Defender

  “And disrupt our lives, our futures,” Paulson said.

  Bren stopped typing. Lost the thread. Found his argument, Mospheiran to Mospheiran. “Is it only our lives? It may not be our trouble now, but when their trouble spills onto our doorstep, won’t the people you represent be very much in favor of having a say—and the power to speak for their own futures? I’m not that surprised to be left in the dark: the aiji has that power, and he’s used it. But it’s much harder to maintain secrecy on the island, Mr. Paulson, as you know—still the President managed it. Hard to keep a secret on a ship, I’ll imagine, too. And Ramirez did. We were all hit. But you know what? In the last ten years, we very different people have developed the same interests, and we’ve come to work together, and thanks to that secrecy and not knowing any better, we’ve spent ten years together building resources we now have to use.”

  Paulson, by his expression, wished he were rather on the North Shore, fishing, at the moment. Paulson was essentially a labor administrator, a financial officer with a background in town planning, who honestly imagined if he did go to the North Shore and went fishing someone else would solve the alien problem. It was Ginny Kroger, the non-official, that he was talking to and hoping for.

  And Ginny, rock-solid Ginny, God save her, simply nodded, thin-lipped and resolute—probably thinking of the politics of getting a phone call through channels to the President, past Paulson’s legitimate right to do it first and officially.

  Trust Mospheira to have trammeled up their lines of action. Never trust putting anyone in office who’d act rapidly, and never approve anyone who’d ever let responsibility for a mistake sit an hour on his doorstep. That was the wisdom of the Mospheiran senate, as long as there’d been a senate. They wanted a stainless manager who wouldn’t do anything startling or sudden. They put in Paulson.

  Ginny’s job, in Science, wasn’t a senate-approved post, which was how she survived. Why she’d come…

  He suddenly had a bone-chilling surmise that Ginny was Shawn Tyers’ catspaw, Ginny and her robots—not briefed on all of it, likely, but not as deeply shocked as he was.

  “We will inform the aiji,” Geigi concurred. That was, give or take a phone system that worked, a one-step process, and an atevi lord who didn’t take quick responsibility for a situation would find Tabini calling him.

  And what would either of them say? We now understand, aiji-ma?

  No. He didn’t. He didn’t understand at all.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  Has any message come?” Bren asked of Narani, safely in the foyer of their own residence. Banichi and Jago ordinarily found business of their own to attend on a homecoming, usually in the security station, but not at the moment. After the funeral, after the unprecedented meeting they’d just attended, they lingered. Tano and Algini, who’d heard both the meeting and the funeral, had come out into the foyer.

  “One regrets, no,” Narani said to him.

  Nothing from the aiji.

  Well, but it reasonably took a certain amount of time for Tabini to ponder the situation, and Tabini was likely still in the information-absorbing stage and hadn’t an answer for him yet. Tabini would have gotten his message by now—he didn’t doubt Eidi would use his considerable resourcefulness, and very unorthodox channels, if he had to, right down to the several guards that stood between Tabini and a bullet, guards who were linked to Tabini’s staff by electronics as constantly as Banichi and Jago were in contact with their own local system. And if everything else on the planet went wrong, it was reasonable to think Eidi might call him back on his own initiative.

  “Banichi-ji. Both of you. Tano. Algini.”

  “Bren-ji.”

  The five of them went into the security station, and Bren found the accustomed seat by the door while Banichi and Jago disposed themselves next to Tano and Algini. In the background the boards carried on quiet blips and flickers, which his staff understood. He never pretended to know, and he assumed if any of them did involve the answers he wanted, they would tell him.

  “It was a satisfactory meeting,” Bren said first, for Tano and Algini, in case they entertained any remaining doubts. “It was an extraordinary meeting. But it left us needing answers we can’t get, except from the aiji.”

  “Is there any threat you perceive, Bren-ji?” Almost without precedent that Jago had to ask him that. But they were in a thicket of human motives and deceptions, and on the station, he was the best map they had.

