Precursor

The security people are making a fuss about my being here. Ever since the news said you’d gone up to the station, they haven’t let me answer my own phone. I hate this. They have guards on this floor, guards watching Barb’s room. It’s just crazy.

I phoned Shawn and phoned your office on the mainland and told them to tell Tabini you hadn’t been in touch.

Barb is going to have another operation tomorrow.

This is the third, but this time they have the bleeding stopped, and this one is to take out some of the tubes and such. She says thank you for the flowers. You could at least send her a hello. It’s only polite.

He didn’t react with temper. He composed a polite, concerned reply, wrote to Tabini:

We have Jase in our keeping, aiji-ma. An opposing association surrounding the fourth captain has seized enough power to insist on his banishment to the planet but not sufficient power to do him harm. The senior of the four has been the target of an assassination attempt.

To Shawn Tyers he wrote, in Ragi, via his office:

As best I can determine, the head of your operation here has valiantly resisted attempts to divide our interests. She persists through hardship, and we support her as best we can. I have not yet drawn her within our protection because having more than one vantage within the station affords us a certain operational flexibility. I urge you to consult with the mainland for more details.

More than that, he dared not write. There was too much chance of having communication cut off again, if it was in fact going through… and he had no proof of that until someone answered him with direct evidence of having read his letters.

“Put me through to Kroger,” he asked Cl.

“ Kroger has given notice she is not receiving messages,” Cl answered. “This is a sleep period.”

“Cl, put me through, or I go there.”

“ Let me consult,” Cl answered him, and put him through, all the same.

Thatwas interesting, he thought as Kroger answered.

“Bren Cameron,” he identified himself. “We have Jase, we have Mercheson, we have the families, as best we can guess. Jase is moving slowly, but everyone seems in good health. Want to join us for supper?”

Jase roused himself out of bed, sore, upset, and in bad temper. At a certain point, Bren thought, one just let the anger slide off. He didn’t blame Jase.

“You’re not getting out of here,” he said to Jase in Ragi. As Jase stood, in a bathrobe, it was not imminent, but Jase was pushing himself to ignore the pain. “That’s exactly what they want you to do, and you’re not going to do it.”

“It doesn’t mean—” Jase began.

He finished it: “You’re out of the game, Jase. Figure it out. Pridebe damned. Throwing yourself away and helping them find the man you don’t want them to find isn’t sensible. Shut up and sit down.”

Jase reached a chair and sat. “A moment, nadi.”

He gave Jase that moment, sat down, himself, and let Jase absorb the pain, and the facts of his situation, in peace. That Jase remembered Ragi, and the self-control of the aiji’s court, was a wonder in itself, considering the circumstances.

Perhaps indicative of the direction of his thoughts, Jase pushed his hair back, straight back, as he’d worn it until he’d done such a wretched job cutting it.

“You’ve become part of thismission,” Bren said.

“Clothes,” Jase said.

“We have yours being cleaned and pressed. Even that jacket.”

Jase managed a short, pain-clipped mirth. “Narani so wanted to do that.”

“Desperately.”

“You can borrow mine.”

“Can’t wear yours.”

“Fu

“I need shipclothes.”

“No, Jase point of fact, you don’t.”

“He’s out there; he has no help. I have to do something, Bren!”

“Don’t count that he has no help,” Bren said. It was Ramirez they were talking about, in this coded mode of no-proper-names. “Conspiracy is spreading through the crew. The shuttle’s due back imminently. I’m going to talk to our fellow delegates from the island, fifteen days to wait while they check out the shuttle… we have to get out of here. We have no more reasonable, rational choice. I can’t lose you. Do you hear? If everything’s lost, there’s you. That’s his legacy.”

“I’m not him!”

“No. You’re his project, his program, his hands, and his determination to have his way. Don’tgive up.”

There were several moments’ more silence while Jase thought that over, and the court mask came over his face, despite the pain.

“The aiji’s favorites have a way of ending up in charge,” Bren said, beyond that. “And atevi are coming to this place. The ship has no choice.”

Jase gazedat him, absorbing that thought, that idea, that proposition.

“He will have won,” Bren said, “if you don’tdo the things the captains are prompting you to do. I think the new senior may have great misgivings about all of this. There’san ally, if you can convince him.”

“I have to think about this,” Jase said, and by midday he was limping about the place, talking intensely to Yolanda in private, and then to Banichi and Jago, filling them in, Banichi said, on every detail of the tu

Bren came in on it, and sat and absorbed the information.

“The food has improved,” Kroger said, “but they’re delivering it. They’re being very cooperative; we walk about. There’s no quibble about that. They arrange for us to go as far as we want. One corridor they wouldn’t let us into. They said that was the end of the pressurized section. It may be.”

“You’re close to the boundary,” Jase said.

The dining hall was at capacity. Banichi and Jago took to having their meals with the security team and the staff, with Kate Shugart, who was here for her own turn at translation.

The Merchesons and the Grahams shared the table; it wasn’t until the after-di

“They don’t want us to leave,” Gi

“The aiji will send whatever representative he pleases,” Bren said in Ragi, with a clear notion it might well be Jase. Tabini could be contrary as hell when he felt pushed. That statement was to keep Jase on an even keel. But he smiled and shrugged. “They’d be fools to lay a hand on him,” he said in Mosphei’, all but certain there weren’t listeners, but almost hoping there were. “The aiji can be damned stubborn when someone pushes the right button, and this would be one. Same with tomorrow. We’re receiving cargo, I’m very sure, and we plan to be there when the shuttle docks. Tom may well be on it. Want to join us and lay claim to what’s yours?”

Gi

“Can we do that?”

They didn’t have Kaplan this evening. They had the old man for a guide. They hadn’t seen Kaplan, Andresson, Johnson, or any of their former visitors, and Bren didn’t take it for coincidence that these people should all be unavailable.

“I’m not going to have their security going over our cargo,” Bren said. “And I’m expecting a crate of candy. And you’re hoping for Tom. We have a vested interest.”

“I can guide you,” Jase said, the very last guide he wanted.

“You have to stay here, nadi-ji,” Bren said in Ragi. “Those were the conditions.”

It didn’t make Jase happy, not in the least, but years in the Ragi court had reshaped some of Jase’s headlong rush at things, redirected that hot temper, once intellect was in the ascendant.