Explorer

On a particular evening of the watch, Bren passed the dining hall to hear loud cheers go up. He wondered whether there was a new sensation to surpass even The Jungle Book .

He looked in. The assembled audience was, indeed, not just the servant staff. Banichi and Jago attended. He saw Cenedi and the dowager’s staff, and Cajeiri, his young face transfigured by the silver light of the screen—of course, Cajeiri had inveigled his way in.

A black and white, the offering was—odd, in itself. Color was usually the preference. As he stood in the doorway, a scaled monster stepped on the ruin of a building. Humans darted this way and that in patterns that atevi would search in vain for signs of association.

Men in antique uniforms fired large guns at the beast, which slogged on, to atevi cheers and laughter.

Hamlet , atevi had appreciated and applauded, when he’d brought a modern tape to the mainland… appreciated it, but felt cheated by ambiguities in the ending. They’d been puzzled by Romeo and Juliet , but were both horrified and gratified by Oedipus , which they conceded had a fine ending, once he explained it.

Now…

A building went flat.

The great Archive. The unseen dramas, manifestation of the collected human wisdom, the possibility of every digital blip the storage had carried on its way to build an outpost of human civilization. And this fuzzy black and white delighted the audience.

Laughter. A light young voice among the rest, the future aiji.

He couldn’t begin to explain this story. He considered going in, tucking himself in among the rest, trying to figure the nature of the tape—but he’d likely disturb the staff, who were obviously understanding the story quite well without him—or at least finding amusement in it. He drifted on to his own quarters and ran through the Archive indices for himself, looking for entertainment, for diversion, for edification—and finding absolutely nothing in the entire body of work of the human species that appealed to him this evening.

Which somehow told him it wasn’t really a tape he wanted.

What he wanted was to be absorbed and equal in the company out there, watching a mythical beast flatten buildings.

What he most wanted was to sit surrounded by congeniality and supplied with something munchable and something potable, having a good time—but the staff, even including Banichi and Jago, could only do that when they thought they had a moment off, and if he showed up, it could only make them ask themselves who was minding the things that had to be minded.

And they would get up and go see if there was anything he needed.

He was feeling human this evening. He was feeling human, strange, and somewhat melancholy.

So let them relax, he said to himself. Staff worked hard enough to assure his relaxation: let them have their own enjoyment without his crises of identity and visions of an uncertain outcome.

And if Cenedi included the aiji’s heir in the security staff’s dubious amusements, Cenedi judged it was probably good for the boy. He himself sat at his desk solo, and played computer solitaire, in complete confidence that if he should ask, tea would arrive. But he chose, again, not to disturb staff. He was human. He was Mospheiran. He could very easily go to the galley and make his own tea. He thought he could find a pan and the tea-caddy… but he hadn’t the energy or the will to attend his own needs. He felt sorry for himself in the numb, dull-as-a-rock way the transition let anybody feel anything.

And he kept losing the games, which in itself was a good barometer of his mood and his muddle-headedness with the basic numbers of his situation.

Nearing the end of this long voyage, and no information, when he blackly suspected Sabin had by now seen it, formed a conclusion, and denied it to him.

He was nearing the point at which his ideas had to work—if he had any; which he wouldn’t, until he got a view of the situation at their exit.

God, he hated improvisation. The older he got, the more he distrusted gut instinct and initial impressions—and he used his instincts, or he had used them, and they’d worked, but they’d worked with people he knew, and often on blind luck— baji-naji , atevi would insist: actions in good awareness of the transitory numbers of a situation flowed with a situation, and luck and chance themselves flowed along discernable cha

But one had to know the numbers. And he didn’t. The ship-folk were more alien to planet-bound humans than atevi were—while ship-folk had queasily found atevi easier to deal with than they found Mospheirans. And nobody, not even Jase, understood the Pilots’ Guild—or the senior captain.

He wanted Jase to rush down to five-deck right about now with a handful of log records assuring him there was a quick, even brilliant answer to what Ramirez had agreed to with the Guild, and it was all fine, but that scenario wasn’t going to happen. By now, he understood the dowager locking herself in her cabin and refusing to come out.

Fragile, that was what he was feeling. Fragile and entirely in the dark.

Stupidity might help. The simple disinclination to ask what came next.

As it was, his mirror and his computer and his steadily lengthening letters home asked him that question, every morning and every evening of their arbitrary, diversion-filled days.

On a certain morning Bren opened his door, bound for breakfast, and a motorized car whizzed noisily past his foot, destination right, origin left.

He looked left, at the future lord of a planet on his knees, control unit in both hands, looking entirely sheepish.

“I’m testing new wheels,” Cajeiri explained, and added in frustration: “They aren’t working right. But one thinks it’s the ship moving.”

“It may well be,” Bren said numbly. “Or not.”

Cajeiri scrambled up and chased down the corridor after his car, where it had swerved and stalled against the i

“May one go ask Gin-aiji’s staff, nandi, about the wheels?”

Oh, now one knew why the aiji-to-be raced his car past authority’s door.

“If Cenedi agrees.” One suspected Cenedi had just said no to the young wretch. And that diversion was in order. “My breakfast is likely waiting… a simple one, aiji-meni.” One never, except through staff, invited a person of higher status to share a meal. One could, however, suggest that breakfast was available at a whim. “I’m sure Bindanda could manage another place.”

“I already had breakfast,” Cajeiri said. And confessed the ultimate catastrophe. “And I’m bored , Bren-nandi.”

“Well, there you have the dreadful truth about adventures, aiji-meni. A great deal of adventures is being bored, or scared, or cold, or wet, or not having breakfast or information on schedule. But adventures often improve in the telling.”

Cajeiri belatedly saw he was being joked with. And took it with an expression very much his father’s when things didn’t go well—not angry, more bewildered at the universe’s temerity in trifling with his wishes. And next came, unmistakably, great-grandmother’s tone.

“Well, I detest boredom, Bren-nandi. I detest it. I brought my own player, and I want tapes, and nadi Cenedi says I have to have your permission to have them.”

“That’s because it’s the human Archive, nandi-meni, and what’s human is very different, and some of it confuses even humans who aren’t ten yet.”

“I know. But I’m very intelligent.”

“Well, one supposes one could go back to the computer and find something. If the young aiji were interested, he might watch.” One didn’t ask an aiji under one’s roof, either. One suggested there might be something of interest under that roof and the great lord went, if he wished.