Chapter 9

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Has any message come?” Bren asked of Narani, safely in the foyer of their own residence. Banichi and Jago ordinarily found business of their own to attend on a homecoming, usually in the security station, but not at the moment. After the funeral, after the unprecedented meeting they’d just attended, they lingered. Tano and Algini, who’d heard both the meeting and the funeral, had come out into the foyer.

“One regrets, no,” Narani said to him.

Nothing from the aiji.

Well, but it reasonably took a certain amount of time for Tabini to ponder the situation, and Tabini was likely still in the information-absorbing stage and hadn’t an answer for him yet. Tabini would have gotten his message by now—he didn’t doubt Eidi would use his considerable resourcefulness, and very unorthodox channels, if he had to, right down to the several guards that stood between Tabini and a bullet, guards who were linked to Tabini’s staff by electronics as constantly as Banichi and Jago were in contact with their own local system. And if everything else on the planet went wrong, it was reasonable to think Eidi might call him back on his own initiative.

“Banichi-ji. Both of you. Tano. Algini.”

“Bren-ji.”

The five of them went into the security station, and Bren found the accustomed seat by the door while Banichi and Jago disposed themselves next to Tano and Algini. In the background the boards carried on quiet blips and flickers, which his staff understood. He never pretended to know, and he assumed if any of them did involve the answers he wanted, they would tell him.

“It was a satisfactory meeting,” Bren said first, for Tano and Algini, in case they entertained any remaining doubts. “It was an extraordinary meeting. But it left us needing answers we can’t get, except from the aiji.”

“Is there any threat you perceive, Bren-ji?” Almost without precedent that Jago had to ask him that. But they were in a thicket of human motives and deceptions, and on the station, he was the best map they had.

“What likelihood, for instance,” Banichi asked, “that the ship-aijiin will take action against Jase-paidhi, or Kaplan? One hardly understood everything he said in the ceremony, and less of what others may have thought, but words, indeed, came through.”

“Kaplan has qualities,” Bren said. “I’m frankly surprised he was the one to stand up and speak.”

“Might he have spoken for Jase?”

There was a thought. “I doubt Jase would have asked him to do it—risking Kaplan’s personal reputation, if nothing else, though I can understand Kaplan taking the order if Jase asked. I can’t explain what they feel; I’m not sure I understand it myself, but ship crew and ship officers are a family association, far closer to atevi in that regard than they are to Mospheirans: I just can’t envision what you might call a filing of Intent inside the crew. Tamun—” He saw the question in their eyes. “Tamun was a rogue. He drew people apart from the crew. He struck at authority. And some went with him. Some weren’t certain of the authority, whether it had integrity, or whether it protected their interests—and by all we’ve learned there may have been reason for crew to have that perception. There is a division of interests between command and crew—they’re full blown sub-associations, so to speak, and that’s how the schism could develop at all. Kaplan spoke very eloquently about that schism today. He spoke as common crew. He spoke as common crew who felt the aijiin hadn’t seen to their interests and hadn’t trusted them as they might have expected their own aijiin to trust them.”

“True, is it not?” Jago asked.

“Quite true. And Tamun reasoning did exist in the crew, and dissent and anger may still exist in a few places. That’s why the aijiin didn’t want to tell the crew the truth—as they reasonably ought to have done. Kaplan, not Tamun, is the man who stands in the breach now. Jase ought to have accepted Jenrette and Colby as his aides and let Kaplan and Polano go on to whatever fourth captain the council appoints… that’s the way they traditionally do things. Instead, Jase took Jenrette and Colby and not only didn’t dismiss Kaplan and Polano from his man’chi, he took on Pressman, who’s actually a mechanic, not a security man at all. But a friend of Kaplan’s and Polano’s. This is a major disturbance of the way the captains have done things in the past. I chided Jase for not taking up the authority Ramirez-aiji gave him, but I may have been unjust in that assumption. Jase seems to have made preemptive moves of his own—whether Kaplan forced the issue, and spoke without Jase’s foreknowledge, or whether Jase had a hand in it. I rather think the former. And Kaplan spoke passionately and as if it were his own argument. I think Kaplan represents a faction among the crew that’s very upset, and Ogun-aiji was smart enough to see he had to answer it right then or see the schism between captains and crew open up again. Personally, I’m glad Kaplan spoke up. I think Ogun is glad he did—maybe even glad the issue blew up then, into the open. Because they aren’t atevi, I doubt that the matter goes into a third layer of complicity, with Ogun setting Jase up to set Kaplan to what he did, but it at least turned out to be in everyone’s interest for Kaplan to speak.”

“Still,” Tano said, “Jase-ji has taken Kaplan and his associates, even Pressman.”

“More true, I suppose,” Bren said, “that he didn’t reject Jenrette and Colby and wouldn’t cast off Kaplan and his associates. One might ask him, I suppose, but here we have the least senior captain with a security staff outnumbering the rest. An arms race among the captains, one supposes. It’s a delicate moment. And possibly Jase took Kaplan under official protection not to save him from Ogun or Sabin, but to keep him out of crew politics. Now I think of it, that’s the most likely answer. Jase just wants him able to say, I can’t talk. I can’t answer that.”

“Very strange, these humans,” Banichi said.

“Mospheira, on the other hand, working with Tabini—did any of you know?”

“We did not, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “I assure you of that.”

“Do you know anything? Do you guess anything?”

“About humans?” Banichi said. “No. That Tabini-aiji might conclude a secret agreement… it would by no means be the first.”

It would certainly not be the first. And much as the aiji prized initiative on the part of his officers, he would not welcome being found out by one of those officers. Most particularly he would not welcome the whole thing blowing wide in the view of outsiders.

“I don’t see what more we could do,” Bren said. His security staff was no happier in being in the dark than he was. “I don’t see that we were invited to know this, and I have the uneasy feeling that if we walk about too much in the dark we may do damage. But we still have no contact with Tabini. And news has to be all over Mospheira by now. Leaks are bound to start on the mainland. Something’s happening down there—that’s what worries me. But I don’t know that we ought to try too much harder to make contact. Things seem to have stabilized here, pending a decision on the part of the captains, and I fear that decision is going to take the ship, the pilots, and Jase and all his resources out of our reach.”

“Back to this other station,” Jago said.

He hadn’t entirely assembled that scenario. But when he did, it either left Jase with them, on this station, and the ship going off to deal with a situation that had flummoxed it before; or, nearly as bad, Jase going out there with the ship and trying to deal with a Guild intransigent and without that sense of loyalty that held the crew together.

In historical times, people had opposed the Guild and met with accidents. A few had been shot, and declared mutineers.

He didn’t like either decision.

“If they take the pilots with them,” Banichi said, “who will keep this agreement and train ours?”

“Good question, in itself, nadi-ji.” He’d fought indigestion for hours. He had a recurring bout. “I don’t like what I see. But I don’t know what I can do about it, except advise Tabini as I’m supposed to do, and advise Jase as much as I can, and right now I’d say sit for a year and let’s think what to do about this. We’ve been here for years. It’s not as if it’s suddenly an emergency decision.”

“Ramirez has made it so,” Jago said. “Ramirez has pushed this thing by refueling the ship.”

“We can do very little more to contact the aiji,” Banichi said, “except to use our last resources—which I will do, if you truly wish to gain the aiji’s attention. This is your decision, nandi. Shall we?”

“Contact through the Assassins’ Guild?”

No one spoke, but since they didn’t deny it, he understood.

“I think we have to move very quickly,” Bren said, “and not for atevi reasons. For crew reasons. Most of all for Mospheiran reasons. Ramirez lied. He lied with reason, he lied judiciously, he went through topmost authorities, as atevi understand. Mospheirans accept being lied to in little things, but this isn’t a little thing. They could take the Pilots’ Guild being in charge on the ship. They almost suspect that’s the case. But finding out the ship isn’t under Guild authority, but that Guild authority survived on Reunion—the most universally detested authority that ever existed, as far as Mospheirans are concerned—that means Ramirez wasn’t really making the decisions, or never really was in charge, as they see it.”

“Is it true, Bren-ji?” Jago asked.

“Certainly his authority was questionable in direct confrontation with the Guild. And that puts Mospheiran authority into a game far bigger than they bet on. Now we learn the Guild gave Ramirez-aiji orders to come here, maybe to create a base, maybe to prepare a defense—or maybe to gather force to come back and fight some general war against some alien enemy we never wanted to offend in the first place. Who knows now? If Ramirez lied in one thing, in their minds, he could lie in another. Maybe Ramirez-aiji didn’t follow all his orders, and didn’t intend to. Unless Ramirez wrote his orders in the ship’s records, or passed them to Ogun, it’s possible no one under this sun knows what the Pilots’ Guild wanted Ramirez to do. Jase doesn’t know. Ogun hasn’t appeared to know. And if Ogun and Sabin don’t know—this whole crew doesn’t even know that basic a thing—whether they’ve been following Guild orders all along—or actively rebelling against them. They don’t know the most basic facts of their situation—and it’s not sure to this hour that even Ogun or Sabin has possession of the truth to give them. I say that on one fact alone: Sabin backed Tamun into a captaincy, and if she’d known what Ramirez knew and told Tamun the truth, Tamun could have used it. Tamun didn’t, even when he was losing. So he didn’t know. He grabbed Ramirez. But Ramirez didn’t talk. So either Sabin didn’t know, or she didn’t talk. If she knew and didn’t talk, she didn’t back Tamun in the mutiny. If she didn’t know—she didn’t have the chance to back him, and backed out and let him take the fall. In that case we can’t really trust Sabin, and we don’t know as much about Ogun as we wish we knew. So that’s an ongoing question, one we’re not likely to find the facts of until we’re far deeper into this mess than we’d like to be.

“Second point: the longer we sit waiting for an official decision, the more the conspiracy theorists are going to have a run at this, on the island and on the mainland, and even up here among the crew, who ordinarily aren’t disposed to speculate. If you can use your contacts to get a message through, Banichi-ji, I think this is the time to do it.”

Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance. It was widespread—suddenly the most abundant commodity in the universe.

“One will manage,” Banichi said. “Will you compose a message, nandi?”

As if he could come up with a clear, coherent explanation to give Tabini, regarding all the human motives and actions around him, when the last hour hadn’t done it.

But he had to try.

Aiji-ma,

Information has come to light at Ramirez’ death regarding the survival of personnel at the distant station, and agreements the gist of which we now possess. We request your immediate personal assistance. The Mospheiran leaders on the station agree to stand together with myself and lord Geigi. We regard Jase-paidhi as our spokesman and channel of information among the ship-aijiin and have confidence in him.

Regarding these agreements, we are at a critical point of decision and request your personal communication immediately, aiji-ma. I cannot sufficiently stress the urgency of this request.

Your silence has made me question the integrity of the channels through which my messages travel. Please relieve my concern, aiji-ma.

He notified Tano and Algini. They achieved a link through C1 to the big dish down at Mogari-nai.

He sent.

And while he still had a link with that dish, he made a scrambled phone call to his own absentee household within the Bujavid’s walls.

There he reached an excellent and refined gentleman, Narani’s second cousin, a man who moved very slowly, but who found shepherding a skilled servant staff in a long-vacant, perpetually waiting estate his ideal retirement job.

“Nadi-ji,” he said to this elderly gentleman, “have you noted any unusual circumstances lately in the aiji’s household?”

“No, nandi.” The old man was slow, but he had instincts honed in a very dangerous school. Immediately his tone was all business. “Shall we take precautions?”

“Rather a small piece of needful intrigue, nadi-ji. Have you been out of the apartment recently?”

“Not I, nandi, but numerous of the juniors.”

“I wish you personally to carry a message to the aiji’s apartment. Insist to speak to the aiji himself, or to the aiji-consort, or to the chief of security, or to Eidi, in that order, in my name, have you got all that?”

“Yes, paidhi-ma.”

“Say directly to any of those individuals that I have not received any communications from official channels, nor has lord Geigi. Tell Tabini that I have sent repeatedly and beg him call me immediately to consult on business that absolutely cannot wait. If I don’t hear some response I must send a courier down on the next shuttle, and I’d rather use all my resources here and not expose my staff to hazard—do you have all that, nadi-ji?”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.” The good gentleman had never failed him in lesser responsibilities, and was no fool. “I will go this very instant.”

“I’ll wait on the line.” He had no wish for another of his messages to fall away into silence. And he added, “Be cautious. If your mission can’t be accomplished in safety, come back instead and report the hazard to me immediately. I’ll keep this link open, meanwhile. Put on one of the staff to talk to me.”

“Yes, nandi!”

Another pebble cast into a pond that thus far showed no ripples. He sat, chatted nicely with a middle-aged servant whose knowledge of the estate was limited to the premises. This involved an inventory of linens and an incursion of worms in the kitchen—dubious flour—while the future of the planet followed an old man’s lengthy trek down the hall, into the lift, down another hall to the aiji’s residence.

“Have you heard any rumors, Dala-ji?” Bren asked the servant. “Any interesting gossip at all?”

Unfortunate question. It involved a bitter, complex intrigue involving the servant staff of lord Tatiseigi and the servant staff of a southern lord, an illicit romance and a threat of invoking the Guild.

It wasn’t what he wanted. But the dramatic recital filled the time, step by step through a disastrous and in fact stupid encounter—an affair between rival staffs had to be potent to convince otherwise rational people to create an absolute imbroglio of rival and irresolvable interests.

“So have they resolved the matter?” he asked.

“I think they’ll attempt to leave their employ, nand’ paidhi,” Dala said. “Because their man’chi is confused. But where will they go? Where will these lords that don’t agree allow them to go, since they do know details of the households. Neither will let the other have his servant. Neither will let an ally of the other have his servant. And I don’t think anyone else will wish to employ them with these two lords at odds and not trusting them.”

It was a royal mess, that was sure, a tragedy for the couple, a disaster for the two lords, who didn’t want to be villains, but who couldn’t have privileged information spread to houses outside the bounds of man’chi: and he was one of a handful on speaking terms with both… one of those cases of a matter chasing up the stream of man’chi until it finally hit someone of ability to absorb it.

Did he want two lust-driven fools on his staff?

But at that moment, for good or ill of the fate of the two fools in question, the old man came back, a little out of breath.

“Paidhi-ma, nandi—” A gasp for breath. “I delivered my message myself to the aiji’s major domo, who answered that there is no answer at present.”

To Eidi, that was. And Eidi replied that there simply was no answer for him.

Had Eidi delivered the content as he saw it, but not the specific wording?

Had he somehow failed to make himself understood?

He could hardly shout from space, Your conspiracy with the President of Mospheira has come to light, aiji-ma, and the ship-council is in crisis.

Or, Aiji-ma, how am I to do my job when you go past me and keep secrets with unskilled persons?

Am I in disfavor?

It by no means seemed the case when the aiji and the aiji-dowager separately invited him for intimate dinners during his sojourn on the planet.

Nothing made sense to him. Nothing at all.

He signed off with the good gentleman, remembering to say, “Dala-nadi told me a sad story, nadi-ji. It does occur to me that I include the two houses in good relations. If you can tender my offices in mediation, and find a place for two fools, perhaps on the country estate, it would be a good service to both houses.” Meaning he would gain favor with both. That was his recompense for agreeing to support the two fools and make use of their labor. “Surmising that they aren’t of highest clearance, or Guild.”

“One knows the circumstances the foolish woman gossiped,” the good gentleman said. “We might solve it. Forgive Dala for bothering you with the matter, paidhi-ji.”

“I do. And I expect a good outcome. Work to keep you young and sharp, nadi-ji. An excellent job, at all times. Thank you.”

He signed off and sat staring at the crisis-littered desk.

He’d saved two strangers and two allied houses from a difficult situation, if they’d accept it, as likely they would. For them he’d worked a divine intervention.

Less fortunate gods seemed to preside over his communications with Tabini, such that he had to ask himself if he had become inconvenient, if his persistent attempts to warn Tabini were only exacerbating a situation Tabini wanted to keep away from his assembled funeral guests.

When were they going home?

When was Tabini going to get back to routine answers to things like, It seems to me, aiji-ma, that the whole alliance is about to explode, and that aliens are going to come and destroy the lot of us?

He got up and went to the security station.

“I’ve sent. I suppose you followed that.”

“One did, yes,” Tano said.

“I’ve done everything I can think of. I confess I’m in some despair of getting through. I did try the staff in the Bujavid.”

“We are trying elsewhere,” Tano said, “and the message went down. More, we don’t know.”

“I keep telling myself Tabini isn’t going to be pleased with my constant battering at his doors.”

“That there is nothing,” Algini pointed out, “and no quiet message from the aiji’s staff, considering your repeated attempts, is extremely puzzling. Your security is now worried, Bren-ji.”

He was not reassured to learn that.

If Tabini had directly ordered silence… why?

And at a hellishly bad time. Incredible timing.

Which circumstance in itself, after long dealings with atevi, nagged at the nape of his neck and promised no rest until he knew. Coincidence might operate freely down in the byways of Shejidan, but it only overnighted in the Bujavid’s well-guarded halls.

And what reasonably could Ramirez’ death and Tabini’s silence have to do with one another?

The Assassins’ Guild—one of their operations?

Station security, the entire situation of station security, was a sieve. The world sent up workers by the shuttle-load, vouching for them, giving them papers that were as real and true as the two governments wanted them to be, with care and attention as intense as two governments had time and budget to apply.

But it wasn’t only the two governments that could slip some agent into a work crew. Any one of the dissidents, the factions opposed to Tabini, to Shawn Tyers, diehards opposed to the concept of space presence, old enemies against the atevi-human association—they could.

And could they eliminate some random lunatic in the work force, some individual from whom the Assassins’ Guild would never take a contract, some lunatic Mospheiran of clever bent and demented purpose?

The thought, foolish as it might be, U-turned him from the study back to the security station, where now Banichi had turned up, with Jago—discussing the communications silence, it might well be: did they have another crisis occupying their attention?

“Nadiin,” Bren said from the doorway, “I know it would be possible someone assassinated Ramirez.” Assassination, for some of their enemies, was an art form, and infinitely various and subtle. “But what if Tabini did it?” He could see it happening if Tabini felt betrayed in his arrangement with Ramirez. And if that happened, there were two agencies besides Tabini’s own that might carry out the order.

He was talking to one of them.

“An interesting theory,” Banichi said.

“We have had assurances from the Guild as late as this day,” Jago said, breaking that secretive Guild’s rules left and right, “that no Guild member is here without our knowledge.”

Unprecedented straightforwardness. He was glad someone gave him truth enough to work with.

No Guild member outside his staff.

And Geigi’s.

But that didn’t answer the central question. He was back down the hall toward the study before he sorted that out. For all he knew, the Assassins’ Guild had established a regional office on the station, one his staff knew about. Once he thought of it he could not imagine the all-seeing Assassins’ Guild failing to take that step.

Damn, of course that Guild was here. But how long they had been here and what their activity had been—or how closely his own staff had been in touch with such an entity—there was no use retracing his steps to ask that second question, which would only make his staff uncomfortable. There were some degrees of truth he simply could not expect.

He knew, for instance, that Bindanda was Assassins’ Guild, one of uncle Tatiseigi’s men, with him for years. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Geigi’s staff held such small, known, surprises. Such infiltrations kept the great houses informed, and man’chi stable.

