Destroyer

How much of the aishidi’tat had fractured when that happened? How much pent-up tension in the power structure had just snapped? Classic, absolutely classic atevi behavior.

  And what could a human do to mend the damage, when the human in question had made the critical mistakes in the first place, and given his atevi superiors bad advice?

  Ilisidi might, with some justification, ask for transport for herself and Tabini’s heir back to her homeland, bidding the paidhi to stay the hell on the island. She might justly tell the paidhi to give her no more advice, certainly not of the quality he’d given Tabini. She hadn’t yet mentioned the word blame, but he was sure she knew a certain amount of this situation was indeed his fault.

  And there were no few atevi on the mainland who’d like to explain to him all the mistakes he’d made, he was quite sure of it. By now many of his loyal staff, maybe even Banichi and Jago themselves, were quietly questioning moves he’d made, things they’d accepted.

  Now that he had an enforced time to sit and think, not even tea sat easily on his stomach, and sleep, as tired as he was, did not come, no matter how he tried, so the hours stretched on and on, in blacker and blacker thoughts. He ate a bite or two of his supper and found no desire for the rest. He drifted, belted to his seat, in a cabin never quiet—the shuttle had too many fans and pings and beeps for that—but that held a kind of a white, shapeless sound, and permitted far too much calculation.

  “Bren-ji, you have not eaten,” Jago observed, loose from her seat for the moment, drifting close to him.

  “Later, Jago-ji,” he said. “I shall have it later.”

  At the moment he wasn’t sure he could keep another bite down.

  But self-blame was a state of indulgence he could not afford. Until Ilisidi did, for well-thought reasons, tell him go to hell, he had to get his wits working and do something constructive, if he could only figure what that was.

  So he decided he had best shake the vapors, satisfy Jago, and eat the damned sandwich, bite by bite. Deal with the situation at hand, avoid paralyzing doubt, and try to think of first things first. Try to learn from the mistakes. That was the truly unique view he could bring to the situation. At least he’d had experience in mistakes. He had a very good view, from the bottom of this mental pit, of what they had been, and what not to do twice.

  Dry bite of tasteless sandwich. One after the other.

  If atevi affairs were to get fixed, the fix had to start from the top of the hierarchy. That was the very point of man’chi. He had to find out what had happened to Tabini, the foremost atevi who’d trusted him, and set things right in that regard, if he had to shoot Murini with his own hand.

  There was an ambition worth having. Too late to utterly undo the damage, but at least, if he took Murini out of the picture, as should have been done in the first place, he could free the people of a leader completely undeserving of man’chi, of anyone’s man’chi—in his own admittedly human estimation.

  He hadn’t asked himself, in those fast-moving days when the space program had been his only focus, why humans felt guilty if they didn’t spare their enemies, but, more importantly, he hadn’t asked himself why atevi had generally felt extremely guilty if they did. He’d been feeling all warm and smug in his accomplishments in those days, too warm and smug and convinced of his own righteousness ever to ask himself that question . . . like . . . do atevi have an expectation of certain behavior on all sides, that might be worth considering?

  The human word gratitude had always translated into Ragi, the dictionary blithely said so, as kurdi, root from kur, debt. But what did it mean, derived from the word debt? A feeling of debt for an undue kindness? Good debt or bad debt?

  And how was that to translate into atevi actions not within, but across the barriers of man’chi? There was the problem.

  And translators previous to him had never questioned whether application of gratitude across man’chi lines was possible—had never taken any within-and-outside-man’chi applications into account because translators before him had never been in a position to see atevi cross those boundaries. Translators before him had never dealt with an aiji as extraordinary as Tabini, whose ambitions had crossed those boundaries and placed him into situations where inside and outside man’chi critically mattered. He hadn’t seen it. Bang! Right in the face, and he hadn’t seen it. None of his predecessors had suggested there might be a problem with the word, that concept, that assumption.

