Except na Hallan, who went in ordinary spacer blues. But when they walked down the ramp to the dock, there was no question where the stares went— straight to the hani a head taller than any of them, the one with the shoulders and the mane that matched.
Work stopped. A transport bumped the one in front with a considerable jolt. Hallan watched his feet on the way down. She watched their surroundings and said, under her breath, “I don’t expect it, but watch left and right and say if you see anything untoward. Na Hallan, if there should be trouble, you do understand that getting your head down doesn’t necessarily cover your rear. There’s a lot of you. Wherever we go, I want you to have somewhere in mind that you could get to that would be a solid barrier; and where you’d duck to if you had to fall back. I want this whole dock to be a map like that in your head, do you follow me?”
“Yes, captain. I do, thank you.”
He might. Boys learned hunting, bare-handed; boys learned tracking and hiding and all such games as fitted them for defending their lives. It was heroics she worried about. Boys learned to show out, and bluff, and trust the other side most often to follow the rules, although na Kohan had said once, reflectively, that men learned to cheat in the outback, because some did, and once that was true—you couldn’t assume.
So with Chihin and Tiar. The rings in their ears meant a lot of ports and each one of those rings a risky situation, in space or on the docks. But they weren’t Pride crew, and they hadn’t studied this together. She just trusted they were thinking now, better than Tiar had been when she had felt that cross-up of signals.
They walked through the traffic of transports and past the towering gantry that held the power umbilical, took that route for the next three berths, before they tended around the off-loading of another ship, mahen, as happened.
There were stares. Hallan cast an anxious look back at them and stumbled on a power cable.
“Feet,” Chihin said.
“Sorry,” he said.
There was the kifish trade office, number 15, opposite berth 28, as listed—an unambitious and functional looking place, conspicuous by the orange light behind the pressure windows; but beyond the section doors was a district where that lighting was the norm, where kifish bars, restaurants and accommodations mingled with gambling parlors where kif played games no outsider would care to bet on, and where bloodletting was not an uncommon result, at least … it had been that way.
Maybe they had cleaned it up. One reminded oneself these were civilized times.
But that might be fatal thinking.
“This is the place. If there’s trouble, have your spots picked and don’t look after anyone but yourself—at least you know what you’re thinking and where you’re going.”
“Too gods-be close to the kif section,” Chihin said.
“We’re dealing with kif,” Tiar said.
Now she was nervous. Now the hair down her backbone must be ridged, and her claws kept twitching in their sheaths.
But not notably scared. It was like sleepwalking, saying to herself, I’ve done this before, this is the life I chose for myself, this is the way the Compact is, not— not the safe, law-hedged half-truths the treaty made. Safe, as long as you’re within twenty lights of Anuurn, civilized, as long as it’s only hani you deal with, altruistic, as long as you’re not dealing with species who have to have that word explained to them.
A methane-breather wove past, in its sealed vehicle; a bus followed, humming along its mag strip.
Never could convince the tc’a to rely on the magnetics. Something about their sensitivities. You couldn’t get that clear in translation either.
That was the truth out here. It wasn’t law that got you by. It was good manners. It was giving in on a point that wasn’t fatal to you, and might be to them.
There were kif about the door—not unnaturally. And it said something strange, that these kif showed less surprise at them than the mahendo’sat had done … these kif simply made soft clicking sounds of attention and backed away to allow them the door. There had been a time when kif didn’t share information, when one kif knowing a fact didn’t guarantee that other kif did.
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