Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  The silence stretched on—two, three more heartbeats. “If you can eat it, they can eat what we eat.”

  “Your pardon, sir, but their physical requirements involve alkaloid poisons, as I’m sure we’ve made clear; their religious and philosophical requirements insist they have their own diet.”

  “Baggage passes our inspection. Your people can stand by.”

  “No, sir,” Bren said calmly. “That’s contrary to already ne-gotiated agreements. We state that we’ve brought nothing aboard that’s on your forbidden list, and we’ll make no open fires. The fact you don’t have the facility ready is your side of the agreement; the fact that we have equipment we’re bringing aboard is our side, and failing one of our arrangements, we stand by the other.”

  “Captain,” Kroger said. “Our baggage should not be at issue. We have our clothing, our small personal necessities. Inspect what you like, but this is an official delegation, negotiated as of two years ago; that the aiji in Shejidan hurried it is not our choosing.”

  “We won’t be hurried,” Ogun said.

  “We’ve heard for three years,” Bren said, “that haste serves all of us. The baggage is not renegotiable; trade agreements depend on our ability to maintain a mission here under our own seal, to feed our people in our own kitchen, and we will not give on that point.”

  “From what I can see, you’re human, Mr. Cameron, and you can tell them this, and you can tell the aiji this: we won’t tolerate being pushed!”

  “He’s being obdurate,” Bren said in Ragi, and in Mosphei’, “My security officers are armed, tradition on the mainland; they will always be armed. So will the security that attends any atevi representative. That, and the kitchen, will not change, sir. My staff understands as well as yours the hazards of discharging weapons in this environment, and likewise the hazards of interfering with your communications. All this was worked out two years ago, both for us and for Mospheira. Inspection violates those agreements. Your negotiations with the aiji are all tied to those agreements, and we will not give on that point. The contents of diplomatic messages and baggage must be respected, or this shuttle will go back down, and the aiji will consider constructing his own space station and reserving work for himself.”

  “The hell he will!”

  It was possible to stare down another human being, someone on eye level. And he already knew watching the changes in expression that the captain was not going to throw up two years of agreement on his source of supply; the captain wanted him to back down on the details of the request.

  More, he knew this man, at least second-hand and from Jason.

  “The hell, yes” Bren said, and in Jase’s accent. ”End report.“

  “We can’t admit weapons to the hull. Or biological contaminants.”

  “The greater hazard is in ourselves, sir, and frankly we’re more worried about you, since the Mospheirans and the atevi have never had a major disease outbreak interchanged. We don’t carry crop pests, and if we did, we could settle them. Processed flour, sir. Cooking oil. Our galley is self-contained and uses electricity, not open flame, a considerable cultural concession, components we’ve designed to function with station electrical systems on your own advisement, captain, with all due respect. I’m here to talk deal on your supplies, not our baggage.”

  “All right, we’ll arrange a stopgap. Settle it for now. Our security will take you to quarters. You can settle in and we’ll discuss the rest.”

  “On the baggage,” Bren said, not disposed to move… resistance to discomfort was a requirement of tenacious negotiation; and if this man was difficult, a session in the atevi legislature was hell itself. “If those seals are broken, sir, if there should be an accidental breach, we go down without negotiating, and we may be another two years negotiating another mission.”

  There was a long, long silence.

  “This will go under discussion during the next twenty-four hours,” Ogun said. “Along with the quarters.” He shifted an eye distastefully over all the staff, and the hand luggage, a waist-high mound of it. Then gave the same look to Kroger and Lund and party.

  “Mr. Delacroix. Quarters for the lot.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  “Jase,” Bren said, aside, with a glance at Jason. “Join us for supper?” Meaning: if you don’t like what you hear, accept. Now.

  “Mr. Graham is Phoenix crew,” the captain said. “He’ll join the captains for supper. Contact them later, Mr. Graham.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jase said.

  “Meanwhile, Mr. Delacroix.”

