Explorer

  He was too tired to think. The brain was attempting configurations of thought just too complex to chase right now. “Instinct, aiji-ma, says it’s not likely. They wait. They have waited for six years, it seems, and one thinks they will go on waiting so long as we keep from alarming them.”

  “The station taking the ship would surely alarm them.”

  “It would. I’m sure it would—if they detected that.”

  “And this Guild. They might have made us feel welcome and easy in this meeting and then attacked. On the contrary, they have offended Sabin-aiji and now Jase-aiji. They have offended this crew. So you say.”

  “So it seems, aiji-ma.”

  A wave of an arthritic hand. “They are fools.”

  “They have been fools for centuries, aiji-ma. But armed and powerful fools.”

  “This authority is fearful of us? Or have they some distaste for subterfuge?”

  “One believes they are fearful for their authority, aiji-ma, and know that man’chi will divert from them toward us once truths begin to come out.”

  “Ought we then to provide these truths?”

  “We would frighten the population, aiji-ma, until we can provide ourselves as an avenue of escape.” He was so tired he was falling on his face, yearning for nothing more than his own mattress, and the dowager, characteristically, gave him nightmares. “And we still hesitate to encumber the ship by taking a great number aboard. We have to let Jase attempt to deal with this.”

  “So we spend all effort on this Guild squabble. And this Guild had rather squabble than deal with this foreign ship—after offending it by firing at it, as seems the case. This is hardly reasonable behavior. Have they a reason for confidence we as yet fail to know?”

  The world swung around him. The walls did. He found no solid ground.

  Dots . . . marched on a screen. An alien craft. An incursion. An expedition. His mind was trying to form a conclusion.

  “Aiji-ma, I don’t know. I have no answers.”

  “But will find out. Will find out very soon.”

  “I must, aiji-ma.” he said, “but now, aiji-ma, I plead exhaustion, and trust myself and my staff to your resourcefulness, aiji-ma, confident in that, always.”

  Dots and light and dark. Flow of events.

  The dowager said: “Sabin appointed Tamun.”

  Sometimes Ilisidi turned corners and forgot to inform those engaged in arguments with her. But this leap of logic jerked him sideways. Tamun occurred to her.

  Tamun, a junior captain, had mutinied against Ramirez, senior captain, when Phoenix had come to the atevi world.

  Why, an ateva would ask? What had changed in Tamun’s mind? What was the agenda on which he operated?

  That was the cliff on which Ilisidi set him to perch for whatever sleep he could get.

  Sabin, not within Ilisidi’s man’chi, remained a question—in Ilisidi’s mind, surely. In his, too. In Jase’s. In no few reasoning individuals’ minds, the more since her communications had gone silent—hers and the majority of the ship’s trained security personnel. But there was more than that. Sabin’s relation to Tamun had always troubled them. And now Sabin, who had appointed Tamun to office, had fallen into Guild hands. And taken twenty-odd ship’s personnel into silence with her.

  Had Tamun mutinied over the station mission tape? Over information Ramirez withheld from crew? Had Tamun been outraged crew? Or a Guild agent in the path of command?

  “I haven’t forgotten,” he murmured. “I never have forgotten.”

  Ilisidi lifted that thin, age-wrought hand. “One would never suppose that what was true when Ramirez left this place is still true here. All things change. Persons fall from power. Persons rise. Agendas change.” A second time Ilisidi waggled her fingers. “An old woman has little to do but think in her isolation, understand. These may be idle fancies. One amuses oneself. But weary as you are, you surely pay little attention to us. Go. Sleep. Rest.”

  “Aiji-ma.” He bowed. His wits had taken one final battering. But he thought. Crazed as he was, he found his brain working.

  Dicey. Very dicey, he said to himself, tired enough and bemused enough to walk into walls. He took his leave, found the door switch and exited back to the cruel, cold glare of the corridor lights, to alienly human corridors where Cenedi waited, along with Banichi and Jago.

