Precursor

  PRECURSOR

  Caroline J. Cherryh

  the fourth in the Foreigner sequence

  * * *

  Contents

  |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|

  * * *

  Copyright © 1999 by C. J. Cherryh

  All rights reserved.

  Jacket art by Stephen Youll

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1137

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Book designed by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper

  First Printing, November 1999.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  * * *

  To Kira and Kasi

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  The jet that waited these days was passenger-only, carrying no baggage but that which pertained to the paidhi and whatever diplomats happened to be traveling under his seal.

  More, since a certain infelicitous crossing three years ago, the plane itself bore the colors, the house seal, and the personal seal of Tabini-aiji, which served as an advisement to any small craft that, anyone else’s personal numbers be damned, the paidhi’s jet had absolute right of way.

  Diplomatic status on the island enclave of Mospheira, however, did not mean a luxurious lounge. It didn’t even mean access in the public terminal, where the island traffic came and went and delivered more or less happy families to holiday venues. No, diplomatic passengers embarked from the freight area. Security preferred that defensible seclusion. The State Department arranged a red carpet across the bare concrete, a small concession to appearances on a tight budget.

  Bren preferred the seclusion, carpet or no carpet. A mission from Mospheira was already aboard, so security informed him, about five minutes ago… they’d not been waiting long, but they were all the same waiting, now, safe, their baggage aboard.

  He carried his own computer, that was all, a machine with information certain agencies would kill for, and set it down to say his good-byes. Seclusion might mean family partings in a dingy, spartan warehouse, but it also meant he could indulge those partings in private: maternal tears, brotherly hugs, on a hasty Independence Day visit that had nothing to do with family obligations, rather four days occupied with official duties, then an overnight stay with his mother that ended one day before the official holiday.

  On his way out of the human enclave, arriving by private car and not having to run the gauntlet of news cameras, he’d already changed his island casual knits for the calf-high boots and many-buttoned frock coat of atevi court style. He’d braided his hair unaided into a respectable single, tight plait, precisely—he hoped—between the shoulder blades, with his best effort at including the proper white ribbon of the paidhi’s rank. He had lost one cufflink into the heating duct of his mother’s guest room, or somewhere, this morning; he was relatively sure it was the heating duct, but he hadn’t had time to dismount the grate and retrieve it. His mother had regaled him with an elaborate, home-style mother-cooked breakfast—her substitute for the holiday—and what could he do but sit down and spend the little time he could spend with her?

  He’d borrowed a straight pin to hold the cuff, which he now tried to avoid sticking into his brother’s shoulder as they embraced.

  It was: “Take care” from his brother. And predictably, from his mother: “You could stay another day or two.”

  “I can’t, Mom.”

  “I wish you’d arrange another job.” This, straightening his collar. He was thirty years old, and probably the collar needed straightening. “I wish you’d talk to Tabini. At least get a decent phone line.”

  Tabini-aiji was only the leader of the civilized world, the most powerful leader on the planet and probably above it. A decent phone line in his mother’s reckoning meant one that would take calls in Mosphei’ instead of Ragi and let his mother through the atevi security system at any hour, day or night; that would suffice. The fact that there were four diplomats and a situation waiting aboard the plane was not in her diagram of the universe. Next it would be: Get a haircut.

  “You have the pager, Mother.” It had been a birthday gift, last visit. “I showed you—”

  “It’s not the same. What if I had an attack and couldn’t use the pager? I’m not getting any younger.”

  “If you couldn’t use the pager, you couldn’t use the phone. Just talk to the thing. It’s all automatic, state of the art.”

  “State of whose art, I’d like to know.”

  “It’s Mospheiran. Bought right here on the island.”

  “You don’t know where it goes. You don’t know who’s listening. And atevi made it. They make everything.”

  “I know who’s listening,” he said, and attempted conciliation with a hug. She was stiff and resisting to his embrace.

  “Shots in the night,” she muttered, not without justification. “Paint on my building.” That was years ago, but he couldn’t blame her for blaming him.

  His brother moved in—a diversionary tactic. Toby put his hand on their mother’s shoulder, simultaneously offered Bren his right hand in a handshake, and gave him a clear passage to the red carpet.

  “See you,” Toby said. “Go.”

  It was smooth. It almost worked.

  But a wild cry of: “Bren!” came from beyond the security station, and a woman in fluttering white came running across the concrete, in fragile yellow shoes not designed for athletic effort.

  Barb—the ex-girlfriend he’d successfully evaded for the last four days, who’d sent him voicemails he’d deleted.

  Barb—whom he’d almost married.

  She’d not put in a personal appearance during this visit or the last or the one before that, though his mother on all his visits had talked of Barb—Barb did this, Barb did that; Barb did her shopping, ran her errands.

  Barb, married, had all but adopted herself into his mother’s apartment, and yet didn’t manage to show up while he was there… not that he’d advertised his visit, or even given his mother advance notice of last night’s visit. Barb had tried to meet him, he was sure. He’d “just missed her” twice, this trip. He didn’t know what the sudden insistence was. He wondered if he should have deleted those voicemails.

