“And this tape shows?”
“Corridors lacking power or air… in which the search team walks—walks, with the appearance of gravity, which, aiji-ma, cannot be created without stable rotation, and stable rotation of a damaged station is no accident. That is the sensitivity of this record, on a pinpoint. At a certain point they disappear into a working airlock and the tape ends. Which is also against regulations, Jase-aiji informs us. That record should not have terminated, but it does. They preserve the secrets of their negotations with their Guild.”
“Shall we be surprised at this?”
“No, aiji-ma. In retrospect, one thinks not. But that raises another question: did Ramirez act on his own ! Jase suspects the timing in which he and Yolanda were created, decades before their usefulness in Shejidan. Jase suspects Ramirez had ambitions to create yet another colony, secret from the Guild. But Sabin suggests Ramirez meant to contact foreigners—spacefaring foreigners, and that his intrusion into sensitive foreign territory prompted the attack on Reunion.”
“Bypassing atevi? How were these persons preferable?”
Trust the dowager to see to the heart of a matter. “One believes, aiji-ma, that it was not so much fear of atevi as fear of detection, if he diverted the ship to a known and forbidden destination—the old colony; and fear that contacting humans once hostile to the Guild would be very difficult to manage. He had no idea of the technical advances atevi might have made. He wanted potent, spacefaring allies. And found potent, spacefaring enemies, as seems, from some place he visited.”
“And where is this place?”
“Out among the stars. Sabin-aiji strongly suggests Ramirez disturbed and alarmed a foreign world.”
“As Mospheirans dropped down on us, abusing our hospitality. Is once not enough?”
“One hardly thinks Ramirez’s intentions were to land. In this case, aiji-ma, the owners of the planet were out in space and armed. And resented his intrusion.”
“Bad habits will get one in trouble.”
“One concurs, aiji-ma. In this—very likely they did.”
“Why run such a risk, counting its previous failure?”
He had no clear answer, even for himself, on a human level. “Desire to throw off an oppressive authority, one might surmise. The Pilots’ Guild is that. Desire for alternatives. Atevi, to his knowledge, had only mastered the steam engine. He thought, mistakenly, that contact would be easy—it had been easy, with atevi, before the ship left. It lent him false confidence. In seeking allies, he found an enemy—or made one, by error. He never had a chance to engage Jase in the contact—Jase was, at the time, quite junior. He was unprepared, and fled. This may have been a grave mistake.”
“So. This fills in the shadows of the image, but only slightly. Ramirez was ambitious. Are we utterly surprised at his ambition?”
“We are not, aiji-ma. Not wholly. But he was desperate, perhaps, as desperate as ambitious—wholly dependent on the station for fuel. Everything he did found limits on fuel needs. I surmise they continually planned his missions and kept the ship on a tight rein precisely because they lacked confidence in the captains’ man’chi. A powerful ally would have utterly upset the balance and given the ship alternatives, resources, everything at a stroke. And patience is not a ship virtue. He looked elsewhere than Alpha, continually niggling away at something he could do undetected. A second contact, with those he might deal with in secret, changing the ship’s man’chi, establishing himself as aiji, making his power firm before challenging his Guild.”
“History has sharp teeth, Bren-paidhi. Both our species have found that true.” Ilisidi took a placid sip of tea. “So. So. One always wondered what lay within Ramirez’s energetic and open-handed approach to us.”
“Not only to you, as now seems, aiji-ma. But you were by then used to humans.”
“A truly reckless man. So we read him in his dealings. If the paidhi-aiji had not intervened—who knows what his contact with us would have been when he returned? A disaster. Clearly a disaster.”
“He had prepared Jase to deal with outsiders. This time, Jase and Yolanda having had intense preparation, he did engage their services—having more foresight than his ancestors, on a year-long voyage toward that meeting. I respect him for that act of foresight, aiji-ma, but, yes, he was reckless. Utterly. And naive in his approach to outsiders. He should have consulted them when his contact with outsiders went wrong—although possibly the incident proceeded too rapidly to brief newcorners to the situation. One has no idea.”
“He was reckless. He offended strangers. He brought ruin on his Guild. And what shall we do with this knowledge, Bren-paidhi?”
“Little else we can do, now, aiji-ma, but go to the station and hope to find what Ramirez left in no worse condition than it was.”
“And if there are worse conditions?”
“Jase-aiji tells me we have resources to pull off to a nearby refuge, one where Gin-aiji and her robots can work, though it would be chancy and slow. One suspects Sabin-aiji has had that contingency very much in mind. I confess I have increasing misgivings about the planning for this venture.”
“Which we have left in human hands.”
“I have requested more information on Ramirez’s past actions, aiji-ma. Jase is attempting to learn, and he takes our view. But Sabin forecasts a ship-move tomorrow. The last ship-move, so they think, before our destination. We are forced toward this event, precipitately so.”
“Inconvenience,” Ilisidi said with a grimace. “Uncomfortable, these transitions. One wearies of them. And far too much to hope that these remote station-folk at our destination dine better than we.”
“One greatly doubts it, aiji-ma.” His misgivings on Sabin’s misdirection of his request were heard. Not discussed. Not discussable, since there was nothing, in the dowager’s opinion, to be done, except to note the fact against Sabin. Therefore she changed the subject. “One doubts we will find much comfort there.”
“We equally doubt that Reunion has entertaining sights to see. We have extensively seen a station.”
Be brave, she was telling him. Steady on course. Be calm.
“I fear we could never promise the aiji-dowager grand entertainments there.”
“Ah, well.” The dowager adjusted her laprobe. “We have seen very curious things on our voyage, all the same. Whatever the outcome, we have learned the names of two hundred stars and seen one eat another—Grigi-ji will be envious.”
“That he will, aiji-ma.” The Astronomer Emeritus would have given his aged life to be on this voyage—but health and duties and the pleas of his students had, the dowager had said, dissuaded him.
“Do you suppose Sabin-aiji plots revenge on this household?”
Back to the Sabin matter. Back to questions of reliability of human authority in charge of this ship—a logical question, since she’d served Sabin poison at her dinner-party, letting Sabin choose it, to be sure: baji-naji. And in that chaotic revolution, she’d made sure that Sabin would not dictate to atevi where they spent the voyage, and not restrict atevi movements or communications on a ship on which her grandson might have designs of ownership—if atevi had one species-wide bad habit, it was that tendency to take for themselves anything they could lay hands on, if there was no preventative civilized agreement… and ship-humans had never quite established their willingness to defend their own ship.