Explorer

“I’ll ask Banichi,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do with that idea.”

Jase reached into his jacket pocket and handed the key to him. “Take care,” Jase said, clapping him on the arm. “Take care of yourself, Bren.”

“That’s a high priority,” he said, and hied himself off at Gin’s speed, resisting any temptation to cast a look back as if it was a last look. He made up his mind it wouldn’t be. He left the bridge and went to the lift, pockets full of electronic connections, the key, all manner of responsibility he’d rather not have, but had, and a mission now diverted from the one he knew how to do, onto an operation that didn’t involve sitting at a dining table.

“Asa-ji,” he said to Asicho on his way down in the lift, “how is our guest?”

“ He seems well, nandi. ”

“Advise Banichi and Jago they may leave our guest to Narani’s and the dowager’s judgement and meet me in security. By no means alarm our guest, but the foreign ship is moving toward us and the station has offended Jase-aiji. We are being threatened.”

“ Yes, nandi ,” Asicho said; and, depend on it, that was done.

He checked the bridge remote, and saw the current displays as the lift reached five-deck—no change in that situation. The alien ship was still moving; the flow of images was under Jase’s management—their own latest output redemonstrating their desire to board passengers and refuel. And at very worst—at very worst, Jase could put Prakuyo on mike and tell him talk to the foreign ship, and just hope for the best—

Hope that, meanwhile, station hadn’t taken a rash potshot at the advancing ship. One recalled that slagged station surface. A, one didn’t want to destroy an alien craft and have that to explain to the next ship that came asking, and, B, one didn’t want to damage that alien craft and have them retaliate at everything in their gunsights. Which meant getting present decision-makers away from the fire button in station Central, and hoping nothing they did put innocent people into an area that ended up vacuum.

He had an argument coming with Banichi and Jago, and he hated to dispute them—but assuredly he would. He was going with them. He had to. Couldn’t see them forced to shoot it out with scared, mostly innocent stationers… having to mow them down in rows to get at the guilty.

He entered the atevi section. “The dowager, nandi, is still with the foreigner,” Ilisidi’s guard at that post advised him.

“Thank you, nadi,” he answered, hardly pausing, all the while trying to figure how, in addition to other troubles, he was going to explain the situation to Prakuyo… or if he should explain, at all. Leave matters as they were, he thought on his way to the security post. Explain nothing. Hope that all explanation in Prakuyo’s case became extremely simple: The station is cooperating. We have fuel. We shall take you to your ship. Let us leave now. Goodbye. Good luck .

God, if only it could be that easy.

He reached the security post. Asicho shared the boards with one of Ilisidi’s men. Banichi and Jago were there waiting for him. With their fighting gear and their black bag. That fast.

“We have understood,” Banichi said, “Bren-ji.”

“Gin-aiji will send Barnhart,” Jago said. “We are ready. The aiji-dowager will see to matters here. Staff will attend our guest.”

A negotiator braced for argument hardly knew what to do at that point.

“I have to change coats,” he said.

A quick change, down to the skin, and back to station-style clothes. He was wearing out his wardrobe in a day.

He added the gas-mask, a rolled collar about his neck. Back came his gun, too: “One hopes not to need it, nandi.”

“One heartily agrees, Rani-ji.” He had the precious key in hand, and transferred it carefully to a zippered pocket, to be doubly sure. He made a fast check of the handheld unit Jase had lent him and saw the slow-moving dialogue of yes-no, black-white, off-on images proceeding, while communication with the station—God only knew. He had his pocket com. He didn’t want to attempt using the unfamiliar handheld for voice communication. “Bren Cameron, for Captain Graham,” he said to C1, and immediately had Jase on.

“Change of coats and we’re ready to move,” he reported to Jase. “Our plan is set. Banichi and Jago will brief me on the map in a few minutes. How is Gin?”

“ Says she’s prepping the suit. We want to do this about simultaneously. You’re going to have to hold up and wait for her. ”

“That’s all right. I’m not eager for this. Our guest, by the way, is enjoying dessert. He can out-consume Banichi. They hadn’t fed him enough. Or the right things.”

“ Ship cuisine benefited greatly from Bindanda’s influence ,” Jase said quietly, and said something aside from the com, then: “ If things get dicey, I’m thinking of putting our guest on com, let him talk to that ship. Good idea or bad ?”

“Could be a good idea. We don’t know what he might promise them or encourage them to do, that’s the situation. Not a good idea they move into line of the station’s guns. He speaks a few words, Jase. Not many, but at least a few. Maybe you could get him to follow a diagram, maybe you could show him where the guns are and let him explain the situation.”

“ God knows what they’d understand the situation is between us and station ,” Jase said. “ I’d like to control communications better than that. We don’t know but what he’d say come in and get me .”

“You’re probably right,” Bren said. “Listen, I’ll handle it when I get back. See you.” Gallows bravado, as he clicked off. It was increasingly dawning on him that this was the craziest thing he’d ever done—fueled by the optimism of a little dive into the lightly watched perimeter of the station, where, in a uniform society, nobody was expecting a security breach. Now they were expecting it—well, they’d be expecting it by the time they noticed their doors weren’t locking. This was the high stakes move. The very high stakes. Control of the whole station. Most important, stopping the station from taking a shot at that ship.

And, along with that, right at the top of their list: blowing the Archive. Preventing the whole cultural works of the human species from becoming a prize of war.

“Our guest is enjoying another dessert,” Narani informed him, “and greatly appreciates the fruit pie.”

“Excellent. One has great confidence in the staff. And in your resourcefulness, Rani-ji.” The whole rest of the staff was hovering about the dining hall, being sure nothing untoward happened—their collective strength surely enough to subdue their guest and rescue the dowager and Cajeiri, if needed.

Fruit pie hardly sounded like discontent or dispute, except the sugar high of all those tea cakes.

He patted the gun and the key a second time, then gave a little bow. “One hopes to be home for breakfast.”

“Nandi,” Narani said with a little bow of his own, and let him out the door, down to security where Banichi and Jago were in preparations, giving last-moment information. Barnhart was there, hands in coat pockets, heavy cold-boots on his feet, gas mask tucked down at his collar—certainly not the sort of gear one wore in one’s office.

“Thanks for coming,” Bren said, and held out a hand, Mospheiran-style handshake. “We’re on a rush move here. I trust you know about the ship moving in. I appreciate the backup.”

“No question,” Barnhart said.

They were ready.

Chapter 18

The lift had begun to work overtime, cars rigidly locked on their task, shuttling back and around from the forward airlock to the decks above—specifically to three- and four-deck, where common crew by now must have spread out in sections to assign cabins and see that station-born residents obeyed stowage, that they understood the movement rules, the alarms, and the plumbing and the area restrictions—crew that made themselves living rulebooks, because human beings under stress didn’t reliably absorb labels and lists. The ship had laid out and rehearsed all the plans during their voyage. They’d held weekly drills, such that Bren had a very clear inner vision of those corridors, rows of doors like every other, but now with real live people inbound with their kids, their small bundles of baggage. They came thanks to Narani’s brochures, thanks, perhaps, to his handing out sheets of printed paper in a remote region of the station where station security didn’t expect contraband and hadn’t been prepared to defend the station’s version of truth against a simple handful of printed papers.

Their clerk might have run to his office, called his wife and said, simply, Pack; the ship will take us to Alpha, and a wife might have called a mother who called a father, who called his second daughter at work, and that daughter called her husband, who called his sister and her teen-aged kids: human relations went like that, and if people really believed his promise that the brochures were a boarding pass—then God save them, he thought. They were naive, they were innocent of Braddock’s policies, and they deserved rescue, if the ship could get nobody in adminstration out alive.

This time there might be shooting. There was likely to be.

He clung barehanded to the safety rail in the car, next to Banichi and Jago. Barnhart was behind him with Desabi, Anaro and Kasari, three of the dowager’s young men: fortunate seven. They were off to take a space station that could, undamaged, have housed a city full of humans.

The illusion of gravity, supplied now only by the car’s jerks and turns and final stop, ceased altogether. The doors shot back with a sigh and showed them a safety web in dim lighting and a clutter of stationers and small baggage every which way—stationers that caught sight of Banichi and Jago and stared, wide-eyed. There were startled outcries.

“Allies!” Bren shouted. “Friends! You’re perfectly safe! Keep moving!”

A good sign, he thought, that the refugees were more concerned about getting into the car they’d just vacated, and two of the ship’s own crew were there to get them on in good order.

“No crowding!” one shouted as they left that problem behind and forged ahead, past the round tube entry where Kaplan and Polano were in charge of a handful of crew, armed and hard-suited against the unthinkable, that they would have to slow down a panic rush or a takeover attempt. Beyond them was utter dark.

“Outbound!” Bren yelled at the pair.

“Mr. Cameron, sir,” Kaplan said. “You take care!”

“Intend to,” he answered. Meanwhile a lighted gold ribbon of a conveyor line delivered more would-be passengers up and, past its sprocket, headed down into infinity. Banichi grabbed it, Jago did, and Bren tailed on, yanked authoritatively down past ascending passengers.

“Allies!” Bren shouted at those frightened looks in the dark, underlit by the conveyor line itself. “Hang tight! Warm space coming!”

Cold was all here—air in the tube stung the nose and burned the lungs, and dim light made them all shadows, except the light from the conveyor line, a golden glow that touched hands, underlit faces and edges of coats, bundles—they were ordinary folk, might-be shopkeepers and schoolchildren, workmen and businessfolk attached to this ribbon of light, grandmothers shepherded by younger folk, women carrying bundled children in one arm, one-handing their way up the conveyor, all packed tight for a space. That made about a lift car-load or two. Then there came a vacant space on the line, where crew below must be parceling out the refugees, lumping them into groups, sending them out a long, long ride in the absolute dark of the pressurized mast where the station itself hadn’t deigned to turn the lights on.

Their own party was the only one downbound, and Banichi and Jago wisely kept upper bodies turned slightly away, where atevi eyes woudn’t catch the indirect light of the conveyor line. Down and down they went, past another clot of refugees, then into the spotlight glare of the tube entry, where a few bright lights overpowered the dark beyond.

No lights in the mast. No power, or no cooperation from Central for their own people voting, so to speak, with their departure. But no lights suited invaders very well. Invaders found a safe concealment.

Maybe he should have sent Prakuyo back to confinement before he left. Certainly leaving him in the dining hall with Ilisidi and the boy was worth a cold second thought. But it was far out of his hands now.

Long, long ride to think about that. And not a thing in the world he could do. No com. No information, either direction.

Then bottom. End of the line, down in the spotlights that shone on desperate refugee faces, a parka-coated crewman.

“Friends!” Bren said as they met and passed one another on the lines, and an alarmed outcry was swallowed up in dark and cold.

They were at a lift station, where the glowing dot of a button said a car was coming, doubtless with more people.

It arrived, brightly lit as the door opened, tightly packed with refugees who in their haste to get off and find their way, never noticed some of the people waiting in the dark for a lift were taller and broader than ordinary. The passengers cheered with relief to see the conveyor lines, to realize they’d met ship’s crew; they came burdened with children and bundles, and wanted through this ordeal of cold and dark as fast as possible. They wanted safety, and reassurance.

Bren got in, held the door for Banichi and Jago in the warmth and light: Barnhart and the dowager’s men entered, all of them, pressed close to the walls.

Time for the precious key. Bren pulled it out, fighting cold stung tears that froze his lashes together and obscured his vision. He stuck it in the slot, input the builder’s code, A1, which was as close to the operational heart as a car could get.

Doors shut. The car banged into motion. Feet hit the floor and Bren tucked away the key and zipped the pocket, fingers so numb he had to look to be sure he had the zip secure.

Perfectly ordinary lift car. It could have been on their home station—give or take the level of weaponry around him. It rose, it clicked through ordinary operations. He watched Banichi and Jago take out sidearms and asked himself whether he should draw his gun and prepare to threaten the opposition, shoot without warning—or attempt the civilized approach he had envisioned when he insisted on coming.

“Let me attempt to talk to whatever individuals we meet,” he requested of them. “Barnhart, the atevi have body armor. Keep to the rear; we don’t want to lose our hands-on person.”

“Enough said,” Barnhart answered him.

The car slowed. The indicator didn’t say first level. Someone had a priority code.

“To the sides,” he said in Ragi— foolish of him to attempt to direct the operation, but they understood him and got to the protected sides.

The car stopped. A man in a suit, communications to his ear, simply got on, and didn’t seem to register there was anything particularly unusual until the dowager’s men flattened him and took his handheld away. An item sailed out of the car, far down the corridor—the handheld, Bren thought in one heartbeat, before a siren started up, where that object landed.

“ Evacuate immediately ,” that object screamed, deafening in volume… in Gin’s voice. “ Instability warning. Evacuate to the mast. Prepare for cold. Evacuate immediately …”

Conspiracy between Gin and his staff. His heart thumped as he shoved his key back into the slot—deciding this time not only to punch the button, but to hold it—he’d seen maintenance do that. It might work.

The car got underway. Not a sound from the man in the suit, and a glance back didn’t even show his presence, only Ilisidi’s three guards in the corner.

Level 3. Section 2.

They were getting into the critical area. Holding the key in and the button down was working or they’d met a run of luck not too surprising in a station bleeding occupants toward the ship. Jago had gotten a small gray box out of their bag, and had that in hand. A grenade? Another noisemaker? He hoped not to meet resistence. And was sure he wouldn’t get his wish.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get the sweat out. Wiped them clear, trying not to hyperventilate. Banichi and Jago were right with him.

Level 2. Section 1. They were nearly there. Nearly there. Atevi had guns at the ready. Barnhart had wedged himself in the back somewhere. Question was, when they’d built the station, A-1 had been the building center, the core of original construction. It was near the control center. It wasn’t necessarily inside the control center.

Level 1. Section 1.

The car stopped. “I shall have a look, nadiin-ji,” Bren said, snatching the key back as the doors opened. He stepped out into an ordinary corridor, typically without numbers or signs; but with a single clerk in rapid motion, and he could see the secured doors of what was surely Central just to his left.

“Alarm on four!” he called out, which happened to be the truth. “Alarm on four! They’re evacuating.”

The clerk looked at him in shock.

“Get out of here!” Bren said; and about that time his company exited the lift car. The clerk pasted himself to the wall.

“Grenade!” Jago said, and Bren translated it: “Grenade! Run! Ship’s boarding!”

As another noisemaker hit the corridor, siren shrieking, Gin’s voice saying over and over, “ Evacuate !”

