Precursor (33 page)

They listened to him very soberly, and remained silent a moment after.

Then Jago said, “So, this starship. Shall we have one, too?”

“If the aiji wills,” he said. That was the answer to all official policy; and he knew what Jago asked: separate command, on the station, was a problem. Establish another aiji and there was a potential rivalry within the aishidi’tat, an unsettling of the balance of power. “But with atevi, every outpost, every separated community must find honest aijiin who can agree with the aiji in Shejidan for good and logical reasons; as we may have to find an honest lord to command a starship. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now, who knows what will be possible for any of us?”

“Perhaps we’ll all be so virtuous there’ll hardly be aijiin, or presidents,” Jago said.

“One doubts it,” Banichi said.

“More than starships, Nadiin-ji, far more than starships is the skill to absorb change, and atevi do excel at that. Atevi managed the resolution of the War. We, Mospheirans and atevi, wrote the Treaty of Mospheira, and the atevi economy every year makes technology transfer an asset, not a detriment. It’s taken two hundred years to refine the economy to do that. Now we absorb an immense rate of change without social upheaval.”

“Without much social upheaval,” Banichi said.

“Give or take what happened three years ago. But to accomplish what atevi and Mospheirans have done, Nadiin-ji, welding together two completely different economies, peacefully, prosperously, that’s no small thing.”

“No,” Banichi said, “nor managed by fools, as delicate as it is.”

The mathematical gift of atevi was prodigious. They hadn’t needed computers at the start of the relationship, and in the last few decades of this two-century partnership, the University and the Foreign Office on Mospheira had stalled… very, very fearful of releasing computers into the information pipeline.

They had done it, truth be told, because atevi knew
about
computers and had begun to understand them as more than an aid for humans. As trade proliferated, the economy expanded, the population bloomed, and—second truth—the Mospheiran economy could no longer fine-tune itself fast enough to sustain its more advanced industries once atevi competed with them, unless there was closer contact. Atevi, who made a rug or a vase to stay in the economy for centuries, had discovered a use for fast food and ephemeral gains… as a blunt-force weapon in an economic war and as a useful communal experience in an ethnically diverse province.

Highways had once started wars. Trains were the appropriate answer.

Computers had helped atevi understand how humans perceived the universe. Atevi were reinventing them, hand over fist.

But dared one think of a space station and a starship as the equivalent of a provincial fast food chain, feeding a carefully-modulated interprovincial money flow?

They sipped their liqueur, and he had his misgivings.

The banking system, with its new computers, was set up to do that kind of calculation down to the small exchanges. Coinage as such was one of those imports from the human side of the straits, more token than intrinsically valued.

Coinage was going to be a problem on the space station, getting crew into possession of coinage was another question.

And within the aishidi’tat there were questions. Provinces, however loosely they defined borders, still had borders in terms of economic interest, and that was going to be a touchy problem.

They had to be careful of the ethnic composition of the work force the aiji sent, keeping the provinces and great houses from seeing advantage to their rivals; and keeping the ubiquitous number-counters from seeing calamity in obstinate human dualities. Computers, God knew, had been a controversy in that regard.

He felt a headache at the mere thought of the provincial lords. The hasdrawad. The tashrid. The committees. Mospheira was not alone in its proliferation of committees.

“So,” Banichi said, in this post-supper discussion, “we shall set up, shall we, nadi, as a permanent installation? And then, shall Tano and Algini look to stay?”

Tano and Algini struggled to learn the language. But outside of Banichi and Jago themselves, whom he would not give up, there was no choice, much as he hated the whole idea of leaving atevi unbuffered up here, without him, even for a few weeks.

“Ask them to consider the assignment. We should widen this zone with every shuttle flight. More, the next flight should bring technicians to assist, and staff to support them, and so on. Increasingly more personnel, until they see it possible to turn the matter over to subordinates. We can’t forgo the materials tests, but we do need to establish several other working modules here, on the station.”

“Refurbish those areas immediately adjacent,” Banichi said.

“And areas useful to us… all those things, granted we gain the agreement of all the captains… and the aiji. We get the other shuttles into operation… hire more staff. The dedicated spaceport will have to move on schedule, no matter what. Shejidan can’t spare many more roof tiles.”

Wry smiles from Banichi and Jago. “The Ragi have a fondness for history.”

The Ragi of the capital mailed broken tiles to relatives as valued mementos. He’d signed a few.

“But when their roofs leak, this fall, they may think less of it. We’ve met schedule. We’re up here.
We’re
up here, unlikely as it still seems. The new runway should be complete as soon as possible, before Shejidan soaks in the winter rains. I have the manager’s word on it.”

“With the tourist center?”

“With the tourist center.” He lifted his small glass to atevi determination. Two small industrial towns near the new spaceport—a runway accessible by rail-link and a short flight from the airport space center—had turned out on various holidays to assist the crews driving spikes, to establish a second link with their quaint local steam locomotive, which would run back and forth, half an hour’s round trip to the modern spaceport. The towns anticipated genteel atevi tourists, and prosperity, and perhaps warehouses of goods and a modern rail-link to the national system… all in the concept of what a tourist facility meant. They had not yet grasped what was taking shape at their very doorstep, were contemplating a name change to
Jaitonai-shi
, Flower-about-to-open.

Could one look about this cramped, small quarters, austere as the harbor town that might become Jaitonai-shi, and see, as they sat on the floor on their baggage, a place of dreams?

“I think of the folk of Jaitonai-shi,” he said. “How very strange the world may become.”

