Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  For three years a handful of atevi engineers, he and Jase and to a certain extent, Yolanda Mercheson, with their respective staffs, had shared every breath, lived and breathed the shuttle, the space center, the program.

  “Nice,” Lund said of the decor.

  Bren took a breath. Let it out slowly. Lund meant a compliment. He and Jase had hoped for just such ease in humans when they came to these rooms. Cope hadn’t even said that much when he’d come down four weeks ago, yet Cope had lived those four weeks almost exclusively in these rooms because he’d had motion sickness only when he’d left this facility… had had it all the way across the strait at night on the plane, had had it in his new residence on Mospheira, probably would have it in his new offices, give or take the drugs that held it at bay, and despite his suggestions to State to try to limit Cope’s exposure to changing light conditions and contrasts and open horizons.

  He’d grown sensitive to such details, thanks to Jase. Irregularities in lighting were an indication of failing systems, to a ship-born human… large spaces were a particular fear, or so Jason had explained to him: a sensible fear of impact.

  Make the corridors interrupted with cross-corridors and nooks that could be a refuge in acceleration: the center did that. Zero chance the space center would ever accelerate, but small chance that blue that comforted Lund and his friends was sky, either. It was something to do with hindbrain and childhood security, he supposed, not intellect.

  So Lund liked the decor… didn’t apparently notice that there were no steps to make humans labor or to trip up atevi strides. Elevators handled all level changes. Control panels and wall switches sat at intermediate height, a little high for humans, not too low for atevi.

  And the flowers on the table, an atevi welcome in this area, were a carefully chosen arrangement—no different than the species familiar to Mospheirans, but felicitous in number and color, given the blue and green: they were spring, and hope.

  “Lovely flowers,” Kate was kind enough to say, perhaps making conscious amends for Lund. She and Ben might understand. The others might finally twig to at least that. Mospheirans were remarkably stubborn in their insularity, but the news channels had been full of unbridled analysis of atevi ways in the last three years. In the end, he’d sent his own reaction in an interview, trying to satisfy a burgeoning, fearful curiosity without weakening the strictures that kept the species from unofficial contact. Adventurous types on either side of the straits had tried contact in rowboats, and successful, live venturers, even escorted back by the authorities, were damned dangerous to have expounding in the press and over the airwaves.

  How long could they hold two curious species apart, with a narrow body of water separating them?

  That, apart from hostile aliens in some other solar system, was one of the worries inherent in the space program… in this launch, in Jason’s recall, and in this mission. Atevi would grow close, again, to humans.

  The door to the lounge opened.

  And there Jason met them—his dark hair starkly, badly, shockingly cut. In three years Jason had carefully grown the beginnings of a respectable braid, that badge of atevi dignity, and now he’d cut it, along with his ties to the earth… God alone knew in what frame of mind when he’d gotten the orders from above. Jase wore a dark-blue jersey, black trousers, and, God save them both, that frayed fishing jacket Toby had given him three years ago.

  “Jason Graham,” he introduced himself to the Mospheirans, as if television hadn’t broadcast his image all over the planet at least twice a week. He didn’t quite look at Bren, not looking him in the eye, at least. “Jase is what I go by.” Duly, Jase shook hands, smiled, did all the right and human things with the newcomers: Bren accomplished the introductions, wanting all the while to ask the essential question, but they were waist-deep in newcomers and unanswered questions.

  “Mine’s the first room,” Jason said to the incomers, indicating the first of the twenty rooms in circular arrangement around the common room: no head, no seniormost: King Arthur’s revolutionary arrangement. It set atevi teeth on edge. To atevi eyes, it was social chaos. War. “Plenty of room, this trip. We have space for more.”

  All cheerfulness… which certainly hadn’t been Jase’s mood when he’d gotten the order to fly, and was not what he expected from Jase, not with that haircut.

