Explorer (35 page)

“One must rest a few hours, nadiin-ji. My reasoning grows exceedingly suspect.”

“Shall we,” Jago asked, “consider possibilities in this direction?”

“I believe we should. We may take Jase into our confidence. I shall have to finesse that. But I believe we may ultimately rely on Jase. On his man’chi. On the man’chi of the crew to him. On the association of our mission to all his associations.” His brain veered momentarily sidelong, into human thinking. Or hybrid thinking, such as his and Jase’s had gotten to be. “I don’t think he expected man’chi from the crew, such as he has. They will follow him. And that is a rare and extraordinary asset among humans, nadiin-ji.” He didn’t know whether he was thinking straight or not, but it seemed to him he had suddenly drawn a fair bead on the situation. “That is an asset we should greatly value—this crew, and Jase.”

“One perceives so, Bren-ji,” Jago said, and Banichi said something of the like.

He didn’t even remember reaching his room. He had the impression he’d spoken with staff. He thought he’d turned down a pot of tea. He undressed, handing the gun as well as the clothing to Bindanda and finished his muddled thought about Jase—something about the meeting with crew—while lying on his face, naked on cool sheets, with the scent and the feel of his own mattress to tell him where he was.

Only a crazed recollection of his hours above five-deck persisted to tell him, indeed, he and Jase had actually—well, if not won the round, at least had the problem locked away. Here and there were not congruent. These decks didn’t match the others. The reasons down here didn’t match those on upper decks, but they fit well enough. They got along.

He didn’t know when he’d been as tired, as absolutely out of resources. He crashed again, beyond coherency, telling himself he had to get up and check on essentials, if he could remember what they were—involving Guild enforcers locked away, involving Sabin, involving that great hole in the station . . .

He waked a third time and crawled toward the edge of his bed in that total darkness that, with atevi, passed for moderate. “Rani-ji?”

Staff kept the intercom live, to hear such calls. It was not, however, Narani who answered the summons, but Bindanda: bulky shadow in the doorway, a merciless spear of light from the outer corridor, a glare that afflicted his eyes and comforted him at once. If there were any sort of trouble from upper decks he was sure domestic staff would wake him to report.

They hadn’t. He
could
sleep if he wished, and oh, he wished. Resolution trembled. So did the arm that supported his weight.

But Jago wasn’t here.
Jago
wasn’t here.

“Is there any word down from Jase, Danda-ji?”

“No, nandi.”

“Jase surely would tell me if there were developments.” He believed it, but Jase, too, had to rest. And he daren’t pin the future of two species on his faith in anyone’s waking him. “Kindly see to it this happens, Danda-ji. And maintain our watch. Jase must sleep, too.”

“One will surely make that effort, nandi. Do go back to sleep. I have that firm instruction, to say so.”

“Where is Jago?”

“Resting, one believes.”

Then it was all right. Bindanda wouldn’t lie to him. “I have every confidence in staff,” he murmured—and dropped onto his face.

The door closed. The light went.

If, however, Banichi
weren’t
up to something, Jago would be safe in his bed, asleep, would she not? And she wasn’t. And resting didn’t mean sleeping. So Banichi
was
up to something.

The whole staff might be up to it along with them—whatever
it
was. Cenedi might likewise be aiding and abetting.

And any action involving foreign humans—or worse, not humans—triggered every warning bell the long-time paidhi-aiji owned.

He urgently needed, despite Bindanda’s wishes, to get up off his face and get dressed and advise his staff where the limits were.

Don’t assume. Don’t do any of those things that had been downright fatal in interspecies relations. The Pilots’ Guild on Reunion Station wasn’t the President’s office on Mospheira. There was no equivalency.

And most of all, none of them knew the nature of that ship out there. There were answers they had to get. A
mission for
that
craft that might or might not let them leave this place: there was no guarantee of reciprocal favors—that logic didn’t reach to the back end of the human spectrum and it didn’t hold up as far as atevi councils, either. Expectation of like result was a box that hemmed in his thinking, that guided him toward what might be a false conclusion, when he ought to be using his head and thinking of multiple ways out.

