C Cherryh - Chanur's Homecoming

“What are you talking about, for godssakes?”

“You no damn fool. You see. You see clear. Sikkukkut get power by create little hakkikt and take what they got. Let them do work. He lot smart kif. Till he make you hakkikt and try take what you got. You got the Person-thing. He think he got more, he damn lot mistake. We don’t mistake. This kif here don’t mistake. You got whole thing in you hands. Me, / recognize. Same like this kif. Long time.”

“No. My gods, no!” She waved her hand, cast a look at the hani behind her, at her crew and back again.

“War, friend. What I tell you happen? Not war like ground war. War like new kind thing. Like crazy thing.”

“Then send your gods-be human friends home! Out! Turn those ships around, restore the balance, for godssake!”

“How you guarantee Anuurn be safe, a? How you heal stsho? How you ’splain these human we got change mind? How you deal with knnn, a?”

A sense of panic closed in on her. Not alone because it was all logical, and the pieces were there. She looked around again at the hani lines, at her own people, at some faces gone hard and ears gone flat. At others, spacers, who just looked worried. Like her crew.

Like Goldtooth.

And not a sound from the kif.

The politicians would hang her, eventually, when all the furor died down. It was the last shred of Chanur’s reputation they asked for.

“Yeah,” she said. “Well, it’s clear, isn’t it? We just tell these humans they have to leave. That you consulted with some high Personage and there’s a lot of trouble and they just have to turn those ships around and get back the other side of that border. Which we can do, can’t we? It just might give Skkukuk here a good chance to go home in style, number one fine-a whole shift in policy, a new mekt-hakkikt, a new directive. I’m not real interested in going into kifish space, Skkukuk my friend: I’m just real pleased for you to be hakkikt over all the kif you can get your hands on. And all you have to do is hold that border tight once the humans cross it outbound.”

“Kkkt.” Skkukuk drew in a hissing breath. “Mekt-hakkikt, you justify my faith in you.”

“You won’t cross into mahen territory.”

“They won’t cross into ours.”

“They won’t.” Looking at Jik. And Goldtooth. Goldtooth lowered his small ears and bowed his head slowly, with reluctance.

“I hear,” he said quietly. And made the same gesture to Jik, and to the Personage as he turned away.

Something’s wrong with him. Something mahen and crazy, and something I don’t know: I’ve done something to him. I’ve beaten him.

Two plans. Two treaties. The mahendo’sat rise and fall on their successes; and they disown the failures.

“If I’ve got to run this business for a while,” she said to Jik, “I want him. What would he think about it?”

Jik’s eyes flickered and something lightened there. “He tell you you got damn fine fellow.”

“This Personage of yours-” She tilted a careful ear toward the robed mahe with the Voice. “Iji?”

“Same. I talk for him. He don’t got good pidgin. Same his Voice. He also Personage, see you got same Person-thing, lot strong. He say-God make Personage. He-” Jik gave a helpless gesture. “He say God make lot peculiar experiment.”

She laid her ears back, trying to put that on one side or the other. “Tell him-gods, just tell him I’ll do what I have to. First thing-” She put her hands in the waist of her trousers. They were icy; her feet were numb from the decking. And it was still raw fear. “Tully.”

“Captain?”

The humans were first. She kept her shoulder to the han representatives and to the Llun; and felt a dull shock to find Skkukuk’s armed presence a positive comfort on her left, where it regarded breaking that news.

“What we do, we talk a little trade, talk up all the trouble they got to watch out for. I figure maybe they’ve seen enough to worry about. Maybe we just tell them it gets worse up ahead.”

“They go,” Tully said finally, coming out of that small fluorescent-lit room on Gaohn dockside, where mahendo’sat and kif and humans and hani argued. Armed. Every one of them, since the kif were worse without their weapons at hand than with. And they went at it in shifts, till Tully came out in a waft of that godsawful multispecies stale air, and leaned against the doorframe. “They go.” He looked drowned. Sweat stuck his hair to his forehead and his eyes looked bruised. After three days at this back-and-forth, herself out of the room for clean air and a new grip on her temper, agreement was like the floor going away.

“Go? Leave? They say yes?”

Gods, who threatened them? What happened? What went wrong? Belligerence was not the strategy she chose. Discouragement was. She had hammered this home with Skkukuk until the deviousness and the advantage of the tactic slowly blossomed in his narrow kifish skull, and his red-rimmed eyes showed a distinctive interest, which, gods help them all, might turn up as something new in kifish strategy.

“They say yes,” Tully said, and made a ship-going motion with his flat hand. “Go way home. Kif and mahendo’sat go with. First mahendo’sat, then kif, with few hani. You got find hani ship go. Make passage ’long kif territory.”

“That bastard.” Meaning Skkukuk, who had ulterior motives in running a parade of exiting humans right through kifish territory. It was also the shortest route. And Tully just hung there against the wall blinking in his own sweat and smelling godsawful no matter how much perfume he dosed himself with. He picked it up off the others. They all did. But overheated human still had its own distinctive aroma.

“Good?” he asked.

“Gods.” She drew a deep breath and took him by the shoulder on her way to the door. He had to go back in. They still needed him. The mechanical translators were a disaster. And he looked all but out on his feet. “Yes. Good. Thank gods. Can you go a little longer? Another hour?”

“I do.” Hoarse and desperate-sounding.

“Tully. You can go with them. You understand. Go home.”

He blinked at her. Shook his head. He had that gesture back. “Here. The Pride .”

“Tully. You don’t understand. We got trouble. We’re all right now. After this-I can’t say. I don’t know that Chanur won’t be arrested. Or worse than that. I have enemies, Tully. Lot of enemies. And if something happens to me and Chanur you’d be alone. Bad mess. You understand that? I can’t say you’ll be safe. I can’t even say that for myself or the crew.”

He did not understand. The words, maybe. But not the way the han paid off people like Ayhar, like Tahar, who was still not in a mood to come in. Gods knew what they reserved for Chanur.

“I friend.”

“Friend. Gods. They owe you plenty, Tully. But you got to get out of here with somebody.”

His mobile eyes shifted toward the door, the same as a hani slanting an ear. They. “Not good I go with.”

It made sense then. Too much. “They got the han’s way of saying thanks, huh? Same you, same me with the hani. Gods-rotted mess, Tully.”

He just looked at her.

And they went in one after the other. To get down to charts and precise routes.

Across the table from a tired, surly lot of humans.

Tully talked again, from his seat halfway down the table. In a quiet, colorless tone.

What came back sounded heated. But not when Tully rendered it. Simply: “They go. Want us come home with.”

“No,” the Llun said, before the mahen Personage got a word in. Skkukuk just sat and clicked to himself.

“This isn’t a good time,” Pyanfar said. Being an old trader. Tully rendered that in some fashion. “Knnn out there.” And he rendered that, which got surlier frowns.