Precursor

It was a discouraging portrait, one in line with Jase’s previous notes on the two. But he had a hope in Ogun, and gave it up only reluctantly. “Have they struck at Ramirez, nadi?” he asked Jase.

“Not directly,” Jase said. “I don’t think so.”

“And might they be looking at Tamun anxiously?”

“Now? Sabin, I don’t know.”

“And Ogun?”

“Thinks he can manage Tamun.”

“But supports the rules. Supports the agreements once made. Sat besideRamirez when we had our negotiating session. At least appeared to be consenting to all we said.”

Jase drew in a breath and leaned back, seeming to go into himself for a moment. Then he let out the breath. “I can imagine him doing that,” Jase said. “And likewise supporting the agreements.”

“So dare I go to him?” Bren asked. “Dare he come here!”

“Ogun would dare what suited him,” Jase said. “This man is an aiji, in a way Ramirez is not, if he could gain the man’chi of the crew. Humans prefer to liketheir aijiin, nadiin-ji.” The word ineluctably drew amusement from Banichi and Jago and Tano—who understood the relationship between salads and human emotions—and bewilderment from Cenedi. “But failing to likehim, we still know he deserves man’chi, while Tamun… Tamun only desiresman’chi, and promotes fear of aliens, fear of weakness, fear of everything, all to gain his followers.”

“We know this man,” Cenedi murmured in a low voice. “This machimi we do well understand.”

“So do I,” Bren said, fervent in hope of a path through their situation. “Machimi indeed. Confront Ogun with Ramirez, with wrongs done himby Tamun’s spite.”

“If you can reach him” Jase said, “on hisshift. Which ought to be in a few hours.”

“We have no leisure to wait,” Cenedi said, “Nadiin-ji, except as the shuttle crew can maintain excuses to delay. They are to move, either at our order, or reaching a point where they can no longer sustain themselves in the shuttle.”

“Is there anyway to get to him?” Bren asked. “Do you know where he lodges?”

“I don’t know if he’s taken Ramirez’ cabin,” Jase said. “He might. He would take it to make the authority clear to the others—but to get there…”

“They guard against one another,” Bren asked, “to that extent, in a population of fifteen hundred human beings?”

“They didn’t,” Jase said, “but we didn’t shoot each other, either. I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t know what I thought I knew about these people, and I was born here. But if you wish to reach Ogun, if you think he might do something… I’drisk it, I, personally, I’llmake a try at it.”

“You find Ramirez. You’re more able at that, if you can climb a ladder with those ribs.”

“I can do it.”

“Not a question of wish. Can you do it, without breaking something? Maybe Yolanda.”

“No. She gets disoriented in heights and the tu

“I shall go with him,” Tano said. “I can carry you if need be. How far need we climb?”

“Only one level. Maybe a transverse. I know, at least, where to start looking, as I don’t think Yolanda does.—I also know where Ogun sleeps and where his office and Ramirez’s offices are, but I’m afraid there’s no access near there.”

Bren shrugged. “An access takes too long. I shall walk, nadiin, down the middle of the corridor. I have an appointment.”

“With the crew below, tomorrow is too late,” Banichi said.

“I lie,” he said. “I lieto the guards and claim a misunderstanding. I see no other course. If we run out of time and Geigi’s men break out, we three can deal with that distraction. It will create a few moments of confusion, will it not?”

“The guards will not likely believe you are there by error nadi-ji.”

“They have to ask before acting. Can you deal with them without killing?”

“One will do one’s best,” Banichi said, and still had a worried look. “ Youwill take the gun, nadi.”

“I’ll take the gun,” Bren conceded. He pla

But conceding that made his security far happier.

The ship-folk had never yet questioned how his security breached doors and walked about as they pleased, and one did rather think the ship-folk had noticed. Probably the ship-folk very well guessed howthey routinely activated the locks, but found no percentage in doing anything about it.

So they went, brazenly, right down the main corridor, into the more trafficked area. There a handful of curious young women, who seemed ordinary crew, simply stared at them, wide-eyed; and a pair of guards in Kaplan’s style of gear, the sight of whom sent Bren’s heart rate up a notch, let them pass down the hall and through the intersection with only a close look and a consultation, perhaps, with Cl.

Turning their backs on that potential threat was hard. Bren kept thinking of shots coming at them, of a solid wall of guards turning up to cut them off… a situation he would have to talk their way out of.

But they kept walking, unchallenged, as if the guards who observed assumed they had orders. They reached the corner, turned, finding a bare corridor. No one followed. Banichi and Jago were listening all the while, Bren was sure, to every slight sound, much of it below his level of sensitivity.

They walked that corridor unmolested.

Jase and Tano meant to dive into an access… might be below their feet at this very moment, for all they could know.

One hall and the next, no one challenged them.

At the third, an ordinary woman stood to the side to let them pass, and said quietly as they did so, “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” he said, and kept walking, heart beating hard. Good luck? What in hell did the crew want? Or how much did they know?

Or what were they walking into?

“She wished us luck,” he said, in the unlikely chance his security hadn’t understood that remark.

“Baji-naji,” Jago said, the reciprocal atevi expression. The world upside-down, pieces landing as their inherent numbers let them… which led to the new and more flexible order, once things had gotten bound up and stressed to the limit.

It didn’t guarantee the survival of the pieces.

Another turn.

They took the lift, alone, no one stopping the car. They had time to exchange silent glances, to express with the eyes what was imprudent to express in words: it was the diceiest of situations. They hoped. They didn’t know. They couldn’t guess the eccentricity of the crew’s behavior, except, Bren said to himself, in a population who feared its leaders. In this case, they feared fortheir leaders.

Or maybe it was both.

They exited, reached the region of better-designed corridors, the spongy, sound-deadening flooring, that row of glossy-leaved potted plants.

Even a numbers-blind human recognized the landmarks here: the tendriled green-and-white plant, the large-leafed one.

Turn right at the green-and-white one.

“Third door,” he remembered, all on his own, from Jase’s description. That was Ramirez’s cabin. If Ogun wasn’t in it, at least no one else should be, that was how he reckoned it. What could they access with least chance of touching off a general alarm.

He pressed the button to signal the occupant there was a visitor. Banichi and Jago waited just behind him, whether ready to fire he did not count it his business to see.

The door stayed shut.

“No one home,” he said with a deep sigh. That had been their best hope: that Ogun might answer, hear his concern for the ship, immediately agree to rescue Ramirez, arrest Tamun, and honor the agreements.