Chanur's Venture
by Caroline J. Cherryh
Map of Compact Space
Chapter One
Meetpoint was in one sense the center of Compact space: in another sense, this place where all the Compact met for trade was the hindside of every species' separate territory, and, along with its cosmopolitan character, it had that chancy watch-your-back kind of feeling on its dockside, even in these days when weapons were discouraged and peace governed the dealings of species. Meetpoint's oxygen docks were redolent of cold and oil and volatiles, its dockside shops and bars echoed of trade and business and offered a selection of vices. Its methane side — the methane folk had to answer for, in their multiple-brained thoughts and stranger songs: but on the oxygen side, the stsho, who were the landlords of Meetpoint, traded in what pleased them. Among those spindly, white-skinned merchants one could find hani, mahendo'sat, kif and (at least when a certain ship was in dock) a stray human from a world named, unenterprisingly, Earth.
That certain ship had been here. That certain ship had departed twenty-odd days ago in pursuit of its own business, a circumstance which completely satisfied Hilfy Chanur, captain of, newly in dock at Meetpoint and besieged by her aunt's unreceived mail — beset also by every hanger-on, would-be and might-have-been politician, inventor, and academician with every offer of favor, every piece of influence-peddling, every crackpot idea and complaint for forty light-years about.
Being niece to the President of Compact space, the elected President of the spacefaring amphictiony of Anuurn, the mekt-hakkikt of all the kif, the Personage of Personages of the mahendo'sat (gods only knew about the methane folk)… in short, entailed a few liabilities.
It remained to be seen, with the Legacy past the initial formalities, whether aunt Pyanfar's latest dealing with Meetpoint's governor was about to become another of those liabilities. It remained imminently to be seen, because at the top of the message stack which had landed in the Legacy's files at the instant of their docking, sat a message from gtst excellency No'shto-shti-stlen, requesting the presence of "the august niece of the most distinguished (untranslatable) Pyanfar Chanur in the inner most hospitable (?) administrative offices," and so on and so on, "omitting customs formalities which this office will be delighted to obviate," and so on in that vein.
One didn't trust that those formalities were going to be ignored, by the gods, one didn't. One set one's second-in-command to handling them, in case the honorable or excellent No'shto-shti-stlen changed gtst mind and charged one's ship with smuggling.
So Hilfy put on her administrative-offices best pair of black satin trousers, and (acutely aware of her youth) combed the mane until it crackled with static (and looked fuller) and the mustaches so that they somewhat covered the youthful scantness of beard. Hilfy Chanur's ears at least had no scarcity of rings to signify her voyages. Her red-gold coat was brushed to a sheen. Her mood was even cheerful as she took the lift down from topside to the main lowerdeck corridor and put her head in at lowerdeck ops.
"I'm off, cousin. You're in charge. How's it going?"
"Smooth so far. Are you sure you don't want one of us to go along?''
Tiar was harried, hurried — they were a small crew, in a strange port, dealing with officials they didn't personally know. The crew was eager to go on liberty, which they couldn't do until the forms were filed and the cargo was delivered.
"I'm fine. I know this place. I know exactly where I'm going."
"You've got the pocket com."
She patted the pocket of her trousers. "No problems. Just a walk down the dock to the lift. You get those forms filed, make sure we're clear of customs… make them sign the forms anyway. Refer them to the governor's office. I'm not taking any chances."
"Aye, captain," Tiar said, and Hilfy walked on and into the lock, cycled it through to Meetpoint's biting air, and walked the frost-rimed yellow tube of the ramp to the wide open docks.
It was a world of gray steel gantries, towering up into an overhead obscured by blinding light, an overhead so tall it made its own weather, had occasional haze about the lights, and rained condensation puddles on the utilitarian decking. Neon glared from storefronts and bars, oxy-breathing species rubbed shoulders in disregard of differences, and nowadays one could trust there were no weapons-One could at least carefully hope there were no weapons. She carried none. Since the Peace, guns on dockside were strictly for the police: all species were civilized now. Law decided controversies, ships refrained from piracy, as a historic source of provocation, and from cargo-pilfering, a clear violation of treaties every known species but one now respected.
So Hilfy Chanur didn't hurry on her way — or worry about the attention she drew here. She cut a fair figure, red-gold hide and black silk breeches in a world of dreary grays and garish neon light. Hani were fairly scarce at this end of space, but most of all, the Chanur name on the Legacy would not have passed unnoticed. She could imagine the whispers: the Personage's relative, the mekt-hakkikt's niece, what's she up to? — justified, since Chanur had a habit of being up to things.
But, credit to Meetpoint's new ordinances, there was not a single interception on her way across the docks, only ordinary traffic; and the lift coordinates she punched in with the number gtst excellency's request had provided her were a priority destination: no waiting for the car, not even fellow passengers to deal with, just a g-shifting express ride into the great body of Meetpoint Station, to a debarcation into that area the stsho landlords reserved unto themselves, white halls draped in shades of nacre and pastel, and ornamented with the writhing alabaster shapes the stsho called art.
She abandoned cautions, abandoned concerns for untoward encounters: this was a safe place; quiet and peaceful, so harmonious that she no more than blinked in dismay when black-robed kifish guards turned up in her path.
So the stsho were back at that foolish practice: un-combative themselves, so fragile a single blow could crush them — they engaged species who could defend them against individuals who might do them violence, the most likely to do violence, unfortunately, being the very species that they hired. One thought that they might have learned that most expensive lesson about the kif — but the stsho made the choices the stsho made: the experiment with mahen and hani guards had apparently not satisfied them, although Hilfy herself had not heard about it; and the fact that the hair rose on a hani captain's nape and that her vision hazed about the edges at the mere sight of these tall, black-robed figures, the fact that a hani of otherwise peaceful intent instantly entertained violent thoughts at meeting these creatures, did not matter to the stsho. It was so polite. So civilized. The kif bowed; she bowed; they said follow, and she followed these thin, long-snouted shadows, these creatures that always, no matter what the circumstances, reeked of ammonia, if only in her memory.
"Chanur captain," they called her, with their peculiar clicking accent, the sound of double, deadly jaws, making consonants that no hani could exactly duplicate. They spoke to her respectfully, for her aunt's sake, for their employers' sake: they showed every sign of fearing her displeasure — as kif might, who had reason to think she had power and influence with their employers. So these were no danger. They were not high in kifish rank or they would not be working here, in alien employ. Kick them and they would estimate you the higher for it.