Political compromise. Accepting a someday problem to solve a near-term worry.
Add in the refinery wreck and the solar storms, which no one at the time knew the limit of, and the attractive planet just lying there under their feet, hell—they’d do no damage, they’d get along, the natives already had steam, they were bound to encounter anyway, and why should they risk their precious lives trying to hold together against the odds.
At least, that was how a descendant nine or so generations down reconstructed the decision-making process … the atevi couldn’t be too different. They had locomotives. They had steam mills. They had industry.
They had one hell of a different hard-wiring, but you couldn’t tell that from the physics they used.
Couldn’t tell that meeting an atevi. Hello, how are you, how’s the weather? Nice people. Arrange a little trade, a little tech for an out-of-season game animal or two …
Right bang into the cultural rift.
Try to settle it—make it right with the local leaders: right into the cultural whirlpool.
Count the ways the first settlement had screwed it up. Count the ways they’d gotten good and deep into the interface before they’d begun to figure out betrayal wasn’t betrayal and murder wasn’t murder and that you couldn’t promote one local aiji and fight another one without involving a continent-spanning Association with everything that conflict dragged into it. You didn’t expect a steam-powered civilization to have world government …
But, then, if you were an early human colonist, maybe you didn’t expect anyone to behave in any way you wouldn’t.
Fifty years and two paidhiin ago, Mospheira had taken a collective deep breath and thrown satellite communications and rocket science onto the table, with the fervent hope that by hooking it to advanced communications, biichi-ji and kabiu together would keep some enterprising atevi entity from combining the explosive with the propellant technology and blowing their rivals to hell.
Because they thought now they’d gotten to know the atevi.
God help fools and tourists.
He flipped an unread page of the history, realized he hadn’t read it, and flipped it back again, trying to concentrate on the doings of aijiin and councillors long since drifting on the Malguri winds, washed into its soil with the rains, down to the sea from Lake Maidingi rather more rapidly in this season than in fall.
He was bitterly angry and his mind was wandering, back and forth inside known limits, like a caged creature, when the real answers had to lie outside the bars of his understanding.
Maybe it was a point all paidhiin got to. Maybe he was the most naive, maybe because he’d gone into a relationship with the most friendly of aijiin, and it was so damned easy to ignore the warnings in every text he’d ever studied and fall right into the same trap as the first humans on the planet … expecting atevi to be human. Expecting atevi to do what one naturally expected nice, sane human people to do and, God help him twice, what he wanted atevi to do, what he emotionally needed atevi to do, instead of himself waking up, paying attention to danger signals, and doing the job he’d been sent here for.
He should have made that phone call, back in Shejidan, if he’d had to make it with Bu-javid guards battering down the door. He shouldn’t be thinking, even at this hour, that Tabini was under some sort of pressure and desperately needed him back in Shejidan, because if that was the case, then the television network Tabini tightly managed wouldn’t be looking for interviews to prove the paidhi was a nice, easy-going friendly fellow, not some shadow-villain plotting world domination or contriving death-rays to level cities.
I will not betray you, Bren-ji?
What in hell did that mean, before Jago lit out the door and down the hall at the next thing to a dead run?
And where’s the gun, Jago? Where is Banichi’s gun?
The logs burned down and fell, showering sparks up the flue. He put on another, and settled back to his book.
Not a word back from Banichi or Jago about what was wrong out there—whether someone had breached the security perimeter, or whether someone odd had simply arrived at the airport or whether they’d had some dire word from Tabini.
He flipped the page, figured out he’d stopped reading the second time somewhere in the middle of it, and turned it back, with a dogged effort to concentrate on the text, in atevi directions, and to make sense out of the antique, ornate type style.
The lights went on again, out again.
Damn, he thought, and looked at the window. The rain was down to spatters now, gray cloud and a scattering of bright drops on the glass. The candles cast a golden glow. White light came from the window, as if the clouds were finally thinning up there.
He laid the book down, got up with the intention of having a look at the weather—heard someone in his bedroom and saw Djinana coming through from the back hall.
“The transformer or a bad wire?” he asked Djinana conversationally.
“One hopes, a wire,” Djinana said, and bowed, at the door. “Nadi, a message for you.”
Message? In this place of no telephones?
Djinana offered him a tiny scroll—Ilisidi’s seal and ribbon, he judged before he even looked, because the red and black was Tabini’s house. He opened it with his thumbnail, wondering was it something to do with the after-breakfast engagement. A cancellation, perhaps, or postponement due to the weather.
I need to speak with you immediately, it said. I’ll meet you in the downstairs hall.
It had Cenedi’s signature.
IX
Downstairs all the oil lamps were lit and a fire burned in the hearth. The outer hall, with its ancient weapons and its trophy heads and its faded, antique banners, was all golds and browns and faded reds. The upward stairs and the retreating hall below them were cast in shadow, interrupted by circles of lamplight from upstairs and down. Power was still out. Power looked to stay out, this time, and Bren regretted not wearing his coat downstairs. Someone must have had the front door open recently. The whole lower hall was cold.
