Текст книги "Defender "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

A small commotion had reached the foyer. Narani came to the office door.

“Your luggage has arrived, nandi. Crates have been set in the kitchen. Those without labels are in the foyer.”

“Very fine, Rani-ji.” He rose from his desk and let the messages lie—decided against the coat, after all, and walked to the the foyer, where, amid dinner preparations, the smaller luggage sat, large, travel-worn lumps of diplomatic bags about which the servants gathered in shy anticipation.

He personally opened the sealed tie and passed out the bundles and packages. He needed distraction. He enjoyed the gift-giving, like holiday.

Letters. Abundant letters from happy, sensible, long-bonded families, whatever the baroque nature of atevi parentage and fosterage. He gave those into Narani’s care, and Narani ceremoniously handed them to junior servants to sort and distribute, all with fair despatch. There were special treat packets from various homes, small, brightly wrapped presents from relatives… those were the bulk of the bags—besides the requested video games, which regulations did not permit in the general uploads from Mogari-nai, and which therefore had to be freighted up. For Narani, a great-grandfather for the third time, there was a basket about which he had been curious: it was very light. It proved to be simply curls of fragrant bark, and that gift passed from one to the next, with appreciative sighs and second sniffs: smells of the world of their birth.

Then his gifts: he had provided, gathered from the Bu-javid gardens, a middle-sized box containing bits of natural wood and a few curious rocks and sprigs, which the servants prized for their own common quarters, for kabiu. That was his gift to them, which he had personally asked of the gardeners.

For his senior staff, he had another box—a very fine two hundred-year-old bowl of southern work, for Narani and an antique book for Bindanda.

They were far, far more than servants to him.

For Tano and Algini, books. Tano had, besides, gotten a letter from his father. The two had begun to correspond, and did so quite frequently, now that Tano was out of reach.

Banichi and Jago turned up, at the distribution of gifts, both fresh from showers and ready for dinner—they came to present Algini their own gift, a very, very florid shirt, to laughter and applause from the servants, because Algini had a penchant for his old black uniform tees, in his rare moments off-duty. Algini accepted it in good grace, shed his uniform jacket and put on the shirt over the black tee to general laughter.

The door beeped. Algini shed the gift quickly.

“What?” Banichi said. “Not wear it for Jase-ji?”

Algini said not a word, only put on his jacket and looked quite proper before junior staff could open the door.

Chapter 5

Jase turned up in station casuals, never, these days, his atevi finery. Bren was sure it was a political decision that led a Phoenix captain, however unwelcome the captaincy, not to dress as a foreigner to the ship. Jase kept his hair cut, too, and at his least formal, still wore ship-issue, plain blue that had as well be a uniform. He’d been given his captaincy for political reasons, after the juniormost captain Pratap Tamun—there were four captains running Phoenix, by ship’s custom—had led a failed mutiny. The ship had badly needed a reconciling symbol in the wake of that disturbance, and Jase had become that symbol—a captain not tainted by the divisive politics that had led to the mutiny. But beyond the immediate need for a figurehead and over Jase’s protests, circumstances and the senior captain’s insistence had kept him in the post. In self-defense, Jase had thrown himself into the requisite studies, and the requisite manners, and uniform—hell, he probably even knew the set of orders that could activate the ship engines. Please God they could put off that order for decades.

“Hello there,” Bren said as Jase shed his jacket into the servants’ keeping.

“Good trip?” Jase asked him.

“Interesting,” Bren said. “Good, I suppose.” He decided, on the whole, it had been a good trip, no matter what he learned once he got home. No matter what he’d not been able to do while he was there. “The whole business seemed to be a funeral.”

“Funeral.”

“Well, of sorts. Belated. A memorial service for Valasi. Tabini’s putting on a show, called in all the television people. Don’t ask me why. Days there and I still don’t know. I think we got the feed up here. I haven’t asked yet.”

Jase gave him a look as they walked into the dining room. Jase had lived on the planet, knew Tabini, and well knew the rumors Tabini had assassinated his father.

“Curious.”

“Baji-naji,” Bren said. “Everyone who’s anyone was there, and for some reason, Iwas, and it was important that I be there. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

But that was the last word of politics, dinner being the matter at hand, and he would not insult his staff by violating that very basic rule of a noble house. Banichi and Jago joined him and Jase on some more convivial nights, but this being a homecoming, and his security staff having, it seemed, given Narani their regrets, dinner had been construed a shade more formally this evening—it was clear in the careful arrangement of the table, in the number of forks laid out, seven, to be precise.

