“Nandi.” Jago simply pushed the button, the computer floating in her grip.
“So will you,” Yolanda’s voice said, that sound-clip, right there. “… where you are—and I’m glad you’re going. All I know—all I know of what’s out there—if Ogun doesn’t know, and he hasn’t told Sabin, then there’s two names. There was a three-man exploration team that went in. I know that Jenrette was one of them; and two more got killed.”
Jase’s lips had become a thin line.
“Tamun was trying to catch Ramirez, and they ran, and Tamun’s mutineers shot them. Jenrette’s still alive, but they aren’t. I didn’t used to think so, but now I ask myself whether Tamun suspected something, and if that was why he was trying to overthrow the council—but Tamun couldn’t get at it, when he was one of the captains. He couldn’t get the proof, or didn’t release it. So we didn’t know—and now he’s dead. And that scares me. All that scares me.“
“Shit,” Jase said.
“Log record?” the tape went on, Bren’s own voice, alternate with Yolanda’s.
“Common crew can’t get into the log file. I guess not even all the captains can. There could be a tape—they usually make one, through helmet-cam. But if there is, it’s deep in archives.”
“Tape of what?” he’d asked.
“Their going onto the station. Through the corridors. That’s all I know. Which is what everybody in the crew knows. But didn’t know they knew. That’s the hell of it. We thought the report was just what you’d think it would be… which it wasn’t. And now if there was a tape, orifjenrette knows something—he’s the only eyewitness. And he’s attached to Jase.”
“When did she talk to you?” Jase asked, appalled.
“Does it matter?”
“It bloody matters. Is she all right?”
“You have to ask that?”
Jase wasn’t pleased. Jase had a temper. But right now Jase looked stark scared.
“I put her into my apartment,” Bren said, “with my staff, with instructions to protect her against the consequences of telling me the truth. —You didn’t know I’d done that.”
“I heard she was there. I didn’t hear the circumstances. Obviously I didn’t.”
“But you’re scared.”
“I’m damned upset! This isn’t a small affair, Bren. This is explosive.”
“It took Yolanda some thinking, I imagine, to see past the obvious. I didn’t see it, first off. Did you?”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
“Ragi, nadi-ji. Give me the benefit of your thoughts, if you will. Dare we say you know what I’m talking about, and we’re both distressed about what Mercheson said?”
“I didn’t expect Yolanda was involved any longer. I thought she was out of this, once Ramirez died.”
“What was she out of?”
“Ship politics.”
That covered the known world. “You were personally involved with her,” Bren said, determined on confrontation. “Then, surprise, nadi-ji, you weren’t. You couldn’t face each other. —I could have predicted that breakup, forgive me. It’s the job.”
“It was her job, as it turned out.” The job she’d done for Ramirez, the job she hadn’t told either of them about. “Wasn’t it? Or do we know something else?”
“You didn’t know what she was doing when you broke up. But it was there, nadi. Secrets are bad bedfellows.”
Ship-speak. “They’re killers. None of which is here or there with what she’s charging.”
“And you’re still mad. You were damned mad when you found out what she’d been doing with Tabini and Ramirez. But you were mad before that. You canceled her out. You didn’t deal with her. You didn’t talk. That was bad business, and I didn’t know how to patch it. Our conversations stopped, too. She avoided me as well as you. I attributed it to the severance of relations with you. As it turned out, she needed help, and I was blind.”
“She could have asked for it. Weren’t you mad, when you found out what she was up to?”
“Damned mad. And jealous. I confess it. Confession’s good for the soul. Isn’t that what they say? Maybe hers is quieter now.”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know where the hell this is going.”
“Well, for one, nadi-ji, I think she still cares and I know what bastards we are to live with under the best of circumstances.”
