Silence from the kyo. Absolute, dead silence.
Hakuut asked: “Sound?”
How to answer that one? How did one explain—laughter?
“Good sound,” Bren said. “Laugh. Laugh is opposite of upset.”
“Laugh.” It came out softened, strange. “Laugh is good. Laugh is . . .”
Triple boom.
“Laugh,” Prakuyo said.
Then a sudden, scary boom, from some chest-deep source neither human nor atevi biology managed. “Angry.”
“Angry,” Cajeiri said then, and made an angry face, and struck his palm with his fist.
Then: “Happy.” Broad smile, open hands, in an exaggerated way one almost never saw atevi behave except at home.
“Happy,” Hakuut said. “Good.” Triple flutter. The youngsters’ faces were clearly relieved, freed of atevi restraint despite the circumstances. The kyo boomed and thumped.
Emotions on a platter. Dare one trust congruency?
Back in his apartment, with the parents, the instruments, the analysis bouncing to both Centrals and ship-com, technicians had just gotten a solid piece to work with, if they were not deafened.
Prakuyo interrupted the exchange. Hakuut’s speckle pattern instantly became visible. Hakuut gave a quiet thump, looked down and hooked the fingers of one hand into the other, silent.
Hard not to assume, but in many ways Hakuut seemed as outgoing—and was perhaps, in his own way, as bright and complex—as Cajeiri.
The youngsters likewise went solemn and quiet, a little worried at the lapse.
“And what is this?” Ilisidi said with a flourish of her hand. “Are we afraid? We think not. Prakuyo-nandi, we grow impatient. Do we speak of fixing problems? Of war. And peace? Tell us. Are these children safe? Do we hurt children? We think not!”
“Not hurt,” Prakuyo said. “Not hurt. More Reunioners sit in Bren’s place. Bring!”
No question the kyo heard them. Bren said again, quietly. “Mothers and fathers of the children, Prakuyo-nandi. They want to be near their children.”
A soft string of booms. “Mothers and fathers come sit now. Eat teacakes. All be safe.”
So much for their controlled situation. Prakuyo was challenging him—or thought they were in some game of catch-me-if-you-can.
Prakuyo knew, however, that he knew that Prakuyo could hear what went on in that space, and, knowing that Prakuyo knew, he had put the parents there.
Well, as for teacakes . . . he had personally had a surfeit of teacakes—and at some unpredictable moment the kyo were going to have eaten as many as they could tolerate, too. But for right now, for a full disclosure—to ask for a disclosure from the other side—hell, walls down. All walls down. Bring out the staff. Everybody. Staff, Guild. Everybody.
And try for reciprocity.
“Aiji-ma,” Bren said quietly, “he wishes to talk to the parents. I think we should also introduce staff. All staff.”
“These are sensible folk,” Ilisidi said. “They know. We know. They know we know. Let us save some time and know each other.”
• • •
The order brought a number of people out—Jase, with Artur’s parents, and Gene’s mother; Tano and Algini, who had never yet put in an appearance with the kyo, Narani, and domestic staff from the dowager’s apartment as well; Nawari, and others of the dowager’s security; one-armed Ruheso, and the other three Guild Observers. Artur went to Bren’s apartment door to bring his parents in, and Gene took Irene by the arm and went over to meet his mother as she came out, right before Asicho and Jeladi.
All in all, it was a room-filling collection of atevi and humans—ship-human, Reunioners, and, if one counted the paidhi-aiji, Mospheiran.
And a sizable number of introductions, and explanations. The kyo had asked. The kyo had them all to meet, a number of atevi in Guild black; Jase; a number of serving staff. It was orderly—preponderantly atevi—and the youngsters kept close to their parents. Artur brought his mother and father to give polite little bows to Ilisidi and Cajeiri. Gene and Irene followed their example, with Gene’s mother, all very smoothly managed, court manners, the parents very bravely taking the cues they were given.
