If anyone did have to convey that information, he knew all too well who the translator had to be.

They arrived into a scene of managed chaos, the midst of null-g preparations for the invitation… preparation which their constant communications net had already set into motion.

Bundles were everywhere in the paidhi’s quarters, soft bundles, in general, which floated where they were not jammed tightly in, bundles that should give forth their contents and then fold down inconspicuously and with little mass.

Bundles were lodged up near the ceiling and a few were tucked into the narrow passage between bed and bath, rather like the egg-cases of an infestation of insects; and the bed itself—fortunately extendable—had a transparent half lid of sorts, which had not come down, and behind which a few smaller parcels were tucked as if for ready reference. Bundles were secured in the bath, bundles were stored in the shower stall, besides one that seemed to have exploded, strewing far more wardrobe into the zero-g of the premises than it could reasonably have contained.

Amid it all, Banichi and Jago had cases of electronics yet to set up, two of which they immediately emptied, donating them to Narani’s urgent demand for a flat surface. They were still searching for the pressing-iron, and exactly how they proposed to use that in null-g remained to be seen.

“Press cloth in these circumstances, Rani-ji?” Bren objected. “The second-best shirt will do. I’m sure it will do.”

“Paidhi-ma,” Narani objected, “I beg you allow us to try. For our pride’s sake, nandi. The coat has gotten rumpled, among other calamities. And the captains are invited.”

Staff continued their unpacking, cursing the insistence of ship security on inspecting certain of the items in an entirely unacceptable fashion, and at the last moment, of stowing the contents of the baggage cart in a haphazard hurry. Things had gone askew from plan, and it wasn’t in any way the atevi-ordered arrangement of rooms that let the staff do their duty in an orderly way. The staff was entirely distressed.

Meanwhile there was the scale of things. Banichi and Jago had quarters adjacent to his, and communicating by a door between as well as their own corridor access. A suite of rooms, the charts called the arrangement, each with clear floor about four strides long and two strides wide, which turned out to be, when occupied by atevi, human strides, if they were able to stride at the moment—and entirely too small. Niggling minor problem—storage for atevi-scale clothing was impossible in the tiny lockers provided for the original colonists. Greater problem: low human-scale ceilings made it very scant clearance for tall atevi such as Banichi even to stand up, once they were standing, and made a room in which four or five atevi were drifting askew a very small-seeming room indeed.

Those were situations for which they had been moderately prepared—at least in planning, before they tried to maneuver past one another. The closet and the food-storage closets were both what the ship called suites, and those were full, at the moment, Bren was told, of floating bags. The unpacked clothing would ultimately fit on lines to contain and order the wardrobes, once there was gravity, which now there was not. The unpacked security equipment had clamps and braces which did not mate to the room, rather to more gear that itself had to be fixed in place under these conditions, and which had to stay in place once there wasgravity.

More, the galley stores and the security equipment included heavy items, and in the grand scale of things, even the dowager’s invitation took second place to the need to get the heavy equipment and bundles sorted to the bottom and secured before undocking—before the simulated gravity sent the heavy things crashing down on the light ones. And on that score, there had been argument. Crew had advised them in a written communiqué not to take things into quarters, to leave them in cargo until after undock, and he had said no, they would take them in nevertheless. So doubtless crew who had shoved things into the cabins were quite smug about it all. So a jaundiced suspicion could guess.

And here they were, everything in their own control, if one could call it control—with a formal dinner unexpectedly at hand and baggage everywhere.

His luggage, however, was bulk rather than mass, and at least posed few breakage hazards.

“Just pad the equipment with mybags,” he told Banichi and Jago, when there was question of bringing Tano and Algini board for a few hours to do the installation while they pursued Ilisidi’s notion of formal entertainment. “We aren’t going to be able to get this installed before we move. My shirts won’t break. And we shouldn’t pull Tano and Algini off internal security. I truly don’t like that notion, Banichi.”

“One can try to secure things,” Banichi said. “Or we can draw personnel from Cenedi, perhaps before launch.”

“I’m sure I have enough clothes. I’m sure I have far too many clothes. Do it, Banichi.”

Meanwhile the domestic staff, which had expected a decent interval to do its necessary arranging, now searched to find, among other necessities of life, old-fashioned vegetable starch, which they intended to boil—one asked—in a sealed bag in the microwave… which also had to be unpacked and secured. One did not want to imagine the zero-g consequences of a burst bag of starch.

They had, however, located the pressing-iron—which fortunately waselectric, not a flatiron as the old arrangement had been.

Plugging it in, however, required a unit and a small, unreasonably mislaid adapter to mediate between its three-pronged plug and the ship’s power clips. That was well enough: they needed the adapters for the microwave, too.

The staff oh so rarely missed a social forecast. Narani had so carefully had his less formal second-best pressed, protected, and ready for what had, to Narani, seemed likely: an informal dinner with the dowager.

They had certainly been sandbagged. Caught out, half-prepared—excusable, under the pressure of their sudden departure; but now there was no margin.

“I could surelymake do with the casual coat, Rani-ji,” Bren reiterated, foreknowing the futility of that protest; and, no, no, even yet, absolutely not. Narani would perish of shame if he sent the paidhi-aiji to a state dinner in his second-best coat and trousers, and he would not admit defeat, yet, no matter the lack of adapters.

Not to mention that Banichi and Jago had to have theirformal uniforms and everything of their individual spit and polish, and the equipment that went with them. That necessity had Asicho in a dither, because those hadn’t been readied, either.

There was at least time to bathe, once Asicho shifted the baggage out of the paidhi’s shower, and Bren simply turned over the clothes he was wearing, trusting no crew would be floating by in the common hall, and took refuge in the anemic fog-shower, which at least was unaffected by lack of gravity.

It was fifteen minutes of comparative peace until the shower beeped a warning, sucked up the moisture and turned itself off.

Asicho waited with a soft, sweet-smelling bathrobe, zero-g and all.

Meanwhile the adapters had turned up, and staff, having microwaved their starch to slimy perfection, prepared his shirt for ironing.

There was something remarkably tranquil about the aroma of fresh ironing. And Banichi and Jago reported one emergency solved and their quarters secured: they had unmade their beds, corralled the fragiles in small bundles of bedding and secured them under the lowered transparent bed-lids.

Bren settled to dry his hair and check last-moment messages.

Of mail, there was none but a parting well-wish from Lord Geigi, which he answered fondly, and with kind thoughts for the one atevi in all the world who probably wanted most to be here: