Explorer

by C. J. Cherryh

  He wished they were safely back in orbit around their own planet and he could take years doing this.

  But they weren’t, and he couldn’t. He gathered himself up with a deep breath. “Do not hesitate to notify us, Asi-ji,” he said to Asicho, “if there should be any word from Jase or the dowager on any account.”

  “One will be closely attentive, nandi,” Asicho assured him softly.

  He left, Banichi and Jago close on his heels . . .

  And outside, he discovered Cenedi. So the dowager was interested, and not entirely patient.

  And with Cenedi and his two men came a very unofficial presence, Cajeiri, tagging the dowager’s men at a safe distance, looking as inconspicuous as possible. And—one should note, who hoped for quiet and sanity—Cajeiri stood eavesdropping, toy car in hand.

  “The dowager inquires,” Cenedi said.

  “I am proceeding immediately,” Bren said.

  Cajeiri noted that look. “Might one just see this foreigner, nand’ Bren?”

  Cenedi bent a stern look aside and down.

  But, it flashed across Bren’s mind—in the naivete of that question: in the extreme pressure of time, to convince another species that one was not a warlike, ravening enemy—dared one think?

  Dared one remotely think a child might be useful?

  “Perhaps the dowager might permit him, Cenedi-nadi. What if we were to work on this foreigner what we worked upon Becker-nadi? What if this foreigner were to see we have young children and elder statesmen aboard?”

  His own staff looked at him, appalled. Cenedi looked decidedly uneasy. “Hurrah!” Cajeiri cried.

  Yet was it not the case, the paidhi asked himself? The fragile, troublesome side of every intelligent species must be its young—young in an intelligent species requiring a prolonged learning phase. Young who were apt to do any damned thing. Young who routinely made naturally forgivable mistakes.

  How best, without words, to demonstrate one’s pacific intent, than to show one’s softer side? The dowager had rarely come under that description. But she could manage a grand graciousness. The ship’s crew venerated her.

  “Perhaps, Cenedi-nadi, we shall invite our guest to the dining hall for refreshments—tired though our guest may be, he would surely like to know his situation, and perhaps we can demonstrate our hospitality. Perhaps the young aiji might indeed come and bring his toy. Though it is a very adult business, and the young aiji must bear extreme tedium with extraordinary patience. Perhaps the dowager herself would come and observe.”

  Cenedi looked worried. “One will certainly relay this invitation, nandi.”

  An invitation unwritten, testing the limits of atevi courtesy: but Cenedi clearly had no doubt the dowager would be amenable, and laying her own schemes on her next breath.

  “Shall we speak to this foreigner, nadiin-ji?” Cajeiri asked.

  “Perhaps,” Bren said, “we may convince him even our youngest are civilized and polite.”

  “A subterfuge,” Cajeiri said with restrained excitement. “A subterfuge, Cenedi-nadi!”

  “His new word,” Cenedi said, and to the offspring: “If mani agrees, you may be present and you may speak, young lord, but judiciously, and one does not believe the paidhi-aiji intends civility as a hollow subterfuge.”

  “Yes, Cenedi-nadi!”

  “We shall ask your great-grandmother,” Cenedi said—indeed, ask the dowager, who thought a headlong ride down a rocky mountain was sport, at her age. Cajeiri worshipfully tagged Cenedi down the corridor toward the dowager’s door.

  Bren looked at Banichi and Jago, knowing—knowing that he was about to test the limits of reasonable risk and his staff’s resources. He would assuredly have his own fragile neck at risk, and if he showed a potential enemy their softer side, he also showed that enemy a softer target—not even figuring it might go all wrong and he might offend or disgust the individual they had to reach. There were no certainties. The fact was, there were no facts to work on: they had the what, but not a shred of the why.

  “Safeguard the dowager and the heir at utmost priority. I insist, nadiin-ji. They would be the soft target, if I make any mistake. You will give me an opportunity to retreat. And I assure you, I promise you, I promise you twice and three times—I shall run.”

  “One agrees,” Banichi said—viscerally as hard for his own bodyguard, that promise to abandon him, as a leap off a cliff. All instincts warred against leaving him. But they were not slaves to those instincts. They understood him. “Yes,” Jago said flatly.

