There was the Jase he’d known on the mainland. Thank God.
“And the other captains?” Bren asked.
“Ogun-aiji will stay by agreements,” Jase said, “and I vote with Ogun, generally. In that light, I don’t think they will appoint a fourth until Ogun and Sabin can resolve their differences, because I can prevent it, if I vote with one or the other.”
“And these differences, nand’ Jase?” Geigi asked.
Jase considered. Bren tried hard to think, typing between species-separate languages. Hindbrain was completely occupied, and the rest of the brain just listened, hoping for peace in the room and no repercussions outside, down the line.
“Differences in style,” was Jase’s answer. There it was: stone wall. Jase didn’t discuss internal ship politics. That was probably wise, Bren thought. And stopped typing to gather a thought, a necessary question of his own.
“What agreements, nandi?” he asked Jase in Ragi. “And what prevented Ramirez-aiji from removing station personnel from Reunion at that time?”
“I don’t know,” Jase said, and said it in ship-speak. Toggle-flip. Mental shift, to another world, another entire logic-set. And likely, at the core of his being, Jase hadn’t wholly noticed he’d switched. He was thinking ship now, and spoke its language.
Bren knew that kind of transaction, at gut level, he knew.
“Ogun knows that answer if anyone does,” Jase said further. “I don’t.”
“Are those remaining on Reunion… Guild?” Bren asked bluntly.
“It may be,” Jase said faintly.
Pilots’ Guild. Bad word with the Mospheirans. Very bad word. Kroger’s face and Paulson’s said it.
“It’s likeliest that’s who’s in charge,” Jase said. “Some portion of the old Guild, at least. Someone or some group of it. Ogun says he isn’t sure what passed between Ramirez and station leadership. If he does know anything beyond that, I’m not sure Sabin does. Which is reasonable. She came to her post during the voyage.”
“And Tamun didn’t know.”
“Logically, no. Tamun would have used the information in a heartbeat, if he’d known. He’d have torn the crew apart.”
“One believes so,” Bren said in Ragi. It was the strongest argument that Sabin hadn’t known—Tamun having been her protege. He saw a frown on Geigi’s face—perplexity displayed for Jase as an intimate, the dispassionate atevi mask momentarily dropped… perhaps on that very point. “Let me add, too, in explanation for Lord Geigi,” Bren interjected, “that Gin-ji and nand’ Paulson have a bitter history and an ancestral anger with this Guild, because of past deeds.”
“Be assured I’m not Guild,” Jase said, flatly, in ship language. “As for Guild being on the ship… if it didn’t all transfer to the station at Reunion, if there’s any vestige of it left on the ship, the majority of us aren’t aware of it being here. I think Ramirez intended, by creating Yolanda and me—especially in appointing me where I am—that we break with the past. The whole ship has no illusions what the Guild did. We know the responsibility it bears for the way it dealt with the colonists. Guild leadership dealt badly with crew, for that matter. And for us, for us, in terms of our making our own decisions, the Guild’s become just a name on a remote record. A thing captains might still belong to as a matter of course and never think about or reference when we’re away from the leadership. What the crew wants right now is an answer why we went off and left people who probably didn’t have any choice about being left under Guild authority. In that sense, they don’t like or trust the Guild any more than you do.”
“Second question.” Bren interrupted his typing. “What happened out there at Reunion, Jase-nandi, and was it the Guild’s fault?”
