Precursor

“Political and practical,” Kroger said. “Political, because manned mining was part of the mystique; because the colonist faction was doing the mining and possibly the leaders feared if the robots replaced the miners they’d lose their political clout.”

“Is there proof of that?”

“It’s my own suspicion,” Kroger said, “and there’s no proof. But I don’t think there were saints on either side. There was some reasonthe colonists didn’t push for robotic development when they were dying left and right; there was some reasonleadership didn’t press for a delay of the ship fueling and a rearrangement of priorities, to get robots that worked. Possibly it was simple ignorance. Possibly it was ideological blindness. We’ve seen a bit of that in our generation. The fact was, the radicals among the colonists suspected everythingthe Guild proposed, by that point in time. If the Guild proposed it, there must be an ulterior motive. And the radicals were in charge. As long as their people kept dying at a sustainable rate, the anger of the colonists kept them going.”

“I don’t like to think so,” Bren said, “but I’ve no way to deny your thesis.”

“It could have been done,” Kroger said. “And they didn’t do it. The political pressure for a landing built and built.”

“The question is” Bren said, “whether the robots weren’t built because they couldn’twork, or whether you’re right. I’d hope there’s a third answer. I really hope there’s a third answer, that we can’t have been that venal.”

“Both factions had a greater good at issue,” Kroger said. “Both factions thought they were right, that if they gave in on one point, they’d erode all they had. Desperate, suspicious times. Both sides thought they allwould die if they didn’t have their way. Robots. Common damned sense, Mr. Cameron!”

“And a joint company,” Lund said. “Your large-scale engineering, our electronics, our control devices.”

“I see no difficulty in agreement,” Bren said. “I see no difficulty at all.” His own people had a plan, buried deep within the departments of the government, but, thank God, a plan, and a viable one. He was for the first time in a decade proudto be Mospheiran. “Can you deliver it?”

Kroger let go a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Cameron, seventeen of us have spent our careersassuring we can deliver it. We knowthe metallurgy—and damned hard that’s been to develop with all the materials having to be imported from the mainland—but damn, we’ve doneit. For the robotics, the specific designs… that was a problem. The records had been lost. We just got those records, Mr. Cameron.”

“If the archive shouldhave those plans,” Bren began, and Kroger lowered her fist onto the table.

“The archive doeshave them, Cameron. It does. I looked. I knew what the files ought to be, where they ought to be. I’ve worked my whole lifearound that hole in the records, and believe me I know where to look in the archive.”

Her whole life… was that merely a figure of speech?”

How long? Bren wondered with a nervous and sudden chill. How long had Kroger been working on this notion? More than three years back threw her into the whole pro-space movement, which had its roots in the Heritage Party, Gaylord Hanks’ party, with all its anti-atevi sentiment.

But that didn’t mean everyone who’d ever taken that route because it was the only route for pro-spacers was automatically Gaylord Hanks’ soulmate. Their proposal, just voiced, was a pro-space proposal, but it wasn’t anti-atevi. That the Heritage Party might have drawn in the honest and sensible, the dreamers with a willingness to ignore the darker side of their associations… it was possible.

Kroger, whatever else, was not a fool. She sat enjoying supper in an atevi household and proposing, with Lund, cooperation. Proposing a program that would save atevi lives if the aiji undertook the rough part of the operation. Proposing to better what he’d envisioned and give her benefit to the project.

“I thought you might be Hanks’ partisan,” he said. “And I don’t think you are. I think you’re an honest negotiator, Ms. Kroger. Dr. Kroger. Mr. Lund, the same. I think this might be entirely viable.”

Kroger said: “Damn Gaylord Hanks, Mr. Cameron. No fewof us damn Gaylord Hanks.”

“Damn Gaylord Hanks?” Lund said, with a sudden, cheerful smile. Kroger had somewhat neglected her main course in the passion of argument, but Lund had demolished his, looking up sharply now and again, clearly paying attention. “I knowGaylord Hanks. I’ve known him since school days, and now a lot of people know him. The Heritage Party has another wing, I’m glad to say, and Hanks can take a rowboat north for what most of us think.”

“So I have the Heritage party for guests.” He’d picked up the prior signals of Kroger’s attitudes, the unconscious statements of prejudice; he didn’t see them in evidence at this table, in this room. He took that for a signal, perhaps, of a woman who’d adopted protective coloration, perhaps in a bid for survival.”

“Certainly not Hanks’ followers,” Kroger said. “Neither one of us. I’m not a dogmatist; I’m a scientist. Tom’s an economist, performs wizardry, odd moments of magic, I don’t know what; but he’s no more a follower of Hanks than I am or you are.”

“That’s quite good news.”

“There was quiet cheering inside the party when the invasion bounced off the shores,” Lund said. “That’s not publicized, but, God, that wasn’t a direction we ought to have gone, and no few of us knew it. We didn’t have the means to stop it. There was cheering in some quarters when the ship came back; there isn’t, yet, in others, and in some surprising quarters: some of the pro-spacers don’t want it. They’d wanted to do it themselves, if you want the honest truth; they damned sure didn’t want another Guild dominion.”

“I know these people,” Bren said quietly.

“Robotics,” Kroger reiterated. “What we should have done from the beginning, what we couldn’t do then, what we cando now.”

And from Tom Lund: “You’re not alone, Bren. Not you, not the atevi. Others share your enthusiasm for this new opportunity. Believe that, if nothing else.”

“I do believe you,” he said. “And I’m very willing to take this to the aiji with a strong recommendation.”

There was a small silence at the table, a trembling, hope-fraught kind of silence.

“Well!” Lund said. “ Well!Good! But I trust this room is secure. We understand your principals are rather good at that sort of thing.”

“They are.”

“Promise Sabin what you have to,” Lund said quietly, “and let’s get our own agreement nailed down, together, present a deal signed and sealed. Thentell the captains.”

Bren gave a small, conscious smile, thinking to himself that these two were a tolerably good team. Sometimes Kroger seemed in charge, sometimes Lund, and he began to get the feeling that they were accustomed to sandbagging their way to agreements, much as the aiji was.

But these two were from inside the Heritage establishment, the pro-space wing, perhaps, perhaps some more convolute— associationwas an atevi word, one with emotional depth, and implicit unity. Coalitionof interests seemed more apt, a human way of operating quite similar and quite different from ways atevi would understand.

“I’ll reserve what we’ve discussed,” he said, “and we’ll continue discussing it. This venue is secure. It’s one reason I encouraged you to come here. I hope you’ll come back.”

“Every intention to,” Kroger said.

It was a success, an unqualified success, Bren said to himself. Obstacles were falling down left and right because the situation mandated cooperation and old, old rivalries and attitudes didn’t survive the encounter. It wasn’t histriumph; it was the triumph of basic common sense, after a long night of bad decisions. Three years of diminished power for Gaylord Hanks and Mospheirans had gathered up their wits and brought the likes of Ginny Kroger into striking distance of a patient, lifelong work. The pro-spacers had made their move.

Thank God, he thought.

The servants had carried on their business in near-silence, dealing in small signals, whisking courses onto and off the table. Only at the end, Bren signaled Narani to come and meet the guests, whom he introduced in Ragi, with translation, and said, in Mosphei’, “A nod of the head is courteous. One doesn’t rise or take their hands.”

His guests showed that courtesy; the servant staff lined up and bowed in great delight, and there were smiles all around, that gesture both species, both remote genetic heritages, shared… he’d never so much wondered at it or thought it odd until he saw Bindanda and Kroger smile at each other, both looking entirely self-conscious, each in their own native way… convenient in an upright species to unfocus the hunting gaze, perhaps, this bowing and smiling: hard to glare and smile simultaneously.

“Very fine,” he said in Ragi. “Thank you, Narani-ji, so very much. Is the staff managing with Kaplan-nadi and with Ben-nadi?”

“Very well, nandi,” Narani said, sounding pleased with himself; and courtesies wended toward a late drink and a social moment, which stretched on uncommonly at table. They were short of a sitting room and the lord’s bedchamber seemed less appropriate for foreign guests.

Narani had put together a supper for Shugart, alone at her post; and that ended up in Feldman’s hands as the guests departed, with Banichi and Tano and Jago there to bid them all a farewell, Kaplan in his array of electronics… he had at least put off the eyepiece to have supper, and had stuffed himself with food and fruit sweets, so Bren discovered.

“He liked them quite emphatically,” Jago said, “and had eaten far too much to enjoy them, and wished more. So we quite by chance suggested through Ben-nadi that he put some in his pockets.”

“He was very pleased,” Tano said. “Like Jase, he had never had such strong tastes.”

“One hopes he is careful,” Bren said.

Fruits. Vegetables. Jase called them water-tastes and earth-tastes, and said they made his nose water. It hadn’t stopped him making himself sick on them. Tano knew, and he trusted Tano had warned Kaplan before stuffing his pockets full.

Fruit sweets.

Kaplan’s first taste. Therewas one of the likely first imports. Jase had said he would miss the fruit most of all.

And wouldn’t have to miss it long, if the meeting tomorrow went well, and if they gained agreement with the captains.

Send and receive produced no messages from Toby. A hello, and I have made up our arguments and everything’s finewould have capped off the evening beyond any fault.

But that there wasn’t… that was understandable. He’d been too damned much in Toby’s life the last several years; it was more than time to leave Toby to settle his own life, his own marriage… his own kids. He had to keep hands off.

Meanwhile he had a small flood of messages answering the morning’s mail, answers from the mainland, a note from the office asking on what priority they might be translating the transmission of what was, in effect, the archive, and thatwas a question that deserved an answer on better information than he had at the moment. He needed to compose a query to the University to see whether they might release what index they compiled.

Algini, meanwhile, was freed from his isolation, having had supper slipped in to his station. His security needed a briefing, and he provided it, a rapid, Ragi digest of what he had discussed with Kroger and Lund.

“Computer-operated machines,” he said, but that was too cumbersome. Robotisounded distressingly like a vulgar word for lunatic, which would never inspire atevi workers to trust them.

“Botiin.” he said, which sounded like guideor ruler. “Like manufacturing machines, but capable of traveling out to the job, in the very dangerous regions. One sits back in safety and directs them.”

“Air traffic control,” Banichi said, which summed up a great deal of what atevi thought odd about Mospheiran ways, a system about which there was stillfierce debate, regarding individual rights of way and historic precedences, andfelicity of numbers.

He had to laugh, ruefully so, foreseeing a battle on his hands—but one he could win.

One he wouldwin. “I have a letter to write to Tabini,” he said to his earnest staff. “I want you to help me make it soundbetter than air traffic control.”

They thought thatwas funny, and he went off to his evening shower with that good humor, undressed, preoccupied with the explanation of robots, entered the shower, preoccupied with the query about translation of an index for atevi access to the archive.

He scrubbed vigorously, happier than he’d been in years.

He expected a counter-offer tomorrow. He also expected notto get one. Possibly the captains were making an approach to Kroger’s party, and certainly the captains were informed the guests had been putting their heads together in private discussions. There would be anxiousness on that score.

The water went cold. Bitter, burning cold. Pitch darkness. Silence.

“Damn!” he shouted, for a moment lost, then galvanized by the sense of emergency. He exited the shower, in the utter dark, feeling his way.

And saw a faint light, a hand torch, in the hallway.

Atevi shadows moved out there. One light source came in, bearing a hand torch, spotting him in the light. He flung his arms up and the light diverted, bounced off the walls in more subdued fashion.

“The power seems to have failed,” Jago said.

“I’m all over lather,” he said, still shaken. “Things were going entirely too well, I fear. Nadi-ji, please inform the staff. Power here is life and death. I trust the fuel cylinders in the galley will hold a while for warmth, but I understand warmth can go very quickly. Be moderate with them. Gather the staff near the galley.”

“They should last a time,” Jago said. “So should our equipment.” Bindanda joined her, and moved in dismay to offer a robe.

He accepted it. “Warm water, if you please.” Outrageous demands were not outrageous if it meant giving the staff something to do, and he was covered in soap. “I’ll finish my bath.”

“Immediately, nandi.”

Immediately was not quite possible, and he had all too much time to listen to his staff bearing with the disaster, to attempt the communications panel, and to find it not working.

Warm water did arrive in reasonably short order, all the same, and Bindanda assisted him in rinsing off the soap, a hand torch posed like a candlestick on the counter.

“Very fine,” Bren said with chattering teeth, trying not to think of a general power failure.

A large shadow appeared against the dim glow of the hall. “Bren-ji?”

Banichi.

“Any news?” He expected none. “If power has gone down, there willbe the ship itself, trusting this isn’t the alien attack.”

“That would be very bad news,” Banichi said in that vast calm of his.

But in that moment a sound came from the vents. The fans started up, failed.

“Well,” Bren said. “They’re trying to fix it. The air is trying to come through.” He seized up the damp, still-soapy robe, with the notion of reaching Cl if there were moments of power, and Bindanda hastily snatched the robe away, substituting a dry coverlet. Bren gathered that about his shoulders and punched in Cl.

There was no answer.

“The lock is electronic,” Banichi said, “and we can access it, to the exterior of this section.”

“We aren’t completely sure there’s air on the other side of the door,” Bren said, wishing they might supply power to the panel; but that did no good if no one was listening. “Do we have radio, Banichi-ji?”

“We have,” Banichi said confidently. “We would rather not use it.”

“Understood,” Bren said. “Perfectly.” He was comforted to think that, in extremity, they might have a means to contact the ship or the shuttle itself, hoping for some word of what was going on outside their section.

The lights came on. Fans resumed moving air.

He and Banichi looked at one another with all manner of speculations; and he heaved a great sigh.

“Well,” he said to Banichi, “presumably it will go on working. Conserve, until we know what’s happening.”

“One will do so,” Banichi said. “In the meantime… we’ll attempt to learn.”

“Wait,” he said, and tried Cl again. “Cl. What’s going on? Do you hear me?”

“ The emergency is over,” Cl answered, not the main shift man, but a woman’s voice. “ There’s no need for alarm.”

“Does that happen often, Cl? What didhappen?”

“I believe a technical crew is attempting to rectify the problem, sir. It’s a minor difficulty. Out, sir.”

Cl punched out. Cl might have other problems on her hands. God knew what problems.

“It’s not an alien invasion,” he said to Banichi. “The central communications officer claims not to know the cause.”

Banichi might have understood that much.

“One wonders how general it was,” Banichi said. Jago had appeared, and there was some uncommon calling back and forth among the staff, confirming switches, in the hall.

“I’ve no idea,” Bren said. “Cl certainly knew about it.”

“One should rest, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “One of us is always on watch.”

He had no doubt. And he had no doubt of the rightness of the advice, no matter what was going on technically with the station.

There was not another alarm in the nighttime.

In the morning he was not utterly surprised to hear Cl say that Sabin had canceled their scheduled meeting; he was not utterly surprised to hear that there were no communications with Mogari-nai. The earthlink was down. Neither ship nor station was communicating with anyone.

“Is there still an emergency?” he asked. “Is the station intact?”

“ Perfectly intact, sir,” Cl answered, the regular, daytime Cl, which reassured him. “ Sorry. I don’t have the details. I have to shut down now.”

Disappointing, to say the least. He went to report the situation to his staff, that the day’s schedule had changed.

“I don’t know why,” he said to the staff. “We felt no impact, as if there were explosion, or a piece of debris, but I don’t know that we might, on so large a structure. I’ll work in, today. Simply do what needs doing.”

It was a slow day, in some regards, a frustrating, worrisome day, but power at least stayed rock-steady.

He made notes on the discussion with Kroger. He answered letters. He wrote letters… restrained himself from writing to Toby, and asked himself whether the link was going to be in operation.

There was a quiet supper. He had pronounced himself not particularly hungry, and perhaps a little overindulged from the day prior. “I get very little exercise here,” he said to Narani, “I don’t walk enough. Satisfy the staff, certainly. But I have no need for more than a bowl of soup.”

He was primarily concerned, after his day’s work, to have the earthlink function smoothly, and it seemed to.

But the messages were all from the mainland.

“Put me through to Jase Graham,” he said, the ritual he and Cl had established.

“Sir, he’s still in conference.”

“I thought he might be rather less busy with the station’s problems.”

“I’m told he’s still in meetings.”

“Yolanda Mercheson?”

“Still in meetings.”

“Captain Sabin.”

“Still in meetings, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Captain Ramirez.”

“Sir, all the captains are in meetings.”

One wondered if anything was getting done anywhere on the ship or the station. He wanted to be cheerful for his servants’ sake, but was glum at heart, surer and surer that Ramirez had not pulled off his majority, and that the meetings Jase and Yolanda were involved in likely involved sitting under guard, in isolation, and answering occasional questions from a deadlocked association of captains.

And that was the most optimistic view.

A shadow appeared by his bed, utterly silent—just loomed, utterly black, and his heart jumped in fright.

“Do you wish?” Jago’s lowest voice. “Nadi?”

“Bren-ji,” he corrected this slide toward formality. “Some aspects of this being a lord I don’t like. Sit down.” He made room for her on the narrow bed, realizing at the same time that she and he wouldn’t fit it, or at least, not comfortably.

He shifted to give her room, her arms came about him. Deeper thought and glum mood both went sliding away, in favor of a thoroughly comfortable association and the easy, gentle comfort of her embrace. He heaved a sigh, not obliged even to carry his weight, not with Jago, who supported him without any thought. Her breath stirred his hair, ran like a breath of summer over his shoulder, and for the next while, and right down to the edge of sleep, he didn’t think.

But he felt a certain uneasiness, a certain sense of embarrassment, the rooms were so small, the staff pressed so close. The bed required close maneuvering.

“You can’t be comfortable here,” he said. “Don’t wake with a kink in your back, on my account.”

“I have no difficulty,” she said.

He was habitually cold; he wasn’t, while she was in bed. But he truly didn’t want the closeness of the quarters here to create a difficulty.

“Perhaps you should go for other reasons,” he whispered to her. He always felt guilty for the relationship, the event, whatever she might call it. She had a partner. To this hour he had no idea whether her being here represented some allowed breach of that partnership, or what the relationship was between her and Banichi—which was a trust he had absolutely no willingness to betray. They had never been at such close quarters. She’d always assured him Banichi understood, understood, understood, but he was uneasy, tonight.

“What other reasons?”

“Getting some sleep, for one.”

“I might sleep, if nand’ paidhi weren’t talking.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, and felt the tension he created. “The whole staff must know, Jago-ji.”

He felt, rather than heard, her laughter. “One is certain they do.”

