Chanur's Homecoming

“That’s prescriptive. You drink. Hear?”

He took it then, and took a sip and shuddered visibly. Sat there looking nowhere. Thinking of friends, maybe. Of Goldtooth, outbound and not to return for months.

Of his ship, so close and himself helpless to reach them.

“Take another,” she said. He did, shuddering after that one too, and that shudder did not stop. Liquor spilled out onto his hand, pooled on the table as he set the glass down. He put the hand to his mouth and sucked at the knuckle where it had spilled. His eyes glared at her.

She sat down, opposite him. If Tirun wanted her, there was the alarm. Her own aches could wait. She was prepared to wait. For whatever it took.

It was a long time before he moved at all, and that was to lift the glass and take it all down in one long stinging draught. He shuddered a third time, set the glass down empty and she filled it.

Got a crate of the stuff in storage. Pour it all down him if we have to.

“Hao’ashtie-na ma visini-ma’arno shishini-to nes mura’ani hes.” Whoever he was talking to, she did not follow it. Something about dark and cold. It was that dialect he spoke with Kesurinan. “Muiri nai, Pyanfar.”

“Mishio-ne.” I’m sorry.

“Hao. Mishi’sa."—Yes. Sorry. “Neshighot-me pau taiga?” What the hell good is it?

“None. I know that. Species-interest, Jik. I warned you of that. Now you can try to break my neck. It won’t get you our access codes. What it will get you is a lot of grief. You don’t want it; I don’t want it. We’re old friends. And you know down that one way’s a lot of trouble and no good at all and down the other’s a hani whose interests might be a lot the same as yours in the long run.”

For a while he said nothing. After a while he picked up the glass again and took a tiny sip. “Merus’an-to he neishima kif, he?”

Something about damned kif, himself, and bargains.

“I want my people safe, Jik.”

“You damn fool!” His hand came down on the table, jarring the liquid. “Give me com.”

“So you can doublecross me again? No. Not this time. Too many lives here.”

While pacifist stsho ran in gibbering terror in the corridors of their station and discovered there were species which could neither be hired nor bribed nor prevented from being predators. “Humans,” she said; “and mahendo’sat. If Tully’s right, if Tully’s telling the truth, and I think he is-there’s one more doublecross in the works. The humans will betray Goldtooth. Hear? And you know and I know Sikkukkut’s got to do something here. Your partner’s going to push and herd the kif into fighting. He thinks. But in the meanwhile who does the bleeding? They’ll herd him right away from mahen space. Right? Where does that leave? Stsho? Tc’a? Goldtooth’s defending that. That leaves hani space,-friend. You don’t push me right now. My people have got me between them and that, and don’t push me, Jik!”

“You-” Jik fell silent a moment, coughed and rested there with his mouth against his hand as if he had lost his way and his argument. “Merus’an-to he neishima kif. Shai.”

Bargains and the kif again. Then: I. Or something like that. He spoke mahensi. As if he had forgotten that he was not on his own ship. Or as if, exhausted as he was and wrung out, he lacked the strength to translate. He had that glassy look. Jump healed, but it took it out of a body too. And he had gone into it hurt, in body and spirit.

He was still reasonable. Still the professional, getting what he could get. She counted on that.

“I have to go in there to Meetpoint,” she said. “I got to get what I can get. I won’t doublecross you. Won’t do any hurt to the mahendo’sat. I swear that, haur na ahur. But I don’t want you against me either. I don’t want you trying to get at controls, I don’t want you trying to get at my crew. And everything you tell me’s going to be a lie. Isn’t it? Con the hani again.” She fished her pocket and laid the two pills on the table. “You take those when you want ’em. Nothing but sleeping pills. I got enough troubles. You got enough. You’re strung. You know it. I want you to go out of here, mind your manners with my crew, get some sleep. That’s all you can do. All I can do for you. Like a friend, Jik. But first I want to ask you: have you held out on me? Conned me? You got anything you think I better know? ’Cause we are going in there. And we’re going to get blown to a mahen hell if this is a trap. And Sikkukkut just might not go with us, which would be a real shame.”

He shoved the glass up against her hand. “You want talk? Take bit.”