  “What likelihood, for instance,” Banichi asked, “that the ship-aijiin will take action against Jase-paidhi, or Kaplan? One hardly understood everything he said in the ceremony, and less of what others may have thought, but words, indeed, came through.”

  “Kaplan has qualities,” Bren said. “I’m frankly surprised he was the one to stand up and speak.”

  “Might he have spoken for Jase?”

  There was a thought. “I doubt Jase would have asked him to do it—risking Kaplan’s personal reputation, if nothing else, though I can understand Kaplan taking the order if Jase asked. I can’t explain what they feel; I’m not sure I understand it myself, but ship crew and ship officers are a family association, far closer to atevi in that regard than they are to Mospheirans: I just can’t envision what you might call a filing of Intent inside the crew. Tamun—” He saw the question in their eyes. “Tamun was a rogue. He drew people apart from the crew. He struck at authority. And some went with him. Some weren’t certain of the authority, whether it had integrity, or whether it protected their interests—and by all we’ve learned there may have been reason for crew to have that perception. There is a division of interests between command and crew—they’re full blown sub-associations, so to speak, and that’s how the schism could develop at all. Kaplan spoke very eloquently about that schism today. He spoke as common crew. He spoke as common crew who felt the aijiin hadn’t seen to their interests and hadn’t trusted them as they might have expected their own aijiin to trust them.”

  “True, is it not?” Jago asked.

  “Quite true. And Tamun reasoning did exist in the crew, and dissent and anger may still exist in a few places. That’s why the aijiin didn’t want to tell the crew the truth—as they reasonably ought to have done. Kaplan, not Tamun, is the man who stands in the breach now. Jase ought to have accepted Jenrette and Colby as his aides and let Kaplan and Polano go on to whatever fourth captain the council appoints… that’s the way they traditionally do things. Instead, Jase took Jenrette and Colby and not only didn’t dismiss Kaplan and Polano from his man’chi, he took on Pressman, who’s actually a mechanic, not a security man at all. But a friend of Kaplan’s and Polano’s. This is a major disturbance of the way the captains have done things in the past. I chided Jase for not taking up the authority Ramirez-aiji gave him, but I may have been unjust in that assumption. Jase seems to have made preemptive moves of his own—whether Kaplan forced the issue, and spoke without Jase’s foreknowledge, or whether Jase had a hand in it. I rather think the former. And Kaplan spoke passionately and as if it were his own argument. I think Kaplan represents a faction among the crew that’s very upset, and Ogun-aiji was smart enough to see he had to answer it right then or see the schism between captains and crew open up again. Personally, I’m glad Kaplan spoke up. I think Ogun is glad he did—maybe even glad the issue blew up then, into the open. Because they aren’t atevi, I doubt that the matter goes into a third layer of complicity, with Ogun setting Jase up to set Kaplan to what he did, but it at least turned out to be in everyone’s interest for Kaplan to speak.”

  “Still,” Tano said, “Jase-ji has taken Kaplan and his associates, even Pressman.”

  “More true, I suppose,” Bren said, “that he didn’t reject Jenrette and Colby and wouldn’t cast off Kaplan and his associates. One might ask him, I suppose, but here we have the least senior captain with a security staff outnumbering the rest. An arms race among the captains, one supposes. It’s a delicate moment. And pos
sibly Jase took Kaplan under official protection not to save him from Ogun or Sabin, but to keep him out of crew politics. Now I think of it, that’s the most likely answer. Jase just wants him able to say, I can’t talk. I can’t answer that.”

  “Very strange, these humans,” Banichi said.

  “Mospheira, on the other hand, working with Tabini—did any of you know?”

  “We did not, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “I assure you of that.”

  “Do you know anything? Do you guess anything?”

  “About humans?” Banichi said. “No. That Tabini-aiji might conclude a secret agreement… it would by no means be the first.”

  It would certainly not be the first. And much as the aiji prized initiative on the part of his officers, he would not welcome being found out by one of those officers. Most particularly he would not welcome the whole thing blowing wide in the view of outsiders.

