Chapter Two

« ^ »

Banichi-ji,” bren said under his breath, sitting in the office chair, and using the pocket com while there was still time, “please advise security everything’s under control and proceeding well.”

Advise the atevi establishment, that was, and under control was tolerably true. He sat in Jase’s office waiting for Sabin to show up on a small hours of the morning, on a minor emergency call, waiting for all else that might fall out—and the second worst situation he could think of was that Cenedi might have waked the dowager to advise his ultimate authority what was going on upstairs. The second worst. The very worst thing he could think of, outside of a complete malfunction of the ship’s engines, was the dowager deciding to come up here in person to have morning tea and reason with Sabin.

Tea was not a word of fortunate history, under those circumstances.

Kaplan, however, had indeed come into Jase’s office just for that purpose, to make tea… a nominally Mospheiran herbal item, one of those light mass planetary amenities that the ship’s crew had taken to as passionately as they took to fruit sugar.

Polano and Banichi and Jago made a living wall of security outside… that sense of presence Jase deemed a very good idea.

Sabin had gotten the message from C1, and hadn’t objected to Jase’s office as the venue. She might, Bren thought, have breakable objects in her own.

It was a level of not-quite-critical summons that meant she could take a decent amount of time responding. She might even stop for breakfast, if only to try Jase’s patience, but they made strong tea, all the same. It was pushing five hundred hours, not too far off first shift’s ordinary waking.

Bren’s pocket com beeped. So did Jase’s desk unit.

She’s here, was the general advisement. Heads up.

A few beats later the door opened and Sabin walked in. She was a thin, past-sixties woman with close-clipped gray hair, uniform sweater and uniform coat. She didn’t walk into a room: she invaded it—gave an habitual scowl to their security, who folded in after her—their security, then her security, two men, Collins and Adams, intent on coming inside if the rest were bent on it.

Bren stood up, a courtesy. Jase poured a cup of tea and set it on his desk edge.

She didn’t take it. She didn’t sit down. “Nature of the emergency. I trust there is an emergency.”

“A fairly major one,” Jase said. “The tape, captain. The tape. And I’m not about to let Mr. Cameron go out of here seeing what he’s seen without hearing your side of this.”

“What in hell have you done?”

“Well, looked for answers, for a start.” Jase’s eyes could be perfectly innocent, on demand. “Unfortunately I’ve stirred up more questions than answers, but I have every confidence you had a reason for restricting the tape record. I’m equally confident that you were testing me to see if I could get it. I did. So I’m not sending our ally below with half the truth to work on. I’m certainly not having our allies wait until they get to the station to see what any eye can see—that Reunion was under an immaculate one g rotation nine or so years ago, while we were docked and refueling, contrary to the image provided belowdecks; and certainly the crew will see it, and recall all too keenly that isn’t what we all saw on our screens, so there’s a whole other question. So I think we ought to talk about this, captain, and I’m sorry about waking you early to do it, but Mr. Cameron’s knowledge of the situation—for which I take full responsibility—provides a certain urgency. Unhappily my watch falls during your sleep, and I apologize. Considering the hour, I at least made you some tea. My aides will provide whatever else you might want.”

Dead silence. Sabin was fully capable of wishing them in hell and walking out, all questions hanging.

She didn’t. “So you got into the log.”

“It took some work, captain. I trust you knew I’d do that. I took it rather as one of the many tests of competency you’ve set me. I did it. Now Mr. Cameron’s seen it. So has his guard.”

They’d provided a chair for Sabin in the scant room there was left. She turned it on its track, took the tea from Kaplan, and sat down.

Bren sat, having been prepared to intervene, glad he hadn’t had to. But the crisis wasn’t past. Sabin often operated on a delayed fuse.

She had a sip of tea—she took it dark, strong, and unmitigated, ignoring the condiments, ignoring the hazards of one past poisoning.

“So?” she said to Jase, likewise ignoring the crowd of security and the sure knowledge the atevi representative was wired.

“I’ve a lingering few critical questions,” Jase said. “I can certainly understand why you didn’t release this to the crew at large. Captain Ramirez faked the monitor output, and he did it before he ever had clear contact with the survivors. Am I right?”

Sabin sipped her tea and didn’t say a thing.

“When crew finds out,” Jase said, “if they find out when they’re in a good mood—that’s one thing. If things aren’t going well when they find out, I ask myself, what else are they going to doubt?”

Sabin shrugged. “You have all the answers. You’ve made the decision to view this with Mr. Cameron. I’m listening to your reasoning.”

“Excuse me, captain,” Bren said. “Our section is disconnected from these events and capable of discretion, if that’s the ruling here.”

“I’m sure you’re capable of a good many things,” Sabin said, “including seeking your own advantage. I take it the dowager now knows, too.”

“If it isn’t the case, I’m sure it will be as soon as she wakes. At least her staff knows. So does mine.”

“Marvelous,” Sabin said dryly, swallowed the tea and held out her cup to Jase. “Another cup.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jase said moderately, without a ruffle, and handed it to Kaplan to fill, which menial task Kaplan did with dispatch. “And in the reasonable assumption,” Jase said, “like other matters you’ve left me to find for myself, that this tape and the technical way into the log was a matter of my education in command, for which I’m grateful, I certainly learned a great deal more about ship’s operations than I expected, as you knew I’d learn, I’m sure, all to the good. So I doubt you’re entirely surprised that this tape Mr. Cameron suggested was important at the start of the voyage remained an issue with me. I did note you never cautioned me against finding it—and considering my peculiar position in this office, I’ve also spent some time wondering about reasons you may have had for remaining the perpetual dissenting vote on the Captains’ Council. Voting on principle, I take it. Possibly opposed to my very existence.”

“Go on.” Sabin took the second cup from Kaplan’s hand. “This is actually interesting.”

“As to why I brought Mr. Cameron in on the matter, it’s precisely the consideration of a foreign state of mind that we on Phoenix don’t quite understand. The very thing my education prepared me to deal with. You sent me down to the planet…”

“Correction. Stani sent you down to the planet.” Ramirez, that meant.

“With your dissenting vote, granted. As, very likely, when Ramirez proposed to get into the gene banks to create me and Yolanda in the first place, you weren’t highly pleased. But all that aside, the captains voted, and I exist. It was the ship’s executive that sent me down to the atevi world, unprepared as I turned out to be—but having at least the basics of an understanding what I was up against—what Yolanda and I were up against. Then Mr. Cameron took me in hand and shook new considerations into me. Set me out on an ocean and let me contemplate a whole wealth of new input.”

“This is far less interesting.”

“Like everything not bounded by this hull. I’m aware that’s your view, captain. It’s not your job. But I assure you it’s mine, to understand things external. And that’s my use to you. I was born to acquire a certain expertise—enough, in my executive capacity, now, to know what Mr. Cameron’s knowledge is worth, and enough to consult him when the executive of this ship is as entangled as it is in Guild deceptions, and burdened as it is with past decisions, and sitting on an ocean of information far deeper than we may think it is.”

“Meaning you brought him in here hoping his presence will moderate my response to what you’ve done.”

“Meaning, captain, I recommend hearing his input where it regards diplomacy, including internal diplomacy, particularly that of our allies, whose reaction is not to be taken for granted—and I suggest we listen to him particularly carefully, because if a first viewing of this tape touched off his ground-born suspicions, it’s certainly touched off mine on certain major topics—such as whether Captain Ramirez deceived the rest of the executive or only half of it; or whether Pratap Tamun was specifically after this tape when he staged his mutiny; or whether this crew should worry about the integrity of command; or whether Mr. Jenrette, whom you snatched fairly precipitately out of my security team once this tape turned out to be an issue, is going to be available to me to fill in where this tape stops. And as to why Captain Ramirez ordered me born twenty years ahead of the mission I ended up being uniquely suited to perform, I don’t believe in coincidence. He knew something. He intended something. You’ve spent twenty years of my life voting no on every single issue I’ve been involved in, and probably before that. So I’m asking if you had good reason to vote that way.”

“Good reason.” Sabin seemed surprised, even amused, somewhere in the outrage. “And we’re to discuss these delicate situations with Mr. Cameron present and his security wired to the hilt. Do you intend to provide a translation to your staff, Mr. Cameron?”

“If you ask my discretion, again, my particular interests involve the dowager’s safety and the mission’s success. We won’t jeopardize this ship. Personal issues between members of the ship’s executive are likely outside our concern or interest. But serious questions are posed here, captain, and the tape is disturbing. I’d suggest even at your level you suspect Captain Ramirez didn’t tell you half what was going on, and that what happened at Reunion on your last visit didn’t involve unanimous decisions of the executive of this ship.”

He hadn’t put that the most straightforwardly possible. He’d backed around the issue and given Sabin the broadest possible avenue to maneuver. And Sabin took a moment, thinking.

“Not bad, this tea.”

“A planetary gift,” Jase murmured.

“Addictive,” Sabin said.

“An easy habit to form, at least.”

“Like a hell of a lot else that’s insinuated itself aboard! Hype up on sugar, calm down with tea, never ask what it does to the body. Poison’s at least decently evident in the aftermath.”

Sabin rarely brought up the unfortunate dinner party.

“This isn’t poison, is it?”

“No, ma’am,” Jase said. “This is my personal store. And lest we ever forget, you’re in command of the ship getting there and getting home again, while I’m not remotely confident I could do that. So I’m extremely determined you should survive in good health.”

“Home,” Sabin observed. In fact it was a curious word for Phoenix crew to use about any destination besides the ship itself.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jase said. “Home to the atevi world. After which I’ll resign this post and leave your command unquestioned and forever untroubled by my existence.”

Sabin’s gaze strayed up past Jase’s shoulder, to the barren shelves, the single framed photo, the fishing trip.

Snapped back, and hooded in speculation. “A captain of this ship wants to live on a ball of rock.”

“I’m Ramirez’s appointee,” Jase said. “An interim solution to a specific problem, in no wise approaching your expertise or your talent, I’ve no question.”

“Yet you get into the ship’s log and distribute information on your own authority.”

“I do specifically what I was trained to do, senior captain, which is to figure whether smart people are saying what they think they’re saying when the words reach somebody not on their wavelength.”

“You’re determined you’ll never lack employment.”

“And I hope I’m useful, captain. Question: Tamun got into the captaincy and immediately mutinied, and died. Was it all about this tape?”

“Why would you suppose that Pratap Tamun has anything to do with this tape?”

“He was bridge crew. And how many of the crew that watch were sworn to secrecy, and how many of them had to hold onto suspicions for years, watching the executive lie to their cousins and mothers?”

“Lie?”

“Lie, captain. It’s clear the images fed throughout the ship—maybe even to the bridge—were a lie. And the common crew is going to find out, now or later, assuming there’s anyone alive on Reunion Station.”

“Make it later. Once the mission’s succeeded they won’t care. If they find out before—it certainly won’t serve this ship.”

“On the whole, I’ve reached the same conclusion.”

“Oh, I’m gratified.”

“But if we can tell at a glance that that station’s alive, so could anybody else coming here over the last nine years, and if someone has come calling, and if they’re the same hostile aliens, the station won’t have fooled them by playing dead and using spinner chambers way inside, which somehow some of us were left to assume. As good as put up signs saying we’re here. Let me pose you this, captain: let’s assume—let’s outright assume we’re going to get there and find the station in ruins. Let’s assume worse than that. Let’s assume we’re going to get there and discover humans don’t own it any more. What’s left for us? We should have told the crew the truth back at dock. If we don’t tell them now and they get there and find trouble, where are we going to start telling the truth?”

“And I’m saying if that happens, crew’s going to be too busy for questions. Stow this information and don’t make trouble.”

“What did you see when you were there last? What was Ramirez poking about in when the ship tucked tail and ran back to Reunion in the first place?”

“Stop at the first problem. Other operations aren’t in your capacity.”

“Why did Tamun finally turn on you, captain? And while you’re at it—why was I ever born?”

“Both deeper questions than you ever want the answer to.”

“Ramirez meant to double-cross the Guild years ago. Didn’t he?”

“He had a lot of crazy notions.”

“And you voted no every time.”

“We have witnesses, Captain Graham. Maybe this is best said between us.”

“Maybe it’s not. Maybe at this point I’m done with secrets and having him here will save me the trouble of explaining it all. So treat him as family. Why? What were you voting against? Why were you always opposed to me?”

“Your ignorance isn’t enough?”

“You can’t provoke me out of asking the question, Captain. Why do I exist?”

“What’s your guess?”

“That Ramirez had a private notion of a colony of his own, one that the Guild might not find out about until it was too late.”

Sabin didn’t respond at once. She sipped cooling tea and set the cup down. “Well, you’re smarter than I thought.”

“It doesn’t tell me an answer, what he wanted.”

“Oh, you’re fairly well on the track. He kept nosing about until he found trouble and until trouble found us. Then he had the notion of going back to Alpha colony. And when we did go back, and when he found what he found, it set him back, oh, for about an hour. By then, of course, we had limited options. And no fuel. And we knew that the island was founded by rebels against ship’s authority; and that the atevi continent—having all its drawbacks—had natural resources the island didn’t. So right from the start we had our problem—and we weren’t that sure the trouble that hit Reunion wasn’t coming on our tails. I didn’t vote against refueling at Reunion. I didn’t vote against refueling at Alpha. I didn’t vote against cooperation with the atevi, for that matter. It was all we had left. It’s all we still have left. I tell you, if I ever have to plant a space station, I’ll do it in a populated, civilized region, not out around some remote rock with a disputed title, where you don’t know who the owners are.”

“That’s what happened?”

“We haven’t a clue what the aliens think. We’re pretty sure we went where they objected to us being. Violently objected. As far as I’m informed, they didn’t consult the space station to lodge an objection: they just hit it, took out half the mast and did major damage to the ring, fortunately missing the fueling port. End report. We hope, in the nearly ten years we’ve been building a space program and refurbishing Alpha Station, that Reunion has managed to patch itself up and gather in a load of fuel for us. If, as you say, worse isn’t the case. That’s the truth, pretty much as it’s always been presented. Except the fact, evident to me, at least, that our chances of finding the station in one piece are minimal, for exactly the reason you cite, and our chances of convincing the crew we ought to give up on that station are nil until they know there are no surivivors. We are a democracy, junior captain, at the most damnedly inconvenient moments.”

“I’m glad to hear it’s not worse.”

“Oh, it can easily be worse, sir. I assure you it can easily be worse.”

“What was Captain Ramirez up to when he had me born?”

“Stani kept his own counsel,” Sabin said. “Or he confided in Jules.” That was Ogun, who was sitting back at the atevi station, managing a small number of ship’s crew in technical operations—and in the building of another starship. “Frankly, Stani had a lot of pipe dreams involving what we could build out here. I’m more pragmatic. Where we are is what we are. And Taylor’s Children aren’t anything better than what we are.”

“I’d agree, ma’am. Quite honestly, I would. What I do have for a resource is unique training.”

“And, curiously enough, a certain divorcement from the past—as well as unique entanglements. You’re Stani’s pet project.” From hostile, Sabin had become downright placid. “And by your own qualities, you’re liked. It’s occasionally useful to have a captain the crew likes.”

“Crew’s gotten rather fond of you, as happens. And they’d take the truth from you—now, if not before.”

“Bull.”

“Crew knows how you work, senior captain. Doing my job and yours. And they’re grateful.”

“You’ll have me shedding tears.”

“Truth. It’s my skill, remember, to figure out what people are really saying about the powers that be.”

“Doesn’t matter what the crew thinks.”

“I differ with you on that one.”

“Differ all you like. You say you just know what people think. Fine. You don’t figure me or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“You’re not simple, captain.”

“I don’t play your games. I don’t give a damn. And don’t plan to.”

“Yet you took a chance and sponsored Tamun into office. You believed in him.”

“He was qualified.”

“And collectively, Ramirez and Ogun agreed and voted him in. And he turned on you. I take it he turned on you.”

“You’re asking if I sponsored the mutiny.”

“I’m asking if you have any special clue why he turned the way he did.”

“I’m a lousy judge of character.”

“I still suspect it was about these tapes.”

