"Good night?" Banichi asked them, in the cold, rainy dawn, when Ilisidi's men were off to saddle the mechieti.
"Quite good," Jago declared with a tilt of her head. "For the curious, yes, Banichi-ji, and you'll go begging for the salacious details."
Bren tried to keep an expressionless face as Banichi glanced at him for information. And didn't think he succeeded.
"Shut out," Banichi said. "Abandoned."
"Fled," Jago said. "Having set the scene."
"She was the one who said we needed to set separate guard last night," Banichi said. "But I heard no appeals for rescue."
"Be decent!" Jago said, finally rising to the defense. "My partner has no shame, paidhi-ji."
Banichi strolled off quite happily, while the servants hastily struck tents. Ilisidi and Cenedi had gone out to get the mechieti; until Babsidi came to his rider, no other would. The boy from Dur had found Jase and was tagging him on a course toward them.
Jase was limping: it needed no guess to say why, in a beginning rider. Jase looked worried. Likely he was going to ask why they'd been separated last night.
And he didn't know how he was going to explain it. The truth was going to have repercussions. There was no way it wouldn't.
"I have duties," Jago said, and deserted him.
"Bren?" Jase said.
"Good morning, Jasi-ji. Sorry about the change of arrangements last night."
"The rain. I know." Jase rushed past that item. "Where are we going? Nand' Rejiri says west. West, am I right, nadi? Mogari-nai? Not fishing. Not down to the sea?"
The boy from Dur looked as if a glimmering had reached him that he had just possibly said something out of line. And Bren tried to recall what he'd told Jase on the other side of a mountain of new information.
"You promised me the ocean," Jase reminded him, "nadi. We were going to go fishing. You said political problems at Mogari-nai. Nand' Rejiri says his father should bring guns there and I should ask you to ask the dowager if he can go to his father and bring guns."
"Ask the dowager," Bren said to the boy, "nadi."
"One has asked, nand' paidhi. But she won't rely on me."
"Possibly she has other reasons, nadi, such as intentions she holds in secret, and I would suggest that you remember she is old because some of her enemies are dead."
Rejiri's face grew quite sober. "Nandi," he said.
While an aggrieved roommate with a good deal more than that on his mind waited to have his question answered.
"Jase," Bren said, "we are going to Mogari-nai, and I am increasingly certain we have a difficulty."
"We are not on vacation."
"I do not think we are on vacation, no, Jase."
"Where were you last night?"
The boy was there, all ears.
"Talking," Bren said.
"But not to me," Jase said, and walked off.
"Jase!" he said, but Jase kept walking down what had been a line of tents and now was a set of bundles of baggage.
He couldn't run after after Jase in front of the whole camp. He couldn't start a quarrel. Jase was not a diplomat. He didn't know how far it would go, or where it would end if Jase blew up, and blew up at the wrong people.
Meanwhile Ilisidi was up on Babsidi and she and Cenedi were bringing the herd in to the place where the gear waited.
"I suppose I talked too much, nand' paidhi," Rejiri said shamefacedly.
He'd never dealt individually with atevi youngsters. Certainly not with a boy verging on independence.
And he had no wish to humiliate the boy, who had probably heard his faults enumerated by Banichi. "Did nand' Banichi give you advice?" he asked.
"Yes, nand' paidhi."
"Was it good advice?"
There was a moment of silence. "Yes, nand' paidhi."
"He's a wise man," Bren said. "I take advice from him, frequently. Even the aiji does. I'd watch him and do what he does."
He wasn't thinking about the boy. He was thinking about Jase, and how to patch his own mistakes, and maybe it was a little revenge for Banichi's jokes to aim the innocent in his direction. But the boy said, enthusiastically,
"Thank you, nand' paidhi," and set off in Banichi's direction.
He wondered what he'd just done; and then it struck him that Ilisidi and all her men were eastern, and he and Jase were the only officials here whose man'chi was really clearly Tabini's. He'd just confirmed to the confused lad that, indeed, he could rely on Banichi, and recommended he do so.
