Chanur's Homecoming

“I never took you for one. I got that impression early on. And I’ve got to go on walking the track I’ve been walking. Inside. Same as Jik’s done. Till we’ve got Akkhtimakt stopped. There aren’t enough hani ships in all space to do what we have to do, against hunter-ships and gods know what. We need the kif s firepower, even at the risk we’re running. That’s the game I’m playing, Tauran, and you know what I’ll hear from the han if I can even get to ’em. Illegal contacts. Violation of treaties. Illegal personnel for the eternal gods’ sake, on my ship. If somehow we live through this and the han’s still operating, they’ll probably hit us both with a charge of registry violations. That’s how much they understand. You know who we’re dealing with. Those old women are up with every twitch and power shift in the insystem markets, they know who’s leaning where in the vote, they know every move and current in Anuurn affairs, and every dustup in history between the River Hegemony and the Amphictiony of Pesh and every other gods-be particle of past history that isn’t going to matter a whole lot, Tauran, if one incoming rock kills every living thing on the planet back to the bugs and the worms, is it? A whole lot of expertise that’s by the gods useless in the only question that matters, which is what are we going to by the gods do, Tauran, with what we know and where we are, and what we got behind us and ahead of us that we know about and they don’t?”

“I’m hearing you,” Sirany said. There had been a quiet stir about. Chanur crew was up. Tauran crew was still in place. But it was very quiet now. “I’m hearing you. I’m agreeing with you. But I’ve still got to think about this, Chanur.”

“Think all the way to Kura Point. I’m going to send you Sifeny and Fiar back to your shift; let you all work it out. Take my own back to the boards. Human and my husband and the kif and all. With my thanks, her Sirany. They’re good. I don’t like to mess with teams that work. Yours or mine. And we need some crew rested full. For contingencies.”

“You got it.” Sirany released restraints and climbed out of the chair. “Get you a sandwich back here,” she said then, and gathered up her crew, galleyward bound. Pyanfar stared at her retreating back, still hanging onto the seat. In case. The way any spacer held onto things in a moving ship. She looked at her own crew, at sober faces of Chanur who had arrived around her.

Ears lifted. “Good,” Haral said.

“I hope,” she said, and slid a glance Geran’s way, at a face that showed trouble. “How is she?”

Geran shrugged. The woman had gone so gaunt herself that her ribs showed. Her worry was tautly held, made a darker spot above her nose, an indentation in her brow that had gotten to be part of her expression.

“You’re a mess yourself. We need you. Get in there with Sirany’s crew, get some food down you; Tully’ll run some back to Chur. Don’t argue with me, gods rot it, I’ll have your ears. Chur’ll have mine if I get her there without you. Hilfy, get the rest of us up here.” The assigned crew was all there, all settling in as Hilfy’s voice began calling Tully and Khym and Skkukuk on the general speakers.

“Mess,” Pyanfar said, and flung herself into her chair. Haral was beside her, already in control of things. “No sign of Moon Rising.”

There had been a chance. There was less and less. It was four months back at Meetpoint, as hyperlight ran down the starlanes, but not by the way they traveled; whatever had happened there was four, five months old and about to get

older.

“Long time back,” she said, while the data flowed past her.

“Kura’s alive,” Haral said. “Just not talking. Kif scared them plenty. They shut down everything. They got no ships here or they’re all lying silent.”

They had been a long time away from home. And far from the han. “Gods know what the stsho taught us, huh?”

Years the way homework! saw it. That was the way of spacers. To stay young while the worlds aged, and groundlings connived and contrived their little worldly plots and made their gains in the intervals when spacers were strung out between the stars, lost in dreams.

“Kif’s not having any trouble out there. Real fine piece of navigation, that.”

“We got troubles, Skkukuk’s gods-be dinner’s loose again. Got careless with his door open.”

“Or we missed a couple of ’em.”

“What’s it eating, that’s what Sirany wanted to know. That’s what / want to know.”

“Maybe it’s gotten acclimated to electric shock,” Hilfy said, breaking in on station-to-station. “Adaptive, Skkukuk said they were. Akkhtish life.”

She looked straight across at Haral with a sinking feeling about her stomach.

“Lifesupport,” Haral said.

“Check it. Those godsforsaken things eat plastics.”

“We’ll get it.” Haral was out of her seat and headed. “Hilfy, get the menfolk on it. Get Skkukuk!”