The kif hissed and clicked and retreated in profound offense, teeth bared, and Chur bared hers, coming up on her free elbow.
“Easy,” Geran said, pushing her back; and Tirun chased the kif on out, Haral’s sister Tirun, big enough to make a kif think twice about any argument, and owing that slight limp to a kifish gun some years back: Chur felt herself safe if Geran was by her and Tirun was between her and the kif. She looked up at Tully’s gold-bearded face and blinked placidly.
“Gods-be kif,” Geran said. “Readout jumping like crazy- Tully, here, get this gun out of here.”
“No,” Chur said. “Drawer. Put it back in the drawer, Tully.”
“Out of here,” Geran said.
“Gods rot,” Chur yelled, “drawer!” Living around Tully, a body got to thinking in pidgin and half-sentences. And the voice came out cracked. Tully hesitated, looking at Geran.
An even larger figure showed up in the doorway, filling it. Khym Mahn, male and tall and wide: “What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble,” Geran said. “Come on, close that door, everyone out before another of the gods-be things gets in. Who’s watching the godsforsaken kif?”
“Put the gun in the drawer,” Chur said firmly. “Tully.”
“You leave it there,” Geran said, getting up, as Khym vanished. She stood looking down a moment, while Tully did as he was told. Then the two of them stood there, her sister, her human friend; if there was ever truly such a thing as friendship between species. And the gods-be kif down the hall-Was that thing a friend, and did they have it running loose on the ship now? Had the captain authorized that?
“O gods,” Chur murmured, too tired and too sick for thoughts like loose kif, and for uncharitable thoughts toward Tully, who had done his unarmed best to save all their hides more than once. But it was in her heart now that she would not see home again, and that this was her last voyage, and she wanted to go home more than anything, back to Anuurn and Chanur and to have this little selfish time with things she knew and loved, familiar things, uncomplicated by aliens and strangeness-wanted to be young again, and to have more time, and to remember what it was to have her life all in front of her and not behind.
Wanted, gods help her, to see even her home up in the hills, which was purest stupidity: she and Geran had walked out of there and come down to Chanur when they were kids as young as Hilfy, because a young fool of a new lord had gotten himself in power up there over their sept of clan Chanur, and she and her sister had pulled up roots and left for Chanur’s main-sept estate with no more than the clothes on their backs.
And their pride. They had come with that intact. The two of them.
“Never looked back,” she said, thinking Geran at least might understand. “Gods be, odd things were what we were looking for when we came down the hills, wasn’t that it?”
Geran made a desperate motion at Tully that meant get out, quietly, and Tully went, not without a pat at Chur’s blanketed leg.
Chur lay there and blinked, embarrassed at herself. She looked like something dead. She knew that. She and Geran had once looked a great deal alike, red-blond of mane and beard and with a sleekness and slimness that was the hillwoman legacy in their sept; not like their cousins Haral and Tirun Araun or their cousin Pyanfar either, who had downland Chanur’s height and strength, but never their highlands beauty, their agility, their fleetness of foot. Now Geran’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion, her coat was dull, her eyes unutterably weary; and Chur had seen mirrors. Her bones hurt when she lay on them. The sheets were changed daily: Geran saw to that, because she shed and shed, till the skin appeared in patches, all dull pink and horrid through her fur. That was her worst personal suffering, not the pain, not the dread of dying: it was her vanity the machine robbed her of, and her dignity; and watching Geran watch her deteriorate was worst of all.