  “Yes, sir,” Delacroix said, and passed the next order to the human crew that waited. “Mr. Kaplan, Ms. Ramsey. Quarters.”

  “Yes, sir, come this way, sir.”

  Quarters, then, had been an item understood, probably debated with raised voices ever since Tabini’s advisement they were coming up. Mr. Kaplan and Ms. Ramsey evidently had a completely clear idea where they were going; Bren was no little amused, resolved not to let it affect his judgment… and not to jump quickly to oblige the captain’s maneuvers, no matter the personal discomfort.

  Meanwhile Narani and the servants had gathered that they were moving out, and gathered up the baggage. Banichi and his team, likely subtle origin of the signal to Narani, looked to him for orders.

  Bren delayed, smiled at Kroger and Lund. “Hope to see you tomorrow,” he said, offering a hand, and went through the entire hand-shaking formality for no other reason than to set his imminent departure as his choice, his schedule.

  “Mr. Cameron, sir,” Kaplan urged him, wishing him to go to the left. Kaplan, a young man, wore a kind of headset, and had swung down an eyepiece, appalling-looking creation. It looked like half of eyeglasses; screens, set only a minute degree from the eye, quite transparent to the outside view.

  Such eyepieces could be used for targeting. Bren recalled that. Mospheira didn’t have any survivals of that technology, not outside the close confines of the Defense Department.

  And on a thought, Bren delayed for another moment, regarding transmissions down to Mogari. “Ginny, give Shawn my regards when you talk to him,” he said.

  “The same to the aiji,” Kroger said, with less than atevi-style formality, annoyed as hell, Bren thought.

  “See you,” he said to Jase, before he acquiesced to the guidance offered. It was the parting he least wanted, and Jase knew he meant it: See you. It was another of those mutual codes. But for now he obediently led his group after the crewman, down a short hall to an automatic door.

  They passed through that and into a hall that, incredibly, curved upward, exactly the reverse of the situation that had turned Jason’s stomach when he’d faced planetary horizons.

  Remarkable, Bren thought… and was glad to know his stomach tolerated it. It didn’t feel as bad as it looked. There was just more upward-curving hallway. And a lot of intersections. He’d seen the diagrams of the station; had studied them with interest, when, two years ago, the whole business of diplomatic establishments had come up and they’d talked about what he could do about the doorways, the sanitary facilities, all the modifications that evidently hadn’t been made as agreed.

  But, damn, he thought: he had them in his computer, that small machine Jago carried for him. Since he’d gotten this new portable, and since it went in the highest security Mospheira and the mainland could mount, he’d never dumped a file that he feared he might regret. More, he’d loaded everything in that he could possibly lay hands on, everything Shawn let him have.

  Everything they knew of Phoenix design was in there; station design was; the architectural modifications, and ten or fifteen card games and any other piece of extraneity he’d used in the last damned year, and he hadn’t even thought about it, except a passing connection of neurons about having it with him, asking himself, under hasty circumstances, if there were atevi files he could compromise.

  But he didn’t keep the sensitive ones in the portable. Those were in the office computer, under gua
rd. He didn’t take them back and forth to the island, only files atevi and the island shared. Thank God, he thought, for that.

  His staff was coping with the perspective and the maze they traveled. Keeping his own steps straight seemed to want conscious effort, but at least the nausea didn’t recur. Most of all, he was glad to have played the hand right in the encounter with Ogun… not to have been settled into siege in a rapidly-cooling shuttle cabin while Tabini slugged it out verbally with the Pilots’ Guild, as could have happened if he’d overshot his limits. Atevi, who chilled less readily, could have lasted longer than he could… but it could have been damned dangerous, no credit to Kroger… none to him for antagonizing the woman.

  But that he’d win the question with the captain who didn’t want atevi cargo on his station, he had little active doubt. It was not in the ship’s interest to offend Tabini, as it was not in his own interest or Tabini’s to declare war with an orbiting power.

  Ultimately, agreements had to work. Ultimately, Kroger, who seemed to get harder to deal with when fear reared its head, had to work with him.

