Defender

Another trip to the cabinet and Geigi laid something new atop it all: it might be another tank, or a tricky sort of valve—the paidhi had gotten fairly proficient at engineering over the last decade, but this one eluded him.

“This is my own invention,” Geigi informed him. “And mathematically, baji-naji, I can say there are potentially sufficient variables to make the solutions for escape exceed the number of fish. This is an escapable trap.”

“An escapable trap, nandi.”

“It admits fish to an area where they may be caught. It revolves, see?” Geigi went back to a second cabinet and brought a plastic model, a somewhat taped-up and revised plastic model.

One began to get the notion.

Fairness. Mathematics that would prove to have harmonious numbers.

Atevi hunted. And fished. They did notraise animals for slaughter. The ship-folk’s cultural divorcement from the concept of eating living things ran head-on into Mospheira’s love affair with food and meat. The mainland’s code of kabiu, fitness, meant eating no meat outside its appropriate season, and eating with ceremony—respect, even reverence: ship-folk began to take to that concept, though queasily.

But for atevi, reverence didn’t mean processed meat, and it didn’t mean domesticated herds. And that had been a major stumbling block in trying to supply food to the station.

Fairness meant going out to fish for wild fish, not scooping up everything that lived in one whole tank and processing it without individuality.

But this revolving trap, this remote-fisher, offered a statistical chance to the fish to escape.

“Ingenious,” Bren said.

“Fry hatch along the bottom, where this grid—” Geigi pulled a sheet of plans from the middle of the stack, which showed a mesh smaller, one presumed, than the adults. “And a rapid current sweeps the young into the hatchling tanks, to what passes for shallow water. There are three outlets and one inflow. Of outlets, one offers this choice.”

Absolutely ingenious. Roulette, for fish.

Geigi was self-pleased. “ Phoenixengineers, who understand this floating in space, these no-gravity pumps, they do this sort of thing very well. But we can satisfy the objections of the most fastidious. Fish may become resident in this facility, we don’t breed them. They breed themselves. And even from the fishing tank there is an escape back into the breeding tanks.”

Bren examined the plastic model, asked himself why a fish would want to dive through those holes—a question the paidhi had never asked himself in his life.

Some fish, like the species they pla

It was notlike the introduction of high fructose sugars, which had addicted the crew and made SunDrink a wild success. To the bewilderment of the Mospheiran companies who had hoped for Phoenixto argue on their side and accept meat products, the human ship-crew did not take readily to meat… but did take to the atevi view of fairness and fitness and season. Fairness made a sort of sense to the ship-folk, while it vaguely disgusted Mospheirans, who preferred not to think of the fish on one’s di

“We can offer the fishing tanks for recreation,” Geigi said. Bren had wondered how long it would take before Geigi offered that notion.

“At first, however, nandi, I fear we’ll do well to have the fish reproduce.”

“We need a game biologist.”

“And the engineers.” It all was, to Mospheiran sensibilities, an insanely grandiose plan. But insane things had been engineered before now, since humans falling in from space had landed in a steam-age culture. One had only to look at the Shejidan spaceport to know what could be done to accommodate atevi sensibilities. Fresh water fish, however, not salt. A sea turned out to be a very fussy, very complex environment to maintain.

And once there were the robots, they had the means to automate operations and increase the supportable station population at the same time. With an unlimited food source, they could envision full-scale operation, a station population adequate to any operation… anyoperation, and a food-source that wouldn’t exclude atevi from orbit: thatwas the center of their plan.

“If we achieve this, nandi,” Bren said, “and quit spending so much of our launch weight on food, we’ll have the labor up here. No question.” In the most logical sense of how to proceed, he supposed he should push for a Mospheiran style fish-farm to start into operation first, to feed enough Mospheirans to make the harder project easy—but getting more Mospheirans than atevi up here was the very last thing they wanted to do. “This keeps everyone happy. I’m quite convinced.”

“Very good,” Geigi said delightedly. “Excellent!”

It was concluded. It was only twice and three times the scale they had intended, but now two thirds of the population were in accordance with the other third, and kabiucould be satisfied for good and all, now that there was a positive abundance of worker robots.

“We have at least a materials estimate,” Geigi said—and stopped, as the door opened and Geigi’s chief of security slipped in with a quietly blank look. Security never intervened in business except on life or death.

“Nandiin,” the man said. “An urgent message for the paidhi.”

For him? And two lords’ security agreed to interrupt a meeting? It was nothing good.

Might it be his call from Mospheira? Some message from Toby?

“Excuse me, nandi.” Bren rose. “I’ll deal with it quickly.”

“Whatever you must do,” Geigi said, rising, the soul of courtesy.

Geigi’s man led the way outside. Banichi was there, to be sure, and Bren’s immediate expectation was that Banichi had received a message, something relayed from Tano.

But Geigi’s man opened the door to the general reception area, where an unlikely individual, in blue fatigues and with a blinking lot of electronics, waited for him.

Kaplan. One of Jase’s aides, considerably out of formal uniform such as he mostly wore nowadays.

“Excuse me,” Kaplan lisped in Ragi, and lapsed into ship-language. “Captain Graham’s sending, sir, Captain Ramirez—he’s had a seizure. They’ve taken him to infirmary.”

“To stationinfirmary.” Ramirez would ordinarily go to sick bay on Phoenix. The station infirmary was closer—for minor things or, conversely, for absolutely urgent care.

“Orders said find you wherever you were, sir. Captain Graham thinks you should come, right now.”

“Absolutely.” He changed to Ragi. “Ramirez has been taken to station hospital, a health crisis, I take it. I’m going at once to pay respects. Tell nand’ Geigi.”

“Yes,” Geigi’s man said, and went to do that immediately.

Which left him with Banichi and Kaplan.

“Kaplan. We’re with you.”

“Yes, sir.” Kaplan led off, out the door.

Ramirez. He’d been subconsciously primed for grievous news to come from the planet, not from here.

But Ramirez… Ramirez had been in dubious health—and he was one of the three keys to the whole atevi-human partnership. The paidhi-aiji could suffer a personal loss and go on doing his job the same day. The paidhi could lose everyone he loved in the world, and the future of three nations would go unshaken.

But Ramirez stumbled, in the midst of all the agreements and programs that relied on that one man… and three worlds shook.

Lord Geigi, no less, overtook them at the lift. That was Ramirez’ importance. Bren acknowledged the presence with a glance as the car arrived, and all of them got in together, bound toward a very small installation on third deck, which had only one virtue—its proximity to Ramirez’ on-station office.