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  Fourth finger. “Sabin wants them landed on the planet where they’ll be swallowed up forever in a sea of Mospheirans.” Thumb. “The majority of Reunioners want to build new space onto this station and integrate with the Mospheirans, who don’t want them to be there.”

  “Six,” Bren said, holding up his own thumb. “Mospheira has an opinion in this affair. Mind, I haven’t consulted on this one—I’m a long way from representing Mospheira at all, these days—but Mospheira won’t want a rival government setting up out at Maudit any more than they’ll want Mospheiran-born workers outnumbered and outvoted by Reunioners on the station. They won’t want Reunioners settling in atevi territory, which atevi would never permit, anyway. But they also know, like it or not, that five thousand Reunioners aren’t going to go away.”

  “Whatever happens,” Jase said, “however we resolve the question, disposition of the Reunioners can’t wait another year. It can’t. The station had to surrender three entire sections to their residency, piecemeal, and jury-rigged. We have people living in what used to be workshops, partitioned-up, but extremely bare bones. Singles are still in barracks—that’s a minor problem. But no jobs. No cooking facilities: you get food at kitchens, just like on the voyage. There’s a flourishing black market, and theft we haven’t had to cope with on the Mospheiran side. Fights break out, and Braddock’s people swagger about attempting to say they run things, even holding trials. It’s not tolerable long-term. And Tillington’s just gone over the edge, accusing Sabin of conspiracy, stirring things up on the Mospheiran side. So this is a quiet request, just an advisement. Can you do something about Tillington—move him out, move him up or down, no preference, but get him somewhere he can’t cause more trouble? And is there any way to look at getting the Mospheiran legislature to bring the Reunioners downworld?”

  Bren drew a deep breath. It was a sane proposal. With the new med, the fact there’d been no such sickness as Jase had experienced before, either in Jase or the children—yes. It became possible. That didn’t mean it was going to be an easy proposal to advance in the Mospheiran legislature. But yes, if the ship had come up with something to enable an easier transition to the planet—if it had found a way to prove the Reunioners could live and thrive down here—

  “I’m doing all right down here,” Jase said. “I’m adjusting. Those Reunioner kids have no problems. Nothing. They’ve skipped pills. Two have been off them more I suspect than they admit. They’re not sick, so they forget. So Reunioners can adjust to being down here. We supply the population with meds for a few months . . . and their way of looking at the world will adjust. Maybe a few will have to go back, for medical reasons that haven’t turned up yet. But right now—if the Mospheiran legislature hasn’t been getting the word from their constituents up there—we’re still fragile. Damned fragile. We’ve got water, we’ve got basic protein and carbohydrate, but there are shortages of things we need. Diet’s not what it was. And I waited to bring this up now because I didn’t want to be debating it while we were trying to deal with the kids and everything else that was going on. Then the Sabin and Tillington matter blew up, making it impossible to put the problem off any longer. I’m sorry to tie the two together. But they tie themselves together, unfortunately. Tillington doesn’t want the Reunioners, and he apparently doesn’t want any Reunioner kids on the planet.”

  “Landing does become possible.” They’d been consistently hearing only two solutions for the refugees . . . Maudit, or a station expansion. There were serious objections to both. Now . . . “Where do the captains stand? You want me to propose this as a program?”

  “It’s Sabin’s position. And mine.”

  “Not Ogun’s?”

  “Ogun wouldn’t be unhappy to be rid of the problem.”

  “The logistics are impossible. Five thousand people, going down by shuttle, between cargo runs.”

  “Easier down than up.”

  “It still takes the passenger modules.”

  “There’s light freight you could pack into that config on the return.”

  “That’s still a lot of shuttle loads, while you’re having shortages.”

  “The more people we shed, the less pressure on the system. Mospheira’s program’s looking to launch a second shuttle next year. And we can build a second shuttle dock, granted Geigi will give us the resources. That doubles our ability to handle freight.”

