Defender

  “So have they resolved the matter?” he asked.

  “I think they’ll attempt to leave their employ, nand’ paidhi,” Dala said. “Because their man’chi is confused. But where will they go? Where will these lords that don’t agree allow them to go, since they do know details of the households. Neither will let the other have his servant. Neither will let an ally of the other have his servant. And I don’t think anyone else will wish to employ them with these two lords at odds and not trusting them.”

  It was a royal mess, that was sure, a tragedy for the couple, a disaster for the two lords, who didn’t want to be villains, but who couldn’t have privileged information spread to houses outside the bounds of man’chi: and he was one of a handful on speaking terms with both… one of those cases of a matter chasing up the stream of man’chi until it finally hit someone of ability to absorb it.

  Did he want two lust-driven fools on his staff?

  But at that moment, for good or ill of the fate of the two fools in question, the old man came back, a little out of breath.

  “Paidhi-ma, nandi—” A gasp for breath. “I delivered my message myself to the aiji’s major domo, who answered that there is no answer at present.”

  To Eidi, that was. And Eidi replied that there simply was no answer for him.

  Had Eidi delivered the content as he saw it, but not the specific wording?

  Had he somehow failed to make himself understood?

  He could hardly shout from space, Your conspiracy with the President of Mospheira has come to light, aiji-ma, and the ship-council is in crisis.

  Or, Aiji-ma, how am I to do my job when you go past me and keep secrets with unskilled persons?

  Am I in disfavor?

  It by no means seemed the case when the aiji and the aiji-dowager separately invited him for intimate dinners during his sojourn on the planet.

  Nothing made sense to him. Nothing at all.

  He signed off with the good gentleman, remembering to say, “Dala-nadi told me a sad story, nadi-ji. It does occur to me that I include the two houses in good relations. If you can tender my offices in mediation, and find a place for two fools, perhaps on the country estate, it would be a good service to both houses.” Meaning he would gain favor with both. That was his recompense for agreeing to support the two fools and make use of their labor. “Surmising that they aren’t of highest clearance, or Guild.”

  “One knows the circumstances the foolish woman gossiped,” the good gentleman said. “We might solve it. Forgive Dala for bothering you with the matter, paidhi-ji.”

  “I do. And I expect a good outcome. Work to keep you young and sharp, nadi-ji. An excellent job, at all times. Thank you.”

  He signed off and sat staring at the crisis-littered desk.

  He’d saved two strangers and two allied houses from a difficult situation, if they’d accept it, as likely they would. For them he’d worked a divine intervention.

  Less fortunate gods seemed to preside over his communications with Tabini, such that he had to ask himself if he had become inconvenient, if his persistent attempts to warn Tabini were only exacerbating a situation Tabini wanted to keep away from his assembled funeral guests.

  When were they going home?

  When was Tabini going to get back to routine answers to things like, It seems to me, aiji-ma, that the whole alliance is about to explode, and that aliens are going to come and destroy the lot of us?

  He got up and went to the security station.

  “I’ve sent. I suppose you followed that.”

  “One did, yes,” Tano said.

  “I’ve done everything I can think of. I confess I’m in some despair of getting through. I did try the staff in the Bujavid.”

  “We are trying elsewhere,” Tano said, “and the message went down. More, we don’t know.”

  “I keep telling myself Tabini isn’t going to be pleased with my constant battering at his doors.”

  “That there is nothing,” Algini pointed out, “and no quiet message from the aiji’s staff, considering your repeated attempts, is extremely puzzling. Your security is now worried, Bren-ji.”

  He was not reassured to learn that.

  If Tabini had directly ordered silence… why?

  And at a hellishly bad time. Incredible timing.

  Which circumstance in itself, after long dealings with atevi, nagged at the nape of his neck and promised no rest until he knew. Coincidence might operate freely down in the byways of Shejidan, but it only overnighted in the Bujavid’s well-guarded halls.

  And what reasonably could Ramirez’ death and Tabini’s silence have to do with one another?

