C. J. Cherryh - Chanur 4 - Chanur' s homecoming

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Chanur's Homecoming
by CJ Cherryh
(Chanur book #4)
In our last episode...
Two years previous, the aggressive kif, natives of Akkht, had a hakkikt, a leader so fearsome he
united more than the usual number of kif behind him in a pirate band. This hakkikt, Akkukkak, had
seized a ship of a hitherto unknown species, humanity; and acquired ambitions beyond the usual
kifish banditry against other species. With a species to prey on which was without the protections
of the Compact, he might grow powerful enough to gather the whole kifish species under his
influence, sweeping down on the Compact in a wave of conquest unprecedented in history.
But his human prey escaped him. While the hakkikt was docked at Meetpoint starstation, the last
surviving prisoner ran to shelter aboard The Pride of Chanur, a hani merchant ship captained by
one Pyanfar Chanur, who in no wise solicited this refugee.
Still Pyanfar and her crew as a matter of policy refused to surrender the human to Akkukkak's
demand. This was a two-fold calamity for the kif: first the loss of the human and all the
information he held about his species; and then this defiance from a mere hani merchant-who
continued to elude the great hakkikt in a multi-star chase. Akkukkak was suddenly fighting not
only for his prey but for his life, for a kif who loses face rapidly loses followers, and becomes
the target of other kif with ambitions. Akkukkak was compelled to seek vengeance on a scale
sufficient to cover this humiliation; and this humiliation involved an ambition large enough to
shake worlds.
He took the unprecedented step of moving on the hani homeworld, seeking first the humiliation and
removal of Pyanfar Chanur and all her clan, in what may have been a kifish misapprehension of the
importance of any single hani; he was thinking as a kif, and interpreted Pyanfar's moves as
aggressive ambition. He also demanded the return of his property. In all these demands he
seriously misjudged the hani, for no action he could have taken would have rallied the hani
against him more than this intrusion on hani home territory and the demand to surrender a living
being who had taken shelter within a hani clan. Hani resisted in a battle at Gaohn station, and
they received mahen help in the persons of two hunter captains, known to Pyanfar (mahendo'sat
names are not easy for outsiders) as Goldtooth and Jik. This firefight would have been serious
enough; but the hostilities disturbed yet another species of the Compact, the methane-breathing
knnn, aliens of direst reputation and the highest technology in known space. The knnn,
intervening, took Akkukkak away to a fate unguessed. And that settled that. The human Tully went
home to his people. Pyanfar Chanur looked forward to a new era of trade and prosperity in which
not only Clan Chanur, but all hani-kind would profit from human contact.
She reckoned, unfortunately, without the stsho, whose station at Meetpoint was the hub of all
trading routes of the Compact. Total xenophobes, the stsho withdrew Chanur's trading permit. More,
Akkukkak had indeed caused a profound disturbance in hani affairs by the manner of his demise.
Chanur was forced to defend itself against challenge by hani enemies who took advantage of popular
fears of the knnn, and though Lord Kohan Chanur held on, Chanur lost valuable allies whose support
in council Pyanfar and other women of the clan very greatly missed.
To add to the difficulties, no one kept their promises. The humans did not return and the
mahendo'sat withdrew into isolation.
Two impoverished years later, Pyanfar Chanur was doing all she could to keep The Pride running,
and she was not the only Chanur captain in deep trouble.
Then by some unforeseen miracle her papers cleared and she was invited back to Meetpoint to
recover her trading license.
She pulled into Meetpoint with the last cargo she could afford to buy, and fell right into the
welcoming arms of Goldtooth the mahendo'sat, who handed her a courier packet with the human Tully
as a secret passenger and told her to run for her life: the kif were hunting him.
