Текст книги "Precursor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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PRECURSOR

Caroline J. Cherryh

the fourth in the Foreigner sequence

To Kira and Kasi

Chapter 1

The jet that waited these days was passenger-only, carrying no baggage but that which pertained to the paidhi and whatever diplomats happened to be traveling under his seal.

More, since a certain infelicitous crossing three years ago, the plane itself bore the colors, the house seal, and the personal seal of Tabini-aiji, which served as an advisement to any small craft that, anyone else’s personal numbers be damned, the paidhi’s jet had absolute right of way.

Diplomatic status on the island enclave of Mospheira, however, did not mean a luxurious lounge. It didn’t even mean access in the public terminal, where the island traffic came and went and delivered more or less happy families to holiday venues. No, diplomatic passengers embarked from the freight area. Security preferred that defensible seclusion. The State Department arranged a red carpet across the bare concrete, a small concession to appearances on a tight budget.

Bren preferred the seclusion, carpet or no carpet. A mission from Mospheira was already aboard, so security informed him, about five minutes ago… they’d not been waiting long, but they were all the same waiting, now, safe, their baggage aboard.

He carried his own computer, that was all, a machine with information certain agencies would kill for, and set it down to say his good-byes. Seclusion might mean family partings in a dingy, spartan warehouse, but it also meant he could indulge those partings in private: maternal tears, brotherly hugs, on a hasty Independence Day visit that had nothing to do with family obligations, rather four days occupied with official duties, then an overnight stay with his mother that ended one day before the official holiday.

On his way out of the human enclave, arriving by private car and not having to run the gauntlet of news cameras, he’d already changed his island casual knits for the calf-high boots and many-buttoned frock coat of atevi court style. He’d braided his hair unaided into a respectable single, tight plait, precisely—he hoped—between the shoulder blades, with his best effort at including the proper white ribbon of the paidhi’s rank. He had lost one cufflink into the heating duct of his mother’s guest room, or somewhere, this morning; he was relatively sure it was the heating duct, but he hadn’t had time to dismount the grate and retrieve it. His mother had regaled him with an elaborate, home-style mother-cooked breakfast—her substitute for the holiday—and what could he do but sit down and spend the little time he could spend with her?

He’d borrowed a straight pin to hold the cuff, which he now tried to avoid sticking into his brother’s shoulder as they embraced.

It was: “Take care” from his brother. And predictably, from his mother: “You could stay another day or two.”

“I can’t, Mom.”

“I wish you’d arrange another job.” This, straightening his collar. He was thirty years old, and probably the collar needed straightening. “I wish you’d talk to Tabini. At leastget a decent phone line.”

Tabini-aiji was only the leader of the civilized world, the most powerful leader on the planet and probably above it. A decent phone line in his mother’s reckoning meant one that would take calls in Mosphei’ instead of Ragi and let his mother through the atevi security system at any hour, day or night; that would suffice. The fact that there were four diplomats and a situation waiting aboard the plane was not in her diagram of the universe. Next it would be: Get a haircut.

“You have the pager, Mother.” It had been a birthday gift, last visit. “I showed you—”

“It’s not the same. What if I had an attack and couldn’t use the pager? I’m not getting any younger.”

“If you couldn’t use the pager, you couldn’t use the phone. Just talk to the thing. It’s all automatic, state of the art.”

“State of whose art, I’d like to know.”

“It’s Mospheiran. Bought right here on the island.”

“You don’t know where it goes. You don’t know who’s listening. And atevi made it. They make everything.”

“I know who’s listening,” he said, and attempted conciliation with a hug. She was stiff and resisting to his embrace.

“Shots in the night,” she muttered, not without justification. “Paint on my building.” That was years ago, but he couldn’t blame her for blaming him.

His brother moved in—a diversionary tactic. Toby put his hand on their mother’s shoulder, simultaneously offered Bren his right hand in a handshake, and gave him a clear passage to the red carpet.

“See you,” Toby said. “Go.”

It was smooth. It almost worked.

But a wild cry of: “Bren!” came from beyond the security station, and a woman in fluttering white came running across the concrete, in fragile yellow shoes not designed for athletic effort.

Barb—the ex-girlfriend he’d successfully evaded for the last four days, who’d sent him voicemails he’d deleted.

Barb—whom he’d almost married.