Jase settled, and paid courteous attention as Narani supervised their juniormost servant setting out the appetizer, a pate of pickle, seafood and nuts that was improbably one of Jase’s favorites. The accompanying crackers were a Mospheiran brand, but kabiu, and plentiful in the station outlets.

“And was Ilisidi there?” Jase asked. It was not quite a political question.

“Oh, yes. I had supper with her. She sends her regards, nadi, most specifically. I gave her yours.” They spoke Ragi. Jase liked to keep up his skills and Bren thought in Ragi, dreamed in Ragi these days—refused to slip into Mospheiran or ship-accent unless he had to: it fuzzed his thought patterns in the work he had to do. “Ah. There is some additional news. The Astronomer Emeritus is coming up two months from now. Heshould keep Geigi entertained.”

“There’s a treat,” Jase said cheerfully. Grigiji was a favorite and intermittent guest—a delightful and curious old man whose greatest joy was the observation station that was supposed to report to them if there was any signal out of the deep… and that incidentally gave Grigiji information on the wide universe. “I’ll arrange something for him.”

From Grigiji and the mathematicians they went on to discuss the weather in Shejidan, the quality of the fishing—but at each new course, offered great appreciation for the dishes. Bindanda had provided his favorites and Jase’s: the effort deserved applause, and one always showed particular reverence for the meat course, under any decent circumstances.

It was another of Jase’s favorites, among items they could import, a meat that Bindanda’s artistry turned from station staple to a very fine presentation.

It was a slow finish, then, a delicate cream dessert—atevi had only a dim compunction about animals kept for milk, though they would not tolerate animals kept for slaughter. But they had gotten the notion of cream cheese from Mospheira, and this was seasonal fresh fruit, one of Bindanda’s specialties, with a nut topping.

How Bindanda had gotten the fruit up here, on the other hand, must involve high crimes and bribery.

“Very fine,” Jase said. “Where did Danda-ji get this?”

“I don’t think we want to know,” Bren said, and called out the chef to compliment him—both of them praised the dessert, which pleased Bindanda exceedingly. But they had not a word from Bindanda on his sources, so they were assuredly not official.

After that they adjourned for conversation on more weighty matters, in the library-cum-study. Bren assumed his favorite chair, propped his feet up, slightly feeling the effects of pressure-change and long travel, and took a brandy. Jase took one, being off-duty.

“Funeral for Valasi,” Jase reprised. “Didn’t he have one already?”

“One isn’t quite sure what the ceremony meant,” Bren said. He suffered a little dislocation, a flashback to the vault, the shadows, the live fire of torches… and tried to think by what handle to grapple with all the questions at once. “I attended and I still don’t know why Tabini wanted me there. The meetings beforehand were all social. I wish you couldhave come. But I’m afraid there wouldn’t have been any fishing—except for information—and there was precious little catch in that commodity, either.”

“What’s your best guess?”

“A patch-up with the conservatives. An overdue patch-up. I don’t know whether Ilisidi’s on the inside or the outside of the plan… but Tabini’s spent a lot of political credit getting what he’s gotten.”

“The economy’s running well.”

“Oh, it is. But prosperity and electric toasters only means the far lunatic fringe loses power… and the legitimate sane conservatives lose power. And the very fact he is succeeding only makes it worse, to the other side’s view. They wanthim to fail. They wantsomething to go wrong. And he’s just gotten stronger.”

“So he offers them a favor anyway?”

“So maybe he knows they’re getting desperate. He certainly made the transfer of Cajeiri into Ilisidi’s care quite public… that may have been the statement he was making. Which was and wasn’t a towering success at the ceremony. Which is one reason I honestly can’t figure it: the boy wasn’t exactly the centerpiece of the event—wasn’t really involved. My meeting with Tabini—well, fine, and social, but I expected more. I bounced from cabinet meeting to cabinet meeting, all courtesy matters and briefings, all the department heads wanting to get up to speed on what’s going on up here. I answered a handful of southern concerns about siting a plant down on the coast—I happen to agree with the ones protesting. They can put the thing inland. They don’t need coastline. It’s a damned eyesore where they want to put it.”

Jase sighed. “I did look forward to the fishing trip.”

“If you’d been there you’d only have gotten caught in this affair. But hang on. You’ll get your ocean. Next spring.”

“Promises.”

“Promises. We’ll try, this time. We’ll try damned hard. I’ll do some extravagant favor for Tabini and see if we can’t get a couple of weeks.”