The dowager nodded, satisfied, sitting in place. Cajeiri eased out of his seat to stand quietly, anxiously by. Bren positioned himself to manage the parents in that meeting, and said, in ship-speak, “These are Prakuyo-nandi, Matuanu an Matu, and Hakuut an Tri. Honored guests, this is Artur’s father, Artur’s mother.”
There were bows, small, restrained booms. The kyo were on formal manners.
“Gene’s mother,” Bren said, then, in no order, only nearness to him. Gene had no father, and how and when that had happened, whether it was choice, or some connection to the massive loss of life in the kyo attack—had never been a matter on which Bren had questioned the boy. The question occurred to him in that split-second, as Gene’s mother, this diminutive woman said in ship-speak, with tears running down her face, “My son says you had a bad time at Reunion. So did we. Can we just have peace?”
Thump. A vibration that made itself felt in the bones, a second from Matuanu, and Guild all about instantly, dangerously on alert.
Kids. Parents. Kyo. And a history.
“Peace,” Prakuyo said in ship-speak. “Kyo want. Peace.”
“Then,” Gene’s mother said, and held out her hand, “we’re glad you’re here.”
“Gene’s mother,” Bren translated, “says welcome. Good you come.”
“Welcome, Gene’s mother,” Prakuyo said, and reached out a massive hand and touched hers, only touched.
Gene slipped an arm about his mother, leaned close, and said something which kyo and atevi might have heard. Bren couldn’t, though the room was quiet.
Bang. The dowager’s staff. “Staff will serve. We shall sit. Back to duty.”
God. Matuanu and Hakuut had twitched to that as if it were a gunshot. Prakuyo hadn’t. The parents and kids definitely had.
Bren drew in a breath, gestured toward the chairs. “Everyone sit down,” he said in ship-speak. “Captain Graham, where are we on the Central matter?”
“Forty-three minutes,” Jase said, taking his own cue. “I’ll assume the arrangement stands?”
“Yes,” Bren said. There were times, in crisis, when his nerves became astonishingly steady. They had been steady, for several critical moments now, cold, analytical, resolving that his tolerance for kyo demands had gotten them to a situation all common sense should have avoided, and the only way out was to deal with it as it came. Yes, he could have handled an incident. He could have excused it, and talked their way past it, because the issues were too critical, what was at stake was too important. Thousands dead at Reunion, families shattered, all those things—Prakuyo confined six years as a hostage with no negotiations in progress—they’d gotten past that. The past ultimately might have to be discussed. But coldly. Remotely. With a desired outcome in mind.
Gene Parker’s mother had laid it on the table. Your wounds. Mine. Peace.
Impartiality shot to hell.
Forty-three minutes till they had to break this up and get rattled parents and three incredibly stable kids upstairs, and escort the kyo up to tour the nerve centers of the station.
Prakuyo hadn’t asked about Gene’s father. Or the fact that pale-skinned Gene and dark Irene didn’t look to be out of the same parentage. The kyo had hit Reunion that first time . . .
And pulled back. For four years, before Prakuyo had approached the station in a small, vulnerable craft.
Mistakes. All around.
Forty-three minutes to get the emotion dialed down and remind everybody that a repeat of what had happened at Reunion was unthinkable. He didn’t have that many diplomatic tools, no understanding of what value kyo put on life or individuals . . .
Learn what they could. Keep the kyo from shooting at them. Get the kyo to see them as individuals. Get the kyo to form some sort of emotional contact points, some common ground that might at l
east make knowledge itself a fair trade. If they became people in the kyo’s reckoning, whatever people meant to the kyo . . . if the kyo no more than concluded they might offer some benefit to the kyo . . . the less likely it became that the kyo would slide them and their whole existence into the liability column. The kyo admitted they already had a war, which they suggested now was not just a conflict, but a war of annihilation. They were jealous of their territory, but taking on a second enemy, even one unarmed and virtually helpless against the kyo—he had to hope the kyo weren’t bent on creating a protective desolation around them, and he had to take every chance, any chance, to make the kyo see future relations as peaceful.
