“You know where I stand with Mospheira,” Bren said. “We knoweach other. That’s three years of good faith any other negotiators would have to do over, and—we’ve talked about this before—I’m not sure anybodyis going to understand Mospheirans oratevi who hasn’t met us in our own environment.”

“No more than you’ll understand us without being in ours,” Jase said. “Ramirez comes closest.”

“On the planet, among atevi, Tabini comes closest.”

Jase shook his head. “No. Among atevi, youcome closest. Down to the last, down to the last, I think I hoped there’d be a personal miracle. Selfish hope. It’s a dream, on this planet. You can dream there are no aliens. You can dream you can go on forever, going about your routine, having your pleasant times… that’s what the Mospheirans do, isn’t it?”

“And atevi,” Bren said. “Atevi aren’t immune to it.”

“Living a fantasy is not what they created me to do. What Ramirez didcreate me for… was to make this leap; contact; understand… report. Ramirez was the only one who understood the possibility there wouldbe Mospheirans. He thought the people we’d left behind us might have changed; the other captains didn’t think so.” A second sip, steadier. “He’d planned we’d meet a tamer situation, a safe, functioning station; that we’d present you a present: a star station and a starship to reach it, and we’d build another ship; and another; and weave this grand web that gave us all access.” Jase shook his head. “Which the alien attack demolished. We ran home. Here. And when we found what didexist, then the other captains looked at me with my language study as something other than Ramirez’s personal lunacy.”

He knew this part. He sensed Jase was going somewhere new with it. The other captains? Josefa Sabin was the second shift captain in the twenty-four-hour rotation; then Jules Ogun, and the fourth, different than they’d started with, since that man had died last year, was Pratap Tamun.

“But they don’tsee me as having authority,” Jase said.

“Then join our group. We’ll make damned sure they listen to you.”

Jase shook his head. “That would undermine Ramirez. He’s had confidence in me; I’ll back him. Just… don’t push too hard too early. Give me a day or so to sit down with Ramirez, let us put our heads together. If you’ll trust me, I’ll see if I can level with him and get his agreement.”

It posed a question, not Jase’s honesty, but how much three years of rarified diplomatic atmosphere had prepared Jase to stand on his own feet; and how much internal politics of the Pilots’ Guild would listen to reason.

“ Chei’no Ojindaro. Pogari’s Recall.”

Another machimi play. Jason’s gaze flickered first with an effort to remember, then with complete understanding. “ Hari’i,” he murmured, sliding back into Ragi with no apparent realization of it. By no means.

The return of a long-absent retainer to a corrupt house: a recognition of loyalties, a sorting-out of man’chi… a resultant bloody set of calamities.

“You’re sure,” Bren challenged him.

“I have to try.”

“Don’t tell me have to try. You know you can work with me. The issues here aren’t for guesswork.”

“Tamun,” Jase said. “Ogun’s the chief bastard, but that goes with the job. Tamun is our problem, hardnosed, Sabin’s man, or used to be. Those two have split. Ogun’s not a fool. I canexplain a situation he didn’t anticipate to exist. Pratap Tamun’s the problem.”

Straight out of the Council, Bren recalled Jase saying when he knew Tamun was elevated to the captaincy: the captains tended to be more moderate, the Council more inclined to go for a radical solution. And his appointment to what the Guild called the fourth chair meant that one of the captains tended to more volatile solutions.

“They won’t risk relations with the planet,” Jase said further. “It’s not in their interest. There’s every chance of getting what they want if they ask Tabini and ask politely. As I mean to tell them.—Bren, you’ve never asked me what I’ll say; but you know I’ll advise them to deal with Tabini.”

“This is the question I will ask you: will they listen?”

Jase took a deep breath. “The same us-only streak that runs in the Heritage Party is there. There’s a strong party that thinks aliens out there and aliens here are no different, and the way you feel about Kroger… I feel about Tamun. I think he’d rather deal with the Mospheirans. The whole faction might not even know yet that they’d rather deal with the Mospheirans, but I think there’s a chance the Guild will go through that stage—until they get a strong taste of Mospheiran politics to match their first sight of atevi. That’s going to scare them. No matter they’ve seen them on screen. They’re impressive, leaning over you. But you know and I know the Guild has no real choice. Ultimately, Tabini is their best and only answer.”

“He’s going to be another shock to their concept of the universe.”

“They already had a real shock to their concept of the universe when they lost a space station. They’re scared of aliens. They’re scared as hell of losing this base, and of being double-crossed by aliens they don’t understand. Bren, understand their mindset. If we don’t have this station, we don’t have anything—no population, no fuel, no repairs, no place to stand. That’s death. That’s death for us. That’s their position.”

“You and I both know that, for reasons of state, friends lie. But I’mtelling you, and I want you to tell Ramirez. Tabini’s a master of double-cross, but stress this. He’s also fair. He welds parties together; he’s united the Atageini with his own. He’s gained lord Geigi.”

“He deals with his grandmother,” Jase said with a wry smile. “ There’sthe training course.”

“And he deals with Tatiseigi. This is a powerful, progressive influence that’s tripled the size of the Western Association, gained votes in the hasdrawad and the tashrid, and notconducted a bloodbath of his rivals, which is hell and away better than his predecessors. You tell Ramirez this. In this lifetime, you’re not going to get better than the man who peacefully took the Association to the eastern seaboard and simultaneously took atevi from airplanes to orbit. And who has the resources under rapid, efficient development. There is not going to be a better association for Ramirez, human or atevi.”

He didn’t have to convince Jase. It was Jase’s store of arguments he supplied.

“Ramirez will listen,” Jase said. “Your Mospheiran history about the Guild’s misbehavior might be true: I don’t believe all of the accounts, figuring your ancestors as well as mine had their side of the story. The others will argue.—But here’s the hell of it, Bren, and this I’ve realized slowly over the last three years. A ship’s a small place, compared to a world. What you don’t understand, what you can’tunderstand by experience… you think Mospheira’s small and bound by a small set of habits. Phoenixis smaller. Compared to Mospheira, Phoenixis a four-hundred-year-old teacup, same contents, same set of thoughts, whatever comes and goes on the outside, we’re on the inside. On an island two hundred years? We’ve been spacebound in that teacup for four hundred. We have the archive; we have all the culture of old Earth; but all of us on Phoenixhave in that sense been in one same small conversation for centuries. I’ve been thinking about contrasts, the last few days. And this is the big one. All of us on the ship have the same database. We don’t encourage divergences.”

Curious, he hadalways thought of Phoenixas the outgoing group of humanity, the explorers, the discoverers; and Mospheirans as limited.

But twenty-five hundred individuals, only twenty-five hundred…

“How many areon Phoenix?” he asked, that old, variously answered question between them.