Convergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  “They may visit it but we may not.”

  “It is not in our interest to visit Reunion, aiji-ma. They have claimed it. One believes they are studying it. But they are promising not to go closer to us than Reunion so long as they are at war with anyone. And we promise not to go closer to them than Reunion, which we may do, from our side, if we wish to contact them while they are still at war. We are given a signal to use to identify ourselves should we make that choice. But one does not advise we seek that contact.”

  “Which leads one to ask—why?”

  “Their enemy is human,” Ilisidi said.

  Tabini looked at her in a shock he never would have shown outsiders.

  “The ship Phoenix came here hundreds of years ago,” Bren said, merging facts Tabini well knew—with things they had just learned. “It had lost its way in the heavens. It first found itself near a dangerous star, which killed many of its best and bravest. They then worked their way toward this star, this world, and built Alpha in our heavens, the station from which all Mospheirans descended—before the ship moved on to build Reunion two centuries ago, at a place with resources but no green planet. When the ship left Alpha the first time—the ship-aijiin declared they were trying to find their way home. One now believes—and I have said this to very few, aiji-ma—I believe at least one among the captains had a good notion in what direction to look. Alpha was a first stepping-stone after their original disaster, and when Phoenix left, it never meant to come back to Alpha at all, unless it met extreme difficulty.

  “Reunion was the next stepping-stone they built, and they were preparing to leave it behind, too. Unfortunately . . . the third stepping-stone they planned to make was at a kyo star, perhaps the kyo star. What the ship did not know—was that, on the other side of kyo space, the kyo had been at war with humans. Who these humans are, whether they are a splinter, or the world from which all humans come, I do not know. How this war started, I am not at all certain, either. I am certain that Phoenix, years ago, setting out from our star, and then from Reunion, had no idea the kyo even existed. Phoenix may have detected a civilization of some sort at the star it proposed to visit next—they have instruments that can see that sort of thing. They may well have thought the civilization was human, and they seem to have been cautious, aware that time may have worked profound changes. The senior ship-aiji, Ramirez, on his own, had prepared paidhiin, Jase-aiji and Yolande, schooled in languages of the Earth of humans—so he could talk with other humans after so long an absence. He had done everything generations of ship-aijiin before him had done, advancing and searching. But this time, I think anticipating a meeting with other humans, he had prepared people to speak in whatever language they might need.”

  Tabini listened silently. Some of the history he had long known; but that the captains might have searched with the means to find others out in the heavens—that was news; and that there were humans fighting the kyo—that was very grim news indeed.

  “They arrived at this next star,” Bren continued, “and immediately met a kyo ship. Ships, aiji-ma, have a distinctive voice, an electromagnetic voice, that clearly, the moment Phoenix heard it, said—this is another ship and this is not human.

  “Ramirez ran. He ran for another destination than Reunion, trying to lead this ship off from Reunion, but the kyo, who had been at war with humans for a hundred years, had been watching Reunion, which was giving off its own electromagnetic voice, a voice virtually identical to their enemies’ voice. And once Phoenix made its move from that station into kyo space, the kyo attacked Reunion.”

  “This voice,” Tabini said, gold eyes intense in thought, “this distinctive voice ships and stations have . . . Would not this kyo place give a kyo signal to Ramirez-aiji? Should he not have known there were inhabitants?”

  “I also have wondered, aiji-ma. Jase-aiji said that a planet’s voice is detectible at a vast distance, and a ship’s voice is generally lost in the star’s noise. But a planet’s voice, Jase-aiji says, can be muddled, and hard to read—especially—this is my surmise—if one is expecting something of a certain nature and listening for that.”

  “As the kyo mistook Reunion’s voice.”

  “Exactly so. A quiet voice. And once struck, Reunion did not retaliate—it had no ability to do so. This, apparently, was not what the kyo expected. The kyo drew back to wait and see what would happen—whether Phoenix would come back with reinforcements.

