Chanur's Legacy

Chapter Thirteen

"Captain?" Fala slid a cup of gfi under Hilfy's hand, and she murmured thanks without looking. Her eyes were on the screen, while the search program located the most recent of the letters for Pyanfar, the ones that had just missed her at Meetpoint, the ones that had been backed up at Hoas and Urtur and Kura and Touin. A lot from mahen religious nuts who wanted to tell the mekt-hakkikt about prophecies (one never understood why they were never good news) and a handful who had an invention they wanted to promote, which they were sure the great Personage of Personages would find useful (no few hani were guilty of this sin.) There were a few vitriolic communications from people clearly unbalanced. The prize of that lot was from a mahe who had "written four times this week and you not answer letter. I tell you how solve border dispute by friendly rays of stars which make illuminate our peace. You make power color rainbow green and make green like so… when Iji orientate in harmony with rainbow color red with orange. Please take action immediate." (With illustrations, and important words underlined.) But nothing, so far, no hint of aunt Pyanfar's business in this stack.

A question Hallan Meras would like to ask Vikktakkht.

There was no question that she knew of… except the whereabouts of Atli-lyen-tlas.

And had the kif known that would be a question, back on Meetpoint, before a kifish guard handed Meras over to the Legacy?

Or was it some other thing, something Meras didn't remember or was afraid to say? Pyanfar had passed through Meetpoint not so long before: No'shto-shti-stlen had said so, and the huge stack of messages assumed she would come back through that port.

Hilfy sat, and sat, sipped gfi and stared at the blinking lights that meant incoming messages. The computer was set for the keywords Atli-lyen-tlas, stsho, ambassador, Ana-kehnandian, Ha'domaren, Pyanfar, hani, and Vikktakkht. She figured that should cover it.

But a quick scan of what arrived in the priority stack were mostly inquiries from various mahen companies asking about conditions at Kita. Not a word from the kif. If kif were talking to each other out there, they were not talking to her. Possibly they were occupied with the local investigation.

Possibly they were couriering their messages to each other around the rim, not using com at all.

"Fueling's complete,"Tarras reported from downside ops. “ I've got a good bid on the goods. The market could go a point higher, could sink a little. My instinct says take it. "

"Do it. Very good. — Tarras, when the loaders get here, go ahead and open the hold, but keep someone monitoring the cameras. Whoever's going out, wear a coat, stuff the pistol in your pocket, never mind the regulations."

She still wasn't panicked about the threat, and she kept asking herself whether she were really this calm, or whether she was operating in a state of flashback. Kshshti was the site of her nightmares, and things were going wrong, but she found herself quite cold, quite logical. She could wish aunt Py were here, she could wish her crew had had some experience beyond the years-ago skirmish at Anuurn. Out there on the docks— her one split second of panic was realizing she had to tell Tiar which way to look: The Pride's crew had known, at gut level, which side to step to, who would do what, who was likeliest to cover whom. They'd done it before. They'd worked out the missteps. Paid for a few of them.

But aunt Py wasn't here. Sorting the mail stacks, even with computer search, for some answer to what was going on… could take weeks: the people with the real information were less likely to dump their critical messages in among the lunatic communications the stations collected in general mail, unless there was some code to tell The Pride's computers to pay attention; and she didn't know what keywords to search. Meanwhile it was her ship, her crew. It was her responsibility to get them through alive, and that included telling them when to break the law, violate the peace, the treaties, and the laws of civilized behavior.

It was up to her to decide a course of action on a kif who had gotten his claws into someone on her ship — before they signed the contract. Surmise that the stsho contract was the kif's interest: if it was, surmise that it had known about that contract, it had expected them to get it, and that it was up to its skinny elbows in the disappearance of Atli-lyen-tlas.

They had guns enough aboard — only prudent, never mind where they had bought them, or how, but it had involved a mahen trader; while weapons were such a cultural necessity among the kif, such a part of life-sustaining self-esteem, that the Compact peace treaty had had to except knives and blades from the weapons ban, figuring that kifish teeth were no less dangerous, and that it was far better to have the kif signatory to the peace than not…

Of course, it had taken considerable efforts in translations and cross-cultural studies to explain the word peace to all the several species. Granted, war did not translate with complete accuracy; but kif had understood neither idea. Kif weren't wired to understand war, since they were at constant odds with each other, cooperated when hani least would, betrayed when hani would be most loyal, and hit the ground at birth competitive, aggressive, and (some scholars surmised) having first to escape their nest before they were eaten.

As to the last… that was speculation. But she did understand their minds better than most hani. It wasn't to say she was forgiving. The kif weren't either. Circumstances either changed or they did not. They had that in common.

She got up from the console, she walked back to where na Hallan was puttering about in the galley, and said, with a queasy feeling,

"NaHallan, — how do you feel about talking to the kif?"

"If you want me to," he said.

"You take orders?"

"Aye, captain." Dubiously.

"You foul this up, Meras, and I'll shoot you myself. Lives are at risk, yours, mine, more than that, do you understand? You go out on the docks. And I'll suggest a question you can ask this Vikktakkht — that is, if you can't think of one of your own. Nothing comes to you yet, what he might have meant?"

"I've been trying to understand what he meant, captain. I don't. I can't imagine what he's talking about. It doesn't make sense. It didn't then."

"What would be important to ask him?"

"I don't know…"

"Like in the myths, Meras. You get one wish. What would help us?''

His ears went down and lifted again, tentatively. "Knowing where the stsho is. Getting hold of him…"

"Gtst. Not him. They're quite touchy on that score. But, yes, that's the question — unless you think of a better one."

"I'm sure I wouldn't—"

"I'm sure if you think of one, you'll tell me. I'll find this Vikktakkht. And if we meet him, if knives or guns come out, you take orders, and you don't act the fool. Do you hear me? Do you absolutely, beyond any question, understand?"

"Aye, captain," he said faintly. But if she had said the local star is green, she had the uneasy feeling that na Hallan would have agreed.

Give him credit, he would have tried to see the star that way. But it didn't make Yes the best answer.

And it didn't tell you what he'd do when the shots started flying.

She stared at him long enough to let him think about it. "I'll see if this Vikktakkht is by any chance in touch with his ship."

"You," Hilfy said to Fala, in the lower deck main corridor, "work the hold. Can you handle that?"

"No trouble," Fala said, "but…"

"No 'but.' I need you handling the loader." Ears went down. "Because I'm the—"

"Because I have things on my mind, Fala! Gods!" She headed down the corridor toward the airlock, where, if Chihin and Tiar had gotten Hallan downside, their expedition was organizing.