He couldn’t bear the evasions any longer. He slid free and rested precariously on an arm near the edge where he could be absolutely face to face with her. “Jago-ji. I will not hurt Banichi. I have every regard for you, and I know youwould never disregard him, but I worry, Jago-ji, I do worry what he thinks.”

“He is amused.”

“I know you say that, but a man is a man, and people are people, and they can say something, but it doesn’t make it so, Jago-ji. I have no wish to offend him. I would be devastated to create a breach between you”

“There is none. There has never been one.”

“ Are you lovers, Jago-ji?”He’d chased that question all the years of their partnership. “Have you been, forgive me that I ask, but this causes me a great deal of guilt and worry—” He was under assault, and he fended it off, determined to get out what he had tried a dozen times to express. “—Guilt and worry, that I ever crossed any barrier that I might not have understood…”

Jago’s body heaved gently. After an instant he knew she was laughing. A callused, gentle hand moved slowly across his shoulder. “Bren-ji. No.”

“What do you mean, no, nadi? Have you been lovers?”

“Bren-ji. He is my father.”

He was stunned. He rolled back, fell back onto the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The whole universe shifted vector.

Then the thin mattress gave, and the general dim dark gave way to Jago’s outline, her elbow posed on the other side of him, her fingers tracing their way down from his chin.

Amused, she said. Banichi was amused at their carrying-on.

Not disapproving.

But her father?

“Bren-ji. We do not make relationships public, in our Guild. I tell you as a confidence.”

“I respect it.”

“One knows without doubt the paidhi is discreet,” Jago said, and found his ear, found his hands… outmaneuvering Jago was difficult, and he had no interest in trying that. For the first time he had a relatively clear conscience in her regard, and a joke to avenge. He pulled her close, dismissing the proximity of the servants as any concern to them.

They ran unexpectedly out of bed, on the edge, and nearly over it.

Jago simply rolled out of it, taking him and the sheets with her, and laughed.

Chapter 18

Jago was gone before dawn, and he was in bed when he waked, in bed with the smell of breakfast wafting through the hall.

Bindanda and Kandana were a little reluctant to meet his eye. Had he and Jago embarrassed the whole staff, Bren wondered, chagrined. He found nothing to say, and thought he should ask Jago… he truly, urgently should ask someone what the staff was saying. It could hardly be Banichi; he couldn’t envision that conversation. He knew he would blush. Jago might be the recipient of merciless amusement, and she was hardly the one to ask.

He thought perhaps he could speak to Tano… certainly to Tano, rather than staid, dignified Narani. He could manage to do that on the way to breakfast, which otherwise might be a very uncomfortable affair.

He had chosen less than formal wear for a day on which he had no schedule but deskwork: a sweater and a light pair of trousers with an outdoor jacket, about adequate for the chill of the air, after which he dismissed Bindanda and Kandana, opened up his computer, and went through the send-receive with Cl, and through the usual litany of questions, refusing to give up on Jase or Yolanda or on direct contact with the captains, three of whom he was anxious to hear from.

No message from Toby, none from his mother, nothing this time even from Tabini, who was probably considering the last one, or who simply had things to do other than give the paidhi daily reassurances. Two advertisements had slipped into the packet, one for bed linens and the other for fishing gear, and he scrutinized them briefly for any content from the Foreign Office, any hint that someone had sent him something clandestine. It was a north shore fishing gear manufacturer, one Toby used.

But it was simply one of those hiccups of the communications filter. His mailbox on the island received such things, and he had no staff left there to filter them.

A message from the head of the Transport Committee reported on progress in the new spaceport. They were better than their schedule.

He half-zipped his jacket and went out into the hallway in a routine hurry for breakfast.

And ran chest-high into a stranger.

He recoiled, immediate in everything his security had dinned into him, achieved distance and was a muscle-twitch from diving backward into the door before his vision realized chagrin and offered respect on the other side of the encounter.

Atevi presence on the station was entirely limited, and more, he knew this man: the name escaped him, as his heart pounded, but it was one of the stewards from the shuttle.

“Nand’ paidhi,” the man said with a second bow. “Your pardon. Nojana, of the aiji’s crew of Shai-shan.”

“Of course you are,” Bren exclaimed, taking a hasty breath. “How did you get here?”

He was no longer alone in the hallway. Almost as quickly as he had backed up, the noise of his move had attracted Tano and Algini and Jago out of the security station, and Bindanda from the dining room… which might say something about Bindanda’s Guild associations: Bren noted thatin the aftermath of adrenaline.

“Banichi sent me, nand’ paidhi,” Nojana said. “He wished to confer with the captain.”

“Parijo. The shuttle captain.” There were entirely too many captains in the broth.

“Even so, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana, in fact, was not wearing a steward’s uniform, but the black of the Assassins’ Guild… security’sGuild, and by the height and breadth of the steward, it was Banichi’s body type, Banichi’s muscled arms and shoulders. This was not a man accustomed to passing out drinks and motion sickness pills, but it had not been so evident in his previous uniform.

“And is this youruniform, nadi?”

“No, nand’ paidhi, it is not.”

“And how long have you been here?”

“Since midnight, nandi.”

Bren cast a look at his own security, and, with a feeling of mild indignation, directly at Jago, whose arrival in his quarters, whose determined distraction had left not a shred of attention to the fact the seal-door had opened and closed last night.

Jago, to her credit, met his gaze with a satisfied lift of her chin and the ghost of a smile.

It did beat drugging his drink, he said to himself, and he had no suspicion whatever that Jago had been dishonest in love-making, only that she’d had a considerable ulterior motive.

And he would not call down his senior staff in front of a stranger, or in front of the servants. He simply composed himself, smiled, nodded acknowledgment of a successful operation, namely deceiving the paidhi, and getting Banichi outside without consulting him—and directed his inquiry to Nojana.

“And have you had breakfast, nadi, and will you join us?”

“I had tea at my arrival, nandi, and I thank the paidhi for the kindness of his offer, nothing since. I would be very honored.”

“Do join us, then,” he said, and surrendered Nojana to the guidance of Tano and Algini, with a single glance.

Jago he stayed with a lowering of his brows.

“How in hell?” he said in a half-whisper. “How did he getthere? Did they come after him…” He could envision that the shuttle crew might have some sense of the station: this was not their first trip. “… or did he use the map?” Even with that, it was a risk, not least of running afoul of the ship-captains and the likes of Kaplan. He was thoroughly appalled. Chilled by the very thought… and yet if Banichi had done anything of the sort, he trusted it was well-thought. “Jago, I know what you did. I’m not angry. But what is he doing?”

“He wishes to be sure the shuttle is on schedule.”

“Have we established that?”

“Nojana says yes. There’s been no difficulty at all. Nominal in all respects. It might leave early, except for small details.”

“I’ve no need to have it leave early, or is there something going on I don’t know?”

“One wishes to be certain. Banichi has been concerned about the behavior of the captains.”

Hewas concerned, in that regard. But to go off across a trackless maze of corridors…

“What if he’d been stopped?”

“He would have been surveying for the station repairs, on his own initiative.”

As a lie it was a decent one. “And what if he’d just gotten lost?They’ve done alterations since the charts we have, Jago-ji! How did Nojanaget here? You surely didn’t ask Kaplan.”

“No,” Jago said pleasantly, with a little shrug. “By no means Kaplan. They’ve not made signs, you think, so that the Mospheirans might lose their way.”

“So that we would lose our way. You’re saying you don’t.”

A second small shrug. “We walkedfrom that area, Bren-ji.”

It was rare these days that an atevi-human difference utterly took him blindside. He drew in a breath, replayed that statement, and it came up meaning what he thought. “You mean you don’t lose count of the doorways.”

“Yes,” Jago said cheerfully, that disconcerting Ragi habit of agreeing with a negative. “Do you?”

When he thought about it, he thought he might have a fair notion how to reach Kroger’s section: he countedthings he saw; he’d trained for years to do that, from flash-screens at University to desperate sessions in real negotiations, real confrontations. He’d learned to have that perception, and yes, he saw how a mind that just natively saw in that way might have a better record than he did. The captains’ precautions against invasion were simply useless against atevi memories for sets and structure. It was the same way atevi had taken one look at computer designs that had served humankind for centuries and critiqued their basic concept in terms of a wholly different way of looking at the universe.

“Amazing,” was all he could say. “Really amazing. He shouldn’t get himself in trouble, Jago-ji.”

He didn’t say a word about the diversion last night. He couldn’t say whether if Banichi had come proposing an excursion to see whether the shuttle was safe, he might not have said no. He was very careful with Banichi and Jago in particular… as he supposed they were with him, and he couldn’t deny that they had their reason, that he was a damned valuable commodity to have up here, and that in a certain sense it was folly to have him here.

But he couldn’t become paralyzed by the notion of his own worth, either; he had to dohis job to bevaluable, and that was the bottom line.

Banichi sent him Nojana, and he meant to get the most out of the transaction.

“This is worth the walk, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana enjoyed the food: one could hardly blame him. “Very much worth it, and I am honored.”

It wasn’t quite proper to ask an ateva his Guild if it wasn’t apparent or if the information weren’t offered, but Bren had his notions, looking at Nojana’s athletic build. Arms completely filled out the borrowed uniform. There was a little slack across the chest, but hardly so. The height might be a little more: the sleeves were not quite adequate.

And Nojana was a member of the Assassins’ Guild, members of his staff knew Nojana very well from before this: it was a small and very well-placed Guild, and generally supportive of the aiji, with rare and balanced exceptions. Into Guild politics the paidhi had no entry, and he thought it wise to seek none, as the aiji himself sought none.

He certainly had a healthy appetite.

“How long will you stay?” Bren asked, and reserved What in hell is Banichi up to?for a moment with his own staff.

“One isn’t sure, nand’ paidhi.”

That was a fairly broad answer, warning the habituated that the ateva in question was hedging, and if pressed, would hedge more creatively… being too polite to lie unless cornered.

One took the answer and shut up, and asked Jago later, pulling her within his room.

“I don’t know,” was Jago’s response.

“All right,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’m going down with the next flight. That’s within my judgment.”

“One worries,” Jago said. “Staff can manage this. Someone less valuable can manage this.”

“Less valuable to the aiji because such a person might do less. If I can secure a meeting with the captains, I shouldsecure it. If I can hold Ramirez to agreements personally, even if there’s dissent, I should do it. If I can free Jase, I should free him. In the meantime, Jago-ji, I will prepare dispatches, if I have more than a few hours.”

“One has more than a few hours. I should say quite a few hours, nadi.”

“What is he doing?”

“One can’t say.”

“Well,” he said distressedly, “well, show Nojana what he has to know and I’ll prepare the dispatches. Give me at least an hour’s warning when he leaves.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Jago protested.

“I know you can work wonders,” he said. “I believe that you will.—And you’re not to risk yourself, Jago-ji! You’re not to leave this place unless I say so.”

“I can’t take such orders,” Jago said, but added quickly, “but I see no reason to go at the moment.”

“An hour’s warning,” he insisted, and went off, precaution against surprises, to give the same instruction to Nojana, that he had dispatches that had to go to Tabini, and that Nojana should carry them.

That meant putting his notes in order and some sort of coherency, and more, committing them to an ephemeral card, which he habitually carried since the bad old days of Jase’s descent and Deana Hanks’ attempt to land on the mainland. It had a button that simply, physically, with a caustic element, destroyed the media beyond reading, not something he liked using—he had a dire image of the thing going off while he was producing it; and his scenario for needing it involved a situation in which he might want to destroy his whole computer storage, but this was a good deal less dire, simply to hand Nojana the record and to instruct him to give it personally to the head of the aiji’s security.

“Only to him,” Bren said emphatically. “This tab, do you see, must remain intact unlessyou think there’s a danger of it falling into other hands. Once you tear it off, this record will be destroyed. If an unauthorized machine attempts to read it, the result will be bad for both.”

“One understands,” Nojana said fervently. “The record will reach the aiji’s guard.”

“Very good” Bren said. “There’ll be another if we have time. These are the essentials.”

“Does the paidhi have concerns for security here, or on the ground?” Nojana dared ask.

“Here, primarily. But take care, and ask for immediate escort once you land; I don’t fancy you’ll have to ask twice.” He said that and asked, sensing a man who might have secrets, “Do youhave concerns about which my security should know?”

“I have informed them of essentials, nadi.”

“Inform us all,” he said. “I want to hear it directly, and ask questions.”

“Yes, nandi,” Nojana said, and over at least three cups of tea which Algini made himself, not asking the servant staff, and within the security post, Nojana informed them of what he knew.

“Certain of the crew have become familiar with us,” Nojana said, “and we do speak outside the bounds of our duty. We share food with them, some small extra sweets which they greatly favor, and we gain their goodwill. They mention their recreation and their associations, which we know, and which I can tell you.”

“Do so,” Jago said, and Narana did, mapping out all those individuals whose names or work they knew, and every name associated with them, and where they had complained or praised someone: Narana had a very good memory of such things, second nature to atevi… significant among humans, but not by patterns Narana might suspect.

“Very, very good,” Bren said, having a clear picture from that and from Jase, a tendency to form families of sorts, even lineages and households, all with the tradition of marriage, but without its frequent practice. “You know Jasi-ji. You met him.”

“Yes, nadi, I had that honor.”

“His mother is resident here, perhaps other associates. We’ve been unable to contact him: the captains have given orders to the contrary. If I send word, might you use one of your more innocent contacts to slip a message to her to contact us? I think it might come much more easily from the other direction. They’re routing all our communications through a single channel; we don’t seem to have general access to communications as I suspect others might.” An idea came to him, and he asked the question. “How do you reach the authorities?”

“Cl for communications and Ql for dock communications; but we know a few more numbers.”

“You’ve had no difficulty reaching them.”

“None that I know. I speak enough Mosphei’, nandi, that if a worker needs to reach us, I often receive the call, and if one might be late he calls, and on occasion we provide them small excuse, as if they were at work, but not so.”

“You mean they ask you to conceal their tardiness and absences.”

“They make up deficits quite willingly. We’ve never found it a detriment, nandi. Are we wrong?”

“Not at all,” Bren said. “By no means.” That the crew found occasion to play off on duty was within human pattern; that they made up the work was the pattern of a crew that understood the schedule and would meet it, all of which the atevi working with them had learned. And it might be unwise to use that route to reach Jase’s mother… yet. It might trigger suspicion of malevolent intent, the contact might be rejected at the other end, and there was not quite the urgent need to do it. “But which human would you ask to contact someone outside your area if you had to do it?”

“Kelly. A young woman.” Nojana had no hesitation. “She has a lover. She meets him at times. She knows Jase very well.”

“Has the subject arisen? We’ve been unable to establish contact with Jase; I’m somewhat worried, nadi. Has she expressed concern?”

“She has tried to tell me something regarding Jase, but the words elude me. She seems to express that Jase is associated with Ramirez-aiji.”

“He is. That much is true. Ramirez functions as hisaiji, or his father.”

“Indeed. Kelly has said Jase-nandi is withRamirez.”

Nojana had used the Mospheiran word.

“ Withmeans very many things. Ask if Jase is in danger.”

“I know this word. Shall I ask nadi Kelly?”

“If you can do so discreetly.”

“One will attempt discretion.”

“Report the result of that inquiry to Tabini-aiji when you take him the dispatch. I doubt it would be safe to send word to me, unless I make the flight… as my staff seems to believe I should. I remain doubtful.”

“I shall,” Nojana said. “Indeed I shall, nand’ paidhi.”

They conversed; Nojana slept and waked with the servants, another day, received more files, enjoyed meals with them.

“How long will he stay?” Bren asked Jago directly.

“Not long,” was Jago’s answer. “Tonight perhaps.”

“How did he know his way in the first place?” Bren wondered, because that thought had begun to nag him.

“Banichi sent him with that instruction” Jago said. “I’m very sure. And Banichi won’t have missed a thing.”

“What in hell do you do if you meet guards?”

“One will endeavor not to meet guards,” Jago said.

Some things there was just no disputing; and in some arguments there was simply nothing left to say. Banichi would come back. He believed that implicitly. Banichi would come back.

And true to his instruction, Nojana reported his intention to depart at midnight, enjoyed a cup of tea with him and the security staff, thanked the servants for their attentions, and stood ready to walk back down the corridors to take a lift to the core, with no more baggage than he’d arrived with… to the outward eye.

And could a human observer miss a tall shadow of an atevi in a pale yellow corridor, where there was no place to take cover?

Atevi hearing was good; but that good? He was doubtful. Banichi was armed, and needed no weapons against unarmed humans; but the very last thing he wanted was harm to the crew, even of a minor sort.

“I have all you’ve entrusted to me,” Nojana said, “nand’ paidhi.”

“I have no doubt,” Bren said. Nojana seemed to read his worry as a lack of confidence in him, and he had no wish to convey that at all. “I know Banichi has none.”

“Nandi,” Nojana said.

Then Tano quite deftly opened the door and let him out, one more time to trace his way through foreign corridors.

Chapter 19

They expected Banichi to arrive sometime after midnight. “Wake me” he said to Jago, who shared the bed with him that night. He knew her hearing, and her light sleeping, that she would in no wise sleep through Banichi’s arrival.

“Don’t be angry,” she asked of him.

“I shan’t be,” he said, lying close beside her. When he thought about it, he knew he was disturbed, and wished Banichi had asked before he did such a thing; but anger was too strong a word. Banichi was rarely wrong, never wrong, that he could immediately recall.

“Has he ever made a mistake?” he asked her, and Jago gave a soft laugh.

“Oh, a few,” Jago said, Jago, who knew Banichi better, he suspected, than anyone in the world or off it. “There was the matter of a rooftop, in the south. There was the matter of believing a certain human would take orders.”

“A certain human has his own notions,” Bren said. “And one of them is not to have my staff wandering the halls and me not knowing.”

“In the aiji’s service,” Jago said, “we overrule the paidhi. And the aiji’s orders involve the paidhi’s safe return.”

“The aiji’s orders also involve the paidhi’s success in his mission.”

“Just so, but caution. Caution.”

“Caution doesn’t get the job done.” She distracted him. Jago was good at that. He outright lost track of his argument.

Besides, he intended it for Banichi, when Banichi got back, after midnight.

But he waked in the morning first aware that Jago was not beside him, that the lights in the corridor were bright, and that breakfast was in the offing, all at one heartbeat.

Two heartbeats later he was sure it was past midnight and past dawn and Jago hadn’t done as he’d asked her to.

Or things hadn’t happened as they ought to have happened.

He rolled out of bed and seized up a robe, raking his hair out of his face on the way to the central hall, across it to the security station where Tano and Algini and Jago perched at their console… aware of him from the moment he’d come out the door.

