looked round — gone.”
“Gods rot him!”
“Can’t have gotten far.”
“Sure he can’t.” She took the pocket com Haral offered her and clipped it to her
belt to match what Haral had. “Who’s on bridge?”
“No one. I stayed. Alone.”
“Hilfy’s out there.”
“First.”
“Lock up. Come with me.”
“Aye!” Haral snapped, spun on her heel and ran.
Pyanfar strode on.
Market, she reckoned. Meetpoint’s famed Free Market was far and away the
likeliest place to look. Baubles and exotics. Things to see.
He might have tried the restaurants before the market.
Or the bars of the Rows.
Gods rot him. Gods rot her soft-headedness in ever taking him aboard. On Anuurn
they called her mad. At times like this she believed it, all the way.
She was breathing in great side-aching gasps when Haral came pelting back to
fall in at her side.
“He’s not here,” Hilfy said — youngest of The Pride: her left ear one-ringed,
her beard only beginning, her breeches the tough blue cloth of hani crew, though
she was Ker Hilfy, Chanur’s someday heir. She met Tirun Araun between two aisles
of the dock bazaar, among the stacks of cloth, foodstuffs, the fluttering of
stsho merchants. Fluting cries of exotic nonsapients legal here for trade, the
shouts of traders and passersby, music from the bars of the Rows alongside the
market-echoed off the lofty overhead in one commingled roar. Smells abounded,
drowning other scents. Color rioted. “I’ve been down every aisle, Tirun–”
“Try the Rows,” said Tirun, older spacer. Her beard was full; her mane hung wild
about her shoulders. Her left ear flicked, clashing half a dozen rings. “Come
on. I take evens, you take odds. Hit every bar on the Rows. He might have, gods
only know.”
Hilfy gulped air and went, not questioning the orders as Haral herself had not
questioned what had happened, except that something had gone wrong. Very wrong.
That had been a coded call to get off the docks. At once. Her ears kept lying
back on their own; she pricked them up with spasmodic efforts, seeking a hani
voice through the din, from out of the row of spacer bars that lined the
marketplace.
No sign of any hani in the first bar on the row. It was all mahendo’sat inside,
honking music and the raucous screech and stamp of drunken spacers.
She crossed Tirun’s path on the walk on the way out and they split again into
the third and fourth bar.
Stsho, this den. But she spotted the red-gold of hani backs clustered about a
bowl-table, dived through and slid to her knees on the rim. A senior hani spacer
turned round and eyed her; other eyes turned her way, all round the table. She
bobbed a hasty bow with hands gripping the rim.
“Hilfy Chanur par Faha, gods look on you — you seen a hani male?”
Ears laid back and pricked in non-sobriety all round the table, six pairs of
ears heavy with rings. “Gods — what you been drinking, kid?”
“Sorry.” That was a mistake. She scrambled to her feet and started away; but the
spacer swayed erect, waved wildly for balance as she clawed her unsteady way up
the plastic bowlseat to catch her arm. “Hani male, hey? Need help, Chanur? Where
you see this vision, hey?”
There were derisive laughs, curses — someone was trodden on. The rest of the
hani came up on the seat and scrambled out of the pit. Hilfy tore loose and
fled. “Hey,” she heard at her back, hani-cough, a drunken roar.
“Pay!” A shrill stsho warble from another side. “Pay, hani bastard–”
“Charge it to Ayhar’s Prosperity!”
“O gods!” Hilfy dived for the exit, just as a pair of kifish patrons loomed in
the doorway. Black musty robes brushed her with a smell that sent the wind up
her back. She did not look back or pause as she dived past them both. “Hard
rabble.” she heard hissed behind her, the noise of drunken encounter mingled
with kifish voices.
She darted through the outer doors into the light of the market, blinked,
hesitating on one foot, hearing above the market noise the sound of hani in full