  “I don’t see what more we could do,” Bren said. His security staff was no happier in being in the dark than he was. “I don’t see that we were invited to know this, and I have the uneasy feeling that if we walk about too much in the dark we may do damage. But we still have no contact with Tabini. And news has to be all over Mospheira by now. Leaks are bound to start on the mainland. Something’s happening down there—that’s what worries me. But I don’t know that we ought to try too much harder to make contact. Things seem to have stabilized here, pending a decision on the part of the captains, and I fear that decision is going to take the ship, the pilots, and Jase and all his resources out of our reach.”

  “Back to this other station,” Jago said.

  He hadn’t entirely assembled that scenario. But when he did, it either left Jase with them, on this station, and the ship going off to deal with a situation that had flummoxed it before; or, nearly as bad, Jase going out there with the ship and trying to deal with a Guild intransigent and without that sense of loyalty that held the crew together.

  In historical times, people had opposed the Guild and met with accidents. A few had been shot, and declared mutineers.

  He didn’t like either decision.

  “If they take the pilots with them,” Banichi said, “who will keep this agreement and train ours?”

  “Good question, in itself, nadi-ji.” He’d fought indigestion for hours. He had a recurring bout. “I don’t like what I see. But I don’t know what I can do about it, except advise Tabini as I’m supposed to do, and advise Jase as much as I can, and right now I’d say sit for a year and let’s think what to do about this. We’ve been here for years. It’s not as if it’s suddenly an emergency decision.”

  “Ramirez has made it so,” Jago said. “Ramirez has pushed this thing by refueling the ship.”

  “We can do very little more to contact the aiji,” Banichi said, “except to use our last resources—which I will do, if you truly wish to gain the aiji’s attention. This is your decision, nandi. Shall we?”

  “Contact through the Assassins’ Guild?”

  No one spoke, but since they didn’t deny it, he understood.

  “I think we have to move very quickly,” Bren said, “and not for atevi reasons. For crew reasons. Most of all for Mospheiran reasons. Ramirez lied. He lied with reason, he lied judiciously, he went through topmost authorities, as atevi understand. Mospheirans accept being lied to in little things, but this isn’t a little thing. They could take the Pilots’ Guild being in charge on the ship. They almost suspect that’s the case. But finding out the ship isn’t under Guild authority, but that Guild authority survived on Reunion—the most universally detested authority that ever existed, as far as Mospheirans are concerned—that means Ramirez wasn’t really making the decisions, or never really was in charge, as they see it.”

  “Is it true, Bren-ji?” Jago asked.

  “Certainly his authority was questionable in direct confrontation with the Guild. And that puts Mospheiran authority into a game far bigger than they bet on. Now we learn the Guild gave Ramirez-aiji orders to come here, maybe to create a base, maybe to prepare a defense—or maybe to gather force to come back and fight some general war against some alien enemy we never wanted to offend in the first place. Who knows now? If Ramirez lied in one thing, in their minds, he could lie in another. Maybe Ramirez-aiji didn’t follow all his orders, and didn’t intend to. Unless Ramirez wrote his orders in the ship’s records, or passed them to Ogun, it’s possible no one under this sun knows what the Pilots’ Guild wanted Ramirez to do. Jase doesn’t know. Ogun hasn’t appeared to know. And if Ogun and Sabin don’t know—this whole crew doesn’t even know that basic a thing—whether they’ve been following Guild orders all along—or actively rebelling against them. They don’t know the most basic facts of their situation—and it’s not sure to this hour that even Ogun or Sabin has possession of the truth to give them. I say that on one fact alone: Sabin backed Tamun into a captaincy, and if she’d known what Ramirez knew and told Tamun the truth, Tamun could have used it. Tamun didn’t, even when he was losing. So he didn’t know. He grabbed Ramirez. But Ramirez didn’t talk. So either Sabin didn’t know, or she didn’t talk. If she knew and didn’t talk, she didn’t back Tamun in the mutiny. If she didn’t know—she didn’t have the chance to back him, and backed out and let him take the fall. In that case we can’t really trust Sabin, and we don’t know as much about Ogun as we wish we knew. So that’s an ongoing question, one we’re not likely to find the facts of until we’re far deeper into this mess than we’d like to be.

