Cold in all the warm places and fever-warm in all the cold ones, gods, a hundred eighty degrees skewed. Alien. The kif are that thing in doubles and triples.
Stay cold, Pyanfar Chanur. Save it. Jik's a piece of meat. Tahar an ally-of-fortune, Kesurinan's potential trouble, and this gods-be son of a kif is a convenience.
Kesurinan's not going to make trouble, not yet. She'll let us take Jik aboard.
Gods, don't let Jik come to out here.
Slowly, slowly they walked up the dock past the section seal, into that area where there were no pedestrians. Where there was no traffic at all but themselves.
And there was The Pride's berth ahead, still flashing with those warning lights. She took her pocket com out, within range of the pickup now: "This is the captain. I'm coming in."
"Aye," Haral's voice came back to her, thin with static: that formality she had used was warning, and Haral took it: I've got company, Haral; don't get easy with me.
Another eternity, walking that fragile dock: and gods help them, Tahar and Kesurinan had farther still to go. "Skkukuk," Pyanfar said, and the kif beside her was all attention. "Tell the skkukun-hakkiktu I want Tahar escorted to her ship by the quickest and safest route. Through the central corridors if they can."
"Hakt'," Skkukuk said, acknowledging the order; and walked up with the litter-bearers and gave that instruction with all the kifish modulations of a superior's relayed instructions and his own high status with that superior. Then he fell back a step or two and lifted his face in satisfaction.
She said not a word to Tahar, and Tahar offered not a word to her; that was the way of things.
Toward The Pride's open accessway, then. "Wait here," Pyanfar said to Tahar and Kesurinan, and with a special coldness in Kesurinan's direction, when they reached that gateway: her flesh crawled in that earnest look of Kesurinan's scar-crossed face. "Aye, captain," Kesurinan said, all unknowing.
And betrayed her own captain into foreign hands.
"Chanur-hakto," the foremost kif said, when they had deposited Jik on his litter in The Pride's airlock. That kif took a packet from within his robes and offered it.
Skkukuk intercepted it in one smooth move. And waved his hand, dismissing the other kif out the airlock.
"Seal us up," Pyanfar said to the air and the crew watching on monitor.
The lock shot closed, hissed and thumped into electronic seal.
"Power down," Pyanfar said.
"Aye," Haral's voice came to her. All business, even yet. Pyanfar took the packet Skkukuk offered her officiously, with the stretcher lying on its supports at her feet. Now the shivers wanted to come, but she kept her ears up and looked her own kif in his watery, red-rimmed eyes.
"Good job," she said to Skkukuk.
"Kkkkt," the kif said. "You need me, hakt'. Who else of your crew has manners?"
Her gorge rose. She swallowed and tucked the small packet into her pocket, squatted down by Jik's stretcher and patted his face gently. It was cold and there was no reaction.
"This is an ally?" Skkukuk asked.
"This is a complicated situation," she said, trying to tell a kif the truth; and then a second thought ruffled the hair down her back. Gods, this is a killer I'm talking to. With hairtrigger reflexes. "Yes. An ally." She moved her hand down to Jik's neck and felt the pulse there. "Haral. Get Khym down here. We got Jik to move. He's still out."
"On his way, captain. You all right?"
"Fine. I'm fine. We got out in good shape. Open that door." She patted Jik's face again. "Hey. Friend. Come out of it. You hear me? You're all right." Friend.
He was under. Deep. She heard the lift work: Khym had either been on his way or he had run that topside corridor. And The Pride was proceeding with power-down, a series of subtle noises that her ear knew in every nuance. "Skkukuk. You'll help Khym. You'll do what he says."
"Kkkt. This is your mate."
She stood up and looked flat-eared at Skkukuk, with the ammonia-stink in her nostrils and the antiallergents drying her mouth. Something about the asking crawled along her nerves. This alien, this unutterable alien, was feeling out who was to consider among the crew, who he could displace, who he could get around and who not.
That's one job you can't work your way into, you slithering earless bastard. You keep your mouth off my husband's name. You better figure that, fast.
A thousand thousands of years of hani instinct ran up her spine. And Skkukuk read that look and took on one of his own. Caution.
Footsteps in the lowerdecks corridor. Rapid ones, more than one set.
Don't run, Khym. Dignity, Khym. In front of the kif, gods rot it, Khym.
She was still standing squared off with Skkukuk when Khym showed up in the doorway with Tully close behind.
"You're all right," Khym said.
"I'm just fine. Take Jik to sickbay. Get Tirun onto it. Skkukuk-"
The kif was still waiting. Armed. Their ex-prisoner, possessing a gun that could blow a hole in armor plate. And expecting in his aggressive little kifish soul that he had just won his freedom.
"You're offduty," she told Skkukuk. "You'll keep that gun in your quarters. You've got a lowerdecks clearance. You understand me."
"Kkkt. Absolutely."
"Move."
Everyone moved. Skkukuk got himself out of her sight, correctly reading her temper. Khym and Tully got to either end of the stretcher, got it lifted with its not inconsiderable dead weight of tall mahendo'sat, and maneuvered it out the hatch.
"Tirun's on her way to sickbay, captain." That from her niece. While the powerdown proceeded.
"Understood," Pyanfar said calmly. And stood there a moment staring at the wall. With a kif's orders in her pocket. She fished them out and broke open the brittle seal to look at the written portion.
"Departure at 2315," was the center of that detail. It was, at the moment, all she was interested in. The kif gave them time enough to get organized. Barely. With precise course instructions, aborting one that they had laid in.
"Hilfy."
"Aye," the subdued voice reached her.
"Message to Kesurinan and Tahar: stand by departure; they'll have a bit over six hours. So will we."
A pause. "Aye."
Silence after. The Pride was at rest again. The crew on the bridge could see her, where she stood. The camera was live. She looked up at it. "Things could be worse," she said glumly. "I can think of one way right off. But we got Jik in our custody, we got Tahar and Aja Jin with us, and we've got the hakkikt's orders: it's Meetpoint. His way."
A longer pause.
"Aye," Haral said simply, as if she had given a routine order.
The largest space station in the Compact.
And a forewarned one.
"Clear the boards, stand offduty; I got Jik to see to."
"Aye, captain."
She walked out of the airlock. And only then it occurred to her, like the ghost of an old habit that no longer meant anything, that she had just packed her husband and another crewman off to tend another man, knowing beyond the last twitch of instinct, if it was ever instinct, that Jik was safe with them, safe as that kif was safe to send down the corridor in the other direction, because even the kif was a rational mind and sane and sensible, while the universe quaked and tottered on al! sides of them.