“You want to know the deep-down truth, second captain? I don’t know and I don’t give a damn at this late date. Tamun turned out to have an agenda I didn’t know he had, and Stani and Jules didn’t know he had. They took my advice. It was bad advice. A bad decision approved by all three of us. And since he’s dead and the ones still with us that followed him have stepped sideways as far as they can, it doesn’t matter these days, does it?”

“I hope it doesn’t,” Jase said. “I truly hope it doesn’t. I want us to get there, grab any survivors we can find, and get out of the neighborhood forever, as fast as we can.”

“And if there’s other occupancy?”

“Just get out of the neighborhood as fast as we can.”

Sabin leaned back, cup cradled in a careless hand. “You really want your question answered, why you were born?”

“I’m curious.”

“It’s possibly germane. Stani had a notion of contacting the civilization he thought he’d found. But it contacted us, didn’t it? So much for reason and diplomacy.”

Contacting the civilization, Bren thought, and felt cold clear through. Jase’s instincts were right, if not his exact suspicions. Stani Ramirez had stepped far outside Guild rules—long before he returned to Alpha.

“I hope not to do that,” Jase said, “contact the other side, that is.”

“I’m glad you hope so,” Sabin said, “because where we are and what we’re doing, and where we’re meddling, can bring all hell down on our heads. The short answer is—Ramirez had a plan. You were to advise him in his projected alien contact, whenever the chance came. And that didn’t ever happen, did it?”

“I’d say,” Jase said quietly, “that I never had the question posed. Ever. And if I had had it posed to me, senior captain, maybe things wouldn’t have gone the way they did.”

“You were a green kid. You couldn’t do anything.”

“And a year later he dropped me on the atevi planet. The point is, senior captain, he answered without me. Anything he did with the aliens was an answer. Leaving the scene was an answer. Maybe totally the wrong one. And anything we do in the future is under the same gun, with a bad start, because of things Captain Ramirez did that we may not even know about. I need to be on the bridge when we arrive in system. And log records that might tell us what he did would be extremely useful.”

“Oh, now you want to give the tactical orders.”

“In no way, senior captain. Advice. First thing I learned in the field: you don’t have to speak to strangers to carry on conversation. Staying’s an answer. Running’s an answer. Shooting’s a statement or an answer. Before the conversation gets to missiles, the ship needs a second observer. Another opinion. I may not belong in a captaincy—but I was competent enough in Shejidan that at least you don’t have a war with that species. You need me there. You need Bren.”

Sabin listened, give her credit. Bren found himself holding his breath, wondering dared he say a word, when a woman who controlled their ship, their movement, and the decisions the ship would make, considered all possible options.

“He’s right, is he?” Sabin asked Bren suddenly.

“He’s quite right,” Bren said. “A good translator and an experienced cultural observer. The dowager’s side of this agrees with him, and you, and I assure you we have no interest in exacerbating the situation.”

“Gratifying.”

“It would be a good idea for me to be on the bridge when we reach our destination.”

“No.”

Deep breath. Reasonable tone: carefully reasonable tone. “If you should confront a situation you don’t expect, captain, you might not have time to send for us and brief us. If everything’s as you expect, you don’t need us and we’ll know that. If it isn’t, you’ll have a second immediate analysis from me and from Jase, with what we know about talking to strangers, granted we have no choice. My immediate advice is… don’t talk without analyzing the situation.”

Sabin raked him up and down with a glance, turned to Jase. And back again.

“And if we have to move suddenly, rather than talk, Mr. Cameron, you can dent the wall. You stay belted in belowdecks until we call you.”

Amazing. Astonishing. That was an agreement.

“My staff would likely agree with that, Captain. But expert advice in a dicey situation—”

“After we arrive. We’ll come in far enough out, we’ll be searching for our destination. Plenty of time. Take it or leave it.”

“Accepted, captain.” He had won access, unexpected, and a good thing, in his own summation: time to stop asking. Time to get out of the crossfire.

“So, Captain Graham,” Sabin said.

“Ma’am,” Jase said.

“You’re going to offer your sage advice.”

“I appreciate that, senior captain.”

“You were always supposed to be the expert. You and Mercheson’s kid.” Yolanda. “Taylor’s Children. Nice symbol. The completion of the ship’s mission. The holy mission to spread human culture. Ramirez didn’t trust what might have happened at Alpha. Not because of the aliens—because of the humans. Because they hated the Guild. Because they’d be numerous, if they’d survived at all, and they’d be hard to direct. If he’d gone to Alpha in the beginning, everything might have been different, but he didn’t. He had this notion of controlling the change he was going to make in human affairs. He had this notion of keeping his maneuvers secret—and it couldn’t be a secret if he took the ship back to Alpha and opened up that old issue. Guild would find out where he’d been and they’d want answers. Controlling the contact of aliens with the Guild—sitting in charge of everything—that was his notion. Quietly becoming a power the Guild couldn’t control. But his venture brought retribution down on the station, and he ended up going precisely the direction he didn’t want to go—toward Alpha. This was the set of decisions that put us where we were. And he and his faction still ran the ship. You ask about Tamun. Tamun sounded good, to answer your question. He was my chance to get another no vote on the board, a counter to Ramirez and Ogun. But when a captaincy came up, no, the situation out here wasn’t one of those pieces of information we immediately discussed with Pratap Tamun. We were more concerned with problems where we were—the battle to keep some kind of balance against Ramirez’s unilateral decisions. Maybe I should have raised the Reunion issue with him before he got the seat. I didn’t. What I did know—he didn’t accept where Ramirez had led us. He wanted separation from non-human influences.”

“Separation from the atevi?”

“Separation from the atevi. Building up the Mospheirans. Helping humans take over the mainland.”

Appalling. Evidencing a vast lack of understanding. “Mospheira wouldn’t have any interest in ruling the mainland,” Bren said. “They wouldn’t have the manpower to run the continent if they had it handed to them, and they don’t see any reason to want it.”

“The way they didn’t have any interest in fueling the ship or maintaining the station.”

“They’re farmers and shopkeepers,” Bren said, “and no, their ancestors didn’t have any interest in doing that for your ancestors. They still don’t.”

“Which is why atevi are running the place,” Sabin muttered. “Which is all well and good. At least someone’s running things. And not doing a bad job of it, as turns out. But Tamun was a humans-only sort, vehemently so. I’ve come toward a more moderate view, but in an unfriendly universe—I still don’t trust books or faces I can’t read.”

From hate and loathing to pragmatic, even educated, acceptance? No, it wasn’t an easy step. More, Sabin had always shown a canny awareness of that ambiguity of signals that was so, so, dangerous between two armed species. In her way, Sabin had dealt intelligently with the hazards of interspecies cooperation, reasoning out a caution the Mospheiran fools trying to yacht over to atevi territory in friendship or on smuggling missions didn’t remotely grasp.

“Was Tamun Guild?” Bren asked bluntly.

“He never said. What mattered in the long run was exactly what you originally said, Mr. Cameron. The man was so blinded by his agenda that he couldn’t count. He couldn’t get it into his head that atevi had all the numbers, and when it turned out atevi would do what we needed and get us operational and that we could deal with them, he couldn’t change his views. That change was where I stopped voting no, as you may have noticed. When it came to getting the ship up and running, when it came to the station having power and a viable population, well, then I could deal with my personal reluctance—my regret that some of those historic human skills you were born to learn, Captain Graham, were, in that very process, becoming irrelevant. But I wasn’t so regretful for dead languages and lost records that I’d kill the last chance we had to keep the ship alive out here. I wasn’t that enthusiastic for the Archive, that I had time to sit down and learn old languages, so in the end I suppose they don’t matter that much.”

“One person can’t learn the Archive,” Bren said. “But one person can save it. Ramirez saved it, when he sent it down to the planet. And you know that the part of it Jase knows isn’t irrelevant. A language freights its history, its culture, inside itself. Its structure is the bare-bones blueprint for a mindset. Know one, gain insights into another. That’s how we repair the damage Ramirez did.”

“Blueprints for another starship. That’s the relevant part of the Archive,” Sabin said. “A starship and the guns to defend ourselves from Ramirez’s mistakes.”

“As a last resort,” Bren said.

“I’m only interested in one thing,” Sabin said harshly. “Running through this charade of a rescue mission as fast as we can, having our look around and convincing crew to give up, without dragging an alien armada back on our tail. If I was going to lie, gentlemen, I could lie to the crew without going all the way in there. But we will go in. I want this question actually settled and done with. If they’re dead, they’re dead, and we go on.”

“The Archive at Reunion,” Jase added, “has to be deleted. No matter what.”

“We do what we can.”

“Senior captain, a piece of history, one of those irrelevant bits: Earth had a very famous piece of rock called the Rosetta Stone, a translation key that put two languages together in the same context—one known, one hitherto undecipherable. If the aliens get a live human and that record, captain—and we don’t know what they have, at this point—”

“Hell with your rocks. If some batch of aliens track our wake, we’re dead and Alpha is dead. End of relevance to anything. We take out the Archive if we can. We have a look around and we go back to Alpha. It’s the recent knowledge that matters. Getting the ship refueled, finding out what’s going on there and getting out unobserved is number one priority. Granted there’s fuel convenient, which I personally doubt. I’m not an optimist.”

“Can we reach Gamma?” Jase asked.

That drew a quirk of the brow. “Maybe. Maybe that’s been hit. So, between you, me, and our guests,” Sabin said, on that sober note, “if I have to form a completely cheerful concept of where we’re going, it involves a functioning station with a full fuel load and nothing more exotic, thank you. So you can remain irrelevant. So we can rescue enough people to make the crew happy. Or prove it’s impossible. This always was a crack-pot mission, purely on crew pressure, nothing more.—Mr. Kaplan, another, if you please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kaplan moved instantly, filled the cup, gave it back.

“So if you ask me what you haven’t pressed, would I fake a tape? No. But I’ll use this one. Am I going to deal politically with the Pilots’ Guild if we find anyone alive? Damned right I am, and if we’re lucky enough to have fuel, we’re going to be very correctly Guild until the ship’s fueled and ready. Do we have that, Mr. Cameron? If we do find a live station, you’re going to take orders and keep your alien aristocrats under tight orders and out of sight.”

“I perfectly follow your reasoning, captain. Though I’m not the one who gives the orders in that department.”

“I deal with you. What’s your diplomacy worth if you can’t persuade your own side?”

“Point taken, captain. Meanwhile—can we get the log record from the incident that sent your ship running off to Gamma?”

“Second, we’re not disseminating log records among the crew. Or to the Mospheirans. That’s my diplomacy. Hear me?”

Somehow Sabin had rather well hijacked their agreement. Their security already knew and wouldn’t talk. The dowager was the soul of secrets. Gin would inevitably find out. That left only the ship’s crew still in the dark. And Sabin was still the autocrat she was determined to be.

“Give us the log records, captain. I’d think you’d want all the information you could get out of that incident. We can extract it. We can possibly give you information you don’t know you have.”

“We’re in transit, headed for a ship-move, Mr. Cameron. Am I going to abort that operation for some piddling records search?”

“You might well,” Bren said levelly, “if informing your own resource people what you might have done wrong the last time saved you all those small inconveniences you name.”

“We’ll see,” Sabin said.

We’ll see, by experience, could take forever. But it was what they had. Sabin sipped her tea and talked about the day’s schedule as if there was nothing in all creation out of the ordinary, a rapidfire series of hours and acronyms that made only marginal sense to an outsider, but that Jase seemed to follow.

“Well,” Sabin said, then, reaching the bottom of the small cup, “some of us go on duty at this hour.” She set down the cup, got up and gathered up her security. “Thank you for breakfast, Captain Graham. Good night to you. Good morning, Mr. Cameron.”

“Good morning,” Bren murmured, as Jase murmured the same, at the edge of his night. Foreign habits. Planetary habits. Sabin used the expression consciously, in irony, Bren was quite sure, and after the door shut, with Jase’s security and Sabin and her security on the other side of it, he realized he’d just held his breath.

“We’re alive,” he said.

“Don’t joke,” Jase said.

“Do you believe that?” Bren asked.

“That she took it that well? I don’t. Meanwhile what you do with the tape is in your discretion. I trust you.”

They’d reached, as Sabin had observed, the end of Jase’s day and the dawn of his. The information was in his hand. The map and that record and the pieces of information he’d gathered were going to keep his staff and the dowager’s very busy for the next number of hours. If only, God help them, they could get those log records on what Stani Ramirez had done. But if he went on pushing Sabin, they might lose the cooperation they did have.

“This the last time I’m going to see you before we move?” Bren asked.

“Likely.” Jase offered his hand, a quick, solid grip. “We’ll work on it. I’ll nudge her about those records, much as I can. Likely one more day’s work before the move, but unless something comes up, I’m going to be seeing to details up here on one-deck… for days.”

“Same below,” Bren said, and let go the handshake—wishing, after a year of numbing tedium intermittent with bone-shaking anxiety, that they’d had this information at the start of the voyage, not at the end. At the start, back at Alpha, things had seemed cut-and-dried simple: go back, fulfill what the crew thought was a plain promise of rescue of their stranded relatives, if the station survived, and pull the old Guild off Reunion, destroying all sensitive records in the process. Only on the voyage the wider truth of the senior captains’ assessment of the situation began leaking out, bit by bit, incident by incident. The only senior available to them here was Sabin. The other, Ogun, was back managing things at Alpha—presumably not pushing relations with the atevi further or faster than prudent.

And typical of any dealing with Phoenix’s original four captains—he wished he knew which half of all Sabin said was the truth, or what resources she held that had made her willing to agree to this voyage, and what secrets she still kept close.

More fuel reserve than they’d ever admitted to their allies who’d filled their tanks? A potential fuel dump at a place called Gamma? On both accounts, very reassuring news, though it would have slowed refueling efforts back at Alpha and given political ammunition to those who hadn’t want to fuel the ship at all.

But both the possibility of repair to the station and a fear of finding alien presence there? Was that Sabin’s natural voyage-end pessimism at work, or a long-held conclusion based on more information than they’d yet laid hands on?

Jase had to work with the woman, had to maintain cooperation and simultaneously keep alert for sudden shifts in Sabin’s intentions—about which they were still not convinced.

“Take care,” Bren wished him.

“Take care,” Jase said, too, and added, pointedly, counting the aiji-dowager down on five-deck, full of justifiable questions of her own: “Good luck.”

Chapter Three

« ^ »

There was no extended comment from Banichi and Jago, even in the lift: there, the ship’s eavesdropping was a given. There was no comment, at first, as they crossed toward the closed door of their own section, through that foyer they shared with Kroger’s corridor.

But for the first time it was moderately safe to talk, in Ragi. “You followed most of it,” Bren said, “nadiin-ji.”

“Certainly important points, nadi-ji,” Banichi said. “But not enough to be confident of understanding Sabin-aiji.” Banichi let them through the closed section door and into the long corridor that was their own domain. The dowager’s staff stood guard, as always, and passed them on without a word.

“No one understands Sabin-aiji,” Bren muttered. “She deliberately obscures her actions.”

“One perceives,” Jago said as they walked, “that there may have been a falsified television image when last the ship visited this station. That more secret records may be at issue.”

“True in both instances.” He gathered his breath for an explanation. Didn’t even know where to start, about Ramirez’s actions and Jase’s suspicions, that ran back for decades.

A missile from out of the galley hit the corridor wall.

Ricocheted to the floor.

And skidded toward them on the tiles.

A red-fletched, blunt arrow.

With a whisper of leather and a light jingling of silver weapon-attachments, Jago bent down and gathered it from their feet.

A young atevi face peered from the dowager’s galley, down the corridor. Gold eyes went very wide.

“No, we are not the indulgent side of staff,” Jago said ominously. “I am Assassins’ Guild on duty, young aiji, escorting the aiji of the heavens to his apartments in dignity fit for his office, young aiji. I react quickly to threat. Fortunately for you, young aiji, I react as quickly in restraint, a lesson which in future might prove more beneficial than archery. Do you know what your father would say if he saw this arrow at Bren-aiji’s feet?”

The future aiji exited the door, bow in hand, and stood contrite… as tall as a grown human; but far shorter than adult atevi. “Jago-ji, I put another lamina on the bow.”

“Evidently.” Jago strode to the point of impact, which bore a slight dent. Young muscles as solid as an adult human’s had put a fair draw on a bow that had grown thicker on this voyage—a bow with added strength, since the boy had tinkered with it. “You have damaged the ship.”

“It’s only a dent, Jago-ji.”

Oh, we are getting bold, Bren thought, wondering what his staff was going to do with this burgeoning personality, if they all lived so long. That sullen look was his father’s. Or—one dreaded to think—his grandfather’s.

“Dare you say so?” Jago was not daunted. And towered over the boy. “Dare you say so? Did you build this ship? Did you place those panels? Do you command those who can?”

Clearly the answer was no. Cajeiri didn’t command anything about the ship.

“So?” Jago said. “Do you fancy going to Sabin-aiji and asking someone to repair it?”

Set of the jaw. “I would go to Sabin-aiji.”

“That would hardly be as wise as an aiji needs to be,” Bani-chi said in his deep voice. “Do you know why?”

Clearly that answer was no, too. But the boy was not a complete fool, and lowered the level of aggression.

“I was seeing how hard it would hit,” Cajeiri said.

“And did not intend to dent the ship?”

“I beg pardon, nadiin.”

“Wrap the points,” Jago said shortly, “aiji-ma. Be wiser.”

“Yes, Jago-nadi.” The young wretch set the offending instrument of war butt-down on the deck, its heel in his instep, and unstrung it. He took the arrow from Jago. And bowed to authority, attempting charm. “Good morning, Bren-nandi. Is Jase-aiji coming down?”

“Little pitchers with big ears,” Bren translated the human proverb, which Cajeiri understood and thought funny. “I have had my meeting with Jase. It was very nice, thank you.”

“Grandmother wants you to come to breakfast,” Cajeiri said. “But the hour is past breakfast.”

One could imagine she wanted to hear from him.

“She has not yet invited me, nadi.”

“I told Narani. I brought the message.”

“Staff does these things quite efficiently on their own,” Banichi said dryly. “If you can shoot at lord Bren, you can manage beyond the children’s language, am I correct?”

“No,” Cajeiri said defensively. He was only seven. Consequently he spoke Ragi without the architecture of courtesies and rank and elaborate numerology of his seniors. He had liberties appropriate to his age—and was bored beyond bearing, being the only seven-year-old aboard. Ship’s crew had left their minor children, considering it was not a safe voyage.

But the aiji in Shejidan had sent his son on a voyage that should teach him more than bad behavior and dangerous familiarity.

“I shall see the aiji-dowager,” Bren said. “Go beg Narani-nadi to arrange some graceful hanging on this wall, to save the servants asking each other who could have damaged our residence.”

“Yes, Bren-aiji.”

“And regard security’s advice. Aijiin do not defend themselves with bows and arrows—”

“With guns, Bren-nadi!”

“Not even with guns, Cajeiri-nadi. Their staffs defend them. The very humblest servant who locks a bedroom window at night defends them. Not to mention the Assassins’ Guild, who do carry guns, and whose reactions are very quick, and not to be trifled with. Please live to grow up, young aiji. Your father and mother would be very disappointed otherwise. So even would your great-grandmother.”

Cajeiri’s eyes… they looked at one another eye to eye… grew very large.

“And by no means forget,” Bren said, ”that I am several times your age. So your father would remind you.”

“Yes, Bren-aiji.”

He liked the boy. And like was for salads. Love was for flavors of fruit drink. It wasn’t an emotion one could even translate for a species that operated by hierarchies and grouping and emotionally charged associations.

“You are within my man’chi,” was as close as he could come. “No matter you behave like this. But be careful. The ship is going to move soon. We’re going into a place of considerable danger.”

“Are we?” Eagerness. The boy was seven. “Is it the lost station?”

“It may be. Meanwhile—wrap the arrowheads. Don’t shoot my staff. And see me later. I’m sure we can find some new videos for the trip.”

“Some human ones!”

“Some human ones, too.” They had a store of them. A large store. In consideration where they were going and the risks they ran, they’d dumped a great deal of the human Archive from the ship, entrusting it to the planet and the station of their origin. But they’d kept a few useful bits. “Now apologize, and then off with you to tell Narani.”

“One is very sorry,” the scoundrel said, with all his father’s winning ways, and bowed to him and to Jago and Banichi. “One is doubly sorry, nadiin-ji. And begs to be excused.”

“Go,” Banichi said, and the boy escaped.

Galley staff had watched all this from the open door.

“One is equally sorry, nandi,” the cook said—the dowager’s men, all young, except the cook; and bet that Cenedi, the dowager’s chief of security, had had an immediate report about the dent that had sprung, likely without much warning, from the depths of their premises.

“One very well understands, nadi,” Bren said. Never turn aside an atevi apology: they came when due. “One is informed the dowager has sent for me?”

“You were expected at breakfast, nandi,” the cook said. “The aiji-dowager is now in her study.”

“I’d better go there immediately,” he said to his staff.

“One will inform Narani,” Jago said, and they turned back toward the dowager’s main doors, their own unvisited—well, except by a boy on a life-saving mission. The dowager was not long on patience.

Several doors back, in their relatively compact living arrangement, this linear, human-designed interlock accommodated what should be roughly circular routes, by atevi habit. Atevi ingenuity did manage: the dowager’s household accessed the bone-numbing cold of a service tunnel running behind the cabins’ back walls for brief, discreet trips past the dowager’s front door, where a guest entered.

He rapped softly—a shared custom—rather than use the signal button. The door opened. Cenedi had a small, highly electronic secretary desk in the curtained-off foyer. Cenedi was often at work there, and Cenedi was on the spot at the door, right behind the dowager’s major domo. Expecting them—no miracle, given their ubiquitous communications links.

“Welcome,” Cenedi said. “Welcome, nandi.”

“Indeed, thank you, Cenedi-ji.—I shall keep the coat, nadi.” This for a servant who silently offered to take it. The dowager’s favored temperatures were too cold for comfort—this, the woman who preferred a drafty mountain fortress with minimal plumbing to the luxury of temperate—and political—Shejidan.

He retained his coat, left Banichi and Jago to their ordinary social interface with the dowager’s security, and followed the servant’s polite lead to the service access, a bone-chilling walk three doors down, a duck of the head to get into the comparative heat of the dowager’s underheated study.

They could have gone back into the main corridor. The dowager did otherwise. The staff did otherwise. So her guests, once admitted to her premises, did otherwise.

The dowager occupied a chair in what was, given the carefully restrained objects on the shelves, an office-study cum library—in short, all those functions that in the dowager’s establishment were sanity-saving and civilized.

The dowager, knitted shawl about her, read. And looked up from her book.

Scowling. Darkly scowling.

“You coddle the boy.”

Where was her communications link? He had never spotted it.

“He’s bigger than I am,” Bren said, and it struck the dowager’s humor. She laughed, and laughed, and moved her cane to tap the other chair.

He sat. He didn’t begin a report. He waited about two breaths.

“So,” she said. “And how is Sabin-aiji?”

“Well,” he said.

“Have you broken your fast?”

“No, aiji-ma, but—”

“But. But. But. Will you have breakfast? Or tea?”

“I fear my stomach could by no means deal with a breakfast, aiji-ma, and I have had tea upstairs.”

“And your estimate?”

That was the formal invitation. “Aiji-ma, you know the ship-aijiin lied to the crew.”

Impatient wave of the hand. “Estimate of Sabin-aiji.”

“A difficult book to read, aiji-ma, a palimpsest of several regimes on this ship, and to this hour I cannot know precisely which layer has the truth. But she acts as if she expected Jase-aiji to find that tape. She is aware that it was falsified. And in my own opinion, that deception may have served us all. The crew would have been very difficult for the aijiin to manage over the last decade if they had known from the start that there were survivors back at the original station. They would most surely have diverted all energy toward refueling the ship precisely for this voyage, and subverted all construction toward that end. Neither Mospheirans nor atevi would have agreed with that as a priority, one is sure, and one is convinced Ramirez foresaw that. If there were no particular haste to return, the crew would take any order. Pratap Tamun’s attempt to take power—this is my own guess, aiji-ma—might indicate a certain suspicion within the certain levels of the crew. He may have used his suspicion to blackmail the other ship-aijiin into conceding to his demands—but he lacked proof. His kidnapping of Ramirez instead of killing him suggests he wanted something Ramirez could give. I used to wonder what. Now I strongly suspect it was an admission of information on this tape—or beyond it, from some meeting of Ramirez’s men with station authorities.”

“And this tape shows?”

“Corridors lacking power or air… in which the search team walks—walks, with the appearance of gravity, which, aiji-ma, cannot be created without stable rotation, and stable rotation of a damaged station is no accident. That is the sensitivity of this record, on a pinpoint. At a certain point they disappear into a working airlock and the tape ends. Which is also against regulations, Jase-aiji informs us. That record should not have terminated, but it does. They preserve the secrets of their negotations with their Guild.”

“Shall we be surprised at this?”

“No, aiji-ma. In retrospect, one thinks not. But that raises another question: did Ramirez act on his own! Jase suspects the timing in which he and Yolanda were created, decades before their usefulness in Shejidan. Jase suspects Ramirez had ambitions to create yet another colony, secret from the Guild. But Sabin suggests Ramirez meant to contact foreigners—spacefaring foreigners, and that his intrusion into sensitive foreign territory prompted the attack on Reunion.”

“Bypassing atevi? How were these persons preferable?”

Trust the dowager to see to the heart of a matter. “One believes, aiji-ma, that it was not so much fear of atevi as fear of detection, if he diverted the ship to a known and forbidden destination—the old colony; and fear that contacting humans once hostile to the Guild would be very difficult to manage. He had no idea of the technical advances atevi might have made. He wanted potent, spacefaring allies. And found potent, spacefaring enemies, as seems, from some place he visited.”

“And where is this place?”

“Out among the stars. Sabin-aiji strongly suggests Ramirez disturbed and alarmed a foreign world.”

“As Mospheirans dropped down on us, abusing our hospitality. Is once not enough?”

“One hardly thinks Ramirez’s intentions were to land. In this case, aiji-ma, the owners of the planet were out in space and armed. And resented his intrusion.”

“Bad habits will get one in trouble.”

“One concurs, aiji-ma. In this—very likely they did.”

“Why run such a risk, counting its previous failure?”

He had no clear answer, even for himself, on a human level. “Desire to throw off an oppressive authority, one might surmise. The Pilots’ Guild is that. Desire for alternatives. Atevi, to his knowledge, had only mastered the steam engine. He thought, mistakenly, that contact would be easy—it had been easy, with atevi, before the ship left. It lent him false confidence. In seeking allies, he found an enemy—or made one, by error. He never had a chance to engage Jase in the contact—Jase was, at the time, quite junior. He was unprepared, and fled. This may have been a grave mistake.”

“So. This fills in the shadows of the image, but only slightly. Ramirez was ambitious. Are we utterly surprised at his ambition?”

“We are not, aiji-ma. Not wholly. But he was desperate, perhaps, as desperate as ambitious—wholly dependent on the station for fuel. Everything he did found limits on fuel needs. I surmise they continually planned his missions and kept the ship on a tight rein precisely because they lacked confidence in the captains’ man’chi. A powerful ally would have utterly upset the balance and given the ship alternatives, resources, everything at a stroke. And patience is not a ship virtue. He looked elsewhere than Alpha, continually niggling away at something he could do undetected. A second contact, with those he might deal with in secret, changing the ship’s man’chi, establishing himself as aiji, making his power firm before challenging his Guild.”

“History has sharp teeth, Bren-paidhi. Both our species have found that true.” Ilisidi took a placid sip of tea. “So. So. One always wondered what lay within Ramirez’s energetic and open-handed approach to us.”

“Not only to you, as now seems, aiji-ma. But you were by then used to humans.”

“A truly reckless man. So we read him in his dealings. If the paidhi-aiji had not intervened—who knows what his contact with us would have been when he returned? A disaster. Clearly a disaster.”

“He had prepared Jase to deal with outsiders. This time, Jase and Yolanda having had intense preparation, he did engage their services—having more foresight than his ancestors, on a year-long voyage toward that meeting. I respect him for that act of foresight, aiji-ma, but, yes, he was reckless. Utterly. And naive in his approach to outsiders. He should have consulted them when his contact with outsiders went wrong—although possibly the incident proceeded too rapidly to brief newcorners to the situation. One has no idea.”

“He was reckless. He offended strangers. He brought ruin on his Guild. And what shall we do with this knowledge, Bren-paidhi?”

“Little else we can do, now, aiji-ma, but go to the station and hope to find what Ramirez left in no worse condition than it was.”

“And if there are worse conditions?”

“Jase-aiji tells me we have resources to pull off to a nearby refuge, one where Gin-aiji and her robots can work, though it would be chancy and slow. One suspects Sabin-aiji has had that contingency very much in mind. I confess I have increasing misgivings about the planning for this venture.”

“Which we have left in human hands.”

“I have requested more information on Ramirez’s past actions, aiji-ma. Jase is attempting to learn, and he takes our view. But Sabin forecasts a ship-move tomorrow. The last ship-move, so they think, before our destination. We are forced toward this event, precipitately so.”

“Inconvenience,” Ilisidi said with a grimace. “Uncomfortable, these transitions. One wearies of them. And far too much to hope that these remote station-folk at our destination dine better than we.”

“One greatly doubts it, aiji-ma.” His misgivings on Sabin’s misdirection of his request were heard. Not discussed. Not discussable, since there was nothing, in the dowager’s opinion, to be done, except to note the fact against Sabin. Therefore she changed the subject. “One doubts we will find much comfort there.”

“We equally doubt that Reunion has entertaining sights to see. We have extensively seen a station.”

Be brave, she was telling him. Steady on course. Be calm.

“I fear we could never promise the aiji-dowager grand entertainments there.”

“Ah, well.” The dowager adjusted her laprobe. “We have seen very curious things on our voyage, all the same. Whatever the outcome, we have learned the names of two hundred stars and seen one eat another—Grigi-ji will be envious.”

“That he will, aiji-ma.” The Astronomer Emeritus would have given his aged life to be on this voyage—but health and duties and the pleas of his students had, the dowager had said, dissuaded him.

“Do you suppose Sabin-aiji plots revenge on this household?”

Back to the Sabin matter. Back to questions of reliability of human authority in charge of this ship—a logical question, since she’d served Sabin poison at her dinner-party, letting Sabin choose it, to be sure: baji-naji. And in that chaotic revolution, she’d made sure that Sabin would not dictate to atevi where they spent the voyage, and not restrict atevi movements or communications on a ship on which her grandson might have designs of ownership—if atevi had one species-wide bad habit, it was that tendency to take for themselves anything they could lay hands on, if there was no preventative civilized agreement… and ship-humans had never quite established their willingness to defend their own ship.

Now the dowager asked, having been informed about Sa-bin’s ignoring his request for information—has Sabin a lingering intention of revenge?

And he had to say, with far too little information—“One doubts it would be related to that, aiji-ma. She seems to take the matter of the dinner as a known hazard in dealing with foreigners.”

“And her opinion of the situation?”

“By her history, she might decide to favor the Pilots’ Guild for certain reasons, in some attempt against Ogun’s authority, on our return to our world. But as regards the incident of the dinner—with this one particular woman, I believe a decision to act against atevi would be a policy decision, no personal vendetta. Humans find this woman difficult to predict. It is a trap to find some of her actions atevi-like and reasonable.”

It was wry humor. Ilisidi was wryly amused. But took the information behind those lively eyes and stored it.

“A grudge is not efficient,” Bren added. “And very few of Sabin’s acts carry inefficient ornament.”

“One finds it very tempting to think one understands this.”

“A trap, very certainly a trap. I remind myself daily not to view her as, say, a miniature Tatiseigi.”

That did amuse Ilisidi. The aiji’s wife’s uncle, Cajeiri’s former guardian, possibly Ilisidi’s lover, was a notorious stickler for tradition, often offended in this era of fast food and faster transport—and a notorious participant in various schemes.

“Ah,” Ilisidi said, “but Tatiseigi would have invited us all to dinner.”

True. And made them sweat every minute of it, likely doing nothing at all.

He was amused in turn,

“And do you think she may yet invite us?” Ilisidi asked.

