Chanur's Legacy

Chapter Two

The stack from the translator was 532 pages thick… counting the alternative translations successively rendered. That was the first pass the comp had made. The legal advisement program advised that its analysis of the translation would be 20588 pages in length and did the Operator want it simply to summarize?

"Apparently the thing is a vase," Hilfy said. Four hani faces, four worried hani faces, stared back, and blinked in near unison.

"A ceremonial vase," Tiar said.

"Somebody's grandmother buried in it?"

"Not from what I figure. I've run oji through every cognate and every derivation I can find. It means

'ceremonial object with accumulated value' and it's related to the word for 'antique' and 'relic.' Its transferred meanings and derivatives seem to mean 'ceremonial object with social virtue,' 'communal high tea,'…"

"You're kidding."

"… and 'inheritance.' "

"No'shto-shti-stlen's going to die?" Fala asked.

"Who knows?" A shrug was not politic, but it was close company, here. "Maybe gtst is designating a successor. Maybe the old son is going home to die."

"They do that," Chihin said. "Stsho won't die in view of strangers. Bad taste."

"It's pay in advance. Gtst can't change gtst mind."

"That's for certain."

Hilfy stared at the stack. "Pay in advance. Gods, it pays. You just keep asking yourself why."

"What can go wrong?" Fala asked, and got a circle of flat-eared looks and a moment of silence.

"There's an encyclopaedia entry," Hilfy said, "under oijgi, related substantive, to the effect that an object like that can't be paid for, that it just transfers, and money can't touch it directly. Mustn't touch it directly.

It's all status. Of some kind. It could account for the extravagance."

"We could outright ask somebody," Tarras said.

"No. Not when we don't know what we're dealing with — or how explosive it is. No'shto-shti-stlen has ears in every wall in this station."

"Electronically speaking," Tiar said.

"I certainly wouldn't bet the contract against it."

"So you're leaning toward signing?"

"Once every quarter hour. Elsewhen I'm inclined to take our cargo on to Hoas and forget I ever heard about it. Why in a mahen hell does this thing have to go rush-shipment to Urtur? Why not a slow trip via Hoas in the first place? Does the governor have to be difficult? Does the thing explode on delivery?"

"You want my opinion?"

"What?" she asked.

"I say if we take the contract, we get all our cargo buys nailed down in advance. And stall signing to the very last moment. Gossip's going to fly the moment that check hits the bank. They'll jack the prices on us."

"Give the old son no time," Tarras said, "to frame us for anything. Because you can bet the next trip's take that bastard No'shto-shti-stlen is thinking how to get that money back before it hits our pockets.

On gtst deathbed gtst would make that arrangement. Gtst isn't the richest son this side of space for no reason."

"Trouble is," Chihin said, " — we've got to take certain cargo for Urtur if that's where we're going. And unless old No'shto-shti-stlen's been uncommonly discreet, there are stsho on this station who know what the deal is; and if they know, security's already shot. If we're going to deal, we'd better deal fast, because I've got a notion if this thing is that important to the stsho, it could be important to No'shto-shti-stlen's enemies, too. If it is, figure on spies reporting what we buy, and what we deal for, and what we've got contracts on — if we sneeze, it's going into somebody's databank and right to No'shto-shti-stlen's ears for a starter."

"And elsewhere simultaneously," Hilfy said. Aunt Py had dealt with the stsho. And still did; what was aunt Py's expression? Never trust the stsho to be hani? They weren't. They wouldn't be. No more than hani would play by stsho rules; or mahen ones; and the stsho had been cosmopolitan enough to know that single fact before the han or the mahendo'sat ever figured it out. Add to it, that a hani who happened to be fluent in stsho trade tongue and its history might deceive herself in special, personal blind spots related to the interface between languages and world-views.

"I want," Hilfy said, extruding claws one after the other to signify the items: "an estimate on a list of things I've left on file, under 'Urtur.' I'm betting on goods that originate from beyond Meetpoint, that no one's going to bring in from the other direction. Things we know Urtur's short on. And I want a search on the manifests for ships going out of here. We can't account for what might come in from Kshshti — so let's concentrate on stsho and t'ca goods."

"Gods, not another methane load."

"It pays. It pays and they have their own handlers."

"It's who else might be interested in it worries me," Tiar said.

"It's a straight shot to Urtur. If we just do a fast turnaround here, and get ourselves out of port…"

Tiar made a visible shudder, and waved a hand in surrender. "It pays."

"So we agree?"

A murmured set of agreements. Hilfy watched the expressions, wondering whether they might be agreeing against better judgment, because of kinships, because of loyalty.

