Explorer (21 page)

“Fuel load wasn’t ready,” was Sabin’s immaculately honest answer, along with, “Local control, local politics, but negotiable.” That could cover anything, including armed conflict. “What changes here? What’s our fuel situation?”

There
was the prime question.

Meanwhile galley served more tea and sandwiches, and Narani and the dowager’s staff sent up delicacies for the dowager
and
for humans on the bridge—weary bridge crew, crew who’d stayed far longer than their own shift, while below, crew chafed to be out of confinement in quarters. Officers of the next shift sent wary inquiries, briefing themselves, a busy, busy flow of conversation on several channels, C1 to C12. One had never appreciated how much went on, not even counting the flow of atevi communications aboard, which was another several channels.

The dowager took possession of Jase’s quarters. Bren meanwhile stuck close to the bridge, eating a sandwich while wandering between the atevi settled into the executive corridor and the human crew in constant activity on the bridge.

Jase had suggested, not for the first time, that they might take advantage of the moment to go to shift change. Bren’s own knees began to protest he’d stood long enough; and he had no doubt Sabin’s older bones had to be aching far worse than his as she kept up that slow, mostly silent patrol, occasionally commenting into the communications flow.

Waiting, he was sure, for some answer, from some quarter, not likely to rest until it did come; and now the reply-clock was thirty-two minutes into negative territory.

Bridge crew took intermittent rests, a few at each console moving about on break, or, by turns, head
pillowed on arms, resting weary eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting.

“Request you proceed with approach, captain. Explanation after you dock.”

It
wasn’t
the positive fuel answer they wanted. It wasn’t,
we have everything in order, proceed toward the fueling port.

“They may not anticipate the alien craft can understand our conversation,” Bren murmured—wishing that were so, wishing that the Guild had miraculously turned cooperative—or that the alien out there did understand a common language. There was no proof of either. “One might distrust this request to dock first.”

“C1, repeat the last query.” That was Sabin’s answer, cold and calm, as if they hadn’t just waited the lengthy time for the last inadequate answer, as if she weren’t, like all of them, aching to have basic questions settled and to know for certain they had fuel. But:
do it again,
was the response, in essence.
Do it again until we get an answer we like.

And meanwhile, be it admitted, they weren’t doing what station wanted.

Bren felt his own knees protesting. And he walked, and paced, trying to think of all possible angles, and finally went back to Jase’s office and sat down in a chair opposite Banichi and Jago’s seat on the floor.

“Station has failed to answer Sabin-aiji’s simple question regarding available fuel, nadiin-ji. She has therefore reiterated her question. This give and take of answers will take, at least, another two hours.”

His bodyguard absorbed that information, respectfully so, noting clearly that Sabin-aiji had not backed down, and showed no sign of it.

“If it should be a lengthy time, then you should nap, Bren-ji,” Jago advised him. “It seems we are not yet useful.”

It was reasonable advice. He had been observing every micro-tick of information flow, fearful of missing some critical interaction, but found no further advice to give. . . . He
didn’t
like the reticence on the station’s side. If the alien didn’t understand, Sabin was right: they could transmit nursery rhymes and targeting coordinates with no difference in that ship’s behavior—and if it did understand—then they had a very different problem, at once an easier one, but one in which the station would participate, and in which, in the fuel, it might
hold a key bargaining item. Most of all he didn’t like the picture he had: a third party, themselves, arriving in the middle of a long standoff, an arrival recognizably allied to the station, talking with it while signaling the alien presence out there. It looked all too much like a schoolyard squabble, politics on that primitive a level, and the imbalance of power since their unexpected arrival here could tip things over the edge.

It would do it faster if they made a wrong move.
Two
powers had to be refiguring the odds at the moment, and he hoped the apparently bullied party, the station, didn’t suddenly decide to shove things into a crisis with some demand for action, the rationality of which they couldn’t assess at a distance.

