Precursor (53 page)

“I’ve sent for food,” he said. “In thirty days we should have your mission something edible.” He took a small taste, and it was bland, incredibly so. “I can send over some hot sauce. It might improve it.”

“It’s just pretty damned bad,” Kroger said. “And it generates, pardon me, physiological upset.”

“Dare I guess.” He was afraid to eat much of it, and pushed it around with his plastic spoon. “You’ve got to come over to our place. We’ll feed you.”

“If you have enough to ship us some meals, we’ll be in your debt.”

“This is inhumane,” he said. The orange had flavor, to be sure. It tasted like fish liver oil.

“I’m told you eat one and then the other. It does help. They’re supposed to have every necessary nutrient.”

“God, this is awful.”

“Oh, there’s better. But there’s been
just
this stuff since Tom left.”

The Feldman-Jago-Tano conference was going on next to them at the table, with some laughter over phrases like, “We distrust extremely the least senior authority; we believe lives are in danger,” and “Have you heard anything from your offices?”

“No,” Feldman said in reply to Jago. “We are concerned, nadi.”

“What would you like?” Bren asked Kroger. “Fish? We’ve plenty of fish. Bread.”

“We’ll take absolutely anything,” Kroger said, and she surely knew as well as he did that the real information was passing in the chatter she couldn’t understand at all, that of Feldman with his security. “Our stomachs can’t take much more of this. Neither can our guts.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and wandered on to a discussion of imports, franchises and economics, enough to lull listening spies to sleep, while Feldman limped through several mistaken nouns and some half-heard assertion that green vegetables were alarmed.

No, Feldman indicated, Kroger had not been able to get messages through. They had heard nothing. They had received no indication that the shuttle had met with any difficulty.

It made some sense. The captains that had seized power dared not prevent them sending word down, but it limited the instruction they could get from the ground.

That silence meant thirty days for the captains in power to gain control of the situation, trusting
they
wouldn’t act without that instruction getting through to instruct them. He himself was the most dangerous presence aboard, because he could act without orders.

And intended to, at this point.

God knew where Banichi might be. The first thing the dissident captains certainly had to assure was Ramirez’ death and a lack of knowledgeable witnesses. And he had bet heavily that Ogun might not be as committed to the plot.

God knew what the rumor he had spread via Johnson and Andressson had done, whether it was still spreading or whether the candy-loving so-called security personnel had gone straight to the captains who’d attacked Ramirez and suggested they had to be silenced quickly.

He couldn’t tell Kroger all of it, not in this venue. He left that to Jago’s cleverness, not mentioning a single name, struggling for nouns the novice translator might comprehend.

And all the while there was such gentle, good-natured laughter from that table, just the very picture of the beginner practicing his understanding… if anyone in this insular community could comprehend the pretense of that art at all.

At least it might confuse them. Feldman spoke a fairly good code himself, for anyone who knew from infancy that it was easy to mistake the word for green vegetables for that for one’s superior.

Malapropisms and all, they endured the meal.

“Want to come to our place for a drink?” Bren asked then. Kroger had gathered up some of the disgusting supper for Shugart, on watch in the apartment.

“No,” Kroger said. “Kate would worry.”

Read that she was worried about Kate Shugart’s safety, and wouldn’t leave one of her own where at any moment the ship might close off access and she might not be able to get back. Either Kroger had grown with the job or he had been mistaken in the woman’s native good sense, Bren thought: likely both.

He accepted that declaration with respect, and after a walk back with the old man’s glowering accompaniment, paid his respects at the door.

“Take care,” he said to Kroger and Shugart, with more than social meaning.

It was back to their own quarters, then, very little better informed, except that the Mospheirans were worse off than they were, and trying as they were to carry on the pretense that nothing was wrong, or at least that they were completely oblivious to the failure of their government’s messages to get through.

“Did you learn anything?” he asked Jago when they were all back in their own section.

“No,” Jago said, and she had a far more worried look, her true feelings there for him to see. “They know nothing. I informed them of what we know. Ben-nadi will accordingly inform her. —Bren-ji, let me go out in this next slow watch. Let me see what I can learn.”

“No,” he said. He was never so nervous as when he had to give orders to his security about their business. “What would he say, Jago-ji? What would Banichi say if he heard this?”

“He would still say sit still,” Jago admitted, the telling argument. “But, Bren-ji, he has been wrong, now and again.”

“So we daren’t be. There’s been absolutely no sign of him. That’s very likely by his choosing. He may have stayed to administer aid to the captain; or even have found a better place for them: he might not even
be
where you think he is.”

“That might be,” Jago conceded. “But, nadi, he would leave me word.”

“One more day,” he said. “Jago-ji, I request it. I believe that’s what he wishes.”

“One more day,” she said. “Then. Then I will advise you send me to search for him, nandi.”

Tano and Algini, standing near, said nothing, nor did Jago look at them.

Nojana, separated from his own partner, who had left on a shuttle about which they had heard nothing, likewise bore a somber look.

The lack of information was hell on all of them.

«
^
»

Jago did not come to bed, rather hovered gloomily about the security station, watching every tick of the instruments that he knew now monitored the smallest sounds, even the flow of water through the pipes: she listened to everything.

Bren tried to sleep, hovered near it a long while.

Then the outer door did open, and he leaped up, snatched a robe…

And confronted a shut door, utterly in dark.

He groped for the lights. Either the station had sealed him in by remote control or his own security had. He found the wall panel.

The door opened by remote, as it had shut, and he heard voices outside, his security, and a human voice: Kaplan’s.