  And now she’d gotten into this departure area on her husband’s high-clearance security card, he’d damned well bet.

  “Barbie,” his mother said lovingly.

  “Go,” his brother urged him under his breath. Whatever was going on, Toby knew.

  “Security window,” Bren said with a frozen smile. “Have to go. People waiting on the plane. Mum. Toby. —Barb.” He offered his hand. “Nice to see you. Glad you’re seeing to Mother. Kind of you to come.”

  “Bren, dammit!” Barb flung herself into a hug. Bren could find no civil choice but to return it, however distantly. “I know” she murmured against his shirt, “I know you’re angry with me.”

  “Not angry, Barb.” He did the most deliberately hateful thing he could think of, tipping up her tearful face and kissing her… on the cheek. “I’m glad for you. Glad you’re happy. Stay that way.”

  “I’m not happy!” She seized his lapel, flung a hand behind his neck, and kissed him fiercely on the lips. Passive resistance didn’t do enough to resist it… at first: and then he found to his dim distress that he didn’t respond at all. Barb’s kisses were nothing foreign to him—longed-for, for years of his life. Her mouth wanted, tried, to warm his… but nothing happened.

  He was disturbed. He turned from anger to feeling sorry for Barb and a little distressed about himself. For old times’ s
ake he tried to heal her embarrassment by returning the kiss, even passionately, tenderly… as much as he remembered how.

  But still nothing happened between them—or, at least, nothing from his side.

  Barb drew back with a stricken, troubled gaze. He gazed at her, wondering what she knew, or why his human body didn’t respond to another human being, why warmth didn’t flow, why reactions didn’t react. Pheromones were there; it was the old perfume, the very familiar smell of Barb and all Mospheira, to a nose acclimated to the mainland.

  Interest wasn’t there. Couldn’t be resurrected. Too much water under the bridge. Too many “I’m sorrys.”

  And for that one frozen moment he stood there staring into the face of the human woman he’d meant to marry just before the fracture… the human woman who, when the going had been rough, had fought his battles and risked her life—then married a quiet, high-clearance tech named Paul, opting to protect herself behind his security shield.

  Could he blame her for that?

  He didn’t, particularly, in cold blood. But from dismayed at himself, he transited to angry at her. It wasn’t about the marriage; the anger was all for her campaign to get him back, and doing it by attending on his mother, running her errands.

  What in hell did Barb think she was doing? was the first subsurface question. Why did she come now? Why did she court his mother, for God’s sake?

  And looking into her face as he did, he didn’t truly know. One lonely woman befriending another? One woman who hadn’t been lucky in love, crossing generations to find a kindred soul, as close to love as possible?

  In Barb’s paralysis, in that long, stricken stare… he disengaged, and with his face burning, he hugged Toby, hugged his mother, whispered a farewell, grabbed up his computer case, and followed the carpet to the waiting plane, head down, eyes on the carpet underfoot.

  “Bren!” Barb shouted after him. Angry. Oh, damn, yes. Now she was angry. His nerves knew that voice, and for both their sakes, he hoped Barb was angry… angry enough to get on with her life. Angry enough to divorce her new husband, or settle down and live with the choice she’d made three years ago— angry enough just to do something toward a future of her own. Whatever that choice eventually was, it wouldn’t be his choice, not any longer. It wasn’t his mother’s responsibility, either.

  They couldn’t take up again where they’d left off. It wasn’t just the fact she’d married. It was the fact that he himself was no longer the Bren Cameron she knew. Then, he’d been a maker of dictionaries and a translator… until his life had exploded and put her in danger she’d been lucky to escape. He couldn’t go back to that safe anonymity now. Couldn’t join his mother’s fantasy, or Barb’s, that that anonymity would ever exist again. There was a reason for this concrete isolation.

  And a great deal that was human wasn’t within his power to choose anymore. He’d already lost everyone on the island; he was about to lose his only human companion on the mainland. He wasn’t happy about it, but that was the choice far higher powers made.

  He climbed the metal steps to the hatch of the airliner and still didn’t look back, refusing to give Barb a shred of encouragement, even if it meant he didn’t look back for his brother and his mother, either. His mother’s health was fragile. He had reason to worry about her. Toby had had threats on his life and his family’s lives, because of him. And Barb had been a target . . . and knew it. Now she wasn’t, and she couldn’t let well enough alone.

  His mother and his brother would come to the mainland for visits. Barb, on the other hand, couldn’t get the requisite pass—no matter how powerful her husband’s influence— because the visa depended on the atevi government, not her husband’s security clearance in the human one.

  And doubtless she was upset about that, too. Barb wasn’t used to no. She really hated that word. It’s over was another thing she’d made up her mind not to hear. I regularly sleep with someone else was damned sure outside her comprehension. If she knew, and knew that individual wasn’t human, that might figure in her determination.

  But he hoped to hell not even his brother knew… certainly not Barb, because the next step was his mother knowing and the third was the whole island continent knowing.