“Weeks.” Jase looked glum. “I could use a month or two.”

“Something wrong?”

“I broke it off with Yolanda. Again.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” That relationship had been on-again, off-again. Partners, mostly successfully, on-planet. On-station, decidedly not the case.

“Stupid personal stuff. I swear, I think she’s asking herself how can she tell she’s got authority if she doesn’t wield it? She’s taken up with a computer tech, now, a damned bad choice, but it’s herchoice, and sitting where I do—I don’t care.”

What did a friend say? That that wasn’t quite the truth?

“Quarrel?”

“Sulks and silences. I’m on the captains’ list and she’s not, and I think that’s the crux of it.”

“She doesn’t want the job. You don’t want it. Yet you fight over it.”

“Doesn’t matter what we want. Doesn’t matter what I want. I have the office. Suddenly my advice is a captain’s advice. Whatever I say to her is criticism. If I have an opinion, it just blows up: unfair, pulling rank. So what do I do? We don’t talk any more. We tried being lovers. Didn’t work. Tried being sibs. That doesn’t work. I don’t know what we are, but we can’t live with or without each other. She’s going back on main schedule. She’s seeing her tech. What do I care? But some things you ought to know.”

Jase and Yolanda had been lovers, in the same job, stuck on a planet they couldn’t, at the time, get off of. They were shipmates, never sibs—in the biological sense. But they were, if being planned by the same man could make a kinship, if being born at the same time, for the same purpose could make one.

They were both Taylor’s Children. Conceived out of the genetic material of the heroes from before the Landing. Conceived to beheroes. Conceived to be abovepolitics, if it was possible.

Thus far it hadn’t been possible, even between the two of them.

“I should know,” he echoed Jase. “What should I know?”

“She’d been talking with Paulson, and I asked about what. It’s my job, to ask.”

Paulson. Head of Mospheiran operations.

“And she called Mospheira,” Jase added, “and said it was personal.”

She’d served there. But in the last number of years she hadn’t called Mospheira. Didn’t knowanybody on Mospheira, that he knew of, not in the personal sense. And now he knew.

“Who did she call?”

“Don’t know. I thought I ought to have asked. Maybe it was an old friend. But Paulson isn’t. And all of a sudden I’m the villain. I don’t figure her.”

Yolanda Mercheson, the third paidhi, the one originally destined between the ship and Mospheira—as Jase was the ship-paidhi, translator between the ship and Tabini… and him.

Well, a fractured romance was one thing. But having Yolanda start making phone calls between Paulson and Mospheira, on her own?

He left for a few days and things didgo to hell.

“Can you trace who she called?”

“I might. It’s not my job, now.”

“Does Ramirez know?”

A heavy sigh. “I told him. What he said to her, I don’t know. But she was in a mood. Called me a few names. Hell of it is, I don’t know if it’s a personal matter, and I can’t find out—and if Iask, it’s personal and she’s not talking.” Jase gave a short, unhappy laugh. “You said, never let the job get into my personal life, and vice versa. You were right. It did. It shouldn’t have. Now that I’ve blown the alarm on her, I’m wrong. She’s broken regs for a personal call, she’s in deep trouble and of course now it’s all my fault.”

Yolanda Mercheson was as glum and methodical a young woman as Jase was high-voltage. Small wonder that relationship hadn’t worked, logical as it might have seemed at the time between two people effectively shipwrecked.

“A pickle.”

“As in dinner menu?”

“As in a hashed-up mess.”

“I don’t want this job, Bren. Hell, Ramirez doesn’t even need my vote in council. No one dissents. No one argues. I suggested he move Yolanda into the seat in my place. I guess my report this week didn’t encourage that, did it?”

“And Ramirez said, then?”

“Didn’t even look up. Said I was doing just fine: that I understood the atevi. Never mind I don’t have any other qualification and I couldn’t handle ops if the instructions were printed on the console… which they’re not. ‘That’s fine,’ the old man said. ‘You’re doing just fine. Yolanda couldn’t do what you do. Stay put.’ Not damned fair, I say, when the most Iwant out of life is to get on the ocean down there on a boat and just get out of this.”

“That’s not what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want, to tell the truth. I know I never want to handle ops. I don’t want to handle command. I could live off a diet of fish.”

“If we’re really lucky, you won’t ever have to do anything about ops.”

“Or Yolanda.”

“You’re doing fine. Geigi favors you. You give him great confidence, just knowing you’re in office.”

