Destroyer

  There meant home. The Earth of the atevi. The place they’d come from. Mospheira. The aishidi’tat. Toby. Tabini. Everything he’d left in limbo on a hasty departure a little over two years ago.

  “I wanted to tell you myself,” Jase said, while Bren found himself still numb, perhaps less joyful than Jase expected to see. In his daze he woke a little-used half-smile, then a laugh, in this space too dull for smiles and laughter, and clapped Jase on the shoulder.

  “Home, then. Home! You’re sure.”

  “So damned well on the button we can just about wave at the station when we arrive. So the navigator tells us.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Figuratively speaking.”

  “How figurative?”

  “It’s home system. Our coordinates are that good . . . not literally wave at them, Bren, for God’s sake.” Jase had a laugh of his own. “But pretty damned close. Safer, nav says, to pop in there, out of the path of the junk in outer system.”

  “I really don’t want to think about junk in the outer system.” It was a dirty and dangerous system, as solar systems went. So the spacers said.

  “No worry.” A second laugh, at the expense of a notoriously nervous flier, in atmosphere or out. “It’ll be fine, Bren. Not a shred of a worry.” Jase squeezed his arm for reassurance. “Bet you. Bet you a pint of beer. Just pack up. That’s your warning, personally delivered. I’ve got to get back up there. And I did ask Sabin when I notified her: you’re all welcome up on the bridge once we do emerge. So get some early sleep. We’re figuring we drop out at 0416h, and Sabin’s coming back on shift to take over at 0330h, so you don’t need to worry at all who’s driving.”

  “God, I never would.”

  “You should.” A grin from Jase, who was, like him, one of the three paidhiin, and a bookish sort of captain, nothing of the hands-on sort Sabin was. “I’m keeping my mouth shut while the crew does what it knows how to do. But I’ll be on deck when you do come up. No sleeping through this one. I had to tell you myself. So spread the news.”

  “Great,” he said. It was. It really was great news.

  After a two-year voyage and hell in between, they were home, or would be, tomorrow morning.

  God, was it over? Was it done? Home? And Jase, for whom the planet was a destination and the ship his birth-home—Jase Graham, born and bred to this mind-numbing transit through subspace, walked briskly back the way he’d come. There was lightness in his stride, while Bren found his stomach undergoing that desperate queasiness it underwent whenever they faced an imprecise, deep-space drop—the ordinary ones that punctuated their travel between points, let alone the all-important emergence at their destination. Within waving-distance.

  Was he scared? Oh, nothing at all like it.

  Scared as hell, with clammy hands, this time, and he didn’t know why. The notion of the navigator laying bets with Sabin for how close he could shave it, maybe.

  Or maybe—

  Maybe it was knowing they’d coasted along comfortably on their success at Reunion for the last year in a very static situation, everybody, human crew, Reunion refugees, and atevi allies, each on their appropriate decks, everything ruled and regulated and getting along in social stasis. They’d had a year to contemplate what they’d done, a year to get comfortable in that success.

  And now they had to explain to the people back home what they’d done out there and sell their decisions to a diverse and worried world, hoping there wouldn’t be panic, when they mentioned that humans weren’t the only aliens out there among the stars.

  “Well,” he said. Jase had spoken in Ragi, he realized, so he had no need to translate for Narani, or for Jeladi, who had turned up from the servants’ cabin, down the way. Both stood at a respectful distance, listening with very keen atevi hearing.

  Damn, he’d forgotten—he’d completely forgotten to ask Jase to provide precise numerical data on this all-important drop. Atevi always wanted the numbers. He’d have to call up for it.

  “Will you inform the dowager, nandi?” Narani asked, and of course he must—never mind Ilisidi sealed her doors against intrusion and turned surly during folded-space transits. He must tell her, and he must change his coat. And he must get those numbers.

  “I shall, nadiin-ji.” He included them both in the courtesy, and ducked inside with both of them behind him, Narani personally going to the closet to find the appropriate shirt and coat while he used a handheld to log on the ship’s net to ask the precise navigation figures.

