Chanur's Homecoming (35 page)

"You got it." Sirany released restraints and climbed out of the chair. "Get you a sandwich back here," she said then, and gathered up her crew, galleyward bound. Pyanfar stared at her retreating back, still hanging onto the seat. In case. The way any spacer held onto things in a moving ship. She looked at her own crew, at sober faces of Chanur who had arrived around her.

Ears lifted. "Good," Haral said.

 
"I hope," she said, and slid a glance Geran's way, at a face that showed trouble. "How is she?"

Geran shrugged. The woman had gone so gaunt herself that her ribs showed. Her worry was tautly held, made a darker spot above her nose, an indentation in her brow that had gotten to be part of her expression.

"You're a mess yourself. We need you. Get in there with Sirany's crew, get some food down you; Tully'll run some back to Chur. Don't argue with me, gods rot it, I'll have your ears. Chur'll have mine if I get her there without you. Hilfy, get the rest of us up here." The assigned crew was all there, all settling in as Hilfy's voice began calling Tully and Khym and Skkukuk on the general speakers.

"Mess," Pyanfar said, and flung herself into her chair. Haral was beside her, already in control of things. "No sign of Moon Rising."

There had been a chance. There was less and less. It was four months back at Meetpoint, as hyperlight ran down the starlanes, but not by the way they traveled; whatever had happened there was four, five months old and about to get

older.

"Long time back," she said, while the data flowed past her.

"Kura's alive," Haral said. "Just not talking. Kif
 
scared them plenty. They shut down everything. They got no ships here or they're all lying silent."

They had been a long time away from home. And far from the han. "Gods know what the stsho taught us, huh?"

Years the way homework! saw it. That was the way of spacers. To stay young while the worlds aged, and groundlings connived and contrived their little worldly plots and made their gains in the intervals when spacers were strung out between the stars, lost in dreams.

"Kif's not having any trouble out there. Real fine piece of navigation, that."

"We got troubles, Skkukuk's gods-be dinner's loose again. Got careless with his door open."

"Or we missed a couple of 'em."

"What's it eating, that's what Sirany wanted to know. That's what / want to know."

"Maybe it's gotten acclimated to electric shock," Hilfy said, breaking in on station-to-station. "Adaptive, Skkukuk said they were. Akkhtish life."

She looked straight across at Haral with a sinking feeling about her stomach.

"Lifesupport," Haral said.

"Check it. Those godsforsaken things eat plastics."

"We'll get it." Haral was out of her seat and headed. "Hilfy, get the menfolk on it. Get Skkukuk!"

"We can't leave our gods-be schedule. Can't. We got no way to recalc this thing and get word to all the ships back there fast enough. Gods rot it-" They were off auto-pilot see-and-evade while crew was coming up. It put the ship at some risk of damage. Not doing it was worse in terms of fragile flesh and bone. They had lives at stake back there. She punched a button to usurp com. "Ker Sirany, we're slaying stable a good half hour. I'm taking your advice on the vermin. We're trying to track them down."

"Understood," Sirany's voice came back, clear above the quiet of other voices in the galley. And, politic, not one other word.

Second jab of keys tied into com. "Skkukuk, this is the captain speaking, you hear me, son? Your gods-be dinner's loose again, I want 'em counted, I want to know where it is, I want it out of our way, or I'll have your hide for a wall-hanging, you hear me?"

"Kkkkt," the answer came back, dopplered from pickup to pickup. "Hakt', I let nothing escape, this is not my doing, not my doing, mekt-hakt'-/ am on my way, at once, at once-Fools, fools, hold the lift!''

He doubtless believed it about the wallhanging. She ducked her head between her hands and raked her claws through her mane. Tell the Tauran they were sane and this cut loose. It was ludicrous. It was deadly serious. No telling what systems the things could take out. The whole ship was infested. She had lost her reputation already. She stank, the whole ship stank, was acrawl with kifish vermin and gods knew what else, the whole clean, well-ordered universe was turned inside out and the vermin were the last, grotesque insult. The gods' own dark humor, that was what it was; just a final, ugly joke on the species. Take out the ship that might save them, with a mucked-up lifesupport, filters ruined, gods knew where they could get in and short something out with their wickedly sharp little teeth.

