Текст книги "Defender "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“We have how long, reasonably, until the ship breaks dock?”

“Six hours at minimum. Not above twelve.”

“I want the tape, Jase-paidhi.” At a certain point in emergencies, all common sense seemed to cut out and priorities became very cold, very remote from the consequences of failure: downhill, breakneck. “I can’t claim to have created the aishidi’tat, but I created the situation, the whole structure of twigs that supports it. So I know the alternatives. I know what we had before, and I know that there can be worse outcomes than a breach with this mission. I can imagine those very well: betraying the dowager, alienating the aiji—us finding out that our allies came here to get control of our resources.”

“No.”

“Maybe a war that devastated the mainland would suit certain purposes just very well.”

“That’s not so, nadi!”

“Prove it isn’t. Prove to me your ship didn’t come here with exactly that purpose—to find out the conditions in this solar system, to fuel the ship, and go home to report, preparatory to a power grab. We have only your word that the situation you reported out there even exists. We’re betting the whole planet on details we don’t know. You’ve insisted all along nobody on the ship knows better. But now that Landa-ji, out of her private hell of the last few years, points out the obvious, that there wouldhave been a tape record in archive, well, yes, I’d rather like to see it before I step off the edge.”

“What do you think? That the whole crew is in on a conspiracy?”

“No, I’m suggesting they’re the last to know. Either get me the tape, or say you can’t, or don’t want to know, and we’lldo it, but don’task me to assume everything’s all right.”

Jase’s eyes made an eloquent shift toward the door, the windowed wall. “I take for granted Banichi’s heard what we’ve said.”

“I’m sure.”

“Has Cenedi?”

It was a question. Jago’s face gave no hint at all.

“You may answer, Jago-ji,” Bren said.

“Yes to both. We are within the dowager’s household, of allied man’chi, nadiin-ji.”

“Then this is my answer. You’re within my household,” Jase said in a brittle voice, “under my roof, as myhonored guests… and so is the dowager. I don’t think if it were Geigi’s house we would contemplate breaking the historic porcelains because we had a suspicion.”

“Not in the least. Nor do we here.”

“Or endangering lives.”

“Nor shall we.”

“I wasn’t aware of movements I should have known, because I was submerged in my own efforts at a very dangerous time—trying to memorize everything I could, as hard as I could, as fast as I could, after years of saying I wouldn’t. And that’s my fault.”

“We’re not speaking of fault, here, Jase.”

“For the record, it’s my fault. I know a mistake when I see it. But I won’t compound that fault by turning one of my own over to you for an open-ended set of questions, or failing to take command of operations in my household, Bren-paidhi. Let’s have that clear.”

“You’re saying you’ll help us.”

“I’m saying if this file exists, Iwant it, myself. I assume Sabin can get it, but I don’t know that. I assume she knows it’s out there. If she knows and hasn’t told me, or if she doesn’t know and I find out something she needs to know, I’ll decide then what to do with the information. No. I won’t help you. You’llhelp me, and I’ll share information with your side.”

Jase had his moments. On the planet—he’d had a lot of them, once he’d gotten his land-legs and understood the situation; but they hadn’t seen Jase at full stretch since he came aboard and under ship’s authority.

And he had no trouble accepting Jase on a slightly opposed side of the issue.

“I’ll put that proposition to the dowager,” Bren said. “But she’ll know. What’s your advice? Do we let you go out of here, when we suspect a remote possibility that security’s been recording us, and that with half an hour’s concentrated work on the part of people your ship could have been training for a decade—assuming they’re about as fluent as the run of the University—they might translate enough to know what you’re up to?”

“Letting me leave is a real good idea, Bren. As to asking me to stay and talk to the dowager—I assume you’re going to offer—I’ve got a meeting I’m supposed to be back to, up there, that’s going to ring alarms if I’m not back. Sabin’s already suspicious.”

“Why are you afraid of her?”

Jase looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“No,” Bren said. “I’m dead serious. Whyare you afraid of her, under the rules that are supposed to apply?”

Now Jase heard him. Thoughts raced.

“Where can you access the log?” Bren asked. “Jase-ji.”

“It’s only two places. It’s a read-write on the bridge and it’s a read-only in the nav office. It receives and logs automatically from the sensors and the cameras, on a loop—automatically stores alarms and alerts, queries the officer store or no-store on the outside camera input on an interval the officer sets.” Jase’s eyes had a slightly glazed look. “I’ve been memorizing this stuff.”

