Chanur's Legacy (42 page)

“Kkkt.” This time it was laughter, laughter that shook Vikktakkht’s stillness, and rippled around the room.
“Nakkti skskiti.
That
is
Kshshti. A banner for all winds.”

“I’m not. And I’m not such a fool I think kif think like hani. Or that a
hakkikt
of your stature, who wished to contact us, would make two attempts designed to scare us without killing us.”

“Kkkt.” A motion of Vikktakkht’s hand. “You think we have no subtlety?”

“Blowing out a docking port on Kshshti?”

More laughter, that clicked and hissed all around the room.

“Salutation,” Vikktakkht said, “from the
mekt-hakkikt.
Who assured me you would not be diverted by her rival.”

By Paehisna-ma-to, he meant; and meant that Pyanfar leaned to the kif, to
kifish
support, which would always be loyal, while they feared the subordinates that feared
her...

She felt queasy at the stomach, having reasoned her way to that truth, having looked at it from all sides, and having decided that this
was
a place Pyanfar expected her mail delivered—however dark the paths Pyanfar traveled these days.

Maybe Paehisna-ma-to had reason, the thought came fluttering to the surface.

And drowned. Whoever had shot Chihin was not her friend. Whoever had killed innocent stsho and mahen security personnel was not her friend.

“And No’shto-shti-stlen?” she asked.

“An ally with enemies in Llyene. Hence
gtst
moved to form an alliance with the ambassador to Urtur, of a nature which you doubtless know and Ana-kehnandian does not.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve not seen the object.”

Caution held her tongue. Even with this so-named ally of Pyanfar’s. “What would that tell me if I could?”

“The nature of the alliance. No’shto-shti-stlen’s position within it, which of three.”

“You mean sex?”

“An emblem of proposed gender.”

She hoped she kept her mouth closed. Kif, fortunately, had no embarrassment in such matters.

“You have come here to present this to Atli-lyen-tlas. Is this not so?”

“Yes, hakkikt,”

“We have provided the ambassador such comforts as we found possible. But I think the ambassador would be far more comfortable on your ship.”

“Possibly so,
hakkikt.”

“ Sagikkt aku gtst!”

Bring the stsho! the
hakkikt
said, and with no delay whatsoever a door opened, admitting the blinding spectrum of a paler sun. There was a moderate commotion in that quarter. Hilfy turned her head cautiously and saw, past Hallan’s shoulder, kif moving within that light. A waft of perfume came out, and kif made soft sounds of disgust.

Then came the spindly outline of a stsho body,
gtst
gossamer robes backlit against the glare in her watering eyes. She was blind, as the stsho seemed to be, hesitatingly as
gtst
moved; so likewise the kif. Perhaps, she thought, it was eloquent of the condition within the Compact itself.

But the creature did not seem to get
gtst
equilibrium in the dark, and had to be guided by
gtst
kifish attendants. Something’s wrong, Hilfy thought, rising from her chair. Something’s vastly wrong with this stsho.

“Perhaps,” Vikktakkht said, “your care will restore
gtst.
The practice of medicine is not a priority among our species. One argues for it. But medicine is still a secretive matter, practiced upon oneself. There is not, on this entire station, a medical facility, only a few supplies.”

“I would first suggest,” she said, she thought politely, “that
gtst
not be required to walk.”

Not in time.
Gtst
collapsed. Fala made an instinctive move to assist and safeties went off guns all around the room. Fala froze. Hallan lurched for his feet.

“Hakkt!”
Vikktakkht said sharply, that untranslatable word that meant something like Off guard, and safeties went back on, a more random clicking.

“And if you would tell your crew to go back on station power,” Vikktakkht said, “station central control would be far more easy in its dealings.”

“They’re coming back,” Tiar breathed, and only then realized the degree to which her nerves were wound, when she heard the advisement from
Tiraskhti
com, on aural-only.

“/’// trust it when they gel into the airlock, “ Chihin said in her ear, on ops com; and Tarras: “They’re saying they’ve got gtst excellency!”