Banichi and Jago ran for those doors, and Bren ran, Barnhart ran, and two of Ilisidi’s men ran with them. Down went the black bag, Banichi opened the flap, and handed Jago a small object and a sticky wad which Jago pressed together into the door seam—Bren was watching that as Banichi, black bag in hand, jerked him back and pressed him against the wall, Banichi and Jago on either side of him. The stuff exploded with a shock that came up through the decking. Alarms screamed and machinery operated down the hall. Doors shut.

Central knew they were here, no question. Sirens warred, out of sync, theirs and the station’s, as Banichi and one of Ilisidi’s men seized the pair of damaged doors, wrestled something like a truck jack into the bottom.

Fire from inside the room pasted back, close to Banichi. Bren drew his gun, sole comfort in a situation that hadn’t turned out in the least diplomatic. Barnhart proved to have his own gun, but the human contingent could only watch as the second of Ilisidi’s guards added his strength to the jammed doors, as machinery and atevi muscle warred. More pellet-fire streaked out of that room, burning two streaks in Banichi’s sleeve, making him wince.

An office door opened halfway down the corridor, and fire came from the lift car: their own guns keeping whoever was in that new doorway pinned down and out of action; Bren tried to see the target and couldn’t.

Their own doors widened, jostled aside. Jago dropped down to the deck in the doorway, rifle braced at ankle level, and fired into the room.

Pellet fire came out, over her head.

Banichi pulled a grenade out of his jacket and tossed it in. Jago rolled over, out of the way, shielded by the ruined doors.

Percussion grenade. Flash-bang. It no sooner went off than Banichi and Ilisidi’s men charged over Jago’s position and dived to either side within the room.

Jago scrambled up and in.

And damn if he was any use back here. “Watch the hall!” he shouted to Barnhart, and dived low inside the jimmied doors, skinned through the gap on his belly, facing a console base of some kind, only to feel a powerful hand seize the coat in the middle of his back and drag him aside and back against the wall.

Not so much use here, either. Jago had him, hugged him close in the process of wedging him further back into the corner, where her armor protected him. A pall of smoke hung over the place, reddened by the lights blinking on consoles, and sirens were still going off.

Banichi and Ilsidi’s men inched toward wider positions.

And people were going to die.

If he didn’t think of something.

“I’m Bren Cameron from Alpha,” he shouted, “here with local allies from Alpha. Cease fire and get rid of the weapons. We’re a rescue mission! Just don’t fire and you’ll all get out of this alive!”

Fire answered that offer, pellets richocheting everywhere, doing no good for the consoles, which began beeping protests.

“One doubts they will surrender,” Jago said, incredibly patient.

“One regrets the attention, Jago-ji.” Pellets richocheted all about them. “Barnhart is out there watching the hall.”

“Excellent, Bren-ji.” Jago moved a little. “Stay here. Cover your ears.”

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men had just that instant passed out of sight behind a console, and now Jago moved—he hoped he hadn’t thrown their timing off. He crouched low, trying to become invisible.

Bang . A pop-grenade, a distraction. A man broke cover into his aisle, low as he was, and Bren braced his back in the corner and braced his pistol against his knees, affording that security guard a view down the gun-barrel.

“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up. Hands up. You’ll survive only if you do as you’re told. Where’s Braddock?”

“Office.”

“Stand up !” he snapped; but about that time pellets flew all about and the man, starting to stand up, ducked down, covering head and ears.

“I can’t!”

Another grenade explosion went off. What light panels hadn’t fallen, came rattling down everywhere, and Jago appeared on her knees behind his prisoner, snatched him by the foot and flattened him with an elbow and an open-handed blow that sprawled the man flat on the deck.

“One apologizes,” Bren whispered, too deaf to hear his own voice, and Jago scuttled toward him, seized him by the arm and dragged him off to another aisle of consoles where a handful of harmless, non-combatant station techs, caught between invasion and security forces, had taken cover and lay in heaps, covering heads and necks and each other.

A door was down that aisle. A windowed office.

“He said Braddock is in the office, Jago-ji.”

“Tell these persons to move.”

“Crawl out of here,” Bren said. “Clear this aisle. You’re safer outside: just stay down and don’t act hostile. Move, and you’ll survive!”

Most of a dozen techs and clerks mobilized themselves, scrambling out of the aisle, down into another row, an aisle that led potentially to the door; and Jago eeled forward, low, up against the door in question—stuck a device to it and got out of the way, as pellet-fire erupted from another aisle.

The limpet went off—blew a hole where the door edge met the wall; and fire-suppression went off, clouds of vapor coming down.

“Gas!” Jago yelled, and Bren dragged up his own mask, while the air grew thick with fog.

Jago, meanwhile, got a hand on the door-edge and pulled, and pellet-fire came out at them.

Didn’t stop Jago. She charged in and there was a heavy thump.

Bren scrambled to the door on elbows and knees, saw Jago on her feet, dragging no less than Braddock himself, who was swearing and flailing.

Jago’s patience ran out. She swung the man around in a restraining grip and shoved him onto the floor, under her foot.

“Bren Cameron, Mr. Braddock,” Bren said, ducked as low, at least, as the window-edge, bulletproof as it might be. “I’d advise you give up and get your people aboard.”

“Traitor to your own species!”

Name-calling. A disappointing lack of common sense.

“I did my best for you,” Bren said. “You’re on your own, Mr. Braddock. I just hope to prevent most of your people getting killed, because we’re taking this station down.”

“The hell!” Braddock yelled, and broke out in coughing and shortness of breath.

Jago simply flattened him.

“Banichi?” she called out. “We have the station-aiji.”

“We have the main area,” Banichi said, outside, not far distant, and appeared in the haze, standing up, leaning with a casual air against the ravaged door. “It was hardly a well-thought defense, particularly the firefighting system.”

Jago gathered Braddock up, half-conscious as he was. Bren thought it finally safe to stand up; and he could see, in the thicker fog outside, Ilisidi’s men moving about in the aisles.

“They’ll die,” he said, concerned for the techs and even for Braddock, but as he came outside he saw Ilisidi’s men were clearing the aisles of downed workers, simply dragging them out into the corridor, one and two at a time. Jago took Braddock himself to the wrecked doorway and the clearer air.

And Barnhart had come in, masked, walking over fallen light panels to get to the main console.

Station systems. Barnhart knew those, having built them. He started flipping switches. And took up a microphone. “This is station Central announcing a general boarding. Take only essential items and medications. Essential personnel, remain at posts during boarding. You are assured time to reach the mast in an orderly evacuation. We have reached an understanding with the alien craft. Fuel operations techs, report to ship’s officers stat.”

“Can you lock the board, Bren-ji?” Jago asked, and Bren shook off the spell of Barnhart’s general announcement echoing from the hall outside, fished out the precious key and looked for a key-slot. Any key-slot, his being universal.

Barnhart pointed. He slid it in and Barnhart punched buttons.

“They can’t lock the board down,” Barnhart said, and flipped more switches. “Data’s all over this system. But main storage is over there.”

“Banichi,” Bren said, and translated: “That is the Archive.”

Banichi got into the bag and took out an alarmingly large limpet. And stuck it on.

“We should leave now, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and said in Mosphei’, “Run. Now.”

Sabin, Bren thought, realizing the finality of the next explosion. They had no idea where Sabin was. But Jago shoved him and Barnhart at the door and through it, Banichi and Ilisidi’s men following, out into a hall where the third of Ilisidi’s guards maintained one foot in the lift and held under threat of his rifle all the coughing, terrified technicians sitting on the floor. And he didn’t see Braddock.

“We should go support Gin-aiji,” Banichi said, and waved an arm, beckoning the frightened civilians. “Run! Go to the lift!”

The techs scrambled up and ran. Ilisidi’s man stepped out, and Bren stood in the lift door and beckoned the techs. “Come on in with us. We’ll get you to safety. Hurry!”

A handful hesitated, then rushed into the car; the rest scattered.

“Don’t go back into Control!” Barnhart yelled at those that stayed, and about that time the charge blew. One of Ilisidi’s men yanked Barnhart back into the lift and Jago shut the door.

Key. Bren shoved it in. The humans with them jammed themselves into one corner of the car, scared beyond speech and probably now asking themselves if they’d made the right choice.

“Anybody know fuel systems?” Barnhart asked, and in a silence aside from heavy breathing and the thumps of the moving car: “If we can’t move the ship, we’re all in a mess. Is there fuel?”

“There is,” a smallish man said, coughing. “There ought to be.”

“G-10, by the charts,” Barnhart said, and Bren punched that in.

Bang-thump. The car started to move. Bren’s heartbeat ticked up in time with the thumps and jolts the car made.

“All the rest of you,” Bren said, keeping his voice calm, at least, “all of you just stay in that corner and don’t do anything when we get down there. Chairman Braddock claimed you’ve rigged the fuel to explode. We’re going to try to get past that lock to refuel the ship that’s going to get you out of here and back to Alpha. When we get that done, you’ll be free to do whatever you want—get your families aboard, gather the family heirlooms, or run hide in a closet on the station, which we don’t advise. That alien ship is moving in to get its next of kin back, which Braddock has been holding prisoner for most of ten years. Now we’ve got him, and we’re going to give him back and get the ship out of here. Join us if you like.”

Banichi reached into his coat and pulled out, quite solemnly, several of the color brochures, which he offered to the stationers. “Baggage rules,” he said.

The stationers took the papers very, very gingerly. Banichi smiled down at them.

The car slowed. Bren hit lock , then pocketed his key: no car coming in—this one wasn’t getting out. “I’ve locked it.” he said to the workers. “Safest, to stay inside until the dust settles. One of my associates will stay with you. Don’t put your heads out if you hear gunfire.” He straightened his coat, glanced at Banichi and Jago, drew a deep breath, and looked out into the corridor.

Deserted. But fire-scorched along the wall panels. Ceiling panels down, showing structural elements that themselves were potential sites of ambush. It looked as if, please God, everyone had deserted the place.

“Hello?” he called out, playing tourist on holiday, looking, he hoped, not like a foreigner. “Hello?”

Heads popped out of a room down the hall. Projectile fire went past him, and he hit the floor, flat on his face, playing corpse. Pellet-fire came from the room down the hall and projectile-fire came back from at least two sources.

“Bren-ji?” Jago’s voice, from the lift car behind him.

“Cameron?” a hoarse yell from behind him, from a corridor past the lift. Clearly someone knew him. He didn’t quite peg it. “Cameron, get back!”

“Cameron, dammit! Keep down !” God, he knew that voice. Sabin . That came from still farther back down the corridor.

“I’m lying very flat,” he called out to his own team, beginning to creep sideways, over against the same wall as the lift.

Heads popped out of the doorway up the corridor. The occupants fired. Banichi and Jago fired, Sabin’s position far behind him fired, all over his head, and he scrambled backward along the wall, pushing with his palms and knees.

Then a curious object whined along the decking, past his head—one of Cajeiri’s toy cars, with something taped to the top. He was completely mesmerized for the moment, at ground level, watching it zip ahead down the corridor. It finessed a sharp turn, right into the appropriate room—Banichi had to have his head exposed, steering it: that was Bren’s immediate thought.

The car went off in a white flash of brilliant light. A cloud of gas rolled out of that room.

Ilisidi’s men raced past his prone body, as a strong atevi hand grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him up—that was Banichi—and another, lighter footstep came up beside him.

Jenrette. A white-faced, anxious Jenrette, gun in hand. Damned right he’d known that first voice.

If Jenrette intended trouble—he had to admit—Jenrette could have shot him.

“ Trying to follow Graham’s orders,” Jenrette said. “I knew she’d come here, if anywhere. Tell her that.”

Vouch for a many-times traitor, at this critical point, whose reason for not shooting him was far from altruistic? Sabin was farther down that corridor, down by the intersection, still under cover, not coming out into the clear.

Banichi, meanwhile, had joined Ilisidi’s men. Jago had possession of the corridor, rifle in hand, and waited for them. For him . For the key , which he had, dammit and bloody hell!

“Stay down by the lift,” he snapped at Jenrette. Barnhart had run ahead of him, halfway to Banichi. Bren caught a shallow breath and ran, too, on legs that wanted to wobble as if the emergency were already over.

Which it wasn’t by a mile. The rules had changed, but the machinery in that room was still operating. If any of the techs inside had vented the fuel or set something ticking in that gas-filled room, they had a problem.

Next was an intersection of corridors, ambush possible. Banichi and Jago, masks up, entered the room, Ilisidi’s men went to the T of the hall; and there ensued bangs and thumps from inside the gas-clouded room, bodies hitting consoles, God only knew. Bren reached the door beside Barnhart, pulled his gas mask up, already feeling the sting of the gas. His limited view made out Banichi and Jago on their feet, and two lighted consoles in this moderate-sized room, two monitors lit—the techs who should be watching those monitors were on the floor, at the moment, coughing and struggling, and Banichi and Jago were kindly dragging them out.

The mercy mission exited. Barnhart headed in. Bren did. His hazed view of the monitors shaped a camera view of machinery on one screen in the middle of the consoles, graphs and figures on the other, the rest dark and unused. This place handled refueling. Controlled the pumps, the valves, the lines, the booms, and none of that was going on; but that monitor—that one monitor had what looked like a camera-shot of the fuel port; and that, more than the switches, was where Bren directed his attention.

If Gin was out there, he had no idea where; but if she’d gotten there, trying to take the power out—she was still at risk from anything wired in, independent of station power, and they couldn’t communicate with her.

“We don’t know where Gin is,” Bren said, muffled in the mask. “Hang on, hang on before we start pushing any buttons.” He had his own communications, in the pocket com, in the handheld, and took it out uncertainly.

“That won’t reach the ship,” Barnhart said.

“Lights. Gin’d see that. Can we get an on-off? Let her know we’re here.”

Barnhart moved his hand over one board, looking for a switch in the haze, then reached across the board and flipped one. Camera view dimmed. Brightened. The spotlight on that port went off. On. Off. On.

That had to tell Gin she had help inside. That risking her neck had suddenly gone to a lesser priority, and she had time.

And they, meanwhile, were faced with an array of buttons none of which was going to be labeled blow the damn fuel .

“I don’t think we should touch it, yet,” he said to Barnhart, extending a cautionary hand. “Just guard it and get some of the ship personnel up—”

Shots rang out from the left hand of the door. That intersecting T-corridor—he could see it in his mind. Ilisidi’s men. They weren’t safe here. They were far separated from safe territory.

