Текст книги "Precursor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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He tried further. She was an ally, if he could win her. “ ‘Sidi-ji, the Pilots’ Guild would be fools either to offend the aiji or to deal with Mospheirans in any preference. Nature put the resources in Tabini’s hands.”

“Nature,” Ilisidi scoffed.

“So to speak,” he amended that. “But they already know they can’t get a thing from the Mospheirans but workers who speak their language. A considerable resource. What they don’tcomprehend is the danger of having atevi and humans in close contact. We’ve warned them. They still don’t comprehend because it flies in the face of experience. People who live together a long time should grow closer. Not more angry.”

“And the Guild originally was the party to respect atevi rights.”

“Just so. But they’re desperate now. As a human, nand’ dowager, and speaking with all my understanding of the situation, I believe that desperation is real, and that it may drive them to fear atevi less than they ought, or to listen to Mospheirans who may not be well-informed Mospheirans. Above all else, I know Jase knows the truth; it’s valuable they listen to him, but if they get him up there, where he doesn’t have current contact with information, we’re left with Cope, who can’t hold his food down, and whom I don’t find agreeable; and with some other stranger they’re going to drop in our midst, which I don’t favor. There are aliens. There is a danger. There may be small omissions in that truth, but I haven’t lived with Jason for three years without knowing he’s more valuable to us than he gets credit for. If you can intercede with the aiji, do.”

“Jason hasn’t lied to us. On that, everything rests.”

He swallowed a bite that proved just a little large, and took a slow drink to correct it, trying not to let nerves show. They might win. They truly might win. “I have no doubt of him.”

“Do you not?” She rapped the table sharply with her knuckles, shaking the liquid in the glasses and causing ice to shift in the pitcher. “Do you not?”

He had not fortified himself against all her tactics. Some still worked, and this one could shake atevi out of their certainties.

It made him think twice, however, how very, very much relied on Jason’s truth: how much of their information came from Jason; how all their confirmation with the paidhi on the island did agree… but in all of it… in all of it… trust figured prominently.

“Nand’ dowager,” he said calmly, “I have asked myself that question for three years, the same I asked at the beginning. I know I’d entrust my life to him. But the responsibility I bear to the aiji and the association to be sure of the truth… doesn’t allow me to believe anything without question.”

“And this Mercheson-paidhi, whose associations you don’t thoroughly know?”

“Just so.”

“I’d thought a human might have a more exotic answer regarding trust and confirmation.”

“My own mother has associations I don’t thoroughly know, and consequently there are things I won’t tell her. Man’chi doesn’t apply, but gossip in the wrong places is a universal problem.”

Ilisidi laughed, that short, sharp laugh that said someone had, after all, taken a turn she didn’t expect.

“So does my grandsonhave associations of dubious connection,” Ilisidi said, still amused, and utterly serious. “Tatiseigi of the Atageini still rests uneasy.—Paidhi-ji, you never lose your edge.”

“I treasure the dowager’s good opinion.” God, were the gift-servants in his own household informing, however indirectly, the aiji-dowager, as he well knew even Banichi and Jago were informing Tabini? “I hope still to justify it.”

“Is your amorous bodyguard one of those items you don’t mention to your mother?”

He blushed. He knew he did… but Ilisidi had been in on this romantic intrigue from the first night.

“I try not to.”

“Deceiving one’s own mother.” The fruit had disappeared. Ilisidi laid down her utensil and leaned her narrow chin on an aged fist. Golden eyes caught the light, wreathed in wrinkles. “I take it, then, she wouldstill disapprove. On the other hand… is shecelibate? Or would she tell you that?”

His mother? He was shocked to think… no, she wouldn’t tell him. She was completely isolated, completely cut off from relationships outside the family… give or take Barb. She’d separated from his and Toby’s father and never had another man in her life that he knew. By now that was a fairly long record of no outside associations, but frankly, no, he didn’t know what his mother did when he wasn’t in town.

Ilisidi laughed, salacious amusement that was her wicked delight in a still active sexuality… in which he was relatively sure Cenedi figured somehow. He never understood atevi sensibilities in that regard. They had a great reserve outside an association; an unnerving lack of verbal reserve within one—and he suspected he simply didn’t come wired to understand on what grounds she laughed—a fact which he was sure contributed to the joke.

“Your face turns an interesting color,” she said.

“I’m sure it does.” She’d learned the meaning of a blush: and in all the years of their association he hadn’t quite figured out the precise point on which his embarrassment both charmed and amused her. God knew, with ‘Sidi-ji, there were far, far more dangerous relationships. And he always played the game… won her help, sometimes against very heavy odds.

