“But this is the station, young aiji. This is our own station.” Could the boy have missed that detail? “We shall have your birthday, and then catch the next shuttle down to the planet, to Shejidan, to your father and your mother. Will you not like that?”

“Maybe.”

Oh, maybe? Only maybe? He was freezing, at the moment, but this was a very distressed young lad, who evinced only minimal interest in his own parents.

“What is this doubt, young aiji? You surely wish to see your father and mother.”

“Yes.”

“So what should make you fret, young aiji?”

“So shall I see Artur and Bjorn and Irene and Gene after I go down to Shejidan? Shall I ever see them again?”

He was caught with his mouth open, ready arguments all useless. He had had all the adult arguments ready, regarding a boy’s childish disappointment about a birthday—but could he possibly answer that one?

No, in all due honesty—he could not say that the little band would not be broken, this time by circumstances none of the youngsters’ cleverness could overcome… a gravity well, human protectiveness of their children, and atevi sensibilities no different.

He was, however, an optimist. He took a longer view than a boy could. “You are no ordinary boy,” he said, “and you have a father who, if you ask him in the best way, may afford a shuttle ride for your young associates, supposing their parents will agree.”

“And will they allow it, nandi?”

“It may take a little argument,” he said. He hated the scary dive into atmosphere they themselves had to make. He was sure every time he got back down to the planet that he might not personally have the nerve to get aboard the shuttle again. “If the shuttle has proved safe,” he said, “if the trip has gotten to be routine, as likely it has—” The space program itself had been new, the equipment still uncertain, even to the day they had launched. “If it has—and there is no reason to expect otherwise—much more likely they will.” He was absolutely freezing by this time, past slight shivers, the deep cold having penetrated his coat, his skin, his flesh. The warmth was leaving his bones by now, but young eyes were fixed on him, shimmering gold in the motion-lights. “Young aiji, I shall have frostbite if I linger here. I have to go quickly. But I promise I shall intercede with your father and your mother with every diplomatic skill I have, and we shall do everything possible to see your associates pay you visits.”

“Yes!” Cajeiri said, that disconcerting atevi yes, absolute, expectant, and in this instance, exultant. The topic was closed, deal done. The paidhi and he had a small secret. God help him.

“Young aiji,” Bren murmured by way of parting courtesy, ducked his head and escaped out the service access into the brighter light and comparative breath-strangling heat of the dowager’s foyer.

There was frost on his coat sleeves. His fingers would not bend.

“Bren-ji?” Jago was there, distressed for his condition, glowering at Ilisidi’s man, who quickly shut the door as the shivers seized him.

“Perfectly fine,” Bren said, trying not to let the shivers reach his voice. “I had to delay to advise the heir his festivity may be deferred. There was negotiation.” A gasp for warm air, which seemed heavy as syrup, difficult to get into his lungs. He had dealt with Tabini-aiji, and marveled how often Tabini had had the better of them. The skill was evidently inheritable. He succeeded in drawing a whole breath. “I shall call on Gin-aiji, too, nadiin-ji. A matter of courtesy.”

“Frozen through,” Banichi said, disapproving the staff that had not found a way to get him through the space-chilled corridor. Courtesy even yet would have fortified him with hot tea, if he asked, but he waved a disorganized protest, wishing no delays in his business. He had his thoughts collected, more or less, and staff’s energies were as short in supply as drinkable tea and candy, in these latter days of the voyage.

But on his way out of the dowager’s domain, paying automatic courtesies to staff, he kept ticking off in his head the little list of necessary duties, the people who needed to know, in his small society aboard a ship with over five thousand humans, all of whom knew his face, but of whom he only knew a handful.

Gin Kroger—Dr. Virginia Kroger—was their robotics expert, chief of robotics engineering, essential to their success, once upon a time, and glad to be completely useless on the way home. Gin-ji, as the Ragi language had it, nowadays spent her time at her computer, designing and tinkering, as she put it, like a teenager, enjoying a year of unprecedented leisure to create and hypothesize instead of supervise and shepherd scholarly grant requests through committees.

She designed one hell of a race car, that was certain, and the design wars and the toy car races between her engineers and his atevi staff had drawn bets from ship crew as well as bets from her own staff and the two atevi households. If explosives had been part of the rules, no question Banichi and Cenedi would carry the day—but it was sheer speed and agility, involving an obstacle course through several blocked-off corridors, so it was even odds who would win this round. The trophy, an undrunk bottle of brandy adorned with ribbons, had gone back and forth numerous times.

And dared he recall that it was not alone Cajeiri’s birthday that was upset by this arrival? Bets were already laid. A great deal of planning had been done. The bottle had sat in Gin’s office for two weeks. There had to be vindication.

On down the hall, past the atevi-zone security doors by the lift, and through a set of doors to the right, they reached a hall quite happy in its humanly linear arrangements, a hall that lacked compensatory wall-hangings to keep the place harmonious and the ship safe, and instead had the racing odds taped up, the whole record of events.

Both the human and the atevi wings of five-deck society lived by numbers and design, each in their own way.

There was no guard, no sentry. He knocked on Gin’s door. “News,” he called out. “News, Gin.”

In the splendid informality of Mospheiran ways.

The door opened.

“I heard!” Gray-haired, age-impervious pixie Gin flung her arms about him—went so far as to pat Banichi and Jago on the arm, no matter the visible twitch of hair-triggered nerves, likely in their apprehension she might hug them. “I heard!”

“They say we’re dropping out extremely close to the station,” he said. “I hope this is good news. Jase stopped here, too?”

“He called, at least. Come in. Everybody come in. Can I get you a sandwich?”

It wasn’t that large a cabin, but Gin was already hosting Jerry and Barnhart, amid the detritus of dinner.

“We’ve eaten,” he said.

“Well, you can certainly drink. We should crack that bottle.”

“I suppose you should. You have it.”

“Pour him one. Pour them one,” Gin said, intending Banichi and Jago to join them.

“No, in all good will, nand’ Gin,” Banichi said. “We shall stand. You won quite fairly.”

They were on duty, freely translated. And hadn’t won, and wouldn’t partake. But the paidhi wasn’t, well, not that much on duty. It was after dinner, and he sat down long enough to pay the courtesies and share a small glass of very excellent Midlands brandy.

“We were going to call you. We’ll send half to your quarters. It’s only fair.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Half and half. We won’t get a chance tomorrow. Have to drink it all tonight. You’d better take half. We don’t want to be hung over when we make drop.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” he said. “And I can’t stay long. I have to get back to my staff.”

“To good comrades!” Jerry proposed next. It was not quite that deadly word friend. And then: “To success!”

“To success,” he said, lifting his small glass. And, perhaps due to that one sip of brandy, it began to truly sink in that they had indeed made it, that they were on the threshold of home, that, thanks to them, angry aliens would not show up on the world’s collective doorstep—well, there were a few complications, and a great difficulty yet to enable them to cast loose from the Reunioners’ past mistakes, not to mention that they still had a few human troublemakers aboard. They had rescued from certain oblivion something near five thousand people—some more grateful than others. They averted an alien war certain people’s stupidity had done its best to start. And they had gotten themselves back with minimal losses.