He went out to confront the scene, his armed and nervous security, Kaplan… and Narani and Bindanda.
Everyone
was out,
everyone
had pounced on Kaplan, who looked scared, small wonder.

“Sir,” Kaplan said. “Sir!”

“Allow him, Nadiin,” Bren said, and his security let Kaplan come closer, Kaplan looking anxiously over his shoulder, down a stretch of hallway with numerous doors, any one of which might house monitoring equipment.
We need to take that
, Bren said to himself, and shortened his vision to Kaplan, who was without his usual gear, in nothing but a coat.

“I heard what you said,” Kaplan began shakily, “and a friend of yours said the situation’s better, and he wants to move it here, if he can, if he can get through, which is scary. I don’t think he ought to try, but he’s going to, and he needs help.”

“Is Banichi with him?”

“The big guy. I don’t know. I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go. I can take you there, and I’ve got to get back where I belong or I’m cooked.”

“Jago,” Bren said, and had a dilemma on his hands, Jago’s imperfect command of Mosphei, Kaplan’s accent, and Jase’s and Banichi’s safety. He couldn’t take protection from the place, not with all their chance of holding out until the shuttle got back vested in these few rooms. “Jago and I will go. Now.”

“Bren-ji,” Tano protested. “At least take one more.”

“Jago,” Bren said for good or for ill. It was Banichi they were looking for as much as Jase and Ramirez, and Jago knew the halls best. “Two seconds,” he said, and ducked into his room and took his gun from his computer case.

Bindanda followed him, dressed in frantic haste, assisted, and gave him a small packet tied up with cord. “Food,” Bindanda said. “Medicines.”

Was there
nothing
his staff failed to anticipate? “You are amazing, nadi-ji,” he said, and hurried out into the hall, where, second wonder from the same source, Kaplan had come into possession of a gilt-and-flowered box, which he clutched anxiously. Keep the fellow bribed, Bren thought, and hoped the supply held out.

Jago was ready; Jago had been ready for days.

“Let’s go,” he said to Kaplan, and they moved out quickly down the hall. “What chance we’re monitored?”

“Don’t think so, sir. They keep putting it in and your guys keep taking it out.”

Whether or not she understood, Jago didn’t say a thing; and he was alarmed to think Banichi had been quietly disposing of station monitoring where he found it. Warfare had been going on, unannounced, things the station failed to say, things Banichi failed to say… even to him.

Now Banichi was off on his own recognizance, and he
knew
Banichi received some instructions not from him, but from Tabini, and likewise from his Guild.

“He says Banichi has removed station surveillance,” he said to Jago. “Is this so?”

“Occasionally,” Jago admitted.

“And didn’t tell me? This might affect negotiations!”

“So might its presence, nandi,” Jago said as they walked, and that was the plain truth, one he couldn’t deny. What were the spies on the other side to say? You destroyed our bugs?

No, they attempted to replant them, and to assure…

God, what might Banichi have planted in the rest of the station?

Was
that
how Jago claimed to know where Banichi was? It couldn’t be clear radio transmission. Surely they’d locate that. But something was going on.

Were they tapping on the damned water pipes? Knocking on the walls?

Kaplan had stuffed a candy in his mouth and hastened along with a bulge in his cheek, the box tucked in his jacket.

And now Kaplan led them down one corridor and through one and the other doors, and, with fearful looks, led them into a recess and a dogged-down door.

“It’s cold,” Kaplan said around the candy, “but it’s pressurized. Next level down. You want to tuck your hands in your sleeves.”

It was a fast climb, the cold all but numbing the lungs and face and hands. And damned right he wanted to tuck hands into his sleeves to hold onto the ladder. He descended above Jago, Kaplan last above him, and Kaplan shut the door again before coming down in a darkness absolute except for a light Jago produced. There was another door in this tube, and a small platform, and Jago stood astride the ladder and platform to open it into light, onto another level.

The passage went on and on into depth.

“How far?” he asked. “All over?”

“ ’Case the lifts fail,” Kaplan said. “There’s pressure seals below. You don’t open a pressure seal. Blow the whole damn section. Tell her that.”

“He says there are pressure seals below and if we open them we will have a fatal decompression, Jago-ji.”

“One understands,” Jago said.

And seized her gun, and scrambled up the rungs as if stung.

“One damned well does,” Banichi’s voice said out of the dark below them. “Nadiin-ji. One is very glad to see you.”

“See,” Bren scoffed, in near dark, and addressing the darkness itself. His heart was beating so he had trouble holding his grip, and Kaplan had let out a yelp that still seemed to echo through the tunnels.

“We have Ramirez safe, and improved,” Banichi said. “Where we have him, we don’t wish known. So we make noise within the system. Oblige us all by going back by the next passage, Nadiin. We are safe. How do you fare?”

“Well,” he said, “though as yet we’ve had no knowledge of the shuttle.”

“It landed safely,” Banichi said, a fact which, indeed, Kaplan might have told them, Bren was chagrined to realize. “Have you brought medicines?”

“I have them,” Bren said, and passed them to Jago, who climbed down on the ladder and passed the packet down.

Banichi took them.

“I’m losing my grip,” Bren was forced to say. “The cold’s numbed my fingers.”

Jago moved upward at once and took a grip on his arm. That Jago could climb hauling him up he halfway believed.

“Take him to safety,” Banichi said. “Rely on us.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and shoved him upward.

He moved, Jago moved, Kaplan moved… whether Kaplan had gloves or whether Kaplan’s coat was better insulated, he had no idea, but he literally could not maintain his grip much longer. He shoved himself upward with his legs and tried to give Kaplan relief the same way Jago supported him, but it was a damned dangerous maneuver, he was all too aware.