"He does talk."
"So," Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. "Sun, is it?"
"Where are we?" Tully asked. "Ur-tur?"
"Urtur. Yes."
He drew a great breath. "Go Maing Tol."
"Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?"
"Know." He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. "Meetpoint — Urtur — Kshshti — Maing Tol."
"Huh." He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them. "Goldtooth teach?"
"Mahe name Ino. Ship name Ijir."
"Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How'd you find Goldtooth?"
He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. "Go Goldtooth, yes."
"You with him long?"
"#?"
"Were you long time in Goldtooth's ship?"
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce.
"Where did you meet Goldtooth?"
"Ino find him."
It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don't pick a fight, no trouble while Khym's in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves.
"You come how long ago?" Geran asked.
"Don't know," he said, glancing that way. "Long time."
"Days?"
"Lot days."
He could be more precise. He knew the translator's limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence.
Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so. There was not a move at table. Only Tully.
Their old friend.
She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.
His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.
"Where find?" he asked. "Where find, Pyanfar?"
"Whose?" She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead.
"Mahe got?" he asked. "Goldtooth?"
"Kif gave it to me," she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. "Friend of yours, Tully?"
"What say this kif?"
"Said — said it was a message for our cargo."
The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right.
For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully's eyes and ran down into his beard.
"Friend, huh?" She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. "Want to get that vane fixed?"
"Where get?" Tully asked before anyone could move.
"Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?"
His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on.
It was too small. He forced it. "Need #," he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now.
"This kif," she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. "This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you'd come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked.
What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?"
The blue eyes burned. "Friend," he said. "Belong friend stay Ijir."
She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. "So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. Where?"
"Kif got. Kif got # Ijir."
"Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you've told us. What do they know, Tully?
What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?"
"They ask help."
"How much help? Tully-what are you doing here?"
"Kif. Kif."
"What's going on?" Khym asked from her left. "What's he talking about — kif?"
"Later," she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym's nostrils. "Tully. Tell me what's in that paper. You tell me, hear."
"You got take to Maing Tol."
"Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought."
He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated.
"Need you," he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static.
"Friend, Pyanfar."
"I ask him," Khym rumbled.
"No," she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. "Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are."
"Ask hani come fight ship take human."
"Make sense."
"Want make trade hani-mahe."
"Truth?"
"Truth."
The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the han direct. Trade — was the lure, and there was something in the trees.
She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral's ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous.
But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions. Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed.
"Vane," she said with ulterior motives. "Go."
"Aye." Haral moved, shoved Chur's shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up.
"Get the galley cleared," Pyanfar said- "Tully. You just became juniormost. Help Hilfy with the galley. Khym — you fetch and carry on the bridge. Whoever needs it."
"I want to talk to you," Khym said, unbudged.
"No time to talk." She turned her head and met his scowl with her own as he stayed put on the bench, still blocking her way out. "Look, Khym, we've got a vane in partial failure. One of us may have to take a walk after it yet. You got a question that tops it?"
His ears went down in dismay.
"Out," she said.
"We could go to Kura, couldn't we?"
"No. We can't. Can't shift course again this side of Urtur — we're in the dust; we've got a vane down. . The last course change gods-rotted near killed us, you understand that? I haven't got time to discuss it." She shoved and he moved. She got up and looked back at him, at Hilfy and Tully who were gathering dishes at furious speed. But Khym lingered, a towering hurt. She gathered up her patience, took him by the arm, walked him to the privacy of the bridgeward corridor. "Look, Khym — we've got troubles."
"Somehow," he said, "I figured that."
"Kshshti's mahen-held," she said. "Barely. If the kif have Kita watched they've likely got something in at Kshshti. But there's help there or the mahendo'sat wouldn't send us that direction."
"You trust what they say?"
She looked behind him, where one stark-pale human hastened to hand dishes off the table and close doors.