For mahen reasons, of course, some of which were sane and some of which were not.
She flipped switches to check working stations, heard Meetpoint’s thin voice in her right ear. “Coming up on jump,” she was able to declare at last, and opened channel 3 and said in stshoshi trade, “Your honor, kindly take position for jump. We trust you have your medical kit at hand.”
Silence.
“Your honor. Kindly advise us if you have done what we request for the preservation of yourself and the Preciousness.”
Frythat dimwit!
“Honorable captain?”
“Are you ready, honorable?”
“We are ready.,”
“Steady, cap’n.” From Tiar, at her right elbow. “Murder’s not in the contract.”
“Don’t say that word.”
“Hey, we’ll be free of it. Shove the Preciousness and gtst honor right out the chute and be damned to them.”
“Not allowed. Subclause 3.”
“They tell you about this Tlisi-tlas-tin character, cap’n?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
From Tarras: “Do I get to pitch gtst out the lock?”
“Negative. Negative. Subclause three point two. No pitching of the Preciousness.”
“What is this thing? Do you figure?”
“Not a bit. Religious or something. Who knows?”
“That’s a blip.” From Tarras at scan. “We got somebody away from station.”
“Ha’domaren. “
“How’d you know that?” Tarras asked.
“How could I not guess? I want a readout on every ship that’s left Meetpoint since we’ve been there.”
“No problem. I got it. You want it now or other-side?”
“Any kifish ship?”
“Two kif, one t’ca. All Hoas-bound, last few days.”
“That son’s going to move. Lay you odds.”
“After us?”
“Lay you any money you want that’s a mahen agent, for some gods-rotted personage we don’t know who, with an empty hold. It’s politics, it’s politics, it’s some one of Pyanfar’s rivals …”
“Possible,” Tiar said.
“It’s going to come,” Hilfy said. “They’ll try. There’s never been a dearth of Personages. …”
“Coming up on mark,” Tiar said.
“Advise our passengers.”
“Got that,”Fala said from belowdecks.
The numbers ticked down, everything automated, more so than The Pride. Progress. And more things to go wrong. She still watched the lines, and compared the numerical readout, scary large numbers. She’d done it on The Pride, with her aunt’s hand or Haral Araun’s on the controls. These days it was Tiar’s. She wasn’t a pilot, never would be. She could just ride it through.
“Here we go. Suppose we got that mass calc right?” Ship dropped. Everything went hazed.
You could dream in jump.
Sometimes you even knew you were dreaming, if it was an old dream, an often dream.
Dream of gold hair and a human face.
Waiting there. He always was. Even if he was on a ship fifty lights away. Hello, he said, most times, though he was always distant. He had been, since they had parted company at Anuurn. Clearly Pyanfar had talked to him. Told him the practicalities of things. Laid down conditions.
Hello, kid.
But she wasn’t the kid any more. Things had changed. She’d been married. And widowed. Thank the gods there were no offspring to promote permanent ties with Sfaura.
Give No’shto-shti-stlen the gods-be puzzle egg. And good luck to gtst with it.
Meanwhile there was a human face, a human presence, distant and shadowy, a comfort in her traveling.
You have to take care, Tully said to her. He had never gotten that good at hani speech, that she knew of. But that was years ago.
I always take care, she said.
You trust this deal you’re in.
Let’s not talk about business. She knew what she wanted to do. Exactly what her aunt frowned on her doing. But Tully was evasive. He walked away from her, with his back turned.
And the lights dimmed, and there were bars about— ammonia, and sodium light.
She took alarm. “Tully?” she said, and he looked at her, scared as she was. She didn’t want to be here again. She didn’t want this part.
He came and held on to her. He had then. He did until the kif came and then he went with them because they threatened her. The whole thing passed in a kind of haze, the way the hours had in mat kifish cage. There were sounds to hear. She chose not to hear them. She could govern the dream now—she had learned to do that, and she kept saying, over and over again, Tully, come back. Tully, listen to me. I don’t want to remember that. What do you go there for? I don’t want to see that-Come back and talk to me.