Shots became a volley. A firefight. And Banichi vanished from the doorway, headed leftward, leaving Jago alone to hold the door. As fire broke out from the other direction. Jago pasted a shot in that direction, and crouched down, delving into Banichi’s black bag.

Bren left the consoles to Barnhart and joined Jago, hand on the gun in his pocket. “I can lock these consoles down, Jago-ji,” he said. “We can make a run for it. Can we tell Banichi that?”

A sudden fire was going at either side, and there wasn’t a safe place for anyone in the corridor, where they’d dumped the hapless ops center technicians. Banichi and Ilisidi’s men stood their ground at the corner; while fire down the corridor was coming from midway and far down, and the technicians, crawling, attempted to go in that direction.

Jago was assembling another of Cajeiri’s little cars with tape and a black box, and with a fast wrap of tape, she set it loose, steered it left, down the corridor toward Banichi’s position and right around the corner.

“Twenty farther!” Banichi yelled out, and fired around the corner. “Farther, farther. Right turn—now?”

Boom!

Banichi and Ilisidi’s men dived around the corner, not a second’s hesitation, one covering their rear in the T, a thunder of booted feet on the deck and a second explosion. Jago squatted, assembling bits again, this one a knob on a stick.

“I think I know the right switch,” Barnhart reported from behind them.

“Not yet!” Bren said. His full attention was for the way he could watch, while Jago was on one knee, delving into the black bag while snatching looks down the corridor the way they’d come. The technicians they’d evicted had made it halfway to the lift, crawling the distance, coughing and half-blind. Beyond the lift, where the third of Ilisidi’s men maintained position with, presumably, Jenrette, and a handful of stationers, Sabin was still down there under cover—about, he thought, at the next T-intersection. Whoever was firing up the hall was farther off than that, bad for aim, but not comfortable for them getting back to the lift.

Jago made a ripping move, stepped full into the corridor and made a throw with all the considerable strength of her arm. She ducked back as fire came at her, as the grenade hit the decking and exploded in a cascade of ceiling and wall panels.

A section door went shut down there, likely automatic at the explosion, possibly sealing off someone’s retreat.

“It’s sealed that direction,” he said; and about that time another door opened and fire came out toward them. “Damn!”

Jago was on the pocket com, advising Banichi: the things operated independently on short range and searched for signal. “The section sealed in our direction, but we have another site two doors off the lift, nadi, do you hear?”

“One hears,” Banichi seemed to say, difficult to understand.

“We have cleared this corridor. It would be wise to close our section door.”

That took a key.

“I’m coming,” Bren said, springing up. “Tell him I’m coming.”

“Nadi!” Jago protested; but he wasn’t the shot she was, and she protected the fuel supply. Momentarily expendable, he ran, hung a tight right at the intersection, almost into one of Ilisidi’s men, and down the hall where Banichi waited.

Banichi hadn’t wanted him , he was sure of that as he shoved his key into section control and got the control panel open. “One is long out of practice, nadi, with the gun.” Section door close was a two-fingered operation, and he did it, fast. That door cut off anyone coming from that direction. “Better Jago holds that door.” Another breath. He had a stitch in his side from the sprint he’d done. “One or more enemies with a pellet rifle at the end of the corridor; Jago has thrown a grenade down there. Jenrette should be in the lift and I think Sabin is somewhere between us and our enemies. We have tried to signal Gin-aiji. Everyone is here.”

“For the fuel,” Banichi said, sensibly, and pushed him along, back down the corridor toward the intersection. “For control of that commodity. Which we desperately need. All sides will come here. But one takes it there is fuel to defend.” They reached the corner, where Ilisidi’s two men stood on opposite arms of the T. “So we have it, and we shall hold it.”

“Sabin’s got ship’s security with her.” Out of breath, thoughts jarred loose in his brain. “Jenrette knew Sabin-aiji would come here. She never went to Central.”

“She cannot have been here long.”

“We made a great deal of noise upstairs. There may have been a standoff, if only in the last hour. But that Jenrette is here, too—one cannot trust him, Banichi-ji. We cannot trust him, and I sent him to the lift!”

Banichi took out his pocket com. “Kasari-ji, disarm the ship-human immediately.”

Banichi had the com close to his ear. Bren strained to hear, glad there was a reply—not glad that a frown touched Banichi’s face.

“Jenrette never went to the lift,” Banichi reported, and said, via com: “If he arrives, disarm him.”

“He must have moved toward Sabin’s position,” Bren said. “Jase has banned him from the ship unless he comes with her, but I by no means rely on his man’chi.”

“This relies on human thinking,” Banichi said to him, “which is notoriously convolute.”

“Simple, in this case, nadi-ji. His man’chi may lie with Braddock. Kill Sabin, kill all the ship’s senior security, and board with Braddock, trying to take equal power with Jase-aiji during negotiations with the alien ship. Or ally with her, and Braddock. Get aboard. And strike at Jase and the dowager by treachery in the homeward voyage—perhaps taking possession of Tabini’s heir, to strike at Shejidan. This thing might have either of two paths, but one destination.”

One might expect Banichi to be appalled: but Banichi, reloading his gun, shrugged. “Greatly discounting Cenedi.”

“I would never discount Cenedi.”

“Nor would I.” Banichi employed his pocket com a second time. “Nadiin-ji, Bren marks Jenrette as dangerous.”

It was a death sentence. I would never, he wanted to say. Civilized Mospheirans had process of law, of courts, of appeals and debates.

In the aiji’s court—there was Banichi’s Guild. And here was no place to file Intent. Only to move on targets until there was leisure for consideration.

Click. Banichi reloaded his second gun.

“Go to Jago,” Banichi said. “ We will find Jenrette.”

“No, nadi. He will have appealed to Sabin with a lie. I can deny that.” He took out his own gun, that long-ago gift, not sure he could hit the opposing wall after years of no practice, but it posed at least a visible threat. “My presence is absolutely necessary.”

“Movement,” Anaro reported, Ilisidi’s man, next to them, never having taken his eyes off the intersecting corridor.

Bren looked. At that farthest intersection before the closed door, dim with smoke-haze and Jago’s having blown the lighting down there, a handful of humans had come out of hiding, headed up the corridor toward the lift. Sabin. He could make out the silver hair. A dozen or so of her security. He didn’t see Jenrette, and that was worrisome. If Jenrette had communications, and was in touch with Braddock—

“Sabin!” Bren yelled. “Look out!”

Fastest he could think, and the desired result: her security moved to protect her , bodies between her and any conceivable threat, and up against the wall, trying to get to the lift.

“Sabin, we’re in the lift! That’s safe!”

Fire broke out from the place Jenrette had occupied before, the intersecting hall a little down from the lift. Two of Sabin’s party went down, a third hit.

Banichi ran; Bren dived after him, a hard sprint down the corridor toward what had become a firefight. They passed Jago’s position; passed the lift, where Kasari held the doorway, no one in position to get the sniper that was taking down Sabin’s guard.

The sniper put his head and his sidearm around the corner.

Banichi braked so fast Bren nearly hit him, braked, and fired, and the sniper vanished backward, leaving an appalling spatter against the opposing wall.

Fire had stopped from Sabin’s party; Banichi flattened himself against the wall and whipped around that corner, but the immediate relaxation told the tale, and Bren didn’t think he wanted to see the damage that had left its evidence on that other wall.

Banichi wasn’t so fastidious. He squatted down, collected items from Jenrette’s pockets, a sidearm, a pocket com and a handheld, on each of which he killed the power with a press of his thumb.

Those were worth later investigation.

Sabin arrived, her guard battered and bloody, herself with a bloody forearm and a ripped sleeve.

“Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that Mr. Jenrette?”

“Yes, ma’am.” They didn’t have time for question and answer. There was that ship moving in. “Dr. Kroger’s out there trying to defuse whatever-it-is, we’ve got the station up there, we dislodged Braddock from Central and blew the Archive. Captain Graham’s boarding civilians fast as he can. We took the alien hostage Braddock was holding, we’re trying to get communication with him, and last I heard, his ship’s moving in, but we’re talking to it.”

Several blinks. “Not half bad for a day’s work.”

He was numb. He had a dead man at his feet. And a captain who’d tried her best to take the station from inside, with the force she had. And not done a bad job of it, counting she’d ended up at the right place to secure the fuel, the high card she’d known the station held. “Captain Graham will want you aboard soon as possible.”

“Possible, once we get the fuel flowing.” Sabin gave a glance aside as Banichi stood up; and up. “ Hato ,” she said. Ragi, for good . It applied to food and drink, not quite apt.

But Banichi understood.

And called Jago. “Jago. Jenrette is dead. Sabin-aiji is safe.”

Jago said something that made Banichi smile.

“Barnhart has found Gin-aiji,” Banichi reported. “She has swum up to the camera and made encouraging signals. One believes she is in direct communication with Jase.”

“Get my wounded aboard,” Sabin said. “I’ll handle the fuel.”

“Get them into the lift,” Bren said. “We’ll manage. Fast as we can.—Banichi-ji. We are requested to take the wounded back as quickly as we can. Sabin-aiji will manage here.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, and relayed orders to his associates in three positions.

They’d done it. His knees felt weak. They’d actually done it. It didn’t feel done. They’d been attacked from two fronts and the middle, and the way down wasn’t guaranteed safe—particularly sneaking a handful of very tall atevi back on board; but they did what they could.

“I have Jase’s key,” he confessed to Sabin. “I need it to get them back.” Meaning the wounded, and the handful of techs in their keeping.

“You’re just full of tricks,” Sabin said. “Go lock those section doors with that key, Mr. Cameron—I trust you know how to do that—and then get that thing back aboard the ship. Fast.”

The lord of the heavens had his bailiwick and his arena of understanding; it didn’t include ship’s operations, or that fueling station, and when Sabin suggested locking the critical doors with an unbreachable lock, barring all station access to this place, it seemed a good idea to do exactly that, and fast.

Chapter 19

Go,” Bren said to their detainees, once the lift car reached the mast entry level—one expected that to be the most desolate area of the station; but it was jammed with refugees, men, women, children carrying other children and parents carrying baggage—and their detainees vanished into jammed lines of refugees. Terror rippled the lines as unprepared stationers saw atevi exit the car, but they were locked in that essential fact of station life, the line, the line that gave precedence, the line in which all things were done and solved, the line which meant entitlement—in this case, to ship-boarding; and the line buckled.

“They’re from Alpha!” Bren shouted. “They are, and I am! Pass it on! We have injured people here—excuse us. We need through to medical immediately, please !”

They didn’t have access to station communications; but word of mouth rippled both ways in the moving lines—lines ultimately diced and packeted by the lift.

They had one of ship’s security, walking wounded: Barnhart had an arm around him, helping him along. There were three who couldn’t walk, one in bad condition, and Ilisidi’s men carried them like children, gear and all—atevi protocols: Banichi and Jago had their lord present, and guarded him , and that was the way of things. So he went, scaring evacuees—until humans saw a bona fide mission of mercy, and blood, and atevi carrying human wounded toward the ship. Then stares attended them, and confusion swayed the line, but no panic ensued.

“Excuse us,” Bren said, all the lengthy way up the line to the lift. “Excuse us. We have to get to medical. Urgent. Excuse us.”

He was breathing hard, despite the lightest of station gravity. They reached the lift, and stationers there, next in line for salvation, clearly didn’t want to wait—“We have children,” the head of the line objected.

“We have a man critical,” Bren said, in this contest of crises. “Ship’s officer. We can take the children through with us, if you want. Rest a minute. Protect those kids’ faces. It’s a long cold on the other side.”

The man didn’t half know. Frustration, fear and resentment of alien presence were all in that expression; but he was willing to argue with ship personnel and half a dozen towering aliens to get to a safety that—he hadn’t thought it through—likely had more such aliens in charge; and Bren didn’t altogether blame him for his confusion. If a station was going into critical failure, as these people began to realize, it was a very thin bubble in a very big dark, and anywhere with air, light, and power was life itself.

The lift car arrived. Bren crowded his own party in and punched the button, no key. The car shot off, express for the mast; and they were alone for the moment, hoping that Sabin, upstairs, was managing the fueling station without interference.

But the more that line of refugees grew, the more people would begin to realize the station was in trouble, and when neighbors started leaving, people started calling those they cared about. By now, anyone calling Central might not get through. And a failure of communications meant a spread of rumor, in a station already half-dead, already having lost one essential asset, and all protection from alien incursion. Families were taking the ship’s offer. Individuals with non-critical jobs were. Probably a few with critical jobs had begun to weigh staying and going, and if one bolted—more would.

Faster and faster. More and more desperate. They’d gotten through a line reasonably well-ordered and willing to reason, in this early stage of the evacuation. Later—as systems started failing—panic was going to pack more and more people into that line.

“We still cannot reach Asicho, nandi,” Jago said.

“Soon, at least, Jago-ji,” he said. “One believes Gin has relayed reassurances to Jase. And perhaps Sabin-aiji has gotten through.”

Warning lights flashed red. The car began deceleration and the comfortable illusion of up and down shifted, an assault on a stomach already uncertain—he didn’t like this, didn’t like it, stared at the indicators for proof of their location in time and space, reassurance of destination imminent.

The car stopped. They were weightless. And a startled Phoenix crew member met them.

“If you’ve got com,” Bren said, “advise Captain Graham we’re coming, with injured crew.”

“Yes, sir,” the crewwoman said.

The lighted conveyor ran past them. Bren grabbed it one-handed, felt it take the mass of Banichi and Jago behind him and then, presumably, Barnhart and one crewman; and Ilisidi’s men, with two of Sabin’s, as best they could.

There was little stress on the arm, enough to prove they were moving, while all he could see was the glowing ribbon winding through a vast, numbing-cold dark: an illusion of infinity, that ribbon interrupted by silhouettes. In the far distance, dots that were families interrupted the glow, refugees, holding together, half-frozen and caught in, nothing, in nowhere—thank God, Bren thought, that the lighted ribbon did move, and moved with a fair dispatch, because if ever some one of the refugees let go and became lost off the ribbon, they might lodge up in the unseen recesses, helpless, to freeze before rescue could find them. The conveyor was designed for the able-bodied.

Clips, he thought. They ought to find clips somewhere.

The ribbon had an end. Or a returning-point, where it doubled back. And there were a few clips floating past, attached. Someone was using his imagination.

There were crewmen at that end-point. Safety. And nothing would hurry this line. Bren watched the crew help one after another clumps of people into the tube, and onto the next conveyor line.