“Where’s Banichi?” he asked at once. “Did he get back?”

“No, nadi” Jago said, and it was clear she was worried. “We have no information.”

“Did he express any belief he might be late?”

“He said it was a possibility,” Jago said, “if he found no way to move discreetly.”

“Discreetly down a bare synthetic hallway,” Bren said in distress. “I’m worried, damn it.”

“I think it well possible that he delayed with the shuttle crew” Jago said. “If something came to their attention or something changed, he might wait to know. In all his instruction there was no indication he considered the schedule rigid.”

“So what did Nojanawalk into? He went out there expecting an easy walk home.”

“Nojana is of our Guild,” Tano said, “and expects everything.”

“I have no doubt of him, then,” Bren said, “but all the same, Nadiin-ji, what is either of them to do if they meet some crewman going about his business?”

“Doors will malfunction,” Algini said.

“Doors will malfunction. I hope not to open onto vacuum, Nadiin!”

“One knows the route that was safe,” Tano said. “Banichi did consider the hazards, nandi, but he wishes very much to assure our line of retreat is open.”

“I agree with his purpose, but the risk…”

“Bren-ji,” Jago said, “something changed when the power failed. The patterns of activity that we monitor here have shifted, whether because part of this station is no longer usable, we have no idea.”

“How do you know these things?” He understood how they monitored activity in the Bu-javid, where they had the entire apartment wired, including some very lethal devices, but here in a structure where they had no other installations…

They had… one other installation.

Shai-shanitself.

And if in fact there was already an Assassins’ Guild presence on the station, at least a periodic one, with the comings and goings of the shuttle, then there might be equipment which came and went in Nojana’s baggage.

“We monitor sounds and activities,” Algini said. “Very faint ones. We know the pattern of the station from before; we know it now. The structure speaks to us. Now, and ever since the power outage, it speaks differently.”

Being paidhi-aiji, having mediated the transfer of human technology to the mainland, as well as being within very high atevi councils, he knew of atevi innovations that bore no resemblance to technology he knew on Mospheira, and no few of those innovations were in surveillance.

He had had a certain amount to do with the galley specifications: in this collection of monitors and panels and instruments his security had brought aboard… he knew very little, asked very little, mindful of his allegiance these days, and only hoped never to walk into one of the traps that guarded his sleep.

“Can you show me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Algini said.

It was not an encouraging image, knowing the little he did know regarding the station. It indicated a change since the power outage, at least, a change in where Algini estimated personnel were grouped, where they traveled. Everything pointed to a disruption of a region forcing detours.

“I’ve no idea what caused it,” Bren said. “I can’t ask Kaplan-nadi. It would give too much away. I refuse to ask Cl to be off talking to the captains if one of our people is lost.”

“Yet one can’t break pattern,” Tano said quietly. “Nandi, it would seem wisest to do as you always do.”

“Bedevil Cl and ask for Jase?” Bren muttered. “Do you see any shift of activity in the area of the shuttle?”

“Nothing out of previous pattern there,” Algini said, “except activity that would be consistent with fueling.”

“Very well done.” He was astonished by his security, astonished by what information they couldprovide him.

But none of it said why Banichi was late.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I’d rather rely on the chance Banichi’s chosen this delay, and that anything I could do might bring adverse consequences. Do you think so, Nadiin-ji?”

“One believes so” Jago said, but he had the most uneasy notion that she might make a move after her partner—her father—without telling him in advance.

But that was the thought of a human heart. He reminded himself of a certain hillside, and mechieti, and how angry they’d been when he ran the wrong direction, as if he’d suddenly, under fire, lost his wits.

He was the lord, and under fire they would rally to him instinctively, all but blindly, with that devotion with which humans would run for spouses and children and sacred objects. They would run through fire to reach him, and only the exertion of extreme discipline could deaden that instinct. If Banichi was not here, it was againstthat instinct for him. Banichi wantedto be here.

That was a terrible responsibility, to know that one’s protectors had no choice but to feel that, and that a word from him could move them to utter, fatal effort. It was that precariously poised, and so hard, so morally hard to say: let Banichi solve his own problems.

But in that interspecies cross-wiring it was the wisest thing.

“He’s moved during their night,” he murmured. “Is there a reason for this? I would have expected equal distribution of the shifts. It’s traditional.”

“There also is a curious pattern,” Algini said, “since before the outage, the traffic in the corridors was more or less evenly distributed in frequency, and now there seems a cluster of movement last night just after our second watch and their first, then a great falling off. This is a nightly occurrence, as if a group of people moved.”

“Is it likely the ship-folk have this sort of surveillance?”

“We have no information,” Tano said, “but Jasi-ji confided to us that he knew of very little surveillance in the corridors. We failed to press him on the matter: it was Banichi’s judgment we exceeded our authority to ask him.”

It was understandable that Tano had. Anything to do with security involved their Guild and interested their Guild, and Tano had doubtless passed that information to the head of Tabini’s security, too. On one level, the human one, Bren found himself distressed that Tano had asked after such things secretly; on another, the atevi-acclimated one, he perfectly understood it was his security’s job to know everything that touched on the national business.

“Was Jase angry that you asked?” he asked, a human question, seeking the human degree of truth.

“No,” Tano said, who, of the security staff, was closest to Jase. “And he knew I would report it to the aiji’s staff. But one felt it was dangerous to ask too closely, to make Jasi-ji aware of the capacities of the equipment we prepared.”

“Yet we needed to know certain things,” Algini said, “to know how to design this console, and how to take best advantage, and what we needed defend against. And Jasi-ji knew some things, but others he was simply unaware of. One believes, nandi, that the ship itself has some internal surveillance to defend operations centers but that the general corridors of the station and the general corridors of the ship have very little. There are portable units, to be sure, but to a certain extent one suspects inbuilt security is bound to be outmoded and worked around far too rapidly; one would be continually delving into the walls to make changes. We do suspect the light installations in the corridors, as readily available power taps, but thus far, in this section, we turn up nothing.”

Algini spoke very little, except on his favorite topic, security technology. And what he said, and what his security had been finding out from Jase over the last several years, was far more extensive than he’d hoped.

“I suppose that encouraged Banichi to think he could take so long a walk,” Bren said.

“He has the means to operate these doors,” Jago admitted, “and might do so if spotted.”

“But it’s damned cold where the heat’s off,” Bren objected. “Damned cold! And there’s no guarantee of air flow.”

“We chill less readily,” Jago said. “Air is a problem.”

“Yes,” Bren said, hoping his staff would restrain its operations. “Air is a problem. And I don’twant you to go out there looking for him, and if they’ve caught him, I have some confidence I’ll hear about it. But please, Nadiin-ji, don’t surprise me like this!”

He met an absolute, impervious wall of respectful stares.

“You’ll do what you know to do” he said more quietly, in retreat, “but I beg you be careful.”

“One will be careful,” Jago said. “During certain hours there’s less movement in the corridors. One expects my partner will use his excellent sense and wait.”

“Concealed in some airless compartment!”

“He has some resources,” Jago said. “Don’t worry. It’s not your job to worry.”

He had to take himself to his own room and sit down with the computer, to lose himself in reports and letters. There was no other way to avoid thinking about Banichi and disasters.

There was still no word from Toby, there was nothing from his mother… a silence from the island, and nothing from Tabini, only a handful of committee letters acknowledging his previous letters, a dismal lot of mail, none of it informative, none of it engaging.

That his mother hadn’t written back was in pattern, too: when she was offended, she didn’t speak, didn’t reason, didn’t argue, didn’t give anyone a handle to seize that might be any use at all.

I hope you’re seeing your doctor, he wrote her, in a three-page missive. I hope Barb’s improving.

It wasn’t the most inspired of letters.

He wrote Toby, too. I know you’re not in any position to answer, and I don’t expect an answer. Just touching bases to let you know you’re my brother and I’m concerned. He started to write that he hadn’t heard from their mother, but that was the way he and Toby had gotten into the situation they were in: that he’d used Toby for eyes and ears where it regarded their mother, and a pair of feet and hands, too. And if Toby and Jill had a chance, it meant just shutting that channel down and not using it anymore, not even if it put their mother in danger. It was at least a self-chosen danger.

He sent-and-received, and the second round of mail was sparser than the first.

“Cl,” he said. “Can you put me through to Kroger?” He was down to wishing for another human voice, but Cl answered:

“Kroger is not receiving at the moment. There’s a communications problem in that area, sir. Sorry.”

A communicationsproblem.

He signed off and went to report thatto his security.

“It’s not on Banichi’s route, is it?” he asked.

“No,” Tano said. “It should not be.”

“Do you suppose,” Bren asked, “that there’s nothing wrong where Banichi is, that Nojana raninto trouble and just hasn’t gotten to him?”

“We have considered that possibility,” Algini said. “But we have emergency notification, a very noisy transmitter. We have not heard it.”

That was reassuring. Another small feature of his security that no one had told him.

“How many other surprises are there?” he asked.

“Not many,” Jago said. It was clear she wished there were more surprises available. She was worried, and by now he suspected the man’chi that held her to Banichi and that man’chi which held her on duty here, with him, were in painful conflict.

“Come with me,” he said to her, not wishing emotion to make his security’s decisions, and they sat in his room, and he offered her a drink, which she declined in favor of a cup of tea, on duty and remaining alert. They shared a small, out-of-appetite supper, served by a silent, commiserating staff.

It passed midnight of their clock.

And very quietly, with the opening of a door, someone entered the section.

Jago leaped up, and he did. By the time they reached the hall, the whole staff was converging from servants’ quarters, Tano and Algini coming out of their station.

Banichi looked quite unruffled, not a hair out of place.

But to a practiced eye, Banichi had a worried look.

“I fear Ramirez-aiji has fallen,” Banichi said first and foremost, and Bren took in a breath.

“Is anyone behind you?” Jago asked, before anything else.

“No,” Banichi said. “One regrets the delay, paidhi-ji.”

“Did Nojana reach safety?”

“Yes” Banichi said.

“Drinks in the security station,” Bren said quickly, breaching all custom, but he wanted all his security knowing the same thing and the same time, and he dared not have the instruments in that station unmonitored at this time of all times. “Tea, as well.” Half his security was on duty, and would decline alcohol.

Banichi, however, had earned a glass of something stronger. Fatigue rarely showed in Banichi’s bearing, but it did now.

Ramirez gone? Fallen? And not a damned word from Ogun or Sabin, God knew, none from Pratap Tamun.

One could babble questions. But direct questions rarely improved on Banichi’s sober, orderly report, if one’s nerves could bear it.

“The copilot, Parano, while I was there, heard the technicians talk about the power outage, but the copilot’s command of Mosphei’ has notable gaps. The technicians in his hearing asked each other whether they’d had any news of Ramirez, and went on to discuss whether they thought he was dead or alive or where he might be, at least as far as Parano could interpret the words. They discovered then that Parano-nadi was within earshot, changed expressions, and addressed him about business. This Parano reported to his captain, Casirnabri, and Casirnabri to me. Thereafter we spoke together, Parano, Casirnabri, and I, hence my information, directly from Parano. We attempted to overhear other things, during the regular course of work. The shuttle crew and the human workers maintain a good relationship… they do speak to one another in a very limited way, comparison of the translated checklists, translation from the key words list to settle what the topic is, all very slow, with hand signals they’ve devised among themselves, using number codes for operations. Casirnabri thought they might have asked about Ramirez, if I wished: they do have confidence in the goodwill of this crew. But I asked them not to do so. I place great importance, Bren-ji, in assuring your safety.”

“We’ve been quite unbothered here,” Bren began to say, and to add that he by no means took that as absolute, but Banichi frowned.

“No. I mean to take you home, nand’ paidhi. Having you here is far too great a danger. We should proceed as if we know nothing, make our plans to depart, and have you out of the reach of political upheaval.”

“Ramirez is old. Parano might have misunderstood. The crew language is full of idiom.”

Now he saw every single face set against him. Here was rebellion.

“You will go,” Banichi said in that deep voice of his, “Bren-ji. I have the aiji’s authority on this. I request you comply.”

“My usefulness is my ability to negotiate and to settle terms.”

“Your usefulness is very little if you become like Jase, unavailable to the aiji. I went to the shuttle because I had apprehensions and wished to know whether there was, even at this hour, a safe retreat. I believe that there is, and I insist you take it.”

On the aiji’s authority.

“Banichi is right,” Jago said, “given all he says. You should go.”

He didn’t want it. He’d had his doubts about being up here, he’d wondered daily about his usefulness where the captains continually postponed their meetings, but the ground had changed on him, without warning. Now he had to rethink everything, every gesture made toward them, every intimation of cooperation, or noncooperation.

“I’m not sure I improve our position by my leaving,” he said. “We’ve not been threatened. They’ve simply withheld meetings. We don’t know the reason. If the senior captain is ill, or stepped down… we just don’t know.”

“And they mean we should not learn, nandi,” Tano said. “Have they offered any goodwill at all? Have they apologized or admitted?”

“They have not,” he agreed, and Jase’s situation flashed across his mind like summer lightning, the landscape revised in a stroke. “But if we leave, we leave Jase.”

“If they have both you and Jase,” Banichi said, “our negotiating position is not improved. If you stay here, they may attempt some move against our presence here. If our presence grows quieter, they may neglect that measure and leave us a stronghold.”

“If you miss the shuttle,” Jago said, “there’s no chance for a very long time.”

“It’s the eleventh,” he said. “The shuttle leaves on the fifteenth. We have four days.”

“We can do nothing in these days,” Banichi said. “And, Bren-ji, your security very strongly advises you not to make it clear to this Guild that you know something’s amiss. We know humans do very odd things, but embarrassing them would seem provocative. We cannotpredict this situation or their behavior, but reversal of expectations does not seem to please humans more than it pleases atevi.”

“You’re quite correct.”

“Then a surprise would not be a good thing.”

“No” he agreed. “It would not, Banichi-ji. Thank you. Thank you for taking precautions.”

“We cannot take precautions enough,” Banichi said, “to secure your safety for the next few nights. We hope the shuttle will leave on schedule. Preparations are on time. There’s been no cessation of work there. I met no evidence of monitoring in the corridors, beyond what Kaplan carries on his person. I found nothing of the sort in the diagrams, and indeed, there seems none now. But there remains the possibility that they merely observed the movement and did nothing.”

“Likely enough there never was surveillance,” Bren said, “except in administrative areas. These areas were residential, and people would have resented it bitterly, as an intrusion, not as safety. The lack of signs seems their chief precaution. They couldn’t navigate the halls without a map. They don’t think it’s possible. They don’t imagine it. So there’s nothing to watch against.”

“A blind spot,” Algini said.

“A blind spot,” Bren agreed. “Humans aren’t the only species to have made such mistakes. I don’t wish to tell them, not at this point.”

“One has no wish to tell them,” Banichi said. “But were I stopped, I would have been Nojana. One doubts they would know the difference.”

“There are advanced technical means,” Bren said, “even granted they don’t recognize individuals that accurately. We mustn’t risk it again, Banichi-ji. I thank you very much for doing it, but I ask restraint. I understand your concern.” He saw his security poised to object to his objection, and held up a hand. “I will hear you. But give me today until the fifteenth to come to some resolution with the captains—not saying a word of what we know.”

“Until the fourteenth,” Banichi said. “The mission may stay. You, Bren-ji, with no baggage at all, will simply go to the shuttle early, and board, and Jago and I will go with you. The rest will stay.”

There was no question Banichi had just come to this conclusion, that he had had no time since walking through the door to consult with the rest of the team, but there was no schism in the company, that was very certain. Banichi declared his plan and the others said not a word.

It was, beyond that, a plan that made sense, not to advise the captains in advance, to be just a little ahead of any move the captains might make to restrain him from leaving. It left the majority of the staff, left Tano and Algini in charge of the mission, the servants to support them, and someone here in case Jase found a chance to reach them.

But another thought struck him with numbing force. If they left, God, if heleft, Kroger could only think the worst. If the human delegation had no warning of what Banichi suspected and it proved true, then he could by no means afford to leave them behind… Kroger left on a limb and feeling betrayed was beyond dangerous. They had had several centuries of bitter division, had just patched things into a workable agreement, and dared not leave Kroger alone with whatever mischief was shaping up on the station.

Particularly… another dark thought… since if something had gone wrong among the captains, the division might be a factional one as well as a personal power grab.

“We have to advise the Mospheirans,” Bren said. “For diplomatic reasons, for courtesy if nothing more. If they think we’ve double-crossed them, they’ll deal with the other side. They’ll conclude they can’t trust us. They have to have the same chance to get out of here. They have to know we’re on their side.”

“One can hardly speak securely on the intercom with them,” Banichi said.

“One can’t” he agreed, trying to think what to do.

“It’s not that far,” Banichi said. “I can walk there, too, and talk to Ben.”

“You’ve had a drink. You’re not on duty. No!”

“I might have another. If I’m walking the halls, I am doubtless an inebriate having strayed from duty, and will say I require Kaplan to guide me home. Humans understand inebriation. I recall your machimi. They consider it quite amusing.”

“Not when you’re damned guilty and in the wrong corridor. We’re not supposed to be able to open these doors.”

“One would certainly have to admit to that.”

“And there’s the problem of making the Mospheirans believe you when you get there.”

“Give me a token for them. Is this not machimi?”

“One will be prostrate with nerves the whole damned time,” Bren muttered, seeing less and less chance of dealing with a situation run amok. “One has not the least idea what Kroger may do. The woman distrusts me very easily. We simply can’t—”

“A banner is traditional.”

“Not among humans. Rings. Letters.” It was preposterous. “It’s a damned comedy, is what it is.” Banichi wasn’t one to propose lunacy. He had the feeling of being maneuvered, backed toward an ultimatum.

“We can hardly do this by intercom,” Banichi said, silken-smooth and one drink down.

“I can simply invite them to dinner and tell them face-to-face. No more wandering about the halls. By no means.”

Banichi sighed. “One did look forward to it.”

And not for the simple pleasure of risking his neck, Bren was suddenly sure; if Banichi had ever been serious, Banichi had his own reasons for wanting to undertake that walk. But the more likely answer was Banichi simply nudging him to come up with a plan. “Damn the whole idea! No. I’ll invitethem back. Narani will arrange something. An entertainment.”

“Machimi,” Jago said.

He looked at her, looked at Banichi, saw conspiracy and an adamant intent.

More—a third sinking thought—there was always the remotest chance, while he was trying to shore up Kroger’s doubts of him, that Kroger did know, and hadn’t leveled with himregarding Ramirez and some scheme on the part of Sabin and those who dealt far more with the Mospheirans.

