Precursor Read online

  “Tabini and the captains sharing power?” Jase said, his lips hardly moving. “That’s not easy, either.”

  “It has to work.”

  Jase and he had talked about the eventuality before, even the complexity of Mospheira’s quest after space, a quest Bren himself had furthered until the anti-atevi Heritage Party had seized the government, diverted the program to their own issue… until criminal elements had applied force to scientists and idealists, scared some, killed some, converted some. It had been a narrow thing three years ago, when reasonable people, greater in number on Mospheira, had pitched the scoundrels out and discovered the game they were up to. Knowledge of a threat outside the atmosphere hadn’t, however, convinced reasonable people they should go back to space when Phoenix, that old bugbear of Mospheiran legend, had just returned asking for laborers and foretelling wars in space.

  The average Mospheiran wanted to go on having his job and his beachside vacations, raising his kids, believing that if there was a war in space, it wasn’t a threat to the planet… and that linchpin of Mospheiran faith: if they didn’t contact any aliens, aliens would be more likely to leave them alone.

  It was even possible that Mospheirans were right. The question was whether the aliens in question would recognize the difference between Mospheirans and Phoenix crew, when Phoenix came here for help. Some bet their lives that the aliens would be wise, and discriminate.

  Bren didn’t. Tabini didn’t bet atevi would remain immune from retaliation, either. Nonchalance was a position from which, if wrong, there was very little chance of recovery.

  “You know where I stand with Mospheira,” Bren said. “We know each other. That’s three years of good faith any other negotiators would have to do over, and—we’ve talked about this before—I’m not sure anybody is going to understand Mospheirans or atevi who hasn’t met us in our own environment.”

  “No more than you’ll understand us without being in ours,” Jase said. “Ramirez comes closest.”

  “On the planet, among atevi, Tabini comes closest.”

  Jase shook his head. “No. Among atevi, you come closest. Down to the last, down to the last, I think I hoped there’d be a personal miracle. Selfish hope. It’s a dream, on this planet. You can dream there are no aliens. You can dream you can go on forever, going about your routine, having your pleasant times… that’s what the Mospheirans do, isn’t it?”

  “And atevi,” Bren said. “Atevi aren’t immune to it.”

  “Living a fantasy is not what they created me to do. What Ramirez did create me for… was to make this leap; contact; understand… report. Ramirez was the only one who understood the possibility there would be Mospheirans. He thought the people we’d left behind us might have changed; the other captains didn’t think so.” A second sip, steadier. “He’d planned we’d meet a tamer situation, a safe, functioning station; that we’d present you a present: a star station and a starship to reach it, and we’d build another ship; and another; and weave this grand web that gave us all access.” Jase shook his head. “Which the alien attack demolished. We ran home. Here. And when we found what did exist, then the other captains looked at me with my language study as something other than Ramirez’s personal lunacy.”

  He knew this part. He sensed Jase was going somewhere new with it. The other captains? Josefa Sabin was the second shift captain in the twenty-four-hour rotation; then Jules Ogun, and the fourth, different than they’d started with, since that man had died last year, was Pratap Tamun.

  “But they don’t see me as having authority,” Jase said.

  “Then join our group. We’ll make damned sure they listen to you.”

  Jase shook his head. “That would undermine Ramirez. He’s had confidence in me; I’ll back him. Just… don’t push too hard too early. Give me a day or so to sit down with Ramirez, let us put our heads together. If you’ll trust me, I’ll see if I can level with him and get his agreement.”

  It posed a question, not Jase’s honesty, but how much three years of rarified diplomatic atmosphere had prepared Jase to stand on his own feet; and how much internal politics of the Pilots’ Guild would listen to reason.

  “Chei’no Ojindaro. Pogari’s Recall.”

  Another machimi play. Jason’s gaze flickered first with an effort to remember, then with complete understanding. “Hari’i,” he murmured, sliding back into Ragi with no apparent realization of it. By no means.

  The return of a long-absent retainer to a corrupt house: a recognition of loyalties, a sorting-out of man’chi… a resultant bloody set of calamities.

  “You’re sure,” Bren challenged him.

  “I have to try.”

  “Don’t tell me have to try. You know you can work with me. The issues here aren’t for guesswork.”

  “Tamun,” Jase said. “Ogun’s the chief bastard, but that goes with the job. Tamun is our problem, hardnosed, Sabin’s man, or used to be. Those two have split. Ogun’s not a fool. I can explain a situation he didn’t anticipate to exist. Pratap Tamun’s the problem.”

  Straight out of the Council, Bren recalled Jase saying when he knew Tamun was elevated to the captaincy: the captains tended to be more moderate, the Council more inclined to go for a radical solution. And his appointment to what the Guild called the fourth chair meant that one of the captains tended to more volatile solutions.

  “They won’t risk relations with the planet,” Jase said further. “It’s not in their interest. There’s every chance of getting what they want if they ask Tabini and ask politely. As I mean to tell them. —Bren, you’ve never asked me what I’ll say; but you know I’ll advise them to deal with Tabini.”

  “This is the question I will ask you: will they listen?”

