Текст книги "Precursor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“Not safe,” Jase said on a shaky breath, holding to his sleeves. “Bren, Bren,—I can’t think. No words. Drink of water.”

“He asks for water, Rani-ji.—Where have you been?”

“Hiding. Cold. No food. No water. Ramirez, we gave to him—but not much left.”

“Get in here and sit down.” Bren steered him to the nearest door, to the security station, and a chair by Tano, who offered a guiding hand. “Where have you been?” Bren pursued him. “Jase, make sense. Is anyone after you? Is the whole station in this condition? What’s going on?”

“Don’t think anyone’s followed. Becky, my mother, few people, got us food and water, not much. It freezes, there. Blankets. I didn’t know—didn’t know whether he’d make it; tried to get here once. Couldn’t. Becky’s with him. With Ramirez. Crew doesn’t know. They don’t want it known.”

“We can deal with that,” Bren said.

“They’re smart. They’ll get ahead of us. They’ll lie.”

“Who’ll lie?”

“Tamun. Tamun and his crew. I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get back to him. Bren, have you got medicines? We don’t have any medicines. Containers for water.”

“You can’t go back through the corridors loaded like a mechieta at market, nadi. If they’re after you, you can’t take a damned picnic lunch.”

“I know. I know. What I can put in my jacket. I can’t leave him. Can’t stay here.”

“We’re supposed to be leaving on this shuttle, tomorrow!”

“I thought you might.” He reached out for the water Narani offered him, and had a sip, and a second. “Oh, that’s good.”

“I have the aiji’s business to do! You know I can’t divert myself on personal privilege!”

“I know you won’t,” Jase said hoarsely, rolling a look at him, and taking a third, a long, reckless gulp.

“ God, you’ve handed me a mess!”

“I got him away!” Jase fired back at him. “I have him alive!”

“Banichi-ji,” Bren said, “we have a rather serious problem.”

“One gathers enough of this to believe so,” Banichi said.

“What do you want us to do?” Bren asked of Jase.

“I don’t know. If I knew I’d do it. Bren. Bren!” Jase made a strong bid for his attention as Bren looked momentarily toward Banichi. “Bren, they’ve given out among the crew that Ramirez was shot when I tried to take him hostage. That’s the story. That’s what they’re saying. It’s an atevi plot to have their way, and I’m in on it.”

“Can Ramirez refute it?”

“He won’t last ten minutes in their hands.”

“Then bring him here.”

“We can’t. We aren’t where we can get through the halls carrying him. We’re in a service corridor, where they were working, where they haven’t powered up yet, but there’s a few…” Jase drew a breath. “This didn’t take everybody by surprise. They’re not working there now, but those who were, they know how to set up, and they did, and they warned me Ramirez was in danger, but I didn’t know how much. And now we’re there, and there’s not damn much heat and there’s no water because it won’t flow through the pipes, but there’s air pressure, because it’s an air lock, and we can get it.”

“You’re living in an air lock?”

“A work area airlock. It’s large. There’s six of us.” Jase’s teeth began to chatter and he fought to control it. “I knew it would be hard, Bren. I didn’t know it would be like this. I thought I could reason with Ramirez. I thought he could control the rest. I didn’t know they’d go this far.”

“We have made every arrangement,” Banichi said, “to remove Bren from the station, Jasi-ji. In all high regard for you, the aiji’s interests are best served if Bren is removed from this venue as soon as possible.”

“I can’t go,” Bren said. “I can’t go now.” Very clearly his security was ready to hit him over the head and carry him to the shuttle, no idle threat, and he could not permit that. “We areinvolved. I didn’t want this, but Jase is here, and whatever we do next, it can’t be to leave him stranded.”

“We can take him with us,” Banichi said, “we can hold him here within this section and defy the captains to remove him. There are alternatives.”

“The situation aboard is in flux” Bren said. ”Baji-naji. If we take Jase away, Ramirez’ interests will fall entirely or the station will enter a period of factional warfare that the aishidi’tat can ill afford.”

“Nor can the aishidi’tat afford to lose you, nadi. You cannot run this risk.”

“I’m valueless if I sit idle, Banichi.”

“This is not a fifteen-day decision,” Banichi said. “It’s thirty days. Twice that, that the shuttle will remain on the ground.”

“Then it can return with additional security,” Bren said. “How likely, Jasi-ji, is Ramirez to survive his injuries?”