At least it was the truth, and he hadn't misled the boy or done any harm to the situation.
If he could only be so lucky with his own species.
Jase didn't look at him as he walked up. The camp was a snarling confusion as the dowager's men saddled the mechieti.
"Well, well, well," Ilisidi said cheerfully, as Babsidi moved up to tower against the gray-ribboned sky, "good morning, nand' paidhi."
Was she upset? Bren asked himself. Did she know?
Ilisidi knew every sneeze in her vicinity. And that courtship game they'd played, he and Ilisidi. Did it mask real possessiveness? An old woman's real inclinations?
Disaster?
"You inspire so many questions," Ilisidi said from her height of vantage, and signaled Babsidi to go past him. Nokhada was saddled. So was Jase's mechieta, and there was no place to talk, no time to talk with the mechieti waiting for riders and the men who were doing the saddling wanting to get riders up and out of their way.
He made Nokhada bend down for him, got himself up with that unique pain of the second day in the saddle. Jase was no better, he was well certain. He was sure the only ones immune were Ilisidi and her men.
He kept Nokhada under tight rein and knew he wasn't going to have a chance to talk to Jase in anything like the length and complexity of topic that could calm Jase down.
Jase knew he'd been lied to. Not by intent, maybe, but he deserved Jase's anger at being left literally in the dark last night. Banichi would be good-humored and a quiet bedfellow, very quiet, meaning Jase would not have gotten any information out of him. He'd indicated he'd come back. Lie number one.
He'd not told Jase where he'd been. Lie number two, at least by omission, and he hadn't remotely thought about Jase's state of mind in terms of anything but the storm and the lightning he knew Jase feared, Banichi wasn't always good at reassuring a man, Banichi and his jokes. Banichi had probably given him the statistics on people hit by lightning on camping trips.
He had to get his wits together. He couldn't treat Jase that way. He was solidly in the wrong this time, because he'd been distracted by personal affairs, and it was just too damn serious a matter to say I forgot.
The last of the company mounted up. The sea was a misty gray beyond the cliffs. The island of Dur showed indistinct in a morning haze.
Ilisidi kept it on her right as she led off at a fast clip. They were headed west. And they clearly weren't going fishing.
The clouds kept blowing overhead from some inexhaustible source beyond the horizon, wave after wave driven by stiff winds aloft; but the sun began to win the battle toward midmorning, and light and shadow played on the velvet-textured rolls of the land.
Beautiful. A distracted mind couldn't but notice.
Bren said as much to Jase as they rode, trying to set up a friendlier mood for the rest stop he knew was coming, when he hoped to have a chance to talk.
"Yes," Jase said; but nothing more, and when they did get their stop, and did get down, Jase listened to his "I'm sorry," and said, "Where is the truth, nadi? How do I tell the truth?"
"I was with Jago," he said in the lowest voice that would carry. "I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking! I was stupid! Will you listen to me?"
"Go ahead." They weren't that far from Banichi. But that meant they weren't far from the boy from Dur, who'd attached himself exactly as he'd said. And Jase's tone didn't invite confidences.
"There's a rumor Deana Hanks is coming to the mainland. I suspect Mospheira is going to try an independent deal with Direiso of the Kadigidi to peel the northern provinces out of the Western Association, but I'm not sure I can make atevi see entirely what Hanks thinks she's doing: it's too foreign to their instincts. The whole east is shaky, held mostly by Ilisidi's influence. Do you follow me?"
"Is that what you discussed in bed?"
"Yes, dammit, among other things. Listen to me. We've got a problem a hell of a lot larger than my mistake. I admit it was a mistake, all right, I was a damn fool, but I was trying to find out the situation last night —"
"Among other things."
"Yes, among other things." He was getting madder. He was so mad already his muscles were shaking, and his breath was short, and it didn't help communication. He shifted to Mosphei'. "Can you for God's sake quit keeping score on who's wrong and who's right and hear what I'm saying?"
"I do hear what you're saying. If you're not lying one more time, what are we doing out here in the middle of it? Why did they bring us here, if this was going on? Can you answer that?"