  “One is grateful for the dowager’s concern,” Bren said, Cenedi having every right to have some kind of summary. His voice was going. “As always, the dowager offers good advice. Utmost vigilance. She reminds us that whatever exists here was not planned for our arrival. We are interlopers in a situation. We may not be its most active component. And she asked about Tamun, in connection with Sabin’s silence. But I have to rest. Forgive me, Cenedi-ji, I have to rest now.” He was crazily sleepier and sleepier, a cascade of bodily resources all deserting him.

  “Nandi.” Cenedi evidenced that he understood his fatigue, and posed no challenge. Bren gave a small bow, about all he had in him, and walked, trying to make it a straight line. He had Banichi and Jago alone, now, and at the end of the hall, saw his own quarters, his own staff waiting, with Narani.

  Wise, good Narani, who would do everything possible to put him to bed for a decent few hours.

  “Supper and bath and bed, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.

  “Bed,” he said. “The dowager has some few misgivings that Sabin-aiji may be—or become—unreliable. I confess I have similar misgivings, though tempered by a feeling I haven’t—at the moment—the wit to explain.” He thought it was a straggling, struggling human feeling trying to work its way through his brain, but he couldn’t, in his fogged state, be sure of its nature. “And we should remain concerned we have only the word of this Guild that fuel is ready for us. That they would lie—yes, not even for much advantage. Their instinct is to lie, to protect all information, useful and not. There may be fuel. There may not. Things are stable, but not as I would wish, nadiin-ji. We have this offended alien out there. We have a question, nadiin, why Tamun once turned against Ramirez, and what Sabin knows that she never told Jase or us. She is no fool. Yet she deliberately took an untrustworthy guard and went aboard the station, leaving Jase with the ship, armed and warned, and told to heed no word from her until she returns.”

  “With increasing certainty,” Banichi said, “we must take this station, Bren-nadi.”

  Mild shock. At least mild shock. Trust Banichi’s absolute clear view of a situation, when his own stuck at leaping over human barriers. He had thought of taking over the ship—with Jase’s consent. Banichi was far more ambitious.

  Reasonable? Not reasonable? His heart gave two wilder beats, no longer quite panicked. He wasn’t inhibited by his humanity. Or by being atevi. He had occasionally to apply it as a logic-check, as a brake on atevi actions that might be a shade excessive when dealing with humans not quite as hair-triggered as his escort.

  But plan big? Banichi certainly did that.

  Taking the station would solve a certain number of problems here.

  Relations with humans might suffer . . . not alone of the Guild, but of the ship—

  And of persons capable and willing to serve as agents, they had no more than the dowager’s security, and his.

  Yet for what had Tabini-aiji appointed him lord of the heavens and sent him out here? Not to sit on his hands, that was sure.

  “One must rest a few hours, nadiin-ji. My reasoning grows exceedingly suspect.”

  “Shall we,” Jago asked, “consider possibilities in this direction?”

  “I believe we should. We may take Jase into our confidence. I shall have to finesse that. But I believe we may ultimately rely on Jase. On his man’chi. On the man’chi of the crew to him. On the association of our mission to all his associations.” His brain veered momentarily sidelong, into human thinking. Or hybrid thinking, such as his and Jase’s had gotten to be. “I don’t think he expected man’chi from the crew, such as he has. They will follow him. And that is a rare and extr
aordinary asset among humans, nadiin-ji.” He didn’t know whether he was thinking straight or not, but it seemed to him he had suddenly drawn a fair bead on the situation. “That is an asset we should greatly value—this crew, and Jase.”

  “One perceives so, Bren-ji,” Jago said, and Banichi said something of the like.

  He didn’t even remember reaching his room. He had the impression he’d spoken with staff. He thought he’d turned down a pot of tea. He undressed, handing the gun as well as the clothing to Bindanda and finished his muddled thought about Jase—something about the meeting with crew—while lying on his face, naked on cool sheets, with the scent and the feel of his own mattress to tell him where he was.

