Precursor (52 page)

Or Banichi was playing medic, in which Banichi had some small skill. Banichi would have used his own sense about that.

“You mentioned Ramirez to them,” Jago remarked when the door was shut.

“I more than mentioned him,” he said. “I told them the truth. They’re security, but they’re also part of the crew, and they’re not happy about this, never mind the damn box of candy. Have we more of that coming, Rani-ji?”

“Of the candy, nandi? Yes. Kandana made a special note of it.”

“Good.” He rapped a code on the security post door, and was not surprised to see guns on the other side of it as it opened. “It’s all right,” he said, but he didn’t know how more to reassure the staff. “I’ve broken our silence with the crew, baji-naji. Having Banichi gone and not knowing… I don’t know whether I was wise, Nadiin-ji, but we have limited means to make known what we do know. I’d rather have told Kaplan, but I made a choice. We don’t know how long we have. We
assume
the shuttle will depart on schedule. Maintain watch. Anticipate a shutdown of lights and air.”

“We remain prepared,” Tano said.

“Could I doubt?” he answered. He didn’t, not them.

Himself, and his own breakneck course through a field of rocks, oh, he had numerous doubts.

He could have waited until the shuttle left before doing something so rash.

He hadn’t.

And he sweated the hours until, quite predictably, Cl read him a note from Sabin giving her regrets, her apologies for missing the meeting with him, and resetting it for the 16
^th
at 1300 hours.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “I suppose the shuttle got off safely.”

It was after time. There was nothing to tell them, one way or the other.

“
Right on time
, sir.
Nominal
.”

“That’s very good,” he said. “Thank you, thank you very much, Cl.”

Jago happened to be in the room, reviewing a section of the station maps.

“The shuttle has departed,” she restated in Ragi.

“Just so” he said. ”Reportedly without incident.“ He added, because it was the truth: “We now wait, Jago-ji. We have to wait very artfully, very cleverly, and hope what I did today doesn’t cause us difficulties.”

“One doubts we might supply ourselves so long,” Jago said. “But we have identified valves which make it unlikely they would subject this entire section to harsh measures. We seem to share common conduits with quite an extensive occupied area. We measure considerable flow. To deprive us would deprive them.”

“That’s very good news,” he said.

“On the other hand,” she said, “we might disrupt that flow to create inconvenience. We believe there are redundancies. But the flow of water in particular is not wholly dependent on the spinning of the station. It’s aided by pumps, and valved against unanticipated leakage; the movement of air is forced by fans. These are vulnerable systems. We believe we can set up alternate controls, which may allow us to seize control of them. We simply have to observe their normal operation. We know we can secure water and operate doors; we believe that we can control the gates of the air supply as well.”

He was very pleasantly surprised. “Extremely good work, nadi-ji.”

“Algini’s work,” she said cheerfully. “He’s very good at what he does.”

“I will bear those facts in mind,” he said, “in my own work. I don’t intend to wait passively for a month, Jago-ji, while the faction I judge opposed to us has its way. I
want
our missing captain. I want him alive. Then I intend to seize, oh, say, territory down to the central corridor, if you can set up to lay claim, to it… but only as soon as it’s auspicious to take it. We can make territorial claims all the way to the Mospheirans, just join up and claim the corridors between.”

Jago lifted brows, quite blithely accepting his insane proposal. “Shall we not wait for Banichi, nadi? I expect him to have news of some sort. The captain’s condition may have changed, one hopes not for the worst.”

“I think that we should wait to know,” he agreed, and added:. “I earnestly hope he has Ramirez.”

“He knows you wish it,” Jago said, though there had never been a direct request for him to bring Ramirez, only a suggestion to Jase. What Banichi would do if asked and what Banichi considered safe to do in a moment of opportunity, might be two different things, and, as little informed in the situation as he was, he didn’t ask.

He settled to work with his notes, resolved not to pace the floor until they did hear from Banichi.

Most of all he kept telling himself there was no longer any shortage of time. Banichi had not acted, in going with Jase, as if he expected the meeting with the captain to go forward; he might not act, either, as if he believed he had to move today or the next day. When the Assassins’ Guild operated,
patience
was one of the cardinal virtues. Subtlety. Finesse had its atevi counterpart.

And, thanks to Algini, it seemed that they didn’t have to sit and let the station push buttons to inconvenience them.

In her study of that construction diagram, part of his own information, Jago was surely adding to Algini’s schematic, his set of choke points for the station’s choke hold on them.

Thirty days to wait.

Thirty days in which all hell might break loose, and in which he might either want to maintain Kroger’s territory as an outpost of their own, in a district next to human habitations; or draw Kroger and her team in with them, for safety. He did not think the ship wanted to offend the Mospheirans, not if they wanted something beyond fifteen hundred souls up here.

No Banichi after midnight. No Banichi on the following day.

And no word all day. None. Jago began to grow impatient, never to fidget, no such thing, but she gazed off at nothing, and listened to every sound, and at last, late after supper, came to him officially.

“I think I should go look for Banichi, Bren-ji.” she said. “This is long enough. And I think I have a notion where he is.”

“Where Jase is?”

“A certain corridor. We dare not track him too far, but we don’t think he
is
far, nadi.”

“You mean he’s emitting some sort of signal? He’s
radioed?
” He was mildly appalled.

“Not radioed. He hasn’t transmitted for some time. But he wouldn’t, if he thought it might compromise his position. One becomes concerned, however.”

“I’m concerned, too. But we can’t be running about the corridors. We can’t risk another of us. No.”

