Protector: Foreigner #14

by Cherryh, C. J.

  “No need to trouble them,” Bren said, and got up and poured a small dose apiece, not that they either one had much capacity left.

  Geigi took a sip, shut his eyes—composing his thoughts. Bren waited, not expecting good news.

  The station’s politics—and mention of Reunion in connection with Cajeiri’s birthday guests—was not a well-omened beginning.

  There resided an infelicitous four distinct populations currently on the space station. There were the ones atevi called the ship-humans, who had lived their whole lives aboard Phoenix. The ship had been absent from the world for centuries, and on its return had opened up the mothballed station and made contact with the planet.

  The human enclave, centuries settled on the isle of Mospheira, were descendants of colonists who had come down from the space station, some to get freedom from the station authority, and the rest because the ship had left them and the station had lost so much population it could no longer sustain its operations. With the ship’s return, humans from Mospheira had reoccupied the station. That was the second population aboard.

  But humans had not come up to the station alone. Atevi had come with them, the third population, thanks to Tabini-aiji’s insistence on an atevi space program—and the fact that most of the necessary resources to build a shuttle operation were on the continent, and not on Mospheira. In return for materials and items the ship-humans sorely wanted from the world, which the vast continent could supply, Tabini had demanded an atevi share of the station, the building of an atevi starship and the training of atevi crew . . . in short, a piece of everything going—an instant leap from an earthbound civilization that believed shuttles would puncture the atmospheric envelope and let all the air escape—to awareness of the whole solar system and the galaxy beyond it. Starflight. Operation translight.

  It had all come as a shock to traditional beliefs on the continent—and a shock to human perceptions of their situation as an earthly island expecting invasion from the mainland. The aftershocks were still rumbling through the world. But the agreement had worked for everyone—until the ship-humans finally decided to contact the colonists they had left at their former base of operations, at Reunion Station, light years removed from Alpha Station and the world of the atevi.

  Another species had taken exception to the human presence in that remote location. Removal of that colony had become a necessity.

  And collecting every human from Reunion Station and transporting them here had brought a fourth population onto the space station, five thousand technologically sophisticated humans they’d naively assumed were going to fit right in.

  But the Reunion-humans had run their last station as they liked and thought they should run this one. In point of fact, their ancestors had governed the first space station, and were the very ones the Mospheiran humans had fled the station to escape.

  Mospheirans, ship-humans, and atevi all united in objection to the Reunioners’ assumption they were the incoming elite. Together, the three populations outvoted the Reunioners—who were not happy, not in meeting the Mospheirans’ ancestral antagonism toward them, not in the ship-humans, who voted with the Mospheirans, most of all not in the number of non-humans in residence and in authority. Expansion of the station to accommodate the larger population would have been logical—but they were not, politically, happy, and they could not agree on how many hours should constitute a day, let alone how the station resources and manpower should be directed.

  To mediate the problem, the Mospheirans had suggested resurrecting the Maudit Project, first proposed centuries ago, when the ship had arrived at a too-attractive, inhabited planet and the ship-folk had begun to lose control of the colonists, who wanted to land. The ship-captains of that day had wanted to pull their whole operation off to the next planet out from the local sun, where planet-dwelling was not so attractive a lure, where there would be no talk of colonists abandoning the station and landing on the planet, outside the authority of the captains and the crew.

  Park Phoenix at Maudit, they’d said in those days. Build a station, mine the asteroids and moons which were not so far distant from Maudit—and stay entirely space-based, above an uninhabited planet nobody in their right minds would want to choose as a residence.

  Their colonist population had wanted none of it. They’d deserted the station in droves as relations between the station administration and colonists deteriorated—the colonists absolutely dead set against pulling off to Maudit, the ship’s captains and crew dead set on doing it. So they’d finally drawn Phoenix off with a complement of high administration and willing colonists—with the stated objective of finding a better world at another star.

  In point of fact, they’d seen no chance of winning under current circumstances, and had set out, in the typical Long View of their spacefaring kind, to win the argument and give their ship the base they wanted by producing a new batch of colonists who’d support their ship at another base, far away, at a planeted system—so they said. Their real objective had been to get far from the temptation of the atevi world and build a civilization in space.

  Now, centuries later, back on the original station, with the rescued Reunioners, the ship-captains had a problem. They’d not anticipated the antagonism between colonists. Neither Mospheira nor Tabini would let them land the Reunioners and be rid of them that way—

  So, during the last eventful year, the captains had fallen in with the Maudit plan again—give the Reunioners a whole station of their own at Maudit. And gain all the mineral resources Maudit offered. Gain the wider spread of human population. It was a quiet suggestion. It had taken off on the wings of Mospheiran agreement.

  The Reunioners, Geigi had reported, had also leapt on that idea. It seemed to be win-win. The Mospheirans were for it . . . as the fastest way to see the last of most of the Reunioners.

