Текст книги "Defender "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

The ship was leaving dock. Leaving the planet.

Chasing after a problem they all, some less willing than others, had in common.

Deserting them.

“Without consultation? Jase, I still haven’t been able to get through to Tabini.”

“ The proposition’s going to the crew in general council. In about an hour. Ogun’s wasting no time at all.”

With the crew suspecting a double-cross, fast movement on some course of action was the best thing. In that sense it was a good thing the council had decided—but the decision was far from the balanced outcome he wanted.

“I’m not upset they’re going. But they’re moving without a response from the aiji. He may agree, but he has to give his agreement. I know he’s stalling, but there are other issues down there. This is dangerous stuff, and it’s going to create ill will.”

“ I know. I argued that point. Ogun listened, and he and Sabin still voted together. Departure’s imminent… granted the crew agrees. And they will. All they have to do is send essential personnel to stations and flip the master switch. They’ll run tests. But the ship’s in running order. There’s not going to be that long a delay. Then there’s no more debate.”

“Are you going? Or are you staying here?”

A small pause. “ I want to stay. It would make some sense. You and I can work together. But on this one, I’m not sure whether Ogun will vote with me, either. I’m not sure he wants someone here who cooperates that easily with you and Tabini. I know Sabin wouldn’t like my being left as liaison. But I’m damn little use in operations. I’m putting our conversation into the log, by the way.”

If Jase was speaking his own dialect, overhearing was always a possibility, and he hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t say in captain’s council.

“That’s fine.”

“ I’ll be talking to Ogun and Sabin, if I can, trying to argue them into leaving me here. Here, I’m useful. It’s the best outcome I can think of.”

“It shows good faith to Tabini, for one other cogent argument.”

“ That’s a point. I’ll use it. I’ve got to go, Bren.”

“Thanks. Thanks for the advisement.”

Thanks for the advisement.

Was he surprised? Not that surprised.

Breakfast was all but on the table. He’d upset Bindanda if he let it go cold. He saw the maidservant hesitating just beyond the door, an earnest young face, too good sense to interrupt the paidhi in a phone call: she advised him simply by her waiting presence.

“Yes, nadi-ji,” he said. He was cold. “My indoor coat, if you please.”

She hurried to the foyer closet and brought it back. He slipped it on, unrumpled, morning ritual, calming to jangled nerves. One day and the next. Routine. The cosmic carpet was about to go out from under them, but they observed the amenities. And he’d gotten about two hours’ sleep.

Banichi and Jago had likewise turned up for breakfast, black-uniformed, informal and comfortable—armed. They always were. And they probably hadn’t slept either.

“We may have to send a courier down to Shejidan,” Bren said. “Can we hurry the shuttle? Immediate launch? There’s reason to ask.”

“One will learn, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano?” Banichi had his earpiece in, and listened, and gave a little inclination of his head. “Tano will inquire during breakfast.”

“The ship’s going,” he said to Banichi and Jago. “They’re holding a vote of the crew, but I have a notion it’s going to pick up and go. One has to ask still how much of a presence they’re going to leave here. We need technical people to continue with the ship-building and train atevi personnel to manage it. So now we learn, one supposes, whether Ramirez-aiji meant us to have a starship at all, or whether it was all show, to get his ship fueled. That’swhy we need a courier. The ship is about to power up, preparatory to leaving. And the aiji doesn’t answer me. Has there been any response from the Guild?“

“Nothing,” Banichi said. “No answer at all. Which is unprecedented, Bren-ji.”

So was all of it. Currents were moving. Big ones. “If Tabini won’t answer our messages, then we have somehow to rattle his doors. If we do it in error, if we disturb what’s afoot—well, that’s a risk. The aiji knows us, that we’re apt to try something. And I think now we have to take that risk.”

“One understands,” Banichi murmured. The two of them took their seats at table, fortunate three. Silver dishes were arranged. Servants stood by to serve, and began with tasty cold jellies in the shape of the traditional eggs. Bindanda had been very clever, and the quasi-eggs were very spicy, and good.

“Excellent,” they agreed, and complimented Bindanda’s handiwork as the next course proved to be a vegetable and nut pate surrounding stuffed mushrooms with small split-nut fins. Bindanda put the station’s synthetic cheese loaf far in the shade.