How many of them?

Breeding during jump? Something that lived so gods-be fast it just went on living and breeding even in hyperspace, generations upon nasty, squealing little generations?

Nothing could do that. Most animals did well to breed at all on shipboard, with all the noise and the clatter and clank that kept them upset; nothing could shift its metabolism like that and live real time in hyperspace.

Even kif couldn't.

Could they?

She stared at the situation on the screens in front of her, she kept the ship on course while one crew had its necessary meal in the galley; and Geran came back to tell her she had just reassigned Khym and Tully from galley to the hunt and she was, by the captain's leave, taking a cup of soup to her sister, by the captain's leave. Please. In spite of her specific

orders.

"Gods. Yes." Pyanfar took another desperate swipe at her disordered mane and part of it came out on her claws, the way a body always shed during jump, but no one on ship had had a bath in over four realspace months and six or so subjective days. "How is she?"

"Just real still. Says-says there's a trouble at home. Says there's kif going there. Says Moon Rising's behind us. Akkhtimakt's ten days up on us. She says."

A chill went up Pyanfar's spine, and right down again to the gut. "She could be right." For a moment she had a conviction Chur could well be right: crack scan tech and sometime navigator, Chur knew how much time determined hunter ships could gain on a band of freighters. Then she saw it the way Geran had to see it. Chur was a practical woman. And she was babbling prophecies across lightyears. Jump could do that to a mind. There were casualties who never came in out of the dark. She had seen them, sitting in the sun at hospital, with Anuurn's blue sky above them forever and not a realization in the world where they were.

They were everywhere, that was their delusion. They would always be everywhere. If there was anything mystical about it, the thing that was themselves had just reached infinity and stayed there, like a machine with a broken cutoff switch.

"She wants to work," Geran said.

"Tell her-" Pyanfar drew a breath. "Can she?"

"No."

"Get her fed. We got an hour insystem here. I'm taking you offshift; you stay with her."

"No." Geran's ears went flat. "No, captain."

"You want one of the Tauran? Tully, f godssakes? You do it. We got Tirun to take scan. We can run .this one short or I can haul Sif back in. Stay there."

Geran's face went hard and desperate. Ears flicked and struggled up again. "Tully," she said. "I mean, he's not going to do anything, is he? Sleeps with us below. They're friends. Aren't they?"

"Yeah." Less said on that the better. "The good of the ship. Good of-a whole lot of people. Yes. I want you on the boards if you got your mind there."

"It'll be there," Geran said. "Do her good. She can't argue with Tully. I'll feel better about it." And she went, with a solid purpose in her stride.

Pyanfar settled into her place, listened to the chatter insystem, ran checks, took a cup of gfi when Fiar came bringing cups round. Charity. Out of their own galley.

The hunt went on, upper decks and lower. And the system they were running through stayed far quieter than it ought to be.

"They got the upperdecks filter changed out," Hilfy said. "Caught three of those things. Skkukuk swears they didn't slip from his collection. Old stuff, he says. They're coming from somewhere."

"Great. Wonderful." She clicked through changes on the comp. "That's fine news." Ought not to snap. Crew has enough on their minds. "Sorry."

"Aye, captain."

You've grown a lot, Hilfy Chanur. Can't tell you that. Crown woman never wants to hear that. Can't tell you anything anymore.

"First escort's jumped," Tirun said. "We're on-" The fifteen-minute warning sounded, a double pulse. "That's fifteen," Hilfy's voice rang out through the halls.

Pyanfar punched in on the same channel. "Leave it, whatever it is. Give us an easy trip, get yourselves to stations and quarters, wherever they are, forget the gods-be mess, I want you where you're going on the five. Tully, you go to Chur's room. Now."

"Got," that lone human voice came back. And other acknowledgments. Perhaps no one had broken it to Tully until now where he was spending the jump.

He would not object. He understood. Would do anything for Chur. Friend, he would say.

What Chur would say about Tully in her bed was another matter.

Annoy her. Make her mad. Get her mind back. That was what might work. Of a sudden she saw Geran's logic, clear and plain.

"He's what?" Chur murmured, and blinked at her sister, and at Tully standing all diffident at the foot of her bed.