“None of your business, and thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Listen to me, nadi.” Back into Ragi, under cover, into a different framework of thinking, before thinking spiraled out of parameters in ship-speak. “The man’chi underlying is the same, hers and ours, different than the ship. There’s a human truth in that, like it or not, and I suggest you listen to the whole conversation, in which she expressed deep concern for your safety and your welfare and the reasons—there were reasons— why she didn’t feel free to come to either of us. I’m sure jealousy exists in your feelings toward her, but not professional jealousy. I think jealousy of Ramirez doomed your relationship.”
“That’s nonsense.”
Right back to Ragi. “You aren’t related by blood, but you are by father—real father, not the centuries-dead heroes. Ramirez was the head of man’chi, and like any aiji, he worked with secrets, he kept secrets, he nourished them, bred them and crossbred them. There’s a reason he could deal with Tabini, whose whole instinct is secrecy. In that, I’m sure, nadi, that they damned well got along. And in the process, he made you and Yolanda jealous as hell of each other.”
Jase didn’t deny it.
“So he put her in an untenable position,” Bren said, “made her privy to his deception of both of us. And she couldn’t share a bed with you or a pot of tea in my household, not then nor after he died. No, she’s not the most agreeable. She detested the planet. But now she feels safest not in the society she knows from birth, but inside my household, watched over by my staff—being paidhi-aiji and dealing with Tabini. This isn’t the course either of us would have predicted for her. But she hasn’t been where either of us thought she was, nadi. She’s been in a very frightening territory, while you and I were living comfortably, building the future we thought was relatively safe. She knew. I doubt she slept well, these last few years.”
“The hell! She could have come to me.”
“Could she? And what would Ramirez have done, nadi? And what might happen with Tabini?”
Tabini had to give anyone pause. And Jase paused.
“His dying grieved you,” Bren said, “and set her adrift, nadi. Now I hope she’s found a harbor a little more calm than where she’s lived. But while we’ve been comfortable these last years, she’s had years to think, and to assemble the pieces Ramirez necessarily gave her. As translators, we’re not quite machines, are we? We do bring in bits and pieces of our own knowledge. And there she sat, a member of the crew, hearing all this about the contact, knowing who went, knowing now that there was a secret, knowing it was lurking at levels we didn’t deal with— what was she to do? You’d been taken into a captaincy she might have expected for herself. She was passed over, and still sat there, in Ramirez’s company, a repository of his official secrets—and why didn’t he appoint her to the office?”
“I’ve no idea. I wish to hell he had.”
“But she was with him, nadi, day and night; she was subject to his calls—she had all those skills. Was he going to appoint a new captain who’d have full knowledge what was going on? Who had close ties to me, and who might gain access codes? A new ship-aiji who’d be with him so often she’d unbalance the relationship with other officers? She lived in his office. Wasn’t that the point of your own jealousy? And what if that had played out among the other ship-aijiin?”
Jase had let go his handhold, so still he stayed in place, adrift. The pain and anger that had been part of his dealings with Yolanda seemed to have gone elsewhere, redirected, reflected.
“Maybe it was,” Jase said. “Maybe a lot of things were poisoned in the pr
ocess, nadi.”
“Then Ramirez died and left you Jenrette… one assumes to advise you, where matters come up.”
Anger gave way to intense worry.
“He was aboard the station,” Bren said. “All the others that went aboard the station out there, I suppose, were Ramirez’s men. What bothers me—all of them just happened to die in the Tamun affair. All but Jenrette.”
“Defending Ramirez,” Jase said.
“Like Yolanda, I’ll tell you, I’m beginning to ask myself what Tamun was doing that blew matters up and started the shooting.”
“I can’t believe there was anything more in it than Tamun’s ambition.”
“He was already at highest rank,” Bren protested. “What more was there for ambition to go for?”
“Control. Authority. Real authority.”
“And what could give it to him, better than information? Jase, Jase, I’d like you to find out what Jenrette knows. I’d like you to get a copy of that tape, if you can do it, before we leave dock. Before we commit any further to this mission.”
“I can’t do that,” Jase said.
“You can, nadi. Just ask him.”
