Precursor (42 page)

“I don’t like to think so,” Bren said, “but I’ve no way to deny your thesis.”

“It
could have been done
,” Kroger said. “And they didn’t do it. The political pressure for a landing built and built.”

“The question is” Bren said, “whether the robots weren’t built because they
couldn’t
work, or whether you’re right. I’d hope there’s a third answer. I really hope there’s a third answer, that we can’t have been that venal.”

“Both factions had a greater good at issue,” Kroger said. “Both factions thought they were right, that if they gave in on one point, they’d erode all they had. Desperate, suspicious times. Both sides thought they
all
would die if they didn’t have their way.
Robots
. Common damned
sense
, Mr. Cameron!”

“And a joint company,” Lund said. “Your large-scale engineering, our electronics, our control devices.”

“I see no difficulty in agreement,” Bren said. “I see no difficulty at all.” His own people had a plan, buried deep within the departments of the government, but, thank God, a
plan
, and a viable one. He was for the first time in a decade
proud
to be Mospheiran. “Can you deliver it?”

Kroger let go a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Cameron, seventeen of us have spent our
careers
assuring we can deliver it. We
know
the metallurgy—and damned hard that’s been to develop with all the materials having to be imported from the mainland—but damn, we’ve
done
it. For the robotics, the specific designs… that was a problem. The records had been lost. We just got those records, Mr. Cameron.”

“If the archive
should
have those plans,” Bren began, and Kroger lowered her fist onto the table.

“The archive
does
have them, Cameron. It does. I looked. I knew what the files ought to be, where they ought to be. I’ve worked my whole
life
around that hole in the records, and believe me I know where to look in the archive.”

Her whole life
… was that merely a figure of speech?”

How long? Bren wondered with a nervous and sudden chill. How long had Kroger been working on this notion? More than three years back threw her into the whole pro-space movement, which had its roots in the Heritage Party, Gaylord Hanks’ party, with all its anti-atevi sentiment.

But that didn’t mean everyone who’d ever taken that route because it was the only route for pro-spacers was automatically Gaylord Hanks’ soulmate. Their proposal, just voiced, was a pro-space proposal, but it wasn’t anti-atevi. That the Heritage Party might have drawn in the honest and sensible, the dreamers with a willingness to ignore the darker side of their associations… it was possible.

Kroger, whatever else, was not a fool. She sat enjoying supper in an atevi household and proposing, with Lund,
cooperation
. Proposing a program that would save atevi lives if the aiji undertook the rough part of the operation. Proposing to better what he’d envisioned and give her benefit to the project.

“I thought you might be Hanks’ partisan,” he said. “And I don’t think you are. I think you’re an honest negotiator, Ms. Kroger.
Dr
. Kroger. Mr. Lund, the same. I think this might be entirely viable.”

Kroger said: “Damn Gaylord Hanks, Mr. Cameron. No
few
of us damn Gaylord Hanks.”

“Damn Gaylord Hanks?” Lund said, with a sudden, cheerful smile. Kroger had somewhat neglected her main course in the passion of argument, but Lund had demolished his, looking up sharply now and again, clearly paying attention. “I
know
Gaylord Hanks. I’ve known him since school days, and now a lot of people know him. The Heritage Party has another wing, I’m glad to say, and Hanks can take a rowboat north for what most of us think.”

“So I have the Heritage party for guests.” He’d picked up the prior signals of Kroger’s attitudes, the unconscious statements of prejudice; he didn’t see them in evidence at this table, in this room. He took that for a signal, perhaps, of a woman who’d adopted protective coloration, perhaps in a bid for survival.”

“Certainly not Hanks’ followers,” Kroger said. “Neither one of us. I’m not a dogmatist; I’m a scientist. Tom’s an economist, performs wizardry, odd moments of magic, I don’t know what; but he’s no more a follower of Hanks than I am or you are.”

“That’s quite good news.”

“There was quiet cheering inside the party when the invasion bounced off the shores,” Lund said. “That’s not publicized, but, God, that wasn’t a direction we ought to have gone, and no few of us knew it. We didn’t have the means to stop it. There was cheering in some quarters when the ship came back; there isn’t, yet, in others, and in some surprising quarters: some of the pro-spacers don’t want it. They’d wanted to do it themselves, if you want the honest truth; they damned sure didn’t want another Guild dominion.”

“I know these people,” Bren said quietly.

“Robotics,” Kroger reiterated. “What we should have done from the beginning, what we couldn’t do then, what we
can
do now.”

And from Tom Lund: “You’re not alone, Bren. Not you, not the atevi. Others share your enthusiasm for this new opportunity. Believe that, if nothing else.”

“I do believe you,” he said. “And I’m very willing to take this to the aiji with a strong recommendation.”

There was a small silence at the table, a trembling, hope-fraught kind of silence.

“Well!” Lund said. “
Well!
Good! But I trust this room is secure. We understand your principals are rather good at that sort of thing.”

“They are.”

“Promise Sabin what you have to,” Lund said quietly, “and let’s get our own agreement nailed down, together, present a deal signed and sealed.
Then
tell the captains.”

Bren gave a small, conscious smile, thinking to himself that these two were a tolerably good team. Sometimes Kroger seemed in charge, sometimes Lund, and he began to get the feeling that they were accustomed to sandbagging their way to agreements, much as the aiji was.

But these two were from inside the Heritage establishment, the pro-space wing, perhaps, perhaps some more convolute—
association
was an atevi word, one with emotional depth, and implicit unity.
Coalition
of interests seemed more apt, a human way of operating quite similar and quite different from ways atevi would understand.

“I’ll reserve what we’ve discussed,” he said, “and we’ll continue discussing it. This venue is secure. It’s one reason I encouraged you to come here. I hope you’ll come back.”

