Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  He listened.

  And took his handheld and pocketed it. “Mr. Kaplan. Mr. Polano.”

  “Sir,” came from both.

  “Reasonable comforts for these men. Unauthorized personnel, clear the area. Nand’ dowager.” A little bow to Ilisidi, who, with Cajeiri, had been listening to Banichi and Cenedi with considerable interest. “Mr. Cameron. Same request. I’ll see you in my office, Mr. Cameron, if you will.”

  Jase looked white as the proverbial sheet. Crew didn’t argue any point of it. Bren translated the request: “One believes the ship-aiji has reached a point of extreme fatigue, nandi, and wishes to withdraw.”

  “With great appreciation for the dowager’s intervention,” Jase said with a little bow. Weary as he was, court etiquette came back to him. But he retained the awareness simply to walk away, not ceding priority to Ilisidi, a ruler in his own domain.

  “Go,” Ilisidi said to Bren, with a little motion of her fingers.

  While several Guild officers, having vied with one another in spilling what might be their station’s inner secrets, hung at the gridwork watching Jase’s departure. With alien presence and crew resentment both in their vicinity, their stares and their thoughts, too, following the ship’s captain who went away in possession of all they’d said.

  They looked worried. And that lent the most credibility to the information they’d given.

  14

  “My picture’s missing,” Jase said indignantly, when Bren walked into his upstairs office. “Of all damned things for them to take.”

  “Galley,” Bren said. And dropped into a chair. “I nabbed it.”

  Jase gave a shaky sigh. “I’ll want it back.”

  “You’re done in, Jase. Get some rest. Turn things over at least for two hours, while we analyze what we’ve got.”

  “I can’t let the dowager take independent action.”

  “You’ve dissuaded her. Ship-aiji, she says. She accepts that notion. But in the way of things, if you have atevi allies, they’re going to act where it seems logical. We have to face the possibility we won’t get Sabin back. We might even have a worse scenario, that Sabin completely levels with the Guild and sells us out. The dowager wanted to know whether you can lead. I think she’s satisfied.”

  Fatigue showed in the tremor of Jase’s fingers as they ran over the desk surface. “I wish I was.”

  “Get some rest, Jase, dammit. Take a pill, if that’s what it takes. I wouldn’t like to predict our situation without a strong hand at the helm—so to speak, Jase. I truly wouldn’t. And you’re it.”

  “We know there’s one alien ship out in the dark,” Jase said. “For all we know—there could be another. Or three or four. We know what we see. In my mind—and I don’t wholly trust my mind at the moment—agreement with them isn’t inconsequential here. Whether or not Sabin double crosses us, she doesn’t need to tell the station what the aliens out there want—not if they’ve been holding a hostage. The hostage becomes a bargaining piece, right along with the fuel. And Banichi’s talking about getting to him. Is that the deal?”

  “About that, about the fuel.”

  “Our technicians aren’t sure about that lock. They’re studying the problem.”

  “So what are our options?”

  Jase rocked back in his chair, thinking, it was clear. His eyes were red. His voice had gotten a ragged edge. “Our options are to sit here not fueling, not taking on passengers, and hoping the station’s hostage keeps the situation stable, or to give the situation a shove.”

  “In what way?”

  “Make life harder for the Guild. Put pressure on them to fuel this ship. Becker says the population’s about seventeen thousand—more than we thought. I hope he’s telling the truth. It’ll be tight, but we can handle that number.”

  “Three things lend the Guild hope of holding out. Their control of the fuel. Us. And their hostage.”

  “Four things. Their absolute control of what the station population knows. If they didn’t have the hostage, they’d have to fear the aliens. If they had to fear the aliens, they’d still have the fuel, and they’d have us—assuming we’d fight to protect them. They’re sure of that. But if they lose their lock on information—that’s serious. If they lose that, they lose the people.”

  “And the station goes catastrophic in a matter of hours. With the fuel.”

