Precursor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Bren shrugged. “An access takes too long. I shall walk, nadiin, down the middle of the corridor. I have an appointment.”

  “With the crew below, tomorrow is too late,” Banichi said.

  “I lie,” he said. “I lie to the guards and claim a misunderstanding. I see no other course. If we run out of time and Geigi’s men break out, we three can deal with that distraction. It will create a few moments of confusion, will it not?”

  “The guards will not likely believe you are there by error nadi-ji.”

  “They have to ask before acting. Can you deal with them without killing?”

  “One will do one’s best,” Banichi said, and still had a worried look. “You will take the gun, nadi.”

  “I’ll take the gun,” Bren conceded. He planned not to use it. Carrying it into a meeting after one assassination attempt on the ship was in itself a guarantee of trouble, if someone noticed the fact. At the very least, it would rouse distracting objections and put one token on Ogun’s side of the table in any negotiations. It didn’t make him feel safer.

  But conceding that made his security far happier.

  The ship-folk had never yet questioned how his security breached doors and walked about as they pleased, and one did rather think the ship-folk had noticed. Probably the ship-folk very well guessed how they routinely activated the locks, but found no percentage in doing anything about it.

  So they went, brazenly, right down the main corridor, into the more trafficked area. There a handful of curious young women, who seemed ordinary crew, simply stared at them, wide-eyed; and a pair of guards in Kaplan’s style of gear, the sight of whom sent Bren’s heart rate up a notch, let them pass down the hall and through the intersection with only a close look and a consultation, perhaps, with Cl.

  Turning their backs on that potential threat was hard. Bren kept thinking of shots coming at them, of a solid wall of guards turning up to cut them off… a situation he would have to talk their way out of.

  But they kept walking, unchallenged, as if the guards who observed assumed they had orders. They reached the corner, turned, finding a bare corridor. No one followed. Banichi and Jago were listening all the while, Bren was sure, to every slight sound, much of it below his level of sensitivity.

  They walked that corridor unmolested.

  Jase and Tano meant to dive into an access… might be below their feet at this very moment, for all they could know.

  One hall and the next, no one challenged them.

  At the third, an ordinary woman stood to the side to let them pass, and said quietly as they did so, “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and kept walking, heart beating hard. Good luck? What in hell did the crew want? Or how much did they know?

  Or what were they walking into?

  “She wished us luck,” he said, in the unlikely chance his security hadn’t understood that remark.

  “Baji-naji,” Jago said, the reciprocal atevi expression. The world upside-down, pieces landing as their inherent numbers let them… which led to the new and more flexible order, once things had gotten bound up and stressed to the limit.

  It didn’t guarantee the survival of the pieces.

  Another turn.

  They took the lift, alone, no one stopping the car. They had time to exchange silent glances, to express with the eyes what was imprudent to express in words: it was the diceiest of situations. They hoped. They didn’t know. They couldn’t guess the eccentricity of the crew’s behavior, except, Bren said to himself, in a population who feared its leaders. In this case, they feared for their leaders.

  Or maybe it was both.

  They exited, reached the region of better-designed corridors, the spongy, sound-deadening flooring, that row of glossy-leaved potted plants.

  Even a numbers-blind human recognized the landmarks here: the tendriled green-and-white plant, the large-leafed one.

  Turn right at the green-and-white one.

  “Third door,” he remembered, all on his own, from Jase’s description. That was Ramirez’s cabin. If Ogun wasn’t in it, at least no one else should be, that was how he reckoned it. What could they access with least chance of touching off a general alarm.

  He pressed the button to signal the occupant there was a visitor. Banichi and Jago waited just behind him, whether ready to fire he did not count it his business to see.

  The door stayed shut.

  “No one home,” he said with a deep sigh. That had been their best hope: that Ogun might answer, hear his concern for the ship, immediately agree to rescue Ramirez, arrest Tamun, and honor the agreements.

  That proved a dead end. He counted doorways from that, two, and moved down to what was Ogun’s office: no help there.

