Текст книги "Explorer"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Might we have sandwiches?” Cajeiri asked eventually, in the long crawl of time.

“The aiji’s heir alone may have a sandwich,” Ilisidi said, “while his elders worry.”

A small silence. “I no longer feel hungry, mani-ma.”

“When the crew has refreshment,” Ilisidi said, “ then would be appropriate.”

“Yes, mani-ma.”

Cajeiri dutifully returned to his book. Bren longed to get up, to pace the deck, to ask Jase what he’d said to Sabin and what Sabin had said to him—but his questions did no good, no more than Cajeiri’s, and he kept them to himself.

“ This is C1. As yet there is no response from the station. Stand by, ”

Natural caution, Bren said to himself. The station, if there was anyone receiving, had likely to advise its own officers, review the situation, decide to respond to a distant signal.

“Captain.” A communications tech flashed a signal. Sabin was over there in an instant. So was Jase.

They looked like two rescuees from a drowning.

“We have signal,” Sabin said aloud. “A simple hail.” And to the technicians: “Put me through. Put two-way communications on general address, bridge excluded.” She lifted her personal comm to speaking range. “This is Captain Sabin, CS Phoenix , inbound, ETA in your vicinity sixteen hours fifty-six minutes. Hello, Reunion.”

Distantly, from the administrative corridor, as it would on every deck, breaking centuries of precedent, her voice echoed, marginally time-lagged.

No time lag at all within the corridors… compared to the astronomical distances involved in their communication.

Atevi, however, needed quick information.

“A signal has come from the station,” Bren translated the situation quietly, as he sat. “Sabin-aiji has identified herself vocally and given, human reckoning, sixteen hours fifty-six minuta as our arrival.”

“Sixteen and thirty-eight,” Ilisidi said, instantly converting the awkward number… not felicitous, but certainly transitory, as the ship was rushing toward that goal, making the gap tighter and tighter. He hadn’t been able to reckon that far that fast, and should have, he realized to his chagrin, if his brain weren’t overladen with human concerns and racing in a dozen directions at once.

“We contain the numbers of all the world,” he murmured, “which are fortunate, aiji-ma.”

“And we are not superstitious country folk.” Ilisidi sat with hands about the shaft of her cane, in a human chair that would have been inconveniently low for the majority of the atevi staff. A seat on his scale and Ginny’s. And Cajeiri’s. “But do they then trust this reply as genuine, Bren-paidhi?”

“I don’t think Sabin-aiji necessarily trusts anything in this situation,” he said, “but yes, aiji-ma, there’s a certain rush to accept this welcome as reasonable and expected.”

“And?”

“The station authorities may well view us with suspicion after years of delay in our return. We don’t even know for certain Ramirez-aiji left here on their mission—or on his own.”

“The residents should have left this inconveniently located outpost and saved us the bother. And they chose not to vacate.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“Unreasonable, by any logic.”

Indeed, not the first time atevi had posed that nagging question. Not the first time they’d discussed it on this voyage.

“One certainly wishes one knew why before we arrive,” he said. “I have some doubt that even Sabin-aiji is confident that things are as Ramirez-aiji recorded them.”

On the other side, Reunion must have concluded, from their nine year delay, that there hadn’t been fuel waiting, indicating a political situation or a technical failure, or possibly the loss of the ship itself. If things had gone ideally, from the station’s point of view, the ship would surely have coasted up to the station at the atevi star, gotten fuel as fast as possible, and been back in short order.

In the nine, ten years counting Ramirez’s transit to Alpha, depend on it, any survivors at Reunion had had ample time and motive to implement options that no longer included Phoenix .

And now, suddenly, here was Phoenix back again to upset their efforts at self-rescue, efforts potentially involving power struggles and reputations. More, in their eyes, the ship would come freighting in God knew what business from Alpha, with all its questions. On one level, if things were less than disastrous here, Reunion authorities might question very closely what Phoenix had found. And that didn’t help their mission run smoothly.

Figure it. If there were two humans, there were two sides, and if both had a pulse, politics would be at work somewhere in the business.

Getting here involved one set of problems. Now that they were down to another set, the politics of the station itself, he discovered his heart beating as if he’d climbed a tall, tall flight of stairs, nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with decades of preparation that had brought him into this situation. It wasn’t a high-speed train of events—or it was, as planets saw time—as nations changed and rose and fell; in human terms, it moved like land-creep, but in terms of finite human beings supposed to be wise and to make the right decisions, time both dragged and flickered past, and Sabin’s stated number of hours was far too long to worry and far too short a time to do anything creative.

