“Like Meetpoint? You weigh upon my credulity, Keia.” Silk, silk and soothing-soft. “Try again.”
“Not Meetpoint. But some matter of substance he can come to you with. I think he means to come back to talk. But he will bring something.”
Sikkukkut’s snout twitched in a dry sniffing, kifish laughter, which came for many reasons, not all of which were civilized. “Like a million human ships and a great number of guns?”
“Now, that is possible, hakkikt.” Jik blinked and narrowed his focus still tighter on what he had resolved to say, never on what he was hiding. Find the threads of the story and stay to them, walk the narrow path, while the drug and the alcohol and the stimulants in the smoke flowed through his veins. “That is remotely possible; but the advantage would be too onesided for the humans. What good to mahendo’sat, to exchange one powerful neighbor for another of unknown potential?”
“Unknown, is it?”
“You speak excellent mahensi. Far better than I speak your language. Mechanical translators are hardly a substitute for living and fluent brains. The best human translator we know can ask for a cup of water and say he wants trade. Now, what does that tell us about human motives, human government, human minds, a? Friend, they say. You say friend, I say friend. Do we mean the same thing? What do humans mean with that word? Assuredly Ana doesn’t know; and I much doubt he means to upend the Compact as long as he doesn’t know.” Jik held up a blunt-clawed forefinger, to maintain attention to a point. “Goldtooth, our esteemed Ana, takes orders. He also interprets them freely. This is the danger in him. The Personage who sent us both knows this. Therefore he sent me to restrain Ana from his excesses. I have failed in this. But I know Ana’s limits. I am saying this to you, and you speak such excellent mahensi; but I don’t know whether you know the meaning of this word limits in the way we do. It implies the edge of Ana’s personal assumptions. Ana still obeys the Personage at Maing Tol. As I do. And I tell you that negotiation with you is in the Personage’s interest and human ships running freely through Compact is not in those interests. Therefore I make alliance with
you, as I would have made it simultaneously with Akkhtimakt it he were not the fool he is.”
This pleased Sikkukkut, perhaps. The dark eyes flickered. Sikkukkut picked up his cup and the thin tongue exited the v-form gap of his outer teeth and lapped delicately at the petroleum-smelling contents. “I have known mahen fools,” Sikkukkut said.
“Don’t number Ana among them.”
“Or yourself?”
“I hope not to be.”
“I have a notion what you might have been doing out on that dockside, Keia, my friend. Ana Ismehanan-min wanted confusion behind which to depart. And someone fired the shot that touched off the riot.”
“Rhif Ehrran.”
“The hani? Come now, Keia. Hani gave no orders to the mahendo’sat.”
“It’s not certain that they take them either, your pardon, hakkikt. Myself, I look for a fool to do a fool’s work; and Ehrran is the greatest fool I know.”
“Ehrran isn’t sitting here at this moment.”
Jik drew in a long breath of smoke and let it go again. “It did give her the diversion she needed. And indeed, she isn’t sitting here at this moment. At cost to me, to Chanur-in fact, hakkikt, expensive as it may be to her in the long run, in the short, it served her very well. And what my partner is thinking of in her regard I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew. I think he has use for that hani he took with him, use he couldn’t get out of Chanur-Chanur being no fool.”
“Perhaps he has made use of all the hani. Perhaps he has secured his retreat from among us, and that is all he hoped to do-might that not be, Keia? I only wonder what you are doing here.”
“Perhaps he only followed her because he saw no way to stop her.”
“His ship has armaments,” Sikkukkut said dryly. “He was close behind her before her ship reached velocity.”