Visitor

  He pushed himself upright. “Tell me.”

  Antaro came near and sat down on the side of his bed, and now the rest of his aishid was stirring, shadows lit by one tiny spark of light by the door switch. They gathered, likely aware that Antaro had left and aware that Antaro was back.

  “Nand’ Bren is back in his apartment,” Antaro said, whispering, “and Jago came through the servant passage to report. Everything is going well, but we should be careful what we say, because our visitors may have very good hearing or brought equipment in or both. Cenedi thinks if they have equipment, they may be picking up things from up in the station. Mani is asleep. Cenedi will tell her in the morning.”

  He whispered: “Did nand’ Bren learn anything new?”

  “Nand’ Bren and Jase-aiji were both in the session. The kyo knew Jase-aiji was there. Nand’ Jase worked ops with the ship as it came in and they may have assumed he was there; but nand’ Bren says they asked for him only after he had come in from upstairs, so nand’ Bren says assume they do hear, and he thinks our visitors know more ship-speak and more Ragi than they admit. Senior Guild agrees. But it did go very well. They worked a lot with the electric dictionary, and they talked about Reunion. Nand’ Bren told them that we have no intention of rebuilding Reunion or going into their space. They all agreed on that.”

  He would like to see the kyo world. At least pictures of it. It was a sad thought to hear he never might. But he understood all the reasons, understood them all the way back to the reasons humans and atevi had had trouble meaning the same thing, to this day.

  “Nand’ Bren has gone to bed,” Antaro said further, “and nand’ Jase has sent a signal advising the ship-folk that things are going well and to be patient. We do not want to use the lift to come and go. It makes noise all the time, but stopping here, it makes a distinctive noise, and if sounds are informing our guests, we should be careful of unexplained coming and going.”

  “So will we see them at breakfast, Taro-ji?”

  “We are told nand’ Bren will sleep late if he can, and he is requesting your great-grandmother and the Guild Observers all delay breakfast two hours. This will give him time to study before breakfast, and it will give staff time to begin arrangements. Our guests are asking to see the station working, and to see Mospheiran humans. So they are going to go up to see Central do the handoff.”

  That was something he wanted to see. “Shall we all go?”

  “One has not heard.”

  “Tell them I wish to go.”

  “It may make the size of the company unwieldy,” Lucasi whispered, from the side. “One does not know this. But it may be a consideration.”

  An adult consideration. A sensible consideration. Those had not become his favorite words in this last year.

  “There is nothing more I know, Jeri-ji,” Antaro said.

  He had waked up now. Entirely. But it was unfair and even dangerous to keep his bodyguard up so late they were suffering from lack of sleep. Things were not safe. They were never safe with that ship sitting out there.

  “Everyone should go to bed, then,” he said. “Thank you, nadiin-ji. We shall hope, at least.”

  “Nandi,” they whispered, one and all, and went back to their own rooms, that opened onto his.

  It was quiet then. And he was wide awake, remembering, and feeling a little chill in the air.

  He had wanted to go into that room with nand’ Bren. He had wanted to talk to Prakuyo. He had felt shut out, disregarded, and he had just waited for mani to tell him he was wrong for what he was probably thinking.

  But maybe mani had felt a little the same, and without being upset—nothing upset mani—understood his disappointment. He and mani by themselves had gotten Prakuyo to calm down and even be happy, that first time, on Phoenix. It was mani who, even if she never used a word of Prakuyo’s language, had said the right things the right way and made him understand he was offered hospitality, not being locked up.

  This time Prakuyo had come with others they did not understand and had never met before, so things were different, and now was not then. He understood why nand’ Bren had sharply restricted the conversation and talked with them alone.

  But Jase had come in, Guild said. Could not he?

  Maybe nand’ Bren thought he would still deal in toy cars and picture books, when things were more serious than that.

  He was not that boy with the toy cars anymore. He was not that boy who had run the ship-tunnels anymore. He was the boy his father had made his official heir. He was young aiji.

  But one noted mani had not simply stamped her dreadful cane and walked into that room with nand’ Bren either. She could have. Mani had not done that, because, for one thing, mani, with someone at hand to act for her, did not need to act, and did not act. She had been aiji of the aishidi’tat once. She had held Father’s power, and she never acted personally if she had a subordinate to send. That was what it was to be aiji.

  That was what he would be. Someday. There were probably times his father wanted to be involved in something, and held back because it was something a subordinate could do, should do, and if that subordinate failed, he would send another. And another. Even if they got killed.

  And it meant sitting and waiting for somebody to send word and deciding at a distance whether that was good enough.

  It meant staying in Central with mani, only listening while other people went into the station tunnels to rescue his associates.

  It was not just because he was nine years old.

  It was because he was “young aiji.”

  That was what he had to be. He could inform himself on what was going on everywhere. But touch it, until it was quieter?

  No.

  That upset him. But it was what aijiin had to do.

  Aijiin were supposed to get information. His aishid was fairly good at getting it. They had. But it was not all he wanted to know.