Their turn came. Crew had seen them coming.

“We’ve got wounded,” Bren said. “For two-deck.” And the masked, parka-clad crewmen delayed them not at all, only sent them up the umbilical connection to the ship itself.

Faster trip, this.

“Mr. Cameron, sir.” Welcome voice, behind that mask: Kaplan met them on two-deck; Kaplan and Polano; and medics, instantly taking charge of the wounded.

“Sabin’s alive. At the fuel station,” Bren said. Kaplan deserved that information. “Need to see the captain.”

“Go right on up, sir.” Kaplan held the lift door for him and his, and let the door shut once they were inside.

Light. Glorious, brilliant light, and warmth. Air that didn’t feel like the same substance as that burning chill outside. A solid feel to the deck under his feet. It was like emerging from near drowning. Everything was sharp-edged. Every familiar sight was new.

And the handheld worked, if numb fingers could get it out of his pocket and hold on to it. It gave him a series of images his watering eyes couldn’t quite bring into focus; one dark. One was an animation. They were talking to the alien ship. One—one was a suited figure in a lot of dark, beside machinery. Gin. He didn’t know how to bring in the audio, and lost the image.

“Damn!” he said, then, conscious of his companions, and then of the fact their personal electronics were in contact again, and that Asicho, belowdecks, was likewise receiving: “Asa-ji, we are all well.” And to his immediate company. “My fingers are numb. But they seem to be talking to the foreign ship and Gin-aiji seems still at work outside. Perhaps Jase-aiji wishes now to move the ship closer to take on fuel, but with people coming aboard in bitter cold, impossible to hold them off.”

“This ship cannot in any wise maneuver,” Jago observed.

“One believes,” he began to say, but the lift reached its destination and let them out on the bridge: him, his bodyguard, Barnhart, and the dowager’s men, all of them, he suddenly realized, in the pristine cleanliness of the bridge, bloody and sweaty and reeking of fumes as their clothes thawed, their whole party laden down with all sorts of battle-gear.

Jase met them the moment they cleared the short partition, met him and seized him by the shoulder. “Bren. What’s the story over there?”

“Sabin’s at fueling ops, the archive’s blown, Central’s out, and we left word on several levels to evacuate—which people seem to be doing, fast as they can. What’s this side?”

“We’re running out of pictures to send, that ship’s still moving in, and Gin’s out there in short-range communication. We’ve got fuel if we could move to get it. If the station doesn’t go unstable before we can get the fuel off. That’s our problem. Yours is down on five-deck. We need our houseguest to talk to that ship out there. We need time, Bren. We’ve got to get an emergency crew onto the station to keep it stable and keep it running.”

“It’s not secure over there. Braddock’s still alive. Jenrette isn’t. But Sabin’s got the section doors locked on the fuel center. There were several tries at us while we were taking it.”

“Station’s getting shorter-handed by the hour, and we can talk to them .” Jase gave a shake at his shoulders. “We can talk to station. You can talk to the other side of this situation. Get us some time and everything’s a lot better.”

“Understood,” Bren said. He was shivering from recent bone-chill, at that floating-feeling stage of exhaustion, but Jase was right, no question. “I’ll handle it. Key.” He remembered it, and took it from his pocket and gave it back.

“One is grateful, nadiin-ji: one is extremely grateful.” With a small bow to the atevi in general. “Barnhart.” A nod, a warm handshake. “Get a rest.”

“Rest isn’t likely,” Barnhart said. “But I’ll get on it.”

“Nadiin,” Bren said, gathering his company, and went straight back to the lift. Bath, he was thinking, warm bath, warm up the surface, get the brain working, maybe one of Bindanda’s tea cakes and a hot drink: he had to shift gears, get his thoughts out of fight and on to the delicate business of communication. Fast.

He shoved the handheld and its problems into his pocket on the way to the lift—got in, and started to give a surreptitious sniff at his hand, wondering whether fumes had adhered to his skin as well as his clothes and whether he could forego the bath; and saw it spattered with dried blood.

Bath, he thought. There were certain things one didn’t want to explain. God knew what evidence his face had. Barnhart’s coat was bloody. Atevi uniforms were no better off, and Banichi—

The blood seeping down Banichi’s fingers wasn’t old, and Banichi hadn’t been helping the wounded.

“Banichi. How bad? How long?”

“Minor,” Banichi said. “Minor, Bren-ji. Not long.”

“Jago-ji, be sure of it.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and sternly, when Banichi only looked as if he might object, “ yes , nadi.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, which took one crisis off the paidhi’s mind.

“One will be grateful if you take it as a first priority,” he said, as the lift reached five-deck and the door opened. “Barnhart. Owe you a drink.”

“I’ll collect,” Barnhart said, and went off his direction, toward the Mospheiran domain, Bren and his bloodstained band went straight on, to request entry—which came before they could so much as signal: thank Asicho for that.

“Nandi.” Respects, from Ilisidi’s guards.

He acknowledged the courtesy and kept walking briskly, intending to deliver most of his company to the dowager’s staff, to the dowager’s staff medic, intending to have that bath, too, before he thought about the problems of the alien ship.

A brief stop at the security station, where Asicho, one of Gin’s men and one of Ilisidi’s all sat duty: “Nadiin-ji, we are all back aboard, mission accomplished.” They would have heard everything he said to Jase. “We shall want the doctor as soon as possible. Kindly tell the staff not to divert itself from care of our guest.”

“Yes,” Asicho said; and he kept walking, trying to hammer his wits into an utterly different mode of operation.

He hoped not to be noticed as he passed the dining hall. He wanted no explanations until he was clean again, and until he and the rest of his staff could shed the firearms and the bag of explosives and such.

But as he passed, he saw the dining hall ominously dimmed, and heard—

Heard vigorous applause, and muted cheers, and lively music.

He slipped in the door, appalled to find a ring of atevi, including the dowager’s security, and his staff, Cajeiri—that was no surprise—and their guest—and the dowager herself. On the screen, in black and white, a cartoon mouse eluded a cartoon cat.

A fishbowl tottered, sloshed, and Cajeiri shouted a warning, pointing out the obvious danger to cartoon protagonists, as cat and mouse darted this way and that in an elemental antagonism innocent of association.

Now… with their lives hanging in the balance…

A chair went over. Draperies went down. To the dowager’s evident misgiving and Cajeiri’s and Prakuyo’s collective delight.

But by now staff had seen him or heard him, prompting uneasy glances back.

Staff stood up. The dowager looked at him expectantly. And Narani brought up the lights.

Solemn faces, concern. Prakuyo stood up. So did Cajeiri. Only the dowager stayed seated, hands clasped on her staff.

Bren gave a solemn bow. “Nand’ dowager, nandi—” A bow for Prakuyo. None for boys. “Success aboard the station. We are now bringing the people aboard. The security staff is intact, except a minor injury. Prakuyo-nadi—” Change of languages, and a second bow. “Your ship speaks to us. It is coming.”

“Ship. Prakuyo ship. Coming.” Anxiety was evident, in every line of Prakuyo’s stance.

A bow. Agreement. “Yes.” A hand-motion. “Coming to us. I go wash.”

“Wash, yes.” Perhaps it was a mad notion. But Prakuyo bowed, apparently in complete agreement with such a crazed proposition. Or he smelled that bad.

He bowed a third time, shaky in the knees. “Dowager-ji, one is grateful for your staff and your assistance.” On which, at a little nod from Ilisidi, he walked out into the corridor, wondering if the knees were going to hold out as far as his own quarters.

He was pursued, however: Narani and Bindanda arrived on his heels, and saw him into his quarters, and began at once fussing with his jacket, and the shirt, and the boots, and the sweaty pigtail.

He shed the rest and showered, a quick, steam-filled warmth that began to warm him from the outside in, that soaked his hair, and took the stench of gas out of his nose, and soothed a throat he’d been too numb to realize was sore. He coughed, and blew water, and came out before the dry-cycle had had half enough time, but Bindanda met him with a towel, and rubbed life into him, and threw a robe about him—

He had communication. Thanks to the other residents of five-deck, he seemed to have Prakuyo’s good will—an understanding, at least, of benevolent intent.

He didn’t take for granted that would override cultural or biological imperatives or save their collective necks from political policy.

And the dawn of reasonable worry told him that hot water had brought the brain online.

One more change of clothing, as freshly pressed as any morning in Shejidan, court casual, as he thought of it—not good enough for high meetings, but perfectly adequate for bureaucrats and offices.

It brought shoulders back and head up, or one cut one’s throat on the lace.

“How is Banichi, Rani-ji?” That worry was with him, too, and he was sure word had flowed through the staff, what they had done, who was where, what was going on outside: he was sure, despite the scene he had met in the dining hall, that no one on five-deck but Cajeiri and Prakuyo had done anything but follow every word Asicho could gather.

“He is with the dowager’s physician at the moment, nandi. So is Jago.”

“Is she hurt?”

“A minor injury, nandi. So with two of the dowager’s bodyguard. But none life-threatening.”

Damn, he thought, with a heavy heartbeat and a sting behind the eyes. Damn ! that, he hadn’t seen. They’d fooled him all the way back to the ship. And he couldn’t take them all off duty and stand over them until they mended.

He pinched the bridge of his nose until the stinging stopped and tried to get his wits about him—back to work, back to work, fast. They weren’t safe. They wouldn’t be safe until they’d put Prakuyo where he belonged and this solar system behind them.

And meanwhile the sound one expected when traveling about the ship had never stopped, the lift system whining and opening and closing doors, cycling cars back and forth, back and forth, with the wholesale energy of a factory.

Four-deck was coming to life as if there had never been a glitch in their plans. Crew, variously occupied through the voyage, was in high gear, settling in newcomers, instructing them not to leave objects loose, not to take a leaky tap for granted, and how to read the various sirens and bells that advised crew about the ship’s behavior.

As if they had their fuel and were ready to leave.

He thanked his staff and went back to the dining hall, where the lights were up; where—strangely or not—he heard the whirr of small wheels before he darkened the door.

Not all Cajeiri’s cars had met an untimely end.

His security sat at one side of the room with their guest, the dowager sat at the other with Cenedi and one of his men, and Cajeiri—Cajeiri entertained the company with his toy.

Prakuyo, however, paced the room, a lumbering slow pace, but a pace… anxious. Knowing there was news.

“Prakuyo-ji,” Bren said with a little bow. The car stopped.

“Well?” Ilisidi asked him. “Are we making progress?”

Bren bowed. “Indeed, nand’ dowager. We are. Fuel is on the horizon. Gin-nadi is investigating that.”

“One prefers it in this ship,” Ilisidi said sharply, and waved her hand. “This person has been inconvenienced. So have we all, by this Braddock-aiji .”

“Gone, aiji-ma. At least in retreat. And far less of an inconvenience.”

“Jenrette is dead.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” A second bow, to Prakuyo, who waited anxiously. “Prakuyo-nadi. One is very glad to see you at your ease.”

The Ragi might have been ancient Greek. But Prakuyo rocked forward, a sort of a bow of his own, carefully imitated. “Bren-ji.”

“One is amazed,” Bren said, not without a glance at the dowager, who sat smugly in possession of all news on five-deck.

“The children’s language,” the dowager said, rising, leaning on her cane, “seems particularly useful, lacking numerical precision. And he is very quick.”

“ Association ,” Prakuyo said energetically in Ragi, and indicated Cajeiri and the dowager and Cenedi, and him. “Association. Associates. Associates. You, you, you.”

“Indeed, nadi,” Bren said—again with a bow, with a very inclusive sweep of his arm. “Associates. All associates.”

“Atevi. Human. Associates .”

“Yes,” Bren said. Associates . Had no human being in most of ten years of holding this person never tried friend , or tried to speak to this person about ordinary things?

Or was friend somehow too chancy a word to get across to a different species at gunpoint? Associate , among the visibly dissimilar species of five-deck, might hold out a peculiar hope to their guest—the presence of the young, the silliness of toys, the aishi , the easy association that to any casual eye, certainly included more than one species involved in a fair degree of shared trust and authority.

Dared one, for half a breath, feel a little chagrin about the situation—that the paidhi, neutral and noncombatant, had been off aiding the Assassins’ Guild in the overthrow of a government and the aiji-dowager, potent and intensely political, had been sitting here with a seven-year-old and an alien, making a breakthrough he hadn’t.

Their guest made a sweeping gesture. “Prakuyo, Bren, Ilisidi, Cajeiri—associates.”

He bowed. Prakuyo bowed. The dowager, who did not bow, gave a nod of her head.

“Good,” Prakuyo said. “Good. Ship?” Gesture of uplifted hand and distracted stare, a where-is-it apparent past any barrier.

Measure between fingers. “Close.”

“This person should speak to his associates,” Ilisidi said.

“Dowager-ji,” Bren said. “There are unresolved issues.”

“What issues?” Ilisidi asked. “What issues can there be, that we have undertaken to return this individual to his association? This seems relatively simple, and need not observe all the prolonged fuss of ship-folk arguments.”

“We have no promise from them.”

“How shall we reasonably expect one, with nothing given in earnest? We sit in ignominious danger so long as this foreign ship remains in doubt of our honest intentions. This is not acceptable. This is a sensible person who shows every capability of rational dealing with the aishidi’tat . Call this foreign ship, allow Prakuyo-nandi to say that we have reached a civilized understanding, and let us borrow fuel from them , if we reach further impasse with these station-humans. These ingrates have shot at my staff and injured our associates. One is entirely out of patience with them, and after six years, one believes this foreign gentleman is thoroughly out of patience, too.”

One truly did. And he had dealt with Ilisidi long enough to know that, whatever else, this was not an opinion that arrived on the spur of the moment, or without Ilisidi’s very excellent perspective on politics. It did contain a certain nonhuman basic sense: that the very worst thing they could do was demonstrate themselves so closely allied to their badly-behaved station that Prakuyo’s people couldn’t insert a tissue of conjecture between them.

Ilisidi tossed him a live fish, as the proverb ran; and he could improvise. He could very well improvise.

“Associate,” he said fervently, and bowed deeply. “The aiji-dowager wishes Prakuyo call Prakuyo’s ship. You, she, I, associates.”

“Bren,” Prakuyo said. “Nand’ Bren.” A hand extended. “Bren. Come ship.”

Oh, he didn’t like that. He pointed at the deck under his own feet, hoping he hadn’t understood.

“Bren ship.”

“Bren come Prakuyo ship. Make—” Clearly a word was missing, frustrating communication. “Associate.”

