Defender

  From Grigiji and the mathematicians they went on to discuss the weather in Shejidan, the quality of the fishing—but at each new course, offered great appreciation for the dishes. Bindanda had provided his favorites and Jase’s: the effort deserved applause, and one always showed particular reverence for the meat course, under any decent circumstances.

  It was another of Jase’s favorites, among items they could import, a meat that Bindanda’s artistry turned from station staple to a very fine presentation.

  It was a slow finish, then, a delicate cream dessert—atevi had only a dim compunction about animals kept for milk, though they would not tolerate animals kept for slaughter. But they had gotten the notion of cream cheese from Mospheira, and this was seasonal fresh fruit, one of Bindanda’s specialties, with a nut topping.

  How Bindanda had gotten the fruit up here, on the other hand, must involve high crimes and bribery.

  “Very fine,” Jase said. “Where did Danda-ji get this?”

  “I don’t think we want to know,” Bren said, and called out the chef to compliment him—both of them praised the dessert, which pleased Bindanda exceedingly. But they had not a word from Bindanda on his sources, so they were assuredly not official.

  After that they adjourned for conversation on more weighty matters, in the library-cum-study. Bren assumed his favorite chair, propped his feet up, slightly feeling the effects of pressure-change and long travel, and took a brandy. Jase took one, being off-duty.

  “Funeral for Valasi,” Jase reprised. “Didn’t he have one already?”

  “One isn’t quite sure what the ceremony meant,” Bren said. He suffered a little dislocation, a flashback to the vault, the shadows, the live fire of torches… and tried to think by what handle to grapple with all the questions at once. “I attended and I still don’t know why Tabini wanted me there. The meetings beforehand were all social. I wish you could have come. But I’m afraid there wouldn’t have been any fishing—except for information—and there was precious little catch in that commodity, either.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “A patch-up with the conservatives. An overdue patch-up. I don’t know whether Ilisidi’s on the inside or the outside of the plan… but Tabini’s spent a lot of political credit getting what he’s gotten.”

  “The economy’s running well.”

  “Oh, it is. But prosperity and electric toasters only means the far lunatic fringe loses power… and the legitimate sane conservatives lose power. And the very fact he is succeeding only makes it worse, to the other side’s view. They want him to fail. They want something to go wrong. And he’s just gotten stronger.”

  “So he offers them a favor anyway?”

  “So maybe he knows they’re getting desperate. He certainly made the transfer of Cajeiri into Ilisidi’s care quite public… that may have been the statement he was making. Which was and wasn’t a towering success at the ceremony. Which is one reason I honestly can’t figure it: the boy wasn’t exactly the centerpiece of the event—wasn’t really involved. My meeting with Tabini—well, fine, and social, but I expected more. I bounced from cabinet meeting to cabinet meeting, all courtesy matters and briefings, all the department heads wanting to get up to speed on what’s going on up here. I answered a handful of southern concerns about siting a plant down on the coast—I happen to agree with the ones protesting. They can put the thing inland. They don’t need coastline. It’s a damned eyesore where they want to put it.”

  Jase sighed. “I did look forward to the fishing trip.”

  “If you’d been there you’d only have gotten caught in this affair. But hang on. You’ll get your ocean. Next spring.”

  “Promises.”

  “Promises. We’ll try, this time. We’ll try damned hard. I’ll do some extravagant favor for Tabini and see if we can’t get a couple of weeks.”

  “Weeks.” Jase looked glum. “I could use a month or two.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “I broke it off with Yolanda. Again.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” That relationship had been on-again, off-again. Partners, mostly successfully, on-planet. On-station, decidedly not the case.

  “Stupid personal stuff. I swear, I think she’s asking herself how can she tell she’s got authority if she doesn’t wield it? She’s taken up with a computer tech, now, a damned bad choice, but it’s her choice, and sitting where I do—I don’t care.”

  What did a friend say? That that wasn’t quite the truth?

