Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  He bowed a third time, shaky in the knees. “Dowager-ji, one is grateful for your staff and your assistance.” On which, at a little nod from Ilisidi, he walked out into the corridor, wondering if the knees were going to hold out as far as his own quarters.

  He was pursued, however: Narani and Bindanda arrived on his heels, and saw him into his quarters, and began at once fussing with his jacket, and the shirt, and the boots, and the sweaty pigtail.

  He shed the rest and showered, a quick, steam-filled warmth that began to warm him from the outside in; that soaked his hair, and took the stench of gas out of his nose, and soothed a throat he’d been too numb to realize was sore. He coughed, and blew water, and came out before the dry-cycle had had half enough time, but Bindanda met him with a towel, and rubbed life into him, and threw a robe about him—

  He had communication. Thanks to the other residents of five-deck, he seemed to have Prakuyo’s good will—an understanding, at least, of benevolent intent.

  He didn’t take for granted that would override cultural or biological imperatives or save their collective necks from political policy.

  And the dawn of reasonable worry told him that hot water had brought the brain online.

  One more change of clothing, as freshly pressed as any morning in Shejidan, court casual, as he thought of it—not good enough for high meetings, but perfectly adequate for bureaucrats and offices.

  It brought shoulders back and head up, or one cut one’s throat on the lace.

  “How is Banichi, Rani-ji?” That worry was with him, too, and he was sure word had flowed through the staff, what they had done, who was where, what was going on outside: he was sure, despite the scene he had met in the dining hall, that no one on five-deck but Cajeiri and Prakuyo had done anything but follow every word Asicho could gather.

  “He is with the dowager’s physician at the moment, nandi. So is Jago.”

  “Is she hurt?”

  “A minor injury, nandi. So with two of the dowager’s bodyguard. But none life-threatening.”

  Damn, he thought, with a heavy heartbeat and a sting behind the eyes. Damn! that, he hadn’t seen. They’d fooled him all the way back to the ship. And he couldn’t take them all off duty and stand over them until they mended.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose until the stinging stopped and tried to get his wits about him—back to work, back to work, fast. They weren’t safe. They wouldn’t be safe until they’d put Prakuyo where he belonged and this solar system behind them.

  And meanwhile the sound one expected when traveling about the ship had never stopped, the lift system whining and opening and closing doors, cycling cars back and forth, back and forth, with the wholesale energy of a factory.

  Four-deck was coming to life as if there had never been a glitch in their plans. Crew, variously occupied through the voyage, was in high gear, settling in newcomers, instructing them not to leave objects loose, not to take a leaky tap for granted, and how to read the various sirens and bells that advised crew about the ship’s behavior.

  As if they had their fuel and were ready to leave.

  He thanked his staff and went back to the dining hall, where the lights were up; where—strangely or not—he heard the whirr of small wheels before he darkened the door.

  Not all Cajeiri’s cars had met an untimely end.

  His security sat at one side of the room with their guest, the dowager sat at the other with Cenedi and one of his men, and Cajeiri—Cajeiri entertained the company with his toy.

  Prakuyo, however, paced the room, a lumbering slow pace, but a pace . . . anxious. Knowing there was news.

  “Prakuyo-ji,” Bren said with a little bow. The car stopped.

  “Well?” Ilisidi asked him. “Are we making progress?”

  Bren bowed. “Indeed, nand’ dowager. We are. Fuel is on the horizon. Gin-nadi is investigating that.”

  “One prefers it in this ship,” Ilisidi said sharply, and waved her hand. “This person has been inconvenienced. So have we all, by this Braddock-aiji.”

  “Gone, aiji-ma. At least in retreat. And far less of an inconvenience.”

  “Jenrette is dead.”

  “Yes, aiji-ma.” A second bow, to Prakuyo, who waited anxiously. “Prakuyo-nadi. One is very glad to see you at your ease.”

  The Ragi might have been ancient Greek. But Prakuyo rocked forward, a sort of a bow of his own, carefully imitated. “Bren-ji.”

  “One is amazed,” Bren said, not without a glance at the dowager, who sat smugly in possession of all news on five-deck.