  “Phoenix did come back, but alone. And left again. It very likely was tracked, which may have brought kyo to observe this solar system, again, watching, waiting, all the years that we were building the shuttles and rising into space. What they may have seen, even at great distance, confused them—because we would not have the pattern of a human world—we would not have the pattern that high technology would give us. We were not what the kyo expected.

  “And when Ramirez-aiji told at least half the truth on his deathbed and when we traveled aboard Phoenix, looking for survivors on Reunion, then the kyo sought contact.”

  “Could they know atevi were aboard?”

  “If they were watching this world, they would know we are different. They would know that, in the ten years after Phoenix came back to us, the world’s voice changed. The station came alive and we flew in space, but only in a small way. They knew we were the same ship, surely. But maybe the fact that Phoenix is old gave it a slightly different signal. And maybe, too, we were in an odd direction, a place that did not fit with what they knew. Something made them wonder and made them signal. And when they signaled, we signaled. We began to communicate. We asked to take the Reunioners. And they set a condition.”

  “The prisoner they held.”

  “Exactly. They wanted him. Or his remains. And it was our good fortune he was alive. Our kyo, Prakuyo an Tep, whom we rescued from Reunioner detention, had learned a little ship-speak—and he picked up Ragi very fast. He introduced us. He spoke for us. And the kyo said they would come visit—to see what we look like close at hand, we assumed. And surely that was no small part of their visit. But the more important thing—they brought a prisoner of their own, a human—and let me meet this person in secret—to see what would happen, certainly. To see if I could talk to him—and, one is certain, aiji-ma, to know where my sentiments would lie.

  “I was indeed able to talk to him, which they had not been able to do. I learned his name. I learned he was a person of some integrity, and I took a chance, aiji-ma. I taught him how to learn their language. I took it on myself to give the kyo a human paidhi. In seven days—I taught him basics, I restored him to a better appearance, I told him about atevi, but very little about this world. I let him believe, if he would, that ship had met ship in deep space. And in those seven days, I gave him the structure of the kyo language. I gave him words that would let him gain other words. I set him in communication with Prakuyo an Tep, and with influential persons who also had come on the ship. I gave him the best instruction in the paidhi’s office that I could give in the time I had, and told him it was his burden to find a way to talk to his humans, and to the kyo, to find out the causes of their war. And to end it.”

  His voice shook, nearly to breaking. Above all else, with Tabini and Ilisidi, he did not want that. Tabini needed facts. He needed details. “I told Prakuyo not to tell this man where I came from, and not to let him go to other humans, either. For one thing, I fear his own people might not let him return, and would not let him end the war. For another, on our side of space—I decided that neither the ship-folk nor the Reunioners nor Mospheirans should learn that the kyo’s enemy are other humans. Not until the kyo war ends. His name is Guy Cullen, but the kyo cannot pronounce that. They call him Ku’yen. Ku’yen is what he will be. I gave him everything I could. Except the truth. Which I have withheld from all our allies but Jase.”

  There was a small silence.

  “Tea,” Tabini said, into that hush in the room. That was the atevi c
ustom, when passions rose. Tea. And calm.

  “I shall pour it,” Bren said, being, in the room, least in rank.

  Tabini pushed himself back from his desk. “We need the exercise,” Tabini said.

  • • •

  Home. It was home in Cajeiri’s mind, now, though it was spooky, being let out of the lift upstairs, alone, with his aishid.

  And he had to ask himself why his stomach felt tense, and tell himself there was no reason.

  But Father, downstairs, in his office, had things to talk about with nand’ Bren and mani, which confirmed what he had thought, that there were things mani and nand’ Bren had to say that he should not hear, regarding the kyo, regarding that document nand’ Bren had brought back.

  He did not think he had deserved not to be trusted.

  Possibly—possibly, he thought, his father had just happened to be in the downstairs office for other reasons, and possibly his father had sent him upstairs because his mother really was all afire to see him.