He needed to be consulting with his staff—knowing—at least being reasonably confident—that Banichi wouldn’t actually put anything into operation without telling him. He’d told Banichi that. Hadn’t he given that instruction?

He couldn’t quite remember. But he had confidence in Banichi, more even than in Jase.

His eyes were shut. Sleep wasn’t a very long hike.

But along that short journey, he began to think critically—a sign of returning faculties.

The Guild had always been difficult. The Guild had been difficult back when the path to a unified humanity had been well-paved and lined with flowers.

The Guild, seeing the attraction of a green planet luring its crew, had doggedly held to their notion of space-based development, and attempted, instead, to force the human colony safely in orbit at the atevi planet to leave and go live in orbit about barren Maudit, instead—where temptations would be fewer.

Where the colony would be utterly dependent on Guild orders and alternatives would be fewer.

That hadn’t worked. Colonists had left in droves. Flung themselves at the atevi planet and escaped by parachute.

Point: whatever the Guild had in its records about that situation, the Guild did still remember, surely, that the green world had had inhabitants. They did know that the colony they’d run off and left—and ultimately sent Ramirez back to find—was going to be to some degree in contact with the steam-age locals.

And the ship, returning to that place, had stayed gone nine years.

That things had radically changed, given a few hundred years and the remembered direction of the colony’s ambition—it didn’t take geniuses on the Guild board to figure that could happen. It didn’t take a genius on their side to figure that the Guild was nervous about what influences had worked on the ship during a ten-year
absence . . . nervous, too, one might think, about Ramirez’s prior actions and what his influence might have wrought.

The Guild had wanted to talk to Sabin, alone, while their investigators prowled over the ship.

Note too, they’d wanted the ship to move into close dock—from which position the ship’s airlock was accessible to them at their whim.

Sabin had cannily said no to that. She’d taken enough security to keep Jenrette in line, if she had the inclination to keep Jenrette in line—or she’d deliberately stripped security away from the ship, for whatever reasons Sabin had. She didn’t say why.

The Guild tried to pretend they
didn’t
have a hole in their station and
didn’t
have a huge alien ship sitting out there with its own agenda.
Phoenix
tried to pretend planetary locals had never entered its equation. Nobody was saying anything to anybody.

There was a dark space in his reasoning. He realized he’d been asleep.

The door had opened. Someone was standing in the light.

Had he been here before? Had he drifted off while Bindanda was talking to him?

“Bren-ji.” Jago’s voice. “One regrets to wake you, but Jase wishes to speak to you.”

He moved for the edge of the bed. Fast. Too fast, for his reeling sense of balance. “Is he here?”

“On the intercom,” Jago said.

He set a foot on the floor, fumbled after his robe, missed it, and went straight to the intercom without it—punched in, shivering in the cold. “Jase? This is Bren.”

“Bren. Good morning.”
Space-based irony. Or memory of old times.
“I hope you got some sleep.”

“Did.” God, he thought, teeth chattering. Get to the point, Jase. “Heard from Sabin?”

“No, unhappily. Not a word. I need answers. So I’m giving our several guests to you.”

Gratefully, he felt the robe settle about his shoulders, Jago’s doing. He grabbed it close. “What do you want
me
to do with them?”

“Finesse it, nadi-ji. I’m for half an hour of rest.”

“Not slept?”

“Off and on the bridge all shift, with Guild messages that don’t say a thing. I’m getting stupid without sleep. Which I understand you did have, lucky bastard. So go to it. I’ll meet you down there. I want the truth, Bren. Or I’m going to lose my self-restraint and pound it out of them myself.”

“I’m going.” He had not the least idea what he was going to do. Jase was, in very fact, hoarse and on the edge, and he got the picture: the Guild was getting hotter and hotter, demanding restoration of contact with their people, Sabin was still missing—under what conditions Jase didn’t know. And somebody had to move off dead center soon.

Jase clicked out. He did.

He raked a hand through his hair, exposing an arm to icy air.

“Jago-ji. I’m needed. I’ll bathe.” The mind was a blank. But he had to deal with humans. “Island dress.”

“One hears,” Jago said from the doorway. “And for us, nadi?”

