Chanur’s Homecoming by CJ Cherryh

A spacer missed the seasons. She just came home when she got the chance, and tried to make it coincide with spring, a little visit to her brother Kohan, who was glassy-eyed and distracted with affairs in Chanur at such a time, she paid a little courtesy to his wives and any sister or cousin who lived in the house or just happened to be home-

-then it was up in decent leisure to Mahn in the hills, where Khym and his groundling wives held court. His other wives had never much gotten in her way: they were outfought and knew it, and hated her cordially in that way of rivals who knew she would be gone within a week or two, back to her ship and her gadding about again: if one had to have a rival one could not shove out, best at least she be the sort who was seldom home.

Now where were those wives? Hating her still, because she had him to herself at last and he was not decently dead, in his defeat? They would pity him and hate her, and call it all indecent, as if he himself had not had a choice in the world about being snagged up onto a Chanur ship and carried away to a prolonged and unnatural preservation. It ruined his reputation. It touched on their honor. Likely they imagined just such lascivious and libertine unseasonal things as she had led him into, or worse, that he was the prize of all the crew.

She thought about that. “What do you think,” she said into his ear, “do you think you’d object to one of the crew now and again? How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean- they’re-” He was quiet a long time. “They’re friends.”

“I don’t mean you should.” She brushed his mane straight, dragged a clawtip along beside his ear. “I never meant that. I was asking if you ever wanted to.”

”They’re your friends.”

She felt his heart beating faster. Like panic. And cursed herself for bringing it up at all. “They never asked. Gods, what a mess. Don’t even think about it. I’m sorry I said it. I just felt sorry for them.”

“So do I. I’d do it. Tell them that if you want to. Like friends. I think they’d be sensible about it. I think I could be.”

Ask sensible of a man. Trust him. Gods, that’s what’s changed, isn’t it? He’s steady as a rock. He wouldn’t play games about it. They wouldn’t, with him. They respect him. They’d treat him like a sister-in crew matters. Not one of them is petty and not one is the sort that has to prove a point in bed or after. You know that about women you work with for forty years; and they’d know he was a loan. I’d take that risk for them.

But what’s good for him, that matters; that, they’d never question. Gods know I wouldn’t.

“I think you could trust them,” she said. “It’s all of them if it’s one, you understand that. I’m just telling you it’s all right with me. Won’t make me happy or unhappy. I just thought- well, if it ever does happen, you don’t have to slip around about it.”

“I never-!”

“I know that. I’m just telling you how I feel. If it’s ever one, it’s all. Remember it. Gods, back home I’d drop in on you for a hand of days and shove your other wives out; been the longest five days yet, hasn’t it? I’m feeling guilty about hanging onto you so long. It’s getting obsessive. I thought maybe, if things settle down again-” Thoughts crowded in that made it all remote and hopeless and stupid even to talk about it; but it was peace that she had come here for: she shoved Meetpoint aside and pretended. “Well, I thought I ought to give you a little breathing room. I shove you into my room, I don’t give you much choice, do I? I want you to

know you’ve got a berth on this ship. On your own. As much as you want to be. Or where you want to be. You want not to share my bed a while, that’s fine. I’d miss you. But I don’t want you ever to think that’s what you’re aboard for.”

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