Precursor (13 page)

It
said it desperately needed those supplies, and thus far urged the world into a breakneck development of technology and materials.

The Guild also couldn’t take over the shuttle… couldn’t fly a complex surface-to-orbit craft themselves.

Let the Guild look across their steel battlements and figure all that out.

He drew a quieter breath, gazed at his two companions, at Tano and Algini, too, standing their somewhat more distant station at the end of the rail car, and he thought all these thoughts in a tumbling race while the wheels clicked over the joints of steel rails.

When he’d first arrived in his job as a very young paidhi replacing an old and retiring one, the paidhi’s office had still been trying to convince atevi that an air traffic control system over large communities was a good idea.

Atevi had leaped centuries in a decade, unanimity of effort that was
only
possible because of the Western Association and the power Tabini-aiji could fling into action on a wave of his hand. Mospheira called it autocracy, and that was true on the surface, but only true if one backed far, far away from the workings of the government and the legislature and took a human-tinted view. Atevi had committees.

God, atevi had committees. Lord Brominandi could put a tree to sleep.

But the committees didn’t debate what the aiji paid for out of his own pocket… and every subassociation on the continent had wanted a slice of the budget and a connection to the new materials and industries. The download of designs from the ship archive had become a feeding-frenzy of industrial sponsorship, because there was no question that the world was going to change.

Tabini had fought the requisite small skirmishes in the process, several of them, right to the brink of war, but never over it.

Take the kitchen? Damned right they would. Take his bodyguard, his servants, his staff—they didn’t go with him to Mospheira, by virtue of the treaty that kept humans and atevi on this world separate and sane. But the station was going to be atevi territory.

The interface was a lot safer than it had been historically;atevi were a damned sight more sophisticated than they had been. Mospheirans likewise.

It was a question of what the Pilots’ Guild had become.

But Tabini hadn’t backed down yet: blood and conniving bone, yes, the atevi lord of lords, the one other atevi regarded as dangerous, simply waited for the moment the Pilots’ Guild blinked.

Conversation stopped, in the group of Mospheirans gathered in chairs about the low table in the lounge. Bren walked the rest of the way in, scanned the room for Jase first of all, and didn’t find him, not there with the Mospheirans, not in the dining nook.

Ginny Kroger got to her feet first, and asked the logical question: “Mr. Cameron. Is there a problem?”

“No, not as such. What I didn’t know this morning was that the aiji’s just formed a mission of his own. Atevi are going. I’ll accompany you up on this flight.”

The body language said they’d been struck, one and all, a second blow to their certainties when they’d been rushed into this mission not on their own schedule; and now they’d been finagled. Conned.

Lund got to his feet, and Feldman and Shugart, less certainly.

“Quite honestly,” Bren said, “this came as a surprise to me. I suppose it shouldn’t have, but here I am. I’ll be lodging next door, this evening, in the atevi facilities, but I did come by to advise you. To advise Jase Graham, who doesn’t know anything about this, either.”

“You’re welcome here,” Lund said, as cheerfully as he might invite a known thief into their midst. But it was graciously done, all the same.

“That’s very kind of you,” Bren said. And at that, Jase did come out of his room, not hopefully. Jase hadn’t seemed to have overheard the details, only the voice, and didn’t look as if he expected miracles, or a reprieve.

“Bren?”

“He’s sent me, too.” He was very conscious of the witnesses. “
I’m
going.”

“
Are
you?” Jase asked. It was the question of a man who’d known he was in a rapid river, and now heard the cataract. “The aiji’s orders, is it? His idea?”

“Very much so,” Bren said.
Jase
could speak of the aiji in the third person remote. Jase had a welcome in the aiji’s apartment, had the familiarity to speak of him, if Lund didn’t. “I think he figures things are moving, since the Guild asked for you. “Go up and deal with them” he said. So—here I am. Me. Banichi and Jago… four of the staff. With the galley.” When he said that, Jase would know everything: it was the full mission, as they’d planned it. “I hadn’t any notion until he called me in this evening, and then it was turn around, get on the train, go.”

