Chanur's Homecoming

“I remind you that you failed miserably with Goldtooth. We assume that you failed there. In certain moments I wonder.”

“In certain moments / wonder, hakkikt; and I still don’t know what he’s up to. I’m more concerned what the humans are up to; and I can tell you plainly-” she held up a forefinger, claw extended,-"Tully doesn’t know. I’ve questioned him closely on it, and I know when that son is lying and when he isn’t. He was a courier who didn’t know his own message; Goldtooth used him and dumped him, which is a little habit of Goldtooth’s that I want to talk to him about. Goldtooth doublecrossed Tully, doublecrossed Jik. Double-crossed me. And to confuse it all he gave me help, in the form of medical supplies we needed. / don’t know how to read his signals. I’m being perfectly frank with you. I can tell you that Ehrran and I aren’t friendly; and she’s dealing with the stsho, which I trust even less. That’s where I stand. I want Jik back. Under my command, hakkikt.”

“Damn,” Jik said. “Hani-”

“He’s honest,” Pyanfar said. “If you do that favor to him, at my request, he’ll be caught in a moral tangle his government won’t like at all. But we don’t need to tell them that, do we? And we don’t need to leave Goldtooth alone to represent the mahendo’sat. Jik supports your side. And if you lose him, hakkikt, you’ll have no chance in a mahen hell of getting the mahendo’sat to make any treaty. Give him to me. I can handle him.”

“Prove it now. Get the truth from him. Have him say where the humans are going, what Ismehanan-min said to him before he left, and what agreements he knows of with the methane-folk.”

Pyanfar let go her breath slowly. Her laboring heart found a new level of panic.

Fool. Now you get what you bargained for. Don’t you, Pyanfar?

But what else is there to do? How do we win anything without this kif?

She looked toward Jik as he shifted his hold on the chair to face her direction. A fine dew of perspiration had broken out around his eyes, running down into his black fur; his eyes glittered in the orange light and the darkness, and there were lines about them she was not accustomed to see there. “Jik,” she said. “You heard him. You know what he wants.”

“I know,” Jik said, with no intimation he was going to say a thing.

“Listen.” She reached out and took hold of his arm where it rested on the chair; she smelled the sweat and there was the stink of drugs in it; drugs and raw terror. “Jik. I need you. Hear? Hear me?”

Jik’s face twisted, showed teeth, settled again in exhaustion. His eyes shut and he got them open again. “Get hell out. Hear?” And he meant more than get out of Harukk: she read that plainly.

“If the hakkikt fails,” she said, “what does that leave us with? Jik. Jik-” There’s a reason I can’t tell you. She tried to send that with her eyes, with the sudden force of her hand; and with her thumb-claw, dug in so hard he winced.

“Damn!” he cried, jerking back; she held on.

“Listen to me. If the hakkikt fails, where are we? That bastard Akkhtimakt-” She tensed the thumb-claw again. J-i-k. In the blink-code. “Do you hear me? Do you hear?”

He no longer pulled back. His hand twitched. “I hear,” he said in a hoarse, distracted voice. “But-”

“You’ll take my orders. Hear?” And: h-u-m-a-n-t-r-e-a-c-h-e-r-y she spelled into his flesh. The sweat ran in rivulets past his eyes, in the thin areas of his facial hair. “Jik. Tell him everything.”

A long moment he hesitated. She felt the tremor of muscles in his arm. The fear-smell grew stronger. The look on his face was a thing to haunt the sleep: he poured all his questions into it, and there was nothing she knew how to send back-let one kif note that hidden move of her thumb on the underside of his hand and they were both in it. But:

T-r-u-s-t, she signaled him. D-o.

He broke away from her eyes. He leaned himself on the other side of the chair, facing Sikkukkut. “Ana say-humans come Meetpoint. Truth. They go fight Akkhtimakt. Gather hani, make fight ’gainst kif. Then got-” His voice broke. “Got-hani, stsho, human, mahendo’sat, all fight kif.”

“And it’s your task,” Sikkukkut said quietly, “to see that I reach Meetpoint to engage my rival Akkhtimakt-all while being attacked by all the others. Is that what your partner told you to do?”

Prolonged silence.

“Answer,” Sikkukkut said.

“He not tell me what he do. He say-say I got go Meetpoint, wait orders.”

“To turn on me at the opportune moment. Kkkkt. And now what will you do?”

“I think he damn fool, hakkikt.” Again Jik’s voice cracked. “I think I first time got better idea, help you take out Akkhtimakt.”

“And then to turn on me.”