There was order. There was his bed, freed of baggage, lid own, sparklingly modern.
It wasn’t Mospheira, it wasn’t Shejidan: it was modern, it was stark, spartan, and scary. He almost wished for the clutter, he very much wished for the halls of the Bu-javid, those halls where every carpet was hand-worked, antique, convolute in design; where draperies had one pattern and half a dozen vases of carefully selected flowers had another.
But there, right above his desk, in strong light, hung three globes—like Ilisidi’s banquet globes, transparent, and containing green leaves—growing leaves, he discovered, and then recognized them. Fortunate three. Living plants.
Bindanda had had a hand in this, he was quite sure. Had he not given Bindanda Sandra Johnson’s cuttings to establish?
And here they were, green, growing, an oasis, Bindanda’s little secret. He’d entirely forgotten. Some sort of medium, a hole to let the vines trail out—there being only a leaf-tip at the moment.
He’d never suspected Tatiseigi’s spy of such kind sentiment. “Bindanda offers these,” Narani said. “They’re just rooted. Would you care for tea before the ship moves, paidhi-ji?”
There were atevi established here. Of course, silly thought, be very sure there was tea, it was hot, and it could just be delivered before the warning siren.
He sat in the reclining chair, sipped his tea in a disposable cup while staff hurried about.
Jago appeared, right with the siren, on her way through to the quarters she shared with Banichi.
“Don’t take such chances, Jago-ji!” he begged her. “Kindly be earlier.”
“One hears, nadi.” Jago wasn’t inclined to argue.
And would do exactly as she had to do, he was quite sure.
“How does Sabin fare?” he asked.
“Asleep, one believes, nadi.”
A verbal warning, over the intercom: Jase’s voice. “ Acceleration in one minute. Count has begun. Take hold.”
“Go,” he said to Jago. “Quickly.”
He was belted in. Staff had gone to safe positions. He drank the last of the tea, wadded up the cup and held on to it… a physics experiment, he thought, once they were underway. Or he’d just hold it until there was an all-clear.
His heart beat faster and faster.
The first movement was a great deal like the lift’s acceleration, in the core. The illusion of gravity grew stronger and stronger, until the chair seemed horizontal.
He stared at the far wall that was, for the duration, the ceiling, scared, and with no useful place to spend a Mospheiran’s long-cultivated fear of flying.
For no reason and out of nowhere in particular, he thought of his mother’s apartment, and a lost cufflink, and the last visit before things changed in the family for good and all—
It was the last holiday they’d been together. He remembered that cufflink going down the heating register, in a room his mother constantly kept ready for him.
For the black sheep of the family.
He remembered breakfast in his mother’s apartment… and didn’t know whether she was still alive—a human attachment simply lost in the works of nations and captains. He’d had his one chance to go home, and hadn’t even made a phone call.
He couldn’t blame anyone else for thatchoice.
The ship went on accelerating
No way to call out Wait?
No way now…
In point of fact… fear reached a level and stayed there, and fell behind.
The ship traveled, and, different than a flight here, or there, separating him from a situation— Phoenixwas leaving the station, leaving the whole world behind.
While his household, these people around him—they were here on his account, and because of their man’chi, and because their home was always where he was.
Even the dowager, be it remembered, had left the world she championed. There was no fiercer advocate for the old ways of the world, and here she was, outbound with the next generation of her household, to take on whatever humans had done at Reunion—to use hishelp, among others.
Jase only thoughttwo captains ran this ship.
He drew one breath and two, having his bearings, with the world and the station behind him—or under his back, as the axis of the ship went—and getting further away by the second. It wasn’t so bad. He could have drunk the tea more slowly.
No emergency, and they were launched.
They were going to go out to wherever the ship did such things and fold space, bizarre thought. He couldn’t wait to explain that process to Banichi.
And his family, such as he still had back on Mospheira, would have to deal with things in his utter absence, as families could, and did, surviving somehow, and in their own way.
Another set of large breaths. He felt completely lightheaded.
“ Acceleration will continue at 1.2 G,” C1 said over the intercom. “ Emergency movement only until further notice.”
They were on a ship hurtling faster and faster through the cosmos and away from all they knew.
And the whole ship was a place of only crew, only staff—inaccessible to strangers and random lunatics, a place where he didn’t have to worry about assassins and vantages for snipers.
He drew two and three free breaths, in that heady thought.
He was free—for the first time in more than a decade. Give or take Sabin, no one on the ship wanted to kill him.
Wasn’t that a marvelous thought?
—«»—«»—«»—