  “We can’t double the shuttle schedule—they take the time they take.”

  “We could build more shuttles. In space. So no unneeded ground time.”

  Resources and construction gear tagged for the starship under construction had already been diverted to Geigi’s robot landers and the satellite system. Resources would have to be diverted to a Maudit expedition or a station expansion: that the Reunioner problem was going to absorb resources was a given. And a second dock was safer, did conceivably speed turnover . . . increased options. There were ground holds because of a problem in orbit.

  “Have you mentioned the idea to Geigi?”

  “Not yet. But he’s already contributed supplies, just in housing the refugees. He did say—which I certainly relayed to the Council—that the aiji will not permit the station to increase permanent human occupancy space without a corresponding increase in atevi population; and that if there is a decision to build a station out at Maudit, the same principle will apply.”

  “That would be correct.”

  “Tillington’s also said he’d demand a Mospheiran presence at Maudit, whether or not he’s gotten an official position on that, which also slows down any movement of the Reunioners elsewhere, because if we don’t have shuttle space to spare, we definitely don’t have transport for three different construction crews going to Maudit, let alone materials and habitat. I tell you, Bren, the damned thing just accretes parts and pieces, and most of them add to the problems rather than solving them. Everybody wants to control it. Nobody wants to actually do it. Whatever it is. And we can’t go putting it off. This last year’s been difficult. We’re entering a second year with these people in temporary housing, on a diet that’s bland beyond description and supplemented with pills. We’ve got to do something. And the anti-nausea med works. And human senses adjust. It’s our best option, Bren. It’s entirely possible.”

  “It does change the picture. I agree. The logistics remain a problem.”

  “The politics are a problem. And they’re becoming a worse one. It’s not anything analogous to the old situation, but both sides, at least at the administrative level, are treating it as if the old feud is alive and well.”

  Mospheirans had fled to the planet in the first place because they’d fallen out with the ship and station administration. And Reunioners were the descendants of the old admin and the loyalists who had taken off and deserted the Mospheirans, only to return in this century, tail between their legs, having stirred up a worse mess than the War of the Landing.

  Reunioners, in the person of Louis Baynes Braddock, wanted to dictate the future of humanity in space?

  Packing the lot down to Earth became an increasingly attractive solution. Possibly it was going to be more attractive to the majority of the Reunioners.

  “They’ve never experienced a planet. It won’t be the same for them.”

  “The kids had no trouble,” Jase said. “And these people aren’t their ancestors. Reunion was gravity-anchored to a lump of rock and ice, not really a planet: there was no attraction there. But there is a natural attraction to this planet. The past isn’t the present. Once you tell the Reunioners that the planet is a possibility for them—minds will change. And those kids just proved they can live down here. That’s the point.”

  “It’s a better alternative than we have had.”

  “Economically and logistically.”

  “And politically. Mospheirans can make controversy out of siting a shuttle port they do want. Room for five thousand pe
ople they envision as the ancestors—”

  “Versus an expansion of the station that’s going to upset the Treaty. Or a separate state with a history of hostility.”

  “The Reunioners won’t all favor it,” Bren said.

  “Braddock chief among that number. He wants his own station, out there, out of reach, with his hand-picked officers running things again.”

  “He can still cause trouble. God knows, Mospheirans are always ready for issues.”

  “Up there—there’s no shortage of issues. Being short of food and living space is productive of issues.”

  “Mospheirans down here don’t know Braddock’s name,” Bren conceded. “Most don’t have a clue about the Pilots’ Guild. Nor, for that matter, do we actually care.”

  A slight grim laugh. “The fact Louis Baynes Braddock still thinks he should order the Captains’ Council doesn’t impress them?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Maybe we can bring Tillington on board, get him behind the notion of landing all the Reunioners, setting things back the way they were. . . .”

  “I sincerely doubt it. For other reasons. Bren, the man poses a problem apart from the Reunioner issue.”

