"No " Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. "I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can."
"Don't trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I'll try to eat. Hear me?''
"Stays the way they set it."
The monitor beeped again.
"Gods fry that rotted thing!" Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.
"Quiet," Geran said.
She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.
/ can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.
That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark-she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.
/ can think the way home. Bring us all home.
"Chur?"
"I'll be with you," she said. "No worry. Wish they could move this godsrotted rig onto the bridge." She shut her eyes a moment, shut that inward eye that beckoned to all infinity, then looked at Geran quite soberly. "When?"
"Bring him, captain?" It was not Tirun Araun's way to question orders; but there was reason enough, and Pyanfar let her ears down and up again in a kind of shrug that got a diffident flattening from Tirun's ears and put a little stammer in Tirun's mouth. "That is to say-"
"Skkukuk's not the one I'm worried about," Pyanfar said quietly. They were outside the lift, in upper main, and the ship hummed and thumped with tests and closures, auto-rigging for a run. And if there was a place Tirun ought to be it was at her boards down on lowerdeck, in their cargo bridge; and The Pride ought to have a cargo to carry, and a trader's honest business. But those days were past for them. There was only something dreadful ahead; and she went from one to another of the crew and spoke with them, quietly, of things that had to be done, and never of the situation they were in. With Tirun it was just a matter of giving her orders, and of telling her, obliquely, in that way they had talked for forty years and more, that she knew that she asked a great deal; and Tirun's worried look settled and became quiet again, still as deep water. "How many rings you got, cousin?"
"Oh, I don't know." Tirun flicked her ears and set the ones she wore to swinging. " 'Bout many as proves I've got good sense, captain."
"We get out of this one, cousin, I'll buy you a dozen more."
"Huh." Tirun said. "Well, I got enough. We get out of this one, captain, you and I'll both be surprised, and that son Sikkukkut no more than most."
"All of our allies will," Pyanfar said. "Skkukuk's safe. He's on this ship, isn't he? Kif don't understand that kind of suicide. You know Jik had to explain to Sikkukkut we'd really blow the ship? Couldn't figure why you'd do that. You can tell a kif about it all you like. He'll think it's a lie. A bluff. Skkukuk's no different, I think. Tell the son I'm going to give him a job to do: he'll handle kif-com. I'm putting him under Hilfy's orders."
"My gods, cap'n."
"Tully's sitting com too, this jump. No choice, is there? You've got to handle armaments-this time for real, I'm very much afraid; and back up Haral, and keep an eye on scan: I'm putting Jik in Chur's seat, but his board stays locked, whatever condition his hands are in; and sure as rain falls down I'm not giving him com. While we're at Kefk we've got one excuse; at Meetpoint we may have to contrive another. But I don't want to put him between his ethics and our survival. Gods know, maybe it'll take something off his shoulders, in some bizarre turn of the mahen mind. He wants to help us; he wants to carry out his own orders; he probably wants to save Goldtooth's neck in spite of what the bastard did to him, he wants a whole lot of things that are mutually exclusive. Or that may turn that way in a hurry. And gods know I don't want him in reach of your board and the guns."
"He won't like Skkukuk there."
"He'll know why, though. I figure he'll know inside and out why that is."
"Him knowing the kif and all, yes."
"Him knowing the kif and knowing what his own side wants from him, gods save him-gods save us from mahendo'sat and all their connivances. And watch Goldtooth, cousin, for the gods' own sakes, if we do spot him, keep us a line of fire there. I don't like the rules in this game either, but we didn't make them up. They're his, they're that bastard Sikkukkut's, and gods know who else has a finger in it. Watch them all."
"Aye," Tirun said in a hoarse, faint voice. "Them and Ehrran."
"Everyone else for that matter. I don't know a friend we've got."
"Tahar," Tirun said.
"Tahar," she recalled.
A pirate and an outlaw.
And: "I've got Skkukuk?" Hilfy said. Her jaw had dropped, her ears were flat.
Pyanfar nodded. They stood where she had caught up with Hilfy, in the galley. And Tully sat sipping a cup of gfi, his blue eyes following their moves and his human, immobile ears taking in the whole of it. His com-translator would whisper it to him.
"Luck of the draw. He's sitting down by Tirun on the jumpseat, but he'll be working off your board. Just keep your finger by the cutoff. If we have to. And get your wits about you when we come out of the drop. I have to ask you this: how good are you on kifish nuance?"
"I'm good."
"Objective assessment: good enough to pick up the subtleties in a kif's transmissions?"
Hilfy paused, and gathered her cup off the counter. She glanced Tully's way and back again. There was clearest sanity in her golden eyes. "I know what you're saying. No. But Skkukuk can do it. What I've got to do is watch what he-'s saying. And be fast on the cutoff."
"You tell me this: is a kif going to damage a ship he's on?"
Hilfy thought about that one too. Her ears dropped and lifted again. "No," she said. "Not when you put it that way. But there is a point he'd turn on us."
"He'd be alone. Crew wouldn't go along with him the way it might on a kifish ship. Kifish crew'd turn on their captain and mutiny. Hani won't. I think maybe Skkukuk's got a glimmering of that. It'll make him behave."
Again a dip of Hilfy's ears. One ring swung there. But the eyes were not that young any longer. "I tell you what that son's thinking. He's thinking the crew's conserving its own position and it's rallied around you out of fear of him. That's what he's thinking. He's thinking if we got into trouble we'd do a real stupid thing, standing by you just for fear of him. He thinks if we prove tough enough other hani will join us on Sikkukkut's side. It's all very simple to him. One thing I've found the kif astonishingly free of is species-prejudice."
"I think you're right."
That seemed to soothe some raw spot in Hilfy. The ears came up again, pricked in an expression that made her look young again. And they flagged when she looked at Tully.