Jase didn’t answer. But Jase did at least look at him.
“Four, five hundred years ago,” Bren said, “before humans on this planet, atevi rode mechieti to war.” He pointed to the rolling land ahead of them. “Five hundred riders could be just up there, close as the gardens to the apartment. You couldn’t see them. That’s why men keep riding ahead of the dowager. Ordinarily the mechieti don’t like to do that—get ahead of the leader. But they do it for short rides out and back, looking to see the way is clear.”
Jase waslistening. He caught the quick and worried glance at the horizons, and saw Jase’s whole body come to a different state of tension. In that distracted moment Jase suddenly synched with the mechieta’s moving and seemed to feel it.
“That’s how you oughtto ride,” Bren said, “Jase.”
Jase looked at him, lost his centering and found it again; and lost it.
The fact Jase hadsomehow coped with being out here didn’t mean Jase knew a thing, Bren thought, not about the mechieti, not about the concept of land, or tactics, or how to stay on or how to protect himself if someone did come up on them and mechieti reacted as mechieti would do. Politics and language and living in an apartment was what he’d taught Jase. It was allhe’d taught Jase.
“If the mechieti have to run,” he said, “—in case they do.” He changed languages and went rapid-fire. “The atevi riders stay on by balance. Youjust hunch down tight and low and hold to the saddle. It won’t come off. Get as low as you can. If they canjump something they will; otherwise they can turn very fast, and if you’re not low you’ll fall off. Join his center of mass. All right? If he jumps, his head will come back, and if your face is too far forward he can knock you cold. If they jump, center your weight, lean forward, head down while he’s rising, lean back while he’s landing and duck down again. We’re small. Nothing we do affects them as much as an ateva’s weight. Don’t pull on the rein and don’t try to guide him. It can turn his head and blind him to the ground and kill you both. If you do nothing with the rein, he’ll follow Ilisidi’s mechieta come hell or high water.”
“Are we going to run?” Jase said. “From what?”
“It’s just an ‘in case.’ ”
Jase gave him one of those looks.
“It’s a possibility, nadi,” Bren said, and then wished he hadn’t said. He wished he’d said, To hell with you, and not shaved the meaning one more time. “You’re not going to find absolutes in this situation. There aren’t any. I’m sorry. I knew I was asking for a hard time up here when I turned matters over to other people. I knew last night things were getting complicated. I figured—maybe we’d get a chance to go down to the water. Somehow. And things might not even involve us.”
“Once we left the fortress,” Jase said in Mosphei’, “I knew we weren’t going fishing.”
“Because you knew I’d lie? You don’t know that.”
There was lengthy silence.
Then Jase said, “We were still going fishing? All around us, people with weapons. People on radios. Hanks. We were going fishing.”
“Well, we will.” It sounded lame even to him, in what he began to see as a long string of broken promises, broken dates, incomplete plans—not professional ones, but personal. He couldn’t explain all that was going on. Jase didn’t understand the motivations. And God knew what conclusions he’d draw.
The silence persisted some distance more. He wasn’t there for the moment. He was across a table from Barb. Barb was saying, When? When, really, Bren?
“You really tellyourself we’re going fishing,” Jase said, “don’t you?”
“Jase, if I don’t plan to do it, we’ll damn sure never get there. At least,” he added, beginning to be depressed, “if you plan a dozen trips, one happens.”
“Are all Mospheirans like you?”
He’d like to think not. He liked to think, on the contrary, that he was better than the flaws that frustrated him in his countrymen. But it was an island full of people living their safe routines, their weekend trips to the mountains, their outings to the market, like clockwork, every week, sitting on a powder keg, electing presidentiwho lived the same kind of lives and left decisions to their chief contributors rather than those with any knowledge or insight.
Delusion played a large part in Mospheiran attitudes.
Delusion that they had a spacecraft, or could build one, with no facility in which to do it.
Delusion that they could fix their deficits when there was suddenly a great need and all their bets came due.
Self-delusion to which, apparently, he was not immune.
“Lifestyle,” he said, with self-knowledge a bitter lump in his chest. “But I still do plan to go fishing, Jase.”
“Just not this trip.”
“Even this trip, dammit! Security alerts go on all the time. I livewith it! In between times, I relax, if I can get a few hours. Nine tenths of the time nothing happens or it happens elsewhere and life goes on. If you’ve planned a fishing trip, it might be possible. We can rent the gear. And hire a boat.”
“It’s a nervous way to live.”
“It is when you park a bloody huge ship over our heads and offer the sun, the moon, and the stars to whoever gets there first! It makes the whole world a little anxious, Jase!”
“Was life more peaceful before we came?”
“Life was absolutely ordinary before you came. You’ve set the whole world on its ear. Don’t you reckon that? Absolutely ordinary people’s lives have been totally disrupted. Absolutely ordinary people have done things they’d never have done.”
“Good or bad?”
“Maybe both.”
They rode a while more in silence. He watched Jago ahead of him, by no means ordinary, neither she nor Banichi.
He lovedJago. He loved both of them.
“A lotof both,” he said.
And a long while later he asked, “ Whydid the ship come back?”
“Weren’t we supposed to?”
He thought about that a moment, thought about it and wondered about it and said to himself of course that was what the ship did and was supposed to do: go places between stars. And this was where other humans were, and why wouldn’t it come here?
But he always argued the other point of view—everyone’s point of view: Barb’s, his mother’s, Jase’s. He’d elaborated in his own mind Jase’s half-given answers in the days when Jase hadn’t been able to say much in Ragi and after that when the pressure mounted to get the engineering translation settled. They’d talked fluently about seals and heat shields. But when he’d asked, in Mosphei’, as late as a handful of days before his tour, Where were you? Jase had drawn him diagrams that didn’t make any sense to him.
And he’d said to himself, when he hadn’t understood Jase’s answer or gotten any satisfaction out of it, well, he wasn’t an astronomer and he didn’t understand the ship’s navigation; or maybe space wasn’t as romantic as he’d thought it was—or maybe—or maybe—or maybe.
Well, but. But. But.
Did delusion play a part in it? Or a human urge to fill out Jase’s participation and make excuses for behavior that otherwise wasn’t satisfying his expectations.
The ship was doing as it promised. The spacecraft was becoming a reality.
But in his failure to find the friendly, cheerful young man he’d talked to by radio link before the drop, he’d insisted on making that side of Jase exist in the apartment.