Lund had the look of a canny businessman. The junior translators were simply dumbfounded; Kroger, from Science, looked as if she had swallowed something unpleasant.“So what does this mean?” Kroger asked. “Are you cooperating with
us
, or what?”

“The aiji has his requests to make of the Guild… one of the foremost to be sure there
are
adequate quarters for us. We will cooperate, if there’s any difficulty in that regard. The other matters…” He let the statement fall, not willing to lie to them. “Our missions are separate. I don’t know how long it will take. I hope for the same turnaround. If not… we’ll hope they find somewhere for all of us. I do regret the surprise.”

“Well,” Lund said. “Well. It is a surprise.”

They had to realize now that their job had just become far more complex, that they weren’t going to get unfettered access to the Guild up there, if they had ever laid elaborate plans in that regard. They couldn’t be pleased with that. Managing their own reencounter with the Pilots’ Guild, when the Pilots’ Guild was simultaneously face to face with atevi for the first time in all history… they’d been sandbagged, in short. As he’d been, as Jase had been… as the Pilots’ Guild was about to be. It was a three-way maneuver, and Tabini had assigned him, flatly, to get ahead of the Mospheirans.

“Well,” Jason said faintly, “good. I’m glad of the company. —Want to sit down? Fruit juice?”

“Madi,” Bren said, deciding to force his way into the company from which Jase had kept himself isolated, in his room. It was an early fruit, green, biting and sour.

Jase went into the dining nook, bent down to take it from the refrigerator… took down a glass.

Bottled juice, poured into a glass: Jase had scandalized the staff, early on in the bottled juice experiment, drinking from a bottle; and not since.

“Glass,” Jase said.

“Glass.” Bren took his drink, settled… trusted Banichi, Jago, and the rest attended the questions of cargo and baggage. And weaponry. God knew what was going into cargo.

God knew what the station would say.

“So,” Tom asked, “what are you going to ask them?”

“A working agreement. A means that doesn’t get Mospheirans
or
atevi dying in the labor force. The aiji specifically honored his agreement with you in his plans. In his terms, that’s adherence to the agreements. Work with me. I’ll work with you. Fact-finding, I’m very much in favor of.”

“The facts,” Jase said in a faint but carrying voice, “the facts are, there’s a threat out there that may come here.”

“Fact-finding,” Kroger said, annoyed. “We’re not prepared to make agreements.”

“I am,” Bren said.

“Mr. Cameron, this puts us in a difficult position. We need to contact our offices. Tonight.”

“I intend to cooperate fully with your mission,” Bren said, “and hope for the same courtesy. Contact your offices as you like. The phone will go through, I’m sure.”

Lund said, “We’ve left scheduling to the atevi government. Does the ship even know we’re coming?”

“Probably not,” Bren said. “They will.”

“Good God.”

“It’s not the aiji’s style to make it possible for the other side to argue,” Bren said. “We
have
an agreement amongst ourselves. You don’t want to contract for labor in bad conditions; we don’t; they need us badly. That adds very simply. If we on the world present a reasonable case that gets them what they want in a timely fashion, we get economic benefits and we all get some sort of preparation against whatever threat comes over the cosmic horizon.”

“Until what?” Kroger asked. “Until the aiji decides to surprise
us
with another maneuver we aren’t told about?”

“He will do that,” Bren said. “It’s my job to make sure it’s as fair as possible.”

“Mr. Cameron, you’re
their
representative.”

If he weren’t Mospheiran he wouldn’t have understood that statement. Jase probably didn’t. And the species-based blindness that produced so obvious an observation ran cold fingers down his back.

