The paidhi didn't regularly speak at committee meetings. He usually sat in the corner in silence — he had a veto, which he didn't intend to use. He had no right to speak, except by invitation of the chairman…
"One understands, Bren-paidhi, that there will be changes, and rapid change. And clearly everything we've done and all materials in production — are subject to cancellation. We've promise of a building program that has no specifications, no design, that we've seen. Does the paidhi have any more information?"
"Nothing yet," he said. "I hope, nadiin, as you all do, that when information comes it will be thorough. Like you, I'm waiting for responses to questions. I'd say — there will be certain materials we'll use; we may go ahead with the launch program as a way to lift materials into orbit. There's still the construction for the launch site, maybe with modifications for the landing craft, unless whatever they propose can land at Shejidan Airport. Which isn't totally outside possibility. But we've yet to see."
"And Mospheira? The phones are down again." That was the representative from Wiigin, coastal and in a position to know when trade wasn't moving. "We take this for ominous."
Clearly Wiigin wasn't the only one to take that for ominous. Lord Geigi was on this committee. He wasn't one that Tabini had wanted on the committee, but lord Geigi did have the mathematical, and more, a scientific background rare for the tashrid.
Geigi didn't look happy. Geigi hadn't looked happy during the entire meeting.
"Nand' paidhi," another member asked, "what of Hanks' advice to expect far-reaching change?"
"Hanks-paidhi has decided to work with my office in certain areas in which she has considerable expertise. Economics, chiefly. She's "not expert in space science. Nor, you may have gathered, fluent enough to pick up certain shades of meaning. It was brave of her to come across the strait to take up duties while she believed I might be dead —" He saw no reason to demolish Hanks' reputation with atevi, and gave her her due. "But she's straight out of an office on Mospheira and acquiring experience on the job. Thank you for offering her the help you have." That was for the opposition party, whom he didn't want to embarrass. "I think it exemplary of the peaceful system we've worked out that the office was able to function during the crisis, and I thank you in particular for your patience."
"Her advice has run counter to yours," Geigi said bluntly — and rudely — without the proprieties of address. "What are we to think? That juniors are free to advise us?"
"Our advice should not be that different." He felt giddy, blood as well as breath insufficient, or the heart not beating fast enough. Which seemed impossible. Like falling off a mountain. Like a fast downhill, on an icy slope. You could stop. But you didn't come up there to stop. He'd determined on his attack. He launched it. Cold and clear. "Let me be more clear, lord Geigi: in the State Department, there are divergent opinions: those who view that atevi and humans should always stay separate, a view which Hanks-paidhi has held; and those who believe as I do, that there's no unraveling a society that has become a whole fabric. I'm aware that certain atevi are equally apprehensive of true technological parity as if it were a subterfuge for cultural assimilation. That is the point on which Hanks' party and mine do find agreement: that cultural assimilation is not the ideal and not the target. The traditions and values of atevi are for atevi to keep. We know that attractions and change come with advances —"
"Television," a conservative representative muttered.
"Television," he agreed. "Yes, nadi, television. And we should not have provided the formats for broadcast and news. Maybe the television stations shouldn't broadcast full time. Maybe we've made mistakes. I'd be the first to agree that following our pattern is attractive, both culturally and economically — my predecessor vetoed the highway bill because he viewed it as casting atevi into a human development pattern destructive of atevi associa-tional authority, and, pardon me, he found extremely strong opposition to and resentment of that veto. I've moderated my own view on the matter, I understand that there were and are local situations that should receive exceptions, but that's beside the point: one can't carry local situations into a major, continent-spanning development of a technology that's going to disrupt atevi life. The paidhiin have always opposed that kind of development."
"But the damage is done, nadi. And where are our traditions?"
"Nadi, I've recently been to the heart of the mainland, to a fortress built before humans ever left their earth — I've lived, as far a modern man can, the life atevi had before the world changed. I didn't come back unscathed, as you see. — Nor did I come back unaffected in my opinions. The course humans and atevi have followed has preserved such places and the land around them, and when we were struggling together for our lives, nadiin, with the shells flying around us, we found our instincts could work together and that we could fear for each others' lives as well as our own."
"All of this aside," the lord of Rigin said, "some would say this was no place for a human."