"I'm trying to!"
"What does it take? More research?"
"Use your head, dammit! This is serious."
"I don't take it for anything else. Where are Tano and Algini? Why are we suddenly with these two? Bren, give me an answer!"
The dowager was getting back in the saddle. They had to follow or it was certain the mechieti would go and leave them stranded.
"I assure you they're all right," Bren said. "They're working back at the fortress, securing the area."
"Easy answer."
"These are partners of theirs!" The man assigned to help Jase up was waiting. They were almost the last.
"Consider man'chi. Consider everything I've told you. Banichi and Jago aren't going to see anything happen to them."
"Meaning you don't know why they didn't come."
Question begot question begot question. "I can't argue with you. We have to go." He went to Nokhada, so charged with temper he hardly felt the effort it took for bruised muscles to catapult him into the saddle. He reined about to be sure Jase made it as the man boosted Jase up, then assisted the boy from Dur into the saddle.
Jase didn't understand him. Given professional experience, he ought to be able to achieve an understanding with Jase with far less trouble than he had with atevi; and it didn't work that way. It hadn't worked that way all year.
Why are we with these two? Stupid question, ignoring everything he'd said.
But Tano and Algini had been there while Jase was in the apartment, and Banichi and Jago hadn't been there for a long while. Tano and Algini were the reliable figures in the household that Jase knew of, the ones he would go to; so from Jase's viewpoint there was attachment quite as valid as his — admitted — attachment to Banichi and Jago.
In that reassessment of Jase's obstinacy he rode Nokhada near him, hoping that he would choose to talk; but Jase said nothing to him nor seemed to care he was there. Jase sometimes rode with his eyes shut, maybe ignoring the pitch and heave of the land, maybe motion sick: he had complained of it a great deal when he'd first come down.
"Pretty clouds," Bren said.
No answer.
"This whole land tilts," Bren said. "There aren't that many roads. The fortress watches the slope up off the plains. If it weren't there, someone could drive up undetected. They're back there to warn us. That's what they're doing." It dawned on him then in cooler temper that a man who had trouble with a flat surface wouldn't intuitively grasp warfare and its tactics. "Like the foyer at home. Stand in that door and nobody can come in. Just like them staying in the foyer office. As long as they're there, nobody can come up on this land. And Tano and Algini might do that if we were out here on vacation. The aijiin never assume no one's after them. Ever."
Jase didn't answer. But Jase did at least look at him.
"Four, five hundred years ago," Bren said, "before humans on this planet, atevi rode mechieti to war." He pointed to the rolling land ahead of them. "Five hundred riders could be just up there, close as the gardens to the apartment. You couldn't see them. That's why men keep riding ahead of the dowager. Ordinarily the mechieti don't like to do that — get ahead of the leader. But they do it for short rides out and back, looking to see the way is clear."
Jase was listening. He caught the quick and worried glance at the horizons, and saw Jase's whole body come to a different state of tension. In that distracted moment Jase suddenly synched with the mechieta's moving and seemed to feel it.
"That's how you ought to ride," Bren said, "Jase."
Jase looked at him, lost his centering and found it again; and lost it.
The fact Jase had somehow coped with being out here didn't mean Jase knew a thing, Bren thought, not about the mechieti, not about the concept of land, or tactics, or how to stay on or how to protect himself if someone did come up on them and mechieti reacted as mechieti would do. Politics and language and living in an apartment was what he'd taught Jase. It was all he'd taught Jase.
"If the mechieti have to run," he said, "— in case they do." He changed languages and went rapid-fire. "The atevi riders stay on by balance. You just hunch down tight and low and hold to the saddle. It won't come off. Get as low as you can. If they can jump something they will; otherwise they can turn very fast, and if you're not low you'll fall off. Join his center of mass. All right? If he jumps, his head will come back, and if your face is too far forward he can knock you cold. If they jump, center your weight, lean forward, head down while he's rising, lean back while he's landing and duck down again. We're small. Nothing we do affects them as much as an ateva's weight. Don't pull on the rein and don't try to guide him. It can turn his head and blind him to the ground and kill you both. If you do nothing with the rein, he'll follow Ilisidi's mechieta come hell or high water."
