Chanur's Homecoming

Whatever had begun to happen at Meetpoint had played itself out already, while they existed only as a probability in the gods’ intentions, an arc in hyperspace, a bubble with a slender stem to Somewhere shooting along in Nowhere Reasonable on the whim of V and vector and the dimples stars made with their mass-while they did that, ships had battered away at each other, and ships which might have been at Urtur might well have leapt out again days ago, with the kind of hyperspace arc hunter-ships could cut-sleek, power-wasting hunter-ships who could cut days off a freighter’s time—

—but not The Pride’s, except they were encumbered with a handful of freighters who had to make it through to give them a chance at all where they were going.

—Moon Rising, o gods, where?

System buoy gave them nothing. Industry existed back there in that timelag; and Starwind and Hope; and Lightweaver to bring up the rear, unless Moon Rising made it on some miracle—

There was a sick feeling at her gut that had nothing to do with the after-jump queasiness. The numbers ticked away; warnings flashed all over the board, approaching mark, have to make it on schedule or lose it all—

“Coming up on dump,” she said. And let the autos take them, as instruments blipped and flashed hazard warning.

—Easy then to drift away, give it up, quit trying after the figures that glowed ghostly green just beyond her reach, just out of focus. Survival was in those numbers. It was just inconveniently far, everyone so godsforsaken tired and home so far and so fraught with disasters—

Wake up, Pyanfar Chanur, focus, make the fingers feel, the hand move, the mind work—

—long way home. Someone else’s job. She was already there, the pale golden dust, the deeper gold of grainfields and the fleet herds that raced and bounded and soared for the sheer exuberance of running, sharp hooves and sharper horns—

Blood and hani hide. No uruus was calved that could get a horn into Kohan Chanur, except for young Hilfy’s mistake, wide-eyed youngster caught right in the path of one that should have gone the other way.

“It’s all right,” Kohan said. And sat down, plump, right where he stood, with his hand pressed to his ribs and his nose gone pale. “It’s quite all right.”

While Hilfy stood there in horror, only then catching up to what had happened, when all the rest of them had reached their peak of panic when na Kohan had, and moved; but Kohan was nearer, saw young Hilfy’s danger, and hit the uruus like a projectile. It lay dead, its quickness and its beauty all still in the dust; he sat there with blood leaking through his fingers and a sick look on his face that was none of it for himself, only for what could have happened. And the rest of them, chagrined and self-disgusted that he had had to do what he had done, a skilled hunter caught like that, and none of them in position to help when a young girl’s mistake near killed herself and her lord. Hilfy stood there thinking, they knew later, that she had killed him, killed her father, her lord she should have died for, the dearest thing in all her protected young life. She had never taken a scar. Never did.

Till a dockside brawl on Meetpoint; till the kif laid hands on her; till she was their prisoner for much too long—

Kohan would not know his daughter.

She’s grown up, brother. She’s not a girl anymore. Not anything you can understand anymore, your pretty Hilfy; you, tied to the world; her, a spacer, with a spacer’s ways, like Haral, like Tirun, like me.

I don’t want your world.

I’ve ruined her for it, taken her out of it, changed her in ways I wouldn’t have chosen, brother; but I couldn’t keep her prisoner myself; couldn’t hold her, wouldn’t try.

I hate it. I’ve always hated it. Not the fields, not the feel of the. sun. It’s the confinement. One world. One place. A horizon too small.

Minds too small to understand me.

I’d rather go anywhere than home. Rather die for anything than fat old women and empty-headed men who love their walls and their wealth and their privilege and never know what’s out there—

Khym knows. Maybe you almost do. But I’m coming back for them. Hilfy and I. So gods-be many have bled for you. Or frozen cold in space. Or gone to particles, not even enough to find. You don’t know the ways you can die out here.

I don’t want to get there. Don’t want to see the look on your face.

Rut by the gods I won’t leave you to Ehrran and the scavengers.

—Aren’t we coming out of it? Has something malfunctioned? Are there red lights? Gods, do you ever stop thinking when you lose it and the ship doesn’t come down again, do you just go on—

—out again, and back to realspace, with V lower and the telemetry flicking past numbers in mechanical agony, red lights flaring—