in the amphictiony of Enafy under a series of ambitious leaders, Chanur sprang
into considerable prominence as one of the first clans to see the benefits of
offworld trade.
Kohan Chanur is current lord: his principle mates are Huran Faha, Akify Llun,
Lilun Sifas. Actual manager of the estate is his aunt Jofan Chanur par Araun.
His sisters are Pyanfar, Rhean and Anfy Chanur, whose mates are of clan Mahn,
Anury, and Quna respectively, and who captain the ships The Pride of Chanur,
Chanur’s Fortune and Chanur’s Light. His daughters are: Hilfy, by Huran; Nifas,
by Akify, among others; and two sons (exiled).
Araun is a tributary clan, rated as cousins to Chanur; other cousin clans are
Tanan, Khuf, and Pyruun. Jisan Araun par Chanur was mother to Haral and Tirun
through an obscure tributary clan lord from remote Llunuurny, long since
defeated and replaced by a male Haral and Tirun declined to support, leaving him
to his numerous if unambitious sisters. Nifany Pyruun, Jofan Chanur’s blood
cousin, is birth-mother to Chur and Geran and a son in exile. She is
administrator of Chanur offices in the port authority. Kohan’s most recent
defense of Chanur was against Kara Mahn, son of Pyanfar Chanur and Khym Mahn.
Mahn, a nonspacing clan in the Kahin Hills nearby, remains an uneasy neighbor
with Kara in Khym’s stead, and his full sister Tahy at the head of Mahn’s
financial interests.
Hani language and religion
There was not, of course, one language, but the Enafy dialect of the Llunuurn
valley became standardized as the language of commerce and diplomacy. With
considerable resistance it was adopted as the language of the han and is the
only language heard offplanet.
The language was the vehicle of the spread of Llunuurn culture planetwide and
carries it into space.
Terms of respect are: ker, title of a high clan woman; na, title of a clan lord;
par maternal daughter of a clan. Nef is the title of an ex-lord, who is no
longer entitled to be called by the name of his clan.
Hani terms of disrespect involve uncleanness; age (eggsucker implies one too old
to hunt moving game); disavowal by clan (bastard is an inaccurate translation,
since legitimacy cannot be at issue in a matrilineal descent); the deities; the
condition of the ears, which tell a great deal about one’s efficiency in
self-defense. More peculiar is the use of feathered, an impious reference to a
hani religious debate; and son, as in gods give you sons; since male offspring
do no work and are exiled at puberty to return and attempt to take over the
estate in their prime, a house with many sons is in constant turmoil.
The Mahendo’sat
Among the tallest species of the Compact, tending to ranginess and length of
limb, the mahen-do’sat have fur ranging from sleek sheened black to curly brown,
with all gradations in between. Their claws do not retract, and are more a tool
of utility than a weapon. They are omnivores, native to Iji, from which they
control a considerable territory. Their neighbors on the one side are the hani,
on the other the kif, with whom they share some territory in dispute.
The mahendo’sat have more than a hundred languages native to Iji. Their own
lingua franca is chiso, which not all mahendo’sat speak; and very many
mahendo’sat have never succeeded in learning even the simplified pidgin that
they popularized during the hani contact. Ironically, this species which pursues
both art and science for its own sake and which is continually engaged in
research of all kinds, cannot translate either into or out of its own set of
languages with any degree of accuracy, which some might suspect indicates more
than apparent idiosyncrasies in psychology as well as physiology. The fact that
the pidgin is mostly hani rests on several facts, most of them having to do with
the mahendo’sat’s inability to translate their own tongue. First, mahendo’sat
and stsho were already in communication with great difficulty through a bastard
tongue involving kif, who spoke stsho. Second, when hani came into the picture,
hani proved able to learn kifish and stsho and with their long experience as
traders, evolved a pidgin hani that blended with the current pidgin and