Precursor

“Interesting,” Banichi said. One wondered why, and, with Banichi involved, came up with several alarming possibilities.

“Of course,” Bren said, “on the other side of all walls and windows and out where the cameras are is hard vacuum.”

“One does recall so,” Banichi said. “But a view of the exterior might be useful. One would like to know the relationship of pieces.”

“That, I might provide. I can ask Cl. There might be a view available.”

“Interesting,” Jago said, too.

They finished breakfast. And after the accustomed compliments to cook and staff—in this case Bindanda—Bren went to the dining area wall panel and punched in Cl.

“Cl,” he said when he had an acknowledgment. “We’ve been here this long and we haven’t seen the stars. Can you show us a view?”

“Not much to see from the cameras,” Cl said. “ But hull view’s active.”

The screen came live on a glare-lit, ablated surface, and absolute shadow.

“Where is that?” Bren asked, having an idea what Banichi was after, and now Tano and Algini had come in haste, Jago having apparently informed them what was toward.

“ That’s looking back over the hull from forward camera 2,” Cl said.

“Is that the shuttle?” Bren said. There was a reflected glow on a smooth surface, the edge of a wing, perhaps.

“ Should be,” Cl said. “ I can angle for a better view. This isn’t the deep dark, here. There’s planetshine, for one thing, not mentioning the star. You want stars, sir, you should be a little farther out.“

It must be a slow morning in the control center, Bren thought, gratified. It was, in fact, the shuttle.

“ Got to close the show,” Cl said. “ I’ll leave you attached to camera 2 on, say, C45.”

“That’s wonderful,” Bren said. “Delighted, Cl. Thank you.”

“Interesting,” Tano said, much as Banichi had said, as Cl punched out.

“More cooperation than we’ve had, Nadiin,” Bren said. “That man is not cautious with us. Others are. Interesting, indeed.”

His security returned questioning looks. “We had early cooperation,” Bren said, “very wide cooperation, and easy agreement with those who were already agreed. I don’t think it attributable to my powers of negotiation, rather to understandings generally made verbal. Now we have these long delays.”

“Dissent,” Jago said.

“And placatory gestures from the servants,” Banichi said.

It did, however atevi the view might be, seem to describe the situation with Cl.

“It’s not safe to press, however,” Bren said. “No more than in an atevi household. The man is a subordinate.”

He settled to work after that small show, imagining that someone thinking more down a human track would have negotiated that camera view much earlier; that very probably Kroger’s team had asked; and that it was something Cl could grant on request, something to amuse the guests and, like the unmarked hallways, to tell them very little.

They were due to meet with Kroger this evening, supposing that came off on schedule. Certainly Bindanda came to question him diffidently about his selections and his menu: “Excellent,” he said, “and one might have a sweet or two. That will please them.”

“Nandi,” Bindanda said, and went off to their galley stores, with Narani in close supervision.

The household ran without effort; it moved and buzzed about him, rarely disturbed him except to renew his supply of tea, while he sat at the small desk and composed letters and replies to various correspondents.

To Toby:

Write when you can. My love and my apologies to Jill and the kids.

There was no letter today. He wasn’t that surprised in the silence.

To his mother, with ulterior motives, both to hear from her and to hear whatever she might have heard about Toby… ifshe had heard a thing from Toby, which she might not have.

Double reason for checking up on her.

I’m doing fine. It’s an interesting place up here.

He struck that begi

I’m just checking to be sure you’re all right. I hope Barb is improving. I want you to take care of yourself, and be assured I’m fine. I hope you’ll keep me posted on everything, and I want you to be sure to get enough rest. I know how you tend to push yourself. I think I inherited it. Do stay to sensible places. You know how certain elements are dangerous when I’m in the news, and I think I am now. I imagine that I am. Know that I love you.

He’d achieved a certain distance in his communication, after sending that other letter, that possibly hurtful letter. He worried about it, worried about it a great deal, and thought now that he’d been too harsh, too self-centered on his own part, to take every move his mother made as self-serving and self-centered. She wasconcerned for him, God knew. She was a mother. She had a son off on a hitherto unreachable space station telling her things were fine while armed security watched over her and everything she did. He’d been desperate; he’d shoved too hard to be free.

What I wrote was honest at the time but one of those things that one starts thinking about; and both your sons love you a great deal. At something over thirty I’ve reached that stage of wanting to be free and to pursue my own course. Kind of late, but there we are. I haven’t taken Toby’s course, home and house and all. And I shoved far too hard when it came to it. Now that I’ve done that I find myself regretting it and wanting to know how you are and to tell you I care. Not to change my mind, but to tell you I care. Both are human, I think.

The I thinkloomed out at him on rereading. In all honesty, it was an I think. He didn’tknow for certain any longer, or hadn’t since his teens, when he’d gone into the University program and begun to separate from the culture he’d been born to.

I don’t know what more I can say, except to take care of yourself in all senses. I wish I had been able to stay longer. We both needed that. But I’m doing a job here, the results of which I think you are able to see now, and which I hope will give those kids of Toby’s a future.

He wrote to the heads of committees.

We are making progress and hope for your patience. While there are agreements in principle, there are many details yet to work out of what I hope will be a good cooperation between our peoples.

He wrote it until he began to see every flaw in the hope.

And he settled down with Jago for a lengthy talk over the southern provinces of the aishidi’tat, their ethnic questions, their material resources and willingness to mobilize, those divisions of loyalty and wealth he knew, but which a human didn’t feelwith the accuracy an ateva felt the divisions, and which a human couldn’t know with the breadth and depth of an ateva’s being immersed in them lifelong while being wired to feel the tides of provincial resentment.

Was a little town building a railroad to a spaceport? Ask what various provinces might do once they saw prosperity within their reach. An ateva might make a pot to continue in the economy for a hundred years, and an ateva might utilize every scrap of a fruit, down to the peelings; but atevi also might have a color television in a house in which electric wiring was strung along the side of a stone floor, under exposed wooden rafters, some of which might have been replaced in the last century.

Atevi made families and ties within man’chi, and passed these houses, and their debts and their projects, from one generation to another, and had both the most informal barter arrangements and the most rigidly traditional activities… give or take what humans sent them.

Atevi when they came to the station might bring families, including aged aunts and grandfathers, which humans in their economy and focus might not understand.