ran in gibbering terror in the corridors of their station and discovered
there were species which could neither be hired nor bribed nor prevented from being predators.
"Humans," she said; "and mahendo'sat. If Tully's right, if Tully's telling the truth, and I think
he is-there's one more doublecross in the works. The humans will betray Goldtooth. Hear? And you
know and I know Sikkukkut's got to do something here. Your partner's going to push and herd the
kif into fighting. He thinks. But in the meanwhile who does the bleeding? They'll herd him right
away from mahen space. Right? Where does that leave? Stsho? Tc'a? Goldtooth's defending that. That
leaves hani space,-friend. You don't push me right now. My people have got me between them and
that, and don't push me, Jik!"
"You-" Jik fell silent a moment, coughed and rested there with his mouth against his hand as if he
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had lost his way and his argument. "Merus'an-to he neishima kif. Shai."
Bargains and the kif again. Then: I. Or something like that. He spoke mahensi. As if he had
forgotten that he was not on his own ship. Or as if, exhausted as he was and wrung out, he lacked
the strength to translate. He had that glassy look. Jump healed, but it took it out of a body too.
And he had gone into it hurt, in body and spirit.
He was still reasonable. Still the professional, getting what he could get. She counted on that.
"I have to go in there to Meetpoint," she said. "I got to get what I can get. I won't doublecross
you. Won't do any hurt to the mahendo'sat. I swear that, haur na ahur. But I don't want you
against me either. I don't want you trying to get at controls, I don't want you trying to get at
my crew. And everything you tell me's going to be a lie. Isn't it? Con the hani again." She fished
her pocket and laid the two pills on the table. "You take those when you want 'em. Nothing but
sleeping pills. I got enough troubles. You got enough. You're strung. You know it. I want you to
go out of here, mind your manners with my crew, get some sleep. That's all you can do. All I can
do for you. Like a friend, Jik. But first I want to ask you: have you held out on me? Conned me?
You got anything you think I better know? 'Cause we are going in there. And we're going to get
blown to a mahen hell if this is a trap. And Sikkukkut just might not go with us, which would be a
real shame."
He shoved the glass up against her hand. "You want talk? Take bit."
She had no business taking anything of the sort, straight out of jump, with a ship to handle in
what was going on out there. But it was cheaper than argument. She picked up the glass and took a
sip that hit her dehydrated throat and nasal passages like fire, and her stomach like an
incandescence. She set the glass down and slid it across the table to touch his hand again. He
sipped a bit more and blinked. Sweat moistened trails down his face and glistened on black fur;
the dusky rim around his eyes was suffused with blood and they watered when he blinked. And after
all that liquor on an empty stomach and straight from injuries and jump, he showed no sign of
passing out.
"I want stay on bridge," he said. "Py-an-far. Same you don't trust me, this know. All same ask."
"I can't shut you up. I can't have you distracting my crew. I can't risk it. I'm telling you. I
can't risk it. You want your ship to survive this? You help me, gods rot you, cooperate."
He lifted his face then, his eyes burning.
"Survival, Jik. Is there anything we'd better know? Because we've got two kif out there fighting
over everything we've got, and gods rot it, I hate this, Jik, but we got no gods-be choice, Jik!"
His mouth went to a hard line. He picked up the glass and drank half the remainder. Shoved it
across to her. "I deal with that damn kif, set up whole damn thing." His hand shook where it
rested on the table. "Drink, damn you, I don't drink without drink with."
She picked it up and drank the rest. It hit bottom with the rest and stung her eyes to tears.
"We got make friend this damn kif," he said, all hoarse. "I don't know where Ana go, don't know
what he do. We, we got go make good friend this kif. This be job, a? Got go be polite." A tic
contorted his face and turned into a dreadful expression. "Pyanfar. You, I, old friend. You, I.
How much you pay him, a?"
A chill went up her back and lifted the hair between her shoulderblades. "I won't give you up to
him. Not again."
'No." He reached across and stabbed a blunt-clawed finger at her arm. "I mean truth. We got to, we
deal with this damn kif. You got to, you give him me, you give him you sister, we got make
surround-" His finger moved to describe a half-circle in the spilled liquor. "Maybe Ana damn fool.
Maybe human lot trouble. We be con-tin-gency. Con-tin-gency for whole damn Compact. We be inside.
Understand?"
"I don't turn you over to him again."
"You do. Yes. I do job. Same my ship. Same we got make deal." His mouth jerked. "Got go bed this
damn kif maybe. I do. Long time I work round this bastard." He shoved the glass at her again.
"Fill."