The dockers had lost no time: the Legacy's cargo lock was open, and Tarras, in the requisite coat, was out there going over the final customs forms.

There was no graceful way for a hani to wear a cold-hold coat on dockside: Tarras could justify it by going back and forth inside, and perspiring by turns. But they couldn't. So that meant the lightest arms, lousy for accuracy, but they fit in a formal-belted waist with no more than a slight bulge… and it was their office-meeting, formal reception best they wore.

Except na Hallan, who went in ordinary spacer blues. But when they walked down the ramp to the dock, there was no question where the stares went— straight to the hani a head taller than any of them, the one with the shoulders and the mane that matched.

Work stopped. A transport bumped the one in front with a considerable jolt. Hallan watched his feet on the way down. She watched their surroundings and said, under her breath, "I don't expect it, but watch left and right and say if you see anything untoward. Na Hallan, if there should be trouble, you do understand that getting your head down doesn't necessarily cover your rear. There's a lot of you.

Wherever we go, I want you to have somewhere in mind that you could get to that would be a solid barrier; and where you'd duck to if you had to fall back. I want this whole dock to be a map like that in your head, do you follow me?"

"Yes, captain. I do, thank you."

He might. Boys learned hunting, bare-handed; boys learned tracking and hiding and all such games as fitted them for defending their lives. It was heroics she worried about. Boys learned to show out, and bluff, and trust the other side most often to follow the rules, although na Kohan had said once, reflectively, that men learned to cheat in the outback, because some did, and once that was true — you couldn't assume.

So with Chihin and Tiar. The rings in their ears meant a lot of ports and each one of those rings a risky situation, in space or on the docks. But they weren't Pride crew, and they hadn't studied this together.

She just trusted they were thinking now, better than Tiar had been when she had felt that cross-up of signals.

They walked through the traffic of transports and past the towering gantry that held the power umbilical, took that route for the next three berths, before they tended around the off-loading of another ship, mahen, as happened.

There were stares. Hallan cast an anxious look back at them and stumbled on a power cable.

"Feet," Chihin said.

"Sorry," he said.

There was the kifish trade office, number 15, opposite berth 28, as listed — an unambitious and functional looking place, conspicuous by the orange light behind the pressure windows; but beyond the section doors was a district where that lighting was the norm, where kifish bars, restaurants and accommodations mingled with gambling parlors where kif played games no outsider would care to bet on, and where bloodletting was not an uncommon result, at least… it had been that way.

Maybe they had cleaned it up. One reminded oneself these were civilized times.

But that might be fatal thinking.

"This is the place. If there's trouble, have your spots picked and don't look after anyone but yourself — at least you know what you're thinking and where you're going."

"Too gods-be close to the kif section," Chihin said.

"We're dealing with kif," Tiar said.

Now she was nervous. Now the hair down her backbone must be ridged, and her claws kept twitching in their sheaths.

But not notably scared. It was like sleepwalking, saying to herself, I've done this before, this is the life I chose for myself, this is the way the Compact is, not—

— not the safe, law-hedged half-truths the treaty made. Safe, as long as you're within twenty lights of Anuurn, civilized, as long as it's only hani you deal with, altruistic, as long as you're not dealing with species who have to have that word explained to them.

A methane-breather wove past, in its sealed vehicle; a bus followed, humming along its mag strip.

Never could convince the tc'a to rely on the magnetics. Something about their sensitivities. You couldn't get that clear in translation either.

That was the truth out here. It wasn't law that got you by. It was good manners. It was giving in on a point that wasn't fatal to you, and might be to them.

There were kif about the door — not unnaturally. And it said something strange, that these kif showed less surprise at them than the mahendo'sat had done… these kif simply made soft clicking sounds of attention and backed away to allow them the door. There had been a time when kif didn't share information, when one kif knowing a fact didn't guarantee that other kif did.

Was that a change Pyanfar had wrought, the mekt-hakkikt, the leader of leaders, the power over powers, that had unified the kif for the first time in their existence?

Maybe they were all Vikktakkht's. Those were the kind of kif to watch out for, the ones that came in large, strongly-led groups.

The doors opened. They walked into dim sodium light, into ammonia stink that stung the nose, and Hallan did sneeze, loudly in the silence. Black-robed kif kept nothing like a mahen office. It might have been a bar, a restaurant. There were tables, and one was in among them, and at the end of the room a kif with a silver-bordered robe beckoned to them.

That was Vikktakkht. She would lay money on it. As she would lay money there were guns beneath no few of these black robes.

They walked that far. "Good day," the kif prince said. "So pleased you could come."

"Admirable fluency on your side too."

"I even have a little hani. Not much. But enough to resolve differences."

It was disturbing to hear her own native tongue slurred over with kifish clicks and hisses. And one who learned your language might not be doing so for peaceful reasons.

"This is—" she said, "Chihin Anify. And HaIIan Meras you know.''

"Delighted. Kkkkt. Na Hallan."

"Sir."

"You've done as I hoped — served as my introduction. My character witness, I believe your term is. I behaved well toward you, did I not? You've no cause to complain of me?"

"Not of any kif, sir."

"Not of any kif." A soft snuffling that set Hilfy's nape-hairs up. Kifish laughter. Kifish mockery. They knew no other humor, that she had found. "You're such a soft-spoken hani. Yet they do insist you're quite aggressive."

"No, sir, not by choice."

"Don't try him," Hilfy said sharply. "You don't understand us that well. Between species, one can make fatal assumptions. What do you want?"

There was a soft clicking, a stir of cloth, all about them. The orange light glistened wetly on an analytical kifish eye, black as space and as deep in secrets.

"I said that you would want to ask me a question," Vikktakkht said quietly. "Kkkt. Do you have one, na Hallan?"

"Yes, sir," Hallan said. "What are kif doing, transporting the stsho ambassador?"

Hallan's question. Her wording. Don't give the bastard a question he could answer with yes or no.

And Vikktakkht made a soft hiss and wrinkles chained up the leathery snout.

"Following gtst request," the kif said. "And I will be more informative. I will answer a second question.

— From na Hallan."

Gods rot the creature. It was his territory, his terms. And if he spoke hani he likely knew what he was doing, insulting Meras, insulting Chanur.

Hallan stayed silent two, maybe three breaths, and she opened her mouth to say they were leaving; but Hallan said,

"What do you gain by doing that?"

Gods, good question, Meras.

"The good will of the stsho ambassador. Next question?"

Another small pause on Hallan's part. Hallan might have exhausted the permutations of the question she had suggested. And she was curious what he would ask.