He could represent the colonists, or pretend to: he had been the island representative once upon a time. Atevi weren’t the first surprise they should spring on the residents of Reunion: Ilisidi would surely agree to that.

And he assuredly was about to have a job to do, if talk had begun to flow.

“The ship has begun to talk with the station, aiji-ma. I think I should place myself at the ship-aiji’s disposal.” He said much the same to Ginny Kroger: “I’m going to go stand somewhere in Sabin’s easy reach in this reply cycle. I think we’re running stable enough.”

He got up and walked into the aisles. His purposeful approach to the operations area brought a glance from Sabin. An answering slow approach on Jase’s part intercepted him for a private word.

“How do you think we’re doing?” Bren asked him quietly.

“Too well at this point,” Jase said. “Scarily well.”

Sabin walked over, hands locked behind her, muscle working in a lean jaw. “Holding conference, gentlemen?”

“Offering my services where useful, captain. As a start, with all due respect, I’d advise not telling station authorities everything about us.”

“Oh, I’d certainly concur there, Mr. Cameron. By a long way not half about us. And if we’re really lucky we can refuel before we have to tell them a thing about our passenger list or our intentions.”

“One believes they’ll have long since taken their own survival measures, invested reputations and effort, developed an emotional charge on their own course. Resentment of us for not coming back immediately. Suspicion now that we have come back. I wouldn’t be surprised at that.”

“You’re just a prophet of all kinds of trouble, aren’t you, Mr. Cameron?”

“Certainly best we don’t rush out of the ship and hold a farewell party on dockside.”

“I don’t think I had any such intention.”

“I’m sure not. Here’s another item. They’ll contest your command versus their authority.”

A little silence and a sidelong look.

“You know I’m right,” Bren said.

“You’re just full of opinions, Mr. Cameron.”

“I advise the aiji in Shejidan, who’s outlived all expectations. I advise you defy any order to meet them outside the ship.”

“Son of a bitch , Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes, ma’am. At your service. Continually. They’re the authority that’s run human affairs for the last several hundred years. Their ideas haven’t worked damned well. We all think it’s time there was a new authority. And not even for fuel should you give a step backward.”

“Go on, Mr. Cameron, as if I have no imagination of the situation.”

“I’m sure you do, captain. And if we assume they ordered Ramirez to go to the original base, secure it, refuel and get back, we can assume they don’t plan to be taking your orders when you show up, do they?”

“Keep going.”

“Two, they expect Ramirez. Three, they’ve had all these years to figure out things didn’t go according to plan back where we come from. So they’ll immediately ask you what happened to Ramirez and what took so long. If you say, refueling, they’ll know immediately that the station we come from wasn’t exactly waiting for your return. If you say we had to get the locals back into space and build the whole apparatus to refuel, they’ll wonder what else went on. They know the planet is inhabited. And that leads step by step to other questions, such as the reason I suspect Ramirez was courting aliens rather than go to Alpha’s colonists in the first place—I think they’re scared of finding an alternative human agency set up back at Alpha, offering opposition to them. And numerous hard-headed humans, tending to subvert the Guild vision for humanity. I’m willing to be your token colonist authority and lie through my teeth, and try to diminish those fears.”

“A whole lot of help we’ve got,” Sabin said. “Help from your alien allies, and pushy help from a self-appointed advisor.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said, “exceedingly pushy. I have a vested interest in having you in charge, not them.”

“You think so, do you?”

“You’ve told us Ramirez was up to something. I’m sure Ogun knew it. I know you knew it. I know you and Ogun aren’t precisely on the same program. But if you like the idea of turning yourself and your ship and crew over to the people that have gotten this station in need of a rescue, you’re flat crazy, and I don’t think that’s the case.”

Sabin lifted one eyebrow. And looked at Jase. “Does he talk to the aiji that way?”

“Yes,” Jase said.

“The fact is, we haven’t won. We won’t be halfway toward winning this until we’re fueled, loaded, and on our way back. Reunion could have solved all of their problems and ours simply by boarding Phoenix on your last call here. They didn’t do that. So they have another plan, involving some linkage to Alpha, and Alpha’s position is very blunt: fold operations, come under ship rule, and stop bothering the neighbors. Do you think you’re going to get what you want out of them?”

“Go entertain your aliens.”

