He’d just depressed his high spirits. Thinking about his family reliably did that.
That was why he always wrote last to Tabini, which let him report what he’d done right, and the success they’d had, which drew his mind off the Island and Toby’s problems.
Aiji-ma, Jase-aiji informs us we are about to emerge into the solar system. When we do, I shall be able to transmit this letter to you, and within a day, I hope to hear your voice. Within a handful of days I look forward to being in Shejidan again, and to making a full report of all we have seen and done.
I look forward to returning to you the young lord your son, at the completion of his seventh year, as he is pleased to remind us. We are delighted by his general good grace at the collapse of plans for a proper acknowledgment of this anniversary and hope that my lord may in person and more fitly congratulate this young man, since young man he has indeed become, as tall as I am, wise beyond his years and always your son, aiji-ma, to the dowager’s satisfaction and the delight of myself and my staff. I shall forever treasure my two years with him, and hope that what small guidance I may have given him has been appropriate and useful.
Long life and health, aiji-ma, from myself and all my household.
He folded up the computer and rang for staff, looking around his little cabin, his green-sheeted, growing world for the last two years.
Jeladi showed up to help him undress for a before-bed shower—staff would have been greatly distressed if he had ducked their good offices, and in truth, if Jeladi nabbed his clothes, laundry would end up done before 0416h, items would end up in the right bags, and the exactly appropriate suit would turn up clean and ready in the morning. He gave his staff as little trouble as possible, knowing that they would have minimal rest tonight. He hadn’t checked the lockers in his cabin, but he would lay bets that most of them were empty by now, void of all his small personal items, and that they had kept out only those things they thought he might use before bed, for dressing in the morning, and for whatever amount of time—hours or a day or so—it might take them to get to dock and get to their own apartment.
Their own apartment. That was a thought. His own stationside bed. It seemed impossible he could be enjoying that comfort in the near future.
He had a leisurely hot shower, slid between the sheets and ordered the lights to minimum.
Jago might not show up tonight. He wished she would: her living presence kept him from pre-emergence nerves, just by her being there. But that was not likely. Jago and Banichi and the whole staff would be scrambling to break down the roomful of technical equipment in their monitoring station, equipment which had grown increasingly interlaced with ship-sensors. That would foreseeably take a little longer to disconnect and pack than it had to haul out of its padding and set up, and getting the crates out of cargo and all the gear into those crates was going to be a scramble.
So here he was, eyes open, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and now the thoughts started—worries about things he might need once ashore.
Worries, more substantial, about the human contingent they were bringing the station and the world—bringing not alone a pack of children intent on birthday gifts—but the population, the entire surviving population of a defunct station that had once ruled the Phoenix and set policy for all humans in reach. The Reunioners included the old Pilots’ Guild, that had ruled the station they now governed, for starters, and when they had been in power, had so alienated his own colonist ancestors that they had dived onto the atevi planet to get away from them.
Well, the tables were entirely turned now. Atevi ruled the station, and human descendants of those refugees were the shopkeepers and a good part of the technicians on it.
It wasn’t the xenophobic station the Reunioners had once ruled. And the poison of the old Pilots’ Guild wouldn’t spread into today’s station. The station occupants and the current crew of the ship wouldn’t let it.
There was hope for the Reunioners’ future in the likes of Bjorn and Artur, scary as the association of the terrible five might be.
There was hope in those Reunioner kids and in their forgiving parents, who were sensibly anxious, but who had not refused the youngsters’ getting together with Cajeiri. That was on one side of the equation. But they also had Braddock aboard, the former Reunion station-master, the former head of Reunion’s branch of the Pilots’ Guild, and they had to do something with him. There might be, though quiet through the voyage, certain stationers in the population who might support Braddock with sabotage and sedition. And they had no way of telling when, or if.
Which was why Braddock had spent the voyage under close guard.
