“I spit at your charges. I dumped the debris at Kita and warned you only in the remote chance there was still some with me, dumped it, I might add, and sustained damage protecting your worthless station from injury. As for fines, you’re brigands, bloodsuckers, to prey off a friendly ship with a long-standing account at this station, when for the preservation of our lives and the protection of the Compact we had to come in for shelter against piracy. A hani, a hani, mind, asks shelter, and when have we ever done such a thing? Are you blind and deaf as well as greedy?”
“We have outrage. We have knnn act crazy out there. We have report—”
The Personage Stasteburana held up his aged and manicured hand. His Voice silenced herself and broke off with a bow, while Stasteburana strolled back, stroking his ball of fluff, which had never ceased to growl. “You make large commotion, honorable Chanur, great hani captain, yes, we know you — long time absent; maybe trade our rival Ajir, but we know you. Good friend, we. Maybe make deal on fines. But serious matter. Where come from?”
“Meetpoint and Urtur via Kita, wise mahe.”
“With this?” An ears-flat look at Tully.
“An unfortunate. A being of great sensitivity, wise and gentle mahe. His ship was wrecked, his companions gone… he cast himself on my charity and proves of considerable value.”
“Value, hani, captain?”
“He needs papers, wise mahe, and my ship needs repairs.”
Again Stasteburana walked away, aloof from the Voice. “Your ship got no cargo,” the Voice spat. “You come empty hand, make big trouble here. You near ask credit, hani captain; what credit? We make you fines, you send Anuurn get cargo, maybe two, three hani ship pay off damages. You got us knnn. You got us kif. We know this. You go talk hani at next berth, ask she pay your fines.”
“Trivial. I have cargo, better than Moon Rising. I make you a deal, indeed I shall, in spite of your uncivilized behavior. I make a deal all mahendo’sat will want.”
The Voice looked at Tully, and the Personage turned about, moved in with a leisurely grace, handed the small noisy animal to the Voice, and frowned. Stasteburana made a further sign to his other three companions, and one of them called to someone in the hall.
It was not easy to make distinctions of mahendo’sat of the same age and sex and build; but about the large and relatively plain fellow who answered that summons… there was an instant and queasy familiarity — particularly when he flashed a broad gilt-edged smile. Pyanfar sucked in her breath and tucked her hands behind her, pulling the claws back in.
“Captain Ana Ismehanan-min of the freighter Mahijiru,” Stasteburana said softly. “Acquaintance to you, yes.”
“Indeed,” Pyanfar said, and bowed, which gesture Gold-tooth returned with a flourish.
“This kif business,” said Stasteburana, folding his wrinkled hands at his middle. “Explain, hani Captain.”
“Who am I to know what a kif thinks? They let this unfortunate being slip their fingers and expected me to sell him back, plainly illegal. Then they attacked a hani ship which was completely ignorant of the matter. A Handur ship was completely destroyed unless the captain of Mahijiru has better news.”
“No good news,” Goldtooth agreed sadly. “All lost, hani captain. All. I get away quick, come here tell story my port.”
The Personage turned and tapped Goldtooth on the shoulder, spoke to him in one of those obscure mahen languages outside her reckoning. Goldtooth bowed profoundly and backed aside, and Pyanfar looked warily at the Personage. “You know,” she said, to recover the initiative, “what the kif wanted; and you know that there’s no chance of hiding such a prize, not here, not on Anuurn either. No good hiding it at all.”
“I make you—” There was a beep from someone’s pager. A voice followed, and one of the attendants came forward in consternation, offered the instrument to the hand of the Personage Stasteburana. There was talk of knnn: that much past the local dialect; and the Personage’s dark eyes grew wider. “Where is it?” Pyanfar caught that much of the conversation, and saw distress among the others. “You come,” said Stasteburana himself, not using his Voice for instruction, and swept a gesture to the doorway from which the mahendo’sat had come into the room.
“Come,” Pyanfar echoed to Chur and Tully, and walked along amid the mahe, the attendants and the Voice and the captain of Mahijiru, all in the wake of the Personage, who was-hastening with some evident alarm.
The corridor debouched on an operations center. Technicians in the aisles melted aside for the Personage and his entourage. The Voice hissed orders, and the fluff hissed too, in general menace. On the air a tc’a spoke, a sound like static bursts and clicking.
“Screen,” Stasteburana ordered in his own tongue.
The main screen livened in front of them, meters wide and showing a dimly lit dockside. Blues and violets, a horrid light, like nightmare, and a scuttling shape like a snarl of hair possessed of an indefinite number of thin black legs. It darted this I way and that, dragging with it, clutched in jaws — appendages — under the hair? — something which glittered with metal and had the look of a long-limbed hani body.
With a sinking feeling Pyanfar recognized it. It was a good J bet that Chur and Tully did, who had conspired in its construction.
“That’s a knnn,” Pyanfar said to Tully. He said something I back, short and unhappy. On the screen the creature scurried I this way and that with its burden, eluding the attempts of writhing shapes in the shadows which tried to deal with it: those were tc’a. Something stiltlike joined the commotion, darted at the flitting knnn and tugged at the prize, skittered off again. CM, by the gods: those manic beggars; the limbs glowed phosphorescent yellow, left confusing trails on the screen in its haste.
Of a sudden a pair of tc’a writhed into the knnn’s way, physically dispossessed the knnn of its burden; and the knnn darted about the harder, wailing with rage or distress or simply trying to communicate. The scene was complete chaos; and suddenly more knnn poured in. The solitary chi fled, a blur of yellow-glowing sticks; and in the mahendo’sat control center, technicians who had been seated stood up to watch what had become riot. Hisses and clicks and wails came from the audio. The knnn began to give ground, a phalanx of hairy snarled masses.
Suddenly one darted forward, seized one of the leathery, serpent-shaped tc’a and dragged it off into their retreating line. There was a frantic hissing and clicking from the mass of tc’a; but apart from a milling about, a writhing and twining of dozens of serpentine bodies like so many fingers lacing and unlacing in distress… nothing Not the least attempt at counterattack or rescue. Pyanfar watched the kidnapping with her ears laid back.
So the knnn had traded, after its fashion, darted onto station and laid down its offered goods — made off with something it took for fair; and now another species had descended to trading in sapients.
“What is it?” a mahe asked distressedly, and fell silent. The main body of the tc’a managed to drag the knnn’s trade goods along, a grotesque flailing of suited arms and legs. A communication came through, and a technician approached the Personage Stasteburana. “Hani-make eva-pod,” that one said, and Stasteburana turned a disturbed glance on Pyanfar, who lifted her ears and assumed her most careless expression.
“I shouldn’t want to disturb you,” Pyanfar said. “All you’ll find in that suit, wise mahe, is a very spoiled lot of meat from our locker; I’d advise you take decontamination precautions before taking that pod helmet off.”
“What you do?” Stasteburana spoke in anger without his Voice, and waved his Voice off when she attempted to intervene. “What you do, Chanur captain?”