“So,” she said, “are you embarrassed about Jago, before your mother?”

“My mother had far rather I’d married my former lover, who still courts her favor.”

A wry smile touched the dowager’s thin lips, inexplicable for a moment. Then: “Ah. Barb. And does your brother express an opinion?”

“He regards my staff very highly.” Liked them immensely, but there was no atevi word for that. “I rest assured in his loyalty.”

“Ha.” Ilisidi was delighted. “Has he asked particulars?”

He blushed—again, surely to her triumph.

“Only in the most general way, ‘Sidi-ji, and I haven’t answered in any particulars.”

“Such a gallant lover.”

He didn’t know on what grounds or on whose behalf he had just been examined, but he found himself on an unfamiliar shore, high and dry, and took, at last, a political risk.

“I would never lie to you, ‘Sidi-ji. And I do need your help.”

She smiled. Simply smiled. “Welcome home,” she said and, perhaps with a touch of the arthritis that plagued her, winced. “Supper is done. These old bones need a rest. I hate old age.”

She was not going to say a thing about Jase. And there was a time to stop, cease, let a subject rest where the person of higher rank had decided to leave it.

“I should withdraw, then,” he said quietly, “and give you peace. In all high regard for your rest and well-being, nand’ dowager.—But if you will I stay, I shall.”

“Oh, flatterer.” Thin fingers shooed him from the table. “Go. Out.”

“Nand’ dowager,” he said, rose, and excused himself toward the door, attended by the dowager’s servants, by Cenedi as well, who brought him to the foyer where Banichi and Jago waited.

“How is she?” he dared ask Cenedi. The dowager being the age she was, he did worry. He never knew; he never knew whether she would intervene or not.

“As ever,” Cenedi said… no young man himself, but as indefatigable.

“And Jasi-ji?” He never remotely expected Cenedi would betray a confidence, he knew asking had a risk of offense; but pass him a message the dowager herself could not in dignity relay, that Cenedi might do.

“He was here,” Cenedi said, “and now he is outside our security, paidhi-ji. We can’t reach him. We are concerned.”

“So am I,” he said, having no answer. “But not for Jase’s motives.” He passed that word under the table to Ilisidi, who probably would ask Cenedi if he had said anything; and went out, with Banichi and Jago, out into the general hallway, in an area of elegant marble, antique silk carpet, carved tables, and priceless porcelains.

Then he heaved a sigh, finding the vodka had taken the edge off the day; the bruising encounters were at least at distance enough. But if he couldn’t get to Tabini… then he’d go back to the space center, keep a promise… sleep tonight wasn’t likely.

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said to him as they walked, “the aiji has just requested your presence.”

He had his audience. He didn’t know but what Cenedi might have sent word through; he thought Banichi might have asked.

Or it was equally possible Tabini had his own agenda, and waited for the end of this supper—knowing Ilisidi had invited him.

Or there was collusion. That was possible, too.

The aiji called. There was no question he had to accept the invitation.

Chapter 4

Eidi, the major domo of the aiji’s household, admitted them to those historic precincts with minimal fuss, and just as smoothly Banichi and Jago, who knew the territory, knew the staff on a familiar basis, disappeared just past the doorway and went aside to the security station as Bren now knew few others would be permitted to do—Banichi and Jago were from this staff, originally, and maintained their ties.

So, technically, was he from the aiji’s staff, once upon a time, and still technically was on the staff, in respect of feudal loyalty. Any other lord of the Association might have, as he and Ilisidi had discussed, extraneous ties of man’chi, but he did not, and the welcome over the years had varied very little. Eidi provided him a chair in the small side chamber and whisked up a cup of tea, welcome after Ilisidi’s vodka. He sipped that while Eidi went to inform the aiji he had arrived.

A small commotion returned down the length of the foyer. It reached the door, and Bren rose.

Tabini came in still dressed in his court finery, black and red colors of his heraldry, and waved Bren back to his chair. “Well, well, Bren-ji. And how is Grandmother?”

“Very well, as I saw her. Complaining of her age.”

“So. So.” Tabini dropped into a chair. Tabini was a young man: aiji and paidhi-aiji, chief translator, were both young men. In a certain sense, they had come up together, together survived the tides that tried to wash civilization back onto known shores. “A blindingly quick flight from the hinterlands, and she complains of her arthritis.—Sip the tea, be at ease. I’ve no need of any. And how did the trip to the island go?”

