“Sorry I’m—“
“You two,” Hilfy said, “listen to me very soberly. I don’t know what you’ve got going on personally, I don’t care. Either you shake the stupidity out of your heads or you and I are going to blow the peace to bits, do you understand me? It’s not just two young fools who’re going to die if somebody doesn’t get their wits together. We could be at war again, and several billion people could get killed. Is this more important than your personal business?”
“Yes, captain,” Hallan said faintly.
“Yes,” Fala said, ears up, scared, and not looking at na Hallan. “Yes, captain.”
“That’s good. That’s just adequate. Can we ascend to flawless competency?” There was a beep from the board, the motion sensor on the airlock’s closed hatch. The vid monitor showed two black-robed shadows coming down the access link toward the door, two doubtless armed kif. “Our escort’s here. Na Hallan, the question, should you get the chance …”
“Yes, captain.”
“Flatter the son. Don’t embarrass him in front of his people. And find out what he knows about Atli-lyen-tlas.”
“Is that the question, captain?”
“That’s the question. What he knows, not where the stsho is. The second question, if we get one—there isn’t one. There’s nothing that isn’t dangerous. Watch out for the words ‘want’ or ‘need’: a kifish hakkikt doesn’t need anything; and don’t push him: the odds are completely in his favor. Don’t make him demonstrate it.” She shepherded them out the door and settled the gun tight in its holster—no feeling in the universe like making a fast dive for cover and seeing your gun go spinning off across the floor. “Fala, you don’t draw unless they do, and then don’t waste shots on the hired help: shoot the highest rank target you can hit and run for the door. You go for the door, don’t sightsee, that’s all the instruction I can give you. Threat for threat, let them make the first move.”
“Aye, captain.”
“Gods-be right, ‘Aye, captain.’ Follow orders.”
Chapter Seventeen
The docks at Kefk had only sodium glare in the overheads, were all gray paint—kif didn’t see color, at least not the way hani did; didn’t see the yellow of warning signs, just the dark-light pattern; and on Kefk, it was only pattern that identified the conduits, and pattern that said walk here and not there. In all this gray and black universe, oddly tinted by the glare of apricot light, there arrived the color of hani, bronzed: Hilfy’s trousers went a peculiar muted red; the spacer blues went a grayed blue; and rifle barrels and gunbelt metal on their five man escort acquired apricot highlights, while the matte graphite gray of kifish hands and kifish snouts, all that showed from beneath the robes, actually took on a livelier shade.
Do the kids credit, Hilfy thought, they didn’t balk at their escort, they didn’t sightsee or wrinkle their noses in disgust at the ammonia tang in the breath-frosting air; they paid attention to their surroundings, and Hilfy watched everything that passed in front of her and in the periphery of her vision, where neon signs lit a spacer’s row no different than any services zone on any station trying to attract customers, except the words were kifish, and never ask what delicacies those establishments offered, and what entertainments they advertised. The neon signs were white, or the sickly color of kifish daylight; or they were neon red: ask what kifish vision responded to.
While all down the dockside, black-robed, weapons-bristling bystanders clustered in small groups and watched, talking behind their hands, talking with the turn of a shoulder.
Look at the fools, they might be saying.
They passed two berths where not a thing was going on; the ships might be in count, or, Hilfy thought, might be primed and ready to pull out on a second’s notice; passed a third berth, where canisters were going in, but they were all the ship’s-supply sort, with accesses for hoses and dispenser attachments; and just pulling up on a transport truck, cages of live animals, that squealed a thousand irate protests when a loader jolted them, and swarmed like a flow of ink up the sides of the fine mesh cage.