  “And the machinery to deliver it. If they lose control—things become a lot more dangerous. Everything becomes a lot more dangerous.” A tremor of fatigue came into Jase’s voice. “If we try to come in on station communications to tell the truth, their technicians can stop us cold. Anybody aboard who actually got the information, they’d tag before he spread it far.” A little rock backward in the chair. “They’ve got tech on their side, in that regard. But I’ve been thinking. There’s high tech, and there’s low tech. And your on-board supplies include paper.”

  True. The ship didn’t regularly use that precious downworld item. Reunion wouldn’t. Atevi society, however—proper atevi society—ran on it. Paper. Wax. Seals, ribbons, everything proper as proper could be.

  “Handbills,” Bren said, catching the glimmer of Jase’s idea.

  “Handbills,” Jase said.

  “If we do that—they’ll mob the accesses. And we can’t tell honest stationers from Guild enforcers.”

  “They can’t mob us. We’re not hard-docked. Boarders will have to come up the tube, with all that means.”

  “No gravity and no heat. If we don’t open fast, they’ll die.”

  “They also can’t come at us in huge numbers. They have to board by lift-loads, and go where our lift system delivers them: the tether-tube is linked to the number one airlock. Ten at a time’s its limit, and we can override the internal lift buttons.”

  “So you’re planning to do it.”

  “I’m considering it as an option. I’ll write the handbills. I know the culture. I take it Banichi has an idea of his own.”

  “Somewhat down your path. Getting our hands on this hostage. Knocking one pillar out from under their fantasy of safety. Safeguarding this individual before something happens to him.”

  Jase nodded slowly.

  “How we’re to do this,” Bren said, “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll hear it when you do.”

  “Meanwhile—get some sleep. Hear me?”

  “In your grand plan to get hands on the hostage,” Jase said in a thread of a voice, “I take it you plan for atevi to execute this operation. And what happens when they’re spotted? This station is armed and wired for alien intrusion. Your people will be in danger from the stationers. And you’ll scare hell out of the people we want to talk into boarding the ship.”

  “Both are problems. Maybe your handbills ought to just tell the truth. How’s that for a concept?”

  “God. Truth. Where is truth in this mess? I’m not even sure I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Get some sleep. Get some sleep, Jase.”

  “The captain’s missing. Banichi wants to take the station. How in God’s name do I sleep?”

  “Get a pill and lie flat. Do it, Jase, dammit! Let your staff rest. Trust your crew. Trust us, that we’re not going to pull something outrageous without consulting. We’re going to win this thing.”

  Jase looked at him. “Tell me how we convince near twenty thousand scared people to trust us when they come face to face with the atevi Assassins’ Guild.”

  “You’re on the ocean. Your boat goes down. You see a floating piece of wood. You swim for it. If your worst enemy spots it, too, you’ll share that bit of wood. Instinct. Far as we are from the earth of humans, we’ll do it. Atevi do it. It’s one of those little items we have in common.”

  “You suppose those aliens out there have the same instinct?”

  “May well. When the water rises and the world goes under, not just anybody, anything else alive becomes your ally.”

  “I’m not sure I trust your planet-born notions.”


  “Get some sleep,” Bren said, and got up to leave.

  “I want my picture back,” Jase said.

  “Cook has it. I’ll get it myself.”

  “I’ll send down for it,” Jase said. “Get. Go. Do anything you can.”

  He left. Left a man who, on the whole, had rather be fishing, and wanted nothing more than that for himself for the rest of his life.

  But fate, and Ramirez, and Tabini-aiji, had had other designs.

  He walked the corridor behind the bridge, talking to his pocket comm, giving particular instructions, already making particular requests.

  “Rani-ji, I shall need the paper stores. Jase will have a text for us to print, at least five hundred copies.” He recalled, curiously, that five-deck had the only hard-print facility on the ship. Jase had known how to write longhand when he dropped onto the world, but nine-tenths of literate ship’s crew had had to learn how to write coherent words on a tablet when they first saw pen and paper. Read, no problem: dictate well-constructed memos, yes. But they couldn’t write; had never seen paper or written the alphabet by hand. Alpha and the crew had existed across that broad a gulf of experience—there was no shorthand explanation for the differences between Mospheirans and ship’s crew.

