Visitor

  Another transmission came in, in that reciprocal format:

  “Talk. Sit. Talk. Good. Prakuyo Matuanu Hakuut come station.”

  “Yes. Talk.”

  “Teacakes.” Unambiguous and without the kyo counterpart.

  “Teacakes!” He broke into a smile. Almost a laugh. “Yes! Many teacakes! Bindanda is here! He will make as many teacakes as you like. Prakuyo, Matuanu, and Hakuut please come to the station. A human there will help you come through the dark. Cold. Cold there. You can breathe air, but cold. Much much cold there, water makes ice. I, Bren, I shall come to meet you.”

  “Good,” Prakuyo an Tep said. Then: “Prakuyo come now station all good. Matuanu Hakuut come now station. All good. Fortunate three.”

  Fortunate three. No coincidence, then. That consideration of atevi custom was a hopeful sign. Very hopeful.

  “I shall come now,” he said. “I shall come down to meet you, Prakuyo. Yes?”

  “Yes,” the answer came.

  The contact broke. Bren pushed another, lit, button.

  “Jase?” Bren asked.

  “I’m on.”

  “Did you hear?”

  “I heard. Pretty smart, your Prakuyo. Good move, that both-languages idea.”

  “He says he’s here to talk. He remembers the teacakes. Takes a load off the worry in that sense.”

  “Decidedly.”

  “They’re ready to come aboard. Are we rigged yet?”

  “Conveyor line’s rigged. Or will be by the time you get down there. They’re working on it right now. Passenger tube seal is clamped and solid. It’ll pressurize on need.”

  That was the safety that put an airlock beyond their airlock, one in station control, which meant the sealed mast docking section wouldn’t void, comforting thought, should the mate-up to the ship somehow be flawed.

  “I think there will be only three of them coming. I tried to explain about the conveyor line and the cold down there. I’ll have just Banichi and Jago with me. The mast workers we have to have. They should be careful how they move, what equipment they carry, not even the suspicion of weapons.”

  “They’re briefed,” Jase said. “They’re hand-picked ship crew.”

  “Good.” The logistics still loomed like a mountain. “Can you get a man here to pick us up and get us where we need to be? I’m not betting the whole mission on our navigating the lift system on our own. I think we could do it, I’m sure we could do it, but I don’t want to make any mistakes in this.”

  “Polano will be in your foyer. Ten minutes.”

  It was happening. He needed a heavier coat, even given the cold suits they used on the transit. They didn’t know what the kyo were going to do, whether they expected the deep cold, whether they’d suit up. It was a bare-bones system, no better than it had been since the days they’d built the station. Mostly, these days, it was for shuttle crews, young, strong people used to coming and going on the system, which was cheap, easily adjusted, never improved from the days of construction. Damned sure, once they started moving the Reunioners down, they had to do something about that antiquated system.

  Right now they had to get three kyo, whose ship was over-warm to both human and atevi, through it without an incident.

  Jago had arrived in the room. Tano had settled, at an adjacent console. “I am going down to the mast,” he said to them. “Banichi, and you, Jago-ji, will be with me.” Banichi and Jago were the two who knew the kyo, and the kyo knew them.

  “Yes,” Jago said, and left, quickly, back to the inner hall.

  “Tano-ji. Word to Cenedi. Advise the dowager we may have three more for dinner.”

  • • •

  There was a cold-suit locker where they exited, Bren, Banichi, Jago, and Polano worked weightless, floating with light tethers, and with breath frosting despite the best heat the area provided. They were not novices. The mast workers, three in number, ship crew, Jase had said—assisted them, and they assisted one another in turn, Bren first, and Polano second.

  The gloves made the pocket com difficult. Bren left the right glove off and simply tucked it into his insulated, heated pocket, righting himself so he could see the technicians’ console.

  Regulations said the workers were to be in constant contact with the ship or shuttle.

  In this case—not so easily.

  “We shall go out, the three of us with the safety workers,” Bren told them, and switched over to ops-com. “Jase-ji, tell them I am coming out on the line to meet them.”