But it was downright stupid of him not to foresee. He’d experienced the increase in number of workers and the increase in complexity of worker management so slowly that the increasing possibility of various atevi institutions making their way up here too just never had taken shape in his overloaded human brain.

Of course, of course, of course—his own security never had told him. If he were ever under duress, would they wish him to know everything they could do and all the resources they had?

But damned certain there would never be another Tamun rebellion, no more instances where the station dissolved in chaos and bloodshed.

So the paidhi shut up and asked no more questions, but he didn’t think it likely Ramirez had died of Guild action. That wasn’t the signal he was getting from a staff that would signal him if they thought he did need to know.

It still didn’t answer the question of Tabini’s silence.

Defeat. Just defeat. He wasn’t accustomed to running out of resources. He wasn’t used to being out of ideas.

He sat down at his desk, started to key on his computer.

Quick footsteps sounded in the hall.

“Bren-ji.” Jago signaled him with a hand-motion from the doorway. “Toby-nadi. On the phone.”

His brother. Finally. Thank God. He went to the nearest wall-unit and punched in on the lit button. “Toby?” His heart was beating triple-time. “Hello?” He tried to reorganize his thoughts into Mosphei’, his mind into a different universe, and far more personal problems.

“I take it by the location I’ve just reached that you’re not coming.”

Oh, Toby was not happy with him. Not at all.

“I can’t come. Toby, how’s mother?”

“Dicey. Really dicey. I don’t honestly know.”

“Hospital?”

“Hospital? Intensive care since midweek. Since you were down here, damn it, and didn’t call, or answer your mail.”

It wasn’t cause and effect, his presence on the planet, their mother’s crisis. Intensive care didn’t take maybes, didn’t take mothers assuring their sons were in reach.

And a weak, years-chancy heart did what it did for medical, not karmic, reasons.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Toby.”

“Sorry?”

“I want to be there. Toby, I want to be there, and I can’t, the way things are.” Incredibly, one conniving part of his brain said: Ask Toby what’s in the papers; take the temperature of the island; find out what’s public—while another, more sensitive voice, said, For God’s sake, Cameron, this is your mother, your brother. Forget the damn intelligence report and ask your brother the right questions. “It’s one of those bad moments, Toby. I can’t explain. You have every right to punch me out when I get down there. I know that. Take me on credit right now. I have to ask it of you.”

“Bren, Bren, it’s not me. I’m not the issue. Have you possibly got that picture? Mother’s really bad. Really bad. She’s asking for you and I’m sorry, right now I won’t do. She wants you here, and I can’t deliver.”

Toby didn’t say, You’re her favorite son, but that accusation was in there, right along with, I’ve given her all I can give, and I haven’t got any more.

“What she says, Toby, is all well and good, but when I was there, you were the perfect son and I was the vagrant.”

“That’s not the point, Bren! She needs you, she needs somebody and she won’t be content with me!”

“If you were the one out of reach, she’d be asking for you. That is the issue. It’s always been the issue, and when you’ve had any sleep at all you’ll know that fact of the universe. I know what you’re going through—”

“I don’t care what the issue is, Bren. I don’t care about those games and I don’t care about mainland politics. It doesn’t change. It’s always something, and I’m not playing. The plain fact is, she’s really sick, and she’s not faking it. She’s not faking, this time. You think I’d call you with a lie?”

Toby was losing his self-control. And in that realization the negotiator who dealt between Tabini and the ship-humans sucked in a breath and made himself hard and cold as ice. “That may be. It may be true. But you listen to me, Toby. You say you’re not playing. I’m convinced. I believe she’s not. But you listen to me. She has a way of getting all you can give. When she’s well, she wants her way. When she’s sick she shuts down to just one priority, and that’s getting everyone she wants as close as she can get us. No, I’m not her favorite son when I’m there. Then you’re the best and I’m the son that ought to quit my job, get a haircut, and settle down in reach—and you know that’s the truth. Toby, brother, you know it’s never going to be perfect and you can’t ever make her happy. If you need that to satisfy you, you’re in for a big hurt. She’s just the way she is, and we do what we can, but there’s a limit.”

“Bren, I’ve given her my wife and my family. What more is there?”

Bad news. Repeated bad news. “Where’s Jill?”

“I don’t know.” Toby’s voice conveyed utter misery. “At a certain point I don’t give a damn. Some hotel somewhere. With friends. I don’t know.”

“Damn. Go find her.” He didn’t belong in Toby’s private life, but he’d had a front row seat for this disaster for the last ten years. And this time he said it. “Mother doesn’t have a right. She doesn’t have a damned right to your life. Let Barb take care of Mother. You get out of there. Go find Jill.”

“If Jill wants to go off in a fit, that’s her choice.”

“Jill’s had plenty of provocation, brother.”

“You’re talking about things you don’t know about, Bren.”

“And I’m telling you—you and Jill haven’t put in all this time to lose it now. Fix it!”

A small, wounded silence. “Whose the hell side are you on?”

“Yours. Your life. Your life, damn it, which you had going right, and Mother gets sick and there you are.” God, it was autobiographical. “I want you to get out of there and go find Jill.”

“And I’m telling you I don’t give a damn!”

“You listen to me. The kids probably know where Jill is. You know Mother—just make her mad: she’ll go miles just on the adrenaline. It’s good for her, just like medicine.”

“It’s not funny, Bren. This time it’s not funny.”

“I’m not in the least joking. Go find Jill. I don’t care where she’s gone or how well she’s hidden or how hurt your feelings are. Just walk out of there, go find her—”

“There’s just too much gone on.”

“There are too damn many broken promises, Toby. There’s too much someday and not enough right now. I don’t care if you get mad at me. You need to get mad at somebody besides Jill. Get mad at Mother. Get the hell out of there and live your own life. You want the truth, Toby? The absolute truth? I didn’t call when I was on the mainland because I’ve resigned from the emergency squad. I’m not willing to have my emotions yanked left and right by my family, not by Mother… and not by you. I wouldn’t believe in a cosmic connection, but it seems to me that this particular crisis happened right after I’d made a public appearance and just when Mother had to have found out I’d been there…”

“Bren, this isn’t something she manufactured. It’s not a trick. The doctors—”

“It may not be fake, but it’s still something she does to herself. Now she’s got you waiting at her doorstep and she’s got me upset and pretty soon she’ll get well, if she hasn’t done it to herself for good and all this time.”

“Damn it, Bren, this is critical.”

“Oh, I believe you. And you said it: if you divorced Jill and moved in with Mother, you know she’d only have half of what she wants—and so help me, Toby, she’s not going to get what she wants from me, and I don’t want you there, either. She’s got Barb, hasn’t she? They’ve got each other. Tell Barb. Tell Barb I’m calling in a favor. Then go call Jill, call her? I don’t care what you have to go through to get to her or how much you have to take. Jill understands this situation better than you think she does… believe me, she understands. She’s had this all figured out for the last ten years, long before we did. Now you’re learning Mother’s tricks, aren’t you? You want me there. And I can’t give you what you want. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Another silence, one of those absolutely unarguable, unreachable countermoves.

He let it sit there, well knowing Toby wouldn’t breach the silence first, but waiting, letting Toby get past the family temper.

Then Toby pulled the only trump card, and simply hung up on him.

Damn, he thought. He was sure he was right, so far as facts went—but not sure he’d handled it at all well, least of all sure that he’d been right to take that last shot.

Damn.

Well, there was nothing he could do and the agenda stayed, his, their mother’s, and Toby’s, and only the last was still mutable. In the best of situations Toby would let the advice percolate through his hindbrain and get up and make a few phone calls.

Maybe he ought to call Barb. She’d written him a note. Opened the door. Maybe he ought to patch up an old friendship land ask his own favors.

He looked to the door of the study, and saw a row of solemn dark atevi faces.

“My mother is ill,” he said. “My brother has left his wife to go to her—or his wife has left him.” They knew. Little as they understood human customs from the gut level, they knew this was not the desired situation. “I urged him see to his wife. I have some hope that Barb-nadi will be attending my mother. Tano-ji, will you make calls and attempt to locate Barb? She may be at the hospital in my mother’s neighborhood.”

“Yes,” Tano said.

“I’ll compose a brief letter. Send it when you have her whereabouts.”

“Yes, paidhi-ji.”

Oh, so slightly formal.

Jago had offered to file Intent on Barb. But Barb had her virtues. A devotion to his mother was one. He tried not to figure it out. It led places he didn’t want to imagine.

But the staff left him in peace, having a mission to accomplish.

He composed his letter at the computer, brief as it was:

Barb, I think you surely know Mum’s in hospital. I think you know too that Toby’s been with her but he’s had a crisis. Whatever’s between us, personally, I know you’ve been incredibly good to my mother, and Mum needs someone right now. I’m asking, without strings, on your friendship with her, and thank you for sending word

—Bren

He sent it over to Tano, and tried to remember where he had been in business that involved millions of lives.

But that was an equally precarious wait-see. Fate wasn’t going to give him a quick resolution. Things weren’t up to him to decide. Maybe this time he’d lose his mother. It had been close, from time to time. He’d tried to distance himself from situations he couldn’t help, but the grief was still there. He could still remember the woman who’d taken him and Toby on vacations and who’d backed him, however humorlessly, driving her sons in her chosen directions—he forgave that. When he most doubted himself, she’d say—You can do it, Bren. Don’t be lazy. Just keep going.

Good advice, mum. Really good advice. Just keep going.

It saved a lot of thinking. Autopilot. Too stupid to kill. Too ignorant to see a defeat staring you in the face.

Sometimes you just ended up beyond the crisis-point not knowing how you’d lived.

Narani had said something about breakfast. Bren found his mind at one moment far, far distant, with a space station that ought to have died and hadn’t—and local at the next moment, with a captain who shouldn’t have died, and had; and then planetbound, with his staff’s warning about Assassins’ Guild activity on the station, and Eidi, who he believed had faithfully carried his messages.

And not to forget that incongruous ceremony for Valasi, a funeral years late for a father Tabini had probably had a hand in assassinating.

And the chance that Ginny Kroger was working for Shawn Tyers, who’d landed in the Presidency after years of spy-chasing in the Foreign Office.

No. It was a chase around far too many bushes. Ramirez had been in lousy health since the Tamun mutiny, had been downright frail for months. It took no outside agency to explain why a man with one foot in the grave—so to speak—tipped right over at a bad moment.

He hadn’t had that much sleep.

“Nandi,” Algini said from the doorway. “Jase-paidhi.”

God, he thought. What else?

He’d slept in his clothes, doubtless to his staff’s distress. He got up and took the call.

“Bren,” Jase said.

“I’m here.” He already knew it wasn’t good news. Jase sounded exhausted. Far from exuberant.

“The council has voted,” Jase said, and chose a slow, considerate ship-speech. “We’re going out to the other station. Imminently. I moved to delay for a month. I argued. I was voted down.”

The ship was leaving dock. Leaving the planet.

Chasing after a problem they all, some less willing than others, had in common.

Deserting them.

“Without consultation? Jase, I still haven’t been able to get through to Tabini.”

“The proposition’s going to the crew in general council. In about an hour. Ogun’s wasting no time at all.”

With the crew suspecting a double-cross, fast movement on some course of action was the best thing. In that sense it was a good thing the council had decided—but the decision was far from the balanced outcome he wanted.

“I’m not upset they’re going. But they’re moving without a response from the aiji. He may agree, but he has to give his agreement. I know he’s stalling, but there are other issues down there. This is dangerous stuff, and it’s going to create ill will.”

“I know. I argued that point. Ogun listened, and he and Sabin still voted together. Departure’s imminent… granted the crew agrees. And they will. All they have to do is send essential personnel to stations and flip the master switch. They’ll run tests. But the ship’s in running order. There’s not going to be that long a delay. Then there’s no more debate.”

“Are you going? Or are you staying here?”

A small pause. “I want to stay. It would make some sense. You and I can work together. But on this one, I’m not sure whether Ogun will vote with me, either. I’m not sure he wants someone here who cooperates that easily with you and Tabini. I know Sabin wouldn’t like my being left as liaison. But I’m damn little use in operations. I’m putting our conversation into the log, by the way.”

If Jase was speaking his own dialect, overhearing was always a possibility, and he hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t say in captain’s council.

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll be talking to Ogun and Sabin, if I can, trying to argue them into leaving me here. Here, I’m useful. It’s the best outcome I can think of.”

“It shows good faith to Tabini, for one other cogent argument.”

“That’s a point. I’ll use it. I’ve got to go, Bren.”

“Thanks. Thanks for the advisement.”

Thanks for the advisement.

Was he surprised? Not that surprised.

Breakfast was all but on the table. He’d upset Bindanda if he let it go cold. He saw the maidservant hesitating just beyond the door, an earnest young face, too good sense to interrupt the paidhi in a phone call: she advised him simply by her waiting presence.

“Yes, nadi-ji,” he said. He was cold. “My indoor coat, if you please.”

She hurried to the foyer closet and brought it back. He slipped it on, unrumpled, morning ritual, calming to jangled nerves. One day and the next. Routine. The cosmic carpet was about to go out from under them, but they observed the amenities. And he’d gotten about two hours’ sleep.

Banichi and Jago had likewise turned up for breakfast, black-uniformed, informal and comfortable—armed. They always were. And they probably hadn’t slept either.

“We may have to send a courier down to Shejidan,” Bren said. “Can we hurry the shuttle? Immediate launch? There’s reason to ask.”

“One will learn, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano?” Banichi had his earpiece in, and listened, and gave a little inclination of his head. “Tano will inquire during breakfast.”

“The ship’s going,” he said to Banichi and Jago. “They’re holding a vote of the crew, but I have a notion it’s going to pick up and go. One has to ask still how much of a presence they’re going to leave here. We need technical people to continue with the ship-building and train atevi personnel to manage it. So now we learn, one supposes, whether Ramirez-aiji meant us to have a starship at all, or whether it was all show, to get his ship fueled. That’s why we need a courier. The ship is about to power up, preparatory to leaving. And the aiji doesn’t answer me. Has there been any response from the Guild?“

“Nothing,” Banichi said. “No answer at all. Which is unprecedented, Bren-ji.”

So was all of it. Currents were moving. Big ones. “If Tabini won’t answer our messages, then we have somehow to rattle his doors. If we do it in error, if we disturb what’s afoot—well, that’s a risk. The aiji knows us, that we’re apt to try something. And I think now we have to take that risk.”

“One understands,” Banichi murmured. The two of them took their seats at table, fortunate three. Silver dishes were arranged. Servants stood by to serve, and began with tasty cold jellies in the shape of the traditional eggs. Bindanda had been very clever, and the quasi-eggs were very spicy, and good.

“Excellent,” they agreed, and complimented Bindanda’s handiwork as the next course proved to be a vegetable and nut pate surrounding stuffed mushrooms with small split-nut fins. Bindanda put the station’s synthetic cheese loaf far in the shade.

Could one even think politics over such a breakfast?

Bren did, and he was sure Banichi and Jago did.

Nor were they quite out of touch with Tano and Algini, having their quasi-fish in the informality of the security station.

Banichi murmured, quietly, urgently, at a hiatus in the serving, “A shuttle has just launched. This would be the freight shuttle.”

His heart beat fast. “Early, isn’t it?”

“A little early,” Jago said.

“A courier to us?” It made a certain sense, when he was trying desperately to decide who of his staff to send down to Tabini.

It was about damned time, was what.

“One has no information,” Banichi said. “Possible that we’ll hear before docking.”

“Possible that there’s a security force aboard?” Bren had his voice down, trying to preserve propriety, but a shuttle: that was a two-edged prospect. “I wish very much that Tabini would consult, nadiin-ji.”

Understatement, twice over. Tabini had tacitly demanded one simple thing of Ramirez in return for his support of the ship: control of the station. The ship maintained an iron hand over personnel’s comings and goings, and over communications, but atevi were set at key physical points of the station. And to Bren’s observation, both powers thought they ran things, while Mospheirans thought they ran the business operations and the commerce, such as there was—they did that fairly undisputed.

And everyone had tacitly agreed not to challenge each other, under Ramirez’s command.

Now Ramirez was gone, taking all his secrets with him. And now they had their heaviest-lift shuttle arriving, nearly on routine, but just a worrisome little bit early—while the ship-crew was voting to pull the only starship out of the agreement and go off on a mission to stick their fingers into the most sensitive situation possible.

It took a degree of control to appreciate the next course, and to make small talk with his staff and the kitchen.

And at the time when they often set about their day’s business, Banichi and Jago had another revelation from the security station.

“They’re reporting only routine.”

He had a very strong feeling, all the same. He hated like hell to be taken off his guard.

“Do you know, I think we should arrange to meet the shuttle when it docks, nadiin-ji. I think perhaps we should prepare the third residency, in hopes of putting the aiji’s official answer in a somewhat better mood. If we’re wrong, we can always power the apartment down again. Tell the station and the ship we’re doing some maintenance in there.”

“A very good idea,” Banichi said.

It took a long time to warm up an apartment once it was mothballed—not quite the chill of space, but certainly the walls grew cold and difficult to warm.

“One assumes, at least,” Bren said cautiously, as they entered the study, “that Tabini has taken my advisement and Geigi’s utterly seriously. If it turns out to be several hundred of the Guild, I trust they’ll take care with the porcelains.” Heavy lift as well as antiquity made the decor in the adjacent apartment extravagantly expensive. “But it occurs to me, nadiin-ji, that the dowager is available to him, if it weren’t for Cajeiri.”

Ilisidi had been on the station, understood the station, had met with the living captains, and knew Ramirez face to face.

More, she had authority. Vast authority.

And it was very, very possible, if Tabini had to choose someone for a quick personal assessment of the situation— outranking both the paidhi and lord Geigi—Ilisidi would be a very astute observer. Very powerful. Surrounded by close, armed security.

If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.

“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”

“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”

Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.

“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”

If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.

That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.

“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”

“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”

“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”

“One can carry a message,” Jago said.

“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let him suggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”

“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.

“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”

“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.

“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To direct their response.”

“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.

“Do you think there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.

“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.

Something, at least, had changed.

There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who might have a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.

Touchy enough, his relationship with the third paidhi— touchy as Jase’s, who was her ex-lover, and who hadn’t gotten along with her.

Or maybe secrets had driven the wedge.

And secrets had been going on for years.

“I’ll try phoning Jase,” he said to Jago, and got up and did that.

“Mr, Cameron,” C1 said. “Hold on. You’re on priority to Captain Graham.”

Well, that was improved.

“Bren?” A moment later.

“Jase, we’ve got a shuttle inbound. Anyone notice?”

A small pause.

“If you’ve called to say so,” Jase said, being quick, “I take it there’s some concern.”

Chapter 10

« ^ »

Time enough to prepare. Time enough to advise allies about a conjecture of a conjecture.

Time enough to open the aiji-dowager’s former residency, set a vase with hothouse flowers on the foyer table, and arrange a welcome with a small flourish.

For once, Bren said to himself, he had gotten the edge on Tabini.

At least he hadn’t been caught with the ship just pulled out and that armed starship facing the shuttle with a disproportional balance of power. The crew had voted. The foregone conclusion was concluded. The ship would move.

But Jase had presented a possible intervening fact—and Ogun, quite unexpectedly, had given a series of small preparatory orders, maintenance checks, numerous of them. And inventory of ship’s stores. Dared one suspect cooperation?

The action of an alliance—in which Ogun might be better informed than any of them?

