In such small matters lay the least of the problems they faced.
“Nadiin-ji,” Bren said, looking out at the whole staff, across the small room, “that was one of the captains. She’s given us the whole hall up to the safety door, the baggage is on its way, and she wants me to come to a meeting, probably with several of the captains, at early afternoon tomorrow. She proposes to send security to fetch me tomorrow; she doesn’t sound at all pleased when I say I’ll bring mine with me.”
“Were we to send you alone, nadi-ji,” Banichi said, “Tabini-aiji would have a contract on our heads.”
“I made that clear,” Bren said. “Captain Sabin doesn’t like us having weapons, and wishes discretion. Banichi, you and Jago come with me tomorrow, that is, assuming the baggage arrives and we get the quarters we want. Tano, Algini, you’ll take care of the premises.”
“Nandi.”
Contrary to what he’d said to Sabin, he knew Tabini-aiji had gotten them onto the station by what amounted to sleight-of-hand, one that would have played very well in the hasdrawad’s chambers or the machinations of the associations.
So he had the consequence of that: a very rattled, very angry Pilots’ Guild who’d had a few experiences with Tabini-aiji at a distance, and who’d probably—wisely—begun to count their fingers in every transaction they had with his government.
Courtesy, however, was a cultural fault line that crossed more than atevi-Phoenixrelations. The captains weren’t exactly adept in courteous suggestion, a trait that was bound to rattle the Mospheirans, who for ancestral reasons were already disposed to suspect the Pilots’ Guild leadership of nefarious doings. Conspiracy theories bred on Mospheira, part and parcel of Mospheiran life, and the most prominent had the aliens as a complete lie and the captains bent on conquest of the island, from which they would launch out to conquer the mainland.
Neither the Mospheirans nor the Pilots’ Guild had reasonable expectations of one another. He, however, had had Jase for three years. Assuredly, the Guild hadn’t sent their most senior officer onto the planet in the first place, but he could have had worse advisors…
God, he hoped he was right; it was always seat-of-the-pants navigation on an alien interface, where the paidhiin operated. It was bad enough trying to keep the Mospheirans out and yet not overdo the pushing, either. Now he had to stand nose to nose with a captain of the Guild and tell the Guild he wanted the sun and the moon on a platter. He hoped Jase had reached Ramirez, that Ramirez was inquiring about what Jase knew… and that Jase, perhaps with Yolanda Mercheson listening in, was shaping up a pyramidical negotiation: atevi with Ramirez, if they were lucky, the Mospheirans with Sabin. That left Ogun and Tamun to distribute somewhere, possibly to stand off and analyze and pose their own threats.
The servant staff meanwhile was gathering up belongings, to rearrange their living space after hardly more than a couple of hours aboard the station.
Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini, were in a close four-way conversation in which the communication panel figured. On the one hand, he was too preoccupied to inquire and yet thought he should find out.
And he had to tell them, too, what he knew of station structure. “This communication center will be much the same in various apartments,” he said to them, “linked to the central control systems of the station. The ship will be linked into that system, with all its equipment. There might be bugs of all sorts, more sensitive and harder to find than anything that Mospheira’s ever heard of, Nadiin, or anything we might have given the aiji. We don’t know what these people have developed in two hundred years, with all they’ve been through.”
“We ourselves have nothing to conceal,” Banichi said, “nandi, and trust our associate will not translate for them.”
“No,” he said: Banichi didn’t use Jase’s name, and for the same reason, he didn’t, himself. “Because they’re humans, Nadiin, it’s very easy for me to assume I do understand them. I resonate to certain things in this culture the way metal resonates to the right pitch… but Jase and I speak different languages with the same words. One’s own ancestral culture is not the easiest thing to ignore; not always the easiest to identify, either, or to tell from instinct.”
“So one understands,” said Banichi, who owed man’chi to a human.
“So one understands,” Bren said somberly. He looked at the servants as he spoke. “We doubt the ship-folk’s security has become fluent in Ragi. They’ve had three years to do it, but use either the most courtly or the most vulgar language. I forgive you any impropriety. We doubt they’ll acquire the skills to deal with either extreme, no matter what they find in a dictionary. I intend to annoy the aijiin of the Guild; too much comradeship will let them make dangerous assumptions, and I have no wish to repeat the mistakes of the Landing. Let them detest me, nadiin, let them think me entirely unreasonable, so long as they assume nothing and presume nothing. That may not make matters entirely comfortable from moment to moment.”
“Shall we fear for our lives?” Bindanda asked.
He at first thought, Ridiculous, then had to take a heartbeat to be honest with what was at stake. “Recall there’s no air beyond the outer wall, and that delicate machinery maintains air and light and heat within. They fear mistakes, and fear them justifiably. Every door will be too low for you, every seat too small; security will take alarmat your height and your manners, which are contrary to their own. Bow often. If a human looks at you with hostile appearance, smile, however you may think it rude, or however you may find it difficult. Smile even to persons of high rank. Smile at me, as well, even in public. Remind yourselves to do it. Even if their intentions are the worst, we have a mission here, in the aiji’s man’chi. I rely on you all for my life.”
“Nandi.” Narani bowed deeply.
“Smile doing so, Rani-ji.” He did so himself, instantly, and provoked anxious laughter from the staff. “Even you, Banichi-ji.”
Banichi turned from his examination of the television, gave him a dour look, a dire smile, and all the staff laughed, including Jago, including Tano and even Algini.
“So,” Bren said with a small ironic expression, “we await the baggage, we await the betterment of our quarters, and we prepare to deal with whatever comes. Nadiin-ji. My machine, please.”
Jago gave him his computer, and with it he settled in the smaller of the chairs and set to work finding files. Yes, the ship records wereavailable. And Jase’s notes, on particulars of every member of the Pilots’ Guild, every acquaintance he had, every officer, every piece of history.
Trust that information?
Yes. He did. He discovered even his scruples were useful to Tabini, that his human nerves remained sensitive to human concepts of betrayal… that served the aiji. The penalty was a live and touchy conscience about what he did, but intellectually, yes, he knew Jason had hedged the truth and then, in later years, amended it, quietly, just changing a detail or two.
Now he did believe the record, as he believed Jason. His file regarded more than a hundred of the crew.
Senior Captain Ramirez was seventy-one as the ship counted time.
Senior captain, a son, a daughter, both privileged into command training: command within the Guild had descended down very narrow lines, all but hereditary unless the offspring failed the academic tests.
A wife of fifty-some years, deceased. Marriage on Mospheira was often transitory, sometimes lacking entirely. Marriage on Phoenixwas lasting, rank-linked, alliances of power that just didn’t break, not without dire consequences.
He’d asked Jase whether to believe Ramirez. Jase had written: Ramirez picked me and Yolanda togo down. In a sense, if I have a father… he is. He signed the papers, at least, that drew the samples out of storage. He wanted us born because it was a new age. He didn’t expect what happened.