Precursor (21 page)

In the same moment the workers saw what was coming: the body language wasn’t as definite in zero-G, but Bren saw it. First:
Jase; we know him, glad to see you
. Then:
That’s a stranger,
coupled with,
Omigod, they’re large, they’re alien, and there are more of them than us
.

Jase reached out a bare hand to one of the anonymous workers and caught a gloved grip. “Luz?”

“Jase.” The word came muffled through the mask. Josefin was the name on the orange protective suit. “Jase!”

“This is Bren Cameron behind me. His staff. Atevi security. And his servants. I hope the message got here.”

“Yes,” Luz said. “Yes. Mr. Cameron.” Bren drifted along with the assistance of the rope. Exposed flesh, face, ears, and fingers—burned and chilled in the dry cold. The inside of his nose felt frosted, his lungs assaulted. He held out his own hand, had it taken, gingerly, in a grip that hurt his cold fingers.

“Thank you for the welcome. My bodyguard and staff, thanks. Glad to be aboard.”

“Yes, sir,” was the answer. Luz Josefin, a woman with dark eyes behind the goggles, seemed paralyzed an instant, then said, “Yes, sir. Hurry. You’ll freeze. Watch your hands. Warm your ears when you get inside.”

“Thanks.” Bren moved along rapidly then, fingers having lost all feeling. Jase was with him. His staff followed. The atevi crew hadn’t exited—wouldn’t yet; they and the pilots, with their separate hatch, would still be at work, checkout and shutdown. Bren concentrated on getting himself and his security to the end of the rope and the doorway he saw ahead before he lost all muscle coordination… and before Kroger might shut the door in their faces.

“Air lock.” Jase shoved him through, using leverage. “Watch those controls. Don’t push any buttons.” He bumped Mospheirans, couldn’t help it, tried not to kick anyone.

“Are enough of us going to fit?” he asked Jase in Mosphei’, and was glad to see another crewman, wearing bright yellow, standing guard over the lift controls.

His staff packed themselves in. There was a directional arrow on the wall, and the attendant hauled at the Mospheir-ans, saying, “Feet to the floor,” until they had squirmed and rotated into some sort of directional unity, “Feet down,” Jase said. “Watch the luggage, Nadiin, push it to your feet.” The door shut by fits and starts, wedging them and their baggage in, and Bren blew on the fingers of one hand, asking himself how fast frostbite could set in on the one maintaining a hand-grip.

“Never been this way but once,” Jase said. “Should have remembered gloves. Sorry. Sorry about this.”

“Yes,” Bren said with economy, teeth chattering. “Gloves have to go on the list.”

The car moved.

“Hold on,” Jase said. “
Jai! Atira’na
. Don’t let go.”

“Hold on!” Jago echoed, amused, as it proved understatement. Bags settled, forcing themselves among atevi feet. Kate’s bag traveled to the floor and thumped.

“We’ll go through the rotational interface,” Jason said in Ragi, and repeated it in his native accent. “Don’t let go the handholds at any time.”

It was a curious sensation, a little like going from flying to mildly falling, resting very lightly on a floor, then weighing more and more. Where does this stop? Bren’s senses wanted to know with panicked urgency.

The Mospheirans had been told
no large hand baggage
. This was a point the Mospheirans had clearly noticed, and probably resented like hell right now, as his four servants fought desperately to keep theirs organized. Tano and Jago helped, shoving items back in the shifts of stress.

A lift, hell. It didn’t
lift
, it suddenly moved sideways, like a small plane in a thunderstorm.

It dropped.

Came to a stop. Definitive stop, Bren decided, and relaxed an ice-burned stranglehold on the safety grip.

The door opened on light, warmth, a beige wall and an official welcoming committee, men and women in blue uniforms, all the expected signs of rank… uniforms identical to uniforms in historical paintings, in old photographs, in plays and dramas.

It wasn’t teleconferences anymore. It was living history looking them in the face as they got off the lift, one of those perception shifts: home, for Jase, to him and the Mospheirans, history, like someone dressed up for a play—while the atevi saw this uniformed lot as… what else?… the very emblem of the foreigners who had dropped from the sky.

