Chanur's Homecoming

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.

“Kkkkt,” Skkukuk said, lifting his jaw, which they probably failed to understand.

Tully said something. It was probable that Tully did understand.

They were disposed to go to their ships after that.

“We’ve got it,” she said to the Llun, after, herself and Tully outside in the corridor again with the Llun guard, when it was all adjourning. They were somewhat kin, she and the Llun senior. They kept it remote: the Immunes cherished their neutrality.

“We expect,” the Llun said, “that the mahendo’sat may come up with some reparations.”

Pyanfar’s ears went down. Her jaw dropped. “My gods, we just got the kif and the mahendo’sat settled-”

“You have a peculiar position.”

She went on staring at the Llun.

“Unique influence,” the Llun said.

Trading instincts took over. In a blinding flash. My gods. They need something, don’t they?

Gods save us. The mahendo’sat.

/ can get The Pride running again. Maybe get clear of this port. Bluff them out of arresting us.

“It occurs to the han and the Immunes collectively,” the Llun said, “that if you can do this, you can do other things. You have an extreme influence with the mahendo’sat.”

My gods, my gods, they don’t see yet! The mahendo’sat, the mahendo’sat are all they can see. The stsho and the mahendo’sat. Their precious trading interests. She walked away, stared off down the corridor where her own multispecies escort waited, rattling with weapons. Like the knnn and the tc’a out there, which Jik and Goldtooth swore was a tolerably friendly presence. And a pirate ship which was lying very quiet, but assuredly listening. She knew Tahar, that she would go on listening till she knew it was time to run for it. I’m dangerous. I’m a plague and a danger to them. But they’re mistaken what the danger is.

“Chanur. The han is offering you your land back.”

She turned around, blinked and stared at the Immune. “You mean my son is giving it up. Surrendering the land? Or the han is just confiscating it?”

“They’ll work something out. They’re disposed to work something out.”