But when they got to dock, they then had to figure what to do with him, since he hadn’t broken any station laws, or any human laws, for that matter. And they had to do it with political finesse—their own station being a democracy, and fairly low in population.
They were bringing, in their 4078 new residents, a fair-sized voting block sharing a common culture, common problems, and common experience. And Braddock, with whom they had to do something. Soon.
Certainly the Reunioners would have a major and different opinion within the Pilots’ Guild that existed on the atevi station, and in the long haul, he could only hope for more like Artur’s parents.
He knew what he’d personally like to do with Braddock: take him down to the planet and let him loose on Mospheira, where he could join the local hate-mongers and become one of a few hundred troublemakers the government already kept an eye on, rather than a point of ferment in an immigrant population that was, depend on it, going to have their troubles adjusting to a station ruled by atevi and regulated by rules they hadn’t made.
He didn’t know if he could possibly justify removing Braddock to the planet. He didn’t know if he had the authority just to do it. But Captain Sabin might give that order, if she retained custody of Braddock under some arcane provision of ship law. He wished he’d talked to her on that delicate topic before now, before they were suddenly short of time.
And he was sure she was constrained by delicate politics in that regard, because Braddock had actually been head of the main body of the Pilots’ Guild and she, head of the same Guild on the ship, had simply booted him out of office and taken that post herself.
So there were considerations, even for the iron-handed senior captain of the Phoenix. Sabin didn’t give a damn about appearances, ordinarily, but she did have to give a damn about the broader electorate on the station, when the Guild such as it was did get around to its next elections, and various issues came out.
Her reelection to the governing post she’d used a captain’s authority to appropriate was fairly likely—was almost a certainty, unless some challenge to her blew up once they got to the station and dealt with the other ship’s captain, Jules Ogun. But still, there were appearances to maintain, and there were certainly issues that could blow up, not least among them what they did with Braddock, and how the Reunioners reacted when they got onto the station and met the rules that restricted atevi-human contact and placed certain decisions wholly in atevi hands. Sabin at the head of the Guild was their best insurance that the new bloc of population wouldn’t be a problem, that they’d learn the situation before demagogues took to exploiting it: she knew them; Ogun didn’t. They damned sure didn’t want Reunioners trying to run things, not until they’d had a long, long time to learn how the human-atevi agreements worked.
Then—then there was explaining to Tabini that they hadn’t gotten to Reunion before the aliens had, that the alien kyo had taken possession of Reunion as an outpost built in what they considered their territory, and that, no, the kyo hadn’t gotten their hands on the human archive—they’d wiped that from the files—but the kyo did have this very inconvenient habit of considering whatever they’d met as part of them forever. They didn’t disengage. Ever.
Fortunately they were able now to talk to the kyo, who seemed willing to reason, but—
In interspecies dealings
, there was always a but.
In this case, there was a big one. The kyo, no better at interstellar diplomacy, it seemed, than the Reunion colonists, had contacted something considerable on the other side of their space, something they were very much afraid of. Kyo had fairly well demonstrated their ability to slag a complex human structure. And kyo, for reasons likely as convolute as the atevi sensitivity to math, didn’t relinquish any contact they’d once made. More, the kyo authority seemed, at least on very superficial examination of their attitudes, to be homogenous—without dissidence. Without a concept of permissible dissidence. This was, in interspecies relations as much as in internal politics, worrisome.
Maybe they’d swallowed their internal opposition. Or destroyed it. Or just ignored it.
Sticky. Damned sticky.
Sorry, he’d have to say to Tabini. I did the best I could. We all did. But the kyo are out there. Something else is out there. We’re not sure, on the example of kyo behavior with the Reunioners, if we can keep the kyo away from us.
He’d shut his eyes without knowing he’d shut them. When he realized he had, he decided to try sleeping, finding himself very tired and not quite knowing why. Maybe it was just the letdown after a long, long voyage.
