Текст книги "Defender "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Captain’s on his way,” the man said then, with evident relief. “But he’d like to meet you on fifth level. It’s warmer, Mr. Cameron, if you can persuade her to go on through.”

Nerves twitched. Not polite, that unadorned common pronoun. But it wasn’t time for a lesson in protocols, not here.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said in a low voice, “there’s a reception arranged in greater warmth on fifth level, and Jase-aiji will meet us there, with your kind consent.”

“Very good,” Ilisidi said. And waved her cane forward. “Let this person lead, paidhi.”

“Lead on,” Bren said to their escort. The language had been clipped, moderate, but still touchy. “She says you may go in front of her.”

Their escort gave a misgiving look at their party in general, at very large dark-skinned, black-uniformed atevi bodyguards, who drank up the available light in the forefront of the party, and who had moved closer: the paler colors of the household staffs were much to the rear at the moment. Their escort might not like it, and wouldn’t at all like the weapons in evidence, and certainly wouldn’t like the intransigence in the entry corridor. But there they were, ordered to fifth deck and their escort glided out, using the ladder for a handhold, into the first intersecting corridor and up to a lift.

The lift opened at a button-push and cast a bright, reasonable light into their shadowed steel passage. They boarded the lift and rode either up or down, a slightly startling set of paths and tracks, to a brighter area facing a seal-door.

Their escort opened it and led the way.

The atevi-repaired station corridors were still lighter than this, brightly lit and of felicitously pleasant tones: but here the green and brown paneling of the original station was indisputable, unhappy prophecy of the decor beyond. No one could invent those muddy shades on purpose: it was, Bren suspected what the extrusion medium tended to do with the dyes they injected to better a natural puce. The same kind of switches for lights and section-seals were ubiquitous, as if the master kit that had built the station had been applied here—or vice versa, and that meant their staffs could manage these panels without much confusion. He was sure Banichi and Jago had taken that in instantly.

One wondered if the service accesses also existed here, that network of tunnels that allowed service inside the station’s workings.

Grim, human-style Malguri, it was, at least on this level, with moderate improvements in the plumbing and far worse to endure in simple inconvenience.

Ilisidi was taking it all in, stoically refusing to be appalled.

The aiji-apparent, however, looked around him as if he expected the walls to spew forth marvels—or to implode from age and decrepitude. Cajeiri hadn’t seen the station at its worst—had lived in baroque splendor, among centuries-old porcelains, on hand-worked carpet, under gilt ceilings. He had seen, in fact, nothing in his young life more primitive than the new sections of the space station. He clung to the ladder rungs along the wall to keep from another ignominious drift, and tried not to jump when section door locks banged and moved, letting them through to another area, another corridor.

“Mind,” Cenedi said as they went, “these doors are likely the same as on the station: they close without mercy, in the blink of an eye, to keep all the air from rushing out into the ether of the heavens, young sir. If you see red flashing lights, stand where you are. If yellow, run breakneck for the next section and hope not to be cut in half.”

“Where do they steer the ship, nadi?” Cajeiri asked.

“Elsewhere,” Ilisidi interposed. “Where boys don’t need to be.”

“But I want to see,” Cajeiri said as they glided along.

“There may be supper,” Ilisidi said, “and who knows, Imay not wish supper tonight.”

Thatwas a threat. Cajeiri was immediately nothappy. He still stared about him, head turning at every new door, every corridor they passed, youthful jaw set and the dowager’s own glint in his eye.

Bet, too, if there was any similarity in the species, that every inquisitive bone in that young body longed for all of those emergency measures to go into effect at once—just the once, of course, just to find out.

Cajeiri had behaved admirably this far. One remembered, seeing the occasional look, that set of the jaw, that this was, in fact, Tabini’s son, and Damiri’s.

One well remembered, too, what it was like to be that young, that active, that under-informed. And on this excursion one was damned glad that no one less than the Assassin’s Guild was in charge of the boy.

They reached a new section under their official guidance: three crewmen turned out to meet them—with a small presentation of cut flowers, no less, to the lady they called Gran ‘Sidi.

“Welcome aboard,” the head of the little delegation said in passable Ragi, all solemnity.

Ilisidi took the flowers like a queen, lacking a free hand, what with the cane—drifting slightly sideways at the moment. But she snagged the ubiquitous ladder-rungs with the head of the cane and managed a little nod, which greatly gratified the delegation.

“We are here to occupy our quarters,” she said, of course in Ragi, complete cipher to the crew.

“She is pleased,” Bren translated—it was not dishonest of a translator to meet reasonable social expectations on either side, in his practical and practiced opinion. “And she expects the atevi section is close—with Captain Graham, to be sure.”

“On ahead, sir,” their escort said, “and the baggage is ahead, too, and Captain Graham’s on his way this very moment. Through here, sir, ma’am.”

Very good news. Their escort opened a side door, where Bindanda had stationed himself—welcome sight. Cenedi quietly appropriated the flowers, incongruous but not unaccustomed accouterment for security, and they continued through, into a place not only populated by their own staff, but better lit and much warmer. The ship immediately had a more auspicious feeling, despite the mud-colored walls.

Cenedi had had staff aboard for hours, going over every minute detail of their accommodations, checking for bugs as well as inconveniences, one could be sure.

And Ilisidi’s security had a camera live. As they passed the door, Bren caught the shine of an uncapped lens clipped to a uniformed, leather shoulder.

And what was thatfor? Bren asked himself in dismay. The lens certainly wasn’t uncommon, but he was sure the lens had been capped during their trip up the lifts, possibly protectively so, during the intense cold—he had no idea of its limitations. He was sure he’d have noticed otherwise.

But if they’d uncapped it, bet that lens was live and they were transmitting. Was that for security review, privately, something relayed ahead to their staff, in the new quarters?

Something sent farther away, back through the hull, to lord Geigi? He wasn’t sure they could do that. Surely not. So there was a security set-up already active within their section—someone receiving.

He was not unhappy to know they had record of the route and the button-pushes that brought them here.

But for all he knew, Cenedi’s men were making a video record for quite different reasons, a record perhaps to go out to Geigi, then to Tabini, who would be interested, to say the least.

Or—knowing Tabini—was it to go out to every household that owned a television?

Confirmation for the dowager’s political allies that she was well and alive and in charge of her own armed security, on this ship, in this mission?

Atevi couldn’t like the structure they saw—though atevi had gotten used to the concept of twos on the station. Everything in the corridors—doors, and window panels in offices, was configured by ship-culture, convenient sets of two, pairs, that anathema to the ‘counters, more than vexation to the atevi sense of design: an arrangement of space that hit the atevi nervous system with the same painful reaction nails on a chalkboard caused for humans, and worse, he understood, if one were standing in it, experiencing it in three dimensions.

But some enterprising soul had painted two pastel stripes wandering the corridor, two, branching into five, then felicitous seven, right across the green tile.

Someone had arranged a spray of brightly colored plastic balls—seven—on strands of wire, from wall to wall, like planets and moons against the mud brown of the wall paneling.

The effect was less than elegant… the sort of thing that turned up in crew lounges. But seven. It was a valiant attempt at kabiu.

And colored paint. Where had paintturned up in their baggage? It had been at a low priority in station-building, wasn’t manufactured on-station even yet: it had to be freighted up.

Had Jase had that stripe done? Had the dowager’s staff prepared for the spartan environment? Atevi couldn’thave done something as garish as the orange planets.

Staff drifted out from the offices, the dowager’s, welcome sight on both sides, and the staff who’d brought their baggage turned up from further on.

“Thank you,” Bren said to their escort, with a little bow as automatic as breathing and quite impossible in null-G. “We’ll be very comfortable here.”