Thatwas an utterly unwelcome thought. He was bounced out of bed past midnight, forced to think of abandoning everything he’d been doing here, informed that every agreement they’d hammered out was in jeopardy if not completely abrogated, and he found himself maneuvered into asking Kroger here to be read the conditions of a retreat.

And what would Kroger say? Wait for us, we’re leaving? Or, You go ahead, dear allies, and we’ll arrange things.

“I don’t think, given the food here, we’ll have any difficulty getting them to come,” he said to Banichi, “granted only I get a message through. But, dammit, Kroger can mess things up. And she may have a mind to do it.”

“Has there been difficulty with communications?” Banichi asked.

“Nothing worthwhile came through Mogari-nai,” Bren said, recalling that fact in present context, too. “They keep having outages, malfunctions, which might discourage anyone from sending critical messages, such as must not be half-received, or meddled with. I did tend to believe them about the outages. Now I don’t. It may well be an excuse to cut us off from communication. I haven’t gotten anything worthwhile from the aiji; I don’t know that he’s gotten my transmissions: I’ve had no acknowledgments. And that, Nadiin-ji, is a critical point: if we can’t be sure our messages are going through, indeed… if they’re lying to us, we can’t do our jobs here. But if we give up our foothold here, we can’t be assured of getting it back, either. If we can’trely on Kroger, if something’s going through in secret, only to Mospheira, we have a grievous problem.”

“One would agree to that,” Banichi said, and solemnly accepted his second drink, having won everything he had come to get. “But the paidhi will not be the presence to test their intentions.”

“Who can? There’s a reason Tabini sent me. There’s a reason I’m sitting here and not uncle Tatiseigi, Banichi-ji, and I can’t contravene that simple fact. If I don’t do this job, yes, you’re right, there’s no one else who can do it, but the simple fact is, if I don’t do this job, indeed, there’s no one else who can do it!”

The glass stopped on the way to Banichi’s lips. Banichi set it down and regarded him solemnly.

“A dilemma, is it not?”

“One I can’t solve.”

“One we daren’t lose,” Banichi said. “This I have from the aiji, that you must return safely. Do what you can. Take what advantage these days offer. Go down, and if things seem in order, come back in thirty days on the next flight.”

“And if things go wrong, I’ve left my staff in a hell of a position.”

“We simply lock the doors,” Tano said, “and hold out.”

“Against people who control the light and heat, Tano-ji!”

“Do you consider it likely we would be killed?” Tano asked. “It would be very foolish of them if they wish anything from the aiji.”

And Kroger had flatly said what he already knew, himself, that very few Mospheirans were willing to enter work for the ship under the old terms. Robotics, that missing part of the equation, might be Kroger’s specialty, but to design and build those machines in space, where they must be built, still required risks in an environment which had proven a killer before now.

He had to talk to them. That was a given. He had to get a notion how Kroger might react once she did know, and once she did know he knew that Ramirez had met with some sort of difficulty. Jase was another concern, one he knew hadn’t left his staff’s minds, but one which none of them could afford to pursue.

Damn, this was inconvenient. And what hadhappened to Ramirez, and where wasJase, and why, if Jase had a mother aboard, was there absolutely no contact?

He didn’t like the shape of it. Clearly, Banichi hadn’t liked it, and had seen in the outage something that might not be an accident.

That hadn’t been an accident, he was now certain. Something that had happened along with some struggle on the station, perhaps even a schism in the crew, or something designed to put the fear in them and justify both Sabin’s reluctance to meet with him—God knew whether she was secretly meeting with Kroger—and the communications problems that cut him off from advice and information from the planet.

He had to work around it. Had to get somethingthrough to advise the planet there was something not right up here.

Mother, he wrote, in language he was very sure station spies could read, I’m sorry to have been out of touch. They’ve been experiencing communications difficulties here. I love you. Be assured of that. I hope things are working out for everyone. I wish I’d brought my camera up here. One thing I do miss beyond all else is pictures of home. You know that one of you in the red suit? I think of that, and the snow, up on Mt. Adams. Sunset and snow. Fire and ice. You

Did you find a cufflink? I think I left it in my room.

I hope Barb is better. Tell her I think of her and wish her a speedy recovery.

Your son, Bren

There was no red suit. His mother never wore that color, swore it was her worst; that was why they had agreed on it as an emergency notice. Red suit: emergency; contact Shawn; watch yourself. It was the only code he had now that might get through the security blackout… if the authorities chose to let him go on receiving small messages, while they knew Tabini’s signature and blacked those out. If they were at all wary, they wouldn’t let it through. If they’d ever noticed Banichi’s trip to the shuttle, they wouldn’t let it through.

Trust me, he wished the captains still in power. Believe me.

God, he hoped no one had spotted Banichi’s move.

“Cl,” he said, “we’d like Kaplan to escort the Mospheiran delegation here, if I can arrange a dinner meeting at 1800 hours.” He held his breath. “Will that be a problem?”

Cl answered somewhat abstractedly, “ Kaplan, sir. Shouldn’t be.”

“I don’t suppose Jase can join us.” It was part of the long-established pattern. He never let it up.

“No, sir, Jase Graham is still committed to meetings.”

“What about Captain Sabin? Any chance of resuming that appointment? We could perfectly well set a place for the captain, if she wishes.”

“ I’ll relay that, sir,” Cl said, and a few minutes later replied, “ The captains are all in meetings, sir. She did relay regrets and asks for the 18 ^th.”

The day of the shuttle launch, ship-calendar. It was an outright question.

“Tell her I’d be delighted. We’ll arrange a special dinner.”

Sabin wasn’t the only one who could miss an appointment. He had no hesitation in that small lie, and was only minimally tempted to believe Sabin was oblivious to that date.

Was he leaving? Would he be aboard? Sabin very much wanted to know that, in her relayed question.

And dared he tell the truth to Kroger in time to let Kroger get aboard?

Certainly it would not be prudent to tell Kroger everything he knew.

Chapter 20

“I propose to go down to the planet for a few days,” Bren said, over the main course, and after a rambling appetizer conversation that had taken them from skiing on Mt. Adams to the better bars on the north shore. “I’m disappointed in the degree of cooperation we’ve gotten. Either we meet with the captains, or we don’t. I suppose that I’m coming back on the next flight, but I might not. We’ve got to fly that test cargo sooner or later.”

That occasioned raised brows. It was the same arrangement as last time, Kroger and Lund at the formal table, Kaplan and Ben with Tano to keep them distracted, and to get out of them whatever information Tano could obtain.

“You’re breaking off negotiations?” Kroger asked. “Or retiring to consult.”

“Retiring to consult. I fully plan to be back. It’s quite open, as to whether we return on this shuttle rotation or not. I have administrative duties back on the mainland… and a family crisis on the island.” He used that fact shamelessly to convey personal reasons which ought not to make a difference, but which reasonably could. “I think a month’s stand down to let the captains think and analyzemight not be a bad thing.”

Kroger had not quite ceased eating, but the utensils moved more slowly for a moment. “We came prepared to stay longer.”

“My staff will remain here to work. If the cuisine on the station is as bad as I hear, you’re perfectly welcome to dine here while I’m gone. My staff will by no means be sorry to have guests to exercise their talents. And Ben and Kate of course can practice their skills.”

There was a small moment of silence, and the utensils came to a slow stop as Kroger tried to consider the possibilities…

even the chance, perhaps, that the staff might know enough Mosphei’ to be a problem to them.

And the reality, too, it might be, that atevi were here to stay.

“The aiji could waive the cost of a ticket down and back,” Bren said, “if you wished to come down and make your own representations to him.”

“I haven’t that authority,” Kroger said, clearly disturbed. “You have to talk to the State Department for that.”

Interesting choice of words. Very interesting, to an ear attuned to language. The insiders to the various departments tended, though not infallibly, to shorten that down to State… you have to talk to State. You have to talk to Science. It gave Kroger credibility as an outsider, that expression, someone chosen for a mission, but not an insider, not ordinarily a negotiator: a robotics expert, chosen to come up here and see what the state of the machinery or the science might be.

Because thatwould govern how willing human beings might be to undertake the work.

The mind went zipping from point to point in mid-smile. “I will seek someone to do that,” he said. “I think we ought to firm up the agreements we have.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Lund said. Lund had stopped eating, and paid thorough attention. “I, on the other hand, wouldn’t mind the trip. I’ve been curious about the mainland. And I might have something to say to the aiji, if I can get you to translate.”

Kroger’s brows knit, but she didn’t say a word in objection.

Interestingpower structure in this Mospheiran committee. One could discount Lund, but he wasCommerce, and he did have, Bren suspected off and on, a certain authority in his own realm: trade, commerce, and business representations.

And indeed, it made a certain sense, as he’d set the matter forth to them. It was a good solution to the dilemma of how much to tell the Mospheirans about what could become a dicey situation, particularly for his own delegation.

At least he wouldn’t have failed to advise them he was leaving. He could get his hands on Lund, figure him out within the context of Tabini’s court, get on his good side.

“I’d advise you don’t need to dismantle the mission,” Bren said. “Just pack a bag, clothes, that sort of thing. The aiji can arrange flights to the island if you like, strongly supposing you’ll need to consult while you’re down there. The shuttle goes up again in a month, and you’re guaranteed space.”

“Two days,” Kroger mused, the very short interval for preparation. “I don’t know, Tom.”

“You can always make it a last-minute decision,” Bren said. “Unfortunately the shuttle goes down unloaded. Which is a situation we should fix. It’s terribly expensive to do that.”

“Get some manufacturing going up here,” Tom said. “There’s an archive full of things we could be manufacturing; there are dozens of abandoned facilities up at the core, in microgravity. Medicines, for God’s sake. Metals. Ceramics.”

“First we need to get enough atevi crew up here working to establish these areas as safe,” Bren said. “I plan to bring a few technical people myself on the next trip up.” Not to mention increased security, but a few atevi manufacturing experts, who understood the machines that built the vehicles and stamped and pressed and drilled. Robots. That new word, for a class of machines that had never been perceived to verge on intelligence.

The ones Kroger proposed were far more independent, capable of decision-making, and required, he suspected, more computer science than Science had ever admitted existed.

And it must, by what he suspected. Science hadn’t told State, not at his level, but it must; and now atevi had to become privy to that knowledge as well, in computers, an area where atevi innovations had scared hell out of human planners… the one area of human endeavor besides security technology where atevi had simply taken the information provided, gone off on their own and come back with major new developments.

Humans had become very nervous about atevi and computers.

“Might we arrange the same?” Kroger asked. “Free passage?”

“I think I can arrange a suspension of the charges,” Bren said. “On a one-time basis. This is to the benefit of both.”

“Two days,” Kroger lamented a second time. “Damned short notice.”

“Busy month,” Bren said, “on the ground. But every trip, the shuttle should bring a few people. We can arrange to carry a certain number free of charge, where they’re filling up space.”

“You can do that,” Kroger said.

“At least for the present mission,” Bren said, and took a fork to his dinner, very much relieved to have settled the human mission problem, still asking himself whether he ought to level with Kroger, and finally took the plunge. “We’ve received indications that there might be some disturbance within the local administration. That Ramirez might have a health problem. That the delays might be due to that.”

“Are you serious?” Kroger asked, aghast.

“That’s another reason for our timing in going down right now.” He was very glad to see that she was surprised. “I think they’re trying to sort something out; I don’t think we’re going to get damned much done until they do, and I think it’s a good interval to go consult.”

Clearly Kroger was dismayed. “That puts things in a different light.”

“Not much. A delay.” He chose the light to have on it, a bland one. “Captains will come and go. That matters very little to us. They settle their affairs, we settle ours.”

“How do you knowthis?”

“We have our ways,” he said. “It’s an interpretation of what we see, not an observed fact, but I’d bet on it.”

“You mean you’re guessing.”

“I mean observations lead us to this conclusion,” he said, deliberately obscure. “That’s different from a guess. How much credence you put in it… that’s a matter of judgment, but I take it very seriously, seriously enough that if the captains are taking a great many pains to keep us from finding out, indeed, I’m not going to upset them by telling them what I guess. I’m simply going to take the pressure off them, allow them to solve what is their business, and give myself time to solve some of the other problems that are piling up on my desk at home. I just think this is going to be a hiatus in constructive work, after which we can get back to business.”

It was a fairly complex lie in the center, with truth in the operational sense in that it wasn’t quite a lie, in that it was honestly his best attempt to signal Kroger without spilling everything: excuse me, Ms. Kroger, but we may be in the center of a local war; best keep a low profile… at the very least, don’t stand up and wave for attention.

Certainly she paid him strong attention. She had gray, cold eyes, one of her most disconcerting attributes, and all that concentration was on him.

“Are you saying there’s danger, Bren?”

“There’s danger inherent in our situation, but less if we mind our own business, which one can do simply by staying in one’s quarters and waiting for them to sort it out. I just have too damned much business down on the planet, and there are constructive things I can do by relaying this to the aiji in person. It’s far easier to persuade him, frankly, where there’s give and take and where I don’t have to worry about some faction getting wind of it. Tabini-aiji and I can do more over tea in one hour than in forty pages of reports on his desk. Much as we do here. If you feel uneasy and want to go, I think we can contrive an excuse, but if you’re comfortable with remaining here and dealing with my staff, we could certainly use the on-station presence.”

The ice in the stare melted somewhat, and Kroger rested her chin on a crooked finger. “There’s more to this than you’re saying.”

“I haven’t been able to get hold of Jase Graham since we got here. I’m worried about him and have been, and, frankly, yes, there could be danger of some sort. But if they want anything from the planet and I think they do—they’d be fools to do anything to us. We aren’tmembers of their crew. Jase, unfortunately, is, and I think they’re asking him very close questions about us, or preventing him spilling to us what’s going on inside their power structure. That’s my honest thought on the matter. It’s possible the captain most favorable to us is dead. But we can’t do anything about that. We don’t corner them and they don’t corner us. I don’t say we have to like them or agree with them, but for the mission’s sake we ultimately have to work with them, and to work with them we have to trust them just as far as we’re sure is in their interest. That’s why we don’t mention this to them. They’ve constructed a fiction for us to believe, and it’s our job to take our cues and not bother them, and do our job at the same time in a way that lets us go on working with them.”

“Maintain the fiction.”

“That’s the job. For at least a month, until we get the shuttle up again, at which time we can arrange you to give me a verbal signal, say, a message to Tom, here, that you think it’s profitable for us both to come ahead, or we can work with you in charge up here and us on the ground. The main thing is that we have to maintain our agreement and reduce the number of parties here. There’s too much chance of a divide and conquer move, and if they do it to us, they’ll behave just as long as it takes to get all the advantage they get, then dig in their heels and become a majority with the other half of us. Let’s not let them work that strategy. It’s not in our interest. Not in yours.”

Kroger considered it. The eyes windowed a factory of thoughts. The mouth gave not a thing away.

“Interesting,” she said after a moment.

“He has a point,” Lund said. “We can deal.”

“Good,” he said, feeling as if insects were crawling on every inch of his skin. He’d not put his apprehensions into words before, but laying them out, even in slightly deceptive fashion, focused the threat, even to such an extent that he considered advising Tom to move early, as he was doing, to reach the shuttle.

There were two days in which to make that decision, with Banichi’s help, among others. Protecting their retreat had become a priority, one in which, if he had a regret, it was overwhelming worry for Jase. If he was right, his leaving might actually gain Jase more freedom.

There was certainly nothing else he could do to help him, except gain more power than he had now.

They spoke of details, in the security of the dining room, monitored down to the last tick and wave pattern from next door; they concluded their meal in a quiet exchange of promises and well-wishes and he escorted them to the hall and outside.

Ben and Tano had set up a table there, and Kaplan was seated with them when the door whisked open. Kaplan scrambled up, snatching his helmet and putting it on, very official. God knew what view their monitoring security had with the thing on the table, as it had been angled… or whether anyone was currently watching. It had been in a position to keep watch on the door.

“No need to be stiff-backed, Kaplan.”

“No, sir.” Kaplan had something in his mouth. Had pockets stuffed.

“Enjoy the candy?”

“Very much, sir.”

“I like the orange ones, myself.”

“I haven’t had the orange ones. Just the red.”

“Nadi-ji,” Bren said, turning to Narani, “kindly find this young man a variety of the sweets, including damighindi ones, if you will.”

Of all people on the station, he wanted to keep Kaplan well-disposed, for one thing because they might owe the young man an apology, one of these days; for another, because Kaplan’s was the finger on the trigger, most locally, most likely, and he wanted Kaplan to have just that instant of remorse and regret that would give his own security a chance. Theywould have no remorse, but they wouldn’t kill the young man, either, if there was a chance to avoid it: such were their standing orders.

He’d had time for Banichi’s warning to sink in, with all its implications. He knew to what extent he was valuable, and knew that in the same way he’d resisted coming here, Tabini had dreaded sending him: Tabini had given Banichi and Jago direct orders, and here they were.

He’d told Kroger as much as he dared say. The rest… the rest depended on getting to the shuttle and getting it safely away. The captains had declined to stay abreast of their plans.

They shouldn’t be surprised if those plans shifted around their own, and shifted in a major way.

Narani came back with a brimming double handful, which Kaplan took and stuffed into any pocket that had any room at all. The man blushed with embarrassment, thanked them, and filled every pocket to the top, until cellophane was clearly visible.

“Have to eat a few,” Bren said cheerfully. “Obviously, or you’ll shed them on your way.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He wondered if Kaplan was sleeping at all on so strong a sugar intake. Jase had found it quite stimulating, in more ways than one, and addictive. Spread them around, he wished Kaplan without saying a word. Let the rest of the crew share.

They had to include a few crates of sweets and fruit juice on the next shuttle flight.

Chapter 21

Another day, and the next, his last day, and not a word from his mother. Not a word from Toby. Cl claimed intermittent troubles, and said that Mogari-nai might have gotten the notion they weren’t transmitting, they’d had so many equipment failures.

“I don’t believe it,” Bren said to Jago. “The message I have from Tabini-aiji is the most bland thing possible. Felicitations, in the plural for a population.”

“It’s faked,” Jago said quietly. “They have text from the aiji’s messages to them.”

“But don’t know one plural from another,” Bren said. “Damned right it’s faked.”

“An indignity,” Jago said.

“Hardly one we can take exception to at the moment.” It was a death sentence, on the planet, inside the aishidi’tat. “One just has to be patient. They have no idea the seriousness of the act. Tolerance, tolerance.”

“One is tolerant,” Jago said, with a grim and determined look. “But where is Jase, Bren-ji? Is this tolerance?”