"Is that — all you want?"

"Kkkt. It would be very valuable."

"But," Hallan repeated quietly, respectfully, "is

"No," the kif said. What else could a kif say?

But then Vikktakkht added: "The ambassador is at Kefk. Next question."

It was beyond bizarre. In honor, she ought to object and pull na Hallan out of this game. But Hallan did not seem to need rescue.

"Are you a friend of the mekt-hakkikt?"

Gods, that was a mistake. Kif had no word for friend.

"My alignment, you mean? With the mekt-hakkikt. Next question."

"What are you asking my captain to do?"

"To go to Kefk, where / have allies. There, I will have custody of the ambassador. There, you may ask me one more question."

Hallan flicked an ear in her direction. It was not a time to dispute the matter. There was silence all around them. This is a dangerous kif, she thought.

"Yes, sir," Hallan said.

"Chanur."

"Hakkikt?" Hilfy asked, sure that was what she was dealing with.

"You flatter me."

"I doubt it."

"Kkkt. You're free to go. At Kefk, Chanur."

There were arguments possible with mahendo'sat. None with this. A quality called sfik was life and death. And sfik in this case meant swaggering out of here on equal terms.

"At Kefk," she said, that being the only choice. She turned abruptly and walked out, praying to the gods her crew did the same, and that na Hallan, good heart that he was, didn't linger to push a point.

All the way the kif were estimating them, testing them with soft clicking sounds, the threat of their presence, and cleared their path only at the last moment. They lived as far as the door, and as far as outside, and no one had said anything and no weapons were out. They crossed the traffic pattern of the docks quickly now, toward the cover of the gantries and the shadows beneath the structural shapes.

"Was it all right?" Hallan asked. Now she could hear the nervousness in his voice.

"Good job," she said. "Good job, Meras." Because it had been. It still was. They were out of there.

But in the shadows, in those places where the girders and the double lights overhead made eye-tricking shadows, it was too easy to imagine black, robed figures.

"Kefk," Tiar panted distressedly.

Kefk was across the border, kifish territory. If they were anxious here, doubly so there. Hani were theoretically free to use that port, theoretically safe there, the way kif were theoretically safe at Anuurn, but neither hani nor kif had tested the treaty in regular trade.

Ally of Pyanfar's, was he? Kif could lie. Kif were quite good at it.

"I tell you what," Chihin said. "We sell our stsho to the kif."

"I could be tempted," Hilfy muttered. Chihin didn't say the contract had been the stupidest deal they had ever gotten into. Chihin was being polite.

But it was true. And there was no way out of it, at this point. To cut and run wasn't even a remote option, that she could see, not if they hoped to have a reputation left, not if they hoped to have their trading license, not if they hoped the whole gods-be Compact would hang together. Threads were unraveling. Two, now three, mahen stations had lost their whole stsho population to violence.

And they were in it up to their—

Something popped, with that nasty sound of exploding tissue. Chihin stumbled against her, and she yelled, "Cover!" on a half a breath, trying to hold on to Chihin and drag her out of fire if she could figure where it had come from. She saw the red dot on a girder, knew it was from across the dockside, and flung herself behind a pump housing, Chihin actively trying to tuck her legs into shadow and to get up on an elbow.

"How bad?" Hilfy panted.

"Don't know," Chihin said. "Arm. Feels like I was punched; but it works. Sort of." The shock was setting in, and Chihin's supporting arm began shaking, her breathing to shorten. Hilfy had her pocket com out, made a breathless call to the Legacy:

"Tarras! Sniper fire! Get to cover."

She was shaking now, light tremors, which was no good. She put a hand on Chihin, and risked a look out where they had been, where none of her party still was, which was good news. Everyone had made cover of some kind.

"Tarras!"

"Aye! I hear,"the welcome voice came back. "I'm calling the police.'''

Police, for the gods' sake! "Tiar, Tiar, do you read?"

"I'm here,"a breathless voice said, thin and distorted by interference.

"Don't give position!" she said, and caught a breath of her own. “How are you doing?'' she asked Chihin.

"All right," Chihin said thinly, "Give me a minute. We can run for it."

"That's a sniper. Laser targeted. Light arms, but they can cut us up piecemeal. — Tarras, I think the p.o.

is the business frontage. Hang on…"

She leaned to get her gun from her belt, plain projectile weapon, with a vid display, and she drew a bead on the suspicious alley… couldn't get vid resolution. Couldn't go firing blindly down there: she could hit some poor mahen shopkeeper. But she sighted the structural supports where the laser spot had showed, and calculated the angle of fire across the dock. It had to be coming from that alley, that narrow nook between two freight company offices.

"Can we get an ambulance out here? Chihin's hit— don't know how bad…"

A flurry of footsteps arrived out of the shadows. She rolled on her hip and saw red-brown hide, not black robes — a scared, almost too large for cover Hallan Meras.

"What do we do, captain?"

"We keep our heads down."

He was making as small a target as he could, arms locked about legs.

"Ker Tiar's over there," Hallan said, nodding toward the other console.

"Good." A movement and a crash from the Legacy's area. A truck had started up and hit a can. It kept coming. "Tarras! Is that you in the truck?"

Fire hit it and blistered paint. The sniper didn't think it was on his side. She let off a few shots at neutral real estate to keep the sniper pinned. A neon sign. That blew with satisfactory fireworks.

"You see the son?" Chihin asked, squirming for vantage.

"No. Stay down!"

The truck bashed the gantry console and clipped the girder, crash-clang! It reversed and hooked a bumper.

"Gods," Hilfy groaned. Hooked solid. And it wasn't Tarras driving, it was Fala Anify. Fire pasted the vehicle. It rammed forward and jerked the bumper half off, then it hit the gantry console where Tiar was.

"Tiar!" she yelled into com. "You drive!"

There were sirens somewhere distant, under the electric whine of the truck as it backed. Hilfy sent a few more shots into the sputtering neon display, figuring only fools hadn't found cover by now.

And the smoke picked out the source of the opposing shots as they pierced the cloud. Chihin had her gun out, firing at the same area. The truck whined away and backward.

Bang!

Hit another truck.

"Gods in feathers!" Chihin moaned. "What are they doing?"

"They're stuck," Hallan said.

"Most gods-be embarrassing mess I ever…" Hilfy began, and a shot blistered paint on the girder just past their position. She leaned an elbow on the decking and put another round after her last, then fished in her waist after the spare clip. The truck was still backing and maneuvering, and she shot a distracted look at the situation as it clipped a control console and shot free, leaving the bumper clanging on the deck plates.

