Explorer

  “Not damned informative. C3. Give us image, central screen.”

  A dim image flashed up. It could have been a rock. If it had color, it was brownish black, a collection of irregularly arranged panels suspended around a core of indefinite shape, showing no lights at all at the moment.

  “Does it tell you anything?” Sabin asked him.

  “No,” he had to admit.

  Sabin folded her arms, gazed at the screen. Then at him. “And how are you going to talk to this ship once we engage it?”

  “I’ll have to find out,” Bren said. “That’s what I do, captain. That’s what Ramirez trained Jase to do, and Ramirez made a fatal decision when he decided to back off and wait for another try, when his translator was older and better prepared. This is that next opportunity. If we don’t take them up on that invitation to communicate—if there’s any symmetry about their actions—who knows? They may hit Alpha, the way they hit here.”

  Sabin looked at him, a sidelong glance, on that last. Looked away, then. And back. “A basic rule of intelligence, Mr. Cameron—you can chase just one more certainty and one more piece of information just one fatal step too far. At a certain point you have to quit listening and go with best guesses. We don’t know the situation on the station, do we? And we don’t know the situation out there.”

  “We need answers,” Jase said. “We’re not going to get them on the station. If we get that far.”

  “Oh, I’m in favor of answers, second captain. We’re on our original course, not quite on the original schedule, so if that ship out there fired a few minutes ago, we’ll more likely be spectators to a fire show. If we do get a strike, Mr. Cameron, at the first sign of a siren, dive under the nearest console and brace, because we’ll move long and hard; and you haven’t felt movement yet. Not in this entire trip. Not in your life, Mr. Cameron. Right now you have time to get to a takehold and time to get granny to shelter, and I advise you do that.—Mr. Carson. Docking spot number one, three bright flashes toward our spook. Stand by for braking, Jorgensen.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bren said. And moved, not even pausing for a glance at Jase. The ship was acting—God save them, Sabin was taking the action Ramirez had ducked.

  He reached the shelter and repeated that warning in Ragi, for the company. “Prolonged strong movement. Everyone must stay in the shelter, nadiin-ji. This situation may continue a while or change suddenly.” Five-deck would hear. Trust Asicho for that.

  A siren sounded.

  “Sabin here. Take hold, take hold, take hold. Alien contact. We are maneuvering after sending signal to alien craft. Stand by.”

  God, truth from a Phoenix captain.

  Bren wedged himself back in among the rest. Kept his breathing calm and steady.

  “Sabin-aiji has sent a signal to the foreign ship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. His breath seemed inadequate. And the braking hit. The signal had gone. Three blinks of the ship’s powerful docking spots.

  Braking let up. “Mr. Cameron.” Jase’s voice. “Mr. Cameron to the bridge.”

  “Aiji-ma. Nadiin-ji.” He groped for the padded edge of the cabinet and moved, not sure of his safety, but he answered the summons, as far as Jase’s position, against a padded wall. “Jase.”

  Sabin was there, too, braced with her back against the same surface.

  “Mr. Cameron.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Atevi are hearing that advisement below, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bren admitted.

  “Efficient. Keep it that way. Don’t get in my way. Stand by to answer questions.”

  Sabin left the takehold position, walked off, resuming her continual tour. Jase stayed close to him.

  “Scary,” Bren muttered.

  “You noticed,” Jase said. “We’ve signaled it. We’ve changed our position in case they fire on our signal.”

  “Which also tells them we fear hostile action.”

  “Shouldn’t we?”

  “By our logic. They should figure we thought of it and preferred to talk, not shoot. One hopes they think that way.”

  A small moment in which he could scarcely believe he’d just argued with Sabin on her bridge and urged the ship to take an aggressive response—but there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. There simply wasn’t, within anything he could think of.

