Precursor (59 page)

And slowed considerably on the approach, holding hands in sight. “Sir. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Just going down to the dock. Out to the dock. Up to the dock. Whatever you say.”

“You can’t just walk around, sir!”

“I’m not walking around. Just going to the dock. Want to come along? I’ve no objection. —This seems to be an escort, or a witness, Nadiin-ji. Don’t shoot her.”

His escort understood a joke, and laughed, to the woman’s consternation.

“Pauline Sato,” she identified herself. “Tech chief. You can’t be taking the lifts, sir.”

“That’s fine, but I don’t see a way to walk down. Are you in contact with Cl?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’re our escort, then. Just get us down to the docks. Out to the docks.”

Sato seemed to hear voices. Doubtless she did hear one.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and fell in with them, nervously so. She opened the lift door when they reached it. She kept a nervous eye on the atevi and their weapons as they entered, and eyed them with misgivings between button pushes as she gave the car its instructions.

“We haven’t shot anyone since we’ve been on board” Bren said as the car glided into motion. “The only one who’s been shot so far is Captain Ramirez, and we didn’t do it.”

“I can’t talk about that,” she said.

“Jase Graham didn’t do it” he tossed after. “I rather suspect it was an internal dispute. —But we don’t take sides.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’s the shuttle docking coming?”

She listened to voices which obviously didn’t need a repetition of the question. “It’s going fine, sir. They are docking right now.”

“That’s good. Lead on. We’re doing just fine. Think of it as a holiday. A sacred custom among us, to welcome guests. We expect Tom Lund back. Who knows? Ginny Kroger may bring her own party.”

“You can’t be running about the station, sir!”

“I’m sure. But we’re
running
the station for you, Ms. Sato, whether or not you’ve had that information officially. I’m sure it will come damned soon. And we, meaning the atevi, will be repairing your ship and doing other useful things, while Mospheira supplies your food, so I’d suggest it’s a very good idea we explore this place and establish routines with the shuttle. Absolutely nothing to worry about. I
assure
you this whole operation will become routine. We’re not fools.”

“Yes, sir. Please take hold. We’re going up.”

“Take hold, Nadiin-ji,” he repeated in Ragi. “—Have you seen Kaplan, these last few days?”

“I don’t think so, sir. That’s Leo Kaplan. I haven’t seen him.”

They stuck to the floor by virtue of acceleration, but the illusion of gravity began to sink toward the waist, and toward the knees… a queasy sort of feeling. Bren drew in a deep breath and found the ambient air colder than it had been, rapidly so. The car went through a sudden set of gyrations, thumps, and bumps.

“You did push the right buttons, didn’t you?” he asked Sato in all the jolting about of the car. “If you sent us somewhere you shouldn’t, my security would be very upset. They’re obliged to shoot anyone who threatens me. You understand that.”

“It’s the right place,” their guide said staunchly, if anxiously. “Sometimes it just does this. And you can’t be shooting people.”

“I quite agree,” he said, finding the acquaintance of his feet with the floor increasingly uncertain. “I notice you have a gun, amid that other—” He wagged fingers, indicating the heavy load of gear. “—equipment. Tell me, do you use it on other crew? Family members, perhaps? Or have you ever used it?”

“Don’t threaten us!” Sato exclaimed, her eyes wide with fear, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. Just don’t, under any circumstances. You really shouldn’t carry that sort of thing about.”

“Yes, sir.” He’d deeply annoyed Sato. He thought he detected a blush under the stark lighting.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re friends.”

“I have my orders.”

“Here.” He’d tucked a candy or two in his pocket in case Kaplan turned up. He offered it.

“I can’t take it, sir.”

“Oh, come on, no one’s looking. Or are they?”

“I don’t want it, sir!”

“That’s fine. No obligation.” He pocketed the candy. There was a silent interval.

What he took for a position indicator, a dotted line on a panel and a glowing light on the schematic that he took for their destination showed, at least a good guess, that arrival was imminent.

