Small hours of the morning. Those kind of thoughts.
He rested the hand with the stylus against his chin, concentrated on the computer screen, buried the files in arcane atevi code which no one on the station would likely crack.
He got up then, called Kandana, undressed, and lay down in a bed Bindanda arrived to turn down for him.
“Sleep soundly, nandi,” Kandana said, and Bindanda echoed him.
“And so must you both,” he said, and shut his eyes, refusing to think of where he was, or what he faced, or what he had to do—beyond take out a title on the station.
The door shut, leaving the room in utter, depth of space, dark. Air whispered briskly through probably ancient duct work.
And in that deprivation of senses he drifted down, waking once or twice, asking himself in panic where he was, and whether he was blind.
“Jago?” he said once.
But realizing, remembering, calming himself after the separate frights, he found it impossible to resist rest, of which he’d had notably less than his body needed.
As deep a sleep, while it lasted, as he’d slept in half a dozen weeks.
The door shot open, and light flared into Bren’s face. He waked in alarm, finding one central reality: Banichi dressed, immaculate, and backed by Narani and two servants. “Time to wake, nadi-ji,” Banichi said.
He collapsed backward into the pillows, telling himself he was in orbit.
Truly in orbit.
Jase wasn’t there. Banichi was.
Jago. Narani. Tano and Algini.
He had a meeting with the captains.
The mind had been very, very far away. He’d been walking on a beach, somewhere in his childhood. He’d heard kids laughing.
“Nadi?” Banichi asked.
Banichi could come through a firelight with his hair un-mussed. Bren did not find himself in that condition. Restarting his heart was one priority. Convincing exhausted limbs to move took second place.
Getting his brain organized was a mandatory third.
“I’m moving,” he said. Banichi, over the years, had learned not to assume until he saw a foot out of the bed; and he put the necessary foot out, into very, very cold air.
“God, I don’t think I want to do this.”
“Shall one wait breakfast?”
“Bath,” he said, gathered himself up with an effort, and went to the small bath, hoping desperately for hot water.
It was instant. He hit the wall, managed to get the water adjusted, told himself it wasn’t the shower he was used to; but soap was there, oiled soap with familiar herbal scents: Narani and the staff had everything in order. And when he came out of the bath, his servants were ready with his robe and his clothes.
He sat down to have his hair dried and braided in its single plait.
“Did you sleep, nandi?” Narani asked.
“Very well. What’s the time until my meeting?”
“Two hours,” Narani said serenely. “One thought you might wish to sleep.”
“One was very correct,” he murmured, having his hair tugged at. He discovered his eyes shut. “Tea,” he said. It arrived in his hand, preface to breakfast.
Narani finished.
He stood up, passed the teacup to Kandana, after which he dressed, taking time to assure the set of his cuffs, and walked out into the hall that now was the heart of the atevi mission.
Servants bowed.
Tano occupied a canvas, atevi-sized chair in the room opposite his, the chosen security station, next to the outside access… with a fair stack of electronics and a massive console.
Where in hell did that come from?he asked himself. He was moderately shocked, and turned to find Banichi waiting for him at what was now the dining room.
Certain things he didn’t want to know. Certain things he might investigate only if the captains asked him. God knew what else might exist, besides the galley that he and Jase had carefully designed to work with station electronics.
Doubtless, that set of equipment found compatible power supplies, too. If it was patched into the room electronics in any unreasonable way, he didn’t want to know it, at least not before his meeting.
Inside the next open door, that which, with two desks secured together, served as their dining hall, places were set for three, himself and Banichi and Jago, two canvas chairs of atevi proportions, and his. Algini was there to draw back his chair for him, and as they three settled, Sabiso brought in a tea service.
He couldn’t bear the curiosity.
“You aren’t doing anything I need to know about,” he said to the two of them, Algini having melted out the door. “Banichi, Jago-ji, surely nothing hazardous.”
“We know what comes and goes,” Banichi said, “and we listen, Bren-ji. Should we not?”
“Listen as you wish,” he said, as Narani arrived with Kandana, who bore a great, wonderful-smelling serving dish, the contents of which he could guess as a favorite of his. “Nadiin, you amaze me.”
Kandana set down the platter, and Narani removed the cover. It was amidi ashi, a delicately shirred egg dish.
“ Eggs, Nadiin?”
Narani was delighted with his success. “We have a few,” Narani said.
Dared he think that all his security wore their operational blacks, not courtly elegance; and that made into the uniforms were devices the function of which he generally knew as location, protection against sharp weapons, and objects for quiet mayhem? There were small needles, and several sharp edges within what otherwise seemed stiffening.
He ate breakfast, not saying a thing more on that matter.
And a little after the final cup of tea, Tano came in to report a human at the outside door, the promised guide.
Chapter 11
It was not the guide of the day before, but it might have been. The eyepiece, the uniform—the quick sweep of a glance around.
“You can’t have that table in a corridor, sir,” was the first comment, and Bren smiled.
“This isn’t a corridor.”
The young man clearly didn’t know what to do with that statement. The door of the security center, fortunately, was discreetly shut. Algini was inside. Tano, Banichi, Jago, and the servant staff stood in the hallway, three of them in operational black, the servants in their usual formal dress, bowing when stared at.
The guide looked at him, clearly disquieted. “Come with me, sir.”
“ Lead,” Bren said, and the guide opened the door. The man wasn’t prepared to have Banichi and Jago come with him, or didn’t like it. He stopped there, looking uncertain, then led on, and Bren followed, with Banichi and Jago last, very clearly wearing sidearms.
There was no conversation, no pleasantry, no curiosity… just a handful of looks at corners, doors, and other excuses to look back, and the young man reported into his communications that he had, “a couple of the aliens coming, too.”
What the answer was to that indiscreet remark Bren didn’t hear. The young man wore an earpiece.
Not the most communicative guide he’d ever had. Bren tried to keep the corridors in mind through the changes, gray and white and beige corridors, endless, same-looking doors, two lift descents, one of which went forward, not down… he’d looked at the map last night, tried to figure where the administrative portion of the station had been, and thought they were in it, but where the captains lodged, whether even on the station, he had no idea.
Three corridors on from the only conversation, they entered more prosperous territory, a place with sound-deadening flooring, spongy, odd-feeling plastic, a bracketed, white-light row of prosperous-looking potted plants, which he didn’t recognize, but they had a fresh, not unpleasant smell. The original colonists didn’t bring many plants; weren’t supposed to, in ecological concerns… though some scoundrels had smuggled down tomatoes and a handful of other seeds from the original station stores; but the ship reasonably had whatever ornamentals had survived. Beside a doorway an airy green-and-white thing sent down an umbrella of runners and little plants. Another, at a turn, had improbable large leaves, unlike anything in the temperate zones of the mainland or Mospheira.