Visitor: A Foreigner Novel

by C. J. Cherryh

  “The second, then. Were you in a position to observe the lead-up?”

  Shake of the head. “I was in admin,” she said. Her voice was less steady. Her eyes flickered with other visions. “I don’t know what happened, except there was a ship. We thought it was Phoenix. Next thing we knew, the alarms sounded. We went to emergency shelters. I ran. It wasn’t that far. I took cover. We felt the shock. It went through you, through your bones, before you even heard anything.” She shivered. “Lights went out. Fans stopped. People had hit the wall. We all hit the wall. Or the wall hit us. I don’t know which. I woke up in the dark. With no fans. Just people moaning and crying. Metal pinging, the way it does. But we were still airtight. People didn’t panic. We felt around, took care of each other the best we could. First the fans came back on. Then the lights did. We just sat and waited . . . I don’t know how long . . . for an all clear. It was a long time.”

  He had to ask. “Where was your daughter?”

  “Nursery. She was all right. It was a deeper place. Smaller. Better protection than we had. When we got the all-clear I went over there. Saw she was all right. Went back to work.”

  Spacer mindset. He knew Jase. He knew the thinking. He nodded. “You say they came in.”

  “They did. And we caught one.”

  “We.”

  “Our people. Our security.”

  “Did you see him?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t. Never did. I saw vid once. That was all. We just held on to him. We figured, if they ever came back, maybe we could deal.”

  “You figured?”

  “Lou said. That was what he said.”

  “Did he ever say what led up to the attack? Did he ever say anything?”

  “He said . . . he said they didn’t talk. Just fired.”

  The kyo had indicated otherwise, in a fairly straightforward animation of ship, station, and boarding craft.

  “Did they signal at all? Did they do anything?”

  Shake of the head again. “We didn’t see them until the explosion. One of our service-bots. They just ran it down. Collided with it. Or blew it up. That’s what I hear. Maybe they mistook that for an attack. All we saw was the explosion. But then the alarm came and—” She shrugged.

  “Service-bot. Did Braddock say that?”

  “No. Theo did. But he said he didn’t know. Not for certain. Said something about the first attack and mining craft that got blown up.”

  “And you think they might have mistaken an accidental collision—for an attack, and retaliated. Twice.”

  “How would I know? That was Theo’s notion.”

  “Let’s go back to that first attack. Tell me about when Phoenix came back the first time and offered to evacuate the station.”

  She frowned. “Most people don’t know about that. Lou kept it from them.”

  “Why? Why not give them a choice?”

  “Phoenix came back and wanted to take people off. But we couldn’t. The ship was in from a long run. Its onboard stores would be flat. We had all our food production, but we’d lost the storage units. There was nothing to transfer to the ship. No way the ship could take on and feed everyone. We couldn’t. Lou said no, the ship should stay and defend us while we got production going.”

  Now that was interesting. “How long did it stay there?”

  “Long enough to take in fuel. They talked back and forth like they were going to stay. And then they didn’t.”

  “Who was talking?”

  “I don’t know. Lou, on our side.”

  “Did he explain the situation?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t in on it. But they talked a lot of times. They were back and forth on the com. The ship wanted to refuel. They did that. The word was they were going to stay and keep us going till we would have enough for the trip. They finished refueling. They disconnected. And then they started moving off. We still thought it was just positioning the ship. Then they just left us.”

  Beyond interesting. A station with a lot of survivors. And no food for a trip with no assurances on the other end? Someone would have had to decide who could leave and who had to stay and take their chances. The lack of food supply was an insurmountable problem in rescuing all the survivors.

  The truth could have triggered stationwide panic.

  It was no wonder Braddock had been just a bit reluctant when Phoenix returned, ten years later, with pretty much the same demands: fuel the ship and abandon the station.

  But one look at the damage to the station would have told Ramirez the ship hadn’t the firepower to protect it against those weapons. If the people refused to come aboard . . .