Ilisidi, if it was the dowager en route, had been figured out, anticipated, and factored in with astonishingly little fuss, considering all that was at stake—Ilisidi, if it was she, having a considerable lot of credit with the ship’s crew as well as the station.

No publicity yet. The shuttle wasn’t talking about passengers and the ship, busy with its mysterious inventory, hadn’t inquired.

Not even certain, while Bren anxiously figeted away the final minutes, that it wasn’t simply flour and electronics.

But they were ready when the call came that the freight shuttle would use bay 1, which was personnel.

Time to put coats on, gloves in the pockets this time, servants from Geigi’s household and his to give a final touch to the third residency.

Bay 1 was manned and ready.

And they had an entire delegation—himself, lord Geigi, and Jase, with their respective security riding up in the lift, while station operations went through the customs routine, as if there might be simple workers to process.

Bren thought to the contrary.

Definitely political. Incredibly expensive in terms of fuel and wear on the equipment and the cargo the shuttle ought to have been carrying, on its regular schedule… but the aiji in Shejidan used what he had to use, and had with increasing certainty gotten his messages.

They waited in the warm territory of the third deck while the docking approach was in progress. Jase met them there, with his own escort, and brought communications tied to the ship.

“Ogun certainly thinks it’s her,” Jase informed them. “Whether he’s had a communication or not, I don’t know, but there’s every indication there’s a passenger.”

They took the lift up into the cold and zero gravity of the core, exited into that vast dock where light never seemed enough.

There they floated, hovering near the residual warmth of the lift shaft. Gloved fingers made patterns in the frost on the handgrips.

The doors down in Bay 3 were capable of receiving anything the freight shuttle could hand them—objects the size of a railway car, easily, and the big cradles were capable of receiving, maneuvering, offloading contents to various sorting areas.

As it was, if they needed more confirmation, workers had rigged the hand-lines for personnel. They had instructions from C1.

And they waited. Freezing.

Bren personally tried not to look up, or down, or whatever it was. For the sake of his stomach, he mostly stared at the railing near them and the yellow safety-ropes the workers deployed between them and the shuttle hatch. Jase cheerfully drifted slightly sideways to him, Kaplan and Polano and Colby loosely maintaining position along with him: lifelong spacers, confident of the lines.

“High-ranking,” Jase said. “Definitely. There’s been an advisement to customs for a wave-through. You’re right, Bren. I think you’re entirely right. The personnel rig is ready. Dockside has confirmed it. Engaged. They’re in.”

Jase moved out along the safety line. Bren followed gingerly, with Jago and Banichi, and likewise Geigi and his company.

They were most of the way there when the shuttle’s personnel hatch opened… a little in advance of the human workers reaching it.

There—there indeed was Ilisidi, in warm furs. Trust the dowager to devise something stylish for the event.

Elegant, she drifted in the hatch along with Cenedi’s formidable, protective presence.

A smaller figure left the hatch past her right hand, too far— too fast—and drifted right off the platform.

And off beyond the lines. Trying to swim, in space.

A child.

A boy.

A protocol disaster.

Bren held his breath as workers scrambled, on hand-jets.

Ilisidi reached with her cane, and almost had the boy. But Tabini’s son and heir, someday lord of the aishidi’tat, indignantly kicked free and attempted his own salvation. He twisted and kicked in an attempt to reach the door of the shuttle, and banged the edge of the hatch with an unfortunate booted foot.

He sailed off quite spectacularly out of reach—but not quickly enough to arrive anywhere useful anytime soon.

It was chilling cold. The boy was suited only for the brief transit to the lift.

Jase took a hand-jet from a worker and moved out among the rest, while the dowager, who cast an exasperated glance at the boy’s trajectory, glanced at Bren, maintained a grip on the line with the grip of her cane and lifted the other hand in a tolerant, benevolent welcome.

“Well, well. Bren-paidhi. So my grandson told you after all.”

“Not exactly, aiji-ma.” It was hard not to be distracted, with a desperate rescue proceeding above their heads, if there was an above in this steel cavern. But if there was one thing more hurtful to the situation, it was more notice. One only hoped it would not be on public reports. And what did one say, under the circumstance? Did you have a nice flight? “Welcome. Welcome from the staff and from the aijiin.”

“Did you guess, then?”

“I learned of the early shuttle launch, and who else of such overriding importance would divert a shuttle to visit us?”

He managed to please her, in spite of the incident. An angry shout—the family temper—punctuated the icy air above them. No, Cajeiri had no wish to be hauled down ignominiously by human workers. No, clearly he wished to use one of the jets for himself, small chance there was of the workers or Jase allowing that.

Was it possible Ilisidi winced?

“Geigi-ji, too,” the dowager said, however. “So clever, the lot of you. I trust I’m in time for the ship.”

“For the ship, aiji-ma?”

“Do you think they may bring the boy to the lift in time for us, or shall I leave one of my companions?”

Bren gave a desperate look up—or out, or whatever it might be—since propriety forbade the dowager gazing after this youthful error. By now Jase had the boy by an arm and was towing him down.

“They have him, aiji-ma,” Bren said, quite familiar with the dowager’s iron notion of propriety. “Jase-ji.” He reached out a hand himself to steer Jase down, holding firmly to the safety line.

The boy was near enough. Ilisidi reached out with the crook of her cane and snatched the aiji’s heir close, past her elbow, back into her chief of security Cenedi’s hands and Cenedi very smoothly attached Cajeiri’s gloved hand to the safety line. Jase braked, not showing off a bit, no, and stayed free-fall in escort of their party, workers hovering on the other side of the line—in event of other escapes, one surmised.

Cajeiri meanwhile was shivering—being smaller, and chilling even after his burst of furious exertion, but no one shamed him by noticing.

They reached the lift car.

“That will become the floor,” Ilisidi said as they entered the car, and gave the proposed lift deck a stamp of that formidable cane. “Set your feet there, boy! Can you manage that? Thank you!”

Cajeiri turned himself as the adults did and youthful feet went there, just so, with no mistakes this time. It must be Cajeiri’s earnest desire not to be noticed for hours and hours.

Court etiquette forbade noticing the event. Security forbade their discussing business of other kinds, so conversation simply and inanely regarded the dowager’s flight, the launch weather, the weather in the far east of the Association, which was the dowager’s domain—and, in one of those strange drifts of converse, to the hatch of wi’itikiin in recent years.

“Fourteen chicks,” the dowager said proudly, as they rode down past third level, “this spring. All living. Those on the higher cliffs we surmise do as well.”

“One is glad to hear it, aiji-ma.” He truly was glad. It was amazing to him. Ilisidi came here turning their lives upside down even if they’d seen her coming, and told him chicks had hatched on the cliffs of Malguri, making what had been a cold, strange station feel the winds of the world. “One is extremely glad to know it.” What is this about the ship? he wanted to ask, but this was hardly the place for it, in a lift where station security often monitored.

Cajeiri, likely, himself, destined for Malguri after this sojourn of Ilisidi’s on the station, kept meekly quiet, family temper having had its expression—family survival sense having come to the fore.

Tatiseigi’s being the boy’s first lessons—what wonder the boy was grim, Bren thought to himself. No companions. No play.

Now diplomatic missions, God help the boy.

And what was this, In time for the ship?

And why did his heart beat double-time, and why did he reckon suddenly Jase should have heard, and hadn’t, because Jase had been out of range.

“This is Jase-aiji, one of the ship-aijiin, who has extended you considerable courtesy. This is the paidhi-aiji, whom you surely remember favorably. This is Lord Geigi, whom you have yet to meet formally.”

“Ship-aiji,” Cajeiri said in meek tones. “Thank you. Paidhi-aiji, Lord Geigi. I’m gratified you came.”

“One is equally gratified by your courtesy, aiji-ma,” Jase said smoothly, in the smooth tones of practice. That phrase he knew in his sleep.

“Young aiji,” Geigi said.

“See you deal well with these men,” Ilisidi said, and nudged Jase with the head of her cane. “Well done.”

“Aiji-ma. Thank you for coming. We know it’s an arduous journey.”

“Nonsense. But from a handsome young man, acceptable.”

As their feet found the floor with increasing solidity and a slight rotational queasiness.

“This isn’t right, grandmother-ji,” Cajeiri protested. “Are we safe?”

“Safe? Safe? Do you see these gentlemen distressed?” Ilisidi asked, and stamped the deck with the ferrule of her cane. “Conditions to become ordinary to your generation—one is certain, and far too soon. But well that you notice. Well that you notice, all the same.”

“Yes, grandmother-aiji.”

“This generation,” Ilisidi said. “Will it be wiser, Geigi-ji?”

“One has hope, nand’ dowager.”

“Thus far, I doubt it. But I venture, hear? I do venture.”

How did one query the dowager when she was in that mood? And where was there time for thoughtful conversation?

And what was this, In time for the ship?

The lift stopped, let them out in the ordinary station halls, but instead of customs and station security, standard procedure when a shuttle with passengers came into dock—Ogun met them.

With Mercheson beside him.

Yolanda Mercheson, who avoided eye contact, bowing to the dowager.

“Dowager,” Ogun said in the Ragi language. “Welcome to the station.”

“Aiji-ma,” Yolanda said. “We understand your quarters are ready.”

Ordinary workers, mostly Mospheiran, passed by on their various errands—and stopped to stare at a meeting of the paidhiin and atevi aristocrats, and one the widely famous Gran ’Sidi, with her silver-haired chief of security, Cenedi.

And an atevi youngster.

Movement in the hall outright stopped. People stood. A few bowed.

Ogun took out his pocket com and spoke in his own language: “C1, clearance through the halls. Gran Sidi’s in residence. Advise the council. Intentions as yet unspecified.”

C1 answered, a simple acknowledgment of the orders.

“Nand’ dowager,” Ogun said then—he had learned that phrase in the dowager’s last tenancy. But he gave only a passing glance to the boy—not in as much dismay as confusion, as Bren saw it. Ogun might have heard about the unfortunate incident at the dock, or not: he said nothing, simply bowed slightly, stiffly—never a shipboard or a Mospheiran grace—welcoming the aiji dowager to the station as if this was no surprise at all.

“Her discretion,” Ogun said, passing everything atevi to the dowager and to them, and about that moment Ilisidi’s cane came down smartly on the deck, the end of her patience.

“Translate,” she said.

“A welcome, nandi,” Jase said immediately.

“She’s the representative,” Ogun said.

Jase skirted an infelicitous mispronunciation rendering that. One forgave him: the dowager seemed to. She uttered a short, sharp hiss.

“Of course. Does anyone believe we sit in those wretched seats and come to such a frozen desolation in the heavens for our health? A chair. One assumes there will be a chair in a warm place. And supper. I insist on supper. When is the ship leaving?”

“The dowager says yes,” Jase rendered it for Ogun, “and wants to know when the ship is leaving.”

“Ma’am,” Ogun said, a courtesy, “nand’ dowager, we have to go through power-up.”

This arrived in the Ragi language as get it running.

“Get it running,” Ilisidi echoed the translation. “One hopes it runs, nadiin, with some reliability. We expect not to break down. Shall we move temporarily into our quarters?”

Not to break down. We expect not to break down.

Bren cast Jase a look and Jase seemed no more informed than he was. He cast one at Yolanda Mercheson, too.

“ ’Sidi-ji,” Geigi said. “What is this? Are we informed?”

“Geigi,” Ilisidi said, and laid her hand on Geigi’s arm in a very intimate way. “Immediately. Your welcome is appreciated, Ogun-aiji—say so, girl! and be done. My bones ache. I want my chair!”

“Yes, aiji-ma,” Bren said—she was his responsibility, not Jase’s—and damned sure not Yolanda Mercheson’s, if he had a choice in it. “Captain, she’s anxious to be through the festivities and into a comfortable chair, and if there’s anything going on I don’t know, I hope I will know in short order.” What’s this about the ship? was what he ached to ask, but court proprieties kept him from asking outright. “With your permission, sir.”

“The dowager proposes to be a passenger on this voyage,” Ogun said. “With her entourage. The schedule is under construction at the moment. We’ll notify her. We will inspect baggage: we have safety restrictions.”

“I daresay you should have Cenedi there if you do inspect baggage, sir.” He was accustomed to playing along as if he was utterly in the know, but this was the utmost, the most extravagant state of ignorance. A passenger on the ship, hell!

And Mercheson mediating when he was present?

“Well, he’d better come along, then, soon as the baggage is offloaded,” Ogun said.

“Banichi, Cenedi will wish to supervise the inspection of baggage for safety. Jase, can you possibly attend that inspection?”

“I will,” Jase said. No better informed, Bren was convinced—no complicity in what Ogun clearly knew. The lot of them acted as if, of course, no surprise, no concern, they’d known from the start; but he improvised at high speed, and disposed someone who knew station regulations, someone who spoke Ragi and ship-language, to attend on security checks to prevent armed conflict.

Meanwhile he kept close with Ilisidi, intending to stay close until he understood at least the general outline of what was happening. Geigi was as much in the dark as he was, he caught that from what outsiders might not perceive as an expression. Geigi himself was taken aback by this, and Geigi was deeper than he was in Ilisidi’s confidence.

Mercheson and secrets and Tabini’s silence figured in what was going on—he was sure of that. This was his looked-for answer from Tabini, and it was a potent answer.

But, God, send Ilisidi off to the remote station for a look-around?

Have her travel alone?

She couldn’t speak to them. The ship’s crew couldn’t speak to her—except Jase. And Cajeiri had no place in a situation as fraught with danger as that. Was he supposed to babysit an atevi six-year-old?

What in hell did Tabini think he had set up? And with whom? With Ramirez, with Ogun’s knowledge?

“Dowager-ji,” he said, however, as blandly as if they were off to a garden walk, and showed Ilisidi and her party ahead down the corridor, leaving Ogun and Yolanda, Jase and Banichi behind—

Where Jase could find out something, Bren earnestly, desperately, hoped.

“On the ship, is it?” Bren asked, once they were clear of eavesdroppers.

“Sidi-ji,” Lord Geigi said at the same time, “this is a reckless venture.”

“Perhaps it is,” Ilisidi said. She had Geigi on the one hand and him on the other, Cajeiri safely in Cenedi’s hands at the moment. “But my grandson has taken this silly notion that nothing will do but that he know what happens in this far place, and he needs someone of sense, I suppose, to make a fair finding. A great inconvenience, I may say.”

“A very hard journey, Sidi-ji,” Geigi said.

And Bren: “This is no shuttle trip, aiji-ma. This is far, far more than that.”

“Pish.” Ilisidi struck her cane on the decking twice in a step. “And a shuttle trip is far, far more than the inconvenient and uncomfortable airplane I use between here and Malguri. Everything is degree, is it not?”

“The scale of this, aiji-ma,” Bren began. “If you please to—”

“Pish, I say. It has to be done. Don’t complain for me, Bren-ji. You’re going.”

His heart went on quite normally two beats. Skipped one, as he believed he had heard what he had heard and the import of it came home. “Go with you? I’ve heard no such thing, aiji-ma.”

“You hear it now.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” There was, with official orders, only one thing to say, and he said it, calmly, with dignity, though he found breathing difficult.

Go from star to star, into a situation—

—this delicate?

It made a certain terrible sense. But—

“May I inquire, aiji-ma—I do trust the aiji knows your intention.”

“And would you question my order, paidhi-ji?”

“Certainly I must, aiji-ma, to leave a post Tabini-aiji…”

“Ha!” The cane stamped the deck. “Constant as sunrise. My grandson knows, I say. And he sends you to see to matters. I’m to be in the party to provide the requisite authority.”

“Then I shall go,” he said meekly. Scarcity of air made his head light. His hands were still cold from the foray into the cold. Now his whole body lost ground, inward chilling. “If I can arrange this with Ogun-aiji, who governs the ship, aiji-ma.”

“All arranged,” Ilisidi said. “I have my baggage. I do suggest you pack quickly.”

All arranged!

He had to talk to Ogun. He had to talk to Jase. Jase was a fair representative of atevi and planetary interests with the ship’s command. Jase’s skills as an insider, able to deal with the ship authorities, the station authorities, the Pilots’ Guild—that was indispensable. Jase natively had all the information, and the cachet as one of Taylor’s Children. In Ramirez’s intentions, he suspected—it was the other half of what Jase was born to do; and he couldn’t let decisions remove that asset from the mission.

Tabini had clearly made his own arrangements.

Tabini had been dealing—with Ramirez—through Yolanda—behind his back.

He had a difficulty. He had a very great difficulty on his hands, if power was flowing into Yolanda’s hands.

He had the aiji’s heir and a parcel of very different culture being dealt with by a novice. As well send Kate Shugart to negotiate—with the best will in the world, but no resources. No experience.

“And I?” Geigi said. “And I, ’Sidi-ji?”

“My pillar of resolution,” Ilisidi said, “the wellspring of my confidence. I shall see you privately. We have matters to discuss.”

Geigi should meet with her. But he heard no word about the paidhi-aiji being privy to such a meeting—and in the rapidity with which events were moving, and in the dowager’s agenda Bren doubted there was a chink left for an objection, or any change in plans.

At the last moment she might say—of course. Of course come with me. That had to happen. Surely.

Jago was taking it all in: no need to brief her. He was relatively sure Banichi had heard, and he was certain beyond a doubt that Tano and Algini had picked it up through Jago’s equipment. They would be taking their orders through what he’d already said. They would be considering resources and making plans much as if they had overheard a casual order to run down to the planet for tea with the aiji. If he didn’t get a further briefing from the dowager, or if he did, the one thing certain was that planning was already in progress among his staff.

But, God, what was Tabini thinking?

Send an elderly lady to deal with the Guild?

And what was Cajeiri doing here?

A transfer to Geigi’s custody, it might be, leaving him on the station, a place of relative safety from assassination, where the boy might gain, instead of the antiquity of Malguri, the modernity of the cutting edge. That made a certain sense.

But to ask Ilisidi, at her age, to make this kind of flight—

He tried to calm himself—telling himself that the flight, however distant, was an ordinary operation of the ship, that the time it took, while measured in years, was measured in a year or so, not a decade, not a lifetime. Jase had traveled farther in his life. The ship was meant to do such things, and do them safely. It was routine for the ship.

And there was actually very good sense in sending the aiji’s best negotiator, and backing him with the aiji’s personal representative, to settle what a diplomat might be able to settle. If the ship-folk had a weakness in negotiation, it was their blindness to outsiders, their gut-deep certainty that the whole universe was like themselves. The ship had already had that illusion shaken, in dealing with atevi: they were a great deal wiser now than they had been when they came into the solar system.

But they weren’t the only humans at issue. The station-folk at Reunion likely thought foreignness described the ship’s crew, and that diplomacy and negotiation described an administrative meeting.

Not to mention—not even to mention the Pilots’ Guild, which had been a thorn in the side of every colonial decision since the accident that sent the ship off its original mission— notorious in every legend of colonial operations since.

And he was supposed to deal with that situation?

Was, on the other hand, Jase going to deal with it alone? Or worse—Yolanda?

Ilisidi had said something. He sweated. One didn’t ever ask’s the dowager to repeat herself.

But he had to.

“Aiji-ma? I was thinking on the necessities.”

“Taken care of, I say. Pay attention, nand’ paidhi!”

Pay attention. Pay attention. It meant everything. Use your wits. Use your resources. Hear what I’m saying and use your imagination.

