Текст книги "Defender "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said, “let me break some news to you. You don’t control what happens on this ship.”

“A modest proposal,” Bren said. While the sweat increased.

“It’s cold in here,” Sabin said suddenly, distracted. “Is this the temperature your people prefer?”

“It doesn’t seem cold to me,” Bren said. “—Does it to you, Jase?”

Jase threw him a look. It became a stark, a comprehending look. “Face!” Bren said in Ragi. And Jase did what Jase, over years on the planet, had learned to do, and totally dismissed expression.

“Aiji-ma,” Jase protested. “ Bren.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said evenly. “Jase-aiji expresses grave concern for this accident. As do we both. And most earnestly assume it isn’t lethal.”

“The tapes,” Ilisidi said. The dreaded cane had been at rest. Now she banged it hard against a table leg. “The tapes, nadiin-ji.”

Sabin attempted to leave her place, to drift free, not quite in control of her limbs. Cajeiri froze in place, young creature in a thicket, as Jase sailed free of his chair to overtake Sabin, to seize her in his arms.

Bren pushed free as well.

“I’ve been poisoned,” Sabin said. “Damn you!”

“Not lethal,” Bren said to Jase in Ragi. He wasn’t that utterly confident, but he said, in ship-speak. “I fear it’s a reaction to something you ate, captain. The sauces. The sauces can be particularly chancy.” Sabin was passing into shivering tremors, angry and incoherent in the chattering of her jaw. “Not generally fatal. It happened to me, once.” On purpose. At the dowager’s table. For just such reasons. “I’m very sorry.”

Sabin reached for her communications unit, but her fingers had trouble with the button.

Jase took it, about to use it himself, but Bren shot out a hand onto Jase’s and prevented that.

“You’re in charge,” he said to Jase in Ragi. “Not likely fatal, nadi, believe me. But you and I and our security are all going up there, to attend her to sickbay.”

“We can’t have done this!”

“Insulting the dowager at her own table? You can’t have done that, either—which I assure you is far more dangerous to the peace than the soup. Disabling the opposition is a moderate response, a limited demonstration, in this case.”

“Demonstration, hell! Not likely fatal. You don’t know that. She’s not young. She could die.”

“Then stop talking and let’s get her up there to the medics.”

“Your agents going all over the ship—” Jase tried for composure, and Sabin had by now fallen into a tremulous semi-consciousness. “Damn you,” Jase said hoarsely. “Damn you, Bren. I trusted you.”

“You cantrust me,” Bren said. “Move. Fluids are going to be a very good idea, very soon now.”

They were floating mostly above the dining-table. Ilisidi had drifted up, dislodging a stray drink-globe, formidable cane in hand. Cajeiri followed, very, very cautiously, eyes completely wide.

Somehow, meanwhile, Cenedi had arrived from the serving-room, the back way—Cenedi, and then Banichi, together: a number usually unfortunate, but it was a pacifying unity here, with lords at loggerheads.

Perhaps even a human returned to ship-loyalties could feel that shift in the odds.

“She isn’tTamun,” Jase said. “She pulled back from the coup.”

“That’s all very well. You changed the agreements, youwanted us confined to quarters, youstarted imposing conditions on the atevi representation on this mission, conditions I’m not sure would be quite as extreme on our still-to-board humandelegates—”

“That’s your suspicion, Bren.”

“I’m afraid it is. But the odds have shifted. You know what’s at stake. She’s not dead. She’s in reach of medical care you’re keeping her from, nadi, and I’d suggest we get moving right now, no conditions, no maneuvers on your side. Let’s see she stays alive, nadi, before we have the association blow up in our faces.”

“All right,” Jase said in ship-speak. “All right.”

“One recommends fluids,” the dowager said, “a great deal of fluids, very soon. A blanket, for wrapping. Quickly now.”

Servants moved.

“We shall visit our guest,” Ilisidi declared. “We are of course distressed.”