"Some would say the same of atevi on the station. I disagree, nadi. I agree it's a shaky cooperation. It will be a shaky cooperation, with exceptions to rational behavior, and it will be a carefully circumscribed cooperation, for our lifetimes at least, but consider, nadiin: there is one orbital space, one natural environment in which ships from this planet hope to operate, and we must each adapt to this new environment."
"With your designs. Your history. Your technology. Your path."
"Nadiin, there is one air, and one gravity, and one atmosphere through which airplanes move — atmosphere designs the planes, people don't. Some designs move through the air and stay in the sky more efficiently than others; and if humans had never come here at all, the airplanes you designed would work — in principle — exactly like our airplanes, because they operate under similar conditions. As they grew more efficient, they'd look more and more like our best designs, their controls would look very much like our controls — and the need to communicate about those machines at their speed would change your language, as it has, and change your attitude toward computers, which it has. Computers would have to exist. Television, whether or not you used it for general broadcast, would have to exist to give you efficient sight of things far off. And the ships you built for space would look very like the ship up there, once you've pared away all the nonessentials and adjusted the design to do what you need."
"These needs are still cultural decisions," the head of committee said. "That's why this committee exists. That's why we don't take your lordly designs, nadi, and go and build them exactly as you built them."
"Wisely so, my lord." God, he saw the cliff coming. Geigi was listening, chin on fist, glowering, and he took the jump, knowing the danger. "But cultural needs are one thing. There cannot be mathematical differences in our universes, my lord of Rigin. Physics is physics, whether accommodated by humans or by atevi."
"There is one universe," Geigi muttered.
"As efficient machines are what they need to be, no more, no less. To be efficient in a given environment, they turn out to look very much alike, nadiin, and manuals for running them turn out very similar, and people who run them eventually think very similarly, apart from their philosophical beliefs. Given that humans and atevi need similar machines to explore the same environment, we will grow more and more alike in our thinking. Physics guided even the wi'itkitiin, in their evolution, to have wings and not fins, to adjust their wing-surfaces in flight, as airplanes do, as atevi and human pilots do; in short, nadiin, neither humans nor atevi are immune to the numbers of the natural world. And atevi who live in space will use true numbers to understand its demands, and therefore enter harmony with the behaviors of humans who Likewise live in harmony with those numbers. Numbers rule us all, nadiin. We admire atevi minds and your language that so readily expresses the harmonies of numbers: atevi have that advantage over us. We can admire. We respect atevi ability. We want association with atevi not least of all because of your remarkable language and your faculty with numbers, which may well develop new understandings in this new environment."
"Not when ships violate natural law," Geigi muttered. "I want to hear an explanation for your ships moving faster than light, nand' paidhi. I want to see the numbers."
Tension hung heavy in the conference room. Civil peace and civil war hinged on that question. Lord Geigi posed a demand the answer to which could shatter his belief, his political stability, the existence of his house and the institutions it supported, and he did it in public, with his personal fortunes at absolute low ebb — a man with nothing to lose but the philosophy on which he pinned his beliefs.
"Nadi-ma," Bren said, "I will find you an answer. I promise that. Mosphei' doesn't express such concepts easily, which hampers my understanding of the physics as well as my attempt to translate."
"Does mat ship exceed the velocity of light?"
"Mosphei' expresses it in that way." The paidhi was desperate, and the tape around his ribs made him short-winded and probably pale as a sheet. "But the human language often approximates more complex situations, lord Geigi, since we have no convenient way to express what the atevi languages do — especially in high numbers and spatial concepts. We're entering on a field of math that
I've never tried to express." And never damn well understood. "Let me work on the problem a few days. I'm sure there's a better way of putting it than either I or Hanks has done."
Lord Geigi was not a happy man. Perhaps he'd hoped for the paidhi to deny it outright. There were uneasy looks elsewhere at the table.
But the Minister of Transportation moved for the paidhi to undertake such a study, the committee expressed confidence in the paidhi's research on the matter, and they went on to specific topics like the cost estimates on the launch facility and what they ought to recommend to the legislature on continuation of the rocket engine project, in serious doubt pending the receipt of far more modern design, with the contractors justifiably besieging the legislators' doors and demanding some payment on work already completed.