“Advice, captain, simply advice.”

“No place for a damned atevi kid,” Sabin muttered. “No place for the whole damned lot of you. You have your assumptions. But we can’t go blazing in there laying down conditions to the Guildmaster, Mr. Cameron. Fuel first. Then we read them the rules as they’re going to be.”

“If there is fuel.”

“If there is fuel. If there isn’t, then I’ll most certainly call on Ms. Kroger to take our own measures and you’ll doubtless have a word on that, too. Meanwhile, we’re not near docking yet. Go sit down and don’t distract my crew with your predictions.”

She hadn’t asked the station about the fuel situation. She hadn’t presented any long-distance chatter, nothing friendly, nothing as ebullient as long-lost friends meeting. Was he surprised they weren’t leaping up and down and cheering on the bridge, either?

Sabin walked off.

“She appreciated the advice,” Jase said.

Bren raised an eyebrow.

“I work with her,” Jase said. “She’s on alert. She’s glad we got here, but she’s spooked. She’s not trusting anything she sees. She appreciates a cross-check of observations.”

Sabin wasn’t stupid. Thank God.

He went back to the small gathering of atevi and Mospheirans, relayed the gist of the discussion and his own speculations, in Ragi and in Mosphei’. And sat down and waited.

“Is the stationmaster still talking to us, nandi?” Cajeri asked.

“We ride so very far from the station that we have to wait for their answers to reach us. Like seeing lightning and listening for the thunder. This distance is ever so much farther than we ordinarily consider on a planet. So the captain talks and waits; the station talks and waits. By the time the station answers the captain’s questions, the captain has had time to sit down to tea and think about it.”

“This could take all day!”

“And tomorrow, too, young sir, but remember the ship is moving, no matter how it feels. We’re going there quite steadily. So the interval between question and answer grows shorter and shorter.”

“Astonishing, nandi.”

The dowager had thwacked that respectful courtesy into the young rascal.

“It is, young sir. Astonishing to us all.” He recalled his own boyhood, sitting through adult feuds, intimately involved in the outcome and unable to read the signals passing over his head. “Translation: matters with the station are going better than we expected. There are people on the station and they can talk to us. If we’re very lucky everything will be in order and we can do what we came to do and go home.”

“But I want to see the station first!”

The dowager boxed a young ear. Gently so, but sternly. “Your elders have more serious business to consider, young sir.”

“Yes, mani-ma.”

One could understand. The dowager herself likely shared the sentiment. The atevi delegation was on formal manners, sitting and standing. Ginny and her companion were uncharacteristically quiet and solemn.

“Going too well,” Ginny said, next to him. “Worries me.”

“If it goes this easily,” Bren said under his breath, “it’s the first time in this Guild’s history.”

Ginny cast him a look. She was Mospheiran. She knew.

He sat. He waited. Eventually a station response came in and Sabin queried back, giving little information, but asking for the condition of the mast where they would dock.

Jase came to them shortly after. “The captain is ordering up food and drink for the bridge. The shift is not going to change. Would you wish anything, nandiin?”

“Hot tea,” Ginny said.

“We have our own resources, ship-aiji,” the dowager said. “But one is grateful.”

“Nand’ dowager.” Jase bowed, and went back.

The galley order arrived in due time. Bridge crew ate at their posts. Atevi and Mospheirans opened up their small picnic lunches and ate, standing and sitting, in decorous quiet.

Information regarding the mast seemed to have come in: zenith mast was undamaged: one couldn’t say as much for the nadir.

“We go on routine approach,” Sabin said.

After so much, so long. Routine. That in itself was surreal.

Bren was thinking that when a technician moved suddenly and a red blinking quarter hit at least half the screens on the bridge.

Sabin leaned to look more closely at that intrusion; Jase did.

Bren stood up and in the same instant saw Sabin pass an order he couldn’t hear. He walked back across that intangible line, back into aisles where screens still blinked red without explanation.

Jase met him, while Sabin stayed in close conference with the senior navigator.

“Armaments have been called up,” Jase said in Mosphei’. “Something out there just pinged us. Not from the station.”

“Damn,” Bren breathed.

“Damn, for sure. Maybe a mining craft. But it could also be targeting. We’ve been spotted by something.”

Triple damn. He’d just been settling into the comfort of their success and now they might not exist another hour.

Not that he hadn’t asked himself for the last year what they ought to do if this happened.

“Any evidence of mining operations?”