“Her customs are by no means atevi, aiji-ma. But this is how I read her. Ramirez deceived the crew in his pursuing alien contact. He kept that secret from his Guild. And from the moment he saw the station in ruins, he knew he had to persuade his crew to leave the ruined station behind, or embroil himself in the rebuilding and defense of the station, which would, I believe, have been a mistake—binding the ship to a hazardous location, and not using the assets he had—notably Jase and Yolanda. He lied quickly and efficiently. One suspects he grieved not at all for the Guild—but he had to refuel, and he lied to Guild authority, telling them that he was going to our world to find out if there were useful resources there. Perhaps he even offered them the chance to board, and they refused. One suspects so. And failing the Guild’s delivering themselves to his authority, he maintained his deception of his own crew and left, with or without his Guild’s permission. And of course once he reached our world, it became necessary to deal with atevi instead, and to take nearly ten years making Alpha Station viable. Then…” On this point he was far from certain. “Then he did something curious, given all the rest. He refueled this ship, as his health failed, and in dying, told Jase the truth about survivors at Reunion. He also managed to talk where someone could overhear: whether that was intentional or not, it certainly put the heat under the pot, as the proverb runs.” All of this latter history Ilisidi knew as well as he, but he was aiming the arrow of logic at a particular point and the dowager listened with remarkable patience. “So the crew, once they heard, demanded to go back, and of course, the ship being fueled, the surviving captains found it expedient to concede to this voyage—Sabin protested being the captain in charge, but Ogun-aiji ordered her to go—logical, since he communicates far more easily with the planet, and Sabin-aiji is far more skilled with the ship. Sabin-aiji undertakes this mission under protest… she finds herself poisoned before the ship leaves dock, and accedes to the arrangement that atevi will go where they like—as human crew can’t, on this ship. Understand, aiji-ma, that very, very many who work aboard have never set foot in the control center—persons whose jobs run ordinary operations, maintenance, cooking, cleaning—lately, opening and provisioning the three decks of the ship that can take the population of the space station and feed and house it, as if we shall indeed find survivors—which Sabin now avows she very much doubts. Yet all this work proceeds.”

“Keeping the populace quiet.”

“Indeed, aiji-ma. A very few at top who know everything, and a great many common folk who have to trust their aijiin to make good decisions… and who may waver in their man’chi if previous lies become evident. Therein the ship’s authority has operated in some fear of discovery. And Jase has uncovered one lie. One suspects there are others.”

“Insurrection?”

“The crew’s patience is fragile. Their expectations come closer and closer to the moment of truth. Jase now knows the image they were shown belowdecks was completely, deliberately falsified. If they see the same sight as we come in, they will know they were deceived. And that will lead them to question Ramirez, whom they hold as their great aiji. If that reputation cracks—indeed there will be a crisis of man’chi—partly grounded in the fact that Sabin already distrusts the crew. She affects to choose her isolation from those of her man’chi—not as mad as it sounds, for a human, aiji-ma, even a sign of strength—but a fragile strength, once the crew becomes disaffected and rebellious. And that could happen: the old Guild is very generally blamed even by the crew for past bad decisions, and crew has abandoned that Guild, blaming it for whatever dangerous situation exists. In their view, innocent persons could have been rescued from the station immediately if the Guild hadn’t ordered Ramirez to the contrary.”

“This, you say, is the popular rumor. Is it, however, true?”

“We have no idea. We suspect even Sabin lacks information—she avows that Ramirez created Jase and Yolanda to deal with aliens he hoped would give him a means to defy the Guild. One listened to Sabin say so—and remembers at the same time that Sabin herself may have stronger man’chi toward the Guild than any of the other captains, living or dead. Jase, on the other hand, lacking other information, believed he and Yolanda were created to deal with the Mospheiran colony. But the plain truth is, we have no knowledge what Ramirez promised the Guild before he left for our world. He may have lied to everyone, top to bottom.”

“Ah, what a lovely nest of contrary intent.”

“Ship’s records might clarify this. Jase persists in trying to obtain them—but the ship-move will give us no time to deal with anything we learn at our best advantage, even if he can get the records from Sabin. And they may not be relevant when we get there. This ship has been away from Reunion for a decade. Anything could have happened there.”

“Certain things have happened on this ship, have they not? We will not, as a start, recognize the authority of this Guild to be above our own.”

Could one ever doubt the dowager’s resolve? And that was the order of the universe he served—the point at which he and Jase might diverge, the point at which he had to be what he was—and Jase had to; and that was the way things would be.

“I know Gin-aiji will very strongly join you, aiji-ma. The Guild comes to us begging resources, after having mismanaged human affairs for several hundred years, and Mospheira has relations with the ship-aijiin, but not with the Guild at Reunion. Have no doubt that the Presidenta of Mospheira will stand behind you. Conceivably the crew of this ship might stand behind you, in any falling-out with their aijiin—though I would never predict that.”

“Have you explained this state of affairs to Gin-aiji? Or to Jase?”

“I came straight to you, aiji-ma.”

“Flatterer.”

“Prudence, aiji-ma. Among humans, keeping one’s subordinates in the dark is sometimes a matter of common sense and security—as long as one fails to mention it openly, Gin will take it for secret.“

“A very tangled skein.”

“For Gin’s pride, if nothing else. She knows Sabin holds her in complete disregard. It’s a sore point with her, but fails to provoke her.”

“Sabin does not highly regard Mospheirans in general,” the dowager observed.

“Sabin still views Mospheirans as rebels from ship authority, aiji-ma. She respects Tabini-aiji and she respects you, aiji-ma. If she wanted something from the planet, I’m sure she’d go straight to the aiji and negotiate without even thinking that the Presidenta of Mospheira—or Gin—might be able and willing to give her what she needed. Sabin doesn’t want them here—far more than she suspects atevi intentions, she suspects Mospheirans. Ramirez’s reasons for avoiding Alpha and courting outsiders were not only his.”

“Curious,” Ilsidi said. “Very curious thinking.”

“Our ancestors were extremely hostile to their Guild.”

“One sees a certain grounds for suspecting a hidden man’chi, paidhi-ji.”

“Old feuds die harder than old loyalties, aiji-ma. Even Sabin might not realize how strong the old opinions are in her. And one worries, too, about attitudes among the population we mean to rescue. Who knows what the Guild told them—or what the truth is? They may have been told Ramirez refused to pick them up. I find it entirely possible he did refuse, in favor of first establishing his own authority at Alpha—which even Jase may not suspect. Mospheirans would not take that behavior well, if that were the case. Let alone the crew’s opinion.”

“Madness.”

“Certainly a tangled mess, aiji-ma. I advise only keeping the lid on that pot.”

“Never examine a stew too closely. It offends the cook. Consult your clever islanders. If Gin-aiji says anything useful, advise us.”

He gave a wry smile. “I shall, nand’ dowager.” Half-frozen in the temperature the dowager favored, he took it for leave to go.

“Don’t coddle that boy,” she snapped.

“Yes, aiji-ma.” He reached the door, slipped out. Servants, waiting all this time, breaths frosting in the chill, conducted him back through the labyrinth to the foyer.

Banichi and Jago had passed the brief interval at tea with Cenedi—doubtless the eccentricities of the ship-aijiin had been the topic of the hour. And likely the dent in the hall had been a small issue. Last week it had been a spring-gun, and a sailing-plane launched from a slingshot prior to that.

“I need to speak with Gin, nadiin-ji,” he told them, once they stood in the warmth of the main corridor. I’ll call her, he’d almost said, meaning the intercom. He’d been an hour upstairs and that unacceptable notion just leapt out. He thought instead about going to her office, but that venue was not as secure, and if he was going to violate Sabin’s clearly expressed wishes for secrecy, he wanted not to risk spreading the news to Gin’s team. “Suggest to her staff she would be welcome in a social call.”

“Asicho hears,” Jago said.

“One will advise Narani,” Banichi added.

Done, then. His arrangements moved with many more parts, but well-oiled, efficient. A dinner event of adequate size and service would happen if Ginny Kroger’s staff and his managed to communicate. He could imagine it. Yo! Gin! It’s the atevi, gracelessly shouted to Gin’s office, would get a cheerful Mospheiran answer: Sure I’ll come. What time?

Mospheirans viewed themselves as fussily formal.

They walked back to his apartment, where he shed the coat in favor of a dressing-robe. He was able to sit down and take notes, while invitations to Gin percolated through the vents, and while Banichi and Jago consulted Asicho in the security station, catching up on any untoward bit of business that might have gone on—the dent seemed the notable item on five-deck. He made a file, meanwhile, out of the upstairs conference, neatly indexed for points of particular interest, robotically translated, down to the point where the mindless machine couldn’t tell the difference between like words and where his staff couldn’t be expected to figure the meaning.

Noon passed. He skipped lunch. Jago brought him the transcript of the verbal exchanges upstairs, and he traded them Jase’s tape.

“There’s not too much to translate here,” he said, “but index it carefully, nadi-ji.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and added, just as the door opened. “One believes that will be Gin-nadi and one of her staff.”

“Excellent,” he said. They hadn’t disturbed him with the report, but the mission was accomplished. And as Narani showed Ginny into his makeshift study, Jago deftly picked off the aide and requested him, in passable Mosphei’, to come for a separate, far less informative briefing.

“It’s all right,” Ginny assured her aide, who had to be used by now to the concept that when lords talked, aides made themselves invisible.

“Tea, Rani-ji,” Bren requested. “Do sit, Gin. I take it you’ve heard a bit from my staff.”

“At least the topic and the source.” Ginny settled—sixtyish, no different than he’d first met her: thin, gray, with an inbuilt frown that hadn’t been an instantly endearing feature when they’d first met. Nor had the habit of challenging him. He’d come to treasure that bluntness, and her. “I take it the senior captain isn’t supposed to know we’re talking.”

“She knows she won’t prevent us talking. But it is sensitive.”

“Our problem or hers?”

“Both. I think in this we ought to accommodate her. If this does get out at the wrong moment, it could cause problems.” Narani provided the tea, aromatic, safe for humans, tinged with fruit and spice. “Thank you, Rani-ji. We’ll manage.”

“Nandi.” Narani politely withdrew—not the microphones that assured everything would be available for reference, but withdrew, at least, his visible presence. Ginny assuredly knew they were bugged, and came here without objection: it was just procedure, and she came.

And came, not infrequently, for the company the stuffy Mospheiran notion of hierarchy didn’t give her within her small technical staff. Back on Mospheira, or in Shejidan, one held short, sharp meetings. Onboard ship, with far less diversion—meetings lasted, especially in the atevi section. Lasted through the afternoon, if need be. With tea and refreshments.

“So?” Ginny asked him, and he told her in great detail.

“Lied to the crew, too,” Ginny said with a shake of her head.

“Lied to the Guild, lied to Jase—lied to everybody. Not surprising.”

“On Ramirez’s side, there was some reason. It was a useful lie. And one Ramirez could have predicted would give him maximum maneuvering room with us. But still—”

“But still. But still. But still.” Ginny, the guest, lifted her cup for a refill. They’d gone through one pot and were on their second. “You know, you always wonder what things would be like if there weren’t these diversions into deception. Unvarnished truth never seems the ship’s first recourse. The expectation that the crew would be rational. The expectation one’s allies might just realize that ship command hasn’t told the whole truth on any major point in the last three hundred years… I mean, don’t they figure we’d figure, sooner or later? That crew would?”

Bren poured the bottom of the pot for himself. “I think they figure we’ll figure they’ll be lying and they’d only confuse everyone if they told the truth.”

“Point,” Ginny agreed. “But from the absolute start. From the very start of them going in, Ramirez, faking that image. Damn him. Chasing aliens, for God’s sake. And he’s the good guy.”

“We assume he was on the side of the angels. Jase assumes he was. These days, Jase isn’t any more sure of that than we are.”

“Hell on Jase, stuck up there with Sabin-bitch for company. You think he can get those other records?”

“We’re moving ship tomorrow. He’s sticking close to Sabin. He says he’ll try.” Jase didn’t know a thing about ops, or rather, knew as much as he’d been able to pick up by hearing, but he’d never so much as been on the bridge for a look around before being named captain by the aforesaid Ramirez. “I won one thing. I’ve asked—insisted—both the paidhiin should be on the bridge at arrival in system.”

“And Sabin said?”

“Oh, she’s not totally in favor. But she agreed.”

“Good God.”

“Sabin is not optimistic about this mission.”

Ginny sipped the dregs of her tea. “I insist on optimism at this point. I’m ready for the alternative—at least the one that gets us out of there fast. But I hope there’s fuel waiting for us and my robots and my staff don’t have a thing to do but connect the lines and suck up the good news and load survivors. At a certain point I don’t care what Jase’s ancestors did. I want to get home. I want to win this.“

A lengthy mining operation out in a stellar wilderness was one alternative. There were far worse ones to contemplate.

Like running straight out into alien guns.

“Let’s hope,” he said. “Let’s hope for a fast, simple homecoming at the other end.”

“It’s springtime back home,” she said meditatively, Mos-pheiran-like pouring herself another cup. “Did you know? Tourists on the north shore. Nice little bar in Port Winston. Orangelles. That’s what I imagine. Orangelles, orangettes, li-monas and chi’tapas. You can smell them in the air.”

Fruit flavors. Flowers. Orchards in bloom.

“I’ll settle for salt air and the waves,” he said, since they were indulging fancy. Best air on earth. Best sound in the world. In his memory, he discovered, it was less Mospheira’s north shore and more the sound of his own cliff-shadowed beach, a strip of white sand under the balcony wall, a little floating pier, lord Geigi’s huge boat tied up there.

And the faces. And the voices. Bren-ji, they’d call him. And they’d all understand when he wanted to go barefoot at low tide.

But they were there. He was here. Lord Geigi was running the station they’d come from, trying to keep relations between atevi, Mospheira, and the ship’s technical mission functioning smoothly. A vacation at his own seaside estate was a pipe dream.

“I’ll take a sunset on the beach,” Ginny said cheerfully. “Mind, no tourist shops. I erase those.”

“Oh, we’re editing.”

“Privilege of being out here in hell’s armpit. There’ll be this nice little bar, white fence, blooming vine—chi’tapas petals on a sea breeze, while I’m at it, so sickening-sweet you could just choke. Sunset, just one of those orange ones.”

“Touch of pink,” he said.

“Clouds and sails. Lights of the boats on the water, right at twilight.”

“I’ll go with that.” He liked that image. It wasn’t really maudlin. Ginny wasn’t a maudlin sort. She edited that out, right along with the tourist shops and their shell boats and paper flowers. In favor of chi’tapas. “I’ll give you one. Big stone fortress on a stony hill. Huge wall and a gate. The ground’s so steep grass won’t grow in a solid mass, just sort of little shelves of grass and bare ground between. Thorny brush. And it’s one of those gold sunsets above the hill. There’s light in the windows, and there’s supper waiting, and you’re riding in on mecheita-back.”

“You’re riding in,” Ginny said with a laugh. “I’m walking on two feet.”

“Most dangerous place to be.” Mechieti had fighting-tusks, short ones, and didn’t mind stepping on a pedestrian or knocking him flat, at very least. When the herd went, the individuals went, the dreadful fact of an atevi cavalry charge—unstoppable as an avalanche; forget steering. “But there’s roast something or another for supper—”

“Oh, stop. I’m going to die. Roast, with gravy.”

“Brown gravy.”

“Hot bread. Fruit preserves and real butter.”

“Egg pudding. With chi’tapas.”

Sigh.

“We’ll get back,” Ginny promised him doggedly. “We’ll get back. I can’t deliver you roast and gravy in a castle, but I’ll buy you dinner at Arpeggio.”

“Date.”

“Jago’s not possessive?” Slow wink from a woman as apt as Ilisidi to be his grandmother.

“Totally practical. Well, mostly.” It was good to exchange human-scale jibes and threats. He’d come very much to appreciate this woman’s steady, slow-fuse humor in recent years. “All this talk of food. God. Want to drop in for dinner?” He’d halfway thought Ilisidi might propose a supper on this eve of change. But she hadn’t. Staff hadn’t contacted staff, which was how lords avoided awkward situations. “Can’t promise roast and gravy either.”

“Deal. Absolutely. Your cook—your food stores—I don’t know what you do to it, but it sure beats reconstituted egg souffles and catsup.”

“Don’t say catsup near Bindanda’s egg dishes. He’ll file Intent.”

“Anything for an invitation. Can Banichi and Jago be there? I’ll practice my Ragi.”

