He looked to the door of the study, and saw a row of solemn dark atevi faces.
“My mother is ill,” he said. “My brother has left his wife to go to her—or his wife has left him.” They knew. Little as they understood human customs from the gut level, they knew this was not the desired situation. “I urged him see to his wife. I have some hope that Barb-nadi will be attending my mother. Tano-ji, will you make calls and attempt to locate Barb? She may be at the hospital in my mother’s neighborhood.”
“Yes,” Tano said.
“I’ll compose a brief letter. Send it when you have her whereabouts.”
“Yes, paidhi-ji.”
Oh, so slightly formal.
Jago had offered to file Intent on Barb. But Barb had her virtues. A devotion to his mother was one. He tried not to figure it out. It led places he didn’t want to imagine.
But the staff left him in peace, having a mission to accomplish.
He composed his letter at the computer, brief as it was:
Barb, I think you surely know Mum’s in hospital. I think you know too that Toby’s been with her but he’s had a crisis. Whatever’s between us, personally, I know you’ve been incredibly good to my mother, and Mum needs someone right now. I’m asking, without strings, on your friendship with her, and thank you for sending word
— Bren
He sent it over to Tano, and tried to remember where he had been in business that involved millions of lives.
But that was an equally precarious wait-see. Fate wasn’t going to give him a quick resolution. Things weren’t up to him to decide. Maybe this time he’d lose his mother. It had been close, from time to time. He’d tried to distance himself from situations he couldn’t help, but the grief was still there. He could still remember the woman who’d taken him and Toby on vacations and who’d backed him, however humorlessly, driving her sons in her chosen directions—he forgave that. When he most doubted himself, she’d say—You can do it, Bren. Don’t be lazy. Just keep going.
Good advice, mum. Really good advice. Just keep going.
It saved a lot of thinking. Autopilot. Too stupid to kill. Too ignorant to see a defeat staring you in the face.
Sometimes you just ended up beyond the crisis-point not knowing how you’d lived.
Narani had said something about breakfast. Bren found his mind at one moment far, far distant, with a space station that ought to have died and hadn’t—and local at the next moment, with a captain who shouldn’t have died, and had; and then planetbound, with his staff’s warning about Assassins’ Guild activity on the station, and Eidi, who he believed had faithfully carried his messages.
And not to forget that incongruous ceremony for Valasi, a funeral years late for a father Tabini had probably had a hand in assassinating.
And the chance that Ginny Kroger was working for Shawn Tyers, who’d landed in the Presidency after years of spy-chasing in the Foreign Office.
No. It was a chase around far too many bushes. Ramirez had been in lousy health since the Tamun mutiny, had been downright frail for months. It took no outside agency to explain why a man with one foot in the grave—so to speak—tipped right over at a bad moment.
He hadn’t had that much sleep.
“Nandi,” Algini said from the doorway. “Jase-paidhi.”
God, he thought. What else?
He’d slept in his clothes, doubtless to his staff’s distress. He got up and took the call.
“ Bren,” Jase said.
“I’m here.” He already knew it wasn’t good news. Jase sounded exhausted. Far from exuberant.
“ The council has voted,” Jase said, and chose a slow, considerate ship-speech. “ We’re going out to the other station. Imminently. I moved to delay for a month. I argued. I was voted down.”
The ship was leaving dock. Leaving the planet.
Chasing after a problem they all, some less willing than others, had in common.
Deserting them.
“Without consultation? Jase, I still haven’t been able to get through to Tabini.”
“ The proposition’s going to the crew in general council. In about an hour. Ogun’s wasting no time at all.”
With the crew suspecting a double-cross, fast movement on some course of action was the best thing. In that sense it was a good thing the council had decided—but the decision was far from the balanced outcome he wanted.
“I’m not upset they’re going. But they’re moving without a response from the aiji. He may agree, but he has to give his agreement. I know he’s stalling, but there are other issues down there. This is dangerous stuff, and it’s going to create ill will.”
“ I know. I argued that point. Ogun listened, and he and Sabin still voted together. Departure’s imminent… granted the crew agrees. And they will. All they have to do is send essential personnel to stations and flip the master switch. They’ll run tests. But the ship’s in running order. There’s not going to be that long a delay. Then there’s no more debate.”
“Are you going? Or are you staying here?”
A small pause. “ I want to stay. It would make some sense. You and I can work together. But on this one, I’m not sure whether Ogun will vote with me, either. I’m not sure he wants someone here who cooperates that easily with you and Tabini. I know Sabin wouldn’t like my being left as liaison. But I’m damn little use in operations. I’m putting our conversation into the log, by the way.”
If Jase was speaking his own dialect, overhearing was always a possibility, and he hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t say in captain’s council.
“That’s fine.”
“ I’ll be talking to Ogun and Sabin, if I can, trying to argue them into leaving me here. Here, I’m useful. It’s the best outcome I can think of.”
“It shows good faith to Tabini, for one other cogent argument.”
“ That’s a point. I’ll use it. I’ve got to go, Bren.”
“Thanks. Thanks for the advisement.”
Thanks for the advisement.
Was he surprised? Not that surprised.
Breakfast was all but on the table. He’d upset Bindanda if he let it go cold. He saw the maidservant hesitating just beyond the door, an earnest young face, too good sense to interrupt the paidhi in a phone calclass="underline" she advised him simply by her waiting presence.
“Yes, nadi-ji,” he said. He was cold. “My indoor coat, if you please.”
She hurried to the foyer closet and brought it back. He slipped it on, unrumpled, morning ritual, calming to jangled nerves. One day and the next. Routine. The cosmic carpet was about to go out from under them, but they observed the amenities. And he’d gotten about two hours’ sleep.
Banichi and Jago had likewise turned up for breakfast, black-uniformed, informal and comfortable—armed. They always were. And they probably hadn’t slept either.
“We may have to send a courier down to Shejidan,” Bren said. “Can we hurry the shuttle? Immediate launch? There’s reason to ask.”
“One will learn, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano?” Banichi had his earpiece in, and listened, and gave a little inclination of his head. “Tano will inquire during breakfast.”
“The ship’s going,” he said to Banichi and Jago. “They’re holding a vote of the crew, but I have a notion it’s going to pick up and go. One has to ask still how much of a presence they’re going to leave here. We need technical people to continue with the ship-building and train atevi personnel to manage it. So now we learn, one supposes, whether Ramirez-aiji meant us to have a starship at all, or whether it was all show, to get his ship fueled. That’swhy we need a courier. The ship is about to power up, preparatory to leaving. And the aiji doesn’t answer me. Has there been any response from the Guild?“