Governments and theories of government had fallen; they stood, aiji and paidhi-aiji. On Mospheira, at his back, a very odd coalition of hitherto marginalized minorities with nothingin common but their detestation of the conservatives and their fear of war; while the aiji had gathered his former opponents, the bluest-bloods of the Association, to overcome the wealthy conservatives and get atevi into the space business.

“How fares Mospheira?” Tabini asked.

“As it has been. Always as it has been.” I was startled as hell to learn you’d admitted four humans to the space centerdid occur to him. I was upset as hell you’d moved Jase out, was ahead of that, but he let Tabini get there at his own speed.

“The new paidhi was accepted?”

“There’s no polite choice. They find no affront in Mercheson’s withdrawal, but they’re not happy and they wonder what she’ll say.”

“Since they tried to kill her, probably not a thoroughly positive report.”

“But to recall her… Mospheirans accept this as the Guild’s right over its own representative. I did talk with Shawn Tyers. And talked with the delegates on the plane. They were surprised you granted their visa, aiji-ma.”

“Were they? And the meeting with Jase?”

“We talked at some length.” He kept all expression off his face, out of his voice. “I advise the aiji against sending him.”

“When shall we send him, then?”

A question, a challenge for an answer. “When the second shuttle flies,” he said. “I need Jase.”

“And if I say he goes as Ramirez-aiji requires?”

“Then he will go, aiji-ma. But I’ll wish to go back to the space center. I was surprised, of course. We spent the conversation reminiscing. I fear I came away not having asked things I should have asked. I’m not ready to lose this man…”

“ Whatwould you have asked?”

“Principally, what Jase thinks they’ll ask next. He doesn’t think they’ll let him come down soon. I find this alarming.” It wasn’t no, not yet. He still schemed to advance a plan. “He might take moderately ill. The shuttle cycles in six weeks. That would give us time, aiji-ma.”

“Time.—And Trent Cope? Did he recover?”

“Jase doesn’t favor him. I don’t. Though it’s very difficult for a person to be forthcoming when he knows he’s sedated.”

“Understandable. He has all of Jason’s physical difficulties?”

“Moving at night did prove better.”

“And your household? Well?”

“Very well, aiji-ma.”

“And President Durant?”

God, what was this? A catalog?

“Very well. I introduced Trent-paidhi myself, though Trent-paidhi was mildly indisposed and took immediate leave to a windowless room. The President asked politely regarding your health, aiji-ma, and extended his wishes for you and Lady Damiri.”

There was no reaction to the good wishes. Tabini, even seated, towering in the natural height of adult atevi, was a powerful individual… a hunter on opportunity, besides a student of every curiosity, and of technology. His gold eyes were pale to the point of ill omen, and the predatory look came naturally. There might never have been so progressive and enlightened a ruler as Tabini in all the history of the Western Association. But his direct, continuing stare unnerved his opponents.

“You were surprised by the delegation, paidhi-ji?”

“Utterly. I knew they were training a group to go, as of last year. I knew there was going to be a request as soon as the shuttle officially had a flight schedule. I did report that, aiji-ma, I’m sure I did.”

“You did, nand’ paidhi. I certainly attach no fault to you in this matter of the delegation; on the contrary, I sent directly to Tyers, and suggestedthis mission.”

Without translation? It was impossible. Someone had mediated. Someone knew what was going on. He damned sure didn’t.

No study, no committee, no hesitation. Bang! Stamped, sealed, approved, and the team suddenly had a visa; use it or else.

In the same heartbeat came a footfall at the door, a whisper of fabric, a faint whisper of spice, to nostrils assailed with Mospheiran scents for days. Lady Damiri arrived in the room, and Bren rose in courtesy as Tabini’s wife settled in the graceful chair at Tabini’s elbow.

“We will miss you, paidhi-ji,” Damiri said to him.

Miss? Bren thought in shock, and Tabini looked vexed.

“Love of my life,” Tabini began.

“Oh, you haven’t told him.”

“No, I haven’t told him, daja-ma.—Bren, nadi, there was a reason I sent Jase Graham to the space center in such haste. Your belongings are by now packed.”

While he was at the dowager’s apartment? In a matter of two hours? “And I’m going… where, aiji-ma?” To Ilisidi’s estate at Malguri, perhaps. Perhaps that was the connection with Ilisidi’s invitation, and this—he was needed somewhere, maybe another insurgency, some further difficulty with the anti-space conservatives. Twice before, he’d found himself moved out to regions of political stress under extreme security and with little notice.