“Delighted. You might have ’Sidi-ji as a fellow guest; and we might end up there, instead, but I swear you’ll get dinner. Trust me.”

“Either will be glorious. Believe me.”

A dinner.

It posed a pleasant end to a day that overlooked a sheer drop. He hated the ship moving. He hated that whole phase of their travel.

He hated worse the anticipation this time. He needed company, he found. He pitied Jase. He wished he could find the means to get him back—if only for an hour.

But hereafter Jase belonged to the ship. Had to. That was the way things had worked out… at least for the duration.

Chapter Four

« ^ »

In the end it was his cook in collaboration with the dowager’s, and a table set in mid-corridor—anathema to ship safety officers—and both staffs and the lords of heaven and earth at table. Pizza seemed the appropriate offering, a succession of pizzas, with salad from the ship’s own store, and atevi lowland pickles, and the dowager and her staff delighting in salty highland cheese on toast. The aiji’s heir adored pizza, and was on very best behavior. A new hanging adorned the hall, which had had all its numerology adjusted for the occasion. Cajeiri’s reputation was safe.

There was adult talk, translated, and a fair offering of liquors, and a warm glow to end a rare evening.

“An excellent company,” Ilisidi pronounced it.

“One applauds the cooks,” Cajeiri piped up—an applause usually rendered at the main course, but it was still polite and very good behavior, and entirely due.

Bren offered his parting toast. “One thanks the staffs that lighten this voyage—for their cleverness, their hard work, their unfailing invention and good will.”

“Indeed,” Ilisidi seconded his offering.

“I also thank all persons,” Ginny said—in Ragi, a brave venture, “and one offers sincere respects to the lords of the Association and to the aiji’s grandmother and to the aiji-apparent.”

That called for reciprocal appreciations, before they went to their separate sections and their several apartments.

Over all, Bren said to himself, it was like the voyage itself—an astonishing event, a mix of people on best behavior and divorced from those things of the world that usually meant diplomats working overtime to take care of the agitated small interests. An event that would take a month to set up—they managed impromptu. They had very little to divide them, at least on this deck.

Pizza, that food of sociality and good humor, had been the very thing.

A social triumph.

The dowager had genteely remarked on the change in the hangings, without remarking on the dent. Cajeiri had surely realized she knew, or he was not her great-grandchild.

Ginny had gotten her company of engineers through an evening mostly in Ragi, without a single social disaster and even with a triumph of linguistic achievement at the end. She’d likely polished that speech for hours.

And, as Cajeiri had very aptly pointed out, the joint efforts of the two staffs had turned out a success. In a long and difficult service aboard, there had to be some moments to cheer, and this was one.

We should have done this before, he thought, and wished Jase had been able to come down. That would have made the evening perfect.

But Jase had had—one hoped—a night’s sleep by now, if Jase dared sleep. It was near the end of Sabin’s watch.

One day, one very long day, at the end of which, guests all departed to their separate venues, Bren could sit in his dressing-gown and review his notes, by a wall on which two potted plants had run riot. Gifts from home, those were. They’d seemed to grow with more vigor during ship-moves. Humans didn’t like the state they entered, but the plants thrived, given water and food and light enough.

He read until he found his eyes fuzzing, then took to bed. Jago came to bed shortly after and they made love… well… at least that was what Mospheirans called it.

Atevi didn’t. Jago didn’t. He didn’t care and she didn’t. There was no safer companion, no one who’d defend him with more zeal, no bedfellow as comfortable in a long and difficult night. She came to distract him and herself, and it worked. He did sleep.

And waked, and finding Jago asleep, he slept again, thinking muzzily of station corridors and of the petal sails of his ancestors, dropping down and down through the clouds of a scantly known world, onto atevi struggling to master the steam locomotive.

God, who’d have thought, then, where they’d all be, now?

“Stand by,” a voice said at oh-god in the morning. “Ship-move in one hour.”

Now? They weren’t waiting until watch-end? It was Jase’s watch. The ship didn’t move on Jase’s watch. But the robot maintained night lighting. It had to be.

Sabin was likely awake to supervise. And it was Jase’s techs and officers that needed, one surmised, to exercise their skills in—for the first time this year-long voyage.

“Shall we be on duty, Bren-ji?” Jago asked out of the pitch darkness.

“One hardly knows what we could do,” he said, and then did figure what they could do with an hour to wait, because they couldn’t go out into the corridors, rousing staff to risk their necks.

At the end of that hour the count went to audible numbers, and he and Jago counted, and tried to time themselves to the ship’s curious goings-on.

It felt strange when the ship did go. It made a giddy feeling, and after that life went on, just a shade light-headedly.

“It’s very strange,” Jago murmured.

“Well, if anyone asks, we can say we did it.” Bren burrowed his head into her shoulder, and tangled unbraided hair, gold and black. He had the illusion of the verge of downhill skiing. It was like that.

Top of the hill. Big long slope below. Biting cold. Right now he was warm, but if he got out of bed and moved about, he’d be cold—everyone was, continually, when space was folded and the ship was where things from the workaday universe didn’t like to be.

Space did fold. That was what Jase said. He didn’t understand it, but atevi mathematicians were intrigued.

Long, long slope.

Downhill on the mountain. A streamer of white and a whisper of snow under skis.

Toby would be on his heels.

Except he and his brother Toby had left the mountain a long, long time ago.

A world ago. Their mother had been in hospital when he’d left the world, uncertain whether she’d live. The aiji had called him to duty and he’d gone, leaving Toby to deal with the world… as Toby did and had done, all too often. As Toby’s wife and kids did and had done, but it grew harder and harder. Another kind of steep, steep slope, and he couldn’t help Toby or his mother, and he couldn’t patch things, and he couldn’t turn back time.

He was lost, and confused for a while, and seemed to dream. The world became a veil of spider-plant tendrils, branching to more and more little worlds, and he wasn’t sure which one he wanted. But one of them Jago was in, and that was where he went.

He moved, and she moved. “It’s very strange,” she said. And it was.

It was, however, possible to go about a sort of a routine while the ship needled its way through folded space. Bindanda managed to create a basic but very fine breakfast, and it was possible to get a little work done, at least of the routine and non-creative sort, translating files—approving what the computer did—that being about the height of intellectual activity he trusted himself to manage.

That was the first day. Jase had indeed been captain of record during that transition. Sabin, it turned out, had gone to her cabin and wished him and his crew luck.

Maybe it was a sea change in relations—a statement to the crew at large that she trusted him that far, since below-decks was sure to have learned that Jase had been in charge. Or maybe it was a subtle strike at Jase’s confidence, meant to scare him. One thing remained certain: the navigators, the pilot, and the technical crew ran matters. The trade-off of authority and the alternate crew hadn’t risked the ship.

Presumably, at the same time, Jase attempted to persuade the senior captain to trust outsiders with the log files. It remained to be seen whether that would ever happen.

The staff watched television.

The dowager stayed withdrawn in her cabin, her standard practice throughout these voyages through the deep dark: no invitation would tempt her. No one was at his best, and the dowager had no interest.

The heir, however, took to racing wheeled cars, which Ca-jeiri had seen in videos out of the human Archive, and which he had made for himself out of pieces of pipe, tape, pieces of wire, various washers and gaskets, and beans for ballast. One early model exploded on impact with the base of the section door and sent Cajeiri and the servant staff searching the hall for errant beans—not so much for fear of the footing as the certainty that any ship’s maneuver would turn them all into missiles.

Over the next number of days Bren produced the briefing tape. No one on the ship was at his sharpest, but Bren judged his wits adequate at least for a summation of the situation, and he reviewed for the entire security staff, in careful detail and with numerous questions from Cenedi, exactly what he knew: the surmises of various authorities, the history of the Guild, the physical details of the station’s structure and, not strange to his own staff, the station’s necessary and critical operations, especially as regarded the fuel port, the mast accesses, and the damage the ship had previously observed.

Then the staffs—his, the dowager’s men, and Gin’s—put their heads together. In a meeting of their own lethal Guild, they listened to the briefing tapes, then considered the structural charts, reviewing approach, docking, and the refueling protocols. No one would deceive them. No one would confuse them by telling them lies. And no emergency would overtake them unanticipated.

Bren wished he could say the same for himself.

“Any luck on the records?” he asked Jase, in a social call.

“She says she has it on her list,” Jase said.

So, well, damn, but not surprising. That could go on for days. And doubtless Sabin intended it to take an adequate number of days.

He helped staff where he could. Security came back to him ready to discuss their situation and their potential situation for muzzy days and evenings of careful reconsideration. He informed himself on finer technicalities about ship-fueling that he had never intended to know, but a translator necessarily learned, and relayed that information. He fell asleep of nights with Jago, their pillow-talk generally dealing with the same worrisome contingencies and potential operations as occupied their days.

And he slept and waked and slept and waked, day upon quasi-day, with diminishing conviction about the accuracy of time-cycles in their automatic world.

No luck, Jase still informed him, regarding Sabin and further records. She still says she’s thinking about it.

Watching them, Bren began to think. Watching their reactions. Maybe waiting for Jase to make a move… but maybe, at last, questioning her own universe of rights and wrongs and consulting her human conscience. He assumed Sabin had one. But hope for it daily diminished.

He visited Ginny for one lunch of quasi-egg sandwiches on something that passed for bread, and arranged to bring an atevi-style dinner to their section.

Then the notion took them of holding a truly formal folded-space supper in the Mospheiran corridors—Cajeiri wanted to come, and gained permission from the dowager. He even demonstrated his best car for Ginny’s engineers and mechanics.

Immediately there were notions for improvement and a proposal of bets. An electric motor. Remote steering.

“No,” Ginny chided her engineers, but one suspected no would by no means suffice.

Well, Bren wrote to Toby, in a letter that couldn’t possibly be transmitted until they were within reach of docking at their home station, at mission end. Well, brother, the advisement from above claims they have seen some sign the ship is nearing exit, whatever they know up there.

If you’re reading this, it worked. And it’s about the um-teenth day, and I’m tired of this muzziness.

Tired and a lot scared at this point. I can’t string two thoughts together. I tape them in place, laboriously, or they slide off and get confused.

I think about you a lot. I hope everything’s going well for you. I think about you and Jill and the kids, with all kinds of regrets for chances not taken; and of course there aren’t any answers, but I can’t survive out here thinking about things that could go wrong back home. I have to hope that you’re out on that boat of yours enjoying the sunshine. And that those kids of yours are getting along. And that Jill’s all right.

He didn’t write a great deal about Jill and the kids, not knowing what sort of sore spot that might be by the time he returned. He’d left Toby in a mess, their mother in hospital, Toby’s wife Jill having walked out in despair of Toby’s ever living his own life, the kids increasingly upset and acting out, in the way of distressed and confused young folk. He wasn’t utterly to blame for Toby’s situation—but he regretted it. He wished he’d seen it coming earlier. He wished, with all his diplomacy, he’d found a way years ago to talk Toby out of responding to every alarm their mother raised—or that he could have talked their mother, far less likely, out of her campaign to get him out of his job and Toby back from the end of the island he’d moved to.

Their mother was one of those women who defined herself by her children. And who consequently cannibalized their growing lives until, ultimately, the campaign drove the family apart.

He patched nations together. He made warlike lords of another species form sensible associations and refrain from assassinating each other. And he hadn’t been able to impose a sense of reality on his own mother. That failure grieved him, his grief made him angry, and his anger made him feel very guilty when he thought of how he’d left the world, without that last visit that might have paid for so much—that would have turned out so opportune in his mother’s life.

No, dammit. There was no final gesture with someone who was only interested in the next maneuver, the ultimate stra-tegem, the plan that would, against all logic, work, and get her sons home—no matter what her sons wanted or needed. If he’d gotten there, she’d have taken it for vindication.

Toby, unfortunately, was still in the middle of it all. Toby had still been trying to figure it all out. And even if their mother had passed—as she might have—Toby would still be struggling to figure out all out.

Well, what are we up to! he wrote to Toby. A lot of things that I’ll tell you when I get there, because I can’t write them down, the usual reasons. And today I tell you I’d really like that fishing trip. Jase would be absolutely delighted with an invitation from you. He’s done so much. He’s existing in a position he doesn’t think he’s able to hold. He even supervised this last ship-move. He does a thousand things Sabin would have to do if he wasn’t here. I think he’s why she’s sane.

But besides that, there remain some few questions we’d like Sabin to dig out of files, questions we’ve asked. I wonder sometimes if maybe she’s putting more operations on Jase’s back because she really is doing something—or thinking about those answers. Maybe she’s found something she didn’t expect in those records and she’s considering her options. I hope. I don’t know.

Remind me to tell you about exploding cars when I get back. For the future aiji’s reputation I don’t want that one in print either.

When we last folded space I thought about Mt. Adams and the slope that winter—remember the race! Remember when I went off the ledge and through the thicket and lost my new cap and goggles!

I remember hot tea and honey in the cabin that night and us making castles out of the embers in the fireplace. And I’d turned my ankle going off the cliff and it swelled up but I wasn’t telling Mum and I went on the slope the next day, too.

We tried to teach mum to ski, remember, but she said if she wanted to fall down on ice there was a patch in front of the cabin that didn’t involve long cold hikes.

It was an exact quote, and one she’d stuck to. But she’d brought them to the cabin—well, brought them up to the snow lodge ever since the time he’d lost himself in the woods and scared everyone, so she’d changed vacation spots. And she hadn’t liked the ski slopes, either, and had been sure he was going to fall into some ravine and die of a broken leg. Their mother was full of contradictions.

He was sure there was an essential key in that set of facts somewhere, a means to understand her, and consequently to understand himself and Toby, if he knew how to lay hands on it. But no thought during ship-transit was entirely reliable.

was thinking about you and the boat today. You know, in his office up on the bridge, Jase has just one personal item—that photo of him and the fish. Clearly he thinks about getting through this alive and getting that chance to come down—

maybe for good, he says, though between you and me, I think he’d get to missing life on the ship, too. He has a place here. And there. I know he remembers you and the boat.

I have learned a few things in the last few days. I’ll have to tell you when I get there. But then this letter and I will get there pretty much together, so you’ll at least have a chance to ask me first hand.

Here’s hoping, at least.

He had another running letter, this one to Tabini; and to that one, too, he appended a note:

Aiji-ma, we have moved the ship on toward the station. Your grandmother has taken to her cabin as is her habit during these uncomfortable transitions. Your son is taking advantage of the opportunity to undertake new experiments, not all of which have predictable outcomes, but he is learning and growing in discretion. We fill our hours with plans and projections and take a certain pleasure in his inventions and discoveries.

Dared one think Tabini would understand? This was the boy who’d ridden a mechieta across wet cement.

One believes you will approve, aiji-ma.

Concerning Sabin, about the missing files, he withheld statement. If the letter ever got to Tabini, all their problems would have been solved—one way and another. He damaged no reputations, created no suspicions that might later have to be dealt with.

He held misgivings at arms’ length. Viewed suspicion with suspicion, in the curiously muzzy way of this place. He waited.

Besides his letter writing, he took daily walks, around and around the section. He worked out in their makeshift gymnasium. At times the suspension of result and the lack of outcome in their long voyage simply passed endurance, and he pulled squats and sit-ups until he collapsed in a sweating, sweatshirted heap.

He had nothing like Jago’s strength, let alone Banichi’s, but he’d certainly worked off all the rich desserts and sedentary evenings of the last ten years during this voyage. He no longer rated himself sharp enough to downhill Mt. Adams, but he figured if he fell in the attempt, he’d at least bounce several times before he broke something.

And, like the transcript-translation and the two letters which had now become individual volumes, exercise filled the hours, mindless and cathartic. Unlike the transcript and the letter-writing, it didn’t force him to think of dire possibilities or to fret about records on which he could spend useful time, if he could only get them.

He resurrected old card games out of the Archive and translated those for his staff, with cards made of document folders. Whist became a favorite.

Cajeiri, deserted to his own young devices, built paper planes and flew them in the long main corridor, where they took unpredictible courses. Cajeiri said the strangeness of the journey made them fly in unpredictible ways. It seemed a fair experiment and a curious notion, so Bren made a few of his own, and greatly amused the dowager’s staff.

