Explorer (60 page)

So did Sabin. That was the real change.

*   *   *

Separation of nations that have once met is dangerous: that seems the most accurate expression of kyo views of politics. What has met will meet again. What cannot stay in contact is a constant danger of miscalculation.

Curious notion. Possibly even demonstrable, in history. One wonders whether this is a refined philosophy, out of successful experience.

One is very certain we need to go slow with this.

In that notion, we’ve said a kyo goodbye to Prakuyo, who avows he will see us again. This somewhere between threat and promise.

The siren went. Warning.

Time to shut down and take hold.

“Takehold, takehold, takehold.”

The illusion of gravity left them. The ship was sorting itself out. It had its gut full of stationers who had never been through this. They announced every small move.

Curious, Bren thought, that he’d gotten to view this as easy.

All things being relative—it was.

He shut his eyes. They were supposed to have a little transitional time before they underwent another acceleration. The weightless episode was a test—convincing stationers that they really had to stow items. So Jase had forewarned him.

He slept a little, drifting with a little safety tether to the head of the bed.

Waked as the warning siren went off. Gravity returned.

Jago wasn’t back. She’d gone off on some call from Banichi, and wasn’t back yet.

“This is the real one, ladies and gentlemen. We’re about to fold space. Kindly stay put until the all-clear.”

Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe something had been going on. Maybe a crisis on staff, someone needing help . . .

He heard running steps in the hall. Sat up. As the siren went off, sharp warning bursts.

Jago came through the door, crossed the floor and landed on the bed in the space he made.

“Nadi-ji?” He was concerned.

A giddy feeling ensued. The ship began to ease its way out of the ordinary universe.

“One apologizes,” Jago said, breathless—for her, quite unusual.

“Trouble?” Difficulty breathing, himself, for the moment.

“Nand’ Cajeiri had a pocketful of dice.”

“Dice?” A common toy. They came in sets of eight.
His
staff had been called in. Cenedi must have been having fits. “Was he
throwing
them?”

“He called it an experiment,” Jago said. “To know, one understands, whether the numbers come up the same in freefall as on earth.”

He was appalled. The things became missiles under acceleration.

And intrigued. He had to ask.

“
Do
they?”

Jago laughed. That wonderful sound. And was still out of breath, as the universe ebbed and flowed around
them. “A flaw in the notion, failure to ascertain true rest. Two were lost. Cenedi was entirely out of sorts.”

“You did find them.”

“Of course.”

Of course they had found them, or Jago would not have left.

“Excellent,” he said, thinking of dice in freefall. Jago was warm beside him.

Safe. Secure. All dice accounted for. Baji-naji.

They were going home.