There were maps. Ilisidi's security had very detailed maps, which they had brought into the small, glass-walled conference room just off the main communications center. Out there beyond the glass, technicians of the Messengers' Guild kept routine broadcasts going and, being mostly Saduri locals stranded away from their homes by the crisis, gratefully had their suppers off the official buffet. In this room, standing around the conference table with the chairs pushed back to the glass, all of them that had to make the plans were the crowded but willing audience as Rejiri of Dur-wajran ran his hand over a profusion of numbers and topographical lines on the shoreline of Mospheira — including this area, which was not detailed on most atevi maps.
"Most illegal boats come from the Narrows, here," Rejiri said with his fingers on the narrowest part of the strait, that nearest Aidin. "And there's a very bad current in the Narrows, so it looks like a real good place to go across but it isn't. Freighters know, but they come down from Jackson and catch the current and drive hard. They have the big engines, too. But the little boats, they can't carry that much in their tanks, nand' dowager, and if they go too hard they'll run their tanks dry and especially if they don't have a lot of extra tanks aboard they'll be in a lot of trouble. If they leave out of Jackson and go with the current and the wind's not in their faces off Aidin headland they can cut across and the current will just carry the little boats to
Dur. But the sneaky thing is if you don't know anything but boating in safe water and you don't know you're in the current and you think you're going across, and you aren't, you're going way, way south. You want to have a lot of cans of fuel, a whole lot of cans. But if you run out or sometimes if you go out of Bretano — if you do that, and some do, they all come in right here." The boy pointed to a spot on the outer shore, at the place where it turned in to Saduri Harbor — and drew a second breath. "That beach. If you drop a bottle in at Jackson or Bretano it's got to come here. You can find all sorts of stuff after a storm. Just junk, most times. But if there's a boat tried to smuggle stuff in, or if they don't make Dur, they'll break up on the rocks at the point or they'll make landfall somewhere right along here. And weather's been bad. Which could help them along but the seas are going to be awful, too."
"What does he say?" Jase wanted to know. The boy had a rapid patter, an accent, and he was using words Jase didn't know. Bren gave him the condensed version in Mosphei'.
"He's saying the current through the strait is very strong. Boats starting from Mospheira if they don't reach Dur, it carries them onto a beach near Saduri."
"Water current."
"Yes." He didn't know what caused a current. It wasn't the time to find out. He had a council of war around him and Jase. The dowager was looking grimly at the map over which he was sure her knowledge of plans that might be affected was superimposing other considerations, and the boy went on.
"Nand' dowager," the boy said. "I could take the plane out there. I could get to Dur and tell my father you need help."
Ilisidi scowled at the boy. "You don't have a key."
"One doesn't need a key, nandi."
"One forgot. Stealing airplanes is your trade. How does one start it?"
"One pushes a button, nand' dowager."
"A security disaster. Stay here. I plan to charge your father your hourly keep."
"But I could help!"
"Gods felicitous, boy, this is the communications headquarters for half the continent! Do you think we can't phone your father?"
"But they might tap the phones. Mightn't they, nand' dowager?"
There was quiet for a moment, and Cenedi said, "It might be a useful diversion. And the boy's presence on the radio could get four men in unannounced."
"A damned fool of a boy whose welfare is in my hands."
"Nand' dowager, I could go right off the cliff and be on approach. I could fly men into Dur! And we'll get my father to shut the ferry down, so nobody can go from Wiigin to here! If you send men, he'll believe me!"
"Wari-ji."
The man so named leaned a hand on the table. "One does see it as possible, aiji-ma. And the boy has a point."
"Instruct him. If he can start the thing, if it has fuel — let him go. And go now. We haven't touched Dur, so as not to involve them, but Dur has touched us. So let them act, if they will."
"Yes," the man said. Nawari was his entire name. "Boy."
The boy darted to the man and toward the door, remembered to bow, and went where the man beckoned him to go. There was a silence in the glassed-in room until the door was shut. On the end of a console counter outside in the communications center, the carefully prepared buffet laid in the path, and the boy pocketed a sandwich as he passed that table, against, Bren supposed, famine on the way to Dur.