“It’s not wasted. So Ramirez-aiji had to order a store on that camera info.”

“It’s possible he erased it. Possible.”

“In his situation, at the time, considering there could be something to prove to colleagues or successors to the situation—would you?”

“I’d keep it. I’d definitely keep it. But there’s one other source. There’s the men that saw it. Let me talk to Jenrette, under the guise of an apology—he has one coming—and see what he knows.”

“Let you give mea call every hour on the hour to tell me you aren’t languishing under arrest. Or better yet—suppose you take meon a tour of the operational areas and we both get hold of him.”

“You want to know what I’m afraid of,” Jase said. “She can do it. She canorder security and I can’t—she’s the only legitimate authority, legitimate in that she knows what she’s doing. And I can’t replace her. Ogun can’t replace her. If she says jump, people jump.”

“One may have an answer, nandiin-ji.”

Not Jago’s voice. Banichi’s, from the doorway.

And not just Banichi—Cenedi. And the aiji-dowager, drifting slightly sideways and attached by her cane to the ubiquitous ladders.

“We will see this ship-aiji at our table,” Ilisidi said.

“Aiji-ma, I don’t think she’ll regard an invitation.”

“ At our table!” Ilisidi said.

“In these conditions?”

“The crew is boarding, is it not?” Cenedi asked. “And will gravity not exist once they turn the engines on?”

“In essence, Cenedi-ji,” Jase said. “But at that point the ship will undock, which will necessitate securing all personnel to safety positions, where movement about the ship will be impossible.”

“And then, ship-aiji?” Ilisidi asked sharply. “And then? Do we shoot off like a rocket? Or glide away like a yacht? And are we not expected to eat and sleep, or do we starve and languish for the duration of this voyage?”

“Rather well like a yacht, aiji-ma, if things go well, as they ought, but for safety’s sake, one shouldn’t be about, or setting tables.”

“And when will there be supper?” Ilisidi asked.

“The schedule, aiji-ma,” Jase said on a deep breath, “calls for crew to board and settle into quarters, then check equipment and turn on the engines, as you say. And then for about an hour, a little less, as we release we will be like the shuttle during station undocking—possible for us to move about, but strongly discouraged, for the same safety concerns. By the end of that period we will have set our bow toward our destination, aiji-ma, and then there will be two hours in which it will not be safe to move about. That will cease, crew will move about and assure that everything is working as it should, and persons in charge of navigation will be taking finer measurements and assuring that we are on course. There will be another two hours during which we must be secure in our places, and then it will be possible to move about again, for about six hours—by then we will be quite far out from the station.”

“Pish. Infelicitous two, two, and untrustworthy six, chancy ten. Clearly we are not at that point beyond return.”

“No, aiji-ma.”

“And one might demandto be taken back to the safety of the station.”

“Aiji-ma, if one has any doubts—” Jase was clearly appalled., “It’s no small thing to turn this ship around.”

“If we say this ship must turn around, it must.”

“It’s possible… theoretically possible. But I’m not sure Sabin would agree to it.”

Ilisidi waggled thin, elegant fingers. “This is a major point, is it not, Bren-ji, whether we can deal with Sabin-aiji, and whether reasonable requests will be heard. We have no desire to travel with unreliable persons. We will see this ship-aiji. We will estimate the reliability and good will of this person and invite her to our table. Or this agreement is abrogated. Do we agree, paidhiin-ji?”

Dared one say no? Dared one ever say no? And what was this agreement is abrogated?

Whatagreement? Bren wanted to ask.

“We shall see her in person,” Ilisidi declared. “Now.”

“Aiji-ma, crew will be boarding,” Jase said. “Sabin will be busy.”

“Busy?” Ilisidi snapped, and a whack of the cane at the ladders sent echoes through nerve and bone. “We will see her, I say. If she is busy, as you say, we shall do her the honor of visiting her. This very moment!”

“Bren,” Jase said, turning an appalled appeal in his direction.

“The dowager will see the captain,” Bren said in ship-speak.

“And if she gets up there and Sabin won’t see her—”

Where had the whole situation mutated so thoroughly—from missing records to a confrontation over precedences and authority? One thing was a given: that Ilisidi didn’ttake well to no, in any language.

“We’re diplomats, aren’t we?” Bren said, with great misgivings. Jase might be a dozen things, but he was one of a few paidhiin that had ever existed, and some things there wasn’t any resigning. Ever. “That part’s ourjob.”