  “Second point: the longer we sit waiting for an official decision, the more the conspiracy theorists are going to have a run at this, on the island and on the mainland, and even up here among the crew, who ordinarily aren’t disposed to speculate. If you can use your contacts to get a message through, Banichi-ji, I think this is the time to do it.”

  Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance. It was widespread—suddenly the most abundant commodity in the universe.

  “One will manage,” Banichi said. “Will you compose a message, nandi?”

  As if he could come up with a clear, coherent explanation to give Tabini, regarding all the human motives and actions around him, when the last hour hadn’t done it.

  But he had to try.

  Aiji-ma,

  Information has come to light at Ramirez’ death regarding the survival of personnel at the distant station, and agreements the gist of which we now possess. We request your immediate personal assistance. The Mospheiran leaders on the station agree to stand together with myself and lord Geigi. We regard Jase-paidhi as our spokesman and channel of information among the ship-aijiin and have confidence in him.

  Regarding these agreements, we are at a critical point of decision and request your personal communication immediately, aiji-ma. I cannot sufficiently stress the urgency of this request.

  Your silence has made me question the integrity of the channels through which my messages travel. Please relieve my concern, aiji-ma.

  He notified Tano and Algini. They achieved a link through C1 to the big dish down at Mogari-nai.

  He sent.

  And while he still had a link with that dish, he made a scrambled phone call to his own absentee household within the Bujavid’s walls.

  There he reached an excellent and refined gentleman, Narani’s second cousin, a man who moved very slowly, but who found shepherding a skilled servant staff in a long-vacant, perpetually waiting estate his ideal retirement job.

  “Nadi-ji,” he said to this elderly gentleman, “have you noted any unusual circumstances lately in the aiji’s household?”

  “No, nandi.” The old man was slow, but he had instincts honed in a very dangerous school. Immediately his tone was all business. “Shall we take precautions?”

  “Rather a small piece of needful intrigue, nadi-ji. Have you been out of the apartment recently?”

  “Not I, nandi, but numerous of the juniors.”

  “I wish you personally to carry a message to the aiji’s apartment. Insist to speak to
the aiji himself, or to the aiji-consort, or to the chief of security, or to Eidi, in that order, in my name, have you got all that?”

  “Yes, paidhi-ma.”

  “Say directly to any of those individuals that I have not received any communications from official channels, nor has lord Geigi. Tell Tabini that I have sent repeatedly and beg him call me immediately to consult on business that absolutely cannot wait. If I don’t hear some response I must send a courier down on the next shuttle, and I’d rather use all my resources here and not expose my staff to hazard—do you have all that, nadi-ji?”

  “Yes, nand’ paidhi.” The good gentleman had never failed him in lesser responsibilities, and was no fool. “I will go this very instant.”

  “I’ll wait on the line.” He had no wish for another of his messages to fall away into silence. And he added, “Be cautious. If your mission can’t be accomplished in safety, come back instead and report the hazard to me immediately. I’ll keep this link open, meanwhile. Put on one of the staff to talk to me.”

  “Yes, nandi!”

  Another pebble cast into a pond that thus far showed no ripples. He sat, chatted nicely with a middle-aged servant whose knowledge of the estate was limited to the premises. This involved an inventory of linens and an incursion of worms in the kitchen—dubious flour—while the future of the planet followed an old man’s lengthy trek down the hall, into the lift, down another hall to the aiji’s residence.

  “Have you heard any rumors, Dala-ji?” Bren asked the servant. “Any interesting gossip at all?”

  Unfortunate question. It involved a bitter, complex intrigue involving the servant staff of lord Tatiseigi and the servant staff of a southern lord, an illicit romance and a threat of invoking the Guild.

  It wasn’t what he wanted. But the dramatic recital filled the time, step by step through a disastrous and in fact stupid encounter—an affair between rival staffs had to be potent to convince otherwise rational people to create an absolute imbroglio of rival and irresolvable interests.