  “He was a good administrator through the Troubles. He and Geigi worked out a system to communicate without us . . .”

  “Which has become a problem. He doesn’t want me involved and he certainly doesn’t want Sabin. He’s all snug with Ogun. And so far as his great achievement—that neat little system that doesn’t require humans to communicate with atevi in anything but code, it’s just a longer list of the code the shuttle program worked out, and Tillington’s so devoted to it he doesn’t call on me at all, or ask me to interpret the soft tissue of the answer. Geigi will ask me in depth. I have a good relationship with Lord Geigi. But with Tillington—no. With him, yes is yes, that’s the end, and he’ll read it according to what he thinks yes means. And if it later doesn’t turn out to be the precise yes he wanted, then he says Geigi broke his promise. Communication staff to staff is cordial, accurate, and makes things run. Communication between the two stationmasters is another matter.”

  It was a complete right turn from the information he’d gotten from Geigi, even in prolonged exchanges. But—dealing with atevi—sometimes silence was another kind of information. Atevi completely avoided problematic humans, rather than collapse a useful situation. Humans didn’t always figure that out.

  They’d gone to war, humans and atevi, as an outgrowth of such a situation.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “He doesn’t like Reunioners,” Jase said. “And yes, the shortages and the crowding are a problem, but it wasn’t the personal choice of the Reunioners. He complains to his subordinates and crew chiefs, sympathizes with their problems, blames the Reunioners for all of it. He was massively upset about the kids’ visit, called it special privilege for the Reunioners, didn’t want it to happen, said they were short of supplies and the kids’ visit was taking up a shuttle flight—an exaggeration. We used the smallest passenger module and we’ll carry cargo both ways. Ogun wasn’t in favor of it—he was siding with Tillington’s view until the aiji’s request came through. But that wasn’t the end of it. He said Tabini’s government was still unstable, he said the children would be in danger and if anything happened the Reunioners would riot. Well, Sabin fixed that. She proposed I go down as interpreter and run security. So that happened, and we came down. But when we called up to the station to advise the kids were going to stay through another shuttle rotation—Tillington started saying he had information that the kids were a setup, that they’d always been a setup, and that Sabin had arranged their meeting the young gentleman on the ship.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It gets better. According to Tillington, Sabin’s plan was to get Reunioner kids linked to the young gentleman, to get in tight with the atevi, to get an agreement with Braddock and the Reunioners, that she was going to be their ally. That it was all cooked up on the voyage back.”

  Bren’s pulse ticked up a notch. Two notches. “He actually said that.”

  “That’s as Sabin reported the statement to me, which she had from Ogun—who usually doesn’t restructure information. Ogun asked her what the truth was. She naturally said hell, no, it was entirely atevi business what the young gentleman did. She didn’t stop it, because atevi security was watching over the situation. She said she’d as soon space Braddock, given a choice; she’d done everything she’d promised Ogun she’d do, and she’d handled a refugee situation they hadn’t planned for. And she’d brought the ship back, what more proof than that could he want?”

  “Saying the aiji-dowager might have an ulterior motive is like saying the sea has tides. But involving her as your captain’s ally in a special deal, as putting emotional pressure on the aiji’s son, in her care—at his age—and to take—” Neither ship-speak nor Mosphei’ had a word for it. He changed to Ragi. “—to institute a new aijinate aboard that ship, far from the aishidi’tat, to involve herself and the aiji’s son in foreign politics and foreign ambition— No.” He dropped back into ship-speak, for another logic. “First, you and I know it didn’t in fact happen. The aiji-dowager deals from her own hand. No one else’s. And certainly she wouldn’t use her great-grandson as anybody’s ally in some human power game. No. First, it’s false. She allowed the association with the Reunioner children for her great-grandson’s sake—a boy who’d scarcely seen another child—of any sort. And secondly, if word of this accusation reached her, she might well File Intent on Tillington. Mind, she does have Guild personnel on the station. He’d better not repeat this theory, anywhere outside Ogun’s office.”