“I’m glad he’s confident. I don’t like what’s going on.”

“Tabini isn’t at all unhappy to have one of the paidhiin sitting as captain up here: that’s an understatement. It gives himconfidence. The whole aishidi’tatis pleased to have you right where you are. We don’t need Yolanda making independent judgments.”

“Damned right we don’t.”

“I’ll talk to her. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

“She’ll know. But at this point, hell if I care. Maybe youcan get yea or nay out of the Old Man.”

“I can. Trust me.” He hadn’t mentioned the thing Jase would most want to know. “ Ginny’sback. We’ve got robots.”

Hopeful quirk of an eyebrow. “Movement on the robots?”

“No. Freed. Liberated. Strike’s settled. The initial load’s just come up.”

“Damn!” It was an entirely cheerful damn.

“In the station’s receiving area, by now. I imagine she’s notifying Ramirez even as we sit here.”

“When did thatclear?”

“Evidently very fast. Didn’t have any idea, either, until I met Gin on the flight. I think she’sescaping from the planet before one of the company execs can ask a return favor.”

“Oh, this is good news.”

“Looks as if everything’s going to move. We’re going to open the next section, first we can. I’ve got the figures, labor and support. Geigi will get his fish tanks.”

“And the Old Man’s going to be in a farbetter mood all around.”

He’d certainly made Jase’s evening. The unlovely little autobots were the backbone of the fueling and refit operation, and Ramirez had requisitioned a crippling number of them into his refueling and mining the last three years. They were finished with that—and now that they were finished, able to divert the robots back to other priorities, finally, the labor dam broke, and they had the autobots’ next generation.

But it wasn’t too late. It meant they could accelerate station operations, and accelerate ship-building: everythingwas going to break loose.

And damned if Yolanda Mercheson was going to conduct some personal business on official channels in the middle of it. Yolanda wasn’t going to be happy with him, either, before all was said and done, not if she’d been carrying on some personal business on Mospheira without going through channels—or if she’d been running some deal for Paulson without telling her fellow paidhiin. There was no legal sanction for the latter, and she wasn’t paidhi to the island any longer. He didn’t know whether to go and talk to her on what was clearly a sore spot. Between them, these days, there almost wasn’t a friendship, but he could at least make his displeasure known. He could talk to Paulson and make Paulson less anxious to go that route, if Paulson was making trouble—and a sad state of affairs if he was, and if he’d gotten Yolanda to do something that proved the final split from Jase.

“I’ll be talking to Geigi after breakfast tomorrow, if I can arrange it,” Bren told Jase. “I’ll promise him his tanks… I assume he gets his tanks. Any reason against it, before I set that promise in motion?”

“You aren’t talking to the decision-making wing of the Captain’s Council. Remember?”

You’re still one of the captains, Bren thought, but there it was: Jase flatly refused to wield the power. At times it was more than inconvenient, but it was Jase’s notion of honor, and there was no getting by it.

They had a second brandy, all the same, and talked about Geigi, Geigi’s boat—the object of Jase’s daydreams of ocean sailing—quiet talk at the end of a long, long week of hurry-up and changed plans, homecoming, and, thank God, arrival of the robots, that solved so many problems.

Bren found his eyelids at half mast, apologized, and Jase excused himself: “You’d better get to bed,” Jase said. The rigors of travel were, curiously, another matter ship-folk had to learn about, and most didn’t quite understand: the notion of packing one’s belongings in a suitcase and rushing breakneck from point to point was something Jase had only experienced on a planet.

“Good of you to come,” Bren said, saw Jase to the door himself, and added, because he meant it, “Very good of you to come. Do it again soon.”

Fact was, he missed Jase. Didn’t know how he would manage if Jase ever moved back in, since the affair with Jago had gone beyond affair, and gotten to be the next thing to married routine. But there were times a human argument, a human conversation massaged areas of his brain that felt far too little exercised… that was what it was, he thought: too little stimulation of the human that was left in him. Not good. Not at all good, for the human organism. He didn’t know, before Ginny on the shuttle today, how long it had been since he’d had a lengthy social conversation with another human being.

Immediately after that, the brandy hit him with full force, persuading him that bed was just about the last objective he could reasonably achieve. Sensibly, he wantedto talk to Banichi and Jago tonight about a number of things, and dutifully, he should have advised his staff and settled down for an all-night debrief. Jago waited for him in the security post, still official and still in uniform, well, down to the tee-shirt, at least—but debriefing wasn’t what she’d been led to expect tonight. Sleepwas reasonably what she thought she had coming, and she, who’d been on outside duty for hours, took precedence over Tano and Algini who’d had only on-site duty, off and on.

