Chanur's Homecoming by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

had always thought of him as near her own age: and suddenly she thought that he must be, of his kind, old as Khym, whose years had burned the tempers out of him and given him self-control and lost him his lordship over Mahn. Suddenly she suspected that she had always been wrong about Tully, that he was wiser than a young man could possibly be, and cooler-headed: and there was something still he had not been able to tell her. There was something still bottled up in him, she could almost read it, but it was too alien an expectation; or too simple. She could not guess it. The lift door hit her in the shoulder again and gave up, and she reached out and gently touched Tully's face with the pads of her fingers.
    "If you were hani," she said, "we'd-" But she did not say that. It sounded too foolish; and hurt too much, without an answer that resulted in anything but both of them being fools. Laughable fools.
    "Friend," he said in a small voice, and touched her face. While the lift door hit her again, on shorter and shorter reminder. "Friend, Hilfy." With a peculiar stress in his voice, and a break, as it would do when he was grieved. There were things he did not commit to the translator. More and more he tried to speak hani. And to be hani. And he grew sadder and more wistful when he would look at her and say a thing like that, making fools of them both.
    Gods, Hilfy Chanur, she thought, what can you do? When did you go crazy? When did he? When we were alone and we were all we had, with kif all about? I want him.
    If he's older than me, why doesn't he have an answer for this?
    Then an alarm went off. For a moment she thought she had tripped it by holding the door, and Pyanfar was going to skin her.
    "Priority, priority. We've got a courier at the lock," Haral's voice said then from com, from every speaker in the hall. "All secure below. Hilfy, Tirun, arm and stand by: looks like you're the welcoming committee, captain's compliments, and she's staying topside. Protocols. You get that?"
    "I got it," Hilfy said.
    Lock up the kif, that meant. Fast.
    "Tully," she said, and motioned to the lift. Panic had started a slow, hysteric beat in her heart; habit kept her face calm as she stepped aside and held the door with her arm for Tully.
    I could help, that look of his said; I could be down here, I want to be here. I want to help you-
    It was not the kif's feelings he had so laboriously described: you make him part of the crew, you let him believe it, you don't know how cruel you are to let him believe you.
    He'd go out and die for you, Hilfy Chanur. Because he believes you.
    No. It was not true of the kif. It was what he felt in himself.
    "Up," she said. "Bridge. Haral needs you. I got enough down here."
    And, gods, why put it that way? She saw the pain she caused.
    He went into the lift, and turned and pushed the Close, so that the door jarred her obstructing arm and she drew it back in confusion. She opened her mouth to say something like you can't help in this, which was no better than she had already said; but the door closed between their faces, and left her speechless and harried in recalling that it was an emergency Haral had just sent her on-kif, and trouble, and gods knew what.
    The whole situation could be unraveling. Jik might have talked, might have spilled something; it might be the beginning of the attack they had feared; it might be anything, and gods help her, she had just fouled it up with Tully and there was no time, no time, never time to straighten it out between them.
    Gods, gods, gods, I hurt him. I never wanted to hurt him, we can all die here and I can't get past that gods-be translator.
    Why is it all so complicated?
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    It was not a situation Pyanfar enjoyed, sitting on the bridge and watching on the vid as a pair of armed kif headed toward her airlock. They wore no suits, only the hooded black robes universal with their kind. That meant the kif put some reliance on the jury-patches and the