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  But Jase… Jase, who’d regarded Ramirez as a father, at least as much contemporary father as he had—looked shaken.

  Jase… and Yolanda. No one had notified Yolanda Mercheson to be here. And she had lost every bit as much as Jase.

  Ogun shook Jenrette’s hand, first, then looked at Bren, and at Geigi.

  “Captain Ramirez is dead,” Ogun said. “Seniority rests on me. Captain Ramirez’ policies and orders stand until specifically revised, Mr. Cameron, will you relay that to the alllies? We’re on our way to Phoenix, to make the official announcement in about ten minutes. We ask you keep it off the com until then, even for your personal security.”

  “Our condolences and respects,” Bren said solemnly. “We understand. —Banichi, the ship-aiji asks no communication until the official announcement.”

  “One hears,” Banichi said. It wasn’t to say word hadn’t already passed to his own staff and to Geigi’s, before Ogun had requested otherwise, but transmission had been in Ragi, and not apt to slip those channels. Now Bren ordered silence, a respect to the ship that hosted them, as the captains left, Jase left with them, and the aides attended them out.

  The foyer of the infirmary was suddenly only atevi and the paidhi, and the language became wholly Ragi, impenetrable to the infirmary staff.

  “They’re going to Phoenix,” Bren explained, “to make the official announcement. We should go back to our own offices now, to answer questions as they come to us, Geigi-ji. Ogun holds Ramirez’ policies and orders in place, at least for the while. I’ll send a courier to Paulson.”

  Paulson was acting head of the Mospheiran section, Mospheirans having been utterly without representation and without information in this turn of events.

  “A good idea,” Geigi said. “I’ll send, as well, to my domestic staff.”

  By courier, that was, which didn’t breach their agreement. They left the premises and took quiet leave of each other.

  “Call Jago out to meet us at the lift,” he said. He didn’t construe that as violating the silence. “She’ll see me home. You go to Paulson. I’ll write a note.” He searched his pockets for a notepad, found it, wrote as they waited at the lift, a notification for Paulson. A gentler notification for Yolanda Mercheson. He wasn’t sure Jase would find the moment, caught up as he was in the captains’ council, whisked back to the ship under bewildering circumstances.

  By the time you get this you must surely know the sad news, that Captain Ramirez has died. Jase is caught up in official proceedings and incommunicado, as far as I can determine. He was called there, and took it hard. I know he’s still in shock, as I know this message must come as a great shock to you; but I am free to write as I fear he is not, under official order, and express, as I know he would, concern for you.

  My staff will welcome you at any time and convey messages or provide a quiet rest as you need. Please accept my sincere condolences.

  —Bren

  Jago arrived before he was done. He gave her the messages, and their destinations. “No danger,” he said to her. “But requirements of propriety.”

  “Yes,” Jago said, and went, quickly.

  The messages might or might not beat the official announcement, but they would salve feelings. Especially Yolanda’s. That Jase was under official order might at least take the sting out of the likelihood that Yolanda had not been advised, not even in Jase’s mind—he feared so, at least. The look on Jase’s face had said that not much at all was in Jase’s mind at the moment—nothing logical at any rate. And Yolanda wasn’t as close to Ramirez as Jase was. Not that he’d ever observed.

  The pace of everything had stopped when Ramirez’ heart beat its last. Now the rate of decision accelerated again, a set of movements that had immediately to be performed and a set of facts that had to be confirmed, abraded feelings patched, nervous allies reassured even if logic and common sense said there would be no immediate changes in policy.

  The announcement came over the general address in the corridors as they reached their own apartment foyer, as Narani was accepting his coat. The intercom light near the door began to flash, in case they might not have heard.

  “It’s reported,” Bren said to the staff in Ragi. Tano and Algini had come out of the security station. “A call to Tabini-aiji. Use my personal codes. I’ll speak to the aiji himself if I can reach him.”

