“No. It didn’t. We had it arranged, Bren, we didn’tknow what we were putting ourselves into, and we knew there was a potential for problems with the atevi side; we knew there was a potential for problems on the island, too, but we really thought if things broke down they’d break down here, not there. So we said—if we had to signal trouble—one of us would say—would say there was a family emergency. We figured it was the one thing even atevi might understand and let one of us reach the other. And whoever—whoever had to run for it, it was going to be the other one who had somebody get sick. Or die, if it was a life and death situation. She said my father died, Bren. She’s in real trouble.”
He mighthave let expression to his face. He wasn’t entirely sure. He was angry. He was embarrassed, and angry, and had a clear idea Jago followed most of it. He’d been through the entire government with Jase’s lie. He’d intervened in an already touchy situation with a Guild half of whose local members had fled the site they were standing in.
“I didn’t know the atevi,” Jase said. “I didn’t understand the way things are set up here. I didn’t know you had realproblems yourself, and then I did know and I didn’t know how I was going to make it work and get her to the mainland when you had far worse troubles than I could claim to and you weren’t getting your family out. I knew it wasn’t going to work the way we’d planned, and I felt like hell about your situation, and I didn’t know what to do except get over here somehow and get to the shore and know if she made it I’d be here—”
“You know,” Bren said, with far better control of his voice than he thought he’d have, “you know I could take about any of it, piece at a time. I could understand your lying to me. I could accept you had to. But you took after meabout lying, Jase. You went all high and holy about mylying, and you wanted meto apologize to you, when you damned well knew it was the other way around, Jase, that’s what I can’t understand.”
“I didn’t know I could believe you!”
“And now you can.”
“Now I do,” Jase said.
“Wasn’t the plan that we’d sendfor her? Or was this something else, Jase? Are we hearing one more story?”
“I didn’t want to call for her to come over here into something worse than she was in. And I didn’t dare give her a come-ahead. I was with strange security. I couldn’t get you for four days, Bren. I couldn’t ask the staff. You said be careful with them. By then it was too late. My call to my mother—the ship hadn’t heard from Yolanda. Not in four days. And I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you want to come out here. And it’s not what you expected. And nowyou trust me.”
“Everything you’ve told me,” Jase began, but now hisvoice was shaking. “Everything so far makes sense. I believe Yolanda’s leaving the island is tied to what Deana Hanks is doing, it’s tied to everything you’ve told me. I’ve been trying all the way out here to find a way to tell you what was going on, but every time I tried I ran into something elsethat wasn’t what you’d led me to think. I didn’t know but what Yolanda was leaving the island withHanks. But I don’t think so, now. By everything I’ve heard, I don’t think so. These people outside don’t make me think so. The business in the apartment didn’t make me think so. The dowager doesn’t. But I just haven’t known what to do, Bren. I tried to find out the truth—and at the first you were lying to me, and you work for the Mospheiran government, andfor the aiji, and I didn’t know where you stood, and everything was coming apart.”
That made sense. The fishing trip. The damned fishing trip. Every lie they’d told each other, every difference of perceptions two hundred years of separation made in two sets of humans.
And if Yolanda Mercheson was pulling out of Mospheira, there were going to be some angry and desperate people on the island, who were only going to make matters more tense and more desperate for all of them remotely involved.
Forces on various sides of atevi concerns were moving on the mainland. Everything that had been going forward was still in motion and now human troubles were linked into it.
“You and I had better level with the dowager, is what we’d better do,” Bren said. “There are operations going on all over the coast. It may be a hostile reaction Hanks meansto stir up, if your partner’s given away her intentions. If she and Hanks have had a falling-out, it could be whyHanks is doing what she’s doing in the first place, trying to start a war here so the ship won’t deal with us. Or it may be as simple and stupid as I think it is: she doesn’t know what in hell she’s messing with. Years in the program and a week being withatevi and she still doesn’t figure it.—Jago-ji, nadi.” He changed languages, and went for the door, concerned at the time slipping away from them. “How would Yolanda come, Jasi-ji? By boat? By plane?”
“She can’t fly. That’s certain. She couldsteal a boat. But the storm—”
“Handling a boat’s no given, either. Stay with me.” He walked into the communications center, walked past concerned technicians and the boy and the dowager’s security to speak to Ilisidi herself. “Nand’ dowager,” he said, “my partner says that the other ship-paidhi has quit her post.”
“Quit.”
“And is leaving the island and coming to the mainland for refuge. Likeliest by boat. We don’t know when. We don’t know where.”
“And thatis in these messages you read?”
“No, nand’ dowager,” Jase said for himself. “I knew by a phone call days ago. Nand’ Bren had noknowledge of it. I wished finally—” Jase’s voice was trembling, and steadied. “I wished to tell it before now. I apologize, nand’ dowager.”
“It was a code by conversation,” Bren interjected, “aiji-ma. Security couldn’t possibly detect it. I didn’t.”
“Well,” Ilisidi said, and while a foul temper was possible, when it was entirely justified, in fact, it didn’t happen, though nerves all around were drawn tight. “Well.” Ilisidi stood leaning on her cane. “And in this night of human secrets, in this night with serious consequences on every hand and fools attempting to overthrow all established order, what will happen on the island, nand’ paidhi? What hashappened? Disasters? Or better news.”
Bren found his hands trembling again. He didn’t want to go into the business with his family and he was sure someone on Ilisidi’s staff had read the message by now, since it had sent Jase rushing after him, and had stalled everyone until he could sort matters out in the restroom.
“I’m sure that they’ll try to stop her, nand’ dowager.” He had one resource left, one thing Shawn had given him, and as best he could figure it was time to try it.
It was a connection into the international phone system he’d done everything to avoid making: the National Security people had had their hands on his computer during his last visit, and somethinghad happened when he’d stopped on his way to the airport to update his files: a huge amount of information had flooded into his computer storage, data and programs he’d downloaded onto removable storage once he’d realized it. And the Foreign Secretary having gone so far as to slip the codes he had under his cast to get them onto the mainland with him, he figured that Shawn intended them for a dire emergency and not just a phone-home-soon, Bren.