Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Another set of doors. They were in the main corridor, headed for their own, and suddenly, from that side passage, an armed presence entered, Tano, and Algini, and then Jase, and Becky Graham, and the Merchesons… they all had come, and had the door open for them.

  “Easy,” Bren shouted out in Ragi. “Be calm! We have ’Sidi-ji among us, and a crowd of the curious. No one fire!”

  Ilisidi would not hurry. It was the longest few seconds in his life until he reached that refuge and offered that doorway to Ilisidi and Tom and those who had come up with them.

  But Ilisidi would not, however, retreat. She turned with no great haste, stood, and regarded the gathered crew with a calm demeanor, until the jostling stopped, and the voices fell silent.

  Then she spoke, quietly, deliberately.

  “We have welcomed your cousins to the world,” she said in Ragi, “and the aiji of the aishidi’tat will welcome this new star into the heavens.”

  Bren rendered it into Mosphei’, in quiet tones, that most basic of his jobs, the one he least often performed.

  “We have agreed to accept your technology and to construct things which benefit you. We shall make this station a place fit for children, and for persons of creative and sensitive hearts. We shall make this new star enjoy harmonious sights, and comforts of living things; we shall build a ship, and defend this place as our own. We take up residency among you and look forward to wonders which we have not seen. We shall build in ways which neither of our peoples now know, and teach you as

  you teach us. Felicity on this great undertaking, this association in the heavens. Its numbers are three, you, and ourselves, and the Mospheirans. We have done away with the infelicity of two which once plagued us. Three is the number of us, and in that, we have very much to gain.”

  “The last,” he added on his own, “is the most important change, and atevi know it and the Mospheirans understand. That you don’t, yet, is what we have to give one another. The aiji dowager of the Ragi atevi and the aishidi’tat wishes you well.”

  “I still wish to see Ramirez,” Ilisidi muttered irritably, and turned, and walked away inside, leaving her security to shut the doors.

  “She asks for Ramirez,” he said to the crowd, and stepped backward and followed the dowager himself; so with the rest of them, until Cenedi and Banichi shut the doors.

  “Nand’ dowager,” Jase had said, and bowed; and so the servants bowed, among the human guests; and Bren leaned his back against the wall and heaved a breath.

  “Jago-ji, did we shut Sato-nadi out?”

  “She has electronics,” Jago said, “and we did, nadi.”

  “Good,” he said, and drew a second and a third breath. “We survived. We’re here.”

  “The felicity of these surroundings,” Ilisidi said meanwhile, leaning on her cane and slowly surveying the premises, while the servants held their breath, “is without doubt. Exquisite taste. —I am promised supper, and past time!”

  The whole staff jumped. Human occupants stood aside, while Banichi said solemnly, “Shall we take the corridor across the hall, Bren-ji?”

  “Do that,” he said. He could only imagine the situation he had helped provoke among the crew. The fight Ilisidi’s security had broken up was only the visible manifestation. It was the dogged factionalism that had haunted Phoenix from the outset, that had damned some to venture outside without protection, as the robots failed, and others to sit safe, directing it all.

  His heritage. He’d always held apart from what he negotiated, never wholly Mospheiran in sympathy, never atevi by birth, but this—this reached him, this thoroughgoing, asinine insistence on the rightness of one’s own cause; and he found himself infected with it—more, suddenly questioning everything he’d just done, everything he’d ever done. He found himself in a state of cultural recognition, at great depth, right down to his family’s spats and feuds and his hellbent inclination to take a situation and decide he was right. God, how could he?

  His hands were shaking. He wiped sweat off his face and confronted Jase, who looked as shocked.

  “Did you know the dowager was coming?” It was a question spoiling for a fight, damned mad, and not quite over the edge yet.

  “No, I didn’t know! This is her style of dealing; this is how she’s damned well survived a century of goings-on like this, while the rest of us have heart attacks.”

  “There’s a stack of messages,” Jase said. “Almost since you left.”

  “I’ll damn well bet there are. Jase, do you know where Ramirez is? Can you remotely guess, that might be worth going after?”

