Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Crew won’t listen to you. To him, yes. To me. To my mother. Tamun wants to do this quietly. Won’t work.”

  Awareness went out, bit by bit.

  “Get some sleep,” Bren said, elicited one more twitch of the eyelids, and that was all. That last had been the drugged, trusting, truth.

  And Jase listened to him. Jase still worked with him. The captains had attempted to avoid a shoal they saw in their own affairs, and had handed him a weapon, one he had no compunction about using, as Jase had none about being used.

  Jase was a weapon the value of which they might not yet appreciate. Wouldn’t dare… Jase had said, because of what Yolanda and I are… Mystique: an indefinable, irreplaceable commodity.

  And somewhere, either aboard ship or lost to that alien encounter, Jase had said there were eight others of Taylor’s Children. Yolanda was one. He wondered if the other six held similar loyal feelings toward their father-by-authority, and whether or not Jase could contact them.

  And it was a question why Jase had never, in three years, mentioned the whereabouts of those quasi-brothers and sisters, and slid aside from questions.

  He and Jase had atevi owing man’chi to them; he had led his people into this volatile situation, and he had to use all his assets.

  The women were an asset. A reassurance. The captains couldn’t rule them… and wanted them off the station, out of mind, out of view, in a situation in which the captains could absolutely govern and censor the messages that reached a crew that didn’t want to remember what led to familial violence.

  So the captains thought.

  If they had to print messages on candy wrappers for the next decade, they were going to keep the issue alive. They could push the matter back into the captains’ laps, eventually, and maybe not have even much of a fight about it.

  Give or take Ramirez, whose principal support he still bet was Ogun.

  He hadn’t given up. But all his assets seemed future ones, long-term ones. And his heaviest bet was that there wouldn’t be an accident that took them all out.

  “We are very vulnerable,” he said to his security, “to accidents, if not of air pressure, still, of dark or cold and scarcity of water, concentrated as we are in this section. One hopes that no such thing would happer but if they could somehow silence us all at once, the disposition of all the crew would be to pretend ignorance. The captains’ skill is irreplaceable, and they believe they may have lost one captain. The fear of losing the captains is the most important fear they have.”

  “We believe,” Banichi said, “that we can operate any lock and open any corridor. The whole station seems of one style of operation.”

  “I have no doubt of you,” he said, “Nadiin-ji. Can we hold what we have? Should I pull in nand’ Gin? Or have my ambitions even this far been excessive?”

  “We can hold these rooms,” Banichi said without a doubt. “And we can move to others, despite their resistance, at any hour.”

  It was remarkably reassuring to hear that.

  There was, damn it all, still no word from Tabini.

  It was possible that Tabini had not gotten his messages since the ones Kandana carried, and that that was the reason for the silence.

  Bren resent all his prior messages to Tabini in a single gulp.

  He did have one from his mother, short and to the point:

  Please write. I’m worried. This is no time for temper.

  She hadn’t gotten his letters. He resent immediately, resent all his mail to everyone, and restrained the urge to dent the panel.

  “Cl. Voice contact with Mogari-nai.”

  “I’ll try, sir.” In a moment more he had it, and had, in Ragi, from the Messengers’ Guild, confirmation that there had been no messages coming in, that the aiji had given orders to transmit no ordinary business with the station, either.

  “Until one heard from you, nandi.”

  “You’ve now heard from me,” he said. “Give my apologies to the aiji. Ramirez has met with adversity. They have appointed a new captain, Dresh, related to Tamun. Relay that information immediately.”

  “Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

  He signed off, went out into a hall which had doubled in length, his domain.

  Narani and Bindanda were quietly bringing harmony to the further rooms. The table with the message bowl was advanced to the center of the corridor, at the far end, and two more tables stood behind it, at intervals, each with a dish and a small arrangement of wood and stone.

  The servants attended felicity, and assured good fortune.

  The paidhi’s attempt at the same job, however, was unfinished.

