Precursor by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

goes well for both the island and the mainland.”
    Three times was a charm, didn’t the proverb say?
    The fourth launch of a newly-built shuttle, however many missions its exact predecessor had flown in the skies of the earth of humans, still didn’t feel secure, not to him. It didn’t feel that secure to Jason, either, not to anyone who’d sweated through the first, problematic docking. Not to anyone who knew why there’d been an hour-long cabin blackout on the third flight.
    Why the rush? he asked himself.
    The haste couldn’t feel that secure to the four Mospheirans, either.
    Every time he thought about the possibility of a post-launch emergency, with two places in the entire world with a long enough runway, he found his palms sweating. Mercheson had made it safely to orbit. Jase would. He didn’t effectively give a damn about the Mospheirans… and did.
    No cargo, well-thought test plans thrown to the winds…
    “Shall we escort our guests to the facility, then?” he asked Banichi and Jago.
    “As you wish,” was Jago’s answer… elegant, smooth, reasonable, and not a hint in her official bearing that there was ever anything but business between them, or anything in their meeting but well-oiled routine. “The van can accommodate us all,” she said, “nandi.”
    With Banichi, then, she led the way down the stairs. The usual van was waiting.
    “Watch the steps,” Bren said, starting down after her. All the stairs on the continent were higher steps than standard on Mospheira. He didn’t forget; he didn’t trust them to remember, and turned once and twice, hearing too much haste and suspecting too much sightseeing behind him. Rain slicked the ground. A brisk wind was blowing—tousling the Mospheirans’ hair, disturbing a strand or two of his despite his braid, but never, ever disturbing the precise single plaits that swung between atevi shoulders.
    The van rolled forward as his bodyguard reached the tarmac. Banichi and Jago opened the double doors of the van and with the others settled inside, leaped inside themselves with a spring-rocking bound, pulling the doors to after them with a businesslike thump.
    The van rolled off on its way, comfortably appointed, windowless, with no access to the drivers, whose identity Bren suspected as two more of his personal guard.
    The van was armored: it was never a particularly quick acceleration. It heaved on bumps like a boat on rough water, while humans sat on seats out of human scale, sharing close, jostled space with a species who owned the planet by birthright. The humans stared at close quarters. In dim conditions, atevi eyes reflected gold under bounced light. Jago’s gleamed from her seat in the dark corner. Bren didn’t look to see the Mospheirans’ reaction to that, only thought to himself that Jago damned well knew the effect on humans, knew it spooked him, knew it would spook the Mospheirans, and didn’t take precautions against it.
    Jago was mad, damned mad, at something.
    Banichi added his stare to the chatoyant glare, and then looked away, not a word said at the moment.
    Then, in Ragi, looking at Ben, “Pleasant flight?”
    “Yes, sir,” Ben said quietly, in Mosphei’.
    Banichi was pushing it and knew exactly which ones of the humans were translators.
    Beyond that, it was silence: Banichi prodded, Jago smoldered in silence, and Bren wondered in increasing desperation what could have gone wrong so quickly… besides Tabini’s bloody-minded obstinacy and the Guild’s picking a fight neither Jase nor he could win. Possibly both of them had understood Tom Lund’s unfortunate, offhanded remark.
    Ample opportunity for trouble. It was with them. It had gone to the space center with Jase.
    The van, having made the long crossing of the security zone of the airport, bounced sluggishly and went down a steep ramp.
    Somewhere behind them, massive hydraulics operated… the security doors, inside the space center at the northwest end of the airport, the new