Knowing now that there was a hani cursing him deaf in one ear and asking something of him, but nothing more than that.
O gods. Gods, Jik.
His eyes slitted open. He was still far away.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re all right. You’re on The Pride. I got you out. Kesurinan’s gone back to Aja Jin, you hear me, Jik, you’re not with the kif anymore. You’re on my ship.”
He blinked. His mouth worked, the movement of a dry tongue. He heard her, she thought, at some level. He was exploring consciousness and trying to decide if he wanted it.
“It’s me,” she said again. “Jik,” She patted his arm and stooped with a sick feeling at the gut when he flinched from her touch. ” Friend.”
“Where?” he said, at least it sounded like that.
“On The Pride. You’re safe. You understand me?”
“Understand,” he said. His lids drifted down over the pupils. He was gone again, but not so deeply gone. She hesitated a moment, then turned in a blind rage at two fool men who had not sense enough to clear out of sickbay’s narrow space and give them room to work.
She found herself staring eye to eye with Tully-with Tully who had been twice where Jik had been, and whose face was stsho-white and his eyes white round the edges. She had been about to shout. The look on Tully’s face strangled the sound in her throat.
“Out,” she said, and choked on the word. “Clear out of here, you’re not doing anything useful.”
Khym flattened his ears, thrust out an arm and herded Tully away; Tully went without seeming to notice it was Khym who had touched him. The human was a shaken man.
So was she, shaken. The hair was standing up all down her back.
“Captain,” Haral’s voice came, “it’s sothosi. Library’s sending to labcomp right now.”
“We’re on it.”
Tirun was on it, a quick move for the comp unit; a glance at the screen and a dive for the medicine cabinet. She broke open a packet, grabbed an ampule and art astringent pad and made herself a clean spot on Jik’s arm.
The stimulant went in. In another moment Jik made another gasp after air, and another, a healthier darkness returning to his nose and lips. “There we go,” Tirun said, monitoring his heartbeat. “There we go.”
Pyanfar found herself a chair and sat down, before her knees went. She bent over and raked her hands through her mane, conscious of the uncomfortable weight of the AP at her hip and the prodding of the gun in her opposite pocket. She stank. She wanted a bath.
She wanted not to have done what she had done. Not to have made the mistakes she had made. Not to be Pyanfar Chanur at all, who was responsible for too much and too many mistakes. And who had now to think the unthinkable.
“You all right?” Tirun asked.
She looked up at her cousin, her old friend. At a crewwoman who had been with her from her youth. “Tirun.” She lapsed into a provincial hani language and kept her voice down. “He’ll stay here. I want this room safed, I want him left under restraint-”
She tried to keep the cold distance she had had on Harukk. It was hard when she looked into an old friend’s eyes and saw that natural reaction, that dropping of Tirun’s ears.
“Tirun,” she said, though she had meant to justify nothing; she found herself pleading, found a shiver going through her limbs. “We got a problem. I’ll talk about it later. Do it. Can you? Stay with him till he wakes up and make sure he’s breathing all right. And for godssakes leave those restraints on him. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Tirun said. No doubt. No question, from an honest hani who handed her captain every scruple she had and expected her captain was going to explain it all. Eventually.
“Tell him I’m going to come back down. Tell him it’s because we’ve got a few hours, I want him to rest and I can’t think of any other way to make sure he does.” She still spoke in chaura, a language no mahendo’sat was going to understand; and that was statement enough how much truth she was handing out. Tirun stared at her and asked no questions. Not even with a flick of her ears. Lock up a friend who had saved their lives and come back in this condition from doing it. Lie to him.