Explorer

  “The Archive at Reunion,” Jase added, “has to be deleted. No matter what.”

  “We do what we can.”

  “Senior captain, a piece of history, one of those irrelevant bits: Earth had a very famous piece of rock called the Rosetta Stone, a translation key that put two languages together in the same context—one known, one hitherto undecipherable. If the aliens get a live human and that record, captain—and we don’t know what they have, at this point—”

  “Hell with your rocks. If some batch of aliens track our wake, we’re dead and Alpha is dead. End of relevance to anything. We take out the Archive if we can. We have a look around and we go back to Alpha. It’s the recent knowledge that matters. Getting the ship refueled, finding out what’s going on there and getting out unobserved is number one priority. Granted there’s fuel convenient, which I personally doubt. I’m not an optimist.”

  “Can we reach Gamma?” Jase asked.

  That drew a quirk of the brow. “Maybe. Maybe that’s been hit. So, between you, me, and our guests,” Sabin said, on that sober note, “if I have to form a completely cheerful concept of where we’re going, it involves a functioning station with a full fuel load and nothing more exotic, thank you. So you can remain irrelevant. So we can rescue enough people to make the crew happy. Or prove it’s impossible. This always was a crackpot mission, purely on crew pressure, nothing more.—Mr. Kaplan, another, if you please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kaplan moved instantly, filled the cup, gave it back.

  “So if you ask me what you haven’t pressed, would I fake a new tape? No. But I’ll use this one. Am I going to deal politically with the Pilots’ Guild if we find anyone alive? Damned right I am, and if we’re lucky enough to have fuel, we’re going to be very correctly Guild until the ship’s fueled and ready. Do we have that, Mr. Cameron? If we do find a live station, you’re going to take orders and keep your alien aristocrats under tight orders and out of sight.”

  “I perfectly follow your reasoning, captain. Though I’m not the one who gives the orders in that department.”

  “I deal with you. What’s your diplomacy worth if you can’t persuade your own side?”

  “Point taken, captain. Meanwhile—can we get the log record from the incident that sent your ship running off to Gamma?”

  “Second, we’re not disseminating log records among the crew. Or to the Mospheirans. That’s my diplomacy. Hear me?”

  Somehow Sabin had rather well hijacked their agreement. Their security already knew and wouldn’t talk. The dowager was the soul of secrets. Gin would inevitably find out. That left only the ship’s crew still in the dark. And Sabin was still the autocrat she was determined to be.

  “Give us the log records, captain. I’d think you’d want all the information you could get out of that incident. We can extract it. We can possibly give you information you don’t know you have.”

  “We’re in transit, headed for a ship-move, Mr. Cameron. Am I going to abort that operation for some piddling records search?”

  “You might well,” Bren said levelly, “if informing your own resource people what you might have done wrong the last time saved you all those small inconveniences you name.”

  “We’ll see,” Sabin said.

  We’ll see, by experience, could take forever. But it was what they had. Sabin sipped her tea and talked about the day’s schedule as if there was nothing in all creation out of the ordinary, a rapidfire series of hours and acronyms that made only marginal sense to an outsider, but that Jase seemed to follow.

  “Well,” Sabin said, then, reaching the bottom of the small cup, “some of us go on duty at this hour.” She set down the cup, got up and gathered up her security. “Thank you for breakfast, Captain Graham. Good night to you. Good morning, Mr. Cameron.”

  “Good morning,” Bren murmured, as Jase murmured the same, at the edge of his night. Foreign habits. Planetary habits. Sabin used the expression consciously, in irony, Bren was quite sure, and after the door shut, with Jase’s security and Sabin and her security on the other side of it, he realized he’d just held his breath.

  “We’re alive,” he said.

  “Don’t joke,” Jase said.

  “Do you believe that?” Bren asked.

  “That she took it that well? I don’t. Meanwhile what you do with the tape is in your discretion. I trust you.”

