Panic quickened his breathing. No, not panic, healthy respect for his responsibility. Just a monitor-the-dots problem. But Chihin wasn't going to be there if anything went wrong this side.
"I'm here," Tarras said at his other elbow. "Take it easy, do your job, kid. You shouldn't get any input the computer doesn't recognize."
But in another minute or so a dot leaped on to his screen, at Kefk Station rim. His heart jumped. Chihin swore — but she'd just taken the drug. "That's number 10 berth," he read off his screen, trying to stay calm. "Mu~Muk-jukt, captain."
"Friendly to the hakkikt or what?" Fala wondered aloud.
"Ask the hakkikt," the captain said; and Fala did; and said, "He says, quote, he knows…"
Meanwhile another kif left the station. He reported it and he didn't push buttons.
"Gods-be kif show-outs," the captain muttered at one point. "They've got to see, they've got to be there, they'll cut Vikktakkht's throat if this goes wrong. His and ours."
You mean they're not taking orders? Hallan wondered to himself. It wasn't any hani way of doing things.
"Up v," the captain said. "Let's just put a little more push on it. They've got the pillows, below." They hadn't taken on cargo. They hadn't had the time. Or they hadn't trusted it.
They were just going, and Chihin murmured, drowsily, "Wake me if you see any pretty lights, kid.
Otherwise, see you otherside."
Another one and another one. Fala said, "Na Hallan, I forgive you."
"What did I do?" he asked, surprised out of his concentration, and between reports. Lines were converging. They were going, gods, they were going…
"Stand by," Tiar said sharply. "This isn't the standard drop, cousins. Let's not miss a stitch…"
… "Well, well," aunt Pyanfar said, arms folded, feet set, the very image of herself, "you've committed yourself to the kif, have you?"
Hilfy was not surprised at the appearance. She was surprised at herself, that questions leaped into her head, Have I done the right thing? Am I a total fool, aunt Py?… not angry, not resentful, not any of those things, just wishing she could ask across space and warped time… ask the real Pyanfar, not the one that came and went in her mind…
Like what was going on at Kefk, that kif kept Pyanfar’s doings behind a screen, a whole unguessed power that wasn't just The Pride, wasn't just one ship and a well-reputed hani who mediated the Compact's trade and treaty disputes…
Like: aunt Pyanfar, what have you gotten yourself into? Who are you, since you threw me out, down-world?
The mekt-hakkikt, indeed, the leader the kif could never find to unite them; the Personage of the mahendo'sat, with whatever religious mandate that conveyed — until some rival like Paehisna-ma-to came along; the President of the Amphictiony of Anuurn, no gray-nosed, doddering grandmother to quibble about two thousand year old privilege or ceremonial inheritance; that was not what was based at Kefk.
They were committed. They were beyond recall but not beyond disaster.
"Good luck," Tully said, remote from her. And she had too much on her mind, too much on her hands, to play those games of make-believe. He'd been right to walk away. He wasn't the property of some teen-aged child: it wasn't Tully's obligation to set her life in order, or to provide her some strange halfway creature to be, instead of hani: Take care of Chanur, Pyanfar had said, shoving her out of their midst, and wrapping time and black space about herself.
Who are you, aunt Pyanfar?
And what are you doing, in deep space, where the methane-breathers go?
Humans live in that direction. They don't come to trade. They might have; but they insisted we take sides in their war — thank you, we have enough trouble, aunt Pyanfar had said, and drawn a firm line, verbally at least.
But perhaps it was more substantial than one guessed; and vaster and more needful—
— of force? Of hunter ships at Kefk? Of spies and assassinations of hapless stsho and bombs on Kshshti dock?
… "Coming down," she heard Tiar say.
So they were there. Over the edge. In it up to their ears.
The song wavered, there and not there and there again. It seemed he'd heard it for a very long time; and he'd been anxious entering jump, but it was only the dream of a guilty conscience…
He only heard them now. And it wasn't a threatening song, just very different.
He tried to watch the screens, but they were garble. The ship was riding the fabric of space-time, skittering along the interface, to fall into the next dimple, that only a stellar mass could make, and he could see that interface going on and on and skirling anti-mass along the disturbance they were.
Maybe it was only, after all, a dream…
"Going down," he heard Tiar say,
He tried to capture it. The moment of dropping out of the interface. But a vast disturbance sheeted down around them, and he heard tc'a voices, or what passed for it… Heard a machine-voice saying: Proximity alert, proximity alert."
"Around us!" he tried to say, his eyes full of vision and dark, but Chihin said calmly, "Got it, got it, aux; Tiar, the system buoy's gone nuts and we got a heavy surplus on hunter ships out here…"
"I saw ships," he said, "ten, twenty — off in the dark-"
“Dark of where?'' the captain snapped. “This side, that side, where?"
"Otherside," he said, but he knew he was wrong, the ships were here, around them, arriving one after the other.
Chapter Nineteen
Twenty sleek kifish hunters, suddenly another one dropping in — and never, under these circumstances, believe all that the system buoy schema showed you, Hilfy thought, seeing what unfurled itself on her flanks. It wasn't a position she'd ever hoped or wanted to be in — center position in a fleet of kif, aimed at Meetpoint… a Meetpoint the station buoy showed busy with shipping: hani ships, stsho ships, mahen traders, kif, and tc'a and chi, as ordinary as she'd ever seen it, and deader emissions-wise than she'd ever heard it.
"Fala," she said, "all channels input. Stats. Percent. Who's who. It's too quiet for what they're showing."
"Aye," Fala said. Stats be feathered, the number of contacts flickering through com told her it was way down. And not due to the kifish presence: they were an hour out from station, light. The station had an hour yet to wait before Meetpoint learned they were here, and what was here with them and what maneuvers they were performing. An hour before station could react. But not before something might react that was lying silent and closer.
"Arms live," she said to Tarras, heard the acknowledgment, saw another set of lights come on her own board. They were now breaking the law. Several laws. Lane violations, safety violations, the disarmament treaty, the Station Immunity Act…
"Captain," na Hallan said faintly. "When you've a moment."
"Query, aux one?"
"I've got something. I recorded it — I think I did..."
Frightened neo. He didn't know how to give a report or switch images. Tiar had her hands full.
"Fala," she said, "advise station we're inbound for dock and take the feed from Hallan."
It popped over from Fala's number one: matrix-com, raw transcript.
Chanur advise Paehisna-ma-to mistake No 'shto-shti-stlen
Hilfy you kill violent right
all wrong not-low bring choice
stations death ambassador now change
listen kif stsho on Meetpoint
kif now is all governor