“Let’s go,” Bren said. “Your security’s outside. Calm them. I’ll go with you. We won’t let this break wide open, Jase.”

“You’re not taking this ship.” This, in ship-speak.

“I earnestly hope not.” And in Ragi: “We’re sitting here at dock, we haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m not letting you pull this ship out of dock with the dowager and Tabini’s son aboard until we have some kind of cooperation and until the dowager is satisfied. Atevi act for their own interests, and it’s their planet, their sunlight you’ve been borrowing. If you want admission, Jase Graham, negotiate, because the way Sabin-aiji’s gone at it is shaping up to a disaster.”

The servant had come back with a wrap, a wonderfully hand-worked piece, no common woven sheet; and very tenderly that young man helped Jase wrap the shivering captain in its tightly confining embrace—far easier on the captain, far more comforting than a hand-grip. “Get the light out of her eyes,” Bren said, tucking a fold across Sabin’s brow. His own gut recalled the misery, and he had every sympathy for what Sabin was about to endure. “Captain. We’re getting you upstairs. Do you hear me? Hang on. This was surely an accident, an unfortunate accident.”

With Jase he moved Sabin toward the door. Jago was outside. So were Kaplan and Pressman, and so was Collins, Sabin’s man, with his team.

“The captain’s reacted to something at dinner,” Jase said. “Mr. Kaplan, alert the infirmary.”

The dowager followed, with Cajeiri trailing close, the very image of the concerned host, servants adding a cloak to the dowager’s formal attire.

“You’ll stay here,” Collins said to them, as if Jase were one of the passengers.

That, Bren thought, was a tactical mistake.

“Mister,” Jase said, “they’re going where I say they’re going. That’s up to the infirmary, where we can pass information to the medics.”

“Cenedi-ji,” Ilisidi said. “Have the area secure.”

They moved. Cenedi and four men attended the dowager and Cajeiri. “Banichi-ji,” Bren said, intent on going with them, and Banichi and Jago opted to leave security to Cenedi’s men.

That added up to nine atevi, seven of them very large indeed—a boy and the dowager, and a handful of worried human security, with Jase and Sabin—Sabin being still conscious, but quite, quite beyond coherent expression.

They reached the lift together. “Second deck, Mr. Kaplan,” Jase said, and Kaplan punched it in, Sabin’s security crowded in with them so that there was very little space left at all.

The lift shot up, opened its door onto pervisible walls and a waiting escort in blue and white, medics who received the captain in greatest haste and concern and wanted to eject them all back into the lift in the process.

“The dowager expresses great concern for the captain’s welfare and will attend,” Bren said. “Such incidents happen with native diet—rare, but they do happen. Her staff has a pharmacopeia of remedies.”

“We have our own expertise,” the chief medic said. “Captain.”

“The dowager does know what was administered,” Jase said, with no trace of irony or anger about it. “Mr. Cameron can translate.—What will you recommend, nand’ dowager?”

“A purgative,” Ilisidi said. “A strong purgative. The body will continue to throw it off in every possible way, and administration of fluids will be very helpful.”

Bren translated. “Purge the system. Get her to a small, dark room. I’ve suffered a similar situation. Fluids will help the headache. I assure you there will be headache. Severe headache.”

For the next several days. He didn’t mention that. Sabin would want to kill them by degrees. And wouldn’t want to see bright lights or raise her head above horizontal—however that worked in zero-g.

“ This is Captain Graham.” Jase’s voice came over the general address, and from Jase, in stereo, via C1’s offices, Bren had no doubt. “ Captain Sabin has had a food reaction, and is recovering in sickbay, full recovery expected. We’re close to shift-change. It’s become my watch, and first-shift may stand down as relief arrives. Second-shift, report to duty immediately.”

Sabin began to try to speak when she heard that, and was, predictably, suffering nausea. Medics, atevi security and human, moved to assist. In zero-g, it was not a happy situation.

“ Atevi personnel will move about freely during crew and passenger boarding,” Jase continued on the intercom. “ Report any question to me via C1.”

