Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Worse news.

  “Stay here,” he said. “Narani, attend him. Banichi, at least an hour or two. Rest. Eat. Whatever suits. I’m going to talk to the captains.”

  “Agree to nothing that involves going to them, nadi-ji. I most emphatically urge against it. No matter what they urge.”

  They had seven more days until the shuttle came back… let alone the fifteen until they could service it and give them another chance to get off this station. He had been known to lie, in the course of diplomacy, when it was absolutely necessary; but in this case… he had decided qualms about a lie to Banichi, and even greater qualms about a diplomatic failure.

  “I’ll do what I must,” he said, knowing it was not what Banichi wanted to hear. “And trust my security will rest so they can deal with it. I have to deal with these people. If the threat they foresee materializes, we can’t afford years of standoff. I have to find out what we’re dealing with.”

  “Don’t go there,” Banichi said, as forcefully as Banichi had ever said anything, and that stopped him and made him think hard.

  “I can’t evidence fear of these people,” Bren said. “And they have a certain obligation to respect a truce.”

  “These are not Mospheirans, Bren-ji.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Nor would I risk my security; but, Banichi-ji, if we arrange a meeting and they attack, it will not please the crew. The captains have used up all the crew’s patience with the attack on Ramirez. But I believe the crew has a limit, and I believe the captains are worried they may reach it.”

  “Bren-ji,” Jago said. “We have the aiji’s orders, as well.”

  “You’ll have to follow them, Nadiin-ji, as I must, and mine are to take this station. My way is by negotiation, and the aiji sent me to try that to the limit of my ability. I believe I read this correctly, and I will not lie to you. I intend to go and to confront them in their territory and to demand they honor agreements.”

  “If they were atevi,” Banichi said directly, “you would not be right.”

  “I may not be right as it stands,” he said, “but if I’m not, I give you leave to remove the captains and their security on the spot.”

  “That,” Banichi said, “we find satisfactory.”

  * * *

  Chapter 24

  « ^ »

  It was not Kaplan who guided them. It was the old man, whose name-badge said Carter; and it was a long, glum-faced progress into the administrative section, into the region of potted plants and better-looking walls.

  It was the same chamber, at the end of the hall, and the old man opened the door and let them in.

  Ogun was there. So was Sabin, so was Tamun, and a fourth man, a gray-haired man, who was not Ramirez, all seated at the table, with armed security standing behind, and next to the interior door.

  Bren stood at the end of the conference table, waved Jago and Banichi to the sides of the room… one each, hair-triggered, and expecting trouble, but not by the stance they took. Banichi adopted an off-guard informality he never would have used in the aiji’s court, a folded-arm posture that verged on disrespect.

  Jago became his mirror image.

  “Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said reasonably. “We won’t mention your incursions into the station. We understand your security precautions. We advise you we have our own.”

  Interesting, Bren thought. Ogun sat silent. Sabin, now second-ranking, spoke, and Tamun still said nothing. The new man sat silent as Ogun. “I’m glad you understand. I see you’ve rearranged your ranks. This is no particular concern of ours.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” Sabin said harshly.

  “We can salvage agreements,” Ogun said, “if you’ll observe that principle.”

  Ogun had difficulty meeting his eyes, and then did, and on no logical grounds he read that body language as a man who took no particular joy in the present situation, a man who might be next.

  “Captain Dresh,” the fourth man said. “Taking Ramirez’s place. We will not tolerate any interference in our command of the ship.”

  “What you do with the station—” Tamun spoke for the first time. “—is your affair. Yours and the Mospheirans. You don’t interfere with command, you don’t interfere with the ship, her officers, or her operations.”

  He cocked his head slightly, cheerful in the face of what was surely an attempt to shake his nerve. He had Banichi and Jago on his side, and the security standing at the captains’ back had no idea, he said to himself. He failed to give a damn for the threats, did hear the proffer of an understanding, and refused to proffer anything in return.

