But I can’t govern the changes that have already happened.
I can’t govern what happens to me on the way. I never could. And every change has been away, not toward, and every change makes the circle of those who’ve been through this with me smaller, not larger, until at this moment I think I’m becoming a sort of black hole, and I’m going to pull everything I know into a pinpoint so none of us can get out, and then I’ll stop existing at all in this universe. I’m terrified of never getting home, that you’ll never get this letter.
A few people still on earth matter. You. Tabini. And if you are still speaking to me, and if I can get there, I’d like to take about a month sitting on the beach and telling you all the things most people on Mospheira wouldn’t at all want to hear about. I don’t know if you’re curious or if you’re just that patient, but for either reason, I think you’d listen and nod in the right places, even for this. I love you, brother. I miss you. And one part of me wishes you were here and the sane part says thank God you’re not. Thank God something I remember is still there.
By the fact I’m now panicking, you can guess this is the scary part of our trip coming up. This is where I need every scrap of courage I’ve got, and I wish I had more information of substance. I think about Banichi and Jago, and if they or the staff ever doubt our success in this crazy venture, they don’t let me know it. The dowager — she won’t spook, no matter what. Meanwhile I’m thinking this is the scariest thing I’ve ever contemplated, and there’s a six- or seven-year-old kid down there playing with a toy car and thinking it’s all fairly normal for a kid to be racing cars in a starship corridor. He’s not afraid. He doesn’t imagine the trouble we could be in… or he does, but at his age everything’s an adventure. Being alone in the dark scares him. The thought of dropping into deserted space just doesn’t faze him. I’m not sure anything scares Banichi and Jago but the thought of losing me somewhere out here. So is any fear real? Do we become self-focused cowards by measures as we get older? Or am I the only one on this deck who really knows the odds ?
Jase is likely as scared as I am. Ginny hasn’t got nerves. I don’t know what drives her. She’s just busy seeing to her staff, and that’s what she does. But my staff sees to me, not the other way around, and I suppose that leaves me time enough to think, way more thinking about the consequences of various things than I find comfortable.
The beach and the sound of the waves can take all that away. I’d say, the deck of the boat, but right now, considering just stringing thoughts together is like swimming in syrup, sitting very still on a planet’s solid skin sounds good to me.
On a certain day he’d had entirely enough.
He left his computer, left his notes, gathered Banichi and Jago without warning, and headed for the lift.
“ Is there an emergency, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.
“A conference,” he said, and neither Banichi nor Jago asked further questions.
Nor did they evidence any surprise whatsoever that he ordered the lift to the bridge and strode out and past working operations on the consoles, down that screened aisle. He was bound, since Sabin’s bodyguards, Collins and the rest, were sitting watch down in the executive corridor, for executive offices.
The guards got up from benches—not quite hands on weapons, but close.
“I’m here to see the senior captain,” Bren said in Mosphei’. “ Now .”
Jenrette happened to be part of that group of five. But the seniormost of Sabin’s guards, Collins, was a man who’d been Sabin’s for decades before Jenrette came into the picture. The lot of them might have had orders of one kind about crew coming up here—but they likely had special orders about care and coddling of their alien passengers, too, and those separate trains had suddenly intersected, headed for collision.
“I’m not going back down,” Bren said plainly, standing a little out of hearing of techs on the bridge behind him. “She won’t want an incident, I can assure you.”
Collins looked at him, looked at Banichi and Jago, a solid dark wall behind him.
And they were indeed about to have an incident: he was set, however muzzily, on course, and stood his ground.
“Captain,” Collins said to the empty air. “Mr. Cameron’s up here saying it’s urgent business.”
Whatever the answer was, Collins opened the door.
“Kindly wait here, nadiin-ji,” Bren said quietly to Banichi and Jago, facing Sabin at her desk, Sabin—who leaned back in her chair to have a look at the intrusion into her day’s problems. “Senior captain, good day.”
“Mr. Cameron.” No invitation, not a cue or a clue. Sabin folded her hands on her spare middle. The door shut behind him, securing their privacy.
“The record we mentioned, senior captain.”
“Record.”
“You want my help…”
“I don’t recall requesting your help, Mr. Cameron. I do recall your request. I’ve reviewed it. Hell if I’m giving you our log to play with. Go find other amusement.”
“I want the record, captain. I’m sure it doesn’t take you eleven months to find a log entry. I’m sure you had it that same shift we discussed it. I take it you view your survival as a matter of some importance. I want the record.”
A lively, analytical regard. A pursing of the lips. One thing about long-time crew—they adapted to the mental conditions of folded space, did it far better than planet-dwellers. Sabin’s thought processes at the moment might far out-class his. “You do.”
A little caution might be in order. “Politely put, please , captain.”
“You want it.” Sabin moved her chair so suddenly assassination-honed reflexes twitched. Inwardly. He didn’t budge as she opened a cabinet. And took out a tape. And held it up to his view. “You think this holds answers.”
“If you know what you were looking for, with your accustomed ability, yes, I hope it does.”
She flipped it to a landing on the desk. Making him reach to pick it up, a petty move. He wasn’t inclined to object to that.
“Good luck,” she said.
“More than this,” he said, and pocketed the tape. “More than this record, captain, what’s your estimation of the facts?”
Momentary silence. And cold irony. “Forty years and someone finally asks the question.”
“I’m asking, captain. You’ve had, all along, a very keen sense of the risks involved in contact. If we’d had you in charge of the original contact with the atevi, we might not have fought a war. Let me guess—you’ve tried to figure this without my input. You wanted your own uncontaminated assessment, uncolored by my opinions. You have some opinion of your own. What do you think?”
Cold, cold stare. “I want your uncontaminated assessment, Mr. Cameron. Enough is there. Beginning to end. You figure it. You tell me. Five days likely to system entry. You’ve worked miracles, so they tell me. You figure this one.”