"I want opinions!" she snarled. "I want someone to disagree if they're going to disagree!"

No one moved. She waited. And no one said anything.

"No opinions to the contrary."

"No, captain," Tiar said, with a flat, unmoved stare. And added: "I'll check methane ship departures. See what their trade's been. If it looks like there's a niche for us, aye, we do it. We'll pay out the ship on this run. That's worth a chance."

"Do it tomorrow," she said, with the weight of the day on her shoulders. "I want that Hoas cargo done, too, who's going out we can dump it on. Again, quietly."

"I'll check on that," Chihin said. "We'll just pull a big general dataload from the station… costs, but nosy neighbors can't tell anything out of one big request. ''

"Do that," Hilfy said. Specific records-searches would tip off the curious. 15,000 credits. Minimum, for that datadump. But they could re-sell it at Urtur, get back five, six thousand, as moderately comprehensive information. Maybe 10,000. They stood to own the highest currency of information coming in. With a full dataload. She found herself thinking, with increasing solidity: at Urtur. Not Hoas, as they had been bound. At Urtur. They had the advantage of having just been through there, they had the uncommon situation of having the funds to buy their own cargo. That meant the profit was theirs, not some shipping company's.

And Hallan Meras still had a chance to catch his ship. Gods. One more problem than they needed.

"You're not staying on watch," Tiar said.

"No."

"I'd better."

"Get some sleep, I said. I want a crew with brains tomorrow. Good night."

" 'Night, cap'n." From Tiar. At the door, hindmost. Still registering objection, in that backward glance.

But Tiar went.

Tiar was right. If they were half practical they would keep one of them on watch from now on until they parted company with Meetpoint. If they had enemies, things would develop in files on their off watch and proliferate through their sleep. Anyone who had prospects had trade rivals here, and they could have plenty, if No'shto-shti-stlen's shipment was general knowledge… which, of course, they could not ask to find out.

But all that had proliferated into their files thus far was mail, the stack of which, even from ships that had long since left port, equaled the translation. And with the comp set to rouse them for fire, collision, and interstellar war, she reckoned they knew enough. She added one more alarm word from her console: contract, and on a stray thought, added No'shto-shti-stlen.

And headed for her own quarters and for bed, tired, gods, yes.

Until her back met the mattress and her head hit the pillows. Then every detail of the day wanted to come back and replay itself behind her eyelids.

Kifish guards. That brought her eyes open, and she tried to think of something else, anything else, bright tilings, full of color, like the clan estate on Anuurn, with the golden fields and green forest and rolling hills.

But that did no good. She wound up thinking about family politics, remembering her father, wishing that the time-stretches that spun out her star-jumping youth had somehow reached planetside, and extended Kohan Chanur's life. But the years had caught up with him— not a fight with some upstart, thank the gods. His daughter and his sisters and his nieces had kept the young would-bes away, had given him a peaceful old age. No one but time had defeated him. He had just not waked one morning.

Meanwhile her husband, no, Korin nef Sfaura, thought he was going to move into Chanur. Pick a husband with brains and muscle and you got the hormones that went with it, you got a husband with ideas, and Hilfy Chanur had spent sleepless nights telling herself there were reasons to abide by the old customs, that shooting Korin Sfaura, while a solution on the docks at Kshshti, was not a solution on Chanur's borders, with a neighboring clan.

Not unless one wanted to crack the amphictiony wide open, and see war on Anuurn.

Gods-rotted bastard he had turned out to be. But the male-on-male fighting men learned for territory had a few things still to learn from Kshshti docks. Korin had limped out of Chanur territory, half-wed and vowing revenge, and by the time he'd made another try, cousin Harun had come in as lord Chanur… big lad, Harun. Rhean had searched the outback to find him and get him home, out of his wilderness exile.

Best fighter they could find, best lord of household, for a clan taking a lot of challenges. Of all the lads that had come home at Kohan's invitation, and some of them even settled inside Chanur walls, Harun… was not one of that liberal, easy-going number. Ask any of the males he had sent packing, including the ones born to Chanur. A hani of the old school — hair-triggered— thick-skulled…

But it had taken him to rid the clan once for all of what she had brought home, and detest and despise na Harun Chanur as she did, and know, as she did, that Rhean had brought him home precisely to counter aunt Py's influence… she had to think that he might be the right hani for the times; because Pyanfar's gallivanting about and Pyanfar's naming her head of clan had certainly raised the hair on a number of conservative backs. Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms.