Their designs were dubious in the flow of air from the vents. The properties of airplanes in hyperspace remained an elusive question. They were at least soft-landing, and the walls were safe.

And there was the human Archive for entertainment, such of it as they still carried aboard. The servant staff assembled with simple refreshments and held group viewings in the servants’ domain, occasionally of solemn atevi machimi, but often enough of old movies from the human Archive. Horses had long since become a sensation, in whatever era. Elephants and tigers were particularly popular, and evoked wonder. The Jungle Book re-ran multiple times on its premiere evening. “Play it again,” the staff requested Bindanda, who ran the machine, and on subsequent evenings, if the other selections seemed less favorable, they ran and reran the favorite.

On a particular evening of the watch, Bren passed the dining hall to hear loud cheers go up. He wondered whether there was a new sensation to surpass even The Jungle Book.

He looked in. The assembled audience was, indeed, not just the servant staff. Banichi and Jago attended. He saw Cenedi and the dowager’s staff, and Cajeiri, his young face transfigured by the silver light of the screen—of course, Cajeiri had inveigled his way in.

A black and white, the offering was—odd, in itself. Color was usually the preference. As he stood in the doorway, a scaled monster stepped on the ruin of a building. Humans darted this way and that in patterns that atevi would search in vain for signs of association.

Men in antique uniforms fired large guns at the beast, which slogged on, to atevi cheers and laughter.

Hamlet, atevi had appreciated and applauded, when he’d brought a modern tape to the mainland… appreciated it, but felt cheated by ambiguities in the ending. They’d been puzzled by Romeo and Juliet, but were both horrified and gratified by Oedipus, which they conceded had a fine ending, once he explained it.

Now…

A building went flat.

The great Archive. The unseen dramas, manifestation of the collected human wisdom, the possibility of every digital blip the storage had carried on its way to build an outpost of human civilization. And this fuzzy black and white delighted the audience.

Laughter. A light young voice among the rest, the future aiji.

He couldn’t begin to explain this story. He considered going in, tucking himself in among the rest, trying to figure the nature of the tape—but he’d likely disturb the staff, who were obviously understanding the story quite well without him—or at least finding amusement in it. He drifted on to his own quarters and ran through the Archive indices for himself, looking for entertainment, for diversion, for edification—and finding absolutely nothing in the entire body of work of the human species that appealed to him this evening.

Which somehow told him it wasn’t really a tape he wanted.

What he wanted was to be absorbed and equal in the company out there, watching a mythical beast flatten buildings.

What he most wanted was to sit surrounded by congeniality and supplied with something munchable and something potable, having a good time—but the staff, even including Banichi and Jago, could only do that when they thought they had a moment off, and if he showed up, it could only make them ask themselves who was minding the things that had to be minded.

And they would get up and go see if there was anything he needed.

He was feeling human this evening. He was feeling human, strange, and somewhat melancholy.

So let them relax, he said to himself. Staff worked hard enough to assure his relaxation: let them have their own enjoyment without his crises of identity and visions of an uncertain outcome.

And if Cenedi included the aiji’s heir in the security staff’s dubious amusements, Cenedi judged it was probably good for the boy. He himself sat at his desk solo, and played computer solitaire, in complete confidence that if he should ask, tea would arrive. But he chose, again, not to disturb staff. He was human. He was Mospheiran. He could very easily go to the galley and make his own tea. He thought he could find a pan and the tea-caddy… but he hadn’t the energy or the will to attend his own needs. He felt sorry for himself in the numb, dull-as-a-rock way the transition let anybody feel anything.

And he kept losing the games, which in itself was a good barometer of his mood and his muddle-headedness with the basic numbers of his situation.

Nearing the end of this long voyage, and no information, when he blackly suspected Sabin had by now seen it, formed a conclusion, and denied it to him.

He was nearing the point at which his ideas had to work—if he had any; which he wouldn’t, until he got a view of the situation at their exit.

God, he hated improvisation. The older he got, the more he distrusted gut instinct and initial impressions—and he used his instincts, or he had used them, and they’d worked, but they’d worked with people he knew, and often on blind luck—baji-naji, atevi would insist: actions in good awareness of the transitory numbers of a situation flowed with a situation, and luck and chance themselves flowed along discernable channels. One only had to understand the numbers to ride the current and improve one’s luck in moments of change.

But one had to know the numbers. And he didn’t. The ship-folk were more alien to planet-bound humans than atevi were—while ship-folk had queasily found atevi easier to deal with than they found Mospheirans. And nobody, not even Jase, understood the Pilots’ Guild—or the senior captain.

He wanted Jase to rush down to five-deck right about now with a handful of log records assuring him there was a quick, even brilliant answer to what Ramirez had agreed to with the Guild, and it was all fine, but that scenario wasn’t going to happen. By now, he understood the dowager locking herself in her cabin and refusing to come out.

Fragile, that was what he was feeling. Fragile and entirely in the dark.

Stupidity might help. The simple disinclination to ask what came next.

As it was, his mirror and his computer and his steadily lengthening letters home asked him that question, every morning and every evening of their arbitrary, diversion-filled days.

On a certain morning Bren opened his door, bound for breakfast, and a motorized car whizzed noisily past his foot, destination right, origin left.

He looked left, at the future lord of a planet on his knees, control unit in both hands, looking entirely sheepish.

“I’m testing new wheels,” Cajeiri explained, and added in frustration: “They aren’t working right. But one thinks it’s the ship moving.”

“It may well be,” Bren said numbly. “Or not.”

Cajeiri scrambled up and chased down the corridor after his car, where it had swerved and stalled against the inner wall.

“May one go ask Gin-aiji’s staff, nandi, about the wheels?”

Oh, now one knew why the aiji-to-be raced his car past authority’s door.

“If Cenedi agrees.” One suspected Cenedi had just said no to the young wretch. And that diversion was in order. “My breakfast is likely waiting… a simple one, aiji-meni.” One never, except through staff, invited a person of higher status to share a meal. One could, however, suggest that breakfast was available at a whim. “I’m sure Bindanda could manage another place.”

“I already had breakfast,” Cajeiri said. And confessed the ultimate catastrophe. “And I’m bored, Bren-nandi.”

“Well, there you have the dreadful truth about adventures, aiji-meni. A great deal of adventures is being bored, or scared, or cold, or wet, or not having breakfast or information on schedule. But adventures often improve in the telling.”

Cajeiri belatedly saw he was being joked with. And took it with an expression very much his father’s when things didn’t go well—not angry, more bewildered at the universe’s temerity in trifling with his wishes. And next came, unmistakably, great-grandmother’s tone.

“Well, I detest boredom, Bren-nandi. I detest it. I brought my own player, and I want tapes, and nadi Cenedi says I have to have your permission to have them.”

“That’s because it’s the human Archive, nandi-meni, and what’s human is very different, and some of it confuses even humans who aren’t ten yet.”

“I know. But I’m very intelligent.”

“Well, one supposes one could go back to the computer and find something. If the young aiji were interested, he might watch.” One didn’t ask an aiji under one’s roof, either. One suggested there might be something of interest under that roof and the great lord went, if he wished.

Cajeiri wished. He all but tumbled over himself in longing to be somewhere new and entertaining, in a generally off-limits cabin where he hadn’t yet put a dent in something or scratched something or met local disapproval.

So, well, with Bindanda’s forgiveness and given the staff’s devious ways of knowing where he was, the lord of the province of the heavens decided breakfast could wait a few moments.

“The nearest chair is comfortable,” Bren said, sitting down at his desk, and opening up his computer. “Tapes, tapes, tapes.”

“Cenedi doesn’t have to know,” the young rascal suggested. “I want the war ones.”

“Oh, but Cenedi is extremely good at finding out, aiji-meni, and I am Bren-nandi, and dare I say that the young aiji’s latest statement held an unfortunate two?”

“Bren-nandi.” Cajeiri was occasionally experimenting in the adult language. “And it was not two, Bren-nandi.”

“Mode of offer, young aiji, was the implied infelicity of two, since though I trust you were speaking regarding my action, you nevertheless omitted my courtesy.” He could be quite coldly didactic when his fingers were on his keyboard. But one didn’t dwell on an aiji’s failures. He called a list of film titles to his display. “Ha.”

And sifted them for classics as Cajeiri leaned forward, looking… as if Cajeiri could even read the list.

“Ahh,” Bren said as enigmatically as possible.

“Where?” Cajeiri asked sharply, and immediately, under threat of no tapes, remembered the courtesy form: “What does one find in this list, nandi?”

Another sort through the list. Children’s classics. One owed the aiji a proper response for his newly-discovered courtesy. “The very best of stories, aiji-meni.” He considered Tom Sawyer and Connecticut Yankee—no, problematic in approach to authority. And one had no wish to see Cajeiri discover practical jokes or paintbrushes. Robin Hood… no, not good: not only defying authority, but promoting theft.

“Ha.” The Three Musketeers. Satisfying to most atevi principles: the support of an aiji’s wife by loyal security personnel, the downfall of base conspirators.

The education of a young man with more ideas than experience.

He copied it and gave the lad the disk. “Your player will handle this, aiji-meni. One believes the piece is even in color. One is advised to set the switch to second position.”

“Thank you, Bren-nandi!”

“A pleasure, young aiji.” God, he’d forgotten the story himself. And remembered it, once his mind was on it. The whole notion of youthful derring-do came like a transfusion. Oxygen to the blood.

Dared he even think age came on with a little stiffening of the backbone, a little too much propriety, a few too many situations that numbed the nerves?

“Perhaps it would suit the young aiji for me to examine that racing car, after all,” he said. “After breakfast, that is, which the young aiji might still attend.”

Cajeiri happily changed his mind.

And handed the car to him under the table, in a hiatus of service. He had a look at the wheels. And in lieu of a consultation of Gin’s engineers, he proposed an after-breakfast investigation of available possibilities, which ended up providing bits of plastic tubing to stand the wobbly wheels off from the sides.

Which was how, in this transit between places in the depths of space, the dowager’s security happened to find the lord of the heavens down on his knees at one end of the corridor with the future aiji similarly posed down by the galley.

And that was how the dowager’s security ended up, with Banichi and Jago, designing a remote-controlled car whose wheels did not wobble. One understood there were secret bets with Gin’s staff. And a proposed race date.

The staff’s new passion became Alexandre Dumas, books and tapes alike, even the dowager requesting a copy, via written message. Bren began reading the works himself, amid the growing tendrils of Sandra Johnson’s plants, which now formed a green and white curtain from their hanging baskets, and writing daily to his brother.

Banichi and Jago have a chess match going, was one entry. The staff is laying bets.

And at the resolution: Jago is trying not to be pleased with herself; Banichi is trying not to notice. They’ve started another game.

I think there was a car race. And I don’t think we won. I haven’t heard a thing, but Banichi is building a small remote control device of his own, and bets on that are secret, but not that secret.

Jase turned up at one lunch, Jase’s midnight snack, and for an hour they sat and discussed nothing in particular—the merits of cork fishing and the currents off Mospheira’s south shore—whether or not Crescent Island development had ever taken off and whether a small yacht dared try the southern sea.

No, the log records had not surfaced, Sabin was growing peevish, and he had found no key to the information.

Damn.

had lunch with Jase. We talked about Beaufort Bay. We’ll have to talk about the exact plans when I get home. That’s how crazy we’ve become.

God, Toby, I want to get home. I want to get home—and it comes to me that it’s not just the chance of waking up somewhere we didn’t ever mean to go that scares me spitless. It’s that I want to get home, I, me, the me that’s going to have a home when I get back. I changed when I went to the mainland, but not so that I didn’t recognize home. I changed when I began to live on the mainland, but not so that I didn’t dream of trips to the north shore. I changed when I went to live in space, and the situation was always hot, and getting back to the island meant running a gauntlet of press and politics that just wouldn’t let me alone. It’s so strange out here—not that we’ve seen anything or done anything but sit in our cabins for a year and read Dumas and race toy cars—but it’s still strange; and it can only get stranger, and I think so much of home. I’m a little desperate today. I wish I had answers I don’t have.

But I can’t govern the changes that have already happened.

I can’t govern what happens to me on the way. I never could. And every change has been away, not toward, and every change makes the circle of those who’ve been through this with me smaller, not larger, until at this moment I think I’m becoming a sort of black hole, and I’m going to pull everything I know into a pinpoint so none of us can get out, and then I’ll stop existing at all in this universe. I’m terrified of never getting home, that you’ll never get this letter.

A few people still on earth matter. You. Tabini. And if you are still speaking to me, and if I can get there, I’d like to take about a month sitting on the beach and telling you all the things most people on Mospheira wouldn’t at all want to hear about. I don’t know if you’re curious or if you’re just that patient, but for either reason, I think you’d listen and nod in the right places, even for this. I love you, brother. I miss you. And one part of me wishes you were here and the sane part says thank God you’re not. Thank God something I remember is still there.

By the fact I’m now panicking, you can guess this is the scary part of our trip coming up. This is where I need every scrap of courage I’ve got, and I wish I had more information of substance. I think about Banichi and Jago, and if they or the staff ever doubt our success in this crazy venture, they don’t let me know it. The dowager—she won’t spook, no matter what. Meanwhile I’m thinking this is the scariest thing I’ve ever contemplated, and there’s a six- or seven-year-old kid down there playing with a toy car and thinking it’s all fairly normal for a kid to be racing cars in a starship corridor. He’s not afraid. He doesn’t imagine the trouble we could be in… or he does, but at his age everything’s an adventure. Being alone in the dark scares him. The thought of dropping into deserted space just doesn’t faze him. I’m not sure anything scares Banichi and Jago but the thought of losing me somewhere out here. So is any fear real? Do we become self-focused cowards by measures as we get older? Or am I the only one on this deck who really knows the odds?

Jase is likely as scared as I am. Ginny hasn’t got nerves. I don’t know what drives her. She’s just busy seeing to her staff, and that’s what she does. But my staff sees tome, not the other way around, and I suppose that leaves me time enough to think, way more thinking about the consequences of various things than I find comfortable.

The beach and the sound of the waves can take all that away. I’d say, the deck of the boat, but right now, considering just stringing thoughts together is like swimming in syrup, sitting very still on a planet’s solid skin sounds good to me.

On a certain day he’d had entirely enough.

He left his computer, left his notes, gathered Banichi and Jago without warning, and headed for the lift.

“Is there an emergency, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.

“A conference,” he said, and neither Banichi nor Jago asked further questions.

Nor did they evidence any surprise whatsoever that he ordered the lift to the bridge and strode out and past working operations on the consoles, down that screened aisle. He was bound, since Sabin’s bodyguards, Collins and the rest, were sitting watch down in the executive corridor, for executive offices.

The guards got up from benches—not quite hands on weapons, but close.

“I’m here to see the senior captain,” Bren said in Mosphei’. “Now.”

Jenrette happened to be part of that group of five. But the seniormost of Sabin’s guards, Collins, was a man who’d been Sabin’s for decades before Jenrette came into the picture. The lot of them might have had orders of one kind about crew coming up here—but they likely had special orders about care and coddling of their alien passengers, too, and those separate trains had suddenly intersected, headed for collision.

“I’m not going back down,” Bren said plainly, standing a little out of hearing of techs on the bridge behind him. “She won’t want an incident, I can assure you.”

Collins looked at him, looked at Banichi and Jago, a solid dark wall behind him.

And they were indeed about to have an incident: he was set, however muzzily, on course, and stood his ground.

“Captain,” Collins said to the empty air. “Mr. Cameron’s up here saying it’s urgent business.”

Whatever the answer was, Collins opened the door.

“Kindly wait here, nadiin-ji,” Bren said quietly to Banichi and Jago, facing Sabin at her desk, Sabin—who leaned back in her chair to have a look at the intrusion into her day’s problems. “Senior captain, good day.”

“Mr. Cameron.” No invitation, not a cue or a clue. Sabin folded her hands on her spare middle. The door shut behind him, securing their privacy.

“The record we mentioned, senior captain.”

“Record.”

“You want my help…”

“I don’t recall requesting your help, Mr. Cameron. I do recall your request. I’ve reviewed it. Hell if I’m giving you our log to play with. Go find other amusement.”

“I want the record, captain. I’m sure it doesn’t take you eleven months to find a log entry. I’m sure you had it that same shift we discussed it. I take it you view your survival as a matter of some importance. I want the record.”