"I'm not drinking with you. I got a-" -ship to run. She swallowed that down before it got out.
"Gods rot. You got to get something real on your stomach." She filled the glass and got up, jerked
a packet of soup out of the cabinet and tore the foil, poured it into a cup and shoved it under
the brewer. Steam curled up. It smelled of salt and broth, promised comfort to a stomach after the
raw assault of the parini. She took a sip
herself and turned around to find him lying head on arms. "Come on," she said. "I'll drink this
one with you, turn about. Hear? You take the pills."
He hauled himself off the table and took a sip of the cup. Made a face and offered it back.
One and one. She gave him the next sip. "Just keep going," she said. "I got a sick crewwoman to
see about back there." Her stomach roiled. She still tasted the parini and she never wanted to
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taste it again in her life. But it was to a point of locking a friend into a cubbyhole of a prison
and letting a kif loose as crew to walk the corridors where he liked. That was the way of things.
He was right. He was utterly right, and thinking, past all the rest of it.
They might have no choice at all.
"Come on," she said. "While you can walk. Going to put you to bed myself. Pills in the mouth,
huh?"
"No." He picked them up and closed his fist on them. "I keep. Maybe need. Now I sleep. Safe, a?
With friend."
He gathered himself up from the table. Staggered. And gained his balance again.
She motioned toward the number two corridor. The back way toward the lift, that did not pass
through the bridge, past delicate controls.
He cooperated. He went with her quietly, when he had every chance to try something. But that would
be stupid, and gain him nothing, in a ship he could not control.
He had also told her nothing, for all his talking.
That in itself said something worrisome.
They went down to the lift; and down to the lower level; and as far as Tully's cabin, far forward.
Next to Skkukuk's.
Tully was not there. That meant he was in crew quarters. That did not surprise her.
"Get some sleep," she said.
"A," he said. And parked his wide shoulders against the door frame, leaned there reeking of parini
and looking as if he might fall on his face before he reached the bed.
"And don't forget the safety, huh?"
The next door opened. Skkukuk was there, bright-eyed and anxious to serve.
"You don't be fool," Jik said to her. "Friend."
And spun aside into the room and shut the door between them.
She locked it. And turned and looked at Skkukuk. This man is valuable," she said. Kifish logic.
"Dangerous," Skkukuk said.
She walked off and left him there. Took out the pocket-com and used it and not the intercom-
stations along the way. "Tirun, we got it all secure down here."
"Kif are pounding each other hard. We got approach contact from Meetpoint. Stsho are being extra
polite, we got no trouble if the poor bastards don't Phase on us in mid-dock, I got no confidence
I'm talking to the same stsho from minute to minute. Scared. Real scared. I got the feeling kif-
com isn't being polite at all. Ships inbound are Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin."
''Gods. Wonderful. Sikkukkut's chief axe. You could figure."
"You going on break?"
"I'm coming up there." No way to rest. Not till they had an answer. Even if her knees were
wobbling under her. She envied Jik the pills. But not the rest of his situation.
Tirun caught her eye as she walked onto the bridge and looked a further worried question at her.
Tirun, who looked deathly tired herself. "No change," Tirun said. "Except bad news. Goldtooth's
bunch had two chasers on his tail when he went out. Akkhtimakt's got to jump any minute now. Got
to. He's getting his tail shot up. Some of those ships may not make it otherside. They got to
clear out of here." Pyanfar looked. Everyone was still running for jump. The last of Goldtooth's
company was gone. And a flock of stsho, fortunate in being out of range of all disasters and not
being tied up dead-V at station. Not a sign of a methane-breather. Anywhere.
No hani was moving. They were caught at dock. And there was not a way in a mahen hell to get out
vectored for hani space with the angle and the V Sikkukkut's two station-aimed ships had on them.
Ikkhoitr and Khafukkin were going to make it in before their own three ships. Kif were going to
have control of that dock, and gods help the hani who took exception to it.
"We got one more ship ID: a Faha. Starwind."
"Munur." That was a youngish captain. A very small ship. And a distant cousin of Hilfy's on her
mother's side. ''Ehrran?"
"Not a sign."
"With Goldtooth or kited out of here home a long time ago. Want to lay odds which?" Exhaustion and
nerves added up on her. She shivered, and a great deal of it was depletion. "Yeah. Stay on it."
She indicated the direction of the galley and marshaled a steady voice. "Jik's going to rest a
bit. He's plenty mad. And crazy-tired. I hope to the gods he takes those pills and settles down,
but I don't think he'll do it. Pass out awhile, maybe. Maybe come to with a clearer head. Right
now he's real trouble. He's not thinking real clear. Me, I'm not, either. We put his quarters on
ops-com when he wakes up. Maybe let him up here, I don't know yet. It's my judgment I don't trust.
