The stsho aide put a satin-slippered foot into the newly-paneled room and wiped long fingers on the door frame. This passed. Gtst ventured further, onto the newly elevated white decking, to the white bowl-chair sunk into it.
Gtstcrest lifted and sank several anxious times and lifted to half. Gtst looked all about, turned full circle, making little flutters of gtst hands.
“Adequate,” gtst said in Trade-tongue. “I will inform the honorable.”
Whereupon gtst retreated from the room and up the corridor, with gtst own stsho attendant.
The crew said not a word. Ears were flat. But they had said not a word about the contract.
Neither had Hilfy Chanur. She escorted the stsho out and up to the topside lounge, where the honorable Tlisi-tlas-tin sat sopping up cup after cup of tea and giving orders to Fala, whose ears were valiantly upright.
The stsho conferred, informed gtst honor the quarters were adequate, they now dared leave the honorable alone in hani keeping and could assure gtst excellency No’shto-shti-stlen that Chanur had taken at least austere care of their charge.
Whereupon the honorable Tlisi-tlas-tin wearily aroused gtstself from a chair ill-suited to gtst spindly legs, and with a flourish of voluminous gossamer, announced gtstself willing to go below with the Preciousness.
Which traveled in that box, apparently, which had its appropriate customs seals as, simply, oji, and no hint of its shape or nature.
“Honorable,” Hilfy said, with, she hoped, an expression as diplomatic as Fala Anify’s … “may I ask your honor to favor this person whom gtst excellency has trusted with your person with a viewing of this most distinguished …”
“No!” Tlisi-tlas-tin said. Which might be the most direct sentence she had ever heard from a stsho. Gtst gathered up the small box and wrapped it within the gossamer folds of gtst robes. Gtst gave them collectively and sundry a burning look of gtst moonstone eyes. “The Preciousness is not for display.”
A practical and an academic education in diplomacy did not encourage one to seize gtst by gtst skinny white throat. Being Pyanfar’s niece did; but Hilfy recovered from the fog of anger and her ears were still up and her mouth was still smiling. “Please convey yourself and the Preciousness to your cabin before some incident offends you. My aide will escort your honor to your quarters and show your colleagues to the airlock.”
And lock the gods-be cabin door on gtst honor afterwards, she thought. The crew was exhausted. They hadn’t let mahendo’sat workmen do the job, invade their ship, look at their interior, take notes on their systems. Gods-rotted certain they hadn’t had kif. And stsho of the laboring class didn’t exist outside stsho space. So that left themselves—and they had blisters on their hands and panelboard dust up their nostrils, they had broken claws and missing fur, not to mention the captain had dropped a large panel corner on her ankle and taken the hide off”.
The captain was not, consequently, in a good humor. The captain was sweaty and ached from head to foot. They were two hours past their scheduled un-dock, and presented an enigmatic silence to Meetpoint docks, hatches sealed (once the supplies had arrived) hoses uncoupled, com completely silent, their own power plant supplying their needs while they underwent “technical adjustment.”
Tarras came up from downside, saying something about the shower downside being occupied, and her having to use the one topside, poor put-upon dear, and Hilfy glared at her, thinking it could be the end of a family friendship if Tarras opened her mouth on the matter of subclauses at the moment.
“Do that,” Hilfy said sweetly, with as great a control as she had left. “I’ve a few things to see to. We’ve got to recalc our outbounds.”
Tarras took the hint. “Want help?”
She thought about it, a second run-through. Thought about particles floating through the filter systems. “Shower first. We all will. We’ll just give station last-minute notice of our undock.” Satisfying notion. “Let them do the scrambling. The oji has priority. Doesn’t it?”
The banging and hammering had stopped. The hatch had cycled- For a long time there was quiet. Hallan decided the ship might be headed for undock, but people tended to forget him. So he decided it was a good idea to put the blast cushion in order, just in case, and to take a couple of blankets out of the storage lockers, because the heat still had not caught up, and also if they went out very hard or very long, one could want something to stuff in the unsupported spots. They didn’t make flight cushions his size either. Or chairs. Or most anything on a ship.