“It’s already done so,” Jago said.

He massaged his eyes, which stung with the dry air of the station, and asked himself, given the labor of townsfolk who turned out with hoes and shovels to link supply to the new spaceport, how he could think of going to bed in the next hour.

He could take notes. He needed to take notes.

“Nadiin-ji, most of all… most of all, I believe what I’ve done is the best thing to do. An enormous effort.” He gazed across into sober, golden eyes, the two of them his absolutely trusted allies, advisors, protectors. “But over all… one that I still fear to report to the aiji-dowager. Do you think she will at all understand?”

There was no fiercer proponent of the old ways than the aiji-dowager, no more ardent defender of the land, the earth, and its sanctity. And he brought down a proposal for a change that would sweep atevi right off the planet and into an unknown, dangerous future.

But he saw no choice.

“The aiji himself supports what you do,” Banichi said to him in that deep, quiet voice. “I have it on the best authority. —Change is the paidhi’s business, is it not?”

“It remains my business,” Bren agreed, feeling still that change rushed through his fingers, almost out of control, marginally within his grasp.

“Even before the Foreign Star rose,” Jago said, “the world changed.”

There had been changes even before the station appeared in the world’s skies… changes wrought by steam engines, wood fires.

An association of noble houses hellbent on larger and larger associations of interests…

The ruler of the largest association on the planet remained hellbent on his ancestors’ course, insisting the paidhi make sense of it all.

“Change there was,” he agreed, “before there were paidhiin.” He drew comfort from these two who, blood and bone, did understand things.

And he finished his drink, and sighed. “I’ll work tonight. I have the meeting tomorrow. I’ll prepare my case; we may have a very quick return trip, so it’s best I go tomorrow with my proposals in some sort of order. Will you read them and check my proposals for common sense and provincial mistakes?”

“One expects to do so,” Banichi said, and finished his drink.

Bren sat on his bed, made computer notes, nothing quite in Ragi, nothing quite in Mosphei’, a great deal simply in code-labeled graphs that bounced numbers off each other in complex interrelation. He didn’t let himself think about the archive, which might be done by now, which was surely available. Most urgently there was tomorrow’s meeting to prepare for, careful consideration of what specifics he could propose and what he had to insist upon… all the traps, all the considerations on the planet that might blow up into interprovincial matters, or stress between Mospheira and the mainland. Banichi read what he did, discussed it behind the closed door of their small security post with Tano and Algini.

And, minor point of excitement and relief, larger mattresses arrived, simple cushions, very thin, but exceedingly welcome and curiously new, exactly like the mattresses of the bed, a sealed rectangle of foam in a bright blue plastic skin. New, Bren thought, as if the ship had manufactured them; and by what little he knew of the ship’s resources, that was possible, granted the raw materials.

So they had gained another point of their requests. There were beds for the night that did not involve stuffed baggage, that were tailored for his staff, and his security passed the stack in, examining them behind the door for any sign of electronic output or potential for it.

It was encouraging that when, unable to resist temptation, he keyed in the E10 material and hopscotched around the content of the archive, it was accessible as promised. He found unguessed gems, a fabulous treasure of micro-imaged books, an encyclopedia he had never seen, languages he could by no means read, but which some isolated families on Mospheira might even recognize. Certain households had maintained knowledge and recorded it, recreating some things that Mospheira had lost, and scholars would have entire careers comparing the two… granted the world survived the next several difficult centuries and developed the leisure.

He scanned that material until the headache he attributed to the thin, dry air had reached an acute level, and bed began to seem a very good notion.

But before he did, he made one more call to Cl, and to Mogari, and executed another send and receive.

A message from Tabini took priority on his list:
We congratulate you and your staff on a successful flight. We have received your prior message and await word of your progress
. With it came more files that needed examination, but they had the common prefixes of committee reports.

From his own office, in the Bu-javid, his head of the clerical staff:
Toby Cameron has called us three times and we have attempted obfuscation and delays. What shall we say?

There was, in effect, nothing to say. Until he received clear word that the populace knew where he was and there was no problem with revealing that fact, there was nothing at all he could answer, but an enigmatic:
I am answering Toby Cameron’s messages myself. Thank you for reporting them. You
may ignore any future ones that do not evidence an emergency, but relay them all to me for my action
.

And an even more enigmatic message to his brother.

Toby, I’m receiving you at a considerable delay. I’m off on assignment and I can’t reach you directly.

Understatement. He erased his signature and added:

Please write. I’m very worried for Mother and for you. How is Barb? Don’t forget Shawn
. He could rely on Shawn Tyers, personally.

His response didn’t help Barb. Toby’s letter didn’t answer how she was and he had no idea why Toby didn’t tell him that one simple piece of information: maybe because Toby thought he didn’t want to involve himself with Barb’s worries, or because he’d asked Toby to handle their mother’s worries and Barb was one of them… God knew. The potential reasons were legion. The headache reached a lancing crescendo, riding just behind afflicted sinuses.

Humidity. When atevi had the station in their hands, humidity had to be higher than it was. Temperature was bearable, but the air was incredibly sterile.

Why in bloody
hell
didn’t Toby put simple facts in a letter?

Is she alive, Toby? Is she doing any better? For God’s sake, Toby
…

He made what he foreknew would be another no-information attempt, through Cl… wanting some sort of consolation before he attempted sleep:
Toby, I’m sorry, but I need a specific answer, no matter what it is. Do you have any information on Barb?
… with all its attachments and addressing.