hosts fear not.”
“It’s called civilization, you earless bastard.”
A dry kifish sniffing, like laughter. “The stsho are grass to us. You will not
join with me.”
“In a mahen hell.”
He lifted both hands, palm outward. “I do not challenge, hunter Pyanfar.”
Her hand tensed on the gun, to be quick; but the tall kif turned his
black-cloaked back and walked off with that peculiar stalking gait.
“Sfik,” Hilfy muttered, who was the linguist among them. “Means like pride, like
honor, if the kif had any.”
“If,” Pyanfar said, staring after the kif and not forgetting a sweep about to
see if there were confederates lurking: there were not. “That mouth may speak
hani; that brain’s pure kif. Move it. Get out of here.”
“I have a gun,” Hilfy said, backing away as she was told. “Come on, aunt. Let’s
both get out of here.”
“Huh.” She backed, turned, grabbed Hilfy by the arm and both of them hastened up
the rampway into the access, headon into Tirun and Chur who were coming out.
“Good gods,” she said when her heart had restarted.
“Sounded like you had trouble,” Tirun said.
“It walked off,” she said, and gathered them all up, marched them ahead of her
past the safety of the airlock. Chur shut the door.
“Kif?” asked Tirun then.
“Kif,” she said, and looked around sharply at movement to her left, where Geran
stood, with Tully.
“Got talk,” he said.
“Geran, for the gods’ sakes I said settle him.”
“It’s urgent, captain.”
“Everything’s urgent. Get in line.”
“Aunt,” Hilfy said, with that kind of look Hilfy could get when something was
utterly out of joint.
“Got paper,” Tully said, breathless. “Got–” The translator garbled over mangled
hani words.
“Get me a plug, will you?” One materialized out of Hilfy’s pocket, and she put
the audio into her ear. “Tully, what are those papers?”
“Got paper say human come fight kif # # need hani.”
“Rot that translator. I’m losing that.” “Human come fight kif.” A very cold lump
settled to her stomach. “Why, Tully?”
“Make kif #. Friend, Pyanfar. Bring lot human come fight kif.” The cold grew
colder still.
“Sounds like,” said Tirun, “more than one ship involved.”
“They want help,” said Hilfy. “That’s why he came. That’s what I think he’s
saying. It’s nothing to do with trade.”
“Gods,” she muttered, and looked up, at an earnest human face, at four crewwomen
with iaces taut with the same kind of thoughts. “Kif know this, Tully?”
“Maybe know,” he said. He drew a great breath and let it go, held out his hands
as if appeal could get past the translator. “Come long way find you. Kif — kif
make trouble # one time fight Goldtooth friend.”
“Goldtooth,” she said. The name was a bad taste in her mouth. “What am I
supposed to do with you? Huh?”
“Go Maing Tol. Go Anuurn.”
“Gods rot it, Tully, we got kif up to our noses!”
His pale eyes locked on hers, desperate. “Fight,” he said. “Got make fight,
Py-an-far.”
She lowered her ears and brought them up again, glancing round at her crew.
Scared faces. Looking to her for answers.
“Ought to give him to Vigilance,” she muttered, “and advertise it to the kif.”
No one said anything. She imagined the consequences for herself if she did that.
The fragile Compact broken wide open, kif chasing a han deputy ship.
Or Ehrran leaving him on a stsho station, where not a hand would be raised to
prevent kif from walking in and doing what they liked. Kif would do anything, if
profit in doing it outweighed the profit in restraint.
“Where we taking him?” Tirun asked. “Maing Tol, Goldtooth says.”
“Captain — We do that and that blackbreeches’ll have our ears. Begging the
captain’s pardon.”
More questions of her orders. She stared at Tirun, at a cousin, an old comrade;
at another Chanur whose life was at risk.
“You want to turn him over to Ehrran, Tirun?”
Tirun stood there with her ears down, with rapid thinking going on behind her
eyes. “We could send another can to Vigilance,” she said. “Let that kif bastard
wonder.”
The idea struck her fancy. But: “No,” she said, thinking of those same