“She’s snake enough to twist two ways at once,” Tirun said.
“Inside out if I had my choice,” Geran said.
“Meanwhile,” Pyanfar said, “while we’ve got some time, we don’t have much, and work goes on. Hilfy, Tully, Khym, they’re sending over some stuff for the kif. I’d like to get rid of him, but I don’t see a way to do it without creating a problem with Sikkukkut, and we don’t need that. On the other hand, whatever he is, he’s stood about what he can. I want him transferred to a regular cabin, I want the room safed, understand. We’re going to have some sort of live stuff to take care of. Skkukuk can do his own vermin-herding. I want it decontaminated. Never mind the docking-check on this watch, except the filters, the ops and the lifesupport; we’ll catch the little things next. Someone looks in on Chur now and again in Geran’s off-watch; you arrange that, Geran. Don’t wear yourself out. Tirun, call down to Tahar and tell her we’re still working on the problem. She’s probably chewing sticks down there. I haven’t got time to talk to her. Tirun and Geran, Hilfy and Haral when you’ve got time, I want this code-strip fed in and checked against the translator. And when you get all that done, I want a regular dinner set up, none of those gods-be sandwiches.”
There was dismay in tired faces until the matter of the dinner. “We’ll go off-shift,” Pyanfar said, “at need. When there’s a lull, sleep. Feel free to trade off jobs and watches-I don’t care who does it, just so it gets done before watch-end, and it gets done with due precautions: no one visits Skkukuk or Tahar alone. Sorry about the schedule. Goldtooth offered a full crew but I turned him down. Trust is fine; but I’m not handing over The Pride’s codes to anybody. Not these days.”
“Gods-rotted right,” Haral said, and, “Aye,” from the rest, with a flick of ears and a tautness of jaws.
“So get it done, huh?” She nodded a dismissal. Hilfy got up and walked out with Geran, down the corridor. Tirun turned back to com and Haral turned to the main board and systems-checks again. The menfolk were last on their way out, separately. And-“Khym,” Pyanfar said before he could go: “You all right in this? Tully?”
Khym stopped and stuck his hands in his belt, glanced at the deck with a deference natural in Chanur matters. “You pick the fight, I’ll settle the bastards, wasn’t it something like that we promised each other fifty years ago?” It was their marriage vow, less elegantly phrased. But then he looked up, and a curious quirk came and went she had not seen in years. “But I think you’ll have to help, though, wife.”
She laughed despite it all and he grinned as if pleased to have pleased her. She watched the straightening of his shoulders as he walked off the bridge. Somewhere he had got a swagger in his step.
The ache in her own bones felt less, for that.
“Py-anfar?”
“Tully.” She rose from her chair. Walked over near him as he stood there with confusion on his face. “Tully. Did you follow what I was saying to the crew? You understood?”
He nodded his head energetically- yes, that peculiar gesture meant. “I work,” he said. “I work.” And he turned his shoulder to her, there by the scan panel, his hands busy with some printout which he could no more read than he could breathe vacuum.
Avoidance.
“Tully,” she said. “Tully.”
“I work,” he said.
“Put those ridiculous papers down.” She snatched them from his hand and flung them onto the counter. He backed up, hit the chair and caught himself with an arm against the seat-back, eyes wide and flickering. He smelled of human sweat and Anuurn flowers. And sudden terror. Tirun half-turned her chair, and kept staring in distress. Tully stayed frozen, stsho-pale. Fear. Indeed, fear. It set her heart to pounding and touched off her aggressive reflexes; but child she made herself think, dismissing hunter-mind; and alien and friend and hair-triggered male. –
It was not her move that had frightened him. He was beyond that. He knew she. would never lay hands on him; she knew that he knew. It was a deeper thing.