  Bren waited, offered polite, required courtesies. Considered the coat, the performance, because performance it surely was… and God alone knew how Jase had gotten out the door past their major domo wearing that; God knew how he’d saved it from the servants.

  But the jacket was a map of explorations. There was an abrasion on the elbow, where Jase had tried to fall in the ocean. Jase had begged, pleaded, and demanded his visit to the ocean—for ulterior motives, as it had turned out. But Jase had fallen in love with the sea.

  And what did it say, that, going home, Jase chose that ratty, salt-weakened jacket and a shirt he knew had seen three years of wear? What had Jase been thinking, and what must the servants have thought, when Jase took something to his hair.

  “Where’s the shuttle?” Tom Lund was forward enough to ask.

  Jason didn’t give them the expected, verbal answer. He walked over to the wall and pushed the button that motored the blinds aside.

  The gleaming white, bent-nosed bird out on the tarmac seemed about to lift from the ground of its own volition. It looked small… until the eye realized those service vehicles that attended it were trucks.

  “God.” Ben was the only one with a voice. “My God.”

  And Kate: “It’s big.”

  When ten men set their hands to a rope and pulled in unison, amazing amounts of weight slid.

  When an entire civilization worked in concert to accomplish materials and training for a tested design, three years produced—this shining, beautiful creature.

  “Shai-shan,” Bren said, standing behind the group, finding a voice. “Favorable Wind.” He’d seen Shai-shan from framework to molds to first flight, and now Jason’s life, Jason’s departure from the world, rode on these same wings. He’d translated every line of her. He’d all but given birth when she lifted off for her maiden flight, a curious emotion for a maker of dictionaries, a parser of words and meanings.

  “Marvelous, marvelous thing,” Kate managed to say, and the group stayed and stared.

  Jason had a sense of the dramatic, and of diversion. Bren caught Jason’s eye once for all as the group, Kate last, with a lingering glance at the shuttle, began to disperse, subdued, to make their choice of accommodations.

  For a moment Jase gazed back at it, too, then looked at him with a subtle shift of the eyes that indicated the dining recess.

  He went, Jason went. Banichi and Jago walked as far as the arch and stopped.

  There would not be intrusion.

  “So they want you up there,” was Bren’s opener.

  “The aiji’s order,” Jason said with a brittle edge. “Packed in an hour. Hurry and wait.”

  “I’m sure I’ll learn why” Bren said faintly.

  “I’m sure I will,” Jase said.

  “Damn it.”

  “Damn it,” Jase said. That much was Mosphei’, and then, in Ragi: “Sit a moment. The tea’s not bad.”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Bren said. “We ordered it.”

  So the parting they’d both dreaded came down to a cup of tea from a dispenser, and all Bren could hope for was a quiet, guarded conversation in the dining section. The Mospheirans wandered about. Banichi and Jago were forbidding gatekeepers, not moving a muscle.

  “Wish I had answers for you,” Bren said. “I wish I had any answers. You don’t know?”

  “Just… word came: get up there; and word came from the aiji. Go. Not a choice in the world. I suppose the aiji wanted me here to look over our guests, make sure they didn’t steal the silverware.”

  Atevi joke.

  “I don’t know,” Bren said. “I swear I don’t know. Didn’t know. Didn’t have any mor
e warning than you did.”

  “I believe you.”

  There were signs they used for truth, I swear was one of them. They never lied when they said that to each other, though lying was part of their separate jobs… or had been, and might be again.

  “Might still be a weather delay,” Bren said.

  “What about the Mospheirans? Did the Guild want them, too?”

  “Hell if I know,” Bren said. “Not a clue. They asked to go. Tabini said go now.”

  They looked at one another. No sum of the parts made total sense.

  “I’ve still not a clue,” Jason said.

  “Unless they’re going to spite the Guild,” Bren said, and warmed chilled fingers around a plastic cup. “Tabini might do that.”

  “Going to miss you.”

  “Get back down here if you can.”

  “I’ll try,” Jase said. “Get up there, if you can.”

