Explorer (25 page)

Jase gave that order. Sabin simply held her position, arms folded, face grim.

He waited. They all waited.

Image came in. Repeat of the former sequence:
give us our dead.
No mention of evacuation and departure.

“Do we have a problem, Mr. Cameron?”

That, from Sabin. And, yes, he’d say they potentially had a problem.

“We well may. They aren’t getting beyond that demand.
Give us our dead.
Nothing beyond that. They won’t negotiate until we do that. I think it’s pretty clear.”

“Hope the station’s got fuel for us,” Sabin muttered between her teeth. “Agree. Tell them we’ll do it. What we’ll really do is go in, get our business done, see what the situation is, and prepare to run for it.
If
we have fuel. If we don’t, we can’t board the station population. Then we see about negotiating our way out of this.”

An unthinkable dilemma, then. Destroy the station—destroy the Rosetta Stone. But that did no good if they couldn’t get themselves out. If they couldn’t avoid leading a vengeful alien presence back to the atevi planet . . .

“No matter what we do, we’re going to have to negotiate this, run or stay, captain. They can track us. Wipe out the Archive, yes, but that’s not all that’s at risk. Everything back at Alpha is at risk.” A terrible thought came to him, that in some measure,
Phoenix
itself could survive, alone, fugitive that it might be. And Sabin was the
ship’s
protector, nothing less, nothing closer to her bedrock loyalties. “They’re talking, captain. We can solve this. But we’ve got a hellacious puzzle here. Station was hit ten years ago.
If
that’s the truth. We don’t even know for sure that this ship represents the ones that did it. We do know this ship’s been involved for six years. That they came here and sent in a probe. And station blew it up.”

“Four years making up their minds sounds like a committee decision to me.”

“It may, captain. It well may. It may be a hundred planets making up their minds for all we know, and do we want to take that on?” He wanted to undermine any notion of survival on their own. And took his chance. “Can we say where in this whole universe is safe to run to, if we make a mistake here? We
start
by cooperating with them, far as seems reasonable.”

Sabin gave him that patented stare, straight in the eyes. And he gave his own back.

“And if you’re wrong, Mr. Cameron? What you propose means approaching them after they’ve got what they want.”

“Can we defend, if they launch an attack while we’re at the station?”

Lengthy stare. “Point of fact, no. We’ll be as vulnerable as the station.”

“Then I’m right, captain. Last thing we ought to do is run without satisfying these people.”

“People,” Sabin scoffed. While Banichi and Jago stood at his shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am. Whatever shape they come in. Whatever their faces look like. The outline’s of a person.”

“And the minds, Mr. Cameron?”

“There’s thought. There’s insistence. There’s forbearance. There’s regard for their dead. There’s an inclination to communicate. That’s all a foundation.”

“As I recall, you and the atevi lived side by side for quite a while before you went at each others’ throats. The War of the Landing, you call it.”

“We learn. We come here, my bodyguard and I, the dowager and Gin and I, with all that experience—at your service, captain.”

“What, then, Mr. Cameron?”

“Is station going to cooperate with us?”

“I’m not a prophet.”

“Station hasn’t sent us anything else.”

“Not another word,” Jase said.

“C1,” Sabin said. “Replay the sequence as Mr. Cameron suggests.”

“Yes, ma’am,” C1 said, and it went out.

Lengthy wait then.

“Sequence showing us going to the station,” Bren said. “Let’s not get deeper in. Let’s just go do what we can, captain. Let’s try it.”

Sabin gave him a cold, speculative look. Then: “Give me general address.”

“Confirmed,” C1 said, and Sabin took up a mike.

“Sabin speaking. We’ve conducted a short conversation with the alien craft. Seems it sent a probe to the station and had it blown up. It thinks station has one of their dead. We want answers. We’re going to go over
there with a reasonable expectation the alien craft is going to stay off our backs in the meanwhile, and we’re going to find out what the fuel situation is before we make any further decisions. So we’re going to takehold in a few minutes, cousins, and we’re going to move very, very slowly about this, so as not to alarm the neighbors. Don’t take anything for granted. Second shift is now in charge. Likely next shift change will not be on schedule, but technical crew, continue to brief yourselves on channel 10. General crew, feel free to get some sleep if you can—”

God, Bren thought, exhausted—and very far from sleep.

