“So,” Ilisidi said, “have we thought of an answer to this conundrum?”
“Several things have become clear, aiji-ma—that while this ship was absent, the aliens returned. That Ramirez may have earned his Guild’s distrust and disapproval in seeking out contact with foreigners. Third—that the stationmaster refuses to take Sabin-aiji’s orders.”
Why was he going through the list of new information? The job involved only the foreign ship.
But did it?
Something bothered him, beyond the obvious detail of goings-on in their absence, Ramirez’s subterfuges, the Guild’s historic autocracy. He wasn’t sure what nagged at him.
But the dowager listened, waiting for him to put it all together. And he—
He sipped his tea and looked from the dowager to Gin, the third leg of the homeworld tripod, met a sober, on-party-manners look: and the thought of Gin and the colony the ship abandoned—troubled him.
Why should it?
His job was the ship out there. The ship now moving toward and them toward it.
And what was he going to say, that he could say? Hail them in ship-speak as if they were supposed to understand? Continue with the blink-code?
Sitting out here six years meant observation or a stubborn ship’s captain.
Or damage.
“One learns, aiji-ma, that the ship has sat quietly out here, they claim for six years, doing nothing. Station thinks it may be robotic.” He rendered that in Mosphei’, for Gin, who looked as if he’d posed her a personal question. “With control at some remove off in the dark peripheries of the solar system. Which is a very large place.”
“So,” Ilisidi said. “And what shall we do if it is robotic?”
He translated that for Gin, too.
“Or it might be stuck, without fuel,” was Gin’s instant assessment. “If it’s a robot, either the other side lost track of it and it’s out of instructions, or they know it’s here and it’s doing a job. If it is a robot. Personally, I wouldn’t wholly trust a robot to avoid a war. I think they’d be outright stupid to leave diplomacy to a machine, and to leave a weapon sitting out here ready to explode isn’t the way a smart government would carry on, is it? We could be some very powerful non-participant.”
Another translation.
And a thought. It might be sitting there waiting, as robots did so well, for input. And they could well be that input, couldn’t they?
Or if it might be doing a job—what job, beyond observing? Communicating?
Gin was right. Robots weren’t outstanding at avoiding hostilities or at finessing interspecies communication.
He sipped his tea, thinking, it came here, hit the station, and it parked. Odd behavior. Behavior that, however alien, didn’t seem to have a constructive outcome—unless there was some piece of information missing.
“Ramirez arrived,” he said slowly. “And left.” Translation. “Perhaps it waits for the ship.” Translation. “And here we are.” Translation. Grim, cold thought.
“These are not reasonable people,” Ilisidi said, “to fire on persons who have not fired on them.”
“Would a wise and civilized entity fire without more provocation than that? One hardly knows, aiji-ma. Within the possibilities of truly alien behavior—it might.” Translation.
Another sip of tea.
One fired—if.
If one’s culture was to fire on strangers.
If fired upon. That was a big if.
Sip of tea. Very basic thought. One fired to stop an attack. Or what one construed as an attack.
Then one ran for one’s life. If fear was the guiding principle.
Primary mistake to make any third species behave like humans or atevi. But a third point, a third species, could close a geometric figure, make an enclosure, bend lines back to intersect everyone’s positions, over and over and over. Three points could close a circle. Two points might be part of that circle—but one had to guess where the third might land.
Primary mistake to expect them to behave the same. Primary mistake to think there was no logic—that their behavior didn’t make sense within their culture. Give them the same set of circumstances and they’d always do the same thing. Chaos and chaotic response didn’t get a species out of the swamp and into a space program. There was logic in the behavior. That there was any willingness to signal at all was a fair indication that they expected response in kind.
He drew a breath. “One is grateful, aiji-ma.—Thank you, Gin-aiji.”
Nods from both. To that extent, Gin had taken in the adjacent culture. And both understood the value of a tea break.
“ Takehold, takehold minor, takehold, three minute warning. ”
He stood up quickly, turned over his teacup—bowed, and with Banichi and Jago, headed back to his borrowed quarters.
Braking. What the senior captain called a gentle braking. One hoped the teacups were safely put away.
Chapter 7
The bridge was calm when he arrived, the captains momentarily converged at the edge of the corridor. “It’s braked,” Jase reported. “It’s braked, we’ve braked.”
“Excellent news.” It was. Thank God, he thought.
“Our courses are not head-on. Closest approach in three hours fourteen minutes. We signaled with all lights, then braked. They mirrored all actions.”
“Good. Very good.”
“Glad you approve,” Sabin said dryly.
“It was the right answer, captain,” Bren said, deliberately oblivious. Then: “Is the station armed, captain?”
Sabin gave him an odd look. “Yes. I would be, wouldn’t you?”
“We’re human. We’re both human. I can say atevi would be, too. We don’t know what it expected. What would Reunion have done, back then, if something like this just showed up and came close?”
Small silence. “I frankly don’t know.”
“They could have fired?”
“I have no way to know.”
“They’re human. They could have fired.”
“Not ours to estimate, Mr. Cameron.”
Near white-out of thought. It was possible. “We have to be careful not to give that impression, captain. My advice—last thing we want to do,” Bren said, watching that central monitor, “is send anything substantial outside our hull. If, on the other hand, they do it—don’t shoot at it. Evade.” He had no desire to divert any energy into a debate with Sabin. He had more faith Jase was on his side—if sides there were. The train of actions from the alien craft so far mirrored theirs, all the way. Now they paused. Waiting, both ships careening along a converging diagonal, facing one another.
They had to do something before someone made a frightening move, something one side or the other might misinterpret.
“Blink lights one and eight,” Bren said. “Any possible confusion of communications with attack, if we try to talk to them in a voice transmission?”
“At low energy,” Jase said. “Not likely.”
“I take it that it still hasn’t transmitted.” He heard traffic via the earpiece: blink sent. And very quickly answered. They were that close.
“Negative,” Sabin said.
“They’ve been sitting here for six years. I’d think they’d have learned something about our communications. At least our frequencies.”