Pride of Chanur (27 page)

"We're going," Nerafy said, sinking into her cushion. The hatch boomed shut, deafening. "Kihany: it's Anuurn we're headed for; get the captain that link."

Repulse cut in. Pyanfar hand-over-handed her way around the back of the cushions to the com/navigation board and braced herself with feet and a hand on the rim to lean over the board. "I want," she said, ignoring the contrary slams of g against which she shifted without thinking, "relay to Aja Jin. Mahe. Get that ship first."

It took a moment. A mahe voice came crackling through. They lost g as Rau's Luck executed a wallowing maneuver, acquired it again. "Aja Jin. Have you got us in watch? Track this signal."

"Got," the comforting answer returned. "Got. We watch."

"Out," Pyanfar said. She broke it off, not anxious to have long conversations with kif to pick them up. The mike in hand, she tapped the harried navigator on the shoulder. "Next call: satellite to ground station Enafy region, area 34, local number 2-576-98; speak to anyone who answers."

The navigator threw her a desperate glance, shunted her functions to the copilot and started working, no questions, no objections: "What landing?" the copilot was asking; "First we get there," Narafy said. "Got ourselves a rescue run. Speed counts."

"Map Coordinates 54.32/23.12," Pyanfar said, listening to the one-sided com. They were in contact with Enafy. In a moment more the navigator held up a finger and she tucked the plug into her ear and applied herself to the mike. "Chanur," she said, shaking; but that was from the cold. "Is Chanur answering?"

"Here," said a voice from the world, distant and obscure by a bad pickup. "This is Chanur Holding."

"This is Pyanfar. We're on our way in. Who's speaking?"

There was a moment's silence in which she thought the contact was lost. "It's aunt Pyanfar," that voice on the other end hissed within the mike's pickup. "For the gods' sake, tell Jofan and hurry!"

"Never mind Jofan, whelp! Get Kohan on and hurry up, you hear me?"

"Aunt Pyanfar, it's Nifas. I think ker Jofan's coming . . . The Tahar are here; the Mahn have challenged; Kara Mahn has; and Faha's gone neutral except Huran's still here; and Araun and Pyruun have called that they're coming. Everyone's gathered here. They knew-Aunt Jofan, it's-"

"Pyanfar." Another voice assumed the mike. "Thank the gods. Get here."

"Get Kohan on. Get him. I want to talk to him."

"He's-" Jofan's voice trailed off or static obscured it. "I'll try. Hold on."

"Holding." Pyanfar rested the back of the hand which held the mike against her mouth, shifted her body in pain: they were under acceleration now. The rim of the pit was cutting into her back. She achieved a little relief, found all her limbs shaking against the strain, the physical effort of the position she maintained. She watched the screens, seeing something else moving on scan. Aja Jin, she hoped. It had better be.

"Pyanfar." The deep voice, static-ridden, exploded in her ear. Kohan, beyond mistake. "Pyanfar."

"Kohan. I'm in transit. I'm coming. How much time, Kohan?"

A long silence.

"Kohan."

"I'll wait till you get here. I think I can stall it that long?"

"I'm coming in on a direct landing. I want you to stay inside and hear nothing and see nothing. I have something with me. Something you'll find of interest." .

"This Outsider."

"News has got there."

"Tahar-make charges against you."

"Already settled. Settled. You understand?"

There was another prolonged silence. "I have my wits about me. I knew you were on your way. Had to be here if this crowd showed up in such graceless haste."

She let go a long breath. "Good. Good for you. You keep at it."

"Where's Hilfy?"

"Fine. Fine and safe. I'm on my way. Now. No more talking. We've got business. Hear?"

A breath crackled through the static. "I'll work that Mahn whelp into a fit of his own." It began to sound like a reassuring chuckle. "I'll sit inside sipping gfi and enjoying the shade. -Move, Pyanfar. I want you here."

"Out," she said. She handed the mike back, a strain of her arm against acceleration, let the arm fall back and shivered as it sank in how long that conversation had been, how clear it was who was speaking from this shell of a ship. They were on directional to the satellite: perhaps no one had picked it up.

"Got it set up," Narafy said.