But he expected no long meeting, no formality, and the fire moderated the chill. He stood warming his hands, waiting—heard someone coming from Ilisidi’s part of the house, and cast a glance toward that recessed, main-floor hallway.
It was indeed Cenedi, dark-uniformed, with sparks of metal about his person, epitome of the Guild-licensed personal bodyguard. He thought that Cenedi would come as far as the fire, and that Cenedi would deliver him some private word and then let him go back to his supper—but Cenedi walked only far enough to catch his eye and beckoned for him to follow.
Follow him—where? Bren asked himself, not as easy about this little shadow-play as about the simple summons downstairs—as difficult to refuse as the rest of Ilisidi’s invitations.
But in this turn of events he had a moment’s impulse to excuse himself upstairs on the pretext of getting his coat, and to send Djinana to find Banichi or Jago—which he knew now he should already have done. Dammit, he said to himself, if he had been half thinking upstairs …
But he no longer knew which side of many sides was dealing in truth tonight—no longer knew for certain how many sides there were. The gun was missing. Someone had it … possibly Cenedi, possibly Banichi. Possibly Banichi had taken it to keep Cenedi from finding it: the chances were too convoluted to figure. If Djinana and Maighi had discovered it and taken it to Cenedi, he believed in his heart of hearts that Djinana could not have faced him without some visible sign of guilt. Not every atevi was as self-controlled as Banichi or Jago.
But while his guards were out and about on whatever business they were pursuing, he had been making his own decisions this far and come to no grief, and if Cenedi did want to talk to him about the gun, best not try to bluff about it and make Cenedi doubt his truthfulness, bottom line. He could take responsibility on himself for it being there. Cenedi had no way of knowing he hadn’t packed the luggage himself. If the paidhi had to leave office in scandal … God knew, it was better tha
n seeing Tabini implicated, and the Association weakened. It was his own mess. He might have to face the consequences of it.
But if Cenedi had the gun and the serial number, surely the aiji-dowager’s personal guard had the means to contact the police and have that gun traced through records—by the very computers the paidhi had hoped to make a universal convenience. And a lie trying to cover Banichi could make matters worse.
There were just too damn many things out of place: Banichi’s behavior, Jago’s rushing off like that, this man, dead in the driveway, being some old schoolmate of Banichi’s … or whatever licensed assassins called their fellows.
Cenedi at least had missed opportunity after opportunity to fling the paidhi off the mountainside with no one the wiser. The near-fatal tea could have been stronger. If there was something sinister going on within the household, if Tabini had sent him here simply to get Banichi and Jago inside Ilisidi’s defenses—that was his own nightmare scenario—the paidhi was square in the middle of it; he liked Ilisidi, dammit, Cenedi had never done him any harm, and what in the name of God had he gotten himself into, coming down here to talk to Cenedi in private? He could lie with an absolutely innocent face when he had an official, canned line to hand out. But he couldn’t lie effectively about things like guns, and whether Banichi was up to anything … he didn’t know any answers, either, but he couldn’t deal with the questions without showing an anxiety that an ateva would read as extreme.
He walked through the circles of lamplight, back and back into the mid-hall where Cenedi stood waiting for him, a tall shadow against the lamplight from an open door, a shadow that disappeared inside before he reached the door.
He expected only Cenedi. Another of Ilisidi’s guards was in the office, a man he’d ridden with that morning. He couldn’t remember the name, and he didn’t know at first, panicked thought what that man should have to do with him.
Cenedi sat down and offered the chair at the side of his desk. “Nand’ paidhi, please.” And with a wry irony: “Would you—I swear to its safety—care for tea?”
One could hardly refuse that courtesy. More, it explained the second man, there to handle the amenities, he supposed, in a discussion Cenedi might not want bruited about outside the office. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, and took the chair, while the guard poured a cup for him and one for Cenedi.
Cenedi dismissed the man then, and the man shut the door as he left. The two oil lamps on the wall behind the desk cast Cenedi’s broad-shouldered shape in exaggerated, overlapping shadows, emitted fumes that made the air heavy, as, one elbow on the desk, one hand occasionally for the teacup, Cenedi sorted through papers on his desk as if those had the reason of the summons and he had lost precisely the one he wanted.
Then Cenedi looked straight at him, a flash of lambent yellow, the quirk of a smile on his face.
“How are you sitting this evening, nand’ paidhi? Any better?”
“Better.” It set him off his guard, made him laugh, a little frayed nerves, there, and he sat on it. Fast.
“Only one way to get over it,” Cenedi said. “The dowager’s guard sympathizes, nand’ paidhi. They laugh. But we’ve suffered. Don’t think their humor aimed at you.”
“I didn’t take it so, I assure you.”
“You’ve a fair seat for a beginner. I take it you don’t spend all your time at the desk.”
He was flattered. But not set off his guard a second time. “I spend it on the mountain, when I get the chance. About twice a year.”
“Climbing?”
“Skiing.”
“I’ve not tried that,” Cenedi said, shuffling more paper, trimming up a stack. “I’ve seen it on television. Some young folk trying it, up in the Bergid. No offense, but I’d rather a live instructor than a picture in a contraband catalog and some promoter’s notion how not to break your neck.”
“Is that where my mail’s been going?”
