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Emergence (Foreigner, Band 19) - Softcover

Buch 19 von 22: Foreigner

Cherryh, C. J.

 
9780756414160: Emergence (Foreigner, Band 19)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0756414164 ISBN 13: 9780756414160
Verlag: DAW, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

The nineteenth book in the beloved Foreigner space opera series begins a new era for human diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace between human refugees and the alien atevi.

Bren Cameron, acting as the representative of the atevi's political leader, Tabini-aiji, as well as translator between humans and atevi, has undertaken a mission to the human enclave of Mospheira. Both his presence on the island and his absence from the continent have stirred old enemies to realize new opportunities.
 
Old hatreds. Old grudges. Old ambitions.
 
The situation has strengthened the determination of power-seekers on both sides of the strait. Bren knows most of them very well, but not all of them well enough. The space station on which the world increasingly relies is desperate to get more supplies up to orbit and to get a critical oversupply of human refugees down to the world below. Rationing is in force on the station, but the overpopulation problem has to be solved quickly—and Bren's mission on Mospheira has expanded to include preparation for that landing.
 
First down will be the three children to whom Tabini's son has a close connection. But following them will be thousands of humans who have never set foot on a planet, humans descended from colonists and officers who split off from Mospheiran humans two hundred years before in a bitter parting of the ways. There is no way the atevi, native to the world, will cede any more land to these new arrivals: they will have to share the island. But certain Mospheirans are willing to use force to prevent these refugees from settling among them.
 
Bren's job is as general peacemaker—but old enemies want war. Is Bren's diplomatic acumen enough to prevent a war that both sides are prepared to wage?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SFWA Grand Master C.J. Cherryh has written more than seventy books, including the highly popular Foreigner science fiction series. She won the Hugo Award for her novels Downbelow Station and Cyteen, and her short story "Cassandra." She has also won the Campbell Award, Locus Award, and more.

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1
 
The rainy day in Port Jackson brought a cool breeze from the open balcony doors. It was quite a lovely balcony, though Bren Cameron’s atevi security, watching from across the room, didn’t want him to cross that threshold.
 
The doorway, however—theirs being a third-floor suite in an isolated mansion on the highest hill in town—still afforded a spectacular view of the city, and Bren stood leaning on the door frame, enjoying the moving air. Tall buildings of the present century stood on the right and left. The lower rooftops of the gracious old homes and shops of the prior century barely showed below, descending toward the harbor, with a wide gray gap. One couldn’t quite see the harbor from here, but the center of that gap was the sea—the strait that divided the human island of Mospheira from the vast megacontinent that belonged to the atevi, the world’s native inhabitants.
 
Bren’s brother Toby was out there on his boat, possibly the safest man on the planet, anchored as he was next to an atevi naval vessel. In his own way, Toby had become as much a bridge between human and atevi, as Bren himself. Toby had carried secure messages both ways across that strait during the Trou­bles on the mainland, and more than once provided a quiet and safe passage for people and goods, the most recent being his delivery of Bren and his entourage to the island.
 
Bren’s work here was, technically, complete. He’d made his reports, convinced the necessary officials that the answer to the overpopulation in the station orbiting above was to get the ref­ugees from Reunion Station down to the world and integrate them into Mospheiran society. More, he’d set the right people into place to accomplish that deceptively difficult task.
 
Only one job remained, and that was to be here when the next shuttle landed—to greet the three young people so singu­larly important to the aiji’s son, Cajeiri, and to see to their safe and secure settlement into their new life.
 
That, however...was still days ahead. And meanwhile—Bren and his bodyguard remained out of touch with the main­land, cut off from information, more isolated from doings over there than they had been on the space station. A phone call could reach the station. He had that, which could inform him on doings up there, and he could ask what the station knew—but the station itself would have nothing on the things that worried him. If it had—it might have called him. But it had not.
 