A lively, analytical regard. A pursing of the lips. One thing about long-time crew—they adapted to the mental conditions of folded space, did it far better than planet-dwellers. Sabin’s thought processes at the moment might far out-class his. “You do.”

A little caution might be in order. “Politely put, please, captain.”

“You want it.” Sabin moved her chair so suddenly assassination-honed reflexes twitched. Inwardly. He didn’t budge as she opened a cabinet. And took out a tape. And held it up to his view. “You think this holds answers.”

“If you know what you were looking for, with your accustomed ability, yes, I hope it does.”

She flipped it to a landing on the desk. Making him reach to pick it up, a petty move. He wasn’t inclined to object to that.

“Good luck,” she said.

“More than this,” he said, and pocketed the tape. “More than this record, captain, what’s your estimation of the facts?”

Momentary silence. And cold irony. “Forty years and someone finally asks the question.”

“I’m asking, captain. You’ve had, all along, a very keen sense of the risks involved in contact. If we’d had you in charge of the original contact with the atevi, we might not have fought a war. Let me guess—you’ve tried to figure this without my input. You wanted your own uncontaminated assessment, uncolored by my opinions. You have some opinion of your own. What do you think?”

Cold, cold stare. “I want your uncontaminated assessment, Mr. Cameron. Enough is there. Beginning to end. You figure it. You tell me. Five days likely to system entry. You’ve worked miracles, so they tell me. You figure this one.”

“You weren’t going to give me this.”

“I lead a full, busy life,” Sabin said. Then, less provocatively: “I was still asking myself whether I was going to give it to you, to Jase—or not at all.”

“Copy to him. I won’t consult him until I’ve see this.”

“Done.” Sabin shifted the chair and punched one button. “Good luck, Mr. Cameron. Go do your job. And don’t do this again.”

“Only to mutual advantage, captain. Even you need a backup.”

He walked out. He gathered up Banichi and Jago and walked back the way he had come, to the lift, and they rode it down.

“Was it a success, nandi?” Banichi asked him.

“One waits to see, nadiin-ji,” he said to them, and felt of the tape in his pocket to be sure it was there, that his muzzy, half-dreaming brain hadn’t dreamed this gift.

Folded space wasn’t a place to try any complex analysis. Sabin, having a keen brain, being used to these conditions, surely, even so, observed a certain caution about critical decisions. Maybe that was why she made this one belatedly, to hand him the record.

And the ship went, and space bent.

Five days out, Sabin said, five muddled days left, in which, without his going up there and confronting the issue, she might have laid it on Jase’s desk, and might not.

Now he took himself back to his computer, and back to software, Jase’s gift, that could unravel the ship’s image-output or plain-print files.

It wasn’t image. It was text, a sparse, scattershot text that Ramirez had recorded—in Ramirez’s unskilled, demonstrably flawed notion of what to record.

There was a small file of personal notes—that, to a casual scan, revealed nothing but coordinates and dates and a handful of cryptic symbols.

Bren’s heart sank. What might the man have left out, that might be absolutely critical? What was the second record? A notation of where they’d been? What sites the ship had looked at, at vantages far removed from station?

Granted there was something Ramirez hadn’t wanted the Guild to know, the record was disappointingly… useless. Useless without Ramirez’s living brain to explain the memories, the intentions, the actions he associated with those cryptic references.

But there was also the minute-by-minute telemetry report, the autolog, another kind of text, mostly numerical, and huge. That was there. Thank God. Thank Sabin for including it. It was a fair record, best impartial record they seemed to have of those encounters, right down to the chaff of information from the air quality units, reams of it.

One could arrange. And filter. So he filtered. He filtered for hours, going through every internal system’s chatter, dumping the chaff and lining up the log record for the sparse useful facts, all with a brain packed about with cotton wool and unaccustomed to the kinds of data he was trying to sift. He wouldn’t attempt to organize a social dinner in his current state—and here he was put to figuring out an alien contact gone wrong, and figuring what in the data had still changed when Ramirez gave a no-output order.

Fact: Phoenix had spent a decade founding a space station to supply her and spent most of the next couple hundred years poking about in various neighborhoods likely to have supply—supply that came to the ship most conveniently when it came in space—planetoids, not deep planetary gravity wells that the huge and fragile ship had no means to plumb. That fact, he had heard from Jase over a number of years.

No gravity wells—being so fragile: so the choices a Mos-pheiran or an ateva would logically think of first were excluded. Phoenix had arrived at the atevi world not only with no landing craft, but, embarrassing as it was, and admitted much later, the ship had no atmosphere-qualified pilots who could land on a planet and get off again—well, except by brute force and massive lift, something that didn’t rely on air and weather—and which they couldn’t soft-land in the first place. He wasn’t, himself, qualified to pronounce on the feasibility of just lighting a powerful rocket and aiming it straight up, but such a craft had no ready reusability, nothing to enable mining and agriculture on a regular basis, so, from the ship’s point of view, relying on anything in a gravity well was a damned inconvenient way to run a space program.

Not to mention the fact that ship-folk floating in orbit didn’t in the least know what to do with crops outside a hydroponics tank, and weren’t inclined to fall down a gravity well to find out, either.

So scratch landing as an option, and as a basic intent of Ramirez’s illicit explorations. Mospheirans had landed on a no-return basis—and taken two hundred years getting back into space again. No, definitely Phoenix had been interested primarily in space-based resources. Asteroids. Comets. Floating real estate. They’d mine, occasionally, gather, occasionally… that was the way they’d lived.

The ship had had mining craft once upon a time. Which the ship hadn’t had when it showed up at Alpha. They’d lost their resources of that sort. Or maybe the ship usually had them and just hadn’t carried the extra mass on the voyage in question. It was a lot of mass.

And where would they have left them? At a remote star, when they’d pulled up stakes in a hurry?

At Reunion, when they’d come in and found a station in ruins?

Would they have left them as station relief, an aid to rebuilding? Or had they just not been carrying them?

Thoughts slid willfully sideways, into lunacy. Into human behavior that hadn’t, no, been wise at all. They were not figuring out right behavior, even rational behavior, in tracing the history of station and ship decisions. They were second-guessing a senior captain who’d done some peculiar things wrong, including arriving in atevi space with no way to refuel.

Damn, damn, damn.

Question for Sabin—exactly how much mining the ship had been doing in Ramirez’ tenure as senior captain? Did the ship have mining ’bots?

If not, where did you leave them—and when? And why?

Risking stranded themselves? Risking exactly what Phoenix had run into in the disaster that had stranded them? Was it at all sensible, not to have had that capability, when they’d learned their historical lessons?

Something didn’t add up. Or something added up to mining craft either not loaded for the mission, or deployed and not recovered, or left to aid Reunion in a critical situation.

The Guild held refueling as a weapon, hadn’t Jase said?

So was it a Guild decision to keep all possible refueling operations under its own hand?

Worrisome thought.

Had the Guild begun to be suspicious of Ramirez’s intentions, his activities when he was out and about? Or suspicious of the ship’s independence, from the time they built Reunion Station, centuries ago? They should have foreseen the ship would develop different interests. If they were wise.

Four times damn. He called Jase.

“Jase. You have a record you’re working on? Did she give it to you?”

“Affirmative.”

“No queries into your line of thought—but did the ship ever have mining craft? And where did they go?”

“Weren’t loaded,” Jase answered. There was a long pause. “Never were. Guild monopoly.”

“Fuel at Gamma, possibly?”

“Ported out there. Occasionally there was. Such as there was. If there still is any, I have no knowlege. If the aliens haven’t hit it, too, by now.”

“But fuel exists—in its raw state—at Gamma. One could mine.”

“If we got into that kind of situation. Yes. That’s the option. What are you thinking?”

“No comment yet,” Bren said. He didn’t want to prejudice Jase’s thinking, or change its direction. But he was muzzy-headed with folded space. With things that didn’t make sense. With fears, that got down to station’s power play, holding that mining machinery to itself. It hadn’t trusted Ramirez, dared one think? “Ramirez’s personal notebook. Without useful comment from Sabin. Does it make any sense to you?”

“It’s all coordinates. Bearings. I think he could have been watching something come and go. The points given don’t match up with past destinations that I know about. We didn’t ever go to these points. He only wrote them down, outside the log. There’s absolutely nothing else I can get out of the notes.”

Scary implications. Spying on the aliens. Wonderful. Visitations that frequent, and station not aware of them? “Want to come down for lunch? I swear social only. No contamination.”

“Can’t,” Jase said. “Wish I could. Sabin’s set me an administrative job. Have to. You take care down there, Bren.”

“No question.”

Conversation ended disappointingly, a conversation kept entirely in ship-speak, nothing to worry Sabin or make her question what the former paidhiin had been up to—nothing to make Sabin doubt them at a critical moment yet to come—the way the Guild might have doubted Ramirez. Everything was too fragile. Everything depended on Sabin’s judgement of them. And Jase hadn’t risked her opinion by coming down to consult.

Their lives all depended on that brittle thread of Sabin’s judgement. And the solution to Ramirez’s actions relied on brains that couldn’t work at maximum efficiency. So, just to help out, Sabin had loaded Jase with something extra to do. Maybe necessary, maybe not. He was annoyed. Frustrated. But he didn’t want to push Sabin further, not yet.

Conclude one thing for a fact. Ramirez hadn’t had mining capability on the critical run into trouble. He wasn’t likely to get it from a station that didn’t trust him. And he hadn’t been after material gain at that star—not immediately. Information. Data. Scouting things out. Maybe for future mining, if he could beg, borrow or steal a craft. Maybe not. But by what Jase said, he’d been nosing about where he was, possibly watching some sort of activity—without, he thought, getting involved, without going to those destinations.

Wasn’t ready yet. Was still collecting data. Still training Taylor’s Children to be his go-betweens, his eyes and ears for another world.

But the list in the notes, if it was observation of alien craft—was that observation a notation kept aside even from the auto-log? Difficult, one would think.

Log recorded the last arrival at star 2095 on chart, G4, small planets. A great deal of data on all the planets. But the second, temperate planet… temperate planet… had atmosphere. Liquid water. Abundant water. Moderate vulcanism. A single, modest moon—old enough, perhaps, to have swept up all its competitors. A human’s natural interest turned to that world—ignorant as his interest might be.

Resources useless to the Guild, again, at the inaccessible bottom of a gravity well. Guild interest might well be piqued by the data, far more abundant, on the debris in the outer system. Ices. Iron. Nickle. A radiation-hot fourth planet gravita-tionally locked with an overlarge satellite and surrounded by an unstable ring—that was no place a sensible operation would like to conduct business. That world’s well held a rich debris cloud; but from the Guild’s point of view, not because of that hellish place, but because of that inconveniently attractive number two planet, the whole solar system was less attractive to them—a temptation all of history indicated the Guild wanted to avoid like the plague. Both a rich hell to mine, and a quasi-paradise sitting within potential rebels’ reach.

The Guild had had that situation once, at Alpha. And colonists and workers there had staged a rebellion that worked only because the green world allowed a soft landing. Consequently that gravity well wouldn’t give up a single craft, not for centuries—placing all local resources offlimits for a Guild that had forgotten atmospheric flight—so the Guild could whistle for obedience: no one had had to listen, and finally the station had folded, oh, for a couple of centuries.

Interesting, that beautiful green world. Decided temptation, as a Mospheiran saw matters. Temptation.for an atevi ruler. Temptation for anybody interested in population growth—

Even for a Guild captain who should be doing his Guild-bound duty and avoiding another planet-based colonization?

A captain with questionable loyalty to the Guild—a captain legally obliged to convey his log back to close Guild scrutiny… and who might not want to tell them everything.

So said captain heaped up piles of data on the hellish fourth planet. Stayed there weeks, observing that fourth planet. From a distance. Which argued to a suspicious son of rebels that the fourth planet wasn’t all Ramirez was observing and might not be the focus of Ramirez’s real interest.

But if there had been notes on his intentions, they weren’t in the log. And they weren’t in the little file.

No evidence of any foreign occupancy around that green world… no evidence that Ramirez chose to record. That was all the soft tissue of memory, attached to those simple numbers in the little file. And all of that was gone, evaporated, when Ramirez died.

But there were witnesses. Sabin said Ramirez had found something somewhere. Said Ramirez sought alien contact—had wanted to find somebody to deal with, somebody excluding atevi and their own troublesome rebel colony at Alpha. And where was Ramirez to find that, except near such a green planet? And might natives of such a green world, if they had an installation in space, have the supplies Ramirez needed to break free of the Guild?

What foolish thing had Ramirez done?

“Nandi-ji.” Bindanda presented a tray. Tea. And sandwiches. Bren looked at them as alien objects until, a heartbeat or so later, he recalled dismissing Bindanda’s last request for attention. Bindanda was absolutely determined he eat.

“Thank you, Danda-ji.”

“Your bed is also prepared, nandi.”

Was it that time? He wasn’t prepared to consider ordinary routine. Not now. Not given what he still didn’t understand. The sandwiches he was grateful to have. “I shall manage to sleep here, Danda-ji. Please don’t let my schedule disturb staff. See that Banichi and Jago rest. My orders. And you rest, Danda-ji.”

“Yes, nandi.” A bow. The tray stayed. Its contents disappeared bit by bit as Bren worked, considering one piece of non fitting data and the next… in this gift freighted with every blip and hiccup of the ship’s operations in those hours, and on the other hand lacking all human observation that might have informed him on Ramirez’s state of mind, on what he thought he saw, on what he hoped.

What had Ramirez done to contact outsiders? Nothing that involved Jase—or Jase would have known more. Nothing, one surmised, that involved Yolanda, who’d been equally a novice when she’d landed on the atevi world, to try to deal with disaffected humans. Neither of them had had any experience of outsiders—not to mention planets. Ramirez had prepared them for some venture, but they were still junior; and they weren’t well-prepared for planets. And they were, at that time, just very young.

And for that reason he hadn’t asked them. Hadn’t used the tools he himself had prepared. Hadn’t planned the encounter. It had come on him. And he’d simply—

Perceived another ship. That was the first fact in the data log. Another ship. A huge ship.

Another ship—just sitting there. So Ramirez had gone to passive reception, no output. Dead silent.

Then… then Ramirez had recorded one cryptic note: A massive ship has appeared in the orbit of the second planet. We have received a signal. Three flashes, no other content apparent. We are holding position without answering.

Without answering.

Next entry, forty-eight minutes later:

No movement. No signal.

And after two hours:

No movement. No signal. Retreat seems most prudent at this point, in a vector that doesn’t lead home. First vector to Point Gamma, then wait for the wake to fade. After that, home and report.

The log record broke off there.

He didn’t have any record of their arrival at Point Gamma, whatever that was, however useful that record would have been. But Jase had stated they’d gone to that place. Trying to obscure their origin, one guessed.

The segment ended.

No record of further output from the alien before departure. Nothing.

Bren wiped his face. Went through the record multiple times, looking for any chance output that might have generated a misunderstanding.

Running lights had been on. Those stopped when Ramirez ordered no-output. Nothing but cameras and passive reception, gathering signals in, putting none out.

He couldn’t find an active cause prior to that silence. Couldn’t find it.

He realized he’d slept, head down on the desk, neck stiff from hours of bad angle. He rubbed his face and tried to gather up all his threads, found the pieces of last shift’s thought—no wiser than before.

Narani, missing nothing, provided breakfast, offered a dressing-robe instead of his rumpled clothes. “One can think in the shower, nandi. One does suggest so.”

That, Bren thought, might be useful to clear his head; and he tried, but the warm shower only tended to put him to sleep. He came to himself leaning against the wall, and all but fell asleep a second time when Narani was helping him into his bathrobe.

His brain, past experience told him, was vainly trying to assemble diverse parts of a pattern, one that, thanks to missing bits, wasn’t willing to make sense. Conscious thought was timed out while the hindbrain tried its own obscure pattern-making out of the bits and pieces; but it wasn’t getting anywhere, while his waking forebrain came up with images of Jase, younger Jase, sitting in his cabin in those days wondering what was going on.

Those progressed to remembered images of Ramirez himself sitting at his desk, hands together in that deep thinking attitude of his, Ramirez asking himself, in those hours, whether he ought to engage his two translators, whether it was time, yet, to risk contact.