It was safe food: their own people had brought it, as Bren understood, when they came in to secure Mogari-nai. Even if everyone but the paidhiin had had the foresight to tuck emergency rations into their pockets once they left the baggage behind.
"There's fuel in the plane," Ilisidi said. "As happens. Our staff flew it here." There were men still on guard on the roof and about the area of the transmission towers, men who had certainly gotten up to Mogari-nai somehow, but there were too many for one small plane. "One would leave the young fool here, but one can lay odds he'd be in the midst of matters." The dowager's fingers rested on the map, on the aforenamed beach and the island of Dur. "Dur-wajran and its position has been a concern. I do rely on the boy's assessment of his father's man'chi, and I am relieved on that score. We have a number of men on Dur. They came in two days ago on the ferry from Saduri, but they're there as tourists unless they receive orders or see trouble. Nawari will provide them orders for quiet and specific actions and, with the active cooperation of the lord of Dur, we can close off Wiigin from Saduri by water. The boy can be useful in that regard. As is his advice useful. Trust every local youth to know that beach. And if that is the case, so do the Kadigidi know it. They may have advised a boatload of otherwise inept human sailors to put out from Jackson Harbor with enough fuel just to keep the bow to the waves. Smugglers have used Dur, generally, since the stretch of beach in question is government reserve. So Cenedi informs me."
"Trust every local youth to have been on that beach," Cenedi said. "Nandiin, we had not relied on holding Dur, because its beaches are too broad and it's a wooded, populated island rife with smugglers' caches the locals don't want found. We believe a landfall on the Aidin headland would be far safer for the rebels. We do not have sufficient resources in Aidin to prevent a landing at village airstrips or movement at train stations or other routes that might bring Hanks-paidhi into friendly hands. If she comes by air she could possibly come in at the city airport at Wiigin and leave by train without our people being able to prevent her. But if she comes by boat — and we hope our heavy air activity up over Wiigin has discouraged an air route and forced her to that — we know now it will be a small boat, and
that can't reach Wiigin. There's been a diplomatic snag in clearance for freighters, ours or theirs, to leave Mospheiran ports: the aiji has withdrawn permits as of yesterday. They've been warned, and they're a cautious breed. The last freighter in transit turned back to Mospheira this morning. If another leaves port, we can spot it. A small boat, however, has a good chance of getting through the net unseen, and they know that."
That freighter ban was very serious, Bren thought. Extremely serious, following the pattern of the attack on Mospheira the rebel radio had foretold. Atevi would be using surveillance planes out over the strait, probably overflying the harbors and provoking more alarm. The aiji did have customs boats, a number with guns of a range and power sufficient to sink another ship.
Mospheira also had such boats. There was a danger of confrontation if this state of crisis went on too long. "What does the president say?"
"There is a protest from the Trade Office regarding the aiji's action," Banichi said. "If they're officially aware of Hanks-paidhi's provocations, they're being very quiet about the matter. There's no signal they're willing to correct the problem."
"One suspects they are aware," Bren said, and was conscious he now contemplated treason; his stomach knotted up — but so did his nerves, from years of coping with the administration. "But they're not very brave, dowager-ji. They'll please their contributors until the first consequences show up where the voters can find out. Then their attention will be on keeping the voters from finding out and keeping their contributors from being exposed. They'll pull back. The main thing is keeping the customs boats away from each other. That's where people at lower levels could worsen the crisis."
"If they link up with Direiso," Ilisidi said, "she'll lead them on much more precipitate courses."
Or she'll be driven mad with frustration trying to deal with the Mospheiran government, Bren thought. Unless Direiso planned to invade Mospheira if she became aiji.
Which was not a joke. Direiso might indeed have such a notion. The island was ill-prepared to resist, precisely as it had been ill-prepared and ineptly led in the War of the Landing. It was, potentially, the same situation: a mushrooming crisis and most of the human population in slumberous disregard of the danger of a rebel ateva seizing power and running with it.
The same way one decree from Tabini's pen had swept away all debate, all studies, all partisan delays in relocating Patinandi Aerospace and reconfiguring the space program, so events around them now could replace Tabini, who tolerated humans, with Direiso, who would wipe them off the face of the earth.
