The eyes raked him and down in lazy ease, flickered with some kind of interest. "Wrong side of that line, you know."
He cleared his throat, looked nervously over his shoulder. "What are they doing down there?"
"What are you doing up here?"
"I-" He looked back again full into the spacer's lazy stare, that stripped him down to the bones and the truth; there was not even a lie he knew how to tell. "I'm new here," he said; and dropped his ears in deference when her mouth pursed in dour amusement. "What's all the commotion down there?"
"The Pride's in port."
He could not help himself; he looked back again toward the distant lines and drew a large breath. The station, for godssakes, he had truly come to the station, where fantastical species came and went; where fabled ship-names were ordinary on the freighting lists, and many-ringed spacers sat about ordinary as could be. And on the very day he came up from the world, The Pride of Chanur just happened in, with no advance notice in the newsservices, nothing at all to tell the world it was coming. He saw nothing for his looking but a solid line of black-breeched Immunes in the distance, practically no one on the docks there or near at hand; and nothing at all of the ship-boards down there: gantries obscured the view. He looked back and tried to catch his breath. "Gods, I'd like to see it."
"You don't see a ship, son, they stay out there." She was laughing at him, all dour-faced. "But you could go up to the observation lounge, the cameras'll give you a view."
"I want to see them."
"Who?"
"Them."
"The Personage? Gods-rotted lot of nonsense."
He caught a quick breath. His ears went flat. Nonsense. My gods!
"Nonsense," the spacer said again. "No different than you and me. What d'you think, boy? Blackbreeches scurrying around like chi in a fire, shut down the whole gods-be dockside-"
"Well, oughtn't they?" He was indignant. One of the old ones, this, one of the surly old-timers, just blowing off. She doesn't like a boy being up here, doesn't like me being on any ship, ever. Walk off, that's what I ought to do. She probably has a knife somewhere, even a gun in that pocket, gods know what. "I'm going to go have a look." He grabbed up his duffel again.
But the spacer patted the machine-skirt. "Tssss. You won't get anywhere through that line. Just a lot of trouble. Have a seat, boy. All bright-eyed and new, are you?"
He was off his stride. He delayed. And knew himself a fool when the old spacer took on a friendlier, amused look. Turn about for his pretense of being what he was not, that was what she had given him. Fair and fair.
"Sit. Crew's going to be down here in a bit. What ship are you going to?"
"Not to a ship. Yet. School. I'm Meras. Hallan Meras. From Syrsyn." Confession once started, tumbled out in the old spacer's unchanging stare, and his ears burned with embarrassment; she had known even when she asked, but she did not ridicule him. "I want to be a spacer." It was his dearest dream. He saw it coming true and she did not laugh when he said that either. One of the old ones. "Have you-" He cast another look down the dock, leaning forward, and saw nothing of ship names at this angle either. "Have you ever seen the Personage?"
"Lots of times."
He looked back in awe. "Are you a friend of hers?"
"What's the matter with you, boy, what do they teach you nowadays, all this fuss to see some Personage, what's seeing do, anyway? Makes me worry, that's what. Hani I knew'd spit in the eye of somebody that wanted all that bowing and guarding. You ought to."
He understood then. "She got me here," he said. And when the old spacer blinked: "That's why I want to see that ship. I wouldn't be here without her, without what she did. That's why."
"Huh," the old spacer said. "Huh." And: "Uhhnnn-" With a gesture outward, toward the sudden flashing of a strobe light and the arrival of several official cars. "Llun."
"Are we in trouble?" Hallan got anxiously to his feet as his spacer companion stood up. He snatched up his duffel and held onto it. Immune officials and weapon-bearing marshals were getting out of the car, coming their way, while suddenly, adding to the confusion, there were other spacers coming down the ramp out of the ship, one of them a man, one of them-"O my gods," Hallan said, having seen humans in old pictures, and having seen a picture of this one.
"Cap'n," one of the spacers said, scar-nosed and broad-faced; and coming their way. "My gods, you going like that?"
"Too much fuss," the old spacer said, and dusted off her trousers. "Drives me berserk, this whole business. They want a decree, I'll give 'em a decree. Haral, meet a nice kid. Hallan Meras, meet Haral Araun. Sorry we can't stay and talk right now. Luck to you."
She walked off with the crew from the ship, the human Tully and all. And na Khym nef Mahn, who was the first man in space.
One of the crew lingered a moment, a small woman who looked him up and down with eyes that for a moment seemed to see-gods, inside him and around him with a force that left him all but shaking. Chur Anify. The strange one. She was the one that had charted the new Points off beyond Minar, and probes had found them, a bridge to other stars. She was almost as famous as the Personage.
"Who is this boy?" A Llun officer asked, all hard and threatening.
"He has a right to be there," Chur Anify said, and the officer looked at her and dropped her ears and let him alone.
"Are you some relative?" that officer asked when the cars had left the dockside and grim Llun marshals stood double guard outside The Pride of Chanur's ramp access. "Are you Chanur?"
"No," he said, holding his baggage and still dazed as if all the stars in space spun about him. That had been the Personage, the mekt-hakkikt of the kif, the Director . . . there were as many names as there were species in the Compact. She had talked with him, this power that could move a thousand ships and mediate affairs among species.
With him, as if he were truly someone who mattered.
Or as if he might be that someone, someday.