Pyanfar overtook the voice, walking onto the bridge, and wrinkled up her nose with the pungent aroma of the kif. Skkukuk lay listless and neglected in his chair, still secured, a mere heap of black, while Hilfy and Tirun fended calls and Haral ran ops. At least his chatter had stopped.
The kif was one more problem on her mind. One more neglected and suffering piece of protoplasm. She paused by the kif, her hand on the chairback. Skkukuk turned his long jawed head and gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Kkkkt. Captain. I protest this treatment.”
“Fine, fine.” The ammonia reek was overwhelming. She felt pity and loathing at once. And a desire to sneezeIe. “Hilfy, Tirun, go offshift-get this kif down below, get him fed, let him wash up.” She let go the buckle of Skkukuk’s restraints herself and hauled on the kif’s bound arm. “Up.”
Skkukuk cooperated, as far as the edge of the seat. “Captain,” he said.
And plummeted through her hands. Pyanfar recoiled as Skkukuk hit her legs and folded the rest of the way down onto his face in a black-robed, ammonia-smelling heap. Hilfy and Tirun rose from their chairs and Haral looked and quickly swung back to business.
“Gods,” Pyanfar muttered, between dismay and disgust, and squatted down as the kif began to stir and Tirun moved to help.
-Chur. Chur lying abed, the hair peeling from her skin, Chur, of the red-gold coat, the shining mane that got second looks from every man she met-fading out. Wasting under their eyes-
She grasped the kif s thin, robed shoulder and remembered jaws that could bite wire in two. It was a shoulder hard as stone. “Watch it,” she said as Tirun tried to pull him over by the hip, but Skkukuk levered himself up on one elbow and his bound hands. His hood had fallen back. He lifted his bare head in a dazed way, blinking and looking from her to Tirun. “Get him water,” Pyanfar said. Hilfy stood there. It was Tirun who got up and went. “Get your hands back from it, aunt,” Hilfy said.
It was, reckoning those jaws, only sensible advice. “Help me,” Pyanfar said, got a grip on the shoulders of Skkukuk’s robe and hauled the kif upright. “Get his feet.”
Hilfy grimaced and gathered the knees up; the two of them heaved the kif into the chair he had fallen from.
Tirun came back across the bridge in haste, bringing a cup of water. Pyanfar took it and held it under Skkukuk’s mouth. His tongue darted and the water level dropped to a last soft gurgle as the cup emptied. Then he leaned his head back against the headrest and blinked listlessly.
“So he warned us,” Pyanfar muttered. “Get to galley- get something thawed.” Tirun left again in haste; and she put an unwilling hand up Skkukuk’s sleeve and felt the abnormal chill of his arm, “He’s gone into shock, that’s what. Gods rot, I don’t want to lose him.”
Hilfy looked at her in a guarded, hostile way.
“You want him?” Hilfy asked coldly.
“I by the gods don’t want him dying like this. Come out of it, niece. Is that my teaching-or something you learned in other company?”
Hilfy’s ears went back. Nostrils flared and pinched. And Hilfy turned and walked away to the corridor with businesslike dispatch.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To fix your gods-be kif,” Hilfy snapped. “Captain. By your leave, ker Pyanfar.”
“Niece-” Pyanfar muttered.
But what she had was Hilfy’s back as Hilfy headed away down main corridor; and an all-but-limp kif in her custody. “Gods. Gods be.” She unwound the flex which had bitten into the kif’s wrists. His hands were cold and limp, and he regarded her hazily, unresponsive to a fight among hani that, might have greatly amused him “n a better day. “Kkkkkt. Kkkkt,” was all the sound he made in his misery.
Shut up, they had told him when he had begun to make that noise. ,
Khym came in from the galley and stood there with his ears back. Tully came in after him, and stood observing the situation with one of those inscrutable expressions that evidenced something going on in his blond-maned head. Perhaps, like Hilfy, he wanted the kif’s death. Perhaps he was afraid, or wanted to warn them of the danger in this creature, and lacked words to do it. “Get cleaned up,” Pyanfar snapped at them both. “You think we got time to stare? Gods-be kif’s wilted on us, that’s all. Move it. The rest of us want their break. Go. Get to it. The rest of us are waiting on you.”