Now among Pyanfar's other troubles, she had defied hani custom. Hani males were traditionally a
protected class within hani society, the few who made successful challenge becoming clan lords,
ceremonial heads of clans, who in fact had no meaningful authority at all, the real legal and
financial power resting with the clanswomen who conducted exterior business. The rest of the males
lived and died in rural exile, excluded from all society but their own; and to this pool of males
a defeated clan lord must retire, to a short and wretched life among younger, ambitious males
practicing their combat skills. Pyanfar's husband Khym Mahn was defeated by their son Kara, and
deposed; but he postponed his exile to help her in her fight against the kif, and became one of
the few hani males ever to leave the planetary surface-by interstellar agreement, they were in
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fact barred from doing so, since they had a reputation for berserker rages dangerous to life and
property.
But Pyanfar, faced with the prospect of sending Khym down world again to die, defied treaty and
custom and took him aboard The Pride; more, she secured working papers for him by bribing a
mahendo'sat official, and listed him as crew. Having traveled and worked with alien males, Pyanfar
has begun to see in her own husband traits no hani has ever looked for in a male of her species;
she conceived the idea in her heart of hearts that the berserker rages might be due more to
upbringing than biology, and yet- and yet she is hani; and to doubt something out of all folk
wisdom, something built into all language and custom and tradition, is very difficult, the more so
that Khym himself doubts her theories; he is, after all, a product of his culture too, and all the
complex of beliefs which encourage him to be a man also foster his aggressive impulses and his
doubts about his faculties. It is not, in sum, a comfortable situation for The Pride's crew
either, who still cannot figure out whether they ought to treat Khym as a man or try to ignore
that handicap and treat him as one of themselves-in which case modesty and custom and language are
in the way: female humor and traditional curses involve sons and males; pausing to dress in
shipboard emergencies is not practical; ship facilities are not designed to accommodate a man's
larger stature; and male thinking is traditionally given to be hasty and imprecise, not the sort
of thing anyone wants to rely on in any use of hazardous machinery.
But Khym once-lord of Mann acquired the unprecedented (for a hani) designation of crewman aboard
The Pride of Chanur.
The worst happened forthwith: Khym was involved in a riot that heavily damaged Meetpoint station.
Pyanfar escaped a second loss of her license only by charging the entire bill to the mahendo'sat,
who had given her a credit slip for quite different purposes-to aid her with the transport of the
human, Tully.
Unfortunately this riot happened under the disapproving witness of one Rhif Ehrran, an agent of
the hani government.
Now Rhif Ehrran had come to Meetpoint on quite different business. So many of the spacing clans of
the hani had taken heavy damage at Gaohn that the groundling clans had seized control of the han,
the hani senate. Meanwhile the xenophobic stsho, wealthiest species of the Compact, had bribed
certain hani politicians, wanting to subvert hani politics from the inside for fear of two other
species: first, humans, who had trespassed stsho borders and might do so again; second, the kif,
because two of Akkukkak's erstwhile lieutenants, one Akkhtimakt and one Sikkukkut, had risen to
declare themselves hakkikktun. These two kif were currently battling it out between themselves,
but they had already polarized kifish society into a frighteningly few predatory bands. From a
fragmented piratical species, kif had suddenly achieved unity to a degree Akkukkak himself never
effected.
The burning issue, among kif as elsewhere, was humanity; and the persistent rumors held that
humanity was the Compact right through methane-breather space, to unite with the mahendo'sat,
which meant trouble for the kif. The rumors happened to be true. And the stsho, who, incapable of
fighting, had long relied on mahen guards for protection, suddenly suspected they could no longer
trust mahendo'sat. Hence the sudden coziness with the groundling hani clans and the flood of stsho
money to certain hani pockets.
The han had heard rumors too; and heard rumors, moreover, of one hani actively cooperating with
the kif-the hani pirate Dur Tahar of Tahar's Moon Rising. That was the ship Rhif Ehrran had gone
out there to hunt. But Ehrran was also there on secret business: negotiating with the stsho on
behalf of certain of her own political patrons. Certainly Ehrran was interested when Pyanfar
Chanur involved herself in a major riot aboard Meetpoint, entangled with both mahen secret agents
and a high-ranking kif. So when Pyanfar paid a huge bribe to the stsho stationmaster, Stle sties
stlen, and made a hasty departure from Meetpoint with the human Tully aboard, Rhif Ehrran
followed, smelling political blood and seeing in this move of Pyanfar's a threat to all she stood
for.
