Visitor: A Foreigner Novel (34 page)

In one sense, it was strange to think of a linearity in three dimensional space, but stars, so Jase had explained to him, clustered in groups, and those groups in turn lay in lines like pearls on a spiraling string as they raced around the center of the galaxy. It might be an overly simplistic view of the universe . . . but had
Phoenix
, all along, been searching in the right direction?

Did that long-sought human space lie just beyond kyo territory? Possibly the next pearl on the string? And had Ramirez, contrary to that common belief, always known it?
Phoenix
senior captains had a history of keeping secrets. Had the program been to build a chain of stations and colonies stretching back and back to human space? To complete the ship’s original mission of extending human territory, if somewhat in reverse?

For the ship-folk, the universe
was
the ship. The ship needed fuel and it needed a goal. The ship might not really care how many generations it took to get to a goal. Or a world. It seeded humanity—down a string of pearls.

The thoughts came like lightning, in an instant, lighting up a whole well-known landscape of old questions—and new paths developed branches he couldn’t access, not here, not now.

“I’ve said something,” Cullen said, grown quiet, fist still against the glass. “What have I said?”

“Nothing. And a lot.”

If he was right . . . if the location of human space had been known to Ramirez . . . it was possible that information had died with him. It was also possible it was still locked in ship’s records. There were ways that the seniormost
Phoenix
captain could isolate portions of the log, time-lock them, put them off-limits to the three junior to him. If it was lost—it was one thing. If it was locked—it might open up again.

To Ogun.

“You’re thinking about something,” Cullen said. “I
have
said something.”

“Something, yes.”

And if Ogun knew . . . maybe he had a very good reason to have kept quiet, to have resisted the return to Reunion. Maybe Ogun had it figured. Maybe Ogun realized that if
Phoenix
humans, colonists and ship-folk alike, learned that human space was remotely within reach . . . politics would take over and all hell would break loose. If Mospheirans knew—some would be all for contact, and others, deeply committed to their own way of life, would be passionately opposed to it. Some Reunioners would find a rallying point, a future that didn’t depend on the charity of Mospheirans. The ship-folk . . . would find focus, and mission.

And they’d drag the atevi right into it.

All based on the ship reuniting with humans who were currently at war—with a species that had turned a station to slag in a single blast.

And if that was the case, if Ogun had deliberately kept that location secret . . . Bren discovered himself in total agreement.

If this man’s existence—even if
word
of this man’s existence—reached Alpha Station, at the other end of that access tube, the stability of everything he knew, the lives and safety of every person on that station and the planet below, were set at risk.

He had never, never in his life, thought the terrible thought he had now—that if this one voice were silenced—if he had to make the Guild’s kind of choices, not for evil, not for ambition—he could let generations of ordinary shopkeepers and craftsmen go on about their lives, have their children, grow up and grow old in peace.

He could do it. He
would
do it. He could not let some stubborn human notion of returning to a home they didn’t remotely understand plunge them all into war. Neither Mospheirans nor ship-folk were the people who’d left human space. They were something else.

They were one thing. And Cullen was another, a being far more dangerous to their existence than the kyo had ever been.

Keep him secret? Yes. Killing him—no. He didn’t want Cullen to die. He didn’t want Cullen to suffer, or to live in this cage for the rest of his life.

The kyo controlled that. The kyo had brought Cullen all this way—

To do what?

To see whether they were the same people as Cullen? To see whether he would react in strong identification with Cullen?

Or—disturbing thought that settled like lead in his stomach—was it just to see if he could get military intelligence out of Cullen, which added up to killing more people.

“How long have you been with the kyo?” he asked Cullen. “Do you have any sense how long you’ve been here?”

“Don’t know. I used to judge time. I lost all track. Ships moved. Sometimes it was better. Sometimes it was worse. Years. Years and years.”

Diminishing the value of any military information. The hair, the general condition, said that was likely the case.

Was it possible, just possible, he was a rare survivor? Perhaps the only human prisoner they’d managed to keep alive? Was it possible Prakuyo had brought Cullen here to show him, Bren, to convince him to
represent
the kyo, dealing with humans?

The nightmare outcome, of the ship just leaving dock with him, to go do a job that could take a lifetime, resurrected itself with a vengeance.

