Getting here involved one set of problems. Now that they were down to another set, the politics of the station itself, he discovered his heart beating as if he’d climbed a tall, tall flight of stairs, nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with decades of preparation that had brought him into this situation. It wasn’t a high-speed train of events—or it was, as planets saw time—as nations changed and rose and fell; in human terms, it moved like land-creep, but in terms of finite human beings supposed to be wise and to make the right decisions, time both dragged and flickered past, and Sabin’s stated number of hours was far too long to worry and far too short a time to do anything creative.
He could represent the colonists, or pretend to: he had been the island representative once upon a time. Atevi weren’t the first surprise they should spring on the residents of Reunion: Ilisidi would surely agree to that.
And he assuredly was about to have a job to do, if talk had begun to flow.
“The ship has begun to talk with the station, aiji-ma. I think I should place myself at the ship-aiji’s disposal.” He said much the same to Ginny Kroger: “I’m going to go stand somewhere in Sabin’s easy reach in this reply cycle. I think we’re running stable enough.”
He got up and walked into the aisles. His purposeful approach to the operations area brought a glance from Sabin. An answering slow approach on Jase’s part intercepted him for a private word.
“How do you think we’re doing?” Bren asked him quietly.
“Too well at this point,” Jase said. “Scarily well.”
Sabin walked over, hands locked behind her, muscle working in a lean jaw. “Holding conference, gentlemen?”
“Offering my services where useful, captain. As a start, with all due respect, I’d advise not telling station authorities everything about us.”
“Oh, I’d certainly concur there, Mr. Cameron. By a long way not half about us. And if we’re really lucky we can refuel before we have to tell them a thing about our passenger list or our intentions.”
“One believes they’ll have long since taken their own survival measures, invested reputations and effort, developed an emotional charge on their own course. Resentment of us for not coming back immediately. Suspicion now that we have come back. I wouldn’t be surprised at that.”
“You’re just a prophet of all kinds of trouble, aren’t you, Mr. Cameron?”
“Certainly best we don’t rush out of the ship and hold a farewell party on dockside.”
“I don’t think I had any such intention.”
“I’m sure not. Here’s another item. They’ll contest your command versus their authority.”
A little silence and a sidelong look.
“You know I’m right,” Bren said.
“You’re just full of opinions, Mr. Cameron.”
“I advise the aiji in Shejidan, who’s outlived all expectations. I advise you defy any order to meet them outside the ship.”
“Son of a bitch , Mr. Cameron.”
“Yes, ma’am. At your service. Continually. They’re the authority that’s run human affairs for the last several hundred years. Their ideas haven’t worked damned well. We all think it’s time there was a new authority. And not even for fuel should you give a step backward.”
“Go on, Mr. Cameron, as if I have no imagination of the situation.”
“I’m sure you do, captain. And if we assume they ordered Ramirez to go to the original base, secure it, refuel and get back, we can assume they don’t plan to be taking your orders when you show up, do they?”
“Keep going.”
“Two, they expect Ramirez. Three, they’ve had all these years to figure out things didn’t go according to plan back where we come from. So they’ll immediately ask you what happened to Ramirez and what took so long. If you say, refueling, they’ll know immediately that the station we come from wasn’t exactly waiting for your return. If you say we had to get the locals back into space and build the whole apparatus to refuel, they’ll wonder what else went on. They know the planet is inhabited. And that leads step by step to other questions, such as the reason I suspect Ramirez was courting aliens rather than go to Alpha’s colonists in the first place—I think they’re scared of finding an alternative human agency set up back at Alpha, offering opposition to them. And numerous hard-headed humans, tending to subvert the Guild vision for humanity. I’m willing to be your token colonist authority and lie through my teeth, and try to diminish those fears.”
“A whole lot of help we’ve got,” Sabin said. “Help from your alien allies, and pushy help from a self-appointed advisor.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bren said, “exceedingly pushy. I have a vested interest in having you in charge, not them.”
“You think so, do you?”
“You’ve told us Ramirez was up to something. I’m sure Ogun knew it. I know you knew it. I know you and Ogun aren’t precisely on the same program. But if you like the idea of turning yourself and your ship and crew over to the people that have gotten this station in need of a rescue, you’re flat crazy, and I don’t think that’s the case.”
Sabin lifted one eyebrow. And looked at Jase. “Does he talk to the aiji that way?”
“Yes,” Jase said.
“The fact is, we haven’t won. We won’t be halfway toward winning this until we’re fueled, loaded, and on our way back. Reunion could have solved all of their problems and ours simply by boarding Phoenix on your last call here. They didn’t do that. So they have another plan, involving some linkage to Alpha, and Alpha’s position is very blunt: fold operations, come under ship rule, and stop bothering the neighbors. Do you think you’re going to get what you want out of them?”
“Go entertain your aliens.”
“Advice, captain, simply advice.”
“No place for a damned atevi kid,” Sabin muttered. “No place for the whole damned lot of you. You have your assumptions. But we can’t go blazing in there laying down conditions to the Guildmaster, Mr. Cameron. Fuel first. Then we read them the rules as they’re going to be.”
“If there is fuel.”
“If there is fuel. If there isn’t, then I’ll most certainly call on Ms. Kroger to take our own measures and you’ll doubtless have a word on that, too. Meanwhile, we’re not near docking yet. Go sit down and don’t distract my crew with your predictions.”
She hadn’t asked the station about the fuel situation. She hadn’t presented any long-distance chatter, nothing friendly, nothing as ebullient as long-lost friends meeting. Was he surprised they weren’t leaping up and down and cheering on the bridge, either?
Sabin walked off.
“She appreciated the advice,” Jase said.
Bren raised an eyebrow.
“I work with her,” Jase said. “She’s on alert. She’s glad we got here, but she’s spooked. She’s not trusting anything she sees. She appreciates a cross-check of observations.”
Sabin wasn’t stupid. Thank God.
He went back to the small gathering of atevi and Mospheirans, relayed the gist of the discussion and his own speculations, in Ragi and in Mosphei’. And sat down and waited.
“Is the stationmaster still talking to us, nandi?” Cajeri asked.
“We ride so very far from the station that we have to wait for their answers to reach us. Like seeing lightning and listening for the thunder. This distance is ever so much farther than we ordinarily consider on a planet. So the captain talks and waits; the station talks and waits. By the time the station answers the captain’s questions, the captain has had time to sit down to tea and think about it.”