The Pride of Chanur

Dur Tahar had made her offer. Perhaps she expected a different answer. She flinched, managed a lazy indifference, smoothed her rippled beard, turned and looked back toward the airlock a last time, slowly, before she stalked out, gathering her two crewwomen as she went.

“Gods,” Pyanfar muttered through her teeth, put a hand wearily to the rampway wall and turned about to the airlock, feeling suddenly older. That was muffed. She should have been quicker on her mental feet, slower of temper. The Tahar might have been talked into it. Maybe wanted to be talked into it. If a Tahar could be trusted at their backs. She hated the whole of it, mahe, Tahar, Outsider, all of it — winced under Chur’s stare. Not a word from Chur the whole way back, regarding the business she had conducted, this tape — selling, trust-selling.

And Tully’s face… of a sudden he jerked away from Chur’s grip and went into the airlock, Chur hastening to stop him. Pyanfar broke into a run into the hatchway, but Chur had got him. Tully had stopped against the inside wall, his back against it, his eyes full of anger.

“Captain,” Chur said, “the translator was working.”

Pyanfar reached into her pocket and thrust her audio plug into her ear, faced Tully, who looked steadily toward her. “Tully. That was not a friend. What did you hear? What?”

“You’re same like kif. Want the same maybe. What deal with the mahendo’sat?”

“I saved your miserable hide. What do you think? That you can travel through Compact territory without everyone who sees you having the same thoughts? You didn’t want to deal with the kif — good sense; but by the gods, you haven’t got a choice but us or the kif, my friend Tully. All right. I traded them the tape you made — but not that I couldn’t have gotten the ship repair without that: they’re anxious to get rid of us; they’d have come round tape or no tape, you can bet they would. But now everyone’s going to know about your kind; gods, let the mahendo’sat make copies of it; let them sell it in the standard kit. It’s the best deal you can get. I’m not selling you, you rag-eared bastard; can I make you understand that? And maybe if your ships meet our ships… there’ll be a tape in the translators that may keep us from shooting at each other. We meet and trade. Understand? Better deal than the kif give you.”

A tremor passed over his face, expressions she could not read. The eyes spilled water, and he made a move of his arm, jerked at Chur’s grip on it and Chur cautiously let him go.

“You understand me?” Pyanfar asked. “Do I make myself understood?”

No response.

“You’re free,” Pyanfar said. “Those papers let you go anywhere. You want to walk out the rampway, onto the dock? You want to go back to station offices and stay with the mahe?”

He shook his head.

“That’s no.”

“No. Pyanfar. I #.”

“Say again.”

He reached to his waist and drew out the papers, offered them to her.

“Your papers,” Pyanfar said. “All in order. Go anywhere you like.”

He might have understood. He pointed toward the door. “This hani — want me go with him.”

“Her. Dur Tahar. No friend of mine. Or to this ship. Nothing that concerns you.”

He stood a moment, seeming to think it over. Finally he pointed back toward the i

“Go,” she said. “It’s all right, Tully. You’re all right.”

“Friend,” he said, and touched her arm in leaving, walked out with his head down and exhaustion in his posture. “Follow him?” Chur asked.

“Not conspicuously. Docking’s got his quarters out of commission. Get a proper cot for the washroom.”

“We could take him into crew quarters.”

“No. I don’t want that. There’s nothing wrong with the washroom, for the gods’ sake. Just get him a sedative. I think he’s had enough.”

“He’s scared, captain. I don’t much blame him.”

“He’s got sense. Go. Tell Geran if she doesn’t hear something about that repair crew within half an hour, come get me.”

“Aye,” Chur murmured, and hastened off in Tully’s wake.

So. Done, for good or ill. Pyanfar leaned against the wall, aching in all her bones, her vision fuzzing. After a moment she walked out, down the vacant corridor toward the lifts, hoping to all the gods Geran could find no incident to put between her and bed.

No one stopped her. She rode the lift up, walked a sleep-drunken course down the central corridor to her own door.

“Aunt,” Hilfy’s voice pursued her. She stopped with her hand against the lockplate and looked about with a sour and forbidding stare.

“Repair crew’s on its way,” Hilfy said ever so quietly. “I thought you’d want to know. Message just came.”

“You’ve been sitting watch topside?”

“Got a little rest. I thought—”

“If Geran’s on, it’s waste to duplicate effort. Get yourself back to quarters and stay there. Sleep, gods rot you; am I supposed to coddle you later? Take something if you can’t. Don’t come complaining to me later.”

“Captain,” Hilfy murmured, ears back, and bowed.

Pyanfar hit the bar and opened the door, walked in and punched it closed before the automatic could function. Belatedly the look on Hilfy’s face occurred to her; and the long duty Hilfy had spent at com through transit, and that she had intended to say something approving of that, and had not.

Gods rot it. She sat down on the side of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Gods, that she had staggered through the requisite interview with the mahendo’sat, bargained with them, offended the Tahar — and Tully… she had traded off what three of his shipmates had died to keep to themselves.

In such a condition she gambled, with Chanur and Tully’s whole species on the board.

She dropped her hands between her knees, finally reached for the bedside drawer where she kept a boxful of pills. She shook one into her hand and put it into her mouth — spat it out in sudden revulsion and flung the open boxful across the cabin. Pills rattled and circled and lay still. She lay down on the bed as she was, drew the coverlet over herself, tucked her ;arms about her head and shut her eyes, flinging herself into an extended calculation about their routing out of here and refusing to let her mind off that technical problem. She built the numbers in front of her eyes and fended off the recollection of Tully’s face or Hilfy’s, or the scuttling figure of the k

VII

“Aunt.”

It was not com; it was Hilfy in person, leaning over her bed, shaking at her. “Aunt.” Pyanfar came out of sleep with a wild reach to get her elbow under her, shook herself, stared into Hilfy’s dilated eyes. “It’s Starchaser,” Hilfy said. “They’ve come through. They’re in trouble. They can’t get dumped. The word just came in—”

“O gods.” Pyanfar kicked the coverlet off, scrambled out dressed as she was and seized Hilfy by the arm on her way out of the room. “Talk, imp: has anyone scrambled?”

“Station’s called miners in the path… some mention of an outbound freighter being able to change course…” Hilfy let herself be pulled through the doorway into the corridor and loped along keeping up with her on the way to the bridge. “They’re twenty minutes lag out, crossing Lijahan track zenith.”

“Twenty now?”

“About.”

Haral was on the bridge, standing by scan, with the area-light on her face, and her expression was grim when she looked around at their arrival. “They’ve got to get to the pod,” Haral said. “No way anyone can get to her in time. No way any rescue can haul that mass down, even if she’s stripped.”

“What’s our status?”

“We can’t get there,” Hilfy objected, plain logic.