“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“Py. You remember the fable of the house and the stick? You pull the one that’s
loose and it gets another one–”
“Fables are for kids.”
“–and another. Pretty soon the whole house comes down and buries you. You start
a fight like that in the han and gods know — gods know what it’ll do to us.”
“Maybe it might be better. You think of that?”
“Py, I can’t take this dealing with strangers. I get mad and I can’t stand it, I
ache, Py. That’s biology. We’re set up to fight. Millions of years — it’s not
an intellectual thing. Our circulatory system, our glands–”
“You think I don’t get mad? You think I didn’t want to kill myself some kif out
there? And I by the gods held my temper.”
“Nature gave you a better deal, Py. That’s all.”
“You’re scared.”
He stared at her, eyes wide in offense.
“Scared and spoiled,” she said. “Scared because you’re doing what no male’s
supposed to be able to do; and guilty that maybe that makes you unmasculine; and
gods-rotted spoiled by a mother that coddled your tempers instead of boxing your
ears the way she did your sister’s. He’s just a son, huh? Can’t be expected to
come up to his sister’s standard. Let him throw his tantrums, and keep him out
of his father’s sight. Makes him potent, doesn’t it? And gods, never let him
trust another male. Rely on your sister, huh?”
“Leave my family out of this.”
“Your sister hasn’t done one gods-rotted thing to back you. And your worthless
daughters-”
“My sister did back me.”
“Till you lost.”
“What’s she supposed to do? Gods, what’s it like for her, living in Kara’s house
with me running about as if I were still–”
“So she’s uncomfortable. Isn’t that too bad? Spoiled, I say. Both of you, in
separate ways.”
His ears were back, all the way. He looked younger that way, the scars less
obvious.
“You want,” she said, “the advantages I have and the privileges you used to
have. Well, they don’t go together, Khym. And I’m offering you what I’ve got.
Isn’t it enough? Or do you want some special category?”
“Py, for the gods’ sake I can’t work on the docks!”
“Meaning in public.”
“I’ll work aboard.” A great, gusting sigh. “Show me what to do.”
“All right. You clean up. You get yourself to the bridge and Haral’ll show you
how to read scan. It’s going to take more than five minutes.” She sucked at her
cheeks. She had not meant to make that gibe. “You can sit monitor on that. Our
lives may depend on it. Keep thinking of that.”
“Don’t give me–”
“–responsibility? — Nice, boring, long-attention-span jobs?”
“Gods rot it, Py!”
“You’ll do fine.” She turned and punched the door button with a thumb claw. “I
know you will.”
“It’s revenge, that’s what it is. For the bar.”
“No. It’s paying your gods-rotted bar bill same as any of us would.”
She stalked out. The door hissed shut like a comment at her back.
Chapter Four
Tully was at least on his feet — seemed to be feeling like Tully, which meant
insisting on cleaning himself up if he wobbled doing it, crashing about the
lowerdecks washroom talking to himself (or thinking that he was being
understood) and generally insisting on his privacy from females even if they
were of different species. Hilfy dithered between communications from Haral
topside via the hallway com panel, frantic requests from Chur in the op room
down the corridor (Tirun and Geran were busy down in cargo offloading canisters,
with attendant booms and thumps up through the deck plates), and the barricaded
washroom into which disappeared a pair of Haral’s blue trousers and out of which
issued steam and the indescribable mingle of human-smell, fruit, fish and
disinfectant soap.
“You all right?” Hilfy asked, when a hairless arm snaked the offered trousers
from around the corner of the door. “Tully, hurry it up. We’ve got other
problems. Fast? Understand?”
A mumbled answer came back and the door went shut as if he had leaned on the
control as soon as she had gotten her arm out. Hilfy looked round in desperation