  Only a crazed recollection of his hours above five-deck persisted to tell him, indeed, he and Jase had actually—well, if not won the round, at least had the problem locked away. Here and there were not congruent. These decks didn’t match the others. The reasons down here didn’t match those on upper decks, but they fit well enough. They got along.

  He didn’t know when he’d been as tired, as absolutely out of resources. He crashed again, beyond coherency, telling himself he had to get up and check on essentials, if he could remember what they were—involving Guild enforcers locked away, involving Sabin, involving that great hole in the station . . .

  He waked a third time and crawled toward the edge of his bed in that total darkness that, with atevi, passed for moderate. “Rani-ji?”

  Staff kept the intercom live, to hear such calls. It was not, however, Narani who answered the summons, but Bindanda: bulky shadow in the doorway, a merciless spear of light from the outer corridor, a glare that afflicted his eyes and comforted him at once. If there were any sort of trouble from upper decks he was sure domestic staff would wake him to report.

  They hadn’t. He could sleep if he wished, and oh, he wished. Resolution trembled. So did the arm that supported his weight.

  But Jago wasn’t here. Jago wasn’t here.

  “Is there any word down from Jase, Danda-ji?”

  “No, nandi.”

  “Jase surely would tell me if there were developments.” He believed it, but Jase, too, had to rest. And he daren’t pin the future of two species on his faith in anyone’s waking him. “Kindly see to it this happens, Danda-ji. And maintain our watch. Jase must sleep, too.”

  “One will surely make that effort, nandi. Do go back to sleep. I have that firm instruction, to say so.”

  “Where is Jago?”

  “Resting, one believes.”

  Then it was all right. Bindanda wouldn’t lie to him. “I have every confidence in staff,” he murmured—and dropped onto his face.

  The door closed. The light went.

  If, however, Banichi weren’t up to something, Jago would be safe in his bed, asleep, would she not? And she wasn’t. And resting didn’t mean sleeping. So Banichi was up to something.

  The whole staff might be up to it along with them—whatever it was. Cenedi might likewise be aiding and abetting.

  And any action involving foreign humans—or worse, not humans—triggered every warning bell the long-time paidhi-aiji owned.

  He urgently needed, despite Bindanda’s wishes, to get up off his face and get dressed and advise his staff where the limits were.

  Don’t assume. Don’t do any of those things that had been downright fatal in interspecies relations. The Pilots’ Guild on Reunion Station wasn’t the President’s office on Mospheira. There was no equivalency.

  And most of all, none of them knew the nature of that ship out there. There were answers they had to get. A mission for that craft that might or might not let them leave this place: there was no guarantee of reciprocal favors—that logic didn’t reach to the back end of the human spectrum and it didn’t hold up as far as atevi councils, either. Expectation of like result was a box that hemmed in his thinking, that guided him toward what might be a false conclusion, when he ought to be using his head and thinking of multiple ways out.

  He needed to be consulting with his staff—knowing—at least being reasonably confident—that Banichi wouldn’t actually put anything into operation without telling him. He’d told Banichi that. Hadn’t he given that instruction?

  He couldn’t quite remember. But he had confidence in Banichi, more even than in Jase.

  His eyes were shut. Sleep wasn’t a very long hike.

  But along that short journey, he began to think critically—a sign of returning faculties.

  The Guild had always been difficult. The Guild had been difficult back when the path to a unified humanity had been well-paved and lined with flowers.

  The Guild, seeing the attraction of a green planet luring its crew, had doggedly held to their notion of space-based development, and attempted, instead, to force the human colony safely in orbit at the atevi planet to leave and go live in orbit about barren Maudit, instead—where temptations would be fewer.

  Where the colony would be utterly dependent on Guild orders and alternatives would be fewer.

  That hadn’t worked. Colonists had left in droves. Flung themselves at the atevi planet and escaped by parachute.