“I’ll believe
that
when I see it,” Tiar said. And made up her mind she would start believing it when she heard from the captain’s own pocket com, and when there didn’t come any of the codewords for coercion that were in the Manual. She sat gnawing her mustaches to ragged ruin, and then got that thin, static-fractured advisement:

“This is Legacy One, You’re going to see a transport truck pull up. Only bus this station runs. We ‘re all right, we ‘re coming home, we got our addressee, put on a pot of gfi, we could use it.”

“That means it’s really all right,”
Tarras said, the edge of excitement beginning to grow in her voice. And the Manual was on the bridge: they’d fed into com voice analysis every codeword that might come through. If Tarras said it was clear it was clear, and there was a next step.

“Chihin, get down to the lock, arm, don’t open till they’re on it, we don’t trust it.”

“I’m gone’’ Chihin said, and cleared her board to Tarras.

Everybody was all right. There was a little tremor in Tiar’s hand as she reached to key aux monitoring over to her two low-level screens.

Everybody was all right. They’d gotten the stsho,
ker
Hilfy had pulled it off somehow and they could go to Meetpoint with Chanur honor intact.

Please the gods it didn’t blow up in their faces.

But she didn’t think she should advise
gyst
excellency yet, stsho being the easily worried creatures they were. She didn’t think they should provide any good news until they knew there were no catches.

And even after the captain and the rest of them were secure in the airlock
she
wasn’t going to be able to leave station. According to the Book, which had gotten them through it this far, the senior officer parked herself in the number one station, kept systems up, kept a close monitor on transmissions around them, whether or not they could decode them, the number of coded transmissions versus non-coded: and if anything surged out of recent parameters-Then the senior officer was permitted to panic.

Gtst
excellency Atli-lyen-tlas was not at all in good shape—half-dead, to Hilfy’s eyes; and when the driver pulled up in front of the
Legacy’s
berth (most adamantly, she had insisted neither Hallan
nor
Fala drive) she called on
na
Hallan to vault down to the deck and stand ready to receive
gtst
excellency into his arms.

“She is a very large hani,”
gtst
excellency was heard to mutter. “She will not drop us.”

“She won’t,” Hilfy said, and
na
Hallan shut his mouth and reached up his hands. “She’s a very competent person.” At which
na
Hallan gave her a startled look, as if to ask did she possibly mean that.

But she had her hands full of fragile stsho at the moment, and together she and Fala lowered Atli-lyen-tlas into Hallan’s arms.

“I have your honor,” Hallan assured
gtst.

Hilfy clapped Fala on the shoulder, and the two of them jumped down. A whole squad of kif had turned up, with rifles evident, and that was worrisome, but their driver got out and waved a black-sleeved arm toward the ramp and the waiting kif.

“Essscort,” the driver said. “The
hakkikt’s.
Sssafe.”

It wasn’t how she defined safe, but they walked and the kif didn’t threaten them and didn’t move, so she supposed there were no orders on the part of the
hakkikt
to try to rush the airlock. “Watch their hands,” she said to Fala. “Rule of measured threat. You did just fine in there. Let’s get home.”

Fala didn’t say anything but “Aye, captain.” The kids were trying to be right. They walked past the kif, with the half-fainting stsho, and up the rampway. The access gate opened for them, which argued somebody was observing from where they’d been ordered to be, and possibly someone was waiting for them downside, which they were supposed to be. That gate shut, meaning, however fragile the tube that connected them to their ship, they were alone behind seal, and there was, one hoped, no kifish guard at their lock.

“Nobody behind us,” Fala said, having actually cast a look back to see.

“Bravo, kid, you’re learning.” She punched in the pocket-corn. “Tiar, Chihin, Tarras?”

“We’re on it, captain, lock’s about to open. “

Upon which, it did, pale and inviting light.

Things happened, things happened on schedule and with checks, if the crew had had to do it with the manual in one hand and thumbing from page to page. She found her own anxiety like a spring slowly let go—as if somehow she didn’t have to check up, she didn’t have to
wonder
was anything unseen-to: things were getting checked, and when the airlock shut behind them, and the air was cycling, she could feel a queasy confidence someone was monitoring the situation outside, without her—to her giddy relief—having to think of everything at once and give the orders.