  The answer flowed back to him: nav knew by now how passionately the atevi loved such elegant numbers, and set great store by them, and he had clearance to get that information and to pass it on. He captured it onto a removable disk, a tiny thing he held between thumb and palm as Jeladi moved in to rid him of less formal coat and shirt.

  Asicho turned up, the sole female among the servants, alerted by the arcane means the whole servant establishment used. She presented him a small silver message-cylinder for his use, and Narani provided the small square of paper, on which he wrote, in a clerkly, formal hand:

  Aiji-ma, may one call to present a special gift, aware as one may be of the inconvenience? One risks your displeasure to bring you the joy of excellent and auspicious news.

  Hell, yes, she’d want to know. Curiosity would wake her up. He gave the little slip to Asicho, who furled it into the tiny silver case and took off in haste.

  Asicho would naturally spill what she knew to the dowager’s staff, who would present that little cylinder in advance of his arrival and rouse Ilisidi out of the doldrums.

  Into the shirt, young Jeladi assisting, and now rotund Bindanda, cook, spy, and chief contriver of whatever needed doing, provided the knee-length coat, while Bren kept his computer disk safely in his fingers. He dropped it carefully into his coat pocket while Bindanda made sure his queue and ribbons were clear of the collar. Bindanda then fastened the five fashionable fabric-covered buttons, and Bren patted the pocket flap neatly closed.

  “One is grateful, nadiin-ji,” he said to his staff. The whole operation, message to coat, had taken two minutes, if that, and how could a man be less than confident, with such a staff in action? He felt far steadier.

  And when he walked out the door, two shadows loomed, left and right, and immediately fell in with him—Banichi and Jago, his personal bodyguard—bodyguard was only a fraction of what they were, but protection, surely, first and foremost. He was a decent height for a human, and his head reached Jago’s shoulder: Banichi was taller. He was rarely aware of going wired, but he was, thanks to the pocket com, which was always on, and they heard everything, all day—all night, since Jago was, well, considerably closer to him.

  “You know, nadiin-ji,” he said to them.

  “One heard, nandi,” Banichi said as they walked past the common dining room, on their way to the aiji-dowager’s domain.

  “One fears for the birthday party,” Jago observed.

  “Oh.” His reckoning hadn’t gotten that far. Oh didn’t half express his dismay.

  But they had reached Ilisidi’s door, and Banichi signaled their desire to enter. Depend on it, Asicho had made it inside first, using the icy service corridors behind the row of cabins—the staff would break their necks to keep propriety and pass information as servants would in an atevi household. So it was no surprise at all that Cenedi himself, Banichi’s counterpart on Ilisidi’s staff, opened the door for them, almost before Banichi had pushed the button.

  “Cenedi-ji, will the dowager receive a visitor?”

  “Beyond a doubt,” Cenedi said, and showed him past the little reception desk in the cabin Ilisidi’s staff had half-curtained and remodeled into a foyer. The dowager as well as her staff used the service corridors to transit between the various cabins they had turned into an atevi-style residence in this linear human ship, and Bren proceeded to the service access as naturally as to a door, following one of Ilisidi’s young men.

  Beyond, then, into the cold and the dim gl
ow of motion lights in a barren, girdered corridor ordinarily reserved for maintenance. Banichi and Jago would stay to exchange information with Cenedi, if there was anything Cenedi had not already picked up in their interlinked communications: they were as close as two households could get, and very little needed explaining, but it was still the custom, while the Lord of the Heavens froze his bones.

  Bitter cold, for a thin-limbed human nipping through the passages, but thankfully brief. He had only chilled through the outer layers of his coat before Ilisidi’s man showed him, not into her library, as he had expected, but into a nearer room he hadn’t yet visited, which on first sight he realized must be Cajeiri’s own study, with a television and lockers and Cajeiri’s distinctive sketches taped to the lockers—fairly good sketches, for a boy seven-going-on-eight. Reunion Station, complete with the hole blown in it. Sketches of Prakuyo’s ship, odd-shaped and strange. His sweeping glance took in the aiji-dowager seated in the main chair, and Cajeiri standing respectfully behind her. There was a scatter of books on the floor. And cushions. He might have interrupted lessons.

