Read Online Tracker by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online Page A

as Bren, and her frown when they asked said they were not to ask about it. She had cut up most of her station clothes with scissors the second morning in Tirnamardi, and thrown the pieces away, very upset with them, saying only that she needed room in her baggage. She had been collecting writing paper, even scraps, and he had given her whole fresh packets of it, so there was a lot of stationery in her personal luggage right now, along with two picture books he had given her, and her prettiest clothes from his birthday festivity. She was going to wear her riding clothes to go to the spaceport. Irene was very, very smart, smarter than any of them, he suspected. She was certainly the best at languages, and she was, of all of them, a little scary, possibly because Irene herself was always a little scared. What she was scared of, Cajeiri was not sure—maybe she was scared of her own questions. She was a little unlike the others. Her skin was brown. Her eyes were dark. Her frown was like a sky clouding over. And she was so scared of flying she got sick and probably would again.
    He so wished he could help her.
    He’d said that to Gene, last night, about Irene needing the rest of them, about Irene just exploding someday, and Gene had understood him.
    â€œWe can’t always get to her apartment,” Gene said, and tried to explain, saying, “Like the Bujavid. Like the third floor. Not everybody comes there. Security zone, where Irene is.”
    So Irene’s mother had to be somebody more important than Gene’s mother and Artur’s parents. And if Irene lived in a security zone, then
he
was worried for her. Irene’s mother had been against her coming down until the very last moment. And then Irene’s mother had changed her mind for no reason they really understood. If Irene herself knew why, she had not told them; but at least she had gotten to come.
    There could be a problem, a very big problem with Irene, on the next visit.
    If her mother was important, then politics was involved.
    And he
knew
what that meant.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    It was a fair long road from Najida to the train station, one Bren had traveled more often than most roads—and it was a faster trip these days, thanks to peace in the district. Najida cooperated nowadays in road maintenance with the township to the south, with Geigi’s estate, and with the township to the north, so Bren had found himself the unlikely owner of, to date, a fire truck, a yacht, an ambulance, a road grader, a large truck, a dump truck, and a formidable earthmover that could variously hammer a large rock or pick it up in a bin. Combined with other districts, Najida could do substantial jobs for the district, like road repair, employing no few locals in the process.
    So he was somewhat proud of the local road. Not so fine as some, but good enough for market traffic, all the way to the township in the south, and again to Geigi’s estate.
    Najida district was his home, in a sense. It had become that. He cared about the people. He cared
for
them. Whenever he was here, he heard their problems and solved them if he could, whether with application of his personal income or by hearing both sides of an argument and sorting it out as fairly and sensibly as he knew how. He maintained the few roads, he lent transport at need. He paid medical bills. And when he was not here, the Najidi could write to him in the capital, and he would do what he could for the district from the Bujavid—which very often was enough to handle the difficulty. It made him extraordinarily happy, being able to do that.
    But now he was traveling back to a different existence, to do a wider job, while Najida disappeared behind them in a cloud of dust. In that other job, there was far less thanks, but it mattered far more to the outside world.
    And now Jase wanted him to expand that endeavor.
    He and Jase sat and talked while the sun rose and the dawn landscape ripped