Then a one-can truck showed up, with its load, coming back to the Legacy’’s dockside. The mahen driver got out and talked with the foreman, talked with customs, mahendo’sat (it was always the species name when you were talking about more than one) were waving their arms and saying not a word he understood. Ker Chihin was on her feet, but he was closer, and he had the tablet which might tell the story. He didn’t think a proper spacer would hang back and wait for his supervisor, it wasn’t a male/female business, it was a can trying to come back as damaged or wrongly addressed or not cleared or something, and he didn’t want Chihin to have to solve a problem he’d created. He walked up to the shouting mahendo’sat with his tablet and his manifest list.
“Excuse,” he said. “Got list. All right, not all right, why?”
He was reasonably proud of that sentence.
But they waved arms and shouted at him. He looked at the frost-coated can, number 96, lot 3, and he looked at his list, about the time Chihin walked up, asked, “What’s the matter? —What matter, here?”
More shouting. Something, when the mahendo’sat recovered their command of pidgin, about the can being a mistake, that the contents didn’t somehow match the manifest, that the contents were listed as grain, the buyer had stipulated dried fish, and there was a complete foul-up.
“Load wrong at Kita!” the customs agent said. And the truck driver shouted, “Off my truck! Not my fault what got!”
“ NaHallan,” Chihin said wearily.
“KerChihin,” he began, with reference to the checklist, but the mahendo’sat thrust an arm past him and began pointing to numbers and trying to clarify what they meant, he supposed, loudly, in his ear.
“Quiet!” he said, louder than he intended to. But they got quiet, all at once.
“Dangerous,” the customs agent said, retreating.
“He’s not gods-be dangerous!” Chihin shouted, and Hallan folded his tablet against his chest, calling out, “I’m sorry, na mahe, for the gods’ sake!”
More shouting, then. And the mahen truck driver saying he was going to offload it, now, here, and they could handle it.
“Now wait,” Chihin said, but everything was getting confused. He said, “Ker Chihin …”
Chihin paid him no attention. The trucker was getting up on the truck bed, threatening, evidently, to roll the can off and let them handle it; which wasn’t a good way to treat a heavy canister, and the dockers were yelling.
“ KerChihin,” he said, and nobody at all was paying attention.
He shouted, “It’s not our can!”
And everything was breathlessly quiet after.
“Not our can?” Chihin said.
And everybody started shouting again, but Chihin was looking, while he was trying to point at the manifest entry, which showed a different local weight.
“Make mistake at pickup!” the foreman said. “Got no pilfer here.”
“Open can,” the customs agent said.
“No,” Chihin said. “You take it, you open it. It’s not our can. You get it off our dock!”
“The can is list dry fish,” the customs agent said. “We open. Find out.”
“We’ve had one gods-be incident!” Chihin said. “Hallan, get off the dock. Now.”
“But—“
“Get!” Chihin said, and waved her good arm at the docker crew. “Bomb,” she said. “Blow up. Explosive. Boom!”
He was horrified. So were the mahendo’sat, who looked dubious, then in one mass, took out across the dock. The truck driver left his truck and ran for the far side of the dock, while the customs agents hesitated beside the suspect canister, big enough to hold a lift-car full of people or a godsawful lot of explosive.
He knew better than to disobey orders. But Chihin was still there, talking on the com to the ship, and he ran back toward her and met her as she started toward the ship, running and trying to cushion her wounded arm.
He didn’t ask. He just grabbed her around the waist on the good side and hauled her up the ramp, as the Legacy’s outermost gate and cargo lock began to seal.
“Gods rot!” Chihin gasped.
Up the curving yellow tube, and he was dragging her, now. He stopped to snatch her up and ran as hard as he could, for the airlock still open for them.