“The dowager states she is prepared for any eventuality.” There were times he didn’t translate all of what one side said; and there were times he did. “The aiji-dowager expects you to control the human side of this. She is prepared to make inroads into the atevi situation.”
“Go below and observe takehold,” Sabin said. “The lot of you. We’re not wasting any time getting in there, no time for more ferment on their side or ours, thank you.”
“Aiji-ma,” Bren translated that. “The ship is about to move with greater than ordinary dispatch and Sabin-aiji politely urges us all to take appropriate shelter belowdecks for a violent transit. This will speed us in before there can be further disturbance on the station or among our human passengers.”
“Good,” Ilisidi said sharply and headed for the lift, marking her path with energetic taps of the cane. Her great-grandson and the rest of her company could only make haste behind her to reach the doors, while the ship sounded the imminent-motion warning.
It was certainly not the homecoming they’d planned. Damn, Bren thought bleakly, taking his place inside the lift car. They’d ridden from nervous anticipation to the depths of anxiety all in an hour; and amid everything else—
Amid everything else, he thought, looking across the car at Cajeiri, there’d been no special word for a boy who’d just heard bad news about his mother and father, and who remained appallingly quiet.
What did he say to an atevi child? Or what should his great-grandmother have said, or what dared he say now?
The lift moved. Meanwhile the intercom gave the order: “Maneuvers imminent. Takehold and brace for very strong movement.”
Four thousand colonists were getting that news, people unacculturated to the delicate and dangerous situation they were going to land in on the station, people whose holier-than-common-colonists attitudes were even more objectionable to the Mospheirans who were half the workforce on that station, and whose ancestors had suffered under Guild management… and who were going to have to sponsor the Reunioners if, as seemed likely now, Gin’s plan prevailed.
Four thousand people who’d been promised paradise ended up on tighter rations than they’d had where they’d come from. And the Mospheirans, who were going to have to live with them and who’d already endured hardship since the shuttles had stopped flying, weren’t going to be anywhere near as patient with their daily complaints as the ship had been.
Jerry and Gin were holding quiet, rapid-fire consultations next to him, Jerry agreeing to stay aboard the ship while Gin went to her on-station offices to take control. Banichi was holding quick converse with Cenedi.
The lift hit five-deck level and opened for them. Gin and Jerry went one way, they went another, past sentries, into the atevi section.
“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, prepared to take his leave and deal with his own staff. “Nandi.” For the youngster, who gravely bowed. He remained distressed for the boy, the heir, who might in some atevi minds on that station now be the new aiji of Shejidan; but none of them had time to discuss their situation or accommodate an eight-year-old boy’s natural distress—not in a ship about to undertake maneuvers. Beyond that, he reminded himself, Cajeiri’s whole being responded to man’chi, a set of emotions a human being was only minimally wired to understand. For all he knew, the boy was approaching the explosion point. Every association of the boy’s life was under assault, while atevi under him and around him in the hierarchy would rally round and carry on with all the resources the battered association could rake together. God knew what the boy was feeling, or whether he was just numb at the moment, or how he would react when the whole expectations of the station atevi centered on him.
“Go,” Ilisidi said sharply, curt dismissal, and he strode down the corridor at all speed, Banichi and Jago in close company, down to the safety of his own quarters. Takehold racketed through the corridors. Narani waited by his cabin door, but Bren ordered him to safety.
Inside, a shocking transformation. The walls were stripped of plants now, shockingly barren. Everything was barren, even the mattress, the bed he had shared with Jago for two years, lacking sheets and blankets.
He lay down nonetheless, and Jago lay down beside him, pulled the safety netting across, preparing for what could be a scary, hard pull.
“Final warning,” sounded over the general com. “Takehold where you are.”
Engines kicked in. The force dragged at them.
“How is Cajeiri taking the news, Jago-ji?” he asked Jago, staring at the ceiling. “Can one tell?”
A slight move beside him, a shrug, it might be. “Likely still thinking on it, Bren-ji,” she said.
“Can we help him?” As if the boy was a ticking bomb. “Dare we?” Then: “Should we?”
“The aiji-dowager is his only present anchor,” Jago said, “and if his father should be dead, who knows? Who can know? What he feels, what he may feel, no one can predict.”
Emotions, again. Emotions that connected atevi in associations, that dictated who ruled, who followed. Impassivity and formality were so much the rule of polite society; but there were currents under the still surface that he could only imagine—in the boy, and in Ilisidi herself, whose grandson was Tabini-aiji, whose allies had turned against the state she had helped build.
Engines kept up the push. For every force they put on the ship, they’d have to take it off again before they docked. It was going to be a long, rough ride, but he completely agreed with Sabin: if they got there an hour faster, the rumor mill on the station would have an hour less run-time to create problems for them.
And if they could only scare the Reunioners in their belly badly enough, without making them mad, they might have an edge in maintaining control of them. The former inhabitants of Reunion Station weren’t acclimated to rough maneuvers. They had to realize now this wasn’t a routine approach.
News would be spreading through the station, just one communications tech or janitor telling a cousin what was going on, and that cousin calling someone else.
Time, time, and time. It wasn’t on their side.
Chapter 3
A rush to dock, and intense security in their getting aboard—a quick, bone-chilling transit through the deep cold and null g of the mast, and on into the lift—Bren let go a desperate, shuddering breath that he realized he’d held over-long and gulped another, air burning cold and so dry it seared his lungs and set off a fit of coughing.
Himself, the dowager, Cajeiri, her security, with Banichi and Jago: they were the advance party. The rest of his own staff was still on the ship, struggling to pack up, and Jase was coming in the next batch, with Pressman, Kaplan, and a security detail, with more security due to escort them to Ogun’s offices. Atevi station security was to pick them up at the lift exit—Geigi’s men—never mind the usual hassle with customs, Sabin assured them. Just go, get the dowager and the heir safely into the atevi section, and those doors shut, with their security up and functioning. Gin Kroger was going to come in through the cargo lock, with her equipment, with another contingent of Ogun’s men to see things were in order.
Then they’d worry about telling the station at large—and the Reunioners on the ship—what was going on.
The car started moving, that motion rearranging their sense of up and down—they held to the handgrips for a few breathless moments with their luggage bashing up against the ceiling until they’d exited the core. Then the feeling of gravity crept over them, settled them gradually back to a sense of where the deck was despite the movement of the car. Their baggage observed the same slow settling, floating down past them and landing with a muffled, not quite authoritative thump. Ordinarily Cajeiri would be excited and bouncing about to test the new sensations—he so enjoyed instability. But his young face was as sober and his bearing as grimly serious as his great-grandmother’s while the car braked to a stop: Bren noted it with a sideward shift of his eyes, not even a glance to disturb the delicate equilibrium.