Pride of Chanur (9 page)

No, she concluded. It should not. Everyone who got hands on it would have plans for this creature, of one kind and another, and perhaps it sensed that: hence its perpetually sullen and doleful look. She had her own plans, to be sure.

He, Hilfy insisted at every opportunity. Her first voyage, a tragic (and safely unavailable) alien prince. Adolescence. Gods.

From the main section of the com board, outside transmission buzzed, whined, lapsed into a long convolute series of wails and spine-ruffling pipings. She jumped in spite of herself, sat down, keyed in the translator on com. Knnn, the screen informed her, which she already knew. Song. No recognizable identity. No numerical content. Range: insufficient input.

That kind frequented Urtur too, miners who worked without lifesupport in the methane hell of the moon Uroji and found it home. Odd folk in all senses, many-legged nests of hair, black and hating the light. They came to a station to dump ores and oddments, and to snatch furtively at whatever trade was in reach before scuttling back into the darknesses of their ships. Tc'a might understand them . . . and the chi, who were less rational ... but no one had ever gotten a clear enough translation out of a tc'a to determine whether the tc'a in turn made any sense of the knnn. The knnn sang, irrationally, pleased with themselves; or lovelorn; or speaking a language. No one knew (but possibly the tc'a, and the tc'a never discussed any topic without wending off into a thousand other tangents before answering the central questions, proceeding in their thoughts as snake-fashioned as they did in their physical movements). No one had gotten the knnn to observe proper navigation: everyone else dodged them, having no other alternative. Generally they did give off numerical messages, which the mechanical translators had the capability to handle-but they were a code for specific situations . . . trade, or coming in, a blink code. There was nothing unusual in knnn presence here, a creature straying where it would, oblivious to oxygen-breather quarrels. There still came the occasional ping or clang of dust and rock against The Pride's hull, the constant rumbling of the rotational core, the whisper of air in the ducts. The deadness of the instruments depressed her spirits. Screens stared back in the shadow of the bridge like so many blinded eyes.

And they were out here drifting with kif and rocks and a knnn who had no idea of the matters at issue. "Captain," Tirun's voice broke in. "Hearing you." "Got a knnn out there."

"Hearing that too. What are Hilfy and Haral doing about the Outsider?"

"They've gone after him; I'm picking that up. He's not making any trouble."

"Understood. They're on their way up here. Keep your ear to the outside comflow; going to be busy up here."

"Yes, captain."

The link broke off. Pyanfar dialed the pager to pick up the translator channel, received the white-sound of hani words. Everything seemed quiet. Eventually she heard the lift in operation, and heard steps in the corridor leading to the bridge.

He came like an apparition against the brighter corridor light beyond, tall and angular, with two hani shapes close behind him. He walked hesitantly into the dimness of the bridge itself, clear now to the eyes . . . startlingly pale mane and beard, pale skin mottled with bruises and the raking streaks of his wound, sealed with gel but angry red. Someone's blue work breeches, drawstring waisted and loose-kneed, accommodated his tall stature. He walked with his head a little bowed, under the bridge's lower overhead-not that he had to, but that the overhead might feel a little lower than he was accustomed to-he stopped, with Hilfy and Haral behind him on either side.

"Come ahead," Pyanfar urged him farther, and rose from her place to sit braced against the comp console, arms folded. The Outsider still had a sickly look, wobbly on his feet, but she reached back to key the lock on comp, which could only be coded free again, then looked back again at the Outsider . . . who was looking not at her, but about him at the bridge with an expression of longing, of-what feeling someone might have who had lately lost the freedom of such places.

He came from a ship, then, she thought. He must have.

Hilfy stood behind him. Haral moved to the other aisle, blocking retreat in that direction should he conceive some sudden impulse. They had him that way in a protective triangle, her, Hilfy, Haral; but he leaned unsteadily against the number-two cushion which was nearest him and showed no disposition to bolt. He wore the pager at his waist, had gotten the audio plug into his ear, however uncomfortable it might be for him. Pyanfar reached up and tightened her own, dialed the pager to receive, looked back at him from her perch against the counter. "All right?" she asked him, and his face turned toward her.

"You do understand," she said. "That translator works both ways. You worked very hard on it. You knew well enough what you were doing, I'll reckon. So you've got what you worked to have. You understand us. You can speak and make us understand you. Do you want to sit down? Please do."

