Precursor (43 page)

“Immediately, nandi.”

Immediately was not quite possible, and he had all too much time to listen to his staff bearing with the disaster, to attempt the communications panel, and to find it not working.

Warm water did arrive in reasonably short order, all the same, and Bindanda assisted him in rinsing off the soap, a hand torch posed like a candlestick on the counter.

“Very fine,” Bren said with chattering teeth, trying not to think of a general power failure.

A large shadow appeared against the dim glow of the hall. “Bren-ji?”

Banichi.

“Any news?” He expected none. “If power has gone down, there
will
be the ship itself, trusting this isn’t the alien attack.”

“That would be very bad news,” Banichi said in that vast calm of his.

But in that moment a sound came from the vents. The fans started up, failed.

“Well,” Bren said. “They’re trying to fix it. The air is trying to come through.” He seized up the damp, still-soapy robe, with the notion of reaching Cl if there were moments of power, and Bindanda hastily snatched the robe away, substituting a dry coverlet. Bren gathered that about his shoulders and punched in Cl.

There was no answer.

“The lock is electronic,” Banichi said, “and we can access it, to the exterior of this section.”

“We aren’t completely sure there’s air on the other side of the door,” Bren said, wishing they might supply power to the panel; but that did no good if no one was listening. “Do we have radio, Banichi-ji?”

“We have,” Banichi said confidently. “We would rather not use it.”

“Understood,” Bren said. “Perfectly.” He was comforted to think that, in extremity, they might have a means to contact the ship or the shuttle itself, hoping for some word of what was going on outside their section.

The lights came on. Fans resumed moving air.

He and Banichi looked at one another with all manner of speculations; and he heaved a great sigh.

“Well,” he said to Banichi, “presumably it will go on working. Conserve, until we know what’s happening.”

“One will do so,” Banichi said. “In the meantime… we’ll attempt to learn.”

“Wait,” he said, and tried Cl again. “Cl. What’s going on? Do you hear me?”

“
The emergency is over
,” Cl answered, not the main shift man, but a woman’s voice. “
There’s no need for alarm
.”

“Does that happen often, Cl? What
did
happen?”

“I believe a technical crew is attempting to rectify the problem, sir. It’s a minor difficulty. Out, sir.”

Cl punched out. Cl might have other problems on her hands. God knew what problems.

“It’s not an alien invasion,” he said to Banichi. “The central communications officer claims not to know the cause.”

Banichi might have understood that much.

“One wonders how general it was,” Banichi said. Jago had appeared, and there was some uncommon calling back and forth among the staff, confirming switches, in the hall.

“I’ve no idea,” Bren said. “Cl certainly knew about it.”

“One should rest, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “One of us is always on watch.”

He had no doubt. And he had no doubt of the rightness of the advice, no matter what was going on technically with the station.

There was not another alarm in the nighttime.

In the morning he was not utterly surprised to hear Cl say that Sabin had canceled their scheduled meeting; he was not utterly surprised to hear that there were no communications with Mogari-nai. The earthlink was down. Neither ship nor station was communicating with anyone.

“Is there still an emergency?” he asked. “Is the station intact?”

“
Perfectly intact, sir
,” Cl answered, the regular, daytime Cl, which reassured him. “
Sorry. I don’t have the details. I have to shut down now
.”

Disappointing, to say the least. He went to report the situation to his staff, that the day’s schedule had changed.

“I don’t know why,” he said to the staff. “We felt no impact, as if there were explosion, or a piece of debris, but I don’t know that we might, on so large a structure. I’ll work in, today. Simply do what needs doing.”

It was a slow day, in some regards, a frustrating, worrisome day, but power at least stayed rock-steady.

He made notes on the discussion with Kroger. He answered letters. He wrote letters… restrained himself from writing to Toby, and asked himself whether the link was going to be in operation.

There was a quiet supper. He had pronounced himself not particularly hungry, and perhaps a little overindulged from the day prior. “I get very little exercise here,” he said to Narani, “I don’t walk enough. Satisfy the staff, certainly. But I have no need for more than a bowl of soup.”

He was primarily concerned, after his day’s work, to have the earthlink function smoothly, and it seemed to.

But the messages were all from the mainland.

“Put me through to Jase Graham,” he said, the ritual he and Cl had established.

“Sir, he’s still in conference.”

“I thought he might be rather less busy with the station’s problems.”

“I’m told he’s still in meetings.”

“Yolanda Mercheson?”

“Still in meetings
.”

“Captain Sabin.”

“Still in meetings, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Captain Ramirez.”

“Sir, all the captains are in meetings.”

One wondered if anything was getting done anywhere on the ship or the station. He wanted to be cheerful for his servants’ sake, but was glum at heart, surer and surer that Ramirez had not pulled off his majority, and that the meetings Jase and Yolanda were involved in likely involved sitting under guard, in isolation, and answering occasional questions from a deadlocked association of captains.

And that was the most optimistic view.

A shadow appeared by his bed, utterly silent—just
loomed
, utterly black, and his heart jumped in fright.

“Do you wish?” Jago’s lowest voice. “Nadi?”

“Bren-ji,” he corrected this slide toward formality. “Some aspects of this being a lord I don’t like. Sit down.” He made room for her on the narrow bed, realizing at the same time that she and he wouldn’t fit it, or at least, not comfortably.

