Precursor (44 page)

“Nand’ paidhi,” the man said with a second bow. “Your pardon. Nojana, of the aiji’s crew of
Shai-shan
.”

“Of course you are,” Bren exclaimed, taking a hasty breath. “How did you get here?”

He was no longer alone in the hallway. Almost as quickly as he had backed up, the noise of his move had attracted Tano and Algini and Jago out of the security station, and Bindanda from the dining room… which might say something about Bindanda’s Guild associations: Bren noted
that
in the aftermath of adrenaline.

“Banichi sent me, nand’ paidhi,” Nojana said. “He wished to confer with the captain.”

“Parijo. The shuttle captain.” There were entirely too many captains in the broth.

“Even so, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana, in fact, was not wearing a steward’s uniform, but the black of the Assassins’ Guild…
security’s
Guild, and by the height and breadth of the steward, it was Banichi’s body type, Banichi’s muscled arms and shoulders. This was not a man accustomed to passing out drinks and motion sickness pills, but it had not been so evident in his previous uniform.

“And is this
your
uniform, nadi?”

“No, nand’ paidhi, it is not.”

“And how long have you been here?”

“Since midnight, nandi.”

Bren cast a look at his own security, and, with a feeling of mild indignation, directly at Jago, whose arrival in his quarters, whose determined distraction had left not a shred of attention to the fact the seal-door had opened and closed last night.

Jago, to her credit, met his gaze with a satisfied lift of her chin and the ghost of a smile.

It did beat drugging his drink, he said to himself, and he had no suspicion whatever that Jago had been dishonest in love-making, only that she’d had a considerable ulterior motive.

And he would not call down his senior staff in front of a stranger, or in front of the servants. He simply composed himself, smiled, nodded acknowledgment of a successful operation, namely deceiving the paidhi, and getting Banichi outside without consulting him—and directed his inquiry to Nojana.

“And have you had breakfast, nadi, and will you join us?”

“I had tea at my arrival, nandi, and I thank the paidhi for the kindness of his offer, nothing since. I would be very honored.”

“Do join us, then,” he said, and surrendered Nojana to the guidance of Tano and Algini, with a single glance.

Jago he stayed with a lowering of his brows.

“How in hell?” he said in a half-whisper. “How did he
get
there? Did they come after him…” He could envision that the shuttle crew might have some sense of the station: this was not their first trip. “… or did he use the map?” Even with that, it was a risk, not least of running afoul of the ship-captains and the likes of Kaplan. He was thoroughly appalled. Chilled by the very thought… and yet if Banichi had done anything of the sort, he trusted it was well-thought. “Jago, I know what you did. I’m not angry. But
what is he doing?
”

“He wishes to be sure the shuttle is on schedule.”

“Have we established that?”

“Nojana says yes. There’s been no difficulty at all. Nominal in all respects. It might leave early, except for small details.”

“I’ve no need to have it leave early, or is there something going on I don’t know?”

“One wishes to be certain. Banichi has been concerned about the behavior of the captains.”

He
was concerned, in that regard. But to go off across a trackless maze of corridors…

“What if he’d been stopped?”

“He would have been surveying for the station repairs, on his own initiative.”

As a lie it was a decent one. “And what if he’d just gotten
lost?
They’ve done alterations since the charts we have, Jago-ji! How did
Nojana
get here? You surely didn’t ask Kaplan.”

“No,” Jago said pleasantly, with a little shrug. “By no means Kaplan. They’ve not made signs, you think, so that the Mospheirans might lose their way.”

“So that we would lose our way. You’re saying you don’t.”

A second small shrug. “We
walked
from that area, Bren-ji.”

It was rare these days that an atevi-human difference utterly took him blindside. He drew in a breath, replayed that statement, and it came up meaning what he thought. “You mean you don’t lose count of the doorways.”

“Yes,” Jago said cheerfully, that disconcerting Ragi habit of agreeing with a negative. “Do you?”

When he thought about it, he thought he might have a fair notion how to reach Kroger’s section: he
counted
things he saw; he’d trained for years to do that, from flash-screens at University to desperate sessions in real negotiations, real confrontations. He’d learned to have that perception, and yes, he saw how a mind that just natively saw in that way might have a better record than he did. The captains’ precautions against invasion were simply useless against atevi memories for sets and structure. It was the same way atevi had taken one look at computer designs that had served humankind for centuries and critiqued their basic concept in terms of a wholly different way of looking at the universe.

“Amazing,” was all he could say. “Really amazing. He shouldn’t get himself in trouble, Jago-ji.”

He didn’t say a word about the diversion last night. He couldn’t say whether if Banichi had come proposing an excursion to see whether the shuttle was safe, he might not have said no. He was very careful with Banichi and Jago in particular… as he supposed they were with him, and he couldn’t deny that they had their reason, that he was a damned valuable commodity to have up here, and that in a certain sense it was folly to have him here.

But he couldn’t become paralyzed by the notion of his own worth, either; he had to
do
his job to
be
valuable, and that was the bottom line.

Banichi sent him Nojana, and he meant to get the most out of the transaction.

“This is worth the walk, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana enjoyed the food: one could hardly blame him. “Very much worth it, and I am honored.”

It wasn’t quite proper to ask an ateva his Guild if it wasn’t apparent or if the information weren’t offered, but Bren had his notions, looking at Nojana’s athletic build. Arms completely filled out the borrowed uniform. There was a little slack across the chest, but hardly so. The height might be a little more: the sleeves were not quite adequate.