Chapter 16

The lift had room enough, Banichi having to bend his head a little; but there they were: Ilisidi, Cenedi and three of his men, with Banichi and Jago—and attendant hardware—two humans and seven atevi, fortunate nine, in fleeting contact with the floor of the lift.

Bren hadn’t even been to his cabin yet. He hadn’t changed his coat. He’d passed a message to Narani to advise him of a supper invitation, for his household’s sake.

The lift stopped: instantly, they floated. So did stomachs. But the door opened smoothly, with a hiss of hydraulic seals. Jase had passed a message to his staff, too; and Kaplan, Polano and Pressman were right there to meet them, on what the lift buttons indicated as A deck, in a short corridor.

“Sir,” Kaplan said. “Ma’am. Mr. Cameron.” That was a damned rapid sort through the protocols: the eyes were near frantic, trying to take in this upheaval of natural order in the universe, but Kaplan asked no questions.

“Captain Sabin’s on the bridge?” Jase asked.

“I don’t know, sir. The bridge, her office, I don’t know.”

“Adjacent,” Jase said in a low voice, and drew a deep, audible breath. “Stay with me, Mr. Kaplan. The dowager’s asked to see the senior captain.—Aiji-ma, Bren-ji, kindly come and kindly don’t touch weapons.”

Kaplan, who didn’t understand the latter slightly pidgin statement, looked as if he wanted to do something or stop someone and didn’t know where to start. Polano and Pressman looked no happier as Jase shoved off his handhold and sailed down the null-g course to a wall-switch.

Bren followed Jase, desperately trusting atevi to stay with them—Banichi and Jago, and the dowager and her party. If anything went amiss up here, with armed atevi security, armed humans—

The switch opened the door. Bren expected another corridor, and offices: every other door led to the like.

This one opened on a wide technical zone: consoles, displays, flashing lights and readouts, and a number of busy technicians, some of whom looked their way in shock.

More did. Work stopped. Computers didn’t.

It was that area that Phoenixnever opened to visitors—that area Phoenixhad never permitted to be photographed, even if Mospheira and Shejidan both had plans of such a place: the configuration, they’d always said, the precise configuration was as secret and classified as the interior of Tabini’s apartments, the inside of the Presidential residence on Mospheira.

And here they were in the control center, heart of the computers, nexus for communications. The bridge itself was that open space just beyond the array of consoles that, in effect, ran everything above the planet’s surface.

They were in it now. Up to their necks.

And that was Captain Sabin in the brightly lighted bridge section, under a light that sheened her gray hair like a spotlight. Officers and technicians floated at fair random, this way and that, oriented to their work or their convenience. But Sabin, not the tallest, not even the fanciest-dressed—she was in a long-sleeved black tee—was unmistakable.

“There is the ship-aiji,” Ilisidi said with satisfaction, pointing with the ferrule of her cane. “We’ll talk.”

With all the profound courtesy that implied, of who had come to whom.

And Sabin had seen them.

“No weapons!” Bren said immediately, and repeated it in ship-speak, loud and clear, with the gut-deep fright of a slip on ice. “The aiji-dowager has honored the ship’s captains by coming to them, in their residence, and comes here in courteous deference to rulers in their own domain. This is a high honor paid the ship’s command on this auspicious occasion.”

Sabin’s pitch, now. Please God, Bren thought. He’d cued her. Let Sabin once in her life moderate her response.

There was a four-beat silence. Everything froze.

Then Sabin lashed out with a booted foot and sailed toward them like a missile: techs hugged panels and got out of the way as Sabin flew from bright light to dim, from command to operations—and stopped, suddenly, with a reach to a handhold: a crisp, expert halt and a strength astonishing in a thin-limbed old woman.

“This is the bridge,” Sabin said. “This is restricted.” From Sabin that was utmost restraint. “Captain Graham.” Thatwas utmost restraint, too. Say one thing for Sabin: she didn’t light into a brother captain in front of crew. But the anger was palpable. “I’m not going to speak to Mr. Cameron. I can’t speak to the dowager. Kindly straighten this out.”

“You’re not speaking to me,” Bren said and shot right ahead: “Through me, you’re speaking to the dowager, captain. She’s delighted to be aboard and pays you the signal honor of coming to youin your premises rather than requiring you to come to her in audience… thereforeshe came to present her compliments, making you a head of state, captain, and a very favored person.”