She sent a covering fire across the traffic lanes, and saw an open-sided pedestrian transport lumbering along the dockside, oblivious. "Gods!" she breathed. And to the com: "Hold fire, hold fire, there's bystanders out there!"

It wasn't the only vehicle coming. It rolled through. So did a couple of transport trucks thank the gods not carrying volatiles, and a cab. Then fire set up again, with a smell of blistered paint from the other side of the console that provided them cover.

"They made it," Chihin breathed. Hilfy looked; and ducked her eyes behind her hand.

Bang.

Into a loader arm.

"Fifty thousand," Chihin muttered under her breath.

"Where are the gods-be police?"

Another volley hit the console.

Cars passed, wheels thumping on the deck plates, traffic oblivious to the invisible barrage of laser fire and the pop of small caliber weapons.

She leaned painfully on her elbow, a new clip in her gun, with no desire to hit a passerby.

And saw a bus coming from the other direction.

She pointed to the dark. "Hallan! Carry Chihin! Run for those shadows!"

"I don't need—" Chihin began, and yelled as Hallan obeyed orders, grabbed her and darted, brave lad.

Hilfy ran behind them, cast a look back as their bus outran their diagonal, and fire popped after them.

Goodfor the smoke. She pasted rounds back, four of them, and dived for the cover of a girder.

"Keep going!" she panted. "Ramp shadow!"

"Gods be feathered!" Chihin gasped, but Hallan's shoulder cut off her wind, and he ran.

Hilfy fired another shot, darted back one way from cover and ran the other, after na Hallan.

A shot burned her arm. That was how close it was as she skidded over the deck plates in a slide for the shadow of a truck.

The far-side tire deflated with a hiss. The mahen dock workers stared back at them out of the shadow with dismay writ large on their features.

Thenthe police transport pulled up, with yellow-flashing emergency vehicles, ambulances, civil vehicles…

repair trucks. She put the gun away, out of sight, and looked at Chihin, who had gotten a knee on the decking, na Hallan still holding on to her with both arms. Chihin shoved her gun into her belt, out of sight of the police, she had that much presence of mind, as they began swarming around the vehicles. Hilfy started to get to her feet to deal with them, safely behind the cover of the slightly tilted truck.

A shadow turned up next to her, around the truck's back end: Haisi reached for her arm to help her up.

She snatched the arm back and got up herself, glaring.

"I try warn you," Haisi said. "I say, watch you back, I say don't deal kif. You got be damn big hurry…"

"Big damn help, mahe!"

"You want help? Easy deal. I help carry…"

"No!" She barred his path to Chihin, who was bleeding on Hallan. "We got enough help."

"You number one stubborn hani."

"Get away from my ship!"

"Also crazy."

"I said leave! This is our business!"

"Maybe better you ask stsho, ask, You want die, you want take ride with kif? Maybe you listen somebody know who friend and not friend."

"Police!"

Haisi cast a look over his shoulder. Police were moving in.

"You got answer their question. You got answer, Hilfy Chanur? I got."

"Like you gave me an honest warning! — Officer, this mahe is a gods-be nuisance! I want him off my dockside! Now!"

Haisi said something in dialect, the police officer said something back, put a hand on his shoulder, and the two of them stood in close conference for a moment.

Maddening. But it was what you got, in another species' port. The medics were looking confused, and she motioned them toward Chihin. "There's a surgery on my ship. She goes there! Fala, Hallan, stay with her.’‘

"We got regu-lation."

"I got a surgery. There. Go, gods rot it! No argument!"

"Captain?" The com had been nattering at her for the last few seconds. "Captain? Are you all right?"

"All right," she said, glumly watching the medics confer with the police and Haisi Ana-kehnandian.

"We're coming in. Just keep monitoring."

The Personage of Kshshti to the hani ship Chanur’s Legacy, attention captain Hilfy Chanur.

We not responsible this fool incident. We do investigation high priority. Hope you not take us do this.

Hope well soon your crewmember. We do no charge medical service.

Bill for truck and loader arm attached. Also store sign and panels. You sue party responsible recover damage.

The hani ship Chanur’s Legacy, captain Hilfy Chanur, her hand, to his honor the Personage of Kshshti,

We thank the police and emergency services for their response. We assure the Personage we took all precautions against endangerment of bystanders, and urge that the party responsible when discovered be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

We accept the bill for damages and request that, when responsibility is fixed, the suit be lodged by proxy by your office and monies forwarded to us.

Like your honor we are very glad that no bystanders were injured and ask your honor to extend our personal apologies to affected residents. We did not seek or provoke this assault.

Thehakkikt Vikktakkht an Nikkatu to captain Hilfy Chanur, the hani merchant, at dock: Our congratulations for the damage inflicted on your enemies and may you eat their hearts.

Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian, mahen shipHa'domaren, at dock, to captain Hilfy Chanur, .

You one damn stubborn hani. See what kif do if you not got respect. They try make you scare. I make guess. They tell you go Kefk, yes? Damn stupid. You go Meetpoint. You can do Meetpoint if you carry no cargo. I escort you Meetpoint.

You friend try look out for you, you all same got arrogant mouth.

You deal with kif you got kif problem. How good now?

Repeat same offer. You want ally, you ask. Number one good friend. You call say help, I do.

Chihin called it a patch job. The mahen surgeon, operating in the Legacy's small medical station, called it a close call and wished Chihin would check into hospital.

Hilfy called it a lucky thing it had hit the arm and missed anything irreplaceable. And she was mortally glad to get the dockers furloughed over the next watch, the station medical team off her deck, the airlocks sealed, and the situation down to manageable.

Thank the gods the station had turned a blind eye to the gun law violations.

Thank the gods no sharp station lawyer had yet suggested they'd foreknown there was a risk… or they wouldn't have gone out on the docks armed.

To their credit they'd at least advised station that they'd been harassed. To their credit they were Pyanfar Chanur's relatives, and they had special and real reason to worry. As they need not argue with the Personage of Kshshti, if the Personage wasn't friendly to Ana-kehnandian's personage, which was yet to be proved. She hadn't liked Ana-kehnandian's friendliness with the police.

And she didn't like the feeling in the pit of her stomach.

It was all right on the bridge. There was too much potentially to do to let the mind settle in old tracks.

There was just trained response and a bucket of water on every fire that popped up… in fact, there were gratefully few of them; but that left an old Pride hand wondering where the rest were smouldering.

And when she walked back to her quarters to wash the blood and the sweat and the ammonia smell out of her memory… when the steam of the shower was around her and sound was down to the hiss of water from the jets, then the thoughts came back, then the mind went time-wandering and couldn't remember then from now — except the shower was fancier and the responsibility was hers. All hers.