“. . . and stay to your cabins until further notice. We might still have to move ship far and fast on a few seconds’ warning, but right now, we’re going to start in toward station and see whether refueling is at all an option.”

The message from the alien craft meanwhile came back, identical to their output.

“Looks as if they agree,” Jase muttered. “For good or ill.”

“It secures our backs,” Sabin said. “It gets us there.”

Sabin was being uncharacteristically charitable. His action wasn’t all a success. It might be a grave mistake to have conveyed regret. Belligerence and indifference wasn’t his native inclination, and he’d mistrusted the notion, incapable of playing the hand the way Banichi, perhaps, would have done. At times Tabini had wisely shoved his translator aside and said, in effect, let me deal with it. And Tabini dealt, hard and fast and with nerves that didn’t flinch at a frown from the opposition.

Tabini’s opponents fell into Tabini’s sense of timing and didn’t ever recover their balance—ended up negotiating peace because they couldn’t ever get their feet under them. Figuratively speaking.

He envied that ability. He wished he’d found his balance in this exchange for any given moment. He wished most of all he’d found a way to get a confirmation out of the alien regarding their leaving the scene.

That
could be the greatest failure in his life. Absolutely essential, and for a critical moment he’d doubted he could get it, and balked. Mistake, mistake, mistake.

“Mr. Cameron.” Sabin.

“Ma’am.”

“Good job.”

Did one tell the plain truth, in the middle of the bridge, if not in the midst of the below-decks crew? “I have lingering concerns, captain.”

“A no-go, Mr. Cameron?”

Did he then undermine administration’s confidence in the outcome, when he was negotiating with his own side as well as the other?

“No, captain. I’m sure we’ll solve problems as they come.”

“Best we can ask, Mr. Cameron. Take a tea-break.”

Take a tea-break.
Get your interference out of my thought processes.

“Yes, ma’am.” He wasn’t going to be provoked, not here, not now, not with what they had hanging off their bow. He did walk away, Banichi and Jago close on his heels.

“Takehold, takehold minor, takehold,”
hit the speakers. They were about to back away from the confrontation.

He took hold, in the corridor, where there was a safety nook and a recessed bar for handholds. Banichi and Jago braced him within the lock of their arms, and scarcely swayed to the ship’s gentle push.

Sabin might be halfway satisfied with what had happened.

He wasn’t. The longer he reviewed his performance the more he doubted what he’d done. They’d lied to the aliens about who they were. They’d lied about their possible intentions.

Now they went to the Guild to lie to them about their ultimate intention to destroy the Archive and shut down the station the Guild had built and defended. And where did the truth start?

The all-clear sounded. The alien ship hadn’t, apparently, fired on them, confirming he’d interpreted the signals well enough. They were still alive. He straightened his collar, arranged his sleeves and walked on to the dowager’s cabin.

Best steady his nerves and quit double-thinking what he’d done. Decision was decision. He might yet get a
chance to finish that letter to Toby, and the one to Tabini. He might yet get a chance to send them.

What would he write about the last performance?
I guessed? I did my best guess. They didn’t shoot at us.

Better than the station authorities had done, at least.

At the moment he owed the dowager and Gin a personal presentation of the facts, beyond what they’d have picked up from their communications. He removed the noise from his ear, pocketed the device as Banichi rapped at the dowager’s door.

One of Cenedi’s men opened to them, and they walked in on that most uncommon of sights, the dowager’s small court and Gin and Jerry sitting together, faces all turned toward him.

He bowed. “Aiji-ma, Gin-ji.” They made a fortunate number, together. He was never so aware of settling back into the comfort of that system, every detail considered: baji-naji, but the chances of chance were limited in the dowager’s company. “We’ve sent a sort of animated cartoon to the foreign ship, aiji-ma, an illustration of past behaviors and present. We’ve received their version in reply, and their information indicates they approached the station, sent a probe, and the station blew it up—retaining the remains of the occupant. The aliens have offered no further explanation of their long wait here, but they declare, as best the images indicate, that they want the remains returned, along, I would assume, with all bits and pieces of the craft. They may be concerned, as we are, with information that may have fallen into human hands. One could surmise they have identical concerns about an enemy researching their home planet.”

