The interview with Tabini had gone relatively quickly, and on a day interrupted by phone calls and upsetting news of the Atageini visit — to his apartment — Bren was hardly surprised.
That left him time to go back to the apartment before the television interview, or, on the other hand, time to visit the office down in the legislative wing and to pay a courtesy call on his staff.
He might, he decided, accidentally interrupt Jase's phone call if he went back to the apartment: Jase had to make his call either from the library or from the security station, and the library venue had been so hard to predict regarding noise from the reconstruction (hammering would begin at the damnedest times, and the staff would go running, trying to silence the culprits) that he rather imagined Jase would use the security office phone near the front hall out of force of habit.
Which didn't need the confusion of the front door opening and closing and the servant staff running about.
So he opted for the office downstairs, where his clerical staff maintained a dike against the flood of correspondence. It was a rare honor, the dedication of one of the three available offices inside the Bu-javid, 'for security reasons,' as he'd heard, meaning that he tended to visit the clerical office often and that his security and Tabini's didn't want the paidhi going to the building that was the other option, down the hill to what was officially called the Maganuri Annex Building. It had been built in haste among the hotels at the foot of the historic real estate, and it probably forecast the trend: the governmental complex was starting to sprawl, and the last rank of intruders, the hotels, were, only since last year, starting to crowd the residential areas, which the Planning Commission wouldn't have.
So there was to be a new subway link to a hotel district being built on the city outskirts. Tabini's enemies pointed to the growth of government.
But those same enemies supported the creation of various commissions and agencies that kept the aiji from making autocratic decisions, which was the alternative. And they required more offices and more hotels. He'd warned Tabini against more committees. Tabini had been willing to let the power go last year, saying that certain things needed more study than his staff could give it.
But now Tabini was looking with a very suspicious eye at some of the commercial interests that had crept in with agendas which had no place in the traditional structure, agendas being backed by some of the lords. That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was beginning to be plagued by sewer and electrical problems. The opposition blamed sabotage by Tabini's agents, or by the old aristocracy, a wide range of conspiracy indeed, and no few of the commons avoided it and wouldn't attend committee meetings there because of the reputed bad numbers.
Others said it was built on a battlefield (it was) and that the dead troubled it. Oddly enough, the surrounding hotels and businesses had never had such difficulties.
So the paidhi was quite glad to be honored by the office he had, and not to have to take the subway down the hill, or to the edge of town — where according to the latest rumors, the construction, since the folded space controversy had set certain numerologists playing with an expanded deck, was also plagued by bad numbers, which might even halt construction.
Certain numerologists were suggesting that the number of state offices be shrunk, and the whole thing be cast back to the system whence it had blossomed, tossing the responsibility for information-gathering back into the hands of lords and representatives, who, in the old days, might suffer personal disgrace if they handed in bad information. The names of lords authoring reports previously had been permanently attached to the measures they proposed and the results, good or bad, had remained their responsibility.
Some said the fact that Maganuri had died and that the three local lords (who had been very forward to hire construction agencies within their associations) failed to affix their names to the building ought to be a warning.
Some said that old Maganuri himself haunted the office building on stormy nights, looking for Shimaji, Sonsini, and Burati, the contractors in question, to put them to haunting the building in his place.
So the paidhi was definitely glad not to be down there, in a building some were seriously talking about demolishing before it was fully occupied. As it was, he needed only go to the lower tiers of the Bu-javid complex and, via the security access, walk into his premises, never having broken a sweat.
Secretaries scrambled out of their chairs, rose and bowed as he and Banichi walked in, and nand' Dasibi, the chief of his clerical staff, came hurrying from his office to bow and receive the paidhi's personal inquiry into office affairs.
While he was listening to Dasibi's running commentary, Dasibi walking beside him with his notebook the while, the paidhi took his usual tour down the aisles of the clerical desks, pausing here and there for a word to the clericals who answered his mail, the first line of defense between the paidhi and his more interesting correspondence.
He routinely scanned that, too, or at least the prize pieces. Nand' Dasibi had established a board on the south wall in which the staff delighted. It recorded, Bren had discovered, the tally of death threats versus marriage proposals, choice crank letters, some proposing how to protect the earth's atmosphere against pollution from passing spacecraft and one, his favorite, from a husband and wife in the East, regarding the invention of a ray that would convert the ether of space into breathable atmosphere so that airplanes could fly to the station.
