name Akkhtimakt. I think this fellow lieutenant to Akkukkak, got same ugly way
make trouble, want prove self more big than Akkukkak. How do this? Revenge on
knnn not good idea. Revenge on human another kind thing; same revenge on you and
me. Ship in port name Harukk, captain name Sikkukkut. This number one bastard
claim self enemy this Akkhtimakt, want offer deal. This smell many day dead.
You add all same up, run mahen Personage. Paper good. You make number one deal
mahendo’sat this time. You got big item. Forget other cargo. Be rich. Promise.
You hani enemies not touch.
Wish all same luck. I got business stsho space. Got fix thing.
Goldtooth Ana Ismehanan-min a Hasanan-nan, same give you my sept name.
She looked up, ears flat.
“What’s it say?” asked Haral, in all diffidence.
“Goldtooth wished us luck. Promises help. He’s bribed the stsho. Someone got
those papers fixed to get us here and gods-be if any of it was accident.” She
gnawed a filthy hangnail. It tasted of fish and human. She spat in distaste and
clipped the papers into her data bin. “Tell Tirun and Geran get out cargo
unloaded. Get Chur on it. Fast.”
“All of it?”
She turned a stare Haral’s way. It was a question, for sure; but not the one
Haral asked aloud. “All of it. Call Mnesit. Tell them get an agent down here to
identify what’s theirs. Tell Sito sell at market and bank what’s ours.”
“They’ll rob us. Captain, we’ve got guarantees; we’ve got that Urtur shipment
promised — We’ve got the first good run in a year. If we lose this now–”
“Gods rot it, Haral, what else can I do?” Embarrassed silence then. Haral’s ears
sank and pricked up again desperately.
So they prepared to run. Prepared — to lose cargo that meant all too much to
Chanur in its financial straits, trusting a mahen promise . . . for the second
time. And for the first time in memory Haral Araun disputed orders.
“I’m going for a bath,” she said.
“Do what with the incoming cargo?” A faint, subdued voice.
“Offer it to Sito,” she said. “Warehouse what he won’t take. So maybe things
work out and we get back here.” Likely the stsho would confiscate it at first
chance. She did not say what they both knew. She got out of the chair and headed
out of the bridge, no longer steady in the knees, wanting her person clean, her
world in order; wanting–
–gods knew what.
Youth, perhaps. Things less complicated.
There was one worry that wanted settling — before baths, before any other thing
shunted it aside.
She buzzed the door of number one ten, down the corridor from her own quarters,
down the corridor from the bridge. No answer. She buzzed again, feeling a twinge
of guilt that set her nerves on edge.
“Khym?”
She buzzed a third time, beginning to think dire thoughts she had had half a
score of times on this year-long voyage — like suicide. Like getting no answer
at all and opening the door and finding her husband had finally taken that
option that she had feared for months he would.
His death would solve things, repair her life; and his; and she knew that, and
knew he knew it, in one great guilty thought that laid her ears flat against her
skull.
“Khym, blast it!”
The door shot open. Khym towered there, his mane rumpled from recent sleep. He
had thrown a wrap about his waist, nothing more.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Sure. Fine.” His pelt was crossed with angry seams of scratches plasmed
together. His ears, his poor ears that Gaohn Station medics had redone with such
inventive care and almost restored to normalcy — the left one was ripped and
plasmed together again. He had been handsome once . . . still was, in a ruined,
fatal way. “You?”
“Good gods.” She expelled her breath, brushed past him into his quarters, noting
with one sweep of her eye the disarray, the bedclothes of the sleeping-bowl
stained with small spots of blood from his scratches. Tapes and galley dishes
lay heaped in clutter on the desk. “You can’t leave things lying.” It was the