  “Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said. “Do you understand?”

  “I’ll relay your sentiments.”

  “We have messages,” Ogun said, “representing our position. We’ll transmit them when you take the next flight down. They’ll be extensive, and detailed. We include the agreements as we see them, our requirements, our commitments to the aiji and to the President of Mospheira.”

  They hadn’t gotten a separate offer. Durant and Shawn had been too canny for that; so had Tabini.

  And next shuttle flight had seemed attractive until they offered it, and thought it to their advantage.

  “My clerical staff can begin work,” he said.

  “You begin work,” Sabin said. “And you take that flight, Mr. Cameron. We’ve done all the negotiating we’re prepared to do.”

  “An incentive.” Tamun tossed a signal at the guards behind him, and the man nearest the door opened it, not without Banichi’s and Jago’s attention.

  The guards brought out a man in filthy coveralls.

  Jase.

  Clearly he was meant to react. He did, internally, and thought of options at his disposal to remove Tamun from among the living.

  “Take him with you,” Tamun said. “Take him, take Mercheson, and their adherents. They’ve refused to live under the rules of this ship. You repeatedly claim you need their assistance in translation. You have it.”

  “Jase,” Bren said calmly. He was rumpled and scraped and had a bloodstain on his sleeve; he might be unsteady on his feet, but he saw a signal to join him. The guards brought Mercheson out, similarly bedraggled; two older women, and a younger… Jase’s mother, Bren thought. He’d seen her in image.

  All of them, exiled. All of them, turned over for shipment down on the next flight.

  “Chances for dissent are few,” Tamun said, “except at stations. Our last port of call took away no few dissenters, but they had no luck. Let’s hope, Mr. Cameron, that this one fares better.”

  “Let’s hope that my mail starts coming through,” Bren said. “Let’s hope that the power stays stable. Let’s hope I take this gift as an expression of your future will to have a working agreement and get our business underway. Where do the Mospheirans fit in this?”

  Sore point. He’d thought so.

  “You raise that question with Ms. Kroger,” Tamun said. “Next time let them send someone with power to negotiate.”

  “Probably myself,” Bren said equably. “I’m a pragmatist, Captain Tamun. I deal where I have to, to my own advantage. I can use Jase; I’m sure I’ll find a use for other help.”

  “You stay the hell out of our affairs!”

  “You give me direct communication with the aiji and no damn censoring of my messages, Captain. Blocking out my messages won’t make me any more reasonably disposed.”

  “Don’t push us.”

  “The messages, and stable power to our section. We’ll be taking the adjacent rooms. We need the space.”

  “The shuttle will be on schedule,” Tamun said quietly, as quietly as he had been violent a moment before. “Be on it. Let’s see no more than scientific packages for a while, Mr. Cameron. We’ll honor agreements. This is the authority you’ll be dealing with. Accept it, and go do your job, whatever that is.”

  “My mail.”

  “Damn your mail, sir! You don’t make demands here!”

  “You don’t make them down there. If
you want anything transported, I need access to mail I know hasn’t been tampered with. You altered one of the aiji’s messages! That’s a capital matter in the aishidi’tat, sir, and you leave me to explain that to my government, which will be damned difficult, sir! If you want any cooperation out of me or the mainland or the island, you consider the mail flow sacrosanct! You’re verging on no deal at all.”

  “Get out of here!”

  There was the explosion point. “Jase. Yolanda. I take it these are your respective parents. Let’s go.”

  He turned, gave a glance to Banichi, a signal, and Banichi moved with him, not without a harsh glance toward the captains, and Jago never budged from her position by the door until their whole party was out it, in company of the sullen old man who had guided them there.

  Then she swung outside, hand on her sidearm.

  “We’ll return to our apartments,” Bren said to their guide, and the old man led off.

  There was a conspicuous presence of armed men down the hall as they walked, a presence that retreated down a side corridor when they came and that proved not to be in the side corridor when they passed.