“With medicines, he may,” Jase said. “Fever is setting in. We daren’t take him anywhere. I have to get back to him, Banichi.” He had recovered some of his fluency in Ragi. “It’s not only man’chi, which I do feel, but logic. Without this man, my people will fall under Tamun’s control and use only the Mospheirans, and destabilize them by doing so, and destabilize the aishidi’tat, perhaps, too, if things go badly.”

“He’s right,” Bren said. “If Tamun deals with the likes of Gaylord Hanks, we’re in trouble. The Mospheirans are back under the hand of the Guild, they’re in civil war over that, and we in the aishidi’tat are in for a very rough ride being the only source of earth-to-orbit transport, with weapons orbiting over our heads, Nadiin-ji. Remember the ship is heavily armed. Under ill-disposed leadership, it might issue threats against the aishidi’tat, completely ignorant of the realities on the planet, completely foolish, completely unable to make peace after it has made a war greater than the War of the Landing. Bad as the situation is, Banichi-ji, I can bein no better position than I am now. We have Jase. We have a warning. The crew hasn’t fallen all the way into Tamun’s hands. There remains something we can do.”

“There remains something the paidhi can do on the ground, too,” Banichi said, “in safety. One can cut them off from labor and supplies and sit and wait. That is the more prudent course, nand’ paidhi. We can rescue Jase, who can attest the truth of what happened, which they must deal with if they wish supply. The Mospheirans cannot build a shuttle. They have no materials. Above all else we must remove the shuttle from their reach until we have some resolution. We cannotallow them to have it.”

Banichi’s argument was a telling one, victory the slow way, starving the Guild of labor and supplies, possibly entailing the fall of the rebel captains.

“Yet if they know we have boarded with Jase and that we’re taking that shuttle down to the mainland, not to return,” Bren said, “they may move against us, and we may end with a damaged shuttle or a shuttle held by force.”

“We have the other shuttles, not yet complete, but approaching it.”

“And no destination for them without the station, and without the ship,” Jase said. “Nadiin-ji, I can’t leave Ramirez to die. I have to go back to him, now. He has to have the medicines. That’s the answer to all of this. He can’t die. I agree we have to get him here. We have to get him help. But right now, he needs help where he is, and every moment I stay here, the condition in the corridors could change.”

“Thirty days’ wait,” Jago said. “Thirty days and an unpredictable situation.”

“What situation? We’ve never received this information,” Bren said in a tone of mock indignation. “We’ve had no visitor. We know nothing. They’re cutting us off from Tabini’s messages and no knowing what else, but we know nothing of that; we’re completely ignorant and suppose Tabini simply has nothing to say. We carry on for thirty days, and wait for our messages to get down with the crew.”

“We might trade one steward for one servant,” Banichi said. “Nojana would be an asset. The shuttle can spare him.”

“Dangerous,” Bren said.

“We have to get them word, at any event,” Banichi said. “If they see nothing of us, the shuttle will have a mechanical hold, some small problem, until they do hear.”

How could he not foresee Banichi would have some such arrangement? He was appalled. “So we must contact them… and we have Kroger to deal with, too. We can’t let them blithely proceed while we change our plans. They’ll be outraged.”

“One has one’s tasks to do,” Banichi said.

Bren cast him an unhappy look.

“First I must find where Jase is lodged,” Banichi said, “and safeguard his return. Then Kroger. But Kandana can go to the shuttle, and exchange very easily with Nojana. If Nojana arrives, we shall know the message reached them.”

“Be careful,” Bren said.

“I mean to be,” Banichi said. “Shall we find the medications, Bren-ji?”

“Do,” Bren said, and laid a hand on Jase’s shoulder. “If the place you’re hiding has you in this condition, it can’t be helping Ramirez. We have to get him here, into warmth, and care.”

“He won’t,” Jase said, down to the honest truth. “He won’t agree. I tried to persuade him. He’s off his head, maybe, but I don’t think so. While he’s on his own, he’s still in command. He hasn’t appealed to anyone else, any outsider. He’ll order the crew when he’s strong enough.”

“What’s the damage?” Bren asked. “What help has he got? What care?”

“There’s a medic with us,” Jase said. “Or he might have died. We’ve gotten supplies in. We’ve got a blanket for him. We’re just kind of short.”

“He needs warmth,” Bren translated. “Jase, think in Ragi.”

Jase made an obvious, physical effort. “I’m trying,” he said in that language. “I’m just tired. Questions. A lot of questions. No sleep. Hiding. I’m not thinking at my best.”

