Precursor (22 page)

They passed through that and into a hall that, incredibly, curved upward, exactly the reverse of the situation that had turned Jason’s stomach when he’d faced planetary horizons.

Remarkable, Bren thought… and was glad to know his stomach tolerated it. It didn’t feel as bad as it looked. There was just more upward-curving hallway. And a lot of intersections. He’d seen the diagrams of the station; had studied them with interest, when, two years ago, the whole business of diplomatic establishments had come up and they’d talked about what he could do about the doorways, the sanitary facilities, all the modifications that evidently hadn’t been made as agreed.

But, damn, he thought: he had them in his computer, that small machine Jago carried for him. Since he’d gotten this new portable, and since it went in the highest security Mospheira and the mainland could mount, he’d never dumped a file that he feared he might regret. More, he’d loaded everything in that he could possibly lay hands on, everything Shawn
let
him have.

Everything they knew of
Phoenix
design was in there; station design was; the architectural modifications, and ten or fifteen card games and any other piece of extraneity he’d used in the last damned year, and he hadn’t even thought about it, except a passing connection of neurons about having it with him, asking himself, under hasty circumstances, if there were
atevi
files he could compromise.

But he didn’t keep the sensitive ones in the portable. Those were in the office computer, under guard. He didn’t take them back and forth to the island, only files atevi and the island shared. Thank
God
, he thought, for that.

His staff was coping with the perspective and the maze they traveled. Keeping his own steps straight seemed to want conscious effort, but at least the nausea didn’t recur. Most of all, he was glad to have played the hand right in the encounter with Ogun… not to have been settled into siege in a rapidly-cooling shuttle cabin while Tabini slugged it out verbally with the Pilots’ Guild, as could have happened if he’d overshot his limits. Atevi, who chilled less readily, could have lasted longer than he could… but it could have been damned dangerous, no credit to Kroger… none to him for antagonizing the woman.

But that he’d win the question with the captain who didn’t want atevi cargo on his station, he had little active doubt. It was not in the ship’s interest to offend Tabini, as it was not in his own interest or Tabini’s to declare war with an orbiting power.

Ultimately, agreements had to work. Ultimately, Kroger, who seemed to get harder to deal with when fear reared its head, had to work with him.

And with luck, he would do what he’d come to do in the same two weeks as the Mospheirans planned to use. He’d get an arrangement with Ramirez and his brother captains, Ogun included, that let him come and go… and that let Jase come and go. He had no right to add that to the bottom line, and couldn’t spend the aiji’s credit to get it; but he was forming an opinion that if Bren Cameron had any personal credit in this affair, he knew where he was going to spend it.

Seeing this place with its wrong-curving corridors, its endless, same-textured, cream-colored corridors, he understood how frightening Jase had found the variability of a planet. He found
this
morally frightening. A machine had extruded this corridor, a huge, unvarying machine. The door insets were just that, inset in an extruded-plastics form, not fighting the curvature except for a slanted sill, and every one the same, every door human height, as the corridor overhead was interrupted by absolutely regular translucent light panels.

It was absolutely the antithesis of hand-crafted Malguri. His ancestors had made this place… and he didn’t recognize it. Heart and mind, he didn’t recognize it.

Banichi and Jago walked just behind him, clearing the ceiling by not too much, trusting his leadership without question as they went deeper and deeper into this maze, deeper and deeper into places human authorities knew and he didn’t. Tano and Algini walked behind them, the staff with the hand-baggage two by two behind that. He was aware of the order every time they passed a section door, and there were no few. The escort took them on and on.

And finally right-turned down an intersecting corridor, through a doorway—theirs, Bren hoped, in acute discomfort, only to be disappointed. There was more corridor, another turn, and again a corridor, another door. Kaplan had to be using that eyepiece to navigate, giving no advantage to anybody who wasn’t receiving the information. Scuffs on the flooring gave the only proof of prior traffic.

Security… for the holders of the information. They’d refurbished this area. Put
no
identifying marks anywhere on walls or doors or floor.

“Here you are” Kaplan said confidently, at an apparent dead end that might be only another turn in the corridors, and opened a door.

Light came on inside a room with a bed, a desk, several chairs, and a dressing-area.

“Thank you,” Bren said. “And what for the rest of my team?”

“I’ve no instructions, sir. Far as I know, this is what there is.”

“Nine persons won’t fit.”

“I can relay that, sir.”

“And how do we come and go to our meetings? I have to make an appointment with your officers at the earliest. How do I contact them?”

“Someone will come for you.”

“At very minimum we’ll need more beds.”

“I have no orders, sir.”

“You have a request. This is one bed. Obviously there are other beds elsewhere.” He waved a hand, Tabini-esque. “We need more beds.”

“They’re built in, sir. Can’t move them.”

“Then mattresses. Bags with stuffing in them. I don’t care. My people are not going to sleep on the floor or step over one another. We need more rooms. We need mattresses.”

“I don’t know what I can do, sir.”

“You know how to find out, however. That is a communications link you’re wearing; you
can
talk to your officers on that communication system, and I insist you do that or accept all the responsibility for not doing it. Tell them mattresses. Or padding of some sort. I want those within two hours. Rooms by tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll work it out. Will you show me the phone?”

“Phone.”

“Communications, sir.”

There was contact, behind both eyes, glassed and unglassed. The young man stepped inside and touched a wall installation, fingers flying over buttons. “This is communications. This is light. This is up heat, this is down. This is the fan setting. There’s an intercom. You just punch in and wait.”

“What about the other rooms neighboring this one? I’m sure you won’t mind if we open them up.”

“There’s personnel assigned there, sir. There’s personnel assigned all over. This is living quarters.”