  Then Ramirez’s old office, where Ogun, acting as senior captain, might be trying to find loose bits of business.

  No answer there, either.

  “I fear Ogun knows we’re here,” he said. “Or maybe Ogun himself has met misfortune.” It was one of those moments of not-quite-logic, one of those moments that had to do with estimating human beings, but it was a rational hypothesis.

  Banichi and Jago said not a word, only maintained a wary watch on their surroundings, trusting absolutely nothing.

  He wanted to take to his heels and put distance between himself and this slowly sealing trap. But they had a shipload of atevi whose choice was to freeze to death, surrender, or come out shooting.

  And for good or for ill, they had the dowager on their hands. Baji-naji. There was no way to unravel that design. Pieces were going to shift and settle, or break.

  “We’re down to Ogun’s cabin,” he said quietly, and moved to that one and buzzed it.

  No answer.

  “Sabin’s our next hope,” he said, counting doors. “If they haven’t retreated to the ship, which is far less comfortable lodging.”

  No answer, at either Sabin’s office or her cabin. The hour it was now had been Tamun’s watch, according to the schedule Jase had given him; but now that ought to have shifted to Dresh, the new man, if nothing else had changed. The higher the captain, the more mainstream the watch that captain took. It was status… and he read Tamun as likely to grab it with both hands.

  If anyone was alone in the conference room, it would likely, at this hour, then, be Dresh, who would not be good news.

  “Why do they not investigate, nadi?” Jago asked. His security was growing more and more anxious.

  “Perhaps because they don’t need to investigate,” he said. “My guess is, they know we’re here. They very likely are armed, they very likely have already gathered security about them.” The second risk was the worse, and he spelled it out for nonhuman minds. “They greatly fear losing all skilled pilots and captains at once. They may have separated. One captain may stay and serve as bait for adverse action, or we may simply walk into a trap consisting solely of security.”

  “Then shall we trip it?” Banichi suggested. “The conference room seems likely.”

  It was an outrageous action, and yet they were running out of time. They might walk in on an odd-hours meeting of all the captains, for what they knew. Or an ambush.

  It was the last door that might possibly lodge someone sympathetic. The very last chance of a peaceful outcome to their effort.

  He reached for the button. Jago prevented his hand, drew them both aside from the door opening, and pushed it with a piece of flat plastic.

  The door opened. Ogun stood behind the conference table. Four armed security, in eyepieces and backpacks, arrayed two in a corner, held rifles aimed at them. There were likely two apiece in the corners they couldn’t see, those nearest them.

  But in for a little, in for the whole pot, he said to himself. He walked in, heedless of the display of threat from the man they’d come to see, and he bowed just the same as he would in Tabini’s court, with far more lethal, less equipped security… bowed as if there were nothing particularly unusual in the leveled rifles. “Captain Ogun,” he said
calmly. “Just the man I hoped to find. Call them off, if you please. We’re not here to cause trouble. I hope you’ll be glad to know Ramirez is alive.”

  Ogun’s expression, forbidding by habit, varied not at all at that news. Still, he lifted a hand, waved it, and rifles lifted just slightly out of line.

  “Where is he?” Ogun asked.

  “I don’t know. I know those who know those who may.”

  Ogun stared at him in glowering silence for a moment. Banichi and Jago had not come in, and remained a potent threat, one Ogun could not ignore.

  “Jase is very much his partisan,” Ogun said. “Some say he shot Ramirez. I don’t happen to believe it. But my priority is the safety of the ship. We all have to be pragmatists. Go back and pretend you didn’t come here. If Ramirez is alive, leave him to crew and leave our matters to us. We don’t need your help.”

  “I wish it were still that simple,” Bren said, “but now the aiji-dowager has come up. She’s old, she’s infirm, she has a temper as well as a soft spot, and she’s immensely influential. If she doesn’t like what she sees, all we’ve talked about is undone and all to do over. On the other hand, she’s agreed to meet with you, personally… a considerable concession. I might arrange a personal meeting over drinks, in our section, right now. You’ll be perfectly safe and free to leave. And if Ramirez should by some incredible chance decide to show up sometime during this meeting, you might even have a chance to talk to him, and find out what he may know. I’ll just about bet you don’t know what happened. And he does.”