The paidhi through his staff had suggested that the proposed spacecraft did have wings for atmospheric operation, so that, if the gentleman and his wife could perfect the conversion ray, it would be perfectly compatible with the current design.
So far there was no news from that province of such a development.
And there was the board devoted to children's letters: the staff tallied those, too, mostly sweet, occasionally clever, sometimes fearful of half-heard adult conversations. The staff passed on to him the best of the children's letters and the letters which seemed to represent a trend, and occasionally gave him copies of the really good crank letters and marriage proposals. His security handled the death threats.
But mostly these clericals dealt with the flood of general correspondence, which would have inundated him and taken all his time. They also transcribed his tapes and cleaned up his rough and informal notes into the language most appropriate for the occasion. That small service alone saved him an immense amount of dictionary-searching — not that he didn't know the words, but he was never sure there wasn't a better one and never, on an important report, dared trust that the word that popped into his head didn't have infelicitous connotations that he had no wish to set onto paper. A written mistake might fall into the hands of news services interested in catching the paidhi in such an infelicity. The press daren't take on the aiji, mustn't, in fact; but a lord of the Association was a fair target; and in less than a year he'd become such a person — protected, still, in certain ways, but increasingly fair game if he made a blunder that saw print.
Besides, his dictionary was one humans had compiled, of necessity, to equate human words — and sometimes one could make an unthinking glitch on the numbers because counting didn't come naturally and even atevi made mistakes. These experienced governmental clericals would, like his experienced governmental security, fling their knowledge between the paidhi and the dedicated number-counters who sometimes sent letters specifically designed to entrap the paidhi into numerically infelicitous statements, which they, in the perverse self-importance of such experts, could then term significant.
As a minor court official, again, he'd been immune from such public relations assassinations. As a major player in affairs of state, he, like the aiji, was a target of such manipulators, and his strike in return was a standing order for commendations to any clerical who by handwriting, postal mark, or other clues, identified one of these nuisances by name, handwriting, and residence and posted them to others in the pool. The staff shared information with the aiji's staff and, in a considerable network, with various lords' staffs: 'counters could be a plague and a pest, and the clericals detested and hunted them as zealously as the Guild hunted armed lunatics.
It made him feel a certain disconnection from the job he'd used to do himself, however, and he feared that he was in danger of losing touch with ordinary atevi as fast as his increased notoriety and importance had gained him the ability to know them. He liked the atevi he'd met, the elderly couple at Malguri, his former servants in the Bu-javid, the astronomy students at Saigiadi — most of all, people of various staffs he'd dealt with.
And he couldn't stay in touch with them, and couldn't allow himself the human softness, either, to reserve a spot for them in that inner limbo where lost and strayed acquaintances dwelled. They were outside his man'chi. They weren't his. He couldn't expect them to become his.
And in that one simple example he saw why humans could become so disruptive of atevi society in so short a time, just by existing, and dragging into their liking persons who really, never, ever should be associated with them in the atevi sense.
Humans had created havoc without knowing the social destruction they were wreaking on the foundations of society where people could be badly bent out of their comfortable associations, in that region where man'chi could become totally complex.
In some wisdom the aiji had set him up in the rarified air where man'chi could flow safely up to him — but sometimes he looked with great trepidation at the day when, their mutual goal, atevi might be working side by side with humans on the space station they were diverting the economy of a nation to reach.
In such moments he asked himself what potentially disastrous and crazy idea he'd given his life to serve.
He deliberately didn't think too deeply into the changes in his personal status he'd encouraged or accepted — or a part of his brain was working on it, but it wasn't a part that worked well if someone turned on the lights in that dark closet.
Stupid choice, Bren, he sometimes said to himself, when he realized how high he'd climbed and how he'd set himself up as a target. Deadly stupid, Bren Cameron, he'd say, on cold and lonely nights — or standing as he was in the middle of the atevi clerical establishment that, with great dedication to him, for emotional reasons he couldn't reciprocate, continually and routinely saved him from making a fool of himself.
