“Kkkkt,” the answer came back, dopplered from pickup to pickup. “Hakt’, I let nothing escape, this is not my doing, not my doing, mekt-hakt’-/ am on my way, at once, at once-Fools, fools, hold the lift!”
He doubtless believed it about the wallhanging. She ducked her head between her hands and raked her claws through her mane. Tell the Tauran they were sane and this cut loose. It was ludicrous. It was deadly serious. No telling what systems the things could take out. The whole ship was infested. She had lost her reputation already. She stank, the whole ship stank, was acrawl with kifish vermin and gods knew what else, the whole clean, well-ordered universe was turned inside out and the vermin were the last, grotesque insult. The gods’ own dark humor, that was what it was; just a final, ugly joke on the species. Take out the ship that might save them, with a mucked-up lifesupport, filters ruined, gods knew where they could get in and short something out with their wickedly sharp little teeth.
How many of them?
Breeding during jump? Something that lived so gods-be fast it just went on living and breeding even in hyperspace, generations upon nasty, squealing little generations?
Nothing could do that. Most animals did well to breed at all on shipboard, with all the noise and the clatter and clank that kept them upset; nothing could shift its metabolism like that and live real time in hyperspace.
Even kif couldn’t.
Could they?
She stared at the situation on the screens in front of her, she kept the ship on course while one crew had its necessary meal in the galley; and Geran came back to tell her she had just reassigned Khym and Tully from galley to the hunt and she was, by the captain’s leave, taking a cup of soup to her sister, by the captain’s leave. Please. In spite of her specific
orders.
“Gods. Yes.” Pyanfar took another desperate swipe at her disordered mane and part of it came out on her claws, the way a body always shed during jump, but no one on ship had had a bath in over four realspace months and six or so subjective days. “How is she?”
“Just real still. Says-says there’s a trouble at home. Says there’s kif going there. Says Moon Rising’s behind us. Akkhtimakt’s ten days up on us. She says.”
A chill went up Pyanfar’s spine, and right down again to the gut. “She could be right.” For a moment she had a conviction Chur could well be right: crack scan tech and sometime navigator, Chur knew how much time determined hunter ships could gain on a band of freighters. Then she saw it the way Geran had to see it. Chur was a practical woman. And she was babbling prophecies across lightyears. Jump could do that to a mind. There were casualties who never came in out of the dark. She had seen them, sitting in the sun at hospital, with Anuurn’s blue sky above them forever and not a realization in the world where they were.
They were everywhere, that was their delusion. They would always be everywhere. If there was anything mystical about it, the thing that was themselves had just reached infinity and stayed there, like a machine with a broken cutoff switch.
“She wants to work,” Geran said.
“Tell her-” Pyanfar drew a breath. “Can she?”
“No.”
“Get her fed. We got an hour insystem here. I’m taking you offshift; you stay with her.”
“No.” Geran’s ears went flat. “No, captain.”
“You want one of the Tauran? Tully, f godssakes? You do it. We got Tirun to take scan. We can run .this one short or I can haul Sif back in. Stay there.”
Geran’s face went hard and desperate. Ears flicked and struggled up again. “Tully,” she said. “I mean, he’s not going to do anything, is he? Sleeps with us below. They’re friends. Aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Less said on that the better. “The good of the ship. Good of-a whole lot of people. Yes. I want you on the boards if you got your mind there.”
“It’ll be there,” Geran said. “Do her good. She can’t argue with Tully. I’ll feel better about it.” And she went, with a solid purpose in her stride.