Akkhtimakt headed Pyanfar off by occupying Kita Point, strategic gateway to mahen and hani space,
forcing all traffic to detour into the Disputed Zones along the kifish/mahen border. With The
Pride damaged enroute, Pyanfar had no choice but to go to Kshshti Station in the Zones, seeking
repairs and help. Her intended destination was Maing Tol, the mahen regional capital; her aim, to
deliver Tully and his message from humanity into the hands of Goldtooth's superiors. But on her
arrival at Kshshti, she ran into Rhif Ehrran, the kif Sikkukkut, and the hani trader Ayhar's
Prosperity, which had lost its cargo at Meetpoint thanks to her: its captain Banny Ayhar was not
pleased.
Rhif Ehrran demanded Tully's surrender to her; and her attempt to take custody of Tully resulted
in a dock fight which put Tully and Pyanfar's young niece Hilfy Chanur into the hands of their
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enemy Sikkukkut. Sikkukkut left, leaving Pyanfar the message that she could recover the hostages
at Mkks, a station right on the kifish border. It was too obviously a trap.
In the midst of all this, Goldtooth's partner Jik (whose true mahen name is Keia Nomesteturjai)
showed up at Kshshti with his powerful hunter-ship Aja Jin; and sent the hani captain Banny Ayhar
on to Maing Tol with the message Pyanfar had brought this far. He supported Pyanfar in her
decision to go to Mkks: he went along and somehow argued Rhif Ehrran into joining them.
At Mkks, Sikkukkut returned Hilfy and Tully in a negotiated settlement. He also gave Pyanfar a
gift of kifish esteem-a slave named Skkukuk.
And all they had agreed to do in return was to cross into kifish territory and help Sikkukkut take
Kefk station, the main kifish link to Meetpoint, in an act of outright piracy.
Jik agreed, to Pyanfar's consternation. Moreover, Rhif Ehrran did, after listening to Jik's
persuasion.
They made the jump and they succeeded. Their ships occupied Kefk kifish-fashion, by superior bluff
and with very little damage.
Goldtooth showed up then, furious with his partner Jik, for Goldtooth had been lying silent just
off Kefk monitoring the situation. He had been off a time fighting Akkhtimakt, trying to open the
way for a human fleet now enroute to Compact space, and now Jik had made a deal which would
effectively bring Sikkukkut into alliance with the mahendo'sat against Akkhtimakt, emphatically
not the situation Goldtooth was working toward. Humans were headed into Compact space in great
number, and Goldtooth's whole plan for human-mahen alliance now was jeopardized by the taking of
Kefk and its delivery to Sikkukkut, who consequently would bring the kif into unity under one
hakkikt much faster then Goldtooth's plans called for.
Pyanfar meanwhile received a second gift of esteem from Sikkukkut, the person of her old enemy Dur
Tahar the pirate, who had been a respectable hani merchant captain before she opposed Pyanfar at
Gaohn and accidentally ended up in alliance with the kif, her reputation ruined. Now a prisoner of
Sikkukkut, captured along with Akkhtimakt's partisans on the station, Tahar had reached the nadir
of her fortunes and begged Pyanfar to intercede with the kif for the lives of her cousins still in
Sikkukkut's hands.
Tahar. Pyanfar refused, having nothing but disgust for Ehrran's secret police methods and police
state mentality. Tahar would go home to hani justice, but aboard The Pride of Chanur. It was a
direct slap at Ehrran and a threat to her prestige; and a countermove against her patrons'
ambitions. It served notice that Chanur, instead of bowing to political force, was going to
exercise the ancient authority of a clan to take its own prisoners and administer its own justice
before turning the offender over to the han. This effectively meant that Rhif Ehrran's superiors
and political allies could not touch Tahar without dealing with Chanur as a head-of-cause in open
council, and without bringing the whole* foreign policy issue into debate in the han with Chanur
as the chief spokeswoman for the opposition, precisely the situation Chanur's enemies did not
want.