  Welcome home, Bren Cameron. Welcome home, on the day all the mistakes suddenly made a difference. Bring the computer up, open the dictionary paidhiin had spent centuries building, and put a significant question mark not only beside that word kurdi, but add a note that every emotional and relational word in the dictionary deserved a number one and a number two entry, an inside meaning and an outside meaning.

  He’d let his dictionary-making duties slip, thinking they didn’t matter so much as his flashier, newer ones. Lord of the Heavens, he’d become. But where was the clue to his problems? Lurking, as always, in the dictionary, right where he’d begun.

  The shuttle made its insertion into atmosphere on a route they’d never used before, so everything was tense. The station confirmed they had clearance from their landing site at Jackson, and from Mospheiran air traffic control in general—it was another worry, that some lunatic Mospheiran with an airplane might take exception to their landing or just, in great admiration, take the unprecedented chance to see a shuttle landing. Both sides of the strait had their patented craziness, and a man who wanted to think about such things could fret himself into deeper and deeper indigestion.

  Jago noticed it, and inquired again: “Are you ill, Bren-ji?”

  She had put away a fair amount of the offered pre-landing snack, and for answer, he simply gave her his dessert, a prettily wrapped bit of cake. “Would you, Jago-ji? I fear I may weigh my stomach down.”

  She knew him. She knew he was worrying. She likely knew he was scared spitless. She floated across the aisle and back a row and shared her acquired pastry with Banichi. Then the two of them gave him analytical looks, and put their heads together and conferred.

  The conference drifted up the aisle—literally, as Banichi and Jago floated forward—to Cenedi. Dared one wonder—or worry—that his anxiety might then drift over to the dowager, and reach the eight-year-old heir?

  Bren felt his ears grow hot, a flush of thoroughly human embarrassment, and he shot Banichi and Jago a fretful look, trying to get them to desist from advising Cenedi. He signaled Jago, who pretended not to see. Now they were worried because he was worried, and because he had not informed them why.

  His bodyguard was a delicately balanced, edged weapon. It was outright wrong to handle such an instrument with anything but precision and caution, and he had leaked human emotion into their situation. He had upset their calculations of the risks, not told them the nature of his worries, possibly tipped them toward distrust of the Mospheirans they might have to deal with.

  Well, he could at least patch that problem. He insisted, caught Jago’s eye, and when she had drifted back to him:

  “Have no concern for my surly disposition or my appetite, nadi-ji. Flying always upsets me. I particularly dislike it when there may be missiles aimed at us. Imagination quite thoroughly upsets my stomach. But I have confidence in our landing and great confidence in Mospheirans on the ground.”

  “Do we rely securely upon the Presidenta?”

  She was still ready, ready as Tabini had been, along with all their security, to take his word as truth, when his judgement was necessarily at issue in this whole business, whether he was at all reliable in his estimates of his own people, when he’d been so badly mistaken in reactions on the mainland. But there was no room for second thoughts. Gravity had them. They were headed irrevocably for Jackson, with no other landing site in the whole world available, carrying the most precious cargo atevi had, in the dowager and the (at present) bored, over-sugared, and over-stressed heir of the aishidi’tat.

&n
bsp; The paidhi needed to get solid control of his own nerves, that was what. He could only think so many moves ahead, or go crazy trying to calculate the variables to a nicety. There was no calculation possible at present, except that they had to get down and get transportation to a place where they could gather more information.

  “We may rely on Shawn,” he said. “The Presidenta remains a strong associate, reliable and, as far as I know, firmly seated in his power. I wish I might tell you the next steps we shall take, but I have been reluctant to discuss any specifics with him, for fear of interception by some less well-disposed party. We shall land, I suppose we shall spend the night near the landing field to consider our options and gather information, and by some means, in the morning, I expect, we shall cross to the continent as rapidly as we can. I trust the Presidenta will arrange a boat—that would be my preference.”

  “Safer,” Jago agreed. “Slower transit, but one believes all of us agree. There will be surveillance, but surely more boats than planes go about the strait, particularly under these circumstances. I shall present it to the others.”