He thought — he thought that FTL encompassed areas of math he'd never completely understood, and he thought at least he knew where his deficiencies began. The paidhi had to have mathematical ability: it went with the job, and one learned it right along with a language that continually made changes in words according to number and relationship — sometimes you needed algebra just to figure the grammatically correct form of a set-adjective, when the wrong form could be infelicitous and offend the person you were trying to win. You formed sets on the fly in your conversation just to avoid divisible plural forms, like the dual or quad not offset by the triad or monad, and in learning rapid conversation, even with the shortcut concepts the language held, your head hurt — until you got to a degree of familiarity where you could chain-calculate while holding a conversation, and no restaurant ever got away with padding your bill. He'd slid out of higher math in desperation for more study time, found later that he could sight-solve the problems in the math he'd skipped if he thought in Ragi, and the university had given him six credits he'd never sat in class for.
But by everything he could access at this point, looking through the window of truly esoteric math from the outside, and studying atevi philosophy from the outside, and without the neural hardwiring atevi had, he didn't know how in hell to translate what didn't, emphatically didn't, fit into the ordinary framework of the language. There had to be forms as yet not in the dictionary, or acceptable forms had to be created that wouldn't violate felicity —
Which wasn't exactly a job for a human proceeding past the limits of his own education.
And if pedestrian and literal-minded atevi (and there were such) believed that computers through demonic processes assigned infelicitous numbers to airplanes, he didn't know what he was going to do when the numbers began to describe processes of an imperfectly perceived universe.
Atevi demanded perfection in their numbers. It was the demon in the works, that both kept atevi from sliding back into dark ages once they'd made an advance: and kept atevi from advancing as fast on a single front — because they had to adjust all their philosophy to accommodate new concepts. The numbers of a situation entered philosophy, integrated with it — and numbers could take forever to find proof enough for someone to try a new thing.
Or they could, absent the gadfly effect of human presence and human tech that patently and demonstrably worked, stop all progress while atevi worked out perfection, while amateur 'counters and philosophers rose up to claim the space program would puncture the atmosphere —
I detest amateurs, Banichi had said, in so many words. The paidhi thought the same. God save them all from paidhiin who revealed translight physics with no understanding that to atevi the math involved was far more earth-shattering than the ship was; no understanding that atevi would take the mathematics of folded space and integrate it at every level of their languages, their philosophies, their thinking, until, if humans had trouble understanding atevi logic now, humans were in for a century of real, devastatingly confusing adjustment, right when the whole world had a lot else to adjust to.
It was a wrench in the works for sure. If he'd spent months thinking of exactly what mathematical concept he wouldn't want to toss into the atevi-human interface at this precise moment in history, he thought that folded space would probably sit at the top of the don't-mention list. But it was all on the negotiating table now.
Not everyone they had to deal with had Geigi's brand of courage. He liked the man. The same recklessness that had gotten Geigi into financial difficulty had evidently moved Geigi to that blunt, public question, and if there was an influence among the opposition to Tabini that deserved preservation right along with Ilisidi, Geigi's blunt willingness to confront the paidhi and demand a truth that might wreck him had the paidhi's respect.
With a word in the right ear — he might be able to help Geigi. He was moved to help Geigi — and damned right the paidhiin occasionally took wide decisions, and played, he hoped, lifesaving politics without consultation. He checked it through the professional filter: he believed he acted independently of human emotion, though human emotion appreciated what Geigi had done; intellect evaluated Geigi's character. And the value of a man who asked reasonable questions, he was convinced, did cross species lines. Any way he could take to help the man — he resolved to use the channels he did have.
Adjournment proceeded, on a vote of the committee, to reconvene in five days for a presentation by the paidhi on FTL.
The paidhi smiled and looked, he hoped, serene in the prospect.
It wasn't what the paidhi felt. And if Hanks had financial expertise, and if, if he could rely on her, Hanks still couldn't rescue him from this one. Financial modeling just didn't exactly suit the problem.
Jago had walked him down to the meeting, since Algini, who might have drawn the duty, was still feeling the effects of his injuries. Reasonably, he expected Jago to be waiting outside to walk him back to the apartment, but it was Banichi instead, standing with his shoulders against the wall, easing, one suspected, the stress on his lately injured leg.
"Banichi," he said, and Banichi stood upright quickly enough, though caught by some surprise, which one could rarely do with Banichi, as the committee adjourned without the usual fuss and members walked out the door.
Banichi was tired and in pain, Bren suspected. That rarely showed, either. One could almost guess Jago was taking the walking jobs and Banichi was handling those that didn't require that much; he'd sent Tano, the other of his security with two good legs, off looking for offices, another job his security shouldn't have to do.
"That was well done," Banichi said as they walked toward the lift.
