Wheels touched down, squealed on wet pavement. The airport buildings rushed past, went slower.
Slower still.
Chapter 2
The plane braked to an easy turn on a rain-puddled taxiway and rolled toward the security zone while the stewards reunited passengers and coats.
They reached a sedate stop, and there followed the immediate, familiar growl of the ladder-truck.
All four of Bren’s seatmates, putting on their coats, simultaneously developed the same angle of furtive small stares toward the windows, dignified, not wishing to be seen staring as the ladder-truck moved up. But at the approach of the first atevi personnel, the first atevi they would ever have seen in the flesh, they stared. Ben and Kate had spent years studying and translating the language, but they had never seen the species who owned the planet they lived on; Ginny and Tom had no association whatever with atevi but trade and scientific exchange.
Bren himself fully expected the ladder-shaking rush of giants up the aluminum steps to meet the opening hatch. He didn’t stare, rather composed himself to court standards, as the two atevi he hoped would have come to meet him arrived in the hatchway… Banichi and Jago, senior pair of the four who guarded him: black skinned, black-haired, golden-eyed, in the black leather and silver of the Assassins’ Guild, against whose size they all looked like children.
His bodyguard, appointed by Tabini-aiji: his dearest friends, humanly speaking… and not friends: he was their duty, their association, as atevi felt things.
Human friends, even family, might desert you for very valid emotional reasons, even leave you for hire; and when he was on Mospheira, the human ways crept into his bloodstream and gave nesting room for doubts. But this pair, not being insane, wouldn’t leave him except when duty took him overseas, where the law wouldn’t let them go… and the moment they could rejoin him, sure as sunset, here they were.
They found themselves facing strangers, probably no surprise to them, but their polite impassivity gave no clue even to him. In front of dignitaries from Mospheira they stood, armed, solemn—very, very tall.
“Banichi and Jago,” he introduced his bodyguard, then in Ragi, revised the island names to a form the language could accommodate. “Ben Feldman, Kate Shugart, Tom Lund, Ginny Kroger. One believes Tabini-aiji has granted their request to go up on the shuttle.”
“Honored,” Banichi replied in Mosphei’, in a voice that would rattle china. He even gave a nod of the head, signal honor to the paidhi’s guests if they knew enough to recognize the fact.
“Honored,” Ben said. It was his very first chance to speak a word of Ragi to an ateva face-to-face, and the atevi in question disappointingly spoke Mosphei’ to him first. But it was still a life-defining moment for the two linguists. Bren heard the quaver, saw two pairs of eyes wide as saucers, unabashedly staring at what they’d devoted their lives to understand.
Tom and Ginny remained more reserved, staying more to the rear… he knew that reaction, too. One felt smaller than usual. Even the scents atevi brought with them were mildly different. All of a sudden and for the first time, Mospheirans found themselves not in the majority, not giving the orders, not the masters of civilization. It was another life-defining moment, less pleasant than Ben and Kate’s.
“The escort is waiting, sirs,” Banichi said, and Bren translated. “Observe caution on the steps.—Nadi Bren, Jason has gone to the lounge.”
“ Hashe?” He didn’t let it show on his face or in his manner, and he didn’t translate that part. He reined his reaction back hard, though he felt it as a blow to the gut. He’d raced all this distance, left his family early—he’d had to be the one to take the new ship-paidhi to the island when he was ready to go, no question, but dammit! someone could have waited. He’d rushed to get back to have time with Jason… and to no avail, it seemed.
Things suddenly didn’t seem that right on the mainland, despite Banichi’s and Jago’s presence, not with this mission, not with Jase’s.
“The aiji deemed best he welcome the passengers and deal with them. Jasi-ji asks you meet him there.”
“Let’s go there, then, nadi-ji.”
“Is there a problem?” Tom asked him.
“No,” Bren said quickly, adjusting his coat sleeve past the annoyance of the straight pin, relieved it had held, dignity preserved. It had scratched his wrist, minor pain, bringing a spot of blood to the cuff. “Jase Graham’s gone to the space center to welcome you there. The aiji, I’m sure, thought you’d be more at home if he met you.”
“Very thoughtful of him,” Tom said, and at that unthought and rude familiarity, Bren found himself furious, behind a diplomatic mask. Thoughtful.
Thoughtful, hell!Not of him, not of Jase, not of the unusual haste that was manifesting around him.
But having fallen already into the expressionless mode of atevi among strangers, he’d also begun hearing things through a Ragi filter, began to adjust his eyes, so that Banichi and Jago looked ordinary, and it was the humans who looked strange. Such was the order of the majority of the world, except for Jason Graham, and, briefly, Yolanda Mercheson.
And he knew every nuance of his guards’ expressionless expressions, understanding by that immediate advisement that he was being set on his guard, so far as Banichi could go against the aiji’s orders. He didn’t know why, didn’t take anything for urgent information, guard-your-life information, but his bodyguard was just slightly on edge about something.
Welcome home.
“Very thoughtful,” he echoed Tom Lund. “I’m sure the aiji hopes this mission goes well for both the island and the mainland.”
Three times was a charm, didn’t the proverb say?
The fourth launch of a newly-built shuttle, however many missions its exact predecessor had flown in the skies of the earth of humans, still didn’t feel secure, not to him. It didn’t feel that secure to Jason, either, not to anyone who’d sweated through the first, problematic docking. Not to anyone who knew why there’d been an hour-long cabin blackout on the third flight.
Why the rush? he asked himself.
The haste couldn’t feel that secure to the four Mospheirans, either.
Every time he thought about the possibility of a post-launch emergency, with two places in the entire world with a long enough runway, he found his palms sweating. Mercheson had made it safely to orbit. Jase would. He didn’t effectively give a damn about the Mospheirans… and did.
No cargo, well-thought test plans thrown to the winds…
“Shall we escort our guests to the facility, then?” he asked Banichi and Jago.
“As you wish,” was Jago’s answer… elegant, smooth, reasonable, and not a hint in her official bearing that there was ever anything but business between them, or anything in their meeting but well-oiled routine. “The van can accommodate us all,” she said, “nandi.”
With Banichi, then, she led the way down the stairs. The usual van was waiting.
“Watch the steps,” Bren said, starting down after her. All the stairs on the continent were higher steps than standard on Mospheira. He didn’t forget; he didn’t trust them to remember, and turned once and twice, hearing too much haste and suspecting too much sightseeing behind him. Rain slicked the ground. A brisk wind was blowing—tousling the Mospheirans’ hair, disturbing a strand or two of his despite his braid, but never, ever disturbing the precise single plaits that swung between atevi shoulders.
The van rolled forward as his bodyguard reached the tarmac. Banichi and Jago opened the double doors of the van and with the others settled inside, leaped inside themselves with a spring-rocking bound, pulling the doors to after them with a businesslike thump.