O, deft, Jik. The methane-breather connection. That’s one thing Sikkukkut has to be afraid of. For godssakes don’t overdo it.
Jik shrugged. “So, Ana be lot upset. Lot knnn interest this human thing. Lot interest.”
Profound silence. Pyanfar found herself holding her breath and daring not get rid of it. She kept the ears still; and even that betrayed the tension every posture in the room already betrayed, kif and hani alike. Tully’s eyes darted to Jik, to her, to the kif, the solitary, sapphire-glittering motion in a gray and black world.
“Yes,” Sikkukkut said. “There would be interest on their part. And it has also occurred to me that we have a source of information here among us. At this table. Tully-you do understand me, Tully.”
O gods-She saw Hilfy’s minute flinching; the tension of muscles in her, in Tully, in Haral-Look this way, Tully-
“I understand,” Tully said at his clearest, looking straight at Sikkukkut with never a look or a pause for advice. “I not know, hakkikt. I not know route. I not know time. I know humans come quick.”
A long moment Sikkukkut gazed at him as she glanced between them. A visible shiver began in Tully’s arms, his hands upon his knees. “You and I have met before on this matter,” Sikkukkut said. “But how fluent you’ve become.”
“I be crewman, hakkikt, on The Pride. I belong captain Pyanfar. She say talk, I talk.”
Gods help us, be careful, Tully.
“Where will they likely come?”
Now Tully looked her way, one calmly desperate look.
“Do you know?” Pyanfar asked, pretense, not-pretense. He continually baffled her. “Tully, gods rot it, talk.”
He looked back toward Sikkukkut. “I not know. I think humanity come Meetpoint. I think Goldtooth know.”
“Kkkkt. Yes. I think so too. So does Akkhtimakt, who stripped that knowledge from your shipmates. Who has what that courier carried, information that-doubtless-has sped to points in mahen space. Truth, finally, arrives from the least likely source. You amuse me-Tully. You endlessly amuse me. What shall I do with Keia?”
“Friend,” Tully said quietly, evenly. His best word. Almost his first word. His fall-back word when he was lost.
“But whose?”
There was silence. Long silence.
“I think that Keia will be my guest a while. Go back to your ships. I shall release your crew, Keia-in time. I wouldn’t impair your ship’s operation. And I’m sure your first officer is quite competent.”
Jik reached for another smokestick. No one interfered. He slid a look Pyanfar’s way. Go.
“Right,” Pyanfar said in a low voice. “I take it we’re dismissed, hakkikt?”
“Take all I have given you. You’ll board by lighter. The dock access is not useable.”
“Understood.” She rose from the insect-chair, in the murk and the orange glare; and signed to her crew and to Tahar. Jik sat there lighting his second smoke and looking as if that were the most ordinary of companies to be left in.
O gods, Jik. What else can I do?
“The hakkikt promised all,” Pyanfar said to the guard, her ears flattened and her nose rumpled. “I want the wounded hani. Savuun. Haury Savuun. You’ll know where she is. You’ll bring her.”
It pushed-about as far as they could push. “Yes,” the kif in charge said, stiff-all over stiff. The hostility was palpable. Not hate. There was no hate in question. It was assessment-what the foreigners’ credit was with the hakkikt. When to kill. When to advance and when retreat in the hakkikt’s name. A kif did not make two mistakes.
Yes. It turned and gave orders to that effect.
It was a silent trip after that-down through Harukk’s gut to the hangar-bay; and no relief at all until they had gotten down near the large boarding-room, and Haury arrived on the other lift-dazed, wobbling on her feet as they brought her out, but limping along with kifish help. From Haury a lift of the head, a momentary prick of the ears and widening of hazed eyes that betrayed confusion, then a taciturn expression, a wandering sweep of the eye that took in friends and guards and the boarding-lock. Gods knew what she had expected being brought down the lift. But only the tautness about her jaw still betrayed emotion-a hani long-accustomed to kif, grim and quiet. Eternally playing the game that kept a kif alive.