Chanur's Homecoming

Gods, I poisoned the whole house. All the other marriages. Ruined my kids-hurt Chanur in the long run, when my daughter turned on Khym and took our staunchest ally out. My doing. All of it mine.

He sighed, a motion of his huge frame against her. “I didn’t mean to say that. Gods blast, Py, I just fouled it up, is all.”

That was his life. That was why he walked on eggshells round those women, lost the kids. O gods. Lost Mahn alone, finally. And came back to Chanur like a beggar when I finally came home. Alienated his sisters. Everything. His sisters-for an outsider. They couldn’t forgive that. And the wives’ clans too. All for one wife. That’s crazy.

But, gods, what I’ve done-for a husband. I think I love this great fool. Isn’t that something? Love him like he was clan and kin. Like he was some part of me. It’s gotten all too close. He needs someone else for balance. Some sense of perspective. So do I. And I’m not interested. Handsomest man on Anuurn could walk in stark naked, I’d rather Khym. Always would. And he’d rather me. I never saw that part of it. I never saw that that was always what was wrong with us, and look what it did. We did so much damage, never meaning to; I did so much to him. Gods, I wish I could turn him over to the others.

They wouldn’t know how to treat him but they’d try. Even Tirun.

He wants so much to be one of them. That’s what he really wants. And they’d forget that. They’d forget because I can’t tell them any way I could make them understand what goes on in him.

Haral would. Haral might make a dent in Tirun, the old reprobate: gods, Khym, if you knew what good behavior Tirun’s been on-not laid a hand on you, has she? Because you’re mine. She’d go off and get drunk with you and take you home nice as milk, she would, because she’s onship and you’re offlimits and gods know she likes you, thinks you’re something special. I don’t know. She might be the real lady with you, you’re so much the gentleman. Funny what a crooked line we walk.

No, if you knew either side of Tirun, really knew her, you’d like her.

Geran and Chur-Gods. I wish you’d known them before this mess. So pretty. But deep water, both of them. And dark. You don’t ever pick a fight with either. But they’ve got a godsrotted broad sense of humor . . . never told you those stories. Not planetside. They don’t go down so much. Not comfortable around groundlings. That’s the awful thing: sometimes you want the land under your feet and the sun on your back, and then you’ve got to deal with the people that live there.

And Hilfy-you see what’s going on, her and Tully? My poor, conservative, ex-groundling man-not a flicker. We’re too well-bred. We don’t see. We don’t know what to do about it, so we don’t see; and we wish them by the gods well, because you and I, Khym, we’re on the downside of our years and we’ve got enough to do just to do for ourselves, in the mess we’re in.

You couldn’t sleep with Hilfy; never her. She’s the odd one out. Species she can get across. But the generations she can’t bridge. Can’t figure me out; gods, she can’t figure herself out. You’d confuse everything. And you’re uncle to her, you always will be, even if you haven’t a corpuscle in common. You’re her substitute for Kohan. She loves her father so much. That’s why she fusses over you like a little grandmother.

Bring her out here, never give her a stopover at home, and her in the growing years-She takes what she can. It was all so pat for us. And we wasted so much time. Good for her, I think. Good for Hilfy.

Thank the gods you’re here.

2342 and The Pride was stretching muscles, electronic impulses sending tests down to systems aft and bringing internal support up full, while lights on the bridge flickered and instruments blipped, routine departure-prep.

Given a kifish ship still stationary over station axis, bow-down so that its guns were constantly in line with every ship on the rotating station, but most notably the ones whose systems were now live, the ones full of non-kif who thought non-kifish and unpredictable thoughts.

But they kept com flowing naturally between The Pride and station central, which was partly Harukk personnel. And com operations went on likewise between The Pride and Aja Jin and Tahar’s Moon Rising, nothing compromising in any fashion, just the necessary coordination of three ships which planned to put out close together. There was still the coder they might have used. There were languages the kif might not understand.

There was also that ship over their heads, and mindful of that and of the firepower here gathered, they refrained from all such options.

“Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, “take message on your three: first thing at Meetpoint, auto that escape course out to both our partners.”

“Aye,” Hilfy said. “Understood.”

Hilfy and Haral and Tully were all settled in, Khym was settling. Haral was still running Geran’s station from the co-pilot’s board, but that was all perfunctory: there was not