Conspirator

Things within the apartment would not be to Ilisidi’s liking. They were bound not to be. The management of her grandson would become a daily crisis.

  Uncle Tatiseigi would voice his own opinions on the boy’s upbringing.

  And he would be on his boat with his brother, fishing . . . for at least a few hours a day.

  He almost felt guilty for the thought.

  He almost felt grateful to the Farai, considering the incoming storm he was about to miss.

  Not quite guilty, or grateful, on either account.

  The train moved out, slowly and powerfully, and the click of the wheels achieved that modest tempo the train observed while it rolled within the curving tunnels of the Bujavid.

  Bren had a drink of more than fruit juice as he settled back against the red velvet seats, beside the velvetdraped window that provided nothing but armor plate to the observation of the outside world: Banichi and Jago still contented themselves with juice, but at least sat down and eased back. Tano and Algini had taken up a comfortable post in the baggage car that accompanied the aiji’s personal coach. Bren had offered them the chance to ride with them in greater comfort, but, no, the two insisted on taking that post, despite the recent peace.

  “This is no time to let down one’s guard, nandi,” was Tano’s word on the subject, so that was that.

  So they made small talk, he and Banichi and Jago, on the prospect for a quiet trip, on the prospect for Lord Tatiseigi’s participation in a full legislative session for the first time in twenty-one felicitous years . . . and on the offerings they found in the traveling cold-box, which were very fine, indeed. Those came from the aiji’s own cook, with the aiji’s seal on them, so they could know they were safe—as if the aiji’s own guards hadn’t been watching the car until they took possession of it. Even his bodyguard could relax for a few hours.

  It was all much more tranquil than other departures in this car. The coast wasn’t that far, as train rides went, and the aiji had done them one other kindness—he had lent an engine as well, so the red car was not attached to, say, outbound freight. It was a Special, and their very small train would go directly through the intervening stations with very little pause. They might even make Najida by sundown, and they could contemplate their own staff preparing fine beds under a roof he actually owned for the first time since they had come back from space.

  A little snack, a little nap . . . Bren let himself go to the click-clack of the wheels and the luxury of safety, and dreamt. . . .

  Dreamt of a steel world and dropping through space-time.

  Dreamt of tea and cakes with a massive alien. Cajeiri was in this particular dream, as he had been in actual fact. Prakuyo an Tep loomed quite vivid in Bren’s mind, so much so that, in this dream, the language flowed with much less hesitancy than it did in his weekly study of it. He dreamed so vividly that he found himself engaged in a philosophical conversation with that huge gentleman, with Cajeiri, with the aiji-dowager, and with peace and war hanging in the balance.

  He promised Prakuyo an Tep that indeed this was the son and grandmother of the great ruler of the atevi planet (a mild exaggeration) and a partner with humans (true, mostly) in their dealings with the cosmos. He had done that, in fact.

  Humans having greatly offended the kyo, he had collected the whole stationful of them that had so offended, and delivered them back to the star they shared with atevi.

  Humans having so greatly offended the kyo, he had persuaded the kyo that atevi were a very great authority who would make firm policy and guarantee humans’ good behavior in future.

  Most of all, he had shown the kyo, who had never seen another intelligent species prior to their exiting their own solar system, and who had somehow gotten into space with no concept or history of negotiation—one shuddered to think how—that two powerful species could get along with each other and with the kyo—a thunderbolt of a concept the paidhi had no illusions would meet universal acceptance among the kyo.

  Prakuyo an Tep, over a massive plate of teacakes, miraculously and suddenly resupplied in this dream, vowed to come to the atevi world and document this miracle for his people, a visit which would persuade them to conclude agreements with this powerful atevi ruler and his grandmother and son—agreements which would of course bind all humans—and together they would find a way to deal with the troublesome neighbors on the kyo’s other perimeter: God knew whether that species had a concept of negotiation, either.

