Protector

“They seem to be enjoying themselves,” Banichi said, having taken a short walk down the aisle and back, as they finished lunch. “They seem to be doing very well. No motion sickness.”

“One is glad,” Bren said. “Thank you, Nichi-ji.” He and Jase had their lunch together, a little separated from Ilisidi and Tatiseigi, and bodyguards did their own rotation, catching lunch in the little galley. Jase was doing very well, had an appetite, had no problem with the rock and sway of the train.

“Which of us is going to handle protocols?” he asked Jase. “How much have you told them?”

“That the bodyguards mean business, and that you don’t touch people. Particularly people with bodyguards.”

Bren laughed a little. “Children have latitude. Nobody would hurt them.”

“The boy’s grownthis year.”

“Eight or nine, the kids shoot up fast. Big spurt between eight and twelve. All feet and elbows in a year or so—just like a human kid. The emotions are different—there’s adjustment, a little rebellious streak. Jago’s warned me.”

“Sounds like us.”

“But girls won’t be the focus. Man’chi will be. A push-pull with the parents. Rebelliousness. Quick temper.”

“Sounds exactly like us, in that part,” Jase said. “I was a pain. My actual parents weren’t available to argue with, and I stillargued with them—in the abstract. Wasn’t fair, them being so non-communicative.”

Jase’s humor had a little biting edge to it. Jase was one of Taylor’s Children, stored genetic material, a specialkid, harking back to the original crew. Ship aristocracy, in a manner of speaking. A living relic. A resource.

Sometimes, Bren suspected, from what he had heard Jase say, those who hadraised him had forgotten he was still a human being.

“You turned out pretty well.”

“Dare I say, thanks to you?” A narrow-eyed glance his way, then around the train. “Thanks to all of them. —When they decided to come back here, they decided to resurrect a few of us. Beginning a new era, I suppose. A marker. I wonder, sometimes, what they think of what they got. Yolanda’sgone philosophical. Meditates in a dark room. She scares me.”

Yolanda was another of Taylor’s Children. Like Jase, but not like. Cold as a fish and as prickly, in Bren’s way of thinking. “Seriously?”

“I think she’s in a career crisis. She didn’tlike my promotion.” Jase heaved a sigh. “Authority problems. She’s always been a person who likes definitions. The planet bothered her. Translating bothered her. She’s got more realities in her head than she likes and she won’t go into the atevi section, won’t deal with Geigi. Geigi’s learned ship-speak, since she’s resigned. She’s dropped linguistics. She’s gone over to research, records-keeping, history of the ship, that sort of thing. I think it’s a cocoon. It’s safe.” He shrugged. “She and I don’t talk.”

“That’s too bad.” Yolanda had served as paidhi-aiji, translating directly for Tabini, during the time he, and Jase, had been away on the ship, settling the Reunion mess. She’d been there—when the coup came.

The world she’d tended had blown up. At least the atevi side of it had, and stayed in chaos for most of two years, until the ship had gotten back from its mission and Tabini had retaken Shejidan. “You think she blamed herself for what happened?”

“She wasn’t you. She knew that much. It’s my understanding that she made some mistakes.”

The world she was trying to deal with had blown up. She’d failed, while Jase had been coopted into a captaincy, on a mission that succeeded brilliantly. So Yolanda was retreating into old records, which didn’t have ticking bombs in them. Another paidhi could somewhat figure that reaction. His own predecessor had come back from the mainland completely shut down, close-jawed. A very unhappy and strange man.

“Suppose Icould talk with her?”

“Maybe,” Jase said. And again: “Maybe.”

He put it on the agenda. When he found a way. Granted the world didn’t explode again, because of three human kids.

“So . . . who doeshandle the protocol explanation?” he asked.

“You know the twists and turns. I’m a student. Youdo it. I’m interested in not offending the other end of this bench.”

Truth—Ilisidi had found humans an unexpectedly interesting experience, and enjoyedher position among ship-humans. Tatiseigi was a man atevirated as difficult and volatile, a proud old conservative with no good opinion of human-induced changes in the world. . . . But now the old man seemed to be undergoing a sudden and strange transformation in his attitudes—inviting the human paidhi to dinner. Having his collection televised. Inviting human childrenunder his roof and accepting Jase’s appearance with two armored, other-worldly bodyguards, all without a visible flicker of dismay.