“Both factions had a greater good at issue,” Kroger said. “Both factions thought they were right, that if they gave in on one point, they’d erode all they had. Desperate, suspicious times. Both sides thought they allwould die if they didn’t have their way. Robots. Common damned sense, Mr. Cameron!”
“And a joint company,” Lund said. “Your large-scale engineering, our electronics, our control devices.”
“I see no difficulty in agreement,” Bren said. “I see no difficulty at all.” His own people had a plan, buried deep within the departments of the government, but, thank God, a plan, and a viable one. He was for the first time in a decade proudto be Mospheiran. “Can you deliver it?”
Kroger let go a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Cameron, seventeen of us have spent our careersassuring we can deliver it. We knowthe metallurgy—and damned hard that’s been to develop with all the materials having to be imported from the mainland—but damn, we’ve doneit. For the robotics, the specific designs… that was a problem. The records had been lost. We just got those records, Mr. Cameron.”
“If the archive shouldhave those plans,” Bren began, and Kroger lowered her fist onto the table.
“The archive doeshave them, Cameron. It does. I looked. I knew what the files ought to be, where they ought to be. I’ve worked my whole lifearound that hole in the records, and believe me I know where to look in the archive.”
Her whole life… was that merely a figure of speech?”
How long? Bren wondered with a nervous and sudden chill. How long had Kroger been working on this notion? More than three years back threw her into the whole pro-space movement, which had its roots in the Heritage Party, Gaylord Hanks’ party, with all its anti-atevi sentiment.
But that didn’t mean everyone who’d ever taken that route because it was the only route for pro-spacers was automatically Gaylord Hanks’ soulmate. Their proposal, just voiced, was a pro-space proposal, but it wasn’t anti-atevi. That the Heritage Party might have drawn in the honest and sensible, the dreamers with a willingness to ignore the darker side of their associations… it was possible.
Kroger, whatever else, was not a fool. She sat enjoying supper in an atevi household and proposing, with Lund, cooperation. Proposing a program that would save atevi lives if the aiji undertook the rough part of the operation. Proposing to better what he’d envisioned and give her benefit to the project.
“I thought you might be Hanks’ partisan,” he said. “And I don’t think you are. I think you’re an honest negotiator, Ms. Kroger. Dr. Kroger. Mr. Lund, the same. I think this might be entirely viable.”
Kroger said: “Damn Gaylord Hanks, Mr. Cameron. No fewof us damn Gaylord Hanks.”
“Damn Gaylord Hanks?” Lund said, with a sudden, cheerful smile. Kroger had somewhat neglected her main course in the passion of argument, but Lund had demolished his, looking up sharply now and again, clearly paying attention. “I knowGaylord Hanks. I’ve known him since school days, and now a lot of people know him. The Heritage Party has another wing, I’m glad to say, and Hanks can take a rowboat north for what most of us think.”
“So I have the Heritage party for guests.” He’d picked up the prior signals of Kroger’s attitudes, the unconscious statements of prejudice; he didn’t see them in evidence at this table, in this room. He took that for a signal, perhaps, of a woman who’d adopted protective coloration, perhaps in a bid for survival.”
“Certainly not Hanks’ followers,” Kroger said. “Neither one of us. I’m not a dogmatist; I’m a scientist. Tom’s an economist, performs wizardry, odd moments of magic, I don’t know what; but he’s no more a follower of Hanks than I am or you are.”
“That’s quite good news.”
“There was quiet cheering inside the party when the invasion bounced off the shores,” Lund said. “That’s not publicized, but, God, that wasn’t a direction we ought to have gone, and no few of us knew it. We didn’t have the means to stop it. There was cheering in some quarters when the ship came back; there isn’t, yet, in others, and in some surprising quarters: some of the pro-spacers don’t want it. They’d wanted to do it themselves, if you want the honest truth; they damned sure didn’t want another Guild dominion.”
“I know these people,” Bren said quietly.
“Robotics,” Kroger reiterated. “What we should have done from the beginning, what we couldn’t do then, what we cando now.”
And from Tom Lund: “You’re not alone, Bren. Not you, not the atevi. Others share your enthusiasm for this new opportunity. Believe that, if nothing else.”
“I do believe you,” he said. “And I’m very willing to take this to the aiji with a strong recommendation.”
There was a small silence at the table, a trembling, hope-fraught kind of silence.
“Well!” Lund said. “ Well!Good! But I trust this room is secure. We understand your principals are rather good at that sort of thing.”
“They are.”
“Promise Sabin what you have to,” Lund said quietly, “and let’s get our own agreement nailed down, together, present a deal signed and sealed. Thentell the captains.”
Bren gave a small, conscious smile, thinking to himself that these two were a tolerably good team. Sometimes Kroger seemed in charge, sometimes Lund, and he began to get the feeling that they were accustomed to sandbagging their way to agreements, much as the aiji was.
But these two were from inside the Heritage establishment, the pro-space wing, perhaps, perhaps some more convolute— associationwas an atevi word, one with emotional depth, and implicit unity. Coalitionof interests seemed more apt, a human way of operating quite similar and quite different from ways atevi would understand.
“I’ll reserve what we’ve discussed,” he said, “and we’ll continue discussing it. This venue is secure. It’s one reason I encouraged you to come here. I hope you’ll come back.”
“Every intention to,” Kroger said.
It was a success, an unqualified success, Bren said to himself. Obstacles were falling down left and right because the situation mandated cooperation and old, old rivalries and attitudes didn’t survive the encounter. It wasn’t histriumph; it was the triumph of basic common sense, after a long night of bad decisions. Three years of diminished power for Gaylord Hanks and Mospheirans had gathered up their wits and brought the likes of Ginny Kroger into striking distance of a patient, lifelong work. The pro-spacers had made their move.
Thank God, he thought.
The servants had carried on their business in near-silence, dealing in small signals, whisking courses onto and off the table. Only at the end, Bren signaled Narani to come and meet the guests, whom he introduced in Ragi, with translation, and said, in Mosphei’, “A nod of the head is courteous. One doesn’t rise or take their hands.”
His guests showed that courtesy; the servant staff lined up and bowed in great delight, and there were smiles all around, that gesture both species, both remote genetic heritages, shared… he’d never so much wondered at it or thought it odd until he saw Bindanda and Kroger smile at each other, both looking entirely self-conscious, each in their own native way… convenient in an upright species to unfocus the hunting gaze, perhaps, this bowing and smiling: hard to glare and smile simultaneously.