Precursor

And they, foreign as they were, large as they were, numerous as they were, and armed to the teeth, hardly needed leveled weapons to scare the hell out of the human guard. A handful of weapons stayed leveled, and if anyone should fire, bullets might go anywhere, ricochets like swarms of deadly midges.

Sato hovered close, trying to tell him something about cargo.

“Hell with cargo… order those guns up!”

“They areordered, sir.”

“Have them order it again! They’re not complying.”

Sato did. A moment later the last guns lifted out of line, and Bren drew a whole breath.

“About the cargo, sir,” Sato began.

“Ha!” Ilisidi waved the cane perilously near the lift panel. “Does one floatup here, or is there sensible ground somewhere?”

“There is ground, aiji-ma.—She wishes to find a place with what she designates a sensible floor. She’s very old, Ms. Sato. I can’t reckon, myself, how old, but she’s revered from one end of the aishidi’tat to the other. She’ll have come with considerable baggage. We need more space. The other corridor will do.”

“He says she’s very important among atevi and very old and she has a lot of baggage, sir,” Sato relayed that. “He wants more room.” Sato winced, and Bren could hear that noise past her earphones. “I know, sir. But there’s thirty, thirty-six of them, sir, not counting the shuttle crew.” Sato winced a second time.

“Tell the esteemed captain the rooms I last took were vacant, which shows there isvacant space on this station and the aiji dowager needs it. She has health conditions. If she were to die up here, I couldn’t predict the consequences. We have to get her out of this chill, immediately.—Nand’ dowager, please come into the car. Banichi, Jago. Come.” He gave no orders to Nojana, who had moved somewhere, vanished, in the way the Assassins’ Guild was notorious for doing. “Ms. Sato. Immediately!”

“Yes, sir.” Sato was still talking to the captains, saying, “She really is old, sir. She’s tiny for one of them and very wrinkled and grayed. Everybody treats her like royalty.”

“She is,” Bren said. “No question. Ask the Mospheirans. Her security’s hair-triggered and extremely dangerous.”

“The captain says, sir, be damned to you.”

“If I translate that, you may be at war.”

“Don’t translate that, sir.” Sato flinched from a direct question from the dowager, which happened to be, “To whom does she speak?”

“To the captains,” Bren said. “Nandi.”

“Then tell them they have a damned cold reception hall! And a damned disorderly procedure!”

“I have registered that complaint, aiji-ma.” The lift had started moving, and he quickly instructed their fellow passengers, the dowager, and about half her security, in managing the shift of floors.

Ilisidi set her stick against what proposed to be the floor and rode through the change with no evident distress, her eyes snapping and fierce, and her jaw set.

“Well, well,” she asked when they weighed something again, “is this the dread transition? Are we now in the station proper? And are we soon to meet these troublesome captains?”

“She wishes a meeting with the captains,” Bren said to Sato, and Sato relayed that.

“Tomorrow,” Sato relayed back. “At—”

“At oh-one-hundred,” Bren supplied.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that a local proverb for cold day in hell?”

“Sir, I don’t—don’t understand.”

“ Cold day in hell, Ms. Sato, as in at no damn time! This appointment is made, it is firm, and if you want cooperation, you will damned well make that meeting happen!”

“Is there a difficulty, paidhi-ji?” Ilisidi asked as the car went through a set of jolting intersections amongst the tubes, swaying all of them.

“One expresses determination the captains be punctual,” Bren said. “Will tomorrow suit?”

“No,” Ilisidi said. “The day after. My bones hurt. I wish to rest.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” He turned a bland look on Sato. “Relay to them that she will meet with them on the following day.”

“However!” Ilisidi said. “I shall see Ramirez-aiji in my quarters immediately.”

“She says she will speak to Ramirez tonight.”

Sato’s eyes went wide, behind the lense she wore. “Captain, she says—” She broke that off. “You can’t do that.”

“She favors Ramirez. You’d better produce him.”

“Sir,—sir, I’m to tell you that that’s impossible. He’s dead.”

“No, he isn’t. You produced Jase Graham, after trying to pin Ramirez’s death on him, which was a lie. I happen to know he’s alive, and he’d damned well better stay that way. Are you talking to Tamun?”

“To Captain Tamun, sir.”

“Well, well, tell him that. Tell him whether Ramirez has retired from the post or whatever he’s done, he’s valuable as a mediator, and his health matters. Put me through to Captain Ogun.”

“I can’t do that, sir.”

“Can’t? What does Ogun have to say about it?”

“I mean, sir, I don’t have that control. Phoenixcommdoes it.”

“Well, then Phoenixcommcan damned well find all the captains. Let’s not play favorites. The aiji dowager wants to talk to the lot of them; she’ll do farbetter if there are five captains instead of four. Atevi detest the number four. And two. They find all sorts of offense in it. Five, Ms. Sato. And I suggest you relay that quite seriously.—Banichi, nand’ Cenedi, we’ll be going to our own quarters. I trust you’ll be pleased to sit there until we can secure more comfortable arrangements. Because the station is in such bad condition, not all of it is accessible.”

“She will wish to sleep, Bren-nadi.”

“Ah. Mattresses! That’s the other point.—Ms. Sato, mattresses, in sufficient number. Atevi-sized mattresses, and beds. Or the makings of them. This is a very ingenious crew.”

“Sir.” Sato looked as if she were living the worst day of her year, and dutifully relayed to someone who seemed to be overhearing quite efficiently, as was. “The captain says this is outrageous and he won’t put up with it.”

“Who is this strange creature?” Ilisidi demanded, freeing her cane to take a poke at Sato, who looked horrified, and flinched, jammed in as they were, shoulder to shoulder, atevi and humans.

“This is a young woman, aiji-ma.”

“A woman, is it? She looks like a television with limbs! Is this the fashion here?”

“The aiji remarks on your equipment and says you resemble a television, which she detests.—Aiji-ma, she is a dutiful member of the ship. She is speaking with her aijiin, who instruct her.”

“Does she! A very odd arrangement. Are the captains afraid, and send this young girl?”

“She asks if the captains are hiding in fear.”

Sato half-relayed that, in modified form, winced at the reply. “The captain says she has no business coming here without arrangements.”

“I won’t translate that. You’ll have days straightening it out, and maybe a lifelong enemy. The atevi didn’t arrange this. Your captainsdid, when the captains sent down an agreement. Atevi have acceptedit, in the dowager’s coming here. You’ll get your station built; you’ll get your ship; or you get the nastiest damned war on this front you can conceive of. Phoenixcan choose which it would rather have.”

There was a lengthy silence while Sato listened to something else from the captains.

She was still listening when the lift arrived at its destination and opened onto a corridor… not a deserted corridor, not a corridor with an official welcoming committee, but a corridor crowded with about twenty or so crew in blue coveralls, men and women and a scattering of young folk, all of whom stared at the strangeness that had arrived in their midst.

“Look at the floor!” Bren said, feelingthe impropriety of the stares, and crew, accustomed to orders, did that, at least for a split second.

It prevented drawn guns.