“The official story,” Jase began—that story was in the reports out for years: probably even Paulson and Ginny Kroger knew it inside and out, but Jase laid it on the table, in Ragi, once for all and with recent events factored in. “We’d made some sort of tenuous contact—more a sighting—aboard Phoenix, in a certain solar system, and we left and reported it immediately to the station. We did set instruments to listen and watch in that direction, but no attempt to contact these strangers. They turned up again, or what we thought might be them, at another solar system. We watched about thirty-six hours. We left. We looked at another near star, found nothing. When we went home to Reunion to report, we found it destroyed. Or what we thought was destroyed. We were there just long enough to take on a fast fuel load. That was still there, untouched. What we now know, of course—that wasn’t all that was left there, and they’d maintained that fueling port and safeguarded the fuel, but crew thought then it was just simply blind luck the refueling port still worked. We thought we were just very lucky to get out of there and travel on toward this system as our refuge. We don’t know why the attack happened. If Reunion did anything to provoke it, we don’t know. The station couldn’t have reached outside its area except by communications. It didn’t have any vessel but mining craft available to it. We don’t know what happened during the attack, and it turns out it wasn’t the devastating blow the crew looking at the station exterior assumed it was. If someone survived inside and intended to stay, clearly they survived with enough resources to assure we could fuel, and they had enough food production to assure they could survive at least two years for us to come here and report back to them. It’s been far more than two years, and we didn’t show up, and Captain Ramirez didn’t tell us there was any time agreed on for us to come back. So maybe there wasn’t an agreed time, and they won’t be surprised we’ve delayed here.”
“Two years,” Bren said.
“Travel time,” Jase said. “Round trip.”
Bren typed, in Ragi.
“One sees a difficult situation,” Geigi said. “And a dearth of answers. Jase-ji.”
“Nandi.”
“What of dangers to this station?” Geigi asked. “Is it only against eventualities that Ramirez-aiji wished the ship refueled, or does he foresee these aliens coming here?”
“I don’t know,” Jase said. “I truly don’t know, nandi. I don’t see that our interests have diverged that far. The crew does feel obliged to you and to this place. This has become—it’s become our port. And that’s a matter of man’chi. But at the same time, there are so many unanswered questions, questions they should have known. If Ramirez-aiji left instructions beyond what he told me, those records aren’t within my authority to access. Ogun succeeds to Senior Captain. He knows, if anyone does. And he hasn’t told me. But the gist of it is this—Captain Ramirez did want to go back. He didn’t want to leave those people behind in the first place, but he didn’t know what he’d find here. And when he got here, of course he didn’t have the resources behind him that we have now. That’s changed. Ask the whole planet to trust him, ask you to work so hard fueling the ship—to send it back to the other station in return for some unprovable promise given here—I think he saw from the start that that wasn’t going to work. You had to have something of advantage in the exchange. And we had to have something for ourselves.”
Among the human faces at the end of the conference room, Jenrette, and Colby, who had been with Ramirez for decades, who might have been with him that long. There was wisdom in shifting the oldest staff to the newest captain on the council. There was, in Jase’s whole bearing at the moment, the burden of knowledge Jase might not have had an hour ago.
“The Guild, when it was in power here, wanted to establish this station to support the ship,” Jase said. “And when the station rebelled, it wanted to set up elsewhere, at Maudette. When the rebellion became louder and more widespread among the colonists, the Guild wanted to go farther out, to a place they’d spotted only by instrument. That didn’t work out. But there was a second choice. And there they stopped to mine and build, nandi. They called their station Reunion. Reunion of all humankind was what they meant. Reunion under one rule.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Paulson said, the first word from either of the Mo
spheirans in what was a deeply troubling—but not damned secret—admission. Mospheirans knew. Mospheirans had broken with the ship over that one point.
“As I said—we don’t support it, either, sir,” Jase said. “The Guild meant to build and multiply until they’d far outgrown anything that might happen here—and I suppose at the start they hoped to come back and simply absorb all the building and resource that might have developed at this planet, and have their way. They always wanted to have numerous stations, numerous colonies.”
“And they would wish to take the mainland for humans without struggle,” Geigi observed.
“They’re not interested in planets, as such, nandi. They don’t regard planets as important to them. They’ve long dismissed any attachment to any world except as a convenient way to aim and anchor their ship. The resources of a planet, if they can be gotten into space, they’re quite keen to have—but only on their terms. Always on their terms.”