  Jase’s mother had looked in on him, to reassure herself, then had fallen asleep in an atevi-sized chair in the dining hall, utterly exhausted. He went quietly to talk to Yolanda, where she sat with her mother and sister in the new sitting room, the first one across the section line. The temperature in the new rooms had reached something more livable. The decor was still considerably lacking, but they all had blankets and steaming cups of tea.

  “Jase is fine,” he said. “Just a little bruised. Nothing broken. We’ll be getting you down to the planet at first opportunity. Don’t think of it as permanent, but it’s the safest place for you to be.”

  “It’s not the crew that’s done this,” Yolanda’s mother said. “It’s Pratap Tamun.”

  “It may be,” he said. “But still, the planet is safest for a few months. I don’t doubt things will quiet down.”

  They weren’t happy. The young sister was scared, and didn’t want to leave her cousins.

  He left them to a serving of sandwiches, which ought not to upset their stomachs, and another round of tea, and ordered them a few of their precious currency, the fruit candies, wondering if Kaplan was in trouble, too.

  A family of this size and complexity, however, could not engage in a bloodbath without destroying itself. The captains had acknowledged that in turning Jason and Yolanda over to him with orders to leave.

  But the very reasons that had saved these few had also dictated the crew simply had no mechanism to use to fight back. The captains were not elected. They were a life appointment, by the other captains… who else could judge competency?

  He ventured into the security station to fill in his staff on what he’d learned, and Banichi was there, looking like death.

  “You, nadi,” he said to Banichi, “ought to be asleep.”

  “A superfluous habit,” Banichi said. “Conducive to ignorance. What has Jasi-ji said?”

  “That Ramirez is alive. Yolanda says that Ramirez may be alive. By all that’s happened, I’m all but certain he is, and I’m certain Jase feels a profound man’chi to this man.”

  “Ah,” Jago said. “Something we understand. This is old, even for machimi.”

  “Indeed,” Bren said, and sank heavily into a chair. He was tired. He had not thought how completely atevi that ancient ploy was, machimi to the hilt, and transparent as glass. “Atevi, however, tend to think around the urge. Jase will want to go straight to Ramirez, when the painkillers wear off.”

  “He must not.”

  “Absolutely, he must not. But I’m relatively sure he’ll listen, in that regard. He’ll want us to do it.”

  “Possibly,” Banichi said. “But after you leave.”

  “Not without you, nadi.”

  “Then Ramirez must fend for himself.”

  “We might be well advised to do something.”

  “And we to get the paidhiin off the station.”

  “I may remain,” Bren said, “if we can get Jase down.”

  “No.” That was Banichi, Jago, and Tano, all at one word.

  “Jase can translate, Nadiin-ji.”

  “Not well enough,” Jago said. “Melons.”

  “That was three years ago.”

  “Flying fish.”

  “Such were said to exist, on the Earth of humans.”

  “Nevertheless,” Banichi said. “Jasi-ji, as highly as we regard him, cann
ot do your work, he cannot deal with the aiji, he cannot deal as effectively with Mospheira, and we are instructed, besides all this, paidhi-ma, not to return without you, so if you stay, we stay.”

  “Good fortune attend our getting Jase onto the shuttle if we do nothing for Ramirez.”

  “Many days hence,” Banichi said. “By then things may well be different. If we see an opportunity, we may act. But not otherwise.”

  “The crew is forcing the captains’ action. The captains fear to alienate the crew. They attempted to blame Ramirez’ misfortune on Jase; that didn’t work. But they dared not have Ramirez on the planet broadcasting messages to the station. If we might assure his safety, here, I think he might rouse the crew to action.”

  “He has not roused them to action where he is,” Nojana said.