  “I’ll try to relay that,” Jase said in ship-speak, audible to them all. “We’ve done a graphic to illustrate the system. They’re stable. The kyo ship is not linked up for water or power. Took a bit to get the personnel tube secure to their lock, but we’ve tested it. We’ll remote the number two inner lock from our side when we’re sure the number one is shut and they’re all the way through on our side.”

  There was a delay. Bren put the face shield down to conserve heat, kept hands in his pockets, safe within the lift. Then Polano relayed, “They’re through to the tube, sir. Seal is good.”

  “Understood,” Bren said. He had no detailed knowledge of how the system worked, except there were sensors—and fail-safes. The kyo were now inside the tube, technically within the station at this point.

  Time to go meet them, in a lot of cold black. The worker in charge opened the lift door. Outside was a pressurized section of the mast, but past the lighted lift access apron, and the attachment for the conveyor line, there was utter dark, and a dangerous cold.

  The lead worker took a handgrip unit and started out, casually expert. The second safety man, clipping to a safety stanchion on the apron of the lift, guided Bren’s grip to the next handle. That immediately clamped onto the line and whisked him out and away into the dark and cold, right behind the lead worker. He felt the vibrations of other entries onto the line, knew without looking that Banichi and Jago, likely Polano and the second safety man were also on the line. The guide in front, several meters distant, passed girders and conduits, the light of his handgrip and Bren’s own gliding eerily over the structures, then going to utter black. The line itself, similarly illumined, headed straight toward a distant spot of yellow light.

  That was the access tube, the beginning of whatever connection ops had cobbled together. And their progress, hauled along by mechanical means, was just about to meet the party outbound from the ship, at the other end of the line.

  More encouraging lights, red, yellow, and green, outside on that yellow expanse began to blink in sequence, indicating the second lock was ready to bring their visitors through.

  The traverse on the line moved air against Bren’s lower face, thin and fiercely cold. One wouldn’t freeze during the transit. But it was the driest cold one ever looked to experience. Mountaintop cold. Thin air. He was anxious to reach that widening yellow spot, where the line anchored.

  That yellow spot enveloped them all, having slight shadow in its depth, like the bell of a garden flower. They stopped at the apron within that bell, drifting, breath sparkling frost in the glaring light as one after the other of them arrived and the conveyor links piled up, waiting.

  Waiting.

  Then the garden flower irised open at its depth, as the last airlock opened. Like figures from a dream, three stout, suited, masked visitors drifted out, propelling themselves along the side-rigging of the tube. The first came unencumbered. The other two, slightly behind, hauled along a sort of sled with what might be baggage. The kyo had indeed suited up, taking no risks with the rigging, the bitter cold, or the air pressure.

  “Bren!” a voice said, from speakers on the helmet; tinny, but deep, deep, booms attending.

  “Prakuyo?” Bren asked. “Bren here.” He held out a hand. Prakuyo caught it. “Come, come, Prakuyo-ji, hold the line—safe. Safe, this. Cold. Cold. Bad air. Hurry.”

&n
bsp; No bilingual repetition this time. Just a quick greeting. Details could wait for warmth.

  “Yes,” Prakuyo said, and Bren, with their hindmost guide already going out on the line, simply grabbed Prakuyo’s massive gloved hand and set it on the grip.

  “Hold! Hold tight!”

  Prakuyo held, whisked away as he caught the next, and felt the others on the line, counted the number, and had no idea how the workers were dealing with the sled. Prakuyo, with an effort to look back, looked out through the lighted visor, humanlike but not human, eyes murky dark and wide, looking perhaps to be sure his companions were coming, looking perhaps, too, to recognize his face in the ghostly light, while he tried to recognize the kyo he knew.

  “Welcome,” Bren said. It was always hard, out here, to get enough air to talk. “Good you come.”

  “Banichi. Jago.”

  “They are coming. Hold tight!”