  Point: whatever the Guild had in its records about that situation, the Guild did still remember, surely, that the green world had had inhabitants. They did know that the colony they’d run off and left—and ultimately sent Ramirez back to find—was going to be to some degree in contact with the steam-age locals.

  And the ship, returning to that place, had stayed gone nine years.

  That things had radically changed, given a few hundred years and the remembered direction of the colony’s ambition—it didn’t take geniuses on the Guild board to figure that could happen. It didn’t take a genius on their side to figure that the Guild was nervous about what influences had worked on the ship during a ten-year absence . . . nervous, too, one might think, about Ramirez’s prior actions and what his influence might have wrought.

  The Guild had wanted to talk to Sabin, alone, while their investigators prowled over the ship.

  Note too, they’d wanted the ship to move into close dock—from which position the ship’s airlock was accessible to them at their whim.

  Sabin had cannily said no to that. She’d taken enough security to keep Jenrette in line, if she had the inclination to keep Jenrette in line—or she’d deliberately stripped security away from the ship, for whatever reasons Sabin had. She didn’t say why.

  The Guild tried to pretend they didn’t have a hole in their station and didn’t have a huge alien ship sitting out there with its own agenda. Phoenix tried to pretend planetary locals had never entered its equation. Nobody was saying anything to anybody.

  There was a dark space in his reasoning. He realized he’d been asleep.

  The door had opened. Someone was standing in the light.

  Had he been here before? Had he drifted off while Bindanda was talking to him?

  “Bren-ji.” Jago’s voice. “One regrets to wake you, but Jase wishes to speak to you.”

  He moved for the edge of the bed. Fast. Too fast, for his reeling sense of balance. “Is he here?”

  “On the intercom,” Jago said.

  He set a foot on the floor, fumbled after his robe, missed it, and went straight to the intercom without it—punched in, shivering in the cold. “Jase? This is Bren.”

  “Bren. Good morning.” Space-based irony. Or memory of old times. “I hope you got some sleep.”

  “Did.” God, he thought, teeth chattering. Get to the point, Jase. “Heard from Sabin?”

  “No, unhappily. Not a word. I need answers. So I’m giving our several guests to you.”

  Gratefully, he felt the robe settle about his shoulders, Jago’s doing. He grabbed it close. “What do you want me to do with them?”

  “Finesse it, nadi-ji. I’m for half an hour of rest.”

  “Not slept?”

  “Off and on the bridge all shift, with Guild messages that don’t say a thing. I’m getting stupid without slee
p. Which I understand you did have, lucky bastard. So go to it. I’ll meet you down there. I want the truth, Bren. Or I’m going to lose my self-restraint and pound it out of them myself.”

  “I’m going.” He had not the least idea what he was going to do. Jase was, in very fact, hoarse and on the edge, and he got the picture: the Guild was getting hotter and hotter, demanding restoration of contact with their people, Sabin was still missing—under what conditions Jase didn’t know. And somebody had to move off dead center soon.

  Jase clicked out. He did.

  He raked a hand through his hair, exposing an arm to icy air.

  “Jago-ji. I’m needed. I’ll bathe.” The mind was a blank. But he had to deal with humans. “Island dress.”

  “One hears,” Jago said from the doorway. “And for us, nadi?”

  He heard, too. “Please get a little sleep, nadi-ji. I shall have Jase’s guards, and I shall take no chances, none whatsoever, Jago-ji. They should not see you yet. But I assure you. I set no conditions on your assistance if you should hear any threat to me.”

  “One accepts, nandi,” Jago said. Not wholly satisfied, it was clear, but much mollified by the emergency clause.

  “Asicho can sit duty, nadi. I shall need you soon. I’ll need your wits sharp when I do. But one thing I shall wish immediately: have Bindanda pack a modest picnic basket for five humans. And tuck in a bag of sugar candies.”

  A slight hesitation. Jago could speculate quite easily that the picnic wasn’t for Gin and company.

  “Yes,” Jago said.

  Accepted.

  Reassured, he dumped the robe and ducked into his shower, chilled half to the bone.