“She’d been talking with Paulson, and I asked about what. It’s my job, to ask.”

Paulson. Head of Mospheiran operations.

“And she called Mospheira,” Jase added, “and said it was personal.”

She’d served there. But in the last number of years she hadn’t called Mospheira. Didn’t knowanybody on Mospheira, that he knew of, not in the personal sense. And now he knew.

“Who did she call?”

“Don’t know. I thought I ought to have asked. Maybe it was an old friend. But Paulson isn’t. And all of a sudden I’m the villain. I don’t figure her.”

Yolanda Mercheson, the third paidhi, the one originally destined between the ship and Mospheira—as Jase was the ship-paidhi, translator between the ship and Tabini… and him.

Well, a fractured romance was one thing. But having Yolanda start making phone calls between Paulson and Mospheira, on her own?

He left for a few days and things didgo to hell.

“Can you trace who she called?”

“I might. It’s not my job, now.”

“Does Ramirez know?”

A heavy sigh. “I told him. What he said to her, I don’t know. But she was in a mood. Called me a few names. Hell of it is, I don’t know if it’s a personal matter, and I can’t find out—and if Iask, it’s personal and she’s not talking.” Jase gave a short, unhappy laugh. “You said, never let the job get into my personal life, and vice versa. You were right. It did. It shouldn’t have. Now that I’ve blown the alarm on her, I’m wrong. She’s broken regs for a personal call, she’s in deep trouble and of course now it’s all my fault.”

Yolanda Mercheson was as glum and methodical a young woman as Jase was high-voltage. Small wonder that relationship hadn’t worked, logical as it might have seemed at the time between two people effectively shipwrecked.

“A pickle.”

“As in dinner menu?”

“As in a hashed-up mess.”

“I don’t want this job, Bren. Hell, Ramirez doesn’t even need my vote in council. No one dissents. No one argues. I suggested he move Yolanda into the seat in my place. I guess my report this week didn’t encourage that, did it?”

“And Ramirez said, then?”

“Didn’t even look up. Said I was doing just fine: that I understood the atevi. Never mind I don’t have any other qualification and I couldn’t handle ops if the instructions were printed on the console… which they’re not. ‘That’s fine,’ the old man said. ‘You’re doing just fine. Yolanda couldn’t do what you do. Stay put.’ Not damned fair, I say, when the most Iwant out of life is to get on the ocean down there on a boat and just get out of this.”

“That’s not what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want, to tell the truth. I know I never want to handle ops. I don’t want to handle command. I could live off a diet of fish.”

“If we’re really lucky, you won’t ever have to do anything about ops.”

“Or Yolanda.”

“You’re doing fine. Geigi favors you. You give him great confidence, just knowing you’re in office.”

“I’m glad he’s confident. I don’t like what’s going on.”

“Tabini isn’t at all unhappy to have one of the paidhiin sitting as captain up here: that’s an understatement. It gives himconfidence. The whole aishidi’tatis pleased to have you right where you are. We don’t need Yolanda making independent judgments.”

“Damned right we don’t.”

“I’ll talk to her. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

“She’ll know. But at this point, hell if I care. Maybe youcan get yea or nay out of the Old Man.”

“I can. Trust me.” He hadn’t mentioned the thing Jase would most want to know. “ Ginny’sback. We’ve got robots.”

Hopeful quirk of an eyebrow. “Movement on the robots?”

“No. Freed. Liberated. Strike’s settled. The initial load’s just come up.”

“Damn!” It was an entirely cheerful damn.

“In the station’s receiving area, by now. I imagine she’s notifying Ramirez even as we sit here.”

“When did thatclear?”

“Evidently very fast. Didn’t have any idea, either, until I met Gin on the flight. I think she’sescaping from the planet before one of the company execs can ask a return favor.”

“Oh, this is good news.”

“Looks as if everything’s going to move. We’re going to open the next section, first we can. I’ve got the figures, labor and support. Geigi will get his fish tanks.”

“And the Old Man’s going to be in a farbetter mood all around.”

He’d certainly made Jase’s evening. The unlovely little autobots were the backbone of the fueling and refit operation, and Ramirez had requisitioned a crippling number of them into his refueling and mining the last three years. They were finished with that—and now that they were finished, able to divert the robots back to other priorities, finally, the labor dam broke, and they had the autobots’ next generation.

But it wasn’t too late. It meant they could accelerate station operations, and accelerate ship-building: everythingwas going to break loose.

And damned if Yolanda Mercheson was going to conduct some personal business on official channels in the middle of it. Yolanda wasn’t going to be happy with him, either, before all was said and done, not if she’d been carrying on some personal business on Mospheira without going through channels—or if she’d been running some deal for Paulson without telling her fellow paidhiin. There was no legal sanction for the latter, and she wasn’t paidhi to the island any longer. He didn’t know whether to go and talk to her on what was clearly a sore spot. Between them, these days, there almost wasn’t a friendship, but he could at least make his displeasure known. He could talk to Paulson and make Paulson less anxious to go that route, if Paulson was making trouble—and a sad state of affairs if he was, and if he’d gotten Yolanda to do something that proved the final split from Jase.

“I’ll be talking to Geigi after breakfast tomorrow, if I can arrange it,” Bren told Jase. “I’ll promise him his tanks… I assume he gets his tanks. Any reason against it, before I set that promise in motion?”

“You aren’t talking to the decision-making wing of the Captain’s Council. Remember?”

You’re still one of the captains, Bren thought, but there it was: Jase flatly refused to wield the power. At times it was more than inconvenient, but it was Jase’s notion of honor, and there was no getting by it.

They had a second brandy, all the same, and talked about Geigi, Geigi’s boat—the object of Jase’s daydreams of ocean sailing—quiet talk at the end of a long, long week of hurry-up and changed plans, homecoming, and, thank God, arrival of the robots, that solved so many problems.

Bren found his eyelids at half mast, apologized, and Jase excused himself: “You’d better get to bed,” Jase said. The rigors of travel were, curiously, another matter ship-folk had to learn about, and most didn’t quite understand: the notion of packing one’s belongings in a suitcase and rushing breakneck from point to point was something Jase had only experienced on a planet.

“Good of you to come,” Bren said, saw Jase to the door himself, and added, because he meant it, “Very good of you to come. Do it again soon.”

Fact was, he missed Jase. Didn’t know how he would manage if Jase ever moved back in, since the affair with Jago had gone beyond affair, and gotten to be the next thing to married routine. But there were times a human argument, a human conversation massaged areas of his brain that felt far too little exercised… that was what it was, he thought: too little stimulation of the human that was left in him. Not good. Not at all good, for the human organism. He didn’t know, before Ginny on the shuttle today, how long it had been since he’d had a lengthy social conversation with another human being.

Immediately after that, the brandy hit him with full force, persuading him that bed was just about the last objective he could reasonably achieve. Sensibly, he wantedto talk to Banichi and Jago tonight about a number of things, and dutifully, he should have advised his staff and settled down for an all-night debrief. Jago waited for him in the security post, still official and still in uniform, well, down to the tee-shirt, at least—but debriefing wasn’t what she’d been led to expect tonight. Sleepwas reasonably what she thought she had coming, and she, who’d been on outside duty for hours, took precedence over Tano and Algini who’d had only on-site duty, off and on.