"Are we going to run?" Jase said. "From what?"
"It's just an 'in case.'"
Jase gave him one of those looks.
"It's a possibility, nadi," Bren said, and then wished he hadn't said. He wished he'd said, To hell with you, and not shaved the meaning one more time. "You're not going to find absolutes in this situation. There aren't any. I'm sorry. I knew I was asking for a hard time up here when I turned matters over to other people. I knew last night things were getting complicated. I figured — maybe we'd get a chance to go down to the water. Somehow. And things might not even involve us."
"Once we left the fortress," Jase said in Mosphei', "I knew we weren't going fishing."
"Because you knew I'd lie? You don't know that."
There was lengthy silence.
Then Jase said, "We were still going fishing? All around us, people with weapons. People on radios. Hanks. We were going fishing."
"Well, we will." It sounded lame even to him, in what he began to see as a long string of broken promises, broken dates, incomplete plans — not professional ones, but personal. He couldn't explain all that was going on. Jase didn't understand the motivations. And God knew what conclusions he'd draw.
The silence persisted some distance more. He wasn't there for the moment. He was across a table from Barb. Barb was saying, When? When, really, Bren?
"You really tell yourself we're going fishing," Jase said, "don't you?"
"Jase, if I don't plan to do it, we'll damn sure never get there. At least," he added, beginning to be depressed, "if you plan a dozen trips, one happens."
"Are all Mospheirans like you?"
He'd like to think not. He liked to think, on the contrary, that he was better than the flaws that frustrated him in his countrymen. But it was an island full of people living their safe routines, their weekend trips to the mountains, their outings to the market, like clockwork, every week, sitting on a powder keg, electing presidenti who lived the same kind of lives and left decisions to their chief contributors rather than those with any knowledge or insight.
Delusion played a large part in Mospheiran attitudes.
Delusion that they had a spacecraft, or could build one, with no facility in which to do it.
Delusion that they could fix their deficits when there was suddenly a great need and all their bets came due.
Self-delusion to which, apparently, he was not immune.
"Lifestyle," he said, with self-knowledge a bitter lump in his chest. "But I still do plan to go fishing, Jase."
"Just not this trip."
"Even this trip, dammit! Security alerts go on all the time. I live with it! In between times, I relax, if I can get a few hours. Nine tenths of the time nothing happens or it happens elsewhere and life goes on. If you've planned a fishing trip, it might be possible. We can rent the gear. And hire a boat."
"It's a nervous way to live."
"It is when you park a bloody huge ship over our heads and offer the sun, the moon, and the stars to whoever gets there first1 It makes the whole world a little anxious, Jase!"
"Was life more peaceful before we came?"
"Life was absolutely ordinary before you came. You've set the whole world on its ear. Don't you reckon that? Absolutely ordinary people's lives have been totally disrupted. Absolutely ordinary people have done things they'd never have done."
"Good or bad?"
"Maybe both."
They rode a while more in silence. He watched Jago ahead of him, by no means ordinary, neither she nor Banichi.
He loved Jago. He loved both of them.
"A lot of both," he said.
And a long while later he asked, "Why did the ship come back?"
"Weren't we supposed to?"
He thought about that a moment, thought about it and wondered about it and said to himself of course that was what the ship did and was supposed to do: go places between stars. And this was where other humans were, and why wouldn't it come here?
But he always argued the other point of view — everyone's point of view: Barb's, his mother's, Jase's. He'd elaborated in his own mind Jase's half-given answers in the days when Jase hadn't been able to say much in Ragi and after that when the pressure mounted to get the engineering translation settled. They'd talked fluently about seals and heat shields. But when he'd asked, in Mosphei', as late as a handful of days before his tour, Where were you? Jase had drawn him diagrams that didn't make any sense to him.
And he'd said to himself, when he hadn't understood Jase's answer or gotten any satisfaction out of it, well, he wasn't an astronomer and he didn't understand the ship's navigation; or maybe space wasn't as romantic as he'd thought it was — or maybe — or maybe — or maybe.