“I’m to show you temperature and emergency controls, sir.”

Therewas a potentially explosive foul-up. “I’m sure you’ve shown the staff,” Bren said, drifting slightly askew—difficult to maintain formality at odd angles—“and deputized themto show security personnel, who will show me and the dowager what’s needful for us personally to do. That’s our protocol, sir. Believeme, Captain Graham will confirm it.”

Trust them, that the ship would not explode from thisdeck.

“Then is there any need of me further?” their escort asked.

“With thanks, sir,—one trusts Captain Graham is here.”

“He’s in the section, sir. He’s on his way.”

The door behind them opened at that very moment. He heard it, and when he turned, drifting, to look back, Jase wasthere.

Thank God.

“We’re just fine, then. We’ll all be fine. Thank you, yes, that’s all we need.”

“There will be nowalking about,” Ilisidi was telling Cajeiri quite firmly, in this place where, at the moment, walkingwas a euphemism, “no leaving your quarters without security escort, nadi.”

“But this is all like a house, mani-ji. Surely—”

“Nothing is sure here!” This under her breath, with a hard jerk at Cajeiri’s hand. “Hear me!” Bren tried not to notice the preface, as Ilisidi, disgusted, turned a sweetly benevolent glance toward him, and toward Jase, as Jase sailed to their side, and stopped.

Jase, in a blue uniform jacket, with the Phoenixinsignia, the closest to captain’s estate he’d yet come. The emblem looked like one of the wi’itikiin, the flying creatures of Malguri cliffs, rising from solar fires—atevi, having heard the legend, thought it very well-omened.

The inner door shut, making everything private, including Jase with them.

“Jase-aiji. How kind of you to come.”

“Aiji-ma,” Jase said quietly, distantly to Bren’s ears.

The offices inside were all lit up, with atevi staff unpacking their own equipment.

And the stripes braiding their way down the corridor, past the windowed offices immediately in view, branched out to two side corridors in the section.

He’d approved the arrangement the dowager’s staff had provided: numerous staff sleeping rooms, back near the kitchens, and two bedchambers, two office/studies, for himself and for the dowager. They used a vast amount of room—they’d added staff, and only scantly advised the ship, which had, for all he knew, discounted the advisement: certainly there’d been no high-level reaction. Of room there was no shortage, so instructions said, and their baggage requirements remained negligible to the scale of things.

“I hope everything’s in order,” Jase said. “I hope you’ll be as comfortable as we can provide, aiji-ma.”

“Acceptable, ship-aiji.” This, from the mistress of ancient Malguri, the dowager who slept on bare ground and still outrode two humans. “But association and man’chi. How stands that?”

“Firm,” Jase said. The reassuring answer. “Still within the aiji’s man’chi. And my ship’s.” One could have two man’chiin: the whole aishidi’tatwas a web work, and two and three and four associations at once was a benefit, not a detriment.

“Accept this,” Cenedi said, and handed Jase one of the pocket coms, “to keep us in close touch. The dowager relies on you especially, nandi, in this voyage. She will call on you whenever she has a personal question. She wishes to have this clear.”

Jase bowed his head—the rigorous instruction of the court made that act the simplest, most basic reflex. “I’ll endeavor to answer the dowager’s questions.”

“So what will the schedule be, if you please?” Ilisidi asked.

“If the dowager please—” Court expression for a brief stall, a gathering of words. “We’re transient.”

“Moment to moment,” Bren muttered, on autopilot.

“Moment to moment.” Jase scarcely blushed, seized on the apt word, and the omen fell unremarked. “Reliant on the numbers, aiji-ma, as crew boards. We have to have a precise calculation of mass. We’ll leave dock and calculate, we hope, in about four hours. Crew boarding has begun. It can be very fast.”

“Very good. And we will then walk decently on the deck.”

“As soon as we’re underway, aiji-ma.”