  The Assassins’ Guild—one of their operations?

  Station security, the entire situation of station security, was a sieve. The world sent up workers by the shuttle-load, vouching for them, giving them papers that were as real and true as the two governments wanted them to be, with care and attention as intense as two governments had time and budget to apply.

  But it wasn’t only the two governments that could slip some agent into a work crew. Any one of the dissidents, the factions opposed to Tabini, to Shawn Tyers, diehards opposed to the concept of space presence, old enemies against the atevi-human association—they could.

  And could they eliminate some random lunatic in the work force, some individual from whom the Assassins’ Guild would never take a contract, some lunatic Mospheiran of clever bent and demented purpose?

  The thought, foolish as it might be, U-turned him from the study back to the security station, where now Banichi had turned up, with Jago—discussing the communications silence, it might well be: did they have another crisis occupying their attention?

  “Nadiin,” Bren said from the doorway, “I know it would be possible someone assassinated Ramirez.” Assassination, for some of their enemies, was an art form, and infinitely various and subtle. “But what if Tabini did it?” He could see it happening if Tabini felt betrayed in his arrangement with Ramirez. And if that happened, there were two agencies besides Tabini’s own that might carry out the order.

  He was talking to one of them.

  “An interesting theory,” Banichi said.

  “We have had assurances from the Guild as late as this day,” Jago said, breaking that secretive Guild’s rules left and right, “that no Guild member is here without our knowledge.”

  Unprecedented straightforwardness. He was glad someone gave him truth enough to work with.

  No Guild member outside his staff.

  And Geigi’s.

  But that didn’t answer the central question. He was back down the hall toward the study before he sorted that out. For all he knew, the Assassins’ Guild had established a regional office on the station, one his staff knew about. Once he thought of it he could not imagine the all-seeing Assassins’ Guild failing to take that step.

  Damn, of course that Guild was here. But how long they had been here and what their activity had been—or how closely his own staff had been in touch with such an entity—there was no use retracing his steps to ask that second question, which would only make his staff uncomfortable. There were some degrees of truth he simply could not expect.

  He knew, for instance, that Bindanda was Assassins’ Guild, one of uncle Tatiseigi’s men, with him for years. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Geigi’s staff held such small, known, surprises. Such infiltrations kept the great houses informed, and man’chi stable.

  But it was downright stupid of him not to foresee. He’d experienced the increase in number of workers and the increase in complexity of worker management so slowly that the increasing possibility of various atevi institutions making their way up here too just never had taken shape in his overloaded human brain.

  Of course, of course, of course—his own security never had told him. If he were ever under duress, would they wish him to know everything they could do and all the resources they had?

  But damned certain there would never be another Ta
mun rebellion, no more instances where the station dissolved in chaos and bloodshed.

  So the paidhi shut up and asked no more questions, but he didn’t think it likely Ramirez had died of Guild action. That wasn’t the signal he was getting from a staff that would signal him if they thought he did need to know.

  It still didn’t answer the question of Tabini’s silence.

  Defeat. Just defeat. He wasn’t accustomed to running out of resources. He wasn’t used to being out of ideas.

  He sat down at his desk, started to key on his computer.

  Quick footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “Bren-ji.” Jago signaled him with a hand-motion from the doorway. “Toby-nadi. On the phone.”

  His brother. Finally. Thank God. He went to the nearest wall-unit and punched in on the lit button. “Toby?” His heart was beating triple-time. “Hello?” He tried to reorganize his thoughts into Mosphei’, his mind into a different universe, and far more personal problems.

  “I take it by the location I’ve just reached that you’re not coming.”

  Oh, Toby was not happy with him. Not at all.

  “I can’t come. Toby, how’s mother?”

  “Dicey. Really dicey. I don’t honestly know.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Hospital? Intensive care since midweek. Since you were down here, damn it, and didn’t call, or answer your mail.”

  It wasn’t cause and effect, his presence on the planet, their mother’s crisis. Intensive care didn’t take maybes, didn’t take mothers assuring their sons were in reach.

