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and had no power at all to arrange—he wanted his guests to live safe from politics up on the station. The situation up there, the Mospheirans feuding with the Reunioners—that quarrel really, really worried him.
    There were over twice as many humans on the station as there were supposed to be, and the half of them, who had come up from the island of Mospheira, hated the other half, who had arrived last year from Reunion, out in deep space. There was not enough room. So things had become crowded and difficult.
    More, a treaty said that there would always be as many atevi up there as there were humans—and
that
agreement was thrown out of balance, with the Reunioners arriving. Now there were twice as many humans as there ought to be, but only the same number of atevi. Maybe it would have been kind for atevi to give up some of their room to make things better, but for some reason they were not doing that. He had to ask his father why. It was possibly because they did not want the Reunioners staying there and fussing with the Mospheirans. Or possibly just that they did not want to interfere in a human feud.
    And then there was the accident with one of the big tanks that grew fish and such that fed the station—when the station had already had trouble feeding everybody before the Reunioners had come. Atevi were not willing for humans to be short of food, however. So they had helped with that, with workers and metal to repair the damaged tank. And Lord Geigi had sent workers and materials that modified a number of public areas into living spaces. But it was all still a mess.
    And there was no easy way to fix it. The ancestors of the Mospheirans had had a disagreement with the ancestors of the Reunioners, and now, just when the Mospheirans had gotten themselves through a very scary and dangerous time, and built everything to make themselves comfortable and well-fed again—the Reunioners showed up to overcrowd them.
    Mospheiran humans on the station wanted to pack up all the Reunioners and send them out to go build a completely new station at the barren ball of rock that was Maudit, far across the solar system. Mospheirans wanted never to see them again.
    He did not agree. His three guests were Reunioners, and he did not want them sent out to Maudit.
    So if the Mospheiran stationers won and the Reunioners were set to leave, he intended to get his guests and their parents over into the atevi section of the station, under Lord Geigi’s authority, where no human order could reach them. He had not gotten his father’s agreement that that was what they would do—but that was his intention, and he intended to do what he could to arrange that, quietly, so as not to upset adults.
    He intended to write to Lord Geigi, for one thing, and get Lord Geigi to agree to protect his guests. And their parents. He would ask it in principle, first. That was one of his great-grandmother’s words. In principle. Nand’ Bren would say, getting one’s foot in the door.
    And once he knew
that
was set up, and given that they
could
reach Lord Geigi by the secret passages Gene had mapped, then he could at least feel easier about his guests. They might have to go back tomorrow. But tomorrow he would set about getting them back down to Earth for his next birthday.
    Nobody was going to take them away. Nobody was going to threaten them because of some stupid quarrel their ancestors had had.
    Nobody was going to stop him.
    If being heir of the aishidi’tat meant anything—he was going to get his guests back and keep them safe from stupid people.

2
    T hree people waited on the dock as
Jaishan
came in: Saidaro, who cared for
Jaishan
most of the year, and Saidaro’s two assistants, elderly fishermen from Najida village, the Edi community just down the hill from the estate.
    On an ordinary day, Bren would have stayed to shut down the boat and talk and do whatever maintenance might have come up, but not this