  It was possible. His mother wanted things to be in their place, and people to be in their places, and she had not wanted him to go up to the station at all. She might, in her fierce way, be anxious to see him.

  But it was also possible he had been sent up simply because secrets were about to pass downstairs, and if that was the case, his mother might not even come out of her suite to meet him. That had been the way of things since his baby sister had arrived, well, mostly, and the situation did not make him sorry. Perhaps his mother would pretend not to have worried at all, and take her time about seeing him, once she had word he was indeed back. That was very possible. She kept her displeasure cool, and easy to bear. She had made one or two moves to bring him closer, but such moods came and went, and her detachment—that was a breach never quite made right. He had been brought up by mani, on that long trip through space, and his mother had let him go. She had had to let him go. For his safety. But any reminder of his absence with mani upset her to this day.

  So, well, if that was the case, they only had to slip in quietly; the major domo would let them in, and then they only had to head to the inner hall and his own suite as quietly as five people could.

  “We shall try to slip in,” he said to his aishid.

  “Your mother is expecting you,” Antaro said, in electronic communication, constantly, with other Guild, inside and outside the apartment.

  “Oh,” he said, walking toward the apartment door. There was no help for it, then. Expecting him. And doubtless upset. “You need not be there. Go on to the suite.”

  “We should hear,” Antaro said. Antaro and Jegari, sister and brother—they were the oldest and the youngest of his bodyguards. Taibeni—his father’s clan—and younger in years, but longer with him.

  “So we should,” Lucasi said. Veijico and Lucasi, another sister and brother team, several years older, but still in their teens. They were his household, along with Eisi and Liedi, who were grown-ups, and patient with his wants, all the same.

  It was loyalty. Man’chi. Whatever his troubles, they shared them. They were his household, these six, his advisors, his protection, his better sense on most occasions.

  And that better sense advised him now to go directly to his mother. He wished his stomach were not in a knot at the prospect. There was no reason for it. He knew nothing he should not know, so there was nothing he could do wrong. He just did not expect an easy meeting.

  He had met with the kyo, who all the world feared could just blow up the space station with the push of a button. And he had been nervous at that. But there was a peculiar kind of nervousness his mother could set into him—wanting to please her, and absolutely convinced he never would. Not quite. Not in the way he imagined he should.

  Maybe it went both ways. Maybe his mother viewed him with the same nervousness, dreading to be upset by a situation neither of them could have helped. He’d been able to figure out alien words. He’d learned to talk to the kyo. Could it possibly be harder to figure out what his mother meant, in the language they shared?

  He had no chance to set his hand on the door. He never tried. The major d’, inside, whisked it open, also electronically forewarned, and expecting him.

  “Your mother,” the major d’ said, “is waiting in her sitting room.”

  “Yes,” he said. Her sitting room, not the main one. He slipped the top button of his coat, seeing his own servants, Eisi and Liedi, there to provide him another. The travel-worn coat slipped away. The lighter coat went on, cool from the depths of the closet, and his aishid shed their baggage into the hands of other Guild, who guarded the apartment. “Is everything well?” Cajeiri asked the major d’. “Is she happy?”

  “One believes she is relieved, young aiji. As always, when you return safely.”

  • • •

  “Who knows about this, paidhi-ji?” Tabini asked, when he had set aside his cup.

  “The aiji-dowager,” Bren said, with a respectful nod toward Ilisidi. “Cenedi, I believe.”

  “Cenedi and Nawari,” Ilisidi said. “Cajeiri does not.”

  “Jase-aiji. No one else, of the ship-folk, though he may have told the ship-aijiin.”

  “Is that not a danger?” Tabini asked.

