Put them on with double-sided tape. That was very nice to hear. The mahe was not an utter fool.
And, yes, oh, yes, the mahe was ever so excited to learn that a relative of the great, the esteemed Pyanfar Chanur was indeed in port and had expressed an interest, and of course the mahe would be delighted to franchise his product via Chanur's well-reputed trading company…
Well-reputed at least where hani bankers weren't taking a close look at the amount of debt Chanur was carrying.
But for a dock worker who'd had a geological grenade blow up in his face, gambled his life savings and had sudden interest from a Chanur ship, after months of advertising in the list at ruinous rates, gods, the fellow offered her everything but a pledge of marriage, and called on mahen divinities to look on Chanur with outstanding prosperity and confusion upon Chanur's enemies unto a thousand thousand generations. One would do, she thought. But the franchise offer was absolutely to the mane's liking, he was completely thrilled, he was sure the Chanur name would lend respectability to his enterprise… she could have had the marriage proposal if she'd written it in. Her proposal to put him in for a percentage of sales thereafter was, he professed, full of such real business terms he knew he was in honest hands…
Gods protect the fellow, Hilfy thought. Real business words, indeed.
For the rest she was sure Haisi was investigating every deal she'd just made, and drawing conclusions about the degree of her understanding based on what she was buying.
Which meant Haisi's personage was going to learn in short order, plans might well be laid in accordance with Haisi's best guess about what she had learned from the stsho, and so much the better.
Aunt had used to din into her juvenile and unwilling ear: Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.
Gods, she hadn't felt so alive since she was a teenager. She was in a situation up to her ring-bedecked ears, and by the gods she felt…
She felt something she hadn't felt in years. She felt… as if she had suddenly understood what her aunt had been trying to make her feel, talking about responsibility to the ship and the responsibility of the merchant trade and things that had just gone into an over-hormoned young brain and out the other ear… she outright shared something with Pyanfar Chanur, over the absent years and across light-years of space.
A feeling aunt Pyanfar had given up, for…
For what aunt Pyanfar had sworn she despised— politics. Gods-rotted politics, Pyanfar had used to say, cursing the practitioners thereof.
And then she went and joined the forces.
Led them — was the truth. And why?
Hilfy began to see a certain sadness in that. Even to have sympathy for aunt Py, and to think that maybe having na Khym with her was a necessary consolation…
And what was she doing wandering down tracks like that? What in the nine or so mahen hells was into her? And why had she called Haisi back to rattle him and make him do desperate things, when Haisi going away was what she wanted most?
Pyanfar-nerves, that was what she was experiencing. She'd learned from a past master at chicanery and if she weren't convinced she was half-crazy, she'd say she'd waked up, come alive… that she'd challenged Haisi Ana-kehnandian because she was Pyanfar's niece, not Kohan's well-behaved daughter.
Gods, she'd just contracted for a can of exploding rocks. And a franchise on them.
She'd just sent a very dangerous mahen agent wandering through station computer records to ask himself why she'd bought what she'd bought, and why station life-support chemicals, basic foodstuffs, and exploding rocks nobody in Compact space had wanted to buy… all interested her in the light of what she'd learned from a stsho Haisi didn't know had Phased out of gtst former identity and out of gtst sanity.
Did hani Phase?
She wondered. She wondered about mahendo'sat.
And listened to the sounds of the Legacy giving up cargo to create space for the deals she'd just made.
"I was terribly embarrassed," Fala said. "I'm terribly sorry," and Hall an, cornered in the crew lounge, with no excuse to leave, murmured what he hoped was a polite agreement and tried to think of somewhere else to look but Fala Anify’s face and something, anything, that could look like an assigned job.
"Tarras just jokes," Fala said.
"I know," he said.
"You're awfully nice," Fala said.
He tried desperately to find occupation in sorting through the tapes in the rack.
"Tarras and Chihin both joke a lot. It's just their way of being friendly. They really like you."
That didn't exactly help.
"Where is Meras, exactly?"
"Ruun. Near the mountains. It's a real small clan."
"I ought to know. But I wasn't at all good in geography. I can astrogate. That's fine. But I just wasn't interested in planetary stuff. My aunts went with The Pride. They used to send me things when they were in port." She bounced down to sit on the end of the couch, which made it harder not to look at her. He must nave sorted the tapes beyond twice. He looked stupid, he knew he did, and his ears twitched like a fool's if he tried to keep them up. So he had to look like he was sulking, and that might make her mad.
She asked, in his silence: "Meras isn't a spacing clan, is it?"
"No. No, it isn't."
"How come—?"
"I just wanted to." Gods, they were around to that.
"Anify's up in the mountains. My uncle's a lump and my aunts walked out on him and I think they sort of drifted into ker Pyanfar's business. But I'd get presents from space and Anuurn just didn't matter to me. I wanted it so bad, to go to space, my mother used to box my ears about my lessons, and finally she just told me spacers had to know this and spacers had to know that and if I didn't do my divisions and my tables and my geometry and my biology and my Compact history no ship was ever going to want me.
But she couldn't make me believe it about agronomy and geography and classical poetry."
He liked classical poetry. But he could understand what she was saying.
"I just nattered my sisters into helping me," he said. "They got me a ride to station. They said I wouldn't last the first winter in the woods. They were right. I was a scrawny kid. And I don't have any aptitude for politics or farming. So if somebody handed me a niche in the clans I'd foul it up."
"I think you could do anything you wanted to."
"You could learn geography. If you wanted to."
He hadn't thought that was particularly clever. But she started to laugh, until the all-ship blared out:
“ Fala? Where’s that systems check? We 're in count, gods rot it!''
"I've got to go," she said, and scrambled for the door. But she stopped there and looked back. "Can I bring you anything? Gfi? A sandwich?"
"No. No, I'm fine."
"Fala!"
She ran for it— not using the com unit by the crew lounge door. The door shut. He found himself exhaling a pent breath and feeling as if he should adjust the cabin temperature.
So they were in count for leaving this port. That was fast. That was very fast. And he was anxious to get out in space where there was something maybe the captain would let him do, so he had an excuse not to be cornered.
They were in count and the clanks and thumps of offloading cargo kept going. That was a first too, so far as his experience went.