Chanur’s Homecoming by CJ Cherryh

But in his casting about for direction he spied a spacer, a graynosed woman whose ears had, gods, a whole fistful of voyage-rings, who sat on the skirt of some huge piece of machinery, just sitting, observing the whole furor, arm around one knee, her ears backslanted in the racket; suddenly she was looking straight at him.

He dropped his ears at once in politeness: and in outright awe at the spacer rings and the easy assurance of this veteran who was everything he was not and longed with all his heart to be. He would never have come her way on his own; but she was staring at him as if he were somehow more interesting than the chaos and the goings-on with the Immunes. He thought he detected an invitation, a summons in the twitch of a many-ringed ear: and he hitched up his duffel and all the courage of his seventeen years.

“H’lo,” he said, walking up-his smile and his friendliness had won him a great deal in his life, and he relied on it

now, when he was afraid, slanting an ear toward the commotion behind him. “Lot of noise, isn’t it?”

The spacer nodded.

Not a word. Not the least ear-twitch of friendliness. He was left a fool, twice desperate. His blue breeches were brand new. His ears were ringless. His duffel still had package-creases and he swung it back behind him and dropped it where it was less conspicuous, figuring he had mistaken her invitation: he was suddenly anxious only to get his directions and go, before he found himself in something he could not handle.

The eyes raked him and down in lazy ease, flickered with some kind of interest. “Wrong side of that line, you know.”

He cleared his throat, looked nervously over his shoulder. “What are they doing down there?”

“What are you doing up here?”

“I-” He looked back again full into the spacer’s lazy stare, that stripped him down to the bones and the truth; there was not even a lie he knew how to tell. “I’m new here,” he said; and dropped his ears in deference when her mouth pursed in dour amusement. “What’s all the commotion down there?”

“The Pride’s in port.”

He could not help himself; he looked back again toward the distant lines and drew a large breath. The station, for godssakes, he had truly come to the station, where fantastical species came and went; where fabled ship-names were ordinary on the freighting lists, and many-ringed spacers sat about ordinary as could be. And on the very day he came up from the world, The Pride of Chanur just happened in, with no advance notice in the newsservices, nothing at all to tell the world it was coming. He saw nothing for his looking but a solid line of black-breeched Immunes in the distance, practically no one on the docks there or near at hand; and nothing at all of the ship-boards down there: gantries obscured the view. He looked back and tried to catch his breath. “Gods, I’d like to see it.”

“You don’t see a ship, son, they stay out there.” She was laughing at him, all dour-faced. “But you could go up to the observation lounge, the cameras’ll give you a view.”

“I want to see them.”

“Who?”

“Them.”

“The Personage? Gods-rotted lot of nonsense.”

He caught a quick breath. His ears went flat. Nonsense. My gods!

“Nonsense,” the spacer said again. “No different than you and me. What d’you think, boy? Blackbreeches scurrying around like chi in a fire, shut down the whole gods-be dockside-”

“Well, oughtn’t they?” He was indignant. One of the old ones, this, one of the surly old-timers, just blowing off. She doesn’t like a boy being up here, doesn’t like me being on any ship, ever. Walk off, that’s what I ought to do. She probably has a knife somewhere, even a gun in that pocket, gods know what. “I’m going to go have a look.” He grabbed up his duffel again.

But the spacer patted the machine-skirt. “Tssss. You won’t get anywhere through that line. Just a lot of trouble. Have a seat, boy. All bright-eyed and new, are you?”

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