Bad news multiplied and Mospheira blamed the Foreign Office which told it things that didn't match its expectations; Mospheira then refused to listen to the paidhi in the field and, rather than face down human agitators who now thought they were winning political points, Mospheira had withdrawn police protection from his mother's apartment, or worse, politics infiltrating the police departments had made it impossible for the Mospheiran government to do anything about political thugs and lunatics if they wanted to.
He'd seen it coming. He'd watched it barrel down on them like a train headed down the tracks.
This time there was a strongly centralized power in Shejidan. This time the Edi and Maschi atevi of the peninsula weren't raiding the Padi Valley. This time they had a ship over their heads that was definitely a player, but which couldn't reach them or get its people out. This time atevi were very well advised on human habits and internal divisions, and this time there were paidhiin.
All of which might — or might not — tip the scales.
Outside, he heard the sound of the plane starting up.
The boy was on his way. With the means to take the island of Dur for their forces. That was one stretch of beach, if the lord of Dur was on their side, they were relatively sure they could win.
And one of the men outside the glass walls came in and handed Cenedi a note. Cenedi's expression changed as he read it.
"Nand' dowager," Cenedi said, "the warehouse down in the town is moving its trucks out. Down the harborside road to the west. Do we stop them, or allow them to clear the harborside?"
Ilisidi frowned and looked down at the maps.
"Maintain the peace," Ilisidi said. "For the next hour or so."
So now atevi forces were moving. Bren didn't know where, or how many, but the consoles out there were manned by loyal Guild and watched over by loyal Guild, and he tried to sit in one of the soft chairs in the lounge, lean his head back on the back of the seat and rest, when he wanted to be up pacing the floor.
Jase came into the little nook with a cup of tea. He had a worn, grim look, and found even the padded chair uncomfortable — at least he'd winced when he sat down, and Bren would have done so when he'd sat down, if he'd had the strength left. He eyed the arrival, muttered to indicate he didn't mind Jase being there, and shut his eyes, thinking that in Shejidan it would be about bedtime.
Their company was getting the little rest they could. Not all of them: Banichi and Jago were in close conference with Cenedi, and the dowager had taken possession of the director's office to rest, having taken a map with her.
He'd rather, personally, have stayed in the briefing; but it was Guild business in there, not the Messengers, but the Assassins, and when Banichi said in that very polite tone, "Nand' paidhi, you need to rest," he supposed even aijiin took that cue and went to nurse their headaches.
And watch over their other responsibilities.
Mospheira didn't care so much, Bren told himself, if it let both its Ragi-speaking paidhiin, him and Deana, travel out of its grasp; there were other students in the University. Someone's son or daughter could replace either of them. Of course.
Jase shifted. Bren heard the creak of the other chair. Jase was worried about Yolanda. Justifiably so.
As Mospheira's allowing Deana Hanks to cross the water meant risking her life. If Mospheira lost her, that meant they had no translator who'd actually been in the field advising them, and their maze of security precautions was going to operate very slowly in giving anyone outside the State Department access to documents: the aiji's blockade order, which he hadn't translated, must either have come in Ragi and sent them scurrying for advanced translation, or in atevi-written Mosphei', which wasn't supposed to exist. He did wonder which.
But the readily obvious fact was, the government didn't give a damn whether it talked to atevi so long as it thought the ship up there would deal with them.
It would, however, panic at the thought of Yolanda Mercheson leaving its shores or the ship aloft cutting them off cold from the flow of technology that was coming to the atevi. There was a level of self-preservation in the President's office that hated adventurous doings, and that wouldn't let Deana Hanks take Yolanda with her. He reasoned his way to that conclusion.
There were also people in charge of Deana: Deana who did not have the intelligence or the authority she dreamed she had. She was not a random and stupid threat until she was in the field dealing with atevi. They, the they who controlled her, didn't know how bad her handling of the translation interface was, which was their major flaw. If there were atevi experts able to know how bad she was, there wouldn't be an intercultural problem. They liked her because what she told them would work was shaped exactly to fall into their plans, and that was their blind spot and her reason for getting the post.
But they had to be restraining her from her wilder notions, or God knew what would happen.
And somebody could keep Hanks on the island. George Barrulin could, if he could get through to him.