  “The children’s language,” the dowager said, rising, leaning on her cane, “seems particularly useful, lacking numerical precision. And he is very quick.”

  “Association,” Prakuyo said energetically in Ragi, and indicated Cajeiri and the dowager and Cenedi, and him. “Association. Associates. Associates. You, you, you.”

  “Indeed, nadi,” Bren said—again with a bow, with a very inclusive sweep of his arm. “Associates. All associates.”

  “Atevi. Human. Associates.”

  “Yes,” Bren said. Associates. Had no human being in most of ten years of holding this person never tried friend, or tried to speak to this person about ordinary things?

  Or was friend somehow too chancy a word to get across to a different species at gunpoint? Associate, among the visibly dissimilar species of five-deck, might hold out a peculiar hope to their guest—the presence of the young, the silliness of toys, the aishi, the easy association that to any casual eye, certainly included more than one species involved in a fair degree of shared trust and authority.

  Dared one, for half a breath, feel a little chagrin about the situation—that the paidhi, neutral and noncombatant, had been off aiding the Assassins’ Guild in the overthrow of a government and the aiji-dowager, potent and intensely political, had been sitting here with a seven-year-old and an alien, making a breakthrough he hadn’t.

  Their guest made a sweeping gesture. “Prakuyo, Bren, Ilisidi, Cajeiri—associates.”

  He bowed. Prakuyo bowed. The dowager, who did not bow, gave a nod of her head.

  “Good,” Prakuyo said. “Good. Ship?” Gesture of uplifted hand and distracted stare, a where-is-it apparent past any barrier.

  Measure between fingers. “Close.”

  “This person should speak to his associates,” Ilisidi said.

  “Dowager-ji,” Bren said. “There are unresolved issues.”

  “What issues?” Ilisidi asked. “What issues can there be, that we have undertaken to return this individual to his association? This seems relatively simple, and need not observe all the prolonged fuss of ship-folk arguments.”

  “We have no promise from them.”

  “How shall we reasonably expect one, with nothing given in earnest? We sit in ignominious danger so long as this foreign ship remains in doubt of our honest intentions. This is not acceptable. This is a sensible person who shows every capability of rational dealing with the aishidi’tat. Call this foreign ship, allow Prakuyo-nandi to say that we have reached a civilized understanding, and let us borrow fuel from them, if we reach further impasse with these station-humans. These ingrates have shot at my staff and injured our associates. One is entirely out of patience with them, and after six years, one believes this foreign gentleman is thoroughly out of patience, too.”

  One truly did. And he had dealt with Ilisidi long enough to know that, whatever else, this was not an opinion that arrived on the spur of the moment, or without Ilisidi’s very excellent perspective on politics. It did contain a certain nonhuman basic sense: that the very worst thing they could do was demonstrate themselves so closely allied to their badly-behaved station that Prakuyo’s people couldn’t insert a tissue of conjecture between them.

  Ilisidi tossed him a live fish, as the proverb ran; and he could improvise. He could very well improvise.

  “Associate,” he said fervently, and bowed deeply. “The aiji-dowager wishes Prakuyo call Prakuyo’s ship. You, she
, I, associates.”

  “Bren,” Prakuyo said. “Nand’ Bren.” A hand extended. “Bren. Come ship.”

  Oh, he didn’t like that. He pointed at the deck under his own feet, hoping he hadn’t understood.

  “Bren ship.”

  “Bren come Prakuyo ship. Make—” Clearly a word was missing, frustrating communication. “Associate.”

  One truly hoped associate hadn’t been mistaken in meaning.

  And he knew what Banichi and Jago would say, but Banichi was off getting his arm sewed up, and they had fuel to get, and an alien craft still moving toward them.

  He touched his heart. “Yes. Bren go Prakuyo ship.”

  Done deal. Civilized understanding. It pleased Prakuyo, not deliriously—dared one imagine just a little worry on that strange face?

  “Bren go. Ilisidi, Cajeiri go.”

  God, no. He saw Cenedi’s face.

  “Shall we truly, mani-ma?” Cajeiri asked.

  “We shall see this ship,” Ilisidi proclaimed, in Cenedi’s pained silence. “Prakuyo will make a civilized call, we shall arrange a visit, and we shall have our understanding with this foreign association.”