  “Yes, nandi.” Tano and Algini would have heard every breath and whisper in their vicinity for the last hour: they were rarely out of touch with their own internal security, and the same, he knew for a fact, for lord Geigi. And likely two messages were going down to Tabini, and Paulson would immediately call the State Department on Mospheira, at very least.

  Then, very quickly, the facts would hit the public news services—no overwhelming shock, because Ramirez was no young man, and his heath had been a serious question for a long time.

  But the loss of Ramirez was going to shake everything from the legislatures in Shejidan to the markets in Jackson. Every lunatic who’d been halfway quiet would become agitated and full of speculations. Every paid publicity-seeker who wanted five minutes in front of the cameras was going to jump up waving his arms.

  Crisis… under control, but yes. They had to get Tabini and Shawn Tyers fully informed, fast, and get a news release organized ahead of the fact.

  He went into the security office to write one, and Tano hastened to open up the board and send as he was directed. Algini was monitoring, listening intently, likely to Jago. Banichi was talking to Narani, outside, likewise passing other details, and count Bindanda into that briefing, too. His security was operating on edge, not alarmed, but their nerves were wound tight, all the same. The passing of a lord was rarely without shock-waves, and somewhere in their atevi nerves was engrained the belief that, species differences aside, some human might at any moment run berserk through the corridors. That it was not that likely to happen in a carefully selected crew was beside the point. If humans failed to do it, some ateva might do it for them, and Geigi surely had his hands full at the moment.

  “Lord Geigi has made the official announcement to the staff,” Tano reported, then, from his personal communications. “He’s assured them that the transition is smooth. He’s requested that non-essential staff go to quarters and official staff express appropriate condolences to official channels.”

  Get off the streets, that was. So to speak.

  Get off the streets and be polite to the humans until whatever might happen had happened, simplest way to deal with the crisis.

  Points to Geigi for simplicity: no explanation, just clear instruction.

  Mospheirans, on the other hand, were likely to populate the bars—there were several devoted to Mospheiran taste—and speculate. Depend on it, there’d be a dozen conspiracy theories in the Mospheiran section by the end of shift, and they’d build on each other.

  Among the crew… the conspiracy that had attempted to take control of the ship, however, was old business and quiet. Tamun was dead. Jenrette had his allies under watch… under close arrest, it was likely, by now, without explanation, knowing how thoroughly and quickly crew tended to deal with emergencies. Mospheirans might insist on due process and rights, but as Jase put it, rights don’t mean anything when the ship moves. Meaning that acceleration and emergency overruled everything. And if it wasn’t an operational crisis, it was close to one. Their security would already have a heavy hand on matters, and ship crew would not gather in bars or even talk on the job.

  “I have sent to Mogari-nai, nandi,” Tano said, seated nearby. “Fifteen messages are in progress to Mospheira… one other is in progress to Shejidan.”

  There was the difference between the cultures, in a nutshell.

  Among atevi those fifteen calls home might indicate fragmentation. Maogishi. Breakdown of order. Among atevi, that rated attention.

  “That’s to be expected,” he said. “Department heads and a couple misusing their business clearances. Likely corporate calls, too. No threat
of fragmentation. Just informative calls.”

  “The halls remain peaceful,” Algini said.

  “Best, all the same, if the human work force stays at work—if nothing else, to be near official channels instead of sources in the bars. I hope Paulson uses good sense.”

  “It seems so,” Algini murmured, hardly diverting attention from his console. “There is a request for a communications stand-by. Will the paidhi add an address to lord Geigi’s?”

  “I hardly need to,” he said. “Lord Geigi will do best.”

  “I have the aiji’s line, nandi,” Tano said. “I have Eidi, at least.”

  Tabini’s head of staff. “Pass it to me, Tano. —Eidi-nadi?”

  “Nand’ paidhi?” The voice, the rational, known voice from the planet was very welcome, water in a cosmic desert.

  “Eidi-ji. I need to speak to the aiji, utmost emergency.”