People were dying out there . . . wherever
there
was. Humans and probably kyo.

But
he
wasn’t Cullen’s sort of human. He was from a little island whose whole history had become part and parcel with atevi, in a way that worked—in a way that
he
made work, in this generation. He had a job here. Obligations. Without him—things here could still go so very wrong, for people he owed, deeply.

He
wasn’t
Cullen’s sort of human.

But Cullen was
.

Cullen
was.

Possibilities existed. But back off, he told himself. Get an emotional distance. Lay the groundwork, discover the man . . . then decide.

“Let me see what I can do to help your situation,” he said. “First things first. Would you like a shave and a haircut? I very much doubt the kyo have a razor, but I packed for overnight.”

“You said first things. What’s second?”

“Communication. Communication between you and the kyo.”

Wary look. A little drawing back. “I don’t know anything. Not a damned thing.”

“I sincerely believe that’s not why they’ve held on to you, Mr. Cullen. I doubt after the passage of years that you know anything they’d be interested in, that optics couldn’t figure out. I do think you’ve been a puzzle to them. And that’s a bit of a wedge, Mr. Cullen. Maybe you can do more than survive. Maybe you can do some good for the wider situation.”

“I don’t know anything about
any
situation. I just want out of here. I’m nobody, do you understand? I’ve got nothing for them.”

“I don’t know what you’re capable of—yet—but I think a
man who’s held up through what you’ve been through is something more than nobody. I can’t change everything. I can’t undo what’s happened. But I can give you a way forward from here.”

Cullen stood, silent, at about arm’s length.

“Well, Mr. Cullen? Will you listen to me?”

A shaggy-headed nod. Arms folded, as if the overheated air had an edge of chill.

“That’s good, Mr. Cullen. Very good. I’m going to leave now. I’m going to see about that razor.” Prakuyo sat in a very dim room some distance up the hall, in a bowl-chair among other chairs, with an extendable platform at his elbow. There was a lighted screen on that platform, of a sort not unlike their tablets. There were a number of chairs, and a low table. Several objects sat on that table. One was an incense burner, the representation of a kyo sort of mythic being, vented, here and there. Another was a wand of unknown use. And a small closed pot. The incense burner was not lit, but it exuded a smell that hovered not unpleasantly between spice and burning wood.

“Want talk,” Bren said, standing in that small room, with Prakuyo alone, seated, and Banichi and Jago behind him. Tano and Algini remained outside, watching the hall. “This man . . . is the war. This is the kyo’s enemy. Yes?”

Soft boom, loud enough, given the enclosed space. In the dim light, with the light coming up from the little screen, the details of Prakuyo’s face became different, severe, like a model of a kyo by lamplight. “Enemy. Yes.”

God. Where did he go from here? Where did he start?

“Prakuyo hear talk?”

“Yes,” Prakuyo said. “Want know.”

“The man’s name is Cullen.”

“Cullen.” It came out
kh’-yen.

“Bren ask Cullen where Cullen ship is. Cullen says kyo fight Cullen’s ship.”

“Yes.”

“One human? Not more?”

“One,” Prakuyo said. Prakuyo shifted in his chair, and leaned back, expectant of information.

“Want open Cullen’s door. Talk to Cullen. Fix Cullen’s—face.” He made a gesture to his own clean-shaven face. His hair. “Cullen says yes.”

“Tea,” Prakuyo said. “Bren, aishid tea. Prakuyo go up, talk to associates. Tea. Here.”

Prakuyo was going up to talk to his associates and he, and his aishid, were graciously offered tea, and a chance to reflect. Atevi custom, excepting their host leaving. Time to reflect, time to talk together, all built into the gesture. Think about it. Talk about it. Discuss the situation.

And it would be no more private than any kyo conversation had been in the hospitality they had offered Prakuyo.

One was absolutely sure of that.

• • •

Cajeiri touched the mark on the screen that triggered a random image of some already established word. Flowers appeared. Trees. A garden.

“Kaksu,” he said, maintaining the appearance of study, even as he strove to hear Cenedi’s latest report to mani.

The garden image flashed red along the border. He tried again.

“Kak aksu.”

The light went green.