  Things were quiet right now, he thought, if everybody had gone to bed. He hoped they had been able to decide that nobody should shoot at each other, and he hoped the kyo had not guessed there was not much they could do if the kyo did shoot.

  There had at least been no word about the kyo ship moving or doing anything. He was very sure Phoenix and the ship-aijiin were watching it, and knew exactly what to watch for, except there being not much they could do about that, either.

  The ship-aijiin, he decided, were probably in the same situation he and mani were—they had to let their subordinates do what they could do, and wait. Jase-aiji had been down here. He would definitely be talking to Sabin-aiji, who had seen the kyo ship before, and dealt with it.

  Ogun-aiji would be waiting. And Lord Geigi and Gin-nandi would both be waiting, all the aijiin of everything—just waiting for reports out of that room.

  Probably there were kyo on that ship waiting for Prakuyo to report to them, too.

  Nand’ Bren said it was hard to understand the kyo, but maybe that was one thing they all had in common. The paidhiin got to go in and find things out, and figure things out.

  Prakuyo was somebody important. But since he came, himself, he was probably not the most important.

  Prakuyo had changed, which was good. He had been very thin. Now he looked a lot more like the others. He was rounder than Geigi or Bindanda. And one could not think that he had come all this way for teacakes, or conversation. Neither would anybody else. He really hoped they would not say anything about taking any Reunioners away with them: he would give them Braddock, but certainly nobody else.

  And when nand’ Bren had not included him in that late session with Prakuyo and the others, he had had, in that very moment, a feeling that it was very adult business afoot, that had to be done right, and without any stupid mistakes.

  But when aijiin were in conflict—and subordinates went in—it made a difference how good those subordinates were.


  The Mospheiran paidhiin had been doing it for a long, long time, and nand’ Bren was the best there had ever been. He was sure of that. Nand’ Bren was the very best.

  And nand’ Bren had not left him totally without information: nand’ Bren had seen to it he had the little screen, and told him it would always keep up to date with whatever people put in.

  And now the kyo had them. He had had that from Antaro’s reports.

  His tablet was on the little table, right beside the bed. He had not turned it on since before supper. He thought now the light might wake his aishid.

  But not if he got under the covers with it. So he reached out an arm, took it, threw the covers over his head so he could see it, and pushed the button to turn it on.

  It was not the image he had left on it. It was an image of steps on a stairway. Then people, humans, going up such steps.

  A ladder. An atevi worker climbing it.

  A mountain. Humans climbing the snowy part, in heavy coats.

  It was making changes without his doing anything, and his aishid said nand’ Bren was asleep.

  He touched the Ragi side of the screen and it said aloud, in nand’ Bren’s voice, mountain. Climb the mountain.

  He felt a chill. He touched the kyo side of the screen. It said, Hsuna. Hsuna nak.

  Not in nand’ Bren’s voice.

  He heard a stir in the room. He came out from under the covers, hair all in disarray. The sound had waked everybody.

  “Nandi?” Jegari asked.

  “The little screen,” he said. “One of the kyo is putting words in.” The image kept changing. “Every time it changes, one of them is adding words.”

  His aishid gathered to see, eyes shining gold in the light from the little screen.

  “It seems a good thing,” Veijico said. “Is it not, nandi?”

  Could his aishid ask him such a question? He had no idea. He had absolutely no idea whether he should speak, or whether his voice might go to the other machine.

  Surely not. It had no way to hear him. Had it? He had not tried to change the screen. Whoever was awake surely would not know they were all sitting here watching.

  Was it Prakuyo? He thought not. He thought rather that voice belonged to the smallest of them. Hakuut.

  That was spooky. It was really spooky.

  19

  No breakfast as yet—but there was hot tea.

  And two messages had arrived in Bren’s message bowl last night, through the servant passage. Kandana, on night watch, had read both, had advised staff, who had decided not to wake him, and Bindanda delivered them with the pre-breakfast tea, the first a message with no seal, no cylinder, on the Guild’s impermanent paper.

  It came from Antaro, of Cajeiri’s bodyguard, and said: New words are appearing in the device in the middle of the night.

  The second message came from Cenedi.

  For the paidhi when he wakes.

  That was interesting. He had not touched the device. He had debriefed with Jase and his aishid and gone straight to bed. It was beside him, atop his physical notebook—he took his best preliminary notes on paper, a habit a voyage to another star and back had not broken, and that battered notebook had seen some travel.

  But had the fishing net indeed caught words last night?

  He turned the device on, sipped tea, and ran through the early section.

  Hakuut, he thought, by the timbre of the voice.

  The lad—he mentally thought of Hakuut that way, fresh-faced, smaller, less in rank—the lad had worked hard at it: picture after picture. He skipped ahead and looked at those sequences designed to get at abstracts.

  Filled in.

  God, had the fellow gotten any sleep?

  There had to be some clues in there, some places where he hadn’t been able to puzzle out the desired path, where it came to abstracts.

  But it was everything he had hoped to do in days. There. On every device this morning. Hakuut had handed them a starting-point . . . actually . . . actually—he checked a group of images that he had set up to establish words like same and different, like and unlike. Filled in. He checked one and another of the concept sections. Filled in.