  “Nand’ paidhi, I regret—the aiji is unreachable even to the utmost emergencies. I can bring the message myself, under my own office, nandi, as fast as I can run.”

  God. Was something wrong down there? Or was it simply Geigi’s call, beating his?

  “Eidi-ji, Ramirez-aiji is dead, of natural causes. Ogun is ship-aiji now, Sabin second and Jase Graham third. The station and ship are quiet. The transition is peaceful, policies remain in place, but unofficial calls from the Mospheiran district on the station are already going out to the island.”

  To the news services, one might as well say, and from there straight to the rumor mill. Of all times C1 had been the choke-point, inconveniencing the free flow of information, it failed them now.

  “I will bring that message, nandi, as fast as I can, understanding its importance. Please remain available.”

  “I shall,” he said. “Thank you, Eidi-ji.”

  The contact winked out, but that was all right. The message would go as faithfully and as fast as the man nearest Tabini could bring it to him. Eidi understood the importance. He had no doubt on that score.

  And now the adrenaline more or less ebbed out of him in disappointment and frustration, knowing he could not speak to Tabini and could not get an immediate resolution out of the situation. Things weren’t going to be simple, not when the changes were this high up the decision-making apparatus.

  A week ago, before Tabini’s phone call, the whole world had been running more than smoothly. Now… with Ramirez dead and Tabini pursuing some arcane piece of internal politics with his predecessor and the legislature that he still didn’t understand—and his own family having waited until precisely this week to have a serious crisis… things had gone straight to hell.

  In the small nook of his mind he reserved for private business, he did earnestly wish Toby would answer his messages and take at least one crisis off the docket. He thought perhaps if their mother was in hospital Toby might be there, and not in touch… though Toby was usually better than that, and usually checked periodically through the day, if he’d put a call in…

  Well, now things were worse on that front. He couldn’t call Toby now, not in the middle of this goings-on. Every call he made to the island was going to be suspect as political in nature. He couldn’t do anything quietly any longer.

  But Toby must surely realize that the moment the news broke. Toby would learn what was going on and then figure out that it was all on him to make contact—that it had to be.

  “Nand’ Gin is calling,” Tano said then, a seat removed from him at the console. “She wishes to speak to you, nandi. Will you?”

  Ginny Kroger. The unofficial and far more competent human power on the station. “I’ll take it,” Bren said immediately, and picked up an ear-set. “Gin? This is Bren.”

  “Bren, I’m getting disturbing rumors. Are you hearing any?”

  “Ramirez has died. Unfortunately that’s no rumor.”

  “Heard that. But that’s not the rumor I’m talking about.”

  Did he ask her to spill it, and risk the security of the communication?

  But if it was a rumor, it was evidently loose, and a little late for secrecy.

  “Something you can say here, Gin?”

  “Talk in the halls. No secrecy here.” Time for a breath. A big one. “Talk says the lost station’s not destroyed, Bren. That it’s still crewed. That the captains knew it all along.”

  That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. His heart stopped a beat.

  No.

  His deepest instinct said he and Ginny damned sure shouldn’t be discussing this over the intercom, but his conscious brain said that if it was in the halls, it was a little damned late for secrecy and about time someone official spoke to the situation. “First I’ve heard,” he said—understatement. “Gin, at this point that’s just a rumor. Report anything else you hear: talk to Jago, on my staff. She can translate somewhat.” Best if Gin could get to Feldman or Shugart, the official translators, but they were both in Paulson’s office, and probably going berserk at the moment trying to monitor atevi internal communications, granted they weren’t stalled trying to figure the intricacies of Geigi’s message down to Shejidan. “I’ll try to trace the rumor through channels.” He was in the political stream up here. Ginny wasn’t. But Ginny had access to the workers. “You try to trace it through the tunnels.”

  “I will,” Ginny said. “Keep me informed.”

