the kif. Two moved, beyond the moving can-carrier, and she shifted to keep them
in sight. The smell of them reached her. Their dry-paper scent offended her
nostrils with old memories. The long-snouted faces peering from within the
hooded robes, the dark-gray hairless skin with its papery wrinkles, the small,
red-rimmed eyes — set the hair bristling on her back. “Do something,” she
wished them. “Foot-lickers. Riffraff. Petty thieves. Did Akkukkakk turn you out?
Or is he anywhere these days?”
Kifish faces were hard to read. If that reference to a vanished leader got to
them, nothing showed. Only one hooded face lifted, black snout atwitch, and
stared at her with directness quite unlike the usual kifish slink. “He is no
longer a factor,” that one said, while the carrier groaned past under its load
of canisters and took itself from between them and four more kif.
More soft impacts hit the deck beside her. From the tail of her eye she saw a
red-gold blur. Tirun and Geran had dropped off the flatbed rear. They took up a
position at her left as Chur held the right.
“Get back,” she said without looking around at her two reinforcements. “Go on
with the carrier. Hilfy’s in lower ops. Get that cargo inside.” The mahen
station guards had moved warily into better position, several dark shadows at
the peripheries of her vision, two of them remaining in front of her and behind
the kif.
“You carry weapons,” that foremost kif observed, not in the pidgin even the
cleverest of mahe used. This kif had fluency in the hani tongue, spoke with
nuances — dishonorable conceaied weapons, the word meant. “You have
difficulties of all kinds. We know, Pyanfar Chanur. We know what you are
transporting. We know from whom it comes. We understand your delicate domestic
situation, and we know you now possess something that interests us. We make you
an offer. I am very rich. I might buy you — absolution from your past
misjudgments. Will you risk your ship? For I tell you that ship will be at risk
— for the sake of a mahendo’sat who is lost in any case.”
She heard the carrier growling its way out of the arena, out of immediate
danger. Chur had stayed at her side. So had the six mahendo’sat station guards.
“What’s your name, kif?”
“Sikkukkut-an’nikktukktin. Sikkukkut to curious hani. You see I’ve studied you.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
“The public dock is no place to conduct delicate business. And there are
specific offers I would make you.”
“Of course.”
“Profitable offers. I would invite you to my ship. Would you accept?”
“Hardly.”
“Then I should come to yours.” The kif Sikkukkut spread his arms within the
cloak, a billowing of black-gray that showed a gleam of gold. “Unarmed, of
course.”
“Sorry. No invitation.”
The kif lowered his arms. Red-rimmed eyes stared at her with liquid thought.
“You are discourteous.”
“Selective.”
The long gray snout acquired a v-form of wrinkles above the nostril slits, a
chain slowly building, as at some faint, unpleasant scent. “Afraid of
witnesses?”
“No. Just selective.”
“Most unwise, Pyanfar Chanur. You are losing what could save you . . . here and
at home. A hani ship here has already witnessed — compromising things. Do I
hazard a guess what will become of Kohan Chanur — of all that Chanur —
precariously — is, if anything should befall The Pride? Kohan Chanur will
perish. The name will have never been; the estates will be partitioned, the
ships recalled to those who will then take possession of Chanur goods. Oh, you
have been imprudent, ker Pyanfar. Everyone knows that. This latest affair will
crush you. And whom have you to thank, but the mahendo’sat, but maneuverings and
machinations in which hani are not counted important enough to consult?”
The transport’s whining was in the distance now. She heard another sound, the
hollow escaping-steam noise of the cargo hatch opening up, the whine of a
conveyer moving to position and meshing; old sounds, familiar sounds: she knew
every tick and clank for what they were. “What maneuverings among kif?” she
asked the gray thief. “What machinations — that would interest me, I wonder.”