  “Do so, Jago-ji,” he said, and she sailed forward, pulled herself down to a secure place in the seats forward and spoke gravely to Banichi and Cenedi, who had continued their conference, and doubtless were committing certain key things to memory. It seemed likely a plan was in formation up there—even, likely, a plan as to what they should do if all the paidhi’s assurances fell apart entirely and they were met with gunfire or treachery at highest levels.

  The paidhi was out of his element in martial affairs. What his bodyguard was doing up there was certainly more constructive than what he was doing, sitting back, fretting, and nursing his indigestion. High time he opened his computer and set about his own reasonable preparation, raking up details of officials on Mospheira, recalling those in various offices, down to their contact numbers and home addresses. He did that, reminded himself of accesses to certain lords on the mainland, then unbelted and drifted up near the dowager. Floating there, tucking down somewhat into a vacant seat, he asked her in detail about various lords on the mainland, with her estimation of their web of man’chi, and that of their households, to whom they paid allegiance, and of what history, with what marriages and inheritances, reestablishing his command of that mathematics of trust and old grievances.

  Certainly young Cajeiri listened with more personal interest than a human child might have mustered, absorbing a set of old, old feuds and seemingly pointless begats, marriages, and business dealings of people he’d never met, most of them now dead. His young lips clamped tight on questions he by now knew not to ask, wisely declining to interrupt the conference of his elders, eyes sparking at this and that name he might remotely know, or a light of understanding dawning at a particular reason this clan avoided that one.

  When Ilisidi began enumerating the members of the Atageini household, and included two sisters of Cajeiri’s mother, and an illicit affair and illegitimate child in the extreme youth of Damiri’s youngest sister, Lady Meisi, his young eyes grew as round as moons.

  “Who, mani-ma?”

  “Deiaja.”

  “She is my cousin, mani-ma?” Cajeiri exclaimed—Cajeiri having resided under great-great-uncle Tatiseigi’s roof, not so long before their mission launched.

  “And being half Kadigidi, and ill-advised, she is a scoundrel of a youngster,” Ilisidi said darkly, “and a thoroughly bad influence, I have no doubt.”

  “She brought me cakes,” Cajeiri said, “when great-uncle said I had to stay in my room. I never heard she was my close cousin.”

  Ilisidi had lifted a brow at the business of the cakes, and actually seemed to muse on that small point for an instant before she frowned darkly. “One may read the winds of decades in a tree. Young, it bends to every fickle breeze. Old—it leans increasingly to the persistent summer winds of its growing seasons. Have you never marked this tendency in trees, young aiji?”

  “I never have, mani-ma.”

  “Do so in future,” Ilisidi said sharply. “Consider the winds that continually blow in the Atageini household, from what direction, and how strong. Grow wise.”

  “I should rather have had Artur and Gene come down with me! I might rely on them more than the Atageini, at any time!”

  Oh, damn, Bren thought, inwardly bracing himself for a very wintry wind, indeed. That small rebellion was certainly not well considered, coming amid Ilisidi’s remarks about childhood and growing.

  “And so you do not trust Deiaja as much these days as once you did.”

  “You say we should not rely on her. But the Atageini . . .”

  “The Atageini remain questionable.”

  “Not my mother, mani-ma!”

  “Children arrive into such difficult situations. Being born to patch a rift, one necessarily spends years at the bottom of it, looking up and seeing far less of the landscape than one might otherwise see. A wise child will take the word of those with a wider view.”

  A young jaw clenched. “Can I not trust my mother, mani-ma?”

  “Do you trust me, young sir?”

  “You are the aiji-dowager. I suppose you are still the aiji-dowager, mani-ma, even if my father is—my father is—”

  “I remain the aiji-dowager and shall remain, so long as I draw breath, young sir. As you will be the sole occupant of that untidy rift so long as you live: plan on it, and get as many reports from those who saw it form. As you grow taller, you will see more of the landscape. Do you understand me? Need I make it plainer, and leave less to your imagination?”