"I hope so," Bren said.
"Tabini was pleased."
"How did he know?" He was startled into asking the unaskable; and Banichi returned:
"In the Bu-javid? Of course he knew."
Possibly through Banichi, who knew? Banichi carried a pocket-corn that might have a sensitive enough mike. Banichi didn't say. But Banichi next spoke to someone on the pocket-corn, probably clearing their passage to the lift: security's code was verbal and seemed to change day by day.
"Do not take gifts with you into secure areas," Banichi said.
"What gift?" he asked, like a fool.
And remembered.
"The pin." He was utterly chagrined.
"Fortunately it's Tabini's."
"Why?"
"He was anxious about Hanks."
"As if she'd leap on me? Hardly."
"One wasn't certain."
"She might have use. She might use better sense. I don't know."
They were still using the back ways, avoiding the main hall and any ordinary traffic that threatened the casted arm; but the paidhi was considering other things than his surroundings — until he waited at the lift, watching the faces of other committee members, covert glances that came his way, all speculative: a small group hung about Geigi and his aides, and looks came his way.
He found his breath freer, despite the damned tape that went on binding and chafing. Matters came into clearer focus on all fronts. Hanks would do what she had to do or Hanks would go straight to the worst of the conservative elements on Mospheira, but Hanks, as a problem, was not the problem, not the one that could harm atevi. The problem that could blow the Western Alliance apart was standing right over there — that was why he hadn't been able to see a path through the rest of it.
It was magical, how freely the mind jumped once a burden of necessity was off the little problems. He couldn't do what Hanks did. He wasn't capable of replacing the entire university advisory committee. Neither was Hanks, and before all was said and done, no matter if Hanks turned up the most brilliant paper of her dubious career, he knew where the real bombshells lurked and he knew the paidhi had to be forearmed.
But as the lift took them in, and Banichi pushed the button to take them to the third floor:
"Banichi-ji, I have an odd request. I need to talk to mathematicians. People whose math describes space. The shape of the universe."
"The shape of the universe, nadi?"
"Universe" was difficult in the atevi language. It as well described the Western Association as stars and space. "Stars. Physics of stars, velocity — space. That universe."
"I know of some very respected mathematicians, some resident in the Bu-javid. But none that deal in such things as that. The shape of the universe. Bren-ji, I know no such things."
"Galaxies and distances." Atevi made no constellations. Stars were stars. "The physics of light."
The lift let them out into the hall. Banichi said:
"Maybe humans have such things. I'd expect them to."
"This human doesn't have these things with him; the phones are down on Mospheira's side of the strait, and anyway, I don't think the human answer would help me that much. The math of fields and physics, Banichi. How atevi view the universe beyond the solar system. What it's shaped like. What's out there, beyond the last planet. What light does in long distances. The shape of space."
"The shape of space." Clearly that thought didn't make sense to Banichi. "Pregnant calendars?"
He laughed. "No. I've got the right word. I'm sure I've got the right word."
They'd come to the apartment door; Banichi had his key and let them in past the security precautions, to the ministrations of the servants and Saidin's oversight —"Nadiin," Bren said, and to Saidin, who evidently considered it her duty to meet her lodger at all his comings and goings, "nadi-ji."
"Will the paidhi care for supper in, tonight?"
"The paidhi would be very grateful, nadi, thank you." God, was it that late? He caught a look at the foyer table, where messages had overflowed the bowl and stacked on the table surface in Tano's absence. "God — save us."
"Nand' paidhi?" Saidin asked.
"An expression of dismay," Banichi said.
"Tano's looking for office space," Bren said. "And professional staff. I don't know how I'm to deal with it otherwise."
"The staff can sort these," Saidin said, "if the paidhi wishes."
"The paidhi would very much like that, daja-ji, thank you. We hope to have staff soon. If the phone lines clear. If — God, I don't know."
"The paidhi would like tea?"
"The paidhi is awash in tea. He just got out of a committee meeting. The paidhi would like something much stronger. Without alkaloids. Thank you, daja-ji. — Banichi, I have to have the mathematicians. I'm desperate. I need to talk to people who understand the shape of space itself. Astronomers."
"Astronomers?" Banichi gave him a frowning, considering look, and he suddenly remembered Banichi, all competent Banichi, was from the provinces; there was that back-country mistrust of the astronomers — the old failure. If there were humans in the heavens, how could the astronomers have failed to find them? If numbers ruled the universe, as devout atevi believed, then how could atevi astronomers, measuring the universe, have numbers with discrepancies in them, as they argued about distances?