“It’s a big solar system. We haven’t gotten any word from station about other activity. More to the point, the origin isn’t in a region where we’d expect mining.” Jase was scared too. It was in his eyes.

“Moving source, or something that’s been there, all along?”

“Seems stationary. Our wavefront apparently just reached round-trip, us to them, them to us. Whoever it is. We’ve got continual signal now, and it’s not showing motion.”

“Did we ping them back?” All the while he was thinking about Ramirez’s response, the dead-ship silence. “What’s Sabin ordered?”

“We’re waiting in silence,” Jase said, that damnable word, silence , that governed their whole situation. That governed the Pilots’ Guild’s approach to the universe.

Deep breath. “No. Broadcast a hail. Noisy as possible. No more tight focus.”

“Your advice is noted, Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. She could come up silently. She had, almost at his elbow. “It’s one option. But we’re closer to station than to it. I’ve queried station. They’ll answer. We’ll brake early. If it’s a missile response we get, that creates a targeting problem.”

“Yes, ma’am, but I’d prepare a broadcast in the event we need it.”

“We can broadcast Mary Had a Little Lamb and whatever’s out there won’t know the difference.”

That happened to be true. On the verbal level. “Send a pattern response. Three blinks. As they did the first time they met Ramirez. Something that at last sounds like an attempt at communication.”

“We’ll consider that option. Meanwhile, gentlemen, we’re doing a take-hold.”

“It’s going to be evident when we brake, captain, won’t it, and maybe they’ll take it for a hostile act if the engines show activity…”

“We have to brake to dock, Mr. Cameron. They may want to critique our approach path, too, but in the meanwhile we hope station has an answer for us, what that noise source is. Advise granny, there. Siren will sound.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and walked back to the dowager. “One should prepare, aiji-ma, for a maneuver of considerable strength and suddenness. I would advise the safety cabinet at this time rather than the seats. Some other presence is out beyond the ordinary limits of station activity. One suspects a hostile presence.”

“Are we going to fight?” Cajeiri asked, rising.

“Hush, wretched boy.” Ilisidi leaned on her cane and rose stiffly, to take his advice. “Prudence should lead valor. Have you never heard that?”

“Gin,” Bren said. “Inside. We don’t know if there’s going to be emergency action, but they don’t want loose bodies flying about.”

“I’ll skip that experience,” Ginny said, and ordered Jerry into the L-shaped enclosure.

They still had a view: the screen at the end of the safety compartment, on a padded wall, showed the bridge, and in a window overlaid on that image, the image from space—the station. They likewise had audio, Sabin’s low voice, and the flow through C1.

“What are they saying?” Cajeiri wanted to know.

“The captain is giving technical instructions, young sir,” Bren answered, setting his back against the padded wall, hoping at the same time that their whole mission didn’t come to a sudden end.

Siren sounded.

Then Sabin’s voice overrode the chatter, loud and clear, on general address: “ We’re beginning a series of small maneuvers preparatory to station approach. Stand by .”

Lie. Damned lie . Bren drew a sharp breath, all but exploded out of the safety zone, out where, if they hit the brakes, he could go splat against the other bulkhead, or up on that nice big viewing screen, untidy objection quashed. But he stayed put. He didn’t go argue the point, on the bridge, in front of all the techs, that truth to the crew might be a good policy. It was reflex, was what it was. Given a situation, given a choice between truth and shading it—it was still the same choices.

One hoped to God Sabin’s current maneuver with the ship was the right one. Braking wasn’t exactly what Ramirez had done. Not quite. And could it look hostile?

“What have they said, paidhi-ji?” Ilisidi asked him.

“The ship-aiji claims this is all preparatory to docking. This may even be partially true, aiji-ma. But it is also maneuvering so as to confuse a possible enemy. Whom they refuse to contact. And one does not believe this silence is wise, either regarding the crew, or the watcher out there.”

The ship braked. Hard and fast, as he’d suspected. He braced himself. Held his breath.

The invisible hand lifted. Let them breathe.

“Shall one not advise the ship-aiji of this opinion, nandi?” Cenedi asked.

“I intend to, nadi-ji.” He was more and more set on arguing his point. Ramirez had been wrong. Silence had been wrong.

Another gentle nudge.

And silence continued from the speakers.

“Are we there yet?” Cajeiri asked. “Nandiin, are we—?”

Hard braking.

“ Mr. Cameron to the bridge .”

Sabin was calling him ?