She by the gods resented it. Py scored a point, and she was absolutely scowling when the airlock door opened and it was Chihin facing Fala and Hallan with a double armload of stsho.

“We need the gurney,” she said shortly. “We need
gtst
excellency to the sickbay and we need the medical supplies, probably vitamin and mineral supplements—“

“A bath,”
gtst
breathed, “oh, estimables, a bath, among first things, cleanly light, wai, the distress and the suffering I have endured—“

“Gtst
shows improvement,” Hilfy said dryly.
“Na
Hallan, never mind the gurney, just carry
gtst,
“

“Aye, captain,” he said, and walked on.

“Tarras,” Hilfy said, “to the dispensary.” “She’s down there,” Chihin said. “She’s already setting up.”

Good gods, initiative. Right decisions. The
crew
knew what was going on, the
crew
all of a sudden knew it was their responsibility to move in advance of orders: it wasn’t—it never had been that they didn’t know what they were doing. Three of them had come in with experience.

The captain hadn’t. And the old women had been right: Rhean had been right: she
hadn’t
had the experience.

Mark another one for aunt Pyanfar. The crew wasn’t unhappy, the
crew
suddenly had the latitude to do what it reasonably thought it ought to, the crew might be a little gods-be scared at the moment, but it was by the ever-living gods functioning ahead of the game for the first time in recent memory.

“I want a—“—thorough check against stsho parameters, she was about to say when she faced Tarras in the lab, but Tarras said to Hallan: “Put
gtst
excellency there, I’ve got the tests set up.”

She could on the one hand feel superfluous. On the other she had enough on her hands—like getting the entire conversation down as she recalled it, like running it through the kifish translation program, looking for significances and omissions.

The captain wasn’t strictly speaking a flight officer on this ship, but the captain with her head clear could make judgment calls that a protocol officer could make—and if there was a time to make them it was now.

Tell
gtst
excellency Tlisi-tlas-tin that
gtst
excellency Atli-Iyen-tlas was lying disreputable in sickbay? Not yet. Not until they knew whether
gtst
excellency was going to live or die—or whether
gtst
excellency
was
still Atli-lyen-tlas.

There was a time one was superfluous, and Hallan had learned to know it. He hovered near the doorway while Tarras gave orders to Fala, and Fala gave him looks while she was carrying this and carrying that.

“I
do
like you,” he contrived to say, when Fala’s fetching and carrying paused her near him. “I really do, Fala, I just—“

Fala retrieved the kit she was after and went across the small surgery to where Tarras was ministering to
gtst
excellency with small and delicate needles, murmuring words of encouragement, assuring
gtst
that it was exactly what the computer had said to do.

Fala didn’t want to talk to him. He didn’t entirely blame her. He didn’t feel welcome here, where people who knew what they were doing were trying to save the stsho gentleman’s—or lady’s—life...

He found it more convenient to edge toward the door, and when no one seemed to notice that fact, to edge out it, and into the main lower corridor.

But ops was down there, and Chihin was working lowerdeck ops, and he didn’t want to go down there; and did, desperately...

Except it was too desperate and dangerous a situation to cause anybody more trouble than he had.

He wanted to apologize to Fala; and, really, truly, he wanted to patch it up: yes, he was attracted to Fala, at least she was pretty and she was clever and she was somebody he wanted very much to have like him, except it wasn’t anything like the feeling he got when he even thought about Chihin.

Which told him it was the last place in the universe he needed to be when things were at a crisis and Chihin was supposed to be doing her job and there was a problem between them.

No business on a ship, the captain had said; and he didn’t want to prove that by creating another problem for the captain. The crew lounge was where the captain had appointed him to go when she wanted him out of trouble and out of sight, and he went down the corridor as carefully as under fire, avoiding Chihin and avoiding any chance of running into the stsho, and got as far as the lift and rode it topside.

Then he could draw an easier breath. Then he could feel as if he wasn’t in the way. And he soft-footed it as far as the corridor that led to the lounge.