  There was just that troublesome issue of who was going to be in charge of the Maudit colony. Depend on it—that question had immediately surfaced. There was no getting away from the fact that the Reunioners expected to be in charge of whatever they built new; and the Mospheirans were bent on seeing they were in charge of nothing.

  True, Cajeiri’s young associates were Reunioner children—but one might have assumed the children were innocent of plots.

  “So,” Geigi said eventually, on his one sip of the brandy and a long pause for thought. “You have had as much experience of the Reunion-humans as I have. And with far more understanding. One has not wanted to poison the situation by bringing politics into the matter. But—”

  “The Reunion humans are a difficult lot,” Bren said. “I was on the ship with them.”

  And Tabini hadn’t been. The whole Mospheiran-Reunion question was a human question. Tabini, at the moment, was not taking on additional problems. Tabini had come back from two years of hiding and dodging assassination attempts and had a great deal on his mind that didn’t at any point involve understanding the Reunioners.

  His son, with whom he had a difficult relationship, wanted the Reunioner children for a two-week visit. Cajeiri had been promised it—last year. Cajeiri had looked forward to it, clinging to his ship-speak and his memory of the only children he had ever played with in his adult-surrounded life.

  No, Tabini had had no expectation the children were going to cause a problem, since the paidhi-aiji hadn’t been convinced there was a problem. Tabini wanted to keep a promise to his son and win his son back—the same as Damiri wanted, only more so. Cajeiri was Tabini’s heir. Next in line to be aiji.

  And on that boy’s man’chi, his sense of loyalty to his father and his kind, the future of the world depended.

  “What problem do you see in this visit happening, Geigi-ji? Inform me. And you need not be politic at this hour. Have I been wrong?”

  That Tabini didn’t understand was possibly his fault. But it might be one of those damnable instances of intercultural reticence. Which is worse
—to have the boy renew acquaintances with children of a troublesome population—or to have him always wanting it, into his adult life?

  “There are nuances of behavior in this which trouble me,” Geigi said, “the more since I began to help this contact along. The parents at first strongly opposed this association, and that seemed natural, given the general mistrust of the Reunion-humans toward us and the slow poisoning of the relationships on the station. I had met with the captains some time ago, to try to explain the situation on earth, but then one parent began to ask why the children’s letters went unanswered, and the captains and the children’s parents seemed to lean in favor of a meeting. This led me to bring the letters down. This is where one belatedly asks human advice.”

  “Tell me what you observe.”

  “This. You know about the Maudit issue.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Reunion humans have, for most of the year, been unanimous in favor of going to Maudit. Now they have developed a splinter group that opposes the idea—the ship-aijiin believe them to be a labor group that has fallen out with Reunion leaders. This group, about five hundred of the five thousand, want to become citizens of the station here, assuming the Maudit expedition does eventually launch. They claim they will sustain themselves in the trades. This does not please us, of course, since we have our own industry, and a niche for them limits us. The ship-aijiin, for their part, do not trust their political motives and do not trust the faction that wants to leave, either. Mospheiran humans are asking atevi to join them in a call for a referendum on allowing any Reunioners to remain on the station, and to vote against the Reunion humans being allowed to stay. This was going on when I left.”

  That was a nasty chain of developments. But—

  “Do you think the children’s parents are trying to avoid being sent out to Maudit? That they hope a connection of this sort could prevent their being removed?”

  “There is, as always, the subtext,” Geigi said. “Remember, Bren-ji, half a year ago, there had attempted to be a vote about the use of Phoenix as a transport for Maudit, to get the operation underway immediately. The Mospheiran humans wanted it—they wanted to be rid of the Reunion humans as soon as possible. We were with them at the start. But the ship-humans denied that any station vote could bind their ship to do anything at all. A station vote would challenge their authority, on a matter of principle and their law. We then abstained from that vote, as an uncivilized suggestion, if the ship-aijiin were standing on privilege of their territory. The vote, you recall, failed.”

  A very small sip of brandy. Geigi had talked a great deal tonight. His voice grew hoarse.

  “And that meant the Maudit venture was foreseeably delayed. Then came the counter-proposal: to have shuttlecraft built specifically for Maudit, largely robotized, to deliver cargo and colonists in stages and continue to serve as freighters, followed by the usual infighting: the Mospheiran humans demand Mospheiran piloted craft all under the control of the Alpha station; the Reunion humans want piloted craft controlled by Reunion humans, based at Maudit. The ship-humans are now standing with the Mospheiran humans and have abandoned the robotic option. I have tended to the idea we should vote with the ship-humans and the Mospheirans. But now I think this whole Maudit matter should be reconsidered. These two populations hate each other. I am beginning to think it will lead to trouble nobody will benefit from.”

  He had heard about the business. Mospheiran news had reported it. He had had his reports from Geigi. In the Mospheiran press, the Maudit colony had begun to look very much like a dead issue. He had brought it up with Geigi. But when they had talked about it, it had not been in the context of the children’s visit, and something had interrupted the conversation: he could not recall what, at the moment—the assassination attempt in Sarini Province had jarred his attention sharply elsewhere.

