Another species had taken exception to the human presence in that remote location. Removal of that colony had become a necessity.

And collecting every human from Reunion Station and transporting them here had brought a fourth population onto the space station, five thousand technologically sophisticated humans they’d naively assumed were going to fit right in.

But the Reunion-humans had run their last station as they liked and thought they should run this one. In point of fact, their ancestors had governed the first space station, and were the very ones the Mospheiran humans had fled the station to escape.

Mospheirans, ship-humans, and atevi all united in objection to the Reunioners’ assumption they were the incoming elite. Together, the three populations outvoted the Reunioners—who were not happy, not in meeting the Mospheirans’ ancestral antagonism toward them, not in the ship-humans, who voted withthe Mospheirans, most of all not in the number of non-humans in residence and in authority. Expansion of the station to accommodate the larger population would have been logical—but they were not, politically, happy, and they could not agree on how many hours should constitute a day, let alone how the station resources and manpower should be directed.

To mediate the problem, the Mospheirans had suggested resurrecting the Maudit Project, first proposed centuries ago, when the ship had arrived at a too-attractive, inhabited planet and the ship-folk had begun to lose control of the colonists, who wanted to land. The ship-captains of that day had wanted to pull their whole operation off to the next planet out from the local sun, where planet-dwelling was not so attractive a lure, where there would be no talk of colonists abandoning the station and landing on the planet, outside the authority of the captains and the crew.

Park Phoenixat Maudit, they’d said in those days. Build a station, mine the asteroids and moons which were not so far distant from Maudit—and stay entirely space-based, above an uninhabited planet nobody in their right minds would want to choose as a residence.

Their colonist population had wanted none of it. They’d deserted the station in droves as relations between the station administration and colonists deteriorated—the colonists absolutely dead set againstpulling off to Maudit, the ship’s captains and crew dead set on doing it. So they’d finally drawn Phoenixoff with a complement of high administration and willing colonists—with the stated objective of finding a better world at another star.

In point of fact, they’d seen no chance of winning under current circumstances, and had set out, in the typical Long View of their spacefaring kind, to win the argument and give their ship the base they wanted by producing a new batch of colonists who’d support their ship at another base, far away, at a planeted system—so they said. Their real objective had been to get far from the temptation of the atevi world and build a civilization in space.

Now, centuries later, back on the original station, with the rescued Reunioners, the ship-captains had a problem. They’d not anticipated the antagonism between colonists. Neither Mospheira nor Tabini would let them land the Reunioners and be rid of them thatway—

So, during the last eventful year, the captains had fallen in with the Maudit plan again—give the Reunioners a whole station of their own at Maudit. And gain all the mineral resources Maudit offered. Gain the wider spread of human population. It was a quiet suggestion. It had taken off on the wings of Mospheiran agreement.

The Reunioners, Geigi had reported, had also leapt on that idea. It seemed to be win-win. The Mospheirans were for it . . . as the fastest way to see the last of most of the Reunioners.

There was just that troublesome issue of who was going to be in charge of the Maudit colony. Depend on it— thatquestion had immediately surfaced. There was no getting away from the fact that the Reunioners expected to be in charge of whatever they built new; and the Mospheirans were bent on seeing they were in charge of nothing.

True, Cajeiri’s young associates were Reunioner children—but one might have assumed the childrenwere innocent of plots.

“So,” Geigi said eventually, on his one sip of the brandy and a long pause for thought. “You have had as much experience of the Reunion-humans as I have. And with far more understanding. One has not wanted to poison the situation by bringing politics into the matter. But—”

“The Reunion humans are a difficult lot,” Bren said. “I was on the ship with them.”

And Tabini hadn’t been. The whole Mospheiran-Reunion question was a human question. Tabini, at the moment, was not taking on additional problems. Tabini had come back from two years of hiding and dodging assassination attempts and had a great deal on his mind that didn’t at any point involve understanding the Reunioners.

His son, with whom he had a difficult relationship, wantedthe Reunioner children for a two-week visit. Cajeiri had been promised it—last year. Cajeiri had looked forward to it, clinging to his ship-speak and his memory of the only children he had ever played with in his adult-surrounded life.

No, Tabini had had no expectation the childrenwere going to cause a problem, since the paidhi-aiji hadn’t been convinced there was a problem. Tabini wanted to keep a promise to his son and win his son back—the same as Damiri wanted, only more so. Cajeiriwas Tabini’s heir. Next in line to be aiji.

And on that boy’s man’chi, his sense of loyalty to his father and his kind, the future of the world depended.

“What problem do you see in this visit happening, Geigi-ji? Inform me. And you need not be politic at this hour. Have I been wrong?”

That Tabini didn’t understand was possibly his fault. But it might be one of those damnable instances of intercultural reticence. Which is worse—to have the boy renew acquaintances with children of a troublesome population—or to have him always wantingit, into his adult life?

“There are nuances of behavior in this which trouble me,” Geigi said, “the more since I began to help this contact along. The parents at first strongly opposed this association, and that seemed natural, given the general mistrust of the Reunion-humans toward us and the slow poisoning of the relationships on the station. I had met with the captains some time ago, to try to explain the situation on earth, but then one parent began to ask why the children’s letters went unanswered, and the captains andthe children’s parents seemed to lean in favor of a meeting. This led me to bring the letters down. This is where one belatedly asks human advice.”

“Tell me what you observe.”

“This. You know about the Maudit issue.”

“Yes.”

“The Reunion humans have, for most of the year, been unanimous in favor of going to Maudit. Now they have developed a splinter group that opposes the idea—the ship-aijiin believe them to be a labor group that has fallen out with Reunion leaders. This group, about five hundred of the five thousand, want to become citizens of the station here, assuming the Maudit expedition does eventually launch. They claim they will sustain themselves in the trades. This does not please us, of course, since we have our own industry, and a niche for them limits us. The ship-aijiin, for their part, do not trust their political motives and do not trust the faction that wants to leave, either. Mospheiran humans are asking atevi to join them in a call for a referendum on allowing any Reunioners to remain on the station, and to vote againstthe Reunion humans being allowed to stay. This was going on when I left.”

Thatwas a nasty chain of developments. But—

“Do you think the children’s parents are trying to avoid being sent out to Maudit? That they hope a connection of this sort could prevent their being removed?”