“One of my sweaters,” Bren said. “I know we brought a couple. Whatever we can fit you up with. Is cold all you’re contending with?”

“Cold, dark, there’s just not much…” Jase looked for a moment as if he’d fall on his face, and Bren brought him up with a hand on his shoulder.

“The hell you’re fit to go back!”

“Have to,” Jase said. “Not a choice.”

“Banichi, if you can assess the conditions, determine whether we have anything that might assist.”

“We have an emergency supply, condensates, warming cylinders, oxygen, water.”

“We don’t have liquid water,” Jase said, “but we take ice. All of that, all of that would help.”

“Easily done,” Banichi said. “We should move soon. Jasi-ji is right. This is a period of little activity in the corridors; it will increase in another half hour. Jago will go to Kroger, Kandana to Nojana, and I will find where Jase is hiding.”

“Can Kandana do it? Will he know his way?”

“There, quite well, I’m sure,” Banichi said. “And Nojana needs no instruction.”

“Then do it,” Bren said. At certain times a prudent, reasonable man simply had to trust his security was right and dismiss the alarms clenching up his own stomach as far less important, not deserving of panic.

He was afraid, nonetheless. He was altogether afraid, and it was as hard to send Banichi and Jago out on their risky ventures as it was to send Jase off to his hiding place.

“You tell them,” he said last to Jase, “that if they harm you, the aiji will take a very hard line with them, and that the aiji has a firm alliance with Mospheira, no matter what they think; tell them you’re highly regarded in the Mospheiran government as well, and if they harm a hair on your head they’ll have no cooperation.”

“I never was as convincing as you,” Jase said, in a laugh a little short of desperate.

“If they harm you,” Bren said, “in any way, I’llfile Intent. I’m not joking. I’ll take them down, personally, under the legitimate provisions of atevi law.”

Jase had started to laugh, obedient good will, but then he seemed to understand that it was indeed serious. Jase understood Banichi’s Guild very well, by all his experience on the planet.

“I’m not worth that,” Jase said.

“If they deal badly with one of their own, who wishes them nothing but good” Bren said, “then damn them to hell, and we’llgovern, the aiji will govern this whole solar system, by atevi law. The aiji will tolerate all sorts of provocations, but you think about it, Jase. Chaos is the absolute enemy of the aishidi’tat, and he won’t have it, he won’t have the abuse of his own associates up here. I told you that you have power. Use it!” He took Jase by both arms and lightened his grip on the left as Jase winced. “You get back here, hear me? Make it unnecessary for me to do anything so rash. I set that on your shoulders, because if anything happens to you, I’ll take this place apart. Hear me?”

“I do,” Jase said. “I’ll be careful.”

“Fishing trip,” Bren said. “Promise.”

“Deal,” Jase said. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go now.”

“Get out of here,” Bren said. “Banichi.”

“I am with nand’ Jase,” Banichi said. “Jago-ji, instruct Kandana.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and on that, Banichi hurried Jase out the supposedly locked door, with no fuss or delay at all.

“It’s not supposed to do that,” Bren said, feeling that things were not at all going according to his preferences. Half an hour ago he’d thought he was bound down to the planet where he could present Tabini apologetically with a negotiation gone to hell and ask his brother whether he’d been able to find his wife and children.

That was not the state of affairs he had. He had just been coopted into the very thing he least wanted, and the very thing that might giveTabini what he demanded, if they could keep Ramirez alive… if he could get his security team back alive, and Jase back alive.

Someone was in deadly earnest, some eruption of factional violence within the crew, and he could only look to their defenses and hope his security had foreseen the control of heat, light, and air being in hostile hands up here.

He could not permit the situation to degenerate. He had his meeting scheduled with Sabin, sure as he was she would break the appointment. He had Ramirez within reach, and the means, perhaps, perhaps, to get word to the crew—if he could get to the one almost-friendly officer in C1…

He sat down with his computer and drafted an announcement:

Captain Ramirez, having suffered an attempt on his life, has taken shelter…

Sometimes one could see things more clearly in draft. And if that message went out, the immediate counter-rumor would be that outsiders had done it; if Ramirez died, they would be left with that accusation hanging over them.

But if Ramirez died, Jase would be the scapegoat, Jase who had tiesto the foreign power, Jase who could no longer be trusted.