But the paidhi-aiji was out of phone numbers that would mean anything, and he couldn't get through to George. They fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office. God!
"Bren," Jase said.
He opened his eyes a slit. And saw Jase sitting opposite him, elbows on knees, cup in both hands, with a downcast look.
"Bren," Jase said in human language. "I want you to understand something."
He had to listen. Jase's voice had that tone. He sat up, tucked a foot across his knee, and tried to look as if his brain were working.
"The business about my father," Jase said. "I don't have one. Fact is — fact is, he is dead."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Politeness was automatic. Understanding what Jase was getting at wasn't.
"No," Jase said. "He died hundreds of years ago."
A glimmering of understanding did come, then. "Taylor's Children. Is that what you mean?"
The ship had had its heroes — those everyone owed their lives to: the original crew and the construction pilots, the ones who'd mined and fueled the ship in the radiation hell they'd first had to survive, had left their personal legacy in cold storage, all they knew they'd send into their ship's uncertain future.
And such individuals, drawn from that cold-storage legacy, had not been the lowest members of the Pilots' Guild, when the modern crew let them be born.
When — rarely — they'd let them be born.
He was sitting in an ordinary chair in an ordinary lounge in a tolerably exotic facility, but the man he'd been dealing with was not ordinary, as he understood history.
The man he'd almost called a friend — brought a bit of the cold of space with him into this little nook.
What the ship had sent them in Jase wasn't the lowest, most expendable crew member. It was one of the elite, one who wouldn't be seduced by any planetary — or personal — loyalties.
The people of the Landing, Mospheirans, hadn't been outstandingly fond of the breed. The privileges of that elite was one of the issues that had led to the Landing. And now the ship sent one down to the planet?
"I must say," Bren said mildly, "I'm surprised. I take it you do have a mother."
"One I'm very fond of. One I want to get back to."
"One can understand how much you want to get back. One can understand very well."
Jase looked at him a little curiously, and didn't ask. But maybe, he said to himself, Jase didn't know there'd been a rift between the ship's crew and the colonists. Maybe that was one of the informational dropouts over time — things like weather, and currents, and sunrise.
"What I want to tell you," Jase said, "is that I am telling you the truth. I'm not keeping secrets from you. And I'll tell you all of it. But I want your help."
"For what?"
A slight move of Jase's eyes, a gesture to the side, to the communications center, he supposed. "To talk to the ship. To warn them what's going on and to tell them to send someone else down here, if something happens."
"Is that what you'd tell them? I'd think it would be 'Get the hell out of here. They're crazy down here.'"
Jase shook his head. "That's not my conclusion. I don't know what's on the other side of the water. Yolanda said at first she was all right. She was having a lot less problems than I was. But things starting going bad. I've heard other codewords, that just meant worry. When she gave me this one — I was scared. You weren't there. And then things started blowing up. I don't think it's coincidence she called me about the time your government started making trouble over here."
Your government. Mospheira. It was a hell of a thing, that statement, he'd had to parse that to know which government Jase meant.
"Telling you the family crisis story was supposed to get you to get Yolanda over for a sympathy visit. And it went wrong. It just went wrong. The ship knows there's something wrong on her side of the water. But if I don't call soon they'll think there's something wrong on this side, too."
"What would they do about it?"
"They'd attempt to deal with it, most probably attempt to deal with atevi in the notion some of them do understand Mosphei' and maybe I'd made a mistake."
He was considering that possibility. "Let's try some critical truth. Is the ship armed?"
"It has weapons. It doesn't have atmospheric craft."
"Coercion occupies absolutely no place in their planning? A little piracy, perhaps?"
"No. If they get involved in this situation, it's possible they can withhold information from one side or the other and get cooperation. It's my recommendation that they cooperate with the atevi and withhold all help from Mospheira."
"You know," Bren said, on a breath that made his voice sail higher and more casual than he wished. "You know," he said more soberly, "I think that's a reasonable position, but I haven't had a lot of luck persuading human governments about it, and we've lived on this planet a couple of centuries."
"You want the truth?"
"I think it would be a really good idea, Jase."
