“Man’chi, and practicality?” Algini asked.
“Deep practicality. Common sense around an environment that has no compromises and takes no votes. I believe I’m beginning to understand Kaplan, even his fondness for sweets. I think he’s allowing us to buy him; I think Johnson outright coming and telling us they’re security is another bid for our attention, and our purchase. They don’t know how to approach us, without some excuse. And I think they plan to plead naive stupidity if caught.”
His atevi hearers were both amused and aghast. “Truly, nand’ paidhi?” Nojana asked diffidently.
“I do think it. I think they have to have an excuse. More, I think they have to have an excuse in order to persuade themselves they’re not doing something bad.”
“They wish to be bribed?”
“I think they do. I think I understand. They want, individually, to see us, to assess our behavior, our patience, our tolerance of them… in short, they’ve never seen atevi up close, they’re scared, but they’re letting themselves grow familiar. At any given wrong move, they could turn on us and draw weapons, but right now I think they’re edging toward believing we’re not that scary, that they might deal with us. In a certain way I think they’re trying to figure out whether Ramirez is, after all, right about dealing with us, and one must respect their courage and common sense in trying to make that assessment. I’m not sure they’ve thought it all out. But I think there’s a real curiosity about the candy… about the planetary resources… and about us. In a certain sense, food is a very basic, very instinctive gift of goodwill. And they’re taking it. They’re approaching us. They’re supporting Ramirez.”
His security looked at him as if he and his entire species had run mad in the streets.
“They test whether they maintain man’chi to Ramirez?” Jago asked, always the cleverest of his staff at seeing through human behavior. “They test feelings?”
“Something very close to that” Bren said. “In this case there’s less intellectual about it than usual. This is far more instinctive… far more simple, in many regards. These people have been left no way to choose their leaders, but they are choosing, I’m relatively sure of it. And every one of them is taking a chance.”
“Of harm?”
“Of harm to the entire ship. The power structure isn’t instinctive, not wholly; it’s pragmatic. And it’s functioned against their will. I believe a good many of the crew hope Ramirez will survive, but they have no confidence in his state of health; they act as if it’s a doomed cause, but not one they’ve utterly given up. Banichi didn’t say, but I think some of them are sheltering him, and I would not in the least be surprised to learn that Jase and Mercheson and various others related to them by kinship are in on it. Subterfuge and indirection, it well may be mediated by kinship. The captaincy seems to pass down by kinship instead of merit.”
“Who are Ramirez’ kin?” Jago asked, straight to the point. “Is it not Jase? Do I not recall Ramirez has no descendants?”
“Jase. Jase and Yolanda. Ramirez’s wife died long ago. Her network remains attached to him, one gathers. Jase tried to lay out the relationships for me. Until Kaplan and his cousins, I confess I didn’t understand all he might have been saying.”
Jase and his family chart, he began to think, might be more important to them than their map of the station and its workings.
“The crew has no weapons,” Algini said.
“None.” They had been over that with Jase, and as far as he had ever learned, it was the truth. The crew had no access to hand weapons. Those existed, but the officers had the keys, and the resistance to shooting one’s cousins and officers, one could only guess. “But we have Ramirez, if we can keep him alive. I think there’s good reason not to bring him here. The crew has to believe he still has authority, not our authority: his authority. If he dies, any hope they have of a captain of his disposition dies with him. And the fourth captain, the one we’ve not met or dealt with, that captain is our problem.”
“Tamun.”
“Just so. I rather think Ogun might stand with Ramirez if he had the chance. He may be doing so, for all I know. For all I know he’s barricaded in some safe place trying to keep himself alive.”
“Tamun must fall,” Jago said.
“But we mustn’t do it,” he said.
“Are they not pragmatists?”
“Emotional creatures, as well. We should not do it if we can possibly avoid it. The captains are reservoirs of an expertise in operating this ship that we can’t pull out of the archive: it’s the same business as the starship crew not being able to fly the shuttle. We can’t just take over the ship and hope to operate it. And without it, if the aliens are real, we have no defense. We have to get Ramirez back in power, but at worst, we may have to make peace with Tamun, if only for the sake of what he knows.”
“This would not be an agreeable outcome,” Jago said.
“No,” he said, “it would not be. But we are limited in what we can do, besides try to maintain an alternative, and not frighten the crew. If we run out of candy, we pass out dried fruit and offer them shots of vodka, and promises, and we hope Banichi stays safe. He’s doing the right thing in trying to keep Ramirez alive and away from assassins: I think Jase is advising him how important that is, and we need to support him. Take inventory of supplies we do have. We need to get decent food to Kroger’s rooms and advise them of the situation.”
“Do we trust her, Bren-ji?”
“Against the likelihood of a conflict in the crew and an unknown rising to authority?” There was one thing Mospheira detested even more than change and that was uncertainty. “There’s all the history of the Pilots’ Guild and the colonists in our favor. In this, I think quite likely they’ll work with us.”
That the shuttle had landed safely was the most welcome news.