“I rarely admit to confusion, aiji-ma.” He knew her, at least. “Forgive me. This is an immense surprise.”

“Surprised you indeed?” Ilisidi was not displeased by that notion.

“Yet your quarters are ready,” he said, “aiji-ma, for at least brief stay in comfort. Once I heard the shuttle had launched, I said to myself, well, I should be ready.”

“Very well managed,” she deigned to say, when he knew he had failed other marks—critical ones. “One expects it of such clever men.”

As Jago opened the section door, admitting their party to a lifferent, warmer light, and more humidity.

And a corridor within their own security.

“Ramirez is dead,” Ilisidi said sharply, stopping just within the zone, the door shutting on the instant. “And this was anticipated. Ramirez-aiji knew he would not live to arrive at the remote station, and therefore made certain decisions: unity of one, that the ship-fueling must happen. Infelicitous two and transitional three, that the powers of the earth must be reckoned with. Precarious four, that the aijiin of the world must be admitted to plans. Stable five, that he must prepare a very difficult matter for other hands to deal with after his death. Prepare for change, nandiin. Geigi-ji. And you—” This with a thrust of the formidable cane toward Bren. “Your message is long since received, paidhi-aiji. And anticipated.

“That Ramirez would die,” the dowager continued, “anticipated. That he would refuse medical help, anticipated. That he would likely do so before his aim was achieved, again, anticipated.”

“There was no assassination, then.”

Cajeiri’s eyes were wide, his face starkly apprehensive as he looked from one to the other. But the dowager was accustomed to such familiarity from the paidhi-aiji.

“An old man’s choice,” Ilisidi said. “Fully his choice. He knew it was likely. So he broached the matter with my grandson, if one can believe that part of the account.”

Approached Tabini without him. Tabini had, years since, understood far more of Mosphei’ than he ever admitted. And Ramirez had found his opportunity.

“Among essential matters,” Ilisidi said, “my grandson demanded the new ship be under construction. I’m told that parts and pieces of it exist up here.”

“You passed them while docking, aiji-ma.”

A tap of the cane against the decking. “Ramirez wanted the original ship fueled, and this my grandson allowed, knowing Ramirez meant his successor to take the ship and do what he should have done in the first place: remove all inhabitants from the other station. This is essential to do. In the meantime,” the dowager said further, sharply as the crack of a whip, “in the meantime, nadiin-ji, my indolent grandson proposes to accelerate production, stir the island’s recalcitrant inhabitants to consider their own survival, and simultaneously hope for common sense in the hasdrawad, a wonder I shall regret missing, if it transpires. Mercheson-paidhi will become paidhi-aiji, as pleases my grandson. She will substitute at court and on the station, she and Kate-paidhi and Ben-paidhi… students, but adequate students, and Mercheson-paidhi has seemed adequate in these transactions. —Geigi-ji, my grandson has specific requests of you. You’ve become essential.”

“ ’Sidi,” Geigi protested. “Stay? I should stay, while you go?” Geigi was not happy.

“Do invite me in, nadi-ji.” The dowager made a slight gesture toward Geigi’s apartment, nearest.

“Of course, aiji-ji.” Geigi motioned toward the doors, which his security hastened to open.

“Good day to you, paidhi-ji.”

She left. She simply walked in. He was not invited. Cenedi, sending the boy inside, shut the doors himself, shutting Ilsidi’s security inside with Geigi and his security, shutting them out in the process.

There was nowhere to look but at Jago.

“I am completely chagrined,” Jago said. “We were outmaneuvered, Bren-ji.”

“I think we were all outmaneuvered,” he said. “Yolanda set this up. It must be. Ramirez’s agent.”

“At his instigation, paidhi-ji. We can’t penetrate the aiji’s closed communications.”

“Nor would I ask it, Jago-ji.” They were still outside their own quarters. “We should go home.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and they walked down the corridor to the end, where Narani welcomed them, without any intimation of having heard.

“Rani-ji,” Bren said, “I think we shall be taking a trip.”

“I have heard so, nandi, at least, so Tano-ji just said.”

That fast.

“Pack for me.” He made a quick estimation. “For Banichi, Jago, and staff for us. Tano and Algini will manage here, as if we were simply on the planet. But we will need attendance.”

“And provisions, nandi?”

“Assuredly.” Years. Years, and the exigencies of atevi diet. They more than favored alkaloids: they needed a certain amount for good health. “We hope the dowager, who is going with us, has taken some note of our needs, Rani-ji, but we will need a very great amount of provision—I don’t know what we’re to do.” He tried not to allow distress into his voice, or his planning. “I suppose we can draw on station stores.” The number of workers aboard meant a backup supply of goods. “Furnishings. There are so many things, Rani-ji.”

“For the ship,” Narani said.

“You didn’t know.”

“Not until Tano’s information, nandi, but we shall manage, never worry.”

Never worry. A slight giddiness possessed him as he slipped aside into the security station with Jago. Tano and Algini were at their posts. Surely Banichi was completely aware.

“We’ve been surprised,” Jago said immediately, in a low, reasonable voice. “We need to move quickly. Tano, Algini, you will maintain here. The dowager is surely prepared, but we’ll want our own gear.”

“Yes,” Algini said, and entered something on his console— which might, for what Bren knew, communicate with the kitchen, or Geigi’s staff, or station supply.

Tano was sending, too. He was surrounded by staff with immediate objectives: secure, pack, provide. What they needed to know was the numbers. Who was going? Who was staying? How many, how long?

“Can Banichi talk to Jase?” he asked and, assured that Banichi could: “Ask him, in Ragi, nadi-ji, how long the trip, and how great the space allowable for us and for the dowager—and if he isn’t now aware of the dowager’s intentions to go on this voyage, make him aware, without setting objections in motion. Ogun seems to know the dowager’s intentions, but we don’t know how much he knows.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and proceeded to speak to Banichi in a rapid Guild jargon that Bren only partially followed, and that only because he knew the content.

There was a pause, in which Banichi perhaps spoke to Jase, or tracked him down.

All arranged, Ilisidi had said.

Ground… so to speak… was rapidly sliding out from under his feet.

But Jago had a message for him. “Jase says Ogun-aiji has called an executive meeting and Jase urgently wishes your attendance, Bren-ji.”

One wondered if Ogun had contacted Ilisidi—or if Yolanda was not now the primary contact in the information flow he had always managed solo, and if certain things Ramirez had arranged were flowing one to the next, under a dead man’s hand.

Damn Yolanda. He hadn’t had to wonder about Tabini’s intentions for years; but for years, apparently, he definitely should have wondered. Ogun might not be in favor of Ilisidi’s arrival. Sabin surely wouldn’t be. And both of them trying to handle that situation through Yolanda—assuming, perhaps, that they could argue with the aiji-dowager and the aiji once publicly committed.

Assumption, assumption, assumption—fastest way to lose a contest one assumed didn’t reasonably exist… and this wasn’t personal pride. It was global safety. Species survival.

The alliance could blow up before Phoenix ever cleared the dock. The aishidi’tat, if thwarted, could bring matters to confrontation, with all the station’s supply at issue.

“We’ll go,” he said to Jago. “Banichi should meet us there.”

The game had changed beyond recognition. He had to gather up the overthrown pieces off the floor and get some order in his universe.

Fast.

Chapter 11

« ^ »

Banichi waited to join them in the executive zone, in that stretch of station corridor where Phoenix’s officers maintained executive offices. The captains’ active presence was in plain evidence—the number of aides and security outside those offices, along the lighted row of potted plants—a number including Kaplan, Polano, and Jenrette, at the end of the corridor.

Banichi, who’d followed it all by remote, didn’t say a thing as they met. Only a look passed between him and Jago.

Our Bren’s gotten us into the worst mess yet, Bren imagined that glance to say.

Had Banichi and Jago volunteered to be going where Tabini proposed to send them?

Could sane planet-dwelling folk even contemplate what they were now supposed to do?

The discontinuity of previous and future reality was so great it just made no sense to a reasonable brain, Bren thought to himself. He himself didn’t yet feel the total shock—hadn’t had time to feel much of anything but the pressure of a requisite series of urgent actions.

And he hadn’t formed a position—in effect, since Tabini had spoken through other agencies, he found he didn’t have one, except that of a subordinate taking orders. And he wasn’t used to blind compliance. It didn’t feel right.

“Mr. Cameron.” Jenrette opened a door and let them in, all three. The aiji and the captains had hammered out the inseparability of a lord and his bodyguard in less pressured times, and no one questioned, now, that Banichi and Jago should enter with him.

Jase and Ogun and Sabin occupied three of the four seats at the end table—Ogun’s dark face as glum and sorrowful as it had been during the funeral, Sabin’s thin countenance set in the habit of perpetual disapproval. Yolanda was there, whether as staff or as interviewee. And Jase—

Jase didn’t look happy at all—not happy to know that all he’d trained for was shifting, that was the first thing: Bren translated that from his own gut-feeling. Not happy to be dealing officially with Yolanda, either, Bren imagined—Yolanda was looking mostly at a handheld unit and not looking at anyone.

The other two captains, Ogun and Sabin, couldn’t be happy about anything that had happened lately: not Ramirez’s death, not the duty that had just landed on their shoulders; not with the information that had suddenly hit the station corridors.

And had Sabin even been in on the post-Tamun plans until Ramirez dropped dead and Ogun had to tell her? There was no way for an outsider to know exactly what had transpired between those two, or what the state of affairs might be. It didn’t look warm or friendly, and Jase’s expression gave him no warnings.

“Mr. Cameron,” Ogun said. “I trust the dowager’s informed you of the situation, and the reason for her presence here. We’re not wholly content with it, but the aiji in Shejidan had an agreement with Captain Ramirez that’s come into play. It was bound to, once certain information reached the aiji—shall I spell out the terms of it?”

Necessary to switch to ship-language. Necessary to switch to human thinking, to the captains’ thinking, in particular, which might figure that he held special information they needed.

That might be true, if the aiji or the aiji-dowager were including him in their conferences. Perhaps he ought to say at the outset that they weren’t including him. Perhaps he ought to admit that he was in the dark.

Pride trammeled up his tongue. And tangled up his thinking, which said, don’t state any change to be the truth until you know it’s true.

“What the aiji intended me to know,” he said, “I knew. Apparently he wished me kept in the dark, captain, so I wouldn’t make decisions outside my arena of responsibility. It’s useful for you to know that, but it wouldn’t be correct to extrapolate while things are in flux. The dowager says I’m going with you.”

“Are you?” Ogun’s tone was flat, but Bren judged that might have been a surprise to them.

“Decision of the aiji. I’m forced to abide by it, sir.”

“Decision of our brother captain,” Ogun said. Meaning Ramirez, who was dead and not available for argument. And Ogun was frustrated. “So the ship has you, and it has the dowager, and her staff.”

“And it has mine, sir. I’ll have a staff with me.”

Ogun remained thin-lipped. Disapproving. “Sealed orders, Mr. Cameron. Mine to deal with. But by their terms, by what Ramirez set out, in this mission when it might come, the aiji chooses his personnel and his risks.” Dared one think that the captains might have sneaked Phoenix out of dock without fulfilling Ramirez’s pledge to include atevi?

Certain of the captains might have wanted to do that. Jase would have surely said, in that meeting, that that would guarantee very serious trouble.

“We don’t know what situation we have at Reunion,” Ogun said. “We don’t know but that it’s gotten worse—we don’t know the aliens haven’t come back. We can’t communicate, not knowing who’s listening. We can’t guarantee they’ve got the fuel for us, out there. So we needed robot miners to refuel us out at Reunion in case the situation’s gotten far worse. And we couldn’t strip this station of robots, either. That’s solved.”

Ginny’s robots.

“We weren’t prepared to have the aiji’s grandmother as his agent. We’d asked, in fact, for you, or for his officer in charge of station operations. The word was—apparently—” A shift of the eyes toward Yolanda and back. Had communications been flowing freely even after Ramirez’ death, through her, and not him? Probably, he thought in distress. “—the word was apparently that the aiji wanted family to represent him. We’re concerned. We’re extremely concerned about the choice that’s turned up. What’s your opinion of this choice, Mr. Cameron?”

“My opinion, sir, is that the aiji will do what he does. She has authority next to his. I understand that the travel itself isn’t that strenuous… I hope it isn’t.”

“There’s some strain. She’s brought the aiji’s son, as I gather.”

“Cajeiri. Yes, sir. In her care.” He dared not argue. It wasn’t his place to argue.

“Captain Graham judges her health up to it.”

“I’d defer to his judgement in that.”

“He also says you can deal with Gran ’Sidi. That you’re an asset.”

Better than I’ve been here, evidently.

His own bitterness surprised him. And hurt feelings had no place. He jerked that reaction up short.

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“The fact is,” Ogun said, “we have an agreement for atevi and Mospheiran participation in the station and in the mission.”

“Mospheira has its representative on this mission?”

“Ms. Kroger.”

Kroger. The ride up. The miraculous appearance of the robots… the President’s personal intervention in the production schedule.

Dared one even think that Ramirez’s death was timed?

Or self-selected…

“Yes, sir,” Bren said.

“We have an agreement,” Ogun said, “to maintain the station, to continue ship construction and training—and to provide for local shelters. Bomb shelters, Mr. Cameron, on the planet. To provision them. To contribute advanced materials to be sure there’s something left here if the situation goes to hell.”

Bomb shelters. For the whole population?

He thought of the Bujavid. Of the hallways of fragile porcelains and priceless work. Of the culture and civilization of two species. Thousands of years.

And Malguri’s stone walls, reared against mecheita-riding invaders. Would there be bomb shelters to save what was there? The wi’itikiin on their cliffs—those delicate nesters, their hatchlings—the blue seas and bluegreen hills? Where were shelters for that?

“The situation remains what it was,” Ogun said. “We don’t know how safe Reunion is, and we can’t risk communications to find out. Command considered an agreement to communicate in event of attack—or imminent destruction—but there was a general fear that if they did transmit, the enemy would know for certain to look for another site, and we don’t want them looking. That remains the decision. There’ll be no communication. If Phoenix gets into trouble—there’ll be no transmission. We’ll go there, get them to abandon the station and get out of there. That’s the mission. You’re along, Mr. Cameron, in case we encounter something other than the Guild. We take it you would be a resource.”

Aliens, that was. He hadn’t even polled his own nerves to know what he thought. He was numb—completely numb. “Yes, sir. Probably I would be.” Someone at least would have the concept of thinking in another language, inside another, non-human skin.

“If it goes well, you’ll have an idle trip. We’ll depopulate the station, destroy any clue of the direction we’ve gone, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, of planet-bearing stars in the vicinity, there aren’t that many. Of life-bearing planets, this one. Only this one.” Ogun leaned back. “So if I were an alien looking for an origin-point for my enemy, I wouldn’t have that far to look. And we can assume their optics and their instruments are adequate for starflight, which means adequate to find this star, this planet, if they haven’t already done it. And this is our dilemma. If we go back there and pull back our observers, I doubt we conceal a damned thing. But we do send a signal. Don’t we, Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes.”

“What will we be saying?”

“The point is, sir, we know what we’ll be saying. But we don’t know what they’ll be hearing. We won’t know that until we encounter them and get a sample of their thinking.”

“Ideally we won’t encounter them. Ever.”

“I’d agree.”

Ogun considered that.

“If we’re lucky,” Sabin said, “they’ve gone off. If we go back there and stir things up again, we’re likely to provoke what we’re trying to avoid.”

“Also possible.”

“We’re not ready,” Sabin said. “Another hundred years at this star and we might be. But right now we’ve got two stations, one ship, and no defense. Bomb shelters won’t save us.”

“Nothing we’ve got will save us,” Ogun said, “if they take Reunion and come after us. Reunion is sitting out there as a provocation.”

“We don’t know what they think,” Sabin said. “We’re assuming.”

Sabin happened to be right. Not necessarily in her conclusion, but in her reasoning.

“We don’t know either way.” Bren contributed his unasked opinion. “They may be waiting for a signal we don’t know how to give. They may think they have peace. They may not know what peace is. They may not know what war is and may not know they may have provoked one. We don’t know. But we shouldn’t go into their territory looking for them.”

“Cameron’s said it,” Sabin said shortly. “My vote is to put a stop to this whole thing and stay the hell out. If Reunion falls, we still have a fifty-fifty chance they won’t come after us.”

He couldn’t swear to the math. But he agreed with the theory.

“We already have the crew’s vote,” Ogun said. “It’s settled.”

“It’s only the crew’s vote,” Sabin said. “And it’s not settled if we decide to the contrary.”

“Reunion is almost certainly repairing,” Ogun said, “and building. They’ll get noisier over time, and they’ll outgrow the situation as it is. They won’t stay hidden. And whatever they do, they remain ours, our fault, whether or not they make good choices and whether or not they can deal with the aliens out there.”

“Or if they build one ship, they can come here,” Jase said out of long silence. “And they can come here with resources, and ships, and orders we don’t want to take.”

There was a thought. More than a thought—a nightmare none of them had talked about.

“We don’t have to be idle here,” Sabin said. “We’re building ships of our own.”

“So what do we have?” Ogun asked. “A human war on the atevi’s doorstep?”

“We don’t need to be sticking our nose into Reunion before we’ve built enough here or there to be able to defend ourselves against whatever that situation produces. I’m not saying don’t go. I’m saying don’t go yet. Ramirez’s brought atevi and the Mospheirans in on it all, trying to force the issue, complicating the situation, complicating decision-making on what’s our business, not the aiji’s, complicating the issues, giving us these damned observers, and all of a sudden I’m seeing a hellbent rush away from patience, away from prudence and headlong into a decision to rip authority away from Reunion and try to bring it all here, under ours.”

“We’d better,” Ogun said. “Captain Graham has the right idea. We’d better bring the decision-making here, before they bring their decisions here.”

“And I say wait.”

“You’re outvoted.”

“I know I’m outvoted, as long as Captain Graham says yes on cue. I’m outvoted and we’ve got a mess. We’ve got the aiji’s grandmother, and now it all involves prestige and power on the planet and could bring the government crashing down if we don’t take this woman out there to interfere in our internal affairs. Am I right, Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re absolutely right about the going. But I resist the characterization—”

“And what the aiji thinks affects how efficiently we get supply. Isn’t that always the threat?”

“The aiji’s stability does affect things,” Bren said. “Agreements made, are agreements, and have to stand. But the question is—and I’m asking, in the aiji’s name, agreeing with you, Captain Sabin—is this the best decision?”

“Hell, no,” Sabin said.

“It is the best decision,” Ogun said. “And it’s the decision we’ve already made.”

“Sir,” Bren said. “Captain Sabin. Excuse me. If we get two, then three, then four decision-makers involved here, pretty soon it can happen that they’re not thinking is this a good idea? They’re thinking, how can I make sure my party’s represented in the outcome? That worries me. It worries me exceedingly. I wasn’t consulted. Ramirez never consulted me…”

“That was rather well your aiji’s option, wasn’t it?” Ogun asked.

Score. “Yes, sir, it was.”

“Stupidity,” Sabin said, “and I vote for keeping quiet, building one, two, three ships, as many as we can—”

“Two, three, and four ships still won’t match what a hostile species who’s had the nerve to blow hell out of an alien outpost may have,” Ogun countered. “We can’t know what they’ve got. We can’t ever know when what we’ve got is adequate to protect ourselves.”

“We can’t know,” Sabin shouted at him, and pounded her fist on the table, “because you want to go out there and pull our damned observers out!”