  God. A gift.

  He poured himself another cup of strong tea and started through it, with an application that exceeded any he’d poured into University graduate finals. He hadn’t had to absorb vocabulary this fast, this crazily, since that ages-ago night when he’d firmly believed the Linguistics certification board was going to try to set him back a year, purely on age requirements.

  Three in the morning, he’d hit a wall and plowed through it. Three in the morning, and a strange sense of how the various numerologies worked in the word cores, and how the logic of the shift revolved simply around convenience and ease of pronunciation, not in some arcane set of word classes that human study had created to explain it. It had been, was still, just that simple—once one had done enough of a type. One could find a logic buried in a class of things.

  And here was a string of identified abstracts, people, processes, acts, connectors, modifiers, done up in seals and ribbons, as atevi would say.

  Seals. As in—locked down.

  And in the thought that just perhaps Hakuut, who had drawn a sharp caution from Prakuyo during the session, might have done something else the other two might not approve—and because changing one device’s content changed them all—he got up from his desk, took the device to the counter where he could make a computer connection, and backed up the state of the device as it was at this exact moment.

  Seals and ribbons. His fishing net had hauled up a school of fish. Multiple schools of fish. Enough fish from an alien sea that he might be able to figure out their linguistic ecology.

  If he had a month or so to do it.

  He didn’t have that. He had three hours until he had to show up for breakfast.

  If he dared, he’d report himself sick and confined to bed.

  But he had made that resolution, which he still thought was the only safe course, to be truthful and forthcoming with their visitors.

  He could walk out and say—pardon me, honored guests, but I have been handed a gift which it will require weeks to appreciate, so meanwhile shall we put a hold on everything and simply live here together and enjoy all the food you can eat?

  Well, he could not quite say it, or propose it that fluently. That was the problem, was it not?

  He had three hours. He had shaved, showered, he had put on shirt and trousers. It would not be the first time his staff had finished dressing him while he read some critical paper.

  • • •

  Ilisidi was in good spirits at breakfast, her ordinary self, not troubling to speak a word of kyo, but definitely in good humor, at one end of the table. Cajeiri’s place was on her right, beside Jase, across from Bren—the kyo having the whole other end of the table. Cajeiri had arrived just a little off from his usual excitement, with a serious look in Bren’s direction as they sat down.

  Bren said, conversationally, “A good night of very peaceful sleep, young gentleman.”

  Cajeiri was no stranger to double meanings. “Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

  “Good sleep, yes,” Prakuyo added cheerfully, as the servants began to serve. “Very good sleep. You sleep good?”

  “Indeed,” Ilisidi said. “And today we understand we shall visit Central. Very good.”

  There were nods and thumps and a gentle booming.

  “Today,” Bren said, just as cheerfully, in kyo, “we see more words in the device. Good help, Prakuyo. Thank you.”

  “Good, yes,” Prakuyo said, and followed it with something to the effect that Hakuut had done the addition.

  “Hakuut says the words, yes, I hear Hakuut’s voice.”

  A nod, a little thump. “Excellent, nand’ Bren.”

  “What is
this we are saying, nand’ paidhi?” Ilisidi asked, reasserting herself. “Kindly inform us.”

  “Hakuut worked late, and generously amplified our store of words last night, aiji-ma, so we can make much faster progress on structure. I think your great-grandson has been doing the same as I have, this morning: studying. I could only wish I had more hours. But this will be a great asset.”

  “Well, well, perhaps my great-grandson can spend a little time with our guests today before the excursion.”

  Turn Cajeiri loose on his own with Prakuyo and perhaps steal a little more time with the new vocabulary? Jase had written reports ready to pass to various people who needed them—explaining, for one thing, the sensitivity of kyo hearing and why they were not using coded com. He might pass them while they were escorting the kyo upstairs, but it seemed fairly urgent to get those reports where they needed to be before kyo appeared in their midst.

  He saw, on the other hand, Cajeiri’s face, not showing the childish delight at that recommendation one might expect. Rather it was a sober look, a little concern. Perhaps it had not been Cajeiri’s aishid’s judgment alone that had sent word to the dowager’s security in the middle of the night. Cajeiri would very likely have been the one to spot the activity—and sensibly notify those who needed to know and pass the message.

  “Indeed, the young gentleman has looked forward to this meeting,” he said, with his own sober reservations, and not without the thought that the dowager herself wanted her great-grandson to have a try at communication. “Perhaps he might indeed enjoy a little time after breakfast. —Prakuyo-nandi.” A switch to kyo. “Cajeiri wants much to talk to Prakuyo and guests after breakfast. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Prakuyo said. “Yes, good talk to Cajeiri.”

  “Good, yes,” Cajeiri said. “Good you come, nand’ Prakuyo.”

  “Very good,” Prakuyo said. Very was the guess, based on context and its similarity to much. “Very good, nand’ Cajeiri. Does the dowager wish to talk?”

  Context was starting to fill in, the structure, words inflecting in relation to each other, the advanced forms. One could not duplicate it yet. But one could guess.