  “We have no way to stop him. It’s not mutiny. It’s opinion, and, all said, he’s your official. In the Mospheiran sense.”

  “No question he’s Mospheiran,” Bren said. “But he’s not on Mospheira.”

  “He’s opened a wide gulf with Sabin. I don’t know how he can retreat from this.”

  “I don’t know how he can retreat from it either, given the situation. I’m serious about the dowager’s position. She will be serious, if she takes notice of it. If Geigi hears it, Geigi won’t work with him.”

  “Geigi already won’t work with him. I know Geigi can speak a little Mosphei’. It doesn’t happen.”

  True. Basically true, during all their absence from the solar system and all the troubles, with all the building, Geigi had been communicating using the supply system codes they’d developed for that interface in the space program, in shuttle guidance, in all the places where numbers and codes could carry a meaning.

  “So he’s become a liability. A serious liability, driving a program that’s going to divert materials for years. And the Reunioners remain a problem driving every decision we make. If we propose moving the Reunioners down, that process is going to take time, and new construction, with politics all the way. If we remove Tillington now, he’ll have an opinion. If it’s political power he’s courting, I can foresee which party will back him. Damn. Is nothing ever simple?”

  “We’ve got Tillington on one side, Braddock on the other, up there, and theoretically we’re not in charge of Braddock, Tillington is. Tell the President this: when you chose the crews to come up to the station, you screened people you sent. They’re all certified sane. The Reunioners were all born on Reunion. They’ve been through hell in the last ten years. And we took all the survivors. There was nothing like screening. There still hasn’t been. We’ve got theft we never had to deal with. We have a shadow market we never had to deal with. You wouldn’t believe what you can turn into alcohol. We’ve likely got some seriously confused head cases in that population. And we’ve got Braddock, who thinks the Pilots’ Guild is in charge of the universe. We’re one psych problem short of a security nightmare. And we’re fragile. Phoenix is. Tillington’s politicking between Sabin and Ogun is bringing
live our old issues. My people still haven’t answered all the questions about why Ramirez pulled us away from Reunion and stranded those people out there in the first place. It’s not a dead issue with the crew or with the Reunioners. It may never be. Damned sure nobody in the crew is on the side of the old Pilots’ Guild, and Braddock’s claims to speak for that ancient organization get no handhold with us. But now Tillington’s shooting sparks into a volatile atmosphere. I don’t think he understands how what he’s saying translates to us or to atevi. But he’s the wrong man in the wrong place right now.”

  He’d been busy since he’d gotten back. He’d been fighting for Tabini’s return, fighting to keep Tabini in office, fighting to defuse issues that had nearly taken the aishidi’tat apart. Tillington had been a name to him, and he’d trusted Geigi to tell him if there were things that needed attention. Of course there were disputes. There were issues. Those had seemed distant, someone else’s problem.

  Then three kids wanted to come down to the planet for a birthday party, and three political systems exploded?

  “Understand,” he said, “I have no standing with the Mospheiran government any longer. I haven’t been back there since before we left the planet.”

  “The President is still an old friend of yours.”

  “He is. And I can still talk to him, on that basis—and as what I am on the atevi side of the strait. I will try to talk to him. But, damn, Jase. I wasn’t paying attention up there. I let this one get past me.”

  “You’ve been just a bit busy. Sabin knows that. It’s why we’ve said nothing until now. So Tillington doesn’t like Reunioners. His wanting to ship the Reunioners out to Maudit was understandable. Everything was understandable—down to the point where he decided he still wanted Ogun’s ear all to himself, everything the way it had been—and Sabin and me out of his way. That’s my theory. He doesn’t want Sabin back any more than he wants the Reunioners. In his head, it’s all one event that’s messed up his little world.”