  “Mr. Cameron.” A human steward welcomed him aboard and took his formal coat as he shed it.

  In that process he scanned the narrow confines of a jet configured for luxury. The passenger shell he’d used in the plane that had previously run this route had always sat as a removable inclusion in the hull just ahead of dried peas and fresh flowers; but this sleek Patanadi Aerospace number, the aiji’s plane, had tapestry for a carpet runner and seat upholstery of ornate atevi needlework. When it wasn’t ferrying the paidhi across the straits, it did transcontinental courtesy service for the aiji’s staff and guests… and the seats and furnishings were all to atevi scale.

  Consequently, four Mospheiran diplomats sat like ten-year-old children in large-scale chairs, grouped around what was, relative to the chairs, a low table… sipping Mospheiran alcoholic beverages from atevi-scale glassware.

  They’d be oblivious before they landed, if they didn’t watch themselves.

  He knew who was who in the group, having been briefed; knew two of the four in the mission prior to this meeting, at least remotely: Ben Feldman was a spare, unathletic young man thinning at the temples, Kate Shugart, a woman with close-cut, dull brown hair drawn back in a clip—she’d trained to have his job, but the job had ceased to exist, and she’d never made the grade. Those two of the four were Shawn Tyers’ people, old hands in the Foreign Office. He trusted Shawn, or he had trusted Shawn—with his life, while he’d been an official working for the Foreign Office.

  The other two… however…

  He walked to the group, still with the taste of Barb’s lips on his mouth and a large breakfast queasy in his stomach. Shawn hadn’t briefed him about this more than to remind him Mospheira had applied to go to space, and to say that the aiji in Shejidan had cleared their mission most unexpectedly. They’d felt no choice but to go, immediately.

  More, Shawn had said, the station in orbit had just called its second and last representative home, on this impending flight. A decision that would affect his work… profoundly.

  And Tabini-aiji had cleared it.

  It was one huge, upsetting mess, and Shawn couldn’t brief him fully, not any longer. They served different governments. He could only say the Mospheiran government wasn’t disposed to say no when the aiji approved a chance they’d looked to take, oh, a year to clear…

  Mospheirans never had understood how fast the aiji could move when he wanted to.

  The question was why the aiji wanted to.

  The shuttle was still in testing; the payload for said test had been set and calculated to a fare-thee-well… one had to be atevi to fully comprehend just what manner of disruption such a change posed. Inconvenient, yes, but more to the point profoundly disturbing to a people whose culture revolved around felicitous numerical associations. Change one kilo of payload, and the entire mission might need to be redesigned.

  It was more than Barb’s maneuver that had his stomach in a knot.

  He could imagine Lord Brominandi making his speech in the legislature: Let the fool humans risk their necks in a shuttle that had only made four prior flights. Mospheirans suddenly declared they wanted seats, just seats, nothing major in the way of baggage, Shawn had told him, no great additional mass… oh, let the shuttle just carry enough fuel. No great problem. No recalculation at all, oh, no, nothing of the kind.

  He was appalled. Infuriated. It was his shuttle, dammit, and even the possibility of a glitch-up and the loss of the shuttle turned his blood cold. God, the whole program set at incalculable risk. For what?

  And Tabini cleared it to fly?

  But the humans in orbit had called their interpreters home, first the one on Mospheira, which hadn’t alarmed anyone on the mainland. It was expected, though early.

  And they’d though
t nothing of it when, on the next turnaround with the only space shuttle in existence, this turnaround, this last flight… they’d sent down a senior staffer from the station to replace, so he and Tabini had assumed, Yolanda Mercheson as the human-to-human paidhi.

  But when Shawn so innocently announced that the station had called home the only other human being on the mainland, the only human being he had regular contact with, to go back to the ship that had sent him down… a fait accompli. No negotiation, no request, no concession to protocols or his plans…

  That had been cause for alarm.

  And had he only found out about that change in plans when the shuttle had landed and deposited said senior staffer unannounced on mainland soil, he might have been able to address those alarms. Instead, he’d been shipped off to Mospheira, delivering that same senior staffer from the station, one Trent Cope, to Shawn’s superiors, and now he had to learn of Jase’s imminent departure from a former colleague who had no idea the bombshell he’d been dropping.

  Yolanda recalled to the station. Now Jase leaving without notice…

  Now Tabini-aiji cleared a human mission to go into orbit and deal with the situation on the station before Tabini’s own representatives could go aloft?

  He was more than appalled. He was furious. And having walked onto the plane with the matter with Barb simmering, an unreasoning fury boiled up in him at the sight of human smiles. The friendly greetings of former junior staffers in the Foreign Office grated on his nerves, and two senior staffers from Science and Commerce whose provenance he more than doubted were just the topping on the affair.

  He knew damned well what the thinking on the island was: Mercheson had gone up with what she could report after her sojourn on the planet, and now the island government grew nervous about what she would report about them… justifiably, counting that certain injudicious fools on Mospheira had started shooting at each other in her witness.