A hovering grandmother, a vitally important child with security attendant, a handworked and expensive cloth—none of these were the ship’s image of a coup, Bren hoped. It would hardly be the image of such an event in Shejidan, if one didn’t intimately know the chief participant.

They’d rescued the precious throw and substituted infirmary disposables. And Sabin was both semi-conscious and miserable.

“We shall stay personally and assure ourselves that the captain is well, nadiin-ji,” Ilisidi said. “We have antidotes, which I have ordered be at hand during any dinner.”

“Aiji-ma, in case there should be any fatal outcome, one would hardly wish to have supplied a drug—”

“Translate!” Ilisidi said. Bren translated, and subsequently accepted a vial from one of Ilisidi’s young men.

“This may be of use,” Bren added, passing it to a medical officer, hoping to very heaven it might not be a fatal dose. “To be taken by mouth.” He knew this one. “The dowager’s medic provides it, out of years of experience with such accidents. It should be minor, except the headache. These are complex substances. I advise taking this remedy.”

“It should be safe.” Jase said at his shoulder, and in Ragi. “Stay here, Bren-ji, and keep matters quiet. Don’t have it look worse than it is. I’m going to the bridge.”

“There will be time to discuss,” Ilisidi said, silk and steel, with a tender smile, “ship-aiji.”

Jase didn’t say a thing. Ship-aiji. She’d just made him that, in very fact.

Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Jase here. Now he was. Now he was in charge, with power to abort or delay the mission. Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Sabin in charge of the mission, either—hadn’t liked her, and possibly hadn’t trusted her associations, to put it in Ragi.

Possibly far too many of his thoughts came in Ragi these days; but he believed in what he saw. He believed that, all evidence accounted, Sabin was a potential asset, only a potential one, and that things trembled on the brink of very bad mistakes.

He saw Jase board the lift, taking Sabin’s men out with him, leaving Kaplan.

Very bad mistakes. Which couldn’t be allowed to happen. He intended to go inside the treatment room, but Ilisidi and her escort came, and they crowded into the room to the evident distress of the medics.

“There’s limited room here,” the chief medic said angrily. “Sir, if you’ll persuade them outside…”

“This is ‘Sidi-ji.” The crew knew the dowager, knew her manner—and respected her. “I doubt I can. We’re here to see the antidote given. She feels personally responsible, and it’s a matter of honor.”

“We’ve no intention of giving the captain another unidentified alien substance…”

“You’re the aliens, sir, by way of precise accuracy, and I do urge the dowager has a far more exact knowledge of native chemistry. This is a medication I’ve had, and if I didn’t think it would ease the symptoms I’d never urge it.—Captain? You’re offered an antidote. I’ll vouch for it, on my personal honor. I’ve had such an incident myself.”

Sabin was just conscious enough, and she’d had it on far more alcohol and a far better cushion of previous dishes: the one might accelerate, the other cushion the effects of the substance, and for all his assurances to the doctors, Ilisidi hadn’thad that extended an experience at poisoning humans.

“At this point,” Sabin said, teeth chattering, eyes clenched rapidly after one second’s attempt to look him in the eye, “at this point, hell, it can’t be worse.”

It could.

“Captain,” the doctor said.

“I said it can’t be worse!” Shouting was not a good idea. Not at all a good idea.

“Just let her drink it,” Bren said. “Hang onto it as long as possible, captain.” Sabin’s heaving stomach knew exactly what he meant.

“Give it,” Sabin said.

Clearly the medics weren’t in favor of native medicines. But one uncapped the vial and offered it, stoppered with a gloved thumb.

Sabin sucked the black liquid down between shivers.

“I don’t know whether it would help or hurt to get gravity aboard,” Bren said. “At least dim the lights in here.”

“Listen to him!” Sabin said. “He’s the only one who knows anything!”

The headache had hit. It was probably a good thing. They were pumping fluids in via a tube.