He shifted to give her room, her arms came about him. Deeper thought and glum mood both went sliding away, in favor of a thoroughly comfortable association and the easy, gentle comfort of her embrace. He heaved a sigh, not obliged even to carry his weight, not with Jago, who supported him without any thought. Her breath stirred his hair, ran like a breath of summer over his shoulder, and for the next while, and right down to the edge of sleep, he didn’t think.

But he felt a certain uneasiness, a certain sense of embarrassment, the rooms were so small, the staff pressed so close. The bed required close maneuvering.

“You can’t be comfortable here,” he said. “Don’t wake with a kink in your back, on my account.”

“I have no difficulty,” she said.

He was habitually cold; he wasn’t, while she was in bed. But he truly didn’t want the closeness of the quarters here to create a difficulty.

“Perhaps you should go for other reasons,” he whispered to her. He always felt guilty for the relationship, the event, whatever she might call it. She had a partner. To this hour he had no idea whether her being here represented some allowed breach of that partnership, or what the relationship was between her and Banichi—which was a trust he had absolutely no willingness to betray. They had never been at such close quarters. She’d always assured him Banichi understood, understood, understood, but he was uneasy, tonight.

“What other reasons?”

“Getting some sleep, for one.”

“I might sleep, if nand’ paidhi weren’t talking.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, and felt the tension he created. “The whole staff must know, Jago-ji.”

He felt, rather than heard, her laughter. “One is certain they do.”

He couldn’t bear the evasions any longer. He slid free and rested precariously on an arm near the edge where he could be absolutely face to face with her. “Jago-ji. I will not hurt Banichi. I have every regard for you, and I know
you
would never disregard him, but I worry, Jago-ji, I do worry what he thinks.”

“He is amused.”

“I know you say that, but a man is a man, and people are people, and they can say something, but it doesn’t make it so, Jago-ji. I have no wish to offend him. I would be devastated to create a breach between you”

“There is none. There has never been one.”

“
Are you lovers, Jago-ji?”
He’d chased that question all the years of their partnership. “Have you been, forgive me that I ask, but this causes me a great deal of guilt and worry—” He was under assault, and he fended it off, determined to get out what he had tried a dozen times to express. “—Guilt and worry, that I ever crossed any barrier that I might not have understood…”

Jago’s body heaved gently. After an instant he knew she was laughing. A callused, gentle hand moved slowly across his shoulder. “Bren-ji. No.”

“What do you mean, no, nadi? Have you been lovers?”

“Bren-ji. He is my
father
.”

He was stunned. He rolled back, fell back onto the pillow and stared at the ceiling. The whole universe shifted vector.

Then the thin mattress gave, and the general dim dark gave way to Jago’s outline, her elbow posed on the other side of him, her fingers tracing their way down from his chin.

Amused, she said. Banichi was amused at their carrying-on.

Not disapproving.

But her
father?

“Bren-ji. We do not make relationships public, in our Guild. I tell you as a confidence.”

“I respect it.”

“One knows without doubt the paidhi is discreet,” Jago said, and found his ear, found his hands… outmaneuvering Jago was difficult, and he had no interest in trying that. For the first time he had a relatively clear conscience in her regard, and a joke to avenge. He pulled her close, dismissing the proximity of the servants as any concern to them.

They ran unexpectedly out of bed, on the edge, and nearly over it.

Jago simply rolled out of it, taking him and the sheets with her, and laughed.

«
^
»

Jago was gone before dawn, and he was in bed when he waked, in bed with the smell of breakfast wafting through the hall.

Bindanda and Kandana were a little reluctant to meet his eye. Had he and Jago embarrassed the whole staff, Bren wondered, chagrined. He found nothing to say, and thought he should ask Jago… he truly, urgently should ask someone what the staff was saying. It could hardly be Banichi; he couldn’t envision that conversation. He knew he would blush. Jago might be the recipient of merciless amusement, and she was hardly the one to ask.

He thought perhaps he could speak to Tano… certainly to Tano, rather than staid, dignified Narani. He could manage to do that on the way to breakfast, which otherwise might be a very uncomfortable affair.

He had chosen less than formal wear for a day on which he had no schedule but deskwork: a sweater and a light pair of trousers with an outdoor jacket, about adequate for the chill of the air, after which he dismissed Bindanda and Kandana, opened up his computer, and went through the send-receive with Cl, and through the usual litany of questions, refusing to give up on Jase or Yolanda or on direct contact with the captains, three of whom he was anxious to hear from.

No message from Toby, none from his mother, nothing this time even from Tabini, who was probably considering the last one, or who simply had things to do other than give the paidhi daily reassurances. Two advertisements had slipped into the packet, one for bed linens and the other for fishing gear, and he scrutinized them briefly for any content from the Foreign Office, any hint that someone had sent him something clandestine. It was a north shore fishing gear manufacturer, one Toby used.

But it was simply one of those hiccups of the communications filter. His mailbox on the island received such things, and he had no staff left there to filter them.

A message from the head of the Transport Committee reported on progress in the new spaceport. They were better than their schedule.

He half-zipped his jacket and went out into the hallway in a routine hurry for breakfast.

And ran chest-high into a stranger.

He recoiled, immediate in everything his security had dinned into him, achieved distance and was a muscle-twitch from diving backward into the door before his vision realized chagrin and offered respect on the other side of the encounter.

Atevi presence on the station was entirely limited, and more, he knew this man: the name escaped him, as his heart pounded, but it was one of the stewards from the shuttle.