Sabin’s eyes were hard and black, still in attack mode, not a bit dissuaded. But she didn’t call security to shoot the lot of them. “That’s all well and good, sir, but I’ll call on your good offices to be damned sure this doesn’t happen again. Now if you’ll get the woman out of here, we have work to do.”

“Captain.” Jase was going to try.

It wasn’t a good idea, in Bren’s experience. He drew a breath and kept going across the ice floes. “The dowager’s come here to pay respects. There’s a reciprocation expected.”

“The hell!” Sabin kept going, but Bren rode right over the top of the outburst.

“You want your supplies, captain—I assume you want your supplies—perhaps we’d better continue this discussion in your office.”

“Here’s good enough.” But Sabin had lowered her voice, and applied her version of conciliation. “I’m damned busy, Mr. Cameron. Get her the hell out.”

“She does understand some Mosphei’, captain. Please use restraint.”

“I am using restraint. I want her off this deck. I want you and her and these people down on deck five and I don’t want to hear from you again until we’re at our destination, at which time I’ll tell you where we are and I don’t want to hear from you after that until we’re back in port at this star. Is that clear?”

“Let me convey for the dowager that she may demand to leave this ship, and if she leaves this ship the diplomatic fallout will be extremely disadvantageous to everything we’ve spent the last number of years building—which I assure you won’t help this ship.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“Far from it. The dowager’s come here to invite you to supper this evening.”

The look on Sabin’s face was astonishing. An expression. A moment of utter, unguarded shock.

“Economical to accept,” Bren said rapidly, before Sabin formulated a reply. “Establishing a cordial tone aboard, bringing the very expert services of her security harmoniously into your service, and the services of the paidhiin, to boot. We’re good, captain. You arehearing me, and I don’t think that was your original intention. We’ll be very pleased to apply our talents to your opposition if you’ll oblige the dowager, win her good will, and make our jobs easier. Besides, she sets a very good table.”

Three expressions from Sabin in rapid succession: shock, outrage, and targeting calculation.

“You’re the damned cheekiest bastard I’ve met in a lifetime.”

“Yes, ma’am, and you’re no pushover, on the other side. If our interests really did diverge, I’d be worried, but I happen to know our best interests and your interests are the same. Besides, you deserve a good dinner, and it won’t be wasted time. You’ll score a relationship that’ll make a big difference out there… that will outright assure you come back here to a working station with resources.”

“Is that a threat, Mr. Cameron?”

“No, captain, it’s a pretty good forecast. If this relationship goes bad, everything goes bad; if it goes brilliantly, everything becomes easier. Let me add my personal plea to the case: accept the invitation and you’ll have my assurances I’ll do everything possible to persuade her of yourpoints. I can’t stress enough how great an honor the dowager’s done you by coming here: she’s put her dignity on the line so as to make clear how greatly she respects your authority. Now it’s very useful for your side to respect and accept her hospitality.”

“ Damnedcheeky bastard, Mr. Cameron.”

“Which I trust refers solely to me, captain, and I hope signals your gracious acceptance.”

“There’s nothing gracious about it.”

“The traditional supper hour, for these affairs. Full dress. She’ll spare no effort to honor her guest.”

“How long am I expected to be honored? I’ve got a ship in the process of boarding.”

“About three hours.”

“Flaming hell.”

“You’ll find it worth your while. Eighteen hundred hours, senior captain. She’ll very much understand if you don’t reciprocate with a dinner of your own, given the pressure of events; but she’ll be pleased to entertain you to the utmost.” He switched to Ragi. “The captain, though pressed for time, is inclining to accept, aiji-ma, understanding the great honor you give her.”

Ilisidi inclined her head benignly. “Very good, paidhi-ji. At the fortunate hour.”

“She’s very pleased,” Bren said, regardless of Sabin’s not-quite-expressed consent. “She honors your good will. Understand, as a great lord proceeds about necessary courtesies even under fire, proving one isn’t at all harried. She views you very favorably.”

“Damned nonsense.” From Sabin it was a moderate response.

“My personal gratitude,” Bren said. “Eighteen hundred hours, at our section: staff will meet you there. The aiji-dowager’s good will and good wishes in fortunate number, ma’am.”

He turned. He managed to include Jase in the sweep of his arm toward the exit, but Jase declined the refuge and drifted there slightly askew from them.

One trusted at least there wouldn’t be bloodshed on the bridge. Sabin might have plenty yet to vent, but if appearances were an indication, Sabin was in control, and if she was thinking, she wouldn’t let fly until the two of them were in an office with the door shut.