Could one even think politics over such a breakfast?

Bren did, and he was sure Banichi and Jago did.

Nor were they quite out of touch with Tano and Algini, having their quasi-fish in the informality of the security station.

Banichi murmured, quietly, urgently, at a hiatus in the serving, “A shuttle has just launched. This would be the freight shuttle.”

His heart beat fast. “ Early, isn’t it?”

“A little early,” Jago said.

“A courier to us?” It made a certain sense, when he was trying desperately to decide who of his staff to send down to Tabini.

It was about damned time, was what.

“One has no information,” Banichi said. “Possible that we’ll hear before docking.”

“Possible that there’s a security force aboard?” Bren had his voice down, trying to preserve propriety, but a shuttle: that was a two-edged prospect. “I wish very much that Tabini would consult, nadiin-ji.”

Understatement, twice over. Tabini had tacitly demanded one simple thing of Ramirez in return for his support of the ship: control of the station. The ship maintained an iron hand over personnel’s comings and goings, and over communications, but atevi were set at key physical points of the station. And to Bren’s observation, bothpowers thought they ran things, while Mospheirans thought they ran the business operations and the commerce, such as there was—they did that fairly undisputed.

And everyone had tacitly agreed not to challenge each other, under Ramirez’s command.

Now Ramirez was gone, taking all his secrets with him. And now they had their heaviest-lift shuttle arriving, nearly on routine, but just a worrisome little bit early—while the ship-crew was voting to pull the only starship out of the agreement and go off on a mission to stick their fingers into the most sensitive situation possible.

It took a degree of control to appreciate the next course, and to make small talk with his staff and the kitchen.

And at the time when they often set about their day’s business, Banichi and Jago had another revelation from the security station.

“They’re reporting only routine.”

He had a very strong feeling, all the same. He hated like hell to be taken off his guard.

“Do you know, I think we should arrange to meet the shuttle when it docks, nadiin-ji. I think perhaps we should prepare the third residency, in hopes of putting the aiji’s official answer in a somewhat better mood. If we’re wrong, we can always power the apartment down again. Tell the station and the ship we’re doing some maintenance in there.”

“A very good idea,” Banichi said.

It took a long time to warm up an apartment once it was mothballed—not quite the chill of space, but certainly the walls grew cold and difficult to warm.

“One assumes, at least,” Bren said cautiously, as they entered the study, “that Tabini has taken my advisement and Geigi’s utterly seriously. If it turns out to be several hundred of the Guild, I trust they’ll take care with the porcelains.” Heavy lift as well as antiquity made the decor in the adjacent apartment extravagantly expensive. “But it occurs to me, nadiin-ji, that the dowageris available to him, if it weren’t for Cajeiri.”

Ilisidi had been on the station, understood the station, had met with the living captains, and knew Ramirez face to face.

More, she had authority. Vast authority.

And it was very, very possible, if Tabini had to choose someone for a quick personal assessment of the situation—outranking both the paidhi and lord Geigi—Ilisidi would be a very astute observer. Very powerful. Surrounded by close, armed security.

If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.

“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”

“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”

Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.

“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”

If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.

That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.

“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”

“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”

“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”

“One can carry a message,” Jago said.

“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let himsuggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”

“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.

“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”

“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.

“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To directtheir response.”

“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.

“Do youthink there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.

“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.

Something, at least, had changed.

There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who mighthave a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.

Touchy enough, his relationship with the third paidhi—touchy as Jase’s, who was her ex-lover, and who hadn’t gotten along with her.

Or maybe secrets had driven the wedge.

And secrets had been going on for years.

“I’ll try phoning Jase,” he said to Jago, and got up and did that.

“ Mr, Cameron,” C1 said. “ Hold on. You’re on priority to Captain Graham.”

Well, thatwas improved.

“ Bren?” A moment later.

“Jase, we’ve got a shuttle inbound. Anyone notice?”

A small pause.

“ If you’ve called to say so,” Jase said, being quick, “ I take it there’s some concern.”

Chapter 10

Time enough to prepare. Time enough to advise allies about a conjecture of a conjecture.

Time enough to open the aiji-dowager’s former residency, set a vase with hothouse flowers on the foyer table, and arrange a welcome with a small flourish.

