Precursor Read Online Free PDF Page B

that, too.”
    The drinks arrived, a small break, a welcome small confusion in the sorting-out of orders and napkins.
    “To your mission,” Bren proposed then, having shot his small dart at the Heritage Party, the pro-spacers who thought humankind had a natural right to everything in sight. “Here’s to tolerance.”
    “To the aiji and his court,” Lund said, “and an alliance of purpose.”
    Bren sipped his drink, with, at a slight bump, a glance out the window. Billowing cumulus, slate gray in spots. “Ah, spring over the straits. We’re in for a little chop for an hour.”
    “Of course,” Kroger said. “They just served the drinks.”
    Old joke, old as mankind, in the general goings-on of Mospheiran air travel, most of it in smaller, slower planes. General relaxation. This was, by default, the longest flight any Mospheiran who wasn’t the paidhi had ever made, except a handful of the paidhi’s friends and family; and those generally came with Toby, on the boat, and to the seaside estate. Mospheiran jet service was limited to the island, not flying so high, nor so long between landings.
    “So…” Kroger asked, then, “will we
meet
atevi when we land?”
    The interspecies interface was so meticulously ordered, so bound in regulations, it was a real possibility they would not meet atevi. They weren’t to speak to atevi; that was the law. Atevi… well, atevi would do as they thought they could, and thank God one species of the two adored the law… atevi had a very fuzzy, constantly shifting concept of right and wrong, man’chi-guided and solid as a rock if one knew where man’chi lay.
    But written orders and nonspeaking attendants would get them from one place to the other… granted the Messengers’ Guild hadn’t run amok and seized power in the four days he’d been gone, granted Jase was still mediating the paidhi’s office, amid his sudden packing…
    God, he was going to miss Jase. He’d be alone… he’d been alone, but he’d gotten used to Jase being there…
    “I’m reasonably sure there’ll be an official escort,” Bren said, “Don’t expect them to speak Mosphei’. Don’t correct their pronunciation of your names. They’ll pick what they can pronounce.” Ben and Kate knew how their names would turn out. Atevi would likely adjust Ginny to Gin, in uniformity with her companions, for reasons of felicity… which would take an hour in themselves to explain to the uninitiated in number theory. Fortunately and by chance, none of the names carried particularly funny or infelicitous meanings in Ragi. “Bow. Don’t smile. Don’t expect them to.”
    “But you converse,” Ben said quietly, as if saying he could fly.
    “Practice,” Bren said with irony. Atevi counted items in sets faster than the eye could blink and either took offense or made linguistic accommodations on the fly. “Long practice.” Not counting hours and hours of math, until he breathed it; not counting becoming so sensitive to atevi expectation that he had analyzed what was wrong with Kroger’s lapel-pin the moment they met, and thought as they entered atevi air space about offering the woman a flower to stick in it… but she was going straight to the space center, and the atevi dealing with strangers expected strangeness: it was all right. “Just use the children’s language. Nothing more. They’ll understand.”
    “No turning back now,” Kate said, out of a long silence.
    Well, there was. There was a chance of landing and riding the plane back to the island, mission forgotten. But diplomats hated like hell to meet an absolute and public rebuke, or to run in terror.
    Brunch arrived, in some haste. The plane met increasing chop, on a direct flight into a security window opened by coastal defenses, and it wouldn’t dare deviate in altitude without a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing on the radio. Possibly they were trying that.
    The plane hit a pocket. Bren adjusted his glass of ice melt on his way to his