“Good question,” he said. And then had a horrid thought, considering Banichi’s foray to the shuttle dock. “One I absolutely forbid you to try to solve, Jago-ji. You and Banichi, and Tano, and Algini. You stay here.”

“We take no chances with your safety, Bren-ji,” Jago assured him. “One wishes the paidhi simply pack those very few essentials, and we will go early, without Kaplan-nadi.”

“I ampacked,” he said, “whenever I fold up the computer case and have it in my hand.”

“You will not wish to leave it here, under Tano’s guard.”

“Much as I trust him, I daren’t tempt trouble on him. They might attempt him, if they thought that prize was here; they’re less likely to attack me, no matter how I affront them.”

“Nevertheless,” Jago said, and went to a drawer in his sparsely furnished room and took out a small packet of cloth. She brought it to him, and began to unroll it, and by its size and shape he had a sinking feeling what it was.

“Jago-ji, it’s hardly that great a threat…”

“Nevertheless,” she repeated, and gave him the gun which had followed him, in his baggage, from one place to the other throughout his career with them. “Put this in the computer case.”

“I shall,” he said. “Or have it somewhere about me. I understand completely. I have no wish to endanger you and Banichi by having no defense, but I say again that my rank and their needs are my best defense.”

“Nevertheless,” she said for the third time.

“I agree,” he said, and put it into the case’s outer pocket, hoping the shape didn’t show too much. “There. Trust that I’ll use good sense.” A thought occurred to him. “Trust that I have no more compunction shooting at humans than I do shooting at atevi.”

“Which is to say, far too much compunction,” Jago said. “But we agree with you that we wish a peaceful passage, and a completely uneventful flight.”

“I’ll be missing supper with the captain,” he said.

“Is the paidhi concerned about that?”

“It’s not the same as declining supper with the aiji. She knew when she asked me. She won’t be that surprised. She won’t take it personally, at least. There’s very little personal in it. That’s the problem.”

“In what way is it a problem?” she asked.

“If it were personal, she and I would have been talking before now. But we aren’t, and it isn’t, and I don’t think she plans to keep that appointment any more than the last. It was only a means to ask me if I was going to leave. That she didn’t choose to ask me directly what should have been a plain question indicates something to me about the minds of the captains, that everything, no matter how simple, is complicated and clandestine; that, as Jase told me, no one ever states a plain intention unless it’s an order, and the captains don’t give one another orders.”

“Do they do this setting the course of the ship?”

He laughed. “I don’t think it goes that far.”

“Then one of them can make decisions.”

One had to think about that, one had to think very carefully on that point. If the rumor was so, Ramirez had ceased to be that person.

“Whenever you and Banichi think good,” he said, “I’m ready to leave.”

A presence hovered at the door, in the tail of his eye. He gave it a full look, and saw Narani, with, of all things, the silver message tray from the hall table.

That was the very last thing he had ever thought to see in use. He thought it must be some parting courtesy from the staff, a wish for his safe flight, a promise of their performance of duty.

“ ‘Rani-ji,” he said, summoning him forward, and Narani offered the silver tray.

“From a woman,” Narani said.

From outside? A written message, rolled up, atevi-style?

He opened it with trepidation.

It said, in bad courtly Ragi,

This message risks our lives, but we need your help, we need it extremely despairingly. If hostile person finds us we all die. Your lordship must not trust any of the leaders in charge of the boat. If you can make unlocked your doorway in the night I have attempted to visit, with all trepidations regarding security.

“It’s Jase,” he said, his voice hushed, even in this secure place. “It’s his handwriting.” The written language of court documents challenged even educated atevi, but Jase had rendered a gallant effort. “Not a damned melon in the document.”

Jase had his problems with homonyms. But no one else on the station couldhave written it in just that degree of semi-competency.

“Narani-ji,” he said, handing the document to Jago to read for herself. “Was it Kate?”

“No, nandi,” Narani said. “A woman of years, if I can judge, and very anxious to be away.”

Jase’s mother was on the station. Friends. Cousins. God knew who it had been; their own hall surveillance might give him the image, but in that sense it made no difference who had gotten it to them. The fact was, it wasfrom Jase, and the only scarier knowledge was, if it had been Jase’s mother, shemight be in some danger.

“He intends to try to join us,” Jago said. “Tonight. Is there any means they might forge this document, Bren-ji? Is it at all possible?”

“Not as far as I know. Even a computer… even the most advanced computer… there are the impresses of the pen on the other side, and the paper… the ship hasno paper, Jago-ji. It’s not something they manufacture. Jase when he came had never written on paper, only on a slate. Never used a pen, only a pointed stick of a thing.”

“One recalls so,” Jago said, and added, “Jase did take a notebook with him.”

“You inspected his packing?”

“He had few clothes, things which I know the ship to lack: sweets, a thick notebook, a packet of pens, a bottle of perfume. He went through no personal scan.” Jago looked entirely uncomfortable, rare for her. “This may have been very remiss of us. But no more did we search you, nandi.”

Weapons were in one sense the thing his security noticed most—on the person of an outsider; in another sense, they were so ordinary as to be transparent, if an ally had them in plain sight.

“God,” Bren said quietly, then answered his own question, even considering Jase exercising his dislike of his captains. “No, he wouldn’t. He would not, Jago-ji. Never in the world would he destabilize our situation up here. He can’t have. They keep saying he’s in a meeting.”

“Which you say is a lie.”

“I know it is. But I think they believe he can’t contact us, and that means under their watch or under their control. If he brought something through and they searched his baggage, as he surely knew they might—but he can’t have lived under your guidance for three years and have done something so rash.”

“One would hope at least he would not be caught” Jago said fervently. “He does most clearly have the notebook.”

“And a hellof a sense of timing! God! What do I do with this?”

“What is wise to do, nandi?” Jago asked. “What must be done, for this mission?”

It was surely a Guild question, herGuild’s question: the dispassionate, the thoroughly professional question. What is wise to do?

Fail an appointment with Jase? Leave him vulnerable?

Or interfere in the inner workings of the Pilots’ Guild, which was an endlessly proliferating problem?

It was a problem they were bound to meet, in long years of working with the Pilots’ Guild. Tabini considered Jase his own, now. Hedid. There was no question of support for Jase’s position on their side, no question what he wantedto do.

His arrangements at present didn’t leave a station without representatives from the planet. It wasn’t an inert, changeless situation, rather one in which Jase, if he was somehow involved in Ramirez’ troubles, could become involved, changing everything.

Creating God-knew-what while he was back on the planet, unable to investigate what was happening.

“If he wants off this station, we’re the only ticket,” he said to Jago. “He knows the shuttle’s going. He’s taken the chance and made his break for our side.”

“Man’chi,” Jago said, though she well knew she was dealing with humans who felt it erratically, that overwhelming drive to reach one’s own side, one’s own aiji, in a crisis.

“Something like that,” he said. “But he’s not helpless against it. He knows what he’s asking us to risk. He knows I can’t act for my own welfare, or his, when it jeopardizes the whole damned planet. He can’t ask that. I won’t give that to my own mother, Jago! How can I give it to him?”

“Is he asking that?” Jago asked sensibly, and he had to draw a less panicked breath.

“No. He doesn’t know we’re going, and he doesn’t know we’re going early, but he knows the way you work. He doesn’t even know we can get that door open, but he suspects you can do it. This is not a confident expedition, Jago-ji. He’s desperate. I think he’s completely desperate. But, damn! Damn it all!”

“I should tell Banichi.”

“We should tell Banichi,” he agreed. “We should establish some sort of watch in the corridor. I don’t know what they can spot on their security boards, but I wouldn’t have that door unlocked longer than need be.”

“We know when something moves out there,” Jago said. “Have no fear of that, Bren-ji. But when he comes, we may go to the shuttle in a great hurry. One should be ready.”

One should be ready. One sat ready, waiting, for hours, talking companionably with Tano and Algini, who would be in charge here, with Narani and the others, who would be dealing with Kroger once they left.

They should be moving now. They should have reached the shuttle by now. It was technically night, and past midnight, that less active hour on the station. The computer was packed, he had his coat on, Banichi and Jago had their coats on.

They waited, having brought chairs into the corridor, just outside the security post, so that he could talk simultaneously to Tano and Algini and the staff, and he declined a cup of tea when the hours dragged on. There was a chance of long waits at the other end of their journey tonight, a chance of having to wait out of view, and he wanted not to have his eyes floating while waiting. He had tucked a few of Kaplan’s sweets in his pockets: the slightly sour ones helped relieve a dry mouth, and dry and ice cold was the condition of the air in the core. He had good gloves in his pocket.

And they waited for a visitation.

All at once Tano and Algini paid sharp attention to their boards and passed a signal to Banichi.

Banichi rose; they all rose as Banichi attached a small device above the switch, and opened the door.

Jase was there, Jase in that wretched fishing jacket, Jase pale, sweating and out of breath, and with a hell of a bruise on his cheek.

Bren welcomed him, flung arms about him, making his security very anxious, considering the circumstances, but Jase hugged him hard as Banichi shut the door.

“Where have you been?” Bren asked, first question, at arm’s length and searching a familiar face for answers. “What in hell’s going on?”

“They shot Ramirez. He’s alive. Bren, I need your help!”

The one thing he wanted to avoid was entanglement insidethe Pilots’ Guild. Anything but that.

And Jase delivered it on his doorstep.

“Who hit you?”

“Getting Ramirez away,” Jase said, still out of breath—scared: that was logical, but completely done in, into the bargain. “Been hiding. Had to trust. Had to prevent you going.”

He’d spoken in his own language, had had nothing else to deal in but his childhood language for the last ten days, and probably couldn’t think in Ragi at the moment, but it was important the staff understand all the nuances. “Ragi,” Bren said, in that language. “This is the aiji’s territory. We aren’t giving it up, nadi-ji. You’re safe here.”

“Not safe,” Jase said on a shaky breath, holding to his sleeves. “Bren, Bren,—I can’t think. No words. Drink of water.”

“He asks for water, Rani-ji.—Where have you been?”

“Hiding. Cold. No food. No water. Ramirez, we gave to him—but not much left.”

“Get in here and sit down.” Bren steered him to the nearest door, to the security station, and a chair by Tano, who offered a guiding hand. “Where have you been?” Bren pursued him. “Jase, make sense. Is anyone after you? Is the whole station in this condition? What’s going on?”

“Don’t think anyone’s followed. Becky, my mother, few people, got us food and water, not much. It freezes, there. Blankets. I didn’t know—didn’t know whether he’d make it; tried to get here once. Couldn’t. Becky’s with him. With Ramirez. Crew doesn’t know. They don’t want it known.”

“We can deal with that,” Bren said.

“They’re smart. They’ll get ahead of us. They’ll lie.”

“Who’ll lie?”

“Tamun. Tamun and his crew. I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get back to him. Bren, have you got medicines? We don’t have any medicines. Containers for water.”

“You can’t go back through the corridors loaded like a mechieta at market, nadi. If they’re after you, you can’t take a damned picnic lunch.”

“I know. I know. What I can put in my jacket. I can’t leave him. Can’t stay here.”

“We’re supposed to be leaving on this shuttle, tomorrow!”

“I thought you might.” He reached out for the water Narani offered him, and had a sip, and a second. “Oh, that’s good.”

“I have the aiji’s business to do! You know I can’t divert myself on personal privilege!”

“I know you won’t,” Jase said hoarsely, rolling a look at him, and taking a third, a long, reckless gulp.

“ God, you’ve handed me a mess!”

“I got him away!” Jase fired back at him. “I have him alive!”

“Banichi-ji,” Bren said, “we have a rather serious problem.”

“One gathers enough of this to believe so,” Banichi said.

“What do you want us to do?” Bren asked of Jase.

“I don’t know. If I knew I’d do it. Bren. Bren!” Jase made a strong bid for his attention as Bren looked momentarily toward Banichi. “Bren, they’ve given out among the crew that Ramirez was shot when I tried to take him hostage. That’s the story. That’s what they’re saying. It’s an atevi plot to have their way, and I’m in on it.”

“Can Ramirez refute it?”

“He won’t last ten minutes in their hands.”

“Then bring him here.”

“We can’t. We aren’t where we can get through the halls carrying him. We’re in a service corridor, where they were working, where they haven’t powered up yet, but there’s a few…” Jase drew a breath. “This didn’t take everybody by surprise. They’re not working there now, but those who were, they know how to set up, and they did, and they warned me Ramirez was in danger, but I didn’t know how much. And now we’re there, and there’s not damn much heat and there’s no water because it won’t flow through the pipes, but there’s air pressure, because it’s an air lock, and we can get it.”

“You’re living in an air lock?”

“A work area airlock. It’s large. There’s six of us.” Jase’s teeth began to chatter and he fought to control it. “I knew it would be hard, Bren. I didn’t know it would be like this. I thought I could reason with Ramirez. I thought he could control the rest. I didn’t know they’d go this far.”

“We have made every arrangement,” Banichi said, “to remove Bren from the station, Jasi-ji. In all high regard for you, the aiji’s interests are best served if Bren is removed from this venue as soon as possible.”

“I can’t go,” Bren said. “I can’t go now.” Very clearly his security was ready to hit him over the head and carry him to the shuttle, no idle threat, and he could not permit that. “We areinvolved. I didn’t want this, but Jase is here, and whatever we do next, it can’t be to leave him stranded.”

“We can take him with us,” Banichi said, “we can hold him here within this section and defy the captains to remove him. There are alternatives.”

“The situation aboard is in flux” Bren said. ”Baji-naji. If we take Jase away, Ramirez’ interests will fall entirely or the station will enter a period of factional warfare that the aishidi’tat can ill afford.”

“Nor can the aishidi’tat afford to lose you, nadi. You cannot run this risk.”

“I’m valueless if I sit idle, Banichi.”

“This is not a fifteen-day decision,” Banichi said. “It’s thirty days. Twice that, that the shuttle will remain on the ground.”

“Then it can return with additional security,” Bren said. “How likely, Jasi-ji, is Ramirez to survive his injuries?”

“With medicines, he may,” Jase said. “Fever is setting in. We daren’t take him anywhere. I have to get back to him, Banichi.” He had recovered some of his fluency in Ragi. “It’s not only man’chi, which I do feel, but logic. Without this man, my people will fall under Tamun’s control and use only the Mospheirans, and destabilize them by doing so, and destabilize the aishidi’tat, perhaps, too, if things go badly.”

“He’s right,” Bren said. “If Tamun deals with the likes of Gaylord Hanks, we’re in trouble. The Mospheirans are back under the hand of the Guild, they’re in civil war over that, and we in the aishidi’tat are in for a very rough ride being the only source of earth-to-orbit transport, with weapons orbiting over our heads, Nadiin-ji. Remember the ship is heavily armed. Under ill-disposed leadership, it might issue threats against the aishidi’tat, completely ignorant of the realities on the planet, completely foolish, completely unable to make peace after it has made a war greater than the War of the Landing. Bad as the situation is, Banichi-ji, I can bein no better position than I am now. We have Jase. We have a warning. The crew hasn’t fallen all the way into Tamun’s hands. There remains something we can do.”

“There remains something the paidhi can do on the ground, too,” Banichi said, “in safety. One can cut them off from labor and supplies and sit and wait. That is the more prudent course, nand’ paidhi. We can rescue Jase, who can attest the truth of what happened, which they must deal with if they wish supply. The Mospheirans cannot build a shuttle. They have no materials. Above all else we must remove the shuttle from their reach until we have some resolution. We cannotallow them to have it.”

Banichi’s argument was a telling one, victory the slow way, starving the Guild of labor and supplies, possibly entailing the fall of the rebel captains.

“Yet if they know we have boarded with Jase and that we’re taking that shuttle down to the mainland, not to return,” Bren said, “they may move against us, and we may end with a damaged shuttle or a shuttle held by force.”

“We have the other shuttles, not yet complete, but approaching it.”

“And no destination for them without the station, and without the ship,” Jase said. “Nadiin-ji, I can’t leave Ramirez to die. I have to go back to him, now. He has to have the medicines. That’s the answer to all of this. He can’t die. I agree we have to get him here. We have to get him help. But right now, he needs help where he is, and every moment I stay here, the condition in the corridors could change.”

“Thirty days’ wait,” Jago said. “Thirty days and an unpredictable situation.”

“What situation? We’ve never received this information,” Bren said in a tone of mock indignation. “We’ve had no visitor. We know nothing. They’re cutting us off from Tabini’s messages and no knowing what else, but we know nothing of that; we’re completely ignorant and suppose Tabini simply has nothing to say. We carry on for thirty days, and wait for our messages to get down with the crew.”

“We might trade one steward for one servant,” Banichi said. “Nojana would be an asset. The shuttle can spare him.”

“Dangerous,” Bren said.

“We have to get them word, at any event,” Banichi said. “If they see nothing of us, the shuttle will have a mechanical hold, some small problem, until they do hear.”

How could he not foresee Banichi would have some such arrangement? He was appalled. “So we must contact them… and we have Kroger to deal with, too. We can’t let them blithely proceed while we change our plans. They’ll be outraged.”

“One has one’s tasks to do,” Banichi said.

Bren cast him an unhappy look.

“First I must find where Jase is lodged,” Banichi said, “and safeguard his return. Then Kroger. But Kandana can go to the shuttle, and exchange very easily with Nojana. If Nojana arrives, we shall know the message reached them.”

“Be careful,” Bren said.

“I mean to be,” Banichi said. “Shall we find the medications, Bren-ji?”

“Do,” Bren said, and laid a hand on Jase’s shoulder. “If the place you’re hiding has you in this condition, it can’t be helping Ramirez. We have to get him here, into warmth, and care.”

“He won’t,” Jase said, down to the honest truth. “He won’t agree. I tried to persuade him. He’s off his head, maybe, but I don’t think so. While he’s on his own, he’s still in command. He hasn’t appealed to anyone else, any outsider. He’ll order the crew when he’s strong enough.”

“What’s the damage?” Bren asked. “What help has he got? What care?”

“There’s a medic with us,” Jase said. “Or he might have died. We’ve gotten supplies in. We’ve got a blanket for him. We’re just kind of short.”

“He needs warmth,” Bren translated. “Jase, think in Ragi.”

Jase made an obvious, physical effort. “I’m trying,” he said in that language. “I’m just tired. Questions. A lot of questions. No sleep. Hiding. I’m not thinking at my best.”

“One of my sweaters,” Bren said. “I know we brought a couple. Whatever we can fit you up with. Is cold all you’re contending with?”

