“Atevi occasionally grant audacious requests when they’re made… just to observe the outcome, even in serious matters. A roll of the dice, you might say. Watching where they fall.”

He shot a small glance at the two translators, looking for any sign of comprehension, and it troubled him that only one, Feldman, seemed to twig to the suggestion it was a test of human intentions; but maybe Shugart was practicing that other atevi habit: inscrutability.

“You sent a mission request through.” He let the implied accusation enter his voice. “I didn’t get it.”

The reply and confirmation of the mission had almost certainly come out of Mospheira in the Ragi language, translated by some junior functionary, which was against Foreign Office policy, and he knew Sonja Podesta, an old friend, head of the Foreign Office these days, had to have authorized that message… or had it slipped past her.

But past Shawn, her superior in the State Department? Shawn, who had just briefed him?

It was not a pleasant thought that Shawn might deliberately have tried to put one past him, and lied about it face-to-face.

“The transmission missed you, sir.” Lund seemed quite anxious to avert his suspicion. “We had no idea you were already on the way to the island.”

“Indeed it did miss me. How it got cleared without my knowing is another matter.”

“If there’s any irregularity,” Lund said, “it certainly wasn’t intended.”

“On your part, I well believe.”

“At higher level,” Kroger said. “We meticulously respect the agreements. We had no idea the request was going through your office in your absence. We did not expect this.”

It had been intercepted by someone on the mainland with access to his messages, which could only be the atevi Messengers’ Guild, or his own staff—

Or Tabini’s security.

And, routed to Tabini-aiji, the unseasonable, foolhardy request had been granted.

He wished he’d skipped the hearty breakfast. The search of the grate… the missing cufflink was evident, as he sat. The aiji’s representative was not at his best, in any sense. He’d been sandbagged by his former friends in the State Department, by the President of Mospheira, who was supposed to be sane, and now he learned possibly there was a leak in the Messengers’ Guild… an organization which had not been his best friends on the mainland, which had not been loyal to Tabini. Thatcould be a scary problem.

But leaks in that Guild certainly didn’t get their results approved by the aiji, not unless the message had come in such a public fashion that there was no face-saving alternative but to grant the request. He didn’t know what he might be flying into. A government crisis, very likely.

Distrusting the Messengers’ Guild didn’t encourage him to try a phone call.

The hatch had shut some moments ago, unremarked in the exchange. The plane began its taxi out and away from the building. The alcohol-fed cheerfulness was not quite what it had been, and they weren’t even on the runway yet.

“Well,” Bren said, deciding to be mollified, at least for their benefit, “well, I understand. My apologies for my anxiousness. But I can’t stress enough how delicate the situation is. The aiji didn’t get any advance word from the Pilots’ Guild when they recalled Mercheson and now Jase Graham. He may have felt sending you was tit for tat, with them.”

That provoked a little thought among the experienced seniors.

“The atevi have been pushed pretty hard,” Kate Shugart said very quietly, in her junior, mere-translator status. Three of the five people present knew at gut level how wrong it was to shove badly-done messages through the system. “A great deal of change, when just a few years ago we were debating advanced computers.”

… Carefully examining the social fabric in the process, to be sure what they released into atevi hands didn’t end up starting a war or breaking down atevi society. Atevi had invented the railroad for themselves; humans had lately contributed the culturally dangerous concepts of fast food and entertainment on television, trying not to bring on a second atevi-human war.

Now it was rocket science. And a reported contact with some species outside the solar system, technologically advanced and hostile. The Pilots’ Guild had come running home with trouble just over the horizon… and the world had found itself no longer in a space race for orbit and the old, deteriorating station, but in a climb simultaneously for dominance in decision-making and for survival… against a species the Pilots’ Guild had somehow provoked.

Not a pleasant packet of news for the world, that had been, three years ago.

Atevi, who didn’t universally favor technological imports, suddenly had to take command of their own planet or abdicate in favor of the human Mospheirans andthe human Pilots’ Guild, who historically didn’t like each other and who weren’t compatible with atevi.

And in order for atevi to take command, they had to build a ground-to-space vehicle from a design the Pilots’ Guild handed them, and haul their whole economy, their materials science, and all their industry into line with the effort.

It wasn’t humanlypossible. If atevi hadn’t been a continent-spanning civilization and a constitutional monarchy to boot, with rocketry already in progress, they couldn’t possibly have done it… certainly not in his lifetime. Witness the efforts of the Mospheirans, who’d complained about the tax subsidy for their only aircraft manufacturer, and who’d let the company go. Now they were buying their planes from an atevi manufacturer, and had no recourse but to pay for seats on the atevi shuttle to orbit.

He knew what Tabini was charging them, and the citizens hadn’t yet felt the tax bite.

“If the shuttle should fail,” Bren remarked, likewise quietly, as the plane turned onto the runway and gathered speed, “if the shuttle has anysignificant problem, there would be another War of the Landing. Not could. Would. That’s what we constantly risk. Forgive me for the interrogation; I’m supposed to have translated that request, and somehow it catapulted past me. It’s always dangerous in atevi society when things don’t follow routine channels.”

“We’re not in danger now,are we?” This from Ben Feldman, who did understand the risk, as the plane left the ground.

“I have some concern,” Bren said. “I want to be absolutely sure you don’t walk into something. You’re sure that visa really came from Tabini’s office.”

“It came with verification,” Lund said. “You want to see the papers?”

“ Thatwouldn’t tell me,” Bren said. He didn’t intend to reveal any of his doubts of the Messengers’ Guild, or of instabilities he knew of, not to adversarial negotiators. “What specifically are your arrangements? Who’s meeting you?”

“Straight to the space center,” Kroger said, looking worried. “Officials of that center.”

“That’s good. That’s the arrangement as it should be,” Bren said. “Probably it did come from the aiji’s office.” He’d disturbed his seatmates, he saw. He wasn’t in the least sorry to have done it. Nobody in the world as it was—or above it—should be as naive as Mospheirans tended to be about anything outside their own politics. “Which means he wants this to happen. What’s your job up there?”

“We aren’t empowered to tell you,” Kroger said.

“You’re empowered to negotiate.”

“With the station.”

“ With the crew of the ship,” Bren said in a low voice. “ Wewere the station, weren’t we, before the Landing?”

Therewas the old hot button, the privileges of the Guild, the lack of basic rights of the colonists, once in-flight emergency put the crew in total charge of the mission… once a ship went far, far off-course and the crew couldn’t get them to any recognizable navigation point, a long, long time ago. The colonists weren’t supposed to land. They had. The Guild had argued for respect of the natives and no landing, and had wanted to stay in space.