He’d been, three and four times today, pushed into giving the kyo everything they asked for, the chance to see humans and atevi, then see the Reunioners, talk with them, meet with the parents . . . and they’d come way too close that last time to an unfortunate reaction.
They had the Central visit to get through. Get all the kids and the parents back upstairs, tour the kyo through Central as they’d promised, and then start pressing for reciprocation . . . for kyo revelations, leading ultimately to some basic truths from them before he handed them any other gifts.
There was yet more tea . . . they had to bring in yet another tea service, from staff. There were little sandwiches, for which none of them had great appetite. There were enough chairs, pressed into service from the conference room.
There was a little talk, the kids sitting close to their parents, Irene staying close by Gene and his mother, and all of them saying very little since Anna Parker’s declaration.
“Reunioners go to planet?” Prakuyo asked at one point. “Go now?”
“Year,” Bren said, dodging around their lack of shuttles, their general inability to manage the logistics, which the kyo could see. “Make houses.” As if that were the only delay. The kyo could see for themselves that there was a lack of docking space. A lack of shuttles. One ship, construction long delayed. A new but probably relatively primitive communications network, to their observation.
“Humans make other station?” Prakuyo asked—challenging the facts as given.
Time to draw a little harder line. “How many stations kyo have?”
A flurry of little booms.
And no answer.
You know, Bren thought. We’ve told you what we have. You see what we have here, but you’re not entirely sure. We could be a colony, still primitive. There could be more to us, couldn’t there . . . in that direction at our backs, where you can’t see what is, just what things were, a long time ago?
Let’s see now if you tell me something substantial about yourselves.
“Nandi,” Jago said, “the time.”
It was indeed time. They had fifteen minutes left. And he’d timed the blunt refusal of Prakuyo’s request knowing they were reaching that limit . . . with something else Prakuyo wanted.
“Our human guests should go back upstairs,” Bren said in ship-speak. “We have a schedule to keep.” And in Ragi: “Tano-ji, will you and Algini escort them up, and join us in atevi Central?”
“Nandi,” was the answer, and their guests, in some uncertainty, stood up, and bowed nicely, and clustered together, awaiting direction, which Tano and Algini moved to provide.
“Nandiin,” Irene said, with a proper little bow, and to the kyo, “Nandiin.”
“Good,” Prakuyo said. “Thank you come.”
“Thank you,” Irene said in kyo, not badly done, Bren thought. Anna Parker, too, managed, “Thank you,” in kyo.
That . . . was not badly done, Bren thought, standing, watching every move, every twitch of body language.
“Thank you,” Artur said in kyo, and Gene likewise.
There could be worse outcomes. The only tense moment, diplomatically speaking, in the last hour, had been his own answer to Prakuyo, and Prakuyo hadn’t raised an eyebrow—figuratively speaking. Hadn’t shown any spots. Hakuut had lost a few. But Hakuut’s freckles had come back quickly. Hakuut stood, now, a little restive, bobbing a little as the children and their parents exited to the foyer, with Tano and Algini. Hakuut was the lively one. Matuanu had never twitched at his refusal. He’d just given a long, low rumble that might be words.
“Go to Central now,” Bren said, once the kids and parents had cleared the foyer. “Time to go.”
“Prakuyo go to Central,” Prakuyo said. “Matuanu and Hakuut stay here.”
Leave two behind?
Why?
Leave their establishment to be gone through—with all its equipment?
They could lock the door to his apartment. That said something, too.
Was Prakuyo challenging him again? Was that the game?
Or was it leaving Hakuut’s curiosity and Matuanu’s dour presence alone in this place, to run a little search, or deliver an extensive report to that ship out there.
It put Guild and household staff in charge of saying no if someone wanted to go where they ought not, which set up a potential difficulty. Ilisidi might manage the situation, fragile as she was. The kyo respected her as one of the original three.
Jase could stay. But the one of them who could hold his own in language, and who had at least the cachet of the original three . . . was nine years old.
Cajeiri and the dowager, with Ilisidi in her quarters, Cenedi in charge—her guard, and the Guild Observers—that arrangement upped the stakes if the kyo intended to investigate the premises. Or challenge the staff.