She’d not put in a personal appearance during this visit or the last or the one before that, though his mother on all his visits had talked of Barb—Barb did this, Barb did that; Barb did her shopping, ran her errands.

Barb, married, had all but adopted herself into his mother’s apartment, and yet didn’t manage to show up while he was there… not that he’d advertised his visit, or even given his mother advance notice of last night’s visit. Barb had tried to meet him, he was sure. He’d “just missed her” twice, this trip. He didn’t know what the sudden insistence was. He wondered if he should have deleted those voicemails.

And now she’d gotten into this departure area on her husband’s high-clearance security card, he’d damned well bet.

“Barbie,” his mother said lovingly.

“Go,” his brother urged him under his breath. Whatever was going on, Toby knew.

“Security window,” Bren said with a frozen smile. “Have to go. People waiting on the plane. Mum. Toby.—Barb.” He offered his hand. “Nice to see you. Glad you’re seeing to Mother. Kind of you to come.”

“Bren, dammit!” Barb flung herself into a hug. Bren could find no civil choice but to return it, however distantly. “I know” she murmured against his shirt, “I know you’re angry with me.”

“Not angry, Barb.” He did the most deliberately hateful thing he could think of, tipping up her tearful face and kissing her… on the cheek. “I’m glad for you. Glad you’re happy. Stay that way.”

“I’m not happy!” She seized his lapel, flung a hand behind his neck, and kissed him fiercely on the lips. Passive resistance didn’t do enough to resist it… at first: and then he found to his dim distress that he didn’t respond at all. Barb’s kisses were nothing foreign to him—longed-for, for years of his life. Her mouth wanted, tried, to warm his… but nothing happened.

He was disturbed. He turned from anger to feeling sorry for Barb and a little distressed about himself. For old times’ sake he tried to heal her embarrassment by returning the kiss, even passionately, tenderly… as much as he remembered how.

But still nothing happened between them—or, at least, nothing from his side.

Barb drew back with a stricken, troubled gaze. He gazed at her, wondering what she knew, or why his human body didn’t respond to another human being, why warmth didn’t flow, why reactions didn’t react. Pheromones were there; it was the old perfume, the very familiar smell of Barb and all Mospheira, to a nose acclimated to the mainland.

Interest wasn’t there. Couldn’t be resurrected. Too much water under the bridge. Too many “I’m sorrys.”

And for that one frozen moment he stood there staring into the face of the human woman he’d meant to marry just before the fracture… the human woman who, when the going had been rough, had fought his battles and risked her life—then married a quiet, high-clearance tech named Paul, opting to protect herself behind his security shield.

Could he blame her for that?

He didn’t, particularly, in cold blood. But from dismayed at himself, he transited to angry at her. It wasn’t about the marriage; the anger was all for her campaign to get him back, and doing it by attending on his mother, running her errands.

What in helldid Barb think she was doing? was the first subsurface question. Why did she come now? Why did she court his mother, for God’s sake?

And looking into her face as he did, he didn’t truly know. One lonely woman befriending another? One woman who hadn’t been lucky in love, crossing generations to find a kindred soul, as close to love as possible?

In Barb’s paralysis, in that long, stricken stare… he disengaged, and with his face burning, he hugged Toby, hugged his mother, whispered a farewell, grabbed up his computer case, and followed the carpet to the waiting plane, head down, eyes on the carpet underfoot.

“Bren!” Barb shouted after him. Angry. Oh, damn, yes. Now she was angry. His nerves knew that voice, and for both their sakes, he hoped Barb wasangry… angry enough to get on with her life. Angry enough to divorce her new husband, or settle down and live with the choice she’d made three years ago—angry enough just to do something toward a future of her own. Whatever that choice eventually was, it wouldn’t be his choice, not any longer. It wasn’t his mother’s responsibility, either.

They couldn’t take up again where they’d left off. It wasn’t just the fact she’d married. It was the fact that he himself was no longer the Bren Cameron she knew. Then, he’d been a maker of dictionaries and a translator… until his life had exploded and put her in danger she’d been lucky to escape. He couldn’t go back to that safe anonymity now. Couldn’t join his mother’s fantasy, or Barb’s, that that anonymity would ever exist again. There was a reason for this concrete isolation.

