Invader (33 page)

The ship, as it always had, wanted refueling. The ship wanted provisions. And the world was supposed to provide that, free of charge, one could guess, after one hell of a lot of man-hours of dangerous effort producing what the starship could drink down at one gulp and leave.

But as Jason Graham said, there were things to do first. They were stuck with the ship as a factor. They had a station decaying more rapidly by the year, the ship was a shortcut to saving it — which was worth something, damn sure.

And the ship — couldn't get anything off the planet. By everything he knew — it couldn't get anything that wasn't brought to it in space. That meant the world had leverage.

"Meaning they'll send down their figures as they develop them."

"
Essentially, sir, but
—
can we talk very frankly
?"

"Anything you want to talk about. Go ahead."

"I'm volunteering because I want to do something more with my life than push keys, which is the job I've got, but I don't want to get my throat cut, and I don't want to end up somebody's hostage. Neither does Yolanda. It won't work, for one thing. The captain says he won't deal there to get us back. If anything goes wrong we're on our own. So
—
how safe are we
?"

"You'll have the protection of Tabini-aiji. That's very safe. I can't say about your companion, but Mospheira's quiet to the point of tedium under most circumstances. I'll make every effort to meet you when you arrive. Are you coming down at the same time?"

"That's what we plan. If we can get one of us a way to get to the other place."

"Easily. By the next plane."

"
Mospheira says
—
speaking frankly, sir
—
that atevi can shoot you for no reason. Legally. That somebody just tried to kill you. Twice. That we're much safer landing on the island. You're telling me otherwise
."

"I — equally frankly — advise you that landing on Mospheira would create special problems for you. Yes, there are some very different customs here, and assassination is legal, but it's also strictly regulated. The attempts against me were illicit, they were met by the aiji's security and stopped. In fact, if you land on the island, it would make you much less safe: Tabini-aiji has a great stake in your protection if you land where he asks you to, on his invitation — he's given you his personal assurance of safety, that's one thing. For another, he considerably outranks the Mospheiran President, and accepting the Mospheiran invitation over his would be very bad protocol. Atevi would take it for a calculated insult, or collusion and secret arrangements, which would start you off very badly. Please pass that word into your decision-making process."

"
I
will, sir
. —
Second question. Mospheira says the situation where you are is chaotic. They say you might not be acting of your own accord. That a woman who was supposed to be replacing you has disappeared
."

Maybe not so politically naive. Or at least not incapable of asking questions.

"
Can I believe
you,
sir, that's the question. The island says you've violated orders and you're giving unauthorized information to the atevi
."

"Yes. I have done that. So has the woman they say has disappeared. You'll discover once you get down here that Mospheira moves incredibly slowly on decisions and translators in the field sometimes have to move very fast. Your ship showed in the sky, atevi feared Mospheira was going to abrogate the Treaty and that it was some kind of plot — -damn right I had to take steps to calm things down, among people who didn't feel they had gotten honest information. That necessarily included my explaining what couldn't wait for some committee on Mospheira to approve. Mospheira is sending very contradictory signals. They want me here. They know I'll act. Now State is mad. Fine. If you want the blunt truth, I'd rather offend the President of Mospheira and not have the whole atevi and human relationship blow up over what I could solve, in a situation the facts of which they'd have to rely on my judgment to find out in the first place."

"What about this missing woman?"

"Deana Hanks? She's not missing. I ordered her to go home and she told me she was waiting for formal recall from Mospheira, which Mospheira hasn't sent."

"Why?"

"Because — you want the truth? — she belongs to an opposition party on Mospheira that's trying to get Tabini to accept her credentials; and he won't. She's fine, I had lunch with her yesterday, we argued as usual, but we've agreed to keep it in bounds."

"That's certainly not what we're getting from Mospheira."

"What are you getting from Mospheira?"

"That the situation there is very dangerous, and you might be lying, bluntly put, sir."

"You know where this transmission is coming from?"

"Yes, sir, a station on the coast."

"You think stations of that size are private? Or that it belongs to the atevi government?"

"To the government, I'd say, sir."

"I assure you that's who I'm speaking for, Mr. Graham. I'm the translator, the paidhi, the only human appointed by the Treaty to mediate between atevi and humans. The atevi legislature asked me to perform the same office between you and them, in which capacity I'm now officially functioning. Yes, I work for the Mospheiran government; by the nature of what I do, I also work for the atevi government. That means that it's my job occasionally to say things Mospheira doesn't want to hear. But if I don't say it, it doesn't get said, the situation festers in silence, and we can all end up with real trouble. Plainly, there are Mospheirans that don't like atevi, and they don't like me, either. But that opinion is never going to get atevi to cooperate. Not till hell freezes over, as the saying goes. So tell your captain he can listen to people on Mospheira who either get their information from me or from their own guesswork, or he can ask me firsthand and get the information directly. There's no other choice, because there's no other human authorized to contact the atevi. You're about to become the second. Welcome to the world of politics."

"
Are they
—
easy to get along with? Can you talk to regular atevi? Or are you pretty well guarded
?"

"I deal mostly with government people, but not exclusively. Atevi are honest, loyal to their associates, occasionally obscure, and occasionally blunt to the point of embarrassment. I'll be delighted to have another human face besides the one in the mirror, but I don't live a deprived life here. Let me ask a more technical question. What are your landing requirements? What do you need? A runway?"

"
Actually
—
not, sir. I wish we did. We're using one of your pods
."

"You're kidding."

"Afraid not. They found a couple in the station, packed up and everything."

"Good God. — Excuse me."