With a crew who'd, admittedly, made only one less mistake than the sniper had made, in opting for a silent and invisible weapon on a moving target. Not an outstandingly well-informed or accurate attempt, all told.

And that was worrisome… that was just naggingly worrisome, because it didn't add up, except to a random lunatic.

Which almost excluded the kif. Kif slept with their weapons. Kif lived and died, among themselves, by their weapons. And a mistake like that wasn't the style of a Vikktakkht an Nikkatu, unless he gave orders to miss.

It wasn't the style of a mahen hunter captain, in a mahen port, with all sorts of resources, either.

Certainly wasn't the stsho, unless a stsho hired some other species to do the deed. Could be stsho: they weren't connoisseurs of violence. They couldn't judge the competency or the honesty of the guards they hired. They only paid them well enough that most wouldn't risk their job.

The same as a stupid hani taking a cargo full of stsho trouble, for a price too good to turn down.

They were in it. That was the fact. They were in it and on the dock out there, with shots flying, they'd made mistakes that weren't going to let her sleep tonight, that threatened to replay behind her eyelids and that stacked up ready and awaiting the idle moment, the dark, the unfilled silence. They'd deserved to lose their lives out there. Every time she thought back through it she found a new mistake — theirs, hers trying to cover them, layer upon layer of foul-ups, from the minor glitch to the decision to walk it and not take a taxi.

She scanted the dry cycle, went out damp and sat down on the side of the bed, staring at the locker, within which was a box, and within which was a ragged printout she wasn't supposed to have, and did.

Pyanfar likely hadn't even thought about the ops file in her possession when she told her go downworld; or at least, the level of bitterness between them hadn't gotten that high, that Pyanfar had ever asked if she had more than the printout she had officially turned in.

She'd taken it to learn from it, to understand it, and maybe, in her mind at the time, as a slice of Pyanfar to analyze and figure, when no other clues had served. She still resorted to that printout now and again, when captain Hilfy Chanur had wanted to figure out what Pyanfar had done on some point and what Pyanfar's rules and policy had been on some obscure matter of dealing with certain ports — a compendium of experience that Pyanfar had gathered over a long number of years — some were procedures she'd laid down after certain close calls. Some were just universal good sense; and she had borrowed some inoffensive bits of it to cover the gaps in the Legacy's own freer, easier-going rules, rules that didn't have a lot to say about firearms or being shot at. A lot of that manual her own procedures contradicted, because a lot of it was Pyanfar’s own perfection-driven convictions, and some of it just didn't apply in the peace Pyanfar had built.

But a lot of it the Legacy's written rules didn't cover, or didn't mention for one important other reason, because somewhere at the bottom of her resentment she was still Chanur clan-head, and The Pride's operations, secretive as they were, and likely dangerous as they were, still relied on those procedures.

Things she knew about The Pride's standing orders, The Pride's policies and tendencies and biases and likely choices in an emergency… were in that book; and one of them was that you didn't talk about that book existing, you didn't take that printout off The Pride and you didn't discuss those policies anywhere but on The Pride's deck, because there were agencies and individuals that would kill to know what was in there.

But she didn't have time to reinvent everything. She didn't have time to modify a system that wasn't working. She'd nearly lost lives out there because she hadn't breached The Pride's security to tell them.

They were peacetime traders. The crew hadn't come in with the close-mouthed wariness The Pride's crew had. Tiar wasn't a Haral Araun, she was a good-humored spacer with a pilot's hair-triggered instincts about survival and a common sense about the information flow. Tarras was a canny trader and she scored highest on the simulations with the weapons systems — Tarras had been hours on the simulators, but that didn't say the Legacy had ever launched one of its missiles or fired a gun, or done more than drills. The captain had. Gods-rotted right the captain had. And Rhean's crew had handled sidearms and done the drills and given a fair account of themselves in the battle before the peace, so it wasn't that Tarras had never fired a missile in her life; and it wasn't that Tiar and Chihin hadn't run coordinations or been back-up pilots under heavy fire… but too many ships had died at Anuurn and Gaohn, of mistakes The Pride hadn't made.

Because of The Rules. The by the gods Pyanfar Chanur way of doing things, which wasn't the exact way every hani ship ran its business and which she dared not have her peace-time crew talking about when they were home, or complaining about in a station bar.

And maybe in some remote part of her brain she didn't want to think in those terms any longer. The Compact having changed, peace having broken out— hani wanted to get back to their own business, and take their own time, and not worry about wars, and not hurry more than they had to. The crew was all right, they got along, they were still, after their few years together, making adjustments to working together: they had their operating glitches and they yelled at each other, but no serious glitches, absent hostile action. It was a different age, and instincts dimmed, and fools could steer a ship or a planetary government: precision just didn't matter any more.

Medium was just all right.

Till you rusted or some amateur assassin nailed you for a reason you wouldn't ever find out.

Mad, she was. That son had shot at her and hit Chihin.

That in itself was a sloppy presumption. Aunt Py would say.

If aunt Py were here to lecture… or to haul a young captain out of the mess she'd contracted herself and her crew into.

Not experienced enough for a captaincy, they said in the han, and behind her back.

More by the gods experienced than some — especially in the han. And a crew that was getting smoother as time went on.

But there wasn't time to let Hilfy Chanur figure out her way. There hadn't been time for Hilfy Chanur to figure things out, all her life.

She got up, took the printout from the locker to her office and scanned it in.

She edited off all the references to The Pride. She searched the crew's names, and subbed in her own…

And she came to a dead stop on the matter of Hallan Meras, on the auxiliary post.

Lock him back in the laundry?

Forbid the crew to discuss ops with him, whatsoever?

Why had Vikktakkht wanted him? Why had Vikktakkht insisted to speak to him, except to get a less wary answer, and because Vikktakkht understood hani well enough to know they'd protect him.

Meras was a vulnerability in their midst that her own curiosity had made available to the kif, and she couldn't deny that. She had a certain ruthlessness, a certain deficiency of pity, a certain willingness to run risks with other people's lives… she had discovered that in herself. Or maybe it was just that nobody planetside understood the things she'd seen, and the experiences she'd had… nobody who'd only been a merchant spacer could ever understand… and she grew angry, impatient with people who were naive, and people who were safe, and protected, and innocent…

But that she'd taken Meras with her…

There'd been a good reason. There'd been a kif offering information they had to have. There'd been a kif who could have gone off with what he knew and refused to tell them… (in a mahen hell: Vikktakkht wanted them to know what he'd said)… but at the time, she hadn't known what Meras' possible connection to Vikktakkht was, when she'd taken a young man into that place — she had, who above all knew what could happen to him. And it wasn't all the good reasons for doing it that upset her stomach. It was the angry reason for doing it. That he wasn't Tully. That he was hani, and male, and blindly naive as every charge-ahead brat of a mother's son was brought up to be, worse, he was a feckless fool of an innocent like Dahan had been, and the world wasn't kind to them, the old ways aunt Pyanfar had sent her back to didn't by the gods work, and she didn't care what her biology nagged at her to do. That didn't work either.

