Visitor: A Foreigner Novel by C. J. Cherryh Page A

safeguarded. It may not happen in the next number of days. But it will happen. I take it, in your current situation, this is not a matter of medical urgency.”
    “My research.”
    “And you are?”
    “A physicist. With
company
records.”
    “Excellent. I’ll remember that.”
    “I have status on station. I have a position. Consult your own records.”
    “I’m sure I’ll do that when we have time, but right now that ship is a priority.”
    “I don’t need to be locked up over here. I don’t need my wife and son locked up. I want to leave, I want to get to my bank, I want to find an apartment . . .”
    “As I understand it, a very few Reunioners did manage to find employment, in consideration of patents and processes—would you be one of those?”
    “I’m employed by a Mospheiran company. I have standing.”
    “Which company?” There
had
been a few such transactions. The companies’ behavior was questionable in legality. The patent ownership, regarding things recovered from Reunion records, was questionable. All of the issues were very far from his current problems.
    “Asgard.”
    Purification systems. “Interesting. Probably you’ve been robbed, Mr. Andressen, and the Mospheiran government may be interested in that.”
    “I don’t care to discuss this on this side of the wall. I don’t care to be here.”
    Questionable what Andressen had in his two hundred years of records, and whether it was in the Archive, which was common to anybody with University clearance to access, or whether it was something developed since the Archive, in which case there
still
might be ownership issues—in the chaos of a kyo attack and the evacuation of Reunion. Very many people had died. Ownership might be very much at issue.
    “I’d advise you engage a lawyer, Mr. Andressen, when we do have this settled.”
    “I just want out. I want my family out.”
    “Mr. Andressen, take my advice. Say no more right now, and be content where you are. You’re here now because your son was once part of the association the young gentleman made aboard ship, and your son was endangered by that association. That threat is still under investigation. Until it is resolved, this is the safest place for all of you.”
    “He was
endangered
by an unannounced shutdown of station systems!”
    “Which was occasioned by a general atmosphere of tension between Mospheiran stationers and Reunioners—in which your former stationmaster made moves against the station systems. You ran, by what I hear, to Irene’s residence, where Mr. Braddock was, at the time, asking whether your son might havebeen with her. Why was that? Why did you think she might know where he was?”
    Andressen clamped his lips together. Then: “Because Irene Wilson
is
a friend of his. Because I was looking any place I could think of. And
hoping
the kids weren’t in the tunnels.”
    That was reasonable. That was exactly where Bjorn had been. And Gene and Artur. It was where they had met on the ship.
    Except Bjorn hadn’t been allowed to continue that association. Bjorn had gotten into a station acculturation and education program, which Bjorn’s father, employed possibly questionably by a Mospheiran chemical firm, had arranged.
    And Bjorn sat there now, listening to every word, his increasingly worried look moving from his father to Bren and back again.
    “Let me explain the situation,” Bren said. “Your son
does
have the benefits of association with the young gentleman,” Bren said, “which is the reason why former stationmaster Braddock was attempting to lay hands on all that group. Their being under the aiji’s protection can make them targets for people with an agenda—as it did, then. But the aiji’s protection is no small matter. The aiji has taken a hand in this situation and you are not, due to your son’s association, to be released into the general population, where you could find yourself in harm’s way. On the other hand, this is your choice. You can