  And with luck, he would do what he’d come to do in the same two weeks as the Mospheirans planned to use. He’d get an arrangement with Ramirez and his brother captains, Ogun included, that let him come and go… and that let Jase come and go. He had no right to add that to the bottom line, and couldn’t spend the aiji’s credit to get it; but he was forming an opinion that if Bren Cameron had any personal credit in this affair, he knew where he was going to spend it.

  Seeing this place with its wrong-curving corridors, its endless, same-textured, cream-colored corridors, he understood how frightening Jase had found the variability of a planet. He found this morally frightening. A machine had extruded this corridor, a huge, unvarying machine. The door insets were just that, inset in an extruded-plastics form, not fighting the curvature except for a slanted sill, and every one the same, every door human height, as the corridor overhead was interrupted by absolutely regular translucent light panels.

  It was absolutely the antithesis of hand-crafted Malguri. His ancestors had made this place… and he didn’t recognize it. Heart and mind, he didn’t recognize it.

  Banichi and Jago walked just behind him, clearing the ceiling by not too much, trusting his leadership without question as they went deeper and deeper into this maze, deeper and deeper into places human authorities knew and he didn’t. Tano and Algini walked behind them, the staff with the hand-baggage two by two behind that. He was aware of the order every time they passed a section door, and there were no few. The escort took them on and on.

  And finally right-turned down an intersecting corridor, through a doorway—theirs, Bren hoped, in acute discomfort, only to be disappointed. There was more corridor, another turn, and again a corridor, another door. Kaplan had to be using that eyepiece to navigate, giving no advantage to anybody who wasn’t receiving the information. Scuffs on the flooring gave the only proof of prior traffic.

  Security… for the holders of the information. They’d refurbished this area. Put no identifying marks anywhere on walls or doors or floor.

  “Here you are” Kaplan said confidently, at an apparent dead end that might be only another turn in the corridors, and opened a door.

  Light came on inside a room with a bed, a desk, several chairs, and a dressing-area.

  “Thank you,” Bren said. “And what for the rest of my team?”

  “I’ve no instructions, sir. Far as I know, this is what there is.”

  “Nine persons won’t fit.”

  “I can relay that, sir.”

  “And how do we come and go to our meetings? I have to make an appointment with your officers at the earliest. How do I contact them?”

  “Someone will come for you.”

  “At very minimum we’ll need more beds.”

  “I have no orders, sir.”

  “You have a request. This is one bed. Obviously there are other beds elsewhere.” He waved a hand, Tabini-esque. “We need more beds.”

  “They’re built in, sir. Can’t move them.”

  “Then mattresses. Bags with stuffing in them. I don’t care. My people are not going to sleep on the floor or step over one another. We need more rooms. We need mattresses.”

  “I don’t know what I can do, sir.”

  “You know how to find out, however. That is a communications link you’re wearing; you can talk to your officers on that communication system, and I insist you do that or accept all the responsibility for not doing it. Tell them mattresses. Or padding of some sort. I want those within two hours. Rooms by tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll work it out. Will you show me the phone?”

  “Phone.”

  “Communications, sir.”

  There was contact, behind both eyes, glassed and unglassed. The young man stepped inside and touched a wall installation, fingers flying over buttons. “This is communications. This is light. This is up heat, this is down. This is the fan setting. There’s an intercom. You just punch in and wait.”

  “What about the other rooms neighboring this one? I’m sure you won’t mind if we open them up.”

  “There’s personnel assigned there, sir. There’s personnel assigned all over. This is living quarters.”

  “Do they have mattresses?”

  “Look here, sir, we’re not under your orders!”

  “No. They are.” This with a conscious reference to the living wall of atevi waiting around them. “We need the mattresses, we need more room, and we’re going to be persistent. I don’t care what you find, sir, or how long it takes, but this is the team that’s supposed to supply you with your needs, I assure you, not ours. I do appreciate the inconvenience and the difficulty involved and I’m sorry it’s fallen on you, but I know, too, that your captain places confidence in your judgment and your resourcefulness, or he wouldn’t have sent us off with you. So what can you do for us?”

