“Believe me. We will have.”
“I’m Ramirez’s choice. I have to play this through, Bren.”
“For you?” Bren asked. “Or for them? Or because it’s wise? Second thoughts, I understand. Believe me, I understand: I’ve made my choice. Whatever you want for yourself, this is no time to make gestures. Too many lives are at risk here. What’s the sensible truth, Jase? What do you expect?”
“I need to get to Ramirez. I need to talk to him. We aren’tatevi associations. I remember that from the gut now.”
Naojai-tu?
Association-shift? Rearrangement of man’chi? Damiri’s cynic meeting the relics, in the play?
Humans, on the other hand, made and dissolved ties throughout their lives, even on so limited an island as Mospheira. Jase washuman; the Pilots’ Guild was human. In this whole business, everyone in the game could rearrange loyalties… so could the atevi, but under different, socially catastrophic terms.
“Still friends,” Bren said, meaning it. “No question.”
“Still friends,” Jase said. “But, Bren, I can’t bewho I was down there. They won’t let me be.”
“Will they not?” He was determined to the contrary, determined, in this last-moment doubt, to recall what Jase had thought last week and the week before. “Listen to me. Will you turn against Tabini, or report against him? I don’t think you will; you understand what the truth is down there. I know you won’t ever turn coat for your own sake. I know you.”
“Do you? I don’t know whatI’ll do.”
“I understand that point of view. Been through it. You knowI’ve been through it.”
“I don’t know I can.”
“Get your thinking in order. I know the dislocation you’re facing. But think of Shejidan. It’s real. The people you know are real, and depending on you, the same as I imagine people here are. Personally—I’ll get you back, Jase. Damned if I won’t. Politically, you’ll do as you have to for the short term, but don’t ruin my play and don’t stray too far, not physically, not mentally.”
“I’m not Mospheiran. I can’t explain how different…”
“ Na dei shi’ra ma’anto paidhi, nadi?”… Are you not one of the paidhiin, sir? Am I mistaken?
From a glance at the screens, Jase flung him a sidelong, troubled glance.
“ Na dei-ji?” Bren repeated, with the familiar.
“Aiji-ji, so’sarai ta.”
There was no real translation, only affection, loyalty, a salute. You taught me, my master. I respect that. Implicit was the whole other mindset, that back-and-forth shift that came with any deep shift in language, an earthquake in thought patterns. From panic in Jase’s eyes, he saw a slide toward sanity and familiar ground.
“Shi, paidhi, noka ais-ji?”
Are you reliable, translator-mediator?
Jase heaved a small, desperate breath. “ Shi!” I am.
“ Thinkin Ragi, Jasi-ji. The language changes the way you think. Changes your resources. Your responses. So does your native accent. You’ve been on a long trip. You’re going to remember things here you’d let slip. But stop and think in Ragi, at least twice a day.”
“It’s trying to slip away from me! Words just aren’t there!”
“I’ve been through that, too, every trip to Mospheira. Fight for it.”
“Please give attention to the exit procedures,” the steward said, with the worst timing in the world or above it.
“Jase,” Bren said. “What’s your personal preference? Honestly. You don’t getpersonal preferences. I don’t. But tell me what it is.”
“If I had personal preference,” Jase said with a desperate laugh, “I’d be home.—God! I’m scrambled…”
“I know that,” Bren said. “Think of the sitting room in the Bu-javid. Think of Taiben. Think of the sea.”
“ Sha nauru shina. I’ll contact you,” Jase said desperately, as staff rose and the Mospheirans rose to leave. “Or you demand to see me. They’re going to want me to themselves for a number of days. Ramirez I can deal with.”
“I’ll raise hell till I do get to see you,” Bren said. It might be a close, intense, emotional debriefing, a close questioning no one could look forward to. They would want to bring him back under their authority, even to crack him emotionally to be sure what was inside… Jase had never quite said so, but he had an idea what he was facing. No government could take chances with trust, not with survival at stake.
Likewise he knew what he was promising Jase, on the instant and on his own judgment of a situation. He hadbeen in Jase’s position. And he knew how Jase might both take comfort in someone saying you matter—and at the same time feel politically trapped. In the emotional impact of the ship that was his home, the atevi world was starting to leak right out of his brain, along with all the memories, all the confidence of what he believed.
“At Malguri,” he said while bangs and thumps proceeded aft and Mospheirans drifted free of their seats. “At Malguri,” he said, because Jase knew the story, “I had one of those language transit experiences; I think it helped make me fluent. I’ll tell you honestly I don’t envy you the debriefing. And this I can tell you. Don’t ever let them take timeaway from you. Don’t ever let their reality become yours. I’ll be here as long as possible, and if I have to leave, I’ll apply every means I’ve got to get contact directly with you. I won’t give up. Ever.”
“You can’t afford that.”
“Hell, Tabini won’t forget you. And I won’t. You have power, Jase. I’m handing it to you, right now. Aishi’ji.” Associates. He laid a grip on Jase’s arm. Tightened it. “We don’t lose one another.”
Jase concentrated on him with that wild look he’d had once, contemplating a very deep sea under his feet, and all that heaving water.
“Kindly file out to the rear hatch,” the steward said.
They unbuckled, were able to rise… straight up… taking advantage themselves of zero-G.
His staff had gathered up their carry-on baggage, of which there was a fair quantity.
Tano was with the servants. “One has the manifest, nand paidhi,” Narani said to Tano in his hearing, “so that baggage may find the quarters. How shall I deliver this document?”
This, in a space increasingly complicated by loose passengers, baggage, straps, and elbows.
Something banged. Nothing advised what the various bleeps, beeps, bangs, and thumps were, but he thought it might be the hatch, and in the next moment a wave of cold wind came through the shuttle.
He had to forget Jase then. He cast grim looks at his security, sure that he needed to stay with them, because, being atevi, theywould assuredly stay with him, and he wanted no misunderstandings. The possibility of abrupt, wrong movement all rested with him, with the relative position of him, his guard, and threat. He dared not let overzealous station security create a moment of panic.
“If they do jostle us, Nadiin,” Bren said, drifting up beside Banichi and Jago, “recall they don’t feel man’chi, and may make apparently hostile moves. They are foreigners. Be restrained. Be very restrained. Don’t show weapons.”
“Yes,” Jago said, that disconcerting Ragi agreement to a negative.