  They’d reached, as Sabin had observed, the end of Jase’s day and the dawn of his. The information was in his hand. The map and that record and the pieces of information he’d gathered were going to keep his staff and the dowager’s very busy for the next number of hours. If only, God help them, they could get those log records on what Stani Ramirez had done. But if he went on pushing Sabin, they might lose the cooperation they did have.

  “This the last time I’m going to see you before we move?” Bren asked.

  “Likely.” Jase offered his hand, a quick, solid grip. “We’ll work on it. I’ll nudge her about those records, much as I can. Likely one more day’s work before the move, but unless something comes up, I’m going to be seeing to details up here on one-deck . . . for days.”

  “Same below,” Bren said, and let go the handshake—wishing, after a year of numbing tedium intermittent with bone-shaking anxiety, that they’d had this information at the start of the voyage, not at the end. At the start, back at Alpha, things had seemed cut-and-dried simple: go back, fulfill what the crew thought was a plain promise of rescue of their stranded relatives, if the station survived, and pull the old Guild off Reunion, destroying all sensitive records in the process. Only on the voyage the wider truth of the senior captains’ assessment of the situation began leaking out, bit by bit, incident by incident. The only senior available to them here was Sabin. The other, Ogun, was back managing things at Alpha—presumably not pushing relations with the atevi further or faster than prudent.

  And typical of any dealing with Phoenix’s original four captains—he wished he knew which half of all Sabin said was the truth, or what resources she held that had made her willing to agree to this voyage, and what secrets she still kept close. More fuel reserve than they’d ever admitted to their allies who’d filled their tanks? A potential fuel dump at a place called Gamma? On both accounts, very reassuring news, though it would have slowed refueling efforts back at Alpha and given political ammunition to those who hadn’t want to fuel the ship at all.

  But both the possibility of repair to the station and a fear of finding alien presence there? Was that Sabin’s natural voyage-end pessimism at work, or a long-held conclusion based on more information than they’d yet laid hands on?

  Jase had to work with the woman, had to maintain cooperation and simultaneously keep alert for sudden shifts in Sabin’s intentions—about which they were still not convinced.

  “Take care,” Bren wished him.

  “Take care,” Jase said, too, and added, pointedly, counting the aiji-dowager down on five-deck, full of justifiable questions of her own: “Good luck.”

  3

  There was no extended comment from Banichi and Jago, even in the lift: there, the ship’s eavesdropping was a given. There was no comment, at first, as they crossed toward the closed door of their own section, through that foyer they shared with Kroger’s corridor.

  But for the first time it was moderately safe to talk, in Ragi. “You followed most of it,” Bren said, “nadiin-ji.”

  “Certainly important points, nadi-ji,” Banichi said. “But not enough to be confident of understanding Sabin-aiji.” Banichi let them through the closed section door and into the long corridor that was their own domain. The dowager’s staff stood guard, as always, and passed them on without a word.

  “No one understands Sabin-aiji,” Bren muttered. “She deliberately obscures her actions.”

  “One perceives,” Jago said as they walked, “that there may have been a falsified television image when last the ship visited this station. That more secret records may be at issue.”
r />   “True in both instances.” He gathered his breath for an explanation. Didn’t even know where to start, about Ramirez’s actions and Jase’s suspicions, that ran back for decades.

  A missile from out of the galley hit the corridor wall.

  Ricocheted to the floor.

  And skidded toward them on the tiles.

  A red-fletched, blunt arrow.

  With a whisper of leather and a light jingling of silver weapon-attachments, Jago bent down and gathered it from their feet.

  A young atevi face peered from the dowager’s galley, down the corridor. Gold eyes went very wide.

  “No, we are not the indulgent side of staff,” Jago said ominously. “I am Assassins’ Guild on duty, young aiji, escorting the aiji of the heavens to his apartments in dignity fit for his office, young aiji. I react quickly to threat. Fortunately for you, young aiji, I react as quickly in restraint, a lesson which in future might prove more beneficial than archery. Do you know what your father would say if he saw this arrow at Bren-aiji’s feet?”