In some religious minds, that was heresy. The numbers of the universe had no discrepancies. That was the very point the Determinists and the Rational Absolutists fixed as unshakable.
"I fear that's who I need to talk to, yes, astronomers."
One rarely saw Banichi at a loss. "There's an observatory in Berigai, in the Bergid. That's an hour by air."
"None closer? The university? I mean legitimate astronomers, Banichi. Not fortune-tellers. This is a legitimate observatory in the Bergid, there's a school —"
"There is. We can call them. We can ask."
"Would you —" The paidhi was tired, and the security station was at hand. "Would you mind terribly giving them a call, asking if they have anyone who can answer my questions? I'll write my essential question out, given faster-than-light flight and the Determinist objection, and if you could ask them if there's anyone who can answer it —"
"No," Banichi said, which meant he didn't mind — one answered the question asked, not the question implied, as the paidhi's tired brain should have recalled.
The paidhi went to sit in the sitting room, write down his question for Banichi, and have the servants bring him a drink. He wished the ship had called. Or his mother had called, or someone. He took the little glass the servants offered, sat and stared at the Bergid, floating in its misty serenity above the city, wondering whether Banichi was having luck getting anyone, or whether he was totally on his own.
Atevi philosophy had used to hold, with misleading but reasonable argument, that the farthest events in the heavens were the least changeable, because you could see more of them.
And he supposed if there weren't atevi constellations, as the paidhiin had from the beginning known there weren't — no constellations such as humans from age immemorial had made out of the brighter stars, and still tried to make out of the atevi sky — then it followed that ordinary atevi didn't grow up with much curiosity about the night sky — hard, without those pictures, and without popular names for them, to tell where one was in a seasonally changing sky. Ask a farmer, maybe. Maybe a sailor, among nonscholarly types.
But, point of constant difference with human history, a significant part of the atevi food supply didn't depend on the stars and never had: they domesticated no food animals. They counted the winds from the sea, the turning of the wind from the south, as a reliable marker for seasons. Animals bred as animals pleased and the stars had nothing to do with it.
And in fact there was a dearth — he had heard it in school — of reliable bright stars, compared to the sky of the long-lost human earth.
Certainly the elite of the Assassins' Guild wouldn't take overmuch time memorizing random lists of stars and locations, except perhaps as it did affect navigation. But the far-faring ships of atevi history had, another long-understood point of atevi science, always hugged the coasts and felt out the abiding currents for direction.
A significant point for the paidhi's journal to pass on to the university: nobody had made a real study of atevi star-lore, because there wasn't any atevi star-lore to speak of. Though they'd marked the appearance of the Foreign Star, as, a most strange event in atevi skies, the ship had built the station — astronomers, in those days a cross between fortune-tellers and honest sky-charters, had correctly said it foretold something strange, and maybe fearsome.
But atevi astronomers hadn't known what it was, and they never had recovered their popular respectability, which the paidhiin knew. But the paidhiin had, so far as he knew, never risked the topic of atevi astronomy — never dared seek out astronomers — because they didn't want the specific questions astronomers could ask. He understood a risk in the undertaking that was precisely of more and closer questions than Geigi knew how to ask.
Or in wasting time with a discipline allowed through benign neglect, to wander off into star observations and fortune-telling, a discipline which was, as far as he knew, half philosophy.
But that might be exactly the sort of people to talk to the Determinists. Someone at that level had to have made the kind of rationalizations that answered the Geigis of the world. He only hoped not to bog down in sectarian disputes and abstruse systems. He hoped not to waste a great deal of time on a matter which he wanted quietened, not expanded to side questions and, one always risked it, controversy between philosophies.
Banichi finally came to him, looking perplexed as a man might who'd just had to discuss warped space with academics.
"There is a man," Banichi began.
"Have a drink," Bren said, and gestured toward a chair — the servants must perch on the edge of visibility at all times: it was almost predictable that there was a young lady at Banichi's elbow before his weight had quite settled into the cushions. Banichi ordered one that was alkaloid, straight, and propped his injured leg on a footstool.
"This man?" Bren said.
"Very old. They say he's brilliant, but the students don't understand him. They wonder if he'd be of any help to the paidhi."