  “One strongly agrees,” Bren said. “Neither side will keep agreements, Geigi-ji, so long as one group thinks they should rule the other. Maudit will not settle it. It would make it worse.”

  “The crisis will come on the station, then,” Geigi said, “and one dislikes to see it. Station-humans are politicking very hard with the ship-humans, to secure a lasting association between them, being space-born humans. I can use their words, but what I am asking, Bren-ji, is whether my interpretation is accurate. We and the Mospheirans can out-vote the Reunion-humans. But one asks—will Mospheira then break from us at some future date? Are we placing ourselves in the midst of a human quarrel in which human loyalty will dictate some turn we do not foresee?”

  There was nothing Bren could say, no reassurance he could give, and Geigi nodded. “It is some human signal I have missed, then.”

  “It is not.”

  “Which brings us to this business of the children.”

  “How so, Geigi-ji?”

  “The Reunion-humans who do not want to go to Maudit, the ones who want to stay, use this word assimilation.”

  “To become in-clan,” Bren said. “To become one with the Mospheirans. This is what we initially hoped would happen. But the way politics has so readily sprung up, no, not so easily. This is a power struggle. These people have seen a very frightening situation out in space, alone. Fear of being abandoned. Fear and distrust of their leaders—remember that their leaders take power by having a coalition of supporters. Distrust of the leaders is very possible. There will be a rival set of leaders attempting to gain followers. They will turn to the ship-humans, once they see the Mospheirans will not give them positions of authority. Maudit is an issue—but one they will politicize and argue for years. I suspect the Maudit issue is already dead, though some will not admit it. And as I see it, Mospheirans and ship-humans would be very wise to stay united with atevi.”

  “This insanity equals Marid politics.”

  “It is not that different. Except that among these humans there are no clans. There will be a committee in charge, and you will see a great deal more milling about than atevi will do. Let me guess now. The children’s parents are in this number who want assimilation.”

  “Yes. Precisely. Three of them seem not so enthusiastic about their children being guests here, and one of those three, oldest of the boys, named Bjorn, aged thirteen, is now in an advanced training program—he is very bright, and has real prospects. His mother is very reluctant to see him give that up, since he might risk dismissal, should he accept the young gentleman’s invitation. The questions of the parents of the other two boys were reportedly about safety and supervision, which seems a natural thing. In the case of the girl Irene, however—I have this from the ship-humans—her mother has been fearful and suspicious of atevi. She was embarrassed by Irene’s meetings with the young gentleman on the ship, and was strongly against any association. I have been warned of this. Yet at a certain point she personally brought a set of letters which she said she had withheld, and was very polite, if highly nervous. One is suspicious that these letters are of recent composition. They lack the historical references of the others. And yes, we have read them.”

  “One would not fault that at all, Geigi-ji.”

  “There are indications, my sources say, that this woman has been approached by others of exactly the sort you forewarn . . . but it would not be a turn of man’chi driving this change of mind, would it? What, then, can so profoundly change this mother’s opinion? She is a woman without administrative skills. She has been public in her detestation of atevi. Now she approaches my office bowing after our fashion and begging to have her daughter go.”

  “She is not likely leading anything,” Bren said bluntly. “But may have someone urging her to be part of this. One cannot fault your observation in the least, Geigi-ji. The three reluctant ones ask proper questions. Irene-nadi’s mother believes her child will be in the hands of those she hates. Yet what she can gain from sending her must matter more. That is my opinion.”

  Geigi drew in a breath. “All t
his came up just as I was leaving and trying to gather information on the situation on the coast. I brought the letters. I have apprehensions I attempted to convey to the aiji. But I am feeling I am caught between whatever these Reunioners are up to and my aiji’s determination to keep a promise to his son. I attempted to explain the situation to Tabini. He asked me only if I saw any danger to the young gentleman at the hands of any of these children, and I pointed out that they might attempt to gain favors and influence. He said that that goes on daily and that is fully within the young gentleman’s understanding. I argued the situation further tonight, attempting to explain that these are not Mospheiran children, and that their parents may attempt to use the connection to political advantage. He said I should discuss the matter with you, and that we should take measures, but that he cannot now go back on his promise. Excuses can still be found to stop this meeting or at least delay it until some of these issues are settled. I can prevent their coming. I shall take it on my head, if necessary.”

  “It would greatly distress the young gentleman,” Bren said, “and I have every confidence our young gentleman himself is no fool where it comes to people trying to get their way. If one of his associates presses him too far, I have every confidence they will rapidly meet his great-grandmother’s teaching face to face. The changes in him and the changes in them in the last year will, I think, more confuse the human children than they will him. I have thought about this. I am most concerned that there have been no other children in his vicinity—unless one counts two of his bodyguards—and he has never forgotten what he considers the happiest time in his life. If we attempt to stop him meeting with them—we create a frustrated desire that may have the worst result, particularly if these children develop political notions.”