Precursor by C. J. Cherryh

changes. Control panels and wall switches sat at intermediate height, a little high for humans, not too low for atevi.
    And the flowers on the table, an atevi welcome in this area, were a carefully chosen arrangement—no different than the species familiar to Mospheirans, but felicitous in number and color, given the blue and green: they were spring, and hope.
    “Lovely flowers,” Kate was kind enough to say, perhaps making conscious amends for Lund. She and Ben might understand. The others might finally twig to at least that. Mospheirans were remarkably stubborn in their insularity, but the news channels had been full of unbridled analysis of atevi ways in the last three years. In the end, he’d sent his own reaction in an interview, trying to satisfy a burgeoning, fearful curiosity without weakening the strictures that kept the species from unofficial contact. Adventurous types on either side of the straits had tried contact in rowboats, and successful, live venturers, even escorted back by the authorities, were damned dangerous to have expounding in the press and over the airwaves.
    How long could they hold two curious species apart, with a narrow body of water separating them?
    That, apart from hostile aliens in some other solar system, was one of the worries inherent in the space program… in this launch, in Jason’s recall, and in this mission. Atevi
would
grow close, again, to humans.
    The door to the lounge opened.
    And there Jason met them—his dark hair starkly, badly, shockingly cut. In three years Jason had carefully grown the beginnings of a respectable braid, that badge of atevi dignity, and now he’d cut it, along with his ties to the earth… God alone knew in what frame of mind when he’d gotten the orders from above. Jase wore a dark-blue jersey, black trousers, and, God save them both, that frayed fishing jacket Toby had given him three years ago.
    “Jason Graham,” he introduced himself to the Mospheirans, as if television hadn’t broadcast his image all over the planet at least twice a week. He didn’t quite look at Bren, not looking him in the eye, at least. “Jase is what I go by.” Duly, Jase shook hands, smiled, did all the right and human things with the newcomers: Bren accomplished the introductions, wanting all the while to ask the essential question, but they were waist-deep in newcomers and unanswered questions.
    “Mine’s the first room,” Jason said to the incomers, indicating the first of the twenty rooms in circular arrangement around the common room: no head, no seniormost: King Arthur’s revolutionary arrangement. It set atevi teeth on edge. To atevi eyes, it was social chaos. War. “Plenty of room, this trip. We have space for more.”
    All cheerfulness… which certainly hadn’t been Jase’s mood when he’d gotten the order to fly, and was not what he expected from Jase, not with that haircut.
    Bren waited, offered polite, required courtesies. Considered the coat, the performance, because performance it surely was… and God alone knew how Jase had gotten out the door past their major domo wearing that; God knew how he’d saved it from the servants.
    But the jacket was a map of explorations. There was an abrasion on the elbow, where Jase had tried to fall in the ocean. Jase had begged, pleaded, and demanded his visit to the ocean—for ulterior motives, as it had turned out. But Jase had fallen in love with the sea.
    And what did it say, that, going home, Jase chose that ratty, salt-weakened jacket and a shirt he knew had seen three years of wear? What had Jase been thinking, and what must the servants have thought, when Jase took something to his hair.
    “Where’s the shuttle?” Tom Lund was forward enough to ask.
    Jason didn’t give them the expected, verbal answer. He walked over to the wall and pushed the button that motored the blinds aside.
    The gleaming white, bent-nosed bird out on the tarmac seemed about to lift from the ground of its own volition. It