either of them.
Lies and lies and lies.
“When we get in,” she said to Hilfy, looking straight at her, “I want a mahen
courier in here. I don’t care who it is. Dock manager will do. Don’t shake
things up, but get us someone who can get us someone else. Shouldn’t be hard.
Suggest we’ve got a cargo difficulty.”
Khym sat there. It occurred to her that in his life he had never told a witting
lie . . . being downworld hani, dealing with hani and believing in the han. And
it had never occurred to her that in dealings off-Annum she had had many faces
— one for stsho, one for mahendo’sat. She was more hani with the kif.
“It isn’t Annum,” she said across the bridge in a low, hard voice. “Nothing’s
Anuurn but Anuurn itself, crewman, and we aren’t home.”
Maybe he understood that much. She saw a slight flicker in the eyes.
“Pyanfar,” Tully said. “Maing Tol. Go Maing Tol.”
She put the com plug into her ear. “I understand,” she said. He was scared.
Terrified. “Quiet, hear? We got you. We’ll work it out. Fix, understand?”
He said nothing, neither he nor Khym.
“Gods rot,” she muttered, and got up. “Take her in, Haral.” She stalked off aft,
caught the safety grip and looked back. “I’m going to clean up. Tirun, you wash
up; I want you with me. I want that courier, niece.”
It was not an easy thing to manage, a cleanup during dock approach. She had
inhaled a bit of water and stung her nose, but that meeting was its own kind of
emergency — to be presentable as possible, formidable; and there was not, here,
the time to spend on it.
She overdid it, if possible — wore her finest red breeches, her most
resplendent rings. She reeked of perfume. That was interspecies courtesy; and it
was strategy, to drown subtle cues to sensitive alien noses.
Face the bastards down, by the gods.
It was The Pride at stake. And with it–
The Pride nudged her way into dock, smooth, smooth glide now; a last warning
from Haral and another shift of G as all ship rotation ceased, only spin-match
carrying them now. The sensation of fifty pounds extra weight eased off. She
held on to the recessed grip by the cabin door, trusting Haral’s skill, and dock
came softly, a thump against the bow, a clang of grapples going on, the
steadying of G force at a mahen-normal .992 as they became part of Kshshti’s
wheel.
She gave her mane and beard a final combing, twitched the left ear’s rings into
order. The sudden silence of the ship at rest gave an illusion of deafness: the
constant white noise had ceased.
“Aunt.” That was Hilfy from the bridge. “I made that contact. We’ve got a
customs official on the way.”
“Good.” She clipped a pocket com to her waist, tucked a pistol into her
pocket-gods, no way for an honest hani to do business. But Kshshti, as she had
said to Khym, was not Anuurn, and the universe was a lonely walk among species
that had been at this hunt long before hani came.
Fix the rotted vane at Urtur; crawl up the column, indeed. Hilfy Chanur would
have. Would do, when she inherited The Pride. Hilfy would make high and wide
decisions, take the straight course, not the devious.
Perhaps she had done that herself once. She tried to remember. Perhaps age
dimmed the recall.
She thought not. No, by the gods.
Young fool, in charge of her ship. Not for by-the-gods years yet. But the
thought appalled her . . . to go back to Chanur, sit in the sun and waste away.
Haral, Tirun, no youngsters themselves, to give up their posts to bright-eyed
youngsters who thought everything was simple–
Gods.
She latched the drawer tight, and walked out, a little rubber-kneed in Kshshti’s
heavier G.
“Captain.” From the pocket com, Haral’s voice. “Message from Vigilance. Rhif
Ehrran’s at our dock.”
“Oh, good gods.”
“They want the lock open.”
She put a claw in the pocket com. “Where’s that customs officer?”
“On the way. That’s all we know. Stall?”