“Do you approve, paidhi-ji, this mission of representatives to the station? Are these acceptable persons?”

“Two translators from the Foreign Office, Feldman and Shugart, belong to Shawn Tyers; or Podesta. She’s department head now. They’re advisors, very junior. I don’t know the other two. One is from Commerce. Anyone from that department is a concern to me. That’s George Barrulin’s old power base.”

“Translators of Ragi,” Tabini mused. “To go to the space station.”

“Awareness of nuance and context makes them valuable observers. I understand why Tyers sends them… I know why they formed the team as they did.” Four. Infelicitous four, he thought. It was not a good number. He’d been functioning with the Mospheiran side of his brain not to see that at the outset.

But Jase was going. Set of five.

“What does Jase fear?” Tabini asked. “He expressed no fears to me.”

“He wouldn’t,” Bren said. “He respects you. He knows he has no recourse. And I stillask, aiji-ma, that you not send him yet. The next flight. Not this one. They’ll understand… they won’t expectyou to grant their request. A human would delay.”

Tabini had a wry expression. “Delay, with these aliens coming.”

“It’s human, aiji-ma. And I need him. They won’t argue. They won’t take offense.”

“In this additional time… what would you gain?”

“Questions. More questions.”

“And three years have not sufficed?”

It was a very good question… one he couldn’t outright answer, except they weren’t either of them ready for this.

“Jase wants to see his ship again; and he knows, in the economy of things, he’s become a valuable advisor to them.”

“As to you.”

“As he is to me,” Bren acknowledged.

“He will go, advise his people, then return.”

“Not likely. They’ve no reason to let him come back.”

“I shall place a personal request for his return.”

“I fear your request won’t get him back, aiji-ma. Not from the Guild.”

“Will Jase remain well-disposed to us? Will he wish, then, what he wishes now?”

“He’ll feel emotional attachment. He’ll fall into old associations.”

“And this mission from the island? Will they find things familiar? Will theyobey the Pilots’ Guild? Or oppose them?”

“I don’t know. There’ll be an emotional context for them. The sites of history have their impact.”

“ Naojai-tu,” Damiri said quietly, “nand’ paidhi.”

“Like that,” Bren said. The machimiplays were the collected wisdom of atevi history, the culture of the Western Association. In Naojai-tu, a cynical woman came face to face with relics she had thought remote and unimportant… and in the impact they had, in the context, she turned on her lover. Indeed, he knew the play, and its conclusion.

Unguessed association, unguessed emotional reaction, unguessed affiliations devastatingly realized.

And when one came down to analyzing the emotional impact of the human team seeing the station their ancestors had come from—or the feelings Jason would have face to face with his relatives again—yes, atevi could indeed comprehend that. Sometimes humans jumped the same direction atevi jumped when startled.

But you didn’t take for granted it was the same reason for the reaction. Or the same outcome. “And what was Jason’s reaction to the mission?” Tabini asked.

“He didn’t meet with them immediately. He had a short time to see me; he chose that. We met, we talked, and I forgot to ask him questions I should have asked. He didn’t ask me, either. On a certain level I think we knew we’d become separate in our man’chi, so to speak. When he goes back—he’ll have no aiji but Ramirez. So we reminisced, and said good-bye.”

Tabini listened soberly.

“That’s very sad,” Damiri-daja said.

“Do you have confidence in the President’s intentions?” Tabini asked. “And Ramirez?”

Not—is the President of Mospheira lying?—which would be one question, but—do you have confidence in him; and in Tyers; and in the senior captain of the ship-humans?

“Aiji-ma, it’s the same story: Mospheirans want to lead their lives and not worry. A leader who makes them worry isn’t popular. Right now, they remember that the Heritage Party nearly took them to war. Now ship-humans make them worry about the chance there are unfriendly aliens out there. They’d rather not think about it. So they won’t. All this mission learns will create a furor at first… then lose attention. All the President does and all the conservatives do about it will be quiet unless there’s a direct, imminent threat. There’s no energy for it, not so soon after the people kicked the conservatives out of office.”

Tabini smiled. It was certainly the short version of the politics of Mospheira, but it compassed very similar emotions on the mainland: Bren knew it did. Neverupset the midsection of the Association, never annoy uncle Tatiseigi… or Lord Geigi.

