KerChihin was hurting, Hallan could tell that. But she wouldn't stay out of action on the dockside. She kept walking back and forth, overseeing everything, talking to the mahendo'sat in the pidgin, which Hallan couldn't speak, beyond a few words.
He only tried to anticipate what she was going to want, and what was right and what was wrong. He personally, with gestures and his lame command of the Trade, insisted the loaders park on the mark, and the loader kept going without jamming. That was the best help he knew how to be, and ker Chihin didn't disapprove it. She finally sat down on the ramp way railing and watched, and he took over watching the mahen foreman's check-off on the manifest — brought it back for her approval when they had completed the number two cold hold, and Chihin looked it over minutely and cast looks at the cans last on the truck.
"All right," she said grudgingly, signed it, and he took it back to the docker chief and the customs representative, full of the excitement that came of doing something real and useful, and actually dealing with the mahendo'sat himself, talking and being talked to by outsiders — a very queasy, scary situation, if he believed what he'd been taught at home; but it was what he had to do if he ever hoped to find his place among spacers, and the Legacy gave him his first real chance.
"You not damn bad," the docker chief admitted. "Not crazy."
"No, sir," he said. "I'm a licensed spacer."
They said something among themselves. Not all of them spoke the pidgin. But they didn't laugh at him, so far as he could detect. And he felt it a delicious wickedness, to be actually making sense to them, and answering a point of debate, which ordinarily a sister would step forward to do in his stead.
He took the completed form back to Chihin and then went back and told them to signal the next load, which was the number three cold hold, and listed for… he could make it out… Ebadi Transshipped. "All fine, do," the foreman said without quibble, and shouted at his workers. He trekked back to Chihin to say that was what he had just done — she growled at him, but not angry at what he had done, he felt that, only at being asked a needless neo question.
"You're going to wear a track in the deck," she said. "Sit down. They're doing all right. They understood you about parking on the line."
"You speak it?"
"I understand it," she said, and indicated the spot beside her. "Sit. Stay out of their way."
He sat. Chihin didn't sound annoyed, only tired. She said, "We've got cargo coming in. It's Kefk we're going to. You know about Kefk?"
"I know it's on the kifish side."
"It's not a good place. I've never been there. But it's not a place I ever wanted to go."
"I'd go anywhere," he said, consciously pleading his case with her. "If there's a chance I won't come back… that's better than home."
"Is it?" Clearly Chihin didn't think so.
"I'm not a fighter. I'm really not. Not for — for what I'd have to fight for if I stayed on Anuurn."
"Is this better?" Chihin asked. He was surprised at Chihin talking seriously with him at all. But it wasn't asking if Chihin was going to reason long with him. He said only the short answer.
"I want to be here."
Chihin was quiet after that. He thought he had exhausted her patience and his welcome, and he should get up and go be useful, somehow. But Chihin reached out and caught his wrist with the hand that worked.
He didn't know what she wanted. He stared at Chihin for what felt like a long, uncomfortable time, and Chihin said, "You kept your head. You did all right under fire."
"Thank you, ker Chihin."
"I don't like your being here," she said bluntly.
"I know that."
She let go his hand. She didn't say anything for a while. Then: "What do you want? What do you really want?"
"I don't understand."
"You want to be out here? You want to spend your whole life running from port to port, with debt at your tail? Or did you think you were going to get rich and be lord of the spaceways?"
"If I knew I could be lord Meras, it wouldn't matter. I don't want what's down there. I want to be here."
"You're a fool."
"They've told me that. But I want it. I don't mind being junior. I am. I just want to be here."
"You tell me that the other side of Kefk."
"I will. I promise you I will, ker Chihin. There's nothing ever going to change my mind."
"Kid. The captain wants you out of here."
It hurt. He'd almost hoped. He kept a polite expression all the same.
"Most ships," she said, "are going to want you out of here."
"I'll find someone," he said.
"You can't work dockside. Stations aren't going to want you."
He shrugged, said, with a leaden feeling, "I'll find a way.''
"It's sense to go home."
"No, it isn't. I don't want to go back there. It's not sense to do what you don't want."
"Ships have their ways of getting along. Hard enough for any outsider to come in. The Pride was…
under duress. You've got to understand. We get called to station, sometimes in the middle of the night, you haven't got time to dress… I mean, it's a thousand things like that…"
"I don't mind."
"Yeah. Well, others do. People talk. And heads have to be cracked for it, I mean, you get no respect if you let somebody make a remark, you know what I mean."
"Yes."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem. Shit. — Look at you, your ears are flat."
He brought them up with a mindful effort, started to get up to excuse himself and get back to work, but Chihin took hold of his arm.
"You understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, ker Chihin."
Chihin's ears went down and then to half. She was looking him in the face and he stared right back.
" 'Yeah, Chihin,' " she said.
"Yeah."
She had let him go, having made her point. He started a second time to get up, and a second time she stopped him.
"Kid. I don't know it will do a bit of good, but I'm going to talk to the captain, say maybe we should do a wait-see. Mind, she might not go with it. But in my book you earned a chance at it. Not because you hauled me out. But because if you hadn't, a couple more of us might have been fools."
With Chihin you often had to replay things to figure out if they added up to favorable. And it seemed that way. He didn't know what to think: she was canny and she was sharp and he was afraid of her jokes.
"You probably could be lord Meras," she said. "If you wanted to."
He shook his head. "Not me. No."
"Your papa approve what you're doing?"
Another shake of his head.
She patted his leg, which he wouldn't have liked, but it was more like a dismissaclass="underline" Go away, kid. Behave yourself.
He liked Chihin more for that. He got up and went back to work, feeling her watching him, weighing what he did, approving or disapproving. And, gods, he wanted to do just competently well — flashiness didn't impress Chihin. She'd made that clear, about the rescue. Just common sense.
Just doing what you were supposed to do, consistently right. And it made sense to him, the way no one else in the universe had, not ker Hilfy, not Tiar, not Fala nor Tarras nor his mother or his sisters. Just do your job and be right.
He thought he could do that. He had a real hope of that, if that was the mark he had to reach.
… If the parry receiving the goods be not the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1, and have valid claim as demonstrated in Subsection 36 of Section 25, then it shall be the reasonable obligation of the party accepting the contract to ascertain whether the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 shall exist in Subsequent or in Consequent or in Postconsequent; however, this clause shall in no wise be deemed to invalidate the claim of the person stipulated to in Subsection 3 Section 1 or 2, or in any clause thereunto appended, except if it shall be determined by the party accepting the contract to pertain to a person or Subsequent or Consequent identified and stipulated to by the provisions of Section 5…