Explorer (22 page)

He didn’t know what to say. Then he shifted a glance over his shoulder, by implication the array of atevi and Mospheirans—and back. “My predecessors certainly did.”

Sabin’s glance made the same trip. And came back. “You can do it and take my orders, mister.”

“I respect your good sense, captain.”

“What do you propose for the next step?”

“Ignore my ignorance about ship’s operations. But we’ve answered the aliens. Where’s the clock on that, relative to our request to station?”

Sabin checked her wristwatch. “That’s thirty-one to station reply and forty-six to alien reply.”

“If station agrees to signal with us, we do a unison approach. If station doesn’t agree . . . how many lights can the ship manage in a row, to signal with?”

“Eight.”

Infelicitous eight. Was it mad for a human mind to think in those terms—to have numbers make a difference at all?

“I’ll give you a blink pattern with those eight. I’ll think of something.”

“I’m sure that’s very useful, Mr. Cameron.”

“We can signal an approach. If we can make an approach to them.”

“You’re recommending this.”

“I’m recommending this.”

Again a long stare. “I’m not expecting station cooperation. Get me your blink pattern, Mr. Cameron. Let’s just see what we can learn.”

*   *   *

Half an hour. He had other minds to consult, and he went and consulted, the aiji-dowager sitting ramrod
stiff in an upright chair in Jase’s cabin, Ginny sitting on the bed, security standing about. He sat down and made his proposal, talking to two individuals: the human one of which didn’t remotely understand his craft; but the dowager understood the problems. So, even, did Cajeiri, who stood by his great-grandmother’s chair and listened very solemnly, not a word from him, but a lively spark in his eyes, not a reasonable ounce of fear.

No more than in his great-grandmother. “So,” Ilisidi said, having heard him out. “What does Jase-aiji think?”

“One will surely consult him in this, aiji-ma.” He had a keen awareness of passing time. Of the impending reply window. He hastily took his leave, gathering Banichi and Jago and Gin—almost Cajeiri, but for the dowager’s sharp command restraining the rascal.

“Answer?” Bren asked Jase, arriving beside him on the bridge. The communications flow in his ear was momentarily interrupted, for sanity’s sake. He was screwing the earpiece back in as he asked.

“Station says their policy is no contact. They repeat their order to come in.”

His heart thudded for no particular reason: he’d expected worse—but the citing of policy under present circumstances hammered at his nerves. The communications chatter was back in his ear. He watched Sabin stroll over.

“Negative,” she said. “So?”

“I suggest, then, unless the alien initiates some new pattern we can work on—blink all lights sequential toward the endmost, toward that ship. Then slow. And turn. Blink all lights toward the center. Then steady light, and go toward them.”

“That’s
it?”

“Works in downtown Jackson traffic,” he said, beyond being defensive. “Communicates to our species. Atevi intuitively figure it on Alpha station.”

“A damn stationside
turn
signal?”

He shrugged. “We’re not going to communicate the whole dictionary, captain. Simplicity. The most universal things we can think of:
we’re turning
and
we’re coming toward you very, very slowly.
”

Sabin swore under her breath.

“What would you do, captain, if they sent that signal to you?”

“I’d uncap the fire button, plain truth.”

“Would you fire?”

Sabin thought more soberly about that. Expressionless, walked over to the third console and gave an order.

Another transmission-wait clock showed up on the main screen.

They’d signaled.

“Takehold, takehold, takehold,”
the intercom warned the ship.

Maneuvering. His plan was in full, precipitate operation, not waiting for answer.

He looked uncertainly toward Jase. Jase looked to
him,
that was the panic-producing realization; and there wasn’t time. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to Banichi and Jago, “take hold. Advise the dowager. We three shall use the alcove.”

Where he had at least the hope of contributing advice—if the aliens didn’t construe their movement as attack, or simply prove intractably hostile.

“Bren-ji.” Banichi insisted he enter first. Jago followed. They made a sandwich of him within the protective, padded closet, and he tried not to shake like a leaf.
They
rather expected the lord of the heavens to have a notion what he was doing. And not to shiver.

An hour and more until the aliens knew they were slowing and turning—and signaling their intentions. Which might also make a shot miss them, if the aliens pissaciously fired before they considered the blink signal.

Head against the padding. Eyes shut.

Final alarm. The ship began to maneuver. Ships that traveled such vast distances so fast were rather like bullets. They weren’t meant to jitter about, changing course, making loose objects and passengers into pancakes.
Phoenix
certainly wasn’t designed to do it.

But she did.

Long change of direction. Time for thought, which he tried not to use, except on his next step.

Suppose the other ship echoed the signal, including the ship movement. Supposing they came forward.

Suppose they offered some different signal.

Suppose, on the other hand, they sat inert, not doing a thing. Could
Phoenix
detect it, if they did? Or if, sitting still, they fired?

A certain degree before a physical missile reached them. No detection if hostility traveled at the speed of light. One thought ever so uncomfortably of very bad television, back home, death rays from the heavens, shadow-creatures menacing whole towns—

Such naive images. And so unwittingly prophetic if he couldn’t think of the right answers.

He felt the living warmth on either side of him, steady, absolutely unflinching.

Calm, calm, calm. Panic didn’t serve the cause, not at all.

“How are they down on five-deck?” he asked.

“Very well, nandi,” Jago answered.

“And the dowager?”

“Very well, too,” Banichi said on his other side.

“Well,” he said, “nadiin-ji, we have at least gotten one signal out of these folk, whether or not it comes from something like Gin’s robots—which hardly matters: if signal is being offered, signal is being offered, dare one say? So we orient ourselves toward them. We have offered a signal stating our proposed motion, which we hope does not look like stealth or offense.” He
had
the Assassins’ Guild right at his elbow and hadn’t asked them their opinion of the captain’s precipitate execution of his plan. “How would you manage a peaceful approach to them, nadiin-ji, figuring a complete dearth of cover?”

“One would stand at distance and signal in plain sight,” Banichi said, “except that distance places this inconvenient lag between responses, and one seems therefore not to be quite in plain sight.”

“One hopes, if nothing else, the signals continue to flow,” Jago said. “We have every confidence the paidhiin will manage matters very adequately in that regard. But does there not remain the small possibility, Bren-ji, that there have been other, surreptitious messages from the station to the ship?”

Trust the Assassins’ Guild to entertain truly disturbing thoughts—it was their job. “One hardly knows,” he said. “We cannot guarantee Jase has all the information, nadiin-ji.” He had Jase’s communication device muttering in his ear—but that channel only carried voice transmissions, and only what C1 opted to put on that channel.

Jase was on the bridge, nonetheless, moderating Sabin’s reactions, if nothing else. And Sabin, so far as they saw, responded to their arguments, and met the station’s with anger.

But his security reminded him: one couldn’t, here or in Shejidan, just watch the noisy things that were going on. Atevi lords died of mistakes like that. Subtexts mattered. Plans advanced by moves not apparently related to the objective. God, one could go crazy in the levels of distrust that existed between ship and station and that transmission-source out there.

A queasy motion. Turns on any axis were subtle, mere reorientation. They’d shed velocity as they bore. Then what seemed a turn.

They accelerated briefly, modestly, he thought, eyes shut, trying to read the ship’s motion.

At a certain level, biological organisms trying to get within proximity without touching off fight or flight mostly did the same things, at least on the evidence of atevi and humans. One could call what they did an approach. Or, even being human, one could call it a hunter’s moves. Stalking the prey. One hoped—hoped—

The all-clear sounded.

He moved. His bodyguard moved. He followed Banichi out of their refuge, Jago following him as he looked for the principals in the case.

The bridge seemed calm. Sabin and Jase were back on slow patrol of the aisles of consoles.

Banichi meanwhile spoke quietly to Cenedi and Asicho, advising them of the current situation.

The reply-clocks ran on the display, independently, computer-calculated, one supposed.

Bren heaved a deep breath, went and stood at the end of the middle row of consoles, his bodyguard with him, all of them quietly watching the display for information.

Station’s answer arrived first.
“Don’t contact the alien. Don’t meddle with the outlying ship. It’s been quiet
for six years. Let it alone. Do you read?”

Late for that.

Station
wasn’t
taking Sabin’s instructions, that was clear, and thought Sabin should take theirs.

“Captain Sabin,” he heard Jase say, amplified by the earpiece, “we should proceed on Mr. Cameron’s advice.”

“We’re on course, second captain.”

“If the spook’s been out here six years, it may have gathered something of our language—if it’s picked up any station chatter. If, God forbid, it’s gotten hold of any personnel.”

Jase’s mind was clearly working. Chillingly so—convenient as it might be to their mission to meet an opposition that could be talked to. The blink-code procedure wouldn’t carry that. Direct transmission might.

Dared they risk breaking pattern with what seemed the alien’s own chosen mode of communication?

Not wise, every experience informed him. Not wise to push the envelope.

“We should stay to the blink-code, captain, unless they initiate another mode.”

“We’ll try Mr. Cameron’s notion,” Sabin said grimly, and gave no window into her own thoughts.

Neither, one noted, did she show any inclination to answer station’s orders at the moment.

They stood. They waited.

The clock ticked down.

“Repeat,”
the word came in from Reunion,
“do not contact the outlying ship.”

Sabin’s lips made a thin line. “I believe we’re having transmission troubles,” she remarked to all present. “C1, put me on general address.”

“Proceed, captain.”

Sabin picked up a wand mike from C1’s console.
“We have now signaled the alien craft and diverted course toward it in what our planetary advisors suggest is a reasonable approach. We remain on high alert. We are not releasing crew from cabins. There remains a likelihood of sudden movement which may exceed takehold safety. In other words, cousins, we may have to get the hell out of this solar system. Stay smart, stay put, stay
alive.”

Bren translated that for his allies down in the executive cabins, and for five-deck. And waited. And sweated.

“Captain Sabin.”
A deeper voice, this time, from Reunion Station.
“This is Guildmaster Braddock. If you insist on this change of course, you risk our lives. We have this information for you. This is very likely a robot. It’s sat there for years without moving or responding. We have no indication of it being controlled from outside. Optics have turned up nothing in outlying regions. We detect no transmissions and no active probes. Our experts believe it’s a failed piece of equipment dating from a second attack on us and we urge you reconsider any approach to it. If it’s dormant, it does us no good to wake it up. Abort whatever you’re doing in regard to it. If you’re on Ramirez’s orders, abort. You don’t know what you’re messing with. You may get a robotic response and it may be lethal and unstoppable. I urgently advise you pull back.”

That, Bren thought, that was interesting . . . not least regarding a
second
attack, in the ship’s absence. And interesting regarding Ramirez’s relations with his Guild, if they’d had overmuch doubt. Station hadn’t trusted Ramirez. And they’d had no way to remove him from command.

Sabin looked at him, eyebrow arched.

He looked back, looked at Jase, looked at her.
“Second
attack.”

“We continue our transmission difficulties,” Sabin said without comment.

And the clock ran down toward the alien’s reply window.

“Second attack,” Jase echoed, walking near him on his right. Jase and Sabin alike showed the hours they’d been on duty. Jase’s voice was ragged.

“Things haven’t stood still here.”

“They’re right, six years of patience doesn’t sound organic. But . . .”

“Can’t assume an alien behavior,” Bren said.

“Can’t assume an alien machine is set the way we’d set it, either. The thing could do any damn thing.”

“There is that,” Bren muttered. “But it’s signalled us. Machine or not, it had that pre-set in its routines.”

Flick-flick-flick of the reply window numbers.

Into the negative. Ten, fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-odd.

“Signal from the alien,”
someone said, audible in Bren’s earpiece.

Sabin and Jase moved to the nearest consoles. Bren, Banichi and Jago a massive shadow behind him, watched over Jase’s shoulder, hearing the details. The signal was a series of six lights—was there significance in six?—mirroring their action.

It made an analog of their signal, it mirrored what they sent, and it didn’t need to slow down, just point its bow their way.