  And even in that gut-deep human and atevi dislike of turning their backs on an enemy, in their choice to deal with the situation rather than go on in, ignoring the presence, there was animal instinct at work . . . a good instinct, an instinct viable in every situation that two similarly wired species could jointly think of, but that didn’t say definitively that no other answer had ever evolved in a wide universe. It only said their behavior was statistically likely to be understood, based on a sample of two and based on the limits of the translator’s own imagination.

  “Likely this maneuvering will drag on now for hours,” Jase said. “It might be an opportunity to persuade the dowager below. Tell her it’s for comfort. Comfort, at least.”

  “This is the woman who sleeps on stone several times a year. Who rides mountain trails in thunderstorms. Who took on Cajeiri as a ward. I don’t think we’ll persuade her easily, Jasi-ji.”

  “Days, Bren. It could be days working this all out. With terrible forces, if we have to move. Hard on the whole body, even in shelter. Tell her that.”

  “One will pose the question.” He made the short trek to the security cabinet, quickly, economically.

  And met a row of dark and light faces all with the same wary, determined expression.

  “Jase-aiji suggests this maneuver will be extremely long, even days, and that for comfort and dignity—”

  “No,” Ilisidi said abruptly. “We will not go below.”

  “Nand’ dowager . . .”

  “Interesting things happen here. Not there. If I were reckless of staff safety I would send after hot tea,” Ilisidi said. “I forego the tea. In that, I have taken my personal precautions and my staff is settled in safety. We are very well. Gin-nandi is very well.” This with an all but unprecedented nod toward Ginny Kroger, who gave a nod in turn—a unity of appalling, infelicitous two, give or take the ship itself—a welding of Gin’s notorious obstinacy to the dowager’s, which was legendary. Somehow there had been basic converse in his absence.

  “I convey the respects of the ship-aijiin,” Bren said with a little bow. “And urge you all make yourselves comfortable, but sit warily, aiji-ma, nandi. One hopes this matter will work itself out peacefully.”

  He caught Banichi’s eye, and Jago’s, and they extracted themselves from shelter, with relief, he was sure. He left, with them in attendance and within easier reach of information at the moment—atevi presence re-expanded onto the bridge.

  He found Jase where he had been, next the take-hold just outside their shelter.

  “The dowager declines. Gin declines. I used the word ‘days.’ They’ve formed an alliance.”

  Jase didn’t look at him. Jase’s eyes, like Sabin’s, roved continually over the aisles, where techs sat waiting for response. “We have what facilities we have up here,” Jase murmured. “We can’t change them. But if she grows weary, offer my office, my cabin, my bed, for that matter.”

  “One will do so, nadi-ji, with thanks.”

  “For yourself as well. I want you rested, paidhi-aiji.”

  “One understands that as well.”

  Jase reached to his ear and handed him the communications unit, warm from his skin. “Use that. I want you current with our information flow.”

  “One concurs.” He positioned it in his own ear, beginning to receive the very limited cross-chatter of station with station, Sabin’s low-key orders, the ordinary life’s pulse of the bridge. Jase secured another unit for himself, meanwhile, from one of the endmost consoles, adjusted it, became available.

  “I am now in direct touch with ship’s communications,” Bren muttered to Banichi and Jago. “Make clear to the dowag
er Jase’s offer of his own cabin, which would afford more comfort and security. Tell Cenedi first: he may have more luck in argument.”

  “A very good idea,” Banichi said, with a side glance at Jago—their information had simultaneously gone to Cenedi and to five-deck. And one hoped the dowager would hear reason.

  A desk, a chair and a bed within easy walk of the bridge, it turned out, was an acceptable idea. There was not only Jase’s cabin and Jase’s office, but Ramirez’s and Ogun’s, unoccupied, ample room; ample means by which experience could be available and out from under foot, and the dowager was not opposed.

  The station, meanwhile, answered an earlier time-lagged query. “The spook’s been out there for years. It may be robotic. We instruct you, ignore it.”

  “What grounds to believe it’s robotic?” Sabin fired back. “Be advised we are taking measures for contact.”