And she hated…

… hated a wide-eyed, good-natured, handsome kid looking at her with worship in his eyes, reminding her what she'd lost, what she'd compromised, and what she'd let Pyanfar Chanur…

… strand her planetside to do.

She was by the gods mad. She was still… that… mad….

It still hurt. She could look at Hallan Meras and see her junior over-eager self, and be perfectly forgiving and understanding; but when she looked at him and felt anything…

She got mad, just cruelly… mad… at things unspecified.

That was a problem, wasn't it?

Py had cut her off from Tully, cut her off from her dearest friends in the entire universe, and sent her home… where Py couldn't go again. Ever.

That also… was a problem, wasn't it? It was Chanur's problem. And Py sent her to solve it, and washed off Chanur, and Chanur's politics, and everything to do with the clan — forever, at that point.

Direly sad thought… for aunt Py. Py had gotten hot when she'd said no. Py had said things… maybe because Pyanfar Chanur was feeling pain, who knew? Pyanfar wasn't ever one to say so.

So bad business had happened at Kshshti, so she'd had a rough few years and she hated her unlamented husband with a passion.

But why was she so shaking mad? Why in all reason was she sitting here at her reasonably well-ordered desk upset and wanting to do harm to a young man who'd had no connection with Py except a conversation on a dockside years ago. She was a self-analytical person. She had sore spots and she knew where they were: she might have nightmares that made her throw up, but she didn't let them dominate her waking life, and she didn't let them sway her from what made business sense… gods-be right she'd deal with a kif if he had a deal she needed. She'd felt no panic at going to Kshshti. She could contemplate going to Kefk, clear over the border into kifish territory, and as it seemed now, they were going.

So she didn't have a problem, outside the occasional flashes on the past. She was free, she went where she chose, she had no problems that a financial windfall and peace in the family wouldn't cure. So why did she feel that way about Hallan Meras? Instinct? Something that deserved distrust? Something that threatened them? She hadn't read that between him and the kif. And she generally understood her own behavior better than that.

Attraction? She'd noticed he was male. So? She was also exhausted, distracted, and too harried by petulant stsho, pushy mahendo'sat, and a ship with potential legal problems, to think about any side issues.

She just didn't figure it — being at one moment perfectly at ease face to face with the lad and then, in the abstract, when he wasn't even at hand—

Enough to make you wonder about yourself, it was, what sore spots did go undiscovered, and what that one was about. But it wasn't about Hallan Meras personally. No. He was just a problem—

A security problem where it concerned the manual. Tell na Hallan to keep a piece of information to himself forever, and she honestly had every confidence he'd try. But this was the lad who'd fathered a tc'a by backing a lift-cart.

And, no, she wasn't going to accept him in the crew. Maybe that was what made her mad: that they weren't The Pride, but that given time to work together, their way, her way, they might have become their own unique entity, nothing complicating their lives, no family divisions and feuds, no favoritisms. No mate problems. No jealousies.

And now there wasn't a chance for that to happen. Now she had to do something different, in the incorporation of aunt Py's ideas, aunt Py's personal notions, that there wasn't time to take part of.

Maybe that was why the Hallan matter touched her off. Maybe it was watching things go to blazes and knowing that Hallan's slips weren't harmless, that while they were trying to keep his skin whole and interrupting their life and death business to do it, he had become first a vulnerability, and now an obstacle to shaping her crew into what she wanted.

That might be it. That might be why she wanted to kill him, because a part of her had been seeing all along that he was that kind of danger.

And with the ship utterly still, the loaders silent, and the only sound the air whispering out of the ducts in the medical station… she called in all of them but Hallan Meras.

"Come in," she said to Tarras, who hovered at the door. "Sit down. — Chihin, don't sit up. Don't push it."

Chihin muttered and stuffed a pillow under her head, one-handed. "Nothing said about not sitting up."

"Orders," she said. "Mine. Nice if someone obeyed them. Just a wistful thought, understand."

There was general quiet. A respectful moment of general quiet. But it wasn't blame she wanted to start with. "First," she said, "the assassin made more mistakes. None of us are dead. The truck—"

"I'm sorry," Fala said faintly.

"It did work," Hilfy said. "It wasn't a stupid thought. Nothing we did was a stupid thought. But the unhappy fact is that we didn't win because we were good. He lost because he fouled up— if he lost. We don't know that he didn't accomplish what he wanted. He certainly made a lot of noise. And he's made us have to assume from now on that we're somebody's enemy." She had the thin manual printouts in her possession. She handed them out. "This is procedure from now on. Eat and drink it and sleep with it, but don't talk about it, don't joke about it. Na Hallan's not to get this.

He's not to know about it. No copies go off this ship, in any form."

Fala was frowning. Chihin was trying to leaf through hers, one-handed, the booklet propped on her knee. Tiar and Tarras gave theirs a dubious look.

"A general change?"

She didn't intend to tell them, she hadn't intended to admit it. But she didn't intend to claim it for a daughter either, and you didn't just rip away everything an experienced crew knew and tell them do differently without saying why. "It's The Pride's ops manual. I'm not supposed to have it. You're not supposed to know it exists. Read it. Follow it. We can talk about it. And maybe we can think of better ways. But we've got to live long enough. This fixes responsibilities, it talks about how many decimal places in the reports, it mandates when we do certain maintenance, it talks about some technical details that are just Py's idea, but let's don't quibble about that for now. She's a gods-be stickler for some details you're going to call stupid and you're going to find some procedures in there that were illegal even before the peace. But my word is, memorize this, understand it, don't mention it in front of outsiders, and I pointedly include na Hallan: he's not staying on this ship and he can't take this to another crew.

Questions?"

"Are we going to Kefk?" Tarras asked.

"Very possibly," Hilfy said. "I don't see anything else to do."

There weren't questions beyond that. Maybe there was just too much reading to do.

"Dockers are on paid rest until 0600. I'd suggest you catch some sleep."

"I'm going to be fit tomorrow," Chihin said.