He heard, too.
“Please
get a little sleep, nadi-ji. I shall have Jase’s guards, and I shall take no chances, none whatsoever, Jago-ji. They should not see you yet. But I assure you. I set no conditions on your assistance if you should hear any threat to me.”

“One accepts, nandi,” Jago said. Not wholly satisfied, it was clear, but much mollified by the emergency clause.

“Asicho can sit duty, nadi. I
shall
need you soon. I’ll need your wits sharp when I do. But one thing I shall wish immediately: have Bindanda pack a modest picnic basket for five humans. And tuck in a bag of sugar candies.”

A slight hesitation. Jago could speculate quite easily that the picnic wasn’t for Gin and company.

“Yes,” Jago said.

Accepted.

Reassured, he dumped the robe and ducked into his shower, chilled half to the bone.

He toggled on the water and scrubbed with a vengeance, trying to adjust his thinking not only to human,
but beyond ship-human and ship-speak, all the way over to Reunion Guild—trying to scrub away all the disposition of his Mospheiran heritage, all his accumulated distaste for the behavior of the Guild’s officers on their deck. He had to get down to mental bedrock. Had to look at what was. Not what had been, centuries ago.

He was relatively clear-headed when he emerged, relatively calm and with his head full of tentative, Guild-focused notions.

Narani helped him dress, island-style being far, far quicker than court dress. He omitted the ribbon, tucked the braid down his collar, as he had when he visited home, in the days when things had been easier than he had ever realized.

He clicked on the pocket comm.

“One rejects the gun, this time, Rani-ji, in close contact.”

The requested picnic basket turned up, a generous container, in Jeladi’s hands. A very generous container. The requested bag of candies, he tucked directly into his pocket.

The breakfast would have served a soccer team, by the weight of it. He walked down the corridor, seeing Banichi and Jago, doubtless waiting to bid him be careful—

“One will be extraordinarily careful,” he said, tilted slightly with the weight of the basket. “I know their mannerisms and their threats, and I shall not be surprised. Sleep, nadiin-ji. Favor me with the effort, at least.”

He walked on. By the dowager’s door, Cenedi’s men stood simply watching, doubtless communicating with persons inside. Definitely so. Cajeiri popped out to watch him pass, as if he were an expedition.

With the weight of the baggage, he might well have been.

He exited to the lift area. He supposed Gin knew about the proceedings, too, or would know in short order.

He got in and punched two-deck.

Armed guards met him on that level. He was a little taken aback; but it was Kaplan and Polano—Jase’s bodyguard, in full kit, two men he was sure hadn’t had any more rest than he had, turned out to welcome him.

“Here to help, sir. Cap’n’s down there.”

Jase
was here. He murmured a response and walked ahead, Kaplan and Polano attending. Jase was here to
meet him, maybe for a conference without a great number of witnesses.

Jase waited, beyond the immediate area, short of sleep and running very short of temper. Bren, having shared an apartment with Jase for no few years, saw the folded arms and the set of the shoulders and immediately recognized a man who’d as soon throttle his problems as negotiate.

Jase, however, had settled a strong veneer of civilization clamped atop his temper these days—most times.

“What is this?” In ship-speak, and referring, by the glance, to the picnic basket.

“Breakfast,” Bren said. “A good breakfast, nadi, to put anyone in a better mood. Want to join me?”

Jase stared at him bleakly. Then the expression slowly changed, as thought penetrated past the anger.

“Not one of the dowager’s dishes, one hopes, nadi. We need these people able to talk.”

“No, no, perfectly acceptable and human-compatible. Word of honor. What’s going on?”

“Oh, besides the hourly calls from Guild Headquarters informing us they’re not happy, medical says we have a bug.”

“A bug.” Bren set the basket down a moment, dug in his pocket and produced the hard fruit candies, remembering that Kaplan and Polano were very fond of them. He gave them each one, under Jase’s burning gaze. And offered one to Jase. Calm down, he was saying. Have a candy. Communicate.

It got him another of Jase’s stares. A decade ago, when they’d shared quarters, a cavalier confrontation with Jase’s temper would have gotten a three-day silence. But in stony silence Jase took one. Studiously considered the wrapper. “An
internal
bug. I said not to go after it yet.” He changed to Ragi. “One is annoyed, nadi. One is outraged.”