His connection to the University and the State Department apparently was renewed along with it.
So he was going to have to speak for Shawn, too, without quite speaking for Shawn, until the Mospheiran shuttle got there with whatever news it brought.
Springing a replacement as a total surprise, two days after their arrival—that was going to be a dicey moment.
But a hell of a lot worse if Tillington decided to resist removal.
Have a safe trip.
Good luck, was what Shawn could well have wished him.
His brain had been full of surmises about kyo grammar and sentence structure.
Now he had to map a meeting with Tillington. In case.
And a meeting with Ogun, to explain it all.
Jago, sitting beside him, gave him a questioning look. The exchange with Shawn had been via the earpiece. Atevi hearing could pick up the voice despite the ambient noise of the shuttle under power, and Jago understood more of the language than the University on Mospheira would like. But Jago would not pick up all the verbal code behind the words.
She queried him in the mere arch of a brow.
“The Presidenta asked me official questions, only so he can relay my answer to the news services, regarding the visitors. The real news is that the shuttle from Mospheira is running only two days behind us. I believe he is sending someone to replace Tillington. He also addressed me as paidhi representing Mospheira.”
“Has there ever been another paidhi?”
“No.” One couldn’t count Yolanda Mercheson. “None in the last three years.”
Jago gave a tip of her head, less surprised than he was, he was sure.
And a lot more confident.
“I hope for Kate Shugart,” he said. “I hope there has not been politics in the appointment, but likely there was. The ability of Mospheirans to imagine conspiracies is exceeded only in the Transportation Committee of the aishidi’tat. And I have no time to become involved in a discussion. Being paidhi for the humans—means I am charged with securing cooperation.”
“From Ogun-aiji.”
“From Ogun-aiji to start with. I think it will be politic to meet with him directly on arriving—before meeting Sabin-aiji, unless she comes to meet us first, and I do not believe she will. Ogun being seniormost of the captains, he is due respect.”
Jago listened: one saw the analysis flicker through her eyes. “One assumes that Jase-aiji has an association with Sabin—and with you. Which is stronger? Will approach to Ogun weaken Jase-nandi, regarding Sabin?”
“One does not think so. One hopes not. For any repercussions—I have to trust Jase.” The route past Ogun’s expectations of treachery was forming in his brain as he talked—where Ogun’s loyalties lay now, and where they had been when Ramirez had been alive, and the mess Ogun had had to deal with when Sabin and Jase had taken the ship out to Reunion.
Why had Ogun let her take the ship?
Possibly because he couldn’t stop her without armed force.
Perhaps because Sabin had threatened to take the truth to the crew.
She never had. But there might be facts known among the Reunioners, kept vivid by their resentments for being left—when Phoenix, under Ramirez in those days, had run, and left them to face the kyo.
That information, coming out from the Reunioners and apt to reach the Mospheirans and the ship’s crew, might be one reason Ogun was upset.
Grant that Ogun hadn’t been the one to make the decision to leave Reunion. He’d been second to Ramirez. Ogun might have compromised his conscience to make what he had thought at the time was the only choice.
He’d been rather well forced, also, so long as Ramirez was alive, to oppose Sabin, who was not well in accord with Ramirez. Where had Sabin been during the kyo encounter? He had no idea, nor did, apparently, Jase, which said something.
But all that was old history. That was something interior to the ship and maybe something he would never know.
But what was steering the current problem was Ogun’s support for Tillington. It was understandable. When Sabin had set out to settle what had become of Reunion, Ogun had had to work with the man, half-fearing, perhaps, that Sabin might not come back, and half-fearing that she would come back with information that would ruin him.
He’d had Tillington, with whom he could communicate. But no paidhi to communicate with Geigi—they’d had to route matters through the University linguistics department, through translators who read the language, but could not speak it. They’d done their best. He’d supported Geigi, so far as requesting supplies for atevi projects—not demanding them; and Geigi had responded positively, for the most part. They’d limped through a very bad time, while the Mospheirans were trying to build their own shuttle, and Shawn had been quietly supporting Geigi and backing atevi trying to bring down Murini’s regime.
Then Sabin had come back, bringing a man Ogun held accountable for the whole situation. Louis Baynes Braddock, Chief of the ancient Pilots’ Guild—who had wanted Phoenix to take on the kyo. Braddock, stationmaster over Reunion, had arrived with five thousand survivors, and no supplies.
More, Jase Graham arrived home with Sabin, perfectly fluent in communication with Lord Geigi, and when Tabini-aiji took back the aishidi’tat, and everything began flowing that hadn’t flowed during the hard years of their absence, effortless. Shuttles flew. Supply arrived. If it had all been good change, Sabin might have won the Mospheirans’ good will despite the gift she’d brought.
But all the new construction, all the gains the station had made in the Mospheiran section, had to be diced up to house the Reunioners—lifelong stationers, who had skills, and wanted jobs, which the Mospheirans weren’t going to surrender.
He’d known it was difficult. He’d not known how difficult.
And insofar as Tillington had made himself the champion of Mospheirans seeking to hold on to their station—Tillington would have support. Insofar as Tillington supported Ogun and made Ogun feel he had allies—Tillington would have Ogun’s support.
Insofar as Tillington wanted to play on the old, old resentments of the colonials against the governors, claiming conspiracy—Tillington could wake something deep in Mospheiran roots that had not slept that long, that had waked now and again in Mospheiran relations with the aishidi’tat, that was certainly ready to wake, when Mospheirans identified modern Reunioners with the hated colonial administrators and the ancient Pilots’ Guild.
He had to move in ahead of that situation, get Ogun to listen, create a place for Ogun in the arrangement they had to have with the human side of things, and not let a war break out between the Mospheirans and the Reunioners.
Or have a mutiny within the ship’s crew.
With the kyo inbound.
Represent Mospheira?
God.
He had to think.
16
Debarkation was what the crew called it. It was a new word in Cajeiri’s notebook—or it would be when he had a pen.
Debarkation involved a lot of preparation he never remembered before.
But the last trip he had made to the station, he had had no idea what the shuttle was doing, except when it behaved like a plane. He had had no idea what was up in the front of the shuttle except a lot of dials and lights, and he had not paid a great deal of attention.
Now he did understand. He was much more grown up on this trip. He was a person and not a baby. He had spent hours and hours with his notebook, in the seat next to nand’ Bren, and they had compared their notes, and spoken back and forth in kyo. Bren had asked him his opinion on meanings, and he had answered and nand’ Bren had taken him seriously and even made notes. He was very proud of that. And mani had given him a nod, after, as if she approved. He held that in his mind and worked it over and over when he read his notes.