“One day I should meet the President of Mospheira,” Tabini said, implying there would be no few frustrations in common with Hampton Durant. “So shall we proceed in tasteful silence through these machinations? Or shall we wake two populations from their sleep?”

“Only to tell them both we’ve found a good solution, aiji-ma.”

“Therefore I asked this mission to go with Jase. Time is ours now; perhaps not, if these remote aliens begin to dictate the schedule. Therefore, paidhi-ji, I’m sending you to the station.”

My God, he thought.

And: No. I can’t.

It was the dream of his life, that the space program should have just gotten off the ground with him to witness it. That Shai-shanshould turn out to be his creation… he’d stood on the side of the runway and watched its first flight half a year ago, watched the shuttle become a gleam in the sky, and a dot, and a memory and a hope. When, two weeks later, he had stood on that same runway and watched Shai-shanland as easily as any airliner—God, he’d wept.

But go upthere? That wasn’t for him.

His face, he discovered, didn’t react, hadn’t reacted. Like his predecessor, Wilson, who’d forgotten how to deal with human emotion, he’d stopped reacting.

“Aiji-ma,” he said quietly, accepting that this would happen, “on this flight?”

“On this flight,” Tabini said. And one could not say: but my business, but my possessions, my duties, my staff. One listened. “To remain until you’ve understood them, and then to return to me. You can conduct your other duties by radio, can you not? And your staff is adept enough to carry on without you, at least the commercial aspects. Diplomatic matters with the Pilots’ Guild take precedence until there is an agreement regarding our station.”

Our station. That was Tabini’s position. Humans had built it, Mospheira didn’t want it, didn’t want to lose it, either. Atevi weren’t historically happy about it being there, didn’t want Mospheirans to have it, and Tabini wanted it under his authority.

He hadn’t thoroughly explained that position to Mospheira, but Jase knew.

Get me the sun and the moon, paidhi-ji. Toss in the good will of the Pilots’ Guild for good measure.

Everything was in motion. Everything had been in motion before his plane had set down on the runway. Everything had gotten into motion during his five days isolated and out of touch on Mospheira. Tabini started planning this the day the ship called Yolanda Mercheson home; they called Jason, the day before the shuttle launched, expecting a wrangling argument, and Tabini… simply complied, high and wide.

The ship-humans wanted the program to move faster?

It was about to move faster.

“You must take care,” Damiri-daja said.

“Daja-ma, I will.”

“Safeguard yourself,” Tabini said with unaccustomed fierceness. “Your bodyguard need not return to me if any mishap takes you.”

Then Banichi and Jago were going with him.

But no one would have asked them their opinion, either, and what had been sacrificed in cargo to add three more passengers with baggage… God, the baggage!… he had no idea. Everything… all the scientific packages, all the materials tests…

Where did those stand?

What werethey taking?

What in hell was he supposed to do to make this miracle happen?.

“I’ll work with Jase,” he said to Tabini.

“If they prove intractable, leave.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“I insist on it,” Tabini said, and rose. Damiri-daja rose, and Bren rose.

Together, while he bowed, they left him.

He stood there a moment then, in the middle of the ornate carpet, next to the historic chairs. All the warmth had gone out of him.

He’d built it. He was going to ride it. He was going withJase, who’d just been coopted back under the captains’ authority. If Jase chose to have that happen… and probably he should; probably the captains shouldn’t notice that humans who dealt with atevi tended to grow very strange.

So, well, he said to himself, drew a deep breath and went out, then, not forgetting to pay courteous notice to Eidi, as composed as if he hadn’t just learned he was riding a plane into orbit, to filch change out of the Pilots’ Guild’s pockets.

An agency his compatriots on Mospheira thought of as the devil incarnate.

Had he somehow, somewhere failed to relay that to Tabini?

And Tabini had talked to Shawn?

He walked casually toward the foyer, where he regained his escort.

“Nadiin,” he said simply, taking his leave of Tabini’s security. “Nadiin-ji,” he added, the warmer address to men he knew, and walked outside the heavy doors in his own security’s company.

They, he suspected, had known something was going on from before they picked him up at the airport. They might not have known where he was going, but they’d known they were going with him, and were bound by the aiji’s orders to let him go through this long evening of dinners and conversations—

While his personal belongings were doubtless packed, moved, attended to…

They walked down a hallway resplendent with antiquity and scrutinized by a hundred hidden watchers, electronics, spying devices, all of the panoply of the iron-handed ruler of a world civilization… who didn’t damned much move anywhere without his knowing it.