Toby might know something. A single call right now, and Toby would come into that harbor. Toby might not speak that much Ragi, but he could at least ask the naval escort for news—if the navy itself was told anything beyond its mission, which was to keep Toby safe, to keep one Bren Cameron safe, when he chose to come back across the strait—and to provide the human government of Mospheira a visible earnest of the attention of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, which was to say, the government of the mainland.
 
That was the outward face: the aishidi’tat is watching. The paidhi-aiji has the aiji’s strong support in his presentations, and in his demands.
 
But there had been no word about goings-on inside the aishidi’tat, nothing to explain the uncommon goings-on around Cajeiri, the unprecedented appearance by the nine-year-old heir, not just on atevi national television, but feeding over to the is­land as well. The aiji’s family simply did not appear on camera, but there had been the aiji’s nine-year-old son boarding the train, talking about a visit to his great-uncle Tatiseigi. Alone—give or take his bodyguard. No sign of the aiji-dowager, who ordinarily would have been with him. Not going with Lord Ta­tiseigi, but going alone to visit him—when Lord Tatiseigi had been under strong pressure by his own party. Conservatives were trying to throw their weight around now that other crises had, in their opinion, abated. Had they gotten the old man that upset?
 
Other crises were not that abated. And the Conservatives getting their way could bring one of those crises alive, with all that went with it.
 
They had just saved the planet from calamity, for God’s sake. Could the Conservatives not let the situation lie quiet for a season?
 
Unfortunately—Tabini-aiji himself would not. Tabini had presented the Conservatives new worries. A treaty with an alien power? That didn’t greatly concern them. The fact that two Conservative lordships lay fallow with the next legislative session looming, and Tabini was proposing to fund the landing of more humans from the heavens, to land at their own space­port, while the aiji was flinging precious cargo down from the station to light gods-knew-where on the hallowed soil of the mainland? They were upset. They had harried Tatiseigi to help them fill at least one of the vacant lordships, and get back a vote that could possibly slow Tabini’s plans.
 
Tabini had made a countermove. The nine-year-old heir had just been moved into public view, sent to bolster his great-uncle, with the aiji-dowager, his usual guardian, nowhere in sight?
 
What was he up to?
 
God, he wanted information.
 
But calling Toby in just brought too much attention to Toby, the phones were absolutely not to be trusted, even if they spoke Ragi, and focusing the Mospheiran news agencies onto events on the mainland, at a time when focus on the next shuttle land­ing best served the Mospheiran political process...and the fu­ture of five thousand human refugees...
 
No. His need to know was not paramount. His finishing his job here was. A good appearance, a good impression, and fo­cusing Mospheira on its own peaceful future—that was the best use of the paidhi-aiji. The agreements had to be kept, for the sake of the refugees, and for the stability of the aishidi’tat. Tabini-aiji did not commit himself to unprecedented favors and then have the recipients decide they’d changed their minds.
 
Banichi came to stand by him companionably—senior of his aishid, black-skinned, golden-eyed, a head and shoulders taller than a tall human and wearing a uniform, Guild black, that he’d likely worn every day since he was a teenager. Banichi was likely asking himself what the paidhi found out there of such interest, given a misting rain and an impenetrable gray in the direction of the homeland.
 
They’d been together long enough, however, that Banichi needn’t even ask the question.
 
“I am remembering the city,” Bren answered. “I wonder how my brother is faring out there on the water, and what he knows that we do not.” Two questions begged the felicitous number, three, to settle the universe in order. “I wonder why the young gentleman is traveling alone. And I am becoming very anxious to be home.”
 
Home. It was curious to stand here on the island of his birth and say that, but it was true. Beyond any doubt he had had left, it was true.
 
“We might have flown,” Banichi said. “We still might, at any hour, and easily return to Mospheira for the landing.”
 
“We might have,” he said. “We might. But one hesitates to excite the news folk with distracting questions. I take it there is no news from the mainland?”
 
“Nothing,” Banichi said. Guild communication was neces­sarily by radio, secure in its codes, but apt to raise curiosity when used here,...

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Verlag
DAW
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0756414164
ISBN 13 
9780756414160
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
DAW
https://www.aeuln.top/

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