“Is this where we stay, mani?” Cajeiri asked, sounding disappointed. “It looks like a warehouse.”

“This is manifestly where we stay,” Ilisidi said sharply, “and one will be grateful, great-grandson, that the facility will soon be operative and that the lights require no lengthy and laborious fire source, notthe case everywhere in the world, as you will one day learn to your astonishment, I warn you. Apologize!”

“One regrets, nandiin.” Meek response.

“One accepts,” Jase said.

Ilisidi steered her charge onward, toward her own side corridor. Cenedi attended. Staff bowed, such as they could, adrift.

He and Jase had a moment, then—a solitary moment, after Jase’s quick, confidence-establishing trip to this deck. At times, Bren thought, when he could do his old job, merely translating, correcting Jase’s small lapse, he could sink into flow-through, not paying attention to what he said. At such moments he became a device, not a thinking being.

But he wasn’t merely a recorder. And he knew he was close to panic, in zero-gravity, amid universal reminders they were all but launched. His eyes tended now to dart to details, and to miss all of them. Thoughts scattered. What became absolutely necessary eluded him, at the very moment he needed to gather the facts in and make sense and use the brief chance he had—like this one, to talk to Jase, to have things firm—to make requests, demands on Jase that might break an association, break a friendship, see disaster overtake them… he wasn’t at his best. But time and the hope of remedy was slipping away from him.

“Jase.” He got the word out. “Office.” He changed languages. “Need to talk.” Remembering that Ragi was the most secure code they could use, he shifted his mind back into that track. “A moment only, nadi.”

“I haven’t got time,” Jase said urgently in ship-speak. “I left a briefing—”

“Jase-ji.” He snagged Jase by an arm, gripped the ladder with the other, and pulled Jase loose from his handhold, hauled him bodily into the right-hand office, the one Cenedi and his staff weren’t occupying.

Jago attended him in, braked with a gentle toe touch on a cabinet.

He’d kidnapped a ship’s captain. And he was gripping too tightly, too urgently.

Jago made a signal to them. Wired. Meaning Jase.

“In private,” he said to Jase.

Jase hesitated, looked down at the grip on his arm. Bren let go.

Then Jase reached to his collar and pinched a switch.

“Can’t be out of contact long,” Jase said. “Sabin’s not happy with how much time I’ve diverted here. Silence is going to be noticed.”

“The paint down the hall. Your idea?”

“My orders. My sketch. Crew’s execution. Caught hell for it.”

Jase, practicing kabiu. He didn’t ask about the orange plastic planets.

“Damned good,” Bren said. “Excellent move. Impressive.”

“You didn’t hold me here to discuss the paint.”

“Speak Ragi. Jase, I have a question. Not a pleasant question.—Jago-ji. The meeting with Mercheson. I have it keyed up.” He had his computer. He opened the case, sailed it gently to her. “Play it.”

“Nandi.” Jago simply pushed the button, the computer floating in her grip.

“ So will you,” Yolanda’s voice said, that sound-clip, right there. “… where you are– and I’m glad you’re going. All I know– all I know of what’s out there– if Ogun doesn’t know, and he hasn’t told Sabin, then there’s two names. There was a three-man exploration team that went in. I know that Jenrette was one of them; and two more got killed.”

Jase’s lips had become a thin line.

“ Tamun was trying to catch Ramirez, and they ran, and Tamun’s mutineers shot them. Jenrette’s still alive, but they aren’t. I didn’t used to think so, but now I ask myself whether Tamun suspected something, and if that was why he was trying to overthrow the council– but Tamun couldn’t get at it, when he was one of the captains. He couldn’t get the proof, or didn’t release it. So we didn’t know– and now he’s dead. And that scares me. All that scares me.“

“Shit,” Jase said.

“ Log record?” the tape went on, Bren’s own voice, alternate with Yolanda’s.