“Well,” he said to Banichi and Jago, not accusingly, only to assure himself the needful things were done, “not surprised, were you.”

“Nandi,” Jago said quietly. “To be sent up to the station? We were surprised by the destination, not by the fact that we would move.”

“Nand’ Jase doesn’t know.”

He considered that, as they approached the lift. “He’s going to be shocked.” As hell, he thought.

“I think he will be,” Banichi said.

They stood at the lift. He suddenly realized he had no notion which button to push, whether to go to his apartment, or down to the train. “The staff has packed?”

“While you were at supper,” Banichi said.

“Tano and Algini are going,” Jago said, and punched in for the lowest level. It wasthe train. “Likewise Narani, Sabiso, Kandana and Bindanda.”

“Bindanda.” One of Tatiseigi’s. His mind went flying off on a suspicious tangent, involving Ilisidi’s long association with Tatiseigi, Tatiseigi’s occasional opposition to Tabini, and the likelihood more than one element of the Association had been brought in on this before he had.

Bindanda, a quiet, polite spy.

Four security, around a fifth point. Himself. Nine, with the servants. A very fortunate number: ‘counters had devised it, in harmony with the space center and shuttle.

One wondered how those numbers fit in with the station and the Guild.

“Narani’s quite old for this excitement,” he said as the car arrived.

“He avows his health will withstand it. He’s left Tagi in charge of your apartments, moved Edoro into Tagi’s place in your coastal estate, nandi, with your approval.”

The warmth hadn’t yet come back to his hands. He stepped into the lift.

He hadn’t his most comfortable clothing; he had only what he stood in.

He and Jase had made extensive preparations to set up an atevi residency on the station. There were items of baggage. There were pieces of equipment.

“Are we displacing all the cargo?” he asked.

“One believes so,” Banichi said.

He didn’t know what he was going to tell Jase.

Chapter 5

It was back on the train… going the other direction, a passage punctuated by the click of the rails and the whisper of the car’s passage against the wide and narrow portions of the tunnels.

He sat with Banichi and Jago, sure his baggage from the airplane would turn up, at least the needful things. The computer would turn up. He was entirely sure of it.

“Did the dowager know?” he asked, out of a moment of silence.

“I believe she made great haste in arranging a flight” Banichi said. “That’s all we know.”

Bindanda was one of the number. If Tabini had deceived his redoubtable grandmother, that deception would have meant very unhealthy things going on within the Association. Tatiseigi was always an uneasy ally.

“One is honored” he said of the dowager and her dinner. “I’m glad she came.”

Jago lifted a brow. “She has no return flight arranged,” Jago said, “that we know.”

She might well have decided to stay and become a thorn in the side to Tabini, or so Tabini would claim.

Yet it was remarkable how close that apparently divided house could stand, in crisis… no few of the aiji’s enemies had discovered it.

Ilisidi had brought herself and her security, for what was bound to be a period full of speculation among the lords: what would the paidhi learn? What would Tabini agree to? What would be the relation with Mospheira?… that was bound to follow his ascent into space.

God, he didn’t want to think about the flight. He’d survived watching the flights, had nervous fits watching the landing. The switchover in engines was a miracle the technicians swore was flawless, but it always seemed a chancy thing to do, cut off perfectly good engines several miles above the ocean.

A part of him wanted to go to the one atevi physician who monitored his health and ask for total sedation. He wasn’t sure he could do this; he’d been shot at, shot, and chased down mountains; but engine switchover scared hell out of him.

So did facing Jason at the end of this train ride with, Oh, well, you know how Tabini can be. He decided to send me with you. I swear I didn’t know. And by the way, we’re taking the station.

Sorry for the inconvenience, old friend.

He was still in that psychological dislocation that a trip to Mospheira tended to bring him, that sudden trip among people his height, furniture his size, steps his convenient dimensions, language and food he’d grown up with; and now, leaving Jase in the space center, he’d just definitively cleared the air of the island enclave from his lungs, human language from his head, and human expectations from his emotions.

Now, in the obliging silence of his security, he tried to jerk all that back into focus. Banichi and Jago, sitting across from him on the red velvet seats, became two stone-faced giants in the black leather and silver of their profession, black of skin, black of hair, gold of eye…

He knew, the patterns and the battles he understood… he was valuable here, dammit, the world’s leading expert on the atevi-human interface. Someone else could do this part… maybe a year from now.

Jasewas the logical one. Jaseshould be in Tabini’s employ and reckon whether Tabini hadn’t tried to get Jase’s loyalty into his hands?