  “No games. Go back to your zone. If Ramirez were there, he’d have simply called in from your section.”

  “If he should attend, I said. You have the power to command security. If we had assurance of his safety, we might arrange for him to be there. If I’m right about your place in all this, you didn’t consent to Tamun’s move against him, but Tamun can’t do away with everyone at once. Yet. The ship and the station are in danger, you are, the whole agreement is. I know it takes a degree of trust to walk back with us and protect your chief ally on the Council of Captains. You’re wondering if we have the resources to keep you alive so much as an hour, and I’ll assure you your guard can be right outside, armed, no problems. Tamun hasn’t come at us. He won’t, if he’s wise. Come with us. Take the chance.”

  Ogun’s expression never altered, not even at those provocations. “I stand with the ship,” Ogun said. “Go back to your zone, Mr. Cameron. I’ll advise you now the meeting with this woman is likely to be moved back, perhaps indefinitely, for her safety, and I’m not about to commit myself to your guard. If she’s all that valuable, which I think she may be, I suggest she stay in her station and keep her head down, because your aiji of all the atevi can’t do a damned thing up here. You have fifteen days until the shuttle’s ready to go down. Safer for you and her to be on it. Safer, too, for you not to be in the corridors until then. We have our internal differences. You’ve come up here without invitation, at an embarrassing time. I understand why you did it. I don’t particularly care. What you have to do now is to leave.”

  “By what I’ve seen, any moment we arrived would have precipitated this fight. Any moment Ramirez invited us up here would have precipitated it. Any moment there seemed to be a deal would have done it, because Tamun doesn’t give a damn whether what we offer is good for the ship; he knows the fact we can deliver power to Ramirez is bad for him, bad for his ideas about getting the Mospheirans back, bad for his ideas of running things to his liking. Your ability to do anything about him is eroding. When we were on our way, people in the corridors wished us luck. You sent us Jase Graham, which I take for a bid to protect him from Tamun, and we thank you for that. But you won’t walk out into the corridors, take a handful of these fine gentlemen with their supposedly functional rifles, and get the crew’s help while they’re still able to give it. I know Jase’s version of this. He reports you as an honest man, and what I see confirms it. Use the help you’ve got at hand.”

  “Take my advice,” Ogun said. “Don’t tell me how to manage my responsibilities. Take care of your own, and protect your high official before she gets killed. I won’t ask you a third time. Leave.”

  “You’ll let Ramirez die. You’ll go on trying to finesse this, and Tamun’s not playing that game. Ramirez dies, and that’s one ally down.”

  “I’m not his keeper. I have the ship’s interests to look out for. Contact me from the planet, when you get there. We’ll talk at that safe distance, when I’m not having to protect your lives. Not otherwise.”

  “Very good,” Bren said. “I’ve made the offer. You’ve made your choice. We’ll go back now.”

  “I’ll send an escort with you. —Frank, walk them back.”

  There was just a little hesitation, a little worry in the glance the man named Frank exchanged with his captain, but there was no disobedience.

  His own estimate of Ogun was dead-on right, Bren thought; these men were worried about Ogun; these men protected their captain as the only force likely to keep a very bad choice out of power, and Ogun meanwhile thought there was some danger to them in walking the corridors, a danger that one man walking with them might abate or shame into good behavior.

  And by all he’d seen of the crew’s attitude, it wasn’t any danger from the crew in general. That meant Tamun. That meant a very good likelihood of Tamun growing much less secretive about his actions.

  What was it Jase had said, that the crew would know things and not mention them or do anything about them until there was just absolutely no choice about it?

