Peacemaker

He said further that the only way to preserve atevi rights in this situation was for atevi to speak to the ship-folk directly, invite them to negotiate, and make it clear that the local authority was the aishidi’tat, not Mospheira. They should in fact offer to ally with the Mospheirans in their demands for complete control of the station, and be prepared to share that authority with them.

There was one drawback to everybody’s plans, of course, and it was an old one. None of the starship pilots knew how to fly in an atmosphere. None of the atevi or Mospheiran pilots, who well knew how to fly in atmosphere and gravity, knew how to fly in space.

There were no ship-construction facilities at the mothballed station, which had no population and no workers.

And critical natural resources necessary to build a spacecraft were available only on the mainland. Mospheira had been trading for them—but the mainland could cut that off cold at any time.

Phoenix had the blueprints—the complete library in the data storage of the starship. But atevi had the mines, the factories, and the resources.

Negotiation and unprecedented cooperation between Mospheira and the mainland built a small fleet of shuttles.

Negotiation with the Mospheirans and Phoenix gave half the station to atevi, half to humans.

Tabini would ultimately set an atevi lord, myself, Lord Geigi of Maschi clan, to be in charge of the half of the station.

But before that day came a great upheaval.

The technology that came with the shuttle plans brought massive change to the economy of both Mospheira and the mainland. It required new materials, computers, new plants—it brought all ma

But on the mainland, among us, the shock was as much cultural as economic. For two hundred years the paidhiin had carefully brought technology onto the mainland—items like telephones, and, lately, airplanes, plastics, and transistors. These were benign in most ways—beneficial, unless one asked the older folk.

Then the space program poured new materials and new concepts down from the sky, advice telling us where to mine, with new ways of doing so, telling us how to manufacture, and offering us modern ceramics, and even dropping down certain materials from space.

All this challenged us philosophically. Traditional numbers-causality and the mediaeval concept of astronomy met starfaring equations and a universe that clearly did not consist of a clockwork sky dome and an ether that surrounded the sun and planets. That realization upset the Conservatives . . . and the paidhi-aiji had to open a clerical office simply to answer the letters from people asking, for instance, if a shuttle taking off would let the atmosphere escape.

And there was the politics of it all, which fell on Tabini-aiji. Some districts where the ecological impact would be minimal or which had transportation advantages were awarded manufacturing facilities, rousing resentments from those equally deserving who did not get such facilities—and of course there were areas that wanted none of it, and bitterly resented the economic advantage to those who had such industry.

The fractures in atevi society began to multiply.

On both sides of the straits, people found the whole world changing.

Then the ship-captains admitted the existence of another colony out in deep space, their Reunion Station, which they had never mentioned. This was especially disturbing to the Mospheirans. Phoenix next confessed that their reason for coming back to the Earth now was a need to put the Reunion population somewhere.

Why? the world asked.

Then Phoenix made a third and terrible admission: they had, they said, met hostile strangers in space, who might attack Reunion.

Some on both sides of the strait were inclined to tell Phoenix that they regretted the distress of these people very much, but they were not going to give permission to bring the Reunioners to this world.

Then Phoenix made yet another admission, the infelicitous fourth—that, in its own library, Reunion Station had the location of the atevi sun, and if Reunion fell—the Earth of the atevi might see these hostile strangers arrive here.

viii

<<Bren>> In the urgency of building the shuttle fleet, the mainland had seen change after change, wealth had poured into places of poor land that had not had wealth, and society had become increasingly unstable, but the alternative—having decisions taken in the heavens without atevi participation—was insupportable.

Tabini-aiji had already pushed the citizenry to the limits of their patience when he found out what the ship-folk had confessed. He was angry. And now he was suspicious that neither atevi nor Mospheirans had been given the truth. He decided to take strong action to find out the situation in space, and be sure that things were as the Phoenix captains said they were. He charged Bren-paidhi, who knew humans, and the aiji-dowager, who would not be put off with lies, to go find out the truth. And because he now knew that the news of the ship’s deception would bring his household increasingly under threat, he sent his son, both to learn the new knowledge, to understand humans, and to be taught by the woman who had taught him.

It was a desperate dice-throw, with no knowledge of the scale of the universe, or the fact that the ship could not communicate across that distance, or how hard and dangerous it would be.

ix

<<Geigi>> Tabini-aiji made a decision that shocked the aishidi’tat and revised all calculations. He set all his scattered household out of reach of his enemies: his son, the aiji-dowager, who had ruled the aishidid’tat more than once, and the paidhi-aiji, who could understand humans.

He had also set a technologically adept atevi population in the heavens, governed by Lord Geigi, who had the ability to reach the Earth if he were given a target and an order.

If he himself were to die, Tabini-aiji reasoned—his grandmother and his son would gain power in the heavens, come back, and take back the aishidi’tat. If they failed to return, then Geigi and the atevi in the heavens would declare an aijinate, contact reliable lords on the Earth, and reshape the aishidi’tat in whatever way it had to be shaped to preserve atevi control of the world.

Tabini-aiji did not, however, intend to die. He had reduced his household by two. He became more cautious, was far less frequently in transit, far less exposed to threats from unstable persons. He had not been advised of any Filings against his supporters, nothing of the sort, even though he daily expected it. He had begun to suspect something was being organized, but if it was, it was not behaving in any legitimate way. It had the flavor of the Marid—but the Marid was troubled by none of the issues that troubled the rest of the aishidi’tat.

He asked the Guild to investigate, and they reported only the usual persons, the usual statements, the usual activities, none of which reached to Shejidan. He relied on the information he was getting from the Guild—and from the ship-paidhi Yolande Mercheson—who may have failed to understand one quiet warning, from a source who did not sign the letter.

The ship left the station. The aiji-dowager, the heir, and the paidhi-aiji went with it, not to return for two years.

But—perhaps it was the note given the ship-paidhi that had alarmed the conspirators, or perhaps the indications that the aiji was taking precautions and might discover who they were: rumors grew more frequent than fact. Some believed humans had kidnapped the dowager and the heir. Some said the ship had never left and they all were dead.