  The line swept on, toward the lighted, metallic gray flower that was the open lift. A third worker, from some refuge never far from the lifts, floated at the lift door, clipped and stable, ready to assist them as they arrived. Human as the others. But cold suits muffled them, obscured identity, even species.

  They reached that gray metal flower, and the worker in the lead simply let go and let inertia carry him to a safe rebound within the car, where the third worker assisted his stop. No such panache in their arrival: Prakuyo met that assistance, and arrested his momentum. Bren caught the tethered worker’s offered grip and let his arm absorb the stress, turned slightly as Prakuyo reached a safe stop, and the worker inside drew him in. He reached his own landing, caught the worker’s offered hand, turned as the other two kyo, without the baggage, followed with satisfactory dispatch. That booming sound of theirs came through the thin air as all the kyo reunited inside.

  Jago arrived. Banichi did, close behind. Baggage arrived with the hindmost worker, weightless, but not without mass: stopping it without a bump required Banichi’s slight intervention. They maneuvered it into Prakuyo’s companions’ control, as the hindmost worker sealed the lift door, and the companions bobbed a slight gesture as they floated, a sort of bow, or approval, or just relief to have arrived.

  “Up, sir?” the worker asked. It was always protocol to get the door shut, the car moving, and heated air flowing in as fast as possible.

  “Up,” Bren agreed, and with a booming thump, the lift car began to move. The floor caught up with their feet, and the vertical railings immediately became useful for finding one’s balance.

  “Banichi,” Prakuyo said then. “Jago.”

  “Indeed, nandi,” Banichi said, pushing back his cold suit hood to show his own face. He made a little bow, assisted by the acceleration. “One rejoices to see you in good health, Prakuyo-nandi, and your associates. Welcome!”

  A boom vibrated the air. Prakuyo made his own bobbing bow, such as his suit allowed, the car having achieved about one gravity in the climb, and in rumbling words punctuated with occasional booms of indeterminate significance, addressed his companions.

  Then Prakuyo asked them, “Dowager? Cajeiri?”

  Bren pointed up, the direction they were going, and the kyo bobbed and uttered that sound that might be agreement, or excitement, and began to release helmet latches, not without little shudders and bobs. A foreign scent came into the cold, dry air. A wave of escaping heat and moisture. Frost formed on the insides of the helmets, and on the lift doors. And the air thrummed and boomed with that part of kyo expression that neither humans nor atevi were apt to reproduce. There was light enough to see faces, but, Bren thought, it would be a wonder if kyo could tell one human face from another, no more than he could tell which of the three might be Prakuyo, except being the one nearest him. The faces were all middling gray, skin taut and smooth about eyes and flat nose, mottled with spots that iridesced shades of gray-blue and gray-green. Mouths and jaws were surrounded by folds and an angled musculature different from atevi or human—and that offered distinction, one from the other. One did remember that pattern about Prakuyo’s jaw, the crisscrossing of faint wrinkles and the sweep of the lid at the corners of the eyes.

  One remembered. One remembered those nuances, close at hand. Prakuyo was massive, strong, and while he had grown woefully thin in his imprisonment, his skin hanging in folds when they had known him, now he had recovered his bulk, broadened, grown solid. Larger than his companions. But that slight bluish blotch on the forehead, dotted with freckles, yes, that was indeed Prakuyo. Of all others, that was indeed their kyo.

  “Banichi,” Prakuyo ventured, correctly. “Jago.”

  “Yes,” Banichi said in kyo, with a little nod, and Prakuyo launched into something booming and rapid, perhaps identifying individuals, in a rumbling exchange of which Bren identified only two or three words beyond human and atevi.

  “Human there,” Prakuyo asked, then in Ragi. “Who?”

  “That is Polano,” Bren said in Ragi. “Jase-aiji’s aishid, from the ship. Those three are also Jase’s people, from the ship. We are safe. Welcome aboard.” He rendered that into fragmentary kyo and all three kyo nodded and bobbed.

  “Good,” Prakuyo said. “Go see dowager?”