"Taking care of you," Geran said. "Mind your manners. You take advantage of him the captain'll skin you. Hear?"

Chur blinked again, deciding finally that this was funny. The worried look on Tully's face was funny. There was a time she would have worried. Had been a time-yesterday, it seemed-when she had wanted no more of anything but hani. It was strange how all that had washed away, as if jump had left it behind, left her washed out, new, all things and everywhere. A god would feel this strange sensation, as if all space was her body and her brain, the stars so many particles. She might be a god. She laughed at them both, and flexed the fingers on the arm so long stiff it had gone beyond pain. Machinery ticked away. She had learned how to cheat it, how to keep her heart quiet and not trigger its anesthetizing flood through the tubes. She felt the pulse increase and settled it down again, deliberately.

"Brought me a handsome lover, have you? I must be better. C'mon, Tully. It's all right. They got one hand out of operation."

"I stay with," he said. Innocent of everything.

He stank. Everyone did. She did. There was no help for it, though Geran tried to keep her clean. That was all right too. Geran went off and left them together, Tully standing there lost-looking, and the com crackling with reports.

The reports confused her. They had hunted the black things out at- wherever they had been.

They were back again at Kura. Little slinking evils. A god might have worse things to deal with. They were only nuisance-nightmares.

"Go soon," Tully said, and sat on the edge of her bed. "I be with you." He patted her knee under the blankets. That hurt a little. All her joints ached. "You be fine, Chur."

It was nice to be told that by someone other than Geran, who was biased. She drew a larger breath.

"We go to Anuurn," he said, and held up two slender, agile fingers. "Two jump. We got-" Another rearrangement of the fingers. "Nine ship. Make safe."

"Against the kif?" For a moment space went inside and out. "No. Tell the captain-tell the captain- trouble. They'll be waiting off Tyar."

"Geran tell," Tully said. "She tell, all right?"

"Logic," Chur said, and waved the free hand, a loose, limp failure of a gesture. "Logic-position. The geometry of the thing-" She stared at him in despair. Geran had looked at her as if she were crazed. Tully simply blinked, beyond his vocabulary.

"Danger," she said. "Danger, gods rot it."

"Understand," he said. And looked at her with fear. With Geran's look.

Crew returned. Pyanfar ran the checks. They were still on the mark. They had no communication with the other ships excepting the necessary crosschecks of position and exchange of navigational data. It was not politic or wise, considering possibility of spies overhearing them, to do more than they had done. Their messages would be reported, as often as they were detected, and some they had sent were already pushing the limits of prudence.

Hakkikt, she would say, such arguments were necessary. They won us allies. Isn't that the point?

If she got the chance. .

The five-minute warning sounded. The ship started procedures. Data started coming up. Tauran crew and their mahen passengers reported themselves secure.

"Sukk just made jump," Geran said.

"Coming up on mark," Haral said.

They left behind a scrap of message, to persist after them. Danger to Anuurn. Assist.

Chapter Ten

. . . Down. . . .

. . . one more time. ... . . . "Kura Point, Pyanfar."

She was young. Back in Urarun's day. Green kid on her first trip back home again. Looking forward to Anuurn and swaggering about the estate.

See me. Ring and all. Got this scratch dockside at Meetpoint, I did.

Difference of opinion, me and a Jesur crewwoman.

Gods bless. What were we fighting about?

No matter. We healed fast in those days.

"Meet you at the door, Hal." With a slow and heavy-lidded look, while a gray nosed spacer (that was the name: Pura Jesur) Pura Jesur thought she could push a couple of Chanur kids and have a bit of fun. Herself and Haral, insubordinate and full of young arrogance toward a rival ship's crew. And drunk. That too.

Gods save us.

Urarun Chanur being the captain on the old Golden Sun. She retired as captain two voyages after. Chanur clan took the ship out of service, sold it finally to Thusar, where it ran under the name of Thusar's Merit, a little ship. A lot of ship, for a little clan like Thusar, new to spacefaring. Chanur retired the shipname. Transferred the crew eventually, as many together as they could, to the newbuilt Pride. Urarun Chanur died in her sleep one night planetside.