Tracker, p.26
Tracker, page 26
A number of years ago, Bren thought, he might not have quite appreciated what this unit was, and what their job was, but they were indeed no fools. They asked questions, they sifted statements, and asked other questions. They were far more outgoing than most Guild, and, battle-scarred as they were, they smiled a great deal—which was, one was sure, part of their skill. They encouraged trust, and confidences, and probably read very well between the lines.
Interesting, Bren thought. His aishid and the dowager’s had both urged a little caution with them. Yet on one level he did know exactly what they were doing: he knew the techniques himself.
Banichi said quietly, when they were close to the spaceport, and when everybody was moving about collecting luggage, “They are hearing, Bren-ji. They are impressed.”
That was good to hear. But this battle-scarred unit had only met one human in their lives and never had to cope with them en masse. Where they were going was a very different place than they had ever planned.
• • •
The same bus waited at the station, with the same security personnel, and a similar exchange of codes—but this time there was no baggage truck. All that had already gone aboard. There was just the hand luggage. Bren allowed Jago to take the computer as they walked across the platform to the bus, and she would stow it—the one thing he would keep by him. His bodyguard had their single bag apiece, and Narani and the others had each a very small personal kit. Cajeiri’s four—had a bit more, but they would manage.
There was the long dusty drive up to the gate, and through, then the smooth, slow movement up to the yellow hazard line. Their shuttle waited out on the runway, in a cluster of service vehicles.
This time they walked between the painted lines and boarded by the personnel lift, which raised up and let them out into a pale modern interior. The baji-naji symbol of the space program was blazoned on every seat back and on the bulkhead door. The flight deck lay just beyond that thick bulkhead connection.
It might have been any modern airliner, except for the complete lack of windows, except for that unusual bulkhead door.
There were active screens at every seat, and what they showed as they settled in was the preparation going on around the shuttle, the movement of trucks and personnel.
They secured their luggage, such as it was. Ilisidi beckoned Cajeiri to sit by her, with Cenedi and the rest of the bodyguard and staff directly behind.
Bren and company took seats opposite, and the Guild observers sat behind them. Behind them, domestic staff settled in, most of them veterans of previous flights, able to instruct the novices.
The seat backs had a written admonition to use the provided tethers and clip to the rails when moving fore or aft. The interior was far more refined these days, the rules more defined, polished by experience over the years, and he knew the incidents where some of the rules had originated. Moving workers up to the station, the problems had echoed to his desk in the early years.
A different set of priorities was on their horizon. A different set of worries and problems. There was no longer a need for security from assassination, not here, not now, not until the shuttle let them out in what was definitely another world—and even then, the problems Tillington posed were of a different sort.
So just as well to shut the door on Earth for a while. The rest of the planet, in learning that they had visitors coming, would get a further bit of news—that the dowager, the heir, and the paidhi-aiji were all going up to deal with these expected visitors, further developments to follow. And that meant that the station necessarily would find it out. They’d advised Geigi the news was going to break on Earth. Tillington, where the news had already broken, would be aware an atevi shuttle was coming express. Presumably he would learn the Mospheiran shuttle was launching uncommonly close behind it, which in Tillington’s mind would immediately suggest both were related to the emergency, and that there was going to be a conflict of scheduling at the station’s single personnel dock . . . among other complications.
The orderly conduct of the Mospheiran side, and coordinating the unprecedented situation of an atevi shuttle and a Mospheiran shuttle en route that close together was the last reliance they hoped to place on Tillington.
Tillington should naturally conclude under the circumstances that the Mospheiran shuttle was bringing some sort of Presidential response, to which he would have to answer.
Maybe Tillington would conclude in his own head that he should get things in good administrative order and not roil the waters.
They settled in, disposed items where they had to be for safety as well as convenience. The special routing would shave a good twelve hours off their flight—but there would still be a very long time spent in these seats, a long time under acceleration and an equally long and generally uncomfortable braking at the end, after the body had been some time in weightlessness. He didn’t sleep on the shuttle, excepting catnaps, and he was particularly concerned for the dowager.
Cajeiri was out of his seat: that was predictable. But he was leaning on the seat back, constructively pointing out things in the safety instructions for his young aishid—it being their first trip into space—and being very restrained. Cajeiri and his bodyguard had all been very quiet, very by-the-book from the time they’d left the Bujavid.
Exemplary level of attention in the youngsters, all through the train ride. The shuttle was preparing for launch and they were still being very quiet.
It was more than an excess of good behavior. Distractingly more. The dowager’s presence could account for it. But Bren thought not. Likely the dowager herself thought not.
This extremely adult behavior? This complete lack of fidgeting?
