Chur took it by the arm and drew it into the bath, carefully. Hilfy brought the screen in and Pyanfar added the module as she set it on the counter and plugged it into the auxiliary com/ comp receptacle. From the bath there came briefly the sound of the shower working, then the toilet cycling. Chur brought the Outsider back into the main room, both looking embarrassed. Then the Outsider saw the translator hookup sitting on the counter, and its eyes flickered with interest.
Not joy. There was never that.
It said something. Two distinct words. For a moment it sounded as if it were speaking its own language. And then it sounded vaguely kif. Pyanfar’s ears pricked up ad she drew in a breath. “Say again,” she urged it in kif, and made an encouraging motion toward her ear, standard dockside handsign.
“Kif… companion?”
“No.” She drew a deeper breath. “Bastard! You do understand.” And again in kif: “Who are you? What kind are you?”
It shook its head, seeming helpless. Evidently who was not part of its repertoire. Pyanfar considered the anxious Outsider thoughtfully, reached and set her hand on Chur’s convenient shoulder. “This is Chur,” she said in kif. And in hani: “You do me a great favor, cousin: you sit with this Outsider on your watch. You keep him going on those identifications, change modules the minute you’ve got one fully identified, the audio track filled. Keep him at it while he will but don’t force him. You know how to work it?”
“Yes,” Chur said.
“You be careful. No knowing what it’s thinking, what it’s been through, and I don’t put deviousness beyond its reach either. I want it communicative; don’t be rough with it, don’t frighten it. But don’t put yourself in danger either. — Geran, you stay outside, do your operations monitor by pager so long as Chur’s inside, hear?”
Geran’s ears — the right one was notched, marring what was otherwise a considerable beauty — flicked in distress, a winking of gold rings on the left. “Clearly understood,” she said.
“Hilfy.” Pyanfar motioned to her niece and started out the door. The Outsider started toward them, but Chur’s outflung arm prevented it and it stopped, not willing to quarrel. Chur spoke to it quickly, gingerly touched its bare shoulder. It looked frightened, for the first time outright frightened.
“I think it wants you, aunt,” Hilfy observed.
Pyanfar laid her ears back, abhorring the thought of fending off a grab at her person, walked out with Hilfy unhurried all the same. She looked back from the doorway. “Be careful of it,” she told Chur and Geran again. “Ten times it may be gentle and agreeable… and go for your throat on the eleventh.”
She walked off, the skin of her shoulders twitching with distaste. Hilfy trailed her, but Pyanfar jammed her hands into the back of her waistband and took no notice of her niece until they had gotten to the lift. Hilfy pressed the button to open the door and they got in. Pressed central; it brought them up and still without a word Pyanfar walked out into the bridgeward corridor.
“Aunt,” Hilfy said.
Pyanfar looked back.
“What shall we do with it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Pyanfar said tartly. Her ears were still back. She purposely put on a better face. “Not your fault, niece. This one is my own making.”
“I’d take some of the slack; I’d help, if I knew what to do. With the cargo gone—”
Pyanfar frowned and the ears went down again. You want to relieve me of worry? she thought. Then don’t do anything stupid. But there was that face, young and proud and wanting to do well. Most that Hilfy knew how to do on the ship had gone when cargo blew and scan shut down. “Youngster, I’ve gotten into a larger game than I planned, and there’s no going home until we’ve gotten it straightened out. How we do that is another question, because the kif know our name. Have you got an idea you’ve been sitting on?”
“No, aunt — being ignorant about too much.”
Pyanfar nodded. “So with myself, niece. Let it be a lesson to you. My situation precisely, when I took the Outsider in, instead of handing it right back to the kif.”
“We couldn’t have given him to them.”
“No,” Pyanfar agreed heavily. “But it would certainly have been more convenient.” She shook her head. “Go rest whelp, and this time I mean it. You were sick during jump; you’ll be lagging when I do need you. And need you I will.” She walked on, into the bridge, past the archway. Hilfy did not follow. Pyanfar sat down at her place, among all the dead instruments, listened to the sometime whisper of larger dust over the hull, called up all the record which had flowed in while she was gone, listening to that with one ear and the current comflow with the other.
Bad news. A second arrival in the system… more than one ship. It might be kif, might be someone else from the disaster at Meetpoint. In either case it was bad. The ones already here were on the hunt beyond question — kif were upset enough to have dumped cargo to get here from Meetpoint: no other ships had cause to hunt The Pride, or to call them thief. They were the same kif, beyond doubt, upset enough to have banded together in a hunt. Bad news all the way.
Urtur Station was into the comflow now… bluster, warning the kif of severe penalties and fines. That was very old chatter, from the beginning of the trouble, a wavefront just now reaching them. Threats from the kif — those were more current. The mahendo’sat ship… harassed, made its way stationward. The kif turned their attention to the new arrivals, to other things. They would begin to figure soon that the freighters last arrived had jumped behind The Pride. That The Pride had to have tricked them and gone elsewhere into stsho territories, or had to be here… doing precisely what they were doing; and very probably a nervous kif would play the surmise he had already staked his reputation on. They would start hunting shadows once they reached that conclusion, having questioned a few frightened mahe. They would fan out, prowl the system, stop miner ships, ask close questions, probably commit small piracy at the same time, not to waste an opportunity. The station could do nothing — a larger one might, but not Urtur, which was mostly manufacturing and scarcely defended. No mahendo’sat ship would be willing to be stopped — but there was no hope for them of outrunning that hyped kif ship, no chance at least which an ordinary mahendo’sat captain was equipped to take.
And there was no chance that one of those ships incoming from Meetpoint would turn out to be hani, and relieve them all of that weight of guilt. Handur’s Voyager was gone, beyond hope and help. Not even proximity to Meetpoint was likely to have saved anyone in that attack. The kif were nothing if not thorough: they practiced bloodfeud themselves, and left no survivors.
Kif — had somehow missed killing one another off in their rise off their homeworld and into space. They had done it, hani had always suspected, in mutual distrust; in outright hatred. They had contested themselves into space, and hunted each other through it until they found easier pickings.
Not The Pride, she swore, and not Pyanfar Chanur.
That kif who was in command out there — she was certain beyond question that it was Akukkakk of Hinukku, who had come ahead to stake out Urtur to be waiting for them — once that kif knew they had gotten through, he would be checking all his backtime records, sniffing through everything hoping to catch some missed trace of The Pride’s arrival. They had left very little of a wavefront ghost to detect; but there might be something, some small missed flicker.