One truly hoped associate hadn’t been mistaken in meaning.

And he knew what Banichi and Jago would say, but Banichi was off getting his arm sewed up, and they had fuel to get, and an alien craft still moving toward them.

He touched his heart. “Yes. Bren go Prakuyo ship.”

Done deal. Civilized understanding. It pleased Prakuyo, not deliriously—dared one imagine just a little worry on that strange face?

“Bren go. Ilisidi, Cajeiri go.”

God, no. He saw Cenedi’s face.

“Shall we truly, mani-ma?” Cajeiri asked.

“We shall see this ship,” Ilisidi proclaimed, in Cenedi’s pained silence. “Prakuyo will make a civilized call, we shall arrange a visit, and we shall have our understanding with this foreign association.”

He was aware of Cenedi. He daren’t look at him. One dared not start an argument involving a dangerous guest with whom he could by no means argue fine points. One smiled, one made the absolute best of the situation—one only imagined how one was going to explain it to Jase—but the very next thing to do was to patch Prakuyo through C1 and get voice and visual contact, before something else went wrong—assuming those who knew such things could figure out how to make the equipment talk.

“Come, Prakuyo-ji,” he said, in that language free of all unhappy precedent. He gestured toward the door, and Prakuyo strolled solemnly forward, a short walk down the corridor toward the security station—ordinarily not a place five-deck entertained outsiders.

But the dowager had notions of her own—and the foreign paidhi—whose grasp of Ragi was decidedly from scratch, and impressive—was cooperative. Tell Jase? They had to tell Jase, never mind dealing with Sabin. He had to explain matters and get Prakuyo that requested clearance.

Asicho and Ilisidi’s man on watch knew they were coming, and cleared chairs for them.

“A contact with C1,” Asicho said quietly, “nandi.”

“Excellent,” Bren said, though he could have made it on either piece of equipment in his pocket: he chose to do it on the console mike, and chose to make the argument in Ragi, which Prakuyo might understand as a good faith gesture.

“Captain Graham,” he asked of C1, and when he heard Jase’s voice answer:

“ Mr. Cameron? ”

“Prakuyo-nadi has made strides not in Mosphei’, Jase-nandi—although I think he may indeed understand more Mosphei’ than he admits—but in Ragi.”

“ In Ragi .” For a human, speaking Mosphei’ or its like, Ragi was a vast linguistic jump.

“His native language may find that a simpler transition than that to Mosphei’, at least as regards the children’s language.” Without the numeric demands Ragi placed on adults. “He wishes to contact his ship. We consider this a very good idea at this point, nadi-ji.” We , not one . It was the utmost stress, his reputation, his urging. And Jase knew the nuances. “We have cooperation and wish to keep the momentum in developing relations.”

It couldn’t be an easy decision. It wasn’t, for him; and one could only imagine what Sabin would say if Sabin were back on board.

But Sabin wasn’t. “ Voice contact ,” Jase said. “ We’ll do our best to get you through .”

“Thank you.” He meant that. And he wasn’t going to explain the rest of it, not until he saw encouraging results. He reached across and turned on Prakuyo’s mike. “Prakuyo. Talk. We record—” He made writing motions. “We talk Prakuyo’s ship.”

Prakuyo leaned forward and did speak, rapidly, a speech laced with gutturals some of which were down at the lower end of human hearing and maybe a few too low to make out. And he paused, waiting, waiting, eyes fixed on the console.

“ We’re trying ,” C1 said. “ We have a three-minute window .”

Bren set a timer on the number one clock and called Prakuyo’s attention to the ebb of sections. He held up three fingers, and pointed to the minute digit, folded one down.

A person familiar with countdowns, if not their numerical notation, might know what he meant, and get the rhythm of it. Prakuyo watched, and watched the countdown; and as it went negative, seemed to figure that, too.

Then… then… a static-ridden reply that taxed the speakers, and Prakuyo’s whole face reacted in what was surely the profoundest relief. He replied, rapidly, energetically, and the equipment might or might not handle all those booms and thumps from Prakuyo’s throat.

Bren reset the reply clock.

“Prakuyo ship,” Prakuyo said, and simultaneous with voice, the oddest trait, came a deep rumbling from somewhere in Prakuyo’s throat. “Prakuyo ship come Bren ship.”

“Yes,” Bren said, there not being damn-all else to say, given the dowager’s arrangements. “Associate.”

That word… Prakuyo found troublesomely worrisome. He glanced at Bren, sucked at his lips as if he was restraining some word or just trying to think of one.

And that, in its way, was a comfortingly straightforward honesty… indicative, perhaps, that there were thorny problems, and that Prakuyo wasn’t in a position to make guarantees for his own side.

“Associate?” Bren asked, and Prakuyo’s frown deepened, and that dammed-up thought just couldn’t find a way out.

So if things went badly—on the surface—he could just keep saying, “associate” and expect Prakuyo to know what the sticking-point of negotiations had become. If that word had come across with something like its original meaning in the first place.

These were the truly lovely moments in making a linguistic bridge in negotiations, and never so much was at stake, not even in the first days between atevi and humans, who had at least had experience of each other and settled a little common vocabulary before they managed to get completely at loggerheads on the real meanings.

Here was where ship and station, who had no experience of any outsiders but each other, had no useful referent that wasn’t buried deep in the Archive, unlearned and unstudied in centuries… except for Jase’s knowledge.

And this was where the paidhi-aiji earned his keep.

The answer came back. Prakuyo listened to all of it, then answered, ticking off points to himself on his fingers, and with a great deal of attendant booming and rumbling, before he reached over and thumped Bren on the back. Hard. Bren caught himself against the counter-edge, tears in his eyes, and hoped the shoulderblade wasn’t cracked.

Prakuyo, however, was happy.

“Go Prakuyo ship,” Prakuyo said, “go Prakuyo ship.”

“Ship come?”

“Come?” Prakuyo said happily, and Bren warily turned toward him, to make another back-slap inconvenient.

“Good,” Bren said, feeling less than confident. And saying to himself that if he was going to be going anywhere, he wanted a few words of the language under his belt.

And, God, if Sabin got aboard before Prakuyo’s ship got here—as that sight of an incoming alien craft was almost guaranteed to prompt her to do—he was going to have to explain the dowager’s decision, and his, and somehow keep bargains they hadn’t Sabin’s—or Jase’s—clearance to make.

He needed words. He needed some picture of what he was working with, or going into.

“Asicho. Get me C1.”

“Yes,” she said, and punched buttons. “C1, nandi.”

“Captain Graham,” he said, sure of his contact.

“ I’m on ,” Jase said, not in Ragi. “ How did that go” ?

“Very well.” In Ragi. “The ship will continue to move in, but shooting is less likely.”

“ It expects him to transfer to it, will it? The stationers are very nervous. One is by no means sure we have removed all resistance, besides it will terrify the passengers. One is not complaining, understand… but can one possibly hold that off? ”

“We are not yet fluent enough to undertake that topic,” Bren said. “One regrets, nadi-ji. He wishes me and the dowager and the heir to visit the ship, perhaps to demonstrate us to his fellows; and the dowager has agreed.”

“ God, Bren .” That last was not in Ragi.

“We do intend to return, and consider it no worse risk than parachuting onto a planet.” That for Jase, who had done precisely that, so Jase could hardly complain of wild risks. “Our guest seems very reasonable and well-disposed, all considered. Understand, these matters were cordially agreed while I was absent, and our guest’s good will and confidence may reasonably be dependent on these representations. It might be a grave mistake to backtrack.”

“ Is our guest promising to let us out of here ?”

“Not entirely clear. Either we have some difficulty communicating that point, or Prakuyo lacks authority or disposition to promise it. I do certainly intend to make that issue a primary point aboard his ship.”

“ Bren .” Jase seemed at a loss.

“Prevent the aiji-senior from forbidding this move. That would be a very great help.”

“ Got that straight ,” Jase said. And in Ragi: “ One understands, and one most fervently wishes you success, nandi-ji .”

“A mutual wish. Baji-naji, Jase-nandi.” He shut down the contact, and carefully patted Prakuyo on the shoulder, since Prakuyo had touched him with such familiarity. “Come. Rest, Prakuyo-ji. We go rest.”

Prakuyo might not have understood the essential word, but he got up and came along, a broad, rolling stride beside him, all the way back to his borrowed quarters.

“Sleep,” Bren said then, making the pantomime. “Rest.”

“Yes,” Prakuyo said with a deep rumble. “Yes.” Prakuyo might be exhausted— he was exhausted; but precious little time they might have before critical things happened: that the alien craft got close, demanding to come in; or that Sabin decided to come aboard and take command. Both things were possible, concurrently, other people had made agreements without asking, and he was running out of energy and out of ideas simultaneously.

Most of all he’d had to go running off settling that problem and not seeing to personal concerns, and his first question to Asicho, going back to the security post, was Banichi’s whereabouts.

“In the clinic, with Jago, nandi. He has followed all of this.”

Banichi would; so would Jago. Could he doubt, as long as they were conscious? “I shall see them,” he said. “Thank you, Asa-ji.”

Off to the clinic, closer to their front door, a little room, seeming smaller still with their casualties and the dowager’s physician and a younger aide.

Banichi had gotten a bandage, at least. Bren inhaled to give himself room next a cabinet and Banichi’s chair, Jago standing on the other side.

“You know what the dowager has agreed,” Bren said straight off.

“Of course,” Jago said, and Banichi threw in, “We will be there, Bren-ji.”

“I bear a certain guilt, only asking it of you.”

“Did I hear asking?” Banichi said with a look at Jago.

“No,” Jago said, “one never heard asking.”

He laid a hand on Jago’s shoulder, Banichi’s being likely extremely sore. “Our guest seems civil, at least, nadiin-ji. My greatest worry is Sabin-aiji, if she involves herself in decisions already taken.”

“Sabin-aiji seems busy at the moment,” Banichi observed.

“May she stay that way long enough.” A large breath. He didn’t want to leave them. But they were in competent hands, there was nothing useful he could do here, and he had to refocus his attention on his own skills. Most of all he had to make decisions, to think about the core vocabulary they had to have, and what he was going to say, and how he was going to negotiate a peace with a vocabulary of some fifty or so words.

A gentle pat. One for Banichi, a piece of temerity, but Banichi was obliged, occasionally, to put up with human notions. “One needs a little time to think. Rest , nadiin-ji. Take painkillers without any consideration of the matter ahead: we wish to project ease and pleasantness.”

Short laugh from Banichi. “Pleasantness.”

“Think of going home, nadiin-ji,” Bren said. “Think of us all going home.” A second pat. “Thank you.”

He escaped before he could embarrass himself further, shook off the scene in the clinic and the memory of that glowing strand of desperate refugees, the recollection that Gin and Sabin were desperately engaged in a mission that was going to complicate his own, in timing—none of these things could be top priority in his head now.

They needed go away and destroy the station . They needed take the inhabitants and excuse us for the inconvenience .

They possibly needed please don’t come calling at our planet , but he didn’t see how he was going to get at that one if it wasn’t a mutual desire for disentanglement.

And he might need stickier words, which could be a provocation to try to pull out of their guest. He might need a pad of paper and a pencil, to do diagrams.

A pocket full of sugar candies. That had been the most useful trade goods—forget trying to pretend all this number of humans and atevi didn’t have a planet somewhere, forget trying to conceal where it was. If that alien craft hadn’t been sitting here waiting for them they might have lied about that issue—but given a direction and adequate optics, no question they could find the earth of the atevi. Prakuyo’s folk might ask about the origin of humans, if they correctly perceived they weren’t quite the same biologically, and that could be difficult. No, believe us, we actually misplaced our home planet .

Trust was such a precious commodity.

He took a little chance, from his own quarters, to consult Gin’s staff, wondering how things were going, not wishing to bother Jase with questions, and Gin’s staff reported that Gin was tired, that she and Sabin were swearing at each other, and that another of Gin’s team was suited and out there.

Excellent. Beyond excellent. He sat down on his bed and fell backwards, eyes shut, seeing Gin, suited, in that lonely camera view. Sabin, in that doorway.

That ship moving in on them, blip on a screen, more ominous than anything Braddock could still throw at them.

What more did he want to say?

Come, go, give, take, you, we, they. Woman, man, child.

Fight, not fight. Shoot. Not shoot.

Food, water.

To, from, out of, on, off, over, under, around, through . Pesky directional words that in some languages weren’t words at all.

Not . Ragi was dubious about negatives, wrapped them carefully in courtesies and precise formulae.

Always, never, soon, if . Truly the soft tissue of thought. Time. Time and degree of reality. May and could , those words of conjecture. No hope at all of getting that far into the language. They had to stick to concrete, demonstrable items and actions.

And which language? Prakuyo had picked up elementary Ragi hand over fist, in a matter of hours, and six years among humans hadn’t made him fluent—that he admitted, that he wanted to admit.

It argued that Ragi was a better bridge for Prakuyo’s people. And it stated the truth: that humans weren’t the highest power in these regions, that if one wanted to trade—another useful word—or talk—the best language for it was likely going to be Ragi, and the authority that governed it all wasn’t on the station, nor even on the ship: it was in Shejidan, and the dowager was its representative— he was its representative. He hadn’t abdicated his responsibilities. He’d acted on the ship’s behalf because the senior captain had stripped all its security away—leaving, perhaps deliberately, atevi as the ship’s defense.

Atevi, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. They moved in. He had. He didn’t want to argue the point with Sabin, who probably thought she was running things—certainly he didn’t want to argue it in front of the neighbors.

So, well. Leader, authority, government, people, nation . Those pesky abstract structures that everyone called simple, that provoked so many wars.

Not to mention those pillars of atevi and human civilization please, thank you , and have a nice day . By the way Prakuyo took to the dowager’s society, that element was present in yet another species.

The ship whined and flexed elements of its gut it hadn’t used this energetically in all his time aboard. It had traveled empty. Now it drank down the survivors of this place, this situation, those desperate families and individuals that wanted most of all to live, who had very little concept where they were going or whether it was going to be better or not—but trusting even the appearance of aliens among them, in what amounted to a rush for the lifeboat. That augured well for their ability to fit in where they were going.

Didn’t cure the fact that Braddock was still loose, but the outflux gave Braddock less and less to work with, and Braddock now had very little control over anything mechanical. The wisest among his aides had to be gathering the family silver and running for the exit.

He let his eyes shut. Didn’t trust himself and kept a steady count in his head, which if it began to falter, he had to open them at once and stay awake.

