Defender Read online

  They were coming into a more trafficked area now, beyond the limits of any secure conversation. Remarkable sight, atevi and humans in about equal numbers, coming and going on business, atevi and humans in office clothes and workman’s clothes—regulations-wise unable to say more than a handful of words to one another—notably please go, please come, please stop… please call the supervisor immediately, in the most meticulously memorized and numerically neutral courtesy. But by that means the common folk of two species did talk, if only in those approved, memorized phrases for known situations.

  They tried to be careful. But at certain points they had to cooperate.

  And sometimes it came down to things ludicrous on the surface—at least to one side of the question—but fraught with the most serious emotional reactions.

  Fish, for instance, and the urgent reason he had to talk to Geigi about robots and a fish tank.

  They reached the construction office, a reception area inside of course tastefully arranged: small scroll-paintings and a reception table, with a bowl for correspondence—and an inexpensive soft drink dispenser for human visitors. Geigi was nothing if not even-handed, though the split in decor made an atevi visitor look twice.

  They were expected. The attendant rose and bowed, and immediately opened the door with a key push.

  “Nandi.” Security on duty just inside was as easy, as cordial: Tano had called ahead.

  And in this easy place, Bren left Banichi at the security station to take his ease with Geigi’s staff, there to have a soft drink, likely, and exchange information.

  Meanwhile he went on into the inner chamber, where Geigi, in informal clothing this morning, presided over a desk well-littered with papers, beside a tank humming and bubbling and populated with color and darting movement.

  “Bren-ji.” Geigi rose—great courtesy, for a lord in his own territory. He was a jovial man whose whole attitude toward life was experimental—and, for an atevi lord, very spur-of-the-moment. He swept business aside, knocking two storage disks onto the carpet in the process, and personally dragged a chair up to the side of his desk. “Tea—tea, will you, Bren-ji? I swear I could do with a cup. We have this most amazing infuser—” Geigi himself went to a domed creation on the bookcase counter, put a plastic cup beneath, and created a cup of tea.

  “Thank you.”

  Geigi hastily created another, stirred it with a plastic rod. “Not so fine as that, but hot.”

  “Very welcome.” One was appalled. A tea-maker. A Mospheiran tea-maker. In an atevi lord’s office.

  “Back from the world and all, and a puzzling trip, I take it.”

  “I have no idea why I was called, nandi, I truly don’t.”

  “What, pray, is the aiji doing down there?”

  “Mystifying us all. I wish I knew. So does everyone.”

  “A requiem for Valasi-aiji, and not a whisper of ill intent to the living or the dead.”

  “Not a one. And I can’t answer.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Truly can’t, Geigi-ji. I was down there. I came back none the wiser. But!” It was rude to change subjects on a gentleman, but Geigi was an intimate of long-standing, so intimate he risked his reputation with truly marginal tea. “I had a seatmate on the flight up, nandi. Gin Kroger.”

  “Gin-nadi. With news?”

  “Oh, with more than news, nand’ director! The robots are with us, and more certainly on their way.”

  “A wonder!”

  “I talked with Jase last night, filed intent to have some of our windfall diverted to your fish tanks, my closest of associates, and we, you and I, nandi-ji, need to put our heads together, so to speak, and set priorities and requirements and a timetable before someone else gets a bid in.”

  “This is marvelous!”

  “If the tanks can do as they need, Geigi-ji. If they can provide the needful food.”

  “I have every detail.” Geigi leapt up and went to a central cabinet, among the other high, clear-doored shelves and cabinets that graced this very modern office. From it he extracted a stack of much-abused paper, brought it to the desk and spread it out, sketches of a circle containing many little circles.

  It was an actual engineering plan, an exploded diagram of what he had last seen as a series of sketches on scrap paper: an aquiculture tank, with triple walls and heaters and solar panels and details he hadn’t seen.

  Another trip to the cabinet and Geigi laid something new atop it all: it might be another tank, or a tricky sort of valve— the paidhi had gotten fairly proficient at engineering over the last decade, but this one eluded him.

