“I will, sir. —Second question. Mospheira says the situation where you are is chaotic. They say you might not be acting of your own accord. That a woman who was supposed to be replacing you has disappeared.”
Maybe not so politically naive. Or at least not incapable of asking questions.
“Can I believe you, sir, that’s the question. The island says you’ve violated orders and you’re giving unauthorized information to the atevi.”
“Yes. I have done that. So has the woman they say has disappeared. You’ll discover once you get down here that Mospheira moves incredibly slowly on decisions and translators in the field sometimes have to move very fast. Your ship showed in the sky, atevi feared Mospheira was going to abrogate the Treaty and that it was some kind of plot—damn right I had to take steps to calm things down, among people who didn’t feel they had gotten honest information. That necessarily included my explaining what couldn’t wait for some committee on Mospheira to approve. Mospheira is sending very contradictory signals. They want me here. They know I’ll act. Now State is mad. Fine. If you want the blunt truth, I’d rather offend the President of Mospheira and not have the whole atevi and human relationship blow up over what I could solve, in a situation the facts of which they’d have to rely on my judgment to find out in the first place.”
“What about this missing woman?”
“Deana Hanks? She’s not missing. I ordered her to go home and she told me she was waiting for formal recall from Mospheira, which Mospheira hasn’t sent.”
“Why?”
“Because—you want the truth?—she belongs to an opposition party on Mospheira that’s trying to get Tabini to accept her credentials; and he won’t. She’s fine, I had lunch with her yesterday, we argued as usual, but we’ve agreed to keep it in bounds.”
“That’s certainly not what we’re getting from Mospheira.”
“What are you getting from Mospheira?”
“That the situation there is very dangerous, and you might be lying, bluntly put, sir.”
“You know where this transmission is coming from?”
“Yes, sir, a station on the coast.”
“You think stations of that size are private? Or that it belongs to the atevi government?”
“To the government, I’d say, sir.”
“I assure you that’s who I’m speaking for, Mr. Graham. I’m the translator, the paidhi, the only human appointed by the Treaty to mediate between atevi and humans. The atevi legislature asked me to perform the same office between you and them, in which capacity I’m now officially functioning. Yes, I work for the Mospheiran government; by the nature of what I do, I also work for the atevi government. That means that it’s my job occasionally to say things Mospheira doesn’t want to hear. But if I don’t say it, it doesn’t get said, the situation festers in silence, and we can all end up with real trouble. Plainly, there are Mospheirans that don’t like atevi, and they don’t like me, either. But that opinion is never going to get atevi to cooperate. Not till hell freezes over, as the saying goes. So tell your captain he can listen to people on Mospheira who either get their information from me or from their own guesswork, or he can ask me firsthand and get the information directly. There’s no other choice, because there’s no other human authorized to contact the atevi. You’re about to become the second. Welcome to the world of politics.”
“Are they—easy to get along with? Can you talk to regular atevi? Or are you pretty well guarded?”
“I deal mostly with government people, but not exclusively. Atevi are honest, loyal to their associates, occasionally obscure, and occasionally blunt to the point of embarrassment. I’ll be delighted to have another human face besides the one in the mirror, but I don’t live a deprived life here. Let me ask a more technical question. What are your landing requirements? What do you need? A runway?”
“Actually—not, sir. I wish we did. We’re using one of your pods.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Afraid not. They found a couple in the station, packed up and everything.”
“Good God. —Excuse me.”
“So we’ve got no way back up again if somebody doesn’t build a return vehicle. Between you and me, sir, in language you wouldn’t tell my mother, who’s not real happy with this—what risk am I running?”
“I’d sure want to know why those pods didn’t get used.”
“Mospheira says they were redundancies. There were three last ones. Because the last aboard the station were only six people. And if anything had gone wrong with one, they couldn’t have built another. They had a rule about triple redundancy.”
“That sounds reasonable. But I can’t swear to it.”
“So—if we have to build a ship that can get off the planet, how long is it going to take to get us back up again?”
“If we started today, if things went incredibly right, and that was our total objective in the program, we could maybe launch a manned capsule to low orbit inside a year, year and a half, on a rocket that’s meant to launch communications satellites. No luxury accommodation, but we could get you up to low orbit and probably down again in one piece.”
“But to reach high orbit?”
“Realistically, and I know this part of it, because I’m the technical translator, among my other jobs, if we want a meaningful high-orbit vehicle, we’d be wasting time building a small-scale chemical rocket. I’d much rather negotiate an orbit-and-return technology.”
“And how long for that?”
“Depends on a lot of factors. Whether the materials meet design specs. How much cooperation you can get from the atevi. I’d say if you don’t want to grow old down here, you’d better land on this side of the water and be damn nice to Tabini-aiji, who can single-handedly determine how fast the materials are going to meet design standard.”
“That’s—very persuasive, sir.”
