And he gained Bren-paidhi’s cooperation in increasing his communication with the Mospheiran government, despite the rise of anti-atevi sentiment by certain groups in the island enclave.
iv
<<Bren>> One reason for the stir among the radical groups on Mospheira was precisely the improved relations between the mainland and Mospheira. The radicals wanted separation, not cooperation—and they were increasingly upset by the paidhi’s actions. They always made their greatest political gains by alarming the public, and elements of that party took to the airwaves with a campaign of rumor mixed with sufficient facts to make people uneasy. The paidhi at times ran a certain risk in his visits to Mospheira, but Mospheiran tradition forbade any overt display of protection.
v
<<Geigi>> Things were going fairly well, however . . . until without any warning the starship Phoenix arrived at the space station. The Mospheirans suddenly found the authority of the ship over their heads and the Phoenix captains found that all the humans that should be on the station were down on the planet.
Tabini-aiji suddenly doubted every assurance the Mospheiran government had given him.
vi
<<Bren>> Phoenix made radio contact with Mospheira. Liberals were extremely anxious—having no wish to have another argument with a ship authority which had no understanding of them or the atevi.
Radical groups on Mospheira were literally dancing in the streets. They wanted instant access to space—they called it rescue—and they wanted Phoenix to threaten the aishidi’tat and remove the Mospheiran government.
The Phoenix captains, being no fools, took a look at the cities on both sides of the strait. Their prosperity surpassed any expectation, but their cultural difference was clear, even from space. Phoenix received a rational though cautious response from the Mospheiran government, asking who was in command and what their condition was and whether they needed help.
The ship-aijiin overheard the demands of the radicals in their monitoring. They saw nothing on the planet to indicate hostilities except in the radicals themselves.
The government of Mospheira was certainly deeply perturbed at the entry of a new power into their affairs, but they were reassured that Phoenix accepted the situation, was not in imminent distress, and was anxious not to involve itself in local politics.
Phoenix was upset that the station was in serious decay—the captains were very anxious to see it operating again. Their interests, they assured Mospheira, were only in their ship and its safety. Phoenix wanted a port.
The Mospheiran public, and in fact the government, remained a little fearful that the ship might try to become their government.
That was what the radicals wanted to happen. They saw a return to space as everything they wanted . . . including access to advanced weaponry.
The Mospheiran government was equally determined that the people it should send to space, if it could send anyone, would be those most worried about the ship’s intentions, the most determined to secure Mospheiran control of the station.
By no means did they want to let the radical groups get into direct association with the Phoenix crew.
vii
<<Geigi>> We were highly upset with the sudden turn of events, and suspicion still ran deep. Bren-paidhi assured Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager that the Mospheiran government had not expected the return of the ship, and that Mospheira was determined to gain control of the station, preventing the ship from doing so. Mospheira, he said, was determined to prevent the radicals getting to space or laying hands on advanced technology.
He said further that the only way to preserve atevi rights in this situation was for atevi to speak to the ship-folk directly, invite them to negotiate, and make it clear that the local authority was the aishidi’tat, not Mospheira. They should in fact offer to ally with the Mospheirans in their demands for complete control of the station, and be prepared to share that authority with them.
There was one drawback to everybody’s plans, of course, and it was an old one. None of the starship pilots knew how to fly in an atmosphere. None of the atevi or Mospheiran pilots, who well knew how to fly in atmosphere and gravity, knew how to fly in space.
There were no ship-construction facilities at the mothballed station, which had no population and no workers.
And critical natural resources necessary to build a spacecraft were available only on the mainland. Mospheira had been trading for them—but the mainland could cut that off cold at any time.
Phoenix had the blueprints—the complete library in the data storage of the starship. But atevi had the mines, the factories, and the resources.
Negotiation and unprecedented cooperation between Mospheira and the mainland built a small fleet of shuttles.
Negotiation with the Mospheirans and Phoenix gave half the station to atevi, half to humans.
Tabini would ultimately set an atevi lord, myself, Lord Geigi of Maschi clan, to be in charge of the half of the station.
But before that day came a great upheaval.
The technology that came with the shuttle plans brought massive change to the economy of both Mospheira and the mainland. It required new materials, computers, new plants—it brought all manner of things that poured new goods into the hands of Mospheirans. Of course denial of access agitated the radicals of Mospheira, who most wanted to be lords of space—a situation neither the liberal Mospheirans nor any ateva ever wanted to have happen.
But on the mainland, among us, the shock was as much cultural as economic. For two hundred years the paidhiin had carefully brought technology onto the mainland—items like telephones, and, lately, airplanes, plastics, and transistors. These were benign in most ways—beneficial, unless one asked the older folk.
Then the space program poured new materials and new concepts down from the sky, advice telling us where to mine, with new ways of doing so, telling us how to manufacture, and offering us modern ceramics, and even dropping down certain materials from space.
All this challenged us philosophically. Traditional numbers-causality and the mediaeval concept of astronomy met starfaring equations and a universe that clearly did not consist of a clockwork sky dome and an ether that surrounded the sun and planets. That realization upset the Conservatives . . . and the paidhi-aiji had to open a clerical office simply to answer the letters from people asking, for instance, if a shuttle taking off would let the atmosphere escape.
And there was the politics of it all, which fell on Tabini-aiji. Some districts where the ecological impact would be minimal or which had transportation advantages were awarded manufacturing facilities, rousing resentments from those equally deserving who did not get such facilities—and of course there were areas that wanted none of it, and bitterly resented the economic advantage to those who had such industry.
The fractures in atevi society began to multiply.
On both sides of the straits, people found the whole world changing.
Then the ship-captains admitted the existence of another colony out in deep space, their Reunion Station, which they had never mentioned. This was especially disturbing to the Mospheirans. Phoenix next confessed that their reason for coming back to the Earth now was a need to put the Reunion population somewhere.