  “Isn’t that what they want us to do?”

  “I know it is. But knowing where he is might be the best thing, right now.”

  “I know they’d have moved him.”

  “And where?”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

  There was a slight commotion at the end of the corridor, where a handful of lingering humans attempted to protest the annexation of the matching section across the hall, and made no headway against thirty or so armed and determined atevi.

  “This is the best we can do,” Bren said anxiously. “We can’t house her in what contents us. We have to establish an exterior guard, if we can’t secure that intersection… which I presume they have to use.”

  Jase shook his head. “They can work around. They’ll reroute. Take it. This is not the fanciest accommodation they could have managed.”

  “Captains get that, do they?”

  “Captains and techs. Bren, we’ve got a potential problem…” Jase gave a nervous laugh, as if he’d only then heard himself. “A rather major problem. If they pull the ship off station… it’s armed. And they can stand us off.”

  “No, they can’t” Bren said, just as madly, just as irrationally as he’d argued the rest of his case, and he knew it. “They need us, remember?”

  “Tamun’s crazy. He’s stark raving crazy.”

  “Well, thus far, he has company in that affliction, doesn’t he? Dresh, Sabin, Ogun? They’ve all lost their minds.”

  “I’ll still bet on Ogun,” Jase said on a breath. “Bren, get to him. Get to him.”

  “We’re not getting to anyone until after supper. The dowager wants dinner, didn’t you hear her? And I’ve got that stack of messages. I trust some of them came with ’Sidi-ji. At least one of them. I need to hear from Tabini… I need that most of all.”

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  « ^ »

  Mattresses were going to be an issue: Bren very much feared so.

  He very much feared they weren’t the only issue.

  “I fear they’re rather put out with us,” he said to Ilisidi, who awaited supper in what had been his room, the best they had, the warmest, and the most comfortable. Even she, however, had to rely on Jago’s mattress, which Jago had gladly contributed, while Sabiso, assigned to the dowager’s fearsome demands, had explained the workings of the shower. “I can by no means foretell what may happen to the cargo before we can free it.”

  “Our cargo,” Ilisidi said, seated, hands bare now, both clasped on the head of her cane, “our most valuable cargo is still aboard the ship. Another fifty of the Guild, serving Lord Geigi.”

  He was not seated. He had a sudden impulse to sit down, and had no available chair. “Aiji-ma, are they in the shuttle? They’ll surely freeze! They may have frozen already.”

  “Not so readily.” Ilisidi waggled fingers atop the head of the cane, as if to say that was quite a negligible risk. “They’re prepared. But so we must have rapid resolution of this matter, or there will be far harsher action than these ship-folk will like. I have a message from my rapscallion grandson. He says, Bren-ji … he did say Bren-ji, I distinctly recall it: these modern manners!”

  “I am overwhelmed.”

  “He said, To Ramirez we cede rights to come and go at the station, which we regard as within our association, and to anyone Ramirez deems fit, so long as the aishidi’tat, in
lesser association and cooperation with the government of Mospheira, holds the earth of atevi and all that come within its grip.

  “These are our reasonable conditions, as you have stated, so we state; as you have promised, so we promise; as you declare, so we declare, to which the hasdrawad and the tashrid set their approval…” The usual sort of thing,“ Ilisidi concluded with another waggle of her fingers. ” So! Paidhi. Associate of my rascal grandson, that thief, that brigand, my grandson. What do you propose we do to find Ramirez?”

  “I’ve asked the crew to find him,” he said, “which I believe certain ones well know how to do. Jase and his mother have contacts.”

  “Allow four hours,” Ilisidi said.

  “Four hours.”

  Ilisidi reached to her coat, a far lighter one for the anticipated dinner, and drew out a watch, an old-fashioned sort of elaborate design. The multiple cylinders were of gold, beyond any doubt, and set with pale stones. “We certainly have that long to unload before we need do anything unpleasant. My grandson has extraordinary confidence in your powers of negotiation, Bren-ji, but allow me to say, if these unpleasant people do not rise to a civilized level of welcome very soon, we are prepared to take what we justly demand. I have not come on this extraordinary journey to sit in a windowless room and dine in haste. I am too old to sit on unreasonable furniture and to see my essential baggage delayed by bureaucrats with absolutely nothing to gain but inconvenience. I detest pointless obstruction. Do you not, Bren-ji?”