He didn’t hesitate. He simply turned to the side against the padding and dived out into the open bridge, already planning his next hand-hold, on the end of the third row of consoles. He made that, and the ship stayed inertial. He made his next move halfway down the aisle, where Jase and Sabin both stood, not using handholds at this particular moment.

Safe. Free. If one believed it.

“Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said, and to someone elsewhere: “Put the transmission through to station fifteen.”

Station fifteen was the console nearest. That screen display changed and became a set of numbers and geometrical figures. It looked like navigational problems.

“We’re instructed to come ahead and hard dock at the masthead,” Sabin said. “Ordinary procedure. Guild authority says, quote, that there’s been an observer lurking out there for years doing very little. Unquote. It’s waked up on our approach, made its first active assay of the station in a long time. They’re receiving that output, too. Passive input and long-range optics would be just as efficient observation for its ordinary operations. It was sitting out there listening, it heard us pass, and heard station answer—and woke up. We’re not sure why whoever it is needed first to come alive and betray their presence if they don’t mean to talk. If it’s targeting, and if there’s something on its way, it’s likely going to have fired on the expected path toward docking. Which we’re behind. There’s no reason, either, why they wouldn’t just fire at the station if they were going to—take it all out. What’s your best observation of the situation, Mr. Cameron?”

Good question.

“How many pings?”

“Single.”

“Single output. Last time, three blinks. If it was the same entity.” He dealt with atevi so exclusively he began to think the numbers themselves had significance. And one couldn’t assume that. Daren’t assume it. “A, they’re a robot. B, they’re more interested in watching than in destroying. C—they’re wanting our attention and they want to see if we’re smart enough to have learned anything in ten years.”

Sabin nodded slowly. “Captain Graham would agree. Next question. A’s possible. Why B?”

“Why B? To see what kind of traffic this place gets… one ship, two, a hundred… and where those ships come from, and where they go.”

“The atevi planet,” Jase said in a low voice. “They’ll have that pegged, at least what vector we’ve come in from. Long range optics can do way too much once they start looking.”

“How long can have they been here?” Bren asked. “Were they here, for instance, when Phoenix did her last lookover and left toward Alpha? Is that possible?”

“Good question,” Sabin said. “I don’t know. If they were, they weren’t in our pickup. But I wasn’t on the bridge that day.”

“C, captain. C. Have we learned anything ? I advise we go toward them. Slowly. Go toward them.”

Sabin shot him a dark and frowning look, then turned her back and started away from him.

He wedged himself past a seat, past her, and firmly blocked her path. “On review of the log, captain, my conclusion. My best advice. Issue a signal. Approach them. It’s exactly what the Guild hasn’t tended to do. It may be the one thing you ought to do. Be forthcoming.”

Sabin turned, glanced from him to Jase. And around them, not a single tech had taken eyes from their work to see argument around the senior captain.

“I agree with him,” Jase said in a low voice.

“Then what?” Sabin asked. “Do we have a conclusion for this adventure? Perhaps we rush over there and stir up something we don’t know how to deal with.”

“Your predecessor stirred something up, got a signal, refused to respond, left on a diversionary track, and they didn’t take one of those manuevers kindly. Atevi say—and I asked them—that Ramirez gave a hostile appearance in his behavior, simply by remaining mute. Then by leaving and trying to deceive. So let’s at least do something else.”

Sabin looked at him. Poised, on the brink.

“So maybe they’re going to ignore us,” she said. “By station’s information, they’ve ignored the station for years.”

“Imitating Ramirez? Imitating his actions?”

“After blowing hell out of the station,” Sabin muttered.

“Maybe preparatory to blowing hell out of us if we just cruise over to the station, dock, and sit.”

“So we’re going to go over to the alien ship and do what ?”

“Play it as we meet it, captain. It’s why we’re here. I’m not afraid to board them, myself, if that’s what it comes to.” Not afraid was a lie, but it was an offer he saw no recourse but to make. “Get me over there. I’ll do it.”

“The hell you say. Get you there, but we’re all there in the same ship.”

“Don’t ignore the contact we just had. My best advice. We were touched. They asked a question. Give back the same. Three blinks. Same frequency, same pace as before. You want to bet it doesn’t have a record of the last encounter? Or that there’s no cultural logic behind that output? I’d rather bet on that course of action than on going into dock right now.”

Sabin stood still, at least, gazing dead at him. “You’re crazy.”