And there were all the victims of that change — dead, like poor bookish Dahan Chanur, who had died for nothing more than wanting to collect his notebooks. Gods-rotted thick-headed Harun had ordered him out, Dahan had said something about his notes, headed back for his room, and Harun had flung him into a wall.

Thatwas the lord of Chanur now.

And she had done Rhean's daughter out of the Legacy, and some didn't forgive her for pulling rank and spending her ascendancy as clan head as an absentee.

Truth be told, she was guilty of everything they said at home. Aunt Rhean was disgusted with her. High and wide she'd fouled it up, mate-picking and house-running… parted company with aunt Py, that day on Anuurn docks. And aunt Py…

Ex-clan-head Pyanfar Chanur had said, being lately hailed grand high whatever of everywhere civilized, and leaving Anuurn's dust for good.

Aunt Py had said, Responsibility, Hilfy. Jabbing her with an attention-getting claw. / can't go down there again. It'd be war. And every enemy I have— listen to me! Another jab, and a grab, because she'd tried to walk out on Pyanfar, and nobody did that.

Every enemy I have on Anuurn will try to break the clan. That's the only revenge they can get on me. I want you to go down there, take the responsibility I gods-rotted carried, do your marrying… Kohan 's not going to hold out forever… and get somebody in his place that can hold on to what he helped build, Do you hear me, Hilfy Chanur?

Gods-rotted right she'd heard her. Pyanfar talking about Kohan as if he was already dead, just to be written off; Pyanfar telling her to go down there and make a baby or two, when Py's own offspring in Mahn had been trouble from birth… tell her about handling her responsibilities to the clan, when Pyanfar was off with her ship and her crew and everything in the universe that mattered to her.

Py wanted her off her ship and away from Tully, was the bare-faced truth. Go fall in love with your own species, kid. Tully's all right for Chur and Geran, and Haral and Tirun and anybody else who wants a roll in the bunk, but don't even think of the heir of Chanur hi that picture.

Go make babies downworld. Go find some muscle-bound, ambitious son of a clan you trusted, that you have to get some other muscle-bound dimwit cousin to get rid of. It's a tradition.

It's a gods-be tradition we kill the ones like Dahan and keep the ones like Harun.

And all the lost young lads who believed in Chanur's taking men onto ships, all the hundreds of young lads who with stars in their eyes had begged and bribed their way up to space, where they'd be free of tradition… what did they meet, and where were they, and what became of them, on the ships they'd gone to?

She tossed over onto her face and mangled the pillow, thinking about a human face and a place she didn't want to think about, ammonia-stink that she still smelled in her dreams. Sodium lights and kifish laughter. And Tully'd collected the worst of it, because Tully was a novelty. Tully'd escaped them once and they had something to prove…

They'd come through that, and come through war and fire, and Pyanfar had said…

You 'II only do him harm.

Damned if Pyanfar knew that.

Damned if Pyanfar cared whether she knew what had gone on between them: Pyanfar had cared whether she took up the burden of the clan, and Chanur's politics downworld said there'd been scandal enough— Chanur's heir had to be something the old women downworld could deal with, and accept, and politic with. She couldn't deal with it. She wouldn't deal with it.

The hypocrisy gagged her. And the hypocrisy of We have to change our ways, and Men aren't educated to make decisions, and This generation has to pass —

So Dahan was dead and Harun was lord Chanur, and a hani ship took a naive kid aboard and left him, at the farthest point hani traded, because he wasn't educated to think and wasn't educated to handle strangers, and because every species in the Compact believed that hani males were helpless, instinctual killers.

Gods rot the way things worked! Gods rot the old women who made the rules and the captain that had pulled a ship out with a crewman in kifish hands! Gods rot Pyanfar Chanur, whose powers extended to every godsforsaken end of the Compact and beyond… and who couldn't do justice in her own clan!

She pounded the pillow shapeless, she thought of the kid she'd received out of the hands of kifish guards, she thought of a big, good-looking lad who'd probably paid the obvious for his passage, and she thought bitter thoughts of what was probably going through her crew's heads… months away from home port and the sight and sound of a male voice.

She hated to make an issue. She probably should give a plain and clear hands-off order: Don't scare the kid. Don't crowd him. Where he's been—

She flung herself out of bed, crossed the room in the dark and found the bathroom door cold blind.

Washed her face in the dark, washed her mane and her neck and her hands and stood there with her ears flat and her nostrils shut and told herself it was her cabin, her own ship and she had no need to think tonight about that place, or to remember the stink and the look on Tully's human face.

