The Pride of Chanur

“Bad joke,” Pyanfar said, and walked out.

Tully, she had thought, with an impulse of which she was heartily ashamed.

But she kept thinking of it, all the way up to her own quarters.

She stripped and showered, shed a mass of fur into the drain; dried and combed and arranged her mane and beard. It was the red silk breeches this time, the gold armlet, the pendant pearl. She surveyed herself with some satisfaction, a lift in her spirits. Appearances meant something, after all. The mahendo’sat were sensitive to the matter, quite as much as the stsho.

Offended prosperity, that was the tack to take with them. They knew The Pride. As long as it seemed that Chanur’s fortunes were intact and that Chanur was still a power to reckon with among hani, that long they might hold some hope of mahendo’sat eagerness to serve.

And there was, she reckoned, smiling coldly at the splendid hani captain in the mirror, there was deadly earnest in this haste.

There was Akukkakk.

Gods rot it all.

Possibly she had embarrassed him enough that his own would turn on him. That would take time to know. A long time out from homeport, keeping her ear alert for rumor.

Get rid of the Outsider Tully… would that the disentanglement were that easy.

She stared into her own eyes, ears flat, and meditated the villainy that any trader seeing the Outsider would think on naturally as breathing; and after a little thinking her lips pursed in a grimly smug smile.

So, so, so, Pyanfar Chanur. There was a way to settle more than one problem. Likely Tully would not like it, but an Outsider who came begging passage could take what he could get, and it was not in her mind to beg from Tahar.

She checked com, found the expected clutter of messages waiting attention. “Nothing really urgent,” Geran said. “Station’s still upset, that’s the sum of them.”

“Chur’s got Tully, has she, cleaning him up?”

“A little problem there.”

“Don’t tell me problem. I’ve got problems. What problem?”

“He has his own ideas, our Tully does. He wants to be shaved.”

“Gods and thunders. Washroom?”

“Here, now.”

“I’m coming down there.”

She started for the door, went back and picked up the audio plug for the translator and headed down in haste. Shaved. Her ears flattened, pricked again in a forced reckoning that customs were customs.

But appearances, by the gods…

She arrived in op in deliberate haste, found the trio there, Geran, Chur, Tully, all cleanly and haggard and drowning their miseries in a round of gfi. They looked up, Tully most anxious of all, still possessed, thank the gods, of all his mane and beard and decent-looking in a fresh pair of trousers.

“Pyanfar,” he said, rising.

“Captain,” she corrected him sternly. “You want what, Tully? What problem?”

“Wants the clippers,” Chur said. “I trimmed him up a bit.” She had. It was a good job. “He wants the beard off.”

“Huh. No, Tully. Wrong.”

Tully sank down again, the cup of gfi in his two hands, looked chagrined. “Wrong.”

Pyanfar heaved a sigh. “That’s reasonable. You do what I say, Tully. You have to look right for the mahendo’sat. You look good. Fine.”

“Same # hani.”

“Like hani, yes.”

“Mahendo’sat. Here.”

“You’re safe. It’s all right. Friendly folk.”

Tully’s mouth tightened thoughtfully. He nodded peaceably enough. Then he reached a hand behind his head and knotted the pale mane back in his fingers. “Right, that?”

“No,” Pyanfar said. The hand .dropped.

“I do all you say.”

Pyanfar flicked her ears, thrust her hands into her waistband. “Do all?” She felt pricklish in the area of her honor, and the Outsider’s pale eyes gazed up at her with disturbing confidence. “It might frighten you, what I want. I might ask too much.”

Some of that got through. The confidence visibly diminished.

“I make you afraid, Tully?” She gestured wide, toward the bow. “There’s a station out there, Kirdu Station. Mahendo’sat species is the authority in this place. There’s a hani ship docked next to us. Stsho species too, down the dock.”

“Kif?”

“Two kif ships, not the same ones. Not Akukkakk’s, not likely. Traders. They’re trouble if we linger here too long, but they won’t make any sudden move. I want you to go outside, Tully. I want you to come with me, out in the open, on station dock, and meet the mahendo’sat.”

He did understand. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I’m crew of this ship,” he said. It seemed a question.

“Yes. I won’t leave you here. You stay with me.”

“I come,” he said.

That simply. She stared at him a moment, deliberately held out her hand toward the cup in his. He looked perplexed for a moment, then surrendered it to her. She drank, subduing a certain shudder, handed it back to him,

He drank as well, glanced at her, measuring her reaction by that look, finished the cup. No prejudices. No squeamishness about other species. She nodded approval.

“Go with you, captain,” Chur offered.

“Come on, then,” Pyanfar said. “Geran, you stay; can’t leave the ship with no one watching things, and the others are off. We’re going just to station offices and back, and it shouldn’t be trouble. I don’t expect it, at least.”

“Right,” Geran said, not without a worried look.

Pyanfar put a hand on Tully’s shoulder, realized the chill of his skin, the perpetually hunched posture when he was sitting. He stood up, shivered a bit. “Tully. The translator won’t work outside the ship, understand. Once out the rampway, we can’t understand each other. So I tell you here: you stay with me; you don’t leave me; you do all that I say.”

“Go to the offices.”

“Offices, right.” She laid one sharpclawed fingertip amid his chest. “I’ll try to get it through to you, my friend. If we go about with you aboard in secret, if we leave mahendo’sat territory with you and go on to Anuurn, to our own world — that could be trouble. Mahendo’sat might think we kept something they should have known about. So we make you public, let them all have a look at you, mahendo’sat, stsho, yes, even the kif. You wear clothes, you talk some hani words, you get yourself registered, proper papers, all the things a good civilized being needs to be a legal entity in the Compact. I’ll get it all arranged for you. There’s no way after you have those papers that anyone can claim you’re not a sapient. I’ll register you as part of my crew. I’ll give you a paper and where I tell you, you put your name on it. And you don’t give me any trouble. Does enough of that get through? It’s the last thing I can tell you.”

“Don’t understand all. You ask. I do it.”

She wrinkled her nose, threw an impatient wave of her hand at Chur. “Come on.”

Chur came. Tully did, blindly trusting, at which she scowled and walked along in front of them both to the lock, hands thrust into the back of her waistband, wondering whether station offices had detectors and whether they could get away with a concealed weapon, going where they were going. She decided against it, whatever the other risks.

A watcher stood by the rampway outside, a mahe dock-worker who scampered off quickly enough when they showed outside, and who probably made a call to his superiors… the mahendo’sat were discreetly perturbed, polite in their surveillance. But they were there. Pyanfar saw it, and Chur did; and Tully turned a frightened look toward the sudden movement. He talked at them, but the translator was helpless now, outside the range of the inship pickup, and Pyanfar laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and kept him moving. “Just a precaution,” she said, a quiet tone, and looked beyond to the rampway access of Moon Rising, where a far more hazardous watcher stood, a hani crewwoman.

“Better take care of that business,” Pyanfar said to Chur, and diverted heir course diagonally among the canister-carriers toward Moon Rising.