  “Not as an ateva would,” Bren said. “But he has roused them to action of a sort. Someone is hiding him. No few, likely, are participant in hiding him. These are obedient people, lawful and cautious, and having very few among them who actually know how to repair and run the machinery on which their lives depend. They fear to remove any person who has that knowledge. If he were the most reprehensible of men, they might protect him for the sake of that knowledge, and by all I know from Jase, he is not the most reprehensible of the captains. I think Ogun-aiji, too, the dark one of the captains, was not consulted in the overthrow of Ramirez. I think he rather well fears he may be next, and if he cares for his people, he may fear the consequences of a general bloodletting in the ranks of the captains. He can do good by moderating Tamun’s influence, as I think he did in insisting they stand by agreements. I think Kroger also stood by them; I think Tamun thought he could deal with her to our detriment, and couldn’t. I owe this woman a profound apology for all my suspicions: I think she’s thrown him back to Ramirez’s agreements with us, and between Kroger and Ogun he’s had to moderate his position.”

  “Ogun did not look at Tamun, throughout,” Jago observed.

  “A fault line in the association of the captains. And I think one might even suspect Sabin might have been against dealing with us, and for dealing with the Mospheirans, but even she may be doubtful now, seeing Tamun’s kin as the fourth captain. This cannot please Ogun or Sabin, who now may find they have something in common simply by not being Tamun’s.”

  “They are not incomprehensible,” Tano murmured.

  “In some regards, more like the aiji’s court than the Mospheirans are,” Bren said. “Obscure connections, subterranean agreements—so to speak—placing the interest of their own small association of birth and convenience as paramount within a very large kinship. Threaten the kindred as a whole and that might unify them; but the planet and its offers are a potent force for change in their community; and where change happens—” He gave a shrug.

  “Gold among thieves?” Jago suggested wickedly. It was a proverb: the impetus first to unite, then to dissociate bloodily in self-interest.

  “Something of the sort. Although one might think… perhaps a slight bit more noble.”

  “Indeed” Jago said grimly. ”Yet another angry faction—the just and noble.”

  He gave a rueful laugh. “True, I very much fear. Jase’s faction, the very ones Tamun is sending into exile and the very ones the crew can least afford to lose. One wonders what they lost when they colonized the station, and what manner of folk died when it perished.”

  “Ramirez created Jase,” Banichi said thoughtfully. “Created Jase as a man without man’chi, except to the ship. Ramirez created Yolanda. Now Tamun exiles them both. What does this mean to the crew?”

  “Nothing good,” Bren said. “Nothing good for them at all.”

  “We could shoot this Tamun-aiji,” Algini suggested.

  “It’s very tempting,” Bren said. It was even counted virtuous, among atevi, that leaders, and not the followers, should die in conflicts. “But to satisfy them and to have an agreement later, we have to deal with their law. We have to hope for other means.”

  Barb is showing improvement. Paul showed up and signed the necessary papers. He had very little to say. I haven’t heard from Toby. Do you know where he is? I’m concerned about him and Jill, and I suspect Louise isn’t telling me the whole story.

  The security people are making a fuss about my being here. Ever since the news said you’d gone up to the station, they haven’t let me answer my own phone. I hate this. They have guards on this floor, guards watching Barb’s room. It’s just crazy.

  I phoned Shawn and phoned your office on the mainland and told them to tell Tabini you hadn’t been in touch.

  Barb is going to have another operation tomorrow.

  This is the third, but this time they have the bleeding stopped, and this one is to take out some of the tubes and such. She says thank you for the flowers. You could at least send her a hello. It’s only polite.

  He didn’t react with temper. He composed a polite, concerned reply, wrote to Tabini:

  We have Jase in our keeping, aiji-ma. An opposing association surrounding the fourth captain has seized enough power to insist on his banishment to the planet but not sufficient power to do him harm. The senior of the four has been the target of an assassination attempt.

  To Shawn Tyers he wrote, in Ragi, via his office:

  As best I can determine, the head of your operation here has valiantly resisted attempts to divide our interests. She persists through hardship, and we support her as best we can. I have not yet drawn her within our protection because having more than one vantage within the station affords us a certain operational flexibility. I urge you to consult with the mainland for more details.