One minute, two, three.

Com went off and he yelped as if he’d been shot, grabbed it out of his pocket and thumbed it on, his heart creeping down from a frantic beat. Had he slept?

“ Bren ?” It was Jase. Agitated. “ Bren, do you read ?”

God, what time was it? An hour. Damn !

“Listening, listening, Jasi-ji. Go ahead.”

“ There’s fuel. There is fuel, Bren, do you hear ”?

His heart leapt up again.

“ And that ship’s still moving in, and we’re still pinned here with refugees coming aboard. Senior captain wants me to put out a security contingent and bar the cold zones to the refugees so we can move the ship in .”

To keep people out of the cold areas and reorient the whole procedure to a stable, locked-down docking configuration. A lot safer for the passengers.

“ Which doesn’t let us mate up with the alien ship ,” Jase said further. “ And which is going to create questions on their side if we shift position… and is going to bring Sabin back aboard to do it herself if I don’t take her request. She’s not informed what we’re doing. I’m going to have to tell her .”

“Better now than after she’s come back. I don’t like not having a secure com-line. Braddock’s still out there.”

“ I can send a courier. I can tell her I’m sending one to explain a situation .”

That would take time.

“ What progress down there ?” Jase asked.

“An hour’s unintended rest. But our guest had to be frayed, too. I’m going back at it now. We’ll be ready, Jase.”

“ Sleep is progress ,” Jase said charitably. “ In short supply up here, I’ll tell you. But our ETA for that ship is about three hours and docking shortly after. If you’re going to put any presentation together, just give us raw sketches and C2 can render them in the same form we’ve used all along with them .”

“Good idea.”

“ Got to go .”

“Do it. Thanks. I’m back at work.”

Feet on the floor. Body upright. Quick pass of a wet cloth to bring the wits back awake.

Sleep was progress, and he hoped Banichi and Jago were making that kind.

He had to go wake Prakuyo up, and hope he could establish a safe mode of communication that had taken his predecessors in Shejidan centuries of careful work.

Three hours. Three very short hours.

He needed more than skill. He needed someone very bright on the other end of the telescope; and he hoped to God that Prakuyo, who’d survived six years of stubborn non-communication, was able to meet him at least halfway.

Chapter 20

Prakuyo had been sleeping, so Narani said—small wonder, sleeping, Bren thought, having been catch as catch could with bed for what seemed a very long time, now.

It was court dress, no question, with the ship drawing close.

“Advise the dowager’s staff,” he said to Narani, “that the foreign ship is three hours away. One might add on a little time to establish a link of some sort, nadi-ji, one has no idea. But by no means wake Banichi or Jago. Jeladi can do that duty in the interim.”

“Certainly, nandi,” Narani said—with Bindanda, helping with the cuffs.

He would not have chosen formal dress at the moment, except that time came in such unpredictable parcels, and one could hardly go visiting in one’s bathrobe.

Speaking of which—“One hesitates even to mention it, but what progress with clothes for our guest to wear?”

“Jeladi is assisting him, nandi,” Bindanda said. “Our guest indicated a preference for a blue and mauve brocade—we had three materials in sufficient supply. The green seemed an alternate choice. The gray and black he did emphatically reject for the coat. For the trousers, we used a medium weight blue wool. With a cream silk shirt that seems, by Jeladi’s report, to please him.”

Three choices. Trust his staff to have had the resources, and the sensitivity to offer a choice and report the outcome.

“Excellent,” he said. His staff finished their hasty preparation and he stood ready, immaculate as they could make him.

Not, immediately, for a foray onto the ship. He had a critical job to do before that, and hoped meanwhile that Jase kept Sabin at arm’s length.

“Jeladi reports our guest ready, nandi,” Narani said, one of those snippets of staff intelligence that let coincidences happen so smoothly.

“Excellent, Rani-ji.”

He secured a notebook and pen from the bedside and strolled out into the corridor. Indeed, Jeladi was just bringing their guest out in—Bindanda should be proud—a very elegant coat, with abundant lace on the shirt. For the feet—unatevi and broad—in that essential detail, Bindanda had worked a wonder, an ankle-high boot with lacings that even looked comfortable. Nothing like good footwear to convince a man he was in good hands.

And Prakuyo, seeing him in his court splendor, looked, well—judging any expression on that broad face was difficult—excited, at least. Prakuyo made a nice little bow. He reciprocated with good grace.

“Come,” he said, “nadi-ji. Come sit.”

Prakuyo seemed amenable, though a little disappointed. Ah, Bren thought: Prakuyo had hoped they were going straight to the ship. And still the working of hydraulics went on, the lift system racing to deliver cars to the airlock and passengers to four-deck, just over their heads… crew had to be scrambling, too, on last-moment needs and adjustments.

All of which might persuade an anxious guest that those sounds might include a docking in progress.

They went to the dining hall, sat down at a corner of the large table, and he immediately sketched out themselves, the station, an approaching ship with a directional arrow.

“Prakuyo’s ship is coming,” he said in Ragi. Measured with his fingers a very small distance. “Close.”

“Close.” Prakuyo was attentive and cooperative, though rubbing his face in the way of a man with too little sleep. “Close.” Measure of two thick fingers, fingers with nails so broad and thick they wrapped half the end of the digit—nails that, when they first dealt with him, had been broken and rough. Now they were manicured, filed short. “Good. Good.”

Bren started naming bits of his sketch. And then asked, “Prakuyo talk.”

It got only puzzlement. His request wasn’t expected, he thought. Six years, and maybe nobody had ever asked Prakuyo to use his own language.

“Table,” Bren said. Then said the same in Ragi, and indicated Prakuyo. He did the same for chair, then: “Prakuyo talk.”

“Akankh.” Prakuyo muttered. Then pointed at the table. “Noph.” The language had a difficult popping consonant.

Bren tried it. Prakuyo repeated it three times. There might be a fine distinction on the popping sound—a language with several similar consonants, it might be, and Bren made his utmost effort. “Noph.”

Prakuyo gave him, in short order, pen, paper or notebook, floor, ceiling—demonstrable words. Ship. Station, available in the picture.

“Sit,” Bren said, and Prakuyo gave him that word. Words they had established, they could call up. Sit and stand. Walk. Give and take. They had fourteen words. With three hundred—a body could get through his entire day, fluently.

Fourteen, however, didn’t all apply to what they had to discuss. He had his mental list of vocabulary he wanted. Station, stationer, go. And a frightening decision to take on oneself—but he conceived of very little chance Prakuyo’s folk wouldn’t cross paths again with atevi, and best try to define that inevitable meeting, set a purpose, try to establish a protocol…

Trade. Trade was a concept he illustrated by a human and an atevi figure facing a Prakuyo-like figure, with directional signs and representative goods changing hands. Beads on a string. A shirt. A pitcher. A plate of food. He exhausted his artistic skill with those items, and he wasn’t sure he had gotten the right words. There were horridly complicated alteratives: tribute, marriage-gifts. God knew whether Prakuyo had understood that human-atevi concept and given him the right word back.

But he kept trying, concentratedly. In all the universe there was only this. In all the wide universe, there was only this one necessity—to engage Prakuyo’s equally exhausted wits and to get some sort of communication in three hours before that ship arrived. It didn’t matter what Ginny and Sabin were doing; it didn’t matter what exchanges Jase was making with Sabin via courier and whether the whole situation was about to blow up. If that happened, the new situation was going to need vocabulary, understanding, negotiation; and this was the safest, fastest way to get it. Down here, things took as long as they took, and the good will of this tired, perhaps questionably sane stranger was all-important.

His notebook disassociated into sheets of paper. He made diagrams of spatial relationships: to, from, toward, away from, off, over, under. He formed hypotheses and rudimentary sentences in this new language in which verb-forms seemed simple and directional elements seemed ungodly complex. Prakuyo, with his newly-refined fingers and a pen delicately held, drew stick figures of his own—not skinny, one-line beings, but beings of substance, rounded beings, beings with U’s for legs and arms and heft to the outlines… was it surprising?

“Human,” Bren said of his own skinny short ones. “Atevi,” of the skinny tall ones. He tapped one of Prakuyo’s. Twice.

“Kyo,” Prakuyo called them. They had not ironed out singular, dual, or plural. His species seemed to be that. Or it was simply the word for man, intelligent being, or us.

Kyo . So was Prakuyo, then, a personal name, or a rank, or a species distinction? Was there a concept of individuality? One thought so, since Prakuyo identified him and the dowager by name quite accurately.

Bindanda brought a tray and provided fruit juice. They gained the words for cold and hot. Ice and water; juice, or fluid.

“Banichi and Jago are awake, nandi,” Bindanda informed him, with the tray. “The dowager likewise.”

He was not surprised, then, when Banichi and Jago turned up in the dining hall, their arrival noted, but not interrupting the flow. They listened—sitting at the end of the table, though their habit was to stand. They knew what he was attempting. They knew—the national experience of atevi and Mospheirans—how desperately risky it was, this speaking to strangers. They remained unobtrusive.

Bren drew pictures, trying to make structure, and pushed for new words, pushed while Prakuyo was still willing. He had by now more than a hundred new words jostling around in his head. A hundred words could be an hour’s conversation. Unfortunately one had to know the useful words, the ones attached to their personal situation. They hadn’t yet communicated trust, or don’t blow up our ship, please-thank-you, or, you can have the station; we don’t want it any more.

Negatives, God, the negatives, the not’s and no’s and neither’s and nor’s and other rejections. They were an unexpected headache, with distinctions that just didn’t make sense—a sort of subjunctive of negativity, related—he decided—to degree of reality. There was not, really not, and no way in hell possible; but there was also future-not, and past-not. And—one began to get the nightmarish picture—there were similar distinctions on various other modifiers.

God help him. More to the point, God help the people he represented. He began, for the first time, to believe he’d undertaken the humanly impossible.

He couldn’t figure the past tense. He suspected a similar difficulty. And began to suspect Prakuyo’s language, besides having an array of nots, didn’t use I, was shaky on you, and worse, took truly emotional exception about he and they.

Which wasn’t wholly a linguistic worry. It was, granted Prakuyo was sane, a window into a mentality that really wasn’t quite human or atevi, that had all along had trouble with that he-they concept, and wasn’t happy with the you-word, either.

That was where they’d taken their last break. And his brain was fogging. He had a hundred and one methods for getting vocabulary out of an interview and he didn’t know how to get past the pronoun problem. It seemed one of those right-wrong things, one of those trained-from-birth things, downright invisible to the owner of the reactions, but yes, Prakuyo got upset about pronouns, and, complicating matters, in adult Ragi, their preferred language of communication, atevi continually shifted the number of persons in you or me .

And somewhere in the hard-wiring of Prakuyo’s own massive body, this damnable elusive quantity was, clearly, so simple—if one were Prakuyo. If one’s brain had the sights and sounds and smells and emotional context of being Prakuyo. Which a human hadn’t, and wasn’t, by a long shot.

“We.” Prakuyo said that last in ship-speak. And pointed at him, and Banichi and Jago.

Wrong. That should be a you, and he opened his mouth to say so.

And shut it. Prakuyo looked—dared one think—quite earnest about that mistake.

Bren followed a gut instinct. Pointed to himself and Banichi and Jago. “We.” To himself and Prakuyo and Banichi and Jago. “We.”

Prakuyo got up quickly, making that alarmed booming sound. Banichi and Jago were on their feet just as fast.

But Prakuyo subsided back into his chair as if the air had been let out of him, and thrummed and boomed and clenched his hands together in front of his mouth—not pleased. Or at least—not feeling particularly stable at the moment.

And at a loss for words.

“ Not we?” Bren pushed the point.

He won a dark-eyed, distraught look.

Banichi and Jago sat back down, stoic and impeccable.

“We.” That word again, indicating him, Banichi and Jago, but not including Prakuyo.

Don’t include me. Don’t assimilate me. Don’t absorb me.

We—some quality of we—was as disturbing to Prakuyo as it was ordinary and all but invisible to humans and atevi. But not a take-for-granted among atevi; and not, even in his lifetime, an easy given between humans and atevi. A fogged brain began to gather, beyond the obvious answer of a xenophobia Prakuyo never had demonstrated, that he simply had no wish to be included, and did not give his consent to be included. That somehow, with him and with his kind, we was a fenced-off, difficult word that might imply anything from visceral distaste to outright hatred of outsiders—no evidence in Prakuyo for that; though that hole in the station might attest differently.

What was behind that reaction? Prakuyo’s wrist was as large as a human upper arm. Strength, immense strength: this wasn’t a species that, in its evolution, easily hid or ran; it might, perhaps, take direct solutions; but with complementary delicacy, these hands had built spaceships. Prakuyo’s kind must have made pots, learned agriculture, domesticated animals, made villages, made towns, made cities, made whatever political structures let Prakuyo’s kind cooperate and launch itself into space.

But Prakuyo’s people had trouble including other species with itself.

Or Prakuyo had trouble being included by others, or by them, specifically.

Politics? Social structure? Something that disgusted or frightened?

Prakuyo, however, was willing to sublimate that feeling enough to talk, to learn, even to express enjoyment.

And suddenly something reverberated through the hull, a deep, distant shock. Banichi and Jago both got up, and Banichi left them.

A shot? Bren wondered with a chill. Hostilities with the station, or had that ship out there moved in and simply decided to blow its own way into the hull?

Was all time up?

Prakuyo was incapable of looking worried, in human terms, but he looked at the door, looked about him, the same.

“Hear,” Bren acknowledged the event. He had not yet gotten words for know and not know , was unsure of those pesky soft-tissue conditionals if and then . His attempt to extract them with a flow chart had produced uncertain results—which, along with the absence of pronouns, could mean bad news. A set of conditionals that didn’t jibe with Mosphei’, which was relatively simple, nor Ragi, which wasn’t simple at all. If that was an explosion, nadiin, then we have a problem…

He was losing his focus, getting wobbly.

“Nandi,” Jago said, from the doorway, and he looked at her. “Jase reports that the alien craft has arrived and established a connection.”

Adrenalin ran like static through nerves already on overload.

Then the habits of the aiji’s court came to the rescue, providing stability for a small bow, an utter microfocus on the Prakuyo matter.“Prakuyo ship, Prakuyo-ji. It has come. Go up.”

Prakuyo absorbed that information and solemnly rose. Bren started for the door, then remembered the notes, frantically gathered them up and gave them to Jago as they reached the door. “These must get to Jase. To C2.”

“Yes,” Jago said.