She did not need the light. She felt her way to the shower and shut the cabinet door behind her, turned on the water and let the jets hit her face and her shoulders, hit the soap button and scrubbed and scrubbed, until she could smell nothing but the soap and her own wet fur, until she was warm through and through and she could stand a while against the shower wall while the heated, drying air cycled.

She could forget them, then. She could forget that place, and tell herself the lights if they came on would be the spectrum of Anuurn's own yellow sun; and the voices if she should call on them would be those of the Legacy's crew, cousins and kin she could rely on, kin from Chanur itself, and Chihin and young Fala Anify, Geran's and Chur's cousins, of the hill sept.

Not unreasonable women. Not fools, not political, not planetbound in their thinking, not any of those things she had met downworld. Believers in Pyanfar's ideas… gods, could she ever escape them? But trust her crew? With her life, with her sanity. Lean on their advice? Often.

Risk their lives, on this wild hope of proving Rhean and the rest of them wrong, paying out the Legacy's costs and putting the clan on a footing financially that owed not a gods-be thing to Pyanfar Chanur? If she signed that stsho contract, there was a chance that she might go back to Anuurn solvent and independent of debt.

A chance, too, that she might so compromise herself that Chanur could not redeem her, not financially, not in reputation.

Hilfy Chanur did not intend to come home begging for resources. Hilfy Chanur did not intend to make her way on her aunt's influence, her aunt's reputation, or her aunt's decisions. That was what she decided.

Sign the contract. Take the chance. What would aunt Pyanfar do?

Far more foolish things. Far crazier chances. Aunt Pyanfar had risked Chanur and everything they owned for a principle.

Was that not mad… when no one else of her acquaintance gave a damn — and hani did as hani had always done?

He had not slept, truly slept, in very long; and having a comfortable bed and only the whisper of air from the ducts, he had hardly needed do more than lie down and shut his eyes before he was gone.

He tried to think about things, but they escaped him. He tried to worry about where he was and where he was going, but he simply fell unconscious.

He waked after that in the disorientation of some unfamiliar sound and an unfamiliar cabin — he found he had left the lights on, and wanted to do something about it, but his eyes shut again and he burrowed under the covers and forgot about it on the instant. The next time he waked, he lay thinking about it, and realizing his eyes were tired of the light, and thinking that he ought to get up and do something, but he threw the covers back over his head and was gone again.

The third time he realized someone was in the room, and he took fright and lifted his head.

"Sorry," the crewwoman said — one of the senior two, his scrambled wits could not recall her except as Chanur clan. His fright did not go away. She seemed friendly enough, but he was in strange territory, with strangers he had to get along with.

"Go back to sleep if you like." She opened the closet, took his breeches off the hook and took a quick several measurements while he blinked stupidly at the embarrassing proceedings and decided it was something about the clothing he didn't have.

"Going to need a special order on this," she said. — Tiar was the name, he could recall it now. Tiar.

Chihin. Hilfy Chanur. Someone else he couldn't recall, the small one, the young one… "Do you some kifish outfits, stsho, whatever you like, no trouble. Even mahen stuff. Not hani. I can't even swear we can find blue. I'll do the best I can."

"Thank you," he said uncertainly. Something seemed called for, however awkward the circumstances.

And it got a pursing of the mouth, a twinkle in the spacer's eye.

"Hey. You're safe here. Relax."

He wanted to think so. He remembered Pyanfar Chanur. He remembered every time things got truly bad, that she had taken time to talk to him, and she had encouraged him.

It was a Chanur ship. That was the realization in which he had fallen asleep, and the reality to which he waked. It had all the attributes of a dream, that it was improbable, it arrived out of nowhere, and it promised him everything he couldn't likely have and couldn't hope for.

He truly wanted Tiar Chanur to like him — most of all, to think of him as a spacer. He watched the door shut, and thought that he shouldn't lie here like a lump, he should get up and make up his bunk and be ready to do something around the ship. He wanted to make the best impression he could on Hilfy Chanur. So he got himself out of bed, hoping no one would open the door unannounced, and showered and dressed in the only pair of breeches he had, everything else being on the Sun. He made his bed meticulously.

But when he went to go out, the door was locked.

He tried it a second time, to be certain. His heart sank, and he debated whether to try the intercom and appeal to be let out, but they knew he was here and they surely knew why they had locked the door.

So, with nothing to do, he sat down on the carefully made bed and stared at the furnishings, listening to the sounds that a ship had even when it was at dock, the rush of air in the ducts, the thumps and occasional cyclings of hydraulics. He had no breakfast. Which he supposed they might omit, thinking he was still asleep. But he had looked forward very much to familiar food. He had thrown up most everything they had given him in the jail, and there was nothing available here but water — which at least did not smell of ammonia, there was that to be glad of.

