Then he wiped that out, starting with I just promised… and interposed what he knew he had to write: I want to get over to the island as soon as I can to see you and catch up on things.

It was the most delicate way he knew to phrase what sat at the back of his thoughts, that he didn’t know whether their mother was still alive, that he’d ducked up to the station without a visit to the Island the last time he’d been on the planet, and she’d fallen critically ill while he was setting out on this mission. Guilt gnawed at him, for that desertion. And what could he say, not knowing? What had he ever been able to say when they were only a narrow strait away?

Thanks for seeing to family, brother. I had no choice. I had to leave.

A thousand times, he’d had to say that to Toby. And right now, among things he didn’t know, he didn’t know whether to address his brother as you and Jill and the kids the way he’d used to, because the last time he’d talked to Toby, Jill had walked out on him, Jill having finally drawn the line in the sand about Toby kiting off to stay a week at a time at their mother’s every crisis.

The problem was, the pattern of minor health emergencies that their mother had started, planned or unplanned, as a ploy to get her sons home more often had extended into their mother’s truly serious crises. And he’d not been able to tell the real ones from the ones in which he’d take emergency leave, duck over to the island, and the next morning find her risen from her bed and making pancakes for breakfast, for “her boys,” who’d just put their work and, in his case, the affairs of nations on hold to get to her bedside.

Truth was, their being there had cured what ailed her, since what ailed her was not having her sons with her and not being interested in a life beyond “her boys.”

Barb had shown up, late in her life, Barb, the woman he’d nearly married… and failing a marriage to him, Barb had practically moved in with his mother, not that he’d wanted that solution. Barb had put herself in the position of his mother’s caretaker and confidant, scheming what, he was never sure, but at least their mother had had Barb, for what she was worth.

She’d had Barb and she’d had Toby, who’d gone to their mother’s side even when Jill laid down the law and took the kids away with her.

So what did he say to his brother? Just… I’m coming to the Island, as soon as I can? That covered all possibilities, including the possibility the worst had happened in their mother’s case and in Jill’s, and that Toby had laid it all at his door.

Toby, I have so much to talk about, so much to tell you, so much to ask. I hope to God everything’s gone well at home. I’ve tried not to dwell on it in this letter because when I do, it takes over my thinking and magnifies in the dark, and there’s been a lot of dark out here.

Enough of that. If we come in as close as they’re saying, this should be the very last entry before I actually hear your voice on the phone, and I’m so looking forward to that. I’ll transmit this letter as soon as possible and call you from the station, as soon as I can get to a phone.

Forgive me all my failings, which I know are many. As brothers go, you’re a saint. I want to pay you back everything…

No, strike the last paragraph. He knew he never would be able to pay Toby back what he owed. He knew that Shejidan would have work for him and he’d be lucky to get over to the Island in the first two months he was back—but he was going to fight hard for that visit to be earlier.

He was deceiving himself. Three days. Honestly speaking, except in times of intense crisis, he could almost always manage three days off. That was historically how long it took his family to run out of good will and get down to issues, which was, in his experience, just about time to head for the airport. Wasn’t that what he’d always done?

He’d just depressed his high spirits. Thinking about his family reliably did that.

That was why he always wrote last to Tabini, which let him report what he’d done right, and the success they’d had, which drew his mind off the Island and Toby’s problems.

Aiji-ma, Jase-aiji informs us we are about to emerge into the solar system. When we do, I shall be able to transmit this letter to you, and within a day, I hope to hear your voice. Within a handful of days I look forward to being in Shejidan again, and to making a full report of all we have seen and done.

I look forward to returning to you the young lord your son, at the completion of his seventh year, as he is pleased to remind us. We are delighted by his general good grace at the collapse of plans for a proper acknowledgment of this anniversary and hope that my lord may in person and more fitly congratulate this young man, since young man he has indeed become, as tall as I am, wise beyond his years and always your son, aiji-ma, to the dowager’s satisfaction and the delight of myself and my staff. I shall forever treasure my two years with him, and hope that what small guidance I may have given him has been appropriate and useful.

Long life and health, aiji-ma, from myself and all my household.

He folded up the computer and rang for staff, looking around his little cabin, his green-sheeted, growing world for the last two years.

Jeladi showed up to help him undress for a before-bed shower—staff would have been greatly distressed if he had ducked their good offices, and in truth, if Jeladi nabbed his clothes, laundry would end up done before 0416h, items would end up in the right bags, and the exactly appropriate suit would turn up clean and ready in the morning. He gave his staff as little trouble as possible, knowing that they would have minimal rest tonight. He hadn’t checked the lockers in his cabin, but he would lay bets that most of them were empty by now, void of all his small personal items, and that they had kept out only those things they thought he might use before bed, for dressing in the morning, and for whatever amount of time—hours or a day or so—it might take them to get to dock and get to their own apartment.

Their own apartment. That was a thought. His own stationside bed. It seemed impossible he could be enjoying that comfort in the near future.

He had a leisurely hot shower, slid between the sheets and ordered the lights to minimum.

Jago might not show up tonight. He wished she would: her living presence kept him from pre-emergence nerves, just by her being there. But that was not likely. Jago and Banichi and the whole staff would be scrambling to break down the roomful of technical equipment in their monitoring station, equipment which had grown increasingly interlaced with ship-sensors. That would foreseeably take a little longer to disconnect and pack than it had to haul out of its padding and set up, and getting the crates out of cargo and all the gear into those crates was going to be a scramble.

So here he was, eyes open, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and now the thoughts started—worries about things he might need once ashore.

Worries, more substantial, about the human contingent they were bringing the station and the world—bringing not alone a pack of children intent on birthday gifts—but the population, the entire surviving population of a defunct station that had once ruled the Phoenix and set policy for all humans in reach. The Reunioners included the old Pilots’ Guild, that had ruled the station they now governed, for starters, and when they had been in power, had so alienated his own colonist ancestors that they had dived onto the atevi planet to get away from them.

Well, the tables were entirely turned now. Atevi ruled the station, and human descendants of those refugees were the shopkeepers and a good part of the technicians on it.

It wasn’t the xenophobic station the Reunioners had once ruled. And the poison of the old Pilots’ Guild wouldn’t spread into today’s station. The station occupants and the current crew of the ship wouldn’t let it.