No message from Toby, none from his mother, nothing this time even from Tabini, who was probably considering the last one, or who simply had things to do other than give the paidhi daily reassurances. Two advertisements had slipped into the packet, one for bed linens and the other for fishing gear, and he scrutinized them briefly for any content from the Foreign Office, any hint that someone had sent him something clandestine. It was a north shore fishing gear manufacturer, one Toby used.
But it was simply one of those hiccups of the communications filter. His mailbox on the island received such things, and he had no staff left there to filter them.
A message from the head of the Transport Committee reported on progress in the new spaceport. They were better than their schedule.
He half-zipped his jacket and went out into the hallway in a routine hurry for breakfast.
And ran chest-high into a stranger.
He recoiled, immediate in everything his security had dinned into him, achieved distance and was a muscle-twitch from diving backward into the door before his vision realized chagrin and offered respect on the other side of the encounter.
Atevi presence on the station was entirely limited, and more, he knew this man: the name escaped him, as his heart pounded, but it was one of the stewards from the shuttle.
“Nand’ paidhi,” the man said with a second bow. “Your pardon. Nojana, of the aiji’s crew of Shai-shan.”
“Of course you are,” Bren exclaimed, taking a hasty breath. “How did you get here?”
He was no longer alone in the hallway. Almost as quickly as he had backed up, the noise of his move had attracted Tano and Algini and Jago out of the security station, and Bindanda from the dining room… which might say something about Bindanda’s Guild associations: Bren noted thatin the aftermath of adrenaline.
“Banichi sent me, nand’ paidhi,” Nojana said. “He wished to confer with the captain.”
“Parijo. The shuttle captain.” There were entirely too many captains in the broth.
“Even so, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana, in fact, was not wearing a steward’s uniform, but the black of the Assassins’ Guild… security’sGuild, and by the height and breadth of the steward, it was Banichi’s body type, Banichi’s muscled arms and shoulders. This was not a man accustomed to passing out drinks and motion sickness pills, but it had not been so evident in his previous uniform.
“And is this youruniform, nadi?”
“No, nand’ paidhi, it is not.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Since midnight, nandi.”
Bren cast a look at his own security, and, with a feeling of mild indignation, directly at Jago, whose arrival in his quarters, whose determined distraction had left not a shred of attention to the fact the seal-door had opened and closed last night.
Jago, to her credit, met his gaze with a satisfied lift of her chin and the ghost of a smile.
It did beat drugging his drink, he said to himself, and he had no suspicion whatever that Jago had been dishonest in love-making, only that she’d had a considerable ulterior motive.
And he would not call down his senior staff in front of a stranger, or in front of the servants. He simply composed himself, smiled, nodded acknowledgment of a successful operation, namely deceiving the paidhi, and getting Banichi outside without consulting him—and directed his inquiry to Nojana.
“And have you had breakfast, nadi, and will you join us?”
“I had tea at my arrival, nandi, and I thank the paidhi for the kindness of his offer, nothing since. I would be very honored.”
“Do join us, then,” he said, and surrendered Nojana to the guidance of Tano and Algini, with a single glance.
Jago he stayed with a lowering of his brows.
“How in hell?” he said in a half-whisper. “How did he getthere? Did they come after him…” He could envision that the shuttle crew might have some sense of the station: this was not their first trip. “… or did he use the map?” Even with that, it was a risk, not least of running afoul of the ship-captains and the likes of Kaplan. He was thoroughly appalled. Chilled by the very thought… and yet if Banichi had done anything of the sort, he trusted it was well-thought. “Jago, I know what you did. I’m not angry. But what is he doing?”
“He wishes to be sure the shuttle is on schedule.”
“Have we established that?”
“Nojana says yes. There’s been no difficulty at all. Nominal in all respects. It might leave early, except for small details.”
“I’ve no need to have it leave early, or is there something going on I don’t know?”
“One wishes to be certain. Banichi has been concerned about the behavior of the captains.”
Hewas concerned, in that regard. But to go off across a trackless maze of corridors…
“What if he’d been stopped?”
“He would have been surveying for the station repairs, on his own initiative.”
As a lie it was a decent one. “And what if he’d just gotten lost?They’ve done alterations since the charts we have, Jago-ji! How did Nojanaget here? You surely didn’t ask Kaplan.”
“No,” Jago said pleasantly, with a little shrug. “By no means Kaplan. They’ve not made signs, you think, so that the Mospheirans might lose their way.”
“So that we would lose our way. You’re saying you don’t.”
A second small shrug. “We walkedfrom that area, Bren-ji.”
It was rare these days that an atevi-human difference utterly took him blindside. He drew in a breath, replayed that statement, and it came up meaning what he thought. “You mean you don’t lose count of the doorways.”
“Yes,” Jago said cheerfully, that disconcerting Ragi habit of agreeing with a negative. “Do you?”
When he thought about it, he thought he might have a fair notion how to reach Kroger’s section: he countedthings he saw; he’d trained for years to do that, from flash-screens at University to desperate sessions in real negotiations, real confrontations. He’d learned to have that perception, and yes, he saw how a mind that just natively saw in that way might have a better record than he did. The captains’ precautions against invasion were simply useless against atevi memories for sets and structure. It was the same way atevi had taken one look at computer designs that had served humankind for centuries and critiqued their basic concept in terms of a wholly different way of looking at the universe.
“Amazing,” was all he could say. “Really amazing. He shouldn’t get himself in trouble, Jago-ji.”
He didn’t say a word about the diversion last night. He couldn’t say whether if Banichi had come proposing an excursion to see whether the shuttle was safe, he might not have said no. He was very careful with Banichi and Jago in particular… as he supposed they were with him, and he couldn’t deny that they had their reason, that he was a damned valuable commodity to have up here, and that in a certain sense it was folly to have him here.
But he couldn’t become paralyzed by the notion of his own worth, either; he had to dohis job to bevaluable, and that was the bottom line.
Banichi sent him Nojana, and he meant to get the most out of the transaction.
“This is worth the walk, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana enjoyed the food: one could hardly blame him. “Very much worth it, and I am honored.”
It wasn’t quite proper to ask an ateva his Guild if it wasn’t apparent or if the information weren’t offered, but Bren had his notions, looking at Nojana’s athletic build. Arms completely filled out the borrowed uniform. There was a little slack across the chest, but hardly so. The height might be a little more: the sleeves were not quite adequate.