  He was aware of Cenedi. He daren’t look at him. One dared not start an argument involving a dangerous guest with whom he could by no means argue fine points. One smiled, one made the absolute best of the situation—one only imagined how one was going to explain it to Jase—but the very next thing to do was to patch Prakuyo through C1 and get voice and visual contact, before something else went wrong—assuming those who knew such things could figure out how to make the equipment talk.

  “Come, Prakuyo-ji,” he said, in that language free of all unhappy precedent. He gestured toward the door, and Prakuyo strolled solemnly forward, a short walk down the corridor toward the security station—ordinarily not a place five-deck entertained outsiders.

  But the dowager had notions of her own—and the foreign paidhi—whose grasp of Ragi was decidedly from scratch, and impressive—was cooperative. Tell Jase? They had to tell Jase, never mind dealing with Sabin. He had to explain matters and get Prakuyo that requested clearance.

  Asicho and Ilisidi’s man on watch knew they were coming, and cleared chairs for them.

  “A contact with C1,” Asicho said quietly, “nandi.”

  “Excellent,” Bren said, though he could have made it on either piece of equipment in his pocket: he chose to do it on the console mike, and chose to make the argument in Ragi, which Prakuyo might understand as a good faith gesture.

  “Captain Graham,” he asked of C1, and when he heard Jase’s voice answer:

  “Mr. Cameron?”

  “Prakuyo-nadi has made strides not in Mosphei’, Jase-nandi—although I think he may indeed understand more Mosphei’ than he admits—but in Ragi.”

  “In Ragi.” For a human, speaking Mosphei’ or its like, Ragi was a vast linguistic jump.

  “His native language may find that a simpler transition than that to Mosphei’, at least as regards the children’s language.” Without the numeric demands Ragi placed on adults. “He wishes to contact his ship. We consider this a very good idea at this point, nadi-ji.” We, not one. It was the utmost stress, his reputation, his urging. And Jase knew the nuances. “We have cooperation and wish to keep the momentum in developing relations.”

  It couldn’t be an easy decision. It wasn’t, for him; and one could only imagine what Sabin would say if Sabin were back on board.

  But Sabin wasn’t. “Voice contact,” Jase said. “We’ll do our best to get you through.”

  “Thank you.” He meant that. And he wasn’t going to explain the rest of it, not until he saw encouraging results. He reached across and turned on Prakuyo’s mike. “Prakuyo. Talk. We record—” He made writing motions. “We talk Prakuyo’s ship.”

  Prakuyo leaned forward and did speak, rapidly, a speech laced with gutturals some of which were down at the lower end of human hearing and maybe a few too low to make out. And he paused, waiting, waiting, eyes fixed on the console.

  “We’re trying,” C1 said. “We have a three-minute window.”

  Bren set a timer on the number one clock and called Prakuyo’s attention to the ebb of sections. He held up three fingers, and pointed to the minute digit, folded one down.

  A person familiar with countdowns, if not their numerical notation, might know what he meant, and get the rhythm of it. Prakuyo watched, and watched the countdown; and as it went negative, seemed to figure that, too.

  Then . . . then . . . a static-ridden reply that taxed the speakers, and Prakuyo’s whole face reacted in what was surely the profoundest relief. He replied, rapidly, energetically, and the equipment might or might not handle all those booms and thumps from Prakuyo’s throat.

  Bren reset the reply clock.

  “Prakuyo ship,” Prakuyo said, and simultaneous with voice, the oddest trait, came a deep rumbling from somewhere in Prakuyo’s throat. “Prakuyo ship come Bren ship.”

  “Yes,” Bren said, there not being damn-all else to say, given the dowager’s arrangements. “Associate.”

  That word . . . Prakuyo found troublesomely worrisome. He glanced at Bren, sucked at his lips as if he was restraining some word or just trying to think of one.

  And that, in its way, was a comfortingly straightforward honesty . . . indicative, perhaps, that there were thorny problems, and that Prakuyo wasn’t in a position to make guarantees for his own side.

  “Associate?” Bren asked, and Prakuyo’s frown deepened, and that dammed-up thought just couldn’t find a way out.