He listened to the sounds of the cans moving out of the hold. He heard the hatch cycle more than once.

Finally he lay down and stared at the ceiling, trying not to despair. He did not want to think about his situation. It was like the jail. It was better if you didn't think there, either, or wonder about things.

He did not need to wonder about his ship. He had every certainty where it was, in hyperspace, bound for Hoas. He had every certainty why it had left him, and he supposed now he should not have been surprised. If he were back on Anuurn, he would have had to quit the house, because when boys grew up, they had to leave. They had to go out into the outback to live, team to hunt and to fight each other and if boys lived long enough they could come back and try to drive some older man out into the outback to die. If the man's wives and sisters didn't beat him to death before he got a chance to challenge one on one.

That was what he had been headed for. That had been the order of things forever. There were always too many boys and most of them died. But Pyanfar Chanur's taking Khym Mahn into space, her moral victory over the han and its policies, and her outright defiance of the law and the custom… had given him a chance at the stars, at… freedom.

Well, it was freer than shivering in the rain and killing to eat and to live. Freer than getting beaten off and driven off and told he was crazy because he was male.

He didn't think he was crazy. He thought he did a fair job of holding his temper. He hadn't meant to hit the kif. He'd only wanted away.

Probably, though, the captain had heard the story from the police and the station authorities, and that was why the door was locked. So he could get out of this. He just had to be quiet and patient and not cause any trouble, and prove to the captain that he'd learned something in his apprenticeship aboard the Sun.

Hilfy Chanur was Pyanfar's niece. She was one of the crew that had fought at Anuurn. She was one of the ones that had changed the world. She wouldn't do what wasn't fair. She wouldn't judge him without giving him a chance. She wouldn't just put him off somewhere, or send him home.

He would rather die than go home. Not after… after all he'd learned, and worked for, and seen existing just outside his reach.

Granted he hadn't fitted in. The crew of the Sun had accepted him, slowly — well, they were on the way to accepting him. He tried to outlast their opinions, and they were almost, sort of beginning to take him for granted once they'd gotten used to the idea of having a male aboard. He'd gotten them to show him things, he'd done the best he could, he'd studied everything he could get his hands on, and he'd been getting better, in spite of the growth spurt he'd put on.

He hadn't lost his temper. They'd played jokes on him, but that was just to see how he would react, it was just because he was there and he was different, and he'd proved he could take it. He'd only slipped up the once—

On the docks. Which was bad. That was really bad, and the captain had a right to be mad. But he'd gotten control of himself. He'd not hit anybody else, not even when they arrested him.

Truth was, he'd been scared, not mad. He'd been dreadfully scared. And that feeling was back with him as if it had never left.

The translator was on the fourth from-scratch pass. The legal program was on its second. If this kept up, Hilfy thought, they were going to have to put in an order for another carton of paper. She hated the hand-slate. You took notes on it and it just got messier and spread the information you were working with further and further apart. And you couldn't punch marks in it or turn down the corners or take notes on the back.

Paper, she keyed to the Do List. The thick stuff. It massed more but it didn't fold up while one was reading or note-making, And she had done a lot of reading this morning, while the loaders were clanking and thumping away under Fala's and Chihin's supervision. Meanwhile Tarras was tucked down with the datadump from station files, looking for information — who might take the transship cans, who had what for sale and what the futures list and the methane-folk routings looked like.

The party initiating the contract requires of the party accepting the contract that in the event of the activation of Subclause 14 Section 2 the party accepting the contract shall perform according to the provisions of Subclause 14 Section 2, notwithstanding this shall not be construed as negating the requirements of Section 8 parts 3-15, provided that the party receiving the goods be the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1, and not a Subsequent of said person; if however the party qualified to receive the goods be the Subsequent of said person or Consequent of the Subsequent named in Subsection 3 Section 1, then the conditions set forward in Section 45 may apply.

She had a headache, and sipped gfi and put a purple clip on the side of the paper for performance and a blue one for identity, took another sip and winced as something hung up in the Legacy's off-loading system. A new ship had glitches in common with an old one, systems with bugs in them.

One of the bugs was in the out-track, the very simple chain-driven system that should take one of the giant container-cans smoothly from the hydraulic lift to the hydraulic loader-arms. They had tried lasers to find a fault in the line-up, they had tried carbon-coated paper to turn up an imprecision in the teeth, they'd marked the places on the chain that jammed and the places on the wheel that jammed, and no joy. She had preferred the system because it was what The Pride used, it was old, it was tested, it was straight-forwardly mechanical, cheap to repair, but that gods-rotted chain was going to break and kill somebody someday. Every time it jammed like that she flinched.