Then, while Pyanfar went to negotiate with Sikkukkut, Goldtooth secretly met with Ehrran. And some
unknown agency started a riot on the docks, which set Akkhtimakt's hitherto cowed partisans on the
station to attacking Sikkukkut's forces. Pyanfar and the Tahar crew, whose freedom she had just
negotiated from Sikkukkut, were caught in the middle of the firefight, as Goldtooth and Rhif
Ehrran both took advantage of the confusion to break dock and run for Meetpoint- together.
The slave Skkukuk saved Pyanfar's life in the riot, to her profound distress at the debt.
But Jik, also attempting Pyanfar's rescue from the firefight, fell into the hands of Sikkukkut,
who had some new and hard questions to ask of Jik regarding Goldtooth, mahen ambitions, and the
whereabouts and course of human ships.
Chapter One
The Pride's small galley table was awash in data printout, paperfaxes ringed and splotched with
brown gfi-stains, arrowed, circled, crossed out, and noted in red and green ink till they were
beyond cryptic. The red pen made another notation and another snaking arrow; and the bronze-pelted
hani fist that held it flexed claws out and in again in profoundest frustration. Pyanfar Chanur
sat in this sanctuary gnawing her mustaches and drinking cup after cup of lukewarm gfi amid her
scribbles on the nav and log records.
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
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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
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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
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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."
"Therefore he wrecks Kefk's docks."
Jik shrugged and drew in a puff, blinked and stared at the kif beneath heavy lids. "Well, but
independence is Ana's way. I've known him for years. He's damn stubborn. He thinks he sees a way
and he takes it. Agreements to this side and that- sure, he's working the mahen side. And maybe
the human side too. Most of all he's gathering assets-" (Careful, Keia, the brain's fogged; stay
to the narrow, the back-doubling path and lead us all round again.) Jik drew in smoke and let it
out again in a shaky exhalation. "He'll negotiate with you. Eventually. But think like a
mahendo'sat. He has to get something in hand to negotiate with, something to offer you, hakkikt,
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to demonstrate his worth."
"Like Meetpoint? You weigh upon my credulity, Keia.'' Silk, silk and soothing-soft. "Try again."
"Not Meetpoint. But some matter of substance he can come to you with. I think he means to come
back to talk. But he will bring something."
Sikkukkut's snout twitched in a dry sniffing, kifish laughter, which came for many reasons, not
all of which were civilized. "Like a million human ships and a great number of guns?''
"Now, that is possible, hakkikt." Jik blinked and narrowed his focus still tighter on what he had
resolved to say, never on what he was hiding. Find the threads of the story and stay to them, walk
the narrow path, while the drug and the alcohol and the stimulants in the smoke flowed through his
veins. "That is remotely possible; but the advantage would be too onesided for the humans. What
good to mahendo'sat, to exchange one powerful neighbor for another of unknown potential?''
"Unknown, is it?"
"You speak excellent mahensi. Far better than I speak your language. Mechanical translators are
hardly a substitute for living and fluent brains. The best human translator we know can ask for a
cup of water and say he wants trade. Now, what does that tell us about human motives, human
government, human minds, a? Friend, they say. You say friend, I say friend. Do we mean the same
thing? What do humans mean with that word? Assuredly Ana doesn't know; and I much doubt he means
to upend the Compact as long as he doesn't know." Jik held up a blunt-clawed forefinger, to
maintain attention to a point. "Goldtooth, our esteemed Ana, takes orders. He also interprets them
freely. This is the danger in him. The Personage who sent us both knows this. Therefore he sent me
to restrain Ana from his excesses. I have failed in this. But I know Ana's limits. I am saying
this to you, and you speak such excellent mahensi; but I don't know whether you know the meaning
of this word limits in the way we do. It implies the edge of Ana's personal assumptions. Ana still
obeys the Personage at Maing Tol. As I do. And I tell you that negotiation with you is in the
Personage's interest and human ships running freely through Compact is not in those interests.
