Explorer

“One is grateful for the dowager’s concern,” Bren said, Cenedi having every right to have some kind of summary. His voice was going. “As always, the dowager offers good advice. Utmost vigilance. She reminds us that whatever exists here was not pla

“Nandi.” Cenedi evidenced that he understood his fatigue, and posed no challenge. Bren gave a small bow, about all he had in him, and walked, trying to make it a straight line. He had Banichi and Jago alone, now, and at the end of the hall, saw his own quarters, his own staff waiting, with Narani.

Wise, good Narani, who would do everything possible to put him to bed for a decent few hours.

“Supper and bath and bed, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.

“Bed,” he said.“The dowager has some few misgivings that Sabin-aiji may be—or become—unreliable. I confess I have similar misgivings, though tempered by a feeling I haven’t—at the moment—the wit to explain.“ He thought it was a straggling, struggling human feeling trying to work its way through his brain, but he couldn’t, in his fogged state, be sure of its nature. “And we should remain concerned we have only the word of this Guild that fuel is ready for us. That they would lie—yes, not even for much advantage. Their instinct is to lie, to protect all information, useful and not. There may be fuel. There may not. Things are stable, but not as I would wish, nadiin-ji. We have this offended alien out there. We have a question, nadiin, why Tamun once turned against Ramirez, and what Sabin knows that she never told Jase or us. She is no fool. Yet she deliberately took an untrustworthy guard and went aboard the station, leaving Jase with the ship, armed and warned, and told to heed no word from her until she returns.”

“With increasing certainty,” Banichi said, “we must take this station, Bren-nadi.”

Mild shock. At least mild shock. Trust Banichi’s absolute clear view of a situation, when his own stuck at leaping over human barriers. He had thought of taking over the ship—with Jase’s consent. Banichi was far more ambitious.

Reasonable? Not reasonable? His heart gave two wilder beats, no longer quite panicked. He wasn’t inhibited by his humanity. Or by being atevi. He had occasionally to apply it as a logic-check, as a brake on atevi actions that might be a shade excessive when dealing with humans not quite as hair-triggered as his escort.

But plan big? Banichi certainly did that.

Taking the station would solve a certain number of problems here.

Relations with humans might suffer… not alone of the Guild, but of the ship—

And of persons capable and willing to serve as agents, they had no more than the dowager’s security, and his.

Yet for what had Tabini-aiji appointed him lord of the heavens and sent him out here? Not to sit on his hands, that was sure.

“One must rest a few hours, nadiin-ji. My reasoning grows exceedingly suspect.”

“Shall we,” Jago asked, “consider possibilities in this direction?”

“I believe we should. We may take Jase into our confidence. I shall have to finesse that. But I believe we may ultimately rely on Jase. On his man’chi. On the man’chi of the crew to him. On the association of our mission to all his associations.” His brain veered momentarily sidelong, into human thinking. Or hybrid thinking, such as his and Jase’s had gotten to be. “I don’t think he expected man’chi from the crew, such as he has. They will follow him. And that is a rare and extraordinary asset among humans, nadiin-ji.” He didn’t know whether he was thinking straight or not, but it seemed to him he had suddenly drawn a fair bead on the situation. “That is an asset we should greatly value—this crew, and Jase.”

“One perceives so, Bren-ji,” Jago said, and Banichi said something of the like.

He didn’t even remember reaching his room. He had the impression he’d spoken with staff. He thought he’d turned down a pot of tea. He undressed, handing the gun as well as the clothing to Bindanda and finished his muddled thought about Jase—something about the meeting with crew—while lying on his face, naked on cool sheets, with the scent and the feel of his own mattress to tell him where he was.

Only a crazed recollection of his hours above five-deck persisted to tell him, indeed, he and Jase had actually—well, if not won the round, at least had the problem locked away. Here and there were not congruent. These decks didn’t match the others. The reasons down here didn’t match those on upper decks, but they fit well enough. They got along.

He didn’t know when he’d been as tired, as absolutely out of resources. He crashed again, beyond coherency, telling himself he had to get up and check on essentials, if he could remember what they were—involving Guild enforcers locked away, involving Sabin, involving that great hole in the station…

He waked a third time and crawled toward the edge of his bed in that total darkness that, with atevi, passed for moderate. “Rani-ji?”

Staff kept the intercom live, to hear such calls. It was not, however, Narani who answered the summons, but Bindanda: bulky shadow in the doorway, a merciless spear of light from the outer corridor, a glare that afflicted his eyes and comforted him at once. If there were any sort of trouble from upper decks he was sure domestic staff would wake him to report.

They hadn’t. He could sleep if he wished, and oh, he wished. Resolution trembled. So did the arm that supported his weight.

But Jago wasn’t here. Jago wasn’t here.

“Is there any word down from Jase, Danda-ji?”

“No, nandi.”

“Jase surely would tell me if there were developments.” He believed it, but Jase, too, had to rest. And he daren’t pin the future of two species on his faith in anyone’s waking him. “Kindly see to it this happens, Danda-ji. And maintain our watch. Jase must sleep, too.”

“One will surely make that effort, nandi. Do go back to sleep. I have that firm instruction, to say so.”

“Where is Jago?”

“Resting, one believes.”

Then it was all right. Bindanda wouldn’t lie to him. “I have every confidence in staff,” he murmured—and dropped onto his face.

The door closed. The light went.

If, however, Banichi weren’t up to something, Jago would be safe in his bed, asleep, would she not? And she wasn’t. And resting didn’t mean sleeping. So Banichi was up to something.

The whole staff might be up to it along with them—whatever it was. Cenedi might likewise be aiding and abetting.

And any action involving foreign humans—or worse, not humans—triggered every warning bell the long-time paidhi-aiji owned.

He urgently needed, despite Bindanda’s wishes, to get up off his face and get dressed and advise his staff where the limits were.

Don’t assume. Don’t do any of those things that had been downright fatal in interspecies relations. The Pilots’ Guild on Reunion Station wasn’t the President’s office on Mospheira. There was no equivalency.

And most of all, none of them knew the nature of that ship out there. There were answers they had to get. A mission for that craft that might or might not let them leave this place: there was no guarantee of reciprocal favors—that logic didn’t reach to the back end of the human spectrum and it didn’t hold up as far as atevi councils, either. Expectation of like result was a box that hemmed in his thinking, that guided him toward what might be a false conclusion, when he ought to be using his head and thinking of multiple ways out.