  Jase said not a word, seeming to have enough to do simply to keep himself on his feet, but doing it, walking with his hand on his mother’s arm. Yolanda walked with the two others, and Jago brought up the rear, not taking anything for granted.

  Not a word, all the way back, and to their own doorway, which opened to receive them.

  Narani hurried out to offer Jase his support. Bindanda took Yolanda in charge, with small bows to the relatives.

  The door shut, walling out their guide; and Jase slid right through Narani’s grasp floorward, would have hit if Narani had not caught him a second time.

  Bren offered his own arm, supported Jase’s head, and he was cognizant, half-out, as his mother attempted to intervene from the other side. “Sorry,” Jase said.

  “Sorry, hell,” Bren said. “Narani-ji. Use my bed. Jase, where are you hurt?”

  “Ribs. Slid down the damn ladder.”

  “Damn. Damn. Don’t pull on him, Rani-ji. Broken ribs. Banichi?”

  “Bandaging,” Banichi said, and gathered him up as if he were a child in arms.

  “Ms. Graham,” Bren said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Yolanda. I take it this is your mother and sister.”

  “Yes.” Yolanda was righting reaction, vastly upset, but not letting go. “It’s Tamun that’s done this.”

  “I’m fairly sure,” Bren said calmly. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll live,” Yolanda said between her teeth. “My mother, my sister… This is Bren,” she said suddenly, as if there were no knowing.

  “Ms. Mercheson. Olanthe, is it?”

  “Yes, sir,” the girl said. She was in her early teens, thoroughly shaken, tear-tracks on her face. Eyes darted to the least movement of the atevi near her.

  “These are my family,” he said to reassure her. “You’re completely safe with us. Come into the dining room, and we’ll get you something to drink. Fruit juice, Bindanda, if you would. This smaller one is a child.”

  “One understands,” Bindanda said. “Yolanda-nandi, will you bring these good persons and come? Come. We will find you whatever comfort you ask.”

  “I have a report to give!”

  “You have them to settle,” Bren said. “Easy. We have time. God knows, we have time. You can talk to Bindanda. They can’t.”

  “See to Jase,” she said, distracted, and went to direct Bindanda. Yolanda always tried to take charge. It was her way, but she worked, she tried with all that was in her. She’d refused to give up on the Mospheirans, and she’d helped Jase, that much he knew.

  Tano and Algini were inside the security center, monitoring activity with fervent attention, learning what, he was not sure. Nojana had gone to help Banichi.

  Jago was distressed and angry, and had nowhere to spend her temper.

  “I do not consider this a reverse,” he said. “Only an obstacle. I need the additional rooms, nadi. Get Nojana, and go take them.”

  “Yes,” Jago said fiercely, and went on that errand, braid swinging.

  “It hurts,” Jase said, lying slightly propped. “I hit every rung for ten feet, and caught a platform edge.”

  Bren could only imagine. It gave him chills. “Banichi says the ribs aren’t broken. Cracked, more than likely.”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “They didn’t hit you.”

  Jase shook his head slightly. “Not except when I laid into one who had it coming. Releasing us is what they had to do. They could shoot Ramirez. They can’t hold a crew-wide bloodbath. Couldn’t attack my mother. That was their downfall. Women… women are damned near sacred, remember?”

  The necessity of child-bearing. Continuance of the species. The Guild had set that priority and the women had fought it; and kept their job rights, Jase said, even if risks set the Guild’s teeth on edge. But you didn’t attack one. You outright didn’t attack one.

  “Good job that’s so,” he said.

  “Doesn’t help us, with me here, and her here,” Jase said morosely. “Getting rid of us and our next-ofs this way, nobody’s going to challenge them for what they’ve done. Give it three years and people won’t bring it up again. Maybe she could even come back, and she’d only be a nuisance.”

  “I understand that,” Bren said, still doubly glad he’d taken the course he had, the lower-key, less confrontational course. It had left them with resources, the women not least. “But three years, the four years, five years that we may spend building their ship… they’ll hear about it. They’ll hear from us. They’ll get damned tired of hearing about it.”