  “Nadi-ji.” A little bow. He trusted word was already passing, from them to Asicho, from Asicho to both staffs. Information flowed, swirled about them, a constant bath of attention and preparation.

  And he walked calmly toward that other door, bent on testing the waters before he committed their more fragile elements. He rang for admission, as if their guest had any control over his own door, before Banichi reached out to the button and unceremoniously opened it.

  Their guest, dressed in Bindanda’s blue bathrobe, met them on his feet, apprehensive, to judge by the rapid pace of the nostril slits. The room smelled of hot pavement.

  “Good afternoon,” Bren said in Mosphei’, showing empty hands and making a small bow—aversion of the gaze was a fairly reasonable, though not universal, indication of quiet intent. He laid a hand on his own chest, avoiding a rude stare in this formal meeting, experimenting shyly with eye contact. A glance seemed accepted, maybe expected, though met with a stony stare in a face that held little emotion.

  “Bren. Bren is my name.” A flourish of a lace-cuffed hand toward his staff. “Banichi. Jago.” An expectant, hopeful flourish toward their guest.

  Who simply turned his back.

  Well. There was a communicative gesture.

  “Be respectful,” Banichi said in a low voice, in Ragi; but Bren made a quiet, forbidding gesture.

  “Have patience, nadiin-ji. His treatment by humans was hardly courteous. It’s a very small defiance. Perhaps even a respectful dispute, in his own terms. Let me see.” He walked over to the corner of the room, gaining at least a view of their guest’s profile, a precarious proximity, though he had Banichi and Jago looming at his left.

  “We would like to take you to your ship,” he said quietly, soothingly, to that averted shoulder. “We wish to take the occupants of the station onto this ship and leave this station. We are here to help, not hurt.”

  It was a lengthy speech, in Ragi, certainly pure babble to alien ears. But it won a direct gaze, sidelong and, dared one think, perhaps reckoning that that was not the language, and therefore not the culture, he had met before.

  “We hope you will be comfortable aboard until we can arrange your return to your ship,” Bren said in a low, talking-to-children tone, still in Ragi. “Narani, the senior director of my staff, has disarranged himself to provide you this comfort, giving you his own bed. Do treat his cabin with respect. He’s a very fine gentleman, and offers you the use of objects which he greatly values.”

  A profile, now. A mouth like a vise, a brow that lowered over large eyes to shadow them—not actually an unpleasant face, once one tried earnestly to see the symmetry of it. But Jago had warned him there were very good teeth, and he could see for himself the huge hands, a grasp which had challenged even Banichi’s strength.

  “We talked to your ship,” Bren said, this time in ship-speak. He kept the vocabulary small and repetitive and the syntax very basic. “They showed us pictures, how station took you. Your ship says bring you back. We say yes. We leave this station. We take all the people out of this station and go. We want peace with you and this ship.”

  Now the full face, as their guest turned to face him—a scowl, was it, or a friendly face in sullen repose? And did turning toward him and meeting his eyes express courteous attention, or defiant insult?

  Massive hand went to massive chest. “Prakuyo.”

  “Prakuyo.—Bren.” He made a bow: one didn’t hold out an intrusive hand, not
with atevi, at first meeting, and not to any foreigner, in his opinion, without knowing the other party’s concept of body space and invasion. On the contrary, he kept his hands to himself and dropped his eyes for a moment, primate respect, before looking up. “Do you understand, Prakuyo? We take you to your ship.”

  The jaw remained clenched.

  But the eyes darted aside in alarm as a disturbance reached the open door.

  A very junior disturbance, as might be, who brought up short and wide-eyed, and who for a moment distracted him, distracted their guest—not, however, Banichi, as Jago alone gave a measured look at the doorway.

  One hardly needed guess Cajeiri had escaped the dowager’s party.

  “This is the foreigner,” Cajeiri surmised.

  “Young lord,” Bren said, now that his pulse rate had slowed, “kindly go back to Cenedi. Immediately.”

  “He’s as large as we are,” Cajeiri said, marveling. The heir, highly overstimulated by the situation and long bored, was being a seven-year-old brat.