He saw the net drawing about them. He saw absolute chaos developing in the prospect of Kroger going down and him staying and his crew running about the corridors in various small teams.

He really wanted an antacid.

He wrote: A dissident faction on the Guild Council has attacked and wounded Captain Ramirez. He appeals for support among the crew. The crew must demand the return of Ramirez and the support of his agreements…

Who? he asked himself in despair. Who would support those programs?

And he remembered Ogun’s face, Ogun’s handshake, the fact that Ramirez had chosen Ogun to sit with him, the whole changing body language of that meeting that indicated to him that Ogun, too, had reached a like decision.

He cleared that draft and wrote, a third time:

Captain Ogun, Captain Ramirez needs your help. Jase Graham saved his life from an attack from someone who wanted the agreements nullified. I think you know better than I who that would be. We will stand by you and Ramirez and the agreements, and we have rejected the chance to go down to the planet. During this crisis, we offer whatever support you may need, including secure quarters.

He opted not to rouse help from Cl just yet. But he wrote:

Aiji-ma, things are going as optimally as in any machimi of homecoming.

And in Mosphei’, to his mother:

Please let me know how things are going.

He wanted to write: I’ve not been sure my messages are reaching you, but he dared not give so strong a hint that he suspected the majority of his messages were going straight into a black hole, and that the ones he had been getting were old messages recycled.

Instead he wrote: I’ve had a great deal of time to think how very much the family has arranged its affairs and its expectations around me, and I think this has always been a strain on everyone. Trust that I’m well, Mum, and that I’m happy where I am. My brother’s grown up into a remarkable man, and I hope you see that and give those great kids of his a hug for me. We’re both your successes. I just turned out a little different, that’s all, and I’m very content with that difference and with the choices I’ve made. I’ll never stop loving you and Toby, and no matter where I am, I’ll always be with you in mind and heart.

It was one of his better letters. He hoped it survived to get to her.

He wrote to a few of the councillors as well, the usual assurances that he remembered them. He did. He wrote to his staff, bidding them take privilege as they could and rest, since more work seemed imminent.

He hoped that would be the case.

He waited until near stationside dawn, and was still waiting when Nojana turned up, quietly.

“Nadi,” Narani said, “Nojana has arrived safely. What place shall I assign him?”

“Kandana’s, for now,” Bren said, and heaved a breath of relief, hoping now that the shuttle made schedule. “Thank him. I’ll speak to him after breakfast.”

In a very little more, Jago slipped into the section.

“How did they take it?” Bren asked her first of all. “How was it out there?”

Jago gave a delicate shrug. “Banichi isn’t back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“There was a close pass of their security,” Jago said. “I heard them, and feared they might come my way. I took a lift up, then down again when I hoped they had gone.”

Hearing. Therewas an atevi advantage he generally forgot to reckon.

“I hope Banichi hurries,” he said. “The Mospheirans weren’t pleased, I’ll imagine.”

“Not pleased. Tom-nadi is still going down, to fly to Mospheira to report; he hopes to come back on the next shuttle. Gin-nadi is remaining. She thanks you for your advisement and wishes to meet with you.”

“You told her about Ramirez.”

“Yes, nadi.” Jago was very clear on that. “I told Kate-nadi to be sure the message was accurate, and asked Kate-nadi not to speak the news aloud, but to write it for her very small and to beg her not to speak this information aloud even among themselves. I indicated also we believe they are monitored. She replied by writing, and I memorized it and destroyed the note: namely this.” Jago took a breath. “ ‘The hardliners have taken control. They want to deal only with us, using only Mospheiran help, no atevi in orbit. They want to fill out the crew by training Mospheirans. I’ve told them we can’t produce the resources and can’t manufacture what they need. They talk about surmounting that problem. The ship is armed, but I don’t know what they can do. I believe we are potentially in trouble.’ That is word for word her answer. Tom-nadi is going down to warn the President.”

“It’s not good news.”

“Do they think to start another war?” Jago asked him. “Does this reference to weapons mean weapons turned against the mainland?”

“I don’t discount the possibility. I rather think they mean that they can get the Mospheirans up here. Thatmeans getting their hands on a shuttle and being able to fly it.”

“The shuttle has no accessible autopilot,” Jago reminded him.

The autopilot required a complex code which atevi pilots would not surrender. “I’ll feel better when I know it’s away clear,” Bren said, and thought to himself, And when Banichi’s back.