Under those circumstances he trusted Jase could hold his own and keep his head.

“Mr. Kaplan,” Jase said calmly, “see them below.”

“Yes, sir.” Kaplan opened the door which had self-shut.

“And where is Jase-paidhi?” Ilisidi demanded.

“Preparing to account to Sabin-aiji for bringing us here, aiji-ma,” Bren said, “which I trust he can do.”

“He will suffer no detriment!” Ilisidi said, and turned and addressed Jase. “Assure us this is the case!”

“Aiji-ma, without a doubt.”

“Well!” Ilisidi said, and by now the door had shut itself again. Kaplan scrambled to open it, and they left under Kaplan’s guidance.

It wasn’t that easy, and Sabin would have words of her own, but Ilisidi expected her below, and Sabin had accepted that.

Amazing, Bren thought. Astonishing.

He could imagine several scenarios to follow, in several of which Sabin decided not to come after all, and precipitated an atevi war. Jase, if he could make the point, would faithfully inform her there wasn’t any change of plans possible, not at this point—not without the attendant war, at least.

He’d been steady enough during the exchange. Now, in the stomach-wrenching reverse of the lift action, he found his knees weak. If there’d been a floor to stand on, he thought he’d have felt them going. As it was, he simply tried not to twitch against his escort, and not to shiver as Jago cushioned their arrival on deck five. That brought a little moment of contact with the deck, and if not for Jago, he thought he would have stumbled, if nothing else, from the welter of confusing directions.

Not the dowager. The lift door opened and she emerged with Cenedi, perfectly in command.

“We shall see you at supper,” she said, “paidhi-ji.”

“Honored, nand’ dowager.”

What elsewas there to say? He didn’t plan to eat. His mind was off into a dozen more scenarios, frantic in its application. War or peace was a hell of a dessert choice, and somehow in his management of affairs, his nudges this way and that, his quest after a piece of tape had ended up in a confrontation between aijiin.

Well to have it now, if it was going to happen, while they were still at dock and had options. The thought of Ilisidi pent up in a ship with a captain whose murder she fondly wished—a captain who was the onlycaptain capable of running the ship’s operations—was unthinkable.

God, he wanted to stay on the ground. He wanted to go back down to the planet and go back to his estate with his staff and wait there for it all to be over… but that wasn’t a choice he’d given himself.

He had to get the authorities through this set of formalities, and he had to ask himself if Ilisidi thought she was going to askfor the ship’s log or if his search for the records had become a complete side-channel to the dowager’s intentions of running matters wherever she was. Certainly no one had informed Sabin she was second to the aiji-dowager on her own deck.

If anyone did have to convey that information, he knew all too well who the translator had to be.

They arrived into a scene of managed chaos, the midst of null-g preparations for the invitation… preparation which their constant communications net had already set into motion.

Bundles were everywhere in the paidhi’s quarters, soft bundles, in general, which floated where they were not jammed tightly in, bundles that should give forth their contents and then fold down inconspicuously and with little mass.

Bundles were lodged up near the ceiling and a few were tucked into the narrow passage between bed and bath, rather like the egg-cases of an infestation of insects; and the bed itself—fortunately extendable—had a transparent half lid of sorts, which had not come down, and behind which a few smaller parcels were tucked as if for ready reference. Bundles were secured in the bath, bundles were stored in the shower stall, besides one that seemed to have exploded, strewing far more wardrobe into the zero-g of the premises than it could reasonably have contained.

Amid it all, Banichi and Jago had cases of electronics yet to set up, two of which they immediately emptied, donating them to Narani’s urgent demand for a flat surface. They were still searching for the pressing-iron, and exactly how they proposed to use that in null-g remained to be seen.

“Press cloth in these circumstances, Rani-ji?” Bren objected. “The second-best shirt will do. I’m sure it will do.”

“Paidhi-ma,” Narani objected, “I beg you allow us to try. For our pride’s sake, nandi. The coat has gotten rumpled, among other calamities. And the captains are invited.”

Staff continued their unpacking, cursing the insistence of ship security on inspecting certain of the items in an entirely unacceptable fashion, and at the last moment, of stowing the contents of the baggage cart in a haphazard hurry. Things had gone askew from plan, and it wasn’t in any way the atevi-ordered arrangement of rooms that let the staff do their duty in an orderly way. The staff was entirely distressed.

