“Come over here,” she said, just that abruptly, not fool enough to talk in detail, nor was he; but they managed to convey, each to the other, that things weren’t just right.
Ginny Kroger punched out.
“Cl,” he said to that entity. “Send Kaplan at 1700. I’m taking a walk to the Mospheirans for a supper meeting.”
“ I’ll put through that request, ” Cl said, but by an hour later: “Sir, we haven’t any personnel available for escort at that hour.”
“And earlier or later?”
“We don’t have any personnel available for escort.”
“Maybe I’ll just wander around and see if I can find the place.”
“We can’t allow that, sir. Please stay in your section.”
“This is annoying,” he said. “I want Kaplan, and I want him or someone at 1700 hours.”
“ Let me see what I can do,” Cl said, and an hour later reported: “ You’ll have an escort, sir. I don’t know who, but someone.”
It was a stranger who turned up at their door at 1700 hours, an elder crewman, white-haired and one-handed, who gave him and Jago and Tano sullen and suspicious looks from the one eye that seemed sharp.
“Nice day,” Bren remarked midway to the Mospheirans’ section. “Fine day. Don’t you think?”
“Don’t know,” the crewman replied, with a surly glance at Tano and Jago… not knowing whether anyone aboard could tell Tano from Banichi without standing them side by side. It was what they hoped, at least. “They understand real language?”
“They don’t speak to strangers,” Bren said, knowing a hard case when he had one. He thought of adding, Or servants, but decided not to push it that far.
Algini was battened down tight in the home section with Nojana. It was their chance to familiarize Tano with the route, and he took it, with a sharp eye to either hand as they went, wondering if there might be at any point, down any corridor, some signal from Banichi.
There was not.
And Kroger was not encouraging. “We’re not getting a damned bit of cooperation out of the administration,” she said, she and he and Feldman walking, with the old man’s guidance, to the mess hall, down an utterly deserted corridor, into an utterly deserted establishment.
Not a single crew member in the place.
“Is the bar this lively?” he asked.
“The bar’s closed,” she said with a lift of the brows. “I don’t suppose you have a spare shot of vodka.”
“I think we do,” he said. “Unwarranted hardship, isn’t it? What’s that poem, Feldman?” He lapsed into Ragi doggereclass="underline"
“They would not send the ordinary guide tonight, They fake the aiji’s messages for days. If you find your safety no longer right, Come visit us and plan to stay.”
“Yes, sir,” Feldman said, and faked a nervous laugh.
Bad impromptu poetry and a young man trained enough in diplomacy and subterfuge to keep from blurting anything out. Feldman even managed a doggerel answer, half in meter:
“ No people now, no one talks.
No one we see, new guide not talk.”
“That’s very good,” Bren said with a laugh. It was amazing, for a novice. And informative. “We ought to let him practice with Jago and Banichi,” he said to Kroger. “You and I need to talk.”
They picked up their supper out of a bin, a container of something gray and something orange, and another container that held liquid.
“This is it,” Kroger said as they sat down and opened their containers. “Don’t even ask what it is. I don’t want to know.”
“I’ve sent for food,” he said. “In thirty days we should have your mission something edible.” He took a small taste, and it was bland, incredibly so. “I can send over some hot sauce. It might improve it.”
“It’s just pretty damned bad,” Kroger said. “And it generates, pardon me, physiological upset.”
“Dare I guess.” He was afraid to eat much of it, and pushed it around with his plastic spoon. “You’ve got to come over to our place. We’ll feed you.”
“If you have enough to ship us some meals, we’ll be in your debt.”
“This is inhumane,” he said. The orange had flavor, to be sure. It tasted like fish liver oil.
“I’m told you eat one and then the other. It does help. They’re supposed to have every necessary nutrient.”
“God, this is awful.”
“Oh, there’s better. But there’s been justthis stuff since Tom left.”
The Feldman-Jago-Tano conference was going on next to them at the table, with some laughter over phrases like, “We distrust extremely the least senior authority; we believe lives are in danger,” and “Have you heard anything from your offices?”
“No,” Feldman said in reply to Jago. “We are concerned, nadi.”
“What would you like?” Bren asked Kroger. “Fish? We’ve plenty of fish. Bread.”
“We’ll take absolutely anything,” Kroger said, and she surely knew as well as he did that the real information was passing in the chatter she couldn’t understand at all, that of Feldman with his security. “Our stomachs can’t take much more of this. Neither can our guts.”
“Glad to help,” he said, and wandered on to a discussion of imports, franchises and economics, enough to lull listening spies to sleep, while Feldman limped through several mistaken nouns and some half-heard assertion that green vegetables were alarmed.
No, Feldman indicated, Kroger had not been able to get messages through. They had heard nothing. They had received no indication that the shuttle had met with any difficulty.
It made some sense. The captains that had seized power dared not prevent them sending word down, but it limited the instruction they could get from the ground.
That silence meant thirty days for the captains in power to gain control of the situation, trusting theywouldn’t act without that instruction getting through to instruct them. He himself was the most dangerous presence aboard, because he could act without orders.
And intended to, at this point.
God knew where Banichi might be. The first thing the dissident captains certainly had to assure was Ramirez’ death and a lack of knowledgeable witnesses. And he had bet heavily that Ogun might not be as committed to the plot.
God knew what the rumor he had spread via Johnson and Andressson had done, whether it was still spreading or whether the candy-loving so-called security personnel had gone straight to the captains who’d attacked Ramirez and suggested they had to be silenced quickly.
He couldn’t tell Kroger all of it, not in this venue. He left that to Jago’s cleverness, not mentioning a single name, struggling for nouns the novice translator might comprehend.
And all the while there was such gentle, good-natured laughter from that table, just the very picture of the beginner practicing his understanding… if anyone in this insular community could comprehend the pretense of that art at all.
At least it might confuse them. Feldman spoke a fairly good code himself, for anyone who knew from infancy that it was easy to mistake the word for green vegetables for that for one’s superior.
Malapropisms and all, they endured the meal.
“Want to come to our place for a drink?” Bren asked then. Kroger had gathered up some of the disgusting supper for Shugart, on watch in the apartment.