There was not one damned letter from any of the committee heads, and while it was remotely possible that Tabini hadn’t written, it was by no means possible that felicitations from the mainland would not pour to Mogari-nai, and onto his staff, who likewise sent no word.
Infuriating. Troubling. Bren found multiple words for the situation.
From his brother there was not a word. None from his mother. There was a disturbing situation. If she’d mentioned the shuttle landing, that alone might have caused the captains to censor her letter—which she would hardly understand, when her son failed to write, when Toby was trying to hold his marriage together, and couldn’t take time out to go solve another crisis that was the cause of the difficulty in the first place.
Bren took his computer back to his desk and carefully, patiently, constructed a positive mood… an hour’s worth of construction, which led to a day’s constructive work in another set of missives for Tabini.
His last ones had gotten through. He was relatively sure Tabini had a clear notion that not everything was as well as the first letters indicated.
At the mid point of the night the outer door opened, and shut; and Bren rolled out of bed, looking for the gun.
His door shut. Immediately. He waited in the dark, shivering in the chill, listening with trepidation as the door opened and shut a second time.
The door of his quarters opened; and Jago stood in silhouette against the muted corridor light.
“A message” Jago said. “Nothing of concern, Bren-ji. Banichi says a hunt is going through the tunnels and that we should affect not to hear it.”
“They’re hunting Ramirez.”
“They have begun a door-to-door search, claiming we have secreted some personnel aboard, nadi. Banichi will not be caught by their nets. Go to sleep.”
“On that?” he asked. “Jago-ji, he can’t stay out there forever. If you’re communicating with him, tell him the hell with independence: bring Ramirez here. Let’s raise the wager. Let them take him from us, damn them!”
“I believe he would be willing,” Jago said. “The humans may be reluctant.”
More than likely
, he thought, trying in vain to recover any urge toward sleep. More than likely there was considerable resistance in the crew, all the reasons he himself had already thought of, but what they were risking, keeping a wounded man on the run, was everything, everything humanity owned in this end of space.
Come in, he wished Banichi, staring into the dark. Don’t listen to human reasons. Talk sense into Jase. Say no to him and get back here. Get him back before someone gets killed. There’s still a way to patch this.
Wishes did no good.
Sandwiches did, at least improving Kroger’s rations, a strike back in a war of nerves.
The lights went out for fifteen minutes or so in the evening; came on; and went out again an hour later.
A candle in the hallway provided sufficient light for atevi, and the household proceeded with supper.
“I fear they may be aware of our monitoring,” Bren whispered to Tano after supper, in the utter, ghostly stillness of that dark. “Dare one think they might move up on us?”
“Significant monitoring is passive,” Tano said, “and we listen, nadi Bren, we do listen for any such. They make noise in the tunnels now and again, but nothing near us.”
“It makes no difference that we have no idea where Ramirez is. Certain authorities might think he’s taken refuge with us.”
“We watch, nadi Bren. We watch.”
“One knows so,” he said. He wanted Banichi back. Immediately.
But he did no good pacing the floor or making his security nervous. There was always the chance that the lights might not come on again. There was the chance they would freeze in the dark, though he doubted that his security would allow that without a blow struck.
He wanted the adjacent rooms in their hands.
And then he had the most uncomfortable notion where Banichi might be, and where Ramirez might be, and how the fugitive captain was receiving food, water, and care. He cast Tano an uneasy look, and kept quiet about the idea.
He went back to bed, where it was warmer, and shortly after that all the lights came on and the fans started up.
“One doubts they will willingly freeze the water pipes,” Jago said blithely the next morning. “One believes, nadi, these outages are connected with the search.”
“With listening?”
“Likely,” Jago said. “Likely they hope to hear movement.”
He simply cast a look toward the door, by implication toward that section beyond it.
Jago shrugged, and said not a thing.
He made a gesture for here! Made it emphatically. Bring him here!
Jago gave a negative shrug: not wise, she meant, he was sure of it. His security would not jeopardize him, whatever else, and would not let the search lead here. He recalled what Banichi had indicated, of making noise in distracting directions.
A dangerous set of maneuvers.
Damned dangerous, he said to himself, but he doubted close questions served anyone’s safety: if they were where he thought, they were as good as within their perimeter.
Day, and day, and night and night.
No messages came up from Mogari-nai, not a one. He ordered Cl to send-receive, and had no idea whether his messages went anywhere. He wrote to councillors, to department heads, to his staff, and to his mother, not daring to mention that he hadn’t gotten any messages, not daring to admit he was worried.
“Any word from Jase Graham?” he asked daily, as if there were nothing wrong in the world.
Occasionally he called Kroger, and twice summoned Kaplan for uneventful escorts over and back.
He’d thought he’d found the limits of his nerves and passed them long ago. Shouting and argument he could deal with; silence was its own hell.
But withstanding that was as important. And Jago was happier, at times, even cheerful… interspersed with days of bleak worry, when he was relatively certain something was going on that his security opted not to tell him. There were more outages, and one that lasted until he was sure the pipes were in definite danger.
