“Nadi?” he asked, in the not unlikely case Banichi was reluctant to distract him with another problem.
“The young gentleman has brought Irene back to nand’ Geigi’s staff. And there is some trouble which the staff does not understand. Gene and Artur have been translating, prior to this, and there is not an active disturbance, but there is distress of some sort.”
“I should go there.” If Irene was upset, if parents were upset, or if adjustments of some sort needed to be made in her situation, he needed to be involved. Geigi had offered to solve the human situation by lending his large guest quarters. Geigi, on watch and watch for days, and still due to wait for Gin, deserved to come home to domestic tranquility.
Nor did Irene deserve to have to explain herself.
“Is Irene moving back to Geigi’s apartment?” he asked, and Banichi asked the question of staff.
“No,” Banichi reported as the lift stopped. “The young gentleman has told staff she is a guest of the aiji-dowager.”
Cajeiri would not hedge that fine point. So Ilisidi was aware, and had involved herself in the matter. That might or might not ease tensions. Not, was more likely.
“We shall go there,” he said, hauling his mind back from problems of an oncoming alien ship and a new human administration, and back to the smaller politics of three sets of Reunioner parents, of vastly different social class, thrown onto the charity of an atevi lord and the earnest efforts of his staff.
Hell with the social class. He was on the side of the agreeable ones. And he was forming opinions.
• • •
The apartment door opened before they reached it, grace of his aishid’s advisement to Geigi’s staff that he was coming, and Geigi’s major d’ met him in the foyer.
“Be welcome, nandi. One is uncertain whether the problem need involve the paidhi-aiji, but the young gentleman being here . . . one felt obliged to notify the other staff.”
“I am glad you did report it,” he said. “What is the nature of the problem?”
“There is a request to return to the sealed sections, nandi, and we are instructed not to allow it. The young gentleman has arrived with Irene-nadi, and by our lord’s instructions we have done our utmost to make our guests comfortable. But one person asks urgently to be allowed to return to his apartment, fearing for something left there.”
“We are not surprised at that. Let me reassure them.”
“Yes,” the major d’ said with relief, and led the way down the hall which brought them, in the traditional way, past the dining room and master’s bedroom, past the bath, and to the door of the very large guest suite. The major d’ knocked once, then opened the automated door, in the way servants of any earthly house would do.
The adults, likewise the eldest boy, Bjorn, were startled by the entry; not so, the three youngest, not so Cajeiri.
“Nand’ Bren,” the major d’ announced him, “paidhi-aiji, Lord of Najida, Lord of the Heavens.”
Bren walked in, bowed politely to Cajeiri, and to Irene, the dowager’s guest. Artur and Gene stood up at once. Their parents and Bjorn rose uncertainly. Bjorn’s father stayed slouched in a chair. Bjorn’s mother stood by a guest-room door. And Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini, took up position by the main door, and the sides of the room.
Atevi would not have been anxious at that move. The parents were. Bjorn’s father straightened in his chair. Bjorn’s mother came to stand beside it. Only Cajeiri stayed seated . . . and Irene. One did not miss that little move of Cajeiri’s hand, bidding her, the dowager’s guest, stay seated.
Manners. Manners that played out in a handful of seconds. Manners which wouldn’t govern the parents where they were going, but which would definitely govern three of the children, in the circles where they might move.
“Nadiin-ji,” Bren said. There were two chairs unoccupied in the little sitting room, and he took one. Servants waited to provide tea, and as much tea as the whole company must have absorbed this morning, he signaled acceptance for form’s sake. “Please. Sit down. We’ll go on human custom, and I will answer questions frankly. I hope you’ve been comfortable.”
The parents’ anxious glances flicked between him, seated, to the four black-clad, armed Assassins’ Guild standing solemn guard.
He understood their unease. They had been lifted out of one threatening situation and dropped into a world as alien to them as that oncoming ship. Their lives were in suspension. There were things they didn’t know and no one had had time or fluency enough to answer—things regarding their future and their children’s future.
Certain situations were still in flux. It was not an occasion to unbend and make extravagant promises that he would do this and that or that they could have this and that. He couldn’t promise that their lives would resume a normal track. Nothing the Reunioners had experienced in the last decade had been normal, and their future involved changes, changes to everything they knew . . . changes in their own children. Some of those changes were already happening.
“News this morning,” he said, “Tillington is replaced.” That was good news for any Reunioner. Tillington had been the roadblock to any improvement in their situation. “I’ve just spoken to the new Mospheiran stationmaster, who is Gin Kroger—you don’t know her, but she was on the voyage with us, she knows what you were promised, and she’s determined to begin meeting those promises within the limits of resources at her command.”
They did like that news. They were a little suspicious, and that was understandable.
“What about our situation?” Artur’s mother asked. “Did you talk to her about us?”
