Ramirez and Ogun listened intently, unmoving, perhaps not unaware that Tabini had steered the situation to this point, and meant to go on steering it… perhaps as disinterested in running this station as Tabini was in running their ship or ruling humans.
“We may have an agreement,” Ramirez said. “You will need to present the case to the Guild in general session, but I think you see very clearly what our interests are.”
“I think our interests are entirely compatible.”
“You have to explain it to Mospheira.”
“I have no difficulty explaining it to Mospheira. Ms. Kroger and I seem to have a problem, possibly of my making, but President Durant and Secretary of State Tyers and I do communicate quite well.”
Ramirez gave a small, short laugh, indicative, perhaps, of chagrin at the rapidity of the negotiation.
“Interesting to meet you in person, Mr. Cameron. Jase is quite emphatic we shouldn’t deal with the Mospheirans. Yolanda, interestingly, just says believe you.”
He hadn’t expected that. He gave a slight, tributary nod of the head. “My compliments to Ms. Mercheson. I’m flattered.”
“Jase says you’re the best asset we have.”
“Jase roomed with me for three years. If he and I, given our starting point, haven’t killed one another, peace is possible between our parts of the human race.”
A slight smile from Ogun. There was an achievement.
“Jase has seen what you wanted him to see,” Ogun said.
“Jase could go anywhere he applied to go. He was rather inundated with the workload that descended on both of us. Your shuttle flies, gentlemen. We, on the other hand, worked a very large staff very long hours.”
“The shuttle is a damn miracle,” Ramirez said. “Another Phoenixis far, far harder. Fabrication in space. Extrusion construction. Simultaneously repairing the station.”
“The population of the continent is a classified matter, but suffice it to say, if that is a national priority, labor is no problem. Leave that matter to the aiji.”
“How many fatalities are you prepared to absorb?” Ogun asked.
“None,” Bren said flatly. “But that’s the aiji’s problem. Accidents are possible. Carelessness won’t be tolerated.”
“And meet the schedule?” Ogun asked. “Three years for a starship?”
“Depends on your design, on materials. Transmit it to Mogari-nai with my order, and translation on the design starts today. Materials inquiry starts on the same schedule. We have a good many of the simple conversions automated in the translation, with crosscheck programs; we’ve gotten quite quick at this. We build the ship, we turn it over to you, werun the station our own way.”
“You don’t understand. It has to be built in orbit.”
“Yes, Captain, I do understand. That’s why we have to make immediate provision to get the other shuttle in operation and to get crew housed reliably and comfortably. We’ll rely on you, I hope, to determine what materials are available most economically in space, with what labor force, and what we have to lift.”
“Are you remotely aware of the cost involved?”
Bren shrugged. “There is no cost so long as the push to do it is even and sustains itself. Materials are materials. You won’t deplete a solar system; you won’t pollute a planet; you won’t push atevi any faster than they choose to work. The critical matter is who’s asking them to work, whether their quarters are adequate… and all I say about the second ship is subject to the aiji’s agreement that it should be undertaken as an emergency matter.—Does your ship work?”
That question startled them.
“She works,” Ramirez said.
“That’s a relief.”
“Fuel,” Ramirez said. “That’s a necessity.”
“Can be done.”
“You talk to the general meeting, Mr. Cameron, and we have a bargain.”
“No problem that I see. We’ll straighten out the details, and I’ll go down again.” He added, as if it were ordinary business, not looking up at the instant. “I could use Jase. He can come and go, but I need him, urgently; he’s the other half of our translation team for technical operations.”
“He said so,” Ramirez said with some humor, and didn’t quite answer his request, but the response sounded encouraging to Bren’s ears.
“When, for this meeting?” Bren asked.
“Two days,” Ramirez said. “Oh-eight-hundred.”
Ramirez said a majority was a given, and wanted two days. Bren didn’t raise an eyebrow, but thought the thought, nonetheless, and gave a small, second shrug as he drew out a common notepad with a pen, and made a note.
“Meanwhile,” Bren said, so doing, “we’d like to feel free to move about.”
“Mr. Cameron,” Ogun said, “there’s hard vacuum on the other side of certain doorways, and we don’t allow our own personnel to wander about.”
“Access to crew areas. Guides, if you like. Integration into your communications.”
“Not until there’s agreement,” Ogun said.
“We need radio contact with our own government. As, I’m sure, Mospheirans will ask the same. Resolution of outstanding points on the agenda the last several years, release of historic records, archived files…”
“Classified,” Ogun said.
Now Bren did lift the eyebrow, and stared straight at the captains. “Centuries-old records, gentlemen?”
“Mospheira wants them. There’s ongoing negotiation on the matter.”
“It’s been ongoing for three years. We see no reason for these files to be withheld. Was there any secret in the original mission? Were we targetedto the white star? Or here? That isone of the conspiracy theories, generally promulgated in small handbills throughout the island… has been, I think, for over a hundred years. Of course, that flies in the face of the competing theory that atevi, having just made the steam engine practical, secretly sent out energy waves to divert our navigation to this world to take us over. The fact is, sirs, there are theories; the more reasonable ones do find credibility, where there’s secrecy with no evident, rational explanation for that secrecy. Werewe targeted to the white star? Isthere some mammoth conspiracy? Haveyou always known where Earth is? Was Taylor’s flight sabotaged?”
“Release the files,” Ramirez said. “The short answer is, Mr. Cameron, there’s no secret. They’ve been retained because negotiations have remained volatile, because we haven’t known how certain historical information would intersect your government’s opinion… the Mospheiran government, or the atevi. There were a couple of murders. Inflammatory history. And a damned lot about old Earth that we weren’t sure how the atevi would receive, and consider, frankly, none of their business to worry about. But no one’s history’s perfect. The main reason’s simply that they’re something Mospheira wants and something the atevi want, and we have them, until we know more about you. But in earnest of the agreement you set forward, I’ll release them. They didn’t exist on the station when we arrived. We theorize you must have lost them, probably in your notorious War of the Landing. We and the station storage now have redundant copies, and between you and us, Mr. Cameron, I’m anxious to see the collected works of our species replicated in a storage deep in a gravity well. We’ve stared extinction in the face, Mr. Cameron, and we wantthose files duplicated. They’ll be available within the hour. When you order transmission, we will transmit, in your name.”