My God, he thought.

And: No. I can’t.

It was the dream of his life, that the space program should have just gotten off the ground with him to witness it. That Shai-shanshould turn out to be his creation… he’d stood on the side of the runway and watched its first flight half a year ago, watched the shuttle become a gleam in the sky, and a dot, and a memory and a hope. When, two weeks later, he had stood on that same runway and watched Shai-shanland as easily as any airliner—God, he’d wept.

But go upthere? That wasn’t for him.

His face, he discovered, didn’t react, hadn’t reacted. Like his predecessor, Wilson, who’d forgotten how to deal with human emotion, he’d stopped reacting.

“Aiji-ma,” he said quietly, accepting that this would happen, “on this flight?”

“On this flight,” Tabini said. And one could not say: but my business, but my possessions, my duties, my staff. One listened. “To remain until you’ve understood them, and then to return to me. You can conduct your other duties by radio, can you not? And your staff is adept enough to carry on without you, at least the commercial aspects. Diplomatic matters with the Pilots’ Guild take precedence until there is an agreement regarding our station.”

Our station. That was Tabini’s position. Humans had built it, Mospheira didn’t want it, didn’t want to lose it, either. Atevi weren’t historically happy about it being there, didn’t want Mospheirans to have it, and Tabini wanted it under his authority.

He hadn’t thoroughly explained that position to Mospheira, but Jase knew.

Get me the sun and the moon, paidhi-ji. Toss in the good will of the Pilots’ Guild for good measure.

Everything was in motion. Everything had been in motion before his plane had set down on the runway. Everything had gotten into motion during his five days isolated and out of touch on Mospheira. Tabini started planning this the day the ship called Yolanda Mercheson home; they called Jason, the day before the shuttle launched, expecting a wrangling argument, and Tabini… simply complied, high and wide.

The ship-humans wanted the program to move faster?

It was about to move faster.

“You must take care,” Damiri-daja said.

“Daja-ma, I will.”

“Safeguard yourself,” Tabini said with unaccustomed fierceness. “Your bodyguard need not return to me if any mishap takes you.”

Then Banichi and Jago were going with him.

But no one would have asked them their opinion, either, and what had been sacrificed in cargo to add three more passengers with baggage… God, the baggage!… he had no idea. Everything… all the scientific packages, all the materials tests…

Where did those stand?

What werethey taking?

What in hell was he supposed to do to make this miracle happen?.

“I’ll work with Jase,” he said to Tabini.

“If they prove intractable, leave.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“I insist on it,” Tabini said, and rose. Damiri-daja rose, and Bren rose.

Together, while he bowed, they left him.

He stood there a moment then, in the middle of the ornate carpet, next to the historic chairs. All the warmth had gone out of him.

He’d built it. He was going to ride it. He was going withJase, who’d just been coopted back under the captains’ authority. If Jase chose to have that happen… and probably he should; probably the captains shouldn’t notice that humans who dealt with atevi tended to grow very strange.

So, well, he said to himself, drew a deep breath and went out, then, not forgetting to pay courteous notice to Eidi, as composed as if he hadn’t just learned he was riding a plane into orbit, to filch change out of the Pilots’ Guild’s pockets.

An agency his compatriots on Mospheira thought of as the devil incarnate.

Had he somehow, somewhere failed to relay that to Tabini?

And Tabini had talked to Shawn?

He walked casually toward the foyer, where he regained his escort.

“Nadiin,” he said simply, taking his leave of Tabini’s security. “Nadiin-ji,” he added, the warmer address to men he knew, and walked outside the heavy doors in his own security’s company.

They, he suspected, had known something was going on from before they picked him up at the airport. They might not have known where he was going, but they’d known they were going with him, and were bound by the aiji’s orders to let him go through this long evening of dinners and conversations—

While his personal belongings were doubtless packed, moved, attended to…

They walked down a hallway resplendent with antiquity and scrutinized by a hundred hidden watchers, electronics, spying devices, all of the panoply of the iron-handed ruler of a world civilization… who didn’t damned much move anywhere without his knowing it.

“Well,” he said to Banichi and Jago, not accusingly, only to assure himself the needful things were done, “not surprised, were you.”

“Nandi,” Jago said quietly. “To be sent up to the station? We were surprised by the destination, not by the fact that we would move.”

“Nand’ Jase doesn’t know.”

He considered that, as they approached the lift. “He’s going to be shocked.” As hell, he thought.

“I think he will be,” Banichi said.

They stood at the lift. He suddenly realized he had no notion which button to push, whether to go to his apartment, or down to the train. “The staff has packed?”

“While you were at supper,” Banichi said.

“Tano and Algini are going,” Jago said, and punched in for the lowest level. It wasthe train. “Likewise Narani, Sabiso, Kandana and Bindanda.”

“Bindanda.” One of Tatiseigi’s. His mind went flying off on a suspicious tangent, involving Ilisidi’s long association with Tatiseigi, Tatiseigi’s occasional opposition to Tabini, and the likelihood more than one element of the Association had been brought in on this before he had.

Bindanda, a quiet, polite spy.

Four security, around a fifth point. Himself. Nine, with the servants. A very fortunate number: ‘counters had devised it, in harmony with the space center and shuttle.

One wondered how those numbers fit in with the station and the Guild.

“Narani’s quite old for this excitement,” he said as the car arrived.

“He avows his health will withstand it. He’s left Tagi in charge of your apartments, moved Edoro into Tagi’s place in your coastal estate, nandi, with your approval.”

The warmth hadn’t yet come back to his hands. He stepped into the lift.

He hadn’t his most comfortable clothing; he had only what he stood in.

He and Jase had made extensive preparations to set up an atevi residency on the station. There were items of baggage. There were pieces of equipment.

“Are we displacing all the cargo?” he asked.

“One believes so,” Banichi said.

He didn’t know what he was going to tell Jase.

Chapter 5

It was back on the train… going the other direction, a passage punctuated by the click of the rails and the whisper of the car’s passage against the wide and narrow portions of the tunnels.

He sat with Banichi and Jago, sure his baggage from the airplane would turn up, at least the needful things. The computer would turn up. He was entirely sure of it.

“Did the dowager know?” he asked, out of a moment of silence.

“I believe she made great haste in arranging a flight” Banichi said. “That’s all we know.”

Bindanda was one of the number. If Tabini had deceived his redoubtable grandmother, that deception would have meant very unhealthy things going on within the Association. Tatiseigi was always an uneasy ally.

“One is honored” he said of the dowager and her dinner. “I’m glad she came.”

Jago lifted a brow. “She has no return flight arranged,” Jago said, “that we know.”