Chanur’s Legacy by C.J. Cherryh

“You not know that?”

“I have no interest in that!”

“Then why you ask?”

Murder occurred to her. Most vivid murder.

“Because I got a large hairy fool being a fulltime pain in the—“

“You know what No’shto-shti-stlen send? Or you take gtst word what you carry? Sloppy way pass customs.”

“Until it comes off my ship, customs can wonder.”

“Unless it universal contraband. Like run guns. Like run—“

“I’m bored. I’m leaving.”

“You not know.”

“Goodbye.”

“You want know where Atli-lyen-tlas go?”

“Where?”

“What you give me?”

“I’ll look it up in station records.”

“Kita. Go Kita Point. Easy jump. You want data on Kita market? Got. Real cheap. Great bargain. Give you break. Get you futures reports maybe two month back.”

Futures in a deeper mahen market where the mahendo’sat knew best what they had and didn’t. Speculation there was asking for trouble, hired hauling was the only sure thing, and information at the narrow downside end of mahen trade routes wasn’t going to tell you what goods might already have arrived there from points upstream.

And there was a worse problem with Kita.

“You want deal?” the mahe asked.

“I’ll think about it.” She stood up and walked for the door.

“Not real long time think,” Haisi said. “You got stsho deal, not good you break promise. Cargo get lost, stuff screw up at Meetpoint … Personage not real damn happy with you, Chanur captain. Big mess. You go ahead. You do. You make. Talk me later I see if rescue you worth while.”

“You captain?”

“Me? Not.”

“Ha’domarenyour ship?”

“Not. Belong cousin.”

“You got cousins everywhere, don’t you?”

“Big fam’ly.”

“I’ll bet.” She did walk out, shoved her hands in her pockets and thought how this had more and more the smell of trouble, such that she wasn’t seeing Urtur’s garish lights, she was seeing what used to be, and missing the weight of the pistol she had worn in those days before the disarmament agreement, before the peace.

It didn’t feel like peace. Not at all.

“We got check,” the mahen customs agent said, and Tiar jabbed the slate in question and said, politely, “It’s on our ship. Until it comes off our ship it isn’t your province. That’s in your regulations. Until it’s offered for sale it isn’t merchandise. It’s an item in the possession of gtst honor under diplomatic privilege and it stays on this ship until we find the addressee. In which case you can work out the problems with the stsho delegation. It’s not our problem!”

“Got consult stationmaster,” the agent said, andflipped his slate closed and walked off. Tiar stood staring after him, and turned and stalked back into the access, up the rampway to the hatch and the lower main corridor.

“Trouble?” Fala asked.

“Gods-be right we have trouble, we have bids breeding like crazy and we can’t get the gods-rotted customs to fill out the gods-rotted forms and clear the gods-be-feathered—“

It had been quiet for a very long time. And Trade in Agricultural Goods might be informative, and Hallan was willing to learn anything that gave him expertise in anything whatsoever to do with space and trade; but it was uninspired and highly repetitive.

Still, he read on, having had his shower and his lunch and all. He heard crew members going up and down the corridor outside, he listened hard, thinking that he might hear something, but most of all he heard a voice he thought was Tiar’s yelling about mahendo’sat and customs and blackmail.

So he thought something bad must have happened.

Then he heard the captain’s voice, he was relatively sure, yelling something about mahendo’sat and blackmail. So he didn’t think things were going well.

Probably it was not a good time to ask to be let out of the laundry. Probably he should read Trade in Agricultural Goods very slowly and thoroughly and make it last, because it might be all the entertainment he had for a while.

Home again, to read the gods-forsaken contract. To consult the legal program. The translation. The transcription of the original into mundane type, and into phonetic rendition.

7098 pages. Of which the computer identified 20 clauses as of particular application, regarding Un-proven Subsequents.

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