And that meant the carefully channeled interface was flung wide open, everyone exposed to the same stresses that had brought them to war before. Now with more lethal weapons, more power at their disposal—but with strangers supposedly looming on the horizon, strangers with a grudge, a grievance, or pure native aggression: no one was sure, least of all the human crew of Phoenix, who had seen their handiwork—they waited desperately to be invaded, and their children lost faith that the invaders would come.

The cultural differences, the biological differences that had led atevi to attack the early settlers were continually with them… now known and laughed at, on both sides, but those differences still tweaked live nerves in moments of frustration.

A worker, human or atevi, who couldn’t overcome his own biologically-generated anger and laugh at a situation, had to ship out—he got a quit-bonus for his honesty, but all the same, he had to ship out.

And thus far, years into the project, they’d only had to ship out—what, fourteen, fifteen, out of hundreds? Not too bad a record… thus far. The two species had changed their cultures to fit—somewhat.

They’d developed a stationside culture of interspecies jokes, that was one thing—some bawdy and some stupid. Mospheiran experts had wanted to silence them, but atevi had let them run, and the ship humans had contributed the framework and Mospheirans took to it. A human team and an atevi team had a contest, one such joke began…

There was a whole series of those, that usefully illustrated species differences, cultural differences, and made two species laugh. That was the good news. No one had gotten mad. That was the other good news.

We have to get alonghad become the common sentiment between humans and atevi aloft, at least.

Aloft, and being over sixteen, they still believed in the invaders.

They just tended to forget about them, for long, long stretches in which the company contests or the prospect of a machimi play took precedence.

The flight, bumpy for a while, smoothed out. The vodka and fruit juice arrived. Bren sipped it and drew a long, long breath. The screen showed nothing but darkening blue ahead of them.

Chapter 3

The vodka was down to icemelt, they were on their way in deep vacuum, and take-off nerves were quieter. Banichi and Jago, in the seats opposite, were reading manuals.

With Ginny, there was at least a wealth of small talk—island gossip, some of it hilarious, some of it union spats, political maneuvers that only elevated Bren’s blood pressure and tempted him to have a second vodka.

But he didn’t have to go to the island and deal with the problems, these days, and given the rare opportunity of a trip to earth, he didn’t go there, not even with family to consider. He left island politics to Ginny and Shawn and all the brave souls who had no cultural choice.

And it didn’t damned well matter to the space effort if the island politicked about the shuttle port, and took forever getting its own shuttle off the ground. Four atevi shuttles were flying—well, count Baushi, which was simply a lift engine for heavy modules: a freighter, a simple freighter, that carried passengers in a small afterthought of a module… a lot like the aircraft arrangement that had once, in simpler days, squeezed the paidhi into the regular island flight, ahead of dried fruit and pottery.

He supposed if he had missed the flight, he might possibly have caught a ride on Baushiin a few days. He tended to discount it as a passenger option, but it was. Using both spaceports, servicing two shuttles at once, one on the early and one on the late phase of mission prep while a third underwent systems-checks and cargo loading, they had a flight newly landed or about to go nearly once a week, with rare exceptions, and if Mospheira ever got it completed, Mospheira was building a runway out beyond Jackson limits to improve their narrow choice of weather.

That runway construction was a major victory for the pro-spacers like Ginny Kroger. Jackson Aerospace, moreover, was finally breaking ground for its new cargo-launch facility on Crescent Island, to the south of Mospheira.

And that, Ginny opined, meant it was really going to happen. Businesses were moving onto Crescent—not only aerospace suppliers, but companies like SunDrink and Peterson’s, intending to feed and clothe the workers. Jackson Aerospace was starting up in place of defunct Mospheiran Air… still buying its necessary aircraft from atevi Patinandi Aerospace and concentrating its own manufacturing in narrow but profitable niches—

“But over all,” Ginny said, “good news. Ifthe aiji in Shejidan gives them formal permission.”

Permission to expand out of their enclave and Crescent Island, that they had. There were other proposals for humans moving onto air-reached islands no atevi interest was ready to claim. For political reasons going back to the War of the Landing, that was a major, major concession that hadn’t happened yet.

“I favor it,” Bren said earnestly. “I think it will pass. I don’t, honestly, know whether it’s going to pass this year—” More difficult, if the legislative session in the offing now blew up. Or faster, if it didn’t. “It’s still on the table. It could move soon, if things go as well as possible.”

Better news from Ginny, the Heritage Party was still fragmenting, its idealists taking off to space and its hidebound bigots still scheming and planning a human takeover, but now a national joke, with less and less real power in their hands. In recent memory, the Heritage Party had won the Mospheiran Presidency. Now they struggled to maintain membership.

“Nand’ paidhi.” The steward brought sandwiches—a human notion long popular on the mainland—and melon, an atevi institution. “Nandi.” The latter to Ginny Kroger, with the same offering.

“Thank you,” she said, without Bren’s having to interpose a special courtesy to cover for her. She’d learned—so much. “Very fine, very fine and much appreciated.”

“Indeed,” Bren said on his own behalf. “I do favor these. Well-chosen.”

The steward was pleased.

So there was harmony in the heavens. Talk with Ginny drifted off to their former partner Tom Lund, who had been downworld and office-bound for the last two months on the Jackson heavy-lift project.

“Tom has a real gift for persuading the corporations out of their funds,” Ginny said. “He’s frustrated, but they’re moving.”

“They’re making money.”

“Everyone’s making money,” Ginny said—then added the ultimate islander objection to travel anywhere: “You can make money on the island, too, and still be home for supper.”

“You can make far moremoney running Crescent operations.” The otherMospheiran passion: finance, and the beacon of a new colonial effort.

“Try getting low-level personnel who want to live out there. That’s the thing. They’ve poured foundations. Getting the houses, getting the facilities—it’s all chasing its own tail. Mospheirans won’t go until there’s advanced plumbing and phone service.”

“Atevi would do it. Willbuild it, if Mospheirans want to sit in front of their televisions and watch it all pass.”

“Mospheira knows that. The legislature knows it. But it’s the old story: the heads of corporations don’t trust the very ones that are willing to go out there and take charge. The psychological profile of any administrator who’ll leave Mospheira worries the corporations immensely.”

“Micromanaging from remote-control,” he said. “Bad enough from one end of the island to the other. On Crescent, it’ll be a disaster, mark my words.”

“I think Crescent operations can get possibly toilet paper right now without a corporate requisition, but maybe not.”