Meanwhile there was the scale of things. Banichi and Jago had quarters adjacent to his, and communicating by a door between as well as their own corridor access. A suite of rooms, the charts called the arrangement, each with clear floor about four strides long and two strides wide, which turned out to be, when occupied by atevi, human strides, if they were able to stride at the moment—and entirely too small. Niggling minor problem—storage for atevi-scale clothing was impossible in the tiny lockers provided for the original colonists. Greater problem: low human-scale ceilings made it very scant clearance for tall atevi such as Banichi even to stand up, once they were standing, and made a room in which four or five atevi were drifting askew a very small-seeming room indeed.

Those were situations for which they had been moderately prepared—at least in planning, before they tried to maneuver past one another. The closet and the food-storage closets were both what the ship called suites, and those were full, at the moment, Bren was told, of floating bags. The unpacked clothing would ultimately fit on lines to contain and order the wardrobes, once there was gravity, which now there was not. The unpacked security equipment had clamps and braces which did not mate to the room, rather to more gear that itself had to be fixed in place under these conditions, and which had to stay in place once there wasgravity.

More, the galley stores and the security equipment included heavy items, and in the grand scale of things, even the dowager’s invitation took second place to the need to get the heavy equipment and bundles sorted to the bottom and secured before undocking—before the simulated gravity sent the heavy things crashing down on the light ones. And on that score, there had been argument. Crew had advised them in a written communiqué not to take things into quarters, to leave them in cargo until after undock, and he had said no, they would take them in nevertheless. So doubtless crew who had shoved things into the cabins were quite smug about it all. So a jaundiced suspicion could guess.

And here they were, everything in their own control, if one could call it control—with a formal dinner unexpectedly at hand and baggage everywhere.

His luggage, however, was bulk rather than mass, and at least posed few breakage hazards.

“Just pad the equipment with mybags,” he told Banichi and Jago, when there was question of bringing Tano and Algini board for a few hours to do the installation while they pursued Ilisidi’s notion of formal entertainment. “We aren’t going to be able to get this installed before we move. My shirts won’t break. And we shouldn’t pull Tano and Algini off internal security. I truly don’t like that notion, Banichi.”

“One can try to secure things,” Banichi said. “Or we can draw personnel from Cenedi, perhaps before launch.”

“I’m sure I have enough clothes. I’m sure I have far too many clothes. Do it, Banichi.”

Meanwhile the domestic staff, which had expected a decent interval to do its necessary arranging, now searched to find, among other necessities of life, old-fashioned vegetable starch, which they intended to boil—one asked—in a sealed bag in the microwave… which also had to be unpacked and secured. One did not want to imagine the zero-g consequences of a burst bag of starch.

They had, however, located the pressing-iron—which fortunately waselectric, not a flatiron as the old arrangement had been.

Plugging it in, however, required a unit and a small, unreasonably mislaid adapter to mediate between its three-pronged plug and the ship’s power clips. That was well enough: they needed the adapters for the microwave, too.

The staff oh so rarely missed a social forecast. Narani had so carefully had his less formal second-best pressed, protected, and ready for what had, to Narani, seemed likely: an informal dinner with the dowager.

They had certainly been sandbagged. Caught out, half-prepared—excusable, under the pressure of their sudden departure; but now there was no margin.

“I could surelymake do with the casual coat, Rani-ji,” Bren reiterated, foreknowing the futility of that protest; and, no, no, even yet, absolutely not. Narani would perish of shame if he sent the paidhi-aiji to a state dinner in his second-best coat and trousers, and he would not admit defeat, yet, no matter the lack of adapters.

Not to mention that Banichi and Jago had to have theirformal uniforms and everything of their individual spit and polish, and the equipment that went with them. That necessity had Asicho in a dither, because those hadn’t been readied, either.

There was at least time to bathe, once Asicho shifted the baggage out of the paidhi’s shower, and Bren simply turned over the clothes he was wearing, trusting no crew would be floating by in the common hall, and took refuge in the anemic fog-shower, which at least was unaffected by lack of gravity.

It was fifteen minutes of comparative peace until the shower beeped a warning, sucked up the moisture and turned itself off.

Asicho waited with a soft, sweet-smelling bathrobe, zero-g and all.

Meanwhile the adapters had turned up, and staff, having microwaved their starch to slimy perfection, prepared his shirt for ironing.

There was something remarkably tranquil about the aroma of fresh ironing. And Banichi and Jago reported one emergency solved and their quarters secured: they had unmade their beds, corralled the fragiles in small bundles of bedding and secured them under the lowered transparent bed-lids.