“Jase is coming,” he said to Banichi and Jago when he passed the small security station.

“Shall we include Jasi-ji?” Narani asked, following him.

“He won’t stay, I much doubt it,” Bren said. “But he will come. We’ll have vodka, Rani-ji, in the sitting room. Might there be a fire?”

“Immediately, nandi.”

Jase being under other orders, it wasn’t proper, he suspected, to include Jase in his personal arrangements, not for the sake of a few hours. If he undermined Jase’s status as an independent representative of his ship, and if the captains took exception, that could prove a distraction. Only if Jase asked. Then they should, and he’d deal with the difficulties.

He didn’t want a fracture in his understandings with Jase—above all else, he didn’t.

And sure enough, Jase arrived not a minute later, in his jersey and that wretched jacket.

The servants fussed and made despairing motions toward taking the jacket, but Jase complained of chill.

Bren said not a word, only showed him to the sitting room and offered him a chair by a just-lit fire.

Narani himself brought them ice, glasses, a crystal flask of Mospheiran vodka, set it on the side table and poured in that practiced efficiency that never seemed rushed, that seemed to urge the same deliberate slowing of pace on the whole household. Narani served them, received Jase’s quiet thanks, and ebbed silently out the door, shutting it as he went.

“Cheers,” Jase said, in his own dialect, lifted his glass and took a sip.

Bren took a sip of his own, second for the evening; but it was an uncommon evening.

A damned uncommon evening.

“I am sorry, Jase. I was utterly blind to this one; to the last, I didn’t see it.”

“I have no trouble believing it.”

“You didn’t say you’d had supper with Ilisidi.”

A blink. “I did.”

“I know you did. So did I. Whydid she come?”

“I’ve not a clue,” Jase said.

“Do you think she knew what was up?”

“I’m not surprised at anything where she’s concerned. Or Tabini.” Jase added: “I’d like to have stayed. Selfishly speaking. Is this, honestly, not cleared with the Pilots’ Guild?”

“Of course it isn’t. Does Tabini clear any damn thing?”

“No,” Jase said. “Of course he doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t want the Guild to build its entire impression of atevi from you or from Yolanda, either.”

“It wouldn’t be an accurate impression.”

“More accurate than the Mospheiran delegation would give them, I’ll tell you. I don’t trust Ginny Kroger.”

“She’s angry at you,” Jase said.

Bren shook his head. “Angry doesn’t matter with her. I’m afraid she’s a type, and unless she changes her attitude about me, which she came in with, I don’t like the idea of her shaping policy.”

“You have to admit you’ve pushed them.”

“ Iknow that. I don’t think it matters a damn to Kroger’s opinion. She’s set on her own way. Until she believes she’s not on Mospheira, she won’t modify her opinion; and I’m afraid she’s going to discover it after she’s gotten into negotiations.”

Jase didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “How long are you up there?”

“Two weeks. Just until the shuttle goes down.”

“If the shuttle’s on schedule.”

“Fifty-fifty so far.” That was the shuttle’s on-time departure percentage. So far, the shuttle had had no serious mechanical problems, no disaster. “Crossing fingers. I’m not against staying longer. I’d liketo get you back down when I go. If you wantme to do that.”

“I want to be able to go back and forth.—I want them not to blow up when they find out they’ve got unscheduled guests.”

“You think they will.”

“I know they will.” A small laugh, not amused. “They’ll survive it. They’ll be glad, on one level. But I get to explain Banichi to Ramirez.”

“Think the quarters are ready?”

“I damned well doubt they are. Nothing gets prioritized until it’s an emergency. There’s just not enough personnel.”

“We can fix that. If you can get us Ramirez’s seal on this.”

Ramirez: senior captain, the one who’d managed all the atevi contact, the one Jase called something akin to a father, if fatherhood was a signature on an authorization. Of the four captains, it was Ramirez who’d had the vision of a trade empire uniting this station with their outpost at a distant star, and Ramirez who’d had all his plans fall in ashes with the alien attack.

It was Ramirez who’d brought Phoenixhome to the station at this star, hoping for a thriving station, and help.

And the planner in all this grand design for how humanity in this lost end of space should reunite and support the ship, was likewise Ramirez.

“You’re going to be our most valuable resource,” Bren said soberly.

“Don’t count on me for any say.”

“I know. I understand you’re in a difficult position. Andin a certain amount of power, if you’ll use it.”

Jason’s shoulders drew in as if, even with the jacket, he felt a chill. “Symbolic. Ramirez’s project. We were that; we were supposed to inspire the crew… back when this contact was supposed to bring the whole circle together. But as far as power beyond Ramirez’s good opinion, I don’t have it. With Tamur…” That was another of the captains. “I certainly don’t have it.”

“Why did they call you back?”

Jase’s eyes lifted, direct, worried.

“ Whydid they call you back?” Bren repeated the question. “We didn’t expect it. Might Yolanda have said something?”

“She might have, inadvertently. Maybe they just think it’s time.—Maybe it istime.”

“Tabini thinks so.” Bren drew a breath, took the plunge. “Tabini wants the station.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I’m not surprised you’re not surprised. That’s the condition. Mospheira running the station? They can’t site a public park without a chain of committees. If this alien threat materializes, someone’s got to make decisions as fast as the captains do. Mospheira won’t do it. They know one thing: the history that drove them onto the planet. Freedom is down here. The faction that wants to be up there—isn’t the best of Mospheira. In my own biased opinion, the captains can’t deal with them either. There’s too muchhistory in common, too many old issues.”

“Tabini and the captains sharing power?” Jase said, his lips hardly moving. “That’s not easy, either.”

“It has to work.”

Jase and he had talked about the eventuality before, even the complexity of Mospheira’s quest after space, a quest Bren himself had furthered until the anti-atevi Heritage Party had seized the government, diverted the program to their own issue… until criminal elements had applied force to scientists and idealists, scared some, killed some, converted some. It had been a narrow thing three years ago, when reasonable people, greater in number on Mospheira, had pitched the scoundrels out and discovered the game they were up to. Knowledge of a threat outside the atmosphere hadn’t, however, convinced reasonable people they should go back to space when Phoenix, that old bugbear of Mospheiran legend, had just returned asking for laborers and foretelling wars in space.

The average Mospheiran wanted to go on having his job and his beachside vacations, raising his kids, believing that if there was a war in space, it wasn’t a threat to the planet… and that linchpin of Mospheiran faith: if they didn’t contact any aliens, aliens would be more likely to leave them alone.

It was even possible that Mospheirans were right. The question was whether the aliens in question would recognize the difference between Mospheirans and Phoenixcrew, when Phoenixcame here for help. Some bet their lives that the aliens would be wise, and discriminate.

Bren didn’t. Tabini didn’t bet atevi would remain immune from retaliation, either. Nonchalance was a position from which, if wrong, there was very little chance of recovery.