It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.
Tully's. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.
"Is the human alive?"
"At present."
Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. "Tell Sikkukkut I'll talk about it."
There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. "You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours."
It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. "We can deal here," she said. "Now."
"This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?"
She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. "All right," she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif's neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. "All right. We'll add it up later, kif."
It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks.
Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings.
"Captain." A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. "No go—"
"Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?''
The Voice fell behind. "You crazy," the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. "You crazy go that place!"
II
Kif fell in and walked as an escort about them, their black robes like a moving wall in the dockside twilight. A dry paper and ammonia smell rose about them, mingled with the; scent of pungent incense and oil. Weapons rattled as they went, rifles and sidearms as illegal as their own.
They had docked in the same section as Harukk, without a section door to pass. The twilit deck stretched out in the! upward-tending horizon of all station docks, up to a towering section seal that blinked red lights: hazard, hazard, hazard-precaution against riot and catastrophe. Mkks braced itself.
On the rows opposite the docks, in that space usual for services and bars such as spacers used, doorways filled with kif who lounged there with hateful eyes and whispers. Windows glowered with neon, with sodium- and argon-light; the girders overhead were palled with smoke no ventilation coped with, a haze about the glaring suns of the dock's floodlamps.
"Gods-rotted mahen hell," Haral muttered, striding along at Pyanfar's side. "The place is all kif."
The kif cluttered and clicked among themselves in some obscure accent. Not main-kifish. Pyanfar knew words enough of that, and lost this entire.
They passed other doors from which came different, grass-eater smells; and strange moans and wailings: animals, kept and pent here. Hunter-kind that hani were, it turned Pyanfar's stomach. Kif fed on live food. While it lived.
Even on their own kind, in defeat. So rumor had it.
The kif in the lead tended toward the inner wall and a side corridor; they followed into that narrower passage, among armed kif who loitered in small clusters along the wall and stood away from it as they passed.
"Kk-kk-kk," one said, insulting them. Khym broke step: "No," Pyanfar hissed; and Geran grabbed his arm. They went further, with kif closing in at their backs and in front of them. The safeties were already off the guns and had been off, since the airlock. But there was nothing to win here. Not even for the kif.
Doors opened for them, on a room sodium-lit and reeking of kif-stink. The distinctive chatter and. clicking of kif came out to them; and a high wail that was not kif died in a sudden squeak.
"Here," their hooded guide said, beside that open door, extending a wide-sleeved arm. "The hakkikt will welcome you."
"Huh," Pyanfar said, and stepped inside, into the murk, slid sideways of the door and sideways still as Haral and the rest followed, in amongst a crowd of kif, in amongst deeper shadows and that old-paper scent and scent of ammonia and incense so strong they blinded the nose to other cues.
There were chairs, tables: seated kif, standing kif.
And standing at the far end of the long room, amid the hellish glare and drift of incense, two paler figures, one pale-skinned, one red-brown.
Abruptly Pyanfar's rifle tumbled from carry to her hands and rifles and guns moved with one rattle that sounded round the room in rapid sequence, a hundred-fold. Five of them were hers. The ready-lights on rifle stocks glowed like a scatter of bloody stars.
Nothing moved after that. Their backs were at the wall; and Hilfy and Tully were thrust back amid a ring of kif with rifles all about them.
"Sikkukkut!" Pyanfar yelled. "You here, hakkikt?"
One kif had remained seated in a many-legged chair. That one unfolded upward and stepped from among its legs, one hand lifted. "You amaze me, Chanur. Now what will you do? Ask me to let them go?"
"Oh, no. I'm going to stand here. We're all going to stand here like this, and no one moves, until my friends get here.''
"Your friends."
"Couple of hunter-ships. Just to keep the odds even while we trade."
The kif lowered his hand very slowly. He was utter shadow as he moved before the orange glaring lamp. The hands spread themselves, light streaming past the sleeves. A dry sniffing reached her ears. Kifish laughter. "So that was your request for an open berth. Good, hani. Very good." He gestured toward his prisoners. "Do you want to take them now?
Pyanfar did not look, refusing the distraction. She kept the gun aimed at the hakkikt's chest. "We can have a real good bloodbath, hakkikt. Let me put it in kifish terms: we've got a sfik item here. It's my ego in question. So we'll just stand here. Hours maybe. We're patient. You want to send a message? Head my friends off from docks? Fine. Or come at us. It's all over in here, then."
The kif gave a flourish of his hands and sat down in his insect-legged chair, a black lump amid the black pillars of his folk, beside the solitary wisp of white and color that was the prize. In the tail of her eye she saw a shifting there among the prisoners, and heard a sharp, hurt gasp.
"I'd stop that back there," Pyanfar said, "hakkikt. One my people over there yells, might distract me, huh?"
Sikkukkut lifted a hand. "Hunter Pyanfar, you should havebeen a kif. I tell you, I will deal with you."
They could die, they could all die, of this kif s embarrassment. Of failing him. Or of trusting him. But it was an offer. She drew a long, even breath.
"Fine. Let's wait on my friends."
"There truly are such?"
"Truly, there are."
"You have a fast ship, hunter Pyanfar."
A kif—gave points away and halfway admitted to surprise. It was, gods help them, conciliatory. Or mockery. Or some obscurely kifish thing.
"What do you want?" she asked. It had to be the right question. Or there might none of them leave the room alive. "You wanted me here. Why? What trade?"
There was long silence. "Skokitk," the kif said. Cease. "Skokitk!"
The pale figure hit the floor, a thudding tumble to its knees. The red-brown moved and crouched low beside it. Pyanfar never turned her head.
"Hilfy," Haral said. "Very carefully. Get up and get him over here." -