“Cold, dark, there’s just not much…” Jase looked for a moment as if he’d fall on his face, and Bren brought him up with a hand on his shoulder.

“The hell you’re fit to go back!”

“Have to,” Jase said. “Not a choice.”

“Banichi, if you can assess the conditions, determine whether we have anything that might assist.”

“We have an emergency supply, condensates, warming cylinders, oxygen, water.”

“We don’t have liquid water,” Jase said, “but we take ice. All of that, all of that would help.”

“Easily done,” Banichi said. “We should move soon. Jasi-ji is right. This is a period of little activity in the corridors; it will increase in another half hour. Jago will go to Kroger, Kandana to Nojana, and I will find where Jase is hiding.”

“Can Kandana do it? Will he know his way?”

“There, quite well, I’m sure,” Banichi said. “And Nojana needs no instruction.”

“Then do it,” Bren said. At certain times a prudent, reasonable man simply had to trust his security was right and dismiss the alarms clenching up his own stomach as far less important, not deserving of panic.

He was afraid, nonetheless. He was altogether afraid, and it was as hard to send Banichi and Jago out on their risky ventures as it was to send Jase off to his hiding place.

“You tell them,” he said last to Jase, “that if they harm you, the aiji will take a very hard line with them, and that the aiji has a firm alliance with Mospheira, no matter what they think; tell them you’re highly regarded in the Mospheiran government as well, and if they harm a hair on your head they’ll have no cooperation.”

“I never was as convincing as you,” Jase said, in a laugh a little short of desperate.

“If they harm you,” Bren said, “in any way, I’llfile Intent. I’m not joking. I’ll take them down, personally, under the legitimate provisions of atevi law.”

Jase had started to laugh, obedient good will, but then he seemed to understand that it was indeed serious. Jase understood Banichi’s Guild very well, by all his experience on the planet.

“I’m not worth that,” Jase said.

“If they deal badly with one of their own, who wishes them nothing but good” Bren said, “then damn them to hell, and we’llgovern, the aiji will govern this whole solar system, by atevi law. The aiji will tolerate all sorts of provocations, but you think about it, Jase. Chaos is the absolute enemy of the aishidi’tat, and he won’t have it, he won’t have the abuse of his own associates up here. I told you that you have power. Use it!” He took Jase by both arms and lightened his grip on the left as Jase winced. “You get back here, hear me? Make it unnecessary for me to do anything so rash. I set that on your shoulders, because if anything happens to you, I’ll take this place apart. Hear me?”

“I do,” Jase said. “I’ll be careful.”

“Fishing trip,” Bren said. “Promise.”

“Deal,” Jase said. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go now.”

“Get out of here,” Bren said. “Banichi.”

“I am with nand’ Jase,” Banichi said. “Jago-ji, instruct Kandana.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and on that, Banichi hurried Jase out the supposedly locked door, with no fuss or delay at all.

“It’s not supposed to do that,” Bren said, feeling that things were not at all going according to his preferences. Half an hour ago he’d thought he was bound down to the planet where he could present Tabini apologetically with a negotiation gone to hell and ask his brother whether he’d been able to find his wife and children.

That was not the state of affairs he had. He had just been coopted into the very thing he least wanted, and the very thing that might giveTabini what he demanded, if they could keep Ramirez alive… if he could get his security team back alive, and Jase back alive.

Someone was in deadly earnest, some eruption of factional violence within the crew, and he could only look to their defenses and hope his security had foreseen the control of heat, light, and air being in hostile hands up here.

He could not permit the situation to degenerate. He had his meeting scheduled with Sabin, sure as he was she would break the appointment. He had Ramirez within reach, and the means, perhaps, perhaps, to get word to the crew—if he could get to the one almost-friendly officer in C1…

He sat down with his computer and drafted an announcement:

Captain Ramirez, having suffered an attempt on his life, has taken shelter…

Sometimes one could see things more clearly in draft. And if that message went out, the immediate counter-rumor would be that outsiders had done it; if Ramirez died, they would be left with that accusation hanging over them.

But if Ramirez died, Jase would be the scapegoat, Jase who had tiesto the foreign power, Jase who could no longer be trusted.

He saw the net drawing about them. He saw absolute chaos developing in the prospect of Kroger going down and him staying and his crew running about the corridors in various small teams.

He really wanted an antacid.

He wrote: A dissident faction on the Guild Council has attacked and wounded Captain Ramirez. He appeals for support among the crew. The crew must demand the return of Ramirez and the support of his agreements…

Who? he asked himself in despair. Who would support those programs?

And he remembered Ogun’s face, Ogun’s handshake, the fact that Ramirez had chosen Ogun to sit with him, the whole changing body language of that meeting that indicated to him that Ogun, too, had reached a like decision.

He cleared that draft and wrote, a third time:

Captain Ogun, Captain Ramirez needs your help. Jase Graham saved his life from an attack from someone who wanted the agreements nullified. I think you know better than I who that would be. We will stand by you and Ramirez and the agreements, and we have rejected the chance to go down to the planet. During this crisis, we offer whatever support you may need, including secure quarters.

He opted not to rouse help from Cl just yet. But he wrote:

Aiji-ma, things are going as optimally as in any machimi of homecoming.

And in Mosphei’, to his mother:

Please let me know how things are going.

He wanted to write: I’ve not been sure my messages are reaching you, but he dared not give so strong a hint that he suspected the majority of his messages were going straight into a black hole, and that the ones he had been getting were old messages recycled.

Instead he wrote: I’ve had a great deal of time to think how very much the family has arranged its affairs and its expectations around me, and I think this has always been a strain on everyone. Trust that I’m well, Mum, and that I’m happy where I am. My brother’s grown up into a remarkable man, and I hope you see that and give those great kids of his a hug for me. We’re both your successes. I just turned out a little different, that’s all, and I’m very content with that difference and with the choices I’ve made. I’ll never stop loving you and Toby, and no matter where I am, I’ll always be with you in mind and heart.

It was one of his better letters. He hoped it survived to get to her.

He wrote to a few of the councillors as well, the usual assurances that he remembered them. He did. He wrote to his staff, bidding them take privilege as they could and rest, since more work seemed imminent.

He hoped that would be the case.

He waited until near stationside dawn, and was still waiting when Nojana turned up, quietly.

“Nadi,” Narani said, “Nojana has arrived safely. What place shall I assign him?”

“Kandana’s, for now,” Bren said, and heaved a breath of relief, hoping now that the shuttle made schedule. “Thank him. I’ll speak to him after breakfast.”

In a very little more, Jago slipped into the section.

“How did they take it?” Bren asked her first of all. “How was it out there?”

Jago gave a delicate shrug. “Banichi isn’t back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“There was a close pass of their security,” Jago said. “I heard them, and feared they might come my way. I took a lift up, then down again when I hoped they had gone.”

Hearing. Therewas an atevi advantage he generally forgot to reckon.

“I hope Banichi hurries,” he said. “The Mospheirans weren’t pleased, I’ll imagine.”

“Not pleased. Tom-nadi is still going down, to fly to Mospheira to report; he hopes to come back on the next shuttle. Gin-nadi is remaining. She thanks you for your advisement and wishes to meet with you.”

“You told her about Ramirez.”

“Yes, nadi.” Jago was very clear on that. “I told Kate-nadi to be sure the message was accurate, and asked Kate-nadi not to speak the news aloud, but to write it for her very small and to beg her not to speak this information aloud even among themselves. I indicated also we believe they are monitored. She replied by writing, and I memorized it and destroyed the note: namely this.” Jago took a breath. “ ‘The hardliners have taken control. They want to deal only with us, using only Mospheiran help, no atevi in orbit. They want to fill out the crew by training Mospheirans. I’ve told them we can’t produce the resources and can’t manufacture what they need. They talk about surmounting that problem. The ship is armed, but I don’t know what they can do. I believe we are potentially in trouble.’ That is word for word her answer. Tom-nadi is going down to warn the President.”

“It’s not good news.”

“Do they think to start another war?” Jago asked him. “Does this reference to weapons mean weapons turned against the mainland?”

“I don’t discount the possibility. I rather think they mean that they can get the Mospheirans up here. Thatmeans getting their hands on a shuttle and being able to fly it.”

“The shuttle has no accessible autopilot,” Jago reminded him.

The autopilot required a complex code which atevi pilots would not surrender. “I’ll feel better when I know it’s away clear,” Bren said, and thought to himself, And when Banichi’s back.

Chapter 22

“C1, Bren said, ”send-receive to Mogari-nai.” “ Yes, sir.”

There was no question to him about the shuttle, which was due to depart. Nojana had informed them that the captain’s instructions were clear and that the shuttle was continuing a normal preparation for launch. Kandana would be aboard by now; Lund would be headed in that direction at any moment, for a launch at local 0900, and there was still no Banichi, still no word from Jase, no word, as Bren expected at any moment, that the meeting with Sabin was canceled.

Come on, he wished Banichi, as everyone on staff tried to pretend cheerfulness in spite of the situation. Jago was brisk, cheerful in her comings and goings.

Bren thought of the fact of Banichi’s absence in every other breath, telling himself that if anything should happen to Banichi for his sake he would never forgive himself. He could hardly look at Jago. He had no cheerfulness to spare.

The upload was felicitations for the safe shuttle flight from numerous agencies, and from his mother…

From his mother, an honest-to-God letter.

They say you’re on the space station, and that’s why you couldn’t return my calls. I shouldn’t be surprised ever at anything, I suppose. I know you must be worried about Barb. I sent her flowers in your name. She came through the surgery. She’s very strong. She’s gotten rid of a couple of the tubes, which she says is about time. I haven’t told her where you are. She doesn’t remember anything about the accident. She asks whether she fell on the escalators or whether she was shot or something.

And you tell her, but she forgets. They still have her sedated, and she wanders in and out. She talked about going up to Mt. Adams with you, to the lodge. She said you’d promised that. I haven’t told her anything to the contrary. You can’t reason with sick people and this isn’t the time for it.

I had a disturbing call from Toby. He’s having trouble with Jill. He says she objects to his coming here, as if she didn’t visit her family two and three times a year, not to mention dropping those kids on Louise. I think Toby should put his foot down about that. The children run around at all hours, and I know they’ve slipped out of the house at night. Louise can’t keep up with them, and if Jill doesn’t take a strong hand with those kids, they’re going to be a problem in another couple of years. Toby just thinks anything Jill wants is fine and the kids are spoiled the same way. Too many material things, not enough family time, and by my opinion, too much running about on that boat. I never approved of exposing the children to the mainland. I know certain things are all right for you. But the children shouldn’t see them.

At any rate, things are quieter here. I wish you were here.

Whydid he let things like this bother him? Why, amid every other world-threatening worry he had, did this one letter send his blood pressure soaring, and how could it persuade him he was derelict not to drop everything and run home and talk sense to his mother?

There was no logic. She was his mother.

He wished she hadn’t written today. He honestly wished that. And felt guilty about it. He felt angryabout Barb lying there with a damned batch of flowers his mother had signed his name to.

How dareshe? Easily. She just did, that was all. She knew best. Ask her.

“Bren-ji.” It was Jago who leaned in the door, supporting her weight in transit on the door frame. “Four men outside.”

The knell of doom, it might be. His mind leaped into a completely different track: Banichi might have run into serious trouble. Talking them out of it might be an option, but not with a handful of armed men.

And there was a reasonatevi residences were constructed as they were. “ Mantos an,” he said, for which there was no translation, nor any more order needed. Jago relayed the order, mantos an, and every door they owned whisked shut, within the same ten seconds.

Jago stayed on his side of the door. He was certain that Tano and Algini were in the security post, and that that door was shut, and in his mind’s eye he could all but see Narani, alone, walking to the door.

The station might have opened that outer door and secured a tactical advantage. Whatever was up, they had opted not to do that.

Bren rose, having taken the gun from his computer case, wondering if the captains’ men might cut down Narani and use some electronic key to the door locks, defeating all but armed resistance; and for some moments he waited, quiet, straining to hear any activity at all outside.

Then came a light, muted tap at the door, and Jago opened it, on her guard: he stood with gun leveled.

Narani was there, alone, with the silver tray, bearing an odd wisp of pink cellophane. A candy wrapper, and a card.

“They have no message cylinders, as it seems,” Narani said. “They are Johnson-nadi and his associates, the ones displaced by our residency.”

Bren cast Jago half a glance, confused, but it was most certainly a candy wrapper, and somehow it had ended up in the transaction with Johnson and associates. “Kaplan,” was his instant guess, the only route by which it might have happened, and he set his gun carefully on the counter and went out into the hall, with Narani.

Their front door, as it were, stood open, and Johnson, Andresson, Pressman, and Polano waited quite respectfully in the corridor.

“Mr. Cameron?” Johnson said. “We came to name our favor.” And when he said nothing to that remarkable statement: “You’re passing out those sweets for favors. Have you got any more?”

His security was on highest alert, Banichi was missing, and he wasn’t without suspicions it was a reconnoitering mission; but he solemnly translated for Narani, who bowed and went off to find the requisite stores.

“My head of staff is looking for them,” he said. “Friends of Kaplan?”

“Cousin,” Andresson said.

“Ah. Would you like to come in and have tea?”

“Don’t know tea, sir.”

“Well, probably I shouldn’t. It kept Jase awake all night the first time he had it. But I can see imports will be very popular.”

“Like the sweets, sir.”

“I favor them myself.” He heard Narani coming back, but did not turn his head, having had Banichi and Jago for teachers. He received the small box, a common tin box, and presented it to Johnson. “Very happy to oblige.”

“You want this back, sir?”

“The box? It’s yours, if you like it.”

“It’s got pictures,” Johnson protested.

It was printed with flowers and fruits, as it happened, and had an oval with the inset of a sea. Indeed it was a fine little box, where paper was unknown.

“I hope you enjoy them. We’re very comfortable here, thanks to you. If you’d like to come back when you’re truly off-duty… we could show you some of Jase’s favorites. I wonder if you aren’t that Johnson he mentioned.”

“There’s thirty of us Johnsons aboard,” Johnson said. “And he’s captains’ level, which we don’t get to, much.”

Sometimes a devil took him. There was no other way he found to describe it. He had wanted to get word out to the crew, and in that small personal confidence, he saw an opening and went for it. “I heard the rumor. Have they caught the person responsible?”

“What rumor, sir?”

“That Ramirez was shot. You haven’theard? Maybe it’s not true.”

“Shot, sir? What’sthis?”

“I don’t know. I heard something. You’re Kaplan’s cousin, are you?” The business of the request for candies had made complete sense to him now. Kaplan had had some to repay a personal favor; they were promised a favor; they wanted theirs in candy, and God knew what the sugar hits were selling for within the crew. “They’re trying to blame Jase Graham, and that’s a damned lie. Jase likes Ramirez. I know damned well Jase would never shoot him—and where’d he get a gun, when he’d just been through a security check? But others hadn’t. I’m damned upset. We had an agreement that was going to get the ship fueled, and now there’s somebody trying to kill Ramirez, who for all I know is locked up in fear for his life.”

“You’re jessing us.”

“I’m worried, is what. You’re the only ones I’ve talked to in days. I don’t like what I’m hearing, and I think maybe there’s something damned underhanded going on. You want to come back here and talk to me, I’ll be glad to tell you and anybody else in the crew what I know, which is that there’s something damned messy in the works that’s somebody’s notion of getting the Mospheirans to work with them, but the Mospheirans won’t, they don’t want it, and some folk on this station are just scared to death of the atevi, who’re doing their damndest to help… Narani, attend me closely. Smile… Does this look like an enemy? He’s a perfectly upright, peaceful man with grandchildren.”

“Yes, sir,” Johnson murmured. “But we’re security and we’re supposed to know if there’s something going on.”

Security, was it? Naive as children, and looking for a bribe, however fierce they might be if they were set off. “Look for yourselves, have a good look. We’ve got a table that violates a code, as I understand, a grandfather who’s doing his own job the best he can, and my room, all my secret goings-on, right here, perfectly in the open… Jago, put the gun up and come smile at these gentlemen.”

Jago came out and smiled and bowed very nicely, despite the sidearm neatly in its holster.

“Nadiin,” she said, and said, in Ragi, “Be careful of these men, nandi.”

“One certainly is,” he said, and in his best approximation of Jase’s dialect, “Damned mess, is what. My staff is concerned.”

“Where’d you hear this?” Johnson asked bluntly. “Who told you?”

“I got it from the Mospheirans,” he said, total fabrication. “I think they heard it in the bar in their area. It’s a rumor. But it is sure we were supposed to meet with Ramirez days ago and it keeps being put off and put off, and no one ever meets. Tell Ogunwhat I’ve told you.”

“We’d better get out of here,” Polano said, and the others thought so, too. They retreated to the door, still with their box of candy.

“You tell whoever you report to that we’re damned tired of waiting,” Bren said, “and we don’t care who we deal with, but we’re here to deal and get this place operational. Tell Kaplan… tell him, too. I owe him an explanation. Tell him to get here.”

“Yes, sir,” Johnson said, and the door shut.

Bren heaved a deep, shaky breath, regretting twice over that Banichi hadn’t shown up, and likely wouldn’t, now, until the down cycle of the activity in the corridors. Banichi was lying up somewhere, surely, surely that was what had happened. It had just gotten hot wherever Jase was, and Banichi hadn’t thought it safe.

Or Banichi was playing medic, in which Banichi had some small skill. Banichi would have used his own sense about that.

“You mentioned Ramirez to them,” Jago remarked when the door was shut.

“I more than mentioned him,” he said. “I told them the truth. They’re security, but they’re also part of the crew, and they’re not happy about this, never mind the damn box of candy. Have we more of that coming, Rani-ji?”

“Of the candy, nandi? Yes. Kandana made a special note of it.”

“Good.” He rapped a code on the security post door, and was not surprised to see guns on the other side of it as it opened. “It’s all right,” he said, but he didn’t know how more to reassure the staff. “I’ve broken our silence with the crew, baji-naji. Having Banichi gone and not knowing… I don’t know whether I was wise, Nadiin-ji, but we have limited means to make known what we do know. I’d rather have told Kaplan, but I made a choice. We don’t know how long we have. We assumethe shuttle will depart on schedule. Maintain watch. Anticipate a shutdown of lights and air.”

“We remain prepared,” Tano said.

“Could I doubt?” he answered. He didn’t, not them.

Himself, and his own breakneck course through a field of rocks, oh, he had numerous doubts.

He could have waited until the shuttle left before doing something so rash.

He hadn’t.