For once, Bren said to himself, he had gotten the edge on Tabini.

At least he hadn’t been caught with the ship just pulled out and that armed starship facing the shuttle with a disproportional balance of power. The crew had voted. The foregone conclusion was concluded. The ship would move.

But Jase had presented a possible intervening fact—and Ogun, quite unexpectedly, had given a series of small preparatory orders, maintenance checks, numerous of them. And inventory of ship’s stores. Dared one suspect cooperation?

The action of an alliance—in which Ogun might be better informed than any of them?

Ilisidi, if it was the dowager en route, had been figured out, anticipated, and factored in with astonishingly little fuss, considering all that was at stake—Ilisidi, if it was she, having a considerable lot of credit with the ship’s crew as well as the station.

No publicity yet. The shuttle wasn’t talking about passengers and the ship, busy with its mysterious inventory, hadn’t inquired.

Not even certain, while Bren anxiously fidgeted away the final minutes, that it wasn’t simply flour and electronics.

But they were ready when the call came that the freight shuttle would use bay 1, which was personnel.

Time to put coats on, gloves in the pockets this time, servants from Geigi’s household and his to give a final touch to the third residency.

Bay 1 was manned and ready.

And they had an entire delegation—himself, lord Geigi, and Jase, with their respective security riding up in the lift, while station operations went through the customs routine, as if there might be simple workers to process.

Bren thought to the contrary.

Definitely political. Incredibly expensive in terms of fuel and wear on the equipment and the cargo the shuttle oughtto have been carrying, on its regular schedule… but the aiji in Shejidan used what he had to use, and had with increasing certainty gotten his messages.

They waited in the warm territory of the third deck while the docking approach was in progress. Jase met them there, with his own escort, and brought communications tied to the ship.

“Ogun certainly thinks it’s her,” Jase informed them. “Whether he’s had a communication or not, I don’t know, but there’s every indication there’s a passenger.”

They took the lift up into the cold and zero gravity of the core, exited into that vast dock where light never seemed enough.

There they floated, hovering near the residual warmth of the lift shaft. Gloved fingers made patterns in the frost on the handgrips.

The doors down in Bay 3 were capable of receiving anything the freight shuttle could hand them—objects the size of a railway car, easily, and the big cradles were capable of receiving, maneuvering, offloading contents to various sorting areas.

As it was, if they needed more confirmation, workers had rigged the hand-lines for personnel. Theyhad instructions from C1.

And they waited. Freezing.

Bren personally tried not to look up, or down, or whatever it was. For the sake of his stomach, he mostly stared at the railing near them and the yellow safety-ropes the workers deployed between them and the shuttle hatch. Jase cheerfully drifted slightly sideways to him, Kaplan and Polano and Colby loosely maintaining position along with him: lifelong spacers, confident of the lines.

“High-ranking,” Jase said. “Definitely. There’s been an advisement to customs for a wave-through. You’re right, Bren. I think you’re entirely right. The personnel rig is ready. Dockside has confirmed it. Engaged. They’re in.”

Jase moved out along the safety line. Bren followed gingerly, with Jago and Banichi, and likewise Geigi and his company.

They were most of the way there when the shuttle’s personnel hatch opened… a little in advance of the human workers reaching it.

There—there indeed was Ilisidi, in warm furs. Trust the dowager to devise something stylish for the event.

Elegant, she drifted in the hatch along with Cenedi’s formidable, protective presence.

A smaller figure left the hatch past her right hand, too far—too fast—and drifted right off the platform.

And off beyond the lines. Trying to swim, in space.

A child.

A boy.

A protocol disaster.

Bren held his breath as workers scrambled, on hand-jets.

Ilisidi reached with her cane, and almost had the boy. But Tabini’s son and heir, someday lord of the aishidi’tat, indignantly kicked free and attempted his own salvation. He twisted and kicked in an attempt to reach the door of the shuttle, and banged the edge of the hatch with an unfortunate booted foot.

He sailed off quite spectacularly out of reach—but not quickly enough to arrive anywhere useful anytime soon.

It was chilling cold. The boy was suited only for the brief transit to the lift.