He wasn’t in condition to confer with anyone, as it was. The Jase conversation had been the last. Even without the brandy he suspected he would have opted for bed, being just too dog-tired.

But there was more than that business afoot, more than Jase, more than Ramirez, more than Tabini’s dealings with the provinces.

“Is there any word from my brother?”

“No, nadi-ji. Go to bed.”

“Good idea.” Tonight he just wanted to fall over and be unconscious for a few hours. “I’m going to sleep, Jago-ji. Are you coming to bed?”

“Soon,” Jago said, and added, because she knew how curiosity consumed him, drove him, made him crazy: “Banichi likewise says get some sleep.”

At least they didn’t need him. Some things, if they rested in safe hands, he didn’t have to ask. He simply directed himself back to the bedroom, shed his clothes into a servant’s care, all but fell onto the mattress and pulled up the covers. His body temperature was sinking fast.

But he didn’t sleep. He shut his eyes, wondering where Toby was, in what situation, whether there would be a phone call before morning.

After half an hour he got up, went to the computer and keyed in a message. Toby, I got your letter. I’m concerned. Call.

He sent it. It had to pass through the security station out there. His staff would know, and probably be distressed about it. But he didn’t explain. He went back to bed, no easier in his mind.

Jago eventually came to bed, a considerable weight on the other side of the mattress, interrupting an exhausted haze that was not quite restful sleep. He knew she was there, and dropped back off, safe.

Safe. Companioned. All things local in their places.

He couldn’t oversee the others.

Chapter 6

No phone call in the morning. Perhaps, Bren said to himself, amid breakfast, the health crisis was over and Toby was on a flight back to the coast. If Toby could possibly reach a phone, he’d likely call, and if he couldn’t reach a phone, it likely meant he was traveling—which was as good news as a phone call.

In the meantime, morning courtesies included a hike all the way to the Construction Operations office to meet officially with their nextdoor neighbor, Lord Geigi—electric runabouts were available for the trip, but undignified, in Bren’s island-born view of the universe—besides heartily cursed by walkers in the halls. Bren, for his part, preferred walking, for the exercise, if nothing else: he’d watched certain officebound sorts put on the pounds, and fought the tendency.

Besides, in long stretches of hall where Jase swore on his life there were no bugs, he could talk at leisure with his staff, much as he and Banichi would talk in the open country down on the planet.

“So how has the world taken the aiji’s address, by now?”

“In curiosity,” Banichi said. “In great interest. Great interest and an expression of discontent in the East.”

Hardly surprising.

“Any clues why he wanted me?”

Tabini, and the ringing of that bell that held every imagination entranced, entrapped.

“One is not satisfied,” Banichi said. “We’ve reviewed the tape. But we haven’t discovered the absolute answer, Bren-ji. We have not, not in the configuration, the seating, or in anything said during the ceremony. Legislative proceedings are under seal, down in Shejidan. And thatis troubling.”

“Something is very peculiar, nadi-ji.”

They were coming into a more trafficked area now, beyond the limits of any secure conversation. Remarkable sight, atevi and humans in about equal numbers, coming and going on business, atevi and humans in office clothes and workman’s clothes—regulations-wise unable to say more than a handful of words to one another—notably please go, please come, please stop… please call the supervisor immediately, in the most meticulously memorized and numerically neutral courtesy. But by that means the common folk of two species did talk, if only in those approved, memorized phrases for known situations.

They tried to be careful. But at certain points they had to cooperate.

And sometimes it came down to things ludicrous on the surface—at least to one side of the question—but fraught with the most serious emotional reactions.

Fish, for instance, and the urgent reason he had to talk to Geigi about robots and a fish tank.

They reached the construction office, a reception area inside of course tastefully arranged: small scroll-paintings and a reception table, with a bowl for correspondence—and an inexpensive soft drink dispenser for human visitors. Geigi was nothing if not even-handed, though the split in decor made an atevi visitor look twice.

They were expected. The attendant rose and bowed, and immediately opened the door with a key push.

“Nandi.” Security on duty just inside was as easy, as cordial: Tano had called ahead.

And in this easy place, Bren left Banichi at the security station to take his ease with Geigi’s staff, there to have a soft drink, likely, and exchange information.

