Tracker by C. J. Cherryh Page B

seatbelts fastened, for the next few hours.
    They’d certainly earned it.
    They’d all earned it. Jase and his bodyguard, too.
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    The paidhi-aiji, however, who had been up before dawn composing documents for Jase, had two reports to outline while the details were fresh in his mind, and another set of documents to translate.
    The train was headed home, on an eastward route right back around to the Central Station. They would come into the capital, then take the ordinary route along the edge of the city, to the Bujavid train station.
    Tatiseigi had returned to the capital some three days ago. Ilisidi was back from business in the East.
    And the letters waiting for him in his Bujavid residence were surely overflowing the message bowl by now, business postponed as long as it could be.
    Aiji-ma,
Bren wrote to Tabini,
the guests have gone home with many expressions of gratitude for their visit. The young gentleman is exhausted, and sleeping as I write. His comportment was exemplary in these last days. I am very glad to have had him as my guest at Najida and he is welcome at any time to return. He is a great favorite of my staff.
    I had opportunity to speak with Jase-aiji at some length. Last night he conveyed a request that I visit the station in the near future, to become acquainted with the station’s current situation and more specifically with the performance of Tillington, the human station-aiji, Lord Geigi’s counterpart. Lord Geigi himself has not, in my hearing, complained of Tillington, but I am alarmed at recent statements, which are problematic for our political allies on the station.
    The difficulty springs from an ancient disagreement, in which the Reunioners, who were the aijiin of the station in past times, lost the man’chi of the population, and then left the world to pursue settlement elsewhere.
    During the two years of the recent Troubles, Mospheirans on the station, in anticipation of a much smaller number of Reunioners returning, worked hard to enlarge the living space and also to repair damages done to the food production factory by a stray piece of rock, this during our mission to Reunion, and during the two years when Murini, of unfortunate memory, had grounded the shuttles.
    The arrival of a much larger than expected number of Reunioners has crowded the human section of the station and shortened supply. The station is divided into two territories. And the Reunioners came with families. Mospheiran workers, for whom families are forbidden, have been crowded into less space, and have a very limited ability to return to Earth for family visits. For various reasons, including scarcity of employment, the ancient antipathy of Mospheirans toward Reunioners has resurfaced, creating tensions.
    The Mospheiran folk wish to be rid of the Reunioners who have disrupted their lives, and indeed, the population of the station is oversupplied with humans so long as the Reunioners remain. But any plan to have the Reunioners go apart and build another station risks the eventual rise of an opposition group of humans. I most strongly discourage that as a solution, aiji-ma. First of all, there is the treaty requirement of numerical parity, which would require atevi presence in equal numbers. It is likely that if the Reunioners stay on the station under current conditions of shortage and overcrowding, there will be conflict. It seems clear that if they cannot stay where they are and we cannot send them elsewhere, the Mospheiran government has it incumbent on them to bring the Reunioners down to Earth. In the general population of Mospheira, five thousand Reunioners will become a minority population and they can be integrated into Mospheiran society.
    Unfortunately two human aijiin have risen in opposition to each other, station-aiji Tillington, appointed by the Presidenta of Mospheira; and Braddock, about whom I have previously reported, who has appointed himself aiji of the