Explorer

“Captain.” A communications tech flashed a signal. Sabin was over there in an instant. So was Jase.

They looked like two rescuees from a drowning.

“We have signal,” Sabin said aloud. “A simple hail.” And to the technicians: “Put me through. Put two-way communications on general address, bridge excluded.” She lifted her personal comm to speaking range. “This is Captain Sabin, CS Phoenix , inbound, ETA in your vicinity sixteen hours fifty-six minutes. Hello, Reunion.”

Distantly, from the administrative corridor, as it would on every deck, breaking centuries of precedent, her voice echoed, marginally time-lagged.

No time lag at all within the corridors… compared to the astronomical distances involved in their communication.

Atevi, however, needed quick information.

“A signal has come from the station,” Bren translated the situation quietly, as he sat. “Sabin-aiji has identified herself vocally and given, human reckoning, sixteen hours fifty-six minuta as our arrival.”

“Sixteen and thirty-eight,” Ilisidi said, instantly converting the awkward number… not felicitous, but certainly transitory, as the ship was rushing toward that goal, making the gap tighter and tighter. He hadn’t been able to reckon that far that fast, and should have, he realized to his chagrin, if his brain weren’t overladen with human concerns and racing in a dozen directions at once.

“We contain the numbers of all the world,” he murmured, “which are fortunate, aiji-ma.”

“And we are not superstitious country folk.” Ilisidi sat with hands about the shaft of her cane, in a human chair that would have been inconveniently low for the majority of the atevi staff. A seat on his scale and Gi

“I don’t think Sabin-aiji necessarily trusts anything in this situation,” he said, “but yes, aiji-ma, there’s a certain rush to accept this welcome as reasonable and expected.”

“And?”

“The station authorities may well view us with suspicion after years of delay in our return. We don’t even know for certain Ramirez-aiji left here on their mission—or on his own.”

“The residents should have left this inconveniently located outpost and saved us the bother. And they chose not to vacate.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“Unreasonable, by any logic.”

Indeed, not the first time atevi had posed that nagging question. Not the first time they’d discussed it on this voyage.

“One certainly wishes one knew why before we arrive,” he said. “I have some doubt that even Sabin-aiji is confident that things are as Ramirez-aiji recorded them.”

On the other side, Reunion must have concluded, from their nine year delay, that there hadn’t been fuel waiting, indicating a political situation or a technical failure, or possibly the loss of the ship itself. If things had gone ideally, from the station’s point of view, the ship would surely have coasted up to the station at the atevi star, gotten fuel as fast as possible, and been back in short order.

In the nine, ten years counting Ramirez’s transit to Alpha, depend on it, any survivors at Reunion had had ample time and motive to implement options that no longer included Phoenix .

And now, suddenly, here was Phoenix back again to upset their efforts at self-rescue, efforts potentially involving power struggles and reputations. More, in their eyes, the ship would come freighting in God knew what business from Alpha, with all its questions. On one level, if things were less than disastrous here, Reunion authorities might question very closely what Phoenix had found. And that didn’t help their mission run smoothly.

Figure it. If there were two humans, there were two sides, and if both had a pulse, politics would be at work somewhere in the business.

Getting here involved one set of problems. Now that they were down to another set, the politics of the station itself, he discovered his heart beating as if he’d climbed a tall, tall flight of stairs, nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with decades of preparation that had brought him into this situation. It wasn’t a high-speed train of events—or it was, as planets saw time—as nations changed and rose and fell; in human terms, it moved like land-creep, but in terms of finite human beings supposed to be wise and to make the right decisions, time both dragged and flickered past, and Sabin’s stated number of hours was far too long to worry and far too short a time to do anything creative.

He could represent the colonists, or pretend to: he had been the island representative once upon a time. Atevi weren’t the first surprise they should spring on the residents of Reunion: Ilisidi would surely agree to that.

And he assuredly was about to have a job to do, if talk had begun to flow.

“The ship has begun to talk with the station, aiji-ma. I think I should place myself at the ship-aiji’s disposal.” He said much the same to Gi

He got up and walked into the aisles. His purposeful approach to the operations area brought a glance from Sabin. An answering slow approach on Jase’s part intercepted him for a private word.

“How do you think we’re doing?” Bren asked him quietly.

“Too well at this point,” Jase said. “Scarily well.”

Sabin walked over, hands locked behind her, muscle working in a lean jaw. “Holding conference, gentlemen?”

“Offering my services where useful, captain. As a start, with all due respect, I’d advise not telling station authorities everything about us.”

“Oh, I’d certainly concur there, Mr. Cameron. By a long way not half about us. And if we’re really lucky we can refuel before we have to tell them a thing about our passenger list or our intentions.”

“One believes they’ll have long since taken their own survival measures, invested reputations and effort, developed an emotional charge on their own course. Resentment of us for not coming back immediately. Suspicion now that we have come back. I wouldn’t be surprised at that.”

“You’re just a prophet of all kinds of trouble, aren’t you, Mr. Cameron?”

“Certainly best we don’t rush out of the ship and hold a farewell party on dockside.”

“I don’t think I had any such intention.”

“I’m sure not. Here’s another item. They’ll contest your command versus their authority.”

A little silence and a sidelong look.

“You know I’m right,” Bren said.

“You’re just full of opinions, Mr. Cameron.”

“I advise the aiji in Shejidan, who’s outlived all expectations. I advise you defy any order to meet them outside the ship.”

“Son of a bitch , Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes, ma’am. At your service. Continually. They’re the authority that’s run human affairs for the last several hundred years. Their ideas haven’t worked damned well. We all think it’s time there was a new authority. And not even for fuel should you give a step backward.”

“Go on, Mr. Cameron, as if I have no imagination of the situation.”

“I’m sure you do, captain. And if we assume they ordered Ramirez to go to the original base, secure it, refuel and get back, we can assume they don’t plan to be taking your orders when you show up, do they?”

“Keep going.”

“Two, they expect Ramirez. Three, they’ve had all these years to figure out things didn’t go according to plan back where we come from. So they’ll immediately ask you what happened to Ramirez and what took so long. If you say, refueling, they’ll know immediately that the station we come from wasn’t exactly waiting for your return. If you say we had to get the locals back into space and build the whole apparatus to refuel, they’ll wonder what else went on. They know the planet is inhabited. And that leads step by step to other questions, such as the reason I suspect Ramirez was courting aliens rather than go to Alpha’s colonists in the first place—I think they’re scared of finding an alternative human agency set up back at Alpha, offering opposition to them. And numerous hard-headed humans, tending to subvert the Guild vision for humanity. I’m willing to be your token colonist authority and lie through my teeth, and try to diminish those fears.”