  And twenty-odd of the atevi Assassins’ Guild were going to scare common sense out of the populace unless there was some immediate, visible reassurance to station that they were on the side of the angels. This was an orbiting nation that couldn’t fly; that universally read and couldn’t write; that knew gravity, but not a sunrise. That panicked at the flash of light and dark in the leaves of trees. Certain subtexts were unpredictably lost when fear took over.

  Someone had to make clear that atevi presence was there to help them. Someone had to demonstrate human cooperation with atevi. Seeing, in a very real sense, was believing.

  And he had a clammy-cold notion where the paidhi’s job had to lie in this one.

  15

  Jase, one hoped, was finally asleep, as Bren sat with his own bodyguard, his own staff, in the dining room, with his computer, with a pot of tea and a plate of wafers, and a number of pieces of printout littering the broad dining table.

  “One has exhausted talk, nadiin-ji, where this Braddock-aiji is concerned. And that we have lost touch with Sabin seems no accident. Her departure left the ship with no skilled operatives, few that know anything of self-defense, this being a closely related clan, unused to internal threat. So Jase has no choice but appeal to five-deck.”

  “Does he then conclude,” Banichi asked, “that Sabin-aiji is lost?”

  “He is by no means sure.” Bren had his own doubts of that situation, and accurate translation to an atevi hearer was by no means easy. Aijiin had no man’chi. It all flowed upward. And that a leader could desert her own followers was a very strange notion. “She may have acted on her own, against the Guild. Certainly she was aware that she was taking most of our protection with her—except atevi. And she took our one known traitor—if traitor he was, to her. Neither Jase nor I know whether she meant to protect Jase from Jenrette, or Jenrette from Jase.”

  “Perhaps,” Jago ventured, “she may not have rushed blindly into whatever trap they may have laid for her. She never seemed a fool. Perhaps she thought she took enough force to seize control of the station center; but why, then, take Jenrette?”

  “That answer must be lost in the minds of ship-folk, nadiin-ji. A Mospheiran human utterly fails to understand it.”

  “Perhaps she did confide in Jase,” Banichi suggested darkly.

  “Even so, even with his strongest promise to keep such a secret—I can hardly believe he would keep it from me. And she would have known that, too.” He thought on the matter of Sabin’s intentions twice and three times and came to the same conclusion. “Either she betrayed us outright, in which case I would expect her to contact us, or she took Jenrette because she wanted his help, or his information. I think she may have intended some covert action of her own, yet to develop—perhaps something so simple as spreading information among the general populace; but more likely attempting to infiltrate critical systems.”

  “The fuel port,” Banichi said, “and communications.”

  “Both likely.”

  “Asking no help from us,” Jago said. “This seems likely, in Sabin-aiji.”

  “Risking failure,” Banichi said. “We should take this station, Bren-ji. We need not run it, only evacuate it.”

  Bren’s heart beat faster. And he couldn’t say no to the outrageous notion.

  “If we open our doors,” Jago said, “we can evacuate it. But we lose our ability to maneuver this ship.”

  “Even so,” Bren said. “And there remains the Archive, that we came here to remove.”

  “We can reach the command center through the accesses,” Banichi said, “and take that during the general confusion. We may find Sabin-aiji, if she should be inclined to be found. The ship, so I hear, can manage the fueling with its own personnel. Gin-aiji can pursue that. Take the command center, free this hostage this Guild retains, and pay our due to the foreign ship, all in one. The staff has every confidence the paidhi-aiji can negotiate, at that point, with all parties.”

  Dizzying prospect. On one level it was what he wanted to hear. He wanted to believe it was reasonable, and possible; and he hadn’t prompted it. He had no doubt at all that Banichi had a clear vision how this could work, and how they could move quickly enough to assure they could refuel before a cascade of systems failures took the station down in an evacuation—if they were fast, if they supported key systems, Banichi clearly thought they could do it. And if they got to the command center and took Braddock, they could take everything at once.

