“You could quit. You could go back.”
“I’d have Deana Hanks for my successor.”
“Does that matter? Ultimately you’re one man. After you, things will be what they’ll be. Does that matter?”
“Yes, it damn well matters. This is my job.”
The conversation was depressing him. He didn’t want to discuss his own situation. He didn’t think it would help.
“You have people harassing your family,” Jase said.
“Where did you hear that?”
Jase had a troubled look. “I’m not deaf. And, as you say, I dopick up things from the staff now.”
“My family’s situation isn’t the official situation. There isa difference, Jase, and the ship needs to know that. Theoretically—” Theoretically the government was looking for the perpetrators. But it never found them. The police never caught anyone. And he had to ask himself how long before he had to hold international politics hostage to the threats against his family and get Tabini to demand something be done.
It was what the perpetrators wanted. It was exactlywhat they wanted. It would give themthe leverage to threaten the government and become noisier than they were. And he tried to deaden his nerves and not react when he got news that upset him.
“Theoretically—” Jase said. Possibly Jase didn’t know that word.
He’d not wanted, for one other thing, to lose his credibility in a descent into name-calling and accusations. He’d never wanted to bring the whole of the stresses on him into question in the household here: it would raise concerns even with the staff. But maybe Jase wasable to understand the complexity of the constraints on him. Maybe he’d been around atevi long enough not to draw wrong conclusions and maybe it wastime to lay some of the truth on the table, if Jase was listening behind doors. He changed to Mosphei’.
“More than theoretically, Jase, the sons of bitches are calling my mother at three in the morning. She’s got a heart condition.—But they’re freelance operators so far as I know. Isolationists. Pro-spacers. Anti-spacers. The whole damn gamut, Jase. It’s the radical fringe that wants another war. Or an end to building on the north shore. I’m sure Ms. Mercheson has had lunch with them, though I haven’t wanted to act as if I were trying to affect herindependent judgment. They’ll be perfectly polite to her. They’ll be dressed in their Sunday best and telling her atevi can’t be trusted.” He knew he’d wandered further than he’d intended, into areas he probably shouldn’t discuss with Jase, politically speaking. But if he didn’t find a starting point to include Jase on the inside of the information flow, Jase couldn’t understand the atevi’s chosen isolation, either.
The hell with it, he thought. It wastime to talk, seriously, about the con job the Mospheiran government was bound to be trying on Yolanda Mercheson; and he’d tried to take the high ground rather than have his own side sound like a con job. But that strategy could backfire, if Jase had gotten some report from Yolanda that painted the other side of the strait as flawless and cooperative; and he wasn’t sorry to have hit Jase with the nastier truths of Mospheira’s underside.
“There’s a lot of humans,” he said, in Ragi again, and more calmly, “who don’t want atevi to go to space. And among those, some are crazy. Some are honest, law-abiding citizens.”
“An infelicity of two: you mean—some are neither.”
That was a first. He waspleased. If Jase had gotten that far, they couldtalk, and he was ready to do so. “Just so, nadi. Better and better. Another such improvement and I might well present you at court.”
“Not—quite ready for that, I think.”
“But very much better. I don’t know if information helps the digestion, but that’s the truth from my side. What’s yours?”
A slight hesitation. Then: “My father’s dead.”
For a moment he didn’t even hear it. Or didn’t believe he could have heard what he thought he had.
“God, Jase.—When?” He couldn’t figure out how Jase would learn such a thing. Whenever the ship called, it created a stir in the household; and he hadn’t heard of it.
“Four days ago.—I got it from Yolanda. I haven’t even been able to call my mother. Security wouldn’t let me call the ship because you hadn’t left instructions and I couldn’t reach you.”
Thatwas the distress over the period out of contact. That was the aborted conversation before supper.
“Damn. Damn, Jase, what do I say?—I’m sorry.”
“It’s one of those things, you know. Just one of those things. He just—just was working—” The glass trembled in Jase’s fingers, and he lifted it and drank. “An accident. Yolanda had talked to the ship. She heard. She thought I already had. She offered condolences—All right?” The glass met the small table. Click. “But I haven’t been able to call herback. I found out four days ago and I haven’t been able to get hold of you. I haven’t been able to call the ship.”
He had to revise a great many estimations of Jase, with this performance, both cool-headed and confrontational, recklessly so: Here’s what I know, be damned to you, I want off this planet.
No wonderJase had been bearing down on the lessons in the last several days. To the point of hysteria, alternated with cold, clear, bloody-minded function. He was speaking now in Ragi and doing it with steady self-control.
“Jase. I didn’t hear. I don’t know why I didn’t hear. And I don’t know why you didn’t get a call from the ship. I’ll ask official questions. I’m extremely sorry.”
The facial nerves were verywell under control, as perhaps his were. He forgot, he feared, to adjust between languages. Between mindsets, he forgot to respond in the human sense. He forgotto use human expressions.
“Jase.” He switched to Mosphei’ and, like an actor assuming a role, brought expression consciously to his face. “I didn’t know. I’m going to find out why I didn’t know. I know that atevi will be concerned that you didn’t learn this in any proper way.”
“Can we use the word ‘care’ here? Are we finally permitted?”
“In this, Jase, I assure you the staff would care.”
“Shed tears, I’m sure.”
“No.” He refused to back up from the attack, and equally refused to attack back. “But making demands like that serves no one.—I’m sorry. I’m extremely sorry. I put you off and I’m sorry. I wish I’d been here. I am here now. Can I do anything?”
“No. I’ve been keeping up with my studies.” Jase’s tone was light, his eyes distracted by something across the room. The wall, perhaps. Or a blowing curtain. “It’s the only choice I have, isn’t it?”
“Is your mother all right?”
Slight pause. Restrainedly, then: “I have no idea.”
“Damn. Damn, Jase. I willstraighten out the phone situation.”
“I’d like to talk to my mother. Privately. If you can arrange that.”
He didn’t know what to say. “I’ll arrange something. As soon as I can. Do you want to speak to her tonight?”
“If she’s gotten to sleep, I’d rather not disturb her this late.” The ship-folk had sensibly adjusted their day-night schedule to the Mospheira-Shejidan time zone. And it was still evening up there on the ship, as it was evening here, but he didn’t argue that fine point with Jase, either.