  “Go,” Jago said, just that, and the boy ducked back out of sight.

  “Pardon. He’s a child,” Bren said calmly, as their guest continued to gaze at the vacant doorway—as if, next, fairies and unicorns could manifest. Interesting, Bren thought. Even encouraging. “This room is in our ship. We live here. This is not a prison.”

  Prakuyo, if that was his name, turned a burning look his way.

  “Do you understand?” Bren asked him. “Six years on the station—I think you might have learned good morning, hello, goodbye.”

  “Damn dumb shit,” Prakuyo muttered, in a voice that sounded like rocks hitting together.

  Had he just heard that? Damn dumb shit.

  Yes, he had heard that. So much for good morning, good afternoon and other station attempts to establish communication.

  “Thank you,” Bren said all the same, and made a bow. “Go home. Does that make sense?”

  “Madison.” It wasn’t a particularly happy tone.

  “Do you want Madison?” Bren asked. That was the person who’d been in charge in that prison. He laid a hand on his own chest. “Bren, not Madison. I don’t know Madison. I make the law here. Do you want Madison?”

  “Madison.” Prakuyo hit fist into palm, not a good indicator for Madison.

  “Bren,” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “Thank you.” Another bow. And the paidhi-aiji, in a sense of timing that had served well enough among atevi, made a wide decision—that even a small advance in communication had to be rewarded, that body language and cooperation indicated they dared run the risk of a boy not being where he was supposed to turn up. He recklessly indicated the door and trusted his staff together could flatten their guest, if they had to. “Come, Prakuyo. Walk with me. Outside.”

  That upset their guest’s sense of the universe. Nostrils worked hard. Need for more oxygen was a basic biological preface to high action, one could take that for a fair guess; but it could also accompany decision. Bren walked easily, cheerfully, to the door, bowed his courtly best and made a clear gesture of invitation outward—spying, in the process, a clear corridor.

  Their guest advanced to the door. And ventured out. Bren showed him the way down the corridor, walking with him, Banichi and Jago a little behind.

  “We live in these rooms,” Bren said, gesturing left and right, prattling on mostly to keep the tone easy as they walked. “My companions are atevi. I’m human. Not station-human. I live on this ship. What are you, Prakuyo?”

  He got no answer to that attempt, not the dimmest hint of understanding. Prakuyo lumbered slowly forward, with heavy swings of his head and shifts of dark, large eyes, taking in every detail of a corridor Narani had done his best to render kabiu and harmonious. Certainly it had to be better to alien eyes than the sterile prison section: a little table, a few hangings . . . one hanging, to be sure, harmonizing the troublesome dent.

  “Come in,” Bren said, showing their guest through the door into their dining hall.

  Again, not ship-bland. Atevi-scale chairs sat around a large table. A tapestry runner relieved the sterile modernity of the arrangement. Wall hangings provided a sense of space and harmony. A graceful vase sat in the center of the table—a moveable object, Bren noted. It held lush greenery, from Sandra Johnson’s now wide-spread cuttings.

  Prakuyo stood stock still.

  Bren laid claim to Banichi’s ordinary chair on the doorward side—his security had hammered home such points with him; Banichi and Jago stood, not inclined to sit down, but their looming over the table intimated a threat that scarcely helped.

  “Do sit, nadiin-ji,” Bren said quietly. Their guest picked a central chair on the opposite side and sat down . . . whether that was his preferred posture or not: the chairs here were at least of a scale that would bear his weight.

  Prakuyo was cooperating, at least . . . cooperating, possibly, to learn what he could before making a break for the vase as a weapon. But they couldn’t act as if they expected that. Prakuyo’s momentary attention was for the vase—or the greenery, that anomaly in this steel world. His eyes showed numerous frown lines, a clue, at least, that the general lighting might be too bright.

  “Jago-ji, dim the light a little.”

  Jago rose and did that, and Prakuyo looked up, the frown lines relaxing.

  The lights might be too bright, the air pressure was probably a little lower than their guest truly liked, but the cooler temperatures seemed not to bother him. He’d had all the water he wanted, on the whole, surely that brought an improvement in his mood.

  “The station was not good to you,” Bren said, deliberately rattling on, to see if the vocabulary provoked a reaction—or whether their guest’s comprehension went beyond single words, to syntax. “Station did bad. Were you angry with them?”

  Silence.

  “Or were you angry at the ship?” Bren asked. “Did the ship go somewhere they shouldn’t have gone? Did they do something that offended you? Something that scared you?”

  Silence still.

  “Can I ask him what his name is?” Cajeiri turned up at the door. Another skip of the heart.

  “One believes you have just done so, young sir. And his name seems to be Prakuyo. But if he doesn’t understand my language, I very much doubt he understands yours. Have you brought your car?”

  Cajeiri brought it from behind him. Their guest looked alarmed.

  “Run it end to end of the table,” Bren said.

  “Shall I use the remote, nandi?”

  Bright lad.

  “You can. Just run it very slowly down the table.”

  Down the sacred dining table. That was a daring enterprise. Cajeiri took the remote from his pocket, which Prakuyo watched apprehensively, and operated his car very slowly, quite circumspectly.

  Bren paid all considerate attention to the toy, which made its way at a jerky pace past the antique vase of greenery and into his hands.

  “Now call it back.”

  Cajeiri did that. Grind and whir. Wobble and correct. The car did far better with grand movements, and one so hoped the young fingers would keep the rate steady and not zip it into their guest’s lap. By now Cenedi’s men were in the doorway, watching this performance.

  Their guest, Bren marked in his peripheral vision, had looked ready to bolt at the first manifestation of the car, and at the remote control, and now just stared as the toy zigged and zagged and trundled safely back down the table.

  “And back again,” Bren said. While the fate of worlds trembled in the balance, while armed security outnumbered the civilians. And while a traumatized foreigner watched a child’s toy wobble down a table top.

  “Does he want to try it?” Cajeiri wanted to know.

  “One hopes not to offend our guest’s dignity,” Bren said. “But our guest should know we do other things less terrible than shoot at those who don’t look like us, should he not?” He smiled. Deliberately. “Are we having fun, young lord?”

  “Shall I m
ake it go fast now?”

  “Slowly,” Banichi said in his low tones. “Slowly.”

  Surely if Cajeiri were demonstrating the car for another boy, fast would have been very impressive. But Cajeiri, despite one accidental spurt, dutifully concentrated on keeping the movement slow. And at that moment Bindanda excused his way past Cenedi’s two men, bearing a tray with a sizeable pitcher of ice water, and fine crystal cups, and a pile of white sugar cakes that smelled of fresh icing and recent baking.

  “Excellent,” Bren said. Whirr went the car, rapidly back to Cajeiri. But the car was forgotten. Their guest’s attention was on those cakes.

  “Danda-ji. Thank you.”

  Their guest duly accepted a crystal cup of water, formally served, sipped it with restraint, accepted an atevi-sized tea cake, eyes sparkling with animation and excitement.

  Dared one think that tea cakes had not regularly been on the station’s menu, for their prisoner? That for most of ten years, the fare had been ship-fare, bland yeasts and synth?

  Cajeiri wanted his tea cake, too, but waited, hushed, toy car tucked out of the way, waiting his turn as Bindanda served all round, served Banichi and Jago as well, and deftly replenished Prakuyo’s cup with ice water.

  “A welcome to our guest,” Bren said then, lifting his cup in salute. “Welcome, Prakuyo-nadi.”

  “Welcome,” Cajeiri said in great enthusiasm, and likewise lifted his cup.

  Could such an immensely strong hand tremble? It did, and spilled water over the rim of the cup. Prakuyo drained another icewater, crunched the ice in, yes, very healthy grinding teeth behind those incisors—definitely an omnivore—and followed it with the cake. Bindanda poured yet another water, and with a re-offer of the plate, indicated Prakuyo should take more tea cakes, until he had fortunate three—in such arcane ways culture manifested itself.

  Then their guest looked doubtfully at Bren, perhaps realizing he had just forgotten that cardinal precaution appropriate in prisoners—that he had just ingested doubtful cakes and suspicious ice water.

  Greenery. Cakes with natural sweetness. Greatly appreciated: Prakuyo, or at least his culture, was not that long divorced from blue sky.