The tracks clicked at a rate now that told him the engineer had clearance all the way, and that they were doubtless inconveniencing trains all over the system. They were late. But they were going to get him off the planet. If they were rushing like this, they were going to make it.

The train took a hard right turn, the last. Jago got up and restored the juice glass to the rack, untroubled by the motion of the car.

They had made the airport spur with that turn, not destined for the public terminal, but to the far end of the airport, which handled diplomatic cargo, spacebound cargo, and occasionally explosives, curious juxtaposition.

They braked. “Plenty of time,” Banichi said.

Another exposure to daylight and the chance of assassins. Bren personally gathered up his computer, but willingly entrusted it to Jago’s offered hand. The body armor chafed. He tugged at it, straightened his cuffs and saw to his pockets—ready for a dash once the train stopped.

“The packages made it into baggage?” He even hesitated to ask, amid more serious difficulties his staff had had to track.

“Early this morning, nadi-ji. No worry.”

The video games for staff had made it, then, likewise Bindanda’s request for two particular spices. And the treats… those were his idea. He wished he’d been able to think of something appropriate for Jase—something that wouldn’t touch on Jase’s longing to be down here and cause more frustration than it cured.

The car’s doors opened on a daylight he had last seen from his apartment windows before the ceremony. The view beside the car was a vast tract of concrete, a clouded sky—blue-green foliage walled off by a high fence. A van was waiting for the train, but it would not be Tano and Algini backing Banichi and Jago up this time—no: two more of Tabini’s own, stationed there to swear to the van’s integrity.

He made the small jump down—a small atevi-scale jump that jolted his knees—to the siding. Jago brought all the hand-baggage, a trifle to her strength, and escorted him briskly to the waiting van—holding back just that small bit that let Banichi double-check that the driver and the guard were indeed Tabini’s agents. Members of the Assassins’ Guild knew one another socially, so to speak—shot at one another, under contract, that being their job, but exchanged pleasant words at other times.

Clearly everything did check. Banichi signaled them, and they boarded.

They weregoing to make it. Bren believed it now, heaved a long sigh as he hit the seat and the door shut. The van moved. Chain-link fence and blue-green scrub gave way to a wide panorama.

Then the shuttle came in view, on the runway.

Sleek and white: Shai-shan, oldest of the fleet, the first shuttle built and the one whose crew they knew best.

Fear of flying be damned, Bren thought—it was far safer than where he had just been. It was safer than the whole planet had become—in terms of schemes and plots, and those, in atevi society, were never without consequence.

They halted right at the bottom of the cargo lift… cargo lifts still serving for personnel, a minor economy in a program otherwise making progress hand over fist. They were in time. They exited the van in haste, walked up onto the platform.

One could hold a transcontinental airliner half an hour or so, but the calculations were made for Shai-shan: she rode favorable numbers, and her ground crew didn’t like to revise them. Stewards at the open hatch door above waved at them anxiously.

A wind was blowing cold as, with a bang and a jolt of the hydraulics, they rose up and up to the open hatch. Banichi spoke to someone on his pocket com, confirming their arrival.

They’d made it.

Chapter 2

Air inside was immediately warmer. “Have I time to shed the coat?” Bren asked, and the steward said there was at least that, yes, nadi.

Bren immediately peeled off the coat, with Jago’s help—slipped out of the heavy vest and let the stewards, who were well accustomed to such precautions, stow coat and vest discreetly in baggage.

Hand-baggage went, too. All but the computer. Jago had that, and kept it.

In the democracy of the space effort—and a single, rear-boarded aisle—they passed alongside atevi station workers bound for their jobs in orbit—most back from leave, a few first-timers. Bren knew no few names, and a few rose, bowing under the cramped overhead. “Thank you, nadiin,” Bren said. “Thank you.” He found himself exhausted, after very little exertion for days—very little exertion, and a great deal of tension. He wanted his seat, which was always up in the front, where the steward was waiting. He made what haste he could.

“Nandi.” The steward’s position marked his proposed seat, not quite the first row, this time, but close.

The forward steward he knew very well—having shared with this crew and the shuttle team the effort that consumed their lives and energies. These were zealots, enthusiasts for the program. He was intheir association; they were inhis. Boarding, he was alreadyhome.

But there were, among atevi—not too unexpectedly—a handful of human passengers, too, in the middle batch of seats. They were going up, workers who’d flown over from the island to catch the shuttle up to their jobs.

And his own seat, forward, turned out to have a human companion—a surprise, and a very pleasant one. He likedGinny Kroger, and had by no means expected her on this flight.

Not his age, not his field, no longer his country… unless one counted the station itself, which for purposes of allegiances, he did. Virginia Kroger was gray-haired, thin, a woman with a fierce sobriety, a mouth that gave nothing away until she absolutely astonished a novice with a grin. No fashion-plate: she wore a thick gray, ugly as sin cardigan and doubtless had an equally unstylish parka in storage: Ginny always complained of the chill on flights, and was usually prepared: count on it.

“Gin.” He saw now that rank and courtesy had handed him this seatmate, and probably Banichi and Jago had foreknown that before they boarded. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to Jago and Banichi.

They took his meaning—certainly had no need to protect him from Gin, and no need to spend the flight pretending not to understand a word of Mosphei’, either.

“No difficulty,” Banichi said. The two of them had their reading and their amusements, and the hand-baggage that contained them.

It was his first chance to talk with Ginny in half a year. The moment they reached the station, duty would take them to two different zones. And her presence on station was very rare. “How’s the island?” he asked, settling in beside her.

“Wet,” Ginny said. Of course. It was spring. Rain was a given. “How’s the mainland?”

“Wet. Security-heavy. The aiji’s holding a family ceremony— thatwas the must-see that brought me down to here, it turns out.” He bet that Gin had had a briefing from the Department of State as well as her own wing, Science, and knew he was here, but without an understanding, he couldn’t give her a reason. “But I suppose I agree with the call: I did need to be here.” Grand negligence. Let Shawn be as puzzled as he was… until he learned something.

The hatch had already shut. The passenger comfort systems had come up. Now Shai-shan’sengines roared to life.

“Welcome aboard,” the copilot said over the intercom, and began the rollout litany, the set of instructions, the list of horrors that a nervous flier hardly liked to listen to, but needed to, no matter how experienced: what to do if the takeoff roll aborted, what to do if they had to evacuate… all the scenarios in which a passenger had any choice.

Mostly there was no choice: there were few runways long enough to accommodate Shai-shanif something went wrong.