Therefore I make alliance with
you, as I would have made it simultaneously with Akkhtimakt it he were not the fool he is."
This pleased Sikkukkut, perhaps. The dark eyes flickered. Sikkukkut picked up his cup and the thin
tongue exited the v-form gap of his outer teeth and lapped delicately at the petroleum-smelling
contents. "I have known mahen fools," Sikkukkut said.
"Don't number Ana among them."
"Or yourself?"
"I hope not to be."
"I have a notion what you might have been doing out on that dockside, Keia, my friend. Ana
Ismehanan-min wanted confusion behind which to depart. And someone fired the shot that touched off
the riot."
"Rhif Ehrran."
"The hani? Come now, Keia. Hani gave no orders to the mahendo'sat."
"It's not certain that they take them either, your pardon, hakkikt. Myself, I look for a fool to
do a fool's work; and Ehrran is the greatest fool I know."
"Ehrran isn't sitting here at this moment."
Jik drew in a long breath of smoke and let it go again. "It did give her the diversion she needed.
And indeed, she isn't sitting here at this moment. At cost to me, to Chanur-in fact, hakkikt,
expensive as it may be to her in the long run, in the short, it served her very well. And what my
partner is thinking of in her regard I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew. I think he has use
for that hani he took with him, use he couldn't get out of Chanur-Chanur being no fool."
"Perhaps he has made use of all the hani. Perhaps he has secured his retreat from among us, and
that is all he hoped to do-might that not be, Keia? I only wonder what you are doing here."
"Perhaps he only followed her because he saw no way to stop her."
"His ship has armaments," Sikkukkut said dryly. "He was close behind her before her ship reached
velocity."
"I mean within his intentions he had no way to stop her."
"And those intentions are?"
Jik spread his hands. "I keep my agreements, hakkikt. And if he has abrogated our partnership-" It
was his best argument, his most desperate. His brain fuzzed and the drug meandered through his
veins with the force of a tidal bore. "If he has cast me off, hakkikt, I still keep my agreements
with you. That's my job to do; and if I fare better than he does, then that will prove to my
Personage which agreement is the better to keep."
"Mahen mentality."
"I tell you: it's very like sfik. Give me status and I'll outweigh him with the Personage at Maing
Tol. It's that simple. It's not unknown that the mahendo'sat conclude conflicting treaties. And if
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my course looks wiser than Ana's, mine will be honored and his will be set aside. If both of us
look like fools, our Personage will lean on other agencies- nor can either of us know if our
Personage is not concluding a third treaty with the stsho. If all fail him, he will fall and
another Personage's agents will be to deal with. The mahendo'sat is easy to predict and reasonable
to deal with. It will always go for its greatest advantage."
"Kk-kk-t. And will this Personage of yours stir forth in action or wait for events?"
"Outcome from the subordinates is always the deciding factor."
"Where has Ismehanan-min gone? Where is this human fleet? What agreements has he made with the
methane-breathers? What of your own?"
They returned to old questions, the same questions, bringing the interview in its usual circle.
"Again, mekt-hakkikt, I don't know. They may aim at Meetpoint. It's not impossible the humans
might come here. And I don't know of any agreement with the knnn. I asked the tc'a to come here to
assure that there was no panic on methane-side-"
"Why did the knnn take your tc'a?"
"I don't know. Who knows the knnn? Who can make an agreement with them-"
"Except the tc'a. Except the tc'a, Keia. Tell me what dealings you have had with them."
"God help me, none." He held up a protesting hand. "I never deal with knnn." And carefully, with
his sense in rags from drugs and drink: "That's Ana's department."
"You wish to alarm me."