“ Common crew can’t get into the log file. I guess not even all the captains can. There could be a tape– they usually make one, through helmet-cam. But if there is, it’s deep in archives.”

“ Tape of what?” he’d asked.

“ Their going onto the station. Through the corridors. That’s all I know. Which is what everybody in the crew knows. But didn’t know they knew. That’s the hell of it. We thought the report was just what you’d think it would be… which it wasn’t. And now if there was a tape, or if Jenrette knows something– he’s the only eyewitness. And he’s attached to Jase.”

“When did she talk to you?” Jase asked, appalled.

“Does it matter?”

“It bloody matters. Is she all right?”

“You have to ask that?”

Jase wasn’t pleased. Jase had a temper. But right now Jase looked stark scared.

“I put her into my apartment,” Bren said, “with my staff, with instructions to protect her against the consequences of telling me the truth.—You didn’t know I’d done that.”

“I heard she was there. I didn’t hear the circumstances. Obviously I didn’t.”

“But you’re scared.”

“I’m damned upset! This isn’t a small affair, Bren. This is explosive.”

“It took Yolanda some thinking, I imagine, to see past the obvious. Ididn’t see it, first off. Did you?”

“See what? What are you talking about?”

“ Ragi, nadi-ji. Give me the benefit of your thoughts, if you will. Dare we say you know what I’m talking about, and we’re both distressed about what Mercheson said?”

“I didn’t expect Yolanda was involved any longer. I thought she was out of this, once Ramirez died.”

“ Whatwas she out of?”

“Ship politics.”

Thatcovered the known world. “You were personally involved with her,” Bren said, determined on confrontation. “Then, surprise, nadi-ji, you weren’t. You couldn’t face each other.—I could have predicted that breakup, forgive me. It’s the job.”

“It was herjob, as it turned out.” The job she’d done for Ramirez, the job she hadn’t told either of them about. “Wasn’t it? Or do we know something else?”

“You didn’t know what she was doing when you broke up. But it was there, nadi. Secrets are bad bedfellows.”

Ship-speak. “They’re killers. None of which is here or there with what she’s charging.”

“And you’re still mad. You were damnedmad when you found out what she’d been doing with Tabini and Ramirez. But you were mad before that. You canceled her out. You didn’t deal with her. You didn’t talk. That was bad business, and I didn’t know how to patch it. Our conversations stopped, too. She avoided me as well as you. I attributed it to the severance of relations with you. As it turned out, she needed help, and I was blind.”

“She could have asked for it. Weren’t youmad, when you found out what she was up to?”

“Damned mad. And jealous. I confess it. Confession’s good for the soul. Isn’t that what they say? Maybe hers is quieter now.”

“I suppose it is. I don’t know where the hell this is going.”

“Well, for one, nadi-ji, I think she still cares and I know what bastards we are to live with under the best of circumstances.”

“None of your business, and thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Listen to me, nadi.” Back into Ragi, under cover, into a different framework of thinking, before thinking spiraled out of parameters in ship-speak. “The man’chi underlying is the same, hers and ours, different than the ship. There’s a human truth in that, like it or not, and I suggest you listen to the whole conversation, in which she expressed deep concern for your safety and your welfare and the reasons—there were reasons—why she didn’t feel free to come to either of us. I’m sure jealousy exists in your feelings toward her, but not professional jealousy. I think jealousy of Ramirez doomed your relationship.”

“That’s nonsense.”

Right back to Ragi. “You aren’t related by blood, but you are by father—real father, not the centuries-dead heroes. Ramirez was the head of man’chi, and like any aiji, he worked with secrets, he kept secrets, he nourished them, bred them and crossbred them. There’s a reason he could deal with Tabini, whose whole instinct is secrecy. In that, I’m sure, nadi, that they damned well got along. And in the process, he made you and Yolanda jealous as hell of each other.”

Jase didn’t deny it.