The whole business of haste—the rush to risk lives—bothered him. “A parachute two hundred years old? The glue on the heat shield—”
“We know. We propose to refit it. They say they can improve on it. Put us down pretty well on the mark. I don’t personally like this parachute idea, but I guess it beats infalling without one.”
“You’ve got more nerve than I’d have, Mr. Graham. I’ll give you that. But our ancestors made it, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“I hate to ask, but what was the failure rate? Do you have any stats on that?”
“Percentage? Low. I know that one sank in the sea. One hard-landed. Fatally. One lost the heat shield and burned up. They mostly made it, that’s all I know. But with all your technology—isn’t there some way to take a little time, at least modify that thing into a guided system? Nothing you’ve got can possibly serve as a landing craft?”
A pause. Then: “Not for atmosphere. The moon—no problem. But that’s a deep, deep well, sir.”
“Gravity well.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t just Mospheira versus atevi that had a language gap. He guessed the shortened expression. And out of the expertise the technological translator necessarily gained in his career, other, more critical problems immediately dawned on him.
“Mr. Graham, I hope to hell if they unpack that parachute to check it, they know how to put it back in its housing. There’s an exact and certain way those things have to unfold. Otherwise they don’t open.”
“You’re really making me very nervous, sir. But they’ve got specifications on the lander. That’s in the station library, they tell me.”
“When are they sending you down here?”
“About five, six days.”
“God.”
“I wish you’d be more confident.”
“Five days is pushing real hard, Mr. Graham. Is there a particular reason to be in a hurry?”
“No reason not to—I mean, we’ve no problem with ablation surfaces. We can do better in no time. I’m less sure about the parachute, but I have to trust they can tell from records.
That’s all. I have to trust it. And they’ll be done, they tell me, in four days. And they can shoot us out there on a real precise infall, right down the path. I don’t know what more they can do. They say it’s no risk. That they’ve got all the results. When did they lose the three they lost? Early on?”
“I think—early on. They didn’t lose any of the last ones.” A slight gloss of the truth. But the truth didn’t help a man about to fall that far.
“I’ll tell you, I’m not looking forward to the experience. I keep telling myself I’m stark raving crazy. I don’t know what Yolanda’s thinking. But if we just get down—”
“The atevi would say, Trust the numbers. Get fortunate numbers out of the technicians.”
“I certainly intend to. —What’s that sound?”
“Sound—?” He was suddenly aware of the outside, of the smell and feel of rain in the air. And anxiety in Graham’s voice. “That was thunder. We’re having a storm.”
“Atmospheric disturbance.”
“Rain.”
“It must be loud.”
“Thunder is. Can be. That was. It’s right over us.”
“It’s not dangerous.”
“Lightning is. Not a good idea to be on the phone much longer. But one thing I should mention before I sign off. We’ve never had much of a disease problem, there’s not much we catch from atevi, and we were a pretty clean population when we landed. But on general principles the aiji will insist you undergo the process our ancestors did before they came down.”
“We began it last watch. My stomach isn’t happy, but that’s the least of our worries.”
“Sorry about that. I’ll relay your assurance to the aiji and I assure you the aiji will be happy you’ve taken that precaution on your own initiative. You’ll impress him as considerate, well-disposed people. I’ll also inform him about your companion needing to get to a plane without delay, assuming that will be her wish. I’ll fax up a map with the optimum sites marked, with text involving advantages and disadvantages. You can talk to your experts and make a choice, but it’s just more convenient to the airports if you can come in on the public lands south of the capital.”
“I’ll pass that word along. I’d like to talk to you fairly frequently, if you can arrange it. I want to look over this material you’re sending up. I’ll probably have questions.”
“I’ll fax up my meeting schedule. Tomorrow I’m going to be traveling out to an observatory in the mountains. I’ll be back by evening. But if something comes up that needs information from me, wherever there are telephones, they can track me down. Even on the plane.”
“To an observatory. Why?”
“To talk to a gentleman who may be able to answer some philosophical questions. Your arrival has—well, been pretty visible to anyone in the rural areas. And call it religious implications, as well as political ones. Say that concerned people have asked me questions.”
“Is that part of the job?”
“I hope we’ll be working together.”
“I assure you I hope we’ll be working together, sir. I’d just as soon they dropped us someplace soft.”
He couldn’t help but grin, to a featureless phone. “I’ll pick you out a soft one, Mr. Graham. My name is Bren. Call me that, please. I’ve never been ‘sir.”’
“I’m Jase. Always been. I really look forward to this. After I’m down there.”
“Jase. I’m going to be very depressed if you don’t make it. Please have those techs double-check everything. Tell them the world will wait if they’re not sure. The aiji will. Under no circumstance would he want you to compromise your safety.”
“I’m glad to know that. But I guess we’re on that schedule unless they find something. To tell the truth, I’d just as soon be done with that part of it.”
“We’re on the end of our time.” Thunder crashed, shocked the nerves. “That was a loud one. I should sign off now.”