"Hakkikt, I am alarmed. I don't know whether Ana is in control of it, or whether the knnn are
doing something independent."
"In control of it."
It did sound stupid. Jik blinked slowly and took another drag at the smoke. "I mean maybe he's in
consultation with them." The hakkikt feared the methane-breathers. Their irrationality, their
technology, their vapors and tempers or whatever it was that sent them into frenzies, made the
methane-folk a force no one sane wanted to stir up. "'Or they approached him." That was enough to
send the wind up Sikkukkut's back. "I don't know, hakkikt. I swear. God witness. I don't know. I
did send a message to Maing Tol. So did Goldtooth. What was in his packet I don't know."
"What was in yours?"
Jik shrugged. "My deal with you. My urging they accept this treaty. I tell you, hakkikt, I'd urge
you-all respect, hakkikt, you let me go back to my ship. I have a personal interest in seeing this
agreement of ours flourish. It'll make me a very powerful man at home."
Give the kif something he understood, an ambition within kifish comprehension.
"You're attempting to use psychology on me," Sikkukkut said.
"Of course I am. It also happens to be true."
"What happened to friendship! You know I know words like this. I am not stupid, Keia; I can study
up on a concept without having the-internal circuitry to process it. Friendship means that you
work in concert with Ismehanan-min. Loyalty means that you might become a martyr-I learned that
word of ker Pyanfar. An appalling concept. But there it was in the mahen dictionary. I was
curious. Martyr. Martyrdom. The whole of mahen history teems with martyrs. You place value on
them. Like the hani. Have you wish to become one, Keia?"
Jik lifted his brows. "Martyr is another word for fool."
"I found no such cross-reference. Tell me: Keia: I want to know this: where do the knnn fit into
Ismehanan-min's
arrangements? What arrangements has he made with the stsho?"
"He would betray them."
"And your opinion of them?"
"They would betray us."
"They have. Stle sties stlen is a deadly creature. For a grass-eating stsho. Is he dealing with
this person?"
"I don't know. No. Yes." God help him, the drug was fuzzing up his mind again. For a panicked
instant he lost all the threads and got them back again, remembering his story. "But not at depth.
Ana doesn't trust the stsho. It's mutual. Of course. The humans will come to Meetpoint-
eventually. I think they'll come there. And Stle stles stlen will Phase when gtst sees it. No sts-
stsho can withstand that kind of blow to gtst reputation. Ana will take advantage of the confusion
and seize the station. If he can."
"And Akkhtimakt will allow this."
"Ana will have to anticipate him there. Perhaps-perhaps, hakkikt, Ana moved so quickly because he
knows something of Akkhtimakt's intentions. That there was no more time-in Ana's estimation."
"And why would he go with the hani?"
"Look for advantage." That questioning made him nervous. It was a new tack; he tried to think his
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way through it and in desperation went back to old answers. "I think-think he hopes to use Rhif
Ehrran to get into Meetpoint itself without having stsho techs Phase and bring the systems down.
Now you doubt this. I well know. But stsho react badly to surprises; from kif, they expect
threats. Even from hani. But mahen threats unbalance them. They're unaccustomed. Ehrran has a
treaty with them. That's all I can guess about it. She's a key. That's all. A fool and a key."
"To do what?"
"Hakkikt, I'm not privy to his plans."
Upon that, they were back to old matters. He sat and smoked while Sikkukkut thought that reply
over once more, hunched faceless within the hooded robe, on his insect chair, the silver emblem of
his princedom among kif shining on his breast stained with sodium-glow. Now and again from the
shadows about them came the rustling of other robes, the restless stirring of subordinates who
waited on their prince's pleasure.