He signaled Jago, said in Ragi, not remotely making an effort to be quiet, not knowing the limits of the kyo eavesdropping, “The walking involved will be strenuous for the dowager. Since our guests wish to stay, she could well be here, and it would satisfy the numbers if the young gentleman were to remain with her.” The hell it satisfied the numbers. Two and two were the worst numerology—which only worked if he and Jase and Prakuyo were, though absent, part of the arrangement. “I think I am quite resolved on this.”
Jago was never slow to take a hint, especially when it came with a deliberate move of the eyes toward the situation in the sitting area.
“Shall I suggest this to the dowager?”
“Suggest it to Cenedi, indeed.” One sincerely hoped that by his upping the stakes, and countering the two kyo remaining with Cajeiri and Ilisidi, would make Matuanu, in particular, inclined not to act without Prakuyo assessing the situation.
Jago went off to speak to Cenedi, who would read the numbers very much the same way, and relay them to Ilisidi, who was not in the habit of taking her instructions from the paidhi-aiji.
But neither was the aiji-dowager in the least slow to take a cue and to find it convenient on her own grounds.
So he was not surprised when the dowager declared she had had quite enough of hiking about the corridors and riding in lifts.
“My great-grandson may do as he pleases, but should any question arise among our guests, having someone here able to translate would be a convenience. He can surely find some activity of benefit here, where he is of use. He has spent quite enough time in Central, surely, to satisfy his curiosity. And he and Hakuut-nandi seem to have an accord.”
Cajeiri had stood up when his great-grandmother had begun to make a statement, and when Ilisidi had gotten to the part about having someone to translate, an experienced eye could see the shift between young boy about to protest, and wise young lad realizing he was being handed a solemn, important order.
“Yes, mani,” he said with a little bow, and, clever lad: “Cajeiri sit talk to Hakuut and Matuanu.”
If there had been any plan to leave those two to explore the place—which, with senior Guild and Guild Observers in residence, would have been resisted—they had headed that off.
And if Prakuyo’s hope was simply to have a chance to talk to him off the record that the kyo were likely sure they were making, they had just arranged that, too, give or take the dowager’s presence, and Cajeiri’s.
20
Something was going on,
Cajeiri was well sure. The one kyo he was most sure of was up to something, or checking what was fact, or just trying to see what the rest of the station looked like, being very like the place he had been a prisoner for years.
It was a little scary to be left to protect mani, but they certainly had enough Guild in the premises to deal with any threat, except from the ship out there.
Was mani scared? If mani was ever alarmed, he was not sure scared was the word to describe it, because mani could be dangerous, and he was sure nand’ Bren did not want any alarms at all in his absence.
Nand’ Bren had left him to deal with the kyo, and mani would watch, unless she had to do something, so it was up to him to make sure that did not happen.
So how did he keep everybody out of mischief?
He had a game set. He had brought it because he had never trusted he would be included in everything. He had made plans not to be bored.
Now, in the most important thing he had ever been trusted with, he thought of that, which atevi had gotten from humans two hundred years ago and changed to suit themselves.
“Shall we have my game set?” he asked mani.
“An excellent notion, if our guests find interest in it.”
“Jico-ji,” he asked Veijico, who asked staff, and they had it from his room very quickly.
He set out the checkered board. He held up the aiji, and identified it, and the opposing one, and showed their moves. He held up the aiji-consort, and identified her, and showed her moves. In similar fashion he held up the aiji-dowager, and likewise the advisor, and the aiji’s fortress.
Then the clan lords, all alike, within the association.
He and mani showed the capture—of course he put a clan lord in jeopardy of mani’s advisor. That piece went to the side.
Then they reset the game, and mani suggested he play against Hakuut, mani advising him, and Matuanu advising Hakuut.
He began thinking just then that it showed exactly how they were, except if they substituted the heir apparent for the aiji-consort. And mani was a very, very good player.
Hakuut, however, was quick, and so was Matuanu.
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