Explorer (40 page)

“You’re on the ocean. Your boat goes down. You see a floating piece of wood. You swim for it. If your worst enemy spots it, too, you’ll share that bit of wood. Instinct. Far as we are from the earth of humans, we’ll do it. Atevi do it. It’s one of those little items we have in common.”

“You suppose those aliens out there have the same instinct?”

“May well. When the water rises and the world goes under, not just anybody, anything else
alive
becomes your ally.”

“I’m not sure I trust your planet-born notions.”

“Get some sleep,” Bren said, and got up to leave.

“I want my picture back,” Jase said.

“Cook has it. I’ll get it myself.”

“I’ll send down for it,” Jase said. “Get. Go. Do anything you can.”

He left. Left a man who, on the whole, had rather be fishing, and wanted nothing more than that for himself for the rest of his life.

But fate, and Ramirez, and Tabini-aiji, had had other designs.

He walked the corridor behind the bridge, talking to his pocket comm, giving particular instructions, already making particular requests.

“Rani-ji, I shall need the paper stores. Jase will have a text for us to print, at least five hundred copies.” He recalled, curiously, that five-deck had the only hard-print facility on the ship. Jase had known how to write longhand when he dropped onto the world, but nine-tenths of literate ship’s crew had had to learn how to write coherent words on a tablet when they first saw pen and paper. Read, no problem: dictate well-constructed memos, yes. But they couldn’t write; had never seen paper or written the alphabet by hand. Alpha and the crew had existed across that broad a gulf of experience—there was no shorthand explanation for the differences
between Mospheirans and ship’s crew.

And twenty-odd of the atevi Assassins’ Guild were going to scare common sense out of the populace unless there was some immediate, visible reassurance to station that they were on the side of the angels. This was an orbiting nation that couldn’t fly; that universally read and couldn’t write; that knew gravity, but not a sunrise. That panicked at the flash of light and dark in the leaves of trees. Certain subtexts were unpredictably lost when fear took over.

Someone had to make clear that atevi presence was there to help them. Someone had to demonstrate human cooperation with atevi. Seeing, in a very real sense, was believing.

And he had a clammy-cold notion where the paidhi’s job had to lie in this one.

Jase, one hoped, was finally asleep, as Bren sat with his own bodyguard, his own staff, in the dining room, with his computer, with a pot of tea and a plate of wafers, and a number of pieces of printout littering the broad dining table.

“One has exhausted talk, nadiin-ji, where this Braddock-aiji is concerned. And that we have lost touch with Sabin seems no accident. Her departure left the ship with no skilled operatives, few that know anything of self-defense, this being a closely related clan, unused to internal threat. So Jase has no choice but appeal to five-deck.”

“Does he then conclude,” Banichi asked, “that Sabin-aiji is lost?”

“He is by no means sure.” Bren had his own doubts of that situation, and accurate translation to an atevi hearer was by no means easy. Aijiin had no man’chi. It all flowed upward. And that a leader could desert her own followers was a very strange notion. “She may have acted on her own, against the Guild. Certainly she was aware that she was taking most of our protection with her—except atevi. And she took our one known traitor—if traitor he was, to her. Neither Jase nor I know whether she meant to protect Jase from Jenrette, or Jenrette from Jase.”

“Perhaps,” Jago ventured, “she may not have rushed blindly into whatever trap they may have laid for her. She never seemed a fool. Perhaps she thought she took enough force to seize control of the station center; but why, then, take Jenrette?”

“That answer must be lost in the minds of ship-folk, nadiin-ji. A Mospheiran human utterly fails to understand it.”

“Perhaps she did confide in Jase,” Banichi suggested darkly.

“Even so, even with his strongest promise to keep such a secret—I can hardly believe he would keep it from me. And she would have known that, too.” He thought on the matter of Sabin’s intentions twice and three times and came to the same conclusion. “Either she betrayed us outright, in which case I would expect her to contact us, or she took Jenrette because she wanted his help, or his information. I think she may have intended some covert action of her own, yet to develop—perhaps something so simple as spreading information among the general populace; but more likely attempting to infiltrate critical systems.”