  But the paidhi, the official translator, whose job entailed maintenance of the human-atevi interface, and the regulation of mandated human gifts of technology to the atevi—according to the treaty which had ended the War of the Landing—had apparently another use in the universe. He was supposed to teach the kyo themselves the techniques of negotiation.

  And simultaneously, back on the planet, he had to make sure Tabini’s regime was secure and peaceful.

  And make sure Tabini’s grandmother was in good humor.

  And make sure Tabini’s son didn’t kill himself in some juvenile venture, and didn’t take so enthusiastically to things human that he ended up creating disaster for his own people on the day he did take over leadership of the aishidi’tat.

  He really had hated to say no to the boy, who had harder things to do than most boys. He had promised him a boat trip.

  And he sat there having tea with the kyo and telling himself he was firmly in charge of all these things. He had lied a lot, lately. He really didn’t like being in that position, lying to the boy, lying to the kyo, lying to—

  Just about everybody he dealt with, except Banichi and Jago, and Tano and Algini. They knew him. They forgave him. They helped him remember what he had told everybody.

  And pretty soon now, he was going to have to lie to the atevi legislature and tell them everything was under control . . . when they all knew that there were still plenty of people out there who thought the paidhi hadn’t done a great job of keeping human technology from disrupting their culture.

  This didn’t, however, stop atevi from being hell-bent on having wireless phones. Some clans thought his opposing their introduction was a human plot to keep the lordly houses at a disadvantage—because the paidhi’s guard had them, and probably Tabini’s had them, and nobody else currently could have them. Clearly it was a plot, and Tabini was in the pocket of the humans, who secretly told Tabini what to do . . . they became quite hot about it.

  Tea with Prakuyo became the windblown outside of a racing locomotive, with a great Ragi banner atop, and the paidhi sat atop that engine, chilled to the bone by an autumn wind, hoping nobody found his pale skin a particular target.

  They were coming into the capital. And the people of Shejidan might or might not be glad to see Tabini return to power . . .

  “Bren-ji.” Jago’s voice. “We have just passed Parodai.”

  They were approaching the lowlands. In the red car. Carrying all his baggage.

  He was appalled, and looked at Banichi and Jago, who had gotten less sleep last night than he had, and who were still wide awake.

  Maybe they had napped, alternately. Maybe Tano and Algini were taking the opportunity, safely sealed in the baggage car. He certainly hoped they were.

  Had he been wound that tight, that the moment he quitted the capital, he slept the whole day away? He still felt as if he could sleep straight through to the next morning.

  But he had now, with Banichi’s and Jago’s help, to put on his best coat, do up his queue in its best style, and look like the returning lord of his little district.

  He owed that, and more, to the people of the district, who had held out against the rebels.

  He owed it to the enterprising staff, many of them from the Bujavid—who had fled during the coup and simultaneously spirited away his belongings—which had consequently not fallen into the hands of the Farai.

  His people had held out on his estate, staying loyal to him when that loyalty could have ultimately cost them their lives. That it had not come under actual attack had be
en largely thanks to the close presence of Geigi’s neighboring estate and the reluctance of any outsider to rouse the Edi people of that district from their long quiet . . . the Edi, long involved in a sea-based guerilla war with almost everybody, were at peace, and not even the Marid had found it profitable to add the Edi to their list of problems. The west coast was remote from the center of the conflict, which had centered around the capital and the Padi Valley—and it just hadn’t been worth it to the rebels to go after that little center of resistence . . . yet.

  He’d gotten home in time. Tabini had launched his counter-coup in time. The estate had held out long enough. The threat of war was gone and Najida stood untouched.

  And the paidhi-aiji owed them and Geigi’s people so very much.