I'm going to clean up, pass out a few minutes. How are you holding?"
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"I'm all right," Tirun said. It was usual sequence: Haral first on the cleanup; Haral first to
snatch a little rest, Haral the one whose wits had to be sharpest and reflexes quickest, their
switcher; and Haral generally shorted herself on rest-time to pay her sister for it. "'Bout time,
though." And before she could leave the chair she was leaning on: "Captain, Chur's wanting a bit
of something hot. Geran went to the lowerdecks to fix it."
That was the best news since the drop. "Huh," she said. "Huh." With a little relaxation in tensed
muscles. She shoved off and walked on down the corridor. She wanted food. Wanted a bath. Wanted,
gods knew, to be lightyears away from all of this. But they did not have that choice. They could
run for it and get out of Meetpoint system while Sikkukkut was busy. But he would find them; and
anyone they were attached to. Their world was held hostage. Not mentioning the immediate threat to
three hundred thousand gods-be stsho and a handful of hani ships.
A kif could not forget an insult.
No more than a hani forgot harm to her friends.
It was a quiet gathering down in crew quarters, in the central area where they had a microwave,
and a little store of instant food: one of those amenities they had installed along with the high-
V braces and the AP weapons they had acquired on the black market. A couple of little couches and
a table or two in a lounge, and a common-room for sleeping, in which they could have installed
partitions, but they had never gotten around to that- never much wanted it, truth be known. A body
learned to sleep with cousins trekking in and out, and there was never any urgent reason to
change, even in the days when they had had wealth.
Right now, Hilfy thought, it was the best reason of all; a body wanted company in this crisis.
Geran came kiting in and out again with two cups of soup, gods only hope she got one into her own
stomach on the way topside; Chur was evidently
awake and willing to try it eating, which was one heart-lightening event among all the bad news.
Haral was sitting on the couch opposite with a bit of jerky in one hand and her mouth full, while
she raked her damp mane into order with the other. Her eyes had that distracted, glassy weariness
jump left in a body. Tully came out of the common bath with a towel over his shoulders, wearing a
pair of Khym's trousers, a rust silk pair which he had had to pin at the waist, but Haral was out
of spares and the other pair was going through the laundry. He staggered over to the cabinet and
got a cup and poured soupmix and water into it, shoved it in the microwave and sat down to towel
his head and beard dry. Pale, old scars stood out on white-skinned shoulders; and pinker, recent
ones.
"Akkhtimakt's jumped out," came the bulletin from the bridge. And: "We got a general slow-down on
Sikkukkut's side, sure enough, 'cept for two of 'em it looks like Sikkukkut's sending out to keep
'em worried, same as he did with Goldtooth's lot. Looks for good and sure like Sikkukkut's going
to stay with us. Thought you'd like to know."
"No surprise," Haral muttered. "Couldn't be that lucky. Couldn't be lucky enough to get help out
of Goldtooth. Sikkukkut's going to have this place stripped to the deckplates before he gets
back."
"Going to do whatever he wants," Hilfy said, "that's sure."
"Lousy mess."
Tully had lifted his face from the towel and looked at them, yellow hair tousled, eyes showing
lines of strain about the edges. Sometimes he seemed too tired even to make the effort of speech.
Or to listen for the translator's sputtering whisper giving him its mangled version of things
around him. The things hardest to get across were the delicate topics, like: How's Chur-honestly?
Or: What do you think Jik will do? And: What are we going to do when the kif move into the
station? He seemed to go away at times. At others he seemed desperate to say something of too much
difficulty to attempt it.
Things like: My people are going. I talked to them. Even if the message didn't get there. I was
that close.
/ didn't betray you.
I swear I didn't try.
The microwave bleeped Finished; and Tully got up and got his soup, with a package of shredded meat
and a packet of mahen fuyas, which he and Haral thought edible and everyone else aboard loathed.
He offered one of the grain-meat sticks to Haral: she took it and stirred her soup with it, and he
settled down with the other packets in his agile fingers, cup in both hands and elbows on his
knees, to drink a sip and sigh in profoundest weariness.
"I figure," Hilfy said, to fill the quiet, and to answer questions Tully did not ask, "Goldtooth
rendezvoused here with the human fleet. That's why he kited out on us at Kefk. He and Ehrran came
in here, he got stuck here, in a standoff with Akkhtimakt. Maybe he got Akkhtimakt pried loose
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