The attendance of atevi had taken position not just in the corner, but stacked rather as if seated in a theater, a black and brocade wall of watchers, Banichi and Jago among the foremost, Cajeiri’s solemn young eyes staring amazedly at the goings-on.

Things settled. Sabin drifted with her eyes shut, medics monitoring, making notations, conferring in low voices among themselves. Bren watched, having learned in his mother’s crises and in a precarious lifetime somewhat to interpret what he heard, which at least indicated to him that vital signs were solid. Sabin’s pulse was racing—he remembered that effect—but not badly so. It went right along with the headache, which by Sabin’s determined, jaw-clenched quiet was indeed what Sabin was feeling.

“Poisoned,” Sabin said during one of her moments of lucidity. “Damn, I knew it.”

“Yet you came to dinner,” Bren said, from his vantage near the troubled medics. “You were willing to risk it. And it may have happened completely inadvertently.” He much doubted that. “The dowager is here, captain. She is concerned for your welfare, and at this moment you might ask her for high favors, to make amends. She is, I’m sure, very willing to make amends… to make peace.”

“Brooks.” Sabin turned her head to appeal to the chief medic, a movement which brought nausea. She made a grab for a suction bag, and nausea replaced thought for a moment.

Bren felt pangs of his own—the memory of that illness didn’t go away.

“Damn you,” Sabin said behind the bag, face averted.

“Yes, captain,” Bren said. “Damn me as you like. But I’m very sure you’d walk through fire to an objective. I suggest this is the fire, and there is an overwhelmingly important objective to be won. I came to a like conclusion once. I suggest you very well know what that objective is: their respect and their cooperation… and that you’ve been tested. Favorably tested, I might add. Do you want the objective? Do you want their cooperation, unmediated by me or by anyone else?”

Sabin beat the nausea, dismissed the attending medic, put up a hand that trailed tubing and wiped sweat from her face. A medic started to dry it with a cloth, and she batted it away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “ Don’t anybody touch me.” She added a string of profanities, and breathed heavily for a moment. Bren knew. Bren utterly knew, inside and out, the war going on in Sabin’s gut, and in Sabin’s very intelligent brain.

Sabin—slowly, this time—turned her head in Bren’s direction, not without a sideward glance toward the towering mass of atevi. Sabin’s eyes watered tears that stood in globules and blinked into small beads on her lashes. It was physiological reaction, not weakness, not—Bren was quite sure—abject fear, no fear of man, atevi, or the devil.

“Damn you,” Sabin said. “You’re in ourship, and you’re alive on our tolerance.”

“Captain,” Bren said, “you’re wanting supplies from ourstation and ourplanet.”

“Your planet,” Sabin scoffed. “You’re human. Or were. Or ought to be.”

“I am. And I still say my planet, my people, my government and my leaders. We’re not your colonists any more. And through your character, your skills, your actions over a lengthy acquaintance, you’ve won the planet’s agreement, not only in this, but in everything you could want. Everything you came to the dowager’s quarters to get, you’ve gotten—if you’re not such a fool as to let a cultural misunderstanding blow up the deal.” He knew Sabin’s temper—that it was extreme—but always under control. And he’d been on the station long enough to know two more things about Sabin, first that the crew’s dislike of her did get under her skin, and that she did make occasional efforts at humanity—and second, that there was a requisite level of honesty and bluntness in dealing with her. Do her credit, truth was one of her virtues. “My apologies, captain, my personal and profound apologies for what you’re going through at the moment. To this moment I don’t know if it was intentional. Atevi custom can be arcane. But the dowager’s attendance here—” He gestured with a glance toward the dark wall of atevi. “—Her attendance on you is an extreme statement. She’s saying she views you favorably. She respects you. She respects your strength.” Ego repair seemed in order, and there were qualities he knew Sabin respected. “Because you haven’t buckled, captain, thereforeshe’ll be able to cooperate with you, the same way she cooperates with the Mospheiran president and the aiji himself. There arevery few authorities that she remotely respects. There’s only one authority on earth she halfway abides, but she allows a very few equals. Thereforeyou were at her table; therefore she sat through—let me very bluntly refresh your memory, captain—your pushing her very, very hard to see what she’d do. And you know you did that. You meant to do it. You wanted to provoke her to push back. Well, now you’ve both proved something. So can we get beyond that, if you please, and walk through that fire, and get to what both sides really want out of this voyage?”