  “Same,” he said to her, and punched out as he swung around in his chair to face an apprehensive staff. “Tano, get Jase on com. Use the beeper.” Jase carried a pocket beeper they had very rarely used… granted Jase had it on him at the moment. If he was in a security lock-down, they might have objected to the atevi beeper. “Send him a code one.”

  See me. Emergency.

  “Yes,” Tano said, and punched buttons. “Done, nandi.”

  “Workers in Gin-nadi’s hearing,” he said then, informing his security staff, who might not have followed all that transaction in Mosphei. “Workers are carrying a rumor that the ship didn’t find the remote station destroyed, as they reported, and that crew remained alive aboard it. That this was something the captains knew.”

  “Then the source is reputed to be the captains?” Tano asked.

  “It would apparently go that high—if it’s true at all.” Everything they had done here to secure their mutual future depended on the ship’s assurances that the aliens that had attacked and destroyed the remote space station couldn’t possibly have gained information from the ruin—that the destruction there was complete, and that no data on the location of their own station could have gotten to the aliens.

  And if that weren’t entirely true—if the conflict out there was still going on—

  Banichi appeared in the doorway. “Were workers or crew the source of the rumor?” Banichi, with his earpiece evidently attuned to proceedings in the security station, was completely briefed, and had the salient question.

  “I don’t know,” Bren said. “But I want to know. Jago’s out in that section. Is she aware?”

  “Now, yes,” Banichi said.

  There was an increasingly queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach.

  Tabini unavailable, Ramirez dead, the newly-arranged captains off to their private councils, and now rumor cast doubt on all their agreements—all the ship’s many promises and protestations, all oaths, all reassurances—

  This was very, very bad news. And it wouldn’t raise trust, among the Mospheiran workers.

  “We’d better get an official answer for this one, fast. Keep trying to get Jase. Contact C1 as well as the beeper—” C1 being Phoenix-com. “Put me through as soon as possible.”

  “Yes,” Tano said.

  “If it’s only a rumor,” he said to his staff, “it’s still serious. If it isn’t—we’ve been lied to. But we don’t assume that as first choice. It may be more complicated than that.”

  Meanwhile Tano pushed buttons and tried to find Jase.

  “C1 doesn’t respond,” Tano said—and that was more than troublesome. “I believe a recorded mess
age is saying all communications are routed through station central until further notice.”

  Not good, not good at all. Bad timing, if nothing else.

  “Use the operations emergency channel.”

  “The ship is fueled, Bren-ji,” Banichi pointed out.

  Phoenix, once all but helpless, was not, at the moment.

  “Gini-ji. Get Paulson.”

  “Yes, nandi.” Algini moved, then signaled him the call was through.

  “Hello? Paulson?”

  “Mr. Cameron?”

  “Paulson.” The relief was a cold bath. “Rumor’s running the halls. C1’s not responding. I think we need a little extraordinary security out there. Keep workers on their shifts. No shift-change, do you agree? Restrict the bars and rec areas. Call it a funeral.”

  “You’ve heard the rumor.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “That Phoenix lied to us.”

  That wasn’t the construction he’d like to put on it. But that was certainly a Mospheiran gut-reaction—a mild one, considering the history of lies the ship had told the colony from the beginning, and the distrust there still was, on the planet, among those whose ancestors had parachuted into a gravity well to escape Phoenix’ iron grip.

  “We don’t know all of it. We don’t even know a legitimate source, unless you’ve got better information than we do. As far as we know, it’s just loose talk that’s gotten started.”

  “We’ve already put the word out: we’re holding employees at posts, we’ve canceled all breaks until further notice and shut down private calls. Supposedly somebody overheard something in the infirmary. Some worker. When Ramirez died.”

  Paulson wasn’t the sort of director who heard rumors. No one told Paulson anything. Except now it seemed as if someone had. Someone had told everyone.

  A worker had come into the infirmary with a cut hand. And been treated in the area where Ramirez died.