The forward steward he knew very well—having shared with this crew and the shuttle team the effort that consumed their lives and energies. These were zealots, enthusiasts for the program. He was intheir association; they were inhis. Boarding, he was alreadyhome.
But there were, among atevi—not too unexpectedly—a handful of human passengers, too, in the middle batch of seats. They were going up, workers who’d flown over from the island to catch the shuttle up to their jobs.
And his own seat, forward, turned out to have a human companion—a surprise, and a very pleasant one. He likedGinny Kroger, and had by no means expected her on this flight.
Not his age, not his field, no longer his country… unless one counted the station itself, which for purposes of allegiances, he did. Virginia Kroger was gray-haired, thin, a woman with a fierce sobriety, a mouth that gave nothing away until she absolutely astonished a novice with a grin. No fashion-plate: she wore a thick gray, ugly as sin cardigan and doubtless had an equally unstylish parka in storage: Ginny always complained of the chill on flights, and was usually prepared: count on it.
“Gin.” He saw now that rank and courtesy had handed him this seatmate, and probably Banichi and Jago had foreknown that before they boarded. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to Jago and Banichi.
They took his meaning—certainly had no need to protect him from Gin, and no need to spend the flight pretending not to understand a word of Mosphei’, either.
“No difficulty,” Banichi said. The two of them had their reading and their amusements, and the hand-baggage that contained them.
It was his first chance to talk with Ginny in half a year. The moment they reached the station, duty would take them to two different zones. And her presence on station was very rare. “How’s the island?” he asked, settling in beside her.
“Wet,” Ginny said. Of course. It was spring. Rain was a given. “How’s the mainland?”
“Wet. Security-heavy. The aiji’s holding a family ceremony— thatwas the must-see that brought me down to here, it turns out.” He bet that Gin had had a briefing from the Department of State as well as her own wing, Science, and knew he was here, but without an understanding, he couldn’t give her a reason. “But I suppose I agree with the calclass="underline" I did need to be here.” Grand negligence. Let Shawn be as puzzled as he was… until he learned something.
The hatch had already shut. The passenger comfort systems had come up. Now Shai-shan’sengines roared to life.
“Welcome aboard,” the copilot said over the intercom, and began the rollout litany, the set of instructions, the list of horrors that a nervous flier hardly liked to listen to, but needed to, no matter how experienced: what to do if the takeoff roll aborted, what to do if they had to evacuate… all the scenarios in which a passenger had any choice.
Mostly there was no choice: there were few runways long enough to accommodate Shai-shanif something went wrong.
“No time for drinks, nand’ paidhi,” the attendant said, pausing by his row. “I’m very sorry.”
“I’ll have a fruit juice and vodka when we get up.” Launch usually had him a mass of nerves, and he liked to have a vodka beforehand to calm down, but he discovered he had no need for that, today. Sitting in his own seat was a victory. “Made it in time,” he said to Ginny, and heaved a sigh, telling himself it was, after all, true, and he was safe. “That’s all I ask.”
“We did hold count a little,” Ginny asked, looking at her watch. “But we’re rolling on schedule.”
“We hurried. The fortunate hours.” A Mospheiran might take a shuttle launch countdown as overriding everything else, but the exigencies of a shuttle launch had nothing against the atevi sense of timing and fortunate numbers, and Ginny did understand that. There were times things were done, as there were days and hours when nothing began. A memorial service and a shuttle flight weren’t remotely in each other’s consideration—except that neither would take place at an infelicitous moment.
Shai-shanmoved out, and made a ponderous slow correction onto her runway—she was not agile on the pavement.
Above the entry to the cockpit, the bulkhead had the black and white baji-najiemblem, that tribute to Chance and Fortune, the devil in the otherwise fortunate numbers. Below it was a screen that showed them the runway.
It trued up in the view.
“Baji-naji,” Gin said, meaning, in human terms here goes nothing.
And in atevi— here goes everything.
The engines roared and the acceleration pushed them back. The thumping of the wheels grew thunderous, and abruptly stopped as the screen showed them blue sky.
A split-screen showed the gear retracting safely below, and the ground and all the city falling away under them.
Well, another few roof tiles would fall in Shejidan. The planners had thought they could cease using the public airport once the new dedicated spaceport went into operation, but this one, the oldrunway—crazy as it sounded to call it that, as if anything was oldin this frantic, less-than-a decade push toward space—still was in use, if only for Shai-shan, Shai-shanwas Shejidan’sshuttle. The citizens of Shejidan, even after so much inconvenience, prized their broken roof-tiles, gathered them up when they fell, patched their roofs and took pride in their personal sacrifices for the greatness of their city.
Their shuttle. Theirstation was up there, too, available for anyone with average eyesight, if that person went aside from city lights, as atevi loved to do. Just ask them whose it was.
Theirstarship, too, was assembling in parts and pieces up there. It seemed mad to say, sometimes, but by agreement it was theirstarship when, a decade ago, rail transport had been a matter of fierce debate.
The wider universe, the universe humans had opened to them, had caught on with a vengeance in atevi popular culture. A passion for the stars and the new discoveries burgeoned in the very capital of the atevi world. Shejidan was mad for space.
And maybe, thinking of that, it was a good thing Tabini had held that remembrance of things traditional. Remember the old ways, before all that was atevi changed, shifted—abruptly.
They’d already had several dangerous moments in atevi-human relations. For a second time, atevi had become fascinated with humans and humans had become equally fascinated with atevi. Once before this, they had worked together, lived together. Humans had failed to grasp what was emotionally critical to atevi, and vice versa, and the whole system had fractured, catastrophically, with enormous loss of life—which was why humans were living on an island as far out of reach of atevi as they could manage at the time. The social disaster they called the War of the Landing had started on a critical handful of mistaken assumptions—because humans and atevi had gotten along just too well at first meeting, loved, associated, and nearly ruined each other.
Maybe remembering a little history was a very good thing, as fast as things were moving.
Or maybe Tabini just wanted his son to see the human paidhi, if not meet him.
Maybe Tabini had wanted the boy to understand the history behind the aishidi’tat, and to appreciate the official, paternal, national, even space-faring approval behind the hard, uncivilized lessons Ilisidi was about to teach him. It was too easy for a highborn youngster to think the whole world was what he saw around him.