Precursor (3 page)

“The transmission missed you, sir.” Lund seemed quite anxious to avert his suspicion. “We had no idea you were already on the way to the island.”

“Indeed it did miss me. How it got cleared without my knowing is another matter.”

“If there’s any irregularity,” Lund said, “it certainly wasn’t intended.”

“On your part, I well believe.”

“At higher level,” Kroger said. “We meticulously respect the agreements. We had no idea the request was going through your office in your absence. We did not expect this.”

It had been intercepted by someone on the mainland with access to his messages, which could only be the atevi Messengers’ Guild, or his own staff—

Or Tabini’s security.

And, routed to Tabini-aiji, the unseasonable, foolhardy request had been
granted
.

He wished he’d skipped the hearty breakfast. The search of the grate… the missing cufflink was evident, as he sat. The aiji’s representative was not at his best, in any sense. He’d been sandbagged by his former friends in the State Department, by the President of Mospheira, who was supposed to be sane, and now he learned possibly there was a leak in the Messengers’ Guild… an organization which had not been his best friends on the mainland, which had not been loyal to Tabini.
That
could be a scary problem.

But leaks in that Guild certainly didn’t get their results approved by the aiji, not unless the message had come in such a public fashion that there was no face-saving alternative but to grant the request. He didn’t know what he might be flying into. A government crisis, very likely.

Distrusting the Messengers’ Guild didn’t encourage him to try a phone call.

The hatch had shut some moments ago, unremarked in the exchange. The plane began its taxi out and away from the building. The alcohol-fed cheerfulness was not quite what it had been, and they weren’t even on the runway yet.

“Well,” Bren said, deciding to be mollified, at least for their benefit, “well, I understand. My apologies for my anxiousness. But I can’t stress enough how delicate the situation is. The aiji didn’t get any advance word from the Pilots’ Guild when they recalled Mercheson and now Jase Graham. He may have felt sending you was tit for tat, with them.”

That provoked a little thought among the experienced seniors.

“The atevi have been pushed pretty hard,” Kate Shugart said very quietly, in her junior, mere-translator status. Three of the five people present knew at gut level how wrong it was to shove badly-done messages through the system. “A great deal of change, when just a few years ago we were debating advanced computers.”

… Carefully examining the social fabric in the process, to be sure what they released into atevi hands didn’t end up starting a war or breaking down atevi society. Atevi had invented the railroad for themselves; humans had lately contributed the culturally dangerous concepts of fast food and entertainment on television, trying not to bring on a second atevi-human war.

Now it was rocket science. And a reported contact with some species outside the solar system, technologically advanced and hostile. The Pilots’ Guild had come running home with trouble just over the horizon… and the world had found itself no longer in a space race for orbit and the old, deteriorating station, but in a climb simultaneously for dominance in decision-making and for survival… against a species the Pilots’ Guild had somehow provoked.

Not a pleasant packet of news for the world, that had been, three years ago.

Atevi, who didn’t universally favor technological imports, suddenly had to take command of their own planet or abdicate in favor of the human Mospheirans
and
the human Pilots’ Guild, who historically didn’t like each other and who weren’t compatible with atevi.

And in order for atevi to take command, they had to build a ground-to-space vehicle from a design the Pilots’ Guild handed them, and haul their whole economy, their materials science, and all their industry into line with the effort.

It wasn’t
humanly
possible. If atevi hadn’t been a continent-spanning civilization and a constitutional monarchy to boot, with rocketry already in progress, they couldn’t possibly have done it… certainly not in his lifetime. Witness the efforts of the Mospheirans, who’d complained about the tax subsidy for their only aircraft manufacturer, and who’d let the company go. Now they were buying their planes from an atevi manufacturer, and had no recourse but to pay for seats on the atevi shuttle to orbit.

He knew what Tabini was charging them, and the citizens hadn’t yet felt the tax bite.

“If the shuttle should fail,” Bren remarked, likewise quietly, as the plane turned onto the runway and gathered speed, “if the shuttle has
any
significant problem, there would be another War of the Landing. Not could. Would. That’s what we constantly risk. Forgive me for the interrogation; I’m supposed to have translated that request, and somehow it catapulted past me. It’s always dangerous in atevi society when things don’t follow routine channels.”

“We’re not in danger
now,
are we?” This from Ben Feldman, who did understand the risk, as the plane left the ground.

“I have some concern,” Bren said. “I want to be absolutely sure you don’t walk into something. You’re sure that visa really came from Tabini’s office.”

“It came with verification,” Lund said. “You want to see the papers?”

“
That
wouldn’t tell me,” Bren said. He didn’t intend to reveal any of his doubts of the Messengers’ Guild, or of instabilities he knew of, not to adversarial negotiators. “What specifically are your arrangements? Who’s meeting you?”

“Straight to the space center,” Kroger said, looking worried. “Officials of that center.”

“That’s good. That’s the arrangement as it should be,” Bren said. “Probably it did come from the aiji’s office.” He’d disturbed his seatmates, he saw. He wasn’t in the least sorry to have done it. Nobody in the world as it was—or above it— should be as naive as Mospheirans tended to be about anything outside their own politics. “Which means he wants this to happen. What’s your job up there?”

“We aren’t empowered to tell you,” Kroger said.

“You’re empowered to negotiate.”

“With the station.”

“
With the crew of the ship
,” Bren said in a low voice. “
We
were the station, weren’t we, before the Landing?”

There
was the old hot button, the privileges of the Guild, the lack of basic rights of the colonists, once in-flight emergency put the crew in total charge of the mission… once a ship went far, far off-course and the crew couldn’t get them to any recognizable navigation point, a long, long time ago. The colonists weren’t supposed to land. They had. The Guild had argued for respect of the natives and no landing, and had wanted to stay in space.

