“Lot funny, Chanur captain. You want meet for talk business now? You want talk Atli-lyen-tlas, a? I got bad news. Real bad news. “
The stationmaster hadn’t said that name. She hadn’t said that name to anyone at Meetpoint, nor to anyone at Urtur until a scant few moments ago, that she’d keyed out a message for that individual. She had never so much as heard the name aloud on this leg of the trip—but she knew gtst as the well-reputed stsho ambassador to Urtur, the addressee in the contract, the intended recipient of the Preciousness.
“You want meet for drink?”the mane said, “You going need same.”
“Atli-lyen-tlas quit,” Haisi said, taking a puff of one of those cursed mahen smoke-sticks. And exhaling, what was worse. “Same quit, go—“ A move of Haisi’s large, bare-palmed hand, a glance of dark mahen eyes about the indefinite perimeters of the lounge—the lounge next the trade office, as happened. Hilfy was not about to go onto Ha’domaren, or take Haisi Ana-kehnandian’s hospitality, or be subject to whatever esoteric truth-seekers Haisi might have installed. Haisi’s eyes roamed the implied infinite and came back to solidity, to her—the poetic hand returned to lie above Haisi’s heart, and Haisi smiled.
“So, so difficult figure alien mind.”
“So where did gtst go?” Hilfy’s ears were flat. She made no pretense of pleasantness.
“You do me small favor.”
“What favor?”
“I tell you,” Haisi said, “I do work in files, all hours I wait talk with you, you know? What for you got arrest here? I curious.”
“I never got arrested here.”
“You all same got police record. File on list. Hilfy Chanur. That you? Sound like you.”
“Then you just better let it lie there. You go digging in that dirt, you’re going to need the bath, because it’s nothing Urtur Station wants to find. And how patient is your personage with foulups?”
Maybe she scored one. Haisi took another puff and seemed to think about it, blowing smoke from his nostrils like some brazen image.
“I might call your personage,” she said, “and tell her—it is her, isn’t it? We got one mahe being damn fool. Call him home before he embarrasses you.”
“Personage might say, Who you talk fool, Hilfy Chanur? You got thing aboard you don’t know what is, you don’t know what does, you got stsho play politic, use you name, use you ship … Big fool.”
“What do you want? Outright, mahe, what do you want?”
“You bring me ‘board you ship. You let me talk stsho.”
“You want to send a message, I might take it. You let the stsho ask to talk to you. If gtst wants to, I’ll bring you aboard.”
“I tell you no good you come here. Stsho you look for—gone.”
“Gone since how long? Since you found out about the shipment? Since you were here last and you learned about it?”
“You not bad guess.”
“What is it to you? What do you care what the stsho do with each other?”
“Ask why stsho care what I do.”
“Why, then?”
“Maybe rise and fall Personages.”
“Which personages? Stsho? Mahendo’sat?”
“Maybe so. Maybe.”
“Gods rot you, give me a plain answer!”
“No more you give me, Chanur captain. Which side you?”
“I’m on the side of making a living, I’m on the side of running an honest trade and shipping operation! If somebody’s got cargo going, and it’s not live and it’s not illegal, I haul it, that’s all! I’m not a personage, I’m not a fool, I’m a ship captain.”
“You think that, you be number one fool, Chanur captain. Wherever you go, politic. All time politic.
You want tuck head under arm not see what is, you do. But maybe all same Urtur find old arrest warrant. Maybe search ship …”
“You want an incident with the stsho, you go right on and try that. You want an incident with Chanur, you want an incident with the han, you want me to sue you clear back to your ancestors, you earless bastard—“
The lifting of an empty mahen hand. “Want no incident. Want know what thing No’shto-shti-stlen send Atli-lyen-tlas.”
“What in your ninety-nine hells difference does it make what gtst sent?”