  The future aiji exited the door, bow in hand, and stood contrite . . . as tall as a grown human; but far shorter than adult atevi. “Jago-ji, I put another lamina on the bow.”

  “Evidently.” Jago strode to the point of impact, which bore a slight dent. Young muscles as solid as an adult human’s had put a fair draw on a bow that had grown thicker on this voyage—a bow with added strength, since the boy had tinkered with it. “You have damaged the ship.”

  “It’s only a dent, Jago-ji.”

  Oh, we are getting bold, Bren thought, wondering what his staff was going to do with this burgeoning personality, if they all lived so long. That sullen look was his father’s. Or—one dreaded to think—his grandfather’s.

  “Dare you say so?” Jago was not daunted. And towered over the boy. “Dare you say so? Did you build this ship? Did you place those panels? Do you command those who can?”

  Clearly the answer was no. Cajeiri didn’t command anything about the ship.

  “So?” Jago said. “Do you fancy going to Sabin-aiji and asking someone to repair it?”

  Set of the jaw. “I would go to Sabin-aiji.”

  “That would hardly be as wise as an aiji needs to be,” Banichi said in his deep voice. “Do you know why?”

  Clearly that answer was no, too. But the boy was not a complete fool, and lowered the level of aggression.

  “I was seeing how hard it would hit,” Cajeiri said.

  “And did not intend to dent the ship?”

  “I beg pardon, nadiin.”

  “Wrap the points,” Jago said shortly, “aiji-ma. Be wiser.”

  “Yes, Jago-nadi.” The young wretch set the offending instrument of war butt-down on the deck, its heel in his instep, and unstrung it. He took the arrow from Jago. And bowed to authority, attempting charm. “Good morning, Bren-nandi. Is Jase-aiji coming down?”

  “Little pitchers with big ears,” Bren translated the human proverb, which Cajeiri understood and thought funny. “I have had my meeting with Jase. It was very nice, thank you.”

  “Grandmother wants you to come to breakfast,” Cajeiri said. “But the hour is past breakfast.”

  One could imagine she wanted to hear from him.

  “She has not yet invited me, nadi.”

  “I told Narani. I brought the message.”

  “Staff does these things quite efficiently on their own,” Banichi said dryly. “If you can shoot at lord Bren, you can manage beyond the children’s language, am I correct?”

  “No,” Cajeiri said defensively. He was only seven. Consequently he spoke Ragi without the architecture of courtesies and rank and elaborate numerology of his seniors. He had liberties appropriate to his age—and was bored beyond bearing, being the only seven-year-old aboard. Ship’s crew had left their minor children, considering it was not a safe voyage.

  But the aiji in Shejidan had sent his son on a voyage that should teach him more than bad behavior and dangerous familiarity.

  “I shall see the aiji-dowager,” Bren said. “Go beg Narani-nadi to arrange some graceful hanging on this wall, to save the servants asking each other who could have damaged our residence.”

  “Yes, Bren-aiji.”

  “And regard security’s advice. Aijiin do not defend themselves with bows and arrows—”

  “With guns, Bren-nadi!”

  “Not even with guns, Cajeiri-nadi. Their staffs defend them. The very humblest servant who locks a bedroom window at night defends them. Not to mention the Assassins’ Guild, who do carry guns, and whose reactions are very quick, and not to be trifled with. Please live to grow up, young aiji. Your father and mother would be very disappointed otherwise. So even would your great-grandmother.”

  Cajeiri’s eyes . . . they looked at one another eye to eye . . . grew very large.

  “And by no means forget,” Bren said, “that I am several times your age. So your father would remind you.”

  “Yes, Bren-aiji.”

  He liked the boy. And like was for salads. Love was for flavors of fruit drink. It wasn’t an emotion one could even translate for a species that operated by hierarchies and grouping and emotionally charged associations.

  “You are within my man’chi,” was as close as he could come. “No matter you behave like this. But be careful. The ship is going to move soon. We’re going into a place of considerable danger.”

