Precursor (7 page)

“Marvelous, marvelous thing,” Kate managed to say, and the group stayed and stared.

Jason had a sense of the dramatic, and of diversion. Bren caught Jason’s eye once for all as the group, Kate last, with a lingering glance at the shuttle, began to disperse, subdued, to make their choice of accommodations.

For a moment Jase gazed back at it, too, then looked at him with a subtle shift of the eyes that indicated the dining recess.

He went, Jason went. Banichi and Jago walked as far as the arch and stopped.

There would not be intrusion.

“So they want you up there,” was Bren’s opener.

“The aiji’s order,” Jason said with a brittle edge. “Packed in an hour. Hurry and wait.”

“I’m sure I’ll learn why” Bren said faintly.

“I’m sure
I
will,” Jase said.

“Damn it.”

“Damn it,” Jase said. That much was Mosphei’, and then, in Ragi: “Sit a moment. The tea’s not bad.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Bren said. “We ordered it.”

So the parting they’d both dreaded came down to a cup of tea from a dispenser, and all Bren could hope for was a quiet, guarded conversation in the dining section. The Mospheirans wandered about. Banichi and Jago were forbidding gatekeepers, not moving a muscle.

“Wish I had answers for you,” Bren said. “I wish I had
any
answers. You don’t know?”

“Just… word came: get up there; and word came from the aiji. Go. Not a choice in the world. I suppose the aiji wanted me here to look over our guests, make sure they didn’t steal the silverware.”

Atevi joke.

“I don’t know,” Bren said. “I swear I don’t know. Didn’t know. Didn’t have any more warning than you did.”

“I believe you.”

There were signs they used for truth,
I swear
was one of them. They never lied when they said that to each other, though lying was part of their separate jobs… or had been, and might be again.

“Might still be a weather delay,” Bren said.

“What about the Mospheirans? Did the Guild want them, too?”

“Hell if I know,” Bren said. “Not a clue. They asked to go. Tabini said go now.”

They looked at one another. No sum of the parts made total sense.

“I’ve still not a clue,” Jason said.

“Unless they’re going to spite the Guild,” Bren said, and warmed chilled fingers around a plastic cup. “Tabini might do that.”

“Going to miss you.”

“Get back down here if you can.”

“I’ll try,” Jase said. “Get up there, if you can.”

“I’ll try that, too” Bren said. “If I can find out anything and get a message back to you, when I get to the Bu-javid, I will.”

“Do we
ever
get word?” Jason asked, rhetorical question. He looked badly used, with the uneven haircut, wisps sticking out at angles. God knew what reason… maybe just a fit of anger at an unreasonable order. Jason wasn’t immune to fits of temper.

Neither of them were that.

“Look, tell them that second shuttle won’t make schedule if you’re not down here,” Bren said. “It’s not entirely a lie.”

“I know,” Jason said. “Damn all
I
can do. Maybe…
maybe
there’s a way back. I can’t guarantee it.”

“Ramirez?”

That was the senior captain in the Guild, Jase’s sometime guardian, sometime chief grievance. Ramirez had his good moments and his bad ones.

“I imagine it is. Him, I can talk to.”

“Talk and get back here.”

“I want to.”

“You’re going to have to grow that damn braid again.”

Jase gave a rueful laugh, shook his head, and for the better part of an hour they drank tea and reminisced, mostly about Toby and his boat… nothing about Barb, not a word about Barb, just… “How’s your mother? How’s Toby and all?”

“Oh, fine,”he said.

Remarkable how little now they found to say to each other, when before this they’d had all the time and talked and talked about details, plans, intentions—time shortened on them, three years to recall, no time ahead of them, just a little rehearsing of the schedule for the two shuttles under construction.

“I’ll write tonight,” Bren said, damned well knowing the barriers of administrations, governments, and just plain available space in the message flow up from the big dish that was most of their communications.

Jason was quiet then, subdued, next to distraught. “Tell Tano and Algini I’ll miss them,” the word was. “Tell the secretaries, all the staff.” It achieved a sense of utter desperation. “Banichi. Jago.” He cast a look at them.

“Nadi-ji,” Banichi said.

“I’ll miss you.”

“We also regret this,” Banichi said.

A silence fell. And grew deeper and more desperate.

“I’ve got to get back” Bren said. ”I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’ll come late tonight, if I can. Maybe spend a little more time.“ The launch was in the early hours. “As much as I can.”

“I’d be glad if you could.”

So there was nothing to do but finish the tea, get up from the chairs, and face one another. Bren offered an embrace. It was the Mospheiran thing to do. Jason met it awkwardly, hugged him fiercely; ship-folk were isolate, not prone to touch one another. Bren gathered a grip on the worn jacket and clapped Jase on the shoulder, feeling a burning tightness in his throat.

“Take care,” Jason said. “Take care, Bren.”

“I’ll do my best.” Bren let him go, turned in the futile attempt to find something to do with his hands, and walked away.

Banichi and Jago went with him, saying not a word as they followed him out of the residency and down the outside, gray hall.

He’d known for three years that, once the shuttle truly flew, he’d be alone again. He’d planned to be alone in his life.

And what was this…
alone?
He had Banichi and Jago, whom he loved… a human could say
love
, and they could be devoted in atevi fashion.

He had Tabini-arji’s high regard, he lived in splendid quarters, held an extravagant seaside estate where his mother and his brother and his brother’s family arrived for family visits… visits no other paidhi had ever been granted—

Not to mention the hundreds of staff and servants and acquaintances… and the relationship, of sorts, he had with Jago, for good or for ill. He was not, whatever else,
alone
.