He could afford at least the question of what in hell was he doing and what did it all mean and where was he leading these people who approached him with the kind of devotion they ordinarily spent on the aiji, who was worth their devotion.
How did he dare? he asked himself; and Chance and George Barrulin, the answer echoed out of the haunted basement of his suspicions, one of whom, Chance, was the demon in the design of the atevi universe and the other of whom, the President's chief advisor, was the devil in the design of Mospheiran politics.
Neither of them was fit to be in charge of as many lives as they controlled.
But Tabini, he strongly believed, was fit: fit by biological processes he couldn't feel and political processes purely atevi.
To his continual wonderment, Tabini accepted what the paidhi did, double-questioned him on his choices, and threw his authority behind the concept of atevi rights in space, when human authority said atevi might be destroyed by the concept of microchips and nuclear energy.
What atevi did after they were up there in space, that was another matter.
He asked himself, on lonely nights, whether he'd live, himself, to see that ship fly. He could envision himself standing at the side of the runway. But in his imagination he never could see the ship. He'd become superstitious about that image in his mind, even gloomy and desperate, and he wasn't ready to dig too deeply and learn what exactly his subconscious thought he was doing. He didn't have a choice; he didn't currently have a better idea, and what he was doing had to be done before the next stage of worrying.
He came down here when he was scared. As the interview had him scared. He faced that fact now. He'd had it easy in the provinces, on tour. He'd been traveling in the aiji's plane, under the aiji's guard, and everybody was glad to see him because he might bring trade and funds.
Here, in the Bu-javid, the predators gathered, and snarled and swarmed after scraps in ways that reminded him very uncomfortably of the situation back home.
He'd discussed it with Tabini.
Now a man was dead, who'd been part of the drive to take the power back to the provinces. It wasn't just that Saigimi was a disagreeable man with bad numbers: it was that Saigimi was a peninsular lord who'd represented a policy and a movement that didn't like the influence of the paidhi — that didn't like the paidhi's acquisition of this office, this prominence, this kind of loyalty. Or Tabini's appetite for technology and power.
It was remotely possible that Saigimi had had a point. A rotten way of expressing it, but a point.
And that was one of those items that was going to be seething under the surface of the questions various news services wanted to ask him. The conference was supposed to be about the space program, which he desperately wanted to talk about. But atevi knew there was something very significant going on in the way the space program was being built, and in the way prosperity was being handed out to one lord and assassination used against another.
The answers whether it was a good or bad change in atevi affairs were in those baskets of letters — ordinary atevi expressing their opinions.
"There are a few items difficult of disposition, nand' paidhi," nand' Dasibi informed him. "One understands there was an untoward incident in the skies on your return. Might one inquire, will the paidhi wish this incident acknowledged if the public inquires?"
"The matter," Banichi said, his shadow as he had walked through the room, among the desks, and now as they stopped at the head of it, "is still under staff investigation. It was minor."
"Say," Bren added, "that I was not hurt and never alarmed. The skill of the aiji's pilots prevented harm. It underscores the importance of pilots observing air traffic control regulations and filing flight plans… and so forth. You know my opinions on that."
"One does, yes, nand' paidhi."
"There will also be an announcement shortly of a tour of the residence by lord Tatiseigi."
Brows went up. Dasibi said not a thing.
"I'm sure," Bren said quietly, "that there'll be inquiries, and the event will not be open to the public. Don't comment on the situation in the peninsula unless it's cleared through the aiji's staff. The official answer and the real one is that I had a successful tour, enjoyed fine hospitality, and was never threatened by the events to the south. I will forewarn you however that one should not schedule very many staff leaves of absence during the next week or so."
"We do hope nothing is amiss."
"One likewise hopes, nand' Dasibi. Very sadly, one member of my household has received bad news from the ship." Short guess who that was. "A death in his family. But he knew his choice to come down here to serve would separate him from his family as well as his people. Please limit public questions on this matter and assure inquirers that the ship-paidhi is a young man of great courage and resolve who shares my purpose in seeing the atevi ship built."
"One will do so, nand' paidhi. Please convey to him our good will."
"With all appreciation, nadi."
"There is — another message from lord Caratho. With maps."
Lord Caratho saw no reason if Geigi was prospering why a space industry plant couldn't be built in his district. That was the crux of the matter.