“Garden,” Hakuut said, though it sounded more like Kargen. But the clever device had learned Hakuut’s mouth’s limitations, as it had learned the limitations of his, and flashed green.

The place seemed scarily quiet. Matuanu sat, just sat, doing nothing, watching everything. Nand’ Bren’s door was shut. Jase was somewhere Cajeiri had no idea. Mani’s door was shut. Cenedi and mani had been talking.

Hakuut was willing to sit down and talk—to keep busy. But Hakuut was listening to things that went on, trying to find out things. So was Matuanu, Cajeiri was sure.

But nobody’s hearing could reach to the ship out there. Everybody was waiting for somebody to call. That was all.

And nobody was going to be happy until somebody did.

• • •

Personnel appeared, bringing a pot of something like tea, and cups, and set it on the table, then departed, with bobs and bows. The light stayed dim. The incense smell obscured the scent of the tea. The chairs were deep for atevi frames, entirely uncomfortable for a human. He had met kyo-designed chairs before, and found a way to sit on the padded rim, feet on the floor.

Tano had come in. Algini had come. They all sat, in chairs about the small table.

Jago quirked a brow, with a shift of the eyes toward the tea service.

Shall we trust it? was the obvious question. “We may serve it ourselves,” Bren said, and added pointedly, “One wonders how the aiji-dowager and the young gentleman are faring at the moment. One hopes Prakuyo will be in contact with his own associates to reassure himself. One trusts he knows he can do that.”

Tano moved to the pot, poured five cups, and served them.

Bren took a cup of tea, which smelled vaguely like fruit. There was absolutely no percentage in the kyo poisoning them—at least for atevi or human logic there was no percentage. As for accidental poisoning, he was relatively sure they had sampled this tea once and twice, on the kyo ship two years ago, without adverse reaction. He tasted it, waited a minute to see whether there was any slight tingle, a burning, or a sweetness that exceeded a fruitlike flavor, before he ventured a sip.

His aishid observed similar caution, except Algini, who merely made a ritual pretense of drinking. That was the rule. There was never a time, under a foreign roof, that all of them made the same commitment.

Bren set his cup down. The others did.

“His name is Cullen,” he said in Ragi, and gave a little
upward shift of the eyes, as good as saying—they’re listening. But of course they were. He felt the tension in his bodyguard, unabated in the whole venture—not extreme, but wary of every sound, wary of presence, wary of the lack of it.

And he chose his words, even in Ragi, to avoid ambiguity that might cause mistranslation to those listeners . . . and to plead their own case to an upstairs audience.

“This man is not from Reunion, not from
Phoenix,
not from Mospheira. He speaks a language I can understand, though time and separation changes a language, and I estimate from these changes that several hundred years lie between his language and ours. One suspects, to one’s great distress, nadiin-ji, that Cullen comes from a human world somewhere beyond the territory kyo claim. One further suspects that the ancestors of the humans in that far region are the humans who built
Phoenix
and sent it out hundreds of years ago. These Cullen-humans’ ships, their stations, likely come of a similar tradition of architecture with
Phoenix
and Reunion. They may strongly resemble each other, to kyo observation, even after all these centuries.”

“Hence the attack on Reunion,” Banichi said.

“Indeed. Hence
everything,
nadiin-ji. As the
Phoenix
records have it,
Phoenix
, being lost and off course, traveled to the Earth of the atevi, searching for a green world, food, and fuel. But a world with inhabitants was not a world they could claim. Hence
Phoenix
left the Earth of the atevi—preserving Alpha Station as a base. They kept going, looking for the home they had lost, looking for those other humans, to restore contact—trade, association—with those who had sent them out in the first place. One suspects, given Cullen’s presence, that some key records were
not
destroyed, that someone within
Phoenix
, likely senior ship-aijiin, knew at least in which direction human home space lay. They looked in that direction and saw at great distance a star and a world that might serve for their colony, perhaps more than one such star and more than one such world.
They built Reunion as a point halfway between Alpha and another destination, a station with no green world to tempt its people to settle. It was only to provide fuel and services for the ship, perhaps to provide people, over time. All this is what I guess. What I know is only that Reunion was built in the direction of human space and that between Reunion and human space is kyo territory.”