"You're going to be sore and impossible," Hilfy said. "You can sit watch in the morning. Run com."

"The kid, you know," Chihin said, not quite looking at her, "didn't do too badly out there."

"I noticed that." Of crew, she began to understand Chihin was angry too, in the same way she was, only more so. But Chihin, owing na Hallan, was being fair. Chihin set great personal store on being fair, even when it curdled in her stomach — for exactly the same reasons that were bothering her, she could surmise as much and not be far off the mark.

"No reason he can't sit station," Hilfy said. "No reason I don't trust him. He just doesn't know everything. Doesn't need to know. That's all." And Chihin looked somewhat relieved.

So they were going to Kefk. And the captain declared a six hour rest, come lawsuit or armed attack, which made the ship eerily quiet after the clangor and thumping of the loader and the irregular cycling of locks.

Hallan gazed at the ceiling of the crew lounge, faintly lit from the guide-strips that defined the walls and the bulkhead, and listened to that silence.

Fala had said, "It was terribly brave what you did."

Chihin had said, "You drive worse than na Hallan." But he couldn't take offense at that, because Chihin, the one who didn't like him, had also said, to him, "Thanks, kid."

She was honest, and she did mean it, even if it choked her; and he liked Chihin — he liked her in a special, difficult way, because Chihin was one of the old guard who was willing to change her perspective on things. You could find people sitting on either side of opinions who were there just because things had landed that way and they went along with it; but Chihin didn't just land, Chihin probed and picked at a situation or a person until she could figure it, and she didn't let up. And she made jokes to let you know what was going on with her. And she made them when you deserved it.

Fala — she was younger than he was, in experience. She'd done what none of her seniors had been in a position to do. And backwards across the docks was faster and it didn't expose any different surface to fire; which wasn't stupid… even if she didn't go a very straight line.

She'd said to him, "Oh, gods, I'm glad you're all right., " in a way that made him go warm and chill and warm again, all the way down to his feet. He'd stood there like a fool, not knowing what to say, except.

"You too."

Because a feeling like that was what you got in families, and what a boy always had to give up, and couldn't count on finding again anywhere: you couldn't count on it in the exile you had to go to and you couldn't count on it from whatever clan you fought your way into. If you were stupid and your feelings for some girl led you to fight some clan lord you couldn't beat, it mostly got you in trouble.

That was what was wrong with this going to space, that na Chanur wasn't here, na Chanur who was also overlord of Anify hadn't the least idea he existed. It was like in the old ballads, like in that book, the young fools meeting in the woods, and things getting out of hand and the clan lord not knowing about it.

Only when he found out, na Chanur was going to want to kill him, and na Chanur and in particular na Anify was going to be upset with Fala, which was going to make her sisters and her mother mad at her, which was going to set the family on its ear, at the least, and get na Chanur after na Meras, who wouldn't be happy with him at all, or with his sisters, for helping him get to space, and creating a problem with Chanur that he might have to fight over. Not to mention na Sahara, who wouldn't like the publicity of a truly famous incident.

Love was all very well in ballads. It was nice to think that it was possible, and maybe it happened in legitimate relationships, like Pyanfar Chanur and na Khym, who had to love each other, besides being married. But in real life it got you killed and messed up families, and he and Fala both had been shaky-kneed from rescuing Chihin, and he'd been wide open. The rush of action, that kind of thing. A moment, an incident, mat wouldn't be the same tomorrow, if he kept his wits about him…

But the feeling just wasn't going away tonight. He really wanted to go off with Fala somewhere and if be did that, and the captain had na Chanur to think about, it just wasn't going to help his case. If he did that, it could make it absolutely certain Hilfy Chanur would get rid of him, and that—

— that, in itself, began to have an emotional context it hadn't had, because he couldn't deal with the idea of not being on this ship. He couldn't lose that. He couldn't risk losing this ship or these people, and he didn't know when he'd begun to feel that way.

Oh, gods, he was in a lot of trouble.

I'm saying get out of here, get out, I won't live with a gods-be fool!

But it wasn't Korin Sfaura, it was a pillow Hilfy found herself murdering, and she rolled onto her back in a tangle of bedclothes, sorry she hadn't killed him herself — and gotten him out of her repertoire of bad dreams and stupid mistakes.

She'd gone at him in a blind rage and at a vast disadvantage, that was all — though she hadn't been concussed, as Rhean said she had been, as Rhean was in a damned hurry to say, bringing in cousin Harun for what amounted to a power-grab, and a takeover of Chanur's onworld business.

Which Rhean did all right at. And she was rid of Korin without offending Sfaura, which it would have done if she'd done what she wanted to do. Politics. Korin Sfaura was dead. And that business was forever unfinished, and she carried that anger, too, but she wasn't sure all of it was at Korin, who'd been a pretty, vain, brute-selfish fool. And she wasn't sure why she waked dreaming about a man she wouldn't waste a waking moment thinking about.

Fact was, she'd picked him. Her judgment had been that bad. She still tried, on bad nights, to figure out why it had been that dismally bad, or what failing was in herself. And "pretty" about covered his assets.

Maybe "stupid" had been another one — because deep down she had wanted a piece of furniture, something decorative, something you didn't have to justify anything to or argue with, because when her father had died she hadn't wanted anybody in his place, no real lord in Chanur, just something that would get heirs and not interfere in the politics between her and her aunts.

Only Rhean, who'd been furious at aunt Py going off from the clan, had had her own ideas how Chanur should face the new age, and what was important, and maybe — no, probably — Rhean had been right: Rhean cared, and Rhean had given up her command and come home and done what needed doing.

Mauled her in the doing, granted. She'd been mad as hell about that, and about na Harun, and stung by Rhean's reaction to her. But truth to tell, Rhean hadn't been happy to go down-world either. No more than she had been.

The power… Rhean liked that. It was a warmer blanket than the husband Rhean couldn't bring home to Chanur, and couldn't likely get to that often. A continent away was a good political alliance, and what was a continent but a half an orbit when Rhean had come in from space, but things were different now.

A lot was.

And she wasn't coming home often, herself. Could marry again, but had no enthusiasm for the institution.

There was Meras. Who was on one level like Korin: pretty face, no source of opinions. Amazing how attractive that still was to her. But not fair to a kid with brains; and he'd shown with the kif that he did think, thought right well for a young man, and clearly enough Fala was taken with him, Tarras and Tiar were…

But, but, and but. It was the middle of her sleep cycle, thoughts like that were a credit a hundredweight, and gods rot it, she didn't want to go through the husband business again. He was bright, he would get ideas, and the politics involved at home were already difficult.