And Nojana was a member of the Assassins’ Guild, members of his staff knew Nojana very well from before this: it was a small and very well-placed Guild, and generally supportive of the aiji, with rare and balanced exceptions. Into Guild politics the paidhi had no entry, and he thought it wise to seek none, as the aiji himself sought none.

He certainly had a healthy appetite.

“How long will you stay?” Bren asked, and reserved
What in hell is Banichi up to?
for a moment with his own staff.

“One isn’t sure, nand’ paidhi.”

That was a fairly broad answer, warning the habituated that the ateva in question was hedging, and if pressed, would hedge more creatively… being too polite to lie unless cornered.

One took the answer and shut up, and asked Jago later, pulling her within his room.

“I don’t know,” was Jago’s response.

“All right,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’m going down with the next flight. That’s within my judgment.”

“One worries,” Jago said. “Staff can manage this. Someone less valuable can manage this.”

“Less valuable to the aiji because such a person might do less. If I can secure a meeting with the captains, I
should
secure it. If I can hold Ramirez to agreements personally, even if there’s dissent, I should do it. If I can free Jase, I should free him.
In the meantime
, Jago-ji, I will prepare dispatches, if I have more than a few hours.”

“One has more than a few hours. I should say quite a few hours, nadi.”

“What is he doing?”

“One can’t say.”

“Well,” he said distressedly, “well, show Nojana what he has to know and I’ll prepare the dispatches. Give me at least an hour’s warning when he leaves.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Jago protested.

“I know you can work wonders,” he said. “I believe that you will. —And you’re not to risk yourself, Jago-ji! You’re not to leave this place unless I say so.”

“I can’t take such orders,” Jago said, but added quickly, “but I see no reason to go at the moment.”

“An hour’s warning,” he insisted, and went off, precaution against surprises, to give the same instruction to Nojana, that he had dispatches that had to go to Tabini, and that Nojana should carry them.

That meant putting his notes in order and some sort of coherency, and more, committing them to an ephemeral card, which he habitually carried since the bad old days of Jase’s descent and Deana Hanks’ attempt to land on the mainland. It had a button that simply, physically, with a caustic element, destroyed the media beyond reading, not something he liked using—he had a dire image of the thing going off while he was producing it; and his scenario for needing it involved a situation in which he might want to destroy his whole computer storage, but this was a good deal less dire, simply to hand Nojana the record and to instruct him to give it personally to the head of the aiji’s security.

“Only to him,” Bren said emphatically. “This tab, do you see, must remain intact
unless
you think there’s a danger of it falling into other hands. Once you tear it off, this record will be destroyed. If an unauthorized machine attempts to read it, the result will be bad for both.”

“One understands,” Nojana said fervently. “The record will reach the aiji’s guard.”

“Very good” Bren said. “There’ll be another if we have time. These are the essentials.”

“Does the paidhi have concerns for security here, or on the ground?” Nojana dared ask.

“Here, primarily. But take care, and ask for immediate escort once you land; I don’t fancy you’ll have to ask twice.” He said that and asked, sensing a man who might have secrets, “Do
you
have concerns about which my security should know?”

“I have informed them of essentials, nadi.”

“Inform us all,” he said. “I want to hear it directly, and ask questions.”

“Yes, nandi,” Nojana said, and over at least three cups of tea which Algini made himself, not asking the servant staff, and within the security post, Nojana informed them of what he knew.

“Certain of the crew have become familiar with us,” Nojana said, “and we do speak outside the bounds of our duty. We share food with them, some small extra sweets which they greatly favor, and we gain their goodwill. They mention their recreation and their associations, which we know, and which I can tell you.”

“Do so,” Jago said, and Narana did, mapping out all those individuals whose names or work they knew, and every name associated with them, and where they had complained or praised someone: Narana had a very good memory of such things, second nature to atevi… significant among humans, but not by patterns Narana might suspect.

“Very, very good,” Bren said, having a clear picture from that and from Jase, a tendency to form families of sorts, even lineages and households, all with the tradition of marriage, but without its frequent practice. “You know Jasi-ji. You met him.”

“Yes, nadi, I had that honor.”

“His mother is resident here, perhaps other associates. We’ve been unable to contact him: the captains have given orders to the contrary. If I send word, might you use one of your more innocent contacts to slip a message to her to contact us? I think it might come much more easily from the other direction. They’re routing all our communications through a single channel; we don’t seem to have general access to communications as I suspect others might.” An idea came to him, and he asked the question. “How do you reach the authorities?”

“Cl for communications and Ql for dock communications; but we know a few more numbers.”

“You’ve had no difficulty reaching them.”

“None that I know. I speak enough Mosphei’, nandi, that if a worker needs to reach us, I often receive the call, and if one might be late he calls, and on occasion we provide them small excuse, as if they were at work, but not so.”

“You mean they ask you to conceal their tardiness and absences.”

“They make up deficits quite willingly. We’ve never found it a detriment, nandi. Are we wrong?”

“Not at all,” Bren said. “By no means.” That the crew found occasion to play off on duty was within human pattern; that they made up the work was the pattern of a crew that understood the schedule and would meet it, all of which the atevi working with them had learned. And it might be unwise to use that route to reach Jase’s mother… yet. It might trigger suspicion of malevolent intent, the contact might be rejected at the other end, and there was not quite the urgent need to do it. “But which human would you ask to contact someone outside your area if you had to do it?”

“Kelly. A young woman.” Nojana had no hesitation. “She has a lover. She meets him at times. She knows Jase very well.”

“Has the subject arisen? We’ve been unable to establish contact with Jase; I’m somewhat worried, nadi. Has she expressed concern?”