  “This is my own invention,” Geigi informed him. “And mathematically, baji-naji, I can say there are potentially sufficient variables to make the solutions for escape exceed the number of fish. This is an escapable trap.”

  “An escapable trap, nandi.”

  “It admits fish to an area where they may be caught. It revolves, see?” Geigi went back to a second cabinet and brought a plastic model, a somewhat taped-up and revised plastic model.

  One began to get the notion.

  Fairness. Mathematics that would prove to have harmonious numbers.

  Atevi hunted. And fished. They did not raise animals for slaughter. The ship-folk’s cultural divorcement from the concept of eating living things ran head-on into Mospheira’s love affair with food and meat. The mainland’s code of kabiu, fitness, meant eating no meat outside its appropriate season, and eating with ceremony—respect, even reverence: ship-folk began to take to that concept, though queasily.

  But for atevi, reverence didn’t mean processed meat, and it didn’t mean domesticated herds. And that had been a major stumbling block in trying to supply food to the station.

  Fairness meant going out to fish for wild fish, not scooping up everything that lived in one whole tank and processing it without individuality.

  But this revolving trap, this remote-fisher, offered a statistical chance to the fish to escape.

  “Ingenious,” Bren said.

  “Fry hatch along the bottom, where this grid—” Geigi pulled a sheet of plans from the middle of the stack, which showed a mesh smaller, one presumed, than the adults. “And a rapid current sweeps the young into the hatchling tanks, to what passes for shallow water. There are three outlets and one inflow. Of outlets, one offers this choice.”

  Absolutely ingenious. Roulette, for fish.

  Geigi was self-pleased. “Phoenix engineers, who understand this floating in space, these no-gravity pumps, they do this sort of thing very well. But we can satisfy the objections of the most fastidious. Fish may become resident in this facility, we don’t breed them. They breed themselves. And even from the fishing tank there is an escape back into the breeding tanks.”

  Bren examined the plastic model, asked himself why a fish would want to dive through those holes—a question the paidhi had never asked himself in his life.

  Some fish, like the species they planned to have in orbit, were kabiu in all seasons, having no migration or well-defined breeding behavior that made them appropriate or inappropriate.

  It was not like the introduction of high fructose sugars, which had addicted the crew and made SunDrink a wild success. To the bewilderment of the Mospheiran companies who had hoped for Phoenix to argue on their side and accept meat products, the human ship-crew did not take readily to meat… but did take to the atevi view of fairness and fitness and season. Fairness made a sort of sense to the ship-folk, while it vaguely disgusted Mospheirans, who preferred not to think of the fish on one’s dinner plate as a personality.

  “We can offer the fishing tanks for recreation,” Geigi said. Bren had wondered how long it would take before Geigi offered that notion.

  “At first, however, nandi, I fear we’ll do well to have the fish reproduce.”

  “We need a game biologist.”

  “And the engineers.” It all was, to Mospheiran sensibilities, an insanely grandiose plan. But insane things had been engineer
ed before now, since humans falling in from space had landed in a steam-age culture. One had only to look at the Shejidan spaceport to know what could be done to accommodate atevi sensibilities. Fresh water fish, however, not salt. A sea turned out to be a very fussy, very complex environment to maintain.

  And once there were the robots, they had the means to automate operations and increase the supportable station population at the same time. With an unlimited food source, they could envision full-scale operation, a station population adequate to any operation… any operation, and a food-source that wouldn’t exclude atevi from orbit: that was the center of their plan.

  “If we achieve this, nandi,” Bren said, “and quit spending so much of our launch weight on food, we’ll have the labor up here. No question.” In the most logical sense of how to proceed, he supposed he should push for a Mospheiran style fish-farm to start into operation first, to feed enough Mospheirans to make the harder project easy—but getting more Mospheirans than atevi up here was the very last thing they wanted to do. “This keeps everyone happy. I’m quite convinced.”

  “Very good,” Geigi said delightedly. “Excellent!”

  It was concluded. It was only twice and three times the scale they had intended, but now two thirds of the population were in accordance with the other third, and kabiu could be satisfied for good and all, now that there was a positive abundance of worker robots.