“Shift change,”
C1 announced then, over the general address.
“Crew will go to second shift.”

Belowdecks had waited long enough.

“Sabin speaking,”
came a smooth, routine murmur following that.
“Situation remains much the same. We have not received adequate answers from station. We have not received a response from the alien presence. As you move through the ship, bear in mind the location of nearest takeholds. We will specifically notify crew of any change in the level of alert.”

Sabin
was
continuing to inform crew. Give her that. They were going to the second of the ship’s four shifts, one that properly was her own crew. And evidently she wasn’t going to rest now.

“We might rest,” he said. Jago was right. It was only sensible. “The both of you—one wishes there were a bed, nadiin-ji.”

“The floor is adequate, Bren-ji—room for one’s feet, at least. Will the chair suffice?”

“Admirably,” he said, and they rested—Banichi and Jago in full kit, with room to stretch out, at least, himself in a partially reclined chair, hardly daring shut his eyes, because of the buzz of communication in his ear. It became a white sound, and it was too easy just to go out.

He concentrated all the same, aware from the flow of communications that Sabin, still linked, had gone temporarily to her own cabin. That there was a shift-change in progress on the bridge.

The ship still waited for response, still waited.

“Guildmaster Braddock speaking,”
came suddenly, clearly, the station’s answer, a different voice.
“Affirmative on your last query, captain. Don’t take any action toward the outlying ship. Repeat, take no action. We estimate it’s a robot outputting its observations to some more remote presence, which may or may not be manned. Your arrival has lit a fire under the situation. Come in immediately.”

That did it. He wasn’t going to lie there after that answer, rational and sensible as it might be on the surface. He was sure Sabin would head back for the deck like a streak.

Faster. An answer came immediately.
“C1, repeat our former query as a response.”

Sabin hadn’t budged an inch.

Damn, he thought. But he approved her obstinacy. If there was any doubt about the fuel situation and they weren’t talking about the alien, he was just as glad she wasn’t taking
Phoenix
in to become part of a larger, predictably orbiting target.

He heartily wished there were better answers out of Reunion. But going out there at the moment wouldn’t help matters. He had nothing to say.

“Senior captain,”
he heard Jase say, and he tried to stay in his semi-rest, expecting Jase to concur in the response, or to report the shift change complete.
“We have a flash response from the alien. Three bright pulses.”

That was it. He flung the chair upright, and moved.

He and Sabin came out into the corridor at the same moment, Banichi and Jago close behind him, Cenedi exiting the dowager’s cabin, Gin and Jerry not far behind.

“It’s not a damn group tour,” Sabin muttered, ahead of them only by virtue of her cabin’s position in the corridor. Words floated in her wake and echoed in Bren’s earpiece. “Advice, Mr. Cameron. Advice!”

“Repeat their signal sequence at the same pace as our answer. Not upping the bet. Duplication, we can hope, is perceived as neutrally cooperative. I hope it gains us time, maybe a further signal to compare.”

“Second captain. Do you copy? Implement.”

“Implementing,”
Jase’s answer came immediately.

Bridge personnel had all changed. Every seat was filled, all the same, every head directed absolutely to console screens and output.

“If that should be a robot,” Bren said as they arrived in Jase’s vicinity, “we might try to calculate the position of any outlying installation by any significant lag in their reply.”

“Ahead of you, Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. “We’ll be working on that information.”

“Or
it could just represent the lag-time in their decision-making,” he said. “We’ve already told them we’re independent enough that
we
generate answers when station doesn’t. Contact station and get them to join us in another response. Indicate their cooperation with us.”

“The hell they’ll do that,” Sabin muttered, but: “C1,” she said. “Transmission to station. Quote: Request you also transmit three bright flashes, identical duration, toward spook source. Critical you comply.”

