"How-threatened?" Haral asked.
"Just that. One ship-if he thinks we're getting out of line. He's not talking about an attack at Gaohn. Nothing like it. He means an attack directly on the world. That's the kind of kif we're dealing with. One large C-charged rock, hitting Anuurn, before Anuurn can see it coming, gods know. It was a threat. I hope it was a remote threat. We're dealing with a kif who knows too gods-be much about hani and too gods-be little: he was a fool to tell me that and maybe he doesn't imagine what we'd do to stop him-before or after the event. But I don't think he's the only kif who'd think of it. I hope they chew each other to bloody rags. We arrange that if we can-but we've got to do what we're told right now or we find ourselves looking the wrong way at one of Sikkukkut's guns, und we don't get the chance to warn anybody, or work our way around this, or save a gods-be thing."
"Captain," Haral said, "we got a kif up there at zenith. He's got position on us."
"I know about it. We're not going to take 'em on. We just get out of here. We've got six hours, we're dropping into a Situation at Meetpoint, and the Compact may not survive it in any form we understand it. That's what we've got. That's what we're up against. I don't know what we're going to find at Meetpoint. Tully-are you following this? Do you understand me?"
"I understand," he said in a faint voice. "I crew, captain."
"Are you? Will you be, at Meetpoint?"
"You want me sit with Hilfy at com, speak human if humans be there." His voice grew steadier. "Yes. I do."
With all he could and could not understand. She gazed on him in a paralysis of will, as if putting off deciding anything at all could stop time and give them choices they did not have.
Jik, they had locked up below. A kif and a human were loose among them. The human sat in their most critical councils.
But Tully had given them the warning she had passed to Jik, a warning blurted out in one overcharged moment that Tully had stood between her and Hilfy and she had questioned his motives.
Don't trust humans, Pyanfar.
On one sentence, one frightened, treasonous sentence in mangled hani, they bet everything.
Gods, risk my world on him? Billions of lives? My whole people? My gods, what right have I got?
"I'll think on it," she said. "I haven't got any answers." She picked up the packet and flung it down again. "We've got our instructions. We've got Tahar with us. We've got Jik's ship. And we've got orders to keep Jik with us and keep that ship of his under tight watch."
"There's something else," Hilfy said. And took up a piece of paper and got up and brought it to her. It trembled in Hilfy's hand. "Comp broke the code. Maybe he meant us to break it. I don't know."
She hesitated in the dim doorway of sickbay, with that paper in her pocket; Jik was awake, Tirun had said.
He was. She saw the slitted glitter of Jik's eyes, saw them open full as she walked in, quiet as she was. She went and laid her hand on his shoulder, above the restraint webbing. Tirun had put a pillow under his head and a blanket over his lower body.
His eyes tracked on her quite clearly now, gazed up at her sane and lucid. "Come let me go, a? Damn stubborn, you crew."
But she did not hear the edge of annoyance that might have been there. It was all too quiet for Jik, too wary, too washed of strength. It was-gods knew what it was.
Apprehension, comprehension-that he might not be among friends?
That for some reason she might be truly siding with the kif-or that she was operating under some other driving motive, in which they were no longer allies?
He had for one moment, in that kifish place, drugged and on the fading edge of his resources, answered questions he had held out against for days, answered because she got through his defenses with a warning his mind had been in no
shape to deal with, and because she had signaled him that he had to do this.
Now he was clear-headed. Now he knew where he was, and perhaps he recalled, too late, what he had done. That was what came through that faint voice, that failing attempt at humor.
"Hey," she said, and tightened her hand. "You got nowhere to go, do you?"
"Aja Jin."
"Told you about that. Kif'll shoot your head off. We're clear. Got it all patched up with Sikkukkut. You passed out on me. Missed the good part. I need to talk to you."
"I got talk to my ship."
"That can wait. You'll fall on your nose if you try to get up. Don't want you trying it, hear? Tirun fill you in?"
"Not say."
"Your ship's fine; the dock's patched; I got you clear and got everything fixed up with Sikkukkut: he's a gods-be bastard, but he does listen. He's still suspicious, but he's put you aboard The Pride, says you've got to ride out the next move aboard my ship and let Kesurinan handle Aja Jin. That was all I could get. We've got to live with that."
"I got damn itch on nose, Pyanfar."
She reached and rubbed the bridge of it. "Got it?"
"Let me go. I walk fine."
"Haven't got time. We're moving. Going to Meetpoint. You're going to have to ride it out where you are. I'm sorry about that, but we haven't got another cabin we can reach till we undock. And then things are going to go pretty fast."
He was quiet a heartbeat or two. Then: "Pyanfar-"
"I got a question for you. I want to know what we're headed into. What did Goldtooth tell you before he left us, huh?"
A silent panic crept into his eyes. He lifted his head and let it fall back against the pillow, still staring at her. "Not funny."
"/ need to know, friend. For your sake, for that ship of yours, gods know, for mine. What are we headed for? What's he doing?"
"We talk on bridge."
Bluff called, she stared at him and he at her and there was a knot at her gut. "You know how it is," she said.
"A," he said. "Sure."
"I got this thing to ask you. I want to know the truth. You understand me."
He ran his tongue over his lips. "What this deal with humans?"
"Tully told me-told me flatly not to trust them. You know Tully; he's not too clear. But what he said, the way he said it-I think they're going to doublecross your partner. I think they're not the fools Goldtooth thinks they are. And they're not taking his orders."
"Maybe you do better talk to Tully."
"I have. We've got a problem. Sikkukkut wants Meetpoint. He wants us three to go in first, The Pride, Aja Jin, and Moon Rising. You see how much he trusts us. He wants us to go in there and shake things up and crack Meetpoint so he can walk right in easy."
"Akkhtimakt maybe be there."
"So's everyone else. Aren't they? I got one more question. What about the methane-folk? What's the real truth?"
"Lot-lot mad." Another pass of Jik's tongue across his lips. "I try talk to tc'a. They want keep like before. Knnn- different question. Goldtooth said-said got maybe trouble."
"Who's Ghost?"
Jik blinked. His eyes locked on hers, pupils dilated.
"When you were in trouble," Pyanfar said, "I hauled out that little packet you gave me at Mkks and started it through comp. We got a number one good linguistics rig. The best. Mahen make, a? Why'd you ever give me that packet, huh?-to carry on for you. In case something happened here at Kefk? So I could get through to Kshshti or Meetpoint? Gods-be careless job of encoding if we could break it-but then, then it might have had to go to a mahen ship way out from your Personage, mightn't it? Someone like Goldtooth, maybe? And the real code's in the language- isn't it?"