  “I do detest it myself, nand’ dowager, but there are numerous innocent parties whose very air and warmth might be adversely affected…”

  Another waggle of the fingers. “If I have cast myself among utter fools, then let us wait no longer. But I rather think that the paidhi who has served us so well is not the only human with powers of reasoning. Use your ingenuity, paidhi-aiji. In the meanwhile, send me Cenedi, and let us see how to use the devices and the records and the maps your security has so elegantly established.”

  He knew when he was being pushed to the wall. He knew how and when to push back, and he went to his small parcel of belongings by the door and returned with a small mag storage.

  “More than the maps they have made, nand’ dowager. These are the charts the makers made. Here is every conduit and switch and component of the entire foreign star, if the dowager will accept this modest offering.”

  Ilisidi’s aged lips twitched in restrained mirth. She reached for it with a flourish. “So! Am I ever mistaken?”

  “I have yet, nandi, to observe an error of taste or judgment,” Bren said. “Begging excuse from supper, I shall attempt what I can do.”

  It became a more sober smile, even a gentle one. “You are excused the supper, nadi. I shall entertain this uncommon set of guests. I cede you your security; mine is adequate for my needs, or nothing is.”

  “ ’Sidi-ji,” he said quietly, and bowed, and paused again on a second thought. “Take charge of this machine of mine. Tano and Algini know how to read it, and know the codes. They would be an asset, if they were not mine.”

  “They would indeed,” Ilisidi said. “As any resource of mine is within your reach, paidhi-ji.” A wave of the hand. “Go! Go, damn your flattery! Out, out, and kindly use your wits, nand’ paidhi!”

  “Geigi has sent men,” he explained the situation to his staff, and to Jase, in close conference in what they now styled the old dining room, in Ragi. Cenedi sat in their midst, advisor; and Tano was with them, while Algini refused to leave the monitoring, the parameters of which he knew intimately, where Cenedi’s men could not replace him. “There is force to be had, aboard the ship,” Bren said. “But it won’t be enough, either, to secure the entire station without destruction, not to mention the hazard to the shuttle. On such short notice, I have not involved Yolanda or Tom, though I regret it. She doesn’t speak well enough to understand this situation, Tom doesn’t speak at all, and I won’t say what I have to say in Mosphei’. So here it is. We have a handful of hours to act before you, Cenedi-nandi, will act. Is that so?”

  “It will not be finesse,” Cenedi said with a downward, deprecating glance. “But it will be forceful.”

  In earlier days, Jase would have flared up, sure no one would consider his view, but at this hour, included in this conference, he had no doubts what he was to represent.

  “Within that necessity,” Jase said quietly, “if we could reach Ramirez, and have his support with us, then we might convince a number of the crew they are not threatened.”

  “Yet, forgive me, Jase, you say the crew will not admit a truth when it stares them in the face,” Bren said in utter frankness. “And will do anything and suffer anything to preserve the captains. We will threaten Tamun, indisputably, we will threaten Tamun.”

  “Dresh is an improvement,” Jase said somberly. “Save him. To hell with Tamun.”

  “Yet, finesse,” Banichi said. “Finesse, Nadiin-ji, amid such fragile equipment. We have the access tunnels. We can move and we can reach the captains, and various other places.”

  “They may have established surveillance in those accesses,” Jase said. “Tamun has reason, and increasing reason. Let us go, myself, my mother, Yolanda, all of us that have been involved in this. We may be able to find where Ramirez is. If we could do it quietly, we could bring him here.”

  “Can we breach communications?” Tano asked, the sensible question.

  “Can we avoid Cl,” Bren rephrased that, “and get to people directly without risking our necks?”

  “Everything goes through Phoenixcomm,” Jase said. “We can’t.”