And he sweated the hours until, quite predictably, Cl read him a note from Sabin giving her regrets, her apologies for missing the meeting with him, and resetting it for the 16 ^that 1300 hours.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “I suppose the shuttle got off safely.”

It was after time. There was nothing to tell them, one way or the other.

“ Right on time, sir. Nominal.”

“That’s very good,” he said. “Thank you, thank you very much, Cl.”

Jago happened to be in the room, reviewing a section of the station maps.

“The shuttle has departed,” she restated in Ragi.

“Just so” he said. ”Reportedly without incident.“ He added, because it was the truth: “We now wait, Jago-ji. We have to wait very artfully, very cleverly, and hope what I did today doesn’t cause us difficulties.”

“One doubts we might supply ourselves so long,” Jago said. “But we have identified valves which make it unlikely they would subject this entire section to harsh measures. We seem to share common conduits with quite an extensive occupied area. We measure considerable flow. To deprive us would deprive them.”

“That’s very good news,” he said.

“On the other hand,” she said, “we might disrupt that flow to create inconvenience. We believe there are redundancies. But the flow of water in particular is not wholly dependent on the spinning of the station. It’s aided by pumps, and valved against unanticipated leakage; the movement of air is forced by fans. These are vulnerable systems. We believe we can set up alternate controls, which may allow us to seize control of them. We simply have to observe their normal operation. We know we can secure water and operate doors; we believe that we can control the gates of the air supply as well.”

He was very pleasantly surprised. “Extremely good work, nadi-ji.”

“Algini’s work,” she said cheerfully. “He’s very good at what he does.”

“I will bear those facts in mind,” he said, “in my own work. I don’t intend to wait passively for a month, Jago-ji, while the faction I judge opposed to us has its way. I wantour missing captain. I want him alive. Then I intend to seize, oh, say, territory down to the central corridor, if you can set up to lay claim, to it… but only as soon as it’s auspicious to take it. We can make territorial claims all the way to the Mospheirans, just join up and claim the corridors between.”

Jago lifted brows, quite blithely accepting his insane proposal. “Shall we not wait for Banichi, nadi? I expect him to have news of some sort. The captain’s condition may have changed, one hopes not for the worst.”

“I think that we should wait to know,” he agreed, and added: “I earnestly hope he has Ramirez.”

“He knows you wish it,” Jago said, though there had never been a direct request for him to bring Ramirez, only a suggestion to Jase. What Banichi would do if asked and what Banichi considered safe to do in a moment of opportunity, might be two different things, and, as little informed in the situation as he was, he didn’t ask.

He settled to work with his notes, resolved not to pace the floor until they did hear from Banichi.

Most of all he kept telling himself there was no longer any shortage of time. Banichi had not acted, in going with Jase, as if he expected the meeting with the captain to go forward; he might not act, either, as if he believed he had to move today or the next day. When the Assassins’ Guild operated, patiencewas one of the cardinal virtues. Subtlety. Finesse had its atevi counterpart.

And, thanks to Algini, it seemed that they didn’t have to sit and let the station push buttons to inconvenience them.

In her study of that construction diagram, part of his own information, Jago was surely adding to Algini’s schematic, his set of choke points for the station’s choke hold on them.

Thirty days to wait.

Thirty days in which all hell might break loose, and in which he might either want to maintain Kroger’s territory as an outpost of their own, in a district next to human habitations; or draw Kroger and her team in with them, for safety. He did not think the ship wanted to offend the Mospheirans, not if they wanted something beyond fifteen hundred souls up here.

No Banichi after midnight. No Banichi on the following day.

And no word all day. None. Jago began to grow impatient, never to fidget, no such thing, but she gazed off at nothing, and listened to every sound, and at last, late after supper, came to him officially.

“I think I should go look for Banichi, Bren-ji.” she said. “This is long enough. And I think I have a notion where he is.”

“Where Jase is?”

“A certain corridor. We dare not track him too far, but we don’t think he isfar, nadi.”

“You mean he’s emitting some sort of signal? He’s radioed?” He was mildly appalled.

“Not radioed. He hasn’t transmitted for some time. But he wouldn’t, if he thought it might compromise his position. One becomes concerned, however.”

“I’m concerned, too. But we can’t be running about the corridors. We can’t risk another of us. No.”

She evidenced no resentment. She had asked. There might be a time she might go without asking, but it was a rift in man’chi, an ateva stretched in two directions.

“Nojana might go,” she said. “He knows the corridors. He speaks a little.”

“No,” he said, less and less sure he was right.

Jill and I are going up to the mountains, Toby wrote him.

We had a long talk. We’re leaving the kids with Louise. I’m sorry about the timing, sorry as I know how to be, but I’m signing off with Mum, can’t do it anymore.

I think I’m going to quit my job. Jill wants to set up a tourist cottage on the north shore. I’m going to sell the boat, get a loan on one a little larger, take tourists out on day trips.

I could help him, was the immediate thought. Finance was never a problem for him, of all else that was. A tour boat? It was a way to go broke. The repairs, the liability…

I know you’ll say let me help, but not this time. This is all if I can talk Jill into it, and if the two of us can remember who we are, and get the world and your security people out of our bedroom. This is my trump card. It’s what we’ve always talked about.

What in hell are you going to do with the kids? he wondered. Toby, have you lost your mind? You opted for a family, the house with the garden.

About the kids, I don’t know. They’re old enough to help. Maybe take radio school. They could do that. It might be good for them.

Living on a boat? It would cut them off for good and all from normal society, he thought, right when kids were learning to think of romance and other kids, and thesekids sliding toward rebellion. They’d pitch a fair fit when they heard the plan.

And the danger, and the weather, in seas never reliable, not on a calm day with the wind fair… and those kids aboard? Their mum would pitch her own fit.

But Toby had a dream, Toby had a plan. It was safer than what his brother did for a living.

And if Toby could convince Jill to trust him, if they could manufacture some romance and honest love around those kids and give them a dose of parental romance instead of intergenerational recriminations, maybe there was a chance for the kids, too.

He didn’t know what more he could say. He wrote back: Good for you. You’ve got my whole-hearted good wishes, brother.

From Tabini, he had no word at all. He sent messages and they dropped into a black hole.

After a couple of tries at faking Tabini’s formal salutations, the captains seemed to have given up.

But given the shuttle landing, hoping to God it hadlanded safely, trust that Tabini was hearing from Kandana and possibly even from Lund, before Tom Lund boarded a plane to tell Hampton Durant and Shawn that things weren’t optimum here.

And Banichi still wasn’t back.

“Well, we’ve supplied you with supper,” he called Kroger to say. “We’re entirely bored. Not a thing moving on this forsaken station. I don’t suppose we might arrange an invitation for us to join you at your local dinery. I’m tired of the local walls.”

“Come over here,” she said, just that abruptly, not fool enough to talk in detail, nor was he; but they managed to convey, each to the other, that things weren’t just right.

Ginny Kroger punched out.

“Cl,” he said to that entity. “Send Kaplan at 1700. I’m taking a walk to the Mospheirans for a supper meeting.”

“ I’ll put through that request, ” Cl said, but by an hour later: “Sir, we haven’t any personnel available for escort at that hour.”

“And earlier or later?”

“We don’t have any personnel available for escort.”

“Maybe I’ll just wander around and see if I can find the place.”

“We can’t allow that, sir. Please stay in your section.”

“This is annoying,” he said. “I want Kaplan, and I want him or someone at 1700 hours.”

“ Let me see what I can do,” Cl said, and an hour later reported: “ You’ll have an escort, sir. I don’t know who, but someone.”

It was a stranger who turned up at their door at 1700 hours, an elder crewman, white-haired and one-handed, who gave him and Jago and Tano sullen and suspicious looks from the one eye that seemed sharp.

“Nice day,” Bren remarked midway to the Mospheirans’ section. “Fine day. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t know,” the crewman replied, with a surly glance at Tano and Jago… not knowing whether anyone aboard could tell Tano from Banichi without standing them side by side. It was what they hoped, at least. “They understand real language?”

“They don’t speak to strangers,” Bren said, knowing a hard case when he had one. He thought of adding, Or servants, but decided not to push it that far.

Algini was battened down tight in the home section with Nojana. It was their chance to familiarize Tano with the route, and he took it, with a sharp eye to either hand as they went, wondering if there might be at any point, down any corridor, some signal from Banichi.

There was not.

And Kroger was not encouraging. “We’re not getting a damned bit of cooperation out of the administration,” she said, she and he and Feldman walking, with the old man’s guidance, to the mess hall, down an utterly deserted corridor, into an utterly deserted establishment.

Not a single crew member in the place.

“Is the bar this lively?” he asked.

“The bar’s closed,” she said with a lift of the brows. “I don’t suppose you have a spare shot of vodka.”

“I think we do,” he said. “Unwarranted hardship, isn’t it? What’s that poem, Feldman?” He lapsed into Ragi doggerel:

“They would not send the ordinary guide tonight, They fake the aiji’s messages for days. If you find your safety no longer right, Come visit us and plan to stay.”

“Yes, sir,” Feldman said, and faked a nervous laugh.

Bad impromptu poetry and a young man trained enough in diplomacy and subterfuge to keep from blurting anything out. Feldman even managed a doggerel answer, half in meter:

“ No people now, no one talks.

No one we see, new guide not talk.”

“That’s very good,” Bren said with a laugh. It was amazing, for a novice. And informative. “We ought to let him practice with Jago and Banichi,” he said to Kroger. “You and I need to talk.”

They picked up their supper out of a bin, a container of something gray and something orange, and another container that held liquid.

“This is it,” Kroger said as they sat down and opened their containers. “Don’t even ask what it is. I don’t want to know.”

“I’ve sent for food,” he said. “In thirty days we should have your mission something edible.” He took a small taste, and it was bland, incredibly so. “I can send over some hot sauce. It might improve it.”

“It’s just pretty damned bad,” Kroger said. “And it generates, pardon me, physiological upset.”

“Dare I guess.” He was afraid to eat much of it, and pushed it around with his plastic spoon. “You’ve got to come over to our place. We’ll feed you.”

“If you have enough to ship us some meals, we’ll be in your debt.”

“This is inhumane,” he said. The orange had flavor, to be sure. It tasted like fish liver oil.

“I’m told you eat one and then the other. It does help. They’re supposed to have every necessary nutrient.”

“God, this is awful.”

“Oh, there’s better. But there’s been justthis stuff since Tom left.”

The Feldman-Jago-Tano conference was going on next to them at the table, with some laughter over phrases like, “We distrust extremely the least senior authority; we believe lives are in danger,” and “Have you heard anything from your offices?”

“No,” Feldman said in reply to Jago. “We are concerned, nadi.”

“What would you like?” Bren asked Kroger. “Fish? We’ve plenty of fish. Bread.”

“We’ll take absolutely anything,” Kroger said, and she surely knew as well as he did that the real information was passing in the chatter she couldn’t understand at all, that of Feldman with his security. “Our stomachs can’t take much more of this. Neither can our guts.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and wandered on to a discussion of imports, franchises and economics, enough to lull listening spies to sleep, while Feldman limped through several mistaken nouns and some half-heard assertion that green vegetables were alarmed.

No, Feldman indicated, Kroger had not been able to get messages through. They had heard nothing. They had received no indication that the shuttle had met with any difficulty.

It made some sense. The captains that had seized power dared not prevent them sending word down, but it limited the instruction they could get from the ground.

That silence meant thirty days for the captains in power to gain control of the situation, trusting theywouldn’t act without that instruction getting through to instruct them. He himself was the most dangerous presence aboard, because he could act without orders.

And intended to, at this point.

God knew where Banichi might be. The first thing the dissident captains certainly had to assure was Ramirez’ death and a lack of knowledgeable witnesses. And he had bet heavily that Ogun might not be as committed to the plot.

God knew what the rumor he had spread via Johnson and Andressson had done, whether it was still spreading or whether the candy-loving so-called security personnel had gone straight to the captains who’d attacked Ramirez and suggested they had to be silenced quickly.

He couldn’t tell Kroger all of it, not in this venue. He left that to Jago’s cleverness, not mentioning a single name, struggling for nouns the novice translator might comprehend.

And all the while there was such gentle, good-natured laughter from that table, just the very picture of the beginner practicing his understanding… if anyone in this insular community could comprehend the pretense of that art at all.

At least it might confuse them. Feldman spoke a fairly good code himself, for anyone who knew from infancy that it was easy to mistake the word for green vegetables for that for one’s superior.

Malapropisms and all, they endured the meal.

“Want to come to our place for a drink?” Bren asked then. Kroger had gathered up some of the disgusting supper for Shugart, on watch in the apartment.

“No,” Kroger said. “Kate would worry.”

Read that she was worried about Kate Shugart’s safety, and wouldn’t leave one of her own where at any moment the ship might close off access and she might not be able to get back. Either Kroger had grown with the job or he had been mistaken in the woman’s native good sense, Bren thought: likely both.

He accepted that declaration with respect, and after a walk back with the old man’s glowering accompaniment, paid his respects at the door.

“Take care,” he said to Kroger and Shugart, with more than social meaning.

It was back to their own quarters, then, very little better informed, except that the Mospheirans were worse off than they were, and trying as they were to carry on the pretense that nothing was wrong, or at least that they were completely oblivious to the failure of their government’s messages to get through.

“Did you learn anything?” he asked Jago when they were all back in their own section.

“No,” Jago said, and she had a far more worried look, her true feelings there for him to see. “They know nothing. I informed them of what we know. Ben-nadi will accordingly inform her.—Bren-ji, let me go out in this next slow watch. Let me see what I can learn.”

“No,” he said. He was never so nervous as when he had to give orders to his security about their business. “What would he say, Jago-ji? What would Banichi say if he heard this?”

“He would still say sit still,” Jago admitted, the telling argument. “But, Bren-ji, he has been wrong, now and again.”

“So we daren’t be. There’s been absolutely no sign of him. That’s very likely by his choosing. He may have stayed to administer aid to the captain; or even have found a better place for them: he might not even bewhere you think he is.”

“That might be,” Jago conceded. “But, nadi, he would leave me word.”

“One more day,” he said. “Jago-ji, I request it. I believe that’s what he wishes.”

“One more day,” she said. “Then. Then I will advise you send me to search for him, nandi.”

Tano and Algini, standing near, said nothing, nor did Jago look at them.

Nojana, separated from his own partner, who had left on a shuttle about which they had heard nothing, likewise bore a somber look.

The lack of information was hell on all of them.

Chapter 23

Jago did not come to bed, rather hovered gloomily about the security station, watching every tick of the instruments that he knew now monitored the smallest sounds, even the flow of water through the pipes: she listened to everything.

Bren tried to sleep, hovered near it a long while.

Then the outer door did open, and he leaped up, snatched a robe…

And confronted a shut door, utterly in dark.

He groped for the lights. Either the station had sealed him in by remote control or his own security had. He found the wall panel.

The door opened by remote, as it had shut, and he heard voices outside, his security, and a human voice: Kaplan’s.

He went out to confront the scene, his armed and nervous security, Kaplan… and Narani and Bindanda. Everyonewas out, everyonehad pounced on Kaplan, who looked scared, small wonder.

“Sir,” Kaplan said. “Sir!”

“Allow him, Nadiin,” Bren said, and his security let Kaplan come closer, Kaplan looking anxiously over his shoulder, down a stretch of hallway with numerous doors, any one of which might house monitoring equipment. We need to take that, Bren said to himself, and shortened his vision to Kaplan, who was without his usual gear, in nothing but a coat.

“I heard what you said,” Kaplan began shakily, “and a friend of yours said the situation’s better, and he wants to move it here, if he can, if he can get through, which is scary. I don’t think he ought to try, but he’s going to, and he needs help.”

“Is Banichi with him?”

“The big guy. I don’t know. I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go. I can take you there, and I’ve got to get back where I belong or I’m cooked.”

“Jago,” Bren said, and had a dilemma on his hands, Jago’s imperfect command of Mosphei, Kaplan’s accent, and Jase’s and Banichi’s safety. He couldn’t take protection from the place, not with all their chance of holding out until the shuttle got back vested in these few rooms. “Jago and I will go. Now.”

“Bren-ji,” Tano protested. “At least take one more.”

“Jago,” Bren said for good or for ill. It was Banichi they were looking for as much as Jase and Ramirez, and Jago knew the halls best. “Two seconds,” he said, and ducked into his room and took his gun from his computer case.

Bindanda followed him, dressed in frantic haste, assisted, and gave him a small packet tied up with cord. “Food,” Bindanda said. “Medicines.”

Was there nothinghis staff failed to anticipate? “You are amazing, nadi-ji,” he said, and hurried out into the hall, where, second wonder from the same source, Kaplan had come into possession of a gilt-and-flowered box, which he clutched anxiously. Keep the fellow bribed, Bren thought, and hoped the supply held out.

Jago was ready; Jago had been ready for days.

“Let’s go,” he said to Kaplan, and they moved out quickly down the hall. “What chance we’re monitored?”

“Don’t think so, sir. They keep putting it in and your guys keep taking it out.”

Whether or not she understood, Jago didn’t say a thing; and he was alarmed to think Banichi had been quietly disposing of station monitoring where he found it. Warfare had been going on, unannounced, things the station failed to say, things Banichi failed to say… even to him.

Now Banichi was off on his own recognizance, and he knewBanichi received some instructions not from him, but from Tabini, and likewise from his Guild.

“He says Banichi has removed station surveillance,” he said to Jago. “Is this so?”

“Occasionally,” Jago admitted.

“And didn’t tell me? This might affect negotiations!”

“So might its presence, nandi,” Jago said as they walked, and that was the plain truth, one he couldn’t deny. What were the spies on the other side to say? You destroyed our bugs?

No, they attempted to replant them, and to assure…

God, what might Banichi have planted in the rest of the station?

Was thathow Jago claimed to know where Banichi was? It couldn’t be clear radio transmission. Surely they’d locate that. But something was going on.

Were they tapping on the damned water pipes? Knocking on the walls?

Kaplan had stuffed a candy in his mouth and hastened along with a bulge in his cheek, the box tucked in his jacket.

And now Kaplan led them down one corridor and through one and the other doors, and, with fearful looks, led them into a recess and a dogged-down door.

“It’s cold,” Kaplan said around the candy, “but it’s pressurized. Next level down. You want to tuck your hands in your sleeves.”

It was a fast climb, the cold all but numbing the lungs and face and hands. And damned right he wanted to tuck hands into his sleeves to hold onto the ladder. He descended above Jago, Kaplan last above him, and Kaplan shut the door again before coming down in a darkness absolute except for a light Jago produced. There was another door in this tube, and a small platform, and Jago stood astride the ladder and platform to open it into light, onto another level.