Sabin had been lucid, and listened to him, her mouth set to a thin line. She wasn’t ready to speak, but she was holding on to arguments as they sailed past her doubtless aching brain.

“I’m mobile,” she said, “as long as we’re in zero-g. I’ve got my tubes. Everything floats. Give me a headache-killer. Damnyou and your schemes, Mr. Cameron, and damn your atevi friends. I’m going to the bridge. Graham isn’tin charge.”

“Yes, captain.” The chief medic made a move to bundle the tubes and the fluid-delivery apparatus—wrapped them together in plastic and tucked them toward Sabin, still pumping their stabilizing content.

“Sabin declares she will go to the bridge, nadiin-ji,” Bren said in Ragi, knowing what he was throwing into motion—and avoiding names. “She is challenging. Advise the bridge.”

Sabin looked at him, quietly rotating toward level, toward that eye contact that human beings wanted with each other, that contact of souls, and it was a blistering, burning contact—momentary, as Sabin sought, with the help of others, to leave.

There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. Jase might try to prove she was out of her head and seize command by virtue of the senior captain’s incapacity, but treatment and sheer dogged determination was overcoming the substance in Sabin’s bloodstream, and she was going to get to the lift, and she was going to challenge Jase, and call on her own bodyguard in the situation… Jase’s bodyguard all being here.

That, he could help.

“Mr. Kaplan,” Bren said. “Assist the captain.”

Kaplan looked at him, Kaplan with doubtless the same desperate set of thoughts going on behind that distressed expression, Kaplan knowing he shouldn’tbe taking orders from an outsider, in support of a captain hostile to his captain. But there was a level of trust between them, of long standing, and Kaplan did move, and the rest of the human escort did, willing to assist Sabin… least of several evils. Kaplan himself offered a hand to assist Sabin’s movement.

And an alarm siren went off through the ship.

And stopped.

“ This is Captain Graham. The Mospheirans are now aboard. We’re going to release the hookups and stand off, preparatory to spin-up. Take hold. Take immediate precautions.”

Jase repeated the same advisement in Ragi and Sabin fumbled after her communications unit, struggling for composure. “C1! Captain Graham is notin charge. Put this to general address! Captain Graham is not in charge. First shift take stations.”

Humans in the medical facility stood as if paralyzed.

It didn’t come over the general address. Sabin’s advisement hadn’t gone out.

C1, on a decision C1 probably hadn’t made alone, hadn’tcooperated.

The motion warning sounded, staccato bursts, warning anyone who’d ever studied the emergency procedures not to be moving from secure places. The warning went on for over a minute, and medical personnel scrambled, securing loose lines, bits of equipment, checking latches.

The warning stopped.

Almost immediately a crash resounded through the ship frame.

Lights dimmed and came up bright again.

“ We have released,” Jase’s voice said. “ Stand by.”

As if Sabin hadn’t said anything. Lights on the intercom panel strobed yellow: caution, caution, take care.

Medics moved to take Sabin. Atevi shifted position. Bren grabbed a safety-rail, heart pounding.

“ Damn you,” Sabin shouted.

The world moved, slowly, subtly, the same feeling as the shuttle had. Strange, Bren thought. Strange that something so massive as Phoenixcould move like that, just so softly.

“ This is Captain Ogun,” the intercom said, “ speaking from station offices, wishing you a safe voyage and a safe return. Our hearts go with you. Be assured that the cooperation of world and station will continue, preserving and building a safe home base for this ship and others. We have been very fortunate in our welcome here.”