In a moment Sikkukkut would negligently lift his hand and those waiting about the room would close
in, to bear their prisoner back downship and belowdecks to a different sort of questioning, now
that he was sufficiently muddled and drugged. Jik did not let himself doubt that. He did not let
himself hope that his argument might sway the hakkikt; least of all did he hope that his hani
allies on The Pride of Chanur and his own crew back on Aja Jin would effect a rescue. That was the
core of his defense here among the kif, the hard center to his resistance that let him sit here so
placidly taking his smokestick down to a stub and watching heavy-lidded while Sikkukkut
an'nikktukktin meditated what next to do to him; it was the center of all secrets he held, that he
counted himself already dead, from which position it was possible to be quite patient with all
manner of misery, since, dead, he was enjoying a degree of sensation and occasional pleasant
interlude no one dead had a right to. Even when the pain was extreme, it was better than not
feeling anything at all. Ever.
Besides, he was mahendo'sat, and curiosity was second nature to him: he was still picking up
information, skilled as Sikkukkut was. He had learned, for instance, that Aja Jin, The Pride of
Chanur, and Tahar's Moon Rising were all at dock and all seemed free: that was very pleasant news.
That Pyanfar Chanur was at hand to lend her experience to his own second in command was very good
news; that Pyanfar still had credit enough with Sikkukkut to keep Dur Tahar's throat uncut was
excellent news as well, and if there was still enough hani left under Tahar's red-brown hide, the
pirate would adhere to her old enemy like burr to fur: hani paid their debts, if nothing else; and
Tahar owed Chanur enough to Stick to hell and back.
All of this he had learned in these sessions, as he knew that the human Tully was indeed safe
aboard The Pride of Chanur, so Sikkukkut evidently valued Pyanfar more than he wanted the human to
question and for other purposes, which was a mighty great deal of value for any kif to put on a
non-kif. This was a double-edged benefit, of course: knowing kifish mindset, value-as-ally could
turn with amazing swiftness to
high-status-target. Friend in a kif s doubletoothed mouth had no overtones of loyalty or self-
sacrifice at all, was in fact nearly the opposite. Ally-of-convenience, rather. Potential rival,
rather. Or poor fool.
The hani knew these things; and he knew well that his second in command knew. So they would both
keep one finger to the wind; and he hoped that heads would stay cool if, as seemed possible and
even likely, portions of himself turned up as decoration on Sikkukkut's ship-ramp. He loathed
stupidity, himself; he had sinned in that regard or he would not be here. But he truly abhorred
the thought that he might singlehandedly serve as trigger to the undoing of the Compact. That was
the one thing even a dead man could fear, the legacy he might leave the living for generations to
come. That thought was the crack in his defense: Sikkukkut, being kif, taking no thought to
posterity, was not capable of reaching that chink without a strong hint.
It was very easy for species to misunderstand each other, particularly when it came to abstracts.
It was possible, for instance, that he and Pyanfar had persistently misinterpreted Sikkukkut's
lack of metaphysics as a lack of emotional abstracts and irrational desires. He had come to know
the kif with unwanted intimacy, and now suspected Sikkukkut of a kifish sentimentality, a
preference for intimate targets for his most personal satisfaction, while Akkhtimakt was less
personal in his mayhem, and more catholic in his attacks.
Akkhtimakt operates with the fist, Sikkukkut was wont to say, and I with the knife.
It was kifish poesy; it was also a profound statement of styles which might, if a mahendo'sat were
well-educated in kifish mentality, say more than its surface content, and delve into those deep
things language barriered away from translation between species.
He smoked the butt down to the last possible remnant, and carefully pinched it out instead of
stubbing it, spacer's affectation. Fire never hurt if one's moves were definite and one's mind was
set firmly on the extinguishing and not on the fire. Spacer's affectation, because when the
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fingers could bear it comfortably, it was safe to put away. He dropped the butt
into the side of the pouch reserved for that and laid the pouch on the table. They never let him
keep it. The pouch, with the liquor and Sikkukkut's good humor, was delivered only in this room.
So he let it lie, and met Sikkukkut's eyes with lazy amusement.
Perhaps he perplexed the hakkikt with his attitude, a coolness between defiance and alliance and
certainly not the behavior of a kif; perhaps that was what kept his head off the spikes outside.