The passage went on and on into depth.

“How far?” he asked. “All over?”

“ ‘Case the lifts fail,” Kaplan said. “There’s pressure seals below. You don’t open a pressure seal. Blow the whole damn section. Tell her that.”

“He says there are pressure seals below and if we open them we will have a fatal decompression, Jago-ji.”

“One understands,” Jago said.

And seized her gun, and scrambled up the rungs as if stung.

“One damned well does,” Banichi’s voice said out of the dark below them. “Nadiin-ji. One is very glad to see you.”

“See,” Bren scoffed, in near dark, and addressing the darkness itself. His heart was beating so he had trouble holding his grip, and Kaplan had let out a yelp that still seemed to echo through the tunnels.

“We have Ramirez safe, and improved,” Banichi said. “Where we have him, we don’t wish known. So we make noise within the system. Oblige us all by going back by the next passage, Nadiin. We are safe. How do you fare?”

“Well,” he said, “though as yet we’ve had no knowledge of the shuttle.”

“It landed safely,” Banichi said, a fact which, indeed, Kaplan might have told them, Bren was chagrined to realize. “Have you brought medicines?”

“I have them,” Bren said, and passed them to Jago, who climbed down on the ladder and passed the packet down.

Banichi took them.

“I’m losing my grip,” Bren was forced to say. “The cold’s numbed my fingers.”

Jago moved upward at once and took a grip on his arm. That Jago could climb hauling him up he halfway believed.

“Take him to safety,” Banichi said. “Rely on us.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and shoved him upward.

He moved, Jago moved, Kaplan moved… whether Kaplan had gloves or whether Kaplan’s coat was better insulated, he had no idea, but he literally could not maintain his grip much longer. He shoved himself upward with his legs and tried to give Kaplan relief the same way Jago supported him, but it was a damned dangerous maneuver, he was all too aware.

Kaplan managed to get them into the upper corridor, and they startled one stray odd-hours walker, but Kaplan high-signed that woman, who stood stark still. “Ramirez!” Kaplan hissed at her.

The woman just stared and backed away a step, and a second, and ran. Jago had a gun out, but Kaplan put himself in the way, wide-eyed and horrified.

“Cousin,” Kaplan said, as if that explained everything.

“How many cousins do you have?” Bren asked, and himself restrained Jago with a signal.

“Never counted” Kaplan said, and tugged at his sleeve, taking them in the opposite direction, and then into a doorway they hadn’t used before.

It led to another corridor, another route. The feeling was coming back to Bren’s hands, and they burned. His face burned from the recent cold, and his lungs felt seared. He’d never breathed such air, not even on Mt. Adams’ snowy slopes, and he heaved a dry cough, trying to smother it.

The next section door and two more had them turned about again, and the fourth set them out in a transverse corridor.

“That’s it,” Kaplan said, “that’s yours, got to go.”

“You wait a second,” Bren said, and caught him by the sleeve. “Is that our door, Jago?”

“Yes,” she said, and in a moment more it opened, their own team having spotted them by some means he had no knowledge of. He let Kaplan go, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and Kaplan hurried back the way they’d come.

The door sealed them in, safe, and Jago a damned lot happier.

“We survived,” Bren said, the images of the whole chaotic trip jostling each other in his mind. It was incredible that that dark cold interior existed, but they had been there, and now were here, and Ramirez was alive and the word was spreading.

It wasn’t the candies that kept Kaplan on their side, he strongly suspected that. It wasn’t only the candies that might seduce the likes of Johnson and his friends. He wasn’t sure, in a human way, whether Kaplan and Johnson and the rest wanted to follow the logic of what they were doing all the way: he’d had Jase’s word for the mind-set of the ship-folk, that rebellion wasn’t in their vocabulary. But rebellion by indirection, rebellion by doing uncooperative things, a passive rebellion against the powers that literally regulated their breath and sustenance… there might be a will to do slightly illicit things against a slightly illicit authority.

Damned right.

No alarm had rung when that crewwoman had reached her destination. She hadn’t reported her cousin. Humans on the ship did understand a sort of man’chi not unlike that on the island.

It was the first time he’d truly warmed to these folk. It was the first window of understanding he’d had.

“What’s in the adjacent rooms?” he asked Jago that evening.

“These have been vacated,” Jago said, “so we believe, when Johnson-nadi and the others left. They set up a bug next door. Banichi removed it, among his first actions. No one else has come there.”

A buffer zone, then. He sat down with his computer and called up the map, and tried to figure for himself what area they might take for themselves if they pulled Kroger and her team in.

“There are a good many of Jase’s associates we have never heard from,” he said to his security team later. “And Mercheson-paidhi. I believe that the Ramirez matter is spreading through the crew quietly. We haven’t ever heard from Jase’s mother or from Mercheson or her mother or any relatives. One can’t predict among humans, but the man’chi is strong in such associations, and this silence in itself indicates trouble.”

“Restraint, nadi Bren?” Tano asked.

“Kaplan-nadi has many cousins. We met one such in the corridor, whom you wisely did not shoot, Jago-ji. I think these are all potential allies. The captains who attacked Ramirez must surely hesitate to harm all these people. They cannot simply go shooting every crew member who opposes them. Man’chi binds the crew to obey the captains, for one thing because they have no technical knowledge how to manage the systems without the high officers, and have no productive choice but to let the officers settle their disputes and pretend not to see them. The crew dares not look to us for a solution. But Jase said they had a custom of ignoring high command disputes.”

“Man’chi, and practicality?” Algini asked.

“Deep practicality. Common sense around an environment that has no compromises and takes no votes. I believe I’m beginning to understand Kaplan, even his fondness for sweets. I think he’s allowing us to buy him; I think Johnson outright coming and telling us they’re security is another bid for our attention, and our purchase. They don’t know how to approach us, without some excuse. And I think they plan to plead naive stupidity if caught.”

His atevi hearers were both amused and aghast. “Truly, nand’ paidhi?” Nojana asked diffidently.

“I do think it. I think they have to have an excuse. More, I think they have to have an excuse in order to persuade themselves they’re not doing something bad.”

“They wish to be bribed?”

“I think they do. I think I understand. They want, individually, to see us, to assess our behavior, our patience, our tolerance of them… in short, they’ve never seen atevi up close, they’re scared, but they’re letting themselves grow familiar. At any given wrong move, they could turn on us and draw weapons, but right now I think they’re edging toward believing we’re not that scary, that they might deal with us. In a certain way I think they’re trying to figure out whether Ramirez is, after all, right about dealing with us, and one must respect their courage and common sense in trying to make that assessment. I’m not sure they’vethought it all out. But I think there’s a real curiosity about the candy… about the planetary resources… and about us. In a certain sense, food is a very basic, very instinctive gift of goodwill. And they’re taking it. They’re approaching us. They’re supporting Ramirez.”

His security looked at him as if he and his entire species had run mad in the streets.

“They test whether they maintain man’chi to Ramirez?” Jago asked, always the cleverest of his staff at seeing through human behavior. “They test feelings?”

“Something very close to that” Bren said. “In this case there’s less intellectual about it than usual. This is far more instinctive… far more simple, in many regards. These people have been left no way to choose their leaders, but they arechoosing, I’m relatively sure of it. And every one of them is taking a chance.”

“Of harm?”

“Of harm to the entire ship. The power structure isn’t instinctive, not wholly; it’s pragmatic. And it’s functioned against their will. I believe a good many of the crew hope Ramirez will survive, but they have no confidence in his state of health; they act as if it’s a doomed cause, but not one they’ve utterly given up. Banichi didn’t say, but I think some of them are sheltering him, and I would not in the least be surprised to learn that Jase and Mercheson and various others related to them by kinship are in on it. Subterfuge and indirection, it well may be mediated by kinship. The captaincyseems to pass down by kinship instead of merit.”

“Who are Ramirez’ kin?” Jago asked, straight to the point. “Is it not Jase? Do I not recall Ramirez has no descendants?”

“Jase. Jase and Yolanda. Ramirez’s wife died long ago. Her network remains attached to him, one gathers. Jase tried to lay out the relationships for me. Until Kaplan and his cousins, I confess I didn’t understand all he might have been saying.”

Jase and his family chart, he began to think, might be more important to them than their map of the station and its workings.

“The crew has no weapons,” Algini said.

“None.” They had been over that with Jase, and as far as he had ever learned, it was the truth. The crew had no access to hand weapons. Those existed, but the officers had the keys, and the resistance to shooting one’s cousins and officers, one could only guess. “But wehave Ramirez, if we can keep him alive. I think there’s good reason not to bring him here. The crew has to believe he still has authority, not our authority: hisauthority. If he dies, any hope they have of a captain of his disposition dies with him. And the fourth captain, the one we’ve not met or dealt with, thatcaptain is our problem.”

“Tamun.”

“Just so. I rather think Ogun might stand with Ramirez if he had the chance. He may be doing so, for all I know. For all I know he’s barricaded in some safe place trying to keep himself alive.”

“Tamun must fall,” Jago said.

“But wemustn’t do it,” he said.

“Are they not pragmatists?”

“Emotional creatures, as well. We should not do it if we can possibly avoid it. The captains are reservoirs of an expertise in operating this ship that we can’t pull out of the archive: it’s the same business as the starship crew not being able to fly the shuttle. We can’t just take over the ship and hope to operate it. And without it, if the aliens are real, we have no defense. We haveto get Ramirez back in power, but at worst, we may have to make peace with Tamun, if only for the sake of what he knows.”

“This would not be an agreeable outcome,” Jago said.

“No,” he said, “it would not be. But we are limited in what we can do, besides try to maintain an alternative, and not frighten the crew. If we run out of candy, we pass out dried fruit and offer them shots of vodka, and promises, and we hope Banichi stays safe. He’s doing the right thing in trying to keep Ramirez alive and away from assassins: I think Jaseis advising him how important that is, and we need to support him. Take inventory of supplies we do have. We need to get decent food to Kroger’s rooms and advise themof the situation.”

“Do we trust her, Bren-ji?”

“Against the likelihood of a conflict in the crew and an unknown rising to authority?” There was one thing Mospheira detested even more than change and that was uncertainty. “There’s all the history of the Pilots’ Guild and the colonists in our favor. In this, I think quite likely they’ll work with us.”

That the shuttle had landed safely was the most welcome news.

There was not one damned letter from any of the committee heads, and while it was remotely possible that Tabini hadn’t written, it was by no means possible that felicitations from the mainland would not pour to Mogari-nai, and onto his staff, who likewise sent no word.

Infuriating. Troubling. Bren found multiple words for the situation.

From his brother there was not a word. None from his mother. Therewas a disturbing situation. If she’d mentioned the shuttle landing, that alone might have caused the captains to censor her letter—which she would hardly understand, when her son failed to write, when Toby was trying to hold his marriage together, and couldn’t take time out to go solve another crisis that was the cause of the difficulty in the first place.

Bren took his computer back to his desk and carefully, patiently, constructed a positive mood… an hour’s worth of construction, which led to a day’s constructive work in another set of missives for Tabini.

His last ones had gotten through. He was relatively sure Tabini had a clear notion that not everything was as well as the first letters indicated.

At the mid point of the night the outer door opened, and shut; and Bren rolled out of bed, looking for the gun.

His door shut. Immediately. He waited in the dark, shivering in the chill, listening with trepidation as the door opened and shut a second time.

The door of his quarters opened; and Jago stood in silhouette against the muted corridor light.

“A message” Jago said. “Nothing of concern, Bren-ji. Banichi says a hunt is going through the tunnels and that we should affect not to hear it.”

“They’re hunting Ramirez.”

“They have begun a door-to-door search, claiming we have secreted some personnel aboard, nadi. Banichi will not be caught by their nets. Go to sleep.”

“On that?” he asked. “Jago-ji, he can’t stay out there forever. If you’re communicating with him, tell him the hell with independence: bring Ramirez here. Let’s raise the wager. Let them take him from us, damn them!”

“I believe he would be willing,” Jago said. “The humans may be reluctant.”

More than likely, he thought, trying in vain to recover any urge toward sleep. More than likely there was considerable resistance in the crew, all the reasons he himself had already thought of, but what they were risking, keeping a wounded man on the run, was everything, everything humanity owned in this end of space.

Come in, he wished Banichi, staring into the dark. Don’t listen to human reasons. Talk sense into Jase. Say no to him and get back here. Get himback before someone gets killed. There’s still a way to patch this.

Wishes did no good.

Sandwiches did, at least improving Kroger’s rations, a strike back in a war of nerves.

The lights went out for fifteen minutes or so in the evening; came on; and went out again an hour later.

A candle in the hallway provided sufficient light for atevi, and the household proceeded with supper.

“I fear they may be aware of our monitoring,” Bren whispered to Tano after supper, in the utter, ghostly stillness of that dark. “Dare one think they might move up on us?”

“Significant monitoring is passive,” Tano said, “and we listen, nadi Bren, we do listen for any such. They make noise in the tunnels now and again, but nothing near us.”

“It makes no difference that we have no idea where Ramirez is. Certain authorities might thinkhe’s taken refuge with us.”

“We watch, nadi Bren. We watch.”

“One knows so,” he said. He wanted Banichi back. Immediately.

But he did no good pacing the floor or making his security nervous. There was always the chance that the lights might not come on again. There was the chance they would freeze in the dark, though he doubted that his security would allow that without a blow struck.

He wantedthe adjacent rooms in their hands.

And then he had the most uncomfortable notion where Banichi might be, and where Ramirez might be, and how the fugitive captain was receiving food, water, and care. He cast Tano an uneasy look, and kept quiet about the idea.

He went back to bed, where it was warmer, and shortly after that all the lights came on and the fans started up.

“One doubts they will willingly freeze the water pipes,” Jago said blithely the next morning. “One believes, nadi, these outages are connected with the search.”

“With listening?”

“Likely,” Jago said. “Likely they hope to hear movement.”

He simply cast a look toward the door, by implication toward that section beyond it.

Jago shrugged, and said not a thing.

He made a gesture for here! Made it emphatically. Bring him here!

Jagogave a negative shrug: not wise, she meant, he was sure of it. His security would not jeopardize him, whatever else, and would not let the search lead here. He recalled what Banichi had indicated, of making noise in distracting directions.

A dangerous set of maneuvers.

Damned dangerous, he said to himself, but he doubted close questions served anyone’s safety: if they were where he thought, they were as good as within their perimeter.

Day, and day, and night and night.

No messages came up from Mogari-nai, not a one. He ordered Cl to send-receive, and had no idea whether his messages went anywhere. He wrote to councillors, to department heads, to his staff, and to his mother, not daring to mention that he hadn’t gotten any messages, not daring to admit he was worried.

“Any word from Jase Graham?” he asked daily, as if there were nothing wrong in the world.

Occasionally he called Kroger, and twice summoned Kaplan for uneventful escorts over and back.

He’d thought he’d found the limits of his nerves and passed them long ago. Shouting and argument he could deal with; silence was its own hell.

But withstanding that was as important. And Jago was happier, at times, even cheerful… interspersed with days of bleak worry, when he was relatively certain something was going on that his security opted not to tell him. There were more outages, and one that lasted until he was sure the pipes were in definite danger.

He sat by candlelight fully clothed and wrapped in a blanket from shoulders to feet, and with his hands tucked under his arms and his feet growing numb no matter the precautions. How general it was or whether Kroger was likewise suffering he had no idea. The silence without the air duct fans was eerie… one grew accustomed to that constant sound. The notion of air that no longer moved gave the place a tomblike feeling.

He wondered if Tabini had done what he urged and opened direct negotiations—such as the University on Mospheira could mediate, using more Bens and Kates—with Hampton Durant on the island. He hoped so. He hoped that by virtue of what he had sent down to the world that men of common sense could form a common purpose and not give the Guild what would damn them all: if it was the xenophobes in charge of the Guild now, minds that truly didn’t want to deal with foreigners of any stamp, and they were determined to alienate the atevi before they took on aliens from far out in space, everything was in jeopardy. He’d made that clear to Tabini, and included a letter for Mospheira, and hoped Tom Lund had corroborated his report.

At times things seemed to be going very slowly to hell with his own position, and in the candlelit dark he asked himself whether he or any of his team might survive this, or whether fools were going to let this go on until the station was damaged, the ship remained unfueled, and the planet had to take its chances with whatever came, helpless to launch more than a shuttle.

He passed despair, achieved numb patience—and guilt for having drawn people he cared for into this mess. He reanalyzed the meeting he had had, when everything had gone too well, too fast, and wondered if he might have precipitated this reversal himself, simply because he was a negotiator and the captains weren’t. Perhaps, he thought, he had pushed the opposition into desperate measures.

It might have happened. It might be that he had driven the opposition to desperation, or encouraged Ramirez to an aggressive posture that proved his downfall… if that was what had happened.

“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom said, breaking its long silence. The lights stayed out.

He stayed seated. The intercom made several tries. He still stayed seated. If they were going to ask him if he had had enough, he wasn’t going to make it convenient for them.

The lights and air came back on within the hour. His security had kept their watch, and reported no movement in their area.

He found himself tempted to order a seizure of the adjacent rooms and main corridor, down to the next security door, in the theory the blackouts might be local, and that he might command an area more difficult for them. But he had no desire to provoke anything until the shuttle was back.

“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom nagged him. He refused to answer.

It went on intermittently for the next day. Narani and the servants ceased to regard the noise. He ceased his daily harassment of Cl, preferring to let the captains worry about the silence from his side.

“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom said finally. “ We know you hear us.”

He somewhat doubted they could guarantee that.

It interrupted his sleep during the night.

An alarm went off, flashing lights from the panel, a loud klaxon that sent them all from their beds.

Jago was in his, and he said, the two of them entangled beneath the sheets, “I honestly hope that’s real and they’re having a bad night.”

“I should go to security,” she said, and eased out of bed. She flung a robe about herself on the way out the door.

He lay and watched the ceiling in the flashing red light. The intercom said,

“Mr. Cameron. The captains are willing to meet with you now.”

That worried him. But he stayed in bed.

The section door opened and shut outside. Thatbrought him out of bed, wrapped in a sheet.

Banichi was back, and for an man who ordinarily suffered not a hair out of place, he looked exhausted.

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “One apologizes for the inconveniences.”

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Be carefulout there, nadi-ji, I earnestly request it.”

Banichi found that ruefully amusing. Jago, who had turned out with all but Algini, did not laugh, nor did the rest.

“We have lost contact with the lower level,” Banichi said then, not happy. “A number are cut off. I ask your leave, nandi, to deal with that.”