Meanwhile he went on into the inner chamber, where Geigi, in informal clothing this morning, presided over a desk well-littered with papers, beside a tank humming and bubbling and populated with color and darting movement.

“Bren-ji.” Geigi rose—great courtesy, for a lord in his own territory. He was a jovial man whose whole attitude toward life was experimental—and, for an atevi lord, very spur-of-the-moment. He swept business aside, knocking two storage disks onto the carpet in the process, and personally dragged a chair up to the side of his desk. “Tea—tea, will you, Bren-ji? I swear I could do with a cup. We have this most amazing infuser—” Geigi himself went to a domed creation on the bookcase counter, put a plastic cup beneath, and created a cup of tea.

“Thank you.”

Geigi hastily created another, stirred it with a plastic rod. “Not so fine as that, but hot.”

“Very welcome.” One was appalled. A tea-maker. A Mospheiran tea-maker. In an atevi lord’s office.

“Back from the world and all, and a puzzling trip, I take it.”

“I have no idea why I was called, nandi, I truly don’t.”

“What, pray, is the aiji doing down there?”

“Mystifying us all. I wish I knew. So does everyone.”

“A requiem for Valasi-aiji, and not a whisper of ill intent to the living or the dead.”

“Not a one. And I can’t answer.”

“Can’t.”

“Truly can’t, Geigi-ji. I was down there. I came back none the wiser. But!” It was rude to change subjects on a gentleman, but Geigi was an intimate of long-standing, so intimate he risked his reputation with truly marginal tea. “I had a seatmate on the flight up, nandi. Gin Kroger.”

“Gin-nadi. With news?”

“Oh, with more than news, nand’ director! The robots are with us, and more certainly on their way.”

“A wonder!”

“I talked with Jase last night, filed intent to have someof our windfall diverted to your fish tanks, my closest of associates, and we, you and I, nandi-ji, need to put our heads together, so to speak, and set priorities and requirements and a timetable before someone else gets a bid in.”

“This is marvelous!”

“If the tanks can do as they need, Geigi-ji. If they can provide the needful food.”

“I have every detail.” Geigi leapt up and went to a central cabinet, among the other high, clear-doored shelves and cabinets that graced this very modern office. From it he extracted a stack of much-abused paper, brought it to the desk and spread it out, sketches of a circle containing many little circles.

It was an actual engineering plan, an exploded diagram of what he had last seen as a series of sketches on scrap paper: an aquiculture tank, with triple walls and heaters and solar panels and details he hadn’t seen.

Another trip to the cabinet and Geigi laid something new atop it all: it might be another tank, or a tricky sort of valve—the paidhi had gotten fairly proficient at engineering over the last decade, but this one eluded him.

“This is my own invention,” Geigi informed him. “And mathematically, baji-naji, I can say there are potentially sufficient variables to make the solutions for escape exceed the number of fish. This is an escapable trap.”

“An escapable trap, nandi.”

“It admits fish to an area where they may be caught. It revolves, see?” Geigi went back to a second cabinet and brought a plastic model, a somewhat taped-up and revised plastic model.

One began to get the notion.

Fairness. Mathematics that would prove to have harmonious numbers.

Atevi hunted. And fished. They did notraise animals for slaughter. The ship-folk’s cultural divorcement from the concept of eating living things ran head-on into Mospheira’s love affair with food and meat. The mainland’s code of kabiu, fitness, meant eating no meat outside its appropriate season, and eating with ceremony—respect, even reverence: ship-folk began to take to that concept, though queasily.

But for atevi, reverence didn’t mean processed meat, and it didn’t mean domesticated herds. And that had been a major stumbling block in trying to supply food to the station.

Fairness meant going out to fish for wild fish, not scooping up everything that lived in one whole tank and processing it without individuality.

But this revolving trap, this remote-fisher, offered a statistical chance to the fish to escape.

“Ingenious,” Bren said.

“Fry hatch along the bottom, where this grid—” Geigi pulled a sheet of plans from the middle of the stack, which showed a mesh smaller, one presumed, than the adults. “And a rapid current sweeps the young into the hatchling tanks, to what passes for shallow water. There are three outlets and one inflow. Of outlets, one offers this choice.”

Absolutely ingenious. Roulette, for fish.

Geigi was self-pleased. “ Phoenixengineers, who understand this floating in space, these no-gravity pumps, they do this sort of thing very well. But we can satisfy the objections of the most fastidious. Fish may become resident in this facility, we don’t breed them. They breed themselves. And even from the fishing tank there is an escape back into the breeding tanks.”