Explorer

Keep him safe, Tabini had ordered Banichi and Jago, and who could have known they’d one day be guarding his life this far from home?

Keep him safe. Was ever a man luckier in his associates?

Breakfast on a balcony, in a thin coat, freezing, drinking burning-hot tea before it chilled to ice. Breakfast with the dowager, who hadn’t needed a coat.

Breakfast and a broken arm.

And an end of all easy assumptions, all confidence in what humans believed about atevi intentions and the atevi’s choices for their future.

That breakfast had led him here, wherever here was begi

Down, now, increasingly down, an illusion of falling through space faster and faster, weightless for a moment.

Then here.

Here.

Suddenly at rest, when intellect knew they weren’t: that the ship was still going faster than a planet-bred imagination easily grasped.

But down felt down again, as if it had never been different—at least a planet-habituated stomach felt very reassured by the current state of affairs. The safe universe had fractured and someone had fixed it. Very nice, very reassuring.

That meant they had arrived. Space had straightened itself out. And he had to move. Quickly, by Jase’s advisement.

He got up, and Jago got up.

“We’ll go up to the bridge,” he said, as if he proposed a trip down the hall at home. Thoughts were suddenly easier. He remembered things. One didn’t have to nail every thought to the wall.

But now he wasn’t sure any of his prior reasoning about the log records made thorough sense.

Jago tugged her jacket smooth. He adjusted his coat. They went out to find Banichi. Staff had turned out into the corridor, too, understanding that events would flow rapidly in this arrival.

“ This is the senior captain speaking ,” the intercom speakers said suddenly. “ Early indications indicate arrival in Reunion System. General crew will stay in cabins until further notice .”

They had arrived. Banichi met them at the security center, where Asicho waited, ready to take up her watch at the boards. Narani had accompanied them down the corridor. So did Bin-danda and Jeladi. They all gathered outside the security station, all his household, all awaiting information and instructions on which their safety might depend.

All relying on him.

And in the same instant he grasped that distressing thought, the dowager’s apartment door opened and the dowager exited her rooms— with Cajeiri in tow. In court dress. It was not a casual expedition.

Ilisidi, Cajeiri, Cenedi. One of the senior staff carried a fair-sized packet wrapped in a tablecloth—lunch, one greatly feared.

They had notions where they were going.

Cajeiri, too, had a small wallet tucked under his arm, which Bren feared was not lunch.

And had he somehow implied, in his general muzziness, that the senior captain had cleared them to come up? There was nothing that stopped a tidal wave or the aiji-dowager once assumptions had gone this far. She was dressed. She was in motion.

And, granted Sabin was going to have the proverbial litter of kittens, the dowager was a resource the paidhiin could well use close at hand if things came unhinged.

“Go,” Ilisidi said with an impatient wave of her cane, as if she were not the one arriving late. “Go, go, nadiin. For what do we wait?”

“Nandi.” Bren stood aside to prefer her and Cajeiri, and both their bodyguards folded in behind.

Chapter 5

The senior captain would be too busy to lodge strong objections, Bren said to himself, watching the lift level indicator flick numbers past. And the captain did expect him, and expected help.

“The ship-aiji believes we have indeed arrived at our destination, aiji-ma,” he said as the lift rose. “One isn’t quite sure how they know, but one supposes they find familiar indications.”

Ilisidi gave an indelicate snort. “High time.”

The lift stopped at its appointed level. The doors opened and they walked out into that neck of the lift foyer that had no view of the bridge, only of the administrative offices beyond.

So far, so good.

Jase stood in view, beside the short screening wall. The lift noise had not gone u

“Four jump seats to your right,” Jase muttered in Ragi. “Emergency cabinet is next to them. Go there if alert sounds.”

Bren spotted the seats and the access—the takehold cabinet was, in effect, the curtain wall itself, and their party certainly exceeded the safety seating.

Then Sabin passed a cold glance over the atevi invasion, and strode toward them.

“Mr. Cameron.” The voice of doom.

“Additional opinions, ma’am. A valuable point of view.”

“The kid is a point of view?”

“I assure you there’ll be no disturbance, Captain.” Bren fervently hoped so, and said, in Ragi, “One must wait in patience, aiji-ma. There are seats over there for you and the young gentleman, should you wish, and one advises their use. This may be hours in progress.”

“We shall undoubtedly avail ourselves of the chairs, paidhi-ji.” Ilisidi leaned on her cane and looked about her. There was no general image view, except one small screen forward, which was uninformatively black, and Ilisidi sca

“Far distant, nand’ dowager,” Jase said, interceding. “Even so the ship is going very fast in the direction of the star, about which one will find three very large planets. Reunion orbits the one nearest to the sun.”

“There are no persons on these planets, is this so, Jase-nandi?”

Ever so careful of the protocols: a considerate honor from the dowager in Jase’s native territory—to which Jase gave an ever-so-little bow, Ragi-style. “The dowager is of course correct. They’re hardly more than balls of natural gas and nitrogen.”

“Fertilizer.” The dowager gave a wry laugh. “So. So. Let us not interrupt your work, ship-aijiin.”

“Nand’ dowager.” Correct address for a great lady no longer his lady: Jase used the remote, not the personal ma —and drew aside to continue, as Sabin did, a slow patrol of the aisles among the four rows of technicians.

Everything was going well. Very well. They were still alive. Sabin had, with a baleful stare, accepted their help. But there was noise from the lift nearby, unregistered in the moment.

The lift had gone down: not unusual. The car resided in mid-levels. But now it ascended a second time, opened its door and let out, God help them, Gi

“What’s this?” Sabin had stepped into line of vision, too, and confronted the Mospheirans. Jerry had also brought, one saw, a sack lunch—like Mospheirans on holiday, Bren thought, the pernicious national habit. Dared one say it lent a very surreal feeling to the moment?

“Moral support,” Gi

“Hell,” Sabin said sharply, gave Bren a withering look—I didn’t was the gut-level response, but he kept that useless protest behind his teeth, and Sabin forbore to order the lot of them off the bridge. “Keep it quiet. And keep out of my way.”