Explorer

They needed go away and destroy the station . They needed take the inhabitants and excuse us for the inconvenience .

They possibly needed please don’t come calling at our planet , but he didn’t see how he was going to get at that one if it wasn’t a mutual desire for disentanglement.

And he might need stickier words, which could be a provocation to try to pull out of their guest. He might need a pad of paper and a pencil, to do diagrams.

A pocket full of sugar candies. That had been the most useful trade goods—forget trying to pretend all this number of humans and atevi didn’t have a planet somewhere, forget trying to conceal where it was. If that alien craft hadn’t been sitting here waiting for them they might have lied about that issue—but given a direction and adequate optics, no question they could find the earth of the atevi. Prakuyo’s folk might ask about the origin of humans, if they correctly perceived they weren’t quite the same biologically, and that could be difficult. No, believe us, we actually misplaced our home planet .

Trust was such a precious commodity.

He took a little chance, from his own quarters, to consult Gin’s staff, wondering how things were going, not wishing to bother Jase with questions, and Gin’s staff reported that Gin was tired, that she and Sabin were swearing at each other, and that another of Gin’s team was suited and out there.

Excellent. Beyond excellent. He sat down on his bed and fell backwards, eyes shut, seeing Gin, suited, in that lonely camera view. Sabin, in that doorway.

That ship moving in on them, blip on a screen, more ominous than anything Braddock could still throw at them.

What more did he want to say?

Come, go, give, take, you, we, they. Woman, man, child.

Fight, not fight. Shoot. Not shoot.

Food, water.

To, from, out of, on, off, over, under, around, through . Pesky directional words that in some languages weren’t words at all.

Not . Ragi was dubious about negatives, wrapped them carefully in courtesies and precise formulae.

Always, never, soon, if . Truly the soft tissue of thought. Time. Time and degree of reality. May and could , those words of conjecture. No hope at all of getting that far into the language. They had to stick to concrete, demonstrable items and actions.

And which language? Prakuyo had picked up elementary Ragi hand over fist, in a matter of hours, and six years among humans hadn’t made him fluent—that he admitted, that he wanted to admit.

It argued that Ragi was a better bridge for Prakuyo’s people. And it stated the truth: that humans weren’t the highest power in these regions, that if one wanted to trade—another useful word—or talk—the best language for it was likely going to be Ragi, and the authority that governed it all wasn’t on the station, nor even on the ship: it was in Shejidan, and the dowager was its representative— he was its representative. He hadn’t abdicated his responsibilities. He’d acted on the ship’s behalf because the senior captain had stripped all its security away—leaving, perhaps deliberately, atevi as the ship’s defense.

Atevi, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. They moved in. He had. He didn’t want to argue the point with Sabin, who probably thought she was ru

So, well. Leader, authority, government, people, nation . Those pesky abstract structures that everyone called simple, that provoked so many wars.

Not to mention those pillars of atevi and human civilization please, thank you , and have a nice day . By the way Prakuyo took to the dowager’s society, that element was present in yet another species.

The ship whined and flexed elements of its gut it hadn’t used this energetically in all his time aboard. It had traveled empty. Now it drank down the survivors of this place, this situation, those desperate families and individuals that wanted most of all to live, who had very little concept where they were going or whether it was going to be better or not—but trusting even the appearance of aliens among them, in what amounted to a rush for the lifeboat. That augured well for their ability to fit in where they were going.

Didn’t cure the fact that Braddock was still loose, but the outflux gave Braddock less and less to work with, and Braddock now had very little control over anything mechanical. The wisest among his aides had to be gathering the family silver and ru

He let his eyes shut. Didn’t trust himself and kept a steady count in his head, which if it began to falter, he had to open them at once and stay awake.

One minute, two, three.

Com went off and he yelped as if he’d been shot, grabbed it out of his pocket and thumbed it on, his heart creeping down from a frantic beat. Had he slept?

“ Bren ?” It was Jase. Agitated. “ Bren, do you read ?”

God, what time was it? An hour. Damn !

“Listening, listening, Jasi-ji. Go ahead.”

“ There’s fuel. There is fuel, Bren, do you hear ”?

His heart leapt up again.

“ And that ship’s still moving in, and we’re still pi