Defender

“Ship-aiji,” Geigi said. Only aijiin had no upward man’-chi—no attachment above themselves: among atevi, it was a biological imperative—only a very, very few had all association in the world flowing toward them.

Fewer still feltno upward loyalty. Even Geigi would not claim as much for himself, or not claim it in anyone’s hearing—independent as he was, and capable of going into space and operating more or less independent of the whole Western Association andTabini’s authority.

While Jase, their modest, quiet Jase, claimed to have no authority above him. Still, he was human, and that maverick separation didn’t mean the ability to use authority.

“Understand,” Bren interposed, “nandi, his lack of man’chi is not i

“What was the full gist of Kaplan’s speech?” Geigi asked. “A challenge?”

“A challenge to the silence, nandi,” Jase said. “To the secrecy. And a declaration that Ramirez’s policies go on and that they won’t change them.”

“And the aiji, and the Presidenta, Jase?” Bren asked in Ragi. That admission was what still rang through his nerves, and what he was sure was percolating through Mospheiran suppositions in very alarming fashion—if not through Geigi’s atevi soul as well. “ Whatdid they agree?”

“That the world will have the next starship,” Jase said with deliberate obliqueness, “and the ship would get the fuel. Not quite the exact agreement they’d published. Not the reassurances they’d offered that there was no way the aliens could get information out of Reunion’s wreckage.

“All those years,” Gi

“Jase,” Bren said. “What arewe supposed to do?”

Leave the situation as it stood, just betray the people at that remote station, never come back—and coincidentally leave the Pilots’ Guild sitting out there on the touchiest frontier imaginable, free to call the shots with an alien enemy, free to create situations that others here at this station had to deal with by their blood and their sweat.

Or find it unexpectedly on their doorstep. There was that possibility, that could no longer be dismissed with assurances.

That station out there had records of the ship’s origin at this star. And given a decade or so, an enemy might extract all sorts of information.

There were certain understandings that never had gotten clarified—not as chance would have it, but as discretion would have it… little details the atevi establishment never had gotten around to discussing with their Mospheiran associates. But this one—Tabini knew?

Tabini knew, and the captains up here knew, and he hadn’t heard of any agreement?

He had a lot of trouble—personally—dealing with that one.

“There will be pressure from the crew to go back,” Jase said. “And Ramirez assuredly intended to. But I think he meant to take control of Reunion. That the aiji in Shejidan and the Presidenta ally with him, if they have ships—and if there was fuel.”

He’d forgotten to type. He felt as if the proverbial ton of bricks had landed.

“What’s he saying?” Paulson asked. Folly, perhaps, to have held this multi-language meeting. At the worst moments, the translator, personally involved, lost all his threads.

Not a single tit-for-tat, secrecy and refueling in exchange for a ship. It was a whole structured, years-old alliance. With an agenda that stretched from here to forever.

“He’s saying Tabini and the President, and I assume the State Department, agreed to refuel Phoenixin exchange for title to the second, and I assume third, starship as they’re built. I assumethis is an alliance.” He’d never felt what he felt at the moment, this charge of adrenaline that had his hands shaking. Anger, it might be. Humiliation, along with it. And where was his right to be so shocked? He should have known. Friend, agent, translator, diplomat, in whatever capacity, Jase or Tabini or even Shawn shouldhave damned well told him, but he had the wit to have dug it out, if he’d been alert enough. “I assumethis all happened without me.”

“And without me,” Jase said, exploding the single most natural theory in a word, denying he’d been the intermediary.

“Might you translate, paidhiin-ji?” Geigi requested reasonably.

“ Yes, nandi. We’re speaking of an extensive agreement between Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and the Presidenta, an agreement that both Jase and I deny making, but which Jase says indeed existed.”

“Yolanda,” Jase said, as if it just occurred to him who had, if neither of them had.

Yolanda.

Damn!

“We seem to have agreements in place.” Bren typed Mosphei’, furiously, while he spoke Ragi. “Yolanda Mercheson is the most likely intermediary who could have done this without our knowledge. We have reasonable suspicion now that the Guild is out at Reunion doing as it pleases, and Ramirez-aiji, commanding the only ship, the only mobile human agency, decided to come here and gain a solid base before challenging Guild authority. As it now seems Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and Tyers’ office all concurred in this fuel agreement, and in an alliance the terms of which we still do not fully understand. Now we have the robots we’d been wanting, Ramirez is dead, and the ship’s been fueled. Jase doesn’t know how these elements intersect, but they do clearly intersect, and he and I are both taken by surprise by these events. Understand—I’m speaking without consultation. I haven’t been able to get through to Tabini. But above all, in this situation, Mospheirans and atevi need to assert our share of control. We’re not going to be dictated to, pardon me, Jase, by the Captains’ Council. We want—”

An equal say? That wasn’t the half of it. The whole vista , spread out in his mind of a sudden, one of those dizzying down-mill perspectives, safe spot to safe spot down a hillside while gravity tried to kill them all.

“We want,” he said, “more than one more patched-up promise atop promises that didn’t work the last time. Ramirez knew what he knew and he wanted certain things: he wanted the agreement. He wanted the station refitted. He wanted the ship refitted. And he created someone to contact the planet.” Also the truth. “So the Guild doesn’t have any desire for planets. Fine. We do. We care about our lives, the lives of the people we represent here, and the aiji in Shejidan. We represent the atevi, who exist only here in the whole universe—while, pardon me, humans have a homeworld somewhere none of us exactly remembers. The atevi don’t give a damn what Ramirez cared about and didn’t care about. They came up here to take care of their own business, as Mospheirans did, because Mospheiranshave also gotten fairly attached to the planet they live on. I’m speaking for the aiji, now, officially, and this is what I say.

“Number one, and not negotiable: this is the aiji’splanet—which he’s chosen to share with humans on a lasting basis. So the ship can talk all it likes about theiroptions, theirchoices and theirproblem, but they’re doing it on the aiji’s tolerance and inside the aiji’s consent, and endangering the aiji’s interests in this quarrel they’ve picked out there far remote from us.”

“A year or so remote,” Jase muttered, and Bren inserted that in the record without a flutter.

“The problem doesn’t go away,” Jase said. “You can’t wish it away. You have to deal with it. We have to deal with it. Ramirez lied to us, but it turns out he didn’tlie to the leaders of the planet. So it wasn’t that he didn’t care about the planet’s future. But the ship is fueled, and we’re supposed to go bring Reunion under our collective authority—”