Read Online Visitor: A Foreigner Novel by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online Page B

hated the Reunion stationmaster with a deep, abiding passion, while Sabin, who had had no share in that decision, had been mightily upset, and blamed Ramirez and Braddock with equal heat.
    Five thousand survivors? Ramirez, faced with a dice throw for the future of the human species in this end of space, had opted to run for their centuries-ago origin point and leave Braddock. And the whole surviving Reunion population.
    What had Ogun known and when did he know it? Had he agreed with Ramirez’ decision? If not, Ogun had had to live with the knowledge for ten years here at Alpha, knowing he’d had no choice but to go along.
    Ramirez had been senior captain. And then Ramirez had been dead and Ogun had had to deal with the situation Ramirez had left.
    Now, ten years later, a third-senior captain bypassed the protocols Ogun had followed, arrested the problem at the core of it all—and handed him to atevi authority.
    Not a situation inclined to induce warmth and love within the Captains’ Council.
    “Is he exercised at us?” Bren asked. “The atevi
did
initiate the action.”
    “Initiated it with ample cause. Even he admits that. —I think he’s actually happy,” Jase said, and took the cup of strong tea aservant set beside him. He added four lumps of sugar, and stirred. “Most calories I’ve had since yesterday.”
    “Have a wafer. There can be a sandwich, if you want it.”
    “Let this hit bottom, and I’ll consider it. —He’s happy to have Braddock in custody, but I don’t think he wants to let this go off entirely into atevi decision-making. I
think
he intends to try Braddock himself.”
    “You think he wants to open up all that history?”
    “I’d swear not. I’d think not. But he’s—are we secure here?”
    “Tano’s been over the place. Entirely.”
    “I think he wants the ship’s record cast in a certain way, and a trial might be how he does it. Better yet, a plea and a statement from Braddock. I think he suspects atevi might be too easy on him.”
    “Atevi have charges against him—his aiming at the children, among others—that wouldn’t go well for him under the aiji’s law. But I can understand what you’re saying. I can understand how Ogun might want the record clear.”
    “I think
all
of us want the record clear. He asked me directly how much authority you have, how much credit with either government down there, whether you can get the Mospheirans to take the Reunioners in, and he’s no little dubious that the Reunioners are going to go along with it.”
    “They
can’t
want to continue living as they have been for the last year.”
    “Ogun is convinced Braddock has support in wanting to build a station out at Maudit. That the Reunioners won’t accept being sent down, they won’t trust the offer and they won’t want to be put under the Mospheiran government. I have an idea that topic may have come up between him and Gin by now. He
wants
it. It puts a real major problem at the bottom of a gravity well. He just doesn’t think it’s going to work. He thinks there’ll be sabotage by the Reunioners, and that the Mospheirans won’t accept them down there any more than here.”
    “Then he should have shut Tillington up.”
    “He knows that now, but the damage is done. Now we need to fix it.”
    Bren nodded slowly. “There
will
be problems, no question, especially if Mospheira expects gratitude and cooperation and the Braddock people don’t see they owe it. But relocation to the planet is the only viable option. Maudit isn’t going to happen without a huge commitment of resources from the planet, and neither government is the least bit interested in supporting it. Mospheirans won’t share power up here and Braddock’s people will insist they run the station, as long as one of them remains up here. Landing’s the
only
choice that makes it absolutely essential they go through screening to get back up, like all the Mospheirans up here.”
    “Even if we claim guilt by