  He had fresh, starched lace at collar and cuffs, had a never-used ribbon for his queue—the ribbon was the simple satin white of the paidhi-aiji, not the spangled black of the Lord of the Heavens, which he very rarely used. He sat down again carefully, so as not to rumple his beige-and-blue brocade coat, and let Banichi and Jago put on their own formal uniforms, Guild black, still, but with silver detail that flashed here and there. Their queues were immaculately done, their sleek black hair impeccable—Bren’s own tended to escape here and there, blond wisps that defied confinement.

  He opened up his computer for the remainder of the journey. He’d hoped to work on the way, on matters for the next session. He’d slept, instead, and now there was time only for a few more notes on the skeleton of an argument he hoped to carry into various committees. Atevi, accustomed to the various Guilds exchanging short-range communications, had seen the advanced distance-spanning communications they had brought back from the ship, and gotten the notion what could be had.

  Worse, humans on Mospheira had adopted the devices wholesale and set up cell towers, and the continent, thanks to improved communications, knew it.

  He had to argue that it wasn’t a good idea. He had to persuade an already suspicious legislature, reeling from two successive and bloody purges—one very bloody one when Tabini went into exile, and one somewhat less so when he returned—that he was not arguing against their best interests, and that after all the unwelcome human technology he had let land on the continent, he was going to say no to one they wanted. And the paidhi’s veto, by treaty law, was supposed to be absolute in that arena. That, too, was under pressure: if he attempted to veto, and if Tabini didn’t back him and the legislature went ahead anyway, that override weakened the vital treaty—and did nothing good for the world, either.

  He just didn’t know what he was going to meet when the legislature met. The last session had seen gunfire in the chambers, blood spilled in the aisle—that memory haunted his worst nights. In the upcoming session, the bloodshed might be figurative, but no less dangerous: undefined new associations trying to form, alliances being made, power-brokering from end to end of the continent, in whole new configurations that had never existed before, never tested themselves against the others.

  Everything was undefined with these new representatives coming to the session in Shejidan, people who had come to their posts after the upheaval. The remnant of the old legislature, those canny enough, devious enough, or stupid enough not to have had an opinion during the Troubles, were going to meet that tide of “new men” in a month, in the aisles of the hasdrawad and the tashrid. God knew what the flotsam would be on the beaches of those debates, or whether the paidhi’s influence could moderate a rush to give Tabini exactly what Tabini had always campaigned to have: more and more of the human tech that conferred power, medical advances, comforts, conveniences—and the damned wireless phones.

  Too much too fast ran the risk of shipwrecking thousands of years of atevi culture . . . worse, yet, of running up against that great unknown of social dynamic. Wireless phones in particular made changes in the way people made contact. Easy and informal contact imitated the way humans interacted—humans, who had the word love and friend; and had alliances outside their kinships. And atevi, who had the word association, and who felt the pull of emotions that held clans together—atevi little comprehended the changes it would make if communications started going outside their ordinary channels and if information started flowing between individuals who had no proper power to resolve an issue.

  Man’chi was an emotion that to this day the paidhi could neither feel nor grasp, not even in the two nearest and dearest associates of his, who sat on the same bench with him. They couldn’t feel what he felt; he couldn’t feel what passion beat in their hearts; and that was just the way it was . . . all unknown, all fragile, all foreign, all the time . . . but it was what kept the clans together. Banichi and Jago would lay down their lives for him, a concept which, were he to do it for them, would mortally offend their sense of the way the universe had to work, not just the emotional sense—but the basic logic and reason underlying every decision. Such an impulse on his part would be, in their estimation, completely insane.

  So when it came to politics, wireless phones, and pocket coms, according to Toby, it was not just the social perniciousness of instant communication. The cell phone plague now preoccupied humans on the island of Mospheira, a plague making them walk into traffic while in conversation that preempted their awareness of their surroundings; a compulsion that suddenly rendered them incapable of ignoring a phone call in the presence of actual people they should be dealing with. It had gone overnight (from the view of someone two years out of the current) into, Toby said, its own kind of insanity.