  “We have at least a materials estimate,” Geigi said—and stopped, as the door opened and Geigi’s chief of security slipped in with a quietly blank look. Security never intervened in business except on life or death.

  “Nandiin,” the man said. “An urgent message for the paidhi.”

  For him? And two lords’ security agreed to interrupt a meeting? It was nothing good.

  Might it be his call from Mospheira? Some message from Toby?

  “Excuse me, nandi.” Bren rose. “I’ll deal with it quickly.”

  “Whatever you must do,” Geigi said, rising, the soul of courtesy.

  Geigi’s man led the way outside. Banichi was there, to be sure, and Bren’s immediate expectation was that Banichi had received a message, something relayed from Tano.

  But Geigi’s man opened the door to the general reception area, where an unlikely individual, in blue fatigues and with a blinking lot of electronics, waited for him.

  Kaplan. One of Jase’s aides, considerably out of formal uniform such as he mostly wore nowadays.

  “Excuse me,” Kaplan lisped in Ragi, and lapsed into ship-language. “Captain Graham’s sending, sir, Captain Ramirez— he’s had a seizure. They’ve taken him to infirmary.”

  “To station infirmary.” Ramirez would ordinarily go to sick bay on Phoenix. The station infirmary was closer—for minor things or, conversely, for absolutely urgent care.

  “Orders said find you wherever you were, sir. Captain Graham thinks you should come, right now.”

  “Absolutely.” He changed to Ragi. “Ramirez has been taken to station hospital, a health crisis, I take it. I’m going at once to pay respects. Tell nand’ Geigi.”

  “Yes,” Geigi’s man said, and went to do that immediately.

  Which left him with Banichi and Kaplan.

  “Kaplan. We’re with you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kaplan led off, out the door.

  Ramirez. He’d been subconsciously primed for grievous news to come from the planet, not from here.

  But Ramirez… Ramirez had been in dubious health—and he was one of the three keys to the whole atevi-human partnership. The paidhi-aiji could suffer a personal loss and go on doing his job the same day. The paidhi could lose everyone he loved in the world, and the future of three nations would go unshaken.

  But Ramirez stumbled, in the midst of all the agreements and programs that relied on that one man… and three worlds shook.

  Lord Geigi, no less, overtook them at the lift. That was Ramirez’ importance. Bren acknowledged the presence with a glance as the car arrived, and all of them got in together, bound toward a very small installation on third deck, which had only one virtue—its proximity to Ramirez’ on-station office.

  They didn’t speculate aloud, he and Geigi. But it took no telepathy to know they shared the same thought, the same apprehension of disaster.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  Phoenix security was evident in the infirmary corridor, two in fatigues; and armed guards occupied the infirmary foyer as if the place were under siege. It was anxious security, worried security—security whose highest authority was behind those doors, incapable of command.

  “Mr. Cameron, you can’t bring them in here.”

  Kaplan was absolutely speechless. Bren swung a stark, forbidding look at the human officer, Jenrette. Ramirez’ man, for God’s sake, delivered a prohibition to an atevi lord and his retinue as if they were random tourists.

  “Mr. Jenrette, this is lord Geigi and his security.” Bren spotted the personal guard of Captain Sabin and Captain Ogun present further in; and Polano, who was another of Jase’s message-runners. “Captain Graham sent for us.”

  Jenrette took a deep breath and made that slight nod of the head that ship personnel had learned to use with atevi authority. “Apologies. Mr. Cameron, the captain… the captain’s in a bad way. The other captains are with him and I can’t let anybody in right now.”

  “We’re here officially, sir, from the aiji’s side. I hope you’ll convey that to appropriate channels. We’re here to help if we can, nothing else.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jenrette’s nerves were wound tight, but he let go a pent breath and looked grateful.

  “I’m sorry,” Bren said. Jenrette’s whole life was wound up in Ramirez, and Bren sensed in the man’s manner that Jenrette knew they were very near to losing the captain. After all the close calls, this might be the last one, and Jenrette was struggling. “I’m personally sorry, Mr. Jenrette.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The last was a breath, heart-felt in expression.