Jase took a hand-jet from a worker and moved out among the rest, while the dowager, who cast an exasperated glance at the boy’s trajectory, glanced at Bren, maintained a grip on the line with the grip of her cane and lifted the other hand in a tolerant, benevolent welcome.

“Well, well. Bren-paidhi. So my grandson told you after all.”

“Not exactly, aiji-ma.” It was hard not to be distracted, with a desperate rescue proceeding above their heads, if there was an abovein this steel cavern. But if there was one thing more hurtful to the situation, it was more notice. One only hoped it would not be on public reports. And what did one say, under the circumstance? Did you have a nice flight? “Welcome. Welcome from the staff and from the aijiin.”

“Did you guess, then?”

“I learned of the early shuttle launch, and who else of such overriding importance would divert a shuttle to visit us?”

He managed to please her, in spite of the incident. An angry shout—the family temper—punctuated the icy air above them. No, Cajeiri had no wish to be hauled down ignominiously by human workers. No, clearly he wished to use one of the jets for himself, small chance there was of the workers or Jase allowing that.

Was it possible Ilisidi winced?

“Geigi-ji, too,” the dowager said, however. “So clever, the lot of you. I trust I’m in time for the ship.”

“For the ship, aiji-ma?”

“Do you think they may bring the boy to the lift in time for us, or shall I leave one of my companions?”

Bren gave a desperate look up—or out, or whatever it might be—since propriety forbade the dowager gazing after this youthful error. By now Jase had the boy by an arm and was towing him down.

“They have him, aiji-ma,” Bren said, quite familiar with the dowager’s iron notion of propriety. “Jase-ji.” He reached out a hand himself to steer Jase down, holding firmly to the safety line.

The boy was near enough. Ilisidi reached out with the crook of her cane and snatched the aiji’s heir close, past her elbow, back into her chief of security Cenedi’s hands and Cenedi very smoothly attached Cajeiri’s gloved hand to the safety line. Jase braked, not showing off a bit, no, and stayed free-fall in escort of their party, workers hovering on the other side of the line—in event of other escapes, one surmised.

Cajeiri meanwhile was shivering—being smaller, and chilling even after his burst of furious exertion, but no one shamed him by noticing.

They reached the lift car.

“ Thatwill become the floor,” Ilisidi said as they entered the car, and gave the proposed lift deck a stamp of that formidable cane. “Set your feet there, boy! Can you manage that? Thank you!”

Cajeiri turned himself as the adults did and youthful feet went there, just so, with no mistakes this time. It must be Cajeiri’s earnest desire not to be noticed for hours and hours.

Court etiquette forbade noticing the event. Security forbade their discussing business of other kinds, so conversation simply and inanely regarded the dowager’s flight, the launch weather, the weather in the far east of the Association, which was the dowager’s domain—and, in one of those strange drifts of converse, to the hatch of wi’itikiin in recent years.

“Fourteen chicks,” the dowager said proudly, as they rode down past third level, “this spring. All living. Those on the higher cliffs we surmise do as well.”

“One is glad to hear it, aiji-ma.” He truly was glad. It was amazing to him. Ilisidi came here turning their lives upside down even if they’d seen her coming, and told him chicks had hatched on the cliffs of Malguri, making what had been a cold, strange station feel the winds of the world. “One is extremely glad to know it.” What is this about the ship? he wanted to ask, but this was hardly the place for it, in a lift where station security often monitored.

Cajeiri, likely, himself, destined for Malguri after this sojourn of Ilisidi’s on the station, kept meekly quiet, family temper having had its expression—family survival sense having come to the fore.

Tatiseigi’s being the boy’s first lessons—what wonder the boy was grim, Bren thought to himself. No companions. No play.

Now diplomatic missions, God help the boy.

And what was this, In time for the ship?

And why did his heart beat double-time, and why did he reckon suddenly Jase should have heard, and hadn’t, because Jase had been out of range.

“This is Jase-aiji, one of the ship-aijiin, who has extended you considerable courtesy. Thisis the paidhi-aiji, whom you surely remember favorably. This is Lord Geigi, whom you have yet to meet formally.”

“Ship-aiji,” Cajeiri said in meek tones. “Thank you. Paidhi-aiji, Lord Geigi. I’m gratified you came.”