The car slowed. They began to float, and the car repositioned itself, simply turning them as they held on.

“Interesting device,” Jago remarked.

The car stopped.

The door opened on the bitter cold of the dock, on a place they had indeed seen before, with the crew members drifting about in orange suits, following a web of handlines.

The hatch that had lately mated with the hatch of
Shai-shan
was right in front of them: the right destination, indeed. A light board said, in letters a Mospheiran could read,
Engaged
.

Shai-shan
was almost certainly in dock.

A second lift, just next to theirs, opened a door.

And this one gave up a dozen floating crewmen with rifles, on handlines.

His own security produced guns at the first sight and in a heartbeat, all three were very well anchored and facing the others with no disadvantage.

“No!” Bren said, holding up a hand.

Everything stopped, save a handful of crew drifting on inertia and probably wishing to be less conspicuous targets.

“You’d be fools,” Bren said, in Mosphei’, to the rifle-bearing crewmen. His breath frosted copiously in the icy air. The chill and the fright together produced a damnable tendency for his voice to shake, and he determined not to let it. “Ms. Sato, kindly inform your listeners that there’s absolutely no need to blow our negotiations to hell. This is a quiet visit to our own shuttle, official business, of which we’re bound to see a tiresome lot, and a very tiresome lot if you insist on customs raking over our cargoes or armed fools standing over us. You’ve already begun one war with strangers! For God’s sake, do you think you need a second?”

“Mr. Cameron,” Sato began, and all of a sudden, bad timing, the air lock flashed a light and opened.

Atevi came drifting out, fairly briskly, disembarked, took a split second to realize guns were deployed, and immediately deployed their own.

“Hold!” Bren shouted, in one language and the other. “Hold still!”

There were twenty, thirty of the atevi, in the black of the Assassins’ Guild, all armed, all at a standoff. More were coming out.

And amid all of it, a white-haired ateva floated out: Cenedi, he would swear.

And behind Cenedi, having hooked the line efficiently with her cane, Ilisidi sailed along, in all the fur-trimmed, long-coated winter finery of court tradition. Black furs, red brocade that glittered with gold thread.

“Don’t fire!” Bren shouted out, and turned about to face his guide and the ship security personnel. “This is an atevi ruler! This is the aiji dowager, the aiji’s
grandmother
. Angle up your damned rifles before you touch off more than you can ever in two lifetimes deal with!”

Rifles wavered, lifted. It was hard to tell with the holders of them in free fall, but there was uncertainty in those ranks.

There was no hesitation at all in Ilisidi. And now Tom Lund had disembarked, with four, five, six other humans to the rear of the atevi.

“Well!” the dowager said, with a wave of her free hand. “Nand’ paidhi, and what nonsense is this?
Weapons?
Do we see weapons?”

“A mistake,” Bren said. “Sato, she’s very annoyed. This is not good. Inform your captains you have the most famous, most revered woman on the planet for a guest. She’s not known for patience, and she’ll expect to be out of the cold
with
her baggage in an official residence immediately—which we’re prepared to oversee, if you’ll get cargo unloaded.”

“Sir,” Sato protested.

“If you want your agreements to hold, this is the woman you have to convince. She’s the worst possible enemy; and a damned powerful friend. You stand to lose everything, or win!”

“I’m receiving instructions,” Sato said desperately. “This wasn’t cleared!”

“The aiji dowager doesn’t clear things with her grandson or the legislature, either. Put those damn guns away.” He couldn’t control the humans, but there was one instigation to violence he could command. “
Banichi!
Stand down!”

“
Yes
, nandi.” Banichi made a great show of putting weapons away, by no means affecting the thirty-odd other atevi of Ilisi-di’s guard, but at least minutely reassuring the ship-folk.

Bren went out along the handlines to offer the dowager an extended hand which felt frozen through. Ilisidi took it in hers, floating along with remarkable dignity, and her hand lent his a burning, firelike warmth.