“No. You don’t understand. It’s not possible. Jenrette’s transferred to Sabin.”
“When did that happen?”
“When we made out the staff assignments. When we divided the crew, and said who was going and staying. I wanted Kaplan with me, on my staff—I trust Kaplan. I wanted to keep him and Pressman and Polano as my aides, and most of all, I didn’t want to leave them behind on the station, where Ogun’s going to appoint a fourth captain, which was the regulation way things work. That’s where they were supposed to go: they weren’t going to be aboard, the way Ogun had drawn things up. But Jenrette and I—I don’t say we don’t get along, but everything I do, it’s obvious in his opinion whether it’s what Ramirez would do, or the way Ramirez did things: he second-guesses me at every turn, I’m not easy with him, and it’s not the best situation, nadi. When I want something done, just done, cheerfully, I ask Kaplan, but I never was going to push Jenrette out. I respect his advice. So I said why didn’t Ogun and Sabin just increase their staffs, which they could use, and I’d have Jenrette and his team and Kaplan and his. That’s when it blew up. Sabin said I’d insulted Jenrette, which I was trying hard not to do. So with Sabin’s famous tact, that fairly well put the personnel question into an hour-long, angry argument—all the principals being present, including Jenrette and his unit, and Kaplan and his.”
God.
“And in the upshot of things, I exploded, I got my way and I kept Kaplan, and Ogun and Sabin increased staff by three, but by then there were hurt feelings, and Sabin said she wanted Jenrette’s experience, if I didn’t value it. I said I did want it, and it wasn’t like that and I wanted him to stay; but Sabin said if she was going to increase staff, she was senior on the ship and she got the pick of staff on the ship. She wanted him, and insisted he transfer, and there it was.”
Disaster. And worse. “When was this?”
“About six hours ago.”
Not good news at all. He shot Jago a look and had one back.
Appalling news, considering that Jenrette’s name had become an issue inside the residency, and Yolanda had just dropped out of Ogun’s reach, not by Ogun’s orders. And could a bug possibly get past Algini’s countermeasures? Could distant listening devices have been hearing, if nothing else, the proper names at issue?
Were they doing that now?
“Coincidences do happen,” Bren said. “Sometimes they really do happen, and merging staffs is always a mess. I can’t see how the ship could get a bug past our surveillance. But this is worrisome, besides inconvenient.”
“A breach could happen, nadiin-ji,” Jago said quietly. “In our craft, once a countermeasure exists, one innovates. We don’t know the ship’s limits. They are the fathers of technology.”
Constant warning. Constant caution. On truly sensitive matters, they talked on the move, in the corridors: harder to pick up. Inside the apartment, they talked behind an electronic screen, in the security station, in a very small safe perimeter.
Hadn’t they warned him? And he’d talked to Yolanda in the study.
“I want that tape,” Bren said.
“You want universal peace, too, nadi, but I don’t know I can deliver it.”
“They have universal peace, and they can lose the aiji’s cooperation, and ours, and the island’s, none of which will help them at all in whatever they’re up to.”
“We don’t know that they care. If they’re overhearing us, and I don’t think it’s happening, but I don’t know everything— they could be forewarned, even now.”
“I’m saying if we’re going to trust Sabin enough to bring members of the aiji’s family into it, we’re going to have to trust Sabin.” He said that sentence in ship-speak, in case. And lapsed right back into Ragi. “And right now and until we know more, we won’t drink a cup she pours. The tape.”
“It won’t be a tape,” Jase said. “That’s an expression.”
“How does it exist?”
“Deep in log archives.”
“Can you reach it? Can you get access?”
“I’m not senior. Ogun can,” Jase added. “We could ask him. We could outright ask him.”
“And, as you say, if we ask him, it could vanish in a moment. Permanently. And Sabin’s senior on the ship. I’ll take for granted she has the codes, nadi.”
“I believe she does.”
