Chanur's Venture by C.J. Cherryh

Author:C.J. Cherryh [Cherryh, C.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-09T00:03:00+00:00

"Pyanfar--"

"Lunatics!"

"Goldtooth friend?" he asked again. "I do good?"

She stared at him a long, long time and he just looked scared. Scared and on the other side of a half-functioning translator. And the gulf of other minds.

"Goldtooth's mahendo'sat," she said flatly. "And he's got a Personage breathing down his neck. They went to get you, friend, because they wanted trade. I'll bet on that. And those human ships weren't getting through. _Ijir_'s no common trader, no way. They wanted to get you to a rendezvous -- find out what humanity's up to. That _was_ the game. But they found out too gods-rotted much and now Goldtooth's scared. Scared, understand? Kif, the mahe can handle. But if knnn have their small black feet in this -- o _gods_, Tully -- you lunatics."

"Got lot ship come -- lot, Pyanfar. Got fight kif, got make stop knnn."

"_No one fights the knnn_! Gods and thunders, you don't pick a fight with something you can't talk to!"

Wide eyes looked back at her in distress.

"Where's Goldtooth, Tully? You know?"

A shake of an uncomprehending head.

"Huh." She shoved back from the table feeling her knees gone jellylike. And still that blue-eyed stare was on her. Lost.

Don't go to the _han_, Goldtooth had said; and Beware of Goldtooth-from Goldtooth's stsho ally--

With Vigilance in the selfsame port.

Suspicions occurred to her, vague and circular, that the _han_ ship might have gotten wind of the clearing of Chanur papers, of mahen money passed to stsho--

--that that ship's presence and Goldtooth's might have had connections Goldtooth would not say . . . _han_/mahen consultations. Stsho like Stle sties stlen, with slippered feet well into it. . . .

And self-interested betrayals, at more than financial depths--

Knnn. Gods, stsho the ultimate xenophobes, and knnn the ultimate reason . . . living right next door -- living, or traveling, or whatever it was knnn did with those ships of theirs.

Perhaps, hani had whispered, stung by stsho references to the mahendo'sat bringing hani into space to balance kif--

--perhaps a great deal that the stsho knew came from methane-breathers. Tc'a were likely. But had limbless serpents originated their own tech?

Or had chi, who might be parasites -- or slaves -- or pets -- to the tc'a? Not likely.

Goldtooth had reason to run scared. And being mahe he had done a mahen thing: he had gone for the contacts that he knew. Same as the whole mahen species had: bring Tully. Go get him. While with trouble in the offing Goldtooth had wanted her. Not the _han_. Not Ehrran. The _han_ knew the mahendo'sat, by the gods: it was why the law existed against taking foreign hire. Mahendo'sat went for Personage. For the Known Quantity. They set up powers. Tore them down. Tied hani rules in knots and brought down powers by ignoring them in crises.

Here's unlimited credit-friend. Tell us what you know. Same as they worked on humans.

Send for Tully.

Gods, they'd drained him dry. Even kif had failed at that.

(_I do good?_ Tully asked. With that blue-flower stare.)

They had her by the beard, that was sure.

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