  “The ship-aijiin, Jase-aiji says, were driven by their original mission, to find an answer and find out where they were. But now they have a base at Alpha. They have all other directions to explore but one, and the original mission is now satisfied. It is Jase’s sense that the crew knowing at this time might not be desirable: it is too close to Ramirez’ lifetime, and loyalties are still active. But that the four ship-aijiin should know—and understand this document—makes it less likely that they would willingly take the ship in that direction. Even subtracting the fact that the kyo have armaments that could destroy the ship, they have just freed the ship from the governance of the ancient Pilots’ Guild, which they had come to detest, in the person of the Reunion stationmaster, Braddock. They have no desire, now that they know where they are, to go where some other authority may seek to direct them. Their freedom lies in all directions but that one. They are safe, they are in command, they see their future clear, and they have no problems except the difficulties of Alpha Station—all of which we can resolve. We have new science—which we gained at Reunion—which will increase our own prosperity. We have every possibility of having the kyo as our shield from any attempt of other humans to come here. There is every hope for a good future . . . in which the notion of the paidhi-aiji as the dispenser of human science is becoming obsolete. I see no future for restriction. The whole of the human Archive should be open to Mospheira, to Alpha, to the Reunioners, to the ship—and to the aishidi’tat, without restriction. Our science is one science. Or it will be, in not so many years.”

  “Amazing,” Tabini said, who was not one to use that word. “We have come a long way, paidhi.”

  “A very long way,” he said.

  “But we shall not have highways,” Ilisidi said firmly. “We shall not become Mospheira.”

  “No,” Bren said. “I shall never urge we should have highways.”

  The building of a railroad through a string of clan territories and hunting ranges centuries ago had set up the supremacy of the Ragi atevi and created the Western Association, the aishidi’tat, which now stretched from shore to shore of the monocontinent and set the capital at Shejidan. It had put Tabini’s dynasty in power, and despite the advent of air travel, the development of a space program, and the dowager’s recent campaign for ocean traffic, rail remained the primary mode of long-distance travel . . . thus preserving the unique cultures, the traditional patterns, dialects, and market communities essential to the atevi way of life. Mospheira had developed traffic, and highways—and the mainland had rail. They were two different lifestyles, two cultures which, after two hundred years sharing the world, still couldn’t speak each other’s language. Which was
probably still a good thing.

  “And have you told this secret to the Presidenta on Mospheira?” Tabini asked.

  “Not yet. I am asking myself whether I should.”

  “Gin-nandi does not know.”

  “Gin-nandi does not know. Nor does Lord Geigi. Only my aishid. They were with me. No one else on my staff. No one else on the station. No one on this earth but the aiji-dowager, her closest guards, and now yourself, aiji-ma.”

  “How is the Presidenta’s security?”

  “Subject to elections . . . not themselves, but in terms of the Presidenta they serve, so that, over time, their service is mutable. It worries me. I would not tell the leadership of the Reunioners, and I am far from certain I should tell the Presidenta, who is my oldest ally, older than Gin. I am inclined not to. It could ruin them, should it become known that they knew and kept it secret. But likewise, the Human Heritage Party, that brought so much trouble to the world, will use any argument it can to promote fear of outsiders. The kyo’s attack on Reunion is something they will certainly try to use. If they found out this secret, they would try to argue the kyo cannot have the same interests, that the distant humans are our natural allies—to which I certainly cannot agree—and that we should launch a campaign to join them against the kyo. That it would be extreme folly, that it might be factually wrong, that it might destroy everything we have built—that is an acceptable risk to them—an acceptable risk, if one thinks a few thousand humans with no ship and no weapons could attack a people who could wipe out our presence in space with one strike. Heritage Party leaders would not be the ones to set out across space and risk their lives. What they would do is stir up fear, use the public outcry to get elected to office, and immediately put through measures to be sure relations with the aishidi’tat are continually disrupted and that the Reunioners, another variety of outsider, are kept unemployed. Their vision is mostly for present gain for their party. Troubles they might cause in the future are not on their personal horizon.”