She evidenced no resentment. She had asked. There might be a time she might go without asking, but it was a rift in man’chi, an ateva stretched in two directions.

“Nojana might go,” she said. “He knows the corridors. He speaks a little.”

“No,” he said, less and less sure he was right.

Jill and I are going up to the mountains
, Toby wrote him.

We had a long talk. We’re leaving the kids with Louise. I’m sorry about the timing, sorry as I know how to be, but I’m signing off with Mum, can’t do it anymore.

I think I’m going to quit my job. Jill wants to set up a tourist cottage on the north shore. I’m going to sell the boat, get a loan on one a little larger, take tourists out on day trips.

I could help him, was the immediate thought. Finance was never a problem for him, of all else that was. A tour boat? It was a way to go broke. The repairs, the liability…

I know you’ll say let me help, but not this time. This is all if I can talk Jill into it, and if the two of us can remember who we are, and get the world and your security people out of our bedroom. This is my trump card. It’s what we’ve always talked about.

What in hell are you going to do with the kids? he wondered. Toby, have you lost your mind? You opted for a family, the house with the garden.

About the kids, I don’t know. They’re old enough to help. Maybe take radio school. They could do that. It might be good for them.

Living on a boat? It would cut them off for good and all from normal society, he thought, right when kids were learning to think of romance and other kids, and
these
kids sliding toward rebellion. They’d pitch a fair fit when they heard the plan.

And the danger, and the weather, in seas never reliable, not on a calm day with the wind fair… and those kids aboard? Their mum would pitch her own fit.

But Toby had a dream, Toby had a plan. It was safer than what his brother did for a living.

And if Toby could convince Jill to trust him, if they could manufacture some romance and honest love around those kids and give them a dose of parental romance instead of intergenerational recriminations, maybe there was a chance for the kids, too.

He didn’t know what more he could say. He wrote back:
Good for you. You’ve got my whole-hearted good wishes, brother
.

From Tabini, he had no word at all. He sent messages and they dropped into a black hole.

After a couple of tries at faking Tabini’s formal salutations, the captains seemed to have given up.

But given the shuttle landing, hoping to God it
had
landed safely, trust that Tabini was hearing from Kandana and possibly even from Lund, before Tom Lund boarded a plane to tell Hampton Durant and Shawn that things weren’t optimum here.

And Banichi still wasn’t back.

“Well, we’ve supplied you with supper,” he called Kroger to say. “We’re entirely bored. Not a thing moving on this forsaken station. I don’t suppose we might arrange an invitation for us to join you at your local dinery. I’m tired of the local walls.”

“Come over here,” she said, just that abruptly, not fool enough to talk in detail, nor was he; but they managed to convey, each to the other, that things weren’t just right.

Ginny Kroger punched out.

“Cl,” he said to that entity. “Send Kaplan at 1700. I’m taking a walk to the Mospheirans for a supper meeting.”

“
I’ll put through that request, ”Cl
said, but by an hour later: “Sir,
we haven’t any personnel available for escort at that hour
.”

“And earlier or later?”

“We don’t have any personnel available for escort.”

“Maybe I’ll just wander around and see if I can find the place.”

“We can’t allow that, sir. Please stay in your section.”

“This is annoying,” he said. “I want Kaplan, and I want him or someone at 1700 hours.”

“
Let me see what I can do
,” Cl said, and an hour later reported: “
You’ll have an escort, sir. I don’t know who, but someone
.”

It was a stranger who turned up at their door at 1700 hours, an elder crewman, white-haired and one-handed, who gave him and Jago and Tano sullen and suspicious looks from the one eye that seemed sharp.

“Nice day,” Bren remarked midway to the Mospheirans’ section. “Fine day. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t know,” the crewman replied, with a surly glance at Tano and Jago… not knowing whether anyone aboard could tell Tano from Banichi without standing them side by side. It was what they hoped, at least. “They understand real language?”

“They don’t speak to strangers,” Bren said, knowing a hard case when he had one. He thought of adding,
Or servants
, but decided not to push it that far.

Algini was battened down tight in the home section with Nojana. It was their chance to familiarize Tano with the route, and he took it, with a sharp eye to either hand as they went, wondering if there might be at any point, down any corridor, some signal from Banichi.

There was not.

And Kroger was not encouraging. “We’re not getting a damned bit of cooperation out of the administration,” she said, she and he and Feldman walking, with the old man’s guidance, to the mess hall, down an utterly deserted corridor, into an utterly deserted establishment.

Not a single crew member in the place.

“Is the bar this lively?” he asked.

“The bar’s closed,” she said with a lift of the brows. “I don’t suppose you have a spare shot of vodka.”

“I think we do,” he said. “Unwarranted hardship, isn’t it? What’s that poem, Feldman?” He lapsed into Ragi doggerel:

“They would not send the ordinary guide tonight, They fake the aiji’s messages for days. If you find your safety no longer right, Come visit us and plan to stay.”

“Yes, sir,” Feldman said, and faked a nervous laugh.

Bad impromptu poetry and a young man trained enough in diplomacy and subterfuge to keep from blurting anything out. Feldman even managed a doggerel answer, half in meter:

“No
people now, no one talks
.

No one we see, new guide not talk.”

“That’s very good,” Bren said with a laugh. It was amazing, for a novice. And informative. “We ought to let him practice with Jago and Banichi,” he said to Kroger. “You and I need to talk.”

They picked up their supper out of a bin, a container of something gray and something orange, and another container that held liquid.

“This is it,” Kroger said as they sat down and opened their containers. “Don’t even ask what it is. I don’t want to know.”