And she was female and he was not, with all the craziness on that score. No place for him to be sitting. Listening to us. Gods, what if he was only waiting, all this time? He's alien. Isn't he? Same as Jik. And we've been through so gods-be much-and I don't know what's in his mind right now. My friend. My- She gave a mental shiver, looked at the time. "Gods," she said, "we better get topside. Tirun-"
"Yeah," Haral said. And: "You want me to talk to the captain?''
"She listens to you more than me."
"Hey," Haral said. And fixed her with a lazy, flat-eared stare. Reprimand for that small remark. Hilfy dipped her ears.
"Kif," Tully said.
"No," Haral said. "We let that son sleep. You stay here. Rest. Understand. You go down that hall to talk to that kif, I'll skin you. Hear?"
"I understand," Tully said. His mouth had that set it got in unhappiness. "Not right, Haral. I sit here."
"Argues," Haral said. "Huh."
"He wasn't juniormost on his ship," Hilfy said. "I know that. He's not a kid, Haral."
"Who is, on this ship? Tully. You want to come? Talk to the captain?"
He had a few bites left. He made it one, drank the cup dry and got to his feet, still trying to swallow what he had.
"How's it going?" Pyanfar asked quietly, leaning shower-damp and exhausted over Tirun's chairback. Khym had come back to his post, far from skilled enough to relieve Tirun, but there, at least for support. Tirun looked back at her with flagging ears and a desperate weariness. Tirun had not had a chance at the showers. That was evident.
"No answers yet," Tirun said. "Na Jik's asleep, I think. Stopped stirring around down there after I heard the safety-web go." She tilted an ear generally downships and down below. "We got our routine instructions, I just fed it into auto. All the kif are on schedule, Sikkukkut's pair's in final just now and the stsho're sweating it."
"Huhhhh." Pyanfar had an eye on the scan from her vantage; ships proceeding sedately on course. No one out there had done anything definitive. And she leaned closer to Tirun's ear, her elbow on the chairback. "Get out of here, huh? I'll take it."
"Haral'll be here." The voice came out hoarse. "You want to go catch a bite? I c'n take a little longer, 'm not doing anything but sit."
"Neither am I. Get. I'll hold the boards." She shoved off from the chair back and paused half a heartbeat considering her husband, who had never looked away from the screen in all this time. Covering, while she distracted Tirun, though the board was audio-alarmed, and her own eye had automatically held on that screen the minute Tirun looked her way. Tirun had known where she was looking-experience, decades of it. Bridge rules. But Khym covered. That was bridge rules too. She gave Khym's chairback a pat, approval, with a little unwinding of something at her gut. Closer and closer to reliable. On the standard of the best crew going. An impulse came to her; she unclipped one of her earrings.
"Hey," she said, and leaned next to him where her breath stirred the inner tuftings of his ear. "Huh," he said, as if it were some intimacy.
"Hold still. Don't flinch." She nipped right through the edge of his ear. "Owwh!" he grunted, and did flinch, turning half about in indignation and then-perhaps he thought it was some bizarre test of his concentration-jerked his gaze right back to the boards.
She slipped the ring right into the wound and clipped it. "Uhhhn," he said, and felt of what she had done. Never looked around.
"Good." She patted his shoulder, remembered then that he had once upon a time reacted with temper over that gesture of shoulder-patting. But maybe it felt different somehow. He did not object. And she went off to her own station, sat down and brought in the scan images and the com.
Sikkukkut was still on course. Ikkhoitr and its partner were docking ahead of them, and The Pride was on a course right down lane-center, neat and precise.
They were going to have some specific docking instructions very soon. The Pride and Aja Jin and Moon Rising were about to put themselves where the kit could get at them.
And where Sikkukkut could make demands of them. Jik, for instance. Jik, for a very large instance. Or even Tully. Or Dur Tahar. All of which items Sikkukkut might want back. She sat and gnawed her mustaches, wishing she dared talk back and forth with Dur Tahar over there, who assuredly knew something about kifish mentality. But absolute com silence seemed the best policy at the moment. Gods knew she wanted no questions out of Aja Jin, where Kesurinan still followed her orders. And did not ask, as Kesurinan might well have asked: How is my captain? Is he recovered? Why do I have no instructions from him?
Kesurinan believed she knew the answers to all these things, perhaps. And stayed patient. So far.
But on that dockside Kesurinan was bound to ask questions that needed direct lies. And inventive ones.
Goldtooth, gods curse you, what have you set up here?
Made an agreement with someone, have you?
Or have we got something else lurking out there, outsystem, that we're going to find out about when our wavefront gets to them and they get themselves run up to attack speed?
Gods, gods, this is no situation to be in. What's Sikkukkut doing? Is that son really depending on us, for godssakes? Are we the backup he thinks he has?
Fool, Sikkukkut. Can a kifmind be that tangled, to trust us now?
Or are you no fool at all?
Com beeped. "Py," Khym said, and cut it in from his board.
"I got it." It was station, talking to them in effusive jabber. A stsho told them that they could, if they wished, have any free berth, but suggested numbers twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Which the lord captain of Ikkhoitr had suggested, praise to the hakkikt.
"Affirm," she said, and with a flattening of her ears: "Praise to the hakkikt."
"No real choice, do we?" Khym asked.
"Life and not. We got that."
"What are we going to do?" There was the faintest note of despair there. A man asking his wife for reassurance. Tell me there's something you can do. Tell me it's not that bad, not that hopeless. A man lived within the small borders of his estate-never tell a man a thing: never worry him with problems he had no capacity to deal with. And no power. Old habits, Khym, gods rot it, grow up!
No. It's crew talking to captain. That's all. Get off him, Pyanfar.
"Feathered if I know what we're going to do," she muttered. No mercy, Khym. "Got an idea?"
"He's going to ask for Jik."
"I'm afraid he is."
''What are we going to do?''
"I'll make something up."
Nothing to do but watch it unfold. Obey instructions, take the berth.
You got it, husband. There isn't an answer. I haven't got a miracle to pull off. I don't know what in a mahen hell we're going to do and most of all I don't know how we're going to get out of here.
Thank gods Ehrran's headed home to warn the han. Even if she goes for Chanur in the process. Better the clan goes down than the whole world. Better a whole lot of things than that.
But, gods, Ehrran's a fool. What's a fool going to tell them? What's a fool going to persuade those fools to do? Gods, give her good sense just once and I'll go religious, I swear I will. I'll reform. I'll- Haral startled her, settling ghostlike into place beside her.