Tom Lund came forward, bravely mingling human targets in among the rest, and called out, with a wave of his arm, “Put the guns away! Put them away now!”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said anxiously. “Cenedi-ji. Be at greater ease. They are anxious house guard, not accustomed to armed guests.”

Cenedi gave a signal, the back of his hand, and instantly the dowager’s guard lifted weapons up and off target, so abrupt, so disciplined a move it seemed to shake the confidence of the handful of humans who kept their guns on target… a lingering threat of some alien-distrusting mind with a nervous trigger finger; but all the armed humans had gear like Sato’s, they all were waiting for orders, and those orders seemed to come. Guns likewise lifted, uncertainly, apt to come back on target in a heartbeat.

“One must see the dowager to warmer places,” Bren said to Cenedi. “Be cautious, nadi-ji! This is the midst of a dispute, one captain is wounded and in hiding, two scoundrels are in power, hearing every word of human language, and Jase is holding the residency we have made, where things are far more reasonable.” He realized objectively he was terrified. The dowager had committed herself to the station for at least the fifteen days it would take to fit the shuttle for the return voyage. It was not just the threat of guns where they were, and Ilisidi and himself and Lund all in reach of bullets; it was far more than that, where the station and the ship were concerned. Real terrestrial authority had arrived, and the bid of Tamun and his ally for power up here in the heavens could run up against a power in their midst that simply would not bend. Species extinction was suddenly completely possible, given the scenario they were offered.

But Sato kept chattering away, a running account of what was going on, her interpretation of events mingled with pleas that no one start shooting, insistence that there was no threat. The humans in the home guard seemed thrown into confusion, and now Cenedi had ordered his guard to come out of the cover certain of them had secured behind structural beams. They came, taking the handlines, moving in surprisingly good order and self-assurance for men and women completely unaccustomed to ungravitied space… but their guild left no situation unplanned and devoted their lives to physical preparedness.

And they, foreign as they were, large as they were, numerous as they were, and armed to the teeth, hardly needed leveled weapons to scare the hell out of the human guard. A handful of weapons stayed leveled, and if anyone should fire, bullets might go anywhere, ricochets like swarms of deadly midges.

Sato hovered close, trying to tell him something about cargo.

“Hell with cargo… order those guns up!”

“They
are
ordered, sir.”

“Have them order it again! They’re not complying.”

Sato did. A moment later the last guns lifted out of line, and Bren drew a whole breath.

“About the cargo, sir,” Sato began.

“Ha!” Ilisidi waved the cane perilously near the lift panel. “Does one
float
up here, or is there sensible ground somewhere?”

“There is ground, aiji-ma. —She wishes to find a place with what she designates a sensible floor. She’s very old, Ms. Sato. I can’t reckon, myself, how old, but she’s revered from one end of the aishidi’tat to the other. She’ll have come with considerable baggage. We need more space. The other corridor will do.”

“He says she’s very important among atevi and very old and she has a lot of baggage, sir,” Sato relayed that. “He wants more room.” Sato winced, and Bren could hear that noise past her earphones. “I know, sir. But there’s thirty, thirty-six of them, sir, not counting the shuttle crew.” Sato winced a second time.

“Tell the esteemed captain the rooms I last took were vacant, which shows there
is
vacant space on this station and the aiji dowager needs it. She has health conditions. If she were to die up here, I couldn’t predict the consequences. We have to get her out of this chill, immediately. —Nand’ dowager, please come into the car. Banichi, Jago. Come.” He gave no orders to Nojana, who had moved somewhere, vanished, in the way the Assassins’ Guild was notorious for doing. “Ms. Sato.
Immediately
!”

“Yes, sir.” Sato was still talking to the captains, saying, “She really is
old
, sir. She’s tiny for one of them and very wrinkled and grayed. Everybody treats her like royalty.”