God.
“And in the upshot of things, I exploded, I got my way and I kept Kaplan, and Ogun and Sabin increased staff by three, but by then there were hurt feelings, and Sabin said she wanted Jenrette’s experience, if I didn’t value it. I said I did want it, and it wasn’t like that and I wanted him to stay; but Sabin said if she was going to increase staff, she was senior on the ship and she got the pick of staff on the ship. She wanted him, and insisted he transfer, and there it was.”
Disaster. And worse. “When was this?”
“About six hours ago.”
Not good news at all. He shot Jago a look and had one back.
Appalling news, considering that Jenrette’s name had become an issue inside the residency, and Yolanda had just dropped out of Ogun’s reach, not by Ogun’s orders. And could a bug possibly get past Algini’s countermeasures? Could distant listening devices have been hearing, if nothing else, the proper names at issue?
Were they doing that now?
“Coincidences do happen,” Bren said. “Sometimes they really do happen, and merging staffs is always a mess. I can’t see how the ship could get a bug past our surveillance. But this is worrisome, besides inconvenient.”
“A breach could happen, nadiin-ji,” Jago said quietly. “In our craft, once a countermeasure exists, one innovates. We don’t know the ship’s limits. They arethe fathers of technology.”
Constant warning. Constant caution. On truly sensitive matters, they talked on the move, in the corridors: harder to pick up. Inside the apartment, they talked behind an electronic screen, in the security station, in a very small safe perimeter.
Hadn’t they warned him? And he’d talked to Yolanda in the study.
“I want that tape,” Bren said.
“You want universal peace, too, nadi, but I don’t know I can deliver it.”
“They haveuniversal peace, and they can lose the aiji’s cooperation, and ours, and the island’s, none of which will help them at all in whatever they’re up to.”
“We don’t know that they care. If they’re overhearing us, and I don’t think it’s happening, but I don’t know everything—they could be forewarned, even now.”
“I’m saying if we’re going to trust Sabin enough to bring members of the aiji’s family into it, we’re going to have to trust Sabin.” He said that sentence in ship-speak, in case. And lapsed right back into Ragi. “And right now and until we know more, we won’t drink a cup she pours. The tape.”
“It won’t be a tape,” Jase said. “That’s an expression.”
“How does it exist?”
“Deep in log archives.”
“Can you reach it? Can you get access?”
“I’m not senior. Ogun can,” Jase added. “We could ask him. We could outright ask him.”
“And, as you say, if we ask him, it could vanish in a moment. Permanently. And Sabin’s senior on the ship. I’ll take for granted she has the codes, nadi.”
“I believe she does.”
“It’s worth a certain risk of diplomatic difficulty, Jase-ji, to know in absolute detail what this ship met aboard the station. Can you call your former aide for a conference, some unfinished business?”
“I can’t do that to him. Bren, I can’t.”
“I didn’t say we were going to make a move.”
“I don’t know what it could entail with things as they are. And you aren’t in command of this mission, Bren-nadi. Ilisidiis. Am I mistaken?”
“No. You’re not mistaken.”
“And if her staff finds out what you suspect, you can’t tell me what she’d stick at.”
True. He drifted back against the counter, took a solid grip. Air currents had taken Jase away from a hand grip and Jase reached and drew himself back before he lost easy contact.
“I’m not going to give this up,” Bren said.
“I can try to talk to Jen—”
“Names,” Bren cautioned him, and Jase cut it off.
“I can try to talk, myself, nadi.”
“We have how long, reasonably, until the ship breaks dock?”
“Six hours at minimum. Not above twelve.”
“I want the tape, Jase-paidhi.” At a certain point in emergencies, all common sense seemed to cut out and priorities became very cold, very remote from the consequences of failure: downhill, breakneck. “I can’t claim to have created the aishidi’tat, but I created the situation, the whole structure of twigs that supports it. So I know the alternatives. I know what we had before, and I know that there can be worse outcomes than a breach with this mission. I can imagine those very welclass="underline" betraying the dowager, alienating the aiji—us finding out that our allies came here to get control of our resources.”
“No.”
“Maybe a war that devastated the mainland would suit certain purposes just very well.”
“That’s not so, nadi!”
“Prove it isn’t. Prove to me your ship didn’t come here with exactly that purpose—to find out the conditions in this solar system, to fuel the ship, and go home to report, preparatory to a power grab. We have only your word that the situation you reported out there even exists. We’re betting the whole planet on details we don’t know. You’ve insisted all along nobody on the ship knows better. But now that Landa-ji, out of her private hell of the last few years, points out the obvious, that there wouldhave been a tape record in archive, well, yes, I’d rather like to see it before I step off the edge.”
“What do you think? That the whole crew is in on a conspiracy?”
“No, I’m suggesting they’re the last to know. Either get me the tape, or say you can’t, or don’t want to know, and we’lldo it, but don’task me to assume everything’s all right.”
Jase’s eyes made an eloquent shift toward the door, the windowed wall. “I take for granted Banichi’s heard what we’ve said.”
“I’m sure.”
“Has Cenedi?”
It was a question. Jago’s face gave no hint at all.
“You may answer, Jago-ji,” Bren said.
“Yes to both. We are within the dowager’s household, of allied man’chi, nadiin-ji.”
“Then this is my answer. You’re within my household,” Jase said in a brittle voice, “under my roof, as myhonored guests… and so is the dowager. I don’t think if it were Geigi’s house we would contemplate breaking the historic porcelains because we had a suspicion.”
“Not in the least. Nor do we here.”
“Or endangering lives.”
“Nor shall we.”
“I wasn’t aware of movements I should have known, because I was submerged in my own efforts at a very dangerous time—trying to memorize everything I could, as hard as I could, as fast as I could, after years of saying I wouldn’t. And that’s my fault.”
“We’re not speaking of fault, here, Jase.”
“For the record, it’s my fault. I know a mistake when I see it. But I won’t compound that fault by turning one of my own over to you for an open-ended set of questions, or failing to take command of operations in my household, Bren-paidhi. Let’s have that clear.”
“You’re saying you’ll help us.”
“I’m saying if this file exists, Iwant it, myself. I assume Sabin can get it, but I don’t know that. I assume she knows it’s out there. If she knows and hasn’t told me, or if she doesn’t know and I find out something she needs to know, I’ll decide then what to do with the information. No. I won’t help you. You’llhelp me, and I’ll share information with your side.”