“Observers who can’t transmit to us without bringing all hell down on their heads,” Ogun retorted in a quieter voice. “And who don’t give a damn for us over them. As well not have them. As well get the provocation out of there, now, while it looks like our choice, an exit with dignity, and not us running for our lives. The decision’s made. You can stay here, or you can take the mission.”

“It’s not official if Graham changes his vote,” Sabin said.

Tabini couldn’t go back, just withdraw his representatives and say to an already nervous Association—oh, well, we changed our minds. Jase Graham voted no, and we’re turning back.

He looked at Jase.

Jase didn’t look at him. Jase looked only at Ogun, then at Sabin. And voted. “It stands.”

Dammit, Bren thought to himself. But not a whole-hearted dammit. Only a sane wish this had gone differently—that he’d been in the loop a long, long time ago.

And how could Tabini do this to him?

He didn’t know where Jase got his decision—whether obedience to Ramirez and Ogun, whether the sense that once the dowager reached here, there was no going back, but effectively—what could they do?

He tried to think of something. He tried frantically to think of something.

“In a nutshell,” Sabin said, “you mean now crew’s involved. They know command’s lied—and we can’t deny that. The atevi have gotten into it. The onworlders have gotten into it. So the mission’s launched, foolhardy as it is. Cameron’s told you we’re crazy. But we’re going hellbent ahead with what never was a good idea, because it was Ramirez’s idea, and he committed us to this mission. And now it’s all mine.”

“I’m sure you’ll carry it out with intelligence and dispatch,” Ogun said. “I’ve never doubted that.”

“I’ll carry it out. And it’s going to be our decision.”

Sabin. Who didn’t trust atevi.

And, Bren thought, he had to work with her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Captain Sabin, somewhat to my own suprise, I’ve taken your side in this. I’m in a similar position: events have gone very far down a track that I can’t retrace either. Since we’re committed to getting what you now admit to be a Pilots’ Guild authority off what you claim to be a wreck of a station, quietly, we hope they’ll listen to reason. But let me ask this question: where do you stand, relative to them, in making future decisions? Bluntly put, are you going to defer decision-making to them, considering they outrank you—or are you going to retain command of the situation, over their objections?”

Silence met that question. Then: “You know I’m a bastard. I’m in command. And we won’t surrender that authority.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“We’ll talk, if that’s possible.”

“More reassuring, Captain. Thank you.”

“I’ll be staying with the station,” Ogun said, “to carry out agreements, to get the shipyard in operation. Captain Sabin will command Phoenix and the mission. That’s the way it will be. Each to our talents.”

Sabin’s left eyebrow twitched. Sabin was brilliant with numbers, had a first-rate instinct in emergencies, and set off arguments like sparks into tinder wherever she walked into a situation. She’d backed Tamun. She didn’t work well with people. Damned right she wasn’t handling the station situation.

“I’ll go with the mission,” Jase said. “With your permission.”

“Well,” Sabin said, “well, well. So we have an opinion. And we want to be helpful. You want to stay with your atevi allies?”

“I believe I can be useful.”

“Mr. Cameron?” Ogun asked.

His decision? God.

“I’m sure Captain Graham would be an asset in either post.”

“Are you up to it?” Sabin asked. “How do you suppose we’re going to get along?”

Jase—Jase with the devil’s own temper—didn’t blow. He composed his hands in front of him, as carefully, as easily as Sabin’s laced fingers. “What I want and what you want, ma’am, neither one matters against the safety of all aboard. A second opinion might be useful. Someone is likely going to do something or propose something to the detriment of the agreements we have back here at this star. I know those agreements, I know the ship’s needs, the station’s needs, and I have an expertise that’s more critical there than here.”

“You have an expertise. We’ve got a translator, in Mr. Cameron.”

“That’s not what he does. As a ship, we don’t see what he does. We don’t understand people who aren’t under the same set of orders for the last several hundred years. Diplomacy— diplomacy, captain. Negotiation. Mr. Cameron’s good at it. So am I. And I can sit here on this station, helping Ms. Mercheson translate, as I assume she’ll stay in that capacity, or I can go out there, giving you a backup, helping explain to Mr. Cameron and the aiji-dowager how the crew works and how the Guild works. And helping arrive at a reasonable conclusion.”

Sabin didn’t say a thing, only listened, hands still clasped, still easy. “We’re not negotiating my orders, Captain Graham. We’re not having any other orders.”

“We don’t know what we’ll meet. And I know routine operations.”

“Let’s hope for routine,” Sabin said glumly. “Keep the dowager quiet, and you’ll be a use.” Sabin’s cold eyes shot straight at Bren. “So you’re going. What kind of space allotment do you need?”

On the spot? Without calculations? “Myself, two security, four staff. The dowager—she has triple that.”

“No outside equipment,” Sabin said, “be clear on that. No electronics independent of our boards. That’s a safety issue.”

“We exist within the station without disruption and my staff is well aware of the issues. I’m sure we can exist within the ship. These are extremely skilled personnel, captain. An asset, in the remote event diplomacy doesn’t work. Of all else you leave behind, I’d advise you take all of our equipment you can lay hands on, along with our specialized staff and our weapons, that we know how to use with very great expertise. And they’ll be at your service, should you need them.”

Ship’s security was electronically difficult to penetrate. Personally—ship’s security had met Banichi and Jago, who were listening to scraps of all that was going on, and didn’t prevent them doing what they did.

“Under whose orders?” Sabin asked. “I’ll have that settled, Mr. Cameron. Yours? Or a planet-dwelling grandmother with a notion she gives the orders?”

“The dowager’s security talks to my security, and won’t do anything that risks the safety of the ship—or that contradicts a ship-aiji’s orders. There is a respect for aijiin on staff, Captain. A profound respect for orders. Ship-safety is in your hands. Safety of outside accesses, while you’re docked—I’d frankly recommend your people take advice from mine in establishing a barrier against intrusion. We’re better than yours, at that.”

He took a chance, but he’d spent significant time dealing with Sabin, and one couldn’t insult a woman whose god was objectivity. She listened, absorbed, analyzed.

“Appearances,” Sabin said.

“We can be discreet. Freeing other personnel on your side.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sabin said. Then: “The whole colonial residency’s vacant on this mission. You won’t be cramped. Your whole station residence couldn’t even make a blip on the ship’s fuel needs or add that much to its mass. Take anything you want.”

“It won’t be that extensive,” he said.

“Kroger will have an establishment. Technical people. Certain number of robot support techs. Gear. A lot of it. Her staff has bulk.”

He didn’t, personally, want to spend the rest of a shortened life sitting at some remote star, reduplicating the plight of the ancestors. He was very, very glad Kroger and her robots were available.

“Station’s fuel needs will be attended to,” Ogun said, “with the older robots. We’re committed to keep building here. Ms. Mercheson will be liaison with the atevi authorities, and with the President.”

“I’d advise splitting that job, sir. Tom Lund would be very good on the Mospheiran side.”

Ogun knew Lund.

“Reasonable recommendation. I’ll talk with the authorities down there.”

“It’s going to be dicey with Shejidan,” Bren said, took a breath. “I’ll advise one thing, Captain Ogun, with all good will: that you take Mercheson’s advice and tell the absolute whole truth at least to her.” He saw the resentment building in a basically honest man, and plowed ahead. “Captain, if you make those leaders down on the planet look as if they don’t know what the truth is, you’ll not only kill any hope you have of dealing with those governments, you’ll likely bring both governments down and have chaos down there that three hundred years won’t fix, no workers, no fuel, no supplies at all, ever. I can’t stress enough how precarious the situation can turn and how fast. And I am so relieved the ship is leaving you here to take charge of it. —Ms. Mercheson, you understand me.”

He’d changed from questioning Ogun’s expertise to praising it so fast that Ogun was still absorbing it. And wasn’t coming to a conclusion. Yet.

“Yes, sir,” Yolanda said, scarcely audible, and cleared her throat. “Yes, sir. He’s right.”

“We don’t take threats,” Sabin said.

“Captain,” Bren said, “excuse me, but as the workers put it—gravity doesn’t care. Gravity doesn’t care, nor do the facts that govern the planet. If you want supply, tell the truth to your translators and let them figure out how to translate the situation in terms the people will understand. Conversely, listen when they say they can’t say a certain thing, and suggest something that will be better understood. Most of all set a course and keep it. That’s my condensed advice. Ramirez surprised us once. About one more lie injected into the situation is going to exceed the possibility of leaders ever explaining anything to them.”

“Is the truth going to make them happier?” Ogun asked.

There was a deep-seated Guild-engendered conviction behind that question, a philosophy that had never done the ship any favors.

“You’d be surprised, Captain. Most Mospheirans—most atevi, for that matter—won’t ever care about anything political until their own supper’s threatened. Once it is, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people each with ideas and no disposition to compromise until their needs are satisfied. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s why my ancestors had rather trust an untested parachute capsule than trust one more rational argument from the Pilots’ Guild. People don’t give a damn what you’re doing as long as they’re confident where you’re going. Atevi are fonder of intrigue than Mospheirans, but you’ve hit your limit of surprises with Tabini, no question. They’ll accord you a certain credence as a new leader for the station, but they’ll be watching. Both island and continent will be watching, and watching each other. You have to be even-handed, and you have to be right. Their belief that things must still be running all right because you two are left in charge is very important to their ability to work with each other. It’s a confidence I share or I’d be telling Tabini and Tyers both to get the hell out of this arrangement and protect their own interests separately, and I’m reasonably confident that, even out of the loop as I’ve been, they’d both listen in a heartbeat. Instead I’m going to throw my support to you both and tell them both to trust you. You’re both reputed as the absolute best at what you’re each going to handle, so I haven’t any objections, only my condensed, impolite, and urgent advice on things I think you already know. I’m done. I’m perfectly confident in both of you.”

It was a piece of bald-faced flattery at the end, but was true, too. Ogun did have a knack for handling the truth with tongs and getting it safely delivered. Sabin could manage sticky operational situations and get out alive—related skills, but in completely different arenas.

Sabin was the hardest to reckon with. “You take orders, Mr. Cameron.”

“On ship? I’d be a fool not to.”

“Are you ever a fool, Mr. Cameron?”

“I’m alive. Most of my enemies aren’t.”

That struck Sabin’s fancy. Delighted her, in fact. She almost laughed. And didn’t.

“Chain of command, Mr. Cameron. Observe it. I’ll take your atevi. You keep them happy. You keep their equipment out of my way. You keep them out of my way. I’m first shift, Captain Graham’s third shift. Pilots will serve in the intervals. I want your primary hours on mine, Mr. Cameron. Say that I want the benefit of your opinions when they do occur. Or if I ask you.”

“I understand you.” No collusion with Jase. He very well understood that implication.

“Good,” Sabin said.

“Any further words, Captain Graham?” Ogun asked.

“No, sir,” Jase said.

Sabin’s hands had returned to their interlaced calm. “Then make your arrangements, Mr. Cameron. That’s all I need from you. That’s all I hope to need.”

“How much time?” he asked.

Sabin cast a glance at Ogun, glanced back again. “Three days to power up from rest. Three weeks to do this in decent shape. But three days will do.”

Three days.

God.

Chapter 12

« ^ »

Three days,” Bren said to Banichi and Jago on the way back to their section.

“Three days,” he had them relay to lord Geigi and to the aiji-dowager even before they reached the security of their own hall. He wondered if Kroger knew, and if Tabini knew, and suspected the dowager already did.

He stopped personally at Geigi’s door, and learned from Geigi’s major domo that the dowager had already departed to her own quarters—small wonder, since she was straight from a long and difficult journey, and the place was warm.

He stopped there as well. Cenedi himself came to the door to take the message.

“One apologizes for the short notice,” he said. “Cenedi-ji. The ship-aijiin seem to believe that the ship will somehow make that schedule.” He fished shamelessly. “Perhaps their preparations were already advanced.”

“One understands, nandi.” Cenedi completely refused the hook.

“We hope it affords reasonable comfort for the dowager.”

“Understood, nand’ paidhi. We are not surprised.”

Not surprised. No. And therefore prepared? Was that his answer? Three days’ notice?

If that was the case, no one was surprised but those of them who lived here.

Meanwhile a small figure appeared to Cenedi’s left, wide-eyed and apprehensive in the visitation.

Cenedi, too, had followed that minute diversion of his eye, as if someone in Cenedi’s profession hadn’t been aware all along of the boy’s presence ghosting up on him, curious and likely wanting information.

“And the aiji-apparent?”

Cenedi gave a little lift of the brow. A motion of the eyes in the appropriate direction. “What of him?”

“Where will he be, Cenedi-ji?”

“The aiji’s heir, nand’ paidhi, accompanies the dowager.”

“With all respect, this is an extremely dangerous voyage.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said.

What had he left to say or to object?

“I understand,” he said, but he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d desperately hoped the boy would go to Geigi. And he’d hoped the dowager would have some sort of information for him, but nothing was shaping up as he wished. “Thank you, Cenedi-ji, if you’ll advise her that I came as soon as I had news.”

“I shall, nandi,” Cenedi said to him—not coldly, but firmly.

So that was that. Feeling shattered, he walked on toward his own apartment, in Banichi’s and Jago’s company, asking himself how he’d let things come to such a state of affairs—and how Tabini could have sent the boy on such a venture even with other family members, and how Tabini could so have distrusted him as to go to Mercheson, or how he could ask his own staff to risk what they couldn’t readily conceive as real—

Banichi hadn’t known the sun was a star when the whole space business became an issue.

He had believed Tabini almost grasped the universe at large, but now, with Tabini’s sending the dowager and the boy up here as if this was a short-term venture to another island, he was no longer sure Tabini did know.

He wasn’t sure, among other things, that the aiji-dowager herself particularly cared about stars, or knew this wasn’t the next planet over, despite her association with the Astronomer Emeritus, and he wasn’t wholly sure Cenedi had a grasp of the geography—or lack of it—either.

Granted it wouldn’t be that long a trip, at least as perceptions made it. The ship folded space—folded space, as Jase put it; and outraged mortal perceptions just didn’t travel well in that territory.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said to his companions as they walked, “understand, if the sun were a finger-bowl in the aiji’s foyer, then where we’re going would be as far distant as…” He didn’t know. But it was far. “As far as another such bowl in my mother’s apartment. Almost as far as a bowl on the dining table at Malguri. Do you see?”

“Quite far,” Banichi said.

“And once we get there, there may not even be a station. This is not a mission to a station like this station. Nothing so comfortable. This is a ruin. This is an area of conflict and destruction, with unknown enemies that might simply blow up the ship before any of us know we’re in danger. And Tabini’s sending the dowager, and a boy who won’t see the sun, won’t see the sky, won’t have any freedom aboard—” He was about to say they had sufficient time to make other arrangements and to persuade the dowager against bringing Cajeiri. But Banichi was quick to answer.

“Then he will learn the discipline of the ship, nadi-ji. He will learn.”

“And risk his life, Banichi. Is it worth it? What can he learn? What can a child do?”

“If he were a potter’s son,” Banichi said, “he would learn clay. Would he not?”

Among atevi, yes. A child would, if he was among potters. If he were among potters he would not be fostered out to every powerful lord in the Association.

“Yes, one assumes so.”

“So being the aiji’s son, he will learn this clay, will he not? He will learn these leaders. He will learn these allies.”

What was there for the paidhi to say to that? He foresaw he wouldn’t make headway on that score.

And where was the proper school for an energetic, somewhat gawky boy who had thus far damaged an ancient garden— where was the school for a boy who would someday succeed the architect of the aishidi’tat, and for whom, all his life, even now, any untested dish on the table, any careless moment at a party could turn lethal?

Was he in greater danger here, where all the staff was vouched for? Or down there, in a time of Associational uncertainty?

“I’d hoped a safer life for him,” Bren said forlornly. “For everyone on the planet, for that matter, nadiin-ji.” They had reached the door. “I suppose the ship-children won’t stay on the station, either.” He’d held that discussion with Jase, theoretically, and in a safer time—how the ship had always voyaged with its children. How very fortunately they hadn’t left them on the station, which despite appearances had turned out to be the riskiest place of all. The universe isn’t safe, Jase had said at the time.

The universe seemed downright precarious for children at the moment.

But from the viewpoint in Shejidan, if the heir were absent, out of reach of assassins, and would presumably return—one hoped—older, backed by potent allies, and by that time possessed of unguessed true numbers, what was more, why, then dared any enemy of Tabini’s make too energetic a move, with so many numbers in the equation unknown and unreachable?

In a sense—no. An atevi enemy was far less likely to move against a boy one day to appear out of the heavens with potent allies and gifted with mysterious new numbers.

Never say Tabini was a fool. Not in this, scary as it was—and not in other decisions Tabini had made. Neither a fool nor timid in his moves.

Never get in his way: hadn’t the paidhi known that among first truths?

Jago opened the door. Narani was there, in the foyer. Of course Narani was there to meet him. Bindanda was. Several of the others attended, with worried faces.

“We have begun packing,” Narani informed him with a bow. “One trusts court dress will be in order, to meet distant foreigners.”

“Very good,” he said, and felt as if a safety net had turned up under him. Of course information flowed on the station. They knew. “Rani-ji, there is a choice to be made, staff to stay, staff to go with me. I want this establishment to stay active. There’ll be specialized needs. Mercheson, Shugart and Feldman will be operating out of the station. They’ll be translating for the court. They’ll need extensive expert help.” Tano appeared at the door of the security station—Tano and then Algini, who had been following as much as they could, passing things along where appropriate. Thanks to them in particular, things ran smoothly. And he had to make a decision very unwelcome to them. “We have to have security staff remaining here, too.” Narani, too, elderly and fragile, and very, very skilled at keeping the household running—ought to stay here, out of danger. “Rani-ji, I set you in charge of the household while I’m gone.”

“Yes, nandi,” Narani answered.

“Tano, you and Algini, you have to run matters here. You’ll be in charge of Associational security on this station, right next to Lord Geigi’s staff. Directly linked to the aiji, as I expect, too.”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi,” Tano said quietly. He might already have a direct link to the aiji’s staff—more than possible, that, all along.

“One hopes to be with you, nandi,” Bindanda said, uncharacteristically setting himself forward: Bindanda, who made his own reports to the aiji’s uneasy ally, uncle Tatiseigi. “I ask this favor. Who else can cook for you?”

“I’ll weigh the matter, certainly, Danda-ji. You’re of extraordinary value in either place.”

Listening staff. Worried staff. They hadn’t foreknown, at least, no more than he.

And he still hadn’t personally absorbed the shocks of the day—he proceeded on automatic, doing what he thought had to be done, but he knew he shouldn’t be deciding things on the fly, disposing of people’s lives like that, treating their loyalty as something to pack or leave…

But given three days, God, what could he do?

He stood there in the foyer, having shed his coat, and felt a distinct chill—the ship secretly prepared to move, Tabini aware of the mission for months, years, and bypassing him—

He questioned his situation, and realized he was looking at Bindanda, knowing at base level that his own household, like any household, had leaks to certain ears. He had to take the distress in stride. It was inevitable Tatiseigi and the conservatives would hear any faltering, any hint of weakness.

And did an ordinary human, however honored—set up for a decoy, perhaps—expect Tabini to tell him everything, once Tabini had gained a certain fluency in the language?

No. Not even reasonable. Everything in Tabini’s character had advised him to watch himself.

