Defender

“No time for drinks, nand’ paidhi,” the attendant said, pausing by his row. “I’m very sorry.”

“I’ll have a fruit juice and vodka when we get up.” Launch usually had him a mass of nerves, and he liked to have a vodka beforehand to calm down, but he discovered he had no need for that, today. Sitting in his own seat was a victory. “Made it in time,” he said to Gi

“We did hold count a little,” Gi

“We hurried. The fortunate hours.” A Mospheiran might take a shuttle launch countdown as overriding everything else, but the exigencies of a shuttle launch had nothing against the atevi sense of timing and fortunate numbers, and Gi

Shai-shanmoved out, and made a ponderous slow correction onto her runway—she was not agile on the pavement.

Above the entry to the cockpit, the bulkhead had the black and white baji-najiemblem, that tribute to Chance and Fortune, the devil in the otherwise fortunate numbers. Below it was a screen that showed them the runway.

It trued up in the view.

“Baji-naji,” Gin said, meaning, in human terms here goes nothing.

And in atevi— here goes everything.

The engines roared and the acceleration pushed them back. The thumping of the wheels grew thunderous, and abruptly stopped as the screen showed them blue sky.

A split-screen showed the gear retracting safely below, and the ground and all the city falling away under them.

Well, another few roof tiles would fall in Shejidan. The pla

Their shuttle. Theirstation was up there, too, available for anyone with average eyesight, if that person went aside from city lights, as atevi loved to do. Just ask them whose it was.

Theirstarship, too, was assembling in parts and pieces up there. It seemed mad to say, sometimes, but by agreement it was theirstarship when, a decade ago, rail transport had been a matter of fierce debate.

The wider universe, the universe humans had opened to them, had caught on with a vengeance in atevi popular culture. A passion for the stars and the new discoveries burgeoned in the very capital of the atevi world. Shejidan was mad for space.

And maybe, thinking of that, it was a good thing Tabini had held that remembrance of things traditional. Remember the old ways, before all that was atevi changed, shifted—abruptly.

They’d already had several dangerous moments in atevi-human relations. For a second time, atevi had become fascinated with humans and humans had become equally fascinated with atevi. Once before this, they had worked together, lived together. Humans had failed to grasp what was emotionally critical to atevi, and vice versa, and the whole system had fractured, catastrophically, with enormous loss of life—which was why humans were living on an island as far out of reach of atevi as they could manage at the time. The social disaster they called the War of the Landing had started on a critical handful of mistaken assumptions—because humans and atevi had gotten along just too well at first meeting, loved, associated, and nearly ruined each other.

Maybe remembering a little history was a very good thing, as fast as things were moving.

Or maybe Tabini just wanted his son to see the human paidhi, if not meet him.

Maybe Tabini had wanted the boy to understand the history behind the aishidi’tat, and to appreciate the official, paternal, national, even space-faring approval behind the hard, uncivilized lessons Ilisidi was about to teach him. It was too easy for a highborn youngster to think the whole world was what he saw around him.

Shai-shanreached her stage one altitude. Wings reconfigured themselves. Hydraulics whined. And Shai-shankept going.

No word for friend among atevi, no word for love… no word for man’chi among humans, no word for aishi, either.

But maybe both species were wise enough now in dealing with one another.

Maybe this generation figured out how to treat the changes that ran amok through everything they touched.

Maybe kids like Cajeiri would figure out how to deal with situations that shoved biologically different instincts up against one another in what had been, once before this, a dangerous, dangerous intimacy.

“Pe

And what was he thinking? That atevi were clearly feeling stressed? That the aiji, who ordinarily backed every change proposed to him, held a ceremony in tribute to the old ways?

“The ceremony,” he said. “Just before I took off. Whole reason for the trip down, it seems. Pace of change. Atevi want to catch their balance. Remember the traditional things.”

“Maybe Mospheirashould have a ceremony like that.”

Gi

“Why so?”

“Kids,” Gi

“My generation?”

Gi

“That’s scary.”

“Oh, damn right it’s scary.”

Appalling thought. Six years since he’d been on Mospheira. The better part of a decade. And she was right. A ten-year-old kid who didn’t care that much about history so easily became a twenty-year-old who didn’t think it was important, either.

“That’s incredible,” he said.

“Kids think there’ll always be a new invention every week. That there’s a magic fix for every problem.”

“That’s good and bad,” he said. “Bad, if they think someone else is always going to solve it. I’m sorry—I plan to retire someday and leave the mess to them. I expect them to do their homework.”

“Oh, but you haven’t been there. We Mospheirans—we do love our holidays. We love our leisure time. We’re too damn convinced it’s all going to work, so if we choose as a nation not to have aeronautics, it doesn’t matter. We need a new swimming center in Jackson. If we choose not to develop our own security, it doesn’t matter. The threat from space, that’s always been there. Just ask any sixteen-year-old.”

“Damn scary.”

Shai-shanroared on, climbing, still climbing, headed for that queasy moment when, far above the earth, perilously riding her momentum and betting their lives in the process—she would shut down one set of engines, switch on another, and transit to space.

“And damn labor,” Gi

Atevi and humans were reaching a kind of engine-switchover, too: that was what Tabini’s ceremony said. That was what Mospheirans weren’tcommemorating. Having gone as far as they could on the old arrangement of separatism, atevi were working directly with humans again, this time in orbit, where it made no sense to build two segregated space stations. On mutually uncommon ground, isolated from everything familiar and historically contested, they tried to adapt.