The problem was, neither did numerous other lords see why they shouldn't have the same advantage. Caratho, and four others, had inundated the Economic Commission's office with figures and proposals. But Caratho alone figured, since various regular channels had turned him down, to deluge the paidhi's staff with maps and reports promoting such a plant.
Oh, damn, was the thought. Here it comes.
"If the paidhi will allow me to frame a reply," Dasibi said, "I believe I can create a list of honored supporters of the space program which one might send to the aiji for his information, a list which others may wish to join and include among their honors — providing a disposition for all these reports and offers of resources to the effort. I have consulted the aiji's staff and they concur. Meanwhile — lord Caratho has no need of such a plant, in the determination of the Economic Commission. He has ample revenues. He has fourteen hundred and fifty-four persons he's had to write onto his staff because of unemployment in the district, which is not unusual for a lord of his wealth, and these are persons who used to be employed in railway construction, when the spur was being built. Let me apply finesse, if you will trust my discretion."
Finesse was the same word Banichi would use — biichi'ji — in a strike without side damage.
"I have all confidence in you, Dasibi-ji. Please do what you can. I am not concerned so much for lord Caratho, but by the persons unemployed. Find out the history on that, via the staff, if you can."
"Taking a little liberty, nandi, I have, and they are persons who would not be employed by the plant he proposes."
"Ah. He's seeking to diminish his obligations."
"One believes he is collecting them into his employ, nand' paidhi, particularly to present appearances and make those rolls larger. I am concerned, nand' paidhi, that he may have done so with disregard of the welfare of the individuals he claims as dependents."
"Do you, nandi, believe this is a situation to pass to the aiji's staff?"
"I would say so, nand' paidhi." This last the old man offered with downcast eyes and some trepidation: he was accusing a lord in the reach of a person of rank sufficient to do him harm.
"I would concur," Banichi said in a low voice, and the old man looked much happier. "And I know the rascal's reputation: you will not surprise the aiji, nadi."
"One is very glad to think so." The old man let go a heavy breath. "And there are two messages from one Rejiri, the son of the lord of Dur, wishing your good will. We have no idea why he sent twice — he mentions a meeting. We are unaware of any meeting with him on your schedule, nand' paidhi."
"The pilot of the plane. And I accept his good will. Assure him so. I have no time for a meeting."
"If not the front door, the back," Banichi muttered. "He is young, nadi."
"Should I not accept his good will?" he asked.
"Young," Banichi said. "And a fool. But, yes. Accept it. Nand' Dasibi advises you very well in everything."
"And," Dasibi said, clearly pleased, "a message from the aiji-dowager's staff, saying there is no need for a response, but that she will conclude her winter season with a brief visit to the capital, and that she will see you, nand' paidhi, at your convenience."
"Delighted," he said, and was, from the time he'd heard it from Tabini, whose protestations about the dowager as a force in politics were frequent, half in jest and half not.
Himself, he'd been very sorry to think of Ilisidi going back to Malguri and particularly of his having no chance at all to see her, perhaps for a very long time, once she settled into the estate she best loved and once she settled deep into the local politics. The most recent turmoil around Malguri had been the dropping of bombs and the launching of shells. They were provincial lords of the eastern end of the Western Association, lords neighboring Ilisidi's mother's home — lords whose tangled thesis was that the paidhi, the aiji in Shejidan, and the human President were all involved in conspiracy to deprive atevi of their rights.
They were the same nuisances who had it that Tabini and everyone involved had known the ship was about to appear.
And some diehard theorists still maintained there was not only a spaceship secretly already built on the island of Mospheira, but that it was constantly coming and going — which wasn't true, but nothing including showing the lords in question the output of the radar dishes that guarded the whole maritime coast would dissuade them from their belief in conspiracy against them. First, they weren't capable of reading the data; second, they would declare it was being falsified by some technical system so elaborate it would have made building a spaceship all but superfluous; and third, they were determined to believe it was conspiracy, and therefore it was conspiracy even if they had to invoke secret bases on the moon or mind-warping rays sent down from the station at night. The point was, they wanted to believe in conspiracy and their own political situation was a lot better and easier to maintain if there were one.