He sat by candlelight fully clothed and wrapped in a blanket from shoulders to feet, and with his hands tucked under his arms and his feet growing numb no matter the precautions. How general it was or whether Kroger was likewise suffering he had no idea. The silence without the air duct fans was eerie… one grew accustomed to that constant sound. The notion of air that no longer moved gave the place a tomblike feeling.
He wondered if Tabini had done what he urged and opened direct negotiations—such as the University on Mospheira could mediate, using more Bens and Kates—with Hampton Durant on the island. He hoped so. He hoped that by virtue of what he had sent down to the world that men of common sense could form a common purpose and not give the Guild what would damn them all: if it was the xenophobes in charge of the Guild now, minds that truly didn’t want to deal with foreigners of any stamp, and they were determined to alienate the atevi before they took on aliens from far out in space, everything was in jeopardy. He’d made that clear to Tabini, and included a letter for Mospheira, and hoped Tom Lund had corroborated his report.
At times things seemed to be going very slowly to hell with his own position, and in the candlelit dark he asked himself whether he or any of his team might survive this, or whether fools were going to let this go on until the station was damaged, the ship remained unfueled, and the planet had to take its chances with whatever came, helpless to launch more than a shuttle.
He passed despair, achieved numb patience—and guilt for having drawn people he cared for into this mess. He reanalyzed the meeting he had had, when everything had gone too well, too fast, and wondered if he might have precipitated this reversal himself, simply because he was a negotiator and the captains weren’t. Perhaps, he thought, he had pushed the opposition into desperate measures.
It might have happened. It might be that he had driven the opposition to desperation, or encouraged Ramirez to an aggressive posture that proved his downfall… if that was what had happened.
“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom said, breaking its long silence. The lights stayed out.
He stayed seated. The intercom made several tries. He still stayed seated. If they were going to ask him if he had had enough, he wasn’t going to make it convenient for them.
The lights and air came back on within the hour. His security had kept their watch, and reported no movement in their area.
He found himself tempted to order a seizure of the adjacent rooms and main corridor, down to the next security door, in the theory the blackouts might be local, and that he might command an area more difficult for them. But he had no desire to provoke anything until the shuttle was back.
“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom nagged him. He refused to answer.
It went on intermittently for the next day. Narani and the servants ceased to regard the noise. He ceased his daily harassment of Cl, preferring to let the captains worry about the silence from his side.
“Mr. Cameron,” the intercom said finally. “We know you hear us.”
He somewhat doubted they could guarantee that.
It interrupted his sleep during the night.
An alarm went off, flashing lights from the panel, a loud klaxon that sent them all from their beds.
Jago was in his, and he said, the two of them entangled beneath the sheets, “I honestly hope that’s real and they’re having a bad night.”
“I should go to security,” she said, and eased out of bed. She flung a robe about herself on the way out the door.
He lay and watched the ceiling in the flashing red light. The intercom said,
“Mi. Cameron. The captains are willing to meet with you now.”
That worried him. But he stayed in bed.
The section door opened and shut outside. That brought him out of bed, wrapped in a sheet.
Banichi was back, and for an man who ordinarily suffered not a hair out of place, he looked exhausted.
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “One apologizes for the inconveniences.”
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Be careful out there, nadi-ji, I earnestly request it.”
Banichi found that ruefully amusing. Jago, who had turned out with all but Algini, did not laugh, nor did the rest.
“We have lost contact with the lower level,” Banichi said then, not happy. “A number are cut off. I ask your leave, nandi, to deal with that.”
He felt a chill that was far more than his bare feet on the cold floor. This one went to the gut and advised him what Banichi was asking, political permission for lethal force.
“I don’t know enough to decide, Banichi. Advise me. We have repeated requests from the captains for me to meet with them, since the last outage. I keep refusing.”
Banichi did not seem to account that good news at all. He heaved a heavy sigh. “It is not from weakness,” he said. “They may have taken Ramirez.”
No, not good news. “I hoped he might be here.”
“We tried to convince them he was at another place,” Banichi said. “The rooms next to us are all vacant now. We had moved everyone back, fearing they might attack here, jeopardizing you, nandi, and we never convinced Ramirez to come to this level. For your safety, Bren-ji, permission to act.”
“To protect this place, or yourself, or our people, Banichi. But if Ramirez is lost, we have no choice but deal with the successors.”
“You must not go to their meeting,” Jago said.
“No,” Tano agreed. “You must not.”
“We can’t protect you,” Banichi said. “It would not be wise, Bren-ji. Your security strongly requests you not take such a chance.”
“I’ll talk with them,” he said. “I won’t agree to go there. But I’m worried about Kroger’s safety.”
“We cannot guarantee it,” Banichi said.
“But the station has no reason at all to antagonize her,” Bren said. “That’s in her favor. If she just stays quiet.”
“One fears Mercheson has contacted her,” Banichi admitted.
“Then she is involved.”
“Yolanda Mercheson believed she had credibility with the Mospheirans,” Banichi said, “and one believes there was contact from Ramirez as well.”
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