  Banichi could be right, and he knew he himself was notoriously wrong when it came to inserting his own plans in Banichi’s area of expertise—but—

  But—he had his doubts. Sane doubts. Doubts that had to be laid out.

  “Yet, Banichi-ji,” he said, “one fears taking on too much. If we should proceed too quickly, if we should fail to manage Central, being as few as we are—if this ship and its pilots should come under orders of this Braddock-aiji, or if the station should fall to that foreign ship—any of these events would lead to terrible outcomes: hostile action against that ship out there, wider provocations that might involve the world we came to protect.” Damn, Banichi was always right. He had a most terrible foreboding about arguing with Banichi’s advice, and more than anything, feared he erred by timidity. “If, on the other hand, nadiin-ji, we take this prisoner into our hands, before they realize that we can penetrate the station, then we take away their source of confidence that they can hold that foreign ship from attacking.”

  Banichi and Jago considered a breath or two. “Will this not unite them in resistance?” Jago asked.

  “It will increase doubt toward Braddock.” It was all soft-tissue estimation, the paidhi’s word about human behavior, versus what atevi might do under similar circumstances; and it gave him no confidence at all that he could make no firm predictions. “I think it likely, at least.”

  “Will they not hold the fuel,” Banichi said, “to counter our leaving with the hostage?”

  “We can leave with the hostage, Banichi-ji. We can reach that ship in a small craft, if we have no other choice. And we can make it clear to the station population that we are here to take them to safety. We have not yet offered them boarding—not that we can rely on them having heard from Braddock.”

  “Shall we then tell them?” Jago asked.

  “Jase has such a plan. Pamphlets.”

  “We pass out brochures?” Banichi asked, incredulous. “Like a holiday?”

  Simply put, it sounded chancy. “Jase believes he can compose a compelling message.”

  Banichi leaned back from the table, simply contemplating the matter. Then: “So we take this prisoner. And distribute brochures. And perhaps we shall find Sabin-aiji and find out her intentions. There are very many pieces to this plan.”
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  “And I shall go with you.”

  “No, Bren-ji.”

  “Absolutely necessary. I can walk up to humans and wish them good day. You are far more conspicuous, nadiin-ji.”

  “He has a point,” Jago said. “If these humans threaten us, we might hesitate to shoot them; but if Bren-ji is with us, we shall have no hesitation.”

  He had lived long enough among atevi that he had no difficulty following Jago’s reasoning. There was a basic logic in it, instinctive protection of their household, with which he found no inclination to argue.

  “So we shall have these brochures,” Banichi said, “which we shall print, which will bring humans rushing to our doors. But will the Guild administration then arrive at our doors begging admittance, Bren-ji?”

  “They will not. One believes they will hold out to the very last. Then we may need your plan to take Central, nadiin-ji.”

  “We should call Gin-aiji,” Banichi said. Gin was their ultimate authority on systems.

  “We shall need to inform Jase,” Bren said.

  “And Cenedi,” Jago said.

  So they sent the requisite messages, and informed Cenedi, who informed the dowager.

  Whose reaction was far more moderate than one expected. “Shall we have television of it?” Cajeiri was reported to have asked.

  In fact, there would be television, if they could manage it, but not for Cajeiri’s delight.

  Gin arrived, herself having caught a little precious sleep. The table was already paved with their own version of station plans and schematics, but Gin brought a schematic she and her engineers had marked up.

  “There are access ports from the outside,” Bren asked her. “Just as at Alpha.”

  “Damned inconvenient for repair crews if there weren’t,” Gin said, and called up specifics of the area Becker and party had named to Jase.

  The diagrams looked as innocuous and common as any other area of the station, which looked like Alpha: Bren knew, having translated a stultifying quantity of the technical manuals and the building plans.

  “They may have modified this entire area for greater security,” Banichi observed, pointing to a section door. “Here would be a likely control point, a minimum of fuss.”