"Banichi, among other things that have changed overnight, it's suddenly become relevant what stars lie near us, what concepts atevi hold of the wider universe, and the paidhi isn't studied up on these things. Ask me about rocket fuel baffles. Ask me about low earth orbit and pay-loads. We're dealing with near stars and solar systems."
"This faster-than-light controversy?" Banichi said.
"Very much so. Asking humans does me no good. I've consulted the words I do have, in what study I can make of it, and I don't know I can find what I want — I'm not sure the average atevi knows, if any atevi at all know what to call it."
"Faster-than-light. Doesn't that say it?"
"I mean concepts. I need mathematical pictures. Ideas, Banichi. I'm not sure that faster-than-light is the best word. Mosphei' has no precision about it."
"Translate. Is that not what the paidhi does?"
"Not when there may be precise atevi words."
"For faster-than-light?" Banichi was clearly doubtful.
"For foundational concepts. For the numbers. For ways of looking at what nature does."
"I fear the astronomers aren't the best method. They invite the paidhi to come in person and talk to this venerable. But —"
"But?"
"Such a meeting could generate controversy in itself."
"You said they were respectable people."
"I said they were scholarly. I didn't say they were respectable, nadi-ji."
"And are atevi astronomers still fortune-tellers? We've released a certain amount of astronomical data to your universities — measurements, data about stars, techniques of measurement — I doubt that the numbers your astronomers have are vastly different from our numbers. I don't see how they could be. I want to find out how they express the math. I want to find out if someone can take Hanks' statement and resolve the paradox the Determin-ists make of it. Clearly they see things differently than humans. Possibly it's simply terminology."
"There will still be controversy."
"Do they still tell the future? I'd be vastly surprised if they did."
"Certain ones do."
Bren took a sip of the liquor, found his hand trembling considerably: fatigue, he supposed. He was tired. He thought he'd found an answer and it was turning itself into a further problem. "I assure you our data does no such thing," he said, but he saw how astrology might still have greater attraction than astronomy for some atevi, and how the paidhi's simple inquiry after better terminology might offend other, more learned atevi. "We have far more uses for star data than telling the future, I assure you, and I would assume at least some atevi share that interest. Perhaps this old man."
"Their mathematics is reputedly highly suspect, Bren-ji, at the university. That's all I know."
That wasn't good news. For more than scientific reasons. "The university itself doesn't believe them?"
Banichi drew a long breath. Had a sip. "They hold that the stars should agree with the numbers humans provide. There are, I'm told, discrepancies. Changes."
"Banichi —" He was exasperated, and asked himself whether he might do far better looking into the truly eosteric corners of atevi physics, not observational astronomy — but that, considering the topic Hanks had broached, was a source of questions he wanted less than the ones observational astronomers might ask. "Banichi, stars move. Everything's moving. So is our observation point. We've put this forth time and time again. It doesn't mean the astronomers are wrong."
"I don't say it makes clear sense," Banichi said, "not to me."
"The earth goes around the sun. In winter it's at one point of its orbit and in the summer it's the opposite. If you're looking at a star and want to know its real numbers, you can measure by taking the numbers from the earth at opposite extremes of the earth's orbit. But the margin of error rapidly gets larger than the measurement itself. We're dealing in very great distances, Banichi, very big numbers, and they have nothing to do with forecast or philosophy: stars have to do with burning hydrogen, that's all."
"Then what use are they?"
"The sun's rather useful."
"What's the sun to do with anything?"
He was perplexed, now, and flung out the obvious. "The sun's a star, Banichi-ji. Close up, the stars look like the sun."
"I believe you," Banichi said after a moment. "I can see your point, I think. But do you wish to add philosophical extremes to the debate? I counsel you, nadi, surely you can come up with something else."
"The ship up there has been to other stars, Banichi, almost certainly. We came from another star very much like the sun."
"This may be true, nadi, and I surely wouldn't dispute the paidhi's word."
He'd gone beyond impatience. He was arriving at curiosity himself, on topics the paidhiin didn't often ask atevi. "Well, where did you think we came from?"
"From another star, nadi."
"Like one of those little points of light up there."
"Actually —" Banichi said, "one had rarely wondered."
"Did you think we lived on a star?"
"Well…" Banichi said with a shrug. "People just don't ask such questions on the streets, nadi-ma. I think if you want such explanations for lord Geigi, you're only going to confuse him."
"I've got to do better than that, Banichi. Geigi at least has a scientific background. He understands the solar system."