  And a weak, years-chancy heart did what it did for medical, not karmic, reasons.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Toby.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I want to be there. Toby, I want to be there, and I can’t, the way things are.” Incredibly, one conniving part of his brain said: Ask Toby what’s in the papers; take the temperature of the island; find out what’s public—while another, more sensitive voice, said, For God’s sake, Cameron, this is your mother, your brother. Forget the damn intelligence report and ask your brother the right questions. “It’s one of those bad moments, Toby. I can’t explain. You have every right to punch me out when I get down there. I know that. Take me on credit right now. I have to ask it of you.”

  “Bren, Bren, it’s not me. I’m not the issue. Have you possibly got that picture? Mother’s really bad. Really bad. She’s asking for you and I’m sorry, right now I won’t do. She wants you here, and I can’t deliver.”

  Toby didn’t say, You’re her favorite son, but that accusation was in there, right along with, I’ve given her all I can give, and I haven’t got any more.

  “What she says, Toby, is all well and good, but when I was there, you were the perfect son and I was the vagrant.”

  “That’s not the point, Bren! She needs you, she needs somebody and she won’t be content with me!”

  “If you were the one out of reach, she’d be asking for you. That is the issue. It’s always been the issue, and when you’ve had any sleep at all you’ll know that fact of the universe. I know what you’re going through—”

  “I don’t care what the issue is, Bren. I don’t care about those games and I don’t care about mainland politics. It doesn’t change. It’s always something, and I’m not playing. The plain fact is, she’s really sick, and she’s not faking it. She’s not faking, this time. You think I’d call you with a lie?”

  Toby was losing his self-control. And in that realization the negotiator who dealt between Tabini and the ship-humans sucked in a breath and made himself hard and cold as ice. “That may be. It may be true. But you listen to me, Toby. You say you’re not playing. I’m convinced. I believe she’s not. But you listen to me. She has a way of getting all you can give. When she’s well, she wants her way. When she’s sick she shuts down to just one priority, and that’s getting everyone she wants as close as she can get us. No, I’m not her favorite son when I’m there. Then you’re the best and I’m the son that ought to quit my job, get a haircut, and settle down in reach—and you know that’s the truth. Toby, brother, you know it’s never going to be perfect and you can’t ever make her happy. If you need that to satisfy you, you’re in for a big hurt. She’s just the way she is, and we do what we can, but there’s a limit.”

  “Bren, I’ve given her my wife and my family. What more is there?”

  Bad news. Repeated bad news. “Where’s Jill?”

  “I don’t know.” Toby’s voice conveyed utter misery. “At a certain point I don’t give a damn. Some hotel somewhere. With friends. I don’t know.”

  “Damn. Go find her.” He didn’t belong in Toby’s private life, but he’d had a front row seat for this disaster for the last ten years. And this time he said it. “Mother doesn’t have a right. She doesn’t have a damned right to your life. Let Barb take care of Mother. You get out of there. Go find Jill.”

  “If Jill wants to go off in a fit, that’s her choice.”

  “Jill’s had plenty of provocation, brother.”

  “You’re talking about things you don’t know about, Bren.”

  “And I’m telling you—you and Jill haven’t put in all this time to lose it now. Fix it!”

  A small, wounded silence. “Whose the hell side are you on?”

  “Yours. Your life. Your life, damn it, which you had going right, and Mother gets sick and there you are.” God, it was autobiographical. “I want you to get out of there and go find Jill.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t give a damn!”

  “You listen to me. The kids probably know where Jill is. You know Mother—just make her mad: she’ll go miles just on the adrenaline. It’s good for her, just like medicine.”

  “It’s not funny, Bren. This time it’s not funny.”

  “I’m not in the least joking. Go find Jill. I don’t care where she’s gone or how well she’s hidden or how hurt your feelings are. Just walk out of there, go find her—”

  “There’s just too much gone on.”

