Precursor

“That’s not so!” someone shouted out, and suddenly there was a thump, a movement among the security ranks, two and three humans trying to go at one another, by what it seemed, and then five and ten and twenty, but atevi simply hauled the two sides apart.

“They’ve been lying!” one of the original two yelled, and atevi hands pried guns away from the combatants.

“We should get the dowager to safety,” Banichi said, “very soon.”

“One is quite willing,” Cenedi said. “ ‘Sidi-ma. Come. Come and let us establish a safe area.”

“Badly run,” was Ilisidi’s damning judgment of all she saw. She waved her stick forward, and they walked, Jago marching Sato along, and the crowd tailed after them, with shouting and the constant threat of weapons in that crowd, a family fight, Bren said to himself, a factional spat. Ilisidi having stirred the pot, it boiled.

They took a turn. They passed security doors which the crowd behind prevented from closing, and they moved as briskly as they could persuade Ilisidi to walk, toward their own area. Lund was still with them. There was no question of separating. Everything remained volatile.

Another set of doors. They were in the main corridor, headed for their own, and suddenly, from that side passage, an armed presence entered, Tano, and Algini, and then Jase, and Becky Graham, and the Merchesons… they all had come, and had the door open for them.

“Easy,” Bren shouted out in Ragi. “Be calm! We have ‘Sidi-ji among us, and a crowd of the curious. No one fire!”

Ilisidi would not hurry. It was the longest few seconds in his life until he reached that refuge and offered that doorway to Ilisidi and Tom and those who had come up with them.

But Ilisidi would not, however, retreat. She turned with no great haste, stood, and regarded the gathered crew with a calm demeanor, until the jostling stopped, and the voices fell silent.

Then she spoke, quietly, deliberately.

“We have welcomed your cousins to the world,” she said in Ragi, “and the aiji of the aishidi’tat will welcome this new star into the heavens.”

Bren rendered it into Mosphei’, in quiet tones, that most basic of his jobs, the one he least often performed.

“We have agreed to accept your technology and to construct things which benefit you. We shall make this station a place fit for children, and for persons of creative and sensitive hearts. We shall make this new star enjoy harmonious sights, and comforts of living things; we shall build a ship, and defend this place as our own. We take up residency among you and look forward to wonders which we have not seen. We shall build in ways which neither of our peoples now know, and teach you as you teach us. Felicity on this great undertaking, this association in the heavens. Its numbers are three, you, and ourselves, and the Mospheirans. We have done away with the infelicity of two which once plagued us. Three is the number of us, and in that, we have very much to gain.”

“The last,” he added on his own, “is the most important change, and atevi know it and the Mospheirans understand. That you don’t, yet, is whatwe have to give one another. The aiji dowager of the Ragi atevi and the aishidi’tat wishes you well.”

“I stillwish to see Ramirez,” Ilisidi muttered irritably, and turned, and walked away inside, leaving her security to shut the doors.

“She asks for Ramirez,” he said to the crowd, and stepped backward and followed the dowager himself; so with the rest of them, until Cenedi and Banichi shut the doors.

“Nand’ dowager,” Jase had said, and bowed; and so the servants bowed, among the human guests; and Bren leaned his back against the wall and heaved a breath.

“Jago-ji, did we shut Sato-nadi out?”

“She has electronics,” Jago said, “and we did, nadi.”

“Good,” he said, and drew a second and a third breath. “We survived. We’re here.”

“The felicity of these surroundings,” Ilisidi said meanwhile, leaning on her cane and slowly surveying the premises, while the servants held their breath, “is without doubt. Exquisitetaste.—I am promised supper, and past time!”

The whole staff jumped. Human occupants stood aside, while Banichi said solemnly, “Shall we take the corridor across the hall, Bren-ji?”

“Do that,” he said. He could only imagine the situation he had helped provoke among the crew. The fight Ilisidi’s security had broken up was only the visible manifestation. It was the dogged factionalism that had haunted Phoenixfrom the outset, that had damned some to venture outside without protection, as the robots failed, and others to sit safe, directing it all.

His heritage. He’d always held apart from what he negotiated, never wholly Mospheiran in sympathy, never atevi by birth, but this—this reached him, this thoroughgoing, asinine insistence on the rightness of one’s own cause; and he found himself infected with it—more, suddenly questioning everything he’d just done, everything he’d ever done. He found himself in a state of cultural recognition, at great depth, right down to his family’s spats and feuds and his hellbent inclination to take a situation and decide he was right. God, how could he?

His hands were shaking. He wiped sweat off his face and confronted Jase, who looked as shocked.

“Did you know the dowager was coming?” It was a question spoiling for a fight, damned mad, and not quite over the edge yet.

“No, I didn’t know! This is her style of dealing; this is how she’s damned well survived a century of goings-on like this, while the rest of us have heart attacks.”

“There’s a stack of messages,” Jase said. “Almost since you left.”

“I’ll damn well bet there are. Jase, do you know where Ramirez is? Can you remotely guess, that might be worth going after?”

“Isn’t that what they want us to do?”

“I know it is. But knowing wherehe is might be the best thing, right now.”

“I know they’d have moved him.”

“And where?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

There was a slight commotion at the end of the corridor, where a handful of lingering humans attempted to protest the a

“This is the best we can do,” Bren said anxiously. “We can’t house herin what contents us. We have to establish an exterior guard, if we can’t secure that intersection… which I presume they have to use.”

Jase shook his head. “They can work around. They’ll reroute. Take it. This is notthe fanciest accommodation they could have managed.”

“Captains get that, do they?”

“Captains and techs. Bren, we’ve got a potential problem…” Jase gave a nervous laugh, as if he’d only then heard himself. “A rather major problem. If they pull the ship off station… it’s armed. And they can stand us off.”

“No, they can’t” Bren said, just as madly, just as irrationally as he’d argued the rest of his case, and he knew it. “They needus, remember?”

“Tamun’s crazy. He’s stark raving crazy.”

“Well, thus far, he has company in that affliction, doesn’t he? Dresh, Sabin, Ogun? They’ve all lost their minds.”

“I’ll still bet on Ogun,” Jase said on a breath. “Bren, get to him. Get to him.”

“We’re not getting to anyone until after supper. The dowager wants di

Chapter 26

Mattresses were going to be an issue: Bren very much feared so.

He very much feared they weren’t the only issue.

“I fear they’re rather put out with us,” he said to Ilisidi, who awaited supper in what had been his room, the best they had, the warmest, and the most comfortable. Even she, however, had to rely on Jago’s mattress, which Jago had gladly contributed, while Sabiso, assigned to the dowager’s fearsome demands, had explained the workings of the shower. “I can by no means foretell what may happen to the cargo before we can free it.”