The fact that Ilisidi, whom these lords knew well and generally believed had the education to read the data, also had the brains to read the situation in Shejidan and the experience to read the truth in the paidhi had not persuaded the diehards. It had only persuaded Ilisidi, so she'd said to him, that the lords she led were not going to follow her further if she didn't convince them by the force of her presence. Her politics revolved relatively simply on the wish to retain some areas of the world untouched by industry and some aspects of atevi culture untouched by human influence.
Oddly enough she'd found the paidhi an ally in that agenda.
So the woman, Tabini's grandmother, who'd almost been aiji of Shejidan on several occasions, must, as she'd put it to him at their parting last fall, go pour water into the ocean: meaning she wouldn't enjoy the work of politics in Malguri. But it was, she'd said, work which needed doing, and it aimed at mending attitudes and regional prejudices which had sadly cost lives and threatened livelihoods. It was work that she could do — uniquely, could do — though he had a great personal regret for seeing Ilisidi spend her efforts on provinces when they needed her as Tabini's unadmitted right hand on a national level.
Even if Tabini complained of her interference.
"Tell her —" he began, completely undaunted by the statement no reply was requested. Then he changed his mind a second time. "Pen and paper, nadi, please."
He had one of his message cylinders in his pocket. He traveled with one. He sat down at a table and wrote, in his own hand,
I am delighted by the prospect you present and would gladly scandalize your neighbors, though I fear by now they have fled the paint and the hammering. Please find the occasion in your busy schedule of admirers to receive me or, at any time you will, please do not hesitate to call upon me.
That would remove any doubt of Ilisidi's welcome to walk into the apartment at her will, and if uncle Tati-seigi was going to pay a call on him, damn, she knew the man, and could judge better than he could what might constitute a rescue. She might even intervene: as Tabini had said, she and he did get along, and her presence at any formal viewing might be an asset. He couldn't choose the guests for an Atageini soiree, but let Tatiseigi try to keep Ilisidi from doing as she pleased — as soon try to stop a river in its course.
He had his seal, too, and the office provided the wax. He put the finished message into nand' Dasibi's hands, spoke his usual few words to the staff.
"Nand' paidhi," Banichi said, attracting his attention. "The news services."
He had, in some measure, rather deal with Uncle.
But the mere thought of Ilisidi had waked up his wits in sheer self-defense, and that was, considering where he was going, all to the good.
It was down the corridor then, and into that area near the great halls of the two houses of the legislature, the commons, which was the hasdrawad, and the house of lords, which was the tashrid. Last year, for the first time on atevi television, a human face had brought into atevi homes a presence which atevi children had once feared and now wrote letters to in the thousands. Last year he'd appeared on tape. This year his press conferences went live. A room across from the tashrid was set up as an interview center — that crowd of microphones and cameras was another accoutrement of notoriety, and of life close to the place where decisions were made. Lines snaked into the little room so that one had to walk very gingerly. The place bristled with microphones surrounding the seat he would take.
He allowed all the paraphernalia he had collected, the computer (which rarely left him) and the notes and the various small items with which he had become burdened in the clerical office, into the hands of junior security, and let Banichi see him to his place and stand near him.
He settled in, blinded by the lights. He waited, hands folded on the table that supported the microphones, until the signal.
"Nand' paidhi," the first reporter began, and wended through the convolute honors and courtesies before the question, a circuitous approach calculated, he sometimes thought, to let the paidhi fall asleep or start wit-wandering.
The question when it finally emerged from the forest of titles, was: "Having just returned from touring the plants and facilities supporting the space program, are you confident that atevi and human construction are of equal importance and on equal footing with the ship?"
"I am very confident," was his automatic answer. It gave him a running start toward: "But not just that we are on an equal basis with Mospheira, nadiin: atevi are well-advanced toward the goal of space flight and may actually be in the lead in the race for space. It's not a position in which one dares slacken one's effort. We don't know what delays may arise. But I am encouraged that we have made vast progress." He was very glad to report nationally that the aiji's monumental risk of capital was producing results: success bred stability — and complacency — he had to avoid that extreme, too. "I am very encouraged about the future of the program."
"On what account, nand' paidhi, if you would elucidate."
"I am encouraged by the people, nadi. I have seen the actual elements of what will become the first spacecraft to be launched from this planet. They now exist. I have met atevi workers dedicated to their work, whose care will safeguard the economic prosperity of generations of atevi."