"Better than I do," Banichi said. "But still, in public, I wouldn't make a great issue about the sun, nadi. I don't think many people will understand you."
He took a slow sip. He'd never in his administration had access to the astronomical faculties, never had recourse to them — he supposed Wilson-paidhi hadn't, nor — if one went on — earlier paidhiin — and that got into increasingly more primitive science. No one in the prior century would have wanted to raise questions of cosmology — or provide, God help them, heavily mathematical data to atevi — except the information that more or less accompanied certain stages of technology, much as knowledge of the ionosphere went along with radio, and the solar wind and the source of auroras would be, he was well sure, a part of current science curriculum — since it mattered. But, but, and but — no study he'd seen had ever speculated on the reach of systematic knowledge of cosmology into the popular understanding —
Of — damn — course. Atevi mentality integrated smaller systems quite well. But atevi truly didn't readily think of the whole earth, didn't have a word for universe that didn't equally mean one's immediate personal world. Atevi didn't have a real interest in understanding the theory of Everything, just in getting the right numbers on their individual circumstances. Philosophers were there to care about larger systems while ordinary atevi adhered to the dominant philosophy of their personal set of associations and trusted the philosophers to get the big picture right — that was exactly what was at stake with lord Geigi, who understood his philosophy better than the average atevi. Geigi had been led deep into that understanding because he'd pursued a scientific education, and he'd been forced to integrate astronomy into his personal system. What fell outside that meticulously ordered system — challenged that system. What couldn't be integrated — challenged that system.
And no wonder people with busy lives, people like Banichi, were content to let the philosophers hammer out the major, theoretical problems, and — in Banichi's and Tabini's case — take all philosophy with a large grain of salt, possibly because they dealt with multiple philosophies, and thought of them in terms of atevi political motives, not underlying fact. Tell Banichi the sun was a star? All right. It didn't shatter Banichi's world. He wouldn't lie awake thinking about it tonight. He might think about it when he had leisure. But he wouldn't worry about his personal universe falling apart because he couldn't integrate that information.
But those atevi who'd invested the time and hammered out the highest, most tenuous and difficult interrelationships of knowledge would lose sleep. And if those people were shaken in their confidence and debate filtered down past the pragmatic sorts like Banichi and became public doubts — a lot of people had invested heavily both financially and politically in what they considered fortuitous systems. A lot of people had paid money to numerologists who'd advised them to certain personal, political and financial courses in which, depend on it, they had a lot of emotional as well as monetary investment. Tell a man that his world wasn't as secure as he'd paid money to have it be, and damned right he was upset.
The paidhiin were well in touch with that fact of atevi life. The paidhiin walked around that kind of minefield all the time. Just — so far as he knew — no paidhi had ever checked up to see if astronomical and cosmological information had been filtering its way into atevi public consciousness to the same degree it had done among human beings who did have constellations, and whose history was tied up with the stars in one form or another. Just one of those myriad little differences that paidhiin stumbled over in operation and wrote some obscure paper about so that ten or fifteen years down the road some committee on Mospheira would take it into account in planning the introduction of some new technological system.
Usually the differences weren't critical. Usually there weren't so many changes at once. Usually there was a ten- to fifteen-year study behind a technological move.
And right now it seemed every unattended detail left for tomorrow by paidhiin of generations past was going to come due on his watch.
"I'll certainly take your advice, Banichi, at least as regards what people know: it's invaluable to me. I think — I'd better accept the venerable's invitation."
"His staff's invitation. I fear the venerable's attention is only for the stars. These foreign suns. Whatever they are. I'll look at the sky tonight and think of strangers. It's quite appalling."
"Inhabited planets must be very rare. I've heard so."
"One hopes. One does hope so, Bren-ji. I don't think we could bear another such onslaught of benefits."
"I've found an office, nodi Bren," Tano reported by phone. "And by the earnest endeavor of the personnel office — twenty-seven discreet and experienced staff, of clear man'chi to Tabini-aiji, and one managerial, a retired gentleman, one Dasibi, out of Magisiri, who would be greatly honored to be called back to Bu-javid service. I explained that all positions might be temporary, pending changes in the volume of the paidhi's mail, but none objected to that. The standard salary seems to be Cari Street market privilege at six thousand a year, medical at two, housing and transport at four, pension at two, and incidentals at two-five. Nadi Dasibi agrees to the same plus six additional stipend. This seems fair and in line with standard. But they all do understand that the offer is conditional on funding."