And Ramirez.

Dared he say his human feelings were, personally, hurt?

That he felt cast aside?

So he made similar decisions regarding his own staff. Could he forget that?

“Your service,” he said to Narani, when, immediately after, he caught Narani alone in the hallway, “your service, Rani-ji, is of inestimable value to me, either here—or going with me. I spoke just now in what I thought your best interest, in proper honor, and knowing the household will need a skilled hand. Or, Rani-ji, if it were your wish, you might also retire—with a handsome pension, I might add, and my profound gratitude. But—”

“Retire I shall not, nand’ paidhi.” Rare that Narani ever interrupted him. This was extreme passion.

“One hardly did ever think so,” Bren assured him in a low voice. “But despite all I said, I urge you choose, Rani-ji, and settle the household either with yourself or another of the staff, and I trust that choice absolutely. I do want you to choose staff to go with me, to the number of four or five servants: I leave the fortunate numbers to your discretion. Security will be Banichi and Jago. I do think Bindanda might be of great use.”

“Then if the choice is mine, nandi, I shall go with you, myself, for one, and I shall prefer Bindanda, if you agree.”

He was not sure he had ever quite, quite broached the subject of Bindanda with Narani. He considered, then took the plunge. “One knows, surely, Rani-ji, that he is Guild.”

Narani lowered his gaze ever so slightly and looked up again with the most clear-eyed, sober look. “So am I, nandi.”

He was absolutely astonished.

“In my man’chi, dare I ask, Rani-ji?” He almost asked now if there was anyone on his staff who wasn’t in the Assassins’ Guild. But he politely refrained from requiring Narani to lie.

The good gentleman lowered his eyes and bowed, ever so slightly. “As tightly so as your security is.”

Dual, then, one of Tabini’s own—it made perfect sense. As Bindanda was within Damiri-daja’s man’chi, and within Tatiseigi’s. And that bound up within his household the same potent alliance as bound very important elements of the Western Association.

“Who will be your third?” he asked.

“Asicho,” Narani said, naming the young woman who attended Jago, at need. This was not the first young woman—and ask, Bren thought, in what merciless school Asicho had had her training, and to whom she was apprenticed.

“Accepted,” he said, not even asking to what other power Asicho might belong; and he wished he had Tano’s and Algini’s technical expertise, but in the field, and this was, he rather relied on Banichi’s. “Do as needful with the numbers. You have my complete approval, Rani-ji. You’re impeccable.”

“Nand’ paidhi,” the old man said, and gave a little bow and went to do what he knew how to do.

Absolute loyalty within the walls.

Betrayal straight from the top, from the aiji, it might be… and yet he was embraced by those in the aiji’s man’chi, who didn’t know they were betrayed. He tried to make that column of figures add, standing there like a fool in the hallway, and he couldn’t.

Because, dammit, he was feeling, not thinking. Standing between species as he did, thinking was a survival skill, feeling was a useful barometric reading, and the job, the important thing wasn’t the survival of Bren Cameron—it was the accurate reading of situations that enabled Shejidan and Mospheira to survive.

And whatever the ship did or arranged, he couldn’t let it sell out those interests.

He took himself to the study to gather his wits, while his staff dealt with less abstract matters.

And, one world touching the other, a servant appeared, regular as clockwork, asking amid the necessary confusion whether he wished tea—he often did, when he ended the day.

“Yes,” he said. A little routine was good for him—reassuring to the staff. So he agreed to the tea, and sat, and stared at the walls, the familiar shelves, the environment he had designed, he himself, with his own hand.

His place. His creation. It wasn’t for him to resent being ripped out of it, sent off into danger as casually as he dealt with the servants.

Barometric reading? Betrayal was something he’d personally felt more than once with atevi. It was an emotion he’d most specifically learned to turn loose and forget, because the equations of behavior just weren’t the same, and a human couldn’t feel the tugs and pulls that made some decisions, for an ateva, logical and reasonable—even automatic, lest he forget. He’d been locked in Ilisidi’s basement and beaten black and blue, and he’d forgiven that; he’d been handed over to an enemy, and set up for assassination, and he understood that. Forgiveness didn’t matter a thing to an ateva who thought the decisions logical. Man’chi was man’chi and actions within it were all reasonable, when a lord needed something.

But there were puzzles.

Why would Tabini call him down to the planet for a completely empty mission? Why call him down for a small private talk that only discussed court gossip and then send him back again with not a word of what was coming?

Why, why, and why, when Ramirez was at death’s door and events were sliding toward the brink?

Granted Tabini had known that, in specific—was the whole ceremony down there only cover? A way for the dowager to get to Shejidan and then board a shuttle—but for some reason not the shuttle that carried him, though he had become inconsequential to the aiji’s plans?

Had his trip down and back been diversion, to attract the news services and raise empty questions, keeping the news away from Ilisidi? His presence was far more unusual than hers—and it had attracted notice.

Possible. Entirely possible. He could accept being used in that sense. It made perfect sense, and didn’t at all hurt his feelings.

But the timing—right before Ramirez’s death. Right before the news broke.

No. Cancel that thought. Assassination wasn’t likely. The one thing, the one unintended event that let the cat out of the bag had been that worker with the injured hand, the one who’d overheard Ramirez giving Jase an emergency briefing. That had thrown everything public before the captains could move: that had brought the acceleration in the program, when a couple of thousand crew found out they’d been deceived, tricked, delayed, and lied to. If not for that one accident, the surviving captains could have had a year or more to plan the mission.

Kroger had just arrived up here with the robots and the promise of an accelerated program, that was planned.

But Tabini had just turned over the management of his heir to Ilisidi. Then Ramirez died—and Tabini couldn’t admit himself surprised or disarrayed, not even for a death. He’d already turned Cajeiri over to Ilisidi—and had to stand by that, or not send Ilisidi, who was the only choice that wouldn’t create dangerous stress in the Association. Geigi would have been next most logical—but Geigi was western, and that was controversial.

So from the aiji’s point of view, Ramirez had needed to stay alive.

Ramirez, who hadn’t briefed Jase, which he’d clearly wanted to do, and did rashly at the last. The captains hadn’t made provision for a successor, or for a full complement of four captains, acting or permanent, for the ship in operation. So as a group, the captains hadn’t known. One captain might have acted to remove Ramirez, and Sabin would have been his immediate suspicion, but he saw no advantage she gained.

And the three day departure? He didn’t know how long it took to prep a fueled ship for a mission from scratch. He did know that the ship never had been powered down, that it ran, continually, being a residency and training site for its crew, performing tests and operations the station couldn’t provide—so in that sense it had never shut down. Maintenance was always going on. Galleys were active. Provisions were always going aboard, to what level of preparedness they had never questioned. The ship’s machinery shops and production facilities, though micro-g, were warm, powered, and in constant use, from the first days, when Phoenix’s manufacturing facilities had been the sole source of parts and pieces for station repair. They still were turning out a good portion of station foodstuffs, most of the extruded beams—there was very little difference, in that regard, from crew engaged in station manufacture and those on shipboard production, except that some operations went better in micro-g and some went better in the station, where things naturally or unnaturally fell into buckets. Crew came and they went, one facility to the other, and various aspects of the ship—including the power plant—had never shut down.

So maybe the ship-folk never had bet their lives wholly on the station or on the planet below.

Maybe the ship had always been three days from undocking and leaving, give or take the fuel to go anywhere in particular after undocking. He hadn’t asked, and Jase hadn’t told him what—to Jase—might be an underlying fact of life.

And now, in the paidhi’s longterm ignorance of shipboard realities, Phoenix could just break away and go on a moment’s notice. Three days might be the captains’ notion of a leisurely departure. And the whole affair that had untidy strings and suspicious tags dangling off it—might not be the strings and tags of conspiracy, but rather of hastily revised plans, plans that had had to be changed in frantic haste… because the whole thing had been shoved into motion prematurely by Ramirez’s failing health.

Well, he couldn’t solve it. His staff didn’t know the answer. As to whether Ramirez had explained the situation fully to Tabini, the aiji-dowager never gave up a secret, either, until she could get good exchange from it.

The simple fact was that they were going, and the dowager was going, and he was going, a headlong slide toward a cliff— beyond which he had insufficient information even to imagine his future.

And that meant he had to set his own private life in suspension; and it wasn’t tidy. It never had been tidy, or convenient, or well-packaged; and now was absolutely the worst time. He didn’t want to call the hospital and tell his mother—Oh, by the way, I’m leaving the solar system for a couple of years. Good luck. Regards to Toby…

He could send to Toby. He needed to. But he didn’t know what to say: Sorry you’ve been in the position you’re in and sorry I can’t help, but I’ve been kidnapped…

That was close to the truth, as happened, and he imagined Toby would be terribly sorry he’d hung up once he knew. Toby would be all sympathy for his brother, and he hadn’t any expectation the spat they’d had was a lasting one—well, bitter because it touched on very sore topics—but Toby wouldn’t think twice on his own misfortunes once that letter reached him.

But it wasn’t a letter he wanted to write cold, either. He wanted to say the right thing, which he hadn’t managed to do in the last few letters, or phone calls.

So what was there to do, then, while his staff packed and put together a suitable supper?

He answered rnemos from various departments, some incredibly mundane, one with a proposal for a new franchise for paper products, with a clever internal recycling option. On an ordinary day he might have been intrigued with it and spent energy chasing down advisors.

Today, he was sure the department in question had no remote idea what was on his desk… and he didn’t care if paper recycled or piled up in masses.

He couldn’t call Paulson or Kroger with what he knew, not until there was an official announcement—and he wasn’t in charge of the timing of that. Ilisidi was. The captains were.

He placed a call to Jase, on a small afterthought, wishing Jase would join him for supper, and met, not uncommonly, a wall at C1: “Captain Graham has your calls at top priority.”

Well, not too surprising, considering: Jase wasn’t in a particularly festive mood and Jase had his hands full—besides which Jase had, at least marginally, family of his own to consider. Becky Graham was Jase’s mother—and Becky’s quarters might be where Jase had gone for an hour or two.

He hoped so. He hoped Jase wasn’t up to his ears in meetings with never yet time to stop and realize he had lost the one father he knew—the one parent, in that sense. Jase was hardly more emotionally related to Becky than he was to the long-dead hero who’d contributed the sperm—but he and Becky had each other in common, little as they ordinarily acknowledged the bond. Jase was on duty, asleep, or talking to Becky—and least of all wanting to have to justify decisions or give explanations of Ramirez’s actions to an old friend with problems of his own. Now that he thought it through, if Jase was on overload, and likely he was, it was hardly kind to add one more pressure—which was all it would be. He couldn’t move a ship’s captain back into the atevi domain where they could talk at will, as they’d used to; where staff could take care of him. He supposed Kaplan and Polano and now Jenrette did take care of Jase, in a subordinate sort of way, but when he considered Jase’s emotional resources outside that, it came down to Ramirez, Ramirez, Ramirez.

No wide attachments among the crew. No close friends among the crew except Yolanda Mercheson, who’d grown up into a partner and now, cutting through every other fact, an ex-lover. It had been a bad mistake, that liaison. It had soured a relationship and laid bare realities of their familial situation that just weren’t helpful.

And Yolanda being jealous and touchy of her professional prerogatives—justifiably jealous and touchy, since Ramirez had always favored Jase over her—man to young man. That had been hard enough; and ex-lover status seemed to put the coup de grace on the friendship. Ramirez had not only created two human beings, he’d monopolized their childhood, limited their associations, expected Jase to work miracles by his mere existence… and dropped him and Yolanda separately onto an alien world to learn to fit in. Then he yanked them off it the moment they succeeded, messed up their interpersonal relations by favoritism, having all his paternal notions fixed on Jase and being blind to Yolanda.

Then after advising Tabini he was having sudden, crisis-level health problems, he dropped dead, leaving his crew in a commotion, Jase and Yolanda bitterly wounded and generally messed up, and his allies pressed to act on a program he’d leaked to staff while he was dying. Jase was stuck in a rank he didn’t want, in a job he didn’t want.Yolanda had the job Jase did want. Not to mention Yolanda had wanted importance with the crew and never had had an emotional bond to her planetary responsibilities.

Damn Ramirez.

Hell and damn in general.

He was working his way into a piece of temper. He typed a letter to Jase—in Ragi, to confound C1’s perpetual snoopery:

On ship or on the station, our door is open at any hour. If you can by any stretch of argument persuade the ship council that having one of the captains closely resident with your atevi advisors truly makes good operational sense, you would be most welcome to reside here, among persons who would treat you most congenially, seeing to your every want.

Or if you simply have an overwhelming longing for pizza with green sauce, we would make every effort.

The Ragi language cannot convey every feeling I would wish to express: but Banichi and Jago would tell you that you are within this household, wherever your residence is compelled to be hereafter. Man’chi is not broken.

It was what they said at an atevi funeral, among those determined to maintain their ties when the essential link had gone. Man’chi is not broken.

Well, hell, Jase needed to know that. He decided he himself did, where they were both going.

He gave the letter to Tano to hand deliver to Jase, or to Kaplan or Pressman.

And he wrote to the ateva with the well-thought recycling program, and recommended it to Paulson. That was one problem off his desk.

He didn’t know what he could do about his family, his staff down on the mainland—he didn’t know how he could get hold of Toby, or whether he ought to try to talk directly to his mother. All the while he thought about the trip, with his irrational hindbrain insisting he was about to die.

And he wasn’t brave, and he didn’t want to know what it felt like when a starship played games with space and time and did things to human flesh and blood that nature never intended to happen.

What had begun as tension rapidly became indigestion.

“Banichi,” he said into the intercom.

“He’s not here, nandi.” Algini’s voice, from the security office.

Surprising. He’d sent Tano out, but not Banichi.

“Jago?”

“Jago has gone with Banichi.”

“When everyone gets back from not being here,” he said to Algini, “tell Banichi I asked, nadi-ji.”

“One, will inform him that, nandi.”

Get an answer, not inevitably. But one would ask, on this day when nothing was casual.

“Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

“Mospheiran crew is somewhat distressed, nandi,” Algini said. “They’ve announced the flight.”

One could imagine somewhat distressed.

And it was headed, now, for the news services. His family would hear. And he didn’t have the rank to get past Geigi, or Paulson.

“If news services call,” he said to Algini, “I will talk to them.”

The station was in increasing disturbance. His staff was ghosting about on mysterious errands. He’d almost expected a summons from the dowager this evening, but none had come. So Bindanda’s preparations advanced. He heard muted activity in the dining room, service prepared.

The front door opened and closed. One of his missing staff was back. He took comfort in that, hearing the quiet tread that approached his door—Narani, with a report: he knew before he looked up.

“Nand’ paidhi,” Narani said, “Banichi is back. He has Mercheson-paidhi with him.”

Yolanda.

There was a disconcerting surprise.

Yolanda—who stood to inherit his job, his place— everything he valued—everything Jase wanted… who wasn’t the most skilled, where she was assigned, and where she had been operating…

God—he was jealous.

Where had that come from? When had that happened?

Jealous that she was staying.

Angry that she’d deceived him and Jase.

Furiously jealous. Bitterly, painfully resentful. He’d kept the lid on his personal wishes so tightly and so automatically he rarely brought them out to look at, and there was a small, nasty surprise. He didn’t want her under his roof—so to speak.

Not profitable to carry on a feud. No.

He got up, put on his jacket for manners’ sake—atevi custom—and walked out to deal civilly with an unwelcome guest who’d arrived—unthinkable among atevi—uninvited, at dinnertime.

Chapter 13

« ^ »

Staff was about to serve,” Bren said, meeting Yolanda in the foyer, intending to issue the polite invitation.

“I’m very sorry,” she said fervently, in Ragi—which went a long way toward patching things with him.

“Do join me.”

“Forgive me,” Banichi said, having escorted Yolanda here. “Nand’ paidhi, Mercheson-paidhi expressed concerns. One took the initiative to accept.”

Yolanda’s instigation, this visit, then… but not the way he’d expected.

“Mercheson-paidhi is an absent household member.” He chose to regard it that way, which Yolanda Mercheson never had quite been, in his cold estimation. She’d been in the household for a time, on the planet, Jase’s lover for a while, until that hadn’t worked. Then back to Mospheira. Then back to the ship where she’d far rather live. “Staff will manage another setting. One trusts you have an appetite, Mercheson-paidhi.”

“One is grateful,” Yolanda said meekly, not quite meeting his eye—but then, an atevi caught in social inconvenience wouldn’t meet his eye, either. Already there was a small flurry of service in the dining room, staff shifting chairs, not yet knowing how to arrange the numbers, or whether Banichi would join them.

“Banichi, will you join us?” Banichi’s presence at least eased the unlucky numerology of two at table. You brought her; you patch the numbers was implicit in the invitation, and Banichi accepted, commitment of his own very valuable time—but there they were, Jago still absent—one supposed if something were wrong, someone would say so. Tano and Algini doubtless had their heads together, possibly assuring Jago’s safety, or good records, wherever she was. That left Banichi.

He entered the dining room with Yolanda and Banichi, sat down, went through the formalities due any guest. They duly appreciated a fine, if informal dinner, the tone much as if Yolanda still were a member of the household.

And formal or informal, one didn’t talk business—rather the quality of the food, the skill of the chef—the arrival of the aiji-dowager might have been a good topic, if the implications of it were business-free, but they weren’t and it wasn’t. The departure of the ship would have been a fine topic, if it were guilt-free and casual; but it was neither guilt-free nor casual.

So talk ran to the weather on the continent, the launch, the situation at the new spaceport, and the lack of news from Yolanda’s former domicile on the island, which did actually skirt business topics.

Dinner came down to a delicate cream dessert—which Yolanda had always very much favored.

“One grew so accustomed to luxuries,” was her only expression of regret.

He let that remark fall. That wistfulness, too, led to inappropriate seriousness. And Yolanda very clearly savored the dessert, and pleased Bindanda and the staff.

“Will you join me in the study?” Bren said at the end. “A glass or two?”

Thoroughly courteous. All business, now.

He had no cause to resent Yolanda—so he assured himself. Of course he and Yolanda should consult, and of course Banichi was absolutely right to have brought her.

“Jago’s about business?” he asked in passing.

“One believes she’s with Cenedi, nandi.”

“Ah.” A briefing. Information. One could only hope.

“Shall I attend you?”

“One might look in on that meeting.” There was no reason to take up more of Banichi’s time. Yolanda clearly had not come on a hostile mission. There were, among other things, pieces of ongoing business and certain addresses and numbers he had to hunt out of files and give to her before he left, and before he forgot to do it.

“Yes,” Banichi said, and left them to the study and the brandy, the servants caring for the service and the numerology alike, quite deftly and silently. Brandies arrived, and chairs configured for three immediately found another fortunate configuration, ameliorated by a small table and a small porcelain vase empty of flowers.

“I have things for you,” Bren said, for starters, and to let the brandy and a necessary task take the edge off his resentment before they reached any discussion.

So with a glass of brandy beside him and the computer in his lap, he did that, a few seconds’ work, and handed her the file personally.

“This is a matter of trust,” he said, “nadi-ji.” It was the work of several moments to manage that intimate salutation, that particular tone.

She took it soberly and slipped it into a shirt pocket.