“I can assure you that for right now, you’ll be as safe here as anywhere on the station . . . more so than where you’ve been. Safe and as comfortable as we can make you. I can’t say right now how long you’ll need to stay here.” A cup of tea arrived beside Cajeiri, and another beside him. “You know that there is a kyo ship inbound, they want to talk, and that we will be talking to them as extensively as they want, much as we did at Reunion. We expected this visit. We’re not utterly surprised by it. We’ll deal with it and we expect it to end as reasonably and quietly as our last conversation at Reunion, with their understanding that we’ve told them the truth and that we’re peaceful here. Best case scenario, we’ll make a solid agreement and all sleep better at night. But that means there’ll be a time in which I’ll be quite busy with that visit, and you’ll have to rely on your young folk to translate to the staff for you. I’ve no doubt your young folk will manage to communicate at least as well as they did on Earth. Ask, and maybe they’ll teach you the words they know. Staff is prepared to handle mistakes—they’ll be charmed with the gesture.”
Tea had now arrived beside everyone, and he picked up his cup a little before Cajeiri, who was watching his moves, not the converse that strict manners and protocol of rank dictated. “Atevi custom discourages serious talk during tea, understand. It’s a way to ask that we calm our minds and speak quietly for the space of a cup or two, not quite on business, but let me assure you, conversationally speaking, that the new stationmaster is determined to fix things, and that your own host, Lord Geigi, who is right now busy with the arriving stationmaster, has locked down your premises in the Reunioner area to preserve them absolutely intact. Right now things are still a little too unsettled in the sections to go in after property, but be assured it’s being safeguarded.”
“We have business,” Bjorn’s father said unhappily. “We have jobs. We’re grateful. But we have a lot to lose. Everything to lose. There’s a notebook. All my notes. Family records. Two hundred years of records.”
“Mr. Andressen. It is Andressen, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What records would those be, sir?”
“Private.”
Bjorn’s father—Mr. Andressen—was not accustomed to atevi-scale intrigue, or was baiti
ng a trap.
“I do take note,” Bren said with equanimity, “and whatever they are, they will be under guard, along with other property. Nobody is going to enter the premises until we can make a systematic recovery—no recklessness about it. If you have particular items, provide a list of what you want and where to find it, and I’ll order it found and safeguarded. It may not happen in the next number of days. But it will happen. I take it, in your current situation, this is not a matter of medical urgency.”
“My research.”
“And you are?”
“A physicist. With company records.”
“Excellent. I’ll remember that.”
“I have status on station. I have a position. Consult your own records.”
“I’m sure I’ll do that when we have time, but right now that ship is a priority.”
“I don’t need to be locked up over here. I don’t need my wife and son locked up. I want to leave, I want to get to my bank, I want to find an apartment . . .”
“As I understand it, a very few Reunioners did manage to find employment, in consideration of patents and processes—would you be one of those?”
“I’m employed by a Mospheiran company. I have standing.”
“Which company?” There had been a few such transactions. The companies’ behavior was questionable in legality. The patent ownership, regarding things recovered from Reunion records, was questionable. All of the issues were very far from his current problems.
“Asgard.”
Purification systems. “Interesting. Probably you’ve been robbed, Mr. Andressen, and the Mospheiran government may be interested in that.”
“I don’t care to discuss this on this side of the wall. I don’t care to be here.”
Questionable what Andressen had in his two hundred years of records, and whether it was in the Archive, which was common to anybody with University clearance to access, or whether it was something developed since the Archive, in which case there still might be ownership issues—in the chaos of a kyo attack and the evacuation of Reunion. Very many people had died. Ownership might be very much at issue.
“I’d advise you engage a lawyer, Mr. Andressen, when we do have this settled.”
“I just want out. I want my family out.”
“Mr. Andressen, take my advice. Say no more right now, and be content where you are. You’re here now because your son was once part of the association the young gentleman made aboard ship, and your son was endangered by that association. That threat is still under investigation. Until it is resolved, this is the safest place for all of you.”
“He was endangered by an unannounced shutdown of station systems!”
“Which was occasioned by a general atmosphere of tension between Mospheiran stationers and Reunioners—in which your former stationmaster made moves against the station systems. You ran, by what I hear, to Irene’s residence, where Mr. Braddock was, at the time, asking whether your son might have been with her. Why was that? Why did you think she might know where he was?”
Andressen clamped his lips together. Then: “Because Irene Wilson is a friend of his. Because I was looking any place I could think of. And hoping the kids weren’t in the tunnels.”
That was reasonable. That was exactly where Bjorn had been. And Gene and Artur. It was where they had met on the ship.
Except Bjorn hadn’t been allowed to continue that association. Bjorn had gotten into a station acculturation and education program, which Bjorn’s father, employed possibly questionably by a Mospheiran chemical firm, had arranged.
And Bjorn sat there now, listening to every word, his increasingly worried look moving from his father to Bren and back again.