And a great deal that was human wasn’t within his power to choose anymore. He’d already lost everyone on the island; he was about to lose his only human companion on the mainland. He wasn’t happy about it, but that was the choice far higher powers made.

He climbed the metal steps to the hatch of the airliner and still didn’t look back, refusing to give Barb a shred of encouragement, even if it meant he didn’t look back for his brother and his mother, either. His mother’s health wasfragile. He had reason to worry about her. Toby had had threats on his life and his family’s lives, because of him. And Barb had been a target … and knew it. Now she wasn’t, and she couldn’t let well enough alone.

His mother and his brother would come to the mainland for visits. Barb, on the other hand, couldn’t get the requisite pass—no matter how powerful her husband’s influence—because the visa depended on the atevi government, not her husband’s security clearance in the human one.

And doubtless she was upset about that, too. Barb wasn’t used to no. She really hated that word. It’s overwas another thing she’d made up her mind not to hear. I regularly sleep with someone elsewas damned sure outside her comprehension. If she knew, and knew that individual wasn’t human, that might figure in her determination.

But he hoped to hell not even his brother knew… certainly not Barb, because the next step was his mother knowing and the third was the whole island continent knowing.

“Mr. Cameron.” A human steward welcomed him aboard and took his formal coat as he shed it.

In that process he scanned the narrow confines of a jet configured for luxury. The passenger shell he’d used in the plane that had previously run this route had always sat as a removable inclusion in the hull just ahead of dried peas and fresh flowers; but this sleek Patinandi Aerospace number, the aiji’s plane, had tapestry for a carpet runner and seat upholstery of ornate atevi needlework. When it wasn’t ferrying the paidhi across the straits, it did transcontinental courtesy service for the aiji’s staff and guests… and the seats and furnishings were all to atevi scale.

Consequently, four Mospheiran diplomats sat like ten-year-old children in large-scale chairs, grouped around what was, relative to the chairs, a low table… sipping Mospheiran alcoholic beverages from atevi-scale glassware.

They’d be oblivious before they landed, if they didn’t watch themselves.

He knew who was who in the group, having been briefed; knew two of the four in the mission prior to this meeting, at least remotely: Ben Feldman was a spare, unathletic young man thinning at the temples, Kate Shugart, a woman with close-cut, dull brown hair drawn back in a clip—she’d trained to have his job, but the job had ceased to exist, and she’d never made the grade. Those two of the four were Shawn Tyers’ people, old hands in the Foreign Office. He trusted Shawn, or he had trusted Shawn—with his life, while he’d been an official working for the Foreign Office.

The other two… however…

He walked to the group, still with the taste of Barb’s lips on his mouth and a large breakfast queasy in his stomach. Shawn hadn’t briefed him about this more than to remind him Mospheira had applied to go to space, and to say that the aiji in Shejidan had cleared their mission most unexpectedly. They’d felt no choice but to go, immediately.

More, Shawn had said, the station in orbit had just called its second and lastrepresentative home, on this impending flight. A decision that would affect his work… profoundly.

And Tabini-aiji had cleared it.

It was one huge, upsetting mess, and Shawn couldn’t brief him fully, not any longer. They served different governments. He could only say the Mospheiran government wasn’t disposed to say no when the aiji approved a chance they’d looked to take, oh, a year to clear…

Mospheirans never had understood how fast the aiji could move when he wanted to.

The question was why the aiji wanted to.

The shuttle was still in testing; the payload for said test had been set and calculated to a fare-thee-well… one had to be atevi to fully comprehend just what manner of disruption such a change posed. Inconvenient, yes, but more to the point profoundly disturbing to a people whose culture revolved around felicitousnumerical associations. Change one kilo of payload, and the entire mission might need to be redesigned.

It was more than Barb’s maneuver that had his stomach in a knot.

He could imagine Lord Brominandi making his speech in the legislature: Let the fool humans risk their necks in a shuttle that had only made four prior flights. Mospheirans suddenly declared they wanted seats, just seats, nothing major in the way of baggage, Shawn had told him, no great additional mass… oh, let the shuttle just carry enough fuel. No great problem. No recalculation at all, oh, no, nothing of the kind.

He was appalled. Infuriated. It was hisshuttle, dammit, and even the possibility of a glitch-up and the loss of the shuttle turned his blood cold. God, the whole program set at incalculable risk. For what?