“I’ve given you the addresses of persons who will assist you, on the island,” he said further, in ship language, “and I’d advise you to use those channels far more than the ones that tried to get close to you when you were down there. I can assure they do answer their phones. I’ve also included Shawn Tyers’ private number, if you didn’t have it.” He wasn’t utterly sure she didn’t. “Several others.” Barb’s number was on the list. Toby’s. People he didn’t want remotely involved in any mess Yolanda might make of things, but he tried to have faith in her good sense, and they were resources she ought to know. “I’ve also given you contacts with my staff on the mainland, and you can rely on their advice. Some individuals aren’t official. It’s my personal list. Treat them gently.”

“I understand,” she said.

“You did surprise me,” he said then.

“Coming tonight?”

“Dealing with Ramirez.” He hit her with the question head-on, wondering what she would say for herself, whether her counter would be smug, justified satisfaction—in which case he meant to keep a good grip on his temper.

Smugness wasn’t her response. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell Jase. I couldn’t.”

On evidence of the tone and the expression—he might believe that, but belief still didn’t muster the personal feeling he wished he had for her. “Secrets are hell on a relationship, aren’t they?”

He wished he hadn’t said that. Instantly Yolanda’s lower lip compressed, eyes showed wounding. Deep hurt, quickly held in.

“No question,” she said in ship-speak. And she sat back and seemed to set the armor that covered all her soul, dealing with him, dealing with Jase.

He talked frankly to her after that, warnings, bits of advice about individuals and matters she did know to watch out for. Armor stayed. In a certain measure it made frankness easier. It always had.

Regarding Tabini himself: “I know you have a good relationship with him,” he said, on that delicate topic. “I know you do, or he wouldn’t deal with you. But take two warnings— infelicitous two. Don’t back down from his baiting you. If he thinks you fold rather than argue with him, you’ll be out of his confidence in a heartbeat.”

“I’ve learned that,” she said. “What’s the other?”

“Tell him the truth.” That she pursued the numbers—at least on a small scale—was encouraging. “Third point, fortunate three: listen carefully to what he advises. There’s no one on the planet more dangerous than Tabini. Or smarter. Witness he’s survived all the assassins aimed at him—partly by being so good and so steady in office that even his detractors find a use in his being there. That’s his real success. I learn tactics from him—constantly. I hope you will. Quite honestly—” He made another real try at mending the interface he’d messed up, much as the effort seemed a forlorn hope. “Quite honestly I’m jealous as hell of your being where you are, and a little upset— well, a lot upset—at not being advised of what you were doing.”

“His order,” she said in a low voice.

“Tabini’s? Or Ramirez’s?”

“Both.”

“But who initiated?” What she said tweaked something sensitive, something to which she might be oblivious. “Who contacted whom—first requiring your services?”

Maybe she’d hoped to get out of here without discussing that matter. Maybe it was something she’d been both stalking for an opening and dreading all along. But she answered seriously, meticulously. “I honestly don’t know who did. Ramirez called me in. I don’t know whether Tabini-aiji had called him directly or he’d called the aiji.”

“It would be very useful to know that. But not to remark on, understand. I mention it for your safety. Always know details like that.”

“There was no way to know.”

Her perpetual defensiveness set him off. And he refused to let it do that, this time. There wasn’t the leisure any longer to reform Yolanda. Only to use her services. “Some things it’s necessary to know. Some things it’s unexpectedly critical to know. I’m not faulting you, understand. I’m advising you to the best of my own experience in this situation. In the interest of everybody on the planet down there, I desperately want you to succeed. I want you to do better than I ever did at reading the aiji. I want you to so far eclipse me that you’ll never get caught unprepared. Which means you’ll never get anybody killed. And I’m not sure I can claim that.” Yolanda didn’t understand him or his motives any more than she understood the minds of Mospheiran shop owners… and far less than she understood Tabini, to his long-term observation. She was a spacefarer and if an event or an attitude hadn’t any precedent on the ship— Yolanda didn’t see it. She flatly didn’t see it.

“The aiji scares hell out of me,” she admitted then, the most encouraging statement he’d ever heard out of Yolanda Mercheson. “And I’m not you, and I can’t deal with him the way you do.”

“Be afraid of him. But don’t show it. Stand up to him, and show deference at the same time. Balance the two. And you have my good wishes.” God help us, he thought to himself. She didn’t show fear because she didn’t always know when she was in danger. But she wasn’t the only one with blind spots. He’d come in that blind. He’d spent a night in Ilisidi’s basement learning that lesson. He’d had his arm broken, learning that lesson. “All right. That’s your province. You have to learn. You will learn. Turnabout, advise me—what am I up against on the ship? How do I make headway?”

She hadn’t seen that question coming, either. She drew a deep, deep breath. “You mean with Sabin?”

“And the crew.”

“Crew is easy. They know who you are. They approve. More than that, ’Sidi-ji is their darling and you’re with her. Truth is, everybody detests Sabin. Granted they’re both cold as deep space rock, the dowager and Sabin both—’Sidi-ji smiles at them. That makes all the difference.”

“You know that smile’s not necessarily a good sign.”

“I know, but they don’t know it, and they worship her. Besides, I think she likes it. Well, like isn’t it, is it?”

“Like’s fine with things. Not people. There’s your difference. She likes their approval. She doesn’t like them, because they’re not in her association. Think in Ragi when you think about atevi.”

“She favors their applause.”

“She drinks it like good brandy. If they’d only worship Sabin, Sabin would warm up, don’t you think?”

He saw the body language, disengagement from the very concept. “Not likely. Not ever likely. —But Sabin gets the ship through. We don’t have to like her. If the ship itself’s in trouble, I’ll promise you, you want Sabin on deck.”

“Next question. Do you want her in negotiations?”

Another long breath and a deeply sober thought. “Only if you plan to nuke the other side.”

“Major question. Is she for us, or is she for the authority that sent you here? Does she like what we’re doing here? Or is she against it?”

That brought another moment’s thought. “Honestly, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think Ramirez knew… she doesn’t like atevi, she doesn’t like Mospheirans, and I’m not sure she likes the crew, for that matter. The best thing is, she won’t be here, making decisions. Don’t ever say I said that.”

“Encouraging,” he said. So he’d asked the questions. He’d had his answers, all he knew to ask for. Except one. “Did Ramirez tip Tabini off, that he was dying?”

The question scared her. She was far too readable. Far too readable, still, for safety in court.

“Face,” he snapped, as he’d used to say to Jase, as he’d said to Yolanda more than once. And expression vanished from her face, well, at least that one vanished—quickly replaced with a frown.

“I thought I could be honest with you,” she said.

“You can be. You’d better be, for about five more minutes. Then give expression up for the duration, except inside this apartment, with this staff. Damned uncomfortable pillow, the secrets on this job. Did he tell Tabini?”

“He told him. Therapy wasn’t taking. He was having mental lapses—that’s the truth, Bren. It scared hell out of him, more than the heart condition, because he was forgetting things. And he told me to tell Tabini to get ready, that there was the alien threat, that the world had to get ready, that the ship had to be ready, constantly…”

“On three day’s notice?”

“On three minutes’ notice,” Yolanda said. “We’ve been able to pull out of here at any moment, for the last three months— with whatever crew could get aboard. But we haven’t done that. We told Tabini the truth about the aliens and about the situation back on the station, and we asked for fuel so if some armed ship showed up we had some fighting chance against it. And, ultimately, so we could go back and settle what has to be settled back there.”

“Meaning.”

“Meaning to get that station shut down. Make the gesture. Aishimaran to thema.”

Almost untranslatable: sweeping the boundary. Clearing troublesome disputed areas from an associational edge. Atevi neighbors would exchange property to achieve border peace, in a world with neither boundaries nor borders as humans understood the term—a process arcane and fraught with hazard.

“Tabini’s word?”

“His word.”

“Probably describes it very well. But that program in itself has an assumption—that the gesture will be read the way humans or atevi would read it.”

“But we have to do something.”

“Third assumption,” he said. “You’ve already done something, in staying out of there. Now you think there’s no choice but go back. But that’s out of my territory, too. I can’t claim I know what’s wise to do. Two smart men, on more facts than I have, agreed it was a good idea. —Did Ramirez intend to die?”

“He was having attacks. The fueling being finished—he was talking with Tabini about breaking the news. About timing in telling the truth. Then the robots were ready. And the day he heard that, he had an attack. He worked past it. I knew.” She tried to keep the still, dispassionate face. “Ogun knew he was in trouble. I don’t think Sabin did, but I’m not sure. Then the last attack. And he wanted to talk to Jase, I guess. And he should have left it to me to brief Jase, because it wasn’t secure there in the clinic, but there were probably other things he wanted to say, too.”

“Like?”

“Things he’d say to us. Personal things. Like apologizing for having us born. For putting on us what he’d put on us. Not quite a normal life, is it?”

Bitterness. Deep bitterness. Maybe it wasn’t wise to answer at all. But he did. “Most of us don’t have normal lives,” he said. “Especially in this business.”

“But were you always paidhi-aiji? Didn’t you grow up? Jase and I—we’d have liked to have known our fathers. We’d have liked to have something but a necessary, logical, already made choice. We’d have liked to fail at something without it being a calamity that involved the Captain’s Council.”

“I don’t envy you in that regard. But you came out sane. And decent. And worthwhile. It’s what we do, more than who we are, that makes our personal lives a mess. If we didn’t do what we do for a job, ordinary people might figure out how to get along with us.”

“Jase and I tried to make a relationship. We tried being teammates, we tried being lovers—not having any other candidates. We weren’t good at it. Something about needing to be loved to know how to love, isn’t that the folktale? We’re kind of defective, Jase and I, in that regard. Really confused input, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think.” Atevi society wasn’t a good place for a human with a problem with relationships to work it out. Himself, with a relationship in shambles and his own brother not speaking to him, he knew that. “You’re all right. You’ll be all right. Life’s long. Hold out till we get back. You’ll have a household around you. Mine. While I’m gone, I want you to come here. Live here in my household.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Advice: do it. They’re the best help you can get. And you won’t be alone. Believe me.”

Her lips went thin. He wondered if she knew where his comfort came from, or the situation he had with Jago. He was proof against anyone’s disapproval, outside the household.

And he knew what he was asking of his household, to take her in, but he saw in her the signs that had taken other paidhiin down—the isolation, the sense of alienation, the burden of untranslatable secrets.

“Here is safe,” he said. “For one very practical reason—you may become a target—take my offer. And trust these people. Completely.”

“I don’t trust. I don’t trust people.”

“Learn. With them, learn.”

Deep breath.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You can’t debrief everything in your own language. You need atevi you can trust to talk to. If you’d had someone to ask about Tabini, in Ragi, it would have helped—wouldn’t it?”

That made itself understood. Resistence weakened.

“All right. All right. I’ll see if I can arrange it.”

“You don’t see if you can arrange it, Mercheson-paidhi. You do it. And listen to me. One more question, one more sweeping question: is there anything else I’d better know? Is there anything else you suspect that Ramirez might have told Jase, that you wouldn’t have been able to tell him in a briefing? Anything you’ve suspected, or knew parts of?”

A shake of the head. “No.”

One very last question. “Why in hell didn’t you come to me?”

“Tabini might not have liked it. I didn’t know what to do.”

That wasn’t quite the defensive answer he’d expected. It made sense; and that set him a little off balance. “I could have kept your question secret.”

Hesitation. “The Old Man was pretty sure you wouldn’t keep something from Tabini. That man’chi business. And I told him what I thought I ought to do, which was ask you, but he wouldn’t risk it. He said that was why he called me in.” A moment’s silence. “He didn’t ask Jase. I guess he thought Jase would tell you everything. Jase’s attached to the planet. But I live here. He was the Old Man. My Old Man. That’s all the logic I had to go on. I didn’t want to be where I was. I didn’t want to keep the secret. But I didn’t know how to turn it loose or whether things would blow up if I did. And by then I knew we didn’t have the time we thought we did.”

“I know what you’re saying. I appreciate you made a decision the best you could with what you had to work with. And I appreciate the line you’ve tried to walk, solo, trying to preserve your worth to the situation. But the situation’s vastly changed. That’s why I want you inside the household, so you’re never confronted with an atevi question without advice. You know they could have advised you how to deal with Tabini—if they’d been yours to ask. And in time to come,” he said levelly, “and when we get back, you can even tell me and Jase the truth. We’ll all three sort it out. I think this has all finally become the same side.”

“You trust Jase?”

Shocking question. It shook him.

“You don’t.”

Her doubt might be the aftershock of a relationship between her and Jase that hadn’t worked.

“He loved Ramirez,” Yolanda said. “He was wholly committed to Ramirez. And Ramirez didn’t trust him—because of his relationship with you, I’m reasonably sure that was the whole cause. But Ramirez didn’t trust him, in the end. You’re upset with me, with what you found out was going on. Jase isn’t. Jase is taking Ramirez’s dying just too well. Too sensibly.”

“He learned in Shejidan, maybe.” But he didn’t discount the question.

“But it hurts. It hurts, Bren. And he’s not showing it. And I can’t talk to him.”

“You’ve tried?”

“I leave messages: talk to me. No answers. Jase didn’t like what he heard. He’s mad at me. Really mad at me. I think that I was working with Ramirez, and that Ramirez went to me— that stung.”

Jase wasn’t the young man who’d parachuted onto the planet. And that fact, perhaps, had foredoomed Yolanda to find her own way through the thicket he and Jase had made of their association… and foredoomed not to get answers, and to be even further on the outside.

Association, be it noted: aishi. Aishi had that troublesome word, man’chi, nestled right in the midst of it. He and Jase hadn’t dealt with one another like two humans, in Mosphei’, where friendship existed, where friendship might have swallowed down some of the problems in silence. Instead they’d dealt in Ragi, one of them with a man’chi on earth, the other with his captain in the heavens. They’d found a means of working around the friendship part, thanks to aishi, thanks to the organization of the household, where everyone under the same roof had the same set of motives, the same interests, the same imperatives and acted accordingly, in that clearly foreign matrix.

And Yolanda?

Yolanda had landed instead in that generations-deep nest of conspiracy and humanly seductive friendships over on the island of Mospheira, after living in her close-knit crew. On Mospheira she’d rapidly learned the finer points of being on no side, of being the one true outsider in a society where there were no outsiders. All the lessons of the ship to a factor of ten. And being in a matrix that wasn’t as clearly foreign—that assaulted her human emotions with promises that didn’t pan out. Always the outsider. Always the target.

“I’ll try to patch things with Jase,” he said. “I’ll give him your message, for both your sakes. I hope you believe I’m on the level.”

“I know what you once said to me. I said it to myself all the time I was working with Ramirez.”

“What’s that?”

“That if a side in a dispute doesn’t have somebody they think is working only for them—”

“An honest broker.”

“If they don’t have that, they can do something dangerous to everyone. So that’s what I always told mself I was. An honest broker. I was somebody working only for Ramirez, somebody who’d argue with him. The Old Man’s dead, now. Now, I’m not quite working for Ogun. But Tabini’s asked me to work for him. And I’m going to have to choose. I know I am. And you’re saying go with the atevi, and maybe—maybe that’s what I have to do, now. But I’m scared—”

“Good. Be scared. But don’t be overwhelmed. That’s where the household support will save you.”

“It may save me. But what will save Jase? He’s hellbent for going. He’ll be with Sabin, trying to make her look as good as possible, trying to mediate her decisions—trying to keep the peace aboard. That’s not good, Bren. That’s not good for him, because he was Ramirez’s, not hers, and he hates her. He really does. And on this mission is the last place he ought to be. Hear what I’m saying: he’s alone. He’s going to need help. You’re what he has. Don’t fail him.”

He considered the equation. The warning. All of it. Was it after all, love? “I won’t promise you. I won’t.” They’d gone about as deep as they could, each holding the other’s interests hostage, each of them being where the other wanted most to be, each of the three of them given what another of the three most wanted to have. “Meanwhile you get to stand between atevi and humans until I get back. You’ll have carte blanche with my staff they’ll give you. I have the links, the communications, the staff, and the experts you need. Half my staff, understand, are spies, useful spies. Don’t let on you know, even if they know you know: it’s just not done and it’ll make things impossible. Listen to me: wear the clothes, dream in the language; think in it. My remaining staff will see to your every wish. Down there, Tabini and Damiri will likely ask you to dinner, in which you have no choice. Staff will prime you on protocols. Observe them as you observe safety drills. Your life rides on it. The whole alliance rides on our survival.”

“I don’t need to be more scared than I am.”

“You can be more scared than this. When you are—again talk to staff. That’s why I want you surrounded by them. You’re paidhi-aiji. You’re most useful to Ogun when you take Tabini’s orders and put yourself at his disposal. You’ll be the honest broker—the only one there’ll be for lightyears around.”

A novice… but not a stupid novice, as it turned out and not without canny advice, either. Once he saw she was truly disposed to take that advice, he had no trouble pouring his resources into her hands and wishing her every piece of luck possible.

Yolanda said fervently, “I’m glad you’re going on the mission. You want what I know about what’s out there—if Ogun doesn’t know, and he hasn’t told Sabin, then there’s two names to watch. There was a three-man exploration team that went in. I know that Jenrette was one of them; and two more got killed. Tamun was trying to catch Ramirez during the mutiny, and they ran, and Tamun’s mutineers shot them but Jenrette’s still alive, but they aren’t. I didn’t used to think so, but now I ask myself whether Tamun suspected something, and if that was why he was trying to overthrow the council—but Tamun couldn’t get at it, when he was one of the captains. He couldn’t get the proof, or didn’t release it. So we didn’t know—and now Tamun’s dead. And that scares me. All of that scares me.”

God. Had they been on the right side, putting down the Tamun mutiny?

“Log record?”

“Common crew can’t get into the log file. I guess not even all the captains can. There could be a tape—they always make one, through helmet-cam. But if there is, it’s deep in log archives.”

Jenrette. Two dead men who’d used to guard Ramirez killed when dissidents tried to capture them.

And possibly a tape.

“Tape of what?”

“Their going onto the station. Through the corridors. That’s all I know,” Yolanda said. “Which is what everybody in the crew knows if they’d think about it, which they probably haven’t in years. That’s the hell of it. We always thought the report was just what you’d think it would be… which it wasn’t. But I’ve thought about it, since Ramirez admitted he’d deceived the crew. And now if there was a tape, or if Jenrette knows something—he’s the only eyewitness alive. And he’s attached to Jase.”

Jase hadn’t said a thing if he’d asked questions of Jenrette.

But possibly Jenrette hadn’t answered those questions. Or Jase hadn’t time to ask.

“I very much appreciate the briefing.”

“Protect Jase.”

“I will. I promise you I will.” Jase, who couldn’t handle the ship—Sabin, who could. They were in one hell of a situation if that relationship blew up.

And Jenrette—and tapes that might prove Ramirez’s dealings with the station.

God.

“I want you here,” he said. “Within our protection. Right now. Go pack.”

“I don’t think there’s any hurry that extreme.”

He left the last of his drink, pushing it back. Banichi was nearby. The room was bugged. He knew his security had followed part of it, as much fluency as they had. “I want you with our security, starting now, and I want to know you’re safe and alive. I’m very appreciative, Landa-ji. But I’m not taking chances with someone who knows that many of the requisite pieces. You’re paidhi-aiji. Accept it. Think like it. If human enemies, then atevi enemies, at all times, and sometimes before you think they know what’s critical. Here, you’re safe. Come with me.”