  Likely suggestions occurred to the man, but he adopted an aggrieved, respectful expression and heaved a sigh. “Sir, I’ll do what I can, sir.”

  “I’ll expect success, then. I’m sure of it. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The guard left, probably saying more on his personal communications than a request for mattresses.

  Bren, on the other hand, looked at Banichi, then cast a look at Jago, and then, with the indisputable privilege of rank, ducked inside in desperation, and to the back of the room, to what atevi politely called the accommodation.

  In hardly a day and a night he’d antagonized a Mospheiran ambassador, one of the four Phoenix captains and an innocent crewman. It was not unpredictable that the aiji’s notion of presenting a fait accompli to the Pilots’ Guild had lodged them sideways in the throat of the station, but he had to reflect, once the adrenaline had somewhat fallen, that he’d had to do it, that Tabini had put him into a position, and he had no choice but make it clear… he couldn’t lie to the Mospheirans.

  He couldn’t tell them the entire truth of his intentions ei-I ther, much as he’d gone out of his way to level with them. He’d told most of the truth to Jase, his one wholehearted ally. But as far as human relations went, he’d had to clear a working space, make it very clear to the Mospheirans they weren’t participant with him in agreements he might make, make it clear to the captains one and all that if bargains weren’t kept, bargains wouldn’t be kept.

  It was one policy in the elegant halls of the aiji’s residence.

  It was another here, where they settled, the staff on the floor… himself in one chair, Banichi and Jago sitting on the bed, Algini and Tano standing in the corner. The place was too cold for human comfort. Though the fan was on high and the heat coming out of the vents was substantial, it seemed to produce only a fever-chill in the air. The surfaces stole warmth: walls, even the bedding seemed cold through.

  “I do regret this discomfort” he said to his servants. ”Nadiin, I am hoping to improve this.“

  “They do
not, seemingly, adapt well to surprises,” Banichi remarked, and, caught by surprise himself, Bren had to laugh.

  “We don’t know” Jago added quietly, ”whether this represents the standard of their own quarters.“

  “One certainly hopes not,” Bren said. “More, one doubts it.”

  “We can sleep on the floor,” the juniormost servant, Sabiso, said softly. She had banged her head quite painfully on the door of the facility, and had been mortally embarrassed, knocked half unconscious. It had raised a sizable lump on her brow. “We can use our baggage for mattresses, perhaps.”

  “I don’t intend so,” Bren said. “I do not intend so. I don’t wish to move in with the shuttle crew, but if we get no better from the captains soon, we may have more words. We won’t tolerate this for two weeks.” Dismissing his servants to that greater comfort did occur to him; but it was not the atevi way of managing things, and it could not be his choice, not without shaming his staff. Tabini would much prefer a standoff.

  And ultimately… ultimately, Tabini would have his way.

  “We have brought sandwiches,” Narani said cheerfully, “in case of a long flight, and delays, nandi. It is the hour, in Shejidan, by the clock, and nand’ paidhi may have his supper, if he will.”

  “Brought supper, Rani-ji!” He’d never even asked the servants what was in the huge, heavy baggage. “Beyond hope. Marvelous.”

  Narani was delighted to have surprised him; the servants were entirely pleased and encouraged, and scurried about opening baggage, setting out unbreakable plastic dishes on the desk and the vanity counter.

  Another piece of baggage opened up packets of sandwiches. A third produced fruit juice in unbreakable containers besides other black canvas packages, which Tano quietly abstracted and gave to Banichi.

  What have you brought? he thought of asking, and thought perhaps he’d face the captains more honestly not knowing. Besides, familiar, homemade food sounded very good at the moment, and he was very glad to accept a plate and juice, in a glass, not the scandal of drinking from a bottle. In no wise would nand’ paidhi have other than a plate, and proper utensils.