"What do you say, nand' paidhi," this came from a southern service, "to the objections regarding the cost?"
Lord Saigimi's platform. Not an innocent question. Provocative. It identified the source of trouble. He hoped not to have another question from that quarter, and could not gracefully look to the staff officer con trolling who stood up to ask, not without exposing that glance on live national television.
"The rail system on which all commerce now moves was vastly expensive to build," he said calmly. "Look at the jobs, nadiin, look at the industry. Were we to back away from this chance to lift the people of this planet into authority over their own future, someone else would exercise that authority. By the Treaty, I look out for the peace. And I see no peace if such an imbalance develops in the relationship that now exists between atevi and humans. That would be more than expensive, nadiin, it would be unthinkable. The program must give atevi the power to direct their own lives."
"Is this within the man'chi of the paidhiin?"
"Indisputably. Indisputably. By the Treaty, it is." The question had come from the same source. The man did not sit down. And from all his worries about changes in atevi life, he was reminded now of Saigimi's other qualities. The same whose associates built shoddy office buildings and who personally tried to ruin lord Geigi in order to own his vote in some very critical measures.
"Did the paidhi feel at all that his safety was threatened in the peninsula?"
That was not a permitted question, by the ground rules that governed all news conferences. He knew that Tabini was going to hit the rafters over that one, and other reporters were disturbed, but he lifted a hand in token that he would answer the direct provocation.
"The paidhi," he said calmly, and in meticulous Ragi, "has the greatest confidence in the good will expressed to him by honest people." The news service this reporter represented, whether by one of Deana's little legacies or a new inspiration of Tabini's enemies, was attempting to politicize itself — implying (because a retaliatory strike by Guild members would have to follow a line of direct involvement) that the paidhi or lord Geigi had a connection to the assassination. He had no compunction whatsoever about derailing the effort in a rambling, time-using account. Two could play the games of a live, limited-time broadcast.
"Let me recount to you the scene as I left the plant, nadiin, as the goodheartedness of the workers brought a crowd out the doors, brought them carrying flowers toward the cars. When my plane dipped its wing and came about toward Shejidan I saw, beside the cars of my local escort, flowers of the springtime of the peninsula pass beneath us. So, so much generosity of the people, so much care of the vastly important task under their hands and so generous an expression of their belief in their task. Their hope for the future is visible now. Tangible." They'd edit when bits of this replayed, and after what had been asked, he was careful to give them only positive, felicitously numbered statements. The paidhi did not intervene in atevi internal affairs. That was what they were trying to get him to do, so he played the uninvolved innocent. "I was greatly impressed, nadiin. I tell you, I was impressed so much that I believe as they believe, in the felicity of this project, in the felicity of this nation, in the felicity of the aiji who has been foresighted in making this reach toward space at a moment when all these fortunate things coincide."
A second reporter rose. "Have you authorized, nand' paidhi, the direct exchange of messages between the island and the ship-paidhi, in your absence?"
What in hell was this? A second out-of-line question?
"I have not forbidden it, nadi."
"Can you, nand' paidhi, confirm a death in the ship-paidhi's house?"
There was a leak. There was a serious leak. It smelled of Deana. If he could figure how — and methods including radio did occur to him.
Damn it, he thought. He'd meant to report it, because with servants aware of something, informational accidents could happen, and he didn't want speculation getting ahead of all the facts he had. But he'd meant to report it after Jase had talked to his mother. The death on the ship implied infelicity.
And he could either shut down the interview right now on these two rude and unauthorized questions on the very plain point that they violated protocol — he could signal his security to create a diversion; or he could handle the problem they'd posed and then loose security on the matter of who'd put them up to it.
"I can," he said, "confirm, nadiin, that there is such a sad report; as best I am informed, an accident of some nature. I will try to obtain that information for you. But that is not officially announced, and the release of that information could cause great pain to Jase-paidhi, who has borne the effort and worked honestly to bring good fortune to atevi as well as humans. I'm certain that isn't your intent."
Sometimes his own callous response to situations appalled him. Atevi would wish to know. Number-counters would wish to know. All sorts of people would wish to know for good and sensible reasons, for superstitious reasons, and just because they were justifiably curious about human behavior.