He felt after the bend of the cushion and sank down on the arm of it.

"Better," Pyanfar said. "What's your name, Outsider?"

Lips tautened. No answer.

"Listen to me," Pyanfar said evenly. "Since you came onto my ship, I've lost my cargo and hani have died-killed by the kif. Does that come through to you? I want to know who you are, where you came from, and why you ran to my ship when you could have gone to any other ship on the dock. So you tell me. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you have to do with the kif and why my ship, Outsider?"

"You're not friends to the kif."

Loud and clear. Pyanfar drew in a breath, thrust her hands into her waistband before her and regarded the Outsider with a pursed-lip smile. "So. Well. No, we've said so; I'm not working for the kif and I'm no friend of theirs. Negative. Does the word stowaway come through? Illegal passenger? People who go on ships and don't pay?"

He thought that over, as much of it as did come through, but he had no answer for it. He breathed in deep breaths as if he were tired . . . jumped as a burst of knnn transmission came through the open com. He looked anxiously toward that bank, hands clenched on the cushion back.

"Just one of the neighbors," Pyanfar said. "I want an answer, Outsider. Why did you come to us and not to another ship?"

She had gotten his attention back. He looked at her with a thoughtful gnawing of a lip, a movement finally which might be a shrug. "You sit far from the kif ship. And you laugh."

"Laugh?"

He made a vague gesture back toward Hilfy and Haral. "Your crew work outside the ship, they laugh. They tell me no, go ####no weapons toward me. ### I come back ###."

"Into the rampway, you mean." Pyanfar frowned. "So. What did you plan to do in my ship? To steal? To take weapons? Is that what you wanted?"

"##### no ####"

"Slower. Speak slower for the translator. What did you want on the ship?"

He drew a deep breath, shut his eyes briefly as if trying to collect words or thoughts. Opened them again. "I don't ask weapons. I see the rampway . . . here with hani, small afraid."

"Less afraid of us, were you?" She was hardly flattered. "What's your name? Name, Outsider."

"Tully," he said. She heard it, like the occasional com sputter, from the other ear ... a name like the natural flow of his language, which was purrs and moans combined with stranger sounds.

"Tully," she repeated back; he nodded, evidently recognizing the effort. She touched her own chest. Pyanfar Chanur is my name. The translator can't do names for you. Py-an-far. Cha-nur."

He tried. Pyanfar was recognizable ... at least that he purred the rhythm into his own tongue. "Good enough," she said. She sat more loosely, linked her hands in her lap. "Civilized. Civilized beings should deal with names. Tully.-Are you from a ship, Tully, or did the kif take you off some world?"

He thought about that. "Ship," he admitted finally.

"Did you shoot at them first? Did you shoot at the kif first, Tully?"

"No. No weapons. My ship have no weapons."

"Gods, that's no way to travel. What should I do with you? Take you back to what world, Tully?"

His hands tightened on the back of the cushion. He stared at her bleakly past it. "You want same they want. I don't say."

"You come onto my ship and you won't tell me. Hani are dead because of you, and you won't tell me."

"Dead."

"Kif hit a hani ship. They wanted you, Tully. They wanted you. Don't you think I should ask questions? This is my ship. You came to it. Don't you think you owe me some answers?"

He said nothing. Meant to say nothing, that was clear. His lips were clamped. Sweat had broken out on his face, glistening in the dim light.

"Gods rot this translator," Pyanfar said after a moment. "All right, so somebody treated you badly too. Is it better on this ship? Do we give you the right food? Have you enough clothes?"

He brushed at the trousers. Nodded unenthusiastically.

"You don't have to agree. Is there anything you want?"

"Want my door #."

"What, open?"

"Open."

"Huh."

His shoulders sagged. He had not expected agreement on that, it was evident. He made a vague motion of his hand about their surroundings. "Where are we? The sound. . . ."

The dust brushing past the hull. It had been background noise, a maddening whisper they lived with. Down in lower-deck, he would have heard a lot of it. "We're drifting," she said. "Rocks and dust out there."

"We sit at a jump point?"