A small problem, the outfitter swore. Easy to fix. Just pinpoint the problem, and we'll make it right.

The loader started up again. So nobody was killed. Hope it wasn't the mahen porcelain they were hauling. But the chain was intact. She heard it working.

If the party receiving the goods be not the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1, and have valid claim as demonstrated in Subsection 36 of Section 25, then it shall be the reasonable obligation of the party accepting the contract to ascertain whether the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 shall exist in Subsequent or in Consequent or in Postconsequent, however this clause shall in no wise be deemed to invalidate the claim of the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 or 2, or in any clause thereunto appended, except if it shall be determined by the party accepting the contract to pertain to a person or Subsequent or Consequent identified and stipulated by the provisions of Section5…

However the provisions of Section 5 may be delegated by the party issuing the contract, following the stipulations of Subsection 12 of Section 5 in regard to the performance of the person accepting the contract, not obviating the requirements of performance of the person accepting the contract…

Another sip of gfi. A chase through the stack of paper after subsection 12 of Section 5. She could Search it on the computer but that meant moving the output stacks, the notes, the reference manuals and the microcube case that was sitting in front of the screen. Somewhere in Library there was a reference work on Subsequents, at least as far as mahendo'sat understood stsho personality changes. She would have the computer look it up. When she found the monitor screen. She took another sip of gfi.

The Rows were the open market at Meetpoint— anything you wanted, you had a chance of finding scattered on the tables of a hundred and more smalltime merchants, stsho and mahendo'sat… stsho and mahen hucksters shoving things into your attention and claiming miraculous potency for unregulated vitamins and curious effects for legal and peculiar compounds, offering second-hand clothes and trinkets, carvings by bored spacers and erotic items peculiar to mahendo'sat and curious to everyone else.

But to a hani in a hurry, with specific measurements and business already in the hands of a mahen tailor in a real established Rows shop, with a pressure-door and every indication of permanency and respectability, the glitter and gaud and traffic of the market were an obstacle — and Tiar tried to make time against it.

Though an honest hani watching her waistline could get distracted here, because among the glitter of cheap jewelry and real gold, the echoes of argument and the twittering of doomed kifish delicacies — came the smell of baked goods and spice; mahen pastries. And a number of worldbound hani might turn up their noses at sweets, but she was cosmopolitan in taste: truth was, there was a good deal about mahen sweets she found to like.

And maybe the kid did. And certainly Tarras had the habit.

Well, maybe a dozen. The captain liked some sweets. Fala might. Chihin favored salted things. She could manage that.

And if they were in a mortal hurry and did not get back to the market on this rare stop at Meetpoint (she had asked the tailor to deliver, at soonest)… she could take a small detour.

She bought two dozen of the sweets. And decided, well, there were the fish done up in salt crystals, a crate of those, deliver immediately. And the smoked ones. Practical, and a welcome change in the menu aboard. The stsho merchant offered samples, and, well, a box of those. And there was the herb and spice section, right adjacent, where a hani could inhale her way along, collect a bottle or two — she did no small bit of the cooking, and she felt inspired, here.

Then she thought, with her arm considerably weighted with parcels, well, the poor kid had come aboard with nothing in hand. He could use a few toiletries — such things as a young man might like. Brushes, yes.

A couple of combs. A mild cologne, something clean and pleasant.

A pair of scissors. A file — it was absolute hell to be without that, and have a claw that snagged.

Tooth-brash. Of course. Creme for hands and feet — Meetpoint air was dry by hani standards, and he had been in it for days. A good conditioner for all over, while she was at it, not spicy, something like sweet grass. Any young man would like that.

A kit-case to hold it all. Second-hand, with real silver ornament. Never mind the inscription was in mahen script, and probably some love sentiment, it was a nice piece and if nobody but mahendo'sat could read it, who cared?

"Hani officer. A word?"

She looked around, at a brown mahen belly; and up, quite a distance up, at a sober mahen face.

"Legacy?" the mahe said, laying a hand on his chest. "Friend to Chanur, I, long time, follow the Personage."

Gods, another one.

"Look…" Tiar shifted the packages in her arms and suddenly realized she was far along the Rows, she had spent longer than she intended collecting her odd items, and a mahendo'sat with religious enlightenment or a crackpot scheme either one was not going to get her home any sooner.