And what could he do? Initiate the plan he’d been building for over twenty years, with two junior and necessarily inexperienced translators who hadn’t finished their educations…

Ramirez, hesitating and hesitating, asking himself how much of this meeting he could now keep out of record, how much of his resources he could keep the Guild authority from laying claim to, if he brought them into the question and entered something of their activity on record…

Like the Guild snatching Jase and Yolanda onto Reunion, grilling them for every detail of that encounter, and finding, perhaps—clues that led under other doors.

The Guild appropriating twenty years worth of preparation into the Guild’s hands, with its demonstrably isolationist theories.

Ramirez would find his precious program stopped. His ideas quashed. Twenty years tossed down a black hole. The Guild never had released what it laid hands on. If Ramirez engaged Jase and Yolanda in a contact he wasn’t ready to pursue, the Guild might then take them and never let them go—or not let them go until they were thoroughly Guild, on a Guild mission. A senior captain who’d invested twenty years in a project knew he didn’t have another twenty years to rebuild from scratch, and wouldn’t have the resources to get ahead of the Guild. He had to get through this, lay his plans, try a second time.

Guild—and ship. Two authorities running human affairs.

Guild—and ship. One wasn’t necessarily the other, but ship depended on Guild—and hated its dependence on the Guild for fuel, the lack of mining ’bots. Ramirez wasn’t independent. He couldn’t make a total break from the Guild’s authority.

But in this system he had his fuel source and he had a green world—if he could have used it. He’d flirted with alien contact—so Sabin said—maybe before this. He hoped to break out of Guild control. He hoped to get a source not dependent on the Guild.

But here the aliens confronted him.

So what was prudent?

Sit still. Hope it didn’t notice?

It noticed. It waited.

Awaited contact? Wanted some gesture? Theoretically a civilized entity ought to realize the signals under such circumstances wouldn’t be congruent—but grant atevi and humans, highly civilized, had very clearly botched their own contact well into the process, and nearly killed themselves before they straightened matters out.

Ramirez left. Ramirez had left the confrontation. That was the conclusion of the affair. That was the one rock on which he could build a theory. Whatever his surmises about Ramirez’s reasons and Ramirez’s thought pattern and what a civilized entity on the other side ought to expect—the fact was Ramirez had unilaterally broken his freeze-state, and left in a vector other than Reunion.

That redirection hadn’t fooled the aliens for a minute. Had it? So they had an idea where he came from. They’d been watching.

Silence. Then a deceptive vector.

Touching off, perhaps, as Jase said, emotional responses—those sub-basement responses and assumptions that clouded thinking, those gut-level conclusions that were beneath clear thought.

If he put himself as, say, ship-human, in the aliens’ position—how would he react to seeing an intruding ship pull out without responding? He had no clear idea.

If he put himself as Mospheiran in that situation—he’d—well, he’d find a superior and give a report. And if he was President of Mospheira—he’d call his ally and ask what his ally Tabini thought. He’d get a committee together. He’d fund a study. He’d be paralyzed until the committee report came in. A Mospheiran had a thoroughly despairing view of official decision-making. On the other hand, the average Mospheiran tourist could be an incredible fool.

If, next thought, he put himself as atevi in that situation—

He thought he knew what he’d do if he were atevi. He thought he knew what responses would follow, acted-upon and otherwise. But he had the opportunity to ask someone whose nervous system had those other answers. He called in the least warlike ateva on staff. He called in Jeladi.

“What would one believe that meant?” he asked, having explained the situation, “if the stranger ship left, under those circumstances?”

“It went to its associates,” Jeladi said, “by a devious route.”

“And, nadi?”

“It will return with weapons, nandi.”

He was not particularly surprised. Several thousand years of atevi experience led to that conclusion. He gathered himself up, in his bathrobe, and went to Banichi and posed the ques tion. Jago arrived, and he repeated it. “What would you expect?” he asked them collectively.

“A lure to an ambush,” Jago said.

“We would not take that bait,” Banichi said.

Atevi were not the most peaceful of species. Hadn’t been, even before the petal sails dropped down. There was a reason the Assassins’ Guild mediated the law, a civilizing force in the society.

There remained a third source of information. “I shall dress,” he said to Narani, and began to do so, thinking of begging the dowager to receive a petitioner, no matter that none of them were at their mental best.

But before he had quite donned his coat, a message cylinder arrived.

We have heard your question, Ilisidi said—God, how did she manage? Even my great-grandson has an opinion in this case. One should not follow, except with superior force. One should lie in wait. My great-grandson believes we should blow it up immediately and fortify against general invasion. His greatgrandfather would have concurred.

Go to bed. We order it.

Bren stood there with his limbs wobbling, half-dressed and chilled, thinking—well, now he needed not call on Ilisidi. Now he should call Jase with his multi-sided answer and inform Jase how provocative Ramirez’s apparently prudent actions could seem.

He should call Jase—when he had a brain. And when it wasn’t the middle of Jase’s night. Jase was still asleep. At the moment, he thought, sleep in his own case might produce more intelligence than study would.

He didn’t want to fly his theories past Sabin until he had his wits about him.

He undressed as meticulously as he’d dressed, thinking, thinking—how the ship had gone off its direct track home. But the aliens hadn’t wasted time. They’d known where the human base was.

One assumed an advanced civilization wouldn’t be mindlessly, pointlessly violent.

One assumed that, based on humanity’s rise from the caves. Based on atevi’s general progress—toward television and fast food. On the whole it tended to be true, for these two species. Any two points made a straight line. But a third—felicitous third—wasn’t guaranteed to be anywhere on that line, was it? Not at all.

He was losing his train of thought. Points that didn’t lie in a straight line.

Aliens had gone straight to the station. What they’d done before they hit it, what the station had done—no record.

Ramirez had left the encounter. That didn’t say, on the other end, what the station had done. Or not done.

He lay down in bed. Thinking.

Did the ship observe a pattern in the three blinks from the alien craft? A variation of color, of duration? No information on that score. No image.

One assumed, humans being sensitive to visual input, that Ramirez would have recorded any such anomaly in the signal—if he hadn’t tucked all the really useful notes somewhere outside the official log.

But then, if Ramirez had known enough to take the right notes, he’d have stood a chance of taking the right actions. Wouldn’t he?

Eyes were already shut. Brain drifted toward dark.

He felt the give of the mattress. Felt a familiar warmth, smooth skin against his.

“Jago-ji.” He’d been thinking back and forth in Mosphei’ and Ragi. At the moment he didn’t know which he spoke.

“Have you reached a conclusion, Bren-ji?”

“Not that I trust.”

“Ramirez’s actions were peculiar,” Jago said.

“Not for a human,” he murmured. Senses were leaving him. He settled against Jago’s warmth, still trying to think through Ramirez’s actions and beginning to suspect his thinking had gone off the edge of reason.

He felt Jago’s hand on his face. Felt a caress on his shoulder. He tried desperately to reconstruct his train of thought. Everything was dark, dark and the touch of a familiar hand, the whisper of a familiar voice: “Rest, Bren-ji. Rest now. You try yourself too much.”

He did sleep. He was sure he slept, because, “Bren,” the intercom said, Jase’s voice, in the middle of his night, and he had to wake. He groped for the side of the bed, momentarily forgetting that he was in a steel and ceramics world, where words were sufficient. He thought he was in the tall bed in his own apartment in Shejidan, and was shocked to meet the floor sooner than he expected.

“Lights,” he remembered to say, and thoughtlessly blinded himself and Jago. He held a hand up to shield his eyes. “Two-way com.—Jase? What’s up?”

“Looks like we’re finding an interface,” Jase said. “Not certain yet, but take this for a warning. Whether we’re there or not is always a question, but the navigators think this should be a straightforward entry.”

“Thanks,” he said, muzzy, out of breath. “Thanks.” And tried to organize what he knew. “We’re not done yet. Jase, I’m not done. I’ve learned things—”

“I’ve called the senior captain. My chief navigator estimates one to three hours, big give-or-take.”

“Have you got an answer yet out of that tape?”

“Makes no sense,” Jase said. “No sense.”

“I have theories—at least about the contact.”

“We’ll have to solve those questions on the other side. Drop’s going to happen whether we’re ready or not. It’s in progress. You’ve got leave to be here just as soon as we make entry. Get ready. You may have a very small safe window to move.”

“Understood,” he said, rattled, and translated that in more detail for Jago. Jase was thinking in ship-speak at the moment, not Ragi, and small wonder. They were going in and he and Jase weren’t ready. But the navigators guessed… hoped… this would be it.

And God knew what they were about to meet.

“Advise Narani, nadi-ji,” he said to Jago. “Advise Cenedi. I’ll advise the dowager myself.” He dragged his chilled limbs off the bed and flung a robe about him as Jago hastened about her orders.

Bren stumbled to the table that served as his desk and penned a quick paper note:

Aiji-ma, we may well have arrived at our destination. As ever, there is the possibility of imprecision, but I am proceeding to the ship’s central command immediately after arrival to assess the situation. One hopes for your approval as ever. He dimly remembered, on the other side of sleep, the dowager’s unlooked-for response to his query. One appreciates beyond expression your felicitous response to my question. One is grateful. I shall represent your interests with all my efforts.

He rolled it, slipped it into the cylinder, took the risk of omitting the seal, the reception of which informality depended on the state of Ilisidi’s nerves.

“To the dowager, Rani-ji,” he instructed Narani, who had appeared in the door to assess the state of affairs, and while Narani undertook that diplomatic errand, Bren headed for his shower, for a minute of warm steam and a dry towel, no waiting for the vacuum. He scrubbed violently, trying to rub sensation into his skin; he toweled his hair, hoping for clear thought.

Scared. Oh, he was that, no question. He attempted to finger-comb his hair, breaking through the snarls. He put on trousers and boots, trying not to show absolute terror.

“Haste, nadi-ji,” he told Asicho when she began to comb his hair. “We may be surprised by events. Never mind it pulls.” He would have welcomed a sharp pain, anything to define the space, the time, the event, some keen sensory input to sting him out of this foggy-headed limbo of the ship before space straightened itself out again and dumped them into a situation none of them could predict.

Bindanda and Jeladi both showed up to assist him. For the important event of their arrival, Narani had provided a shirt that had to go on with its coat, the lace so starched it could cut cake.

Asicho finished his pigtail with breathless haste. Narani arrived to supervise Bindanda and Jeladi and be sure of the lace. Banichi and Jago were, meanwhile, managing for themselves, he was sure, while he accepted the help a lord needed, all of them hurrying, accurate, calm in the way his staff had been calm dressing him for court warfare.

One assumed the cylinder had by now found its way to the dowager’s attention at such an hour; one very well knew Cenedi knew, and that courtesy was done. Handled. One thing of all the things on his agenda was done and nailed down tight.

A siren blew briefly. Space, that had held them in a mind-fogged grip for day upon day of perceived time, was about to unfold itself, taking them back into reality with it.

Not his favorite thing. God, no. A lot like landings in airplanes. Or space shuttles.

He was, however, formally dressed. Ready for whatever happened.

“Fifteen minutes to drop,” the intercom informed them.

He received a vexed message from the dowager. Could not the ship-aijiin arrange such events at a more civilized hour?

“This is the captain speaking.” Sabin’s voice, not Jase’s, in dead calm, near monotone. “We are beginning procedures for arrival. All non-essential crew to quarters. Take hold, take hold, take hold.”

Official, then. Sabin was in charge over their heads and crew, all the great majority of personnel that maintained non-critical stations and operations, was to tuck down and remain invisible and out of the way for the duration.

Jago arrived, dressed in her best—armed, though what good that did against their current situation he had no idea, nor, surely, had Jago. The weaponry was an expression of support, of professional attention to detail.

“One believes we should take our seats,” he said calmly, and settled down in a broad, comfortable, bolted chair, carefully arranging his coat tails. Jago took the other. The rest of staff had such accommodations in the security station, where Banichi likely sat; or in their own accommodations, where they could ride comfortably belted down in bed.

“Stand by.” C1’s advisement, the calm clear voice of senior communications.

The slight muzziness of their days of transit increased, convinced the senses that the ship was sliding sideways, then forward.

His staff took it far, far better than he did. His stomach felt very queasy, and he didn’t want to shut his eyes: sense-deprivation only made it worse.

Boarding a plane. He was scarcely out of his teens. Scarcely out of university.

Coming in at Shejidan, ahead of a cargo of tinned fish and electronics, all the tiled roofs spread out below him. It rained, common enough in spring. The tiled roofs became more textured, more real, slicked and shining, while the surrounding hills veiled themselves in rain and cloud.

The Bu-javid sat on its hill, mysterious, indistinct in blowing rain. He’d live there one day. He hadn’t imagined it, then. But he’d have an apartment high on that northern wing, just that window…

Explosion of gunfire, amid golden fields. They were shooting at targets, and Tabini-aiji, tall, slender, skilled marksman, popping branches off a dead limb, while a novice human paidhi tried to figure why the unprecedented invitation, and trying to hold his own firearm steady and not shoot the servants. Illegal for him to have the gun, but the aiji invited him, and he asked himself what the motive might be.

Shot in the dark, in the spring night, with a shadow outside the blowing draperies and the smell of djossi flowers on the heavy air.

A very foolish, very young human interpreter diving out of bed and behind the unlikely cover of the mattress.

Banichi had found him there. Found him, and traded guns with him, and covered what might have been a deep secret among atevi lords.

Keep him safe, Tabini had ordered Banichi and Jago, and who could have known they’d one day be guarding his life this far from home?

Keep him safe. Was ever a man luckier in his associates?

Breakfast on a balcony, in a thin coat, freezing, drinking burning-hot tea before it chilled to ice. Breakfast with the dowager, who hadn’t needed a coat.

Breakfast and a broken arm.

And an end of all easy assumptions, all confidence in what humans believed about atevi intentions and the atevi’s choices for their future.

That breakfast had led him here, wherever here was beginning to be.

Down, now, increasingly down, an illusion of falling through space faster and faster, weightless for a moment.

Then here.

Here.

Suddenly at rest, when intellect knew they weren’t: that the ship was still going faster than a planet-bred imagination easily grasped.

But down felt down again, as if it had never been different—at least a planet-habituated stomach felt very reassured by the current state of affairs. The safe universe had fractured and someone had fixed it. Very nice, very reassuring.

That meant they had arrived. Space had straightened itself out. And he had to move. Quickly, by Jase’s advisement.

He got up, and Jago got up.

“We’ll go up to the bridge,” he said, as if he proposed a trip down the hall at home. Thoughts were suddenly easier. He remembered things. One didn’t have to nail every thought to the wall.

But now he wasn’t sure any of his prior reasoning about the log records made thorough sense.

Jago tugged her jacket smooth. He adjusted his coat. They went out to find Banichi. Staff had turned out into the corridor, too, understanding that events would flow rapidly in this arrival.

“This is the senior captain speaking,” the intercom speakers said suddenly. “Early indications indicate arrival in Reunion System. General crew will stay in cabins until further notice.”

They had arrived. Banichi met them at the security center, where Asicho waited, ready to take up her watch at the boards. Narani had accompanied them down the corridor. So did Bin-danda and Jeladi. They all gathered outside the security station, all his household, all awaiting information and instructions on which their safety might depend.

All relying on him.

And in the same instant he grasped that distressing thought, the dowager’s apartment door opened and the dowager exited her rooms—with Cajeiri in tow. In court dress. It was not a casual expedition.

Ilisidi, Cajeiri, Cenedi. One of the senior staff carried a fair-sized packet wrapped in a tablecloth—lunch, one greatly feared.

They had notions where they were going.

Cajeiri, too, had a small wallet tucked under his arm, which Bren feared was not lunch.

And had he somehow implied, in his general muzziness, that the senior captain had cleared them to come up? There was nothing that stopped a tidal wave or the aiji-dowager once assumptions had gone this far. She was dressed. She was in motion.

And, granted Sabin was going to have the proverbial litter of kittens, the dowager was a resource the paidhiin could well use close at hand if things came unhinged.

“Go,” Ilisidi said with an impatient wave of her cane, as if she were not the one arriving late. “Go, go, nadiin. For what do we wait?”

“Nandi.” Bren stood aside to prefer her and Cajeiri, and both their bodyguards folded in behind.