Sticky. Damned sticky.
Sorry, he’d have to say to Tabini. I did the best I could. We all did. But the kyo are out there. Something else is out there. We’re not sure, on the example of kyo behavior with the Reunioners, if we can keep the kyo away from us.
He’d shut his eyes without knowing he’d shut them. When he realized he had, he decided to try sleeping, finding himself very tired and not quite knowing why. Maybe it was just the letdown after a long, long voyage.
He was aware of a hand on his shoulder. Someone wanting his attention. The intercom panel was flashing red, a flood of blinking light dyeing the cabin walls, all its strands and streamers of spider plants. And he had slept.
“We are about to make the drop, nandi.” It was Narani looming over him, not Jago. “Be sure you are secure.”
“Indeed,” he murmured. It was the predawn watches. Jago hadn’t come to bed. “Is everything all right, Rani-ji?”
“Proceeding very well,” Narani said. “We are nearly ready. I have put out appropriate clothing, nandi, for the event. We shall be here as soon as possible after the arrival to assist you to dress.”
“Your safety comes first, nadi,” he said. He felt guilty, privileged to sleep while his staff had surely been up and working through the night. But that was the order of the universe. “Go, go quickly, nadi-ji.”
Narani left. Left the door open, admitting a white light that ameliorated the red flash of the panel and made the spider plants look less nightmarish. And he was tired, caught up out of sleep. He had no idea what time it was. If he just lifted his head he might be able to see the clock, but that effort took energy.
The siren jolted him out of a drift toward sleep, and Sabin’s voice echoed from on high.
“Sabin here. We’re about to make drop. Three minute warning. Take hold. Take hold, take hold.”
Jago was usually beside him when they went through one of these transitions. He wasn’t used to fending for himself, which, when he thought about it, was ridiculous. He ordered the room lights on, gave a fast scan of the premises—but no, Narani hadn’t left the clothing on the chair as he usually did. The items must be in a locker. Nothing was going to fly loose, nothing was going to float. He was safe. He lay back again.
And depend on Sabin, no emotion, no promises, no flourishes about homecoming, and no bets laid, nothing to indicate this wasn’t just one of the many ordinary transitions.
Eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Slight feeling of floating. It wasn’t that they exactly stopped spin—so Jase informed him—but that the effects of the shift did that to them. Things became highly uncertain for a moment, stomach-wrenching.
Home, he told himself. Home. And tried not to think about the circumsolar rocks.
The sight of all those spider plants lifting their tendrils at once was always too strange for words.
Then the green curtain sank and hung as before.
“We’re in, cousins,” Sabin’s voice, uncharacteristically full of feeling this time. “We are in.”
Emotion from Sabin. God. Unprecedented.
And he needed his clothes. Needed to move. He scrambled up, went to the bath for a quick apology to hygiene, and when he came out to dress, lo and behold, Jeladi and Bindanda had made it in, had clothes ready for him to step into, lace-bearing shirt already inserted into formal coat.
On with the boots, equally quick. He dropped into a chair and ducked his head for Jeladi to loose his hair, comb it, and re-braid it with the white ribbon of the paidhi’s office, which he had never abandoned.
Ready, in record time—not a sort of thing atevi applauded, haste in preparation, but there were moments aboard the ship when haste served very well.
“Nadiin-ji,” he acknowledged their effort. “Have your breakfast, cautiously. I shall make do with whatever the dowager brings along.”
“By no means, nandi,” Bindanda said, and took a packet from the desk-top. “One may find breakfast for the two captains, as well.”
“Danda-ji, you are a treasure.” He took said packet and gave a little bow to his staff, tucking it away out of sight in his left-hand coat pocket, Bindanda’s little high-energy fruit and nut sticks, if he could judge by the size of it… and he lost no time betting Banichi and Jago were similarly provided, not to mention the dowager and her party, and Gin and Jerry. A snack in reserve was a very good idea, they had learned, in a long bridge-side vigil. Bridge crew might change shifts, but galley didn’t function until the ship had gotten the all-clear. And not that he thought Sabin or, by her example, Jase, would partake, but there, they would have made the gesture.
He headed into the hall, got as far as the security station before Banichi and Jago met him, outside a room now broken down to crates, and by now the dowager and her party were out their door, joining them in the corridor, the dowager and Cenedi and Cajeiri, all of them proceeding with some dispatch down to the end of the corridor, and out.
Gin and Jerry met them at the lifts.
“May one wish the young aiji,” Gin said in fairly complex Ragi, “the felicitation of completing a seventh year?”
“Nandi,” Cajeiri said with a bow, with outstanding good grace for a lad deprived of his birthday party.
“Indeed,” Bren said. Gin’s Ragi had gotten good, but he bet she had practiced that one. “A seventh year of extraordinary nature.”
“One is extremely gratified, nandi,” the boy muttered, eyes downcast, in the ragged remnant of his good grace. The glum tone flirted with the dowager’s displeasure. The fearsome cane tapped the floor just once, a reminder.
In that moment the lift arrived, saving the boy further compliments. Banichi and Cenedi secured the doors while they got in, the dowager first, with Cajeiri, and then Bren, and Gin and Jerry, while security folded in after and the doors shut, one of those rhythms of life, protocol, and precedence that had operated like clockwork in their two-year voyage, for, oh, so many trips up and down this lift system.
“We should—” Gin began to say as the car started to move.
Siren. Emergency stop. Cenedi moved to brace the dowager and Cajeiri, Banichi moved to brace Bren, and Jago grabbed Gin and Jerry with one arm, and flew up. She made a terrible crash, and thumped back down onto her feet, Gin and Jerry with her.
“Jago,” Bren exclaimed, afraid she had hit the overhead.
“Of no consequence, nandi,” Jago said, pressing both Gin and Jerry against one of the recessed safety grips. She was hurt, the only one of them who was hurt, to all appearances. Bren frowned in concern.
“We have arrived,” the intercom said from the ceiling of the car, which Bren realized queasily had not in fact stopped: it was the ship that had moved. “We are at home port. Report any injuries. The maneuver was automatic due to system traffic. We remain in a takehold condition.”
System traffic, Bren said to himself, still shaken. System traffic, for God’s sake!
So much for missing space junk. Somebody had put a damned spacecraft in their way. And where had traffic congestion come from, in a station that derived most of its support from the planet it orbited?
He kept his eye on Jago, who flexed her left shoulder and looked otherwise undamaged.
The car arrived at its destination, meanwhile, as if nothing had happened. The door opened onto the bridge, and Jase’s man Kaplan, in fatigues, reached the door and held it open for them. “You’re clear to the shelter, ma’am, sir,” Kaplan said with an awkward little bow. “Go, go! We’re still in takehold.”
When ship’s crew said move, moving fast was a good idea. A padded recess existed between the lift and the bridge, two narrow walls, just to the side of their usual observation post, for just such a purpose. “The shelter,” Bren informed Banichi, in case he hadn’t followed all of it, and Jago took Gin and Jerry along, Cenedi walking with the dowager and Cajeiri in the lead, all with utmost dispatch. They entered the padded area and their security took strong hold of the available handgrips, to protect their more fragile lords.