  “I think they know their situation’s precarious.” Precarious was a long word. It brought a wince, a grimace. “Damn! But it won’t last. They’ll settle in. Nobody questions what’s set still long enough.”

  “This Dresh fellow.”

  “Uncle of Tamun’s. Ramirez hates him.”

  Present tense.

  “They didn’t get Ramirez?”

  “No,” Jase said in Ragi.

  “Do you know where he is?” Bren asked in the same language.

  “I might” Jase said.

  Trouble, Bren thought. He wasn’t willing to have a confrontation over Ramirez, not until he’d gotten essential personnel to safety. Granted there’d been minimal bloodletting this far, that wasn’t saying what would happen if guilty parties found their backs to the wall… even familial reservations about bloodletting might give way, not even mentioning the fate of aliens in their midst.

  But he reached out and patted Jase’s arm, gripped it with some consideration of the bruises. “We just appropriated the next rooms down the row. The station can’t cut power to them except locally, without switching off the entire region, and we’ve got the switch. Everyone will have beds, room, heat, air, every comfort. No shortage of food. We packed the kitchen sink.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. God, don’t make me laugh.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “I’m glad to have my mother out of their reach. You don’t know all she did. Helped us with food, with running messages, gathering up Yolanda… I don’t know who’s in as deep trouble. Her. Yolanda. Yolanda’s set. I think Tamun would have killed us.”

  “And still didn’t dare?”

  “Didn’t dare. Because of them. Because of what Yolanda and I are. That stops them. But not now.”

  “Stopped them long enough,” he said. “Made them turn you over to us.”

  “Flinging us onto a planet.”

  “How many can they fling down there? Is anybody else in danger of their lives?”

  “I hope not. I hope not. Their story started to be that I killed Ramirez. That didn’t work. Then that Ramirez had a mental breakdown. Shot himself. No one believes that, but they have to pretend to. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m Mospheiran, remember? Denying what’s in front of one’s eyes is a soc
ial skill. I know that transaction very well.”

  “You have to live with them, that’s all. They can run the ship. But they need the techs, techs need the crew… it’s just the way it is. They’re going to try to work with the rest. And the rest will give in. Nobody but me and Yolanda wants to leave the ship. My mother… she’d rather die, but she’ll go with me. You have to understand. She’s scared. I can live down there. I wouldn’t mind living down there for the rest of my life. But this is so hard on her.”

  Jase was working himself into an emotional state. It resonated, with a man with a mother bent on indirect self-destruction, and no damned messages but, You should write to her…

  “We’ll get her back up here,” he promised Jase. “We’ll get this patched up. Tell her that. Tell her to give it some time, and we’ll treat her like a princess; we’ll get her back up here if we have to make her a court emissary.”

  “I appreciate that,” Jase said shakily.

  “Listen. Hear me in Ragi.” Meaning, with the associational web in place. “If we have no choice but this set of captains, that’s what we’ll deal with. If things settle, they may take you back.”

  “I won’t go,” Jase said. “I won’t go down there. I won’t take Tamun’s orders, no way in hell…”

  “We do what we have to do in the short term to get results in the long term.”

  “Short term, Ramirez will die. Bren, I can’t leave. Send her down, but I can’t leave him here. They’ll find him and they’ll kill him. Get him some help up here.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Bren said. “We’re not abandoning this post. We’re not giving up. Just get some rest.”

  “The hell. Don’t patronize me.” Jase had had a painkiller, a Mospheiran brand. He was running out of energy and voice. “I won’t go.”

  “We’ll talk,” Bren said in that tone that meant, definitively, later. He and Jase had had their rounds in the last three years; they had their codes, to keep from arguments. He saw Jase’s eyelids sink, flick up, sink again. The strength that had kept him on his feet to get here was ebbing low at the moment.