“Gods-be sfik games. I begin to get the feel of it. And I don’t like what’s going on. Put that call through again as soon as I finish with Ehrran. Have them tell Sikkukkut I’m personally interested in the Tahar crew. Tell him we’ve got sfik involved here.”
That got a look from Haral, beside her. “Captain. Begging your pardon-”
Haral left it unfinished. It was hani lives at stake, feud with Tahar or no feud. A miscalculation with the kif might touch something off and get the Tahar crew killed outright. Jik might even be working near to success on the matter. All these things she thought of, and thought of again under that worried glance from Haral, and a like one from Tirun past Haral’s back. A twitch of many-ringed ears. A deep frown.
“Send it,” Pyanfar said. “Be tactful, that’s all.”
“Tactful,” Tirun muttered, and turned to execute the first order.
“You be my friend. You. Hilfy. All. I die with you.”
“Gods, thanks,” Pyanfar murmured bedazedly. A superstitious chill went down her spine. “Translator again. I hope.” Hilfy’s ears had flagged. “I sure hope you come up with a better idea.”
Perhaps he did not take the humor. His face stayed void of it. Of everything but anxiety.
“Friend,” he said.
“You’ve got duties. Get. Hilfy. Get.”
“Aye,” Hilfy said. And touched the seat-back. “Tully.”
He rose from the chair arm. At the other side Tirun had just turned attention to something from the com-plug in her ear and turned half about again with a flick of the ears and a tilt of the head. Some new difficulty. An incoming call. Pyanfar gave Tully room to get up, laid a hand on his back as; he passed, a slight pat of consolation. “Friend. Go help Hilfy, huh? She wanted you for something.-Uhhhnnn. Tully.”
He looked back at her, all unprepared and trying to collect t again.
“Is there anything you know that we don’t?”
Flicker.
“Uhhhn,” she said again, eyes half-lidded.
“Py-anfar-”
“You think of something, huh, you come to me. You come and tell me. All right?”
The kif had used shocks with him and got nothing. The mahendo’sat used wit; and achieved something. She stared him in the eyes without any mercy at all. And tried for a piece of him.
“Don’t trust,” he said suddenly, miserably. “Don’t trust humanity, Py-anfar.” And he fled out the door-walked out, but it was flight, all the same. Hilfy delayed at his back with one anguished look toward her. And turned and went after him.
Pyanfar was unamazed, except by Tully’s unequivocal thoroughness. It was doublecross. Goldtooth’s. Jik’s. Hers. Humanity’s. Everyone’s but Tully’s-who, along with Chanur, had just betrayed his own kind. Gods knew his reasons. What drove him?
Pyanfar turned her chair again and touched the button to bring the long-waiting call through from Rhif Ehrran; listened to Tirun address the Vigilance com officer.
More games of politics and captainly protocols. The com officer insisted on getting response from The Pride’s captain before putting her own on.
“I’ll take it,” Pyanfar said-curiously, pride with Ehrran had just diminished in importance. She failed even to feel a twinge of temper with the Ehrran officer who tried to provoke her and put it on record. “This is Pyanfar Chanur.”
Keep Ehrran quiet. Get the essentials done. Tahar was the emergency. Chur was safe. Tully assured her nothing critical had spilled into kif hands. There were things Sikkukkut still needed. And that meant at once a safer and a less predictable kif.
“Vigilance. Com officer speaking. One more moment, captain. I’m afraid the captain’s gone off line a moment.” Cold arid calculatedly insolent. Games of provocation.
Three human compacts? Fights between them?
One human Compact, Earth, the human home world, trying to counter two rival human powers with new trading routes? Or was it trade they were interested in?
That was a big section of space, if it had room for three starfaring economies . . . correction: two. And one that just wanted to be bigger.
Did Goldtooth know the situation inside human space? Mahendo’sat with their scientists and their mad delving into oddities-always poking and prodding at things, hoping- hoping what? For new species? New alliances?