“Understood. Talk to you later. Soon as I can, anyway. Thanks.”
The tea had cooled. The wind from the open doors was fresh and damp. Toby’d been right, the storm had swept right on past Mospheira and on to them in all its strength. The plane with the requested tomato sauce probably still hadn’t made it in, and the paidhi had let his tea cool in that wind, talking on the phone with a man born in space at a star other than the sun.
A star the man still hadn’t named for reasons that might not be chance.
Jason Graham claimed twenty-eight as old Earth measured years. The faxed-down information that preceded the call gave his personal record—his and his companion’s, Yolanda Mercheson, thirty-one and an engineer trainee. Nice, ordinary-looking woman with what might be freckles: the fax wasn’t perfect. Jase had a thin, earnest face, close-clipped dark hair—which was going to have to grow: atevi would be appalled, and understand, because, different from centuries ago, they understood that foreigners didn’t always do things for atevi reasons.
But two people of a disposition to fall miles down onto a planet and be separated from each other by politics, species, and boundaries for reasons common sense said surely weren’t all altruism, or naive curiosity—he didn’t understand such a mentality; or he thanked God it wasn’t part of his job. He supposed if they talked very long, very hard—
He still didn’t know, and he believed Jason Graham saying he was scared. The ship had come up with its volunteers very quickly. Which might be the habit of looking down on places, and the nerve it took to travel on such a ship—he had no remote knowledge what their lives were like on the ship. It was all theoretical, all primer-school study, all imagination. Atevi occasionally had a very reckless curiosity. But he didn’t think that curiosity was all that motivated Jase Graham and his associate: humanly speaking, he couldn’t see it, and he couldn’t find it in himself to believe someone sounding so disarmingly—friendly. For no reason. No—
—reason such as he had to trust the tea he was drinking. Because the woman who served it had man’chi to Damiri … he was relatively sure; and Damiri had, toward Tabini, whatever atevi felt for a lover … he was relatively sure. Above all else…
He supposed the ship folk had their own set of relatively-sures, and were prepared to risk his on his say-so. That that was the case … he was less sure; but it was the best bet, the only bet that led to a tolerable future.
It was just daybreak, and he was sitting in the absent lady’s office. He shot his dataload up to the ship. Another war of dictionaries.
Of grammar texts and protocols.
He started, then, to phone down to Hanks, and stopped himself in time, remembering the hour was still godawful, and Hanks would justifiably kill him.
Doubtless Ilisidi was at breakfast, on her balcony below his. She might accept a visitor at this hour. He almost wished he were there. But Ilisidi’s was a company too chancy for a man grown suddenly human and vulnerable this morning. He wished for bright sunlight, for the atevi world to take shape around him and make his existence rational again. He couldn’t afford the impulses that were running through him now, things like instinctual trust, irrational belief in someone on a set of signals that touched something at a level he no longer trusted existed. Not really. It was safe to believe in some other business.
But not in international politics. Not when there were people, human and atevi, who were very, very good at being credible, whose whole stock-in-trade was sounding so straightforward you couldn’t doubt. He wished to hell Jase Graham had affected him otherwise. But the man scared hell out of him—scared him for Jase Graham, if he could believe the man, and scared him how ready he was to jump to those instincts, inside. If it was real, he hadn’t time to give to another set of human relationships than the ones he had, flawed as they were, and it wasn’t fair of fate to hand him a human being he could learn to like, that could waken instincts he couldn’t otherwise trust, that could divert his attention from a very vital job—
Ironically—it was something like atevi described, that damned flocking in
stinct, that biological something that intervened in the machimi plays, and diverted some poor damned fool from the man’chi he’d thought he had to the man’chi he really had, and the poor damned fool in question stood center stage and agonized over the shattering of his mistaken life and mistaken relationships—before he went on to wreak havoc on everything and everyone that remotely seemed to matter to him.
A human watched the plays, trying to puzzle out that moment of impact. A human studied all the clues and knew there was something there.
A human might have finally found it on his own doorstep, in this unformed dawn, this gray, slow-arriving day, shot through with lightning flashes.
One could see the Bergid, now. One could see the earliest lights in the misting rain.
He hadn’t premeditated the invitation to informality, but he’d felt comfortable with Jase Graham, even—
Even knowing now that dawn and sanity were arriving, that he had a daunting task in the man—someone who might—what? Trail years behind him in fluency, have a different cultural bias, a constant matter of explaining, defining, reexplaining, a lifetime of study crammed into—what, a handful of years, after which the ship left and another human link went away, left, went dead.
They might not even get here if the pod failed. The thought upset his stomach, unsettled him at some basic level he wasn’t accessing with understanding. It was beyond self-pity this morning, it was all the way to stark terror: he was feeling lonely and cut off from humanity, and that—say it—friendly—voice had shaken his preconceptions, gotten through his defenses. He ought to know better. You wanted something and it never, ever quite—