He was aware of a hand on his shoulder. Someone wanting his attention. The intercom panel was flashing red, a flood of blinking light dyeing the cabin walls, all its strands and streamers of spider plants. And he had slept.
“We are about to make the drop, nandi.” It was Narani looming over him, not Jago. “Be sure you are secure.”
“Indeed,” he murmured. It was the predawn watches. Jago hadn’t come to bed. “Is everything all right, Rani-ji?”
“Proceeding very well,” Narani said. “We are nearly ready. I have put out appropriate clothing, nandi, for the event. We shall be here as soon as possible after the arrival to assist you to dress.”
“Your safety comes first, nadi,” he said. He felt guilty, privileged to sleep while his staff had surely been up and working through the night. But that was the order of the universe. “Go, go quickly, nadi-ji.”
Narani left. Left the door open, admitting a white light that ameliorated the red flash of the panel and made the spider plants look less nightmarish. And he was tired, caught up out of sleep. He had no idea what time it was. If he just lifted his head he might be able to see the clock, but that effort took energy.
The siren jolted him out of a drift toward sleep, and Sabin’s voice echoed from on high.
“Sabin here. We’re about to make drop. Three minute warning. Take hold. Take hold, take hold.”
Jago was usually beside him when they went through one of these transitions. He wasn’t used to fending for himself, which, when he thought about it, was ridiculous. He ordered the room lights on, gave a fast scan of the premises—but no, Narani hadn’t left the clothing on the chair as he usually did. The items must be in a locker. Nothing was going to fly loose, nothing was going to float. He was safe. He lay back again.
And depend on Sabin, no emotion, no promises, no flourishes about homecoming, and no bets laid, nothing to indicate this wasn’t just one of the many ordinary transitions.
Eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Slight feeling of floating. It wasn’t that they exactly stopped spin—so Jase informed him—but that the effects of the shift did that to them. Things became highly uncertain for a moment, stomach-wrenching.
Home, he told himself. Home. And tried not to think about the circumsolar rocks.
The sight of all those spider plants lifting their tendrils at once was always too strange for words.
Then the green curtain sank and hung as before.
“We’re in, cousins,” Sabin’s voice, uncharacteristically full of feeling this time. “We are in.”
Emotion from Sabin. God. Unprecedented.
And he needed his clothes. Needed to move. He scrambled up, went to the bath for a quick apology to hygiene, and when he came out to dress, lo and behold, Jeladi and Bindanda had made it in, had clothes ready for him to step into, lace-bearing shirt already inserted into formal coat.
On with the boots, equally quick. He dropped into a chair and ducked his head for Jeladi to loose his hair, comb it, and rebraid it with the white ribbon of the paidhi’s office, which he had never abandoned.
Ready, in record time—not a sort of thing atevi applauded, haste in preparation, but there were moments aboard the ship when haste served very well.
“Nadiin-ji,” he acknowledged their effort. “Have your breakfast, cautiously. I shall make do with whatever the dowager brings along.”
“By no means, nandi,” Bindanda said, and took a packet from the desk-top. “One may find breakfast for the two captains, as well.”
“Danda-ji, you are a treasure.” He took said packet and gave a little bow to his staff, tucking it away out of sight in his lefthand coat pocket, Bindanda’s little high-energy fruit and nut sticks, if he could judge by the size of it . . . and he lost no time betting Banichi and Jago were similarly provided, not to mention the dowager and her party, and Gin and Jerry. A snack in reserve was a very good idea, they had learned, in a long bridge-side vigil. Bridge crew might change shifts, but galley didn’t function until the ship had gotten the all-clear. And not that he thought Sabin or, by her example, Jase, would partake, but there, they would have made the gesture.
He headed into the hall, got as far as the security station before Banichi and Jago met him, outside a room now broken down to crates, and by now the dowager and her party were out their door, joining them in the corridor, the dowager and Cenedi and Cajeiri, all of them proceeding with some dispatch down to the end of the corridor, and out.