“They believed they could get all they want elsewhere,” Paulson said, “if they had population enough to risk in the mining. But we threatened their authority, and rather than see our ideas create a general disaffection, they left.”
“And for this we build a ship?” Geigi asked, when that came into translation.
Jase looked as if he had something caught in his throat. “Ramirez-aiji wanted that ship built. And one also believes, nandi, that the aiji in Shejidan has been aware of the situation at Reunion and that he has other plans for that ship, himself. The aiji in Shejidan—and the President of Mospheira.”
Geigi sat back, confounded, Bren was sure, both by the information, and that Jase laid it on the table.
Tabini knew. Tabini knew.
“And what,” Bren asked quite calmly, remarkably calmly, “what do the other captains think?”
“Ramirez knew that the aiji had plans. I think Ogun and Sabin do… but I don’t think they care that he takes the first other ship, nandiin-ji. I’ve said I don’t think they take Guild orders any longer, but I couldn’t absolutely swear to that.”
“And you don’t swear to it.”
“I said I don’t take Guild orders, nor ever will. I wasn’t born to take Guild orders.”
“Ship-aiji,” Geigi said. Only aijiin had no upward man’-chi—no attachment above themselves: among atevi, it was a biological imperative—only a very, very few had all association in the world flowing toward them.
Fewer still felt no upward loyalty. Even Geigi would not claim as much for himself, or not claim it in anyone’s hearing—independent as he was, and capable of going into space and operating more or less independent of the whole Western Association and Tabini’s authority.
While Jase, their modest, quiet Jase, claimed to have no authority above him. Still, he was human, and that maverick separation didn’t mean the ability to use authority.
“Understand,” Bren interposed, “nandi, his lack of man’chi is not innate.” It was a debate even among atevi as to whether aijiin were born or taught. “But I think you understand that he’s taken a strong position, bringing Mr. Jenrette here, and demonstrating Mr. Kaplan, who spoke bluntly to Ogun in assembly, to be within his man’chi. This is not required. But he’s made that clear.”
“What was the full gist of Kaplan’s speech?” Geigi asked. “A challenge?”
“A challenge to the silence, nandi,” Jase said. “To the secrecy. And a declaration that Ramirez’s policies go on and that they won’t change them.”
“And the aiji, and the Presidenta, Jase?” Bren asked in Ragi. That admission was what still rang through his nerves, and what he was sure was percolating through Mosphieran suppositions in very alarming fashion—if not through Geigi’s atevi soul as well. “What did they agree?”
“That the world will have the next starship,” Jase said with deliberate obliqueness, “and the ship would get the fuel.
Not quite the exact agreement they’d published. Not the reassurances they’d offered that there was no way the aliens could get information out of Reunion’s wreckage.
“All those years,” Ginny said. “All those years we’ve been led along with one story. And now what? What are we supposed to do about this situation?”
“Jase,” Bren said. “What are we supposed to do?”
Leave the situation as it stood, just betray the people at that remote station, never come back—and coincidentally leave the Pilots’ Guild sitting out there on the touchiest frontier imaginable, free to call the shots with an alien enemy, free to create situations that others here at this station had to deal with by f their blood and their sweat.
Or find it unexpectedly on their doorstep. There was that possibility, that could no longer be dismissed with assurances.
That station out there had records of the ship’s origin at this star. And given a decade or so, an enemy might extract all sorts I of information.
There were certain understandings that never had gotten clarified—not as chance would have it, but as discretion would have it… little details the atevi establishment never had gotten around to discussing with their Mospheiran associates. But this one—Tabini knew?
Tabini knew, and the captains up here knew, and he hadn’t heard of any agreement?
He had a lot of trouble—personally—dealing with that one.
“There will be pressure from the crew to go back,” Jase said. “And Ramirez assuredly intended to. But I think he meant to take control of Reunion. That the aiji in Shejidan and the Presidenta ally with him, if they have ships—and if there was fuel.”
He’d forgotten to type. He felt as if the proverbial ton of bricks had landed.