"I'm going back to my crew," Pyanfar said. She edged her way out of the pit, one foot against the bulkhead. "Safety line," the captain advised her; she saw it, and tucked down, gained the braking clip on the line and wrapped her hand into it. Launched herself down the long pit of the central corridor, past moisture-dewed metal and aged plastic lighting panels, her own weight and a half on her arm. She reached the barriered recess of cushions where the others had snugged in and Haral snagged her, hauled her with difficulty over the padded safety arm which closed off the compartment, and in several hands, one pair alien, she let herself collapse into the cushions with the rest of them. "Got contact with Kohan," she breathed, sorting her limbs out from among the rest of them. "He's going to stall."

Hilfy's face. She saw that tight-lipped relief and felt a little dismay for the girl who had come onto The Pride a voyage ago j and the woman who stared back at her, self-controlled and reckoning the odds.

"Got contact with the mahe too," Pyanfar said. "They're with us." She cast a look past Chur and Haral to the Llun, Ginas, who nodded, a flat-eared and anxious stare in return "You don't," Pyanfar said, "have to make the return trip There's no reason for you to, ker Llun. We just get you down safe the one time, that's all."

"Appreciated," the Llun said tautly.

"Captain." Haral thrust a package of chips into her hands, and a bottle of drink. Pyanfar braced the bottle in her lap and hooked a claw into the package, hands trembling with the prolonged strain, used the claw to punch double holes on the.,; plastic bottlecap and spout. The food helped, however difficult to swallow in the acceleration stress. She offered to the others. 1

"We've had ours," Chur said. Bodies squirmed down the I line, everyone settling. Tully tried to talk, hand signs and mangled words, and Hilfy and Chur communicated with him as best they could, speaking slowly, something to do with the ship and atmosphere. He was cold; they held onto him and settled finally. Pyanfar rolled a strained glance at Haral and then closed her eyes, numbed by misery.

There was no more that she could do for either situation, the one on the ground or the one on station. Kohan's nerves would be on the ragged edge by now. This go-and-stop-again psyching for challenge would wear at him by the hour. Like nerving oneself for a jump and walking back from it. The second effort was a harder one. A from-the-heart effort. Gods knew how long the situation had been sawing at Kohan's nerves. Months. Since the night Hilfy left. Since before that- when he saw Khym Mahn likely to fall to challenge. There was a point past which he would heave up any food he tried to eat, awake all night, wearing his strength down with pacing, with the constant adrenalin high which would wear him to skin and bone within days. Huran and some of the other mates had stayed. There were his youngest couple of sons, who had run for the borders if they had any sense, not to linger within his reach. There were a score of daughters, who might muster worth enough to see he ate and slept as much as possible approaching this time. Daughters, mates, and with the captains % in, several more half-sisters, who were most reliable of the lot. But there were grown Chanur males who might come straying back from exile to key up the situation further-returned from Hermitage, from wandering, from gods knew what occupations which filled the lives of males in the sanctuaries. Always, at challenge, there were those, hopeless, keyed up, and dangerous, hanging about the fringes.

As for young Kara Mahn, he was probably good. He had taken Khym, who had survived thus far more by wit than by strength. Kara had promised both size and intelligence, the last time she had seen him. Chanur blood, after all, Chanur temperament. She cursed her own stupidity, in seeking after a mate like Khym, a quiet and peaceful domicile, a mountain hideaway and Khym, a resting place, a garden like a dream. Khym had listened to her stories, soothed her nerves, made her laugh with his wit; an ideal mate, without threat to Chanur's interests. But gods, she had never thought what she left behind in that place, her own Chanur-blooded offspring, larger than Khym's daughters and sons of local wives; larger; and stronger; and-if such things could be inherited-quarrelsome and demanding.

Nothing like family loyalty. Her son yearned after his Chanur heritage so much he wanted to take it for his own.

Betterment of the species, hani philosophers had called it. Churrau hanim. The death of males was nothing, nothing but change happening: the han adjusted, and the young got sired by the survivors. One man was as good as another; and served his purpose well enough.

But by the gods it was not true; there were the young and the reckless who might, on a better opponent's off day, win; there were challenges like the one shaping up against Chanur, which involved more than one against one.

And sometimes-gods-one loved them.

She slept somewhat, in the steady acceleration, in sensations so uncomfortable numbness was the best refuge; and in the confusion of jump and time, her body was persuaded it was offshift or perhaps the shift past that.

A new sensation brought her out of it, weightlessness and someone hauling her out of a drift as a light flashed. "About to make descent," Haral said, and Pyanfar reached for a secure hold in preparation.

