“I put her into my apartment,” Bren said, “with my staff, with instructions to protect her against the consequences of telling me the truth.—You didn’t know I’d done that.”
“I heard she was there. I didn’t hear the circumstances. Obviously I didn’t.”
“But you’re scared.”
“I’m damned upset! This isn’t a small affair, Bren. This is explosive.”
“It took Yolanda some thinking, I imagine, to see past the obvious. Ididn’t see it, first off. Did you?”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
“ Ragi, nadi-ji. Give me the benefit of your thoughts, if you will. Dare we say you know what I’m talking about, and we’re both distressed about what Mercheson said?”
“I didn’t expect Yolanda was involved any longer. I thought she was out of this, once Ramirez died.”
“ Whatwas she out of?”
“Ship politics.”
Thatcovered the known world. “You were personally involved with her,” Bren said, determined on confrontation. “Then, surprise, nadi-ji, you weren’t. You couldn’t face each other.—I could have predicted that breakup, forgive me. It’s the job.”
“It was herjob, as it turned out.” The job she’d done for Ramirez, the job she hadn’t told either of them about. “Wasn’t it? Or do we know something else?”
“You didn’t know what she was doing when you broke up. But it was there, nadi. Secrets are bad bedfellows.”
Ship-speak. “They’re killers. None of which is here or there with what she’s charging.”
“And you’re still mad. You were damnedmad when you found out what she’d been doing with Tabini and Ramirez. But you were mad before that. You canceled her out. You didn’t deal with her. You didn’t talk. That was bad business, and I didn’t know how to patch it. Our conversations stopped, too. She avoided me as well as you. I attributed it to the severance of relations with you. As it turned out, she needed help, and I was blind.”
“She could have asked for it. Weren’t youmad, when you found out what she was up to?”
“Damned mad. And jealous. I confess it. Confession’s good for the soul. Isn’t that what they say? Maybe hers is quieter now.”
“I suppose it is. I don’t know where the hell this is going.”
“Well, for one, nadi-ji, I think she still cares and I know what bastards we are to live with under the best of circumstances.”
“None of your business, and thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Listen to me, nadi.” Back into Ragi, under cover, into a different framework of thinking, before thinking spiraled out of parameters in ship-speak. “The man’chi underlying is the same, hers and ours, different than the ship. There’s a human truth in that, like it or not, and I suggest you listen to the whole conversation, in which she expressed deep concern for your safety and your welfare and the reasons—there were reasons—why she didn’t feel free to come to either of us. I’m sure jealousy exists in your feelings toward her, but not professional jealousy. I think jealousy of Ramirez doomed your relationship.”
“That’s nonsense.”
Right back to Ragi. “You aren’t related by blood, but you are by father—real father, not the centuries-dead heroes. Ramirez was the head of man’chi, and like any aiji, he worked with secrets, he kept secrets, he nourished them, bred them and crossbred them. There’s a reason he could deal with Tabini, whose whole instinct is secrecy. In that, I’m sure, nadi, that they damned well got along. And in the process, he made you and Yolanda jealous as hell of each other.”
Jase didn’t deny it.
“So he put her in an untenable position,” Bren said, “made her privy to his deception of both of us. And she couldn’t share a bed with you or a pot of tea in my household, not then nor after he died. No, she’s not the most agreeable. She detested the planet. But now she feels safest not in the society she knows from birth, but inside my household, watched over by my staff—being paidhi-aiji and dealing with Tabini. This isn’t the course either of us would have predicted for her. But she hasn’t beenwhere either of us thought she was, nadi. She’s been in a very frightening territory, while you and I were living comfortably, building the future we thought was relatively safe. She knew. I doubt she slept well, these last few years.”
“The hell! She could have come to me.”
“Could she? And what would Ramirez have done, nadi? And what might happen with Tabini?”
Tabini had to give anyone pause. And Jase paused.
“His dying grieved you,” Bren said, “and set her adrift, nadi. Now I hope she’s found a harbor a little more calm than where she’s lived. But while we’ve been comfortable these last years, she’s had years to think, and to assemble the pieces Ramirez necessarily gave her. As translators, we’re not quite machines, are we? We do bring in bits and pieces of our own knowledge. And there she sat, a member of the crew, hearing all this about the contact, knowing who went, knowing now that there wasa secret, knowing it was lurking at levels we didn’t deal with—what was she to do? You’dbeen taken into a captaincy she might have expected for herself. Shewas passed over, and still sat there, in Ramirez’s company, a repository of his official secrets—and whydidn’t he appoint her to the office?”
“I’ve no idea. I wish to hell he had.”
“But she was with him, nadi, day and night; she was subject to his calls—she had all those skills. Was he going to appoint a new captain who’d have full knowledge what was going on? Who had close ties to me, and who might gain access codes? A new ship-aiji who’d be with him so often she’d unbalance the relationship with other officers? She livedin his office. Wasn’t that the point of your own jealousy? And what if that had played out among the other ship-aijiin?”
Jase had let go his handhold, so still he stayed in place, adrift. The pain and anger that had been part of his dealings with Yolanda seemed to have gone elsewhere, redirected, reflected.
“Maybe it was,” Jase said. “Maybe a lot of things were poisoned in the process, nadi.”
“Then Ramirez died and left you Jenrette… one assumes to advise you, where matters come up.”
Anger gave way to intense worry.
“He was aboard the station,” Bren said. “All the others that went aboard the station out there, I suppose, were Ramirez’s men. What bothers me—all of them just happened to die in the Tamun affair. All but Jenrette.”
“Defending Ramirez,” Jase said.
“Like Yolanda, I’ll tell you, I’m beginning to ask myself what Tamun was doing that blew matters up and started the shooting.”
“I can’t believe there was anything more in it than Tamun’s ambition.”
“He was already at highest rank,” Bren protested. “What more was there for ambition to go for?”
“Control. Authority. Real authority.”
“And what could give it to him, better than information? Jase, Jase, I’d like you to find out what Jenrette knows. I’d like you to get a copy of that tape, if you can do it, before we leave dock. Before we commit any further to this mission.”
“I can’t do that,” Jase said.
“You can, nadi. Just ask him.”
“No. You don’t understand. It’s not possible. Jenrette’s transferred to Sabin.”
“When did thathappen?”
“When we made out the staff assignments. When we divided the crew, and said who was going and staying. I wanted Kaplan with me, on my staff—I trust Kaplan. I wanted to keep him and Pressman and Polano as my aides, and most of all, I didn’t want to leave them behind on the station, where Ogun’s going to appoint a fourth captain, which was the regulation way things work. That’s where they were supposed to go: they weren’t going to be aboard, the way Ogun had drawn things up. But Jenrette and I—I don’t say we don’t get along, but everything I do, it’s obvious in his opinion whether it’s what Ramirez would do, or the way Ramirez did things: he second-guesses me at every turn, I’m not easy with him, and it’s not the best situation, nadi. When I want something done, just done, cheerfully, I ask Kaplan, but I never was going to push Jenrette out. I respect his advice. So I said why didn’t Ogun and Sabin just increase their staffs, which they could use, and I’d have Jenrette and his team andKaplan and his. That’s when it blew up. Sabin said I’d insulted Jenrette, which I was trying hard not to do. So with Sabin’s famous tact, that fairly well put the personnel question into an hour-long, angry argument—all the principals being present, including Jenrette and his unit, and Kaplan and his.”