  A hard decision. A spacer decision: save the ship, at all cost.

  A unilateral decision. Sabin swore she hadn’t known there were survivors.

  So what had Sabin been doing while that had been going on?

  Off shift? Supervising the refueling?

  Ogun and Sabin.

  There were more than thirty people on the bridge, on any of the four shifts. He’d personally been up there. He’d seen it. One shift had been held overtime, maybe. Maybe two shifts had cycled up there, in a position to know. More than thirty, maybe twice thirty people who’d been in a position to see and hear what was going on, more than a few who’d have heard the exchange between Ramirez, senior captain in those years, and Louis Braddock.

  The ship had refueled. Somebody had been in charge of that operation. Somebody had known there were survivors on the station. God knew how much Braddock had told Ramirez, what Braddock had demanded, what he’d told Ramirez about their situation, their numbers, their food situation.

  God knew, too, whether the kyo ship had still been there when Phoenix had come in that first time. Or if they’d picked it up. God alone knew why Ramirez had done what he’d done.

  At least thirty people out of the hundreds native to Phoenix had been in a position to know something—or pieces of something.

  But nobody had broken the silence until Ramirez, dying, had done it himself.

  Ogun and Sabin, on either side of a ten-year silence, and a cadre of officers who weren’t telling their shipmates, their fellow officers—what they’d known. And done.

  Ogun—with a passionate hatred of Braddock.

  And Sabin and Ogun . . . in frosty cooperation.

  “Ms. Williams,” he said quietly, “let me assure you, first, your daughter’s with her friends and their parents, and she’s under the lasting protection of the atevi government. I can’t alter your personal situation right now. But I can keep you under atevi authority, and I can assure you no harm will come to you here. I may be able to make your legal situation better, once we’re past the current emergency. Meanwhile I want you to be safe. I want you to be more comfortable. Is there anything you want, that I can bring in here?”

  She shook her head, not asking a thing. Scared, maybe. Not trusting anything.

  “I’ll give orders, all the same,” he said. “I’ll get something to help you pass the time. And I’ll tell your daughter I’ve talked to you. Is there anything you want to tell her?”

  A second shake of the head.

  “Are you angry at your daughter?”

  Third shake of the head.

  “I’ll tell her that, then.” He inclined his head, a little bow. “I’ll order food be brought in from the Mospheiran side, while I’m at it. You may prefer that.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He left, with Banichi and Jago, and the guards outside shut the door.

  “Instructions,” he said to the guards. “Be watchful. Do not allow ship-humans access here without my specific order, no matter their rank, but avoid violence so doing. Lord Geigi will contact you and send certain things for this lady’s comfort. We are in keeping of a woman perhaps more threatened than threatening, but she is clever, she wants out, and she is deceptive. Do not afford her a weapon or anything that can be made a weapon or do harm, nadiin, and be sure that word passes to all who stand guard h
ere. Be courteous. But be extremely wary of this person.”

  “Nandi,” was the answer.

  And to his bodyguard, as they left. “Her information was interesting. I wish to do some study before I talk to Braddock. I am reconsidering transferring Braddock and his associates out of Lord Geigi’s custody.”

  “She spoke of the ship,” Jago said. “And events at Reunion.”

  “She did,” he said.

  Did he believe what Williams said? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the technicalities—didn’t even know what questions he should ask to judge what she said.

  But letting Williams believe he did believe her . . . that seemed the safer course.

  What he was going to do with the woman—whether he wanted her in any wise associated with her daughter—that was a heavy decision, one that affected far more than Irene and her mother.

  He wasn’t sure. He knew more than he had known. But he was far from sure.

  He was going to get a call—at any given moment—that the kyo had entered an approach. Or changed their transmission. Or needed a response.

  God, of all things, he didn’t need this woman on his hands.

  6

  First order of business, returning home, was a call—a very troubled call. “Jase. I need to see you, urgently. Don’t ask. Please come.”