“Let me explain the situation,” Bren said. “Your son does have the benefits of association with the young gentleman,” Bren said, “which is the reason why former stationmaster Braddock was attempting to lay hands on all that group. Their being under the aiji’s protection can make them targets for people with an agenda—as it did, then. But the aiji’s protection is no small matter. The aiji has taken a hand in this situation and you are not, due to your son’s association, to be released into the general population, where you could find yourself in harm’s way. On the other hand, this is your choice. You can have a comfortable and productive life within the aiji’s protection. Or you can decide to terminate the relationship and leave that protection when we can establish some hope of safety for you. But you may not decide for your son.”
“He’s a minor.”
“We’re not speaking of Reunion law. Or Mospheiran law, for that matter. His association with the aiji’s son is his to determine.”
“He’s human! He’s going to be human.”
“Biologically, certainly. But he will make that choice. As all the others will. Bjorn.”
“Sir.”
“You understand me. You cannot undo the association. That exists in the minds of very many people, not all of good will. If you do leave the young gentleman’s company, that is yours to choose. If your parents will not stay with you, that is theirs to choose. Your decision is for you to make, but understand that if you do leave the young gentleman, you will no longer have that association, and neither you nor your family will remain under the aiji’s protection. Atevi will understand you’re of no use as a bargaining chip if you choose that course, but humans might not.”
“He’ll stay with us,” Andressen said.
“Your choice, Bjorn Andressen.”
Whether Andressen had gone to Irene’s apartment to talk to Irene or to talk to Braddock was a question. Braddock’s people had been trying to lay hands on the children who’d visited Cajeiri. And while Bjorn had been invited to come down to the world with the others, his father’s ordering him to opt out had made him far less useful to Braddock’s scheme, at least in terms of public identification of Bjorn as part of that group.
But rather than simply admit to Andressen that he didn’t have Bjorn, Braddock, who’d set up operations in Irene’s mother’s apartment and next door, had ordered Andressen turned away with no answer whatsoever.
All Andressen’s actions pointed toward a man trying to minimize his son’s connections to the atevi and get his family established on Alpha Station, which would not imply a willing association with Braddock.
Irene’s mother, unfortunately, was entirely another story.
And how that all was going to sort out, he had no knowledge. He hoped Irene wouldn’t ask. Not now. Not in front of the rest. And he was sorry to have had the discussion with Andressen in her hearing . . . but going or staying, with parents or without—was a choice they all had; everybody should understand the choices the youngsters could make, and he didn’t have the time to sit down in private counseling with each of the families. They would be an association behind the kids—or they would not.
“The conclusion you can draw,” he said, to steer the talk to a happier direction, while Andressen glowered in silence, “is that Bjorn, and Gene, Artur, and Irene, are all the personal concern of the young aiji, that everyone here is going to be protected, watched over, and eventually settled in a comfortable situation, the exact nature of which I don’t yet know, but it will be comfortable. For now, please just settle in here. I know you’re short of clothes and personal articles. We can supply those, part of the hospitality, if you will kindly make a list. If you have special problems, like your records, Mr. Andressen—” A little nod in that direction, a last attempt at conciliation. “We’ll make every effort to preserve and protect them. Anything this staff can do for your comfort, they’ll be happy to do. I’m also going to ask Central to provide the Mospheiran vid feed to this residency, in addition to the station’s Ragi feed, so you’ll have information and entertainment—the Mospheiran accent’s a little different, but I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with it. Just rest. Pick up as much of the atevi language as you ca
n. Nadiin-ji.” He changed to Ragi, for the children who understood it. “The young gentleman will be occupied with the kyo very soon and he will not be able to assist you, but rely on Lord Geigi. He wished to invite you to dinner when you arrived, and now he can. So enjoy your stay. Help your parents. And stay here. Above all else, do not go about in the tunnels again. We expect to deal with this incoming ship, and for it to go away, and then we shall expect to find you a good situation.”
“Nandi,” Irene said, and Gene said it, and Artur, all with solemn nods. Bjorn looked not to have understood half of it, but he said, “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Bren said in ship-speak; and to the parents: “I just reminded them Lord Geigi has wanted to invite all of you to dinner. He happens to be the most powerful man in the aishidi’tat next to the aiji himself, so if you ask him something, understand who it is you’re asking. If it’s reasonable, if it’s possible, he can make it happen. He’s very pleased to have you here.”
And to the children, still in ship-speak: “There’s every likelihood that you’ll get to show your parents trees and weather someday soon. Not on the mainland. But on Mospheira.”
That created a little shock.
“Your children,” he said, setting aside the cup of tea, “have an opportunity. A very great opportunity. Consider carefully the advice you give them. But remember it is their choice.”
He left it at that, rose, bowed to Cajeiri, bowed to the gathering, and left, having promised as much as he could, committed as little as he could, and not said a thing about how or when or how long the interval would be. No one could predict that.
Cajeiri, wise in court ways, would not venture to amplify the promise he’d just made. Cajeiri might have his own intentions, some of them stretching well into the unpredictable future. Right now, and Cajeiri well knew it, his father made the rules, and the paidhi-aiji had already made all the promises it was possible to make, and made the warning to Andressen as plain as need be.
The boy was growing. The paidhi-aiji made, this time, an important bet on it.