“The fuel port,” Banichi said, “and communications.”

“Both likely.”

“Asking no help from us,” Jago said. “This seems likely, in Sabin-aiji.”

“Risking failure,” Banichi said. “We should take this station, Bren-ji. We need not run it, only evacuate it.”

Bren’s heart beat faster. And he couldn’t say no to the outrageous notion.

“If we open our doors,” Jago said, “we can evacuate it. But we lose our ability to maneuver this ship.”

“Even so,” Bren said. “And there remains the Archive, that we came here to remove.”

“We can reach the command center through the accesses,” Banichi said, “and take that during the general confusion. We may find Sabin-aiji, if she should be inclined to be found. The ship, so I hear, can manage the fueling with its own personnel. Gin-aiji can pursue that. Take the command center, free this hostage this Guild retains, and pay our due to the foreign ship, all in one. The staff has every confidence the paidhi-aiji can negotiate, at that point, with all parties.”

Dizzying prospect. On one level it was what he wanted to hear. He wanted to believe it was reasonable, and possible; and he hadn’t prompted it. He had no doubt at all that Banichi had a clear vision how this could work, and how they could move quickly enough to assure they could refuel before a cascade of systems failures took the station down in an evacuation—if they were fast, if they supported key systems, Banichi clearly thought they could do it. And if they got to the command center and took Braddock, they could take everything at once.

Banichi could be right, and he knew he himself was notoriously wrong when it came to inserting his own
plans in Banichi’s area of expertise—but—

But—he had his doubts. Sane doubts. Doubts that had to be laid out.

“Yet, Banichi-ji,” he said, “one fears taking on too much. If we should proceed too quickly, if we should fail to manage Central, being as few as we are—if this ship and its pilots should come under orders of this Braddock-aiji, or if the station should fall to that foreign ship—any of these events would lead to terrible outcomes: hostile action against that ship out there, wider provocations that might involve the world we came to protect.” Damn, Banichi was always right. He had a most terrible foreboding about arguing with Banichi’s advice, and more than anything, feared he erred by timidity. “If, on the other hand, nadiin-ji, we take this prisoner into our hands, before they realize that we can penetrate the station, then we take away their source of confidence that they can hold that foreign ship from attacking.”

Banichi and Jago considered a breath or two. “Will this not unite them in resistance?” Jago asked.

“It will increase doubt toward Braddock.” It was all soft-tissue estimation, the paidhi’s word about human behavior, versus what atevi might do under similar circumstances; and it gave him no confidence at all that he could make no firm predictions. “I think it likely, at least.”

“Will they not hold the fuel,” Banichi said, “to counter our leaving with the hostage?”

“We
can
leave with the hostage, Banichi-ji. We can reach that ship in a small craft, if we have no other choice. And we can make it clear to the station population that we are here to take them to safety. We have not yet offered them boarding—not that we can rely on them having heard from Braddock.”

“Shall we then tell them?” Jago asked.

“Jase has such a plan. Pamphlets.”

“We pass out brochures?” Banichi asked, incredulous. “Like a holiday?”

Simply put, it sounded chancy. “Jase believes he can compose a compelling message.”

Banichi leaned back from the table, simply contemplating the matter. Then: “So we take this prisoner. And distribute brochures. And perhaps we shall find Sabin-aiji and find out her intentions. There are very many pieces to this plan.”

“And I shall go with you.”

“No,
Bren-ji.”

“Absolutely necessary. I can walk up to humans and wish them good day.
You
are far more conspicuous, nadiin-ji.”

“He has a point,” Jago said. “If these humans threaten us, we might hesitate to shoot them; but if Bren-ji is with us, we shall have no hesitation.”

He had lived long enough among atevi that he had no difficulty following Jago’s reasoning. There was a basic logic in it, instinctive protection of their household, with which he found no inclination to argue.

“So we shall have these brochures,” Banichi said, “which we shall print, which will bring humans rushing to our doors. But will the Guild administration then arrive at our doors begging admittance, Bren-ji?”