  And when Jase did turn up at the apartment, Bren opted for his office, a cubbyhole of a room, but private, even from staff. Even from his bodyguard, though not because of secrets, but for just the mood he wanted. “I shall see him there, nadiin-ji. I ask you be patient. Tell staff let us be alone until I signal.”

  It was Jase. It was a very close ally, in territory Jase could not exit without their leave. They still frowned, perhaps reading into the context of the business with Irene’s mother. But they bowed and went back to their own territory.

  He waited.

  Jase arrived from the foyer with Asicho, who quietly let him in, then left and closed the door.

  “Problem?” Jase asked in ship-speak.

  “Deep apologies,” Bren said. “I dropped in on Ms. Williams, on my way to talk to Braddock. She had a story. I don’t know enough to figure how much is true. But her account had some details I do need to ask.”

  Jase sank into the nearest chair. “Ask.”

  “Since Ramirez. Since before we went out to Reunion, and after we came back, I’ve heard one story, that present crew didn’t know any part of what went on between Ramirez and Braddock, they had no idea the station had survivors, but after Ramirez said there had been, we, on our voyage, went back moderately prepared for the possibility. We understood the purpose was to destroy the Archive, to be sure the kyo had nothing usable—and if there were still people holding out there—”

  “That’s all true.”

  “In the way of a person who’s not familiar with the operations of the ship, in the way of a person who, at the time, had very little concept what that might entail, I find a question I never have asked—a question which may have been too obvious for you to volunteer. I didn’t ask into the time it took Phoenix to approach the station when it came in, how long to talk to it, to refuel. I did ask who was in command, who wasn’t . . .”

  “Ramirez,” Jase said. “It was Ramirez all the way.”

  “I believe everything you’ve told me. I believe it, Jase. But Ms. Williams filled in a certain amount of detail from the other side—from the Reunion side—that possibly casts Braddock in a more favorable light.”

  “That their food stores were destroyed and we couldn’t take all of the survivors on board?”

  He was shocked for a moment. He hoped he wasn’t about to hear there were deeper secrets.

  “That’s the gist of it,” he said to Jase. “Ms. Williams indicated that when the ship came in, after the attack, there weren’t sufficient supplies left to transfer to the ship to keep them alive on a long voyage, that they needed time to rebuild the station facilities, and that what Braddock wanted from Phoenix was the ship to stay there while they did rebuild that supply. There were certainly supplies to take when we arrived. We loaded them on, filled the tanks . . .”

  Jase nodded. “It’s what Braddock maintained all the way back here. That he’d had firm agreement from Ramirez that the ship would stay and defend the station while they rebuilt the tanks. So the station let the ship refuel. But Ramirez refueled and then ran out on them.”

  “That’s fairly well Williams’s story, yes.”

  “Honestly, we don’t know enough to deny it. Having seen the damage to the station, we knew our weapons wouldn’t stand a chance against whatever did that. Senior captain must have realized the same. If Braddock refused to accept that, insisted on Phoenix fighting an unwinnable battle . . . I can’t say I wouldn’t have made the same decision.”

  “Maybe. But there was another option, one you might have suggested, had Ramirez actually asked advice from anyone, especially the two individuals he’d specifically trained for the circumstance.”

  “Try to talk to the kyo?”

  Bren nodded, and Jase sighed.

  “I must admit, I have wondered whether or not I’d have thought of it. Whether Yolanda and I’d have had the skill to try it, young as we were. But we’ll never know, so I try not to dwell. Ramirez was in command the entire time, and when the word came to pull out, we believed, we believed completely, that there were no survivors. Timing was what you might expect for a search for survivors and refueling. You’ve seen the log. Tapes of the rescue boarding just cut out, once they were in, and the senior captain’s personal log is cryptic, to say the least. Thank God for that single reference to their flashing light contact attempt. Without that—”

  Without that one key, he might never have made the connection between the lights with which the kyo ship had greeted them, and Ramirez’ choice to ignore the same signal and run. It had given him his first insight into the kyo’s actions.

