Kif Strike Back (32 page)

"Captain." Tirun lifted a hand, signaling quiet. "Harukk's going through real procedures this time-I
 
think they're going to try to put the call through. Maybe-Yes. The captain's waiting, Harukk com, if you can do that. Yes. . . . Right. Captain, Harukk com's compliments, and they'll try to reach the hakkikt if you'll put the request yourself."'

Protocols. Sfik games again. Pyanfar flicked her ears and made an affirmative handsign. Immediately the ready light came on and Pyanfar keyed it. Her claws flexed. She drew in a deep breath and killed all the anxieties, banished them to a cold, far place without a future.

"Harukk," she said calmly, "this is Pyanfar Chanur. I have an urgent message for the hakkikt, praise to him."

"Honor to the hakkikt, he may give you his attention, hunter."

-So we come up from our obscure beginnings, do we, kif? Provincial boss and chief torturer-to prince? And we by the gods set you there.

She waited. Coldly, calmly. Long. Eventually:

"This is Sikkukkut, ker Pyanfar. What is this urgency?"

"Hakkikt. I appreciate the courtesy. And the gift you sent me. I'd like to talk with you further. I understand you have Moon Rising's crew in your custody. ..." -

"Hunter Pyanfar, your forwardness would daunt a chi. Is my gift too scant for your appreciation?"

"Hakkikt, I see a way to use it to your benefit and mine. There's some urgency in it. If you'll send a courier I can be more specific." ?

Pause. "Hunter Pyanfar, you interest me. But I see no reason why one of my skkukun should come from my ship to yours and back again, when your own look to be in good health. And I have nothing to say to your crew. I made you a proposition at Meetpoint, you may recall, which you declined. I make it again-a rare offer. Come to my deck this time. If this offer has the merit you say. I trust it does. I'll; expect you-within the hour."

Click.

She leaned back in the chair.

"Captain," Haral said, beside her, "good gods-"

She turned a look in Haral's direction. "That didn't go right."

"Now what? We call Jik?"

"Call Jik to mop up?-We just got a challenge, cousin. I got it. Sfik. The bet just got taken and doubled."

"They want to get their hands on you, good ,gods, they can't get Goldtooth in reach-they want you! You just heard Tully say what that son is and you said yourself what Sikkukkut wants most-Goldtooth was just here, talking to you. The kif have to know that. They know he could have passed us what they want to know-"

"They'll kill the prisoners. They'll kill them sure now if I fail that appointment, and they'll let us know about it. If that weren't enough, our credit with the kif hits bottom. Hard."

"You can't do it!"

"I can't duck it either. No. Sure that earless bastard is going to try us. One way or the other. And I think I'm starting to think in kifish; I think I read him. I'm perfectly safe to walk in there-if I can keep him wondering. I'm going to need company out there. Want to take a walk?"

"Oh, sure," Haral said with a despairing shrug. "Gods, why not?"

XII

The air of Kefk hit like an ammonia-tainted wall. Haral coughed even on the ramp; Pyanfar sneezed and felt the sting of her eyes in spite of the antiallergents. Haral had put on her portside finery, dark spacer blue with a collection of gold earrings, a set of bracelets, an anklet with a bangle, a belt with silver and gold chains that rattled right along with a monstrous black AP gun and a belt-knife. Pyanfar wore the red silk trousers, gold bracelets and belt and gold-earrings aplenty; a knife and a pocket-gun besides the AP slung low on her hip.

"We look a right set of pirates," Haral had said before the lock sealed them out. "It's the pirates outside worry me," Tirun had retorted to them both, there in the lock.

And Khym had said other things, while Geran and Hilfy fretted and gnawed their mustaches sparse-"Huh," Geran had said, with exhaustion and worry in her eyes. "I'll go with you-"

Haral: "My job."

And Tully
 
later: "Where she go-where go, Py-anfar?"

She avoided answers with Tully. "Out," she had told him in that unwanted encounter in the downside corridor. "I got business, Tully. I'm in a hurry."