  “Quarrel?”

  “Sulks and silences. I’m on the captains’ list and she’s not, and I think that’s the crux of it.”

  “She doesn’t want the job. You don’t want it. Yet you fight over it.”

  “Doesn’t matter what we want. Doesn’t matter what I want. I have the office. Suddenly my advice is a captain’s advice. Whatever I say to her is criticism. If I have an opinion, it just blows up: unfair, pulling rank. So what do I do? We don’t talk any more. We tried being lovers. Didn’t work. Tried being sibs. That doesn’t work. I don’t know what we are, but we can’t live with or without each other. She’s going back on main schedule. She’s seeing her tech. What do I care? But some things you ought to know.”

  Jase and Yolanda had been lovers, in the same job, stuck on a planet they couldn’t, at the time, get off of. They were shipmates, never sibs—in the biological sense. But they were, if being planned by the same man could make a kinship, if being born at the same time, for the same purpose could make one.

  They were both Taylor’s Children. Conceived out of the genetic material of the heroes from before the Landing. Conceived to be heroes. Conceived to be above politics, if it was possible.

  Thus far it hadn’t been possible, even between the two of them.

  “I should know,” he echoed Jase. “What should I know?”

  “She’d been talking with Paulson, and I asked about what. It’s my job, to ask.”

  Paulson. Head of Mospheiran operations.

  “And she called Mospheira,” Jase added, “and said it was personal.”

  She’d served there. But in the last number of years she hadn’t called Mospheira. Didn’t know anybody on Mospheira, that he knew of, not in the personal sense. And now he knew.

  “Who did she call?”

  “Don’t know. I thought I ought to have asked. Maybe it was an old friend. But Paulson isn’t. And all of a sudden I’m the villain. I don’t figure her.”

  Yolanda Mercheson, the third paidhi, the one originally destined between the ship and Mospheira—as Jase was the ship-paidhi, translator between the ship and Tabini… and him.

  Well, a fractured romance was one thing. But having Yolanda start making phone calls between Paulson and Mospheira, on her own?

  He left for a few days and things did go to hell.

  “Can you trace who she called?”

  “I might. It’s not my job, now.”

  “Does Ramirez know?”

  A heavy sigh. “I told him. What he said to her, I don’t know. But she was in a mood. Called me a few names. Hell of it is, I don’t know if it’s a personal matter, and I can’t find out—and if I ask, it’s personal and she’s not talking.” Jase gave a short, unhappy laugh. “You said, never let the job get into my personal life, and vice versa. You were right. It did. It shouldn’t have. Now that I’ve blown the alarm on her, I’m wrong. She’s broken regs for a personal call, she’s in deep trouble and of course now it’s all my fault.”

  Yolanda Mercheson was as glum and methodical a young woman as Jase was high-voltage. Small wonder that relationship hadn’t worked, logical as it might have seemed at the time between two people effectively shipwrecked.

  “A pickle.”

  “As in dinner menu?”

  “As in a hashed-up mess.”

  “I don’t want this job, Bren. Hell, Ramirez doesn’t even need my vote in council. No one dissents. No one argues. I suggested he move Yolanda into the seat in my place. I guess
my report this week didn’t encourage that, did it?”

  “And Ramirez said, then?”

  “Didn’t even look up. Said I was doing just fine: that I understood the atevi. Never mind I don’t have any other qualification and I couldn’t handle ops if the instructions were printed on the console… which they’re not. ‘That’s fine,’ the old man said. ‘You’re doing just fine. Yolanda couldn’t do what you do. Stay put.’ Not damned fair, I say, when the most I want out of life is to get on the ocean down there on a boat and just get out of this.”

  “That’s not what you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want, to tell the truth. I know I never want to handle ops. I don’t want to handle command. I could live off a diet of fish.”

  “If we’re really lucky, you won’t ever have to do anything about ops.”

  “Or Yolanda.”