“They will not. One believes they will hold out to the very last.
Then
we may need your plan to take Central, nadiin-ji.”

“We should call Gin-aiji,” Banichi said. Gin was their ultimate authority on systems.

“We shall need to inform Jase,” Bren said.

“And Cenedi,” Jago said.

So they sent the requisite messages, and informed Cenedi, who informed the dowager.

Whose reaction was far more moderate than one expected. “Shall we have television of it?” Cajeiri was reported to have asked.

In fact, there would be television, if they could manage it, but not for Cajeiri’s delight.

Gin arrived, herself having caught a little precious sleep. The table was already paved with their own version of station plans and schematics, but Gin brought a schematic she and her engineers had marked up.

“There
are
access ports from the outside,” Bren asked her. “Just as at Alpha.”

“Damned inconvenient for repair crews if there weren’t,” Gin said, and called up specifics of the area Becker and party had named to Jase.

The diagrams looked as innocuous and common as any other area of the station, which looked like Alpha:
Bren knew, having translated a stultifying quantity of the technical manuals and the building plans.

“They may have modified this entire area for greater security,” Banichi observed, pointing to a section door. “Here would be a likely control point, a minimum of fuss.”

“Remembering, nadi,” Bren said, “that they have had six years to fear that that ship might send a force in to rescue this person. Station may have laid traps.”

“Not, however,” Jago said, “greatly clever ones—if one may judge by Becker. But we should seek a means to distract attention.”

Comforting thought.

“A good use for
roboti,
” Banichi said.

“To draw fire with my robots?” Gin cried, when that found full translation.

“A small one,” Banichi said. “A minor one. We can surely spare one to good use.”

Gin considered, and a grim light was in her eye. “One,” she said, holding up a finger like a merchant in a market. “One.”

It ran like that. Gin laid her plans and went off to estimate how they could best annoy station security. Banichi and Jago and Cenedi went to estimate what items might be both portable and useful.

Therein the paidhi had no usefulness at all, having only the most rudimentary notion how to get into an electronic lock or how to defeat security closure on a section door . . . the paidhi only hoped to lie down in his own quarters, draw a few slow breaths, and perhaps to catch one of those hours of sleep he’d lost.

Prospect of a rash intrusion onto station and the presence of station agents aboard, however inclined to change their views—that didn’t make for restful thoughts. Banichi could sleep anywhere, on cue. He didn’t have that skill.

And what if he dropped a stitch, and they ran into a trap?

What if they were killed attempting this, and the ship had to do without him, and explain matters to that alien craft—explain they’d tried, and explain to an angry and mistrustful set of strangers enough plausible excuses to gain the ship’s release?

Sleep evaporated. He got up, found paper and pen in his desk, and began sketching, in their dot-pattern code, an explanation of their mission. Of—grim thought—mission failure. Of request for a meeting with ship’s personnel. Jase would have to manage it, if it came to that, but Jase, of all others, understood. Gin halfway did. She would help. The dowager would help. It wasn’t as if he was leaving Jase without resources.

More dot-patterns: the ship taking on passengers. The ship mining the area for fuel. The ship leaving the system. The ship conducting talks with the alien craft. The ship engaging in trade—a closeness they never sought, but might have to have.

Trying to imagine all the contingencies Jase might have to deal with, trying to reach across space and time to gather every stray possibility, was a curious enterprise. He tried to think of things. He tried to create a basic vocabulary of interactions: communicating the difference between coming and going to a foreigner who shared one’s planet was hard enough. Communicating that useful distinction to a species that might only have a single word for movement or that might have a dozen more specific words—or, God help them, communicate in something other than nouns and verbs—was no walk on the beach. Go and come, give and get, infelicitous pairs of concepts that had distressed atevi at first glance, for no reason at all to human senses, and disturbing all sense of balance in atevi nerves. Fingernails on a blackboard, continual and unintended in all early efforts.

But civilized entities—if one had a right to expect any behavior out of a species that had gotten off its own planet—ought to have some concept that the universe was wide, that differences were likely, and that shooting as a first response would ultimately lead one to ruin.