  “Are we?” Eagerness. The boy was seven. “Is it the lost station?”

  “It may be. Meanwhile—wrap the arrowheads. Don’t shoot my staff. And see me later. I’m sure we can find some new videos for the trip.”

  “Some human ones!”

  “Some human ones, too.” They had a store of them. A large store. In consideration where they were going and the risks they ran, they’d dumped a great deal of the human Archive from the ship, entrusting it to the planet and the station of their origin. But they’d kept a few useful bits. “Now apologize, and then off with you to tell Narani.”

  “One is very sorry,” the scoundrel said, with all his father’s winning ways, and bowed to him and to Jago and Banichi. “One is doubly sorry, nadiin-ji. And begs to be excused.”

  “Go,” Banichi said, and the boy escaped.

  Galley staff had watched all this from the open door.

  “One is equally sorry, nandi,” the cook said—the dowager’s men, all young, except the cook; and bet that Cenedi, the dowager’s chief of security, had had an immediate report about the dent that had sprung, likely without much warning, from the depths of their premises.

  “One very well understands, nadi,” Bren said. Never turn aside an atevi apology: they came when due. “One is informed the dowager has sent for me?”

  “You were expected at breakfast, nandi,” the cook said. “The aiji-dowager is now in her study.”

  “I’d better go there immediately,” he said to his staff.

  “One will inform Narani,” Jago said, and they turned back toward the dowager’s main doors, their own unvisited—well, except by a boy on a life-saving mission. The dowager was not long on patience.

  Several doors back, in their relatively compact living arrangement, this linear, human-designed interlock accommodated what should be roughly circular routes, by atevi habit. Atevi ingenuity did manage: the dowager’s household accessed the bone-numbing cold of a service tunnel running behind the cabins’ back walls for brief, discreet trips past the dowager’s front door, where a guest entered.

  He rapped softly—a shared custom—rather than use the signal button. The door opened. Cenedi had a small, highly electronic secretary desk in the curtained-off foyer. Cenedi was often at work there, and Cenedi was on the spot at the door, right behind the dowager’s major domo. Expecting them—no miracle, given their ubiquitous communications links.

  “Welcome,” Cenedi said. “Welcome, nandi.”

  “Indeed, thank you, Cenedi-ji.—I shall keep the coat, nadi.” This for a servant who silently offered to take it. The do
wager’s favored temperatures were too cold for comfort—this, the woman who preferred a drafty mountain fortress with minimal plumbing to the luxury of temperate—and political—Shejidan.

  He retained his coat, left Banichi and Jago to their ordinary social interface with the dowager’s security, and followed the servant’s polite lead to the service access, a bone-chilling walk three doors down, a duck of the head to get into the comparative heat of the dowager’s underheated study.

  They could have gone back into the main corridor. The dowager did otherwise. The staff did otherwise. So her guests, once admitted to her premises, did otherwise.

  The dowager occupied a chair in what was, given the carefully restrained objects on the shelves, an office-study-cum-library—in short, all those functions that in the dowager’s establishment were sanity-saving and civilized.

  The dowager, knitted shawl about her, read. And looked up from her book.

  Scowling. Darkly scowling.

  “You coddle the boy.”

  Where was her communications link? He had never spotted it.

  “He’s bigger than I am,” Bren said, and it struck the dowager’s humor. She laughed, and laughed, and moved her cane to tap the other chair.

  He sat. He didn’t begin a report. He waited about two breaths.

  “So,” she said. “And how is Sabin-aiji?”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Have you broken your fast?”

  “No, aiji-ma, but—”

  “But. But. But. Will you have breakfast? Or tea?”

  “I fear my stomach could by no means deal with a breakfast, aiji-ma, and I have had tea upstairs.”

  “And your estimate?”

  That was the formal invitation. “Aiji-ma, you know the ship-aijiin lied to the crew.”

  Impatient wave of the hand. “Estimate of Sabin-aiji.”