  “You’re doing fine. Geigi favors you. You give him great confidence, just knowing you’re in office.”

  “I’m glad he’s confident. I don’t like what’s going on.”

  “Tabini isn’t at all unhappy to have one of the paidhiin sitting as captain up here: that’s an understatement. It gives him confidence. The whole aishidi’tat is pleased to have you right where you are. We don’t need Yolanda making independent judgements.”

  “Damned right we don’t.”

  “I’ll talk to her. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

  “She’ll know. But at this point, hell if I care. Maybe you can get yea or nay out of the Old Man.”

  “I can. Trust me.” He hadn’t mentioned the thing Jase would most want to know. “Ginny’s back. We’ve got robots.”

  Hopeful quirk of an eyebrow. “Movement on the robots?”

  “No. Freed. Liberated. Strike’s settled. The initial load’s just come up.”

  “Damn!” It was an entirely cheerful damn.

  “In the station’s receiving area, by now. I imagine she’s notifying Ramirez even as we sit here.”

  “When did that clear?”

  “Evidently very fast. Didn’t have any idea, either, until I met Gin on the flight. I think she’s escaping from the planet before one of the company execs can ask a return favor.”

  “Oh, this is good news.”

  “Looks as if everything’s going to move. We’re going to open the next section, first we can. I’ve got the figures, labor and support. Geigi will get his fish tanks.”

  “And the Old Man’s going to be in a far better mood all around.”

  He’d certainly made Jase’s evening. The unlovely little autobots were the backbone of the fueling and refit operation, and Ramirez had requisitioned a crippling number of them into his refueling and mining the last three years. They were finished with that—and now that they were finished, able to divert the robots back to other priorities, finally, the labor dam broke, and they had the autobots’ next generation.

  But it wasn’t too late. It meant they could accelerate station operations, and accelerate ship-building: everything was going to break loose.

  And damned if Yolanda Mercheson was going to conduct some personal business on official channels in the middle of it. Yolanda wasn’t going to be happy with him, either, before all was said and done, not if she’d been carrying on some personal business on Mospheira without going through channels—or if she’d been running some deal for Paulson without telling her fellow paidhiin. There was no legal sanction for the latter, and she wasn’t paidhi to the island any longer. He didn’t know whether to go and talk to her on what was clearly a sore spot. Between them, these days, there almost wasn’t a friendship, but he could at least make his displeasure known. He could talk to Paulson and make Paulson less anxious to go that route, if Paulson was making trouble—and a sad state of affairs if he was, and if he’d gotten Yolanda to do something that proved the final split from Jase.

  “I’ll be talking to Geigi after breakfast tomorrow, if I can arrange it,” Bren told Jase. “I’ll promise him his tanks… I assume he gets his tanks. Any reason against it, before I set that promise in motion?”

  “You aren’t talking to the decision-making wing of the Captain’s Council. Remember?”

  You’re still one of the captains, Bren thought, but there it was: Jase flatly refused to wield the power. At times it was more than inconvenient, but it was Jase’s notion of honor, and there was no getting by it.

  They had a second brandy, all the same, and talked about Geigi, Geigi’s boat—the object of Jase’s daydreams of ocean sailing—quiet talk at the end of a long, long week of hurry-up and changed plans, homecoming, and, thank God, arrival of the robots, that solved so many problems.

  Bren found his eyelids at half mast, apologized, and Jase excused himself: “You’d better get to bed,” Jase said. The rigors of travel were, curiously, another matter ship-folk had to learn about, and most didn’t quite understand: the notion of packing one’s belongings in a suitcase and rushing breakneck from point to point was something Jase had only experienced on a planet.

  “Good of you to come,” Bren said, saw Jase to the door himself, and added, because he meant it, “Very good of you to come. Do it again soon.”

