Get off the streets, that was. So to speak.
Get off the streets and be polite to the humans until whatever might happen had happened, simplest way to deal with the crisis.
Points to Geigi for simplicity: no explanation, just clear instruction.
Mospheirans, on the other hand, were likely to populate the bars—there were several devoted to Mospheiran taste—and speculate. Depend on it, there’d be a dozen conspiracy theories in the Mospheiran section by the end of shift, and they’d build on each other.
Among the crew… the conspiracy that hadattempted to take control of the ship, however, was old business and quiet. Tamun was dead. Jenrette had his allies under watch… under close arrest, it was likely, by now, without explanation, knowing how thoroughly and quickly crew tended to deal with emergencies. Mospheirans might insist on due process and rights, but as Jase put it, rights don’t mean anything when the ship moves. Meaning that acceleration and emergency overruled everything. And if it wasn’t an operational crisis, it was close to one. Their security would already have a heavy hand on matters, and ship crew would not gather in bars or even talk on the job.
“I have sent to Mogari-nai, nandi,” Tano said, seated nearby. “Fifteen messages are in progress to Mospheira… one other is in progress to Shejidan.”
Therewas the difference between the cultures, in a nutshell.
Among atevi those fifteen calls home might indicate fragmentation. Maogishi. Breakdown of order. Among atevi, that rated attention.
“That’s to be expected,” he said. “Department heads and a couple misusing their business clearances. Likely corporate calls, too. No threat of fragmentation. Just informative calls.”
“The halls remain peaceful,” Algini said.
“Best, all the same, if the human work force stays at work—if nothing else, to be near official channels instead of sources in the bars. I hope Paulson uses good sense.”
“It seems so,” Algini murmured, hardly diverting attention from his console. “There is a request for a communications stand-by. Will the paidhi add an address to lord Geigi’s?”
“I hardly need to,” he said. “Lord Geigi will do best.”
“I have the aiji’s line, nandi,” Tano said. “I have Eidi, at least.”
Tabini’s head of staff. “Pass it to me, Tano.—Eidi-nadi?”
“ Nand’ paidhi?”The voice, the rational, known voice from the planet was very welcome, water in a cosmic desert.
“Eidi-ji. I need to speak to the aiji, utmost emergency.”
“ Nand’ paidhi, I regret— the aiji is unreachable even to the utmost emergencies. I can bring the message myself, under my own office, nandi, as fast as I can run.”
God. Was something wrong down there? Or was it simply Geigi’s call, beating his?
“Eidi-ji, Ramirez-aiji is dead, of natural causes. Ogun is ship-aiji now, Sabin second and Jase Graham third. The station and ship are quiet. The transition is peaceful, policies remain in place, but unofficial calls from the Mospheiran district on the station are already going out to the island.”
To the news services, one might as well say, and from there straight to the rumor mill. Of all times C1 had been the choke-point, inconveniencing the free flow of information, it failed them now.
“ I will bring that message, nandi, as fast as I can, understanding its importance. Please remain available.”
“I shall,” he said. “Thank you, Eidi-ji.”
The contact winked out, but that was all right. The message would go as faithfully and as fast as the man nearest Tabini could bring it to him. Eidi understood the importance. He had no doubt on that score.
And now the adrenaline more or less ebbed out of him in disappointment and frustration, knowing he could not speak to Tabini and could not get an immediate resolution out of the situation. Things weren’t going to be simple, not when the changes were this high up the decision-making apparatus.
A week ago, before Tabini’s phone call, the whole world had been running more than smoothly. Now… with Ramirez dead and Tabini pursuing some arcane piece of internal politics with his predecessor and the legislature that he still didn’t understand—and his own family having waited until precisely this week to have a serious crisis… things had gone straight to hell.
In the small nook of his mind he reserved for private business, he did earnestly wish Toby would answer his messages and take at least one crisis off the docket. He thought perhaps if their mother was in hospital Toby might be there, and not in touch… though Toby was usually better than that, and usually checked periodically through the day, if he’d put a call in…
Well, now things were worse on that front. He couldn’t call Toby now, not in the middle of this goings-on. Every call he made to the island was going to be suspect as political in nature. He couldn’t do anythingquietly any longer.
But Toby must surely realize that the moment the news broke. Toby would learn what was going on and then figure out that it was all on him to make contact—that it had to be.
“Nand’ Gin is calling,” Tano said then, a seat removed from him at the console. “She wishes to speak to you, nandi. Will you?”
Ginny Kroger. The unofficialand far more competent human power on the station. “I’ll take it,” Bren said immediately, and picked up an ear-set. “Gin? This is Bren.”
“ Bren, I’m getting disturbing rumors. Are you hearing any?”
“Ramirez has died. Unfortunately that’s no rumor.”
“ Heard that. But that’s not the rumor I’m talking about.”
Did he ask her to spill it, and risk the security of the communication?
But if it was a rumor, it was evidently loose, and a little late for secrecy.
“Something you can say here, Gin?”
“ Talk in the halls. No secrecy here.” Time for a breath. A big one. “ Talk says the lost station’s not destroyed, Bren. That it’s stillcrewed. That the captains knew it all along.”
That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. His heart stopped a beat.
No.
His deepest instinct said he and Ginny damned sure shouldn’t be discussing this over the intercom, but his conscious brain said that if it was in the halls, it was a little damned late for secrecy and about time someone official spoke to the situation. “First I’ve heard,” he said—understatement. “Gin, at this point that’s just a rumor. Report anything else you hear: talk to Jago, on my staff. She can translate somewhat.” Best if Gin could get to Feldman or Shugart, the official translators, but they were both in Paulson’s office, and probably going berserk at the moment trying to monitor atevi internal communications, granted they weren’t stalled trying to figure the intricacies of Geigi’s message down to Shejidan. “I’ll try to trace the rumor through channels.” He was in the political stream up here. Ginny wasn’t. But Ginny had access to the workers. “You try to trace it through the tunnels.”
“ I will,” Ginny said. “ Keep me informed.”
“Same,” he said to her, and punched out as he swung around in his chair to face an apprehensive staff. “Tano, get Jase on com. Use the beeper.” Jase carried a pocket beeper they had very rarely used… granted Jase had it on him at the moment. If he was in a security lock-down, they might have objected to the atevi beeper. “Send him a code one.”