But it wasn’t a letter he wanted to write cold, either. He wanted to say the right thing, which he hadn’t managed to do in the last few letters, or phone calls.
So what was there to do, then, while his staff packed and put together a suitable supper?
He answered memos from various departments, some incredibly mundane, one with a proposal for a new franchise for paper products, with a clever internal recycling option. On an ordinary day he might have been intrigued with it and spent energy chasing down advisors.
Today, he was sure the department in question had no remote idea what was on his desk… and he didn’t care if paper recycled or piled up in masses.
He couldn’t call Paulson or Kroger with what he knew, not until there was an official announcement—and he wasn’t in charge of the timing of that. Ilisidi was. The captains were.
He placed a call to Jase, on a small afterthought, wishing Jase would join him for supper, and met, not uncommonly, a wall at C1: “ Captain Graham has your calls at top priority.”
Well, not too surprising, considering: Jase wasn’t in a particularly festive mood and Jase had his hands full—besides which Jase had, at least marginally, family of his own to consider. Becky Graham was Jase’s mother—and Becky’s quarters might be where Jase had gone for an hour or two.
He hoped so. He hoped Jase wasn’t up to his ears in meetings with never yet time to stop and realize he had lost the one father he knew—the one parent, in that sense. Jase was hardly more emotionally related to Becky than he was to the long-dead hero who’d contributed the sperm—but he and Becky had each other in common, little as they ordinarily acknowledged the bond. Jase was on duty, asleep, or talking to Becky—and least of all wanting to have to justify decisions or give explanations of Ramirez’s actions to an old friend with problems of his own. Now that he thought it through, if Jase was on overload, and likely he was, it was hardly kind to add one more pressure—which was all it would be. He couldn’t move a ship’s captain back into the atevi domain where they could talk at will, as they’d used to; where staff could take care of him. He supposed Kaplan and Polano and now Jenrette did take care of Jase, in a subordinate sort of way, but when he considered Jase’s emotional resources outside that, it came down to Ramirez, Ramirez, Ramirez.
No wide attachments among the crew. No close friends among the crew except Yolanda Mercheson, who’d grown up into a partner and now, cutting through every other fact, an ex-lover. It had been a bad mistake, that liaison. It had soured a relationship and laid bare realities of their familial situation that just weren’t helpful.
And Yolanda being jealous and touchy of her professional prerogatives—justifiably jealous and touchy, since Ramirez had always favored Jase over her—man to young man. That had been hard enough; and ex-lover status seemed to put the coup de grace on the friendship. Ramirez had not only created two human beings, he’d monopolized their childhood, limited their associations, expected Jase to work miracles by his mere existence… and dropped him and Yolanda separately onto an alien world to learn to fit in. Then he yanked them off it the moment they succeeded, messed up their interpersonal relations by favoritism, having all his paternal notions fixed on Jase and being blind to Yolanda.
Then after advising Tabini he was having sudden, crisis-level health problems, he dropped dead, leaving his crew in a commotion, Jase and Yolanda bitterly wounded and generally messed up, and his allies pressed to act on a program he’d leaked to staff while he was dying. Jase was stuck in a rank he didn’t want, in a job he didn’t want. Yolanda had the job Jase did want. Not to mention Yolanda had wanted importance with the crew and never had had an emotional bond to her planetary responsibilities.
Damn Ramirez.
Hell and damn in general.
He was working his way into a piece of temper. He typed a letter to Jase—in Ragi, to confound C1’s perpetual snoopery:
On ship or on the station, our door is open at any hour. If you can by any stretch of argument persuade the ship council that having one of the captains closely resident with your atevi advisors truly makes good operational sense, you would be most welcome to reside here, among persons who would treat you most congenially, seeing to your every want.
Or if you simply have an overwhelming longing for pizza with green sauce, we would make every effort.
The Ragi language cannot convey every feeling I would wish to express: but Banichi and Jago would tell you that you are within this household, wherever your residence is compelled to be hereafter. Man’chi is not broken.
It was what they said at an atevi funeral, among those determined to maintain their ties when the essential link had gone. Man’chi is not broken.
Well, hell, Jase needed to know that. He decided he himself did, where they were both going.
He gave the letter to Tano to hand deliver to Jase, or to Kaplan or Pressman.
And he wrote to the ateva with the well-thought recycling program, and recommended it to Paulson. That was one problem off his desk.
He didn’t know what he could do about his family, his staff down on the mainland—he didn’t know how he could get hold of Toby, or whether he ought to try to talk directly to his mother. All the while he thought about the trip, with his irrational hindbrain insisting he was about to die.
And he wasn’t brave, and he didn’twant to know what it felt like when a starship played games with space and time and did things to human flesh and blood that nature never intended to happen.
What had begun as tension rapidly became indigestion.
“Banichi,” he said into the intercom.
“ He’s not here, nandi.” Algini’s voice, from the security office.
Surprising. He’d sent Tano out, but not Banichi.
“Jago?”
“ Jago has gone with Banichi.”
“When everyone gets back from not being here,” he said to Algini, “tell Banichi I asked, nadi-ji.”
“ One, will inform him that, nandi.”
Get an answer, not inevitably. But one would ask, on this day when nothing was casual.
“Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“ Mospheiran crew is somewhat distressed, nandi,” Algini said. “ They’ve announced the flight.”
One could imagine somewhat distressed.
And it was headed, now, for the news services. His family would hear. And hedidn’t have the rank to get past Geigi, or Paulson.
“If news services call,” he said to Algini, “I will talk to them.”
The station was in increasing disturbance. His staff was ghosting about on mysterious errands. He’d almost expected a summons from the dowager this evening, but none had come. So Bindanda’s preparations advanced. He heard muted activity in the dining room, service prepared.
The front door opened and closed. One of his missing staff was back. He took comfort in that, hearing the quiet tread that approached his door—Narani, with a report: he knew before he looked up.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Narani said, “Banichi is back. He has Mercheson-paidhi with him.”
Yolanda.