Defender

God, no. He didn’t want Geigi or the dowager to change the way they dealt with him. He didn’t want a paper title. He supposed it augmented his rank in dealing with Sabin… no matter it was meaningless, but he suspected Geigi was, if charitable, amused. He hoped Geigi wasn’t offended. He hoped the dowager wasn’t about to make some issue of it all.

He didn’t want any more. He wantedto retire to his estate on the coast for at least a month and look at the stars from the deck of a boat—Toby’s boat, at that.

Instead, the lift arrived, and they all fitted in, the same procedures they used when taking the shuttle down to the planet. He hoped that workers would communicate and the baggage wouldn’t stall in their path, and that it would all happen magically, so that the newly appointed lord of the heavens didn’t end up in interstellar space without shirts or Bindanda’s cooking supplies.

So much had to be a miracle. So much just sailed past his numb senses; and meanwhile he had to muster intelligent small-talk, in a station where the weather wasn’t a possible topic.

“So much done so quickly,” he said to the dowager as the lift rose.

“Did you hear from my grandson?”

“I did hear, aiji-ma.” He feared he blushed. And it wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss, his elevation to mythical lordship. “One was very gratified by his letter.”

“Ha,” Ilisidi said, one of those ambiguous utterances. “Politics.”

And Geigi: “My staff is in communication with your quarters, nandi-ji.” Oh, he was glad to hear warmth in Geigi’s tones. “Does Mercheson-paidhi favor fish, do you think?”

“She will be greatly honored by your attention, nandi.” Fish was almost always safe. And he did remember. “She does favor melon preserves, extremely. All varieties of fruit.”

“Ah.” Geigi was pleased to have a personal knowledge. And his ability to get foodstuffs off the planet was scandalous. “One will manage.”

The apartment might be awash in melon preserves. “I’ll be in your debt if you can show my successor the refinements, nandi. One wishes she might have had the benefits of the dowager’s estate, as I did.”

“Ha,” Ilisidi said again. “Benefits, is it?”

“I found it so, dowager-ji. It taught me a very great deal.”

“The paidhi listened,” Ilisidi said, and tightened her grip on the boy’s arm. Gravity was at the moment only a function of the car’s movement. “As some should! Do you agree, boy?”

“Yes, mani-ma.”

“ Grandmotherwill do,” Ilisidi said sharply. “ Aijiwill do better. You have official rank here, if I say so, and we’ll see whether those shoulders are strong enough, yet. So I say, today. Who knows for tomorrow?”

“Yes, aiji-ma,” This quietly uttered, a young soul sharply keyed to the dowager’s voice—

Mechieti racing wildly on a hillside, breakneck after the dominant. Reason had nothing to do with it. Bren didn’t know why he flashed on that, of all moments when he’d nearly died. But it was the fact of native wildlife. It was the fact of atevi instinct: it was the nature of man’chi…

He witnessed it, he thought. He didn’t feel it. But he intellectually understood the boy had learned to twitch in certain ways to instincts that were life to his species, and held tightly to his grandmother’s hand.

That was reassuring to everyone concerned.

They braked. The door opened in a waft of cold pressure-change that frosted metal surfaces.

This time, however, it was not the old familiar sights—not the shuttle dock, with the hatch leading to whatever shuttle sat in dock.

It was dock 1, and a long snake of yellow tubing, which led, he understood, to another, grapple-reinforced tube, where Phoenixrode.

Baggage must have cleared. He didn’t see it.

“Well, well,” Geigi said, “it seems this is the place.”

“So one assumes,” Ilisidi said. Suited workers now appeared in the tube, out of the bend inside it. “One assumes we have an escort. Go, go back to reasonable places before you freeze, Geigi-ji.”

“Safe voyage,” Geigi wished them. “Safe travel, safe return, aiji-ma, Bren-ji.”

There were bows, such as one could manage, reaching out for safety lines strung along the wall.

Then Geigi and his men were inside the lift, they were outside, and the door shut at their backs with appalling finality.

Phoenixwas surely at the other end—intellectual knowledge, but with no view of the dock, only the tube leading to the hatch, it felt rather like being swallowed by some giant of the fairy tales.

The workers beckoned them on. Ilisidi didn’t question, rather proceeded down the handline in the only direction possible.

“One can’t sail off here, aiji-ma,” Cajeiri observed. “Are those the captains?”

“A sensible person wouldn’t try to sail at all,” Ilisidi retorted. “And those are workers. Don’t gawk. Don’t chatter. It burns the lungs.”

Burn, it did. Breath seemed very short. Or the paidhi was breathing very rapidly.

“A small load of baggage was ahead of us,” he said to the workers as they met. “It all should go to fifth deck, my possession.”

“Yes, sir,” the worker said. No argument, no delay, no fuss. “The tag was all in order. It’s well ahead of you. Go right along. Sir. Ma’am.”

Things went with frightening finality.

This is real, a small voice said to him, but for the most he felt numb—not as much fear of the trip itself as reason said was logical, rather more a sense of danger to the things he was leaving: fear of what might change while he was gone, family he might lose, people who might carry on their lives without him, and get to places and situations to which he was irrelevant.

I’ll come back, he said in his heart. I’ll make it back.

But that part wasn’t wholly in his hands any longer.

Now the unwinding of the yellow serpentine showed them an open hatch, and it swallowed them up, a large hatch, that had no trouble taking in all their party at once, with room left over for one of the workers, who punched appropriate buttons and threw switches. And bet that atevi security, his and the dowager’s, recorded those movements, and the accompanying confirmation of lights.

The outer door shut. Then the smaller of the i

It was a tubular corridor—ending in a pressure door, again, like the station accesses.

“A grim place,” Ilisidi pronounced it, but alert to everything around her.

“This way, if you please,” their guide said: his clip-on badge, on a close look, was ship security. “Captain Graham’s compliments, I’ll be your escort to your quarters. Mr. Cameron, if you’d please advise everyone watch the doors as we go.”

“He presents felicitous greetings from Jase-aiji.”

“Who is not here!” Ilisidi said, displeased.

“Who is managing the ship to keep it safe, aiji-ma, and sends security to direct us past hazardous equipment. I’m very sure it’s proper.”

“We demand Jase.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, “it’s by no means certain that Jase is physically on the ship.”

“Are we to believe that pla

This very cold corridor, this corridor the cold of which had, after the deep chill of the dock, penetrated his coat and his gloves and started into his human-sized body.