Bren shook his head. “An opportunity. An opportunity. What do we do? Go in there, tie ourselves down at dock and diminish our range of responses? Including getting out of here, captain, as I understand is still a possibility right now.”

A long, long stare. “You think so.”

“You asked my opinion. I base it on all the information I have. Can we see this ship? Do we know how it’s shaped, what it looks like, how it’s configured?”

“Not damned informative. C3. Give us image, central screen.”

A dim image flashed up. It could have been a rock. If it had color, it was brownish black, a collection of irregularly arranged panels suspended around a core of indefinite shape, showing no lights at all at the moment.

“Does it tell you anything?” Sabin asked him.

“No,” he had to admit.

Sabin folded her arms, gazed at the screen. Then at him. “And how are you going to talk to this ship once we engage it?”

“I’ll have to find out,” Bren said. “ That’s what I do, captain. That’s what Ramirez trained Jase to do, and Ramirez made a fatal decision when he decided to back off and wait for another try, when his translator was older and better prepared. This is that next opportunity. If we don’t take them up on that invitation to communicate—if there’s any symmetry about their actions—who knows? They may hit Alpha, the way they hit here.”

Sabin looked at him, a sidelong glance, on that last. Looked away, then. And back. “A basic rule of intelligence, Mr. Cameron—you can chase just one more certainty and one more piece of information just one fatal step too far. At a certain point you have to quit listening and go with best guesses. We don’t know the situation on the station, do we? And we don’t know the situation out there.”

“We need answers,” Jase said. “We’re not going to get them on the station. If we get that far.”

“Oh, I’m in favor of answers, second captain. We’re on our original course, not quite on the original schedule, so if that ship out there fired a few minutes ago, we’ll more likely be spectators to a fire show. If we do get a strike, Mr. Cameron, at the first sign of a siren, dive under the nearest console and brace, because we’ll move long and hard; and you haven’t felt movement yet. Not in this entire trip. Not in your life , Mr. Cameron. Right now you have time to get to a takehold and time to get granny to shelter, and I advise you do that.—Mr. Carson. Docking spot number one, three bright flashes toward our spook. Stand by for braking, Jorgensen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said. And moved, not even pausing for a glance at Jase. The ship was acting—God save them, Sabin was taking the action Ramirez had ducked.

He reached the shelter and repeated that warning in Ragi, for the company. “Prolonged strong movement. Everyone must stay in the shelter, nadiin-ji. This situation may continue a while or change suddenly.” Five-deck would hear. Trust Asicho for that.

A siren sounded.

“ Sabin here. Take hold, take hold, take hold. Alien contact. We are manuvering after sending signal to alien craft. Stand by. ”

God, truth from a Phoenix captain.

Bren wedged himself back in among the rest. Kept his breathing calm and steady.

“Sabin-aiji has sent a signal to the foreign ship,” he said as calmly as he could manage. His breath seemed inadequate. And the braking hit. The signal had gone. Three blinks of the ship’s powerful docking spots.

Braking let up. “ Mr. Cameron .” Jase’s voice. “ Mr. Cameron to the bridge .”

“Aiji-ma. Nadiin-ji.” He groped for the padded edge of the cabinet and moved, not sure of his safety, but he answered the summons, as far as Jase’s position, against a padded wall. “Jase.”

Sabin was there, too, braced with her back against the same surface.

“Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Atevi are hearing that advisement below, too?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bren admitted.

“Efficient. Keep it that way. Don’t get in my way. Stand by to answer questions.”

Sabin left the takehold position, walked off, resuming her continual tour. Jase stayed close to him.

“Scary,” Bren muttered.

“You noticed,” Jase said. “We’ve signaled it. We’ve changed our position in case they fire on our signal.”

“Which also tells them we fear hostile action.”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“By our logic. They should figure we thought of it and preferred to talk, not shoot. One hopes they think that way.”

A small moment in which he could scarcely believe he’d just argued with Sabin on her bridge and urged the ship to take an aggressive response—but there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. There simply wasn’t, within anything he could think of.

And even in that gut-deep human and atevi dislike of turning their backs on an enemy, in their choice to deal with the situation rather than go on in, ignoring the presence, there was animal instinct at work… a good instinct, an instinct viable in every situation that two similarly wired species could jointly think of, but that didn’t say definitively that no other answer had ever evolved in a wide universe. It only said their behavior was statistically likely to be understood, based on a sample of two and based on the limits of the translator’s own imagination.