"
So we've got no way back up again if somebody doesn't build a return vehicle. Between you and me, sir, in language you wouldn't tell my mother, who's not real happy with this
—
what risk am I running
?"

"I'd sure want to know why those pods didn't get used."

"Mospheira says they were redundancies. There were three last ones. Because the last aboard the station were only six people. And if anything had gone wrong with one, they couldn't have built another. They had a rule about triple redundancy."

"That sounds reasonable. But I can't swear to it."

"
So
—
if we have to build a ship that can get off the planet, how long is it going to take to get us back up again
?"

"If we started today, if things went incredibly right, and that was our total objective in the program, we could maybe launch a manned capsule to low orbit inside a year, year and a half, on a rocket that's meant to launch communications satellites. No luxury accommodation, but we could get you up to low orbit and probably down again in one piece."

"But to reach high orbit?"

"Realistically, and I know this part of it, because I'm the technical translator, among my other jobs, if we want a meaningful high-orbit vehicle, we'd be wasting time building a small-scale chemical rocket. I'd much rather negotiate an orbit-and-return technology."

"And how long for that?"

"Depends on a lot of factors. Whether the materials meet design specs. How much cooperation you can get from the atevi. I'd say if you don't want to grow old down here, you'd better land on this side of the water and be damn nice to Tabini-aiji, who can single-handedly determine how fast the materials are going to meet design standard."

"
That's
—
very persuasive, sir
."

The whole business of haste — the rush to risk lives — bothered him. "A parachute two hundred years old? The glue on the heat shield —"

"We know. We propose to refit it. They say they can improve on it. Put us down pretty well on the mark. I don't personally like this parachute idea, but I guess it beats infalling without one."

"You've got more nerve than I'd have, Mr. Graham.

I'll give you that. But our ancestors made it, or we wouldn't be here."

"
I
hate to ask, but what was the failure rate? Do you have any stats on that
?"

"Percentage? Low. I know that one sank in the sea. One hard-landed. Fatally. One lost the heat shield and burned up. They mostly made it, that's all I know. But with all your technology — isn't there some way to take a little time, at least modify that thing into a guided system? Nothing you've got can possibly serve as a landing craft?"

A pause. Then: "
Not for atmosphere. The moon
—
no problem. But that's a deep, deep well, sir
."

"Gravity well."

"Yes, sir."

It wasn't just Mospheira versus atevi that had a language gap. He guessed the shortened expression. And out of the expertise the technological translator necessarily gained in his career, other, more critical problems immediately dawned on him.

"Mr. Graham, I hope to hell if they unpack that parachute to check it, they know how to put it back in its housing. There's an exact and certain way those things have to unfold. Otherwise they don't open."

"You're really making me very nervous, sir. But they've got specifications on the lander. That's in the station library, they tell me."

"When are they sending you down here?"

"About five, six days."

"God."

"
I
wish you'd be more confident
."

"Five days is pushing real hard, Mr. Graham. Is there a particular reason to be in a hurry?"

'No
reason not to
—
I
mean, we've no problem with ablation surfaces. We can do better in no time. I'm less sure about the parachute, but I have to trust they can tell from records. That's all. I have to trust it. And they'll be done, they tell me, in four days. And they can shoot us out there on a real precise in/all, right down the path. I don't know what more they can do
. They
say it's no risk. That they've got all the results. When did they lose the three they lost? Early on?"

"I think — early on. They didn't lose any of the last ones." A slight gloss of the truth. But the truth didn't help a man about to fall that far.

"
I'll tell you, I'm not looking forward to the experience. I keep telling myself I'm stark raving crazy. I don't know what Yolanda's thinking. But if we just get down
—"

"The atevi would say, Trust the numbers. Get fortunate numbers out of the technicians."

"
I
certainly intend to
. —
What's that sound
?"

"Sound — ?" He was suddenly aware of the outside, of the smell and feel of rain in the air. And anxiety in Graham's voice. "That was thunder. We're having a storm."

"Atmospheric disturbance."

"Rain."

"It must be loud."

"Thunder is. Can be. That was. It's right over us."

"It's not dangerous."

"Lightning is. Not a good idea to be on the phone much longer. But one thing I should mention before I sign off. We've never had much of a disease problem, there's not much we catch from atevi, and we were a pretty clean population when we landed. But on general principles the aiji will insist you undergo the process our ancestors did before they came down."

"We began it last watch. My stomach isn't happy, but that's the least of our worries."

"Sorry about that. I'll relay your assurance to the aiji and I assure you the aiji will be happy you've taken that precaution on your own initiative. You'll impress him as considerate, well-disposed people. I'll also inform him about your companion needing to get to a plane without delay, assuming that will be her wish. I'll fax up a map with the optimum sites marked, with text involving advantages and disadvantages. You can talk to your experts and make a choice, but it's just more convenient to the airports if you can come in on the public lands south of the capital."

"I'll pass that word along. I'd like to talk to you fairly frequently, if you can arrange it. I want to look over this material you're sending up. I'll probably have questions. "

"I'll fax up my meeting schedule. Tomorrow I'm going to be traveling out to an observatory in the mountains. I'll be back by evening. But if something comes up that needs information from me, wherever there are telephones, they can track me down. Even on the plane."

"To an observatory. Why?"

"To talk to a gentleman who may be able to answer some philosophical questions. Your arrival has — well, been pretty visible to anyone in the rural areas. And call it religious implications, as well as political ones. Say that concerned people have asked me questions."

"Is that part of the job?"

"I hope we'll be working together."

"
I assure you
I
hope we II be working together, sir. I'd just as soon they dropped us someplace soft
."