But here he sat on a Chanur ship having thoughts he didn’t even want, and wanting to finish the cursed book, and not wanting to, and scared and drawn at the same time.
Was that being crazy? Was that what happened, and was that what had started when he came on board the Legacy, among female people he could really want?
He kept reading. He got to the end and he sat there staring at the wall and wishing he knew what was ahead of him, and whether he was a fool or not, being out here, in this foreign place with a crew he… Really, really wanted to belong to, in a very absolute and traditional and gut-level way that that book was about.
Which could very definitely get him killed. Which was stupid, intellectually speaking. But not—not when feelings cut in.
The incoming messages were stacked up.
From Haisi, Hilfy presumed, since it had Ha’domaren ‘s header: You better think who you are. Dangerous you not know.
From Customs: Customs approved. For the third time. They were over-compensating.
From Padur’s Victory and Narn’s Dawnmaker, a joint communiqué: We are in receipt of troubling news regarding difficulty with customs and station authorities. We request a briefing at earliest.
That had to be answered, urgently and in the most courteous way, hence the presence of a Padur and a Narn captain in the downside corridor, plain trader captains in workaday blue trousers, out of the midst of their work. And it certainly behooved the bone-tired hani captain in question to meet them personally at the airlock, and invite them into her downside office, and sit down and explain the situation, in spite of the fact she and her sleepless crew were again facing no sleep and snatched meals. Tarras was down there alone, no one was on the bridge, and the offloading was going to go on until the Legacy’s holds were empty.
Meaning about 12 more hours.
“There’s a ship to watch,” she said, “Ha’domaren. If you want my guess what’s going on, there’s a personage with an agent on that ship who’s fairly high up in the hierarchy; that personage assumed I have a direct line to my aunt—which I don’t—and somebody on this station tried to blacklist my ship by bringing up old records about The Pride. I wasn’t interested in a secret game, I raised a racket, this agent didn’t want the publicity, and when the police got involved it bounced the case right where I couldn’t get anyone else to send it—straight to the Personage of Urtur, where I said very definitely I hadn’t any contacts with my aunt and all I wanted was trade. After which they gave me my customs clearance and the Personage of Urtur gave the agent a reasonably dirty look.
That’s the sum of it.”
“We hear,” Tauhen Padur said, with a discreet cough, “there’s some sort of politically hot stsho cargo.”
“Where did you hear that?”
A shrug, a lowering of one ear. “From my crew, indirectly from the market. Where, specifically … I think they’d have said if the source was unusual. Probably just the merchants.”
“Same,” said Kaury Narn. Old spacer, Kaury was, lot of rings, pale edges on the mane, and a right-side tooth capped in silver—ask where and on what kif pirate she’d broken that one. The Narn captain came from far wilder days. “Whatever the chaff is, it’s drifting up and down the market.”
“We didn’t talk to anybody in the market. There’s only one way that information flew in here ahead of us,”
“This Ha’domaren.”
“And one Tahaisimandi Ana-kehnandian, nickname Haisi, who’s operating out of that ship.”
“Eastern hemisphere Ijir. At least by ancestry.” This from Kaury.
“You know him.”
“No,” Kaury Narn said. “But the name is eastern. I’ll remember it.”
“Haisi,” Tauhen said. “Which personage?”
“Not the Personage of Urtur. Somebody named Paehisna-ma-to.”
“Not familiar.”
“Not to me.”
“Is there any way,” the Narn asked, “you can get in touch with your aunt?”
“No. That’s the truth.” Touchy question, under other circumstances; but this was with obvious reason. “What I hear, she’s somewhere …” She censored that. “… inconvenient; and I don’t know where. Possibly Ana-kehnandian’s personage is shaking the tree, so to speak, to see what falls out; certainly somebody wanted to use me to get to her, and I couldn’t if I wanted to. So if your trail and hers should cross, let her know. But meanwhile I hope I’ve settled this mahe and got him off my tail. What I want to know— arethere any stsho hiding on this station?”