  “No, mani-ma, one need not.” A duck of the imperial head, a momentary downward glance. And up again, with a thrust of the bottom lip. “But I could absolutely rely on Artur and Gene, mani-ma. They are very clever.”

  “They are humans, boy.”

  “You rely on the paidhi-aiji, mani-ma, so I could rely on them!”

  Time for the paidhi-aiji, a bystander, to duck his head, cling to his seat, and above all not to think unhappy thoughts about what grief the dowager’s reliance on him had brought to the world.

  “Impertinent youth, to dare compare two untried boys with the paidhi-aiji.”

  “They may be reliable, mani-ma, when they grow up,” Cajeiri protested.

  “When they have grown up,” Ilisidi said, “and when you have acquired an adult mind, great-grandson—then give us your mature opinion. Until then, profoundly apologize to the paidhi-aiji.”

  Bren looked off toward the staff consultations, quite sure he would surprise an unseemly sulk if he glanced toward Cajeiri. He waited for the dutiful, soulless, “One apologizes, nandi.”

  And didn’t hear it.

  “Bren-nandi was eight, once, and he grew to a more fortunate year, mani-ma. So even did my great-grandmother.”

  “Impertinent boy!”

  “But it is true you were eight once, and you grew up wise and clever. So they might, and I might.”

  “Too impertinent by far,” Ilisidi said. “Wait until we stand again on solid ground, young gentleman. Then we will see if substance accompanies that sauce.”

  “Yes, mani-ma,” Cajeiri said, and added, under his breath and with a forward glance: “One does respect the paidhi-aiji at all times.”

  “One is grateful, nandi,” Bren ventured to murmur, as Ilisidi waved the imitation of a blow toward Cajeiri’s ear.

  “Intolerable,” Ilisidi said. “And growing more impertinent by the day. We shall be glad to deliver him to his father.”

  Fortunately phrased, auspicious wish. He personally took heart from the notion that the dowager, knowing her own people, and with her own ambition, had not given up on finding Tabini alive.

  Nor, apparently, had she given up supporting him.

  But he had gathered all he was going to for the moment. The mood was broken.

  And somewhere in the exchange of names, the gathering of reference points and names he had not thought of in years, he found himself sunk back into those referents as he w
ent back to his seat. The dowager’s analogy of standing in a rift was apt. He had been brought in to bridge a rift of his own—and was it entirely his fault if even Tabini, who had a thoroughly atevi set of instincts, had misjudged a situation in relying on him so much? They’d known what they were doing was dangerous, hastening the trickle of technology into a spring flood in response to trouble on the island, incursions onto the mainland, and—and the arrival of the ship from its centuries-long absence. In the press of events, a good number of atevi had come to agree with their actions. Even the dowager, prominent among the environmentalist and traditionalist element, still approved what they had done, to the extent of going into space herself and attempting to assert atevi authority over their own world and its surrounding space.

  He found himself traveling down old, old mental channels instead of meeting blank walls. This lord and that lord might be relied upon to thus and such a degree, as in past crises, and if that lord stayed loyal to the Ragi atevi, so would this other lord, very likely, give or take a cousin married across a certain dubious clan boundary—

  It all grew familiar to him again, like putting on an old, comfortable coat. They weren’t advancing into unreadable chaos. They were coming home—home, whatever its current condition, and there were resources he would be so busy laying his hands on, he wouldn’t have time to panic. They had resources with them, for that matter, and if saving the mainland government meant setting Ilisidi at the head of the aishidi’tat until they could find Tabini, there were northern and central and eastern lords that would approve that stopgap measure in a heartbeat. There were lords he was sure that would approve any aiji at all who wasn’t a usurping duplicitous Kadigidi backed by detested southerners. There was a solid center to the aishidi’tat that would accept compromises of every sort to gain the reestablishment of a solid, known power in place of Murini, who had no majority, only a coalition of powers that sooner or later would cut his throat and fight for power of their own, taking everything down to chaos with him.