Besides, he'd made irrevocable changes in their operations, he was a liability the kif had used to get her into a face to face meeting with unforeseeable consequences. She'd been mad enough to kill him a handful of hours ago, she and Chihin both.

She grabbed the pillow and buried her head under it, looking for some place void of images.

Chihin understood what was happening, Chihin had seen it coming before she did, Tiar and Tarras were too good-hearted to space him and Fala was suffering a late puberty. She didn't know what to do with him, she didn't know where she was going to unload him— Kefk, maybe. Let him bankrupt the kif.

At which thought she saw that room, smelled the air, felt the ambient tension kif generated with each other, and remembered there were creatures in the universe to whom the highest virtue was the fastest strike and who didn't lose a wink of sleep over blowing a shipful of living beings to radioactive dust.

There wasn't evil. She'd studied cultures too thoroughly and learned too many languages to believe in evil.

She just knew that she'd tried to arrange her life so she didn't have to deal with the kif at all… and here she was again; and there it was, the kifish offer… deal with us, learn to strike faster and first, leam to think our way, because we aren't wired to think yours, we can't understand hani thoughts…

You always hoped they could. You were always tempted to believe they might cross that uncrossable gulf and deny their own hardwiring, turn off the triggers that led from impulse to action, the way a hani could turn them on, the way a hani could use instincts that were there, if you wanted to tear up the stones civilization laid over them, worse, you could get into the game, dealing with the kif~-the very primal-level game, that had its very primal rewards, that competed with civilization.

Hilfy Chanur had delved a bit too deeply into kifish minds. Hilfy Chanur had become expert in the language, to understand what she hadn't understood when it was her alone and Tully, and kif had talked outside the cage. She'd learned words she couldn't pronounce, lacking a double set of razor teeth, and words she couldn't translate, without resorting to words of psychotic connotation in every other language she knew.

But you didn't say crazy, you didn't say evil. They weren't. No more than outsiders were what kif would say, naikktak, randomly behaving, behaving without regard to survival.

Which said something about how kif thought of hani… and about the frame of mind in which Vikktakkht had asked na Hallan to ask him questions.

Asked a hani male, who was notorious for unpredictable and aggressive behavior.

Respect for the aggression? Possibly.

Curiosity? Possibly. Kif had a very active curiosity. Kif could be artistic, imaginative, and curious. All these dimensions. They valued such attributes.

But Hallan Meras…

Using him as bait to get her closer, that made sense. That was very kif.

But refusing to talk to her, insisting na Hallan do the business they'd clearly come for…

It snapped into focus. Gamesmanship. Provocation aimed at her.

Why?

She was Pyanfar's relative, but kif didn't understand kinship, not at gut level. They weren't wired for it.

They'd understand it as potential rivalry, but the ones that knew outsiders were too sophisticated to make that mistake. That wasn't what Vikktakkht was doing. It felt too gods-be personal.

She rolled onto her back and mangled the pillow to prop her head, staring at the profitless dark. This was what she did instead of sleeping, too many hours of free association. Why couldn't the mind come to straight conclusions? Why did she have to think about Hallan Meras, her unwarranted temper, and kif, all rolled into one package with Vikktakkht's odd gods-rotted motives? Her mind was trying to put something together out of spare parts. And it wouldn't fit together.

What was the kif—

— after,by the gods?

Hunt. Prey. Run or fight and you got their attention. Stand still and you got eaten.

She'd escaped the kif. That story was probably famous among kif. But this kif had been right there at Meetpoint, set up with a prisoner guaranteed to get a hani's attention…

In jail for hitting a kif. One wondered how far that was a set-up.

Any hani might have done. But he'd just missed

Pyanfar, who'd just gone through there. Pyanfar went through, the Preciousness suddenly became an urgent matter that No'shto-shti-stlen had to get to Atli-lyen-tlas, and Atli-lyen-tlas ran off with the kif while the mahendo'sat ran in panicked desperation to find out what No'shto-shti-stlen had sent.

No'shto-shti-stlen was guarded by kif. So Vikktakkht had either had access to information or had been pointedly excluded from information.

Atli-lyen-tlas had either run to the kif for transport or fallen into their hands as a prisoner. And who even knew which kif? Allies of Vikktakkht? Allies of Pyanfar Chanur?

It was No'shto-shti-stlen who'd rather urgently wanted Hallan Meras in her hands. That urgency might have been stsho anxiety about having a hani male on their hands — stsho didn't understand hani touchiness about their menfolk (stsho were no more constitutionally certain what 'male' meant than hani were about the stsho's third gender) but an old diplomat like No'shto-shti-stlen certainly understood that they were touchy, and that it was an issue that could come back and cause trouble of unforeseen dimensions.

So had Vikktakkht given Meras that odd promise at No'shto-shti-stlen's urging… or had he outmaneuvered the stsho to get into the jail and set a trap for her?

And had he set it up for any hani ship they could get, or had the fact that a second Chanur ship had shown up… either suggested to Vikktakkht a connection between events that wasn't connected, or had it offered him a second chance to involve Chanur in this mess?

He certainly would know who she was. He certainly would know she'd had an experience with kif. That she'd survived and come back to Meetpoint with a ship meant, in kifish eyes, she'd increased in rank, not diminished. In kifish eyes, aunt Py hadn't thrown her out, she'd promoted her or been unable to prevent her rise. She was Chanur clan head, and one could bet the average kif knew what she was.

So Vikktakkht had ignored her in that interview and let himself be interrogated only by na Hallan. If she were kif, she might have casually shot na Hallan and insisted he talk to her. That would have gotten his respect. But he was too sophisticated a kif to expect a hani to do that, or to consider it in purely kifish terms that she didn't. He was sophisticated enough, like the Meetpoint stsho, to know that hani didn't tolerate affront to their menfolk, and probably to know that it was indecent for hani males to deal with outsiders, except when sex was directly at issue.

So was it some bizarre kifish joke? Or the careful playing of a Chanur's desire for specific information against her awareness that if she interrupted the game or refused his rules she might not get everything he would give if she didn't?

Interesting question.

She punched the pillow, battered it with her fist and tried for a comfortable spot in the tangled bedclothes, on a mental hunt through tangles of information. Too many weeds and not enough substance.

The merest shadow of what she was looking for. Clearly enough, the kif wanted her to cross the kifish border.

Another punch at the pillow, which refused to take a convenient shape. She wanted to sleep. Please the gods, she could dump it now and not think through what just didn't have an answer.

But what in a mahen hell made all these various pieces add up?