“One is equally gratified by your courtesy, aiji-ma,” Jase said smoothly, in the smooth tones of practice. Thatphrase he knew in his sleep.

“Young aiji,” Geigi said.

“See you deal well with these men,” Ilisidi said, and nudged Jase with the head of her cane. “Well done.”

“Aiji-ma. Thankyou for coming. We know it’s an arduous journey.”

“Nonsense. But from a handsome young man, acceptable.”

As their feet found the floor with increasing solidity and a slight rotational queasiness.

“This isn’t right, grandmother-ji,” Cajeiri protested. “Are we safe?”

“Safe? Safe? Do you see these gentlemen distressed?” Ilisidi asked, and stamped the deck with the ferrule of her cane. “Conditions to become ordinary to your generation—one is certain, and far too soon. But well that you notice. Well that you notice, all the same.”

“ Yes, grandmother-aiji.”

“This generation,” Ilisidi said. “Will it be wiser, Geigi-ji?”

“One has hope, nand’ dowager.”

“Thus far, I doubt it. But I venture, hear? I do venture.”

How did one query the dowager when she was in that mood? And where was there time for thoughtful conversation?

And what was this, In time for the ship?

The lift stopped, let them out in the ordinary station halls, but instead of customs and station security, standard procedure when a shuttle with passengers came into dock—Ogun met them.

With Merchesonbeside him.

Yolanda Mercheson, who avoided eye contact, bowing to the dowager.

“Dowager,” Ogun said in the Ragi language. “Welcome to the station.”

“Aiji-ma,” Yolanda said. “We understand your quarters are ready.”

Ordinary workers, mostly Mospheiran, passed by on their various errands—and stopped to stare at a meeting of the paidhiin and atevi aristocrats, and one the widely famous Gran ‘Sidi, with her silver-haired chief of security, Cenedi.

And an atevi youngster.

Movement in the hall outright stopped. People stood. A few bowed.

Ogun took out his pocket com and spoke in his own language: “C1, clearance through the halls. Gran Sidi’s in residence. Advise the council. Intentions as yet unspecified.”

C1 answered, a simple acknowledgment of the orders.

“Nand’ dowager,” Ogun said then—he had learned that phrase in the dowager’s last tenancy. But he gave only a passing glance to the boy—not in as much dismay as confusion, as Bren saw it. Ogun might have heard about the unfortunate incident at the dock, or not: he said nothing, simply bowed slightly, stiffly—never a shipboard or a Mospheiran grace—welcoming the aiji dowager to the station as if this was no surprise at all.

“Her discretion,” Ogun said, passing everything atevi to the dowager and to them, and about that moment Ilisidi’s cane came down smartly on the deck, the end of her patience.

“Translate,” she said.

“A welcome, nandi,” Jase said immediately.

“ She’sthe representative,” Ogun said.

Jase skirted an infelicitous mispronunciation rendering that. One forgave him: the dowager seemed to. She uttered a short, sharp hiss.

“Of course. Does anyone believe we sit in those wretched seats and come to such a frozen desolation in the heavens for our health? A chair. One assumes there will be a chair in a warm place. And supper. I insist on supper. When is the ship leaving?”

“The dowager says yes,” Jase rendered it for Ogun, “and wants to know when the ship is leaving.”

“Ma’am,” Ogun said, a courtesy, “nand’ dowager, we have to go through power-up.”

This arrived in the Ragi language as get it running.

“Get it running,” Ilisidi echoed the translation. “One hopes it runs, nadiin, with some reliability. We expect not to break down. Shall we move temporarily into our quarters?”

Not to break down. Weexpect not to break down.

Bren cast Jase a look and Jase seemed no more informed than he was. He cast one at Yolanda Mercheson, too.

“ ‘Sidi-ji,” Geigi said. “What is this? Are we informed?”

“Geigi,” Ilisidi said, and laid her hand on Geigi’s arm in a very intimate way. “Immediately. Your welcome is appreciated, Ogun-aiji—say so, girl! and be done. My bones ache. I want my chair!”

“Yes, aiji-ma,” Bren said—she was hisresponsibility, not Jase’s—and damned sure not Yolanda Mercheson’s, if he had a choice in it. “Captain, she’s anxious to be through the festivities and into a comfortable chair, and if there’s anything going on I don’t know, I hope I willknow in short order.” What’s this about the ship? was what he ached to ask, but court proprieties kept him from asking outright. “With your permission, sir.”