Yet losing Jason left him feeling used up, bruised to the soul.

In that light he knew he ought to open his mouth and talk, talk about something, anything, in the absence of a word from his companions. It wasn’t their job to guess that the human in their midst wanted—
needed
—to be talked to. He was the translator, the cultural interpreter. He should initiate a word, something to give them a cue how to deal with him in this situation they’d never met.

But he didn’t find one.

They escorted him in silence down to the security zone, into that area of grim gray concrete where the van had let them out. The next link would not be by van, but by rail, up to the Bu-javid, the palace on the hill, the center of Shejidan. He walked with them past the spot where the van no longer stood, in the echoing hollow of the place. They entered through a black security door, and saw, not unexpectedly, their associates Algini and Tano, holding place near the rail-access to this closely guarded facility.

“Paidhi-ji,” Algini said, seeing him, and that was the first word he’d heard since he’d left Jason above.

“A good trip?” Tano asked him, as if that should be some consolation for what he was sure Tano knew.

“Very fine,” he said politely. Tano was a good man, a very good man. In the paraphrase of Lund’s question, Tano cared.

But this wasn’t fine, his trip hadn’t been fine, Jase wasn’t fine… and on the island his family wasn’t fine. He hadn’t thought that, in this suddenly harried trip, but it hadn’t been fine at all. His mother had wanted him to stay. Toby’s youngsters were going through growing pains and grandmotherly spoiling, and were wretched company, grating on his nerves for the single day he’d been with them… he wasn’t used to human children.

Where had he lost that sense of connection?

And what had he traded it for?

What was he losing, back there with Jase? The one human being on whom he’d focused all his remnant of humanity, in a desperate attempt to put together official policy for the aiji, trying to understand the ship-humans’ mind-set?

He boarded the train, rode in absentminded silence, recalling a dozen and one trips over the years, the first launch… spiraling back in time, the first trip to Malguri, the return… going out to Taiben, once and twice, all jumbled together, Jase and before-Jase. Down to Geigi’s estate, for one reason and another… those were the good times. Fishing.

What in
hell
was Tabini thinking?

“Do you know anything about this?” he asked his bodyguard, when they were alone, rocking along the rails.

Tabini’s rail car—he’d used it more often than Tabini had, this specially secured compartment, armored against all eventualities.

“No, nadi-ji,” Banichi said. “We, like you, wonder.”

He leaned back on the comfortable velvet bench seat, red velvet, red carpet, a fresh bouquet in the vase on the counter, blooms of the season, the first in the lowlands. They shed a thick, sweet perfume.

A wake might have been more cheerful.

“I need to meet with the aiji,” Bren said quietly.

“One will forward that request,” Jago said.

“The dowager is in residence,” Banichi added.

A new alarm began to go off, deep in his gut.

“Did she come to see Jason?” Bren asked. “What in hell’s going on?”

“She invited him to tea” Jago said, “and they discussed the weather.”

Well, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable; she did come to Shejidan for visits. It was probably coincidence; she’d arrived, and heard he was leaving.

“He’ll have no weather where he’s going,” Bren said, trying to settle himself to the possibility. “He’ll have to get as used to being without it as he did being with it.”

“He will,” Jago agreed.

“So it was one of those conversations?” The aiji-dowager, whom he’d thought safely and remotely at Malguri, was staunchly, provocatively conservative, a promoter of causes, a keen wit.

A good heart.

And a talk on the weather with Ilisidi, Tabini’s grandmother. Lords of the Western Association would give a great deal for a social conversation with her.

But did she do anything…
anything
… by chance?

“Did she know he was leaving?” he asked his security. It was a three-hour flight from Malguri, for an arthritic woman who didn’t like long sitting. He was prepared to be touched by that effort, if she’d heard and made the trip only for Jason.

“One has no idea,” Jago said, “nandi.”

My lord?
Nandi? So formal? What signal was
that?

Jason had said not a word about his visit with the dowager. But she was, though silently, a head of a potentially restive association, within the information flow. Tabini would have sent the dowager word of a favored associate’s departure… or else. If
Ilisidi
couldn’t press Tabini to resist this sudden request from the station, his own chances dimmed.

Jase hadn’t mentioned the meeting… but what could he say? He and Jason hadn’t talked much about the court, had talked instead about the first things they’d done, the things out in the countryside, then sounding each other out a last time, getting their positions on issues fine-tuned, for those who might ask.

It was their job to do that.

But that Ilisidi came to bid Jason farewell meant far, far more than a social discussion… nothing Ilisidi did could go without notice. By meeting with Jason alone, she had declared not only her past association with Jason-paidhi, but a current, live, and potent one.

She had just announced that, in a meeting sure to make the news.

She’d just announced it to her grandson, the aiji. She had an interest in Jason, in his people, in the space program and in the business the ship-humans had with atevi… she, the ecological conservative, the arbiter of taste and society.

He’d been walking about stunned since he’d gotten the news; now he began to wake up.

Much as he relied on the dowager’s goodwill, it was never, ever to be taken for granted. If one lived among atevi, one asked oneself questions, like: was there any enemy or associate Ilisidi wished to slap in the face by making such a trip? He could think of several enemies.

He could even think of the dowager’s grandson, Tabini-aiji, who had advanced Jason’s trip to the space center by a full day, damned well knowing he was coming back with the expectation of a decent farewell… and why had Tabini sent him out there as he had?

Protective of Jason?

A reproof of the dowager for that invitation… disquiet, apprehension of what the dowager might have said or asked?

Why had the Mospheirans gotten their request faster than they’d wanted or expected?