Bren immediately recognized two of the faces he’d seen previously on a viewing screen: Captain Jules Ogun, third-shift, dark-skinned, white-haired. In real life, he had curiously few wrinkles, as if some sculptor’s hand had created them, then smoothed them out again. He was over eighty years old, and had the body of a younger man.

“Captain Ogun, Lieutenant Delacroix,” Jase said quietly. “The Mospheiran delegation, Mr. Lund, Ms. Kroger; and Bren Cameron, the aiji’s representative.”

Ogun offered a hand, shook Lund’s, and Kroger’s, then Bren’s, a thin-boned, vigorous grip.

“Sir,” Bren said, “a pleasure to meet you.”

Ogun gave him an eye-to-eye stare, not a happy one, not an angry one either. “Mr. Cameron. I take it this mission was the aiji’s sudden notion. And the President’s.”

“We were sent,” Kroger was too quick to say, “on the aiji’s schedule. It was hurry up or lose the seats.”

Coldly, Ogun turned his attention past her to Jase. “Jase.

Welcome home.“

“Thank you, sir,” Jase said quietly.

“As for the suddenness of this move,” this with a sweeping glance at Bren and Kroger, “the quarters aren’t prepared. Not a priority, since we’d received no prior word and I don’t hold my crew accountable. I can explain we don’t have the space. I can explain that when we occupy a section of this station we have to secure seals, check the power conduits, turn on power, check the lines, and bring up a section the size of our ship from the extremes of space and vacuum… which we don’t damnwell have the personnel to accomplish without risk. Our occupancy is of two sections, plus the core transport, plus the ship. No room. That’s first. Second, I understand there’s cargo you don’t want opened, that you want put under your control. Unacceptable.”

It had been a long flight. If Bren had a wish, it was for facilities—soon, but the aiji’s dignity was life and death. Ridiculous as this standoff got, it was everyone on the planet’s life and death.

He launched into a translation for his staff, occupying attention, making clear that there was a communication problem which no amount of shouting could cure, and hinting that his staff didn’t communicate, which might become a problem to the station.

Then, giving the captain a direct look: “Space under your constrained circumstances, is negotiable, sir. Our cargo is diplomatic baggage, which falls within the previously agreed circumstances, and any interference in it will compromise all negotiations. This has been cleared; it is agreed. We’re prepared to be understanding regarding your degree of preparedness; but not about our necessity for appropriate food.”

The silence stretched on—two, three more heartbeats. “If you can eat it, they can eat what we eat.”

“Your pardon, sir, but their physical requirements involve alkaloid poisons, as I’m sure we’ve made clear; their religious and philosophical requirements insist they have their own diet.”

“Baggage passes our inspection. Your people can stand by.”

“No, sir,” Bren said calmly. “That’s contrary to already ne-gotiated agreements. We state that we’ve brought nothing aboard that’s on your forbidden list, and we’ll make no open fires. The fact you don’t have the facility ready is your side of the agreement; the fact that we have equipment we’re bringing aboard is our side, and failing one of our arrangements, we stand by the other.”

“Captain,” Kroger said. “
Our baggage
should not be at issue. We have our clothing, our small personal necessities. Inspect what you like, but this is an official delegation, negotiated as of two years ago; that the aiji in Shejidan hurried it is not our choosing.”

“We won’t be hurried,” Ogun said.

“We’ve heard for three years,” Bren said, “that haste serves all of us. The baggage is not renegotiable; trade agreements depend on our ability to maintain a mission here under our own seal, to feed our people in our own kitchen, and we will not give on that point.”

“From what I can see, you’re human, Mr. Cameron, and you can tell them this, and you can tell the aiji this: we won’t tolerate being pushed!”

“He’s being obdurate,” Bren said in Ragi, and in Mosphei’, “My security officers are armed, tradition on the mainland; they will always be armed. So will the security that attends any atevi representative. That, and the kitchen, will not change, sir. My staff understands as well as yours the hazards of discharging weapons in this environment, and likewise the hazards of interfering with your communications. All this was worked out two years ago, both for us and for Mospheira. Inspection violates those agreements. Your negotiations with the aiji are all tied to those agreements, and we will not give on that point. The contents of diplomatic messages and baggage must be respected, or this shuttle will go back down, and the aiji will consider constructing his own space station and reserving work for himself.”