“ Stand by,” the intercom said then, this time in Jase’s voice.

Muscles tensed. Medics cradled their unwilling charge.

“ Have no doubts,” the intercom said, again in Ogun’s voice, “ of our faithful keeping of this port. We will keep you in mind until you’re safely home, with, we hope, all our missing crew, and all our citizens.”

Recorded message, Bren thought desperately. God, it was going bad. Sabin was never going to forgive the dowager, or Jase, who he was sure had just played a departure message out of context.

Sabin damned sure wouldn’t forgive him, once Sabin knew the truth.

But Sabin, hazed and hurting, didn’t fight any longer. She’d made a valiant effort, a heroic effort. Bren knew, in his own gut, what it cost, and wondered at an old woman’s stamina and will… even to contemplate traveling up to the bridge in her condition. Gravity was the trump card, gravity, that pulled bodies down to decks and reasserted ordinary capacities. Sabin couldn’t make it—couldn’t reach the lift. Couldn’t stand, or walk. And knew it.

Motion started. A bulkhead came toward their backs at glacial speed, so, so slowly, while at the same time bodies and objects moved as slowly toward the deck. Small loose items simply drifted across the room, a bundle of tubing, a handful of tissues, a towel, and Bren felt the bulkhead against his shoulder as he felt his feet contacting the deck.

Sabin went rackingly sick. The medics contained the situation, and there went the delicate chemical balance, both positive and negative. She could not hold herself on her feet, that was the plain fact, as objects slowly acquired weight to go with their momentum. The pressure of feet against the floor equaled and then exceeded that against the bulkhead.

The bulkhead pressure stopped. There was a very queasy moment, and then Bren became aware he was standing as he would on the station, with the ship drifting inertial.

And themselves sideways on the inside of a torus. There were things the mind didn’t want to know or reckon with.

Sabin was convulsively ill, and the medics, protective of her, saw a cot let down and Sabin bundled into it.

“Mr. Cameron,” the chief doctor said, “I’ll ask you to take this occupation force out into the corridor. Captain’s orders.”

“No, sir,” Bren said quietly. He had a dozen arguments, but only one matching Sabin’s order: “We’re here at the sitting captain’sorders, and we feel we should regard that instruction until Captain Sabin’s recovered.”

The doctor wasn’t happy. “Watch them,” the doctor instructed a subordinate, “and don’t let them touch her. Don’t let them touch anything.”

Oh, what a happy situation.

But there they sat. Or stood.

They could all end up under arrest, once the matter shook out—God forbid Sabin should die, though that would solve certain things at a stroke, and it could happen very, very fast if Ilisidi so much as flicked a finger. Bren walked over to her, bowed, and explained quickly, in a low voice.

“Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji is furious and takes it that she was poisoned, on which I have not been so forward as to claim any knowledge…”

Ilisidi smiled—was it a smile?—and rested a hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder. “She is alive and quite well. It was a very small dose. But we will notbe constrained in movement or access, and that you may tell her.”

There was an arrival at that point. Ginny Kroger walked in, with a handful of the station’s security guards, and the room… already crowded… became very crowded indeed.

“Bren,” Ginny said, and gave a little bow toward the dowager. “Dowager.” She said it in Ragi, a courtesy. Only a few years ago nohuman but the paidhi ever addressed an ateva, and it had become gingerly matter-of-course that one shoulddo so. “We understand there’s been a little question of our freedom to move about. We also understand the captain’s taken ill. We’re here. At your service.”

Ginny, of all people. Bren’s heart gave a thump; and he had to ask what the hell was going on.

Jase, he thought then. Jase, on the bridge, with freedom of communications.

“I’d like to keep this civil,” he murmured, trying to keep it out of Sabin’s drugged hearing. “The captain pushed the dowager, hard. We’ve had a bit of a blow-up and the dowager’s willing to have it be settled, tit for tat. Given the freedom from restriction. That’s how things are.”