  “There are too damn many broken promises, Toby. There’s too much someday and not enough right now. I don’t care if you get mad at me. You need to get mad at somebody besides Jill. Get mad at Mother. Get the hell out of there and live your own life. You want the truth, Toby? The absolute truth? I didn’t call when I was on the mainland because I’ve resigned from the emergency squad. I’m not willing to have my emotions yanked left and right by my family, not by Mother… and not by you. I wouldn’t believe in a cosmic connection, but it seems to me that this particular crisis happened right after I’d made a public appearance and just when Mother had to have found out I’d been there…”

  “Bren, this isn’t something she manufactured. It’s not a trick. The doctors—”

  “It may not be fake, but it’s still something she does to herself. Now she’s got you waiting at her doorstep and she’s got me upset and pretty soon she’ll get well, if she hasn’t done it to herself for good and all this time.”

  “Damn it, Bren, this is critical.”

  “Oh, I believe you. And you said it: if you divorced Jill and moved in with Mother, you know she’d only have half of what she wants—and so help me, Toby, she’s not going to get what she wants from me, and I don’t want you there, either. She’s got Barb, hasn’t she? They’ve got each other. Tell Barb. Tell Barb I’m calling in a favor. Then go call Jill, call her? I don’t care what you have to go through to get to her or how much you have to take. Jill understands this situation better than you think she does… believe me, she understands. She’s had this all figured out for the last ten years, long before we did. Now you’re learning Mother’s tricks, aren’t you? You want me there. And I can’t give you what you want. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  Another silence, one of those absolutely unarguable, unreachable countermoves.

  He let it sit there, well knowing Toby wouldn’t breach the silence first, but waiting, letting Toby get past the family temper.

/>   Then Toby pulled the only trump card, and simply hung up on him.

  Damn, he thought. He was sure he was right, so far as facts went—but not sure he’d handled it at all well, least of all sure that he’d been right to take that last shot.

  Damn.

  Well, there was nothing he could do and the agenda stayed, his, their mother’s, and Toby’s, and only the last was still mutable. In the best of situations Toby would let the advice percolate through his hindbrain and get up and make a few phone calls.

  Maybe he ought to call Barb. She’d written him a note. Opened the door. Maybe he ought to patch up an old friendship land ask his own favors.

  He looked to the door of the study, and saw a row of solemn dark atevi faces.

  “My mother is ill,” he said. “My brother has left his wife to go to her—or his wife has left him.” They knew. Little as they understood human customs from the gut level, they knew this was not the desired situation. “I urged him see to his wife. I have some hope that Barb-nadi will be attending my mother. Tano-ji, will you make calls and attempt to locate Barb? She may be at the hospital in my mother’s neighborhood.”

  “Yes,” Tano said.

  “I’ll compose a brief letter. Send it when you have her whereabouts.”

  “Yes, paidhi-ji.”

  Oh, so slightly formal.

  Jago had offered to file Intent on Barb. But Barb had her virtues. A devotion to his mother was one. He tried not to figure it out. It led places he didn’t want to imagine.

  But the staff left him in peace, having a mission to accomplish.

  He composed his letter at the computer, brief as it was:

  Barb, I think you surely know Mum’s in hospital. I think you know too that Toby’s been with her but he’s had a crisis. Whatever’s between us, personally, I know you’ve been incredibly good to my mother, and Mum needs someone right now. I’m asking, without strings, on your friendship with her, and thank you for sending word

  —Bren

  He sent it over to Tano, and tried to remember where he had been in business that involved millions of lives.

  But that was an equally precarious wait-see. Fate wasn’t going to give him a quick resolution. Things weren’t up to him to decide. Maybe this time he’d lose his mother. It had been close, from time to time. He’d tried to distance himself from situations he couldn’t help, but the grief was still there. He could still remember the woman who’d taken him and Toby on vacations and who’d backed him, however humorlessly, driving her sons in her chosen directions—he forgave that. When he most doubted himself, she’d say—You can do it, Bren. Don’t be lazy. Just keep going.