"Careful," he had said, anxious-looking. Frightened, doubtless from the time he heard that inner lock open, preparing to expose The Pride to the kifish docks. She reckoned the crew would tell him where they had gone after she was well on her way. Or better yet, when she and Haral got back.

When.

They walked the dockside, she and Haral, in a sodium-light hell of clinging smokes and ammonia-reek and a moist chill like a swamp at sundown. Kif moved, black wisps in the dimmer shadow along the far wall of this section of warehouses and factory fronts. There was no color anywhere about Kefk docks but the sickly sodium-glow, no brightness but the stark white of some argon spotlight on a round steel doorway.

"Kkkkt. Kkkkt," the sound came to them, as they walked past kifish ships. Kif, doubtless some of their erstwhile companions-had seen them walk outside and gathered in clusters to whisper-and perhaps, Pyanfar thought, to wonder whether the two hani walking down the docks of Kefk had lost their collective minds.

("Look at you," Khym had cried in dismay while she dressed for this foray. "Wear that into a den of thieves? Py, for godssakes!")

Crazy to wear that much gold into a kifish den if one had not the sfik to hold onto it. "So we look like trouble," Pyanfar had said to Haral when they laid their plan. "A lot of trouble, by kifish lights. That's the idea."

Advertise their presence and hold it under kifish noses till they smelled it and looked at the gold and the weapons and remembered that The Pride's crew had no general reputation for being fools.

Therefore they must be the other kind. Dangerous.

They were also the hakkikt's invited guests. At least on the way to the meeting.

"Marvelous thing about kif," Pyanfar muttered in a moment when she and Haral were well out of earshot of kif, between one gloomy ship-berth and another. "It occurs to me that these types out here on the dock aren't any more secure than we are. We're high on the wave and so are they and kif sail a rotted choppy sea. Always wondering when the wind's going to shift."

"They're different, that's a fact," Haral muttered in her turn. "No lasting grudges-and, gods be feathered, nothing they won't trade. Flighty folk. I don't think hani ever have got the right of them. Maybe we should have brought our friend Skkukuk on this trip, huh?"

"I did think about it. But I've got an uneasy feeling that one's a little crazy even for a kif. I don't want him near guns and knives."

"Huh. Me either, now I think on it."

A waft of something reached them down the dock. Blood. Even through the ammonia. Pyanfar hissed and cleared her throat. "Good gods," Haral swore in disgust. "That's enough to kill your appetite."

"We're nearly-"-there, Pyanfar started to say and suddenly lost the thread of her thought as she caught sight of the kifish numerals for 28: Harukk's berth. Kif traffic was thick hereabouts and the blood-smell grew stronger.

It worsened rapidly, the closer they walked. The steel rampway rail had a series of metal poles chained to its stanchions, and a dark object sat atop each.

"Gods and thunders," Pyanfar muttered, "Haral, don't flinch."

The heads were kif. Kif came and went on that number 28 ramp, past the awful watchers; she and Haral headed that way among the rest, waiting for challenge from some guard or other.

None came. They passed the first stanchion up and Pyanfar gave the gory object atop it a cold and curious glance.

"So much for the opposition," Haral said.

"Sure ought to keep the new converts in line," Pyanfar muttered. Every kif that came into Harukk had to see it, victory for some, grim warning for the others.

At least, she thought in profoundest relief, none of the heads was hani.

Kif turned and stared at them as they passed, upward-bound like all the rest who had business aboard Harukk. A knot of kif who stood at the accessway clicked and hissed as they passed but made no offer to delay them.

There were, finally, guards inside the large airlock.

"Hakktan," one said in kifish. Captain?

"Ukt," Haral answered with a nod at Pyanfar. Yes. Pyanfar stood by with her arms folded, arrogant to the slant of her ears, and let Haral do the talking. Two of the three kif kept their hands tucked within their sleeves , doubtless concealing weapons besides the guns they wore openly. They stood blocking other traffic into the lock from either direction, while the third reported their presence to the monitor above.

The answer came, orders for their admittance. The guard at the inner hatch stepped aside; and the third guard bowed with that hands-empty gesture: "Inside," that one said.