“So he put her in an untenable position,” Bren said, “made her privy to his deception of both of us. And she couldn’t share a bed with you or a pot of tea in my household, not then nor after he died. No, she’s not the most agreeable. She detested the planet. But now she feels safest not in the society she knows from birth, but inside my household, watched over by my staff—being paidhi-aiji and dealing with Tabini. This isn’t the course either of us would have predicted for her. But she hasn’t beenwhere either of us thought she was, nadi. She’s been in a very frightening territory, while you and I were living comfortably, building the future we thought was relatively safe. She knew. I doubt she slept well, these last few years.”

“The hell! She could have come to me.”

“Could she? And what would Ramirez have done, nadi? And what might happen with Tabini?”

Tabini had to give anyone pause. And Jase paused.

“His dying grieved you,” Bren said, “and set her adrift, nadi. Now I hope she’s found a harbor a little more calm than where she’s lived. But while we’ve been comfortable these last years, she’s had years to think, and to assemble the pieces Ramirez necessarily gave her. As translators, we’re not quite machines, are we? We do bring in bits and pieces of our own knowledge. And there she sat, a member of the crew, hearing all this about the contact, knowing who went, knowing now that there wasa secret, knowing it was lurking at levels we didn’t deal with—what was she to do? You’dbeen taken into a captaincy she might have expected for herself. Shewas passed over, and still sat there, in Ramirez’s company, a repository of his official secrets—and whydidn’t he appoint her to the office?”

“I’ve no idea. I wish to hell he had.”

“But she was with him, nadi, day and night; she was subject to his calls—she had all those skills. Was he going to appoint a new captain who’d have full knowledge what was going on? Who had close ties to me, and who might gain access codes? A new ship-aiji who’d be with him so often she’d unbalance the relationship with other officers? She livedin his office. Wasn’t that the point of your own jealousy? And what if that had played out among the other ship-aijiin?”

Jase had let go his handhold, so still he stayed in place, adrift. The pain and anger that had been part of his dealings with Yolanda seemed to have gone elsewhere, redirected, reflected.

“Maybe it was,” Jase said. “Maybe a lot of things were poisoned in the process, nadi.”

“Then Ramirez died and left you Jenrette… one assumes to advise you, where matters come up.”

Anger gave way to intense worry.

“He was aboard the station,” Bren said. “All the others that went aboard the station out there, I suppose, were Ramirez’s men. What bothers me—all of them just happened to die in the Tamun affair. All but Jenrette.”

“Defending Ramirez,” Jase said.

“Like Yolanda, I’ll tell you, I’m beginning to ask myself what Tamun was doing that blew matters up and started the shooting.”

“I can’t believe there was anything more in it than Tamun’s ambition.”

“He was already at highest rank,” Bren protested. “What more was there for ambition to go for?”

“Control. Authority. Real authority.”

“And what could give it to him, better than information? Jase, Jase, I’d like you to find out what Jenrette knows. I’d like you to get a copy of that tape, if you can do it, before we leave dock. Before we commit any further to this mission.”

“I can’t do that,” Jase said.

“You can, nadi. Just ask him.”

“No. You don’t understand. It’s not possible. Jenrette’s transferred to Sabin.”

“When did thathappen?”

“When we made out the staff assignments. When we divided the crew, and said who was going and staying. I wanted Kaplan with me, on my staff—I trust Kaplan. I wanted to keep him and Pressman and Polano as my aides, and most of all, I didn’t want to leave them behind on the station, where Ogun’s going to appoint a fourth captain, which was the regulation way things work. That’s where they were supposed to go: they weren’t going to be aboard, the way Ogun had drawn things up. But Jenrette and I—I don’t say we don’t get along, but everything I do, it’s obvious in his opinion whether it’s what Ramirez would do, or the way Ramirez did things: he second-guesses me at every turn, I’m not easy with him, and it’s not the best situation, nadi. When I want something done, just done, cheerfully, I ask Kaplan, but I never was going to push Jenrette out. I respect his advice. So I said why didn’t Ogun and Sabin just increase their staffs, which they could use, and I’d have Jenrette and his team andKaplan and his. That’s when it blew up. Sabin said I’d insulted Jenrette, which I was trying hard not to do. So with Sabin’s famous tact, that fairly well put the personnel question into an hour-long, angry argument—all the principals being present, including Jenrette and his unit, and Kaplan and his.”