  “Aiji-ma,” Bren said with a bow, lowering his eyes, but taking in Ilisidi’s informality of dress—not the usual high-collared coat, but a mere day-coat. In the muzziness of folded space, even she gave way to comfortable practicality; and the boy was in a black sweater he might have borrowed from one of the security staff, his gangling limbs having outgrown most of last year’s coats and shirts, and hems and seams being let out and let out until there was no more to give. “Aiji-ma.” Straightening, with the ritual second bow. “Jase-aiji reports we are on the verge of arrival—home, this time, aiji-ma. Right on the doorstep of the station, Jase believes, so there will be no great time at all getting to dock.”

  “Indeed.” A spark of lively interest. “When?”

  “I have not that precise a knowledge of the schedule, aiji-ma, but Jase thinks it will be extraordinarily close to our destination, and the ship crew provides the numbers, in the thought the gift may please you.” He drew the disk out of his pocket and offered it.

  Ilisidi took the object with apparent satisfaction. “And do we assume the same precise imprecision as before? This ‘lumpy space’ of yours?”

  “Not mine, aiji-ma, one begs to say. The navigators do claim this time they know where we are to a nicety surpassing all others. When . . . seems more at issue.”

  “Precise and imprecise at once. The ’counters will be completely scandalized. Lord Grigiji, however, will be delighted.” The former were the number-counters, the numerologist-mathematicians who were somewhere between fortune-tellers and social arbiters in atevi society; the latter was the Astronomer Emeritus, confined by age and frailty to the planet, even to his mountain-top observatory, and there was so very much they had saved up to tell him on their return. “And you, Lord of the Heavens? When do you think we shall arrive?”

  “The paidhi, not being expert, dares rely only on Jase’s estimation, and he gives a time of 0416h, ship’s reckoning. He seems extraordinarily pleased with these calculations. He calls them amazingly accurate.”

  “Amazingly so, then.” A snort. For atevi, who worked math implicit in their language—calculated with every breath—the navigators who talked about lumpy space were indeed a test of belief. “So. That answers to when we shall reach the region. When shall we reach the station?”

  He was caught with his mouth open. He closed it, since while the navigators could just about swear to the time, the location was always just a little looser. “You know I can answer you no better than ever I could, aiji-ma. But we shall certainly get underway for dock the moment we do come in, so we must stow everything. And if we reach the station with some dispatch, if the ship’s chronometer bears any relation to the world’s time, and if the local schedule has held as it was, we may even be able to catch the shuttle in two days and be on the planet in very short order—unless, of course, we linger on the station to please Lord Geigi.”

  “Excellent news.” Ilisidi dragged her walking cane before her and rested her hands on the head of it, entirely pleased. “Well, well, Lord of the Heavens. So we may look forward to a good dinner.”

  “And as much tea as we can possibly drink, aiji-ma.”

  Ilisidi laughed. “Indeed. Indeed. Of a sort you dare drink, to be sure, paidhi-ji. Not to mention fresh fruit and meat of the season, which we have all sadly missed. We look forward to this change of menu. So. We shall begin packing. Shall we be on hand to see this arrival in the morning?”

  “Jase-aiji extends the aiji-dowager an invitation to the bridge, immediately as we arrive, this from both the ship-aijiin.”

  “We shall advise our staff,” Ilisidi said, again satisfied, as if the staff were not at this moment well ahead of them on all such details, and likely already beginning the packing and the preparation of suitable attire. “Excellent. Excellent news, nand’ paidhi.”

  It was his cue to depart. His stated mission was accomplished. He made his bow. “Tomorrow morning, aiji-ma.”

  “Be it auspicious, as by all the numbers it seems to be.” She looked weary and worn by the condition of space that wore on them all. But she positively smiled, rare token of her favor, and added: “Well done, paidhi-ji.”

  “Aiji-ma.” Warmed by that rare approval, he made his retreat, back to the bone-numbing cold of the passage, where her man waited to see him back.

  But not alone, as he realized within that chilly dark space. Running steps overtook him in the shadows—a boy as tall as he was, a boy whose eyes, like those of his guide, reflected like gold glass in the motion-lights of the passage.