"I know, I know, too many come you ship talk crazy. Not me." A hand larger than her head applied itself to approximately a mahen heart.

"Goodfriend, name Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian, ship name Ha'domaren, dock right down there—"

"I'm late. Cap'n's going to skin me as is. Send a message."

''No, no.'' Said mahen hand landed on her arm, and it was drop the packages or listen. As a third alternative, she laid back her ears and stared up at the owner of said hand, who protested, "Important you listen."

"Important I get back, mahe."

"Call me Haisi.''

"Haisi. Get the hand off or I'll give it to you on a plate."

"Very serious! Listen. What you name?" "Never mind my name! You got a message for the Personage, save it for her! My captain's got her own troubles!"

"You take stsho deal?"

She shouldn't have reacted. But she had, she did, and she stood staring at the mahendo'sat. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Got ears."

"Got ears. Great. You want a word with the captain? I'll get you a word with the captain, you just go right down to berth 23 and use the com, like any civilized individual." "What you name?" "Tiar Chanur."

"Ah! Chanur officer!"

"Chanur officer, gods-rotted right, Chanur officer! You want to stay friends with the Personage, you get down to 23 and say what you've got to say—" "I carry package for you."

"I'm doing fine! Get! Don't walk with me! We got enough gossip!"

"You lot worry, Chanur officer. All fine. Name Haisi. Respectable, long-time come and go this station."

"Get!" She aimed a kick. Haisi escaped it. But Haisi went.

"So where did you hear about this deal?" Hilfy asked, as the mahe sipped expensive tea and lounged in her shipboard office, foot propped.

''When did you hear it?"

"What deal you want know?" A large mahen hand balanced a tiny cup, and the mahe regarded it closely.

"Nice porc'lain. Tiyleyn province, a? You got good taste."

"What do you want?"

"You so ab-rupt. So ab-rupt. How you deal with stsho?"

"I don't think you know anything. I swear to you, if you've talked your way onto my ship for some gods-rotted sales pitch, you can take yourself right out—"

Hand on throat. "You insult me?"

"I'm too busy to insult you! I have a ship to turn around, I have cargo all over my dockside because I can't get enough gods-rotted transports! If you know something, spill it!"

The mahe leaped to his feet. "I leave! I don't sit be insult!"

Hemight be serious. She regretted that, just long enough for him to reach the door and look back.

"You stupid hani let me walk out."

"I stupid hani let you sell me some damn deal! All right, all right, sit down, have another cup of tea."

"You say nice."

Rubbing salt on it. She pursed her mouth in pleasantness, pricked up her ears and made a gracious gesture toward the abandoned chair.

"Do sit down, Ana-kehnandian.''

"Nice." The mahe, gods rot his hide, sauntered over to the chair and sat down again, leaned far back and crossed his foot over his knee. "Nice you ship, hani captain."

"What deal?"

"You so sudden. I like more tea."

"Sorry. My entire staff of servants jumped ship at Hoas. The pot's right beside you."

A mahen grin. Only humans and mahendo'sat did that. It was life-threatening on a hani ship. And Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian took his time.

"So," Ana-kehnandian said, with a sip and a sigh. "You want know how I know?"

"I want to know what you know."

"You got fat deal, stsho with stsho. No'shto-shti-stlen got kif work for him. Same Urtur stsho. Lot big thing with kif. You tell Personage she need take quick look."

"Easy to propose. Not so easy to do. Why should the Personage be interested?"

"What word hotai?"

"Bomb. Explosion."

"Explos'. Damn right. Explos' like hell. I tell you, make good deal with you, you let us look this cargo."

She had felt a skip in her pulse from the instant the word kif came into the conversation. And this mahe was probing for information, playing a little information as if he was in it up to his ears. Let him look at this cargo indeed.

"Where did you learn about it, Ana-kehnandian?"

"Call me Haisi. We friend."

"Haisi. Where did you learn about it?"

"Cousin on Urtur."

"So this isn't exactly unexpected."

"No. Long time expect."

"Tell me."

"You let me see cargo."

No spacer. Not any merchant captain, if he was a captain, which she suspected: Ha'domaren, Tiar said.

And that fit: top of the line ship, fire-power concealed by panels, capable of dumping cargo and moving fast, with all the engine capacity of a freight-hauler. She'd seen mahen agents operate when she was with The Pride, and she folded her hands now easily on her middle, assuming a studied relaxation.

"Which Personage are you working for? Not my aunt. She'd not be so coy about it. And if you aren't working for my aunt, why should I let you look at anything?''

"You assume lot."

