Inheritor (54 page)

He'd seen it coming. He'd watched it barrel down on them like a train headed down the tracks.

This
time there was a strongly centralized power in Shejidan.
This
time the Edi and Maschi atevi of the peninsula weren't raiding the Padi Valley.
This
time they had a ship over their heads that was definitely a player, but which couldn't reach them or get its people out. This time atevi were
very
well advised on human habits and internal divisions, and
this
time there were paidhiin.

All of which might — or might not — tip the scales.

Outside, he heard the sound of the plane starting up.

The boy was on his way. With the means to take the island of Dur for their forces. That was one stretch of beach, if the lord of Dur was on their side, they were relatively sure they could win.

And one of the men outside the glass walls came in and handed Cenedi a note. Cenedi's expression changed as he read it.

"Nand' dowager," Cenedi said, "the warehouse down in the town is moving its trucks out. Down the harborside road to the west. Do we stop them, or allow them to clear the harborside?"

Ilisidi frowned and looked down at the maps.

"Maintain the peace," Ilisidi said. "For the next hour or so."

So now atevi forces were moving. Bren didn't know where, or how many, but the consoles out there were manned by loyal Guild and watched over by loyal Guild, and he tried to sit in one of the soft chairs in the lounge, lean his head back on the back of the seat and rest, when he wanted to be up pacing the floor.

Jase came into the little nook with a cup of tea. He had a worn, grim look, and found even the padded chair uncomfortable — at least he'd winced when he sat down, and Bren would have done so when he'd sat down, if he'd had the strength left. He eyed the arrival, muttered to indicate he didn't mind Jase being there, and shut his eyes, thinking that in Shejidan it would be about bedtime.

Their company was getting the little rest they could. Not all of them: Banichi and Jago were in close conference with Cenedi, and the dowager had taken possession of the director's office to rest, having taken a map with her.

He'd rather, personally, have stayed in the briefing; but it was Guild business in there, not the Messengers, but the Assassins, and when Banichi said in that very polite tone, "Nand' paidhi, you need to rest," he supposed even aijiin took that cue and went to nurse their headaches.

And watch over their other responsibilities.

Mospheira didn't care so much, Bren told himself, if it let both its Ragi-speaking paidhiin, him
and
Deana, travel out of its grasp; there were other students in the University. Someone's son or daughter could replace either of them. Of course.

Jase shifted. Bren heard the creak of the other chair. Jase was worried about Yolanda. Justifiably so.

As Mospheira's allowing Deana Hanks to cross the water meant risking her life. If Mospheira lost her, that meant they had no translator who'd actually been in the field advising them, and their maze of security precautions was going to operate very slowly in giving anyone outside the State Department access to documents: the aiji's blockade order, which
he
hadn't translated, must either have come in Ragi and sent them scurrying for advanced translation, or in atevi-written Mosphei', which wasn't supposed to exist. He did wonder which.

But the readily obvious fact was, the government didn't give a damn whether it talked to atevi so long as it thought the ship up there would deal with them.

It would, however, panic at the thought of Yolanda Mercheson leaving its shores or the ship aloft cutting them off cold from the flow of technology that was coming to the atevi. There was a level of self-preservation in the President's office that hated adventurous doings, and that wouldn't
let
Deana Hanks take Yolanda with her. He reasoned his way to that conclusion.

There
were
also people in charge of Deana: Deana who did not have the intelligence or the authority she dreamed she had. She was not a random and stupid threat until she was in the field dealing with atevi.
They
, the
they
who controlled her, didn't know how bad her handling of the translation interface was, which was their major flaw. If there
were
atevi experts able to know how bad she was, there wouldn't
be
an intercultural problem. They liked her because what she told them would work was shaped exactly to fall into their plans, and that was their blind spot and her reason for getting the post.

But they had to be restraining her from her wilder notions, or God knew what would happen.

And
somebody
could keep Hanks on the island. George Barrulin could, if he could get through to him.

But the paidhi-aiji was out of phone numbers that would mean anything, and he
couldn't
get through to George.
They fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office
. God!

"Bren," Jase said.

He opened his eyes a slit. And saw Jase sitting opposite him, elbows on knees, cup in both hands, with a downcast look.

"Bren," Jase said in human language. "I want you to understand something."

He had to listen. Jase's voice had that tone. He sat up, tucked a foot across his knee, and tried to look as if his brain were working.

"The business about my father," Jase said. "I don't have one. Fact is — fact is, he
is
dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Politeness was automatic. Understanding what Jase was getting at wasn't.

"No," Jase said. "He
died
hundreds of years ago."

A glimmering of understanding
did
come, then. "Taylor's Children. Is
that
what you mean?"

The ship had had its heroes — those
everyone
owed their lives to: the original crew and the construction pilots, the ones who'd mined and fueled the ship in the radiation hell they'd first had to survive, had left their personal legacy in cold storage, all they knew they'd send into their ship's uncertain future.

And such individuals, drawn from that cold-storage legacy, had
not
been the lowest members of the Pilots' Guild, when the modern crew let them be born.

When — rarely — they'd let them be born.

He was sitting in an ordinary chair in an ordinary lounge in a tolerably exotic facility, but the man he'd been dealing with was
not
ordinary, as he understood history.

The man he'd almost called a friend — brought a bit of the cold of space with him into this little nook.

What the ship had sent them in Jase wasn't the lowest, most expendable crew member. It was one of the elite, one who wouldn't be seduced by any planetary — or personal — loyalties.

The people of the Landing, Mospheirans, hadn't been outstandingly fond of the breed. The privileges of that elite was one of the issues that had led to the Landing. And now the ship sent one down to the planet?

