Free Chanur's Legacy by C. J. Cherryh Page B

move too much. Hilfy extended a claw, snagged the handle, and dragged it into her weary hand.
    “We made it’’ Tarras said, dropping her bulk into a chair, gfi in hand. “Every gods-blessed one of those babies.”
    “Course comped,” Tiar said.”
    “Got to be the one that makes it. Pay the ship off and go into the profit column.”
    “Somebody feed the kid this time?”
    “Fala’s seeing to it.”
    “What’s our launch, cap’n, we ever get ‘im clear?”
    “First watch, topside. We take her through, we get our rest at Urtur.”
    “Gods, that’s brutal.”
    “Mahendo’sat sniffing around us, this hardship case turns up and No’shto-shti-stlen just happens to want him out of here. I don’t like it. 1 don’t like it and I wish I hadn’t agreed to take him on.”
    Tiar’s ears flattened. “What do you think, he’s some deal of No’shto-shti-stlen’s?”
    “I think the old son knows more about why he’s here than gtst is saying. I’m not doubting gtst wants him off this station: the stsho don’t want trouble and he’s trouble. I don’t know whose, that’s the problem. I don’t know who’s behind him.”
    “There are coincidences, captain.”
    “They become increasingly less when the mahendo’sat show up with deals. That’s what I don’t like. ‘Let us look at it!’ That bastard’s on someone’s payroll.”
    “Not ker Py’s.”
    It was a thought that had occurred to her. “If he was hers, why not say so?”
    “Good question,” Tiar said. “But I don’t think the boy’s involved. It’s perfectly understandable.”
    “What? Leaving him in the brig?”
    “Understandable that he doesn’t like Sahern clan.”
    “That’s what he says. Sahern is not our friend. Other interests aren’t our friends, for my aunt’s sake,for reasons that have to do with decisions she’s made that affect things we have no way to know about. We don’t know who could have hired her, we don’t know who could have hired him, we don’t know what side this Haisi person is on, we don’t even know that No’shto-shti-stlen’s on the up and up or what gtst is up to. The news got to Urtur and this Haisi person had a chance to get here and offer us a bribe for a look at the object. So why hadn’t the news the time to get to Sahern clan, and maybe Sahern lay out some game that would inconvenience us? Ha?”
    “Why would No’shto-shti-stlen give you the boy?”
    “Because hani aren’t as frequent here as they used to be. Because if gtst has had a political object dumped in gtst lap, No’shto-shti-stlen is going to want rid of it in the way most guaranteed to absolve gtst of responsibility. Gtst couldn’t dump him on aunt Py, gtst couldn’t return him to Sahern, and here we come, Pyanfar’s close relatives, just so convenient to hand him to ... I don’t know that’s the case, but thinking about it is going to cost me sleep, this trip, it’s going to make me uncomfortable until he’s off our deck and out of our lives, and I don’t want him loose gathering data at our boards, hear me?”
    “Let me understand—you think Sahern planted him here?”
    “I think it’s a possibility. Maybe to create an embarrassment, maybe it’s something else. I think it’s a possibility there’s something more to him than he’s showing us ...”
    “Captain, he’s a kid!”
    “I don’t like where he was, I don’t like anybody dropped into a kif-run jail and I don’t like Sahern dragging hani clear to this pit on the backside of the universe to drop him, where, if they wanted rid of him, they could at least have dropped him at Urtur. It smells to me like a captain with a god-complex, but I don’t swear that’s the case; there are all the other possibilities, some of which aren’t pretty and aren’t conducive to good sleep, but that’s the way I see it, that’s the way I know how to call it, and that’s the only way I know to keep this ship out of trouble. We’ve got enough problems going,