"Star system." She reached and cut on the telescope in the observation bubble, bringing the image onto the main screen. The scope tracked to Urtur itself, the inferno of energy in the center of the dusty lens-shaped system, a ringed star which flung out tendrils the movement of which took centuries, ropy filaments dark against the blaze of the center. The image cast light on the Outsider's face, a moment of wonder: Urtur deserved that. She saw his face and rose to her feet, moved to the side of this shaggy-maned Outsider-a calculated move, because it was her art, to trade, to know the moment when a guard was down. "I tell you," she said, catching him by the arm-and he shivered, but he made no protest at being drawn to his feet. He towered above her as she pointed to the center of the image. "Telescope image, you see. A big system, a horde of planets and moons-The dark rings there, that's where the planets sweep the dust and rocks clear. There's a station in that widest band, orbiting a gas giant. The system is uninhabited except for mahendo'sat miners and a few knnn and tc'a who think the place is pleasant. Methane breathers. But a lot of miners, a lot of people of all kinds are in danger right now, in there, in that center. Urtur is the name of the star. And the kif are in there somewhere. They followed us when we jumped to this place, and now a lot of people are in danger because of you. Kif are there, you understand?"

"Authority." His skin was cold under her fingerpads, his muscles hard and shivering, whether from the relative coolness of the bridge's open spaces or from some other cause. "Authority of this system. Hani?"

"Mahendo'sat station. They don't like the kif much either. No one does, but it's not possible to get rid of them. Mahendo'sat, kif, hani, tc'a, stsho, knnn, chi . . . all trade here. We don't all like each other, but we keep our business to ourselves."

He listened, silent, for whatever he could understand of what she said. Com sputtered again, the whistles and wailing of the knnn.

"Some of them," Pyanfar said, "are stranger than you. But you don't know the names, do you? This whole region of space is strange to you."

"Far from my world," he said.

"Is it?"

That got a misgiving look from him. He pulled away from her hand, looked at her and at the others.

"Wherever it is," Pyanfar said in nonchalance. She looked back at Haral and Hilfy. "I think that's about enough. Our passenger's tired. He can go back to his quarters."

"I want talk you," Tully said. He took hold of the cushion nearest, resisting any attempt to move him. "I want talk."

"Do you?" Pyanfar asked. He reached toward her. She stood still with difficulty-but he did not touch. He drew the hand back. "What is it you want to talk about?"

He leaned, standing, against the cushion with both hands. His pale eyes were intent and wild, and whatever the precise emotion his face registered, it was distraught. "You #### me. Work, understand. I stay this ship and I work same crew. All you want. Where you go. # give me ####."

"Ah," she said. "You're offering to work for your passage."

"Work on this ship, yes."

"Huh." She thrust her hands within her waistband and would have looked down her nose at him, but it was a matter of looking up. "You make a deal, do you? You work for me, Outsider? You do what I say? All right. You rest now. You go back to your cabin and you learn your words and you think how to tell me what the kif want with you-because the kif still want this ship, you understand. They want you, and they'll come after this ship."

He thought about that a moment. Almost he looked as if he might speak. His lips shaped a word and took it back again, and clamped shut. And something sealed in behind his eyes when he did that, a bleakness worse than had ever been there.

It sent a prickle down her spine. This creature is thinking of dying, she thought. It was the look from against the wall, from the corner in the washroom, but colder still. "Hai," she said, in her best dockside manner, and set her hand on his bowed shoulder, roughly but careful with the claws. Shook at him. "Tully. You aren't strong enough yet to work. Enough that you rest. You're safe. You understand me? Hani don't trade with kif."

There was a glimmering then, a sudden break in that seal. He reached out quite unexpectedly and seized her other hand, his blunt fingers both holding and exploring it, the furred web he lacked, the pads of the tips. Pressure hit the center of her hand and the claws came out, only slightly: she was careful, though her ears flattened in warning. To her further distress he set his other hand on her shoulder, then let go both holds and looked about at Haral and Hilfy, then back at her again. Crazy, she judged him; and then she thought about kif, and reckoned that he had license for a little strangeness. "I'll tell you something," she said, "for free. Kif followed you across the Meetpoint dock to my ship; they followed my ship here to Urtur, and right now we're sitting here, just trying to be quiet so the kif don't find us. Trying to decide how best to get out of here. There's one kif in particular, in command of a ship named Hinukka. Akukkakk. ..."