Sikkukkut gazed at him a moment in what seemed interest, then lifted his hand as he had done
before, and signaled his removal.
"There it goes," someone cried down the hall, and footsteps went thundering past Chur Anify's
door, disturbing her convalescence. "Kk-kk-kt, something else called out, and that brought Chur's
eyes open and set a little quicker pulse into her heart, so that needles jumped on the machine to
which she was bound by a large skein of tubes, indicating an increase in pulse rate; in response
to that, a flood of nutrients and appropriate chemicals came back into her bloodstream,
automatically supplied.
Living bound to a machine-extension which thought it knew best what a body ought to feel was bad
enough; lying there while riot went on in the corridor was another thing, and Chur edged her way
off the bed, carefully (the spring extensions on the skein of tubings made it possible for her to
teach the bathroom and saved her some indignities). In this case she gripped the various tubes in
one fist to keep the extension from jerking painfully at the needles and padded over to the bureau
where she had her gun, hearing the kifish clicking going on out there. Her head spun and her heart
raced and the gods-cursed machine flooded her veins with sedative when it sensed her elevated
pulse, but she made it to the door and pushed the button with the knuckle of her gun-hand.
The door shot open. She slumped lazy-like against the wall and stared at a kif who turned up
directly opposite her and her pistol; then her eyes went strange-focussed and her mind went here
and there again, so that she had difficulty recalling where she was or why there should be a kif
in The Pride's corridor looking as horrified as a kif could look (not extremely) and why the
peripheries of her vision informed her there were her cousins and a human standing there in shock
and in company with this kif. It was a great deal to ask of a drugged hani brain, but the kif had
its hands up and she was not crazed enough to go firing off a gun in a ship's corridor without
knowing why.
And while her brain was sorting through that crazy sequence, something small and black ran right
over her foot on its way into her room. "Hyaa!" she yelled in revulsion, and the kif dived for the
wall beside her as she swung to keep a bead not on the thing but on the kif. A hurtling mass of
her friends overtook her from behind-not to help her, to her vast bewilderment: they grabbed her
and the gun, while the kif flinched and pasted himself tight to the wall, making himself the
smallest possible target.
"Chur," her sister Geran was pleading with her, and she supposed that it was Geran prying the gun
loose from her fingers: she was dizzy and her vision fuzzed. She heard her cousin Tirun's voice,
and human jabber, which was her friend Tully; and she dazedly let herself be dragged one step and
another into the room, someone else taking the skein of tubes. A bell was going off: the infernal
machine was telling off on her, that she was stressed.
"Gods rot it," she cried, remembering. "There's something in here." And then she remembered that
she had seen little black things before, on the bridge, and could not remember whether they were
hallucinations or not, or whether her sister took her seriously. It was embarrassing to see
hallucinations. And the cursed machine kept pouring sedative into her, so that they were going to
leave her alone in here and drugged, with whatever-it-was: she did not want that either.
"Look under the bed," Geran said, while Geran was putting her back into it, and she could not
remember where the gun had gotten to, which was against ship's rules, which was against all the
regulations, to lose track of a firearm; and there was a kif trying to crawl under her bed. A
sweat broke out on her, cold on her ears and nose and fingertips. "Where's my gun?" she asked
hazily, trying to sit up again; and "There it is!" someone shouted from the floor.
"My gods," Chur murmured, and her sister put her flat on her back again. She blinked, blinked
again in the crazed notion that there was a kif on his hands and knees at her bedside and people
were trying to get her hallucination out from under her bed.
"Sorry," Geran said fervently. "Stay down. We've got it."
"You're crazy," Chur said. "You're stark crazy, all of you." Because none of it made sense.
But something let out a squeal under her bed, and something bumped against the secure-held braces,
and there was an ammonia smell to the room which was no illusion, but a kif's real presence.
"He got," said Tully's voice, and he loomed up by her bedside. "Chur, you all right?"
"Sure," Chur said. She remembered at least where she was now, tied to a machine in na Khym's cabin
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