Gin and Jerry met them at the lifts.
“May one wish the young aiji,” Gin said in fairly complex Ragi, “the felicitation of completing a seventh year?”
“Nandi,” Cajeiri said with a bow, with outstanding good grace for a lad deprived of his birthday party.
“Indeed,” Bren said. Gin’s Ragi had gotten good, but he bet she had practiced that one. “A seventh year of extraordinary nature.”
“One is extremely gratified, nandi,” the boy muttered, eyes downcast, in the ragged remnant of his good grace. The glum tone flirted with the dowager’s displeasure. The fearsome cane tapped the floor just once, a reminder.
In that moment the lift arrived, saving the boy further compliments. Banichi and Cenedi secured the doors while they got in, the dowager first, with Cajeiri, and then Bren, and Gin and Jerry, while security folded in after and the doors shut, one of those rhythms of life, protocol, and precedence that had operated like clockwork in their two-year voyage, for, oh, so many trips up and down this lift system.
“We should—” Gin began to say as the car started to move.
Siren. Emergency stop. Cenedi moved to brace the dowager and Cajeiri, Banichi moved to brace Bren, and Jago grabbed Gin and Jerry with one arm, and flew up. She made a terrible crash, and thumped back down onto her feet, Gin and Jerry with her.
“Jago,” Bren exclaimed, afraid she had hit the overhead.
“Of no consequence, nandi,” Jago said, pressing both Gin and Jerry against one of the recessed safety grips. She was hurt, the only one of them who was hurt, to all appearances. Bren frowned in concern.
“We have arrived,” the intercom said from the ceiling of the car, which Bren realized queasily had not in fact stopped: it was the ship that had moved. “We are at home port. Report any injuries. The maneuver was automatic due to system traffic. We remain in a takehold condition.”
System traffic, Bren said to himself, still shaken. System traffic, for God’s sake!
So much for missing space junk. Somebody had put a damned spacecraft in their way. And where had traffic congestion come from, in a station that derived most of its support from the planet it orbited?
He kept his eye on Jago, who flexed her left shoulder and looked otherwise undamaged.
The car arrived at
its destination, meanwhile, as if nothing had happened. The door opened onto the bridge, and Jase’s man Kaplan, in fatigues, reached the door and held it open for them. “You’re clear to the shelter, ma’am, sir,” Kaplan said with an awkward little bow. “Go, go! We’re still in takehold.”
When ship’s crew said move, moving fast was a good idea. A padded recess existed between the lift and the bridge, two narrow walls, just to the side of their usual observation post, for just such a purpose. “The shelter,” Bren informed Banichi, in case he hadn’t followed all of it, and Jago took Gin and Jerry along, Cenedi walking with the dowager and Cajeiri in the lead, all with utmost dispatch. They entered the padded area and their security took strong hold of the available handgrips, to protect their more fragile lords.
They stayed there, ready for imminent, joint-breaking movement for what might be five minutes. But the ship stayed steady. “What injury, nadi?” Bren asked Jago, who, directly asked, gave a shrug.
“Bruises, nadi.” Never saying that the two humans she was trying to protect had gotten between her and the one handgrip that might have prevented her hitting the overhead.
“What just happened, nandiin?” Cajeiri asked his elders.
“One surmises,” Bren said, in the absence of other answers, “that the ship dodged some sort of spacecraft. It seems we braked.” He was trying to calculate the vector of their violent movement relative to the ship’s axis of motion. He thought the motion might have been braking, not acceleration, but his rattled brain refused to figure the angles. Refused to function clearly. What in hell spacecraft was there for them to run into? Had they nearly hit the second starship, in the shipyard, the one Ogun was building?
The navigators had been so cocksure they knew their approach. And that presumably included knowing the location of the shipyard and the construction.
Kaplan showed up again, at the end of the shelter, and immediately seized a handgrip. “Is everybody all right in here? We can get a medic now. We’re in a condition yellow.”
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