  That was all the communication that could flow in that exchange. There followed, from the station, a few further queries. “What kept you?” was one particularly significant, along with: “Who’s in command at Alpha?”

  “Fuel load wasn’t ready,” was Sabin’s immaculately honest answer, along with, “Local control, local politics, but negotiable.” That could cover anything, including armed conflict. “What changes here? What’s our fuel situation?”

  There was the prime question.

  Meanwhile galley served more tea and sandwiches, and Narani and the dowager’s staff sent up delicacies for the dowager and for humans on the bridge—weary bridge crew, crew who’d stayed far longer than their own shift, while below, crew chafed to be out of confinement in quarters. Officers of the next shift sent wary inquiries, briefing themselves, a busy, busy flow of conversation on several channels, C1 to C12. One had never appreciated how much went on, not even counting the flow of atevi communications aboard, which was another several channels.

  The dowager took possession of Jase’s quarters. Bren meanwhile stuck close to the bridge, eating a sandwich while wandering between the atevi settled into the executive corridor and the human crew in constant activity on the bridge.

  Jase had suggested, not for the first time, that they might take advantage of the moment to go to shift change. Bren’s own knees began to protest he’d stood long enough; and he had no doubt Sabin’s older bones had to be aching far worse than his as she kept up that slow, mostly silent patrol, occasionally commenting into the communications flow.

  Waiting, he was sure, for some answer, from some quarter, not likely to rest until it did come; and now the reply-clock was thirty-two minutes into negative territory.

  Bridge crew took intermittent rests, a few at each console moving about on break, or, by turns, head pillowed on arms, resting weary eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting.

  “Request you proceed with approach, captain. Explanation after you dock.”

  It wasn’t the positive fuel answer they wanted. It wasn’t, we have everything in order, proceed toward the fueling port.

  “They may not anticipate the alien craft can understand our conversation,” Bren murmured—wishing that were so, wishing that the Guild had miraculously turned cooperative—or that the alien out there did understand a common language. There was no proof of either. “One might distrust this request to dock first.”

  “C1, repeat the last query.” That was Sabin’s answer, cold and calm, as if they hadn’t just waited the lengthy time for the last inadequate answer, as if she weren’t, like all of them, aching to have basic questions settled and to know for certain they had fuel. But: do it again, was the response, in essence. Do it again until we get an answer we like.

  And meanwhile, be it admitted, they weren’t doing what station wanted.

  Bren felt his own knees protesting. And he walked, and paced, trying to think of all possible angles, and finally went back to Jase’s office and sat down in a chair opposite Banichi and Jago’s seat on the floor.

  “Station has failed to answer Sabin-aiji’s simple question regarding available fuel, nadiin-ji. She has therefore reiterated her question. This give and take of answers will take, at least, another two hours.”

  His bodyguard absorbed that information, respectfully so, noting clearly that Sabin-aiji had not backed down, and showed no sign of it.

  “If it should be a lengthy time, then you should nap, Bren-ji,” Jago advised him. “It seems we are not yet useful.”

  It was reasonable advice. He had been observing every micro-tick of information flow, fearful of missing some critical interaction, but found no further advice to give. . . . He didn’t like the reticence on the station’s side. If the alien didn’t understand, Sabin was right: they could transmit nursery rhymes and targeting coordinates with no difference in that ship’s behavior—and if it did understand—then they had a very different problem, at once an easier one, but one in which the station would participate, and in which, in the fuel, it might hold a key bargaining item. Most of all he didn’t like the picture he had: a third party, themselves, arriving in the middle of a long standoff, an arrival recognizably allied to the station, talking with it while signaling the alien presence out there. It looked all too much like a schoolyard squabble, politics on that primitive a level, and the imbalance of power since their unexpected arrival here could tip things over the edge.

  It would do it faster if they made a wrong move. Two powers had to be refiguring the odds at the moment, and he hoped the apparently bullied party, the station, didn’t suddenly decide to shove things into a crisis with some demand for action, the rationality of which they couldn’t assess at a distance.