  Jase took a deep breath. “The same us-only streak that runs in the Heritage Party is there. There’s a strong party that thinks aliens out there and aliens here are no different, and the way you feel about Kroger… I feel about Tamun. I think he’d rather deal with the Mospheirans. The whole faction might not even know yet that they’d rather deal with the Mospheirans, but I think there’s a chance the Guild will go through that stage— until they get a strong taste of Mospheiran politics to match their first sight of atevi. That’s going to scare them. No matter they’ve seen them on screen. They’re impressive, leaning over you. But you know and I know the Guild has no real choice. Ultimately, Tabini is their best and only answer.”

  “He’s going to be another shock to their concept of the universe.”

  “They already had a real shock to their concept of the universe when they lost a space station. They’re scared of aliens. They’re scared as hell of losing this base, and of being double-crossed by aliens they don’t understand. Bren, understand their mindset. If we don’t have this station, we don’t have anything—no population, no fuel, no repairs, no place to stand. That’s death. That’s death for us. That’s their position.”

  “You and I both know that, for reasons of state, friends lie. But I’m telling you, and I want you to tell Ramirez. Tabini’s a master of double-cross, but stress this. He’s also fair. He welds parties together; he’s united the Atageini with his own. He’s gained lord Geigi.”

  “He deals with his grandmother,” Jase said with a wry smile. “There’s the training course.”

  “And he deals with Tatiseigi. This is a powerful, progressive influence that’s tripled the size of the Western Association, gained votes in the hasdrawad and the tashrid, and not conducted a bloodbath of his rivals, which is hell and away better than his predecessors. You tell Ramirez this. In this lifetime, you’re not going to get better than the man who peacefully took the Association to the eastern seaboard and simultaneously took atevi from airplanes to orbit. And who has the resources under rapid, efficient development. There is not going to be a better association for Ramirez, human or atevi.”

  He didn’t have to convince Jase. It was Jase’s store of arguments he supplied.

  “Ramirez will listen,” Jase said
. “Your Mospheiran history about the Guild’s misbehavior might be true: I don’t believe all of the accounts, figuring your ancestors as well as mine had their side of the story. The others will argue.—But here’s the hell of it, Bren, and this I’ve realized slowly over the last three years. A ship’s a small place, compared to a world. What you don’t understand, what you can’t understand by experience… you think Mospheira’s small and bound by a small set of habits. Phoenix is smaller. Compared to Mospheira, Phoenix is a four-hundred-year-old teacup, same contents, same set of thoughts, whatever comes and goes on the outside, we’re on the inside. On an island two hundred years? We’ve been spacebound in that teacup for four hundred. We have the archive; we have all the culture of old Earth; but all of us on Phoenix have in that sense been in one same small conversation for centuries. I’ve been thinking about contrasts, the last few days. And this is the big one. All of us on the ship have the same database. We don’t encourage divergences.”

  Curious, he had always thought of Phoenix as the outgoing group of humanity, the explorers, the discoverers; and Mospheirans as limited.

  But twenty-five hundred individuals, only twenty-five hundred…

  “How many are on Phoenix?” he asked, that old, variously answered question between them.

  “Fifteen hundred” Jase said, a thunderstroke in a deep silence. The fire crackled, reminiscent of Taiben, of Malguri, old, old places on the earth of the atevi, aboriginal places where fire was the means of heat and livelihood, far, far different than this most modern waystop. ”Fifteen hundred. —Understand, when we built the station, out there, before I was born, there were six thousand; the ship was doubled up, full. When the station went, there had to have been nine or ten thousand people, just there. But we’re the core. We sent out all our population to make the other station; and now there’s just… just fifteen hundred humans alive in space, besides the population of Mos-pheira… thousands, tens of thousands, six million and more human beings on the planet, on the island. That’s incomprehensible to us. Precious to us. And whatever you think, nobody wants to jeopardize that resource… an irreplaceable one to us. That Yolanda can go up there and talk about millions of human beings is so incredible to the Guild you can’t imagine.”

  He could. Not adequately, perhaps, but he could.

  “But in a certain sense,” Jase said, “when you talk to the Guild, you have to imagine a far, far smaller politics. We differ. We do differ. But we have philosophical differences, personal differences; you can’t even call it politics… certainly no regional differences. Generational differences. Experiential differences. Differences of rank: the engineers think one way; the services think another. We respect the captains; we don’t see the same conclusions; but we have to take orders. We always take orders.”

  It was the reprise of a dozen conversations, some of it exactly the same; other bits, and beyond the ship-population bombshell, were new, as if, with his ship-home a reality on the horizon, Jase was recalling details. Details not purposely withheld, only lacking a certain reality in Shejidan.

  The same, but different, and Bren listened with all that was in him.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked Jase. “You don’t take orders.”

  “I’m going to tell them things that aren’t in their database. I’m going to ask Yolanda what she said; I’m going to find her and remind her she can say no. I’m going to tell them they’d better deal with Tabini because they won’t have a concept in their universe how to get an agreement out of the atevi without him. But when my gut knows I’m talking to the captains, I’m going to be scared as hell. All the rest of me is going to want to say, ‘yes, sir’ and do what I’m told.”