“The hell he will!”

It was possible to stare down another human being, someone on eye level. And he already knew watching the changes in expression that the captain was not going to throw up two years of agreement on his source of supply; the captain wanted him to back down on the details of the request.

More, he knew this man, at least second-hand and from Jason.

“The hell, yes” Bren said, and in Jase’s accent. ”End report.“

“We can’t admit weapons to the hull. Or biological contaminants.”

“The greater hazard is in ourselves, sir, and frankly we’re more worried about you, since the Mospheirans and the atevi have never had a major disease outbreak interchanged. We don’t carry crop pests, and if we did, we could settle them. Processed flour, sir. Cooking oil. Our galley is self-contained and uses electricity, not open flame, a
considerable
cultural concession, components we’ve designed to function with station electrical systems on your own advisement, captain,
with
all due respect. I’m here to talk deal on your supplies, not our baggage.”

“All right, we’ll arrange a stopgap. Settle it for now. Our security will take you to quarters. You can settle in and we’ll discuss the rest.”

“On the baggage,” Bren said, not disposed to move… resistance to discomfort was a requirement of tenacious negotiation; and if this man was difficult, a session in the atevi legislature was hell itself. “If those seals are broken, sir, if there should be an accidental breach, we go down without negotiating, and we may be another two years negotiating another mission.”

There was a long, long silence.

“This will go under discussion during the next twenty-four hours,” Ogun said. “Along with the quarters.” He shifted an eye distastefully over all the staff, and the hand luggage, a waist-high mound of it. Then gave the same look to Kroger and Lund and party.

“Mr. Delacroix. Quarters for the lot.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

“Jase,” Bren said, aside, with a glance at Jason. “Join us for supper?” Meaning: if you don’t like what you hear, accept. Now.

“Mr. Graham is
Phoenix
crew,” the captain said. “He’ll join the captains for supper. Contact them later, Mr. Graham.”

“Yes, sir,” Jase said.

“Meanwhile, Mr. Delacroix.”

“Yes, sir,” Delacroix said, and passed the next order to the human crew that waited. “Mr. Kaplan, Ms. Ramsey. Quarters.”

“Yes, sir, come this way, sir.”

Quarters, then, had been an item understood, probably debated with raised voices ever since Tabini’s advisement they were coming up. Mr. Kaplan and Ms. Ramsey evidently had a completely clear idea where they were going; Bren was no little amused, resolved not to let it affect his judgment… and not to jump quickly to oblige the captain’s maneuvers, no matter the personal discomfort.

Meanwhile Narani and the servants had gathered that they were moving out, and gathered up the baggage. Banichi and his team, likely subtle origin of the signal to Narani, looked to him for orders.

Bren delayed, smiled at Kroger and Lund. “Hope to see you tomorrow,” he said, offering a hand, and went through the entire hand-shaking formality for no other reason than to set his imminent departure as his choice, his schedule.

“Mr. Cameron, sir,” Kaplan urged him, wishing him to go to the left. Kaplan, a young man, wore a kind of headset, and had swung down an eyepiece, appalling-looking creation. It looked like half of eyeglasses; screens, set only a minute degree from the eye, quite transparent to the outside view.

Such eyepieces could be used for targeting. Bren recalled that. Mospheira didn’t have any survivals of that technology, not outside the close confines of the Defense Department.

And on a thought, Bren delayed for another moment, regarding transmissions down to Mogari. “Ginny, give Shawn my regards when you talk to him,” he said.

“The same to the aiji,” Kroger said, with less than atevi-style formality, annoyed as hell, Bren thought.

“See you,” he said to Jase, before he acquiesced to the guidance offered. It was the parting he least wanted, and Jase knew he meant it:
See you
. It was another of those mutual codes. But for now he obediently led his group after the crewman, down a short hall to an automatic door.