“Understandable,” the dowager pronounced it. “These seem reasonable demands.”

“They haven’t, however, agreed that we can take the stationers away. We put forward that proposal and they failed, as best we can understand, to consent. This remains a problem for future negotiation. Sabin-aiji wants to dock with the station and find out whether we can refuel. If we have fuel, we have numerous options.” He hadn’t translated for Gin, but Gin followed a little of it, and had heard the original events in ship-speak. “If we have none—we have a further problem.”

Ilisidi lifted a thin hand, waved it. “Pish. Running is no choice. It leads home. And will Sabin-aiji lie to these strangers? A bad beginning.”

“A very bad beginning,” Bren agreed, inwardly cringing at his own responsibility.

“A hard choice,” Ilisidi said.

“But,” Cajeiri said, hitherto wide-eyed and silent, “what do they look like?”

“A little like us,” Bren said.

“Bren-aiji is tired,” Ilisidi snapped. “Pish on your questions. Let him sit or let him go to his quarters.”

“I should indeed take a rest, now, aiji-ma. They haven’t requested we go below. I rather think we should all rest, and be on the bridge as we approach the station. I may go there earlier, and be there when the captains communicate with the station.”

“I can go forward and observe,” Gin said.

Good idea, he thought. He trusted Jase to tell him what was going on as the ship glided away from the encounter. But he didn’t trust himself to stay awake. He took the earpiece from his pocket and handed it to Gin. “Just listen for me from here. Saves arguments. I’m going to try to sleep an hour.”

“You got it,” Gin said, and laid a hand on his shoulder as he started for the door. “Good job.”

“I wish I’d gotten more from them,” he said. It was hardest of all to present a half-done job to his own associates. But he bowed to the aiji-dowager, to the young aiji, and left, Banichi and Jago in close company with him—went to his temporary quarters and sat down in the reclining chair.

He shoved it back all the way. Banichi and Jago settled where they could find comfort for their stature, next the wall, one corner of a square.

Quiet, then. His ear still itched from the long flow of communication. When he shut his eyes he saw black and white figures, the animated docking with station, the embarcation.

The alien ship putting out a probe. The explosion.

Had the alien ship initiated fire on the station ten years ago? Had the station possibly blown half
itself
away trying to hit a ship that came close, and deceived Ramirez about the event—in the same policy of secrets and silence in which Ramirez had shown a lie to his own ship?

Or was it one ship that had hit the station ten years back and another the station had hit six years ago?

God, it was getting far more convolute than a simple lad from Mospheira wanted to figure.

The plain fact was, they and the alien craft had an agreement—and a lie he had to keep covered, namely the atevi’s presence with them.

Now he was going to lie to the station. Aliens aboard? What aliens? Oh, the Mospheiran gentleman . . . a jumped-up colonist negotiator. Never mind the slightly odd clothes.

He wondered if Jase or Sabin was going to get the leisure to sit down for half an hour—let alone sleep. It wouldn’t improve their chances to have the ship’s captains on duty through shift after shift after shift.

Four shifts, still. Two captains. It was all fine when they were careening through folded space, puttering half-wittedly about their duties. At the moment, he desperately wished there were relief for them.
Sabin
wasn’t about to turn anything about this over to Jase and Jase wasn’t going to leave her alone to deal with whatever came up. He had that pegged.

Distrust. The habit of lies. And now this Pilots’ Guild, that wove its own walls out of lies.

Not easy to sleep on that thought. But he did his best. He had the two bravest individuals he’d ever known not a few feet away. He had their wit, their steadiness whenever he faltered. They wouldn’t flinch. He couldn’t. When he lost sight of everything else—they were there.

He thought of home. Of his mother’s dining room. A cufflink, gone down the heating duct. Gone. Just gone. He’d pinned his cuff, rushing off to the plane, rushing to escape the island.