Bren suffered cold shivers. He’d tried to rest and the body hadn’t quite waked up. The mind, however, had, calculating possibilities that began to branch and multiply untidily.
The hell they’ll do that.
Clearly, by this demonstration and others, the
Phoenix
senior captain didn’t expect to give the orders to her Guild. It was becoming critical, and the Guild still thought it ran matters. Not a surprise.

But that the
Phoenix
senior captain meanwhile prepared to act and make a statement, a simple, light-flashed statement to match the ship’s singular:
I
—that was going to have its effect later in their dealings with station, and they couldn’t help that. Not in their present situation. They could only hope for station to comply, if only it would.

And they had to wait more than an hour to get station’s yes or no. Were they unified
we?
Or not?

“Visual senses dominate in that species,” Bren muttered. He’d studied the processes of contact—historically—with the atevi. He couldn’t swear another living soul aboard had that background. And he’d spent eleven months reading on that topic. “Visible spectrum overlaps ours. Brain architecture has that in common, at least, with us and atevi.”

Jase and Sabin alike shot him a look as if he were launching into prophecy.

“The ship out there won’t know the station refused you,” Bren said, teeth chattering in a persistent edge-of-sleep chill, and it sounded like fear, and he couldn’t stop it. “But if our own station won’t cooperate, it tells
me
something about the Guild, while I’m unraveling alien behavior.”

“Screw your suppositions, Mr. Cameron. Confine your speculations to that ship out there and give me facts, not guesswork.”

“Best I can, captain. The only thing we’ve said to them so far is
I
and they’ve answered
me, too.
Useful if we could get the conversation to include a demonstrable
we
, but we don’t expect to have a
we
with station, do we, so that’s likely out.” Where
did
a dialog start, without sea and land and sky for conversational items? Series of lights? Sequential blink used as a pointer?

And a pointer aimed at what? At the non-cooperative station, which might pot-shot the alien and start a war?
That
was no good.

“It may be a naive question, captain, but are we moving toward the aliens at the moment? Or toward station?”

“What are you getting at, Mr. Cameron?”

“I’m trying to figure out what we’re saying in relation to where we’re going.
Everything’s
a word. Where
we’re going is a word.”

“We’re splitting the difference at the moment. We’ve veered off from station signal. We haven’t gone on a heading directly for the alien craft. We’re not going directly at either.”

“Good decision.”

“Thank you,” Sabin said dryly, and he ignored the irony.

“Can we stop? Stand still?”

“Relative to what, Mr. Cameron?”

“I don’t know.” He was totally at sea where ship’s movements were concerned. “Just, once we go on toward the station, now or hours from now, we’ve involved the station. If our own station will cooperate with us—then, yes, we could slow way down, sit out here and maybe work this out. I’m assuming the Guild’s not going to be helpful. So if we could, relatively speaking, just stop or slow way down and talk with this outlying ship—if we could say, by our motions,
we’re going to deal with you rationally and calmly, no hurry here . . .”

“We don’t even know if there’s intelligence aboard.”

“But something somewhere in control of this is rational. We have to believe that, or there’s no hope in this situation—and percentage, captain, percentage in this is all with
hope.
If we can get to talking, if we can get them to accept a slow closer contact and occupy their attention with communications—we may just possibly shift decision-making from their warlike to their deliberative personnel, if there should be that division of power aboard.”

He saw the little frown grow. Sabin was at least listening. And the next part of the thought he didn’t like at all—but it was, personally applied, the hope equation. Percentages.

“If we can do that,” he said further, “if we can just calm down and sit out here increasing our ability to talk to them, then we’ve over all increased the likelihood they’ll talk in all other circumstances. They’ll have invested effort in talking. At least on economy of effort, they’ll reasonably value that investment. Individuals will have committed work to the idea. We may gain proponents among them. We could be several
years
sitting here unraveling this, but the immediate threat to the station will be a lot less down this path. We might be able to
defuse this situation and get their decision-making well away from the fire buttons and over to the communications officers.”

“And you think you can accomplish this fantasy of cooperation.”