Narani came back with a brimming double handful, which Kaplan took and stuffed into any pocket that had any room at all. The man blushed with embarrassment, thanked them, and filled every pocket to the top, until cellophane was clearly visible.
“Have to eat a few,” Bren said cheerfully. “Obviously, or you’ll shed them on your way.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
He wondered if Kaplan was sleeping at all on so strong a sugar intake. Jase had found it quite stimulating, in more ways than one, and addictive. Spread them around, he wished Kaplan without saying a word. Let the rest of the crew share.
They had to include a few crates of sweets and fruit juice on the next shuttle flight.
Chapter 21
Another day, and the next, his last day, and not a word from his mother. Not a word from Toby. Cl claimed intermittent troubles, and said that Mogari-nai might have gotten the notion they weren’t transmitting, they’d had so many equipment failures.
“I don’t believe it,” Bren said to Jago. “The message I have from Tabini-aiji is the most bland thing possible. Felicitations, in the plural for a population.”
“It’s faked,” Jago said quietly. “They have text from the aiji’s messages to them.”
“But don’t know one plural from another,” Bren said. “Damned right it’s faked.”
“An indignity,” Jago said.
“Hardly one we can take exception to at the moment.” It was a death sentence, on the planet, inside the aishidi’tat. “One just has to be patient. They have no idea the seriousness of the act. Tolerance, tolerance.”
“One is tolerant,” Jago said, with a grim and determined look. “But where is Jase, Bren-ji? Is this tolerance?”
“Good question,” he said. And then had a horrid thought, considering Banichi’s foray to the shuttle dock. “One I absolutely forbid you to try to solve, Jago-ji. You and Banichi, and Tano, and Algini. You stay here.”
“We take no chances with your safety, Bren-ji,” Jago assured him. “One wishes the paidhi simply pack those very few essentials, and we will go early, without Kaplan-nadi.”
“I ampacked,” he said, “whenever I fold up the computer case and have it in my hand.”
“You will not wish to leave it here, under Tano’s guard.”
“Much as I trust him, I daren’t tempt trouble on him. They might attempt him, if they thought that prize was here; they’re less likely to attack me, no matter how I affront them.”
“Nevertheless,” Jago said, and went to a drawer in his sparsely furnished room and took out a small packet of cloth. She brought it to him, and began to unroll it, and by its size and shape he had a sinking feeling what it was.
“Jago-ji, it’s hardly that great a threat…”
“Nevertheless,” she repeated, and gave him the gun which had followed him, in his baggage, from one place to the other throughout his career with them. “Put this in the computer case.”
“I shall,” he said. “Or have it somewhere about me. I understand completely. I have no wish to endanger you and Banichi by having no defense, but I say again that my rank and their needs are my best defense.”
“Nevertheless,” she said for the third time.
“I agree,” he said, and put it into the case’s outer pocket, hoping the shape didn’t show too much. “There. Trust that I’ll use good sense.” A thought occurred to him. “Trust that I have no more compunction shooting at humans than I do shooting at atevi.”
“Which is to say, far too much compunction,” Jago said. “But we agree with you that we wish a peaceful passage, and a completely uneventful flight.”
“I’ll be missing supper with the captain,” he said.
“Is the paidhi concerned about that?”
“It’s not the same as declining supper with the aiji. She knew when she asked me. She won’t be that surprised. She won’t take it personally, at least. There’s very little personal in it. That’s the problem.”
“In what way is it a problem?” she asked.
“If it were personal, she and I would have been talking before now. But we aren’t, and it isn’t, and I don’t think she plans to keep that appointment any more than the last. It was only a means to ask me if I was going to leave. That she didn’t choose to ask me directly what should have been a plain question indicates something to me about the minds of the captains, that everything, no matter how simple, is complicated and clandestine; that, as Jase told me, no one ever states a plain intention unless it’s an order, and the captains don’t give one another orders.”
“Do they do this setting the course of the ship?”
He laughed. “I don’t think it goes that far.”
“Then one of them can make decisions.”
One had to think about that, one had to think very carefully on that point. If the rumor was so, Ramirez had ceased to be that person.
“Whenever you and Banichi think good,” he said, “I’m ready to leave.”
A presence hovered at the door, in the tail of his eye. He gave it a full look, and saw Narani, with, of all things, the silver message tray from the hall table.
That was the very last thing he had ever thought to see in use. He thought it must be some parting courtesy from the staff, a wish for his safe flight, a promise of their performance of duty.
“ ‘Rani-ji,” he said, summoning him forward, and Narani offered the silver tray.
“From a woman,” Narani said.
From outside? A written message, rolled up, atevi-style?
He opened it with trepidation.
It said, in bad courtly Ragi,
This message risks our lives, but we need your help, we need it extremely despairingly. If hostile person finds us we all die. Your lordship must not trust any of the leaders in charge of the boat. If you can make unlocked your doorway in the night I have attempted to visit, with all trepidations regarding security.
“It’s Jase,” he said, his voice hushed, even in this secure place. “It’s his handwriting.” The written language of court documents challenged even educated atevi, but Jase had rendered a gallant effort. “Not a damned melon in the document.”
Jase had his problems with homonyms. But no one else on the station couldhave written it in just that degree of semi-competency.
“Narani-ji,” he said, handing the document to Jago to read for herself. “Was it Kate?”
“No, nandi,” Narani said. “A woman of years, if I can judge, and very anxious to be away.”
Jase’s mother was on the station. Friends. Cousins. God knew who it had been; their own hall surveillance might give him the image, but in that sense it made no difference who had gotten it to them. The fact was, it wasfrom Jase, and the only scarier knowledge was, if it had been Jase’s mother, shemight be in some danger.
“He intends to try to join us,” Jago said. “Tonight. Is there any means they might forge this document, Bren-ji? Is it at all possible?”
“Not as far as I know. Even a computer… even the most advanced computer… there are the impresses of the pen on the other side, and the paper… the ship hasno paper, Jago-ji. It’s not something they manufacture. Jase when he came had never written on paper, only on a slate. Never used a pen, only a pointed stick of a thing.”
“One recalls so,” Jago said, and added, “Jase did take a notebook with him.”
“You inspected his packing?”
“He had few clothes, things which I know the ship to lack: sweets, a thick notebook, a packet of pens, a bottle of perfume. He went through no personal scan.” Jago looked entirely uncomfortable, rare for her. “This may have been very remiss of us. But no more did we search you, nandi.”
Weapons were in one sense the thing his security noticed most—on the person of an outsider; in another sense, they were so ordinary as to be transparent, if an ally had them in plain sight.