"I must say," Bren said mildly, "I'm surprised. I take it you do have a mother."

"One I'm very fond of. One I want to get back to."

"One can understand how much you want to get back. One can understand very well."

Jase looked at him a little curiously, and didn't ask. But maybe, he said to himself, Jase didn't know there'd been a rift between the ship's crew and the colonists. Maybe that was one of the informational dropouts over time — things like weather, and currents, and sunrise.

"What I want to tell you," Jase said, "is that I
am
telling you the truth. I'm not keeping secrets from you. And I'll tell you all of it. But I want your help."

"For what?"

A slight move of Jase's eyes, a gesture to the side, to the communications center, he supposed. "To talk to the ship. To warn them what's going on and to tell them to send someone else down here, if something happens."

"
Is
that what you'd tell them? I'd think it would be 'Get the hell out of here. They're crazy down here.'"

Jase shook his head. "That's not my conclusion. I don't know what's on the other side of the water. Yolanda said at first she was all right. She was having a lot less problems than I was. But things starting going bad. I've heard other codewords, that just meant worry. When she gave me this one — I was scared. You weren't there. And then things started blowing up. I don't think it's coincidence she called me about the time your government started making trouble over here."

Your government. Mospheira. It was a hell of a thing, that statement, he'd had to parse that to know
which
government Jase meant.

"Telling you the family crisis story was supposed to get you to get Yolanda over for a sympathy visit. And it went wrong. It just went wrong. The ship knows there's something wrong on her side of the water. But if I don't call soon they'll think there's something wrong on this side, too."

"What would they do about it?"

"They'd attempt to deal with it, most probably attempt to deal with atevi in the notion some of them do understand Mosphei' and maybe I'd made a mistake."

He was considering that possibility. "Let's try some critical truth. Is the ship armed?"

"It has weapons. It doesn't have atmospheric craft."

"Coercion occupies absolutely no place in their planning? A little piracy, perhaps?"

"No. If they get involved in this situation, it's possible they can withhold information from one side or the other and get cooperation. It's my recommendation that they cooperate with the atevi and withhold all help from Mospheira."

"You know," Bren said, on a breath that made his voice sail higher and more casual than he wished. "You know," he said more soberly, "I think that's a reasonable position, but I haven't had a lot of luck persuading human governments about it, and we've
lived
on this planet a couple of centuries."

"You want the truth?"

"I think it would be a really good idea, Jase."

"If Yolanda goes —" Emotion clouded Jase's face and ruffled the calm in his voice. "If she doesn't make it, it's important to me. But not to the ultimate outcome of this business. Neither of us is that important to the outcome unless we can do our work. They give us a lot, that's what they say. But they ask a lot of us."

"You're not a computer tech who's studied languages and taught kids."

"I know computers. We had two engineering texts in the library, one French, one German. They didn't teach me a lot about planets. But I learned how languages work. That's the truth, Bren."

"You in love with Yolanda?"

"I suppose so. Yes. I am."

"But disregarding all this, say we lost you, what would your ship do?"

"Right now, they'd go on pretending everything was fine, and see if you built the spacecraft."

"And then?"

"If atevi got up there, my captains would negotiate. They'd have done what they want. They'd negotiate with atevi. They'd probably keep on giving them tech. As much as they wanted."

He had a very, very bad feeling that he wasn't understanding everything, and that Jase wanted his full attention for the next item.

"Why?" he asked.

"They want the atevi in space."

"Why?"

"Because —" Jase's voice was faint. "Because we're not alone. We're not the only ones in space. And they're not friendly. And we're not sure, but they could come here."

He sat, having heard that. Having heard it, he didn't want to believe it.

"You said," he recalled, "there was another station out there, at the other end of — wherever you've been."

"There was one. It's gone. We don't know who the aliens are. We don't know what they want. We tried to contact them. We had a few passes, months apart. Just a streak on one tape. And some transmissions. We tried scanning the area where we thought they were coming from. We'd moved
Phoenix
out. And when we got back, the station was — was wrecked. Everyone was dead. It hadn't infallen. But it was going to. We took a vote. We decided — we decided we'd better get out of there."

"And come
here
."

"It was the only place."

"Oh, you could have lost yourself in space. You could have gone the hell
away
from us!"

"It's not that far, Bren. It's about eighteen, twenty years light. You're in their neighborhood. We did
nothing
to these people. People — whatever they are. We did
nothing
to provoke them."

"We did nothing to provoke the atevi into attacking the colony, either, but we made it damned well
inevitable
!"

"You know that. You dealt with this situation. Maybe you have a skill — maybe you have a skill we don't. We need you."

"God, look around you! My government's not doing outstandingly well at the moment!"

"If they'd listen to
you
, they'd be better off."

"But failing that miracle, you want the atevi in space. You want us, or you want the atevi."

"This is the atevi star. This is their world. There's something out there that kills people it doesn't know anything about, that never did anything to them. And the atevi need to know that. We could have gone off in space somewhere and hoped they never found us. We could have tried again —"

"No, you couldn't.
You
thought there'd be a thriving colony here. You thought you'd get fuel for the ship here.
You
thought you'd rally the colony to the defense and you'd have everything the way you used to have it, with us doing the mining
and
the dying for you to run the ship."

There was a small silence. But Jase didn't flinch. "We thought we'd have your help, yes. But we thought we owed each other a mutual debt — a warning, and a chance for us to get out of here if you want to take your chances."

"That's a lousy patch on exactly what I said."

"That's fine. That's the situation.
Now
what do you do?"

He let out a long sigh and fell back into the chair cushions to look at the room beyond, communications that could indeed talk to the ship.