  “I’ll try that, too” Bren said. “If I can find out anything and get a message back to you, when I get to the Bu-javid, I will.”

  “Do we ever get word?” Jason asked, rhetorical question. He looked badly used, with the uneven haircut, wisps sticking out at angles. God knew what reason… maybe just a fit of anger at an unreasonable order. Jason wasn’t immune to fits of temper.

  Neither of them were that.

  “Look, tell them that second shuttle won’t make schedule if you’re not down here,” Bren said. “It’s not entirely a lie.”

  “I know,” Jason said. “Damn all I can do. Maybe… maybe there’s a way back. I can’t guarantee it.”

  “Ramirez?”

  That was the senior captain in the Guild, Jase’s sometime guardian, sometime chief grievance. Ramirez had his good moments and his bad ones.

  “I imagine it is. Him, I can talk to.”

  “Talk and get back here.”

  “I want to.”

  “You’re going to have to grow that damn braid again.”

  Jase gave a rueful laugh, shook his head, and for the better part of an hour they drank tea and reminisced, mostly about Toby and his boat… nothing about Barb, not a word about Barb, just… “How’s your mother? How’s Toby and all?”

  “Oh, fine,”he said.

  Remarkable how little now they found to say to each other, when before this they’d had all the time and talked and talked about details, plans, intentions—time shortened on them, three years to recall, no time ahead of them, just a little rehearsing of the schedule for the two shuttles under construction.

  “I’ll write tonight,” Bren said, damned well knowing the barriers of administrations, governments, and just plain available space in the message flow up from the big dish that was most of their communications.

  Jason was quiet then, subdued, next to distraught. “Tell Tano and Algini I’ll miss them,” the word was. “Tell the secretaries, all the staff.” It achieved a sense of utter desperation. “Banichi. Jago.” He cast a look at them.

  “Nadi-ji,” Banichi said.

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “We also regret this,” Banichi said.

  A silence fell. And grew deeper and more desperate.

  “I’ve got to get back” Bren said. ”I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’ll come late tonight, if I can. Maybe spend a little more time.“ The launch was in the early hours. “As much as I can.”

  “I’d be glad if you could.”

  So there was nothing to do but finish the tea, get up from the chairs, and face one another. Bren offered an embrace. It was the Mospheiran thing to do. Jason met it awkwardly, hugged him fiercely; ship-folk were isolate, not prone to touch one another. Bren gathered a grip on the worn jacket and clapped Jase on the shoulder, feeling a burning tightness in his throat.

  “Take care,” Jason said. “Take care, Bren.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Bren let him go, turned in the futile attempt to find something to do with his hands, and walked away.

  Banichi and Jago went with him, saying not a word as they followed him out of the residency and down the outside, gray hall.

  He’d known for three years that, once the shuttle truly flew, he’d be alone again. He’d planned to be alone in his life.

  And what was this… alone? He had Banichi and Jago, whom he loved… a human could say love, and they could be devoted in atevi fashion.

  He had Tabini-arji’s high regard, he lived in splendid quarters, held an extravagant seaside estate where his mother and his brother and his brother’s family arrived for family visits… visits no other paidhi had ever been granted—

  Not to mention the hundreds of staff and servants and acquaintances… and the relationship, of sorts, he had with Jago, for good or for ill. He was not, whatever else, alone.

  Yet losing Jason left him feeling used up, bruised to the soul.

  In that light he knew he ought to open his mouth and talk, talk about something, anything, in the absence of a word from his companions. It wasn’t their job to guess that the human in their midst wanted—needed—to be talked to. He was the translator, the cultural interpreter. He should initiate a word, something to give them a cue how to deal with him in this situation they’d never met.

  But he didn’t find one.