  “Nadiin-ji,” he said quietly to Banichi and Jago, who had remained somewhat behind him, just outside the door: and yes, there were four more men at the rear of the room, at either side. “Nadiin-ji, these reliable men have man’chi to Ogun, he relies on them, and he sends one man to protect us walking back. Whatever the threat to us in the halls, Ogun believes this one man can avert it by his presence and the threat of Ogun’s displeasure. Ogun-aiji will not join us, apprehends he is himself in danger, but insists his man’chi is only to his ship, so he will not compromise his authority even by visiting us. Our arrival here touched off action against Ramirez. It remains a point of contention.”

  It was useful to Banichi and Jago to know the situation as fully as possible, predigested for atevi comprehension: he did what he could to make it understood in shorthand, and he gave a second, reflexive bow of respect to a man of pragmatic combativeness and considerable virtue.

  One who wasn’t prepared, however, to cast his people’s fortunes on strangers or turn loose of his power to do something yet on his own terms.

  He backed out the door, surer and surer that he had read Ogun right, and that Ogun was equally sure he was himself the next target on Tamun’s list.

  The guard who joined them outside also knew the score, and had no wish to leave his captain, not for a minute.

  “Ogun is in danger,” Bren said to that man as they walked down that aisle of potted plants. Then he asked the most critical question: “Do you trust Sabin?”

  “Can’t say, sir.”

  “Well, it’s damned certain Tamun will lead you to disaster if anything happens to Ogun,” Bren said. “Tamun will get you no repairs, no help. He’s about to offend the aiji’s grandmother, which is a bad mistake. But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re Ogun’s man.”

  “Can’t discuss that, sir.”

  “Cousin of his?”

  “Can’t discuss it, sir.”

  “From what I see, the crew in general isn’t happy with this situation, are they? Ramirez was already head-to-head fighting Tamun when we came up here. And rather than let Ramirez win that argument and take what he wanted to take from the aiji in Shejidan, Tamun shot him.”

  “Can’t say that for sure, either, sir.”

  “So now Tamun’s got a small but pretty damned well armed set of helpers, probably cousins, who’ve all gone just one step too far, and probably are just a little dismayed at w
hat’s developed, but they know there isn’t a way back to good grace for them now. They can’t pin it on Jase Graham, their lie is leaking out faster by the hour, everybody knows exactly what they did, and it’s getting hotter and hotter, isn’t it?”

  There was no more denial, only a silence, and he hoped Banichi and Jago were following this, at least marginally.

  “So the only reason Ogun hasn’t shot Tamun is because you resourceful fellows can’t get to Tamun to blow him full of holes.”

  “I honestly couldn’t say that, sir.”

  “So what is the reason against it?”

  They reached the intersection; reached a point where to his immediate attention movement showed in the distance.

  Two crew walked the curvature of the hall toward them. And they carried rifles.

  “Those are Tamun’s cousins,” their guide said as they walked. “Keep behind me.”

  That deserved translation. “Tamun’s father’s sons, Nadiin-ji. Our guide proposes to go first and to watch them carefully.” It occurred to him that if all his running hypothesis was correct, he might remove a significant portion of Tamun’s support simply by targeting those two men and telling Banichi and Jago to take them down on the spot.

  But the fragile relations of crew to crew were strained to the breaking point: fracture had already happened. Worse could yet happen. His flitting mind ran beyond his own arguments to the reasons why Ogun remained reluctant to act, why nine tenths of the crew walked in fear of upsetting the balance. Knowledge of how to run the machinery was stretched so, so thin, the Pilots’ Guild for centuries had restricted knowledge, not disseminated it. The old policy that had so alienated the colonists had come to this, an aristocracy as absolute as that in the hinterlands of the mainland.

  Their guide went just before them, stopped and swung to keep an eye on the two as they passed, and still watched them as Banichi and Jago passed, wary, every line a threat.

  “Don’t—” their guide began to say, and the next instant Bren felt himself yanked backward into a fall. An explosion and an electric crackle brought a grunt from someone, but Jago had his arm, jerked him toward his feet before he could form a notion what had hit him. She and Banichi both fired, the two attackers went down, but so had their guide gone down, in a corridor otherwise void of cover.