“What’s he saying?” Paulson asked. Folly, perhaps, to have held this multi-language meeting. At the worst moments, the translator, personally involved, lost all his threads.
Not a single tit-for-tat, secrecy and refueling in exchange for a ship. It was a whole structured, years-old alliance. With an agenda that stretched from here to forever.
“He’s saying Tabini and the President, and I assume the State Department, agreed to refuel Phoenix in exchange for title to the second, and I assume third, starship as they’re built. I assume this is an alliance.” He’d never felt what he felt at the moment, this charge of adrenaline that had his hands shaking. Anger, it might be. Humiliation, along with it. And where was his right to be so shocked? He should have known. Friend, agent, translator, diplomat, in whatever capacity, Jase or Tabini or even Shawn should have damned well told him, but he had the wit to have dug it out, if he’d been alert enough. “I assume this all happened without me.”
“And without me,” Jase said, exploding the single most natural theory in a word, denying he’d been the intermediary.
“Might you translate, paidhiin-ji?” Geigi requested reasonably.
“Yes, nandi. We’re speaking of an extensive agreement between Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and the Presidenta, an agreement that both Jase and I deny making, but which Jase says indeed existed.”
“Yolanda,” Jase said, as if it just occurred to him who had, if neither of them had.
Yolanda.
Damn!
“We seem to have agreements in place.” Bren typed Mosphei’, furiously, while he spoke Ragi. “Yolanda Mercheson is the most likely intermediary who could have done this without our knowledge. We have reasonable suspicion now that the Guild is out at Reunion doing as it pleases, and Ramirez-aiji, commanding the only ship, the only mobile human agency, decided to come here and gain a solid base before challenging Guild authority. As it now seems Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and Tyers’ office all concurred in this fuel agreement, and in an alliance the terms of which we still do not fully understand. Now we have the robots we’d been wanting, Ramirez is dead, and the ship’s been fueled. Jase doesn’t know how these elements intersect, but they do clearly intersect, and he and I are both taken by surprise by these events. Understand—I’m speaking without consultation. I haven’t been able to get through to Tabini. But above all, in t
his situation, Mospheirans and atevi need to assert our share of control. We’re not going to be dictated to, pardon me, Jase, by the Captains’ Council. We want—”
An equal say? That wasn’t the half of it. The whole vista , spread out in his mind of a sudden, one of those dizzying down-mill perspectives, safe spot to safe spot down a hillside while gravity tried to kill them all.
“We want,” he said, “more than one more patched-up promise atop promises that didn’t work the last time. Ramirez knew what he knew and he wanted certain things: he wanted the agreement. He wanted the station refitted. He wanted the ship refitted. And he created someone to contact the planet.” Also the truth. “So the Guild doesn’t have any desire for planets. Fine. We do. We care about our lives, the lives of the people we represent here, and the aiji in Shejidan. We represent the atevi, who exist only here in the whole universe—while, pardon me, humans have a homeworld somewhere none of us exactly remembers. The atevi don’t give a damn what Ramirez cared about and didn’t care about. They came up here to take care of their own business, as Mospheirans did, because Mospheirans have also gotten fairly attached to the planet they live on. I’m speaking for the aiji, now, officially, and this is what I say.
“Number one, and not negotiable: this is the aiji’s planet— which he’s chosen to share with humans on a lasting basis. So the ship can talk all it likes about their options, their choices and their problem, but they’re doing it on the aiji’s tolerance and inside the aiji’s consent, and endangering the aiji’s interests in this quarrel they’ve picked out there far remote from us.”
“A year or so remote,” Jase muttered, and Bren inserted that in the record without a flutter.
“The problem doesn’t go away,” Jase said. “You can’t wish it away. You have to deal with it. We have to deal with it. Ramirez lied to us, but it turns out he didn’t lie to the leaders of the planet. So it wasn’t that he didn’t care about the planet’s future. But the ship is fueled, and we’re supposed to go bring Reunion under our collective authority—”