“Do they have mattresses?”

“Look here, sir, we’re not under your orders!”

“No. They are.” This with a conscious reference to the living wall of atevi waiting around them. “We need the mattresses, we need more room, and we’re going to be persistent. I don’t care what you find, sir, or how long it takes, but this is the team that’s supposed to supply you with
your
needs, I assure you, not ours. I do appreciate the inconvenience and the difficulty involved and I’m sorry it’s fallen on you, but I know, too, that your captain places confidence in your judgment and your resourcefulness, or he wouldn’t have sent us off with you. So what can you do for us?”

Likely suggestions occurred to the man, but he adopted an aggrieved, respectful expression and heaved a sigh. “Sir, I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“I’ll expect success, then. I’m sure of it. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard left, probably saying more on his personal communications than a request for mattresses.

Bren, on the other hand, looked at Banichi, then cast a look at Jago, and then, with the indisputable privilege of rank, ducked inside in desperation, and to the back of the room, to what atevi politely called the accommodation.

In hardly a day and a night he’d antagonized a Mospheiran ambassador, one of the four
Phoenix
captains and an innocent crewman. It was not unpredictable that the aiji’s notion of presenting a fait accompli to the Pilots’ Guild had lodged them sideways in the throat of the station, but he had to reflect, once the adrenaline had somewhat fallen, that he’d had to do it, that Tabini had put him into a position, and he had no choice but make it clear… he couldn’t lie to the Mospheirans.

He couldn’t tell them the entire truth of his intentions ei-I ther, much as he’d gone out of his way to level with them. He’d told most of the truth to Jase, his one wholehearted ally. But as far as human relations went, he’d had to clear a working space, make it very clear to the Mospheirans they weren’t participant with him in agreements he might make, make it clear to the captains one and all that if bargains weren’t kept, bargains wouldn’t be kept.

It was one policy in the elegant halls of the aiji’s residence.

It was another here, where they settled, the staff on the floor… himself in one chair, Banichi and Jago sitting on the bed, Algini and Tano standing in the corner. The place was too cold for human comfort. Though the fan was on high and the heat coming out of the vents was substantial, it seemed to produce only a fever-chill in the air. The surfaces stole warmth: walls, even the bedding seemed cold through.

“I do regret this discomfort” he said to his servants. ”Nadiin, I am hoping to improve this.“

“They do not, seemingly, adapt well to surprises,” Banichi remarked, and, caught by surprise himself, Bren had to laugh.

“We don’t know” Jago added quietly, ”whether this represents the standard of their own quarters.“

“One certainly hopes not,” Bren said. “More, one doubts it.”

“We can sleep on the floor,” the juniormost servant, Sabiso, said softly. She had banged her head quite painfully on the door of the facility, and had been mortally embarrassed, knocked half unconscious. It had raised a sizable lump on her brow. “We can use our baggage for mattresses, perhaps.”

“I don’t intend so,” Bren said. “I do
not
intend so. I don’t wish to move in with the shuttle crew, but if we get no better from the captains soon, we may have more words. We won’t tolerate this for two weeks.” Dismissing his servants to that greater comfort did occur to him; but it was not the atevi way of managing things, and it could not be his choice, not without shaming his staff. Tabini would much prefer a standoff.

And ultimately… ultimately, Tabini would have his way.

“We have brought sandwiches,” Narani said cheerfully, “in case of a long flight, and delays, nandi. It is the hour, in Shejidan, by the clock, and nand’ paidhi may have his supper, if he will.”

“Brought supper, Rani-ji!” He’d never even asked the servants what was in the huge, heavy baggage. “Beyond hope. Marvelous.”

Narani was delighted to have surprised him; the servants were entirely pleased and encouraged, and scurried about opening baggage, setting out unbreakable plastic dishes on the desk and the vanity counter.

Another piece of baggage opened up packets of sandwiches. A third produced fruit juice in unbreakable containers besides other black canvas packages, which Tano quietly abstracted and gave to Banichi.

What have you brought?
he thought of asking, and thought perhaps he’d face the captains more honestly not knowing. Besides, familiar, homemade food sounded very good at the moment, and he was very glad to accept a plate and juice, in a glass, not the scandal of drinking from a bottle. In no wise would nand’ paidhi have other than a plate, and proper utensils.

“Excellent,” he said. “Excellent, Nadiin. —Sit, sit down, Nadiin-ji. I wish you to sit and share all this with me.”

The offering was meat of the season, pickled eggs and dried fruit, juice, with tea still hot in the flasks. And eat together, and in front of nand’ paidhi and his security? The servants were rarely comfortable with such an arrangement… and he was sorry for his failure as yet to provide them their own place, quarters of their own, their own dining room, their own place for jokes and camaraderie, their domain which Narani should rule.

But they all settled to eat, then, and the sense of ceremony with which they shared their meal made it a quiet, reserved time.

“We’ve become a village,” Jago observed then, recalling the more informal culture of field and farm, and that struck the servants as strangely funny, for reasons a human found difficulty figuring.

“We should have
goda
,” Tano said, which made them laugh aloud. It was country fare, boiled grain on which one slathered butter or fruit jelly or fish sauce, in season: Bren had had it.

“No fish sauce, Nadiin” said Bindanda, the outsider; all the servants well knew Bren’s distaste for that, and they shyly thought that was very funny, too.

“No fish sauce,” they echoed.

In that laughter came a beep from somewhere in the room, which drew immediate attention from Banichi and his staff.

The servants, lifelong accustomed to the goings-on of assassination-prone lords and their armed security, fell instantly silent.

“
Mr. Cameron
,” a voice said from near the door, from the wall unit.