Was he surprised that when he saw her out to the foyer, the requisite persons were at hand: Narani, and Banichi, and Jago back from her conference?

“Mercheson-paidhi will handle affairs on the mainland, appointed by the aiji to take my post, with my approval. To that end, I set her within the household, in the care of the staff. She very much needs reliable people around her, and she promises to appreciate good advice.”

“Mercheson-paidhi,” Narani said, with a bow, and Yolanda made the requisite bow in return.

“One is grateful,” she said properly. “Thank you all.” She made the bow of someone departing, but Narani hesitated in opening the door for her—alone, no security, no escort. That was the way Yolanda had been moving about the station, and that wouldn’t do, not at all.

“Banichi-ji, can you draw someone from atevi general security to attach to her? She needs her belongings. Landa-ji, I’d rather you just stayed here and let us collect your belongings. Is there anything you urgently have to have from your quarters?”

“Not that’s a security rush, but yes, keepsakes. And my mother—” She was starting to think of consequences.

He was grateful for that. And had no good news. “We can provide reasonable security for your mother outside our perimeter. Within atevi protection, with a human staff—you can arrange that set-up, paidhi-aiji. You have the authority. You can authorize, you can build, you can order. It’s up to you how deeply you need to pull her into this.“

“I’ll write a message for her. I don’t know whether she’s going with the ship, or not. We don’t talk that often—but—”

“Frankly, I’d suggest she go. There’ll be fewer potential enemies, and there she doesn’t know anything, and can’t pressure you with personal demands. Here, there’s a danger, however remote, of hostage-taking, for someone else to pressure you.”

Yolanda looked as if she needed to sit down.

“There are two reliable persons in general security, nandiin-ji,” Banichi said, having been in communion with his personal electronics. “I have the names. By your order, we can assign them to bring the paidhi’s belongings.”

“Do so,” Bren said, and to Yolanda: “We now have two agents to attach to you, to this household, as Tano and Algini won’t be at your orders, nor should you ask. No matter the temptation, never stray out of this door without the two agents we assign to you. Same level of security as in the Bujavid. No less hazard.”

“Nandi,” she said, the respectful form, and seemed utterly lost.

“The guest quarters,” he said. It happened to be the library, at other times; but there were beds at need.

“I have a meeting with Ogun,” she remembered, and added, gathering her scattered manners, “nandi.”

“Advise your staff of your needs when they arrive,” he said. “Go to your meeting on schedule, as you and they deem needful. But go with atevi security. Feldman and Shugart will assist her, too,” he said to Narani. “They’re Tyers’ people. One believes one can trust their word, too. We’ll want to provide them with residency here in the section. Not under this roof, however. They remain Mospheiran. Landa-paidhi’s become paidhi-aiji, and she will stay here. Her staff will stay where she disposes them, in this household, starting now, if you can find a moment to advise her.”

“Perfectly understood, nandi,” Narani said. “We will make the arrangements.”

In the midst of packing and everything else Narani had to do. Thank God for his staff.

Late evening. Long evening. They had a guest tucked in toward the kitchen end of the apartment. They had a new pair of guards, formerly attached to general security, undergoing a rapid briefing in what was for them a vast career advancement, and two servants with Tano and Algini quietly retrieving a teddy bear and the contents of Yolanda’s closet from her on-station apartment. She had atevi-style clothing in her size, legacy of her days at court—a few years out of the mode, but adequate until the staff could manufacture something more current.

Yolanda had gone to her quarters with the look of a woman in shock by now, just too much change, too many decisions— the aftershock of too many secrets. She’d arranged certain matters and wandered off to her room, and the servants Narani had assigned her reported her asleep in her clothing, to their deep chagrin.

Bren knew… knew, he fancied, everything she was going through, alone: ultimately, alone, no matter how many people came and went; alone, the way each of the paidhiin was alone, in that sense, and maybe relieved to hear from another paidhi that the isolation had a name and a reason and a set of rules.

There’d come a time for him when he hadn’t found the island safe, or comfortable, either. And he’d—not bullied her into the choice, but maybe narrowed the path on either hand, accelerated the choice, given it a shape for her. He felt guilty about that, or sorry for her, or relieved for her sake, or relieved because she was safer than she would have been—the forgotten paidhi, the paidhi who hadn’t wanted the planet at all. He’d done the best thing.

Jase, now—Jase might or might not know where she was. Ogun did by now. She’d ended up postponing her meeting with the senior captain—informed Ogun she’d taken Tabini’s request to heart, officially, and needed a few hours to rest, and by the way, was no longer functioning under Ogun’s orders.

She’d already informed the aiji, the aiji-dowager, and Lord Geigi, officially and in order of protocol—he’d helped her with the wording:

I have most gratefully accepted the aiji’s summons to duty and accept Bren-paidhi’s hospitality until such time as felicitous long-term adjustments can be made. I await the aiji’s instruction, etc., etc…

He was as tired as she was. It was a decent letter. He knew he had to add his own. He wasn’t, tonight, up to it.

The apartment was quietly, constantly, depressingly astir with servants packing and rearranging. He didn’t ask special favors, not even tea near bedtime.

But Jago came while he was undressing for bed, to his great surprise. “News?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Welcome,” he said, and she lay down beside him. She was as tired as he was, he was well sure, but there was brief love-making, a release of nerves, a little rest for both of them.

The thoughts, the problems, however, wouldn’t leave him alone. He slept briefly, then waked, fearing that that was all the sleep he could get. His mind traveled upstream doggedly, vexingly, back to complete awareness and a new assault on yesterday’s problems.

Jago stirred beside him. Sighed. Drew a knee up, to judge by the motion of the bedclothes.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

“Yes,” she.

“Is there trouble with Cenedi? I never did ask, nadi.”

“No, Bren-ji. It was routine.” She kept things from him—she and Banichi did, being charitably aware that the paidhi’s mind approached overload. The interview with Cenedi might encompass a good many things that would worry him, if he asked too closely.

Today there’d been a good many changes. Worrisome changes. And information shifted value. And he hadn’t thought through the new configurations as far as he wished he had time to do.

“Have I done well with Mercheson-paidhi?”

“Indeed.”

“Once she contacted us—she did contact us?”

“Yes.”

“Once she did that, it seemed a good thing. Far safer for her to be here. I don’t think her own people would move to restrict her. Or understand how to protect her. I am worried about Mospheiran influences. More—I’m worried about her own captains. I know I’m right to break her out of the crew.”

“One does agree.”

“You heard about the tape.”

“Yes.”

The conversation with Mercheson kept nagging at him. Her worries about Jase—worries approaching serious doubts— nagged at him.

And more…

“When I went down to the planet,” he said, “that trip drew our concentrated attention there. Did it not, nadi-ji?”

She was a greater than usual warmth beside him—or he was colder than usual. There was only the least hint of light, to his eyes—but to hers, quite enough.

She rolled suddenly onto one elbow. He knew the pose, when his eyes failed to find her.

“It did,” she admitted, increasingly keen and aware.

“We suspected nothing, then.” There was no illusion of sleep, now. No possibility. “Persons might have moved up here, Jago-ji. Even Guild could have come aboard without us knowing. Is it possible?”

“We have a list of everyone on that shuttle that came up with you,” she said. “And every shuttle flight previous. Thus far we’ve found no suspect.”

His security had not been idle. Never, ever think it.

“So you have suspicions.”

“It’s our tendency, is it not?”

“Who will replace us here?” he asked. “Who is Cenedi leaving? I take it he’s leaving some staff.”

She named two men, Kalasi and Mandi.

“I don’t know them that well,” he said.

“They’re very good,” she said. “Of the dowager’s man’chi, unquestioned.”

“Not precisely Tabini’s, that is to say.”

“Hers, Bren-ji. Unquestioned.”

Wake up, paidhi. Listen to your staff.

“Will Tano and Algini be safe, staying behind, Jago-ji?”

He felt Jago draw a long and thoughtful breath. “Cenedi’s men will assist lord Geigi. In that decision, we are outranked, Bren-ji. Our own staff—”

“We are Tabini’s. Is that a difficulty?”

“One hopes otherwise.”

Oh, he’d hoped for a denial on that score. “But the politics of it—”

“While the Association stays stable, our staff can ally with Cenedi’s men. As Geigi’s can. Under Ogun, things will likely change. Predictions fail us.”

A low-level and chilling thought, often dismissed, kept nagging him. “Lord Geigi wouldn’t have killed Ramirez, Jago-ji. Surely not.”

“It’s not his disposition. Although—”

“Although?”

“Lord Geigi has his own dealings with the aiji, Bren-ji. That isn’t to discount.”

“Through Tabini? Acting as the aiji’s agent?” It wasn’t a comfortable notion at all, that Tabini would have finally decided to take Ramirez out—but that theory satisfied so many other conditions, and filled so many holes, and agreed so well with things he’d found out from Yolanda. The timing. The horrid question of timing.

That trip.

Getting the paidhi-aiji off the station. Out of play.

Getting Banichi and Jago, what was more, off the station and out of play—because those two were the most likely of anyone to detect critical movements of atevi staff.

“Or acting for the aiji-dowager. There is the close association, Bren-ji. Lord Geigi has long been in her association.”

Ilisidi?

“Do you, even marginally, think it?” He almost asked— where is her motive to attack Ramirez? But he’d been thinking far too many hours in human terms.

“They did enter closed conference, the moment she arrived, Bren-ji. You have not been invited to her table tonight—yet Geigi was. I have been invited to conference with Cenedi, but at no time was I in position to overhear her and Geigi. One suspects something stirs there. But one still doubts her motive against Ramirez on her own behalf. There simply is no evidence.”

“It might have been natural causes. There are coincidences. But one, unfortunately, has to suspect every direction except natural causes.“

“Coincidence is the rarest beast, Bren-ji. Its tracks look like so much else.”

“But with Tabini behaving oddly—oddly, Jago-ji. Oddly toward me. Oddly toward the whole association.”

“Yes,” she said, one of those enigmatic of courses, agreeing with him: she was puzzled.

So must Tabini have been—puzzled, or something like it.

By what Yolanda had indicated this evening, Ramirez, against all warnings from everyone who knew better, had opened direct communication with the atevi lord of the known world.

And while Tabini was the most enlightened, the most modern, the most interculturally aware of rulers, he was also atevi, and Ragi atevi, to boot—which meant he counted the expenditure of one man a very enlightened economy versus the need for troops, or wars, or invasions, all of which were as rare as coincidences in atevi dealings.

Tabini wanted a space station: he damned near had it. He wanted a starship: they were building it, and Mospheira had very few illusions as to who was going to get his hands on it once it flew. It was an atevi world, and rulers in Shejidan long before Tabini had been conducting a steady campaign, usually quiet and bloodless, to maintain atevi authority over it. If Ramirez had said the wrong thing, and if Tabini had become convinced that it would advance his interests to remove Ramirez—it was possible. And if Ramirez had been tottering near death, in Tabini’s perception—if there was a real and increasing possibility of Ramirez’s making mistakes and dropping stitches—far from eliciting the sympathy a Mospheiran might expect, that would have alarmed Tabini. It might have convinced an atevi mind accustomed to weigh one life against many that someone had to take charge smoothly and quickly… that it was the ethical, reasonable choice, even for Ramirez’s own good.

There it bloody was. The whole reason for man’chi. Such things didn’t happen in polite atevi circles because polite atevi circles were circles, inclusive, overlapped, interconnected.

It was so damned dangerous to deal with an atevi power from outside the circles.

He’d warned Ramirez. Shawn Tyers above all others knew the hazards, and hadn’t been going past him, but Ramirez had engaged Yolanda as his own, wrenched her tightly into his orbit and played his own game.

Which meant—

“If Ramirez initiated contact with Tabini, he ignored numerous, very basic warnings,” he said to Jago in the dark. “Tabini won’t blame her for things Ramirez could have said, but she should be cognizant of them. And Ramirez may or may not have logged those conversations privately. As senior captain—he had the accesses to be off the ship’s official record… I’m relatively sure that’s the case. We don’t know what they did. Only Tabini does.”

“Affront would have brought him to you, paidhi-ji, I strongly think so.”

Yet she reserved the chance she could be wrong. He picked that up. “Kroger’s coming up here with those robots… that meant everything was done. The means to refuel, out there at the station, if the ship should go. Do you think that was the last stone?”

The last stone on the stack, that was. The one to touch off the slide.

“It is possible.”

“Jago, I didn’t see this. Of all disasters I could have failed to see coming—I didn’t see this one.”

“The aiji has taken the station,” Jago said quietly. “One believes so, though Ogun-aiji may not think it. Well to have Mercheson within these walls. It was well done, Bren-ji.”

“Is that why Banichi brought her? Is that what you think?”

“We had not foreseen danger to Mercheson. But now we see movements within the crew that trouble us. We did foresee that Tabini would move when Ramirez died. And we did foresee that the dowager might come as his agent—but we by no means know whether we are correct in that assumption. We believe that she has demanded custody of Cajeiri as a condition for her help—a very potent symbol for the east, nand’ paidhi.”

Sometimes a human mind could think all the way around an object, feeling it all the way, and still come to wrong conclusions.

“That she’s teaching the heir. That she’s not being sent to her death. Is that the notion?”

“We suspect so. I suspect so, after talking to Cenedi. This voyage is difficult. She may not survive it. Cenedi has not opposed the venture, considering that Cajeiri is in her hands. If she should die, Cenedi will have custody of the heir-apparent, and be within that man’chi. More, this is a child, and Cenedi’s will be the guidance and the instruction. There is the likely thought, Bren-ji. There is the reason the aiji’s heir is with her. Tabini will be the power on the earth. Tabini will have his ship. Ogun will cooperate with him, if Tabini can take Mercheson into his man’chi, as seems likely to happen. It will all be subtle. Certain ones may vanish from the scene—as I foresee. Banichi considers Paulson in danger: I say no. Paulson is a fool, but a fool is safe in his office, if he’s a Mospheiran fool. If Lund comes up here, Lund will know better; Lund may be in danger.”

And he’d suggested Lund come, as a way to get Ogun better advice.

“You got the logs from Mogari-nai, didn’t you?” Extraneous question, the answer to which he thought he knew.

“We did watch contacts. There were no records available to us. We did search Mogari-nai, at our level of authority, and at Guild level.”

“But there is one higher.”

“Yes. Always there is one higher.”

“I think we know the truth,” he said. “I think we know we were gotten out of the way, being called down there.”

“One believes so. There will have been codes,” Jago said, one of those rare revelations of her craft, “given to Lord Geigi, or to his men, or even to independent agencies. This we always knew, that the station is very easy to infiltrate, with so many man’chiin involved. No different than the Bujavid. Anyone can send an unregistered agent—” Non-Guild assassin, that was to say—not lawful, but not utterly illegal. “Right now Banichi is attempting to trace atevi access to Ramirez’s venues. But there are too many tunnels in this place, too many accesses, doors far too easy to penetrate, except here. Ramirez had gone onto the station, in a free-access area, observing a known pattern of activity when he had his attack. He ran such risks and heard no advice against it. There were very many opportunities. What happened, if it happened, caused a crisis which caused his death.”

Next question. Next very scary question. “Human forensics might detect it, if they were looking. And Ramirez was neither buried nor burned.”

“Troublesome.”

“His body will go on the ship with us. If there ever is a question—if it matters—they can investigate.”

“It is inconvenient,” Jago said.

“And Ogun? His safety? He manages the training of pilots. He’s a very vulnerable linch-pin, Jago-ji, in all the plans we have. If this place is such a sieve that random individuals can operate—”

“This Cenedi and I discussed. And there must be provisions made for his protection.”

“Which will draw him closer to the aiji’s hand.”

“One can foresee such. Lord Geigi does think favorably of him. If he would draw closer to Geigi’s man’chi, he might be safer. One is aware, however, that Ogun-aiji has no successor the aiji won’t regard as junior.”

The thought was terrifying. “I wish I was going to be here.”

“Yet is there not danger where the aiji sends us?”

“Very likely.”

“And should we let the situation out there arrive back here uncontrolled, unobserved, unmodified, nandi? You would not choose that.”

He saw the deep void, and felt cold, and scared. Something in him insisted that an honest Mospheiran had no business going on ships into the dark, over unthinkable distances.

“One thinks,” Jago began to say, further, and then Jago’s hand rested on his shoulder. Someone was in the hall.

Someone turned out to be one of their own, from the foyer. And one of their own turned out to be Tano.

“Excuse me,” Tano said. He was a shadow against the vague light from the foyer that permeated the central hall: no light touched within that outline. “Nand’ paidhi.”

Open as the household was, Tano would scarcely venture into his bedroom, not without an uncommonly urgent reason in the security station.

“Tano-ji. Trouble?”

“A handful of sudden matters,” Tano said. “Your brother, nandi; also Barb-nadi—”

My God, Bren thought with a sinking heart. Toby. And Barb. Barb was not someone he wanted to hear from, but Barb, like Toby, orbited around his mother. He dreaded news from that quarter—especially together, in the middle of the night.

“Also,” Tano said, “the aiji and the aiji-dowager have sent messages. All at once.”

All at once.

Temper hit, hard after the first ice-cold shock.

“Either C1 or Mogari-nai has had a hold in place,” Jago suggested softly out of the dark behind his bare shoulder, and, oh, indeed he was sure she was right.

Mogari-nai—site of the big dish that communicated with the station—or C1, the ship communications station—had blocked his calls, all the while assuring him there was no problem. And now, responding to some authority which could be only one of two, they released everything… all his personal calls, all his delicate family business.

And Tabini’s message arrived.

Maybe Tabini had one to the dowager as well. And that had likely triggered something to him from the dowager.

No, the world below had not suddenly gone berserk. It was a chain-reaction, a dam-break.

A torrent of probable bad and worse news…

That the paidhi’s mother was in critical care didn’t matter, on the scale of nations and the future of two species.

“Find Jase,” he said, furious, and trying to control both the temper and the shivers that resulted from the adrenalin hit. And no, one did not talk to a loyal atevi staffer that abruptly, ever. “Kindly call him, nadi-ji. Tell him I’m extremely distressed at what is clearly a mail-block from either C-l or Shejidan, and I urgently ask its origin. You may explain the circumstances.”

“One will do so, nandi. Shall I wait?”

“Ask now. Find out the truth diplomatically, nadi-ji.”

Tano left at once. He got out of bed and searched the dark for his robe—ran his toe into the bed-base and smothered the yell of frustration.

Jago draped the robe over his shoulders. He felt it settle, thrust one and the other arm into it, belted it, all the while thinking, unworthily, but with a deep, sick feeling in his stomach—Jase knew, Jase knew, Jase knew about my mother. Didn’t he know?

Did I tell him? If I told him, why in hell didn’t he just let the personal messages through?

If not Jase—

Tabini. Who didn’t know.

Unless the spy-net that surrounded him had told him. Which it might not have.

“Shall I wake the staff, Bren-ji?” Jago said, slipping on her shirt.

He reached one reasoned resolution. “I’ll dress, Jago-ji.” He’d sat shivering in his robe in the security station far too often in his career, dealing with some godawful midnight crisis. And damn it, it was halfway to local morning. Occasionally his comfort counted, and he could be inconsiderate pursuing it, when it meant having his very critical wits about him. Especially if he had to practice impromptu diplomacy. “I’ll dress and I’ll have hot tea, thank you, Jago-ji, if you’d kindly arrange that. I think our sleep tonight is done for.”