God.

“And in the upshot of things, I exploded, I got my way and I kept Kaplan, and Ogun and Sabin increased staff by three, but by then there were hurt feelings, and Sabin said she wanted Jenrette’s experience, if I didn’t value it. I said I did want it, and it wasn’t like that and I wanted him to stay; but Sabin said if she was going to increase staff, she was senior on the ship and she got the pick of staff on the ship. She wanted him, and insisted he transfer, and there it was.”

Disaster. And worse. “When was this?”

“About six hours ago.”

Not good news at all. He shot Jago a look and had one back.

Appalling news, considering that Jenrette’s name had become an issue inside the residency, and Yolanda had just dropped out of Ogun’s reach, not by Ogun’s orders. And could a bug possibly get past Algini’s countermeasures? Could distant listening devices have been hearing, if nothing else, the proper names at issue?

Were they doing that now?

“Coincidences do happen,” Bren said. “Sometimes they really do happen, and merging staffs is always a mess. I can’t see how the ship could get a bug past our surveillance. But this is worrisome, besides inconvenient.”

“A breach could happen, nadiin-ji,” Jago said quietly. “In our craft, once a countermeasure exists, one innovates. We don’t know the ship’s limits. They arethe fathers of technology.”

Constant warning. Constant caution. On truly sensitive matters, they talked on the move, in the corridors: harder to pick up. Inside the apartment, they talked behind an electronic screen, in the security station, in a very small safe perimeter.

Hadn’t they warned him? And he’d talked to Yolanda in the study.

“I want that tape,” Bren said.

“You want universal peace, too, nadi, but I don’t know I can deliver it.”

“They haveuniversal peace, and they can lose the aiji’s cooperation, and ours, and the island’s, none of which will help them at all in whatever they’re up to.”

“We don’t know that they care. If they’re overhearing us, and I don’t think it’s happening, but I don’t know everything—they could be forewarned, even now.”

“I’m saying if we’re going to trust Sabin enough to bring members of the aiji’s family into it, we’re going to have to trust Sabin.” He said that sentence in ship-speak, in case. And lapsed right back into Ragi. “And right now and until we know more, we won’t drink a cup she pours. The tape.”

“It won’t be a tape,” Jase said. “That’s an expression.”

“How does it exist?”

“Deep in log archives.”

“Can you reach it? Can you get access?”

“I’m not senior. Ogun can,” Jase added. “We could ask him. We could outright ask him.”

“And, as you say, if we ask him, it could vanish in a moment. Permanently. And Sabin’s senior on the ship. I’ll take for granted she has the codes, nadi.”

“I believe she does.”

“It’s worth a certain risk of diplomatic difficulty, Jase-ji, to know in absolute detail what this ship met aboard the station. Can you call your former aide for a conference, some unfinished business?”

“I can’t do that to him. Bren, I can’t.”

“I didn’t say we were going to make a move.”

“I don’t know what it could entail with things as they are. And you aren’t in command of this mission, Bren-nadi. Ilisidiis. Am I mistaken?”

“No. You’re not mistaken.”

“And if her staff finds out what you suspect, you can’t tell me what she’d stick at.”

True. He drifted back against the counter, took a solid grip. Air currents had taken Jase away from a hand grip and Jase reached and drew himself back before he lost easy contact.

“I’m not going to give this up,” Bren said.

“I can try to talk to Jen—”

“Names,” Bren cautioned him, and Jase cut it off.

“I can try to talk, myself, nadi.”