“Yes,” he said, “as I’ve made as clear as possible. I hold a rank
within
Tabini-aiji’s court, I hold my Mospheiran office only because no other paidhi can get a visa, and over that I have no control. Your interpreters can tell you I don’t control the issuance of visas in the aiji’s government. I will negotiate on the aiji’s behalf. I will speak on the aiji’s behalf to Mr. Graham, here, who you might remember speaks for the Guild. That is his function. So we shouldn’t burden him with witnessing too much. On my own, I apologize for the shortness of the notice. For the aiji, I don’t apologize, because it’s perfectly reasonable. Explaining that point is my job. You won’t have to explain it to the Pilots’ Guild. I will. If, on the other hand, you want to request a plane to take you home tonight, I can arrange that.”

There was a lengthy, heated silence.

Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, on every front. What new technology would arrive to disrupt the economy? How could manufacturers bet on known factors in the economy when something could fall out of space and throw all calculations awry?

At least within their imaginations, fortunes were at risk; their independence as Mospheirans was at risk.

“Ultimately” he said, ”humans don’t rule this planet, but you don’t want to be ruled by the Guild, either. The aiji fully supports your position.“

“Well, now,” Lund said, clearly the peacemaker, while Kroger scowled, the lines of her face set in what now looked like a habit of fury. “We have political stability to consider; we’re not splintering off into a second colony.”

“That’s always a hazard” Bren agreed. ”The aiji would agree.“

“And I say we aren’t here to negotiate,” Kroger said.

“And I am,” Bren said quietly. “I don’t negotiate for Mospheira. But I think the Guild will rather well expect something to result besides fact-finding. I think we’ll exit with some kind of agreement, because I know the aiji’s prepared to move to the next stage.”

“Then let atevi die working for the Guild,” Kroger said.

“I’m sure he’s not prepared to have that happen,” Bren said, “and I’m sure the Guild’s perfectly happy to have the goods they want without loss of life. On the other hand, there
can
be profit in this for Mospheira, including the fishing industry, food, and electronics… the usual areas of specialty.”

Electronics was lately in danger, but Mospheirans were still convinced of their superiority.

“Finished goods,” Bren said, to Kroger’s scowl. “That’s what Mospheira has tended to do. We have the lift vehicles; you have specialized manufacturing and you process the kind of foods the station needs far more reliably.” No alkaloid poisons, that was to say; humans were naturally very careful of that sort of thing. “You want the status quo. There’s no reason to see that change. Humans who want to go into space, I’m sure will find a place. Humans who don’t will have their way of life undisturbed, and the aiji’s prepared to guarantee that point.”

Kroger’s face relaxed ever so slightly. “We’ll hear your proposal.”

“I’m making it. A guarantee of stability. Freedom to come and go. Protection for Mospheira against any demands or encroachment.”

“You can’t guarantee that.”

“I know the aiji’s position. I’m very confident of it.”

“He can’t withstand the Guild” Kroger said, and cast an uneasy glance in Jason’s direction, as if for a heartbeat she’d forgotten who and what he was. ”He’s not able to withstand them.“

“He can,” Jase said, and drew all attention, but that was all he said.

“He will,” Bren said, and set down the empty glass. “Jase. Mr. Graham. Will you allow me a brief consultation?”

“I will, ”Jase said.

Bren rose, resisted the habit of a slight bow. “Morning comes before dawn,” he said. “Gentlemen. Ladies.”

“Mr. Cameron” Kroger said. ”Don’t take us for agreeing.“

“No,” Bren said. They didn’t have the power, and he was sure they didn’t, but he had the uneasy suspicion he’d heard Kroger’s opinion, the anthropocentric side of Mospheiran politics. If she wasn’t Heritage, she at least cast that shadow across the proceedings, and he wasn’t so sure Lund even realized it, if he had to guess. He’d have taken Lund for the problem, being out of Commerce, but he began to see compromise in the composition of this mission… Lund thinking he was in charge, but Kroger armed with understandings… he very much feared that was the case: understandings that had nothing to do with Mospheira remaining independent, and everything to do with the last regime’s aims at getting into orbit, getting in power, running human society in a way that had nothing to do with the general will of the Mospheirans as they were and everything to do with old, old agreements with the Guild.