  More than that, he dared not write. There was too much chance of having communication cut off again, if it was in fact going through… and he had no proof of that until someone answered him with direct evidence of having read his letters.

  “Put me through to Kroger,” he asked Cl.

  “Kroger has given notice she is not receiving messages,” Cl answered. “This is a sleep period.”

  “Cl, put me through, or I go there.”

  “Let me consult,” Cl answered him, and put him through, all the same.

  That was interesting, he thought as Kroger answered.

  “Bren Cameron,” he identified himself. “We have Jase, we have Mercheson, we have the families, as best we can guess. Jase is moving slowly, but everyone seems in good health. Want to join us for supper?”

  Jase roused himself out of bed, sore, upset, and in bad temper. At a certain point, Bren thought, one just let the anger slide off. He didn’t blame Jase.

  “You’re not getting out of here,” he said to Jase in Ragi. As Jase stood, in a bathrobe, it was not imminent, but Jase was pushing himself to ignore the pain. “That’s exactly what they want you to do, and you’re not going to do it.”

  “It doesn’t mean—” Jase began.

  He finished it: “You’re out of the game, Jase. Figure it out. Pride be damned. Throwing yourself away and helping them find the man you don’t want them to find isn’t sensible. Shut up and sit down.”

  Jase reached a chair and sat. “A moment, nadi.”

  He gave Jase that moment, sat down, himself, and let Jase absorb the pain, and the facts of his situation, in peace. That Jase remembered Ragi, and the self-control of the aiji’s court, was a wonder in itself, considering the circumstances.

  Perhaps indicative of the direction of his thoughts, Jase pushed his hair back, straight back, as he’d worn it until he’d done such a wretched job cutting it.

  “You’ve become part of this mission,” Bren said.

  “Clothes,” Jase said.

  “We have yours being cleaned and pressed. Even that jacket.”

  Jase managed a short, pain-clipped mirth. “Narani so wanted to do that.”

  “Desperately.”

  “You can borrow mine.”

  “Can’t wear yours.”

  “Funny, you don’t appear to have put on weight. I’d say,
in fact, you’d have trouble filling them out at the moment.”

  “I need ship clothes.”

  “No, Jase point of fact, you don’t.”

  “He’s out there; he has no help. I have to do something, Bren!”

  “Don’t count that he has no help,” Bren said. It was Ramirez they were talking about, in this coded mode of no-proper-names. “Conspiracy is spreading through the crew. The shuttle’s due back imminently. I’m going to talk to our fellow delegates from the island, fifteen days to wait while they check out the shuttle… we have to get out of here. We have no more reasonable, rational choice. I can’t lose you. Do you hear? If everything’s lost, there’s you. That’s his legacy.”

  “I’m not him!”

  “No. You’re his project, his program, his hands, and his determination to have his way. Don’t give up.”

  There were several moments’ more silence while Jase thought that over, and the court mask came over his face, despite the pain.

  “The aiji’s favorites have a way of ending up in charge,” Bren said, beyond that. “And atevi are coming to this place. The ship has no choice.”

  Jase gazed at him, absorbing that thought, that idea, that proposition.

  “He will have won,” Bren said, “if you don’t do the things the captains are prompting you to do. I think the new senior may have great misgivings about all of this. There’s an ally, if you can convince him.”

  “I have to think about this,” Jase said, and by midday he was limping about the place, talking intensely to Yolanda in private, and then to Banichi and Jago, filling them in, Banichi said, on every detail of the tunnels, where they had been, where they had been discovered, where they had run.

  Bren came in on it, and sat and absorbed the information.

  “The food has improved,” Kroger said, “but they’re delivering it. They’re being very cooperative; we walk about. There’s no quibble about that. They arrange for us to go as far as we want. One corridor they wouldn’t let us into. They said that was the end of the pressurized section. It may be.”

  “You’re close to the boundary,” Jase said.

  The dining hall was at capacity. Banichi and Jago took to having their meals with the security team and the staff, with Kate Shugart, who was here for her own turn at translation.