Tell gtst excellency Tlisi-tlas-tin that gtst excellency Atli-Iyen-tlas was lying disreputable in sickbay?
Not yet. Not until they knew whether gtst excellency was going to live or die — or whether gtst excellency was still Atli-lyen-tlas.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a time one was superfluous, and Hallan had learned to know it. He hovered near the doorway while Tarras gave orders to Fala, and Fala gave him looks while she was carrying this and carrying that.
"I do like you," he contrived to say, when Fala's fetching and carrying paused her near him. "I really do, Fala, I just—"
Fala retrieved the kit she was after and went across the small surgery to where Tarras was ministering to gtst excellency with small and delicate needles, murmuring words of encouragement, assuring gtst that it was exactly what the computer had said to do.
Fala didn't want to talk to him. He didn't entirely blame her. He didn't feel welcome here, where people who knew what they were doing were trying to save the stsho gentleman's — or lady's — life…
He found it more convenient to edge toward the door, and when no one seemed to notice that fact, to edge out it, and into the main lower corridor.
But ops was down there, and Chihin was working lowerdeck ops, and he didn't want to go down there; and did, desperately…
Except it was too desperate and dangerous a situation to cause anybody more trouble than he had.
He wanted to apologize to Fala; and, really, truly, he wanted to patch it up: yes, he was attracted to Fala, at least she was pretty and she was clever and she was somebody he wanted very much to have like him, except it wasn't anything like the feeling he got when he even thought about Chihin.
Which told him it was the last place in the universe he needed to be when things were at a crisis and Chihin was supposed to be doing her job and there was a problem between them.
No business on a ship, the captain had said; and he didn't want to prove that by creating another problem for the captain. The crew lounge was where the captain had appointed him to go when she wanted him out of trouble and out of sight, and he went down the corridor as carefully as under fire, avoiding Chihin and avoiding any chance of running into the stsho, and got as far as the lift and rode it topside.
Then he could draw an easier breath. Then he could feel as if he wasn't in the way. And he soft-footed it as far as the corridor that led to the lounge.
But it equally well led to the galley and the bridge, too; and he wasn't forbidden to be there: he actually could do something useful; and Tiar was there, she'd been talking back and forth with them from some ops station and he didn't think it was downside.
Tiar was on his side, she'd always been friendly to him, she hadn't made his life difficult — Tiar understood what was going on.
He tended cautiously up the corridor in the direction of the bridge. The captain was in her office. The door was shut and the light was on the lock panel that meant she was there and the door wasn't locked, if you wanted to risk your neck. He didn't. He walked softly past and through the galley and onto the bridge where, sure enough, Tiar was sitting guard over the boards, with most of hers live and the screens showing the docks outside, and the station's scan-feed, and the station's docking-schema, and inputs he didn't recognize, but they were analytical, he thought, probably running system checks on the engines or something he wasn't familiar with.
He went and sat down very quietly in Fala's usual place, next on Tiar's right, the other side being the captain's place, where to save his life he wouldn't dare trespass.
She glanced at him, and looked back at the boards. So there was silence for some few moments.
"Can I help?" he asked softly, so as not to break her concentration.
"We're getting a little warm-up in a circuit. Not ops-critical, but we've put a load on us this trip. It's just symptomatic of a long run with very little sitting time."
"Dangerous?" Getting lost in hyperspace wasn't a thought he wanted even to entertain.
"No."
He was anxious, all the same. He was just generally scared, of a sudden, or it was easier to worry about a remote chance of breakdown in subspace than to worry about things that were definitely wrong, and he recognized that mental diversion for what it was. He'd nerved himself to walk in here, Tiar wanted to talk machinery, and now he'd lost his opening, which went something like…
"How's the stsho doing?" she asked.
"Pretty weak. Excited about being here. Glad to get into clean air. I don't blame him."
Tiar wrinkled her nose, a grimace. "It does sort of cling to you."
He hadn't washed. Nobody had had time below. And he was embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was that bad."
"Not. Stay. I want to talk to you anyway."
Oh, gods. Everything was out of control.
"What did I do?" he asked.
Tiar's ears flicked, an impressive flicker of rings. "Nothing you did."
"Oh."
"What's the score with you and Fala and Chihin?"
The blood drained to his feet. His brains went with it. He sat there a moment trying to think how not to offend anybody, or look like a thorough fool.
"Do you think Chihin likes me?"
Tiar tried very hard to keep a straight face. It wasn't quite, for a moment, and then she got it under control, quite deadpan. "I'd say it looked that way at Kshshti. Is she being a problem? Is that what's going on?"
"I—" Everybody wanted to blame Chihin. Everybody thought she was taking advantage. Which maybe ought to tell him that was the case.
Except he just didn't pick that up from her. He hadn't. He didn't, below, he had just made himself scarce, which he thought everybody appreciated, since they were busy and thinking about saving their lives, and following the captain's orders.
"You tell her back off," Tiar said. "There's no way she's going to vote for or against a berth on this ship for you on that basis. She's a bastard, but she's an honorable bastard — she just doesn't play the game like that. She's made Fala mad. But that's happened before. Mostly Fala's mad at Chihin playing games."
"You think so."
"Hey. You're not hard to look at, Fala's smitten, doesn't mean she's got proprietary rights. Tell her back off, if that's the way you feel. Then you can have her and Chihin annoyed at you for at least a week.
They'll live."
It sounded like good advice. Except it sat on his heart like lead where it came to Chihin; and he wasn't used to talking back to people, not at home, not on the Sun. He just hadn't mastered the art of saying no.
Hadn't grown up before he'd left home. And maybe hadn't yet, he thought. In spite of banging his head on shipboard doorways, and sitting in the chair he was in with more of him than the chair was designed to hold.
He just felt awkward. At everything. And he didn't know if he could say that to Chihin. Or even Fala. In which case things could only get worse.
"You don't like that advice," Tiar said.
He didn't know what to say. He shrugged, knew he wasn't going to follow her advice, which was stupid, and maybe could lose him his place on board. But he couldn't do it.
"I'm not good at telling people no," he said.
"You want me to tell them?"
That was cowardly. And it would hurt Chihin's feelings, in a major way, he kept thinking that, even when everybody else told him Chihin was having a joke at his expense. And it would last until about the next time the two of them were in the same area of the ship.