“These are our reasonable conditions, as you have stated, so we state; as you have promised, so we promise; as you declare, so we declare, to which the hasdrawad and the tashrid set their approval…”The usual sort of thing,“ Ilisidi concluded with another waggle of her fingers. ” So! Paidhi. Associate of my rascal grandson, that thief, that brigand, my grandson. What do you propose we do to find Ramirez?”
“I’ve asked the crew to find him,” he said, “which I believe certain ones well know how to do. Jase and his mother have contacts.”
“Allow four hours,” Ilisidi said.
“Four hours.”
Ilisidi reached to her coat, a far lighter one for the anticipated dinner, and drew out a watch, an old-fashioned sort of elaborate design. The multiple cylinders were of gold, beyond any doubt, and set with pale stones. “We certainly have that long to unload before we need do anything unpleasant. My grandson has extraordinary confidence in your powers of negotiation, Bren-ji, but allow me to say, if these unpleasant people do not rise to a civilized level of welcome very soon, we are prepared to take what we justly demand. I have not come on this extraordinary journey to sit in a windowless room and dine in haste. I am too old to sit on unreasonable furniture and to see my essential baggage delayed by bureaucrats with absolutely nothing to gain but inconvenience. I detestpointless obstruction. Do you not, Bren-ji?”
“ Ido detest it myself, nand’ dowager, but there are numerous innocent parties whose very air and warmth might be adversely affected…”
Another waggle of the fingers. “If I have cast myself among utter fools, then let us wait no longer. But I rather think that the paidhi who has served us so well is not the only human with powers of reasoning. Use your ingenuity, paidhi-aiji. In the meanwhile, send me Cenedi, and let us see how to use the devices and the records and the maps your security has so elegantly established.”
He knew when he was being pushed to the wall. He knew how and when to push back, and he went to his small parcel of belongings by the door and returned with a small mag storage.
“More than the maps they have made, nand’ dowager. These are the charts the makersmade. Here is every conduit and switch and component of the entire foreign star, if the dowager will accept this modest offering.”
Ilisidi’s aged lips twitched in restrained mirth. She reached for it with a flourish. “So! Am I ever mistaken?”
“I have yet, nandi, to observe an error of taste orjudgment,” Bren said. “Begging excuse from supper, I shall attempt what I can do.”
It became a more sober smile, even a gentle one. “You are excused the supper, nadi. I shall entertain this uncommon set of guests. I cede you your security; mine is adequate for my needs, or nothing is.”
“ ‘Sidi-ji,” he said quietly, and bowed, and paused again on a second thought. “Take charge of this machine of mine. Tano and Algini know how to read it, and know the codes. They would be an asset, if they were not mine.”
“They would indeed,” Ilisidi said. “As any resource of mine is within your reach, paidhi-ji.” A wave of the hand. “Go! Go, damn your flattery! Out, out, and kindly use your wits, nand’ paidhi!”
“Geigi has sent men,” he explained the situation to his staff, and to Jase, in close conference in what they now styled the olddining room, in Ragi. Cenedi sat in their midst, advisor; and Tano was with them, while Algini refused to leave the monitoring, the parameters of which he knew intimately, where Cenedi’s men could not replace him. “There is force to be had, aboard the ship,” Bren said. “But it won’t be enough, either, to secure the entire station without destruction, not to mention the hazard to the shuttle. On such short notice, I have notinvolved Yolanda or Tom, though I regret it. She doesn’t speak well enough to understand this situation, Tom doesn’t speak at all, and I won’t say what I have to say in Mosphei’. So here it is. We have a handful of hours to act before you, Cenedi-nandi, will act. Is that so?”
“It will not be finesse,” Cenedi said with a downward, deprecating glance. “But it will be forceful.”
In earlier days, Jase would have flared up, sure no one would consider his view, but at this hour, included in this conference, he had no doubts what he was to represent.
“Within that necessity,” Jase said quietly, “if we could reach Ramirez, and have his support with us, then we might convince a number of the crew they are not threatened.”
“Yet, forgive me, Jase, you say the crew will not admit a truth when it stares them in the face,” Bren said in utter frankness. “And will do anything and suffer anything to preserve the captains. We will threaten Tamun, indisputably, we will threaten Tamun.”
“Dresh is an improvement,” Jase said somberly. “Save him. To hellwith Tamun.”
“Yet, finesse,” Banichi said. “Finesse, Nadiin-ji, amid such fragile equipment. We have the access tunnels. We canmove and we canreach the captains, and various other places.”
“They may have established surveillance in those accesses,” Jase said. “Tamun has reason, and increasing reason. Let us go, myself, my mother, Yolanda, all of us that have been involved in this. We may be able to find where Ramirez is. If we could do it quietly, we could bring him here.”
“Can we breach communications?” Tano asked, the sensible question.
“Can we avoid Cl,” Bren rephrased that, “and get to people directly without risking our necks?”
“Everything goes through Phoenixcomm,” Jase said. “We can’t.”
“Does that gear the guides carry?” Jago asked.
Jase blinked. “That goes differently,” he said. “That reaches security on a direct link. We don’t want security, nadi-ji. They’re most likely to stay by the captains.”
“Ogun,” Bren said. “Captain Ogun. The new senior. He seems to me not participant with Tamun. He seems to me to have rammed the practicalities of the agreements down Tamun’s throat, when without him, Tamun might have abrogated all the agreements.”
“Ogun’s a puzzle,” Jase said. “He’s hard to read. Disciplinarian.” Jase used a single word in Mosphei’, to express what Ragi could not. “The crew does not favor him, for his harsh measures. Ramirez breaks customs for good reasons. Ogun is conservative as any lord of the west.”
“Sabin?”
“Ogun’s partisan. The two of them have made it difficult for Tamun to have his way completely.”
“Do they favor Tamun?”
Jase frowned. “They have supported him. In his objections against Ramirez’ ventures, they have supported him. Now they have power and Tamun is under them, and ambitious for power… one would wonder how they view him now.”
It was a discouraging portrait, one in line with Jase’s previous notes on the two. But he had a hope in Ogun, and gave it up only reluctantly. “Have they struck at Ramirez, nadi?” he asked Jase.
“Not directly,” Jase said. “I don’t think so.”
“And might they be looking at Tamun anxiously?”
“Now? Sabin, I don’t know.”
“And Ogun?”
“Thinks he can manage Tamun.”
“But supports the rules. Supports the agreements once made. Sat besideRamirez when we had our negotiating session. At least appeared to be consenting to all we said.”
Jase drew in a breath and leaned back, seeming to go into himself for a moment. Then he let out the breath. “I can imagine him doing that,” Jase said. “And likewise supporting the agreements.”
“So dare I go to him?” Bren asked. “Dare he come here!”
“Ogun would dare what suited him,” Jase said. “This man is an aiji, in a way Ramirez is not, if he could gain the man’chi of the crew. Humans prefer to liketheir aijiin, nadiin-ji.” The word ineluctably drew amusement from Banichi and Jago and Tano—who understood the relationship between salads and human emotions—and bewilderment from Cenedi. “But failing to likehim, we still know he deserves man’chi, while Tamun… Tamun only desiresman’chi, and promotes fear of aliens, fear of weakness, fear of everything, all to gain his followers.”