  “But you won’t do that.”

  “I can’t do that anymore.”

  “You know we’re armed. That was part of the understanding, that we would have our own security when we set up the atevi quarters on station. That there would be weapons, electronics… bare walls and life support; and we tie our electronics in with theirs, all that agreement.”

  Jase drew a deep, long breath. “I’ll be damn surprised if it’s there yet. It’s not an emergency yet; it’s what I said. And the rank and file isn’t going to know what to do with it because it violates a dozen rules. You’ll stare at them, and scare them half to hell. There’ll be aliens among them. You know what kind of scare that is, when we’ve already lost one battle?”

  “Not looking them in the eyes?”

  Jase hadn’t, when he first came. “They really don’t like that. Try to make your staff understand.”

  The consequence of growing up in small corridors, narrow passages, managing some sort of privacy in nose-to-nose confinement. They’d discussed that sort of difference over the last three years.

  “I rely on you,” Bren said.

  “That scares the hell out of me.”

  “We share that feeling,” Bren agreed.

  “Time for me to go back. It is time.”

  At the root of all their plans, Jason had known he had to go back as soon as the shuttle flew reliably—being too valuable a passenger to send up with the tests. He’d known when Mercheson flew successfully; they’d both known… that he’d get the call, eventually.

  “We want you back down here to finish the job, if you want to come.”

  “I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “So will I,” Bren said. “And I’ll work with you. Tabini will. He considers you in his household. That’s an irreplaceable advantage. When they really want to talk to Tabini, they’d be wise to send you to do it. —Might at least work a fishing trip out of it.”

  Joke, but a painful one.

  “Safer, this trip,” Jase said. “At least.”

  “Flinging yourself at a planet?” It was the way Jason had landed, flung himself at the planet in a three-hundred-year-old capsule with two chutes, the first of which had failed.

  “Don’t say that.”

  He himself didn’t like all he could imagine, either.

  Jase hated flying. He didn’t. But at engine switchover, he’d like to have the whole damn bottle of vodka under his belt.

  “I promise,” Bren said. “You want a bed here, tonight? It’s late.”

  Jase shook his head. “I’m going to take half a sleeping pill. Try to get some rest. If I don’t wake up for the launch, come and get me.”

  “I will.”

  “You’re not nervous.”

  “God, yes, I’m nervous!” He laughed, proof of it, and didn’t think about the engines. “I plan to enjoy it anyway. Experience of a lifetime.”

  “An improvement,” Jase said. “Falling out of space on my second parachute… that was an experience. —Horizons. That was an experience. Riding another living creature… that was an experience. Being on water higher than the highest building… that was an experience. I want that fishing trip, Bren.”

  They’d been through a great deal. Even standing upright on a convex planet under a convex sky had been a visual, stomach-heaving nightmare for Jason.

  Having a natural wind sweep across the land and ruffle his clothing had frightened him: a phenomenon without known limits. The flash of lightning, the crack of thunder, the fall of rain—how could Jason’s internal logic tell the natural limit of such phenomena?

  It hadn’t been cowardice. It had been the outraged reaction of a body that didn’t know what to expect next, that didn’t know by experience where unfamiliar stimuli would stop, but that knew there was danger. He was in for the same himself, he was sure, tomorrow.

  “Having no up or down” Bren said, his own catalog of terrors.

  “There’s up and down. The station spins. —Didn’t when we docked; but it does now. Low doorways, short steps. It’s the household that’s going to have to watch it, and they never have.”

  Atevi, in Mospheiran-sized doorways. And furniture. “Well, an experience. That’s what we’re there to negotiate. Cheers.” He knocked back the rest of the glass. Stupid, he said to him
self. It wasn’t wise at all, flying tomorrow, before dawn.

  “Cheers.” Jase tossed down his ice-melt, and rose.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  A gleam of silver on a black, imposing figure in the dim inner hall, the gold chatoyance of atevi eyes… very familiar eyes, they were, never failing to observe; his staff had been there. He’d been aware of them. Jase had gotten a summons from outside, and now Jase was under observation, however benign. Someone watched, and that someone was Jago, who waited for him. She bade a polite farewell to Jase and, with Jase out the foyer doors, Narani properly attending, she came back to report as he walked toward his bedchamber, two more of the servants waiting in the hall.

  “The staff reports baggage is boarded,” she said.

  Bindanda, imposing, roundish shadow, said, “The bath, nandi?”

  “Very welcome.” He was tired, mentally tired; he wasn’t going to shake the events of the day by lying down and staring at the ceiling. He knew that Jago would oblige him sexually; he didn’t ask that. She had her own agenda, no knowing what, and he didn’t inquire.

  Rather he walked on, down a hallway more comfortable to his soul these days than the geometries of the human-area conversation grouping.

  Had it only been this morning he’d left Mospheira, and all that was familiar to him from childhood?

  Jago walked behind him, catfooted.

  “Mogari reports,” Banichi said, also appearing in the corridor. “Nothing untoward, no messages passed concerning Jase, except expectation of his arrival.” Mogari was the site of the dish, the source of communications from the station.