As their party ran up against the resident seven-year-old, rigged out in lace and red and black brocade, and behind Cajeiri his great-grandmother, in much the same, with gold; and behind the dowager, Cenedi and reinforcements.

The dowager didn’t move that fast. Someone had been in close touch with Jase while he had been locked in the throes of new vocabulary.

“This has gone on long enough,” Ilisidi said, and banged her cane against the deck. “We have our invitation, one supposes, since the ship has complied with Jase-aiji’s instruction. Prakuyo-ji, we shall see this ship of yours and settle this business.”

Prakuyo bowed, deeply, even gracefully. The change in dress had provoked no comment—of course the staff had come up with something suitable: the dowager expected such miracles, and was prepared to lead the way.

“My best car,” Cajeiri said, holding it safely in his arms. A bow. Very best behavior, as well.

Banichi came out of the security station and quietly waited for them.

A second stamp of the dowager’s cane, a motion down the corridor toward the door. “Well,” she said. “Shall we dither here, or have this business on the road?”

“Nandi,” Bren murmured, and drew a deep breath, and fell in with her, and with Prakuyo, Cajeiri closing up ranks and staying rather closer to his great-grandmother—not a swift progress: not in the dowager’s company, but steady. They gathered up Banichi by the security station, and how the papers got passed, or what arrangements flew in a handful of words between Jago and Asicho, he had no idea, but he trusted the ship would ultimately have diagrams if he needed them.

The guards at the farthest doors opened them, and they walked to the lift and requested a car. Bren drew out his pocket com and requested through to Jase during the wait.

“Jase,” he said, “I understand we’ve got a connection to the ship. We’re on our way. Looking reasonably good. Got some graphics coming up to you.”

“ We’ll handle it ,” Jase said. “ Bren. Bren, take very good care. I wish I was backing you .”

“You are,” Bren said. “No question. Our car’s coming. Which lock?”

“ Number 3. That’s 243 on the pad. We’re watching you, far as we can. Good luck .”

“Good luck to all of us. Back in a few hours. Or not. If not, don’t do anything. Let me work it out. I’ll do it.”

“ I trust you ,” Jase said; and the lift door opened. “ A few hours .”

The last in Ragi. End of the conversation. He thumbed the unit off as he escorted the dowager and Prakuyo through the doors. Cajeiri next. Their bodyguard. He cast a look at Banichi, looking for signs of wear, and found none evident.

He couldn’t afford to divert his attention. Made up his mind not to. He wondered if he should have brought a heavy coat. Then recalled that Prakuyo was quite comfortable in five-deck temperatures.

Prakuyo, at the moment, looked from the doors to them and back again, agitated, anxious—dared one say, joyous? One certainly hoped so.

Long, long ride.

“How far up—” Cajeiri began to ask, and the dowager’s cane hit the decking. Young arms clenched the car close; young head bowed. “One forgot, mani-ma.”

“Then one’s attention was not on one’s instructions. This will be a strange place, and no questions. Think matters through, young sir.”

One did not answer the boy’s question, no matter how tempted, in the face of the dowager’s reprimand.

One simply took that advice for oneself. A strange place, and no questions, indeed. No ability to ask. No words.

But hope. There was that.

The car slowed. The illusion of gravity slowly left them. Bren found his heart pounding and his hands sweating, a fact he chose not to make evident. Cajeiri, who had seen zero-g, restrained himself admirably.

Bren doggedly smiled at Prakuyo drifting next to him, at Banichi and Jago who, one noted, wore no visible armament, no more than the dowager’s guard—a peace delegation, Ragi-style; but he wasn’t sure they’d pass a security scan. Which was Ragi-style, too.

Doors opened. A handful of Phoenix crewmen met them, drifting near the doors. They had sidearms, but nothing ostentatious. They were there to operate the locks for them and to sound an alarm, one suspected, if anything went massively wrong.

“Good luck, sir. Ma’am. Sir.” The last, dubiously, toward Prakuyo. With a bow. Ship’s crew had learned such manners with the atevi.

“Good,” Prakuyo rumbled, as they drifted into the chamber, breaths frosting into little clouds.

Machinery worked and the doors behind them hissed and sealed, ominous sound. No panic, Bren said to himself, thinking strangely of the hiss of the surf on the North Shore. Sunset. Sea wind.

Pumps worked only a moment; and the doors unsealed facing them.

The air that met them made an ice film on every surface, stung the fingers. Prakuyo bounded along, catching handgrips, and the dowager simply allowed Cenedi to draw her along, while Cajeiri was quite content to help himself. Bren managed, teeth chattering, wishing there were a conveyor line.

Long, long progress, and one had the overwhelming feeling of being watched throughout, watched, analyzed for weakness, and the human in the party was determined not to show how very fast he chilled through.

They were arriving, finally, at an end, a chamber with a metal grid, and Prakuyo entered it cheerfully, beckoned them in and showed them to hold on.

Good idea. Doors banged shut, the whole affair began to move and spun about violently, under unpleasantly heavy acceleration to give them a floor, after which the air that came wafting from the vents came thick as a swamp, still freezing where it hit metal and condensed.

Rough braking. Cenedi supported the dowager, Cajeiri had to catch himself, and Bren just held on.

They weighed too much. The air was thick as a swamp at midnight. Doors whined and banged open on a dim, dank place, dark blue-green floor, dark greenish blue walls intermittent with deeper shadow—a succession of edge-on panels, the light so dim it fooled the eye.

A deep rumbling came from all around, and what might be words. Prakuyo bowed deeply, walked forward a step, and out of the shadows a distance removed appeared a solitary, cloaked figure, with Prakuyo’s face, and Prakuyo’s bulk.

“Stop here,” Ilisidi advised, and the paidhi thoroughly agreed: no one should go further, but Prakuyo, who walked a few paces on, bowed again.

Said a handful of words, it might be, underlain with thrumming and booming.

Stark silence from the other side. And as silently—more cloaked individuals from behind the standing panels, and more voices, more booming and rumbling until the floor seemed to vibrate.

Not good, Bren thought, standing very still, not good if Prakuyo left them. It was not a comfortable place, even to stand. He felt as if he’d gained fifty pounds. The dowager’s joints would by no means take this kindly.

But Prakuyo extended an arm toward them—beckoning, one thought. “Dowager-ji,” Bren said quietly, and moved forward a little. And bowed, as Prakuyo had. One trusted the dowager gave a slight courtesy. Their bodyguards, by custom, would not, until the situation was certain.

“Introduce us,” the dowager said, “paidhi-aiji.”

“Indeed,” Bren said. He walked forward a step, and bowed, trying to assemble recently gained words. “Bren,” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “From human and atevi ship. Good stand here.”

One hoped not to have made a vocabulary mistake. An immediate murmur went through the gathering, a visible shifting of stance.

“Ilisidi, ateva, comes, says good on Prakuyo ship.”

Ilisidi walked forward a pace, bringing Cajeiri with her, offering a little nod. Cajeiri, wide-eyed, made a little bow of his own, car clutched firmly against his ribs, and wisely kept very quiet.

Prakuyo, however, had a deal to say. He waved an arm and talked—one could pick out words—about the station, about going to the ship, about them, by name and individually: he talked passionately, thrumming softly under his breath, and walked from this side to the other, finally demonstrating his own person.

“Bren,” Prakuyo said then. “Come. Come talk. Say.”

Bren drew a breath, walked to Prakuyo’s side, and gave another bow to the one who had appeared first, the one Prakuyo had addressed. “Bren Cameron,” he said, a hand on himself.

“Good Prakuyo on Prakuyo ship.” Never using that chancy we . Never having found Prakuyo’s word for the same. “Bren, Ilisidi take humans from station to ship. Ship goes far, far. No fight.”

That other person spoke, not two words intelligible, and not thoroughly warm and welcoming, either.

Prakuyo clapped a heavy hand on Bren’s shoulder, a comfort, considering the ominous murmur around about; and Prakuyo talked rapidly—shocking his hearers, to judge by the reaction.

“Calm,” Bren said in Ragi. “One asks helpful calm.”

“Calm,” Prakuyo agreed—knowing that word, it turned out. And launched on an oration in his own language, his one hand holding Bren steady, his word-choice something about station and Madison, quite angrily—then something about Ilisidi, and Bren, about Bindanda—perhaps about teacakes, for all Bren could tell, and a torrent besides that.

There was an argument, a clear argument going on.

And one had to think that for well over six years neither humans nor Prakuyo’s species had made sense to each other, and that the reason they were all standing here in this fix might well have had to do with a now-deceased captain poking about in solar neighborhoods that weren’t his—it wasn’t just Prakuyo’s grievance; it was likely a number of Prakuyo’s people with complaints about the goings-on.

Prakuyo, however, let him go, and engaged in noisy argument with several others. Bren tried to decide whether it was prudent to get out of the way; but then Ilisidi moved, slowly, considerately, with Cajeiri, and Banichi and Jago found opportunity to move up into his vicinity: but a person used to the Assassins’ Guild noted Cenedi had not moved with the group—Cenedi had stayed back there with his partner, nearer the door, and most certainly was armed.

“Not come fight,” Bren interjected into Prakuyo’s argument, seeing tension rising on this side and that, and at a light tap of the dowager’s cane, wanting his attention, interposed a translation. “Dowager-ma, I am attempting to assert our benevolent intentions. They are discussing what happened here. Prakuyo-nadi seems to be taking a favorable position. But we have no idea what Ramirez-aiji may have done to provoke this: I am suspicious he, rather than the station, triggered hostilities.”

“Pish.” A wave of the hand. “One cares very little what they and humans did.” Bang went the cane. “Now we are annoyed, and we wish a sensible cessation.”

There was a moment’s startled silence. Prakuyo said something involving Ilisidi, and Cajeiri, and something Bren couldn’t remotely follow—a rapidfire something that brought a closer general attention on Ilisidi and the boy.

Then came what might questions from the senior personage, involving Ilisidi and the boy. And him. And Banichi and Jago. They were short of vocabulary and on very, very dangerous ground, and the argument concerning them was getting altogether past them. Not good.

“Nand’ Prakuyo.” Respectfully, since Prakuyo was clearly a person able to give and take with the leadership of this vessel. “Say to this person that humans and atevi go away. Not want to fight. Want to go soon,”

“We,” Prakuyo said, and said a word of his own language, indicating himself and all the others. Then that same word including Bren and Ilisidi and all the rest. And something more complicated, more emphatic, that provoked strong reaction, dismay.

Damn, Bren thought, wondering what that past argument about we and they might have produced here. Prakuyo’s folk didn’t like that word. Passionately didn’t want to be lumped together with non-whatever-they-were. Prakuyo hadn’t been for it, either.

But Prakuyo argued with the idea now. Argued, with occasional booms from deep in his chest that sounded more deeply angry than mournful. And finally gave a wave of his hand, ending argument, producing some instruction to the onlookers.

“Drink,” Prakuyo said, “come drink.”

Was that the resolution? An offering so deep in the roots of civilized basics it resonated across species lines?

“Nandi,” he said to Ilisidi, “we are possibly offered refreshment, which in my best judgment would not be wise to refuse.”

“About time,” Ilisidi said, hands braced on her cane. “Great-grandson?”

“Mani-ma.”

“We shall see the most correct, the most elegant behavior. Shall we not?”

“Yes, mani-ma.”

“Come,” Prakuyo said to them, “come.”

“Cenedi,” Ilisidi said, and their rear guard quietly added themselves back to the party as they walked slowly with Prakuyo, between two of the edge-on panels, into deep shadow that gave way to a broad corridor, with adjacent panels sharply slanted, obscuring whatever lay inside.

Two such moved, affording access to a room of cushioned benches of atevi scale, and Prakuyo himself came and offered his hand to Ilisidi, whose face was drawn with the effort of moving in this place.

It wasn’t court protocol. It was, however, courtesy, and sensible in this place of dim light, uncertain footing, and exhausting weight: Ilisidi allowed herself to be seated, patted the place beside her for Cajeiri, and on her other side, for Bren.

Prakuyo also sat down, with that other individual, who proved, in better light, to be an older, heavier type, with numerous folds of prosperous fat.

Younger persons brought a tray with a medium-sized pitcher and a set of cups—one would expect tea, and a human experienced in atevi notions of tea worried about alkaloids; but what the young persons poured for them proved to be water, pure, clean water.

“Very good,” Ilisidi remarked, which Prakuyo translated; and himself poured more for her and for the rest of them.

“Good,” Prakuyo said. “Good come here.” He said something more to the older person, and by now others had come in to observe, and to listen to Prakuyo’s account, which ranged much farther than Bren could follow.

It took the tone, however, of a storyteller getting the most out of the situation, and came down to mention of their names again, and expansive gestures that looked unpleasantly like explosions.

“Ilisidi,” Prakuyo said then. “Say.”

“We have come,” Ilisidi said, paying no attention to this gross breach of courtly protocols, “we have come to settle matters, to recover these ill-placed humans and take them away, where they will cause you no further trouble. The ship-aiji who caused these difficulties is dead. The station-aiji who treated you badly is deposed and will never have power again, and the ship-aiji who rescued you is now in charge of the ship and the station. We take no responsibility for the doings of these foreign humans but we are glad to have returned you to your ship.”

Prakuyo launched into God-knew-how-accurate a translation, or explanation, or simply an elaboration of his prior arguments. At which point he asked for something, and one of the lesser persons ran off, presumably on that errand.

Prakuyo kept talking, overwhelming all argument, dominating the gathering. Clearly, Bren thought, this was not a common person, though what the hierarchy was on this ship was not readily clear. Six years they’d sat watching, observing—by all evidence of the damage done to the station, capable of simply taking it out, and of having done so before Prakuyo ever came close enough to get himself in trouble. But they’d taken a twofold approach: first to send in a living observer, then to sit and wait—long on a human timescale—six years.

For what? For Prakuyo to teach the humans to talk to them? For the ship that had left to come back? They hadn’t hit it, either, but they might well have tracked it.

A cautious folk. Capable of doing the damage they’d done—but they’d taken a long time to respond to Ramirez’s intrusion: they’d come in on the station rather than the mobile ship; they’d gotten provoked into a response, and then sat and watched the result. This wasn’t, one could think, a panicked, edge-of-capability sort of action, rather an action of someone as curious as hostile, wanting to know exactly how wide and fast the river was before they tried to swim in it.

The errand-runner came back with a tablet of opaque plastic and a marker, which Prakuyo took, and offered to Bren.

