Chanur's Homecoming Read Online Free

again. Constant shifting of strategy, the hard approach and the soft, Sikkukkut usually the latter. Usually.
    Jik kept himself mentally distant from all these changes, observed the shifts and absorbed the punishment with a professional detachment which was Sikkukkut's (surely, Jik reckoned) intention to crack. And he looked Sikkukkut in his red-rimmed eyes with the sure feeling that the kif was analyzing his every twitch and blink, looking for a telling reaction.
    "Come now, Keia. You know my disposition, how patient I am, of my kind. I know that you had ample time to consult with your partner before the shooting started. We've been over these questions. They grow wearisome. Can we not resolve them?"
    "My partner," Jik said, silken-slurred: Sikkukkut afforded him liquor, and he pinched out a dead smokestick and took a sip from the small round footed cup, and drew a long, long breath. Pleasures were few enough. He took what he could get. "I tell you, hakkikt, I wish / knew what my partner's up to. God, you think I'd have been out on that dock if I'd known what he was about to do?" He fumbled after his next smoke and his fingers were numb. Doubtless the drink was drugged. But there were enough of them to put the drug into him another way, so he took his medicine dosed in very fine liquor and quietly gathered his internal forces. He was deep-conditioned, immune to ordinary efforts in that regard: he knew how to self-hypnotize, and he was already focused on a series of mantras and mandalas into which he had coded what he knew, down paths of dialectic and image no kif could walk without error. He smiled blandly, in secret and bleak amusement that Sikkukkut's methods had incidentally eased the aches and the pains of previous sessions. His thoughts swayed and wove, moved in and out of focus. The docks and fire. His crew. Aja Jin. Friends and allied ships were just down the dock and as good as lightyears away. "Let me tell you, mekt-hakkikt, I know Ana's style. Think like a mahendo'sat who knows kif, hakkikt. If he'd asked you for leave to operate on his own you'd never have given it."
    "Therefore he wrecks Kefk's docks."
    Jik shrugged and drew in a puff, blinked and stared at the kif beneath heavy lids. "Well, but independence is Ana's way. I've known him for years. He's damn stubborn. He thinks he sees a way and he takes it. Agreements to this side and that- sure, he's working the mahen side. And maybe the human side too. Most of all he's gathering assets-" (Careful, Keia, the brain's fogged; stay to the narrow, the back-doubling path and lead us all round again.) Jik drew in smoke and let it out again in a shaky exhalation. "He'll negotiate with you. Eventually. But think like a mahendo'sat. He has to get something in hand to negotiate with, something to offer you, hakkikt, to demonstrate his worth."
    "Like Meetpoint? You weigh upon my credulity, Keia.'' Silk, silk and soothing-soft. "Try again."
    "Not Meetpoint. But some matter of substance he can come to you with. I think he means to come back to talk. But he will bring something."
    Sikkukkut's snout twitched in a dry sniffing, kifish laughter, which came for many reasons, not all of which were civilized. "Like a million human ships and a great number of guns?''
    "Now, that is possible, hakkikt." Jik blinked and narrowed his focus still tighter on what he had resolved to say, never on what he was hiding. Find the threads of the story and stay to them, walk the narrow path, while the drug and the alcohol and the stimulants in the smoke flowed through his veins. "That is remotely possible; but the advantage would be too onesided for the humans. What good to mahendo'sat, to exchange one powerful neighbor for another of unknown potential?''
    "Unknown, is it?"
    "You speak excellent mahensi. Far better than I speak your language. Mechanical translators are hardly a substitute for living and fluent brains. The best human translator we know can ask for a cup of water and say he wants