  Atevi who stood against the establishment of a wireless network argued about clan and Guild prerogatives, but even they little visualized what it would do to the social fabric . . . it was as basic as the decision whether to have a network of highways, or to have a network of rail. The one, with unregulated movement, would have utterly upset the associations that were the very fabric of civilization. Rail managed not to. And upset the mode of communication that preserved clan authority? Make it possible for anybody to call anybody at any time and without going through the household? Unthinkable.

  The Assassins’ Guild had more grasp of the situation than anyone—the Assassins’ Guild and the Messengers’ Guild were both on the paidhi’s side in the debate. The Trade Guild and Transport Guild both saw advantages in the proposed technology and wanted it on a limited basis, for themselves. The Academics’ Guild stood against, except that they wanted the now-limited computer network to include their research, and libraries.

  Greed was not exclusively a human vice . . . and everybody was willing to accept damage for somebody else’s venue to benefit their own. Fortunately the Assassins’ Guild was a very, very potent Guild, and generally was listened to—out of dread, if nothing else. The paidhi held out hope that, if he could prevail, it would be thanks to the Assassins’ Guild this time; and if he didn’t—and if this one got past him—

  God, the consequent damage could wipe out everything, absolutely every good thing he’d ever tried to accomplish. He could see the aishidi’tat dissolve, right when it was most necessary the world be stable.

  At times, since their return from space, he asked himself if he had not already lost control of the flow of technology. He was shocked by the changes. It was as if the floodgates had already opened—as forces for and against the old regime bargained and connived for advantage. Tabini’s year-long overthrow, which he had helped end, was in one sense the last gasp of the forces that opposed the wholesale import of human technology, but they had bartered, in a sense, with humans, and more significantly—with humans in space. The space station had sent down mobile base stations, landers. Had established communications. Had instructed Mospheira to set up the cell net. Had encouraged Mospheira to provide technology to the atevi resistance, the University doing damned little to prevent it, and the atevi saying no to nothing.

  When he’d come back, he’d found himself on Tabini’s side, where he had always been, but Tabini had always stood for human contact, more and more human technology. Al
l sorts of proposals were close to opening the floodgates for good and all, importing everything humans had, including the technology in that starship up there, which would change so, so much . . .

  It was still the paidhi’s job to say no when it was time to say no.

  And if he couldn’t say no to this one and make it stick, maybe it was time the paidhi left the job.

  Maybe a new paidhi could do better. But he didn’t know how anybody the University trained could step into the waters now—it had become a rip current, and his own understanding of where they were going had gotten less and less sure.

  Maybe the very institution of the paidhi had become outmoded, and humans and atevi actually were far enough along toward unanimity they could find their own way hereafter.

  But there were bitter lessons to say that was a dangerous, dangerous assumption ever to make. The paidhi’s office existed because humans and atevi had had another lengthy period of accommodation, right after humans had landed on the planet, and good things had flowed from humanity and everybody had just loved their new friends . . .

  Or that was what humans had thought, right before atevi (as humans saw it) went berserk and launched the War of the Landing.

  From the atevi point of view, humans had damned near wrecked civilization, and in fact, they nearly had.

  So it wasn’t safe to start thinking everything could roll along on its own. That, at least once upon a time, had been the point of absolutely terrible danger.

  He just didn’t have the vision of the future he’d used to have. It was all dark up ahead, and he couldn’t see. He’d lost touch with Mospheira: the island of Mospheira, where he’d been born, where he’d grown up, was a place where he was no longer comfortable . . . where the ties he had left were all official ones, political allies . . .

  Except Toby and his household.

  Household, was it?

  He hadn’t even been thinking in Mosphei’ just now. He’d been thinking in Ragi. That was how it was. He couldn’t remember his brother’s face when he was apart from him. Toby belonged to a different world, where people came with different features, spoke differently, felt differently, hadn’t a clue what went on in his head, and didn’t understand why touching another person was just . . . something he didn’t do anymore.