“The dowager proposes to be a passenger on this voyage,” Ogun said. “With her entourage. The schedule is under construction at the moment. We’ll notify her. We willinspect baggage: we have safety restrictions.”

“I daresay you should have Cenedi there if you do inspect baggage, sir.” He was accustomed to playing along as if he was utterly in the know, but this was the utmost, the most extravagant state of ignorance. A passenger on the ship, hell!

And Mercheson mediating when hewas present?

“Well, he’d better come along, then, soon as the baggage is offloaded,” Ogun said.

“Banichi, Cenedi will wish to supervise the inspection of baggage for safety. Jase, can you possibly attend that inspection?”

“I will,” Jase said. No better informed, Bren was convinced—no complicity in what Ogun clearly knew. The lot of them acted as if, of course, no surprise, no concern, they’d known from the start; but he improvised at high speed, and disposed someone who knew station regulations, someone who spoke Ragi and ship-language, to attend on security checks to prevent armed conflict.

Meanwhile he kept close with Ilisidi, intending to stay close until he understood at least the general outline of what was happening. Geigiwas as much in the dark as he was, he caught that from what outsiders might not perceive as an expression. Geigi himself was taken aback by this, and Geigiwas deeper than he was in Ilisidi’s confidence.

Mercheson and secrets and Tabini’s silence figured in what was going on—he was sure of that. This washis looked-for answer from Tabini, and it was a potent answer.

But, God, send Ilisidioff to the remote station for a look-around?

Have her travel alone?

She couldn’t speak to them. The ship’s crew couldn’t speak to her—except Jase. And Cajeirihad no place in a situation as fraught with danger as that. Was he supposed to babysit an atevi six-year-old?

What in helldid Tabini think he had set up? And with whom? With Ramirez, with Ogun’sknowledge?

“Dowager-ji,” he said, however, as blandly as if they were off to a garden walk, and showed Ilisidi and her party ahead down the corridor, leaving Ogun and Yolanda, Jase and Banichi behind—

Where Jase could find out something, Bren earnestly, desperately, hoped.

“On the ship, is it?” Bren asked, once they were clear of eavesdroppers.

“Sidi-ji,” Lord Geigi said at the same time, “this is a recklessventure.”

“Perhaps it is,” Ilisidi said. She had Geigi on the one hand and him on the other, Cajeiri safely in Cenedi’s hands at the moment. “But my grandson has taken this silly notion that nothing will do but that he know what happens in this far place, and he needs someone of sense, I suppose, to make a fair finding. A great inconvenience, I may say.”

“A very hard journey, Sidi-ji,” Geigi said.

And Bren: “This is no shuttle trip, aiji-ma. This is far, far more than that.”

“Pish.” Ilisidi struck her cane on the decking twice in a step. “And a shuttle trip is far, far more than the inconvenient and uncomfortable airplane I use between here and Malguri. Everything is degree, is it not?”

“The scale of this, aiji-ma,” Bren began. “If you please to—”

“Pish, I say. It has to be done. Don’t complain for me, Bren-ji. You’regoing.”

His heart went on quite normally two beats. Skipped one, as he believed he had heard what he had heard and the import of it came home. “Go with you? I’ve heard no such thing, aiji-ma.”

“You hear it now.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” There was, with official orders, only one thing to say, and he said it, calmly, with dignity, though he found breathing difficult.

Go from star to star, into a situation—

–this delicate?

It made a certain terrible sense. But—

“May I inquire, aiji-ma—I do trust the aiji knows your intention.”

“And would you question my order, paidhi-ji?”

“Certainly I must, aiji-ma, to leave a post Tabini-aiji…”

“Ha!” The cane stamped the deck. “Constant as sunrise. My grandson knows, I say. And he sends you to see to matters. I’mto be in the party to provide the requisite authority.”

“Then I shall go,” he said meekly. Scarcity of air made his head light. His hands were still cold from the foray into the cold. Now his whole body lost ground, inward chilling. “If I can arrange this with Ogun-aiji, who governs the ship, aiji-ma.”