The next two questions, which he took from the major news services, were routine and without devious intent. How was the space program meeting the engineers' expectations and was the design translation without apparent error?
"We are developing a set of equivalences between the two languages which render translation of diagrams much easier. We're dealing with a scale of measurements which has a scale of directly comparable numbers"— Atevi ears always pricked up at that word —"which renders the operation of translation much faster. Atevi engineers are actually able to read human documents where the matter involves written numbers, and to perform calculations which render these numbers into atevi numbers with all the ordinary checks that these skilled persons perform."
Not of significance for a human audience, but for an atevi audience a real bombshell of religious and philosophical significance. If the universe was rational and numerical, numbers were a direct reflection of its mathematical dependability; numbers could predict, safeguard, direct, and govern. No project would succeed without good numbers; the ship on which the design was based had flown, the human numbers were therefore good numbers, felicitous numbers, more to the point — since numbers could be felicitous or infelicitous, leading to success or disaster — and to have the news that atevi engineers could make clear sense of human engineering diagrams was the sort of thing that would actually fight with the peninsular assassination and the death on the ship for space on the news, at least briefly. He'd meant to drop that later, but it was capable of knocking Jase's tragedy right out of the headlines, and that was, coldbloodedly, what he intended.
He answered four or five questions at the limits of his own mathematical ability, and took his leave of the reporters, with the (he said to himself) not unreasonable notion of the leisure to go back to his apartment and work through the translations he had to have ready before — the next duty he had on his agenda — he briefed the aiji's aides, who had to go to the various departments to present the paidhi's arguments before — step after that — the paidhi had to go before the off-session legislative aides to answer questions so that when, step three, the legislatures reconvened, they did it with good information before them.
But there was a far more immediate item on his agenda.
"We have a problem," he said to Banichi as they walked toward the lift, and as the junior security held the curious at bay, out of ordinary hearing. "I don't know how that information on Jase's private business got to them, I don't know whether there's a leak somewhere, but my own thought was that either there's a leak on the aiji's staff — or ours — or that they're broadcasting that on the news on Mospheira and somebody on the mainland follows enough of the language to pick it out."
"Such persons who know Mosphei' that fluently are all official," Banichi said under his breath, informing him of something he'd wanted to know, and now did.
"There is," Banichi added, "nand' Deana." One was respectful in a public venue, and accorded a name its honorifics, even when one proposed cutting the individual into fish-bait. "And I can tell you, Bren-ji, there has been illicit radio traffic."
They'd reached the lift. He gave Banichi a sharp, alarmed look.
"How much else don't I know?"
"Oh, much," Banichi said. The door opened. "The names of my remote cousins, the —"
"Banichi, my salad, the truth."
Banichi escorted him inside and delivered an advisement to hall security above that they were coming up. And Banichi grinned, not looking at him after the salad remark.
"The paidhi is still alive," Banichi said, "and we keep him that way. But the details are his security's concern."
"Not where it regards Hanks!"
"Ah. Humans do proceed to feud."
"With this woman? Damned right." The door spat them out into the upper corridor, that with the porcelain bouquets. "Unfortunately the Guild has no offices on Mospheira. — And I need to know this, Banichi-ji."
"It seemed at the time to involve only atevi, on this side of the strait," Banichi said, "and Tano and Algini didn't know. Had Jago and I been here, our rank would have obtained that information for you. Yes, there has been such traffic between Mospheira and the coast, in Ragi, definitively her voice."
"Nand' Deana." Deana, who had had such widespread contact with all the wrong people, until someone had kidnapped her from Shejidan, someone whose identity both Ilisidi and lord Geigi had to this day declined to reveal, nor had he ventured to ask his own staff too closely. The embarrassments of the great houses were a volatile subject.
And when a rival paidhi was at issue, perhaps, he'd decided last of all, they were uncertain how he'd react and whether he'd be able to, in human shorthand, forgive the atevi responsible.
"Where was my female colleague lodged when she was not in the Bu-javid?" he asked Banichi as they walked. "May we now ask officially, and for the record?"
"With lady Direiso."
He was not utterly surprised. To say the least. "And Geigi simply walked in there?"