They certainly had. There was no Guild craft that could land and no Guild pilot that could fly in atmosphere. All that was lost.

The Guild right now didn’t want to fly in atmosphere. They wanted the station manned, their ship refurbished. They wanted labor, the same as they’d always wanted.

Mospheirans were fit to be that labor… speaking the same language, having the same biology. Mospheirans, however, were of two minds: those whose ancestors had been high-status techs on the station were inclined to be pro-space; those whose ancestors had done the brute-force mining and died in droves were inclined not to.

What do you want?
was a loaded question, regarding any delegation of Mospheirans going to talk to the Pilots’ Guild.

“We’re basically fact-finding,” Lund said.

“Find out what they’re up to?”

Kroger shrugged.

“Not hostile to the aiji’s position,” Bren said. “Fact-finding. The big question is… are the aliens real? Did they really find something out there? I’ve worked with Jase Graham very closely for three years… and I believe him.”

They’d reached altitude. He felt the plane level out.

“And does the aiji hold that attitude?” Lund asked.

“Good question. Because I do, he tends to. He pushed for the space program, over some objection, as you may remember. He’s the one who’s enabled this whole program to work. The Guild up there has to understand… do
anything
to jeopardize Tabini’s position and there is no shuttle, no program, no resources, no ticket. Alpha Base, gentleman, ladies. Alpha Base all over again.”

Every paidhi-candidate visited that island site, where the clock stood perpetually at 9:18.

Humans floating down to freedom on their petal sails had settled wholeheartedly into atevi culture and offered their technology, blithely crossed associational lines with no idea in the world of the danger they were in. Humans hadn’t… generally couldn’t… learn the language to any great fluency, and because humans had never twigged to the damage they were doing, because atevi themselves hadn’t comprehended completely what the cost of the gifts was… it all had blown up suddenly, and that clock on the island had stopped, precisely at 9:18, on the morning the illusion had gone up in flames.

After that, the aiji who won had settled the human survivors on Mospheira, and appointed the first of the paidhiin, the rare human who could tiptoe through the language.

“We’ve read your paper,” Ben said earnestly.

Yes, they’d read it, and done what they’d done, and gotten permission from the aiji for this flight, nudging the aiji’s precedence for the shuttle he’d built.

Considering Mospheiran history, why was he not amazed at even the linguists had missed the point?

“Well,” he said, seeing there was nowhere to go with the discussion, “well, you’re on your way, and likely it will work. I just ask… in all frankness… that future conversations with the atevi come by channels.”

“I’ll be frank, too,” Lund said, “relying on your discretion… the Secretary of State insists you can be trusted.”

He gave a nod. “In good will, at least. I
do
report to the aiji.”

“We aren’t interested in establishing another human government in orbit. They say they’ve found hostile aliens out there. They need work crews to fuel their ship and bring the station back into operation, and if your aiji is willing to supply those crews, and if some humans want to go up there and do it, fine. But does the aiji understand the fatality rate?”

“The aiji does understand that,” Bren said. “I explained it very throughly. And neither human nor atevi workers are going to work without protection.”

“And he takes that position. Absolutely. —Or can we say
he cares ?”

That
, from a Mospheiran of Lund’s background, was a sensitive, intelligent question. “Yes and no. The short version: atevi reproductive and survival sense are wound together in man’chi. It’s a grouping instinct as solid as the mating urge, not gender specific. If a person isn’t in your man’chi, no, you don’t
care
. If they’re inside your man’chi, you all have the same goal anyway, give or take the generational quarrels. But that’s the average atevi. An aiji has no man’chi upward, and doesn’t give a damn; but he holds together the man’chi of his entire association. If he wastes that devotion, the association will take offense, pull apart, fragment violently, and kill him. They care. Passionately, at gut level, in emotions we don’t feel, the way they don’t feel ours. The aiji doesn’t throw away lives. Biologically, he’s driven to protect them, they have a drive to protect him, everybody
cares
. Passionately. There’s no chance he’ll tolerate conditions such as our ancestors tolerated. On the question of workers in orbit, you can depend on a united front. Protection, or no workers. He won’t put up with any Guild notion of high-risk operations that don’t benefit the atevi. Second… he’ll constantly be asking what benefit an action is to his association. As will you, I’m well sure, on Mospheira’s behalf. The aiji has everything the Guild’s come to extract from this planet; you have human understanding of how the Guild thinks. It wouldn’t serve either of us to give away the keys to those resources. The atevi halfway understand Mospheirans, as far as they understand any humans. They
know
they don’t understand the Guild.”

“We can’t speak to each other,” Kroger said. “We and the atevi, we and the Pilots’ Guild. We had you to interpret, and you left… pardon me, but left is the word. Then we had Yolanda Mercheson, and
she
was called back. We don’t know what this new man represents. We’re rather well without resources. Our mission is to reestablish that understanding.”

“Certainly I agree with that. If you figure out the Guild… tell
me
. I’ll be interested.”

That raised a small amusement. Small and short.

“What do you think the Guild wants, sending this new man…”

“Cope. Trent Cope.”

“What’s he like?”

Bren shrugged. “Senior to Graham and Mercheson. Probably higher rank. Sicker than seasick, looking at a horizon. Hard to get to know a man when he’s heaving his guts up and drugged half-sensible.”

“I hope it doesn’t work the other way,” Lund said.

He’d opted to travel with Cope, having shepherded Jase through his initiation to planetary phenomena. He’d not known then that Jase would get a recall order; not a clue of it. He hadn’t emotionally reckoned with that hard hit, which he’d only found out about this morning.