  “Go see dowager. Good place. Supper soon.” That, in kyo only. Bren pointed straight up, and the wrinkles below Prakuyo’s mouth moved in what experience remembered as a pleasant expression. Again Prakuyo amplified that with his companions, regarding whose status there was no indication—and possibly no human or atevi correspondence. They had brought the baggage, and handled it, while Prakuyo did not. There was equal animation in the voices and the gestures, no evidence of deference, but all such interpretations were a guess. The words Bren, Cajeiri, and dowager were, however, definitely part of the discussion.

  Another word also stood out: car. And one remembered, as the numbers ticked by in the readout above the door, a toy, a remote-controlled car, that had helped break down the wall of suspicion, two years ago. Cajeiri’s treasure, given to a departing Prakuyo.

  The lift changed directions, and from their guests, came a little click and boom of startlement. Another shift of direction, so that a reach for the safety hold was instinctive in all of them. That drew a strangely musical boom from the companions, a sound that they had heard Prakuyo make both in surprise and in amusement. Prakuyo answered it with a series of three lower-pitched sounds.

  The car slowed, approaching their destination, and eased to a stop. The door opened and let them out.

  “Here,” Bren said, and exited first, carefully offering direction for the kyo, providing them ample room and time—their guide was holding the car. They came out cautiously. Massive folk, with limited mobility in their necks, and more so by reason of the suits, they turned to look this way, and turned slightly to look the other way, a curiously graceful movement, on one foot and the other. Then they faced Bren, looking for direction.

  Routine dictated they shed the cold suits beside the station lift. Bren and his aishid slipped out of theirs quickly and their workers gathered them up, taking them back into the lift. The kyo made distressed sounds, helmets tucked under their arms, their baggage sled beside them—not, one could guess, trusting enough to shed their suits in the corridor and send them away.

  “Come,” Bren said in kyo, and with a gesture down the hallway. “Come. There will be food, beds. A room to change clothing.” It was, he thought, curious the words they had achieved, in a household that dressed for dinner.

  He led the way with Jago, and the kyo followed. The smallest of the three unfolded a handle from the carrier base and brought it along, and Banichi and Polano brought up the rear. It was a clear hallway ahead, few doors, no signage, and no long walk at all to reach their destination.

  Bren stopped at the residency door, Jago beside him, as it opened. He said, in ship-speak: “Polano, thank you. Well done. Very well done. We’ll manage from here. Tell the captain thanks.”


  “Yes, sir,” Polano said, conservatively, not leaning at all on familiarity in front of visitors. It was not Polano’s first encounter with kyo, but he was on formal manners, careful in his movements, few words, likely relieved to have done his duty and to be away, doubtless with a memorable event to share with his partner Kaplan, and with Jase.

  They came into the foyer, and straight into the main room, Narani attending the inner door.

  Narani attracted Prakuyo’s attention, and Prakuyo glanced toward him with a gaped expression, as if Prakuyo might say something, while the other two were more subdued, stalled in the doorway, rocking a little as Prakuyo stood and remembered.

  “Rani-ji,” Bren said, “our guest Prakuyo, and these are his companions, Matuanu and Hakuut, likewise our guests.”

  “Indeed!” Narani said, and Prakuyo, bobbing and booming: “Rani-ji! Yes! Good!”

  “Nandi.” Narani gave a proper bow, holding the door wide. “We are delighted at your safe arrival. Welcome!”

  “Are they here?” The dowager’s door had opened. Cajeiri burst forth, and at that young voice, Prakuyo gestured outward and clasped his arms about his middle, bowing. “Is Cajeiri? Yes!”

  “Nand’ Prakuyo.” Cajeiri came and gave his own little bow, and broke into a broad smile. “Cajeiri, yes! And my great-grandmother is coming.”

  “Large!” Prakuyo said, measuring a hand span, “Cajeiri large!”

  “Indeed.” Ilisidi emerged, with Cenedi, took a position beside her great-grandson, hands on her cane. “He has reached a felicitous nine years. It would be a wonder were he not grown larger.”