Explorer

He needed to be consulting with his staff—knowing—at least being reasonably confident—that Banichi wouldn’t actually put anything into operation without telling him. He’d told Banichi that. Hadn’t he given that instruction?

He couldn’t quite remember. But he had confidence in Banichi, more even than in Jase.

His eyes were shut. Sleep wasn’t a very long hike.

But along that short journey, he began to think critically—a sign of returning faculties.

The Guild had always been difficult. The Guild had been difficult back when the path to a unified humanity had been well-paved and lined with flowers.

The Guild, seeing the attraction of a green planet luring its crew, had doggedly held to their notion of space-based development, and attempted, instead, to force the human colony safely in orbit at the atevi planet to leave and go live in orbit about barren Maudit, instead—where temptations would be fewer.

Where the colony would be utterly dependent on Guild orders and alternatives would be fewer.

That hadn’t worked. Colonists had left in droves. Flung themselves at the atevi planet and escaped by parachute.

Point: whatever the Guild had in its records about that situation, the Guild did still remember, surely, that the green world had had inhabitants. They did know that the colony they’d run off and left—and ultimately sent Ramirez back to find—was going to be to some degree in contact with the steam-age locals.

And the ship, returning to that place, had stayed gone nine years.

That things had radically changed, given a few hundred years and the remembered direction of the colony’s ambition—it didn’t take geniuses on the Guild board to figure that could happen. It didn’t take a genius on their side to figure that the Guild was nervous about what influences had worked on the ship during a ten-year absence… nervous, too, one might think, about Ramirez’s prior actions and what his influence might have wrought.

The Guild had wanted to talk to Sabin, alone, while their investigators prowled over the ship.

Note too, they’d wanted the ship to move into close dock—from which position the ship’s airlock was accessible to them at their whim.

Sabin had ca

The Guild tried to pretend they didn’t have a hole in their station and didn’t have a huge alien ship sitting out there with its own agenda. Phoenix tried to pretend planetary locals had never entered its equation. Nobody was saying anything to anybody.

There was a dark space in his reasoning. He realized he’d been asleep.

The door had opened. Someone was standing in the light.

Had he been here before? Had he drifted off while Bindanda was talking to him?.

“Bren-ji.” Jago’s voice. “One regrets to wake you, but Jase wishes to speak to you.”

He moved for the edge of the bed. Fast. Too fast, for his reeling sense of balance. “Is he here?”

“On the intercom,” Jago said.

He set a foot on the floor, fumbled after his robe, missed it, and went straight to the intercom without it—punched in, shivering in the cold. “Jase? This is Bren.”

“ Bren. Good morning .” Space-based irony. Or memory of old times. “ I hope you got some sleep .”

“Did.” God, he thought, teeth chattering. Get to the point, Jase. “Heard from Sabin?”

“ No, unhappily. Not a word. I need answers. So I’m giving our several guests to you .”

Gratefully, he felt the robe settle about his shoulders, Jago’s doing. He grabbed it close. “What do you want me to do with them?”

“ Finesse it, nadi-ji. I’m for half an hour of rest .”

“Not slept?”

“ Off and on the bridge all shift, with Guild messages that don’t say a thing. I’m getting stupid without sleep. Which I understand you did have, lucky bastard. So go to it. I’ll meet you down there. I want the truth, Bren. Or I’m going to lose my self-restraint and pound it out of them myself. ”

“I’m going.” He had not the least idea what he was going to do. Jase was, in very fact, hoarse and on the edge, and he got the picture: the Guild was getting hotter and hotter, demanding restoration of contact with their people, Sabin was still missing—under what conditions Jase didn’t know. And somebody had to move off dead center soon.

Jase clicked out. He did.

He raked a hand through his hair, exposing an arm to icy air.

“Jago-ji. I’m needed. I’ll bathe.” The mind was a blank. But he had to deal with humans. “Island dress.”

“One hears,” Jago said from the doorway. “And for us, nadi?”

He heard, too. “ Please get a little sleep, nadi-ji. I shall have Jase’s guards, and I shall take no chances, none whatsoever, Jago-ji. They should not see you yet. But I assure you. I set no conditions on your assistance if you should hear any threat to me.”

“One accepts, nandi,” Jago said. Not wholly satisfied, it was clear, but much mollified by the emergency clause.

“Asicho can sit duty, nadi. I shall need you soon. I’ll need your wits sharp when I do. But one thing I shall wish immediately: have Bindanda pack a modest picnic basket for five humans. And tuck in a bag of sugar candies.”

A slight hesitation. Jago could speculate quite easily that the picnic wasn’t for Gin and company.

“Yes,” Jago said.

Accepted.

Reassured, he dumped the robe and ducked into his shower, chilled half to the bone.

He toggled on the water and scrubbed with a vengeance, trying to adjust his thinking not only to human, but beyond ship-human and ship-speak, all the way over to Reunion Guild—trying to scrub away all the disposition of his Mospheiran heritage, all his accumulated distaste for the behavior of the Guild’s officers on their deck. He had to get down to mental bedrock. Had to look at what was. Not what had been, centuries ago.

He was relatively clear-headed when he emerged, relatively calm and with his head full of tentative, Guild-focused notions.

Narani helped him dress, island-style being far, far quicker than court dress. He omitted the ribbon, tucked the braid down his collar, as he had when he visited home, in the days when things had been easier than he had ever realized.

He clicked on the pocket comm.

“One rejects the gun, this time, Rani-ji, in close contact.”

The requested picnic basket turned up, a generous container, in Jeladi’s hands. A very generous container. The requested bag of candies, he tucked directly into his pocket.

The breakfast would have served a soccer team, by the weight of it. He walked down the corridor, seeing Banichi and Jago, doubtless waiting to bid him be careful—

“One will be extraordinarily careful,” he said, tilted slightly with the weight of the basket. “I know their ma

He walked on. By the dowager’s door, Cenedi’s men stood simply watching, doubtless communicating with persons inside. Definitely so. Cajeiri popped out to watch him pass, as if he were an expedition.

With the weight of the baggage, he might well have been.

He exited to the lift area. He supposed Gin knew about the proceedings, too, or would know in short order.

He got in and punched two-deck.

Armed guards met him on that level. He was a little taken aback; but it was Kaplan and Polano—Jase’s bodyguard, in full kit, two men he was sure hadn’t had any more rest than he had, turned out to welcome him.

“Here to help, sir. Cap’n’s down there.”