  “Shift change,” C1 announced then, over the general address. “Crew will go to second shift.”

  Belowdecks had waited long enough.

  “Sabin speaking,” came a smooth, routine murmur following that. “Situation remains much the same. We have not received adequate answers from station. We have not received a response from the alien presence. As you move through the ship, bear in mind the location of nearest takeholds. We will specifically notify crew of any change in the level of alert.”

  Sabin was continuing to inform crew. Give her that. They were going to the second of the ship’s four shifts, one that properly was her own crew. And evidently she wasn’t going to rest now.

  “We might rest,” he said. Jago was right. It was only sensible. “The both of you—one wishes there were a bed, nadiin-ji.”

  “The floor is adequate, Bren-ji—room for one’s feet, at least. Will the chair suffice?”

  “Admirably,” he said, and they rested—Banichi and Jago in full kit, with room to stretch out, at least, himself in a partially reclined chair, hardly daring shut his eyes, because of the buzz of communication in his ear. It became a white sound, and it was too easy just to go out.

  He concentrated all the same, aware from the flow of communications that Sabin, still linked, had gone temporarily to her own cabin. That there was a shift-change in progress on the bridge.

  The ship still waited for response, still waited.

  “Guildmaster Braddock speaking,” came suddenly, clearly, the station’s answer, a different voice. “Affirmative on your last query, captain. Don’t take any action toward the outlying ship. Repeat, take no action. We estimate it’s a robot outputting its observations to some more remote presence, which may or may not be manned. Your arrival has lit a fire under the situation. Come in immediately.”

  That did it. He wasn’t going to lie there after that answer, rational and sensible as it might be on the surface. He was sure Sabin would head back for the deck like a streak.

  Faster. An answer came immediately. “C1, repeat our former query as a response.”

  Sabin hadn’t budged an inch.

  Damn, he thought. But he approved her obstinacy. If there was any doubt about the fuel situation and they weren’t talking about the alien, he was just as glad she wasn’t taking Phoenix in to become part of a larger, predictably orbiting target.

  He heartily wis
hed there were better answers out of Reunion. But going out there at the moment wouldn’t help matters. He had nothing to say.

  “Senior captain,” he heard Jase say, and he tried to stay in his semi-rest, expecting Jase to concur in the response, or to report the shift change complete. “We have a flash response from the alien. Three bright pulses.”

  That was it. He flung the chair upright, and moved.

  6

  He and Sabin came out into the corridor at the same moment, Banichi and Jago close behind him, Cenedi exiting the dowager’s cabin, Gin and Jerry not far behind.

  “It’s not a damn group tour,” Sabin muttered, ahead of them only by virtue of her cabin’s position in the corridor. Words floated in her wake and echoed in Bren’s earpiece. “Advice, Mr. Cameron. Advice!”

  “Repeat their signal sequence at the same pace as our answer. Not upping the bet. Duplication, we can hope, is perceived as neutrally cooperative. I hope it gains us time, maybe a further signal to compare.”

  “Second captain. Do you copy? Implement.”

  “Implementing,” Jase’s answer came immediately.

  Bridge personnel had all changed. Every seat was filled, all the same, every head directed absolutely to console screens and output.

  “If that should be a robot,” Bren said as they arrived in Jase’s vicinity, “we might try to calculate the position of any outlying installation by any significant lag in their reply.”

  “Ahead of you, Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. “We’ll be working on that information.”

  “Or it could just represent the lag-time in their decision-making,” he said. “We’ve already told them we’re independent enough that we generate answers when station doesn’t. Contact station and get them to join us in another response. Indicate their cooperation with us.”

  “The hell they’ll do that,” Sabin muttered, but: “C1,” she said. “Transmission to station. Quote: Request you also transmit three bright flashes, identical duration, toward spook source. Critical you comply.”