  So if things went badly—on the surface—he could just keep saying “associate” and expect Prakuyo to know what the sticking-point of negotiations had become. If that word had come across with something like its original meaning in the first place.

  These were the truly lovely moments in making a linguistic bridge in negotiations, and never so much was at stake, not even in the first days between atevi and humans, who had at least had experience of each other and settled a little common vocabulary before they managed to get completely at loggerheads on the real meanings.

  Here was where ship and station, who had no experience of any outsiders but each other, had no useful referent that wasn’t buried deep in the Archive, unlearned and unstudied in centuries . . . except for Jase’s knowledge.

  And this was where the paidhi-aiji earned his keep.

  The answer came back. Prakuyo listened to all of it, then answered, ticking off points to himself on his fingers, and with a great deal of attendant booming and rumbling, before he reached over and thumped Bren on the back. Hard. Bren caught himself against the counter-edge, tears in his eyes, and hoped the shoulderblade wasn’t cracked.

  Prakuyo, however, was happy.

  “Go Prakuyo ship,” Prakuyo said, “go Prakuyo ship.”

  “Ship come?”

  “Come!” Prakuyo said happily, and Bren warily turned toward him, to make another back-slap inconvenient.

  “Good,” Bren said, feeling less than confident. And saying to himself that if he was going to be going anywhere, he wanted a few words of the language under his belt.

  And, God, if Sabin got aboard before Prakuyo’s ship got here—as that sight of an incoming alien craft was almost guaranteed to prompt her to do—he was going to have to explain the dowager’s decision, and his, and somehow keep bargains they hadn’t Sabin’s—or Jase’s—clearance to make.

  He needed words. He needed some picture of what he was working with, or going into.

  “Asicho. Get me C1.”

  “Yes,” she said, and punched buttons. “C1, nandi.”

  “Captain Graham,” he said, sure of his contact.

  “I’m on,” Jase said, not in Ragi. “How did that go?”

  “Very well.” In Ragi. “The ship will continue to move in, but shooting is less likely.”

  “It expects him to transfer to it, will it? The stationers are very nervous. One is by no means sure we have removed all
resistance, besides it will terrify the passengers. One is not complaining, understand . . . but can one possibly hold that off?”

  “We are not yet fluent enough to undertake that topic,” Bren said. “One regrets, nadi-ji. He wishes me and the dowager and the heir to visit the ship, perhaps to demonstrate us to his fellows; and the dowager has agreed.”

  “God, Bren.” That last was not in Ragi.

  “We do intend to return, and consider it no worse risk than parachuting onto a planet.” That for Jase, who had done precisely that, so Jase could hardly complain of wild risks. “Our guest seems very reasonable and well-disposed, all considered. Understand, these matters were cordially agreed while I was absent, and our guest’s good will and confidence may reasonably be dependent on these representations. It might be a grave mistake to backtrack.”

  “Is our guest promising to let us out of here?”

  “Not entirely clear. Either we have some difficulty communicating that point, or Prakuyo lacks authority or disposition to promise it. I do certainly intend to make that issue a primary point aboard his ship.”

  “Bren.” Jase seemed at a loss.

  “Prevent the aiji-senior from forbidding this move. That would be a very great help.”

  “Got that straight,” Jase said. And in Ragi: “One understands, and one most fervently wishes you success, nandi-ji.”

  “A mutual wish. Baji-naji, Jase-nandi.” He shut down the contact, and carefully patted Prakuyo on the shoulder, since Prakuyo had touched him with such familiarity. “Come. Rest, Prakuyo-ji. We go rest.”

  Prakuyo might not have understood the essential word, but he got up and came along, a broad, rolling stride beside him, all the way back to his borrowed quarters.

  “Sleep,” Bren said then, making the pantomime. “Rest.”

  “Yes,” Prakuyo said with a deep rumble. “Yes.” Prakuyo might be exhausted—he was exhausted; but precious little time they might have before critical things happened: that the alien craft got close, demanding to come in; or that Sabin decided to come aboard and take command. Both things were possible, concurrently, other people had made agreements without asking, and he was running out of energy and out of ideas simultaneously.