C Cherryh: Chanur's Homecoming

Geran took that in and the slump left her shoulders and the grief left her eyes so earnestly and so trustingly it hurt.

Gods, Chur thought, now I’ve done it, I’ve promised her, haven’t I?

Stupid to promise. Now I have to. I’ll lose. It’ll hurt, gods rot it. I’ll die somewhere in jump, O gods, that’s an awful way, to go out there, in the dark between the stars, all naked.

“Not easy,” Chur murmured, heading down to sleep. “Easier to go out, Gery. But I’ll get back up there, b’gods. Don’t you let the captain assign me out. Hear?”

“Chair’s waiting.”

“You want to fill me in, treat me like I was crew?” It was hard to stay interested in life, with the sedatives drawing a curtain between herself and the universe. She remembered her promise and fought to keep it. “What f’godssakes is going on out there?”

“Same as before. We’re sitting at dock waiting for that gods-rotted kif to make up his mind to go left or right, and so far nothing’s worse.”

“Or better.”

“Or better. Except they’re still talking. And the hakkikt’s still real polite.”

“Jik hasn’t cracked.”

“Hasn’t cracked. Gods help him.”

“How long are we going to sit here?”

“Wish we all knew. Captain’s figuring like mad, Haral’s laying in six, seven courses into comp. We may get home yet.”

“Doublecross the kif? They’d hunt us.” Her voice grew thick. “Meetpoint’s the only way out of here. That’s where we’ve got to go.”

Geran said nothing. The threads grew vague, but they always came to the same point. Goldtooth had left them and his partner in the lurch and run for Meetpoint, and Tully’s folk were headed into the Compact in numbers, all of which meant that a very tired hani who wanted the universe to be what it had been in her youth was doomed to see things turned upside down, doomed to see Chanur allied with kif, with a species that ate little black things and behaved badly on docksides, and did other things an honest hani preferred not to think about.

Gods-rotted luck, she thought; and thought again about the hills of home, and the sins of her youth, one of which she had left with its father; but it was only a gods-be boy, and not a marriage anyhow, and she had never written back to the man, who was no happier at getting a son than she was at birthing one (a daughter would have done him some good in his landless station), but his sisters would treat the boy all right. Rest of the family never had known much about it, except Geran knew, of course; and it was before she had joined The Pride . The kid would have come of age and gone off to Hermitage years ago; and probably died, the way surplus males died. Waste. Ugly waste.

Wish I’d known my son.

Maybe I could find him. If his father’s still alive. If he’s like na Khym, if—Maybe, maybe if I could’ve talked to him he’d have sense like na Khym.

Never asked that man—never much talked to him. Never occurred to me to talk to him. Isn’t that funny? Now I’d wonder what he was thinking. I’d think he was thinking. I’d find me a man and make love to him and gods, I’d ask him what he was thinking and he’d—

—I’d probably confuse him all to a mahen hell, I would; aren’t many men like Khym Mahn, gods-rotted nice fellow, wished I’d known him ’fore the captain got him. If he was ever for anybody but her. If a clan lord like him could’ve ever looked at an exile like me. I’d like to’ve loved a man like him. I’d have got me a daughter off him, I would’ve.

But what’s the captain got of him? Gods-rotted son like Kara Mahn and a gods-forsaken whelp of a daughter like Tahy, no help there, gods fry ’em both, no sense, no ears to listen, no respect—doublecrossing gods-be cheats.

Want to find me a man. Not a pretty one. A smart one. Man I can sit and talk with.

If I ever get home.

She pursed her lips and spat.

“You all right?”

“Sure, I’m sleeping, get out of here. I’m trying to get my rest. What in the gods’ name are those black things?”

“Don’t ask. We don’t.”

The lift opened belowdecks, and Hilfy Chanur, coming back onshift, stepped back hastily as the doors whisked back and gave her Skkukuk all unexpected, Skkukuk clutching a squealing cageful of nasty black shapes, which apparition sent her ears flat; but Tirun and Tully were escorting the kif, which got Hilfy’s ears back up again and laid the fur back down between her shoulderblades. She stepped aside in distaste to let the kif out and stood there staring as the door waited to her hold on the call button.

“We think we got ’em.” Tirun said.

“They got,” Tully said, amplifying his broken pidgin with a gesture topside. “Eat filter. Lousy mess.”

“Good gods, what filter?”

“Airfilter in number one,” Tirun said. “Sent particles all over the system: we’re going to have to do a washdown on the number two and the main.”

“Make electric,” Tully said.

“We made it real uncomfortable in that airshaft,” Tirun said.

“Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said, “these are Akkhtish life. They are adaptive. Very tough.”

The creatures started fighting at the sound of his voice. He whacked the cage with his open hand and the Dinner subsided into squeals.

“Gods,” Hilfy said with a shudder of disgust.

“Two of them are about to litter,” Tirun said. “Watch these gods-forsaken things. They’re born fighting.”

“Tough,” Skkukuk said conversationally, and hit the Dinner’s cage again, when the squeals sharpened. There was quiet, except for a hiss. “Kkkt. Excuse me.” He clutched the cage to him and headed off down the hall with the Dinner in his arms, happy as ever a kif could be.

Hilfy’s lip lifted; an involuntary shiver went through her as Tirun turned and went to keep an eye on the kif. Tully stayed, and set a hand on her shoulder, squeezed hard.

Tully knew. He had been with her in the hands of the kif, this same Sikkukkut who was their present ally; who sent them this slavish atrocity Skkukuk to haunt the corridors and leave his ammonia-stink everywhere in the air, a smell which brought back memories—

A second time Tully squeezed her shoulder with his clawless fingers. Hilfy turned and looked at him, looking up a bit; but he was not so tall, her Tully, that she could not look him in the eyes this close. Those eyes were blue and usually puzzled, but in this moment there was worry there. Two voyages and what they had been through together had taught her to read the nuances of his expressions.

“He’s not bad kif,” Tully said.

That was so incredible an opinion from him she blinked and could not believe she had heard it.

“He’s kif,” Tully said. “Same I be human. Same you hani. He be little kif, try do what captain want.”

She would not have heard it from anyone else. She had her mouth open when Tully said it. But this was a man who had been twice in their hands; and seen his friends die; and killed one of them himself to save him from Sikkukkut: more, he had been there with her in that kifish prison, and if Tully was saying such an outrageous thing it might have any number of meanings, but emptyheaded and over-generous it was not. She stared at him trying to figure out if he had missed his words in hani: the translator they had rigged up to their com sputtered helpless static at his belt, constant undertone when he spoke his thickly accented hani or pidgin. Maybe he was trying to communicate some crazy human philosophy that failed to come through.

“Little kif,” Tully said again. She had lived among kif long enough to know what he meant by that, that kif were nothing without status, and that kif of low status were everyone’s victims.