Chanur's Homecoming Read online

  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’as’ 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 But the knnn had withdrawn and Kefk occupied itself with its own affairs, like repair of its fire-ravaged docks and placating its new master, the hakkikt Sikkukkut, whose ships now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 to send a compromising query across the dockside communication lines. Kefk had a great deal to worry about, not least of which was the missing hunter-ship Mahijiru and its captain, one Ana Ismehanan-min, aka Goldtooth, and the hani ship that had run with him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  But the trouble would surely follow her home; she knew beyond a doubt that it would. She had involved herself in the affairs of kifish hakkiktun 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 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 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 he
r aching head in her hands.

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “My partner,” Jik said, silken-slurred: Sikkukkut afforded him liquor, and he pinched out a dead smokestick and took a sip from the small round footed cup, and drew a long, long breath. Pleasures were few enough. He took what he could get. “I tell you, hakkikt, I wish I 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, 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 one-sided 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 space is not in those interests. Therefore I make alliance with you, as I would have made it simultaneously with Akkhtimakt if he were not the fool he is.”

  This pleased Sikkukkut, perhaps. The dark eyes flickered. Sikkukkut picked up his cup an
d 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.”