Precursor by C. J. Cherryh Page B

I can’t guarantee it.”
    “Ramirez?”
    That was the senior captain in the Guild, Jase’s sometime guardian, sometime chief grievance. Ramirez had his good moments and his bad ones.
    “I imagine it is. Him, I can talk to.”
    “Talk and get back here.”
    “I want to.”
    “You’re going to have to grow that damn braid again.”
    Jase gave a rueful laugh, shook his head, and for the better part of an hour they drank tea and reminisced, mostly about Toby and his boat… nothing about Barb, not a word about Barb, just… “How’s your mother? How’s Toby and all?”
    “Oh, fine,”he said.
    Remarkable how little now they found to say to each other, when before this they’d had all the time and talked and talked about details, plans, intentions—time shortened on them, three years to recall, no time ahead of them, just a little rehearsing of the schedule for the two shuttles under construction.
    “I’ll write tonight,” Bren said, damned well knowing the barriers of administrations, governments, and just plain available space in the message flow up from the big dish that was most of their communications.
    Jason was quiet then, subdued, next to distraught. “Tell Tano and Algini I’ll miss them,” the word was. “Tell the secretaries, all the staff.” It achieved a sense of utter desperation. “Banichi. Jago.” He cast a look at them.
    “Nadi-ji,” Banichi said.
    “I’ll miss you.”
    “We also regret this,” Banichi said.
    A silence fell. And grew deeper and more desperate.
    “I’ve got to get back” Bren said. ”I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’ll come late tonight, if I can. Maybe spend a little more time.“ The launch was in the early hours. “As much as I can.”
    “I’d be glad if you could.”
    So there was nothing to do but finish the tea, get up from the chairs, and face one another. Bren offered an embrace. It was the Mospheiran thing to do. Jason met it awkwardly, hugged him fiercely; ship-folk were isolate, not prone to touch one another. Bren gathered a grip on the worn jacket and clapped Jase on the shoulder, feeling a burning tightness in his throat.
    “Take care,” Jason said. “Take care, Bren.”
    “I’ll do my best.” Bren let him go, turned in the futile attempt to find something to do with his hands, and walked away.
    Banichi and Jago went with him, saying not a word as they followed him out of the residency and down the outside, gray hall.
    He’d known for three years that, once the shuttle truly flew, he’d be alone again. He’d planned to be alone in his life.
    And what was this…
alone?
He had Banichi and Jago, whom he loved… a human could say
love
, and they could be devoted in atevi fashion.
    He had Tabini-arji’s high regard, he lived in splendid quarters, held an extravagant seaside estate where his mother and his brother and his brother’s family arrived for family visits… visits no other paidhi had ever been granted—
    Not to mention the hundreds of staff and servants and acquaintances… and the relationship, of sorts, he had with Jago, for good or for ill. He was not, whatever else,
alone
.
    Yet losing Jason left him feeling used up, bruised to the soul.
    In that light he knew he ought to open his mouth and talk, talk about something, anything, in the absence of a word from his companions. It wasn’t their job to guess that the human in their midst wanted—
needed
—to be talked to. He was the translator, the cultural interpreter. He should initiate a word, something to give them a cue how to deal with him in this situation they’d never met.
    But he didn’t find one.
    They escorted him in silence down to the security zone, into that area of grim gray concrete where the van had let them out. The next link would not be by van, but by rail, up to the Bu-javid, the palace on the hill, the center of Shejidan. He walked with them past the spot where the van no longer stood, in the echoing hollow of the place. They entered through