  They escorted him in silence down to the security zone, into that area of grim gray concrete where the van had let them out. The next link would not be by van, but by rail, up to the Bu-javid, the palace on the hill, the center of Shejidan. He walked with them past the spot where the van no longer stood, in the echoing hollow of the place. They entered through a black security door, and saw, not unexpectedly, their associates Algini and Tano, holding place near the rail-access to this closely guarded facility.

  “Paidhi-ji,” Algini said, seeing him, and that was the first word he’d heard since he’d left Jason above.

  “A good trip?” Tano asked him, as if that should be some consolation for what he was sure Tano knew.

  “Very fine,” he said politely. Tano was a good man, a very good man. In the paraphrase of Lund’s question, Tano cared.

  But this wasn’t fine, his trip hadn’t been fine, Jase wasn’t fine… and on the island his family wasn’t fine. He hadn’t thought that, in this suddenly harried trip, but it hadn’t been fine at all. His mother had wanted him to stay. Toby’s youngsters were going through growing pains and grandmotherly spoiling, and were wretched company, grating on his nerves for the single day he’d been with them… he wasn’t used to human children.

  Where had he lost that sense of connection?

  And what had he traded it for?

  What was he losing, back there with Jase? The one human being on whom he’d focused all his remnant of humanity, in a desperate attempt to put together official policy for the aiji, trying to understand the ship-humans’ mind-set?

  He boarded the train, rode in absentminded silence, recalling a dozen and one trips over the years, the first launch… spiraling back in time, the first trip to Malguri, the return… going out to Taiben, once and twice, all jumbled together, Jase and before-Jase. Down to Geigi’s estate, for one reason and another… those were the good times. Fishing.

  What in hell was Tabini thinking?

  “Do you know anything about this?” he asked his bodyguard, when they were alone, rocking along the rails.

  Tabini’s rail car—he’d used it more often than Tabini had, this specially secured compartment, armored against all eventualities.

  “No, nadi-ji,” Banichi said. “We, like you, wonder.”

  He leaned back on the comfortable velvet bench seat, red velvet, red carpet, a fresh bouquet in the vase on the counter, blooms of the season, the first in the lowlands. They shed a thick, sweet perfume.

  A wake might have been more cheerful.

  “I need to meet with the aiji,” Bren said quietly.

  “One will forward that request,” Jago said.

  “The dowager is in residence,” Banichi added.

  A new alarm began to go off
, deep in his gut.

  “Did she come to see Jason?” Bren asked. “What in hell’s going on?”

  “She invited him to tea” Jago said, “and they discussed the weather.”

  Well, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable; she did come to Shejidan for visits. It was probably coincidence; she’d arrived, and heard he was leaving.

  “He’ll have no weather where he’s going,” Bren said, trying to settle himself to the possibility. “He’ll have to get as used to being without it as he did being with it.”

  “He will,” Jago agreed.

  “So it was one of those conversations?” The aiji-dowager, whom he’d thought safely and remotely at Malguri, was staunchly, provocatively conservative, a promoter of causes, a keen wit.

  A good heart.

  And a talk on the weather with Ilisidi, Tabini’s grandmother. Lords of the Western Association would give a great deal for a social conversation with her.

  But did she do anything… anything … by chance?

  “Did she know he was leaving?” he asked his security. It was a three-hour flight from Malguri, for an arthritic woman who didn’t like long sitting. He was prepared to be touched by that effort, if she’d heard and made the trip only for Jason.

  “One has no idea,” Jago said, “nandi.”

  My lord? Nandi? So formal? What signal was that?

  Jason had said not a word about his visit with the dowager. But she was, though silently, a head of a potentially restive association, within the information flow. Tabini would have sent the dowager word of a favored associate’s departure… or else. If Ilisidi couldn’t press Tabini to resist this sudden request from the station, his own chances dimmed.

  Jase hadn’t mentioned the meeting… but what could he say? He and Jason hadn’t talked much about the court, had talked instead about the first things they’d done, the things out in the countryside, then sounding each other out a last time, getting their positions on issues fine-tuned, for those who might ask.