There’s something he wants more than he wants anything on Earth, something recently given to him, and taken away, and now threatened by the kyo, up there.
This is Tabini’s son. The dowager’s great-grandson. With the stubborn will of both.
He’s more than a kid. But he is a kid.
He won’t disobey his great-grandmother. He probably won’t disobey me.
But if something untoward happens—
I know which way he’ll want to jump.
But man’chi overrides.
He is atevi. He’s definitely become that, since he was last off the planet.
The speaker came live.
“This is an express flight,” word came from the captain. “We will enter prolonged acceleration once we reach switchover, so it will be some time until we become weightless, but you will experience a gradual feeling that the shuttle is becoming vertical, and the center aisle will become a long fall for the duration. Keep your seatbelts fastened, and for the safety of others, do not attempt to retrieve items from storage. A period of free fall will follow when you can safely move about. I shall advise you again before our prolonged braking and maneuvering to dock. Whenever you are in your seat, it is a good idea to have the seatbelt fastened. Remember that the aisle will be, for anyone above the last three rows of seats, a very serious fall, endangering others below. Whenever you are moving about in free fall, please clip to the line that runs fore and aft on what is now the ceiling. Please use the clip at your seat to secure any object that you are actively using and please put such objects away securely when not in use.
“Please attend any personal needs before takeoff, or wait for the inertial portion of our flight. If you have any emergency during acceleration, please push the button at your seat to advise us.”
Bren read the information card. Even last year, they’d upgraded the flight protocols to include the express routing, and, to his slight surprise at the time, they hadn’t needed him to do it.
The thought of instructions written by computer was a little scary. But they read fairly well, considering.
Computers likewise laid out their course—but one trusted the course plot was a little better than their grammar.
Warning sounded.
Deep breath. He watched the screen as the service vehicles pulled away.
They began to roll a startlingly short time later, gathered speed as the view began to be sky and a very low horizon. Airborne.
No weather, no obstacles now. They went on climbing, and Bren sat and watched the display as the power began to press them back in their seats and changed the orientation of down.
The engine-switchover when it came was sleek and smooth, and they went on climbing. The view in the screens had been blue, then more than night—deeper, and colder, because they weren’t on Earth any longer.
No phone calls were likely. Nobody would come knocking on the door with a problem.
And there was nothing to do but sit and imagine what was out there in that darkness, and wonder what they wanted, and to try to rehearse, in his own head, what he could say to Tillington to get the man to take dismissal quietly.
What could develop next.
What he could do about Braddock.
He had a recorder with him, a wonderfully tiny device, that stored all the records they had made of kyo speech, of their conversational sessions, such as they were. He put the earpiece in, started it going, put his mind to work, tired as he was, hoping that it might calm his nerves enough. He didn’t want to rely on the pills for sleep. He needed mental acuity.
The kyo voice—a human couldn’t reach that pitch. Possibly atevi couldn’t. There were distinctions hard to hear.
And it wasn’t calming. It was a case of trying to resurrect the thoughts he’d had then, the tissue of supposition and guesswork that he’d framed around the language. Long hours on the voyage after, he’d made his records, tried to construct the grammar, the logic, get sense of a language unlike any he’d worked with. He had his computer, up in storage. There was that.
There was so damned much to do that he hadn’t even been able to touch, with the need to handle logistics, trying to think of every little thing they might need.
He had had no time to handle the most essential thing—which was in the recording, in the notes he’d taken. He could reconstruct it in his head, but he wanted confidence the reconstruction was accurate. He counted on the time the flight would take, to peel away the two years between himself and that time.
God, there were so damned few words. How did he turn a vocabulary of nouns into an exchange about reasons, necessities, safety for everybody involved?
Jago, in the seat next to him, touched his arm.
He blinked, drew his mind back from the place he’d been.
Jago said, “Bren-ji. Crew advises there is a transmission from Mospheira, wishing your attention. They believe it may be the Presidenta, or some message from him.”
They were no longer in the purview of the Messengers’ Guild, now: station shuttle ops and Mospheiran ground services would be handling communications. But given the hour . . .
Tillington’s staff would be handling Central at this hour, and while they didn’t control ops, which for an atevi shuttle would all be Geigi’s people, they were on duty and able to eavesdrop on any communication that flowed in Mosphei’.
He took the handset with some trepidation, hoping Shawn’s office was aware of that fact.
“This is Bren Cameron. Advising you this is not a secure transmission.”
“Bren. Shawn. Looking for an official word from your office, in your old capacity, if you will, no need for secrecy at this point. News of the ship has been released here on the island. Understand the same on the mainland. There’s some general distress about this arrival here, and some confusion. Is there anything we haven’t heard?”
