Precursor

  Their front door, as it were, stood open, and Johnson, Andresson, Pressman, and Polano waited quite respectfully in the corridor.

  “Mr. Cameron?” Johnson said. “We came to name our favor.” And when he said nothing to that remarkable statement: “You’re passing out those sweets for favors. Have you got any more?”

  His security was on highest alert, Banichi was missing, and he wasn’t without suspicions it was a reconnoitering mission; but he solemnly translated for Narani, who bowed and went off to find the requisite stores.

  “My head of staff is looking for them,” he said. “Friends of Kaplan?”

  “Cousin,” Andresson said.

  “Ah. Would you like to come in and have tea?”

  “Don’t know tea, sir.”

  “Well, probably I shouldn’t. It kept Jase awake all night the first time he had it. But I can see imports will be very popular.”

  “Like the sweets, sir.”

  “I favor them myself.” He heard Narani coming back, but did not turn his head, having had Banichi and Jago for teachers. He received the small box, a common tin box, and presented it to Johnson. “Very happy to oblige.”

  “You want this back, sir?”

  “The box? It’s yours, if you like it.”

  “It’s got pictures,” Johnson protested.

  It was printed with flowers and fruits, as it happened, and had an oval with the inset of a sea. Indeed it was a fine little box, where paper was unknown.

  “I hope you enjoy them. We’re very comfortable here, thanks to you. If you’d like to come back when you’re truly off-duty… we could show you some of Jase’s favorites. I wonder if you aren’t that Johnson he mentioned.”

  “There’s thirty of us Johnsons aboard,” Johnson said. “And he’s captains’ level, which we don’t get to, much.”

  Sometimes a devil took him. There was no other way he found to describe it. He had wanted to get word out to the crew, and in that small personal confidence, he saw an opening and went for it. “I heard the rumor. Have they caught the person responsible?”

  “What rumor, sir?”

  “That Ramirez was shot. You haven’t heard? Maybe it’s not true.”

  “Shot, sir? What’s this?”

  “I don’t know. I heard something.You’re Kaplan’s cousin, are you?” The business of the request for candies had made complete sense to him now. Kaplan had had some to repay a personal favor; they were promised a favor; they wanted theirs in candy, and God knew what the sugar hits were selling for within the crew. “They’re trying to blame Jase Graham, and that’s a damned lie. Jase likes Ramirez. I know damned well Jase would never shoot him—and where’d he get a gun, when he’d just been through a security check? But others hadn’t. I’m damned upset. We had an agreement that was going to get the ship fueled, and now there’s somebody trying to kill Ramirez, who for all I know is locked up in fear for his life.”

  “You’re jessing us.”

  “I’m worried, is what. You’re the only ones I’ve talked to in days. I don’t like what I’m hearing, and I think maybe there’s something damned underhanded going on. You want to come back here and talk to me, I’ll be glad to tell you and anybody else in the crew what I know, which is that there’s something damned messy in the works that’s somebody’s notion of getting the Mospheirans to work with them, but the Mospheirans won’t, they don’t want it, and some folk on this station are just scared to death of the atevi, who’re doing their damndest to help… Narani, attend me closely. Smile… Does this look like an enemy? He’s a perfectly upright, peaceful man with grandchildren.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnson murmured. “But we’re security and we’re supposed to know if there’s something going on.”

  Security, was it? Naive as children, and looking for a bribe, however fierce they might be if they were set off. “Look for yourselves, have a good look. We’ve got a table that violates a code, as I understand, a grandfather who’s doing his own job the best he can, and my room, all my secret goings-on, right here, perfectly in the open… Jago, put the gun up and come smile at these gentlemen.”

  Jago came out and smiled and bowed very nicely, despite the sidearm neatly in its holster.

  “Nadiin,” she said, and said, in Ragi, “Be careful of these men, nandi.”

  “One certainly is,” he said, and in his best approximation of Jase’s dialect, “Damned mess, is what. My staff is concerned.”

  “Where’d you hear this?” Johnson asked bluntly. “Who told you?”

  “I got it from the Mospheirans,” he said, total fabrication. “I think they heard it in the bar in their area. It’s a rumor. But it is sure we were supposed to meet with Ramirez days ago and it keeps being put off and put off, and no one ever meets. Tell Ogun what I’ve told you.”

  “We’d better get out of here,” Polano said, and the others thought so, too. They retreated to the door, still with their box of candy.

  “You tell whoever you report to that we’re damned tired of waiting,” Bren said, “and we don’t care who we deal with, but we’re here to deal and get this place operational. Tell Kaplan… tell him, too. I owe him an explanation. Tell him to get here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnson said, and the door shut.

  Bren heaved a deep, shaky breath, regretting twice over that Banichi hadn’t shown up, and likely wouldn’t, now, until the down cycle of the activity in the corridors. Banichi was lying up somewhere, surely, surely that was what had happened. It had just gotten hot wherever Jase was, and Banichi hadn’t thought it safe.

  Or Banichi was playing medic, in which Banichi had some small skill. Banichi would have used his own sense about that.

  “You mentioned Ramirez to them,” Jago remarked when the door was shut.

  “I more than mentioned him,” he said. “I told them the truth. They’re security, but they’re also part of the crew, and they’re not happy about this, never mind the damn box of candy. Have we more of that coming, Rani-ji?”

  “Of the candy, nandi? Yes. Kandana made a special note of it.”

  “Good.” He rapped a code on the security post door, and was not surprised to see guns on the other side of it as it opened. “It’s all right,” he said, but he didn’t know how more to reassure the staff. “I’ve broken our silence with the crew, baji-naji. Having Banichi gone and not knowing… I don’t know whether I was wise, Nadiin-ji, but we have limited means to make known what we do know. I’d rather have told Kaplan, but I made a choice. We don’t know how long we have. We assume the shuttle will depart on schedule. Maintain watch. Anticipate a shutdown of lights and air.”

  “We remain prepared,” Tano said.

  “Could I doubt?” he answered. He didn’t, not them.

  Himself, and his own breakneck course through a field of rocks, oh, he had numerous doubts.

  He could have waited until the shuttle left before doing something so rash.

  He hadn’t.

  And he sweated the hours until, quite predictably, Cl read him a note from Sabin giving her regrets, her apologies for missing the meeting with him, and resetting it for the 16th at 1300 hours.

  “Of course,” he said quietly. “I suppose the shuttle got off safely.”

  It was after time. There was nothing to tell them, one way or the other.

  “Right on time, sir. Nominal.”

  “That’s very good,” he said. “Thank you, thank you very much, Cl.”

  Jago happened to be in the room, reviewing a section of the station maps.

  “The shuttle has departed,” she restated in Ragi.

  “Just so” he said. ”Reportedly without incident.“ He added, because it was the truth: “We now wait, Jago-ji. We have to wait very artfully, very cleverly, and hope what I did today doesn’t cause us difficulties.”

  “One doubts we might supply ourselves so long,” Jago said. “But we have identified valves which make it unlikely they would subject this entire section to harsh measures. We seem to sh
are common conduits with quite an extensive occupied area. We measure considerable flow. To deprive us would deprive them.”

  “That’s very good news,” he said.

  “On the other hand,” she said, “we might disrupt that flow to create inconvenience. We believe there are redundancies. But the flow of water in particular is not wholly dependent on the spinning of the station. It’s aided by pumps, and valved against unanticipated leakage; the movement of air is forced by fans. These are vulnerable systems. We believe we can set up alternate controls, which may allow us to seize control of them. We simply have to observe their normal operation. We know we can secure water and operate doors; we believe that we can control the gates of the air supply as well.”

  He was very pleasantly surprised. “Extremely good work, nadi-ji.”

  “Algini’s work,” she said cheerfully. “He’s very good at what he does.”

  “I will bear those facts in mind,” he said, “in my own work. I don’t intend to wait passively for a month, Jago-ji, while the faction I judge opposed to us has its way. I want our missing captain. I want him alive. Then I intend to seize, oh, say, territory down to the central corridor, if you can set up to lay claim, to it… but only as soon as it’s auspicious to take it. We can make territorial claims all the way to the Mospheirans, just join up and claim the corridors between.”

  Jago lifted brows, quite blithely accepting his insane proposal. “Shall we not wait for Banichi, nadi? I expect him to have news of some sort. The captain’s condition may have changed, one hopes not for the worst.”

  “I think that we should wait to know,” he agreed, and added:. “I earnestly hope he has Ramirez.”

  “He knows you wish it,” Jago said, though there had never been a direct request for him to bring Ramirez, only a suggestion to Jase. What Banichi would do if asked and what Banichi considered safe to do in a moment of opportunity, might be two different things, and, as little informed in the situation as he was, he didn’t ask.

  He settled to work with his notes, resolved not to pace the floor until they did hear from Banichi.

  Most of all he kept telling himself there was no longer any shortage of time. Banichi had not acted, in going with Jase, as if he expected the meeting with the captain to go forward; he might not act, either, as if he believed he had to move today or the next day. When the Assassins’ Guild operated, patience was one of the cardinal virtues. Subtlety. Finesse had its atevi counterpart.

  And, thanks to Algini, it seemed that they didn’t have to sit and let the station push buttons to inconvenience them.

  In her study of that construction diagram, part of his own information, Jago was surely adding to Algini’s schematic, his set of choke points for the station’s choke hold on them.

  Thirty days to wait.

  Thirty days in which all hell might break loose, and in which he might either want to maintain Kroger’s territory as an outpost of their own, in a district next to human habitations; or draw Kroger and her team in with them, for safety. He did not think the ship wanted to offend the Mospheirans, not if they wanted something beyond fifteen hundred souls up here.

  No Banichi after midnight. No Banichi on the following day.

  And no word all day. None. Jago began to grow impatient, never to fidget, no such thing, but she gazed off at nothing, and listened to every sound, and at last, late after supper, came to him officially.

  “I think I should go look for Banichi, Bren-ji.” she said. “This is long enough. And I think I have a notion where he is.”

  “Where Jase is?”

  “A certain corridor. We dare not track him too far, but we don’t think he is far, nadi.”

  “You mean he’s emitting some sort of signal? He’s radioed?” He was mildly appalled.

  “Not radioed. He hasn’t transmitted for some time. But he wouldn’t, if he thought it might compromise his position. One becomes concerned, however.”

  “I’m concerned, too. But we can’t be running about the corridors. We can’t risk another of us. No.”

  She evidenced no resentment. She had asked. There might be a time she might go without asking, but it was a rift in man’chi, an ateva stretched in two directions.

  “Nojana might go,” she said. “He knows the corridors. He speaks a little.”

  “No,” he said, less and less sure he was right.

  Jill and I are going up to the mountains, Toby wrote him.

  We had a long talk. We’re leaving the kids with Louise. I’m sorry about the timing, sorry as I know how to be, but I’m signing off with Mum, can’t do it anymore.

  I think I’m going to quit my job. Jill wants to set up a tourist cottage on the north shore. I’m going to sell the boat, get a loan on one a little larger, take tourists out on day trips.

  I could help him, was the immediate thought. Finance was never a problem for him, of all else that was. A tour boat? It was a way to go broke. The repairs, the liability…

  I know you’ll say let me help, but not this time. This is all if I can talk Jill into it, and if the two of us can remember who we are, and get the world and your security people out of our bedroom. This is my trump card. It’s what we’ve always talked about.

  What in hell are you going to do with the kids? he wondered. Toby, have you lost your mind? You opted for a family, the house with the garden.

  About the kids, I don’t know. They’re old enough to help. Maybe take radio school. They could do that. It might be good for them.

  Living on a boat? It would cut them off for good and all from normal society, he thought, right when kids were learning to think of romance and other kids, and these kids sliding toward rebellion. They’d pitch a fair fit when they heard the plan.

  And the danger, and the weather, in seas never reliable, not on a calm day with the wind fair… and those kids aboard? Their mum would pitch her own fit.

  But Toby had a dream, Toby had a plan. It was safer than what his brother did for a living.

  And if Toby could convince Jill to trust him, if they could manufacture some romance and honest love around those kids and give them a dose of parental romance instead of intergenerational recriminations, maybe there was a chance for the kids, too.

  He didn’t know what more he could say. He wrote back: Good for you. You’ve got my whole-hearted good wishes, brother.

  From Tabini, he had no word at all. He sent messages and they dropped into a black hole.

  After a couple of tries at faking Tabini’s formal salutations, the captains seemed to have given up.

  But given the shuttle landing, hoping to God it had landed safely, trust that Tabini was hearing from Kandana and possibly even from Lund, before Tom Lund boarded a plane to tell Hampton Durant and Shawn that things weren’t optimum here.

  And Banichi still wasn’t back.

  “Well, we’ve supplied you with supper,” he called Kroger to say. “We’re entirely bored. Not a thing moving on this forsaken station. I don’t suppose we might arrange an invitation for us to join you at your local dinery. I’m tired of the local walls.”

  “Come over here,” she said, just that abruptly, not fool enough to talk in detail, nor was he; but they managed to convey, each to the other, that things weren’t just right.

  Ginny Kroger punched out.

  “Cl,” he said to that entity. “Send Kaplan at 1700. I’m taking a walk to the Mospheirans for a supper meeting.”

  “I’ll put through that request, ”Cl said, but by an hour later: “Sir, we haven’t any personnel available for escort at that hour.”

  “And earlier or later?”

  “We don’t have any personnel available for escort.”

  “Maybe I’ll just wander around and see if I can find the place.”

  “We can’t allow that, sir. Please stay in your section.”

  “This is annoying,” he said. “I want Kaplan, and I want him or someone at 1700 hours.”

  “Let me see what I can do,” Cl said, and an hou
r later reported: “You’ll have an escort, sir. I don’t know who, but someone.”

  It was a stranger who turned up at their door at 1700 hours, an elder crewman, white-haired and one-handed, who gave him and Jago and Tano sullen and suspicious looks from the one eye that seemed sharp.

  “Nice day,” Bren remarked midway to the Mospheirans’ section. “Fine day. Don’t you think?”

  “Don’t know,” the crewman replied, with a surly glance at Tano and Jago… not knowing whether anyone aboard could tell Tano from Banichi without standing them side by side. It was what they hoped, at least. “They understand real language?”

  “They don’t speak to strangers,” Bren said, knowing a hard case when he had one. He thought of adding, Or servants, but decided not to push it that far.

  Algini was battened down tight in the home section with Nojana. It was their chance to familiarize Tano with the route, and he took it, with a sharp eye to either hand as they went, wondering if there might be at any point, down any corridor, some signal from Banichi.

  There was not.

  And Kroger was not encouraging. “We’re not getting a damned bit of cooperation out of the administration,” she said, she and he and Feldman walking, with the old man’s guidance, to the mess hall, down an utterly deserted corridor, into an utterly deserted establishment.

  Not a single crew member in the place.

  “Is the bar this lively?” he asked.

  “The bar’s closed,” she said with a lift of the brows. “I don’t suppose you have a spare shot of vodka.”

  “I think we do,” he said. “Unwarranted hardship, isn’t it? What’s that poem, Feldman?” He lapsed into Ragi doggerel:

  “They would not send the ordinary guide tonight, They fake the aiji’s messages for days. If you find your safety no longer right, Come visit us and plan to stay.”

  “Yes, sir,” Feldman said, and faked a nervous laugh.