"Try the Rows," said Tirun, older spacer. Her beard was full; her mane hung wild about her shoulders. Her left ear flicked, clashing half a dozen rings. "Come on. I take evens, you take odds. Hit every bar on the Rows. He might have, gods only know."
Hilfy gulped air and went, not questioning the orders as Haral herself had not questioned what had happened, except that something had gone wrong. Very wrong. That had been a coded call to get off the docks. At once. Her ears kept lying back on their own; she pricked them up with spasmodic efforts, seeking a hani voice through the din, from out of the row of spacer bars that lined the marketplace.
No sign of any hani in the first bar on the row. It was all mahendo'sat inside, honking music and the raucous screech and stamp of drunken spacers.
She crossed Tirun's path on the walk on the way out and they split again into the third and fourth bar.
Stsho, this den. But she spotted the red-gold of hani backs clustered about a bowl-table, dived through and slid to her knees on the rim. A senior hani spacer turned round and eyed her; other eyes turned her way, all round the table. She bobbed a hasty bow with hands gripping the rim.
"Hilfy Chanur Par Faha, gods look on you — you seen a hani male?"
Ears laid back and pricked in non-sobriety all round the table, six pairs of ears heavy with rings. "Gods — what you been drinking, kid?"
"Sorry." That was a mistake. She scrambled to her feet and started away; but the spacer swayed erect, waved wildly for balance as she clawed her unsteady way up the plastic bowlseat to catch her arm. "Hani male, hey? Need help, Chanur? Where you see this vision, hey?"
There were derisive laughs, curses — someone was trodden on. The rest of the hani came up on the seat and scrambled out of the pit. Hilfy tore loose and fled. "Hey," she heard at her back, hani-cough, a drunken roar.
"Pay!" A shrill stsho warble from another side. "Pay, hani bastard-"
"Charge it to Ayhar's Prosperity!"
"O gods!" Hilfy dived for the exit, just as a pair of kifish patrons loomed in the doorway. Black musty robes brushed her with a smell that sent the wind up her back. She did not look back or pause as she dived past them both. "Hard rabble." she heard hissed behind her, the noise of drunken encounter mingled with kifish voices.
She darted through the outer doors into the light of the market, blinked, hesitating on one foot, hearing above the market noise the sound of hani in full chase behind her — no sight of Tirun. She leaned into a run and plunged into the next odd-numbered bar — stsho again, not a sight of hani. She pelted back out the doors, through the incoming mass of Ayhar clan, who began a turnabout in that doorway in merry disorder.
Still no Tirun. She dived into the next odd-number, another stsho den, saw a tall red shape, and heard the voices, a deeper hani voice than this port had ever heard, the chitter of stsho curses, the snarl of mahendo'sat.
"Na Khym," she cried in profoundest relief. "Na Khym!" She eeled her way through the towering crowd at the bar and grabbed him by the arm. "Uncle — thank the gods. Pyanfar wants you.
Now. Right now, Na Khym."
"Hilfy?" he said, far from focused. He swayed there, a head taller than she, twice her breadth of shoulder, his broad, scarred nose wrinkled in confusion. "Trying to explain to these fellows-"
"Uncle, for the gods' sakes-"
"He is," a hani voice cried from the door. "By the gods — what's he doing here?"
Khym flinched, faced about with his back to the bar, starting with misgiving at the drunken Ayhar spacers.
"Hey!" — A second hani voice, from among the Ayhar. "Chanur! You crazy, Chanur? What are you up to, huh, bringing him out here? You got no regard for him?"
"Come on," Hilfy pleaded. "Na Khym-" She tugged at a massive arm, felt the tension in it.
"For gods' sake, na Khym — we've got an emergency."
Maybe that got through. Khym shivered, one sharp tremor, like an earthquake through solid stone.
"Get, get, get!" a stsho shrilled in pidgin. "Get out he my bar!"
Hilfy pulled with all her might. Khym yielded and kept walking, through the hani crowd that drew aside wide-eyed and muttering, past the black wall of curious mahendo'sat and the glitter of their gold.
Another black wall formed athwart the brighter, outside light. Billowing robes blocked the path to the door, two tall, ungainly shapes.
"Chanur," said a kif, a dry clicking voice. "Chanur brings its males out. It needs help."
Hilfy stopped. Khym had, with a rumbling in his throat. "Don't," Hilfy said, "don't do it —
Khym, for gods' sakes, just let's get out of here. We don't want a fight."
"Run," the kif hissed. "Run, Chanur. You run from kif before."
"Come on." Hilfy wrapped her arm tightly about Khym's elbow. She guided him through the crowd toward the doorway, past the first brush of robes, trying to look noncombatant, trying to watch the whereabouts of dark kifish hands beneath the dusky cloth.
"Hilfy," said Khym.
She looked up. The whole doorway had filled with kif.
"It's got a knife!" A hani voice. "Look out, kid-"
Something flew, trailing beer and froth, and hit a kifish head. "Got!" A mahen voice crowed delight. Kif lunged, Khym lunged. Hilfy hit a kif with claws bared and bodies tangled in the doorway.
Yiiii-yinnnnn! a stsho voice wailed above the din. "Yeeiei-yi! Police, police, police!"
"Yaooo!" (The mahendo'sat).
"Na Khym!"
Tirun's voice, a roar from outside the tangled doorway, inbound. "Hilfy! Na Khym! Chanur!"
"Ayhar, ai Ayhar."
"Catimin-shai!"
Mugs and bottles sailed.
"He's on the Rows! Hurry!" Haral's voice came from the pocket com; and Pyanfar, delaying for a check of eat-shops outside the market, started to run for all she was worth, past startled mahendo'sat and stsho who leapt from her path, herself dodging round the confused course of a methane-breather vehicle that zigged away on another tack.
Sirens sounded. The three-story bulkhead doors of the market sector were blinking with red warning lights. She put on a final burst of speed and dived through asprawl as the valves began to move.
The edges met with a boom and airshock that shook the deck, drowning the din of howls beyond, and she gathered herself up off the deck plates and ran without even a backward look.
The whole market was in turmoil. Merchants or looters snatched armfuls of whatever they could; aisles jammed. Animals screeched above the roar. A black thing darted past Pyanfar's legs and yelped at being trodden on. She vaulted a counter, scrambled on a rolling scatter of trinkets, found a clear aisle and ran toward the Rows where a moment's clear sight showed a heaving mass in the doorway. Stsho darted from that crowd, pale and gibbering; drunken mahendo'sat stayed to yell odds— a pair of hani arrived from the other direction: Chur and Geran headed full tilt toward the mass.
She jerked spectators this way and that, careless of her claws. Mahendo'sat howled outrage and moved. A kif-shape darted past her, moving faster than clear sight. She caught at it and got only robe as she broke through to the center of the mob. Plastic splintered. Glass broke, bodies rolled underfoot.