  Fact was, he missed Jase. Didn’t know how he would manage if Jase ever moved back in, since the affair with Jago had gone beyond affair, and gotten to be the next thing to married routine. But there were times a human argument, a human conversation massaged areas of his brain that felt far too little exercised… that was what it was, he thought: too little stimulation of the human that was left in him. Not good. Not at all good, for the human organism. He didn’t know, before Ginny on the shuttle today, how long it had been since he’d had a lengthy social conversation with another human being.

  Immediately after that, the brandy hit him with full force, persuading him that bed was just about the last objective he could reasonably achieve. Sensibly, he wanted to talk to Banichi and Jago tonight about a number of things, and dutifully, he should have advised his staff and settled down for an all-night debrief. Jago waited for him in the security post, still official and still in uniform, well, down to the tee-shirt, at least—but debriefing wasn’t what she’d been led to expect tonight. Sleep was reasonably what she thought she had coming, and she, who’d been on outside duty for hours, took precedence over Tano and Algini who’d had only on-site duty, off and on.

  He wasn’t in condition to confer with anyone, as it was. The Jase conversation had been the last. Even without the brandy he suspected he would have opted for bed, being just too dog-tired.

  But there was more than that business afoot, more than Jase, more than Ramirez, more than Tabini’s dealings with the provinces.

  “Is there any word from my brother?”

  “No, nadi-ji. Go to bed.”

  “Good idea.” Tonight he just wanted to fall over and be unconscious for a few hours. “I’m going to sleep, Jago-ji. Are you coming to bed?”

  “Soon,” Jago said, and added, because she knew how curiosity consumed him, drove him, made him crazy: “Banichi likewise says get some sleep.”

  At least they didn’t need him. Some things, if they rested in safe hands, he didn’t have to ask. He simply directed himself back to the bedroom, shed his clothes into a servant’s care, all but fell onto the mattress and pulled up the covers. His body temperature was sinking fast.

  But he didn’t sleep. He shut his eyes, wondering where Toby was, in what situation, whether there would be a phone call before morning.

  After half an hour he got up, went to the computer and keyed in a message. Toby, I got your letter. I’m concerned. Call.

  He sent it. It had to pass through the security station out there. His staff would know, and probably be distressed about it. But he didn’t explain. He went back to bed, no easier in his mind.

  Jago eventually came to bed, a considerable weight on the other side of the mattress, interrupting an exhausted haze that was not quite restful sleep. He knew she was there, and dropped back off, safe.
/>
  Safe. Companioned. All things local in their places.

  He couldn’t oversee the others.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  No phone call in the morning. Perhaps, Bren said to himself, amid breakfast, the health crisis was over and Toby was on a flight back to the coast. If Toby could possibly reach a phone, he’d likely call, and if he couldn’t reach a phone, it likely meant he was traveling— which was as good news as a phone call.

  In the meantime, morning courtesies included a hike all the way to the Construction Operations office to meet officially with their nextdoor neighbor, Lord Geigi—electric runabouts were available for the trip, but undignified, in Bren’s island-born view of the universe—besides heartily cursed by walkers in the halls. Bren, for his part, preferred walking, for the exercise, if nothing else: he’d watched certain officebound sorts put on the pounds, and fought the tendency.

  Besides, in long stretches of hall where Jase swore on his life there were no bugs, he could talk at leisure with his staff, much as he and Banichi would talk in the open country down on the planet.

  “So how has the world taken the aiji’s address, by now?”

  “In curiosity,” Banichi said. “In great interest. Great interest and an expression of discontent in the East.”

  Hardly suprising.

  “Any clues why he wanted me?”

  Tabini, and the ringing of that bell that held every imagination entranced, entrapped.

  “One is not satisfied,” Banichi said. “We’ve reviewed the tape. But we haven’t discovered the absolute answer, Bren-ji. We have not, not in the configuration, the seating, or in anything said during the ceremony. Legislative proceedings are under seal, down in Shejidan. And that is troubling.”

  “Something is very peculiar, nadi-ji.”