“Mr. Cameron.” The doctor was irate. “I’ll thank you to take this mob out.”

“We can move the captain to the dowager’s quarters, where we can care for her,” Bren said… not having consulted in the least, but he took a chance, high and wide. “We feel, given the nature of the reaction, that we ought to remain a resource for her… and we take our commitment to Captain Graham very seriously. We willremove her from the premises if we feel she’s in danger, damned right we will.”

“Get out of here.”

“You can’t enforce it,” Bren said. “Nor should. This is international politicsyou’re taking a wrench to, sir, and mypatient is the agreement that pastes three species together and keeps your ship operational. In that capacity, I’m supported by two of your captains and both the planet’s nations. And I’m not budging.”

“Cameron.”

That was from Sabin. He paid attention, and walked cautiously over to the bed.

“You damn bastard,” Sabin said.

“Yes, ma’am. I am and please attribute the misunderstandings to me, with profound personal apologies. I know the dowager’s limited in her conversation with you, but she’d much rather have an agreement and a civilized understanding. Her presence here is both an honor to you and an expression of her wish to have an agreement.”

Sabin’s scowling face was pale and beaded with sweat.

“You think I’m tracking?”

“I think you’re hearing things, and they come and they go, rather like talking down a pipe. Am I right? But I think you know the essentials. I think you know you can have a voyage with allies—or maybe that voyage shouldn’t take place at all. If we can’t bring the peace we’ve reached—out there—then what are we bringing, captain? If the representatives of the world and the station have to be locked belowdecks and kept out of decisions, we’re not bringing them damned much hope.”

“Who are you going to poison next? The pilot? That will be useful.”

“Captain, here’s a simple question. Did you back Pratap Tamun in an attempt to get information out of Ramirez? Was that where it went wrong?”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“That is a fairly reasonable suspicion, isn’t it? You nominated Tamun. You generally supported him. Tamun wanted information on conditions at the station, because he was suspicious there was something withheld, and Ramirez wouldn’t give it to him. If he’d had what Ramirez knew, he could have brought the whole crew in on the mutiny—but he didn’t have it. And if hedidn’t have it, maybe you didn’t have it. Now every eyewitness but one is dead. And you just appropriated him to your staff.”

Sabin blinked slowly, sweat beaded in the lines about her eyes. The expression was somewhat bewildered. It might be she’d lost the threads of the question. It might be bewilderment of a different sort.

“Jenrette?”

“All the others died in the coup. So there’s Jenrette. And you wanted him away from Jase. And we know it.”

A slow series of blinks. Sabin’s face wasn’t accustomed to bewilderment. The map of lines was better suited to frowns.

“Damn this headache.” She seemed then to lose the pieces. And grope after them. “You’ve built a fairy castle, Mr. Cameron. And poisoned me because of it?”

“Only incidentally because of it, because if I’d believed you were on the side of the angels, or if you’d understood my position, Captain Sabin, you and I might have talked and the level of tension on this ship wouldn’t have prompted you to restrict the dowager’s movements and insult her at her own dinner table.”

“You were the translator, Mr. Cameron.”

“I can’t ameliorate body language, Captain Sabin.”

“You… and Jase Graham. Damn him.”

“Damn us both, captain. Let’s be fair. Didyou know about the situation on Reunion?”

Sabin’s hand wandered to her head, shaded her eyes a moment, shutting him out.

Then dropped.

“Where’s Jules Ogun? Does your coup extend to the station?”

“Call him. I’m sure Jase can patch you through. What’s on the station is what we agreed on, a cooperative power-sharing, Captain Ogun, Lord Geigi, and Mr. Paulson. And considering everything that’s gone on, I’m not sure we’re not all going back aboard the station.”

“Things onstation are what they were.” Ginny moved to the foot of Sabin’s cot.

“Who’s that?” Focusing clearly hurt.

“Ginny Kroger, captain. Our deep concern for what’s happening here. This isn’t the way we wanted to start the voyage.”