“That’s not exactly qualification.”
“… before I shipped on the Sun. I mean I learned mechanics. I can run the loaders, I can do anything with cargo…”
“Not that we can’t use a hand, but part of the deal with the stsho was getting you off and out of here. I don’t think the captain wants you on the docks attracting attention.”
The kid’s countenance fell, his shoulders slumped. More than disappointment. It was a need of something, there was no time, and Tiar told herself she was a fool for asking.
“Upset you. Didn’t mean to. How?”
The kid shook his head. Interest in breakfast and the packages seemed gone. He didn’t seem articulate at the moment, so rather than embarrass him she answered her question with a question.
“You want out there for some reason? Kid, it’s romantic, but it’s hardly worth your neck. There’ll be other places.”
He gave her a hurt look. So it touched on the nerve but didn’t quite press it. “Somebody you want to meet out there?” Shake of his head, no.
“Something you want to find out there?”
Another shake of his head. Further and further from the sore point.
“You want to talk to me, kid?”
Third shake of his head, and a stare at the wall.
She never was able to walk away from a problem. She stood there, set hands on hips and looked at him a long, long time, figuring he’d collect himself.
“I want to work,” he said finally, without looking at her. “I’ll do anything…”
“I hate to bring this up,” she said, with the feeling she still hadn’t heard what she was after, and might not, now. They had circled somewhere away from the substance. “But you know we’re sort of ancestral enemies.”
“Not with Meras!”
“But with Sahern.”
“I know,” the kid said faintly.
“Hey, it’s not as if it’s active, A couple hundred years since. We’ve got no present grudge. We’ll get you back to your ship. We can be real civil to them, just let you off and wish them well. If we can’t do that, we’ll drop you at some station where they’re due.”
“How could I live? And I don’t want to go back to them!”
It was a question, how they were going to install a hani male on anybody’s quiet space station. Never mind he was a quiet, mannerly kid, the reputation of hani males for violence was well-established and the fear was there. And if anything did happen …
“Well, we’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it.”
He did worry. He looked at her as if he faced an execution. Then looked down and shoved his breakfast around the plate.
They’d locked the door on him. They hadn’t been certain of his disposition to stay put, or to take orders.
They hadn’t been certain his sojourn in the station brig hadn’t been justified and they still didn’t know that.
But she had some judgment of the situation. And the captain might have her hide, but …
“What’s your skill entail, son? Your license says tech. You do anything else?”
“Cargo. Maintenance. Galley. —I want to stay with Chanur.”
Stay with Chanur. An unrelated male. Nobody’s husband. —Same mess he’d been in on the Sahern ship, to tell the embarrassing truth, and she wasn’t going to ask. Young kid like that, too anxious and too gullible, who knew what his skills had entailed? “I can prove I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I haven’t said you didn’t know what you were doing. I’m sure you do.” “Then let me work!”
Plain as plain, his hope to impress hell out of them, to prove himself in some dazzling display and have the whole crew beg him to stay. And who wouldn’t rather a Chanur ship than Sahern? Perfectly reasonable choice. Perfectly engaging kid. She’d had two sons-had cursed bad luck, that way. They were probably dead. She hadn’t stayed planetside long enough to make it worse than it was. Had had them, one and the other, but the disappointment was there from the time the tests had shown they were male. Lot of women wouldn’t have carried them. She didn’t know why she had, tell the truth, but she was old-fashioned, and she had problems about that. Had regretted it for years. And here came this kid, about the age of her younger boy, in space, trying to overcome what Pyanfar Chanur and a lot of her own generation called stupid prejudice, and what a whole string of other generations from time out of mind called nature.