And Tabini cleared it to fly?

But the humans in orbit had called their interpreters home, first the one on Mospheira, which hadn’t alarmed anyone on the mainland. It was expected, though early.

And they’d thought nothing of it when, on the next turnaround with the only space shuttle in existence, thisturnaround, this last flight… they’d sent down a senior staffer from the station to replace, so he and Tabini had assumed, Yolanda Mercheson as the human-to-human paidhi.

But when Shawn so innocently announced that the station had called home the only other human being on the mainland, the only human being he had regular contact with, to go back to the ship that had sent him down… a fait accompli. No negotiation, no request, no concession to protocols or his plans…

Thathad been cause for alarm.

And had he only found out about that change in plans when the shuttle had landed and deposited said senior staffer unannounced on mainland soil, he might have been able to address those alarms. Instead, he’d been shipped off to Mospheira, delivering that same senior staffer from the station, one Trent Cope, to Shawn’s superiors, and now he had to learn of Jase’s imminent departure from a former colleague who had no idea the bombshell he’d been dropping.

Yolanda recalled to the station. Now Jase leaving without notice…

Now Tabini-aiji cleared a human mission to go into orbit and deal with the situation on the station before Tabini’s own representatives could go aloft?

He was more than appalled. He was furious. And having walked onto the plane with the matter with Barb simmering, an unreasoning fury boiled up in him at the sight of human smiles. The friendly greetings of former junior staffers in the Foreign Office grated on his nerves, and two senior staffers from Science and Commerce whose provenance he more than doubted were just the topping on the affair.

He knew damned well what the thinking on the island was: Mercheson had gone up with what shecould report after her sojourn on the planet, and now the island government grew nervous about what she wouldreport about them… justifiably, counting that certain injudicious fools on Mospheira had started shooting at each other in her witness.

The human government had changed three years ago, dumped out George Barrulin and his cronies, put in Hampton Durant as president… cleaned house, so to speak. Mercheson had fled the island briefly for the atevi-ruled mainland, feeling her life in danger among the human population. When the political dust had settled, then she’d gone back to her job… and as of a month ago was up in orbit spilling all the island’s sins to the Pilots’ Guild.

Which was the reason a shuttle existed: the ship that had brought his ancestors to this planet had left again, lost itself for a couple of centuries and then come back to find the space station mothballed, the labor force become colonists on the planet, and the species that owned the planet more or less in charge, despite the delusions of the island that they were the superior species. The humans on the planet had lost a war, agreed to turn over their technology step by step so as not to disrupt the world economy, and never quite grasped the fact that turning over computer science to the mathematically gifted atevi had let the genie loose. Humans on Mospheira weren’t the most technologically advanced beings on the planet… not any longer.

And that technological transfer, two hundred years of it, was at an end, as regarded Mospheira passing technology to the atevi government in Shejidan. Right now the only humans with anything to teach the atevi were in orbit, the crew of the returning starship… the Pilots’ Guild; and the atevi government had turned its attention in that direction. As a consequence, the paidhi, the human interpreter to the atevi, currently one Bren Cameron, as an officer of the Mospheiran Foreign Office, was out of a job; the paidhiin, Bren Cameron, Yolanda Mercheson and Jase Graham, as officers of the atevi government and the Pilots’ Guild respectively, were the interpreters of the new order of business.

Now the ship, as if oblivious to the highly specialized nature of that post, called back both their experienced paidhiin, sent a new man down who couldn’t keep his meals down, and he… he shared a plane with an unexpected human delegation, on their way to orbit, on hisspace shuttle.

Shawn Tyers, always trustable, had not quite answered why they scrambled to this sudden order from Mospheira, when he’d asked the blunt question. People are nervous, had been Shawn’s answer. Average people are nervous. They called Mercheson back.

One could damned well bet they were nervous.

“Mr. Cameron.” Ben Feldman, his own age, courteously rose out of his chair to welcome him with a handshake. “We’ve met.”

He wanted to choke the life out of all of them. But diplomats didn’t have that luxury. He smiled, instead. “Bren, if you will. Ben, Katherine…”

“Kate.” Kate got up, offered a hand, and the portly gray-haired man rose. “Tom Lund.”

And the gray-haired, long-nosed woman: “Ginny Kroger, Science. Dr. Ginny Kroger. Pleased to meet you.”

