Chanur’s Legacy by C.J. Cherryh

But, but, and but. It was the middle of her sleep cycle, thoughts like that were a credit a hundredweight, and gods rot it, she didn’t want to go through the husband business again. He was bright, he would get ideas, and the politics involved at home were already difficult.

Besides, he’d made irrevocable changes in their operations, he was a liability the kif had used to get her into a face to face meeting with unforeseeable consequences. She’d been mad enough to kill him a handful of hours ago, she and Chihin both.

She grabbed the pillow and buried her head under it, looking for some place void of images.

Chihin understood what was happening, Chihin had seen it coming before she did, Tiar and Tarras were too good-hearted to space him and Fala was suffering a late puberty. She didn’t know what to do with him, she didn’t know where she was going to unload him— Kefk, maybe. Let him bankrupt the kif.

At which thought she saw that room, smelled the air, felt the ambient tension kif generated with each other, and remembered there were creatures in the universe to whom the highest virtue was the fastest strike and who didn’t lose a wink of sleep over blowing a shipful of living beings to radioactive dust. There wasn’t evil. She’d studied cultures too thoroughly and learned too many languages to believe in evil. She just knew that she’d tried to arrange her life so she didn’t have to deal with the kif at all … and here she was again; and there it was, the kifish offer … deal with us, learn to strike faster and first, leam to think our way, because we aren’t wired to think yours, we can’t understand hani thoughts …

You always hoped they could. You were always tempted to believe they might cross that uncrossable gulf and deny their own hardwiring, turn off the triggers that led from impulse to action, the way a hani could turn them on, the way a hani could use instincts that were there, if you wanted to tear up the stones civilization laid over them, worse, you could get into the game, dealing with the kif~-the very primal-level game, that had its very primal rewards, that competed with civilization.

Hilfy Chanur had delved a bit too deeply into kifish minds. Hilfy Chanur had become expert in the language, to understand what she hadn’t understood when it was her alone and Tully, and kif had talked outside the cage. She’d learned words she couldn’t pronounce, lacking a double set of razor teeth, and words she couldn’t translate, without resorting to words of psychotic connotation in every other language she knew.

But you didn’t say crazy, you didn’t say evil. They weren’t. No more than outsiders were what kif would say, naikktak, randomly behaving, behaving without regard to survival.

Which said something about how kif thought of hani … and about the frame of mind in which Vikktakkht had asked na Hallan to ask him questions.

Asked a hani male, who was notorious for unpredictable and aggressive behavior.

Respect for the aggression? Possibly.

Curiosity? Possibly. Kif had a very active curiosity. Kif could be artistic, imaginative, and curious. All these dimensions. They valued such attributes.

But Hallan Meras …

Using him as bait to get her closer, that made sense. That was very kif.

But refusing to talk to her, insisting na Hallan do the business they’d clearly come for …

It snapped into focus. Gamesmanship. Provocation aimed at her.

Why?

She was Pyanfar’s relative, but kif didn’t understand kinship, not at gut level. They weren’t wired for it. They’d understand it as potential rivalry, but the ones that knew outsiders were too sophisticated to make that mistake. That wasn’t what Vikktakkht was doing. It felt too gods-be personal.

She rolled onto her back and mangled the pillow to prop her head, staring at the profitless dark. This was what she did instead of sleeping, too many hours of free association. Why couldn’t the mind come to straight conclusions? Why did she have to think about Hallan Meras, her unwarranted temper, and kif, all rolled into one package with Vikktakkht’s odd gods-rotted motives? Her mind was trying to put something together out of spare parts. And it wouldn’t fit together.

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