Well, but. But. But.
Did delusion play a part in it? Or a human urge to fill out Jase's participation and make excuses for behavior that otherwise wasn't satisfying his expectations.
The ship was doing as it promised. The spacecraft was becoming a reality.
But in his failure to find the friendly, cheerful young man he'd talked to by radio link before the drop, he'd insisted on making that side of Jase exist in the apartment.
He'd done all Jase's side of the conversations in his head, was what he'd done. He'd made up all sorts of answerless answers Jase might give, if Jase had the vocabulary, if he had time to sit and talk at depth. Naturally Jase was under stress: language learning did that to a mind. Or maybe — or maybe Jase had been doing the same, filling in between the lines to suit his initial impression; and when those expectations didn't match reality, he felt betrayed.
"Jase," he said.
"What?"
"Where was the ship?"
"I told you. A star. A number on a chart."
"You know the feeling you had we weren't going fishing?"
"Yes?"
"It's what I feel when you tell me that."
Silence followed. It wasn't a happy silence. He wished at leisure he hadn't come at Jase with that.
He wished a miracle would happen and Jase would come out of his sulk and be the person he'd thought he was getting, the person who'd help him, not pose him problems; the person who'd stand by him with reason when the going got tough.
But Barb had done that until she'd had enough. She'd run to marry Paul Saarinson. Maybe Jase didn't want a career of keeping the paidhi mentally together, considering they had to share an apartment.
Maybe in meeting him, the astonishing thought came to him, Jase hadn't found the man he'd thought he was dealing with, either. The breakdown of trust might be rooted more deeply than any dispute over truthfulness, in failings of his own. He managed so well with atevi. His personal life —
Ask Barb how he got along. Ask Barb how easy it was to deal with him.
He remembered Wilson-paidhi. He remembered saying to himself he wouldn't ever get to that state. The bet had been among University students in the program that Wilson couldn't smile. That Wilson couldn't react. Grim man. Unresponsive as hell.
But at the same time those of them going for the single Field Service slot learned to contain what they felt. You learned not to show it. You studied being unreadable.
Barb had complained of it. Barb used to say — he could remember her face across that candlelit table — You're not on the mainland, Bren. It's me, Bren.
It gave him a queasy feeling to realize, well, maybe — maybe it had something to do with the falling away and the anger of humans he dealt with. But he'd told Jase. He'd tried to teach Jase to do it. Jase should realize why he didn't show expression.
Shouldn't he realize it?
Move that into the category of fishing trips.
Fact was, he'd told Jase not to show emotion with atevi, and when Banichi and Jago walked in, he'd been laughing and lively and all those things he'd taught Jase not to be.
Maybe they should have thought a little less about language early on, and more about communication. Maybe they should have learned first what they expected of each other instead of each resigning himself to what he'd gotten.
"You and I," he said in Mosphei', "you and I need to talk, Jase. We need it very badly."
"We were going to do that out here."
"I'm sorry. I didn't remotely know what I was getting you into. I knew it was a chancy time. It's always a chancy time, especially when the pressure mounts up and you want to get away. I knew present company was the chanciest thing on the planet but the people who can do anything always are. It's the way it works, Jase."
"I trust you," Jase said in a curiously fragile tone — had to say it loudly, with all the thump and creak of the mechieti. "I do trust you, Bren. I'm trying like hell to."
"I'll get you back in one piece," he said. "I swear I will."
"That isn't what I'm worried about."
"What is?" he asked, thinking he'd finally gotten one thread that might pull up a clue to Jase's thinking.
But Jase didn't answer that.
And in the next moment he saw Cenedi rein back while Babs kept going. Something was going on. He thought Cenedi had done that to talk to Banichi.
But he was the target. Cenedi fell all the way back to him and Jase.
"Bren-paidhi," Cenedi said, as Bren restrained Nokhada from a nip at her rival. "The dowager asks why you avoid her. She told me to say exactly that, and to say that Nokhada still knows her way, nadi, if you've forgotten."