  “As for Braddock’s claims the station’s food supply was pretty well flat . . . we can’t argue that, because we don’t know. Braddock could have been lying, stalling to keep us there to protect him while he rebuilt the station. Not because the food wasn’t there for a viable evacuation, but because Braddock wanted to preserve his little kingdom. There’s no denying what Braddock did this time is exactly what Ramirez told the crew he did last time—he refused to evacuate. With the kyo right there, with plenty of food stores on the station, he refused to evacuate.”

  That much was true.

  “If you’re asking what I think—I think his motivations were the same then as now. I think he knew that if he boarded the ship he put himself in the hands of Phoenix captains. As noisy as he was about being in command of the ship, I think he knew the old Pilots’ Guild, which was his only justification for his position, was going to die as a separate entity the instant he crossed the threshold. I think he was willing to hold those people hostage until he got concessions, primarily a continuation of his own power and prestige, in writing, first from Ramirez, then from Sabin, while we were sitting there with the kyo looming over us. I think that was exactly it. I think he knew that evacuation was inevitable this time, given our interaction with the kyo, the promise we made them to evacuate the station. I think he forced that boarding party on us because he wanted to know how many crew we had, and whether he stood a chance of seizing control of the ship. I think he didn’t want his people or himself shunted off to the old colonist quarters of the ship, for which you can’t entirely blame him—the plumbing down there’s as old as the ship. However, he’d care more about the fact that the security locks would seal him and his people off from the crew areas. You recall—you had the old admin quarters, but you still had to go through keyed locks to get near the bridge.”

  Also true.

  “That’s not the situation he wanted,” Jase said. “But we damned sure weren’t going to allow him or any of his supporters up in crew territory, seeding doubt into the crew and who knows what into the ship’s systems. So y
es, I think he tried to hold the fuel hostage to avoid a repetition of Ramirez’ actions, and insisted on Sabin’s attendance in his office in order to ‘negotiate,’ even if it meant holding her hostage—we know now how fond he is of that tactic. But it didn’t work. We got her back, got the fuel, and got the people off safe. And that’s really about all I can tell you.”

  Things Jase said fell comfortingly into place. Maybe too comfortingly. He wanted to be sure.

  “I tell you what still bothers me. Ms. Williams maintains Ramirez talked to Braddock—several times and over some period of time. That it got heated. Wouldn’t the bridge crew know? At least that he was talking to someone? Wouldn’t they talk? That’s thirty people trying to keep a secret from family for ten years.”

  Jase frowned, thinking. “Communications doesn’t go anywhere between bridge and the rest of the ship without the communications officer authorizing it,” he said slowly. “And what goes on between chief at com and someone in a private call doesn’t go all over the bridge. It’s entirely reasonable, if the senior captain initiated that conversation from his office, that only two people on Phoenix were in a position even to know the exchange took place, let alone hear it—Ramirez, and the head com tech. Kalmanov. Who’s dead, now.”

  “How long dead?”

  “Six, seven years. Natural causes, what I know. People do die.”

  “Granted.”

  “Maybe Braddock did believe he had an agreement: with Ramirez. Maybe he concludes that the way he still says he outranks the ship’s captains. I don’t know. We don’t trust him, plain and simple.”

  “We?”

  “Ship-folk. Phoenix crew. And this is something maybe you don’t know. The Pilots’ Guild didn’t go ashore. It was put ashore. It was put ashore at Reunion because its priorities had shifted over to Reunion Station, and the captains of that day just stopped taking its orders. From the foundation of Reunion Station, it ceased to be relevant to the ship. Braddock thinks it still is.”

  “Put off. Years ago. Generations ago. That’s a long time to hold on to a fantasy job.”

  “He’s Pilots’ Guild.” As if that explained everything. And perhaps it did. Except: