“This is my watch,” the voice came back with some minuscule delay. “They warned us the link was going up, that they were going to contact you. They’ve been stuttering off and on all this watch. So how are you? Are you safe? Is everyone safe?”
Bren switched to ship-speak, for confirmation. “I’m in the middle of an office party, at the moment, celebrating getting our records back—which we’re doing. We’re putting things back together as fast as we can. The aiji is back in office, the bad guys are on the run, the trains are almost on schedule, and the airlines are back in the air. How are you, up there?”
“May we talk to him?” Cajeiri asked, leaning close, and yelled: “Hi, Jase! Hello!”
“Hello,” the informal reply came back, startled. “Nand’ Cajeiri?”
The boy was on his own agenda. Bren edged Cajeiri back a little.
“You can see,” he said, preempting the mike, “that we’re in good shape here, hale and well. How are your supplies holding out up there?”
“Oh, we’re surviving, but we’re getting damned tired of fishcakes.
We’re in contact with the island. They’re prepping the shuttle there.
They’re telling us the other ships survived. Is that true?”
“Survived, but need extensive maintenance and checks, and likewise training time for the crews—they’re coming in, and unfortunately the simulators didn’t fare as well as the shuttles themselves. A few personnel are taking stock, going through checklists right now, and we can get flight programs and such from the island, even use their sims, I’m sure, if we have to. We don’t have an initial flight date. It may be a couple of months yet, but we will fly.”
“That’s great news,” the answer came down. “Really great news.
We wish it were tomorrow, but that those shuttles survived, that’s a real bonus.”
“How is Gene?” the youthful voice shouted past his shoulder.
“I’m sure he’s well,” Jase answered him. “No great problems in the population. We’re well fed, well housed, and settling in.”
The ship crew settling into the station was probably at about the same state of organization as they were, settling into the Bu-javid, Bren thought, living out of baggage and trying to find their records.
Thousands of refugees from the far station had to be fitted into quarters, and a handful of malcontents had to be put into very secure confinement. The station had already been short of supplies when its population had doubled—with, thank goodness, spare supplies from the ship itself—and order and supply was probably balanced on a knife’s edge now, until the shuttles started making their regular flights.
“We’re going to get essentials up there on a priority,” Bren promised him. “Start making your shopping list. Get that to my staff here as well as over to Shawn. We’ll compare notes and get the number one shuttle going with a full load of the most critical.”
“Wonderful news,” Jase said. “Don’t worry about us starving. The tanks will keep us going, and we’re careful with water, but we’re not short. We’re tracking a near-Earth iceball we’re pretty sure we can nab, give or take a month, and that will set us up much better, in that regard.”
“Good, good,” Bren said.
“We’ll set up a contact schedule,” Jase said. “There are some technicals we need to advise the aiji about. Measures the station took while we were gone, some satellites we deployed during the difficulty.”
Well, that might explain certain complaints. “We have reports of landings.”
“Unmanned ground stations,” Jase said. “Those are separate. I gave your staff a parting gift. Rely on them.”
Bren shot a look at Banichi and Jago, who stood near each other, not far away, their faces completely uninformative— So maybe it wasn’t something to discuss even with this entirely loyal staff, and in front of a trio of youngsters who weren’t a fraction that discreet.
“I’ll ask, then,” he said, taken aback—as he was sure Banichi and Jago were, since that had been one of the ongoing puzzles of the new administration. “It’s good to hear your voice, friend.”
“I’ve been worried about you,” Jase said.
“Mutual.” So Jase was safe. There had been no riot among the four-thousand-odd stationers they had just installed in a station with limited food and water. But with Jase reporting in safe and secure, his other personal worry, Toby, came back to him with particular force in the moment. He didn’t intersperse personal crises with official ones, not if he could help it, but Toby had deserved official attention, dammit, some gratitude for his part in things—and communication was still newly restored: his present recourse to the ship and the island might be more than spotty in days to come. “Jase, you haven’t heard anything from my brother Toby, have you?”
A pause. “I know his location.”
My God. He was ordinarily cautious. He’d tumbled into this one in front of a room of witnesses, the way he’d just done about the unauthorized landings. He blurted out, nonethless: “Is he safe?”
“Tyers knows. Can you ask him?”
Shawn Tyers. The President. He’d asked Shawn to find out. And Shawn had been in contact with the ship. He was numb with shock and—he thought—relief. And there was the Messenger standing by, who might or might not penetrate deep ship-speak slang. He had just blown cover. Not badly, but enough to say Toby was in play, and Shawn knew.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s safe.”
So Toby was listening, he thought. Still on duty. His heart was pounding. The wretch hadn’t just done one mission for the government: he’d posted himself offshore to relay information. And now that he’d just blown his cover, Toby had urgently to be reeled in. “Thank you, Jase. Thanks.”
“I’d better let you go,” Jase said, “and go report. We’re at shift-change. Sabin and Ogun will want me to say hello on their behalf.”
“Hello back.”
“Can you say hello to Gene for me?” Cajeiri asked, bouncing into mike range.
“I shall, young sir.” The last came in Ragi, and Cajeiri— there was no restraining him—looked at least mollified.
“Please let him call me, Jase-aiji!” Cajeiri cried.
“Thank you, Jase-ji,” Bren said.
“Take care,” Jase said, without answering the juvenile request, and the contact went out. The room broke into cheers, after its breathless silence, staffers delighted to have another demonstration that essential systems were working, and the Messenger looked absolutely relieved that it had gone without glitch—in itself, encouragement to believe this was an honest man—though one could not but think this was the one mission in all the continent that the chancier leadership of that Guild would want in the hands of a man of their own. He didn’t trust him. Not for a gold-plated instant.
“Your leave, nandi,” that man said, bowing. “I shall report the contact a success.”
“With my gratitude,” Bren said. “With utmost gratitude to your Guild. Wait.” They had all the appurtenances of ceremony, and wax was still ready. He signed and sealed cards for the occasion, one for the Messenger and one for the Messengers’ Guild as a whole, before the Messenger left their company, an official sentiment of thanks and a memento of the occasion. The network was back up, communications were restored with the space station and the ship, and most of all with Captain Jase Graham, who had just told him what Toby was up to—and he could just about guess where Toby was— —keeping absolute silence and quiet in a zone Bren particularly knew, a little triangle where there was no regular shipping, where fishermen generally didn’t venture, it being inconveniently far from various villages—and where Toby might even have been somewhat in intermittent touch with his own estate staff. His estate had supplied themselves during the troubles by fishing those waters.