  “Does that gear the guides carry?” Jago asked.

  Jase blinked. “That goes differently,” he said. “That reaches security on a direct link. We don’t want security, nadi-ji. They’re most likely to stay by the captains.”

  “Ogun,” Bren said. “Captain Ogun. The new senior. He seems to me not participant with Tamun. He seems to me to have rammed the practicalities of the agreements down Tamun’s throat, when without him, Tamun might have abrogated all the agreements.”

  “Ogun’s a puzzle,” Jase said. “He’s hard to read. Disciplinarian.” Jase used a single word in Mosphei’, to express what Ragi could not. “The crew does not favor him, for his harsh measures. Ramirez breaks customs for good reasons. Ogun is conservative as any lord of the west.”

  “Sabin?”

  “Ogun’s partisan. The two of them have made it difficult for Tamun to have his way completely.”

  “Do they favor Tamun?”

  Jase frowned. “They have supported him. In his objections against Ramirez’ ventures, they have supported him. Now they have power and Tamun is under them, and ambitious for power… one would wonder how they view him now.”

  It was a discouraging portrait, one in line with Jase’s previous notes on the two. But he had a hope in Ogun, and gave it up only reluctantly. “Have they struck at Ramirez, nadi?” he asked Jase.

  “Not directly,” Jase said. “I don’t think so.”

  “And might they be looking at Tamun anxiously?”

  “Now? Sabin, I don’t know.”

  “And Ogun?”

  “Thinks he can manage Tamun.”

  “But supports the rules. Supports the agreements once made. Sat beside Ramirez when we had our negotiating session. At least appeared to be consenting to all we said.”

  Jase drew in a breath and leaned back, seeming to go into himself for a moment. Then he let out the breath. “I can imagine him doing that,” Jase said. “And likewise supporting the agreements.”

  “So dare I go to him?” Bren asked. “Dare he come here!”

  “Ogun would dare what suited him,” Jase said. “This man is an aiji, in a way Ramirez is not, if he could gain the man’chi of the crew. Humans prefer to like their aijiin, nadiin-ji.” The word ineluctably drew amusement from Banichi and Jago and Tano—who understood the relationship between salads and human emotions—and bewilderment from Cenedi. “But faili
ng to like him, we still know he deserves man’chi, while Tamun… Tamun only desires man’chi, and promotes fear of aliens, fear of weakness, fear of everything, all to gain his followers.”

  “We know this man,” Cenedi murmured in a low voice. “This machimi we do well understand.”

  “So do I,” Bren said, fervent in hope of a path through their situation. “Machimi indeed. Confront Ogun with Ramirez, with wrongs done him by Tamun’s spite.”

  “If you can reach him” Jase said, “on his shift. Which ought to be in a few hours.”

  “We have no leisure to wait,” Cenedi said, “Nadiin-ji, except as the shuttle crew can maintain excuses to delay. They are to move, either at our order, or reaching a point where they can no longer sustain themselves in the shuttle.”

  “Is there any way to get to him?” Bren asked. “Do you know where he lodges?”

  “I don’t know if he’s taken Ramirez’ cabin,” Jase said. “He might. He would take it to make the authority clear to the others—but to get there…”

  “They guard against one another,” Bren asked, “to that extent, in a population of fifteen hundred human beings?”

  “They didn’t,” Jase said, “but we didn’t shoot each other, either. I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t know what I thought I knew about these people, and I was born here. But if you wish to reach Ogun, if you think he might do something… I’d risk it, I, personally, I’ll make a try at it.”

  “You find Ramirez. You’re more able at that, if you can climb a ladder with those ribs.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Not a question of wish. Can you do it, without breaking something? Maybe Yolanda.”

  “No. She gets disoriented in heights and the tunnels spook her. Better if I go.”

  “I shall go with him,” Tano said. “I can carry you if need be. How far need we climb?”

  “Only one level. Maybe a transverse. I know, at least, where to start looking, as I don’t think Yolanda does. —I also know where Ogun sleeps and where his office and Ramirez’s offices are, but I’m afraid there’s no access near there.”