Analyzed Work: The Pride of Chanur, Copyright © 1981 by C. J. Cherryh
Protagonist: Pyanfar Chanur: seasoned, comfortably established, successful hani merchant. Ship’s captain of hani clan Chanur’s starship, The Pride of Chanur. The hani are one of four oxygen-breathing species that are members of a loose stellar confederation, the Compact. There are 3 methane-breathing members of the Compact, also. The hani are bipedal felinoids, lion-like both in biology and culture.
Antagonist: Akukkakk: rising hakkikt (warrior/leader/most-vicious-survival type) of the kif, captain of kif hunter ship Hinukku. The kif are another of the Compact’s oxygen breathing races. The kif have self-preservation/survival hardwired in their species; advancement among them occurs by accruing more "sfik" ("face", as in the oriental concept of not losing face/gaining honor/prestige). A kif can quite literally be embarrassed to death – an embarrassed dominant kif’s subordinates will turn on and destroy the embarrassed leader.
External Conflict: Being against Being: (1) Pyanfar vs. Akukkakk; (2) Pyanfar vs. Tahar (another hani clan, one of Chanur clan’s hani rivals)
Internal Conflict: Pride vs. Practicality (initially) that quickly snowballs into Pride vs. Survival (of self and ship) into Pride vs. Survival (of Clan) into Pride vs. Survival (of hani species and the whole Compact)
Bone of contention: Tully, last surviving crewman from a human survey ship captured by the kif. Humans are unknown to the Compact.
Opening Scene: Desperate, starving, pale something charges onto the Pride of Chanur’s ramp and into the ship just as Captain Pyanfar Chanur is leaving to conclude business on station. The crew had noticed it lurking about the ship and chased it off twice before that day, but no one reported it because prudent merchanters do not borrow others’ troubles. Pyanfar does not report it’s on her ship because there must be some reason no one is asking for it back. It’s probably escaped from the kif, but she cannot give it back to them – it would set a poor example for her niece Hilfy, Chanur’s heir, who is on her first voyage as an apprentice on the ship. Chanur do not yield up potential profit/advantage because it might be trouble, a lawsuit or some such. Neither can Pyanfar quietly take the youngster home until the situation is resolved; the young heir’s pride/place in the family might be mortally wounded. (Initial trap springs: Pyanfar decides to keep the creature, in spite of potential complications, because not keeping it goes against her previously successful merchanter habits and Chanur clan pride.)
Akukkakk finds out Pyanfar has the creature and demands she return it. She refuses. The Pride bolts from the station under Hinukku’s fire, dumping cargo in the process. A knnn ship follows them. The knnn are the least understood of the methane breathers, known for spectacular piloting no other species can survive. (Pyanfar had not anticipated the kif reaction; she did not understand the seriousness of losing the creature for Akukkakk (loss of face = loss of life for a kif). Her situation is complicated by hani culture – the cargo dump disgrace will reflect badly on Chanur clan’s reputation and cause other hani males to challenge her brother Kohan as Lord of Chanur. Think lion pride here; thus, hani culture mirrors the kif - loss of face can = loss of life. The consequences of her choice to keep the creature now include personal, ship, and clan survival. At this point, Pyanfar is still trying to solve the problem on her own, with minimal involvement of others, in particular any hani others.)
The Pride hides at the next station’s out system, licking their wounds and learning about the "human" Tully. (We also learn that the kif captured the humans while the humans were investigating knnn song.) Pyanfar decides to try for a coup, a trade alliance/agreement with a heretofore unknown, space faring race, the humans. To escape the kif hunter ship, she leaves a decoy, a ludicrous food animal carcass stuffed into a spacesuit modified to look human sized. Pyanfar hopes to embarrass the hakkikt enough so that his own subordinates will mutiny and kill him. (Pyanfar’s internal conflict is reflected in the kif culture’s built-in obsession with sfik, pride, saving face. Both major external conflicts revolve around issues of pride.)
Middle: Pyanfar’s ploy did not work because the knnn grabs the decoy before Akukkakk can get it. The Pride limps into the next station, ship damaged and unable to go further. Pyanfar is the cause of a major interspecies incident when the agitated knnn brings in the decoy and "trades" for another (living) methane breather, one of the t’ca (the only methane breather species the oxy breathers have managed to communicate with). Pyanfar allows old feuds with a rival hani clan to flare up in argument, and her one possible hani ally leaves them. The hani Tahar ship Moon Rising hurries home to use the story and vid of the sorry state of the Chanur ship to embarrass the clan and quite probably (intentionally) bring challengers against Kohan. (Standard hani pride and cultural and merchanter response leave Pyanfar and her ship stranded, alone on a station with furious officials, with a hunter kif after them.)
Pyanfar trades Tully’s translator tape for human language to get The Pride repaired, Tully’s Compact spacer papers (has him legally declared a sapient being and crew, not property claimable by the kif or others), and allies for the hani against the kif (the mahendo’sat, a third oxy breather species of the compact, send two hunter ships so they will not be left out of any trade/treaties with the new humans). (She gives up potential trade monopoly (pride, merchanter goal, formerly successful behavior) for survival.)
Arriving at the hani homeworld, Pyanfar finds that Tahar and Akukkakk have allied and are attacking all of Chanur clan (and especially Pyanfar and The Pride) for unseemly ambition, piracy, exciting the dangerous methane breathers, etc. legally through the hani government. The knnn has followed them again and, via the t’ca interpreter, accuses the kif of Compact violation. The mahendo’sat representative testifies similarly. (If Pyanfar had not been so concerned about Chanur face-saving in front of the Tahar, they would not have provided an "in" for the kif to hani government – Akukkakk is using "divide and conquer" on the less-sophisticated hani, who have only been in space about two hundred years. Akukkakk’s attack at this point is public humiliation/destruction for Pyanfar and Chanur clan, within the hani legal system.)
Pyanfar claims clan right – with the Lord of powerful clan Chanur facing challenge, the composition of the han is in question. The kif cannot negotiate with the hani government until the composition of that government is stable once again. She goes downworld to resolve the clan dispute and secures Chanur clan’s status. Akukkakk is thwarted in his grab for the human and attempted humiliation of Chanur clan to restore his own prestige. (Akukkakk is humiliated when the hani overrule him. Attack and counterattack are matters of pride – reflections of Pyanfar’s internal conflict.)
Akukkakk launches an all-out physical attack to seize the hani’s main planetary station (subjugate all the upstart hani publicly in the process of retrieving his lost human). (Pride-of-place = survival to the kif. It is hardwired into them. It is semi-wired into the hani species and culture via their practice of "challenge" determining who is a Lord and who thereby gets power in the government. All of which external conflict factors are reflections of Pyanfar’s internal pride conflict.)
End: Pyanfar rallies the hani spacers and the two mahe hunter ships in defense of the hani system (with hani spacers taking posts on whatever ship they can get to quickest – not necessarily their clan’s ship). The hani win; Akukkakk loses. The traitorous Tahar ship flees in disgrace. As Akukkakk tries to flee, a mass of knnn ships burst into the system, leave a ship, englobe the Hinukku, and carry it off. The ship the knnn left in "trade" is human (presumably to meet some of the better behaved oxy breathers of the Compact). The ship and crew, Chanur clan, hani species, and Compact are all saved. (Pyanfar and the other hani triumph when they step beyond the limits of clan alliance and "pride".)
Copyright © 1999 A. Robin Bausman
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