"If Yolanda goes —" Emotion clouded Jase's face and ruffled the calm in his voice. "If she doesn't make it, it's important to me. But not to the ultimate outcome of this business. Neither of us is that important to the outcome unless we can do our work. They give us a lot, that's what they say. But they ask a lot of us."
"You're not a computer tech who's studied languages and taught kids."
"I know computers. We had two engineering texts in the library, one French, one German. They didn't teach me a lot about planets. But I learned how languages work. That's the truth, Bren."
"You in love with Yolanda?"
"I suppose so. Yes. I am."
"But disregarding all this, say we lost you, what would your ship do?"
"Right now, they'd go on pretending everything was fine, and see if you built the spacecraft."
"And then?"
"If atevi got up there, my captains would negotiate. They'd have done what they want. They'd negotiate with atevi. They'd probably keep on giving them tech. As much as they wanted."
He had a very, very bad feeling that he wasn't understanding everything, and that Jase wanted his full attention for the next item.
"Why?" he asked.
"They want the atevi in space."
"Why?"
"Because —" Jase's voice was faint. "Because we're not alone. We're not the only ones in space. And they're not friendly. And we're not sure, but they could come here."
He sat, having heard that. Having heard it, he didn't want to believe it.
"You said," he recalled, "there was another station out there, at the other end of — wherever you've been."
"There was one. It's gone. We don't know who the aliens are. We don't know what they want. We tried to contact them. We had a few passes, months apart. Just a streak on one tape. And some transmissions. We tried scanning the area where we thought they were coming from. We'd moved Phoenix out. And when we got back, the station was — was wrecked. Everyone was dead. It hadn't infallen. But it was going to. We took a vote. We decided — we decided we'd better get out of there."
"And come here."
"It was the only place."
"Oh, you could have lost yourself in space. You could have gone the hell away from us!"
"It's not that far, Bren. It's about eighteen, twenty years light. You're in their neighborhood. We did nothing to these people. People — whatever they are. We did nothing to provoke them."
"We did nothing to provoke the atevi into attacking the colony, either, but we made it damned well inevitable!"
"You know that. You dealt with this situation. Maybe you have a skill — maybe you have a skill we don't. We need you."
"God, look around you! My government's not doing outstandingly well at the moment!"
"If they'd listen to you, they'd be better off."
"But failing that miracle, you want the atevi in space. You want us, or you want the atevi."
"This is the atevi star. This is their world. There's something out there that kills people it doesn't know anything about, that never did anything to them. And the atevi need to know that. We could have gone off in space somewhere and hoped they never found us. We could have tried again —"
"No, you couldn't. You thought there'd be a thriving colony here. You thought you'd get fuel for the ship here. You thought you'd rally the colony to the defense and you'd have everything the way you used to have it, with us doing the mining and the dying for you to run the ship."
There was a small silence. But Jase didn't flinch. "We thought we'd have your help, yes. But we thought we owed each other a mutual debt — a warning, and a chance for us to get out of here if you want to take your chances."
"That's a lousy patch on exactly what I said."
"That's fine. That's the situation. Now what do you do?"
He let out a long sigh and fell back into the chair cushions to look at the room beyond, communications that could indeed talk to the ship.
Then at Jase.
"Damn lot of choice you've given us."
"I'm giving you a choice, Bren. The people at the other station didn't have any."
"What in hell provoked it?"
"We don't know. We just don't know. Maybe they're just that way. That's always a possibility, isn't it?"
"Not one I accept!"
"That's what I count on."
What Jase had already said began to sink in. Unwelcomely. "Don't you lay that on me! Good God, no."
"Let me call the ship. We have armed atevi and probably armed humans and airplanes and boats and mechieti and no one knows what else. None of us may get out of this. Yolanda's already told them don't rely on Mospheira for anything. If you don't want to leave the matter of the atevi to blind luck, baji-naji, Bren, let me talk to them. I'll give them codewords to tell them I'm not compelled and I'll tell them first to trust you, to trust the aiji and the aiji-dowager and whoever they recommend. And if it comes down to Direiso and the rest of them, maybe they'll give the outsiders indigestion if they come here, I don't know. But if we die here, everything is left to chance. They could end up trusting this Direiso person."
"You're not inept, yourself, Jase."
"I've tried to learn from you. Will you let me do it?"