Communicate. Do the pictures. He obliged, and saw to his amazement that his very first mark appeared on a panel at the end of the room. He had an audience. He could start at the beginning. He could make them understand how the whole business had happened. Or he could try. Or he could just get to the point.

He drew a planet and a sun. “Earth,” he said. “Sun.” He drew a ship going out. “Ship. Human ship.” He shaded a dark spot along its route, drew many arrows going out, drew spirals and circles for the lost ship’s route. A dotted line. To a star. Solid line to another star. “Atevi earth. Human ship.”

Prakuyo elected to interpret—one only hoped he got it right; but Prakuyo had been locked into this limited vocabulary, part of the attempt to communicate.

“Human station. Atevi world. Human ship goes away. Humans go from station to atevi world.”

More translation.

“Humans, atevi on earth. Human, atevi, we. Ship they. Ship goes here, here, here. Ship makes station here. Ship goes here and here.” A complicated course, always centering on the second station. “Prakuyo ship comes to the human station, fight. Ship comes to station, comes to atevi world. Atevi and human, we come up to station, say to ship, you take humans from station, bring here to atevi and humans. Atevi and human we want no fight Prakuyo ship. Atevi and humans take Prakuyo on ship, take to Prakuyo ship. No fight.”

Again, a translation, vehement and excited. Prakuyo got up and demonstrated his atevi clothing, to the good, one thought: Prakuyo was not at all unhappy with his treatment on the ship.

It seemed an opportune moment, given the precedent of the water offering. Bren took his packet of fruit candies from his pocket and offered them to Prakuyo, who cheerfully took them, ripped the packet with a sharp tooth, and offered them about.

These were appreciated.

“Prakuyo-ji.” A young atevi voice, uncharacteristically muted. Cajeiri got up very carefully, and handed Prakuyo his car. “I brought it for you.”

Prakuyo took the offering, and took Cajeiri in a strong embrace, and talked with a great deal of booming and humming, even tugging Cajeiri’s pigtail, unthinkable familiarity, but Cajeiri was wise and held his peace.

Questions started. A lot of questions. And lengthy answers. Fruits appeared, on platters. It began to be a festivity, and if they could exit unpoisoned, Bren said to himself, they might secure the peace.

One tasted such things very gingerly. Only a taste. But that much surely was mandatory. There was a general easing of tension. More offering of water. Of little bits of bread and oil, which human taste found encouragingly safe-tasting.

“Good,” Prakuyo said with enthusiasm. “Good.” A powerful pat on the shoulder. “Bren take humans from station. Get all humans. Kyo take station.”

“Yes,” Bren said. Best they could get. They’d blown the archive. “Kyo good.”

“Human-atevi good.” Another blow to the shoulder. “Ilisidi go take Cajeiri. Go ship. Prakuyo come, go, come, go, more talk.”

Permission to go. Prakuyo would go with them and come and go at will. One could by no means ask better.

“One is grateful.” A bow. Perspiration glistened on Ilisidi’s brow. They had to get Ilisidi out of this heavy place. “Aiji-ma, we shall go back to the ship and continue negotiations.”

“Indeed,” Ilisidi said, and—Bren’s heart labored for her—rose, leaning on her cane. Cenedi moved to assist, but bang! went the cane on the floor, startling every person present except those who knew her. “We shall do very well for ourselves,” she said, and gave a polite, leisurely nod to Prakuyo. “We shall go to our ship. We shall have a decent rest. Then we shall be pleased to meet your delegation.”

“The dowager says good, talk soon,” Bren translated the intent into Prakuyo’s language, and bowed as the dowager turned, walking slowly. Cajeiri assisted her, providing his young arm under the guise of being shepherded along. Cenedi went close to her.

Prakuyo bowed during this retreat. Wonder of wonders, the rest bowed—perhaps grandmother translated very well, and found special resonance among the kyo.

Ilisidi seemed quite pleased with herself, standing square on her feet at the back of the airlock-combined-with-lift, as the rest of their party hastened aboard.

The door shut. The car started through its gyrations, and Ilisidi, off balance, had to accept Cenedi’s arm. And her great-grandson’s, on the other side.

“They seem perfectly civilized,” she said. “One can hardly see why we have had these difficulties.”

“Braddock-aiji,” Cajeiri said, having a bone-deep atevi understanding of how the intrigues lay.

The lift spun through its path and delivered them to the tube; and here, without gravity, Ilisidi let herself be moved gently along. Bren followed, glancing to be sure Banichi was all right: Jago was close by him, Cenedi’s men close behind.

They had done it. Bren allowed himself the dizzying thought. Prakuyo and he would talk, they would take their notebooks and their little dictionaries and make some sort of agreement.

They reached the frosted airlock, and locked through to the astonishing sight of an ordinary human face—several of them. Jase was one.

“Nandi.” Immediately Jase bowed to the dowager, who found it an opportune moment to sit down on the let-down seat at the guard post, her cane braced before her, her hands as pale as ever Bren had seen, and frost a gray sheen on her pepper-shot hair.

Cajeiri got down on his knee beside her and rubbed her arm. “It was very brave, mani-ma.”

“The dowager has gotten us an agreement,” Bren said quietly, to Jase, in Ragi. “Undefined, as yet, but expressions of willingness to talk.”

“Your job,” Jase said, laying a hand on his recently bruised shoulder. “You’ll do it. We’re still boarding passengers. We can do that and talk; and then we get to the fuel. Excellent job, nadi.”

“Hardly my doing.” He found himself wobbly in the knees and envied the dowager the seat, but would by no means dislodge her, or suggest they send for transport. “One believes the dowager will do very well with a little rest and warmth, Jase-ji. A little hot tea might come quite welcome.”

“A little less of talk,” Ilisidi said, and gained her feet, frightening them all. “The lift will get us home well enough. Jase-aiji, attend us down.”

Jase doubtless had a thousand things on his mind. But he had a key that preempted all other codes, and got them a lift car, despite the traffic that continually whined and thumped its way through the ship’s length.

The dowager walked in under her own power. Bren walked in, attended by the rest, all of them in one packet.

“Prakuyo will come back aboard to talk,” Bren said.

“Prakuyo.” Jase tried the name out.

“We think that’s his name. It could be his species.” So little they knew, at this point, about each other. Several things pleased the kyo about their expedition: the presence of an elder was one. Several things the kyo found shocking: the inclusion of themselves in the word we certainly seemed a matter of high debate.

But Prakuyo seemed about to make the jump.

Chapter 21

N ot much to report , brother, except ignore the last will and testament, which now seems embarrassing. We’ve loaded precisely 4043 persons and put their luggage through stringent checks for contraband, though what contraband one could find in this desolate station, I can’t imagine. Fruit sugar has produced a few stomach complaints, but the addiction is spreading. Likewise the taste for green plants. A few of the old people insist it gives them stomach ache, and they want their yeasts, but that’s only to be expected, I suppose .

I’ve met numerous times with Prakuyo and his association, there and here, during the last two days, and we’re more establishing vocabulary than conducting truly meaningful negotiations, but it’s pretty clear they’re to take over the station, which is not that far from places they consider theirs — more about that when I get back, when we can discuss this on a suitable beach .

Banichi took a little damage, which is mending nicely. Jago is coddling him shamelessly.

More later.

Aiji-ma, we are about to fuel the ship, and there will be no further difficulty. Gin-aiji has vouched for the machinery as of this morning.

A small note: Prakuyo-aiji indicates the observing ship was regularly receiving supply and exchanging information with others during the last six years, and that Ramirez-aiji had indeed encroached on places the kyo prefer to keep untraveled. The kyo attempt at approach apparently frightened Braddock, which ended in the kyo envoy being held these last six years. The kyo are very glad to know that responsible persons have shown up to rein in such adventures, so that kyo and atevi and humans may establish the nature and extent of their associations in reasonable security.

It should be noted that the kyo ship is very heavily armed, or at least was capable of extraordinary damage. I directly asked Prakuyo if he had knowledge of any other peoples beyond atevi and humans, and he seemed to say that such persons were not welcome in kyo territory. The kyo may be a barrier to such foreigners arriving in atevi regions, or they may have enmities of their own, a possibility which may indicate more caution in our relations with them. They do seem reasonable once approached at close range, but one cannot give credit enough to the aiji-dowager’s wise influence as an elder, which position they do greatly respect, and the fact that she could speak to them in a language recognizably not the language of humans who had offended against the kyo.

They form powerful associations among themselves based on kinships, as best one can guess. They are completely puzzled by the association of atevi and humans: this state of affairs requires an intellectual, perhaps profoundly emotional leap for them to accept as applicable to them, as difficult at least as humans and atevi discussing personal ties on a rational level. But they have moved from passionate rejection to curiosity, at least in the person of several of them. They have never traded outside their own association, except, one gathers, as a preliminary to absorbing that neighbor, but do conceive that trade relations with another powerful and alien association is a topic for discussion. Since there seems to be a historical precedent of trade leading to absorption of neighbors, there may be indications for caution here. Relations will need to be stabilized and well-defined. We are attempting to build the foundations for a lexicon, and may appoint Reunion as a more or less neutral venue in which further discussions can take place. Prakuyo seems very anxious to have this established. If I correctly understand him, the kyo believe that persons once met stay associated — that the universe will not be whole unless what has met remains in association. This may be a religious or a philosophical belief. It is one that may be troublesome in interspecies relations, and may account for the kyo’s persistence. From the time Ramirez began intrusions into kyo territory, trouble was likely .

Ship’s crew had intended to place Ramirez’s remains into the station as they destroyed it, for respectful and fitting cremation; since the station will go into kyo hands, they have determined instead to give him to the local sun as we depart this place.

For the rest, Sabin-aiji has returned to the ship. Sabin-aiji has received communication from Braddock-aiji, who seeks assurances of safe passage, which she has granted. We shall be very sure he is suitably housed and protected from those he has offended. We shall reposition the ship for fueling, preparatory to departure from this place.

Therefore, aiji-ma, I have a great deal of work to do in a very short time. We have contacted a dangerous and different set of foreigners who may present far less danger if our communications can be more accurate…

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the desk. He had a meeting to get to. Not with Prakuyo, thank God, but Jase was coming down to supper. With the dowager. With Sabin , God save them.

Staff was in hardly better condition. He had sat about in his bathrobe this morning, Narani arriving late and absolutely scandalized that he had sat in the chill making notes, but that was very well—he was doing what he had studied all his life to do, and so absorbed in it he had little cognizance outside that job, when he was in it.

Lord of the province of the heavens, not by choice. Paidhi-aiji—that, quite happily so, with a half a ream of notes and sketches and a voyage that seemed all too short ahead of him.

“Nandi.” Jeladi had come in, hoping to help him dress for dinner. He stood up, and stood thinking about nouns and whether kyo linguistics exactly had tense—now and then were remarkably confusable, or they were simplifying for the foreigners, or using a trade tongue: contact with outsiders seemed to have a formula, among them, and since they tended to swallow what they met, thinking it the proper way to do things, there was a little danger in letting kyo fall into formula at all.

Penetrate beyond the trade tongue, if that was what it was. It might take him coming back to Reunion. He rather well hoped to train a handful of sensible sorts to do that, a human-atevi association that could collect data—damn, he wanted his beachfront and his comforts, not to be sitting out here in a steel vault.

He arranged the cuffs, straightened his coat. Bowed his head so that Jeladi could see to the white ribbon. White, for the paidhiin.

Jeladi gave him a mirror, and he approved. Down several kilos, he was. He could live with that change. He hoped to maintain it.

“Very good, Ladi-ji.” A little sound warned him of a presence in the doorway—he was not surprised to see Banichi and Jago waiting for him.

“Nadiin-ji.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said, and they escorted him down the corridor toward the dining hall.

Mission all but accomplished.

A pleasant evening. The dowager’s table, and Sabin. And Jase, whom the crew took for a bona fide captain these days.

So did Sabin. That was the real change.

Separation of nations that have once met is dangerous: that seems the most accurate expression of kyo views of politics. What has met will meet again. What cannot stay in contact is a constant danger of miscalculation.

Curious notion. Possibly even demonstrable, in history. One wonders whether this is a refined philosophy, out of successful experience.

One is very certain we need to go slow with this.

In that notion, we’ve said a kyo goodbye to Prakuyo, who avows he will see us again. This somewhere between threat and promise.

The siren went. Warning.

Time to shut down and take hold.

“ Takehold, takehold, takehold .”

The illusion of gravity left them. The ship was sorting itself out. It had its gut full of stationers who had never been through this. They announced every small move.

Curious, Bren thought, that he’d gotten to view this as easy.

All things being relative—it was.

He shut his eyes. They were supposed to have a little transitional time before they underwent another acceleration. The weightless episode was a test—convincing stationers that they really had to stow items. So Jase had forewarned him.

He slept a little, drifting with a little safety tether to the head of the bed.

Waked as the warning siren went off. Gravity returned.

Jago wasn’t back. She’d gone off on some call from Banichi, and wasn’t back yet.

“ This is the real one, ladies and gentlemen. We’re about to fold space. Kindly stay put until the all-clear .”

Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe something had been going on. Maybe a crisis on staff, someone needing help…

He heard running steps in the hall. Sat up. As the siren went off, sharp warning bursts.

Jago came through the door, crossed the floor and landed on the bed in the space he made.

“Nadi-ji?” He was concerned.

A giddy feeling ensued. The ship began to ease its way out of the ordinary universe.

“One apologizes,” Jago said, breathless—for her, quite unusual.

“Trouble?” Difficulty breathing, himself, for the moment.

“Nand’ Cajeiri had a pocketful of dice.”

“Dice?” A common toy. They came in sets of eight. His staff had been called in. Cenedi must have been having fits. “Was he throwing them?”

“He called it an experiment,” Jago said. “To know, one understands, whether the numbers come up the same in freefall as on earth.”

He was appalled. The things became missiles under acceleration.

And intrigued. He had to ask.

“Do they?”

Jago laughed. That wonderful sound. And was still out of breath, as the universe ebbed and flowed around them. “A flaw in the notion, failure to ascertain true rest. Two were lost. Cenedi was entirely out of sorts.”

“You did find them.”

“Of course.”

Of course they had found them, or Jago would not have left. “Excellent,” he said, thinking of dice in freefall. Jago was warm beside him.

Safe. Secure. All dice accounted for. Baji-naji. They were going home.

About the Author

With over fifty books to her credit, and the winner of three Hugo Awards, C.J. Cherryh is one of the most prolific and highly respected authors in the science fiction field. She lives in Washington State.