Chanur's Homecoming

Geran’s ears went flat and lifted again. There was a drawing round her nose, like pain. “Home, one of these days.”

“Multiple jump?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Maybe, huh?”

“Gods rot it, Chur-”

/ haven’t got the strength. I can’t last it out. Look at her. Gods, look at her. “Listen. You mind your business up for’ard f’godssakes, what d’you want, me make it fine and you marry this ship up with a rock? You pull it together. Me, I’m fine back here. Back here feeding me-” The monitor started going off again. She let it. “When’d you eat, huh? Take care of yourself. I got to worry whether you’re doing your job up there?".

“No ” Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. “I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can.”

“Don’t trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I’ll try to eat. Hear me?”

“Stays the way they set it.”

The monitor beeped again.

“Gods fry that rotted thing!” Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.

“Quiet,” Geran said.

She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.

/ can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.

That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark-she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.

/ can think the way home. Bring us all home.

“Chur?”

“I’ll be with you,” she said. “No worry. Wish they could move this godsrotted rig onto the bridge.” She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. “When?”

“Bring him, captain?” It was not Tirun Araun’s way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun’s ears and put a little stammer in Tirun’s mouth. “That is to say-”

“Skkukuk’s not the one I’m worried about,” Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, auto-rigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader’s honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great

deal; and Tirun’s worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. “How many rings you got, cousin?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. " ’Bout many as proves I’ve got good sense, captain.”

“We get out of this one, cousin, I’ll buy you a dozen more.”

“Huh.” Tirun said. “Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I’ll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most.”

“All of our allies will,” Pyanfar said. “Skkukuk’s safe. He’s on this ship, isn’t he? Kif don’t understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we’d really blow the ship? Couldn’t figure why you’d do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He’ll think it’s a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk’s no different, I think. Tell the son I’m going to give him a job to do: he’ll handle kif-com. I’m putting him under Hilfy’s orders."

“My gods, cap’n.”