“People, sir. The gentleman I dealt with at Reunion is an imposing fellow named Prakuyo an Tep, very smart—a thinker, a very tough individual, and very civilized, who endured ten years of captivity without hating humans indiscriminately. I hope he is aboard that ship. I very much hope he is in a position of authority on that ship. Whatever the situation, sir, I am deeply devoted to the survival of our side of this encounter, and our side includes, as a very high priority, the safety of the ship. I am calling now to offer you my respects, sir, and I hope to work closely with you.”
Again a silence, which extended beyond time-lag.
“Mr. Cameron, you say you will take orders.”
“I assure you, sir, I take orders very well, but my job is to keep the opinions of various sides from intersecting badly. That is my expertise, and I will be as zealous in communicating your point of view or Prakuyo an Tep’s as I am in representing the aiji’s view: that is the job I have, sir. I am charged with bringing all these views to the table and finding some way for them to be compatible.”
“I’ll tell you what I want, right now, Mr. Cameron. I want these strangers out of here, and while you’re at it, I want some lasting solution to five thousand people who don’t like your people, and who happen to be led by the single damned bastard who created this mess.”
Interesting classification—regarding Braddock.
“I understand and agree in all points, sir. I suspect the kyo ship is here on a fact-finding mission, and I hope we can satisfy them and send them on their way. A year’s voyage to reach us is hardly the sort of thing that defines close neighbors.”
“I have things to discuss with you, Mr. Cameron.”
“I would be very glad to have that discussion, sir.”
“Going up with the shuttle tomorrow, is it? You were the delay.”
“Yes, sir. Tomorrow is as quickly as I could get the shuttle reconfigured. In the meantime, sir, the pattern of our communication with the kyo has previously been an opening of reciprocation. Phoenix has all the records of the last exchange, and it also has the personnel who handled the communications. I am extremely glad you have them for a resource. If you start receiving anything different than you are now receiving, I cannot stress enough, send it to me and don’t respond to their signal until I’ve seen it and we’ve had a chance to confer. The kyo will take a continual repetition of the identical pattern quite patiently. I would not like to enter an escalating series of reciprocal actions with them that could be misinterpreted. Their timescale does not seem to be ours.”
Small silence. “I follow your logic, Mr. Cameron.”
That was a relief. “I will be up there as soon as possible. Express, sir.”
“I’ll see you in my office when you get here.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll be there.”
Click.
Connection broke.
He looked across the room, aware now that Jago had come in.
“One could not follow enough of it,” Jago said, which was some encouragement to hope the Messengers’ spies couldn’t, either.
“I have now told Ogun-aiji we are coming. I neglected to mention the aiji-dowager or the young gentleman. Ogun-aiji and I at least reached a civilized understanding this time. But I am not confident I understand Ogun that much more than I understand Prakuyo an Tep. And I do not know his history. I wish I did.”
“How so?” Jago asked.
“Very possibly Ogun has seen the kyo world—or at least knows where it is. I have no access to the ship’s records. And I am not certain the information Ramirez-aiji concealed from everyone is extant or accessible in those records. There may be areas of the ship’s records that Sabin and Jase cannot reach. Ogun may know where the first meeting with the kyo was, and under what circumstances. He may not. And despite Tillington’s charge that this entire situation is Sabin’s fault—by all I can gather, Ramirez was the captain on duty when the ship entered into the kyo solar system. The ship was spotted by the kyo, and it left quickly, leaving, of course, a trail to say where it had come from, exactly the thing Tillington charged Sabin with doing at Reunion, in coming here. The ship took a circuitous course getting back to Reunion, presumably under Ramirez’ orders. When the ship did arrive back at Reunion, it found Reunion had already been hit, and that they were consequently without a secure base—with Braddock in charge, trying to invoke command over the ship. There were two ways to go, then: rebuild Reunion, with the constant threat of another strike—or come back here. Ramirez apparently wanted to abandon Reunion and bring the population here, but Reunion being under Braddock’s orders—Braddock refused to evacuate, and the ship just left, possibly by another indirect route. Ogun was second-in-command. He may have known what Ramirez knew regarding survivors on Reunion, and Ogun’s dealing with Braddock may go back to that time.”
“But would not Sabin know this?”
“If she was off-shift, decisions might have been taken that she had no idea were taken. Allegedly Ramirez gave Braddock the order to evacuate his people from Reunion, and Braddock refused him. Did he refuse? I think it likely is the truth. If the ship had come back here and found no human survivors, they would have lacked laborers and technicians to create any new human settlement. That argues that the ship really did urge Braddock to evacuate—that Braddock in fact did refuse, and that Ramirez-aiji left them stranded because his priority was to protect the ship and re-establish a base here. What he had done troubled him deeply. He revealed the truth about Reunion only when he was dying—but was it to force Ogun by popular sentiment, or was Ogun as surprised by the truth as everybody else? I am convinced that Sabin was indeed surprised by Ramirez’ confession. I do not know what she was doing while Ramirez was making some of these decisions, but I strongly suspect that she may have been barred from the bridge—and that her feud with Ogun and the division in command goes that far back. I have very many questions about Ogun, what he did, who his allies were—but most urgently I need to know what his state of mind is now, and how much the past affects his relationship with Sabin.”
He turned his chair, leaned back—looked directly at a face more familiar than his own. And not human. And beloved.
Strange how a few moments of using the language and thinking human thoughts shifted his whole world.
Jago shifted it all back into the order he much preferred.
“Tillington became Ogun’s ally during our voyage to Reunion, and Ogun will not be pleased,” he said, “when he learns I am requesting Tillington be replaced. But he will accept it, one hopes, before the kyo arrive.”
“Will he be reliable?”
Instantly: where is his man’chi? That was the math Jago lived with.
“One is not sure how Ogun regards me, despite his promise to hear my advice. But if he will hear me for a few moments I think he will realize I can be of far more help to him than Tillington can. Certainly I can be more help than Braddock can.”
Jago gave a silent, grim laugh. One knew what Jago thought logical, regarding Braddock’s fate, and the math made sense. Humans were, in Jago’s estimation, endangering everyone and everything in the world, all to avoid one quiet, well-deserved disposal.
“We Mospheirans are,” he said, “a little crazy. And I wish I knew for certain whether Ogun was complicit in what Ramirez did. It bears on how he makes his decisions now, and what he might want to hide from discovery—as if it could matter now, at least to me. I think, in simple terms, his man’chi is most of all to the ship. And at this crisis, I care very little what Ogun has done or not done in the past. Our problem is immediate, and my concern is a peaceful, constructive talk with that arriving ship and a negotiation that disengages us from all the kyo’s concerns.”