“Every intention to,” Kroger said.

It was a success, an unqualified success, Bren said to himself. Obstacles were falling down left and right because the situation mandated cooperation and old, old rivalries and attitudes didn’t survive the encounter. It wasn’t
his
triumph; it was the triumph of basic common sense, after a long night of bad decisions. Three years of diminished power for Gaylord Hanks and Mospheirans had gathered up their wits and brought the likes of Ginny Kroger into striking distance of a patient, lifelong work. The pro-spacers had made their move.

Thank
God
, he thought.

The servants had carried on their business in near-silence, dealing in small signals, whisking courses onto and off the table. Only at the end, Bren signaled Narani to come and meet the guests, whom he introduced in Ragi, with translation, and said, in Mosphei’, “A nod of the head is courteous. One doesn’t rise or take their hands.”

His guests showed that courtesy; the servant staff lined up and bowed in great delight, and there were smiles all around, that gesture both species, both remote genetic heritages, shared… he’d never so much wondered at it or thought it odd until he saw Bindanda and Kroger smile at each other, both looking entirely self-conscious, each in their own native way… convenient in an upright species to unfocus the hunting gaze, perhaps, this bowing and smiling: hard to glare and smile simultaneously.

“Very fine,” he said in Ragi. “Thank you, Narani-ji, so very much. Is the staff managing with Kaplan-nadi and with Ben-nadi?”

“Very well, nandi,” Narani said, sounding pleased with himself; and courtesies wended toward a late drink and a social moment, which stretched on uncommonly at table. They were short of a sitting room and the lord’s bedchamber seemed less appropriate for foreign guests.

Narani had put together a supper for Shugart, alone at her post; and that ended up in Feldman’s hands as the guests departed, with Banichi and Tano and Jago there to bid them all a farewell, Kaplan in his array of electronics… he had at least put off the eyepiece to have supper, and had stuffed himself with food and fruit sweets, so Bren discovered.

“He liked them quite emphatically,” Jago said, “and had eaten far too much to enjoy them, and wished more. So we quite by chance suggested through Ben-nadi that he put some in his pockets.”

“He was very pleased,” Tano said. “Like Jase, he had never had such strong tastes.”

“One hopes he is careful,” Bren said.

Fruits. Vegetables. Jase called them water-tastes and earth-tastes, and said they made his nose water. It hadn’t stopped him making himself sick on them. Tano knew, and he trusted Tano had warned Kaplan before stuffing his pockets full.

Fruit sweets.

Kaplan’s first taste.
There
was one of the likely first imports. Jase had said he would miss the fruit most of all.

And wouldn’t have to miss it long, if the meeting tomorrow went well, and if they gained agreement with the captains.

Send and receive produced no messages from Toby. A
hello
,
and I have made up our arguments and everything’s fine
would have capped off the evening beyond any fault.

But that there wasn’t… that was understandable. He’d been too damned much in Toby’s life the last several years; it was more than time to leave Toby to settle his own life, his own marriage… his own kids. He had to keep hands off.

Meanwhile he had a small flood of messages answering the morning’s mail, answers from the mainland, a note from the office asking on what priority they might be translating the transmission of what was, in effect, the archive, and
that
was a question that deserved an answer on better information than he had at the moment. He needed to compose a query to the University to see whether they might release what index they compiled.

Algini, meanwhile, was freed from his isolation, having had supper slipped in to his station. His security needed a briefing, and he provided it, a rapid, Ragi digest of what he had discussed with Kroger and Lund.

“Computer-operated machines,” he said, but that was too cumbersome.
Roboti
sounded distressingly like a vulgar word for lunatic, which would never inspire atevi workers to trust them.

“Botiin.” he said, which sounded like
guide
or
ruler
. “Like manufacturing machines, but capable of traveling out to the job, in the very dangerous regions. One sits back in safety and directs them.”

“Air traffic control,” Banichi said, which summed up a great deal of what atevi thought odd about Mospheiran ways, a system about which there was
still
fierce debate, regarding individual rights of way and historic precedences,
and
felicity of numbers.

He had to laugh, ruefully so, foreseeing a battle on his hands—but one he could win.

One he
would
win. “I have a letter to write to Tabini,” he said to his earnest staff. “I want you to help me make it
sound
better than air traffic control.”

They thought
that
was funny, and he went off to his evening shower with that good humor, undressed, preoccupied with the explanation of robots, entered the shower, preoccupied with the query about translation of an index for atevi access to the archive.

He scrubbed vigorously, happier than he’d been in years.

He expected a counter-offer tomorrow. He also expected
not
to get one. Possibly the captains were making an approach to Kroger’s party, and certainly the captains were informed the guests had been putting their heads together in private discussions. There would be anxiousness on that score.

The water went cold. Bitter, burning cold. Pitch darkness. Silence.

“Damn!” he shouted, for a moment lost, then galvanized by the sense of emergency. He exited the shower, in the utter dark, feeling his way.

And saw a faint light, a hand torch, in the hallway.

Atevi shadows moved out there. One light source came in, bearing a hand torch, spotting him in the light. He flung his arms up and the light diverted, bounced off the walls in more subdued fashion.

“The power seems to have failed,” Jago said.

“I’m all over lather,” he said, still shaken. “Things were going entirely too well, I fear. Nadi-ji, please inform the staff. Power here is life and death. I trust the fuel cylinders in the galley will hold a while for warmth, but I understand warmth can go very quickly. Be moderate with them. Gather the staff near the galley.”

“They should last a time,” Jago said. “So should our equipment.” Bindanda joined her, and moved in dismay to offer a robe.

He accepted it. “Warm water, if you please.” Outrageous demands were not outrageous if it meant giving the staff something to do, and he was covered in soap. “I’ll finish my bath.”