Tully’s was a treason unlike Jik’s complicated diagrams. But not simple at all. She watched Tully sitting at scan-monitor, his face-gods, she had even gotten used to it- intent on that screen, seeming lost in his autistic world while the alien babble went on. He was listening; she would bet a great deal on it. He was a great deal like Jik on some levels. That was the anomaly. He did his work. He came with her time and again onto a kifish ship, which had to be terrible to him. But kif were not his greatest fear. She sensed that in a thousand little moves, little twitches of expression, the way his face and his whole body reacted when there was some momentary false alarm.
It’s something not here present. Akkhtimakt’s only another kif. He hates Sikkukkut but Sikkukkut doesn’t panic him. There’s Goldtooth and the mahendo’sat for him to worry about. There’s his own kind.
We might end up in a fire-or-die case of mistaken identity: that’s certainly to fear, if humanity comes breaking in here.
Or is it something he knows they’ll do? Or that he’ll have to do?
Or does he see a day-no matter who wins-that someone might take him into that dark corner and start asking questions he won’t want to answer?
Gods, why’d he do it? Why’d he help us, even when he’s afraid of us, over his own kind? He knows loyalty. He knows friendship. He commits himself to us like kin. It doesn’t make sense. What kind of people could create him, and still make him betray them?
A people varied as we are. A people in internal conflict.
A chill went through her. A bit of sandwich went down hard. She washed it down with gfi and focused on Jik’s dark, red-rimmed eyes. He had asked her something. Got? she realized belatedly. She glanced at the diagrams, at the instructions inbuilt to the comp. She had followed him, followed maybe more than Jik thought. The data and the model were both in their library now and connected to Nav, the probability of mahen ships being anywhere in this zone.
“Backside,” she said. Meaning the hinder side of hani-mahen space. “Where’s the stats on that, hah?”
“Not got. Not mine.”
A fool would believe this mahendo’sat. But he had shown her too much, confirmed too much, admitted too much. And he knew she could put it together.
The whole mahen-hani treaty was in rags with what he had handed over. And as much as she could ever believe him, it had harm enough in it to be most of the truth he had.
“No way we can make that rendezvous with your ships at Urtur,” she said. “And remember, we got two of Sikkukkut’s ships running hours in front-days, with these merchant rigs dragging at us, if they don’t keep the pace we tell them.”
“Cost us five day. We got five day?” A weary blink. “World can die in five hour. I got crew shoot message out.”
“You mean when we go through there? You got a beeper?'”
“Silent till got mahen ID. ‘Spensive. I try. Mahen ship come through there, they get, if we don’t get kif notice.”
Truth, something said again. “Jik. Truth about those short-jumps. Can you do it? Can the kif do it?”
“Got limit like maybe two day light, precise. You try farther you don’t come down ever.”
“Two days. Then Goldtooth is short of that. Out there turning around.”
“Same.” A flicker of dark eyes, a little withholding of truth. “We try fix other end, a?”
“You going to run on me?”
“No,” he said, and looked her in the eyes when he said it. Reached and grasped her wrist where it lay on the counter. “You, me do lot work get inside this business. We got high priority stay there. You understand? Ana be outside. We be inside. He use us way we want to be use’, number one good deal. Best. I tell you I damn smart.” Ghost of a grin. His hand squeezed her hand. She tolerated it. Gods-be mahendo’sat never figured what pressure did to retractile claws. Same as Tully. “I tell you. You valu’ble. Damn valu’ble. You don’t lake chance. Hear. All spacer hani be precious stuff.”