Banichi and Jago had passed the brief interval at tea with Cenedi—doubtless the eccentricities of the ship-aijiin had been the topic of the hour. And likely the dent in the hall had been a small issue. Last week it had been a spring-gun, and a sailing-plane launched from a slingshot prior to that.
“I need to speak with Gin, nadiin-ji,” he told them, once they stood in the warmth of the main corridor. I’ll call her , he’d almost said, meaning the intercom. He’d been an hour upstairs and that unacceptable notion just leapt out. He thought instead about going to her office, but that venue was not as secure, and if he was going to violate Sabin’s clearly expressed wishes for secrecy, he wanted not to risk spreading the news to Gin’s team. “Suggest to her staff she would be welcome in a social call.”
“Asicho hears,” Jago said.
“One will advise Narani,” Banichi added.
Done, then. His arrangements moved with many more parts, but well-oiled, efficient. A dinner event of adequate size and service would happen if Ginny Kroger’s staff and his managed to communicate. He could imagine it. Yo! Gin! It’s the atevi , gracelessly shouted to Gin’s office, would get a cheerful Mospheiran answer: Sure I’ll come. What time ?
Mospheirans viewed themselves as fussily formal.
They walked back to his apartment, where he shed the coat in favor of a dressing-robe. He was able to sit down and take notes, while invitations to Gin percolated through the vents, and while Banichi and Jago consulted Asicho in the security station, catching up on any untoward bit of business that might have gone on—the dent seemed the notable item on five-deck. He made a file, meanwhile, out of the upstairs conference, neatly indexed for points of particular interest, robotically translated, down to the point where the mindless machine couldn’t tell the difference between like words and where his staff couldn’t be expected to figure the meaning.
Noon passed. He skipped lunch. Jago brought him the transcript of the verbal exchanges upstairs, and he traded them Jase’s tape.
“There’s not too much to translate here,” he said, “but index it carefully, nadi-ji.”
“Yes,” Jago said, and added, just as the door opened. “One believes that will be Gin-nadi and one of her staff.”
“Excellent,” he said. They hadn’t disturbed him with the report, but the mission was accomplished. And as Narani showed Ginny into his makeshift study, Jago deftly picked off the aide and requested him, in passable Mosphei’, to come for a separate, far less informative briefing.
“It’s all right,” Ginny assured her aide, who had to be used by now to the concept that when lords talked, aides made themselves invisible.
“Tea, Rani-ji,” Bren requested. “Do sit, Gin. I take it you’ve heard a bit from my staff.”
“At least the topic and the source.” Ginny settled—sixtyish, no different than he’d first met her: thin, gray, with an inbuilt frown that hadn’t been an instantly endearing feature when they’d first met. Nor had the habit of challenging him. He’d come to treasure that bluntness, and her. “I take it the senior captain isn’t supposed to know we’re talking.”
“She knows she won’t prevent us talking. But it is sensitive.”
“Our problem or hers?”
“Both. I think in this we ought to accommodate her. If this does get out at the wrong moment, it could cause problems.” Narani provided the tea, aromatic, safe for humans, tinged with fruit and spice. “Thank you, Rani-ji. We’ll manage.”
“Nandi.” Narani politely withdrew—not the microphones that assured everything would be available for reference, but withdrew, at least, his visible presence. Ginny assuredly knew they were bugged, and came here without objection: it was just procedure, and she came.
And came, not infrequently, for the company the stuffy Mospheiran notion of hierarchy didn’t give her within her small technical staff. Back on Mospheira, or in Shejidan, one held short, sharp meetings. Onboard ship, with far less diversion—meetings lasted, especially in the atevi section. Lasted through the afternoon, if need be. With tea and refreshments.
“So?” Ginny asked him, and he told her in great detail.
“Lied to the crew, too,” Ginny said with a shake of her head.
“Lied to the Guild, lied to Jase—lied to everybody. Not surprising.”
“On Ramirez’s side, there was some reason. It was a useful lie. And one Ramirez could have predicted would give him maximum maneuvering room with us. But still—”
“But still. But still. But still.” Ginny, the guest, lifted her cup for a refill. They’d gone through one pot and were on their second. “You know, you always wonder what things would be like if there weren’t these diversions into deception. Unvarnished truth never seems the ship’s first recourse. The expectation that the crew would be rational. The expectation one’s allies might just realize that ship command hasn’t told the whole truth on any major point in the last three hundred years… I mean, don’t they figure we’d figure, sooner or later? That crew would?”
Bren poured the bottom of the pot for himself. “I think they figure we’ll figure they’ll be lying and they’d only confuse everyone if they told the truth.”
“Point,” Ginny agreed. “But from the absolute start. From the very start of them going in, Ramirez, faking that image. Damn him. Chasing aliens, for God’s sake. And he’s the good guy.”
“We assume he was on the side of the angels. Jase assumes he was. These days, Jase isn’t any more sure of that than we are.”
“Hell on Jase, stuck up there with Sabin-bitch for company. You think he can get those other records?”
“We’re moving ship tomorrow. He’s sticking close to Sabin. He says he’ll try.” Jase didn’t know a thing about ops, or rather, knew as much as he’d been able to pick up by hearing, but he’d never so much as been on the bridge for a look around before being named captain by the aforesaid Ramirez. “I won one thing. I’ve asked—insisted—both the paidhiin should be on the bridge at arrival in system.”
“And Sabin said?”
“Oh, she’s not totally in favor. But she agreed.”
“Good God.”
“Sabin is not optimistic about this mission.”
Ginny sipped the dregs of her tea. “I insist on optimism at this point. I’m ready for the alternative—at least the one that gets us out of there fast. But I hope there’s fuel waiting for us and my robots and my staff don’t have a thing to do but connect the lines and suck up the good news and load survivors. At a certain point I don’t care what Jase’s ancestors did. I want to get home. I want to win this.”
A lengthy mining operation out in a stellar wilderness was one alternative. There were far worse ones to contemplate.
Like running straight out into alien guns.
“Let’s hope,” he said. “Let’s hope for a fast, simple homecoming at the other end.”
“It’s springtime back home,” she said meditatively, Mospheiran-like pouring herself another cup. “Did you know? Tourists on the north shore. Nice little bar in Port Winston. Orangelles. That’s what I imagine. Orangelles, orangettes, limonas and chi’tapas. You can smell them in the air.”
Fruit flavors. Flowers. Orchards in bloom.
“I’ll settle for salt air and the waves,” he said, since they were indulging fancy. Best air on earth. Best sound in the world. In his memory, he discovered, it was less Mospheira’s north shore and more the sound of his own cliff-shadowed beach, a strip of white sand under the balcony wall, a little floating pier, lord Geigi’s huge boat tied up there.