Chapter 22

“C1, Bren said, ”send-receive to Mogari-nai.” “ Yes, sir.”

There was no question to him about the shuttle, which was due to depart. Nojana had informed them that the captain’s instructions were clear and that the shuttle was continuing a normal preparation for launch. Kandana would be aboard by now; Lund would be headed in that direction at any moment, for a launch at local 0900, and there was still no Banichi, still no word from Jase, no word, as Bren expected at any moment, that the meeting with Sabin was canceled.

Come on, he wished Banichi, as everyone on staff tried to pretend cheerfulness in spite of the situation. Jago was brisk, cheerful in her comings and goings.

Bren thought of the fact of Banichi’s absence in every other breath, telling himself that if anything should happen to Banichi for his sake he would never forgive himself. He could hardly look at Jago. He had no cheerfulness to spare.

The upload was felicitations for the safe shuttle flight from numerous agencies, and from his mother…

From his mother, an honest-to-God letter.

They say you’re on the space station, and that’s why you couldn’t return my calls. I shouldn’t be surprised ever at anything, I suppose. I know you must be worried about Barb. I sent her flowers in your name. She came through the surgery. She’s very strong. She’s gotten rid of a couple of the tubes, which she says is about time. I haven’t told her where you are. She doesn’t remember anything about the accident. She asks whether she fell on the escalators or whether she was shot or something.

And you tell her, but she forgets. They still have her sedated, and she wanders in and out. She talked about going up to Mt. Adams with you, to the lodge. She said you’d promised that. I haven’t told her anything to the contrary. You can’t reason with sick people and this isn’t the time for it.

I had a disturbing call from Toby. He’s having trouble with Jill. He says she objects to his coming here, as if she didn’t visit her family two and three times a year, not to mention dropping those kids on Louise. I think Toby should put his foot down about that. The children run around at all hours, and I know they’ve slipped out of the house at night. Louise can’t keep up with them, and if Jill doesn’t take a strong hand with those kids, they’re going to be a problem in another couple of years. Toby just thinks anything Jill wants is fine and the kids are spoiled the same way. Too many material things, not enough family time, and by my opinion, too much running about on that boat. I never approved of exposing the children to the mainland. I know certain things are all right for you. But the children shouldn’t see them.

At any rate, things are quieter here. I wish you were here.

Whydid he let things like this bother him? Why, amid every other world-threatening worry he had, did this one letter send his blood pressure soaring, and how could it persuade him he was derelict not to drop everything and run home and talk sense to his mother?

There was no logic. She was his mother.

He wished she hadn’t written today. He honestly wished that. And felt guilty about it. He felt angryabout Barb lying there with a damned batch of flowers his mother had signed his name to.

How dareshe? Easily. She just did, that was all. She knew best. Ask her.

“Bren-ji.” It was Jago who leaned in the door, supporting her weight in transit on the door frame. “Four men outside.”

The knell of doom, it might be. His mind leaped into a completely different track: Banichi might have run into serious trouble. Talking them out of it might be an option, but not with a handful of armed men.

And there was a reasonatevi residences were constructed as they were. “ Mantos an,” he said, for which there was no translation, nor any more order needed. Jago relayed the order, mantos an, and every door they owned whisked shut, within the same ten seconds.

Jago stayed on his side of the door. He was certain that Tano and Algini were in the security post, and that that door was shut, and in his mind’s eye he could all but see Narani, alone, walking to the door.

The station might have opened that outer door and secured a tactical advantage. Whatever was up, they had opted not to do that.

Bren rose, having taken the gun from his computer case, wondering if the captains’ men might cut down Narani and use some electronic key to the door locks, defeating all but armed resistance; and for some moments he waited, quiet, straining to hear any activity at all outside.

Then came a light, muted tap at the door, and Jago opened it, on her guard: he stood with gun leveled.

Narani was there, alone, with the silver tray, bearing an odd wisp of pink cellophane. A candy wrapper, and a card.

“They have no message cylinders, as it seems,” Narani said. “They are Johnson-nadi and his associates, the ones displaced by our residency.”

Bren cast Jago half a glance, confused, but it was most certainly a candy wrapper, and somehow it had ended up in the transaction with Johnson and associates. “Kaplan,” was his instant guess, the only route by which it might have happened, and he set his gun carefully on the counter and went out into the hall, with Narani.

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’theard? Maybe it’s not true.”

“Shot, sir? What’sthis?”

“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 Ogunwhat 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.