"Huh," said Pyanfar; bowed and slanted her ears back when she did it. Haral stayed close as they passed the hatch to Harukk's ammonia-smelling interior.

More kif waited in the inside corridor-one who turned out to be merely delayed traffic, who stalked on; and four tall kif rattling with weapons.

"Follow," one said, and stalked off in the lead without looking back. Three walked behind, while two stayed. And not a word of objection about the array of weapons their visitors brought aboard. Not a word of any kind. They passed kif in these dim corridors that stank of ammonia and machinery and blood and other, unidentifiable things, and no one gave them a second glance.

Kifish manners, Pyanfar thought. Don't notice the hakkikt's odd guests, don't stare, don't give offense. The aura of fear and fierceness throughout the place was infectious. It bristled the back, set the pulse beating faster, sent fight-flight impulses coursing the nerves.

Hilfy knows this place, Pyanfar thought at sight after sight, with an involuntary tightening of her gut. Hilfy was in this awful place.

Hilfy had stood silent by Khym's side when she had broken the news to them where she and Haral proposed to go. Khym had had his opinion of it all. Like Geran. But Hilfy's ears just went flat and her nostrils drew taut; and: "Huh," Hilfy had said. "Why?" With a darkness of memory in her eyes; and an estimation, and nothing else readable. 'You know it's a trap."

"I know," Pyanfar had said. "At this point there isn't a better choice."

Hilfy knew the ways of kif better than any. And gave her no argument. No offer to come either. The situation wanted cold steadiness and as little as possible chance of provoking the kif. And that put the job, by seniority and by disposition, on Haral Araun.

Haral walked along beside her now as warily easy as on a trek down one of the Compact's rougher docksides-kept her ears up and her face serene during the ride pent in a lift with the pair of kifish guards.

The lift stopped; one guard exited and the rest hung back as they had done below. And it was one more long walk down the dimly lit corridor aft from the lift; then an open doorway, and a dim chamber where a handful of kif waited attendance on one seated on an insect-legged chair, a kif who wore a silver medallion, whose black robe and hood were edged in silver that shone dimly in sodium-light.

"Hakkikt," Pyanfar said, approaching this grim magnificence. And bowed with a carefully rationed measure of respect and self-importance.

"Kkkt." Sikkukkut flourished his thin, dark-gray hand. "Ksithikki." Kif scurried to the corners of the room and carried back two chairs and a low table, all at a virtual run.

"Ksithti."

Pyanfar nodded and sat down in one, feet tucked. Haral took the other. More orders from Sikkukkut, and a wave of his hand in a silver-bordered sleeve. Kif scurried after pitcher and cups with as great haste; and hurried to put a cup into Sikkukkut's outstretched hand before it had had time to tire of waiting. A cup went to Pyanfar; a third to Haral. A kif had poured for Sikkukkut; and came quickly to pour for them from the same pitcher.

It was, thank the gods, parini. Liquor. Strong and straight and likely to go straight to the head; but it was nothing objectionable. Pyanfar sipped gingerly and tried not to think of obvious things like whether the off-taste was the ammonia in her nostrils or something in the drink.

But they were sitting in Sikkukkut's hall, on Sikkukkut's deck; in his starstation; in kif space; and drugged drinks here seemed as superfluous as removing their weapons, which no one had offered yet to do. Haral followed her lead and drank: Haral, whose stomach was redoubtable in station bars from Anuurn to Meetpoint and who always made her duty schedules without a hangover. For the second time she was glad it was Haral by her and not Khym.

"You turned down this invitation once at Meetpoint," Sikkukkut said.

"I remember." A sneeze threatened her dignity. And their lives. She fought it back with an effort that made her eyes water. It was psychological, this aversion to kif. She had taken the pills. And gods, those pills made a hazardous combination with the liquor, dried her mouth, dulled her perceptions. And her nose still prickled.

"I told you then I looked for a change of mind someday." Sikkukkut dipped his nose into the ornate cup and drank. "And here it is. Kkkt. After an emergency on your ship. What sort of emergency, do you mind?"