“Oh, there’s a market for it. The post tries to be careful. But things do slip.”
Is that what this is about? Bren asked himself. Someone stealing mail? Selling illicit catalogs?
“If you get me to the Bergid this winter,” he said, “I’d be glad to show you the basics. Fair trade for the riding lessons.”
Cenedi achieved a final, two-handed stack in his desk-straightening. “I’d like that, nand’ paidhi. On more than one account. I’d like to persuade the dowager back to Shejidan. Malguri is hell in the winter.”
They still hadn’t gotten to the subject. But it wasn’t uncommon in atevi business to meander, to set a tone. Atevi manners.
“Maybe we can do that,” he said. “I’d like to.”
Cenedi sipped his tea and set the cup down. “They don’t ride on Mospheira.”
“No. No mecheiti.”
“You hunt.”
“Sometimes.”
“On Mospheira?”
Were they talking about guns, now? Was that where this was going? “I have. A few times. Small game. Very small.”
“One remembers,” Cenedi said—as if any living atevi could remember. “Is it very different, Mospheira?”
“From Malguri?” One didn’t quite go off one’s guard. “Very. From Shejidan—much less so.”
“It was reputed—quite beautiful before the War.”
“It still is. We have very strict rules—protection of the rivers, the scenic areas. Preservation of the species we found there.”
Cenedi leaned back in his chair. “Do you think, nadi, there’ll be a time Mospheira will open up—to either side of the strait?”
“I hope it will happen.”
“But do you think it will happen, nand’ paidhi?”
Cenedi might have gotten to his subject, or might have led away from the matter of the gun simply to make him relax. He couldn’t figure—and he felt more than a mild unease. The question touched policy matters on which he couldn’t comment without consultation. He didn’t want to say no to Cenedi, when Cenedi was being pleasant. It could target whole new areas for Cenedi’s curiosity. “It’s my hope. That’s all I can say.” He took a sip of hot tea. “It’s what I work very hard for, someday to have that happen, but no paidhi can say when—it’s for aijiin and presidenti to work out.”
“Do you think this television interview is—what is your expression?—a step in the right direction?”
Is that it? Publicity? Tabini’s campaign for association with Mospheira? “Honestly, nadi Cenedi, I was disappointed. I don’t think we got to any depth. There are things I wanted to say. And they never asked me those. I wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with it. It worried me—what they might put in, that I hadn’t meant.”
“I understand there’s some thought about monthly broadcasts. The paidhi to the masses.”
“I don’t know. I certainly don’t decide things like that on my own. I’m obliged to consult.”
“By human laws, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not autonomous.”
“No. I’m not.” Early on, atevi had expected paidhiin to make and keep agreements—but the court in Shejidan didn’t have this misconception now, and he didn’t believe Cenedi was any less informed. “Though in practicality, nadi, paidhiin aren’t often overruled. We just don’t promise what we don’t think our council will accept. Though we do argue with our council, and sometimes we win.”
“Do you favor more interviews? Will you argue for the idea?”
Ilisidi was on the conservative side of her years. Probably she didn’t like television cameras in Malguri, let alone the idea of the paidhi on regular network broadcasts. He could imagine what she might say to Tabini.
“I don’t know what position I’ll argue. Maybe I’ll wait and see how atevi like the first one. Whether people want to see a human face—or not. I may frighten the children.”
Cenedi laughed. “Your face has already been on television, nand’ paidhi, at least the official clips. ‘The paidhi discussed the highway program with th
e minister of Works, the paidhi has indicated a major new release forthcoming in microelectronics …”’
“But that’s not an interview. And a still picture. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hear me discuss the relative merits of microcircuits for an hour-long program.”
“Ah, but your microcircuits work by numbers. Such intricate geometries. The hobbyists would deluge the phone system. ‘Give us the paidhi,’ they’d say. ‘Let us hear the numbers.”’
He wasn’t sure Cenedi was joking at first. A few days removed from the Bu-javid and one could forget the intensity, the passion of the devout number-counters. He decided it was a joke—Tabini’s sort of joke, irreverent of the believers, impatient of the complications their factions created.
“Or people can think my proposals contain wicked numbers,” Bren said, himself taking a more serious turn. “As evidently some do think.” And a second diversion, Cenedi delaying to reveal his reasons. “—Is it a blown fuse, this time, nadi?”
“I think it’s a short somewhere. The breaker keeps going off. They’re trying to find the source.”
“Jago received some message from Banichi a while ago that distressed her, and she left. It worried me, nadi. So did your summons. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Banichi’s working with the house maintenance staff. I don’t know what he might have found, but he’s extremely exacting. His subordinates do hurry when they’re asked.” Cenedi took another drink of tea, a large one, and set the cup down. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’d have advised me, I think, if he’d found anything irregular. Certainly house maintenance would, independent of him. —Another cup, nadi?”
He’d diverted Cenedi from his conversation. He was obligated to another cup. “Thank you,” he said, and started to get up to get his own tea, in the absence of a servant, and not suggesting Cenedi do the office, but Cenedi signaled otherwise, reached a long arm across the corner of the desk, picked up the pot and poured for him and for himself.