“It’s worth a certain risk of diplomatic difficulty, Jase-ji, to know in absolute detail what this ship met aboard the station. Can you call your former aide for a conference, some unfinished business?”
“I can’t do that to him. Bren, I can’t.”
“I didn’t say we were going to make a move.”
“I don’t know what it could entail with things as they are. And you aren’t in command of this mission, Bren-nadi. Ilisidi is. Am I mistaken?”
“No. You’re not mistaken.”
“And if her staff finds out what you suspect, you can’t tell me what she’d stick at.”
True. He drifted back against the counter, took a solid grip. Air currents had taken Jase away from a hand grip and Jase reached and drew himself back before he lost easy contact.
“I’m not going to give this up,” Bren said.
“I can try to talk to Jen—”
“Names,” Bren cautioned him, and Jase cut it off.
“I can try to talk, myself, nadi.”
“We have how long, reasonably, until the ship breaks dock?”
“Six hours at minimum. Not above twelve.”
“I want the tape, Jase-paidhi.” At a certain point in emergencies, all common sense seemed to cut out and priorities became very cold, very remote from the consequences of failure: downhill, breakneck. “I can’t claim to have created the aishidi’tat, but I created the situation, the whole structure of twigs that supports it. So I know the alternatives. I know what we had before, and I know that there can be worse outcomes than a breach with this mission. I can imagine those very well: betraying the dowager, alienating the aiji—us finding out that our allies came here to get control of our resources.”
“No.”
“Maybe a war that devastated the mainland would suit certain purposes just very well.”
“That’s not so, nadi!”
“Prove it isn’t. Prove to me your ship didn’t come here with exactly that purpose—to find out the conditions in this solar system, to fuel the ship, and go home to report, preparatory to a power grab. We have only your word that the situation you reported out there even exists. We’re betting the whole planet on details we don’t know. You’ve insisted all along nobody on the ship knows better. But now that Landa-ji, out of her private hell of the last few years, points out the obvious, that there would have been a tape record in archive, well, yes, I’d rather like to see it before I step off the edge.”
“What
do you think? That the whole crew is in on a conspiracy?”
“No, I’m suggesting they’re the last to know. Either get me the tape, or say you can’t, or don’t want to know, and we’ll do it, but don’t ask me to assume everything’s all right.”
Jase’s eyes made an eloquent shift toward the door, the windowed wall. “I take for granted Banichi’s heard what we’ve said.”
“I’m sure.”
“Has Cenedi?”
It was a question. Jago’s face gave no hint at all.
“You may answer, Jago-ji,” Bren said.
“Yes to both. We are within the dowager’s household, of allied man’chi, nadiin-ji.”
“Then this is my answer. You’re within my household,” Jase said in a brittle voice, “under my roof, as my honored guests… and so is the dowager. I don’t think if it were Geigi’s house we would contemplate breaking the historic porcelains because we had a suspicion.”
“Not in the least. Nor do we here.”
“Or endangering lives.”
“Nor shall we.”
“I wasn’t aware of movements I should have known, because I was submerged in my own efforts at a very dangerous time—trying to memorize everything I could, as hard as I could, as fast as I could, after years of saying I wouldn’t. And that’s my fault.”
“We’re not speaking of fault, here, Jase.”
“For the record, it’s my fault. I know a mistake when I see it. But I won’t compound that fault by turning one of my own over to you for an open-ended set of questions, or failing to take command of operations in my household, Bren-paidhi. Let’s have that clear.”
“You’re saying you’ll help us.”
“I’m saying if this file exists, I want it, myself. I assume Sabin can get it, but I don’t know that. I assume she knows it’s out there. If she knows and hasn’t told me, or if she doesn’t know and I find out something she needs to know, I’ll decide then what to do with the information. No. I won’t help you. You’ll help me, and I’ll share information with your side.”
Jase had his moments. On the planet—he’d had a lot of them, once he’d gotten his land-legs and understood the situation; but they hadn’t seen Jase at full stretch since he came aboard and under ship’s authority.