"Guns were involved, but not seriously. Direiso-daja had launched her greater hope without guns, simply in her acquisition of Hanks-paidhi."
"She took her away."
"Without serious resistance."
"One thought so. And getting Deana back — was there bloodshed?" That defined a level of seriousness in most quarrels. Not in this, he thought. "Did Direiso resist?"
"No bloodshed," Banichi said. "Against fear of her own harm, she saw there was nothing left but graceful acquiescence to the aiji-dowager and the hope that Tabini would soon be a dead man. And that you would be. That would leave Deana Hanks as paidhi. And if Direiso's wishes had proved to have stronger legs, it would have led to her in possession of the ship-paidhiin — which again would have made her powerful. Hence her easy capitulation on the day in question."
That was a plateful of information. Direiso had folded when Ilisidi, whom Direiso had regarded perhaps as rival and as ally, had walked in at gunpoint and demanded Hanks be turned over to her. Direiso had still hoped to reach the descending capsule and get her hands on Jase and Mercheson-paidhi.
But she hadn't won that race. They had.
So Direiso had lost Ilisidi's support (realizing perhaps at the last that Ilisidi would have cheerfully put a dagger in her back, perhaps not even figuratively, rather than see her as aiji.) And now it was possible Direiso was courting the Atageini after an assault on Atageini pride last year, which had destroyed the lilies, perhaps by accident or perhaps not.
"Was not Direiso's son with Tatiseigi of the Atageini at that moment?" he asked Banichi. He recalled hearing that.
"That he was, Bren-ji."
"You exceed my human imagination. Why?"
"If I knew that for certain, Bren-ji, Damiri might be lord of the Atageini at this hour."
Serious news. Banichi suspected Tatiseigi of existing on the fringes of Direiso's conspiracy, and the son's presence there as not without Direiso's approval. "You suspect Tatiseigi was with Direiso, at least in the attack against us in Jase's landing?"
"We suspect everything." They had reached the doors. "We act on what we know."
"And she's still plotting against the aiji. Hence the business in the peninsula."
"True."
"And its timing?"
"One can only guess, Bren-ji."
He was talking to the entity both best and least informed on the matter, the one who'd most likely carried out the strike against Direiso's ally Saigimi.
While he guested with lord Geigi, who'd seemed Direiso's ally and then Tabini's.
One needed a flow-chart. One truly did.
But probably the atevi thought that about humans.
There were things they had never admitted to one another. Radios belonging to the atevi government listening to transmissions. Jamming. On both sides of the strait. Phone lines that went down every time a stray cloud appeared. Banichi had said it once: an old man in a rowboat could invade the island. Or the mainland.
If Hanks had been transmitting to Direiso, there were atevi working for Tabini who would intercept those messages — and Deana and those behind her were just clever enough to plant what they wanted planted: poison, no matter the recipient, poison, whether in the hands of Tabini's people or Direiso's.
"Damn," he said, envisioning listening posts up and down the coast, on which atevi could pick up whatever short-range transmissions the conservative faction on Mospheira wanted to send. It wasn't just Direiso's cause such hateful broadcasts might incite, if Deana and her supporters wanted to see bloodshed.
The fact that such conservative humans hated atevi was in no way skin off Direiso's nose. The fact that Direiso hated her was no skin off Deana's. Both the conservative atevi that wanted Tabini dead and human technology restricted — and the conservative humans whose varied agendas just wanted humans to stay technologically superior to atevi — shared the same agenda: restrict technology getting to Tabini. Tabini in power and Bren Cameron in office meant a rapid flow of tech into atevi hands. So get rid of one or both.
The door opened. The servants received them. Junior security, having used the same lift on its return trip, overtook them before the doors shut and rearmed. He wasn't acutely aware of his surroundings.
That Banichi told him what he did was indicative at least that he was being told truth on a high level. Atevi no longer kept the paidhi, who was acting in their interests, more ignorant than other humans, who were working against those interests.
That was useful. It was one step deeper into the situation he was already in.
It didn't, however, stop Deana Hanks, whose agenda he didn't believe he entirely guessed — and he couldn't act upon his suspicions until he could hear exactly what she was saying and what she hoped to provoke.
And there'd been no atevi offer yet to provide him that information.
Damn, again.