Precursor

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

He signed off, went out into a hall which had doubled in length, his domain.

Narani and Bindanda were quietly bringing harmony to the further rooms. The table with the message bowl was advanced to the center of the corridor, at the far end, and two more tables stood behind it, at intervals, each with a dish and a small arrangement of wood and stone.

The servants attended felicity, and assured good fortune.

The paidhi’s attempt at the same job, however, was unfinished.

Jase’s mother had looked in on him, to reassure herself, then had fallen asleep in an atevi-sized chair in the dining hall, utterly exhausted. He went quietly to talk to Yolanda, where she sat with her mother and sister in the new sitting room, the first one across the section line. The temperature in the new rooms had reached something more livable. The decor was still considerably lacking, but they all had blankets and steaming cups of tea.

“Jase is fine,” he said. “Just a little bruised. Nothing broken. We’ll be getting you down to the planet at first opportunity. Don’t think of it as permanent, but it’s the safest place for you to be.”

“It’s not the crew that’s done this,” Yolanda’s mother said. “It’s Pratap Tamun.”

“It may be,” he said. “But still, the planet is safest for a few months. I don’t doubt things will quiet down.”

They weren’t happy. The young sister was scared, and didn’t want to leave her cousins.

He left them to a serving of sandwiches, which ought not to upset their stomachs, and another round of tea, and ordered them a few of their precious currency, the fruit candies, wondering if Kaplan was in trouble, too.

A family of this size and complexity, however, could not engage in a bloodbath without destroying itself. The captains had acknowledged that in turning Jason and Yolanda over to him with orders to leave.

But the very reasons that had saved these few had also dictated the crew simply had no mechanism to use to fight back. The captains were not elected. They were a life appointment, by the other captains… who else could judge competency?

He ventured into the security station to fill in his staff on what he’d learned, and Banichi was there, looking like death.

“You, nadi,” he said to Banichi, “ought to be asleep.”

“A superfluous habit,” Banichi said. “Conducive to ignorance. What has Jasi-ji said?”

“That Ramirez is alive. Yolanda says that Ramirez may be alive. By all that’s happened, I’m all but certain he is, and I’m certain Jase feels a profound man’chi to this man.”

“Ah,” Jago said. “Something we understand. This is old, even for machimi.”

“Indeed,” Bren said, and sank heavily into a chair. He wastired. He had not thought how completely atevi thatancient ploy was, machimi to the hilt, and transparent as glass. “Atevi, however, tend to think around the urge. Jase will want to go straight to Ramirez, when the painkillers wear off.”

“He must not.”

“Absolutely, he must not. But I’m relatively sure he’ll listen, in that regard. He’ll want us to do it.”

“Possibly,” Banichi said. “But after you leave.”

“Not without you, nadi.”

“Then Ramirez must fend for himself.”

“We might be well advised to do something.”

“And we to get the paidhiin off the station.”

“I may remain,” Bren said, “if we can get Jase down.”

“No.” That was Banichi, Jago, and Tano, all at one word.

“Jase cantranslate, Nadiin-ji.”

“Not well enough,” Jago said. “ Melons.”

“That was three years ago.”

“Flying fish.”

“Such were said to exist, on the Earth of humans.”

“Nevertheless,” Banichi said. “Jasi-ji, as highly as we regard him, ca

“Good fortune attend our getting Jase onto the shuttle if we do nothing for Ramirez.”

“Many days hence,” Banichi said. “By then things may well be different. If we see an opportunity, we may act. But not otherwise.”

“The crew is forcing the captains’ action. The captains fear to alienate the crew. They attempted to blame Ramirez’ misfortune on Jase; that didn’t work. But they dared not have Ramirez on the planet broadcasting messages to the station. If we might assure his safety, here, I think he might rouse the crew to action.”

“He has not roused them to action where he is,” Nojana said.

“Not as an ateva would,” Bren said. “But he has roused them to action of a sort. Someone is hiding him. No few, likely, are participant in hiding him. These are obedient people, lawful and cautious, and having very few among them who actually know how to repair and run the machinery on which their lives depend. They fearto remove any person who has that knowledge. If he were the most reprehensible of men, they might protect him for the sake of that knowledge, and by all I know from Jase, he is not the most reprehensible of the captains. I think Ogun-aiji, too, the dark one of the captains, was not consulted in the overthrow of Ramirez. I think he rather well fears he may be next, and if he cares for his people, he may fear the consequences of a general bloodletting in the ranks of the captains. He can do good by moderating Tamun’s influence, as I think he did in insisting they stand by agreements. I think Kroger also stood by them; I think Tamun thought he could deal with her to our detriment, and couldn’t. I owe this woman a profound apology for all my suspicions: I think she’s thrown him back to Ramirez’s agreements with us, and between Kroger and Ogun he’s had to moderate his position.”

“Ogun did not look at Tamun, throughout,” Jago observed.

“A fault line in the association of the captains. And I think one might even suspect Sabin might have been against dealing with us, and for dealing with the Mospheirans, but even she may be doubtful now, seeing Tamun’s kin as the fourth captain. This ca