Shawn wasn’t informing him about Tillington. The call was purely a call for the record, now that, as Shawn said, the news had broken. The public needed information.
But in your old capacity? Shawn hadn’t invoked him as a Mospheiran government official since he’d come back from Reunion. And he hadn’t served as a Mospheiran official in the last three years.
Maybe it was a comfort to Mospheira to think they had him on duty on their behalf. It was all right with him if that was the case.
And they needed a speech. All right. He could do that, ex temp. He had his wits in good enough order for that.
“As far as I know, Mr. President, there’s nothing much to tell beyond the early reports. We’ve gotten a patterned signal, identical to what we had at Reunion, and we’re responding the same.
“We think it’s a very good bet, given that exact signal, that that incoming ship carries the individuals we dealt with in deep space. We parted on good terms.
“These people come from a very, very great distance, at considerable effort. It seems to be only one ship, very likely a combination of diplomatic mission and scientific inquiry.
“We’re going up as the original contact team, the persons who last dealt with these people. The mission includes the aiji-dowager, myself, and the aiji’s nine-year-old son, so you can see the aiji has considerable confidence that this will be a peaceful meeting.
“We expect to start the conversation with them exactly where we left off.
“We have the help and support of the Phoenix captains and we’re quite confident that this will go as amicably as the last meeting did.
“And should anyone ask the obvious question, there’s no reason at all to expect that these people will want to land on our planet. Their normal gravity is a little off from ours: it’s not likely they’d be at all comfortable on Earth for an hour, let alone a longer stay.”
God, he so wanted to ask Shawn where things stood with the Tillington situation. But he wasn’t going to trade that information in this conversation.
“That’s my answer, Mr. President. My best estimate. I hope everything is going well there. We’re having a good flight, preparing for our mission. I’m reviewing our language study on the way. We expect them to come to the station, possibly to wish to meet ship to ship. In either case, we can manage.”
“All’s well here,” Shawn said. “We’re keeping our regular launch schedule, right down your track, so we hope you will be able to clear dock for us up there.”
Right down your track. Express. And only two days behind them. Shawn hadn’t said Presidential envoy, but pressing the shuttle dock facilities that tight—that was no freight run, either. He understood. Anybody who understood space operations would understand.
Tillington, whether he was listening now, or whether he got the word from ops, would understand it, very clearly, that the President was sending something.
“The technical lads are muttering about sequencing and docking room up there, but they’ll cope. No problems that we foresee.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. We’ll urge that our shuttle be moved out of the way as soon as possible. We don’t have that much to unload.”
He hoped for Kate Shugart. God, he hoped for Kate Shugart to be Shawn’s appointee.
But he still couldn’t ask that question and Shawn wasn’t advising him before advising Tillington—if Shawn decided to advise Tillington.
That gave them two days on the station deck with the kyo incoming, both halves of the station aware of the kyo, Tillington in charge and the china all balanced in tall stacks, as the atevi proverb had it.
“Have a safe trip,” Shawn said.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” he said, and the contact shut down, leaving him with the unsettling realization he had just gotten his official Mospheiran title back.
His connection to the University and the State Department apparently was renewed along with it.
So he was going to have to speak for Shawn, too, without quite speaking for Shawn, until the Mospheiran shuttle got there with whatever news it brought.
Springing a replacement as a total surprise, two days after their arrival—that was going to be a dicey moment.
But a hell of a lot worse if Tillington decided to resist removal.
Have a safe trip.
Good luck, was what Shawn could well have wished him.
His brain had been full of surmises about kyo grammar and sentence structure.
Now he had to map a meeting with Tillington. In case.
And a meeting with Ogun, to explain it all.
Jago, sitting beside him, gave him a questioning look. The exchange with Shawn had been via the earpiece. Atevi hearing could pick up the voice despite the ambient noise of the shuttle under power, and Jago understood more of the language than the University on Mospheira would like. But Jago would not pick up all the verbal code behind the words.
She queried him in the mere arch of a brow.
“The Presidenta asked me official questions, only so he can relay my answer to the news services, regarding the visitors. The real news is that the shuttle from Mospheira is running only two days behind us. I believe he is sending someone to replace Tillington. He also addressed me as paidhi representing Mospheira.”
“Has there ever been another paidhi?”
“No.” One couldn’t count Yolanda Mercheson. “None in the last three years.”
Jago gave a tip of her head, less surprised than he was, he was sure.
And a lot more confident.
“I hope for Kate Shugart,” he said. “I hope there has not been politics in the appointment, but likely there was. The ability of Mospheirans to imagine conspiracies is exceeded only in the Transportation Committee of the aishidi’tat. And I have no time to become involved in a discussion. Being paidhi for the humans—means I am charged with securing cooperation.”