VirginiaKroger. Out of Science. He knew that name, put a face with it, one of the old guard. And Tom Lund, from Commerce… that was a department of the government just a little too close to Gaylord Hanks and George Barrulin, whose influence had damned near taken the world to war three years ago. Their brilliant management was whyMospheira was renting seats on an atevi shuttle… that and the fact that a few billion years of geologic time hadn’t put titanium, aluminum, iron, and a dozen other needful substances in reach of the islanders, where the current aiji’s predecessors had settled human colonists.

“You’re certainly a surprise,” Bren said. “What prompted this sudden hurry?”

“The aiji,” Lund said as they sat down. “Cleared the visas, like that. No warning. We’ve learned… we were ready, even if we didn’t expect it.”

“What—pardon my bluntness—” He suffered a moment of desperation, seeing a thoroughly unpleasant situation shaping up in what had been the world’s clear course to the future. “What do you expect to get, up there?”

He,at thirty, was the veteran diplomat. The people he faced, with gray hair in the mix, were utter newcomers to the trade.

No one on Mospheira but him had actually negotiated with a foreign power in two hundred years. The Mospheirans from their origins had not been models of good sense in international relations… and now they were rushing to insert themselves and their lack of expertise between two armed powers which had had a diplomatic contact proceeding fairly well and without incident.

And they were doing it at the very moment that other armed power pulled its diplomats back without explanation.

He kept a pleasant expression on his face, knowing he was rattled by the whole situation. He certainly didn’t intend to blow up the interface, not with people he knew were going to go do their best to double-deal the atevi andthe Pilots’ Guild. He knew it wasn’t the friendliest question, but he asked it. “Is this a test run, or is there something specific you intend to do up there?”

“I beg your pardon,” Lund said in distress.

“Serious and sober question. I’m worried. Isthere a reason for rushing up there?”

He saw the flicker of thoughts through various eyes… their remembrance, doubtless, that though they were talking to a human being, and though they were on a first name basis, he didn’t work for the Foreign Office anymore… they were talking, in effect, to the aiji’s representative. The aiji had just cleared them to go, but the aiji could unclear it.

“It’s your government’s decision,” Ginny Kroger said, leaning forward. “We filed the request. We had word last night it was cleared. On your own advice, we cooperate, Mr. Cameron. I believe that is your advice.”

He couldn’t deny that, and he gathered up his self-control, such as still existed. “I don’t deny that.” So it wasTabini-aiji’s doing, more than theirs. The ruler of the major civilization in the world had just reacted to the move the Pilots’ Guild had made, serially recalling theirambassadors for consultation, in effect, and sent up, not his own people, but a complete wild card… a handful of Mospheiran experts, two from the ivory towers of University and State, and two old hands in island intrigue.

God, he said to himself, uneasy at the possibilities, and belted in.

“Then I understand what he’s doing.” he said.

“Do you?” Lund questioned. “That’s ahead of anyone in the State Department.”

“Atevi occasionally grant audacious requests when they’re made… just to observe the outcome, even in serious matters. A roll of the dice, you might say. Watching where they fall.”

He shot a small glance at the two translators, looking for any sign of comprehension, and it troubled him that only one, Feldman, seemed to twig to the suggestion it was a test of human intentions; but maybe Shugart was practicing that other atevi habit: inscrutability.

“You sent a mission request through.” He let the implied accusation enter his voice. “I didn’t get it.”

The reply and confirmation of the mission had almost certainly come out of Mospheira in the Ragi language, translated by some junior functionary, which was against Foreign Office policy, and he knew Sonja Podesta, an old friend, head of the Foreign Office these days, had to have authorized that message… or had it slipped past her.

But past Shawn, her superior in the State Department? Shawn, who had just briefed him?

It was not a pleasant thought that Shawn might deliberately have tried to put one past him, and lied about it face-to-face.

“The transmission missed you, sir.” Lund seemed quite anxious to avert his suspicion. “We had no idea you were already on the way to the island.”

“Indeed it did miss me. How it got cleared without my knowing is another matter.”

“If there’s any irregularity,” Lund said, “it certainly wasn’t intended.”

“On your part, I well believe.”

“At higher level,” Kroger said. “We meticulously respect the agreements. We had no idea the request was going through your office in your absence. We did not expect this.”

It had been intercepted by someone on the mainland with access to his messages, which could only be the atevi Messengers’ Guild, or his own staff—

Or Tabini’s security.

And, routed to Tabini-aiji, the unseasonable, foolhardy request had been granted.

He wished he’d skipped the hearty breakfast. The search of the grate… the missing cufflink was evident, as he sat. The aiji’s representative was not at his best, in any sense. He’d been sandbagged by his former friends in the State Department, by the President of Mospheira, who was supposed to be sane, and now he learned possibly there was a leak in the Messengers’ Guild… an organization which had not been his best friends on the mainland, which had not been loyal to Tabini. Thatcould be a scary problem.

But leaks in that Guild certainly didn’t get their results approved by the aiji, not unless the message had come in such a public fashion that there was no face-saving alternative but to grant the request. He didn’t know what he might be flying into. A government crisis, very likely.

Distrusting the Messengers’ Guild didn’t encourage him to try a phone call.

The hatch had shut some moments ago, unremarked in the exchange. The plane began its taxi out and away from the building. The alcohol-fed cheerfulness was not quite what it had been, and they weren’t even on the runway yet.

“Well,” Bren said, deciding to be mollified, at least for their benefit, “well, I understand. My apologies for my anxiousness. But I can’t stress enough how delicate the situation is. The aiji didn’t get any advance word from the Pilots’ Guild when they recalled Mercheson and now Jase Graham. He may have felt sending you was tit for tat, with them.”

That provoked a little thought among the experienced seniors.

“The atevi have been pushed pretty hard,” Kate Shugart said very quietly, in her junior, mere-translator status. Three of the five people present knew at gut level how wrong it was to shove badly-done messages through the system. “A great deal of change, when just a few years ago we were debating advanced computers.”

… Carefully examining the social fabric in the process, to be sure what they released into atevi hands didn’t end up starting a war or breaking down atevi society. Atevi had invented the railroad for themselves; humans had lately contributed the culturally dangerous concepts of fast food and entertainment on television, trying not to bring on a second atevi-human war.

Now it was rocket science. And a reported contact with some species outside the solar system, technologically advanced and hostile. The Pilots’ Guild had come running home with trouble just over the horizon… and the world had found itself no longer in a space race for orbit and the old, deteriorating station, but in a climb simultaneously for dominance in decision-making and for survival… against a species the Pilots’ Guild had somehow provoked.

Not a pleasant packet of news for the world, that had been, three years ago.

Atevi, who didn’t universally favor technological imports, suddenly had to take command of their own planet or abdicate in favor of the human Mospheirans andthe human Pilots’ Guild, who historically didn’t like each other and who weren’t compatible with atevi.

And in order for atevi to take command, they had to build a ground-to-space vehicle from a design the Pilots’ Guild handed them, and haul their whole economy, their materials science, and all their industry into line with the effort.

It wasn’t humanlypossible. If atevi hadn’t been a continent-spanning civilization and a constitutional monarchy to boot, with rocketry already in progress, they couldn’t possibly have done it… certainly not in his lifetime. Witness the efforts of the Mospheirans, who’d complained about the tax subsidy for their only aircraft manufacturer, and who’d let the company go. Now they were buying their planes from an atevi manufacturer, and had no recourse but to pay for seats on the atevi shuttle to orbit.

He knew what Tabini was charging them, and the citizens hadn’t yet felt the tax bite.

“If the shuttle should fail,” Bren remarked, likewise quietly, as the plane turned onto the runway and gathered speed, “if the shuttle has anysignificant problem, there would be another War of the Landing. Not could. Would. That’s what we constantly risk. Forgive me for the interrogation; I’m supposed to have translated that request, and somehow it catapulted past me. It’s always dangerous in atevi society when things don’t follow routine channels.”

“We’re not in danger now,are we?” This from Ben Feldman, who did understand the risk, as the plane left the ground.

“I have some concern,” Bren said. “I want to be absolutely sure you don’t walk into something. You’re sure that visa really came from Tabini’s office.”

“It came with verification,” Lund said. “You want to see the papers?”

“ Thatwouldn’t tell me,” Bren said. He didn’t intend to reveal any of his doubts of the Messengers’ Guild, or of instabilities he knew of, not to adversarial negotiators. “What specifically are your arrangements? Who’s meeting you?”