She pursed her mouth into a smile. "Gods-rotted right I do. Who are you working for, and is it anyone I should trust?''

"Absolute." Give him credit, cornered, presented with the case, he shifted directions. Which meant he had some authority from someone.

"Name?"

"Paehisna-ma-to."

Didn't tell her a thing. And if the mahe had good research on aunt Py's clan, he might know she had a slight sore spot about kif in general. So tell her the kif were interested.

But if the mahendo'sat were interested, and kif got wind of it, they would be sniffing around the situation.

It was their nature. Like breathing.

"So who is Paehisna-ma-to?"

"Wise woman."

"I'm glad. Tell her Hilfy Chanur keeps her contracts. Tell her if there's anything untoward about this contract, her representative should tell me before I sign the thing."

"You not sign yet?"

"Maybe I have, maybe I haven't."

"Don't do!"

"Maybe will, maybe won't. Right now I'm busy. No more time. Unless there's something else I should hear.''

"My ship Ha'domaren. You want talk, you send. Don't call on station com."

"I gathered that." She stood up and walked the mahe to the door and down the corridor toward the hatch, her crew being otherwise occupied — listening, and armed with a stranger on board, but occupied.

"You give my regards to your wise woman."

"Will," the mahe said, and bowed, and strolled off down the corridor to their airlock.

She stood there until she heard the lock cycle. "Is he gone?" she asked the empty air. "Down the ramp," Tiar said via com from the bridge. "Watching him all the way. Sorry about that, captain. I thought you 'd better have a face to face. " "No question," she said, and stared at nothing in particular, thinking how the most secret plans couldn't remain a secret once anybody talked to anybody at all.

Suspect anyone. The aide, the kifish guards, most especially them. Stsho refused, since the war, to take their ships out of stsho space, or. to trade anywhere with the younger species, except only at Meetpoint.

But there was a stsho ambassadorial presence on Urtur. There was a stsho presence even at Mkks nowadays. There would be one at Anuurn, if the han would permit it, but the han let no one in, secretive and protective of the homeworld, with recent reason.

Certainly whatever was going on between No'shto-shti-stlen and the stsho supposed to receive this whatever-it-was at Urtur had attracted someone's attention, or leaked at one end of the deal or the other, Point: Haisi was here. He had come here from elsewhere at sometime — and Urtur was as good as anywhere. While chance and taking advantage of a local leak of information might have brought him to their ship, it was just as possible he was telling part of the truth — and he had known it and come here knowing it. Which meant others might

They were offloading canisters as fast as the Legacy could cycle them out; and by tomorrow they had to be taking others aboard. They had to know as early as next morning whether they were going to pass over the Hoas cans and let another ship take the Hoas load. And that meant making a decision… that meant signing or not signing.

That meant solvency after this trip… or still being involved in the deal even if they turned it down, dammit, because being Pyanfar's niece, if she took the stsho object aboard, it said one thing; and if she refused, and it was some crazy stsho religious thing that brought down a friendly governor at Meetpoint — that was disaster.

For once she wished she could ask Pyanfar. But if leaks were happening, they would proliferate. If the mane agent knew, his crew knew something; if his crew knew something, it could get to the docks; if the kifish guard knew, the kif they might be in collusion with knew; and if things had gone out over station com, then the com operators in station control might know, and so might their associates…

In which case if she didn't sign it and didn't take the deal, and left here for Hoas, there were die-hards who would never believe they hadn't the object aboard, and that it wasn't all a ruse. So the minute one Haisi Ana-whatever knew anything about it — they were tagged with the stsho deal and the stsho object whether or not they actually had it.

At least if they signed the deal and took it, they got paid.

"Who we got to take the Hoas stuff?" she asked on com, when she got back to her office.

"We taking the deal, captain?" Chihin asked. "Looks as if. Who do we have?" "Mahen trader. Notaiji.

Just in, reputable ship. Regular runs to Hoas. Plenty of time to make the schedule and looking for a load.

They don't usually bid, just take what's going and ship when they're full-but this is up to their cap. Good deal for them."

She considered that an unhappy moment and two. Of course a mahen ship was all there was. Where was another hani ship, when a little obfuscation might have served them?

"There are kif outbound. And a t'ca may be. But I didn’t 't consider them as options.''

"No," she said. Almost she had rather the t'ca. But getting the address and the disposition of cargo straight with a matrix brain was an exercise in frustration.

And it might send the cans to OVo'o'ai, for all any of them could tell. It didn't bother a t'ca shipper so, as far as anyone could figure out their economics But it played hell with one's reputation with oxy-breathers.