“That Sabin-aiji can certainly counter his orders and release these agents once she stands on this deck and reclaims her authority from the aiji-junior. That until she does, the ship will not cooperate.”
Ilisidi smiled and nodded benignly as any comfortably set grandmother. “And what will the foreigner-ship do, in the meanwhile, while we remain mired in controversy?”
“That still remains a worry, aiji-ma. No greater and no less a worry than before we restrained these intemperate agents. But their patience must grow less by the hour.”
“And now Sabin-aiji has imprudently gotten herself in a difficulty, does one conclude?” Again, implied, a power vacuum.
“Likely, however, she is alive.”
“Would this Guild use forceful interrogation?”
“They might use drugs on her subordinates. That might be, but one believes they would make her very angry.”
Ilisidi’s amber eyes caught the light, shimmered palest gold, twin moons. “She has lived on the borders of our association. She has dealt with the aishidi’tat . She well understands how any admission of our presence would lead to more questions and far greater suspicion. I have already sent word to Jase-aiji, suggesting that the next attempt to board will not likely be a paltry effort of inept spies. We have seen their subtlety.” A waggle of fingers, suggesting that subtlety was not great. “One expects some stronger effort, and one counts armed assault a possibility, since subtlety failed. With this ship, the Guild, which has languished here for years under threat, has mobility. It might attack that ship out there. When will that ship attack us, do you think?”
He was too tired to think. The brain was attempting configurations of thought just too complex to chase right now. “Instinct, aiji-ma, says it’s not likely. They wait. They have waited for six years, it seems, and one thinks they will go on waiting so long as we keep from alarming them.”
“The station taking the ship would surely alarm them.”
“It would. I’m sure it would—if they detected that.”
“And this Guild. They might have made us feel welcome and easy in this meeting and then attacked. On the contrary, they have offended Sabin-aiji and now Jase-aiji. They have offended this crew. So you say.”
“So it seems, aiji-ma.”
A wave of an arthritic hand. “They are fools.”
“They have been fools for centuries, aiji-ma. But armed and powerful fools.”
“This authority is fearful of us? Or have they some distaste for subterfuge?”
“One believes they are fearful for their authority, aiji-ma, and know that man’chi will divert from them toward us once truths begin to come out.”
“Ought we then to provide these truths?”
“ We would frighten the population, aiji-ma, until we can provide ourselves as an avenue of escape.” He was so tired he was falling on his face, yearning for nothing more than his own mattress, and the dowager, characteristically, gave him nightmares. “And we still hesitate to encumber the ship by taking a great number aboard. We have to let Jase attempt to deal with this.”
“So we spend all effort on this Guild squabble. And this Guild had rather squabble than deal with this foreign ship—after offending it by firing at it, as seems the case. This is hardly reasonable behavior. Have they a reason for confidence we as yet fail to know?”
The world swung around him. The walls did. He found no solid ground.
Dots… marched on a screen. An alien craft. An incursion. An expedition. His mind was trying to form a conclusion.
“Aiji-ma, I don’t know. I have no answers.”
“But will find out. Will find out very soon.”
“I must, aiji-ma.” he said, “but now, aiji-ma, I plead exhaustion, and trust myself and my staff to your resourcefulness, aiji-ma, confident in that, always.”
Dots and light and dark. Flow of events.
The dowager said: “Sabin appointed Tamun.”
Sometimes Ilisidi turned corners and forgot to inform those engaged in arguments with her. But this leap of logic jerked him sideways. Tamun occurred to her.
Tamun, a junior captain, had mutinied against Ramirez, senior captain, when Phoenix had come to the atevi world.
Why, an ateva would ask? What had changed in Tamun’s mind? What was the agenda on which he operated?
That was the cliff on which Ilisidi set him to perch for whatever sleep he could get.
Sabin, not within Ilisidi’s man’chi, remained a question—in Ilisidi’s mind, surely. In his, too. In Jase’s. In no few reasoning individuals’ minds, the more since her communications had gone silent—hers and the majority of the ship’s trained security personnel. But there was more than that. Sabin’s relation to Tamun had always troubled them. And now Sabin, who had appointed Tamun to office, had fallen into Guild hands. And taken twenty-odd ship’s personnel into silence with her.
Had Tamun mutinied over the station mission tape? Over information Ramirez withheld from crew? Had Tamun been outraged crew? Or a Guild agent in the path of command?
“I haven’t forgotten,” he murmured. “I never have forgotten.”
Ilisidi lifted that thin, age-wrought hand. “One would never suppose that what was true when Ramirez left this place is still true here. All things change. Persons fall from power. Persons rise. Agendas change.” A second time Ilisidi waggled her fingers. “An old woman has little to do but think in her isolation, understand. These may be idle fancies. One amuses oneself. But weary as you are, you surely pay little attention to us. Go. Sleep. Rest.”
“Aiji-ma.” He bowed. His wits had taken one final battering. But he thought. Crazed as he was, he found his brain working.
Dicey. Very dicey, he said to himself, tired enough and bemused enough to walk into walls. He took his leave, found the door switch and exited back to the cruel, cold glare of the corridor lights, to alienly human corridors where Cenedi waited, along with Banichi and Jago.
“One is grateful for the dowager’s concern,” Bren said, Cenedi having every right to have some kind of summary. His voice was going. “As always, the dowager offers good advice. Utmost vigilance. She reminds us that whatever exists here was not planned for our arrival. We are interlopers in a situation. We may not be its most active component. And she asked about Tamun, in connection with Sabin’s silence. But I have to rest. Forgive me, Cenedi-ji, I have to rest now.” He was crazily sleepier and sleepier, a cascade of bodily resources all deserting him.
“Nandi.” Cenedi evidenced that he understood his fatigue, and posed no challenge. Bren gave a small bow, about all he had in him, and walked, trying to make it a straight line. He had Banichi and Jago alone, now, and at the end of the hall, saw his own quarters, his own staff waiting, with Narani.
Wise, good Narani, who would do everything possible to put him to bed for a decent few hours.
“Supper and bath and bed, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked.
“Bed,” he said.“The dowager has some few misgivings that Sabin-aiji may be—or become—unreliable. I confess I have similar misgivings, though tempered by a feeling I haven’t—at the moment—the wit to explain.“ He thought it was a straggling, struggling human feeling trying to work its way through his brain, but he couldn’t, in his fogged state, be sure of its nature. “And we should remain concerned we have only the word of this Guild that fuel is ready for us. That they would lie—yes, not even for much advantage. Their instinct is to lie, to protect all information, useful and not. There may be fuel. There may not. Things are stable, but not as I would wish, nadiin-ji. We have this offended alien out there. We have a question, nadiin, why Tamun once turned against Ramirez, and what Sabin knows that she never told Jase or us. She is no fool. Yet she deliberately took an untrustworthy guard and went aboard the station, leaving Jase with the ship, armed and warned, and told to heed no word from her until she returns.”