It was a rough descent: she expected nothing else. She had no idea of the shape of the lander, but it was not one of the winged, gliding shuttles. The lander hammered its way down after the manner of its kind, vibrating stress into the marrow of living bones and vibrating skin and tissues and eyes in their sockets, so that there was nothing to do but ride it down and wish desperately that there was a sight of something, something to do with the hands, some sequence which wanted thinking about and managing.

There was a time she simply shut her eyes and tried to calculate their probable position; she had, she decided, no love of riding as a passenger. Then the sound increased and the stresses changed-gods, the noise. She heard what she fervently hoped was the landing pods extending.

They were in straight descent now, a vibration of a rhythmic sort.

Touch, one pod and then the others, a jolt and a series of smaller jolts, and silence.

Pyanfar flicked her ears with the sudden feeling that she was deaf, looked about her at her shaken comrades. Down was different than before: the gimbaled passenger section had reoriented itself and the central corridor was flat and walkable. "Out," Pyanfar said. "Let's see where they set us down."

Hilfy unlocked the padded safety barrier, and they went. Hydraulics operated noisily and when they had come as far as the control pit, daylight was flooding in onto the metal decking from the open lock.

The others descended. Pyanfar delayed for an instant's courtesy, a thanks for the Rau crew who were climbing out of their pit, their ship secured. "If you come," Pyanfar said, "well; you're welcome in Chanur land. Or if you stay here-we'll be bringing more passengers as quickly as we can."

"We'll wait," Nerafy Rau said. "We put you close, Chanur. We'll have the ship ready for lift; we'll be waiting."

"Good," she said. That was her preference. She ducked under the conduits and swung down onto the extended ladder, scrambled down to the rocky flat where they had landed, in the generally wedge-shaped shadow of the lander. The air smelled of scorch and hot metal; the ship pinged and snapped and smoke curled up from the brush nearby.

Midday, groundtime. The shadows showed it. Pyanfar joined the others and looked where Chur pointed, to the buildings which showed on a grassy horizon: Chanur Holding; and Faha was farther still. And the mountains which hove up blue distances on their right-there lay Mahn Holding. Close indeed.

"Come on," Pyanfar said. She had made herself dizzy with that outward gaze, and shortened her focus to the rocky stretch before her. Horizons went the wrong .way; and the colors, gods, the colors. . . . The world had a garish brightness, a plenitude of textures; and the scents of grass and dust; and the feel of the warm wind. One could get drunk on it; one had enough of it in a hurry, and the sight filled her with a moment's irrational panic, a slipping from one reality to the other.

"Not so far," Hilfy panted, latest from the world. "They'll have heard that landing. He'll know."

"He's got to," Haral agreed.

So will others, Pyanfar thought, deliberately slowing her pace. Rushing up exhausted-no; that was not the wise thing to do. Tully checked his long strides as they did; the Llun who had trailed behind them caught up. Manes were windblown, Tully's most of all. The sun beat down with a gentle heat: autumn, Pyanfar realized, looking about her at the heavy-headed grasses, the colors of the land. Insects started up in panic, settled again.

"They'll surely send a car," Chur said. "If they've spotted us."

"Huh," Pyanfar said; it was her own hope. But none had showed thus far, no plume of dust, nothing of the sort. "They may," she said, "have their hands full. No good any of them leaving, not if things are heating up."

No one answered that. It called for nothing.

She kept walking, out to the fore of the others. Familiar ground, this. She had known it as a child. They reached a brook and waded it ankle deep, came up the other side, and by now Tully was limping-"He's cut his foot," Chur said, supporting him while he lifted it to examine it. "You come,"

Pyanfar said unforgivingly, and he nodded, caught his breath and kept going.

Not so far now. They joined the road that led to the gates, easier going for Tully, for all of them. Pyanfar wiped her mane from her eyes and surveyed the way ahead, where the gold stone outer walls of Chanur Holding stretched across the horizon, no defense, but a barrier to garden pests and the like-the open plains lapped up against it in grassy waves. Beyond it-more buildings of the same gold stone. There would be cars . . . the airport was behind them, down the road; they would have come in from there, all the interested parties and the hangers-on, save only the adventurers from the hills, from Hermitage and sanctuaries, who would come overland and skulk about the fringes; vehicles would have driven in along this road, gone through the gates, parked on the field behind the house . . . that was where they always put visitors.