  Banichi and Jago, further removed, meanwhile, were in near-silent communication—likely with Tano and Algini, back in their residence. So was Geigi’s security in touch with someone elsewhere.

  As for Geigi, his solid, ordinarily cheerful face showed he well understood the heightened tensions… not in human terms, but certainly in practical ones. Love might not translate, but man’chi covered the situation. An association about to shatter translated into Ragi understanding very well, and Geigi’s security was understandably on edge, considering their charge here in the midst of humans at a moment of transition. Geigi’s men reasonably thought they were here to shore up order against impending chaos.

  “One fears the worst,” Bren translated quietly for Geigi. “Ramirez is alive at the moment, though the outcome seems very much in doubt. I don’t think we have to fear a coup as Tamun tried to effect, not even a dispute of succession. Ramirez-aiji’s chief of security is distressed, and only wishes to prevent intrusion.” This above all else was not only understandable but commendable in a man in Jenrette’s position. “These men all answer to the ship-aijiin. Doctors are with Ramirez. We may expect some sort of initial report on his condition.”

  “Understandable in all senses,” Geigi said. “We will attend a decent time, and wait for the report.”

  Geigi’s bodyguards meanwhile still looked uneasy. Their senior spoke to Banichi in low, worried tones. Banichi answered something, and there seemed to be some agreement, likewise some quiet communication to separate staff offices.

  So they stood. They waited. There was little room in the place. The infirmary staff remained at the desk, looking anxious. A lone human worker came into the infirmary with a badly cut hand, and hesitated in dismay, but one of Ogun’s security directed the man to the desk, and security escorted the worker quickly back into the patient care area. For the rest, quiet prevailed.

  “One should set an extra watch on the survivors of Tamun’s men,” Banichi suggested quietly, in th
e wake of the worker, and it certainly was a worthwhile consideration. Tamun might be dead in the coup of several years past, but there were still a handful of crew under close watch, minor adherents of the Tamun affair who had had amnesty.

  Bren hesitated; but critical as the situation might be, he went to Jenrette. “Mr. Jenrette,” he said in a low voice, “my security expresses a concern regarding Tamun’s people. I trust we know where they all are.”

  “At every moment,” Jenrette said, and drew a breath and seemed relieved to find something within his capacity to say, yes, that was under control.

  So they stood, over a period of minutes after the worker’s passage, and the activity in the infirmary’s central corridor increased in ways that seemed, from Bren’s vantage, to center further up the corridor than the injured worker. Doors opened and closed somewhere in the depths of the place.

  Then came a period of ominous quiet, no one speculating, no one saying a word. Jenrette, who had spent years of his life with Ramirez, stood barred from whatever proceeded with his captain, and Bren deeply pitied the man, who struggled valiantly to maintain his calm against evidence that something was wrong.

  Then one of the doctors came out into the hall. Two and three others walked behind him, aides, all looking grim and defeated. The doctor spoke to them, then saw the gathering, and came up the hall with a glum expression.

  “I’m very sorry. Captain Ramirez is dead.”

  There were no expressions, no outburst from the men. “Mr. Franklin is in charge,” Jenrette said calmly, passing command to Ogun’s chief officer. “I’ll be reporting to Captain Graham, now.”

  Jase had wanted to resign his office. Instead—Ogun commanded first-shift; Sabin, second: Jase became third, a heartbeat closer to command, in a ship that had just lost a wealth of its experience and knowledge of very critical decisions.

  “Ramirez-aiji has just died,” Bren translated for lord Geigi and for his staff, who kept a solemn silence like the rest. “Command has just passed to Ogun-aiji.”

  Now the captains emerged from the room down the hall— Ogun, Sabin and Jase Graham. Jules Ogun was a black man, white-haired, square-faced and solid as a basalt pillar; Sabin, a slight woman of grays and dour expression on the best of days, was no different in expression today: they were Ramirez’ two contemporaries, both taking matters in grim-faced calm.