  “Nandi!” Cajeiri overtook him and made a little bow, child to adult, no matter the child was a prince of the Association. “Nandi, shall I then not have my birthday?”

  Oh, such an earnest, honest face, such a thoroughly disconcerted and worried young face.

  “One regrets to say it may have to be delayed,” he said. “My most profound and personal regret, young aiji, but in all likelihood we shall be under a yellow caution the whole day tomorrow, which may force us to postpone the festivity at least until after we dock and disembark.”

  “But that will be no good, nandi! The day! My day! The very day makes it my birthday!”

  He was, after all, despite being a lord and almost on eye level with an adult human, only seven-going-on-eight. He was heart-broken.

  But being born atevi and trained as a lord by a great-grandmother firmly in favor of protocols, Cajeiri also knew that he had gone as far as he could, having presented his argument to the paidhi-aiji. He could not complain to his great-grandmother, who would offer no sympathy: straighten the shoulders, she would say. Bear it with grace.

  It might be the right thing to say, to this particular boy, but a human and a diplomat tried to find a stricken child some comfort. “Well, nandi, the day itself is significant, yes, and the numbers, but among my people, understand, young aiji, birthdays can be moved a little to agree with circumstances and felicity, since the idea is to congratulate the person and have pleasure in his company. And that sentiment depends on you, not on the day itself. And your guests are human, and will entirely understand. Their truly significant desire is to express their wishes for your health and long life, and we shall simply adjust the numbers until everything is entirely auspicious. Narani is extraordinarily adept at such things.”

  “But it should be the day!”

  “Even your father the aiji has been known to move a ceremony for safety. And I’m sure you shall have your presents, likely much the better for being on the station where you can enjoy abundant room. And not to forget the refreshments—I’m sure Bindanda can do ever so much better where we can find the best ingredients.”

  “The cake.”

  “You will absolutely have your cake, young aiji. A real and marvelous cake. I promise it on my word.”

  “But the movie, too, nand’ paidhi? Shall we have that?”

  “Certainly. Certainly we can manage that.??
?

  “Then it will be all right,” Cajeiri said glumly, rising to a dignity the dowager would more approve. And spoiled it with a glum: “One supposes.”

  “But this is the station, young aiji. This is our own station.” Could the boy have missed that detail? “We shall have your birthday, and then catch the next shuttle down to the planet, to Shejidan, to your father and your mother. Will you not like that?”

  “Maybe.”

  Oh, maybe? Only maybe? He was freezing, at the moment, but this was a very distressed young lad, who evinced only minimal interest in his own parents.

  “What is this doubt, young aiji? You surely wish to see your father and mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what should make you fret, young aiji?”

  “So shall I see Artur and Bjorn and Irene and Gene after I go down to Shejidan? Shall I ever see them again?”

  He was caught with his mouth open, ready arguments all useless. He had had all the adult arguments ready, regarding a boy’s childish disappointment about a birthday—but could he possibly answer that one?

  No, in all due honesty—he could not say that the little band would not be broken, this time by circumstances none of the youngsters’ cleverness could overcome . . . a gravity well, human protectiveness of their children, and atevi sensibilities no different.

  He was, however, an optimist. He took a longer view than a boy could. “You are no ordinary boy,” he said, “and you have a father who, if you ask him in the best way, may afford a shuttle ride for your young associates, supposing their parents will agree.”

  “And will they allow it, nandi?”

  “It may take a little argument,” he said. He hated the scary dive into atmosphere they themselves had to make. He was sure every time he got back down to the planet that he might not personally have the nerve to get aboard the shuttle again. “If the shuttle has proved safe,” he said, “if the trip has gotten to be routine, as likely it has—” The space program itself had been new, the equipment still uncertain, even to the day they had launched. “If it has—and there is no reason to expect otherwise—much more likely they will.” He was absolutely freezing by this time, past slight shivers, the deep cold having penetrated his coat, his skin, his flesh. The warmth was leaving his bones by now, but young eyes were fixed on him, shimmering gold in the motion-lights. “Young aiji, I shall have frostbite if I linger here. I have to go quickly. But I promise I shall intercede with your father and your mother with every diplomatic skill I have, and we shall do everything possible to see your associates pay you visits.”