Fifteen thousand five a year for twenty-seven people. Twenty-one five for another. Office payments. Faxes, phones, computers —
"I've not that much in personal savings," Bren said with a sinking heart. "I'd thought of one or two assistants. If we can apply to the general office — I don't know, Tano. I don't know that I can get funds out of my government. They may well want to shoot me instead."
"I've concluded nothing as yet, nand' paidhi. But I have all the figures. I can file a requisition through personnel. I'm sure it'll go straight up to the aiji."
"I'm sure it will." He didn't want to have the office funded through the Bu-javid. If he had a shred of propriety left in the office accounts, he shouldn't be accepting any more funding from atevi, who had far different standards for what the aiji's court demanded in dress and style than what the Mospheiran government wanted to fund for what they viewed as a civil servant. But —"Do it, Tano. I've no other recourse but leave the correspondence piling up. There's another stack. The household staff is sorting through it."
"One isn't surprised at more mail, nand' paidhi. But I'll be a while at the requisitions. I've forms to fill out. A lot of them."
"I'm grateful for your doing it, Tano. Everything's fine upstairs. Algini's resting, there aren't any emergencies. Take time for supper. Please. As a favor to me. If it doesn't all get done today, it'll still get done. We're searching out the volatile ones. We'll take care of it."
"Thank you, nadi-ji." Tano said.
He hung up the phone, working the numbers in his head without half thinking and coming up with a budget that wasn't by any stretch of the imagination going to get clearance without a fight. Mospheira wasn't going to understand why the paidhi, when all previous paidhiin had made do with no staff on the mainland and a staff of ten or less on Mospheira, suddenly needed this kind of operation. Long before Wilson, Mospheira in the executive branch hadn't wanted to admit that the paidhiin were anything but a convenient appendage to the State Department's other, internal business — saw them as bearers of messages, generators of dictionaries, or perhaps as mostly engaged in generating tenure in university posts.
And without executive branch support, figure that the legislators were never going to leap to drain money from their constituencies for an office that had never needed it before, for a paidhi that didn't have friends in high places.
God… help him. He didn't have the funds. In the absence of Mospheira suddenly seeing reason, he knew where the funds were going to have to come from: Tabini. Which, on principle, he didn't want, but if the ship answered — if the ship would just, please God, answer Tabini, and call him, and tell him that they were going to agree to Tabini's proposals…
He was in the lady's small office, where he had a phone and some privacy. Supper was in preparation. He hadn't enough time to start any letter or anything else useful. He resolved to try the Mospheiran phone system again, and called through to the operator with his mother's number.
The call went through. Or sounded as if it were going through.
It didn't.
He listened through the phone system Number Temporarily Out of Service message, and couldn't even get the damn central message system to leave her a "Hello, this is Bren."
He called through again, this time to Toby's home, on the North Shore.
"Toby? This is Bren. Toby, Pick up the phone. Pick up the damn phone, Toby."
The daughter came on. A high clear voice called, "Papa? It's Uncle Bren," and in a series of thumps somebody came down the steps to the front hall.
"Bren."
"Toby, good to hear a voice. What's the matter with Mom's number?"
"What's the matter?"
"I'm getting a Temporarily Out of Service."
There was a moment of silence. "Maybe they're doing repair."
"I tried to call this morning. I got a telegram from her. It was censored to hell. Is everything all right?"
Silence. And more silence.
"Toby?"
"Yeah, everything's fine. How are you doing? The shoulder all right?"
"Best I can tell. — Toby, how's Jill?"
"Oh, Jill's fine. We're all fine. Weather's a little soggy. You'll probably catch it tomorrow."
"We could do with some rain. Cool it off a little. Have you talked to Mother in the last few days?"
Silence. Then: "You know Mom. She doesn't like change."
'Toby?"
"I've got to hang up now. We're going out to supper."
"Toby, what in bloody hell's going on?"
"Mom's been getting some calls, all right? It's not a problem."
"Not a problem. What kind of calls?"
"I'll drop her a message on the system, tell her you called. It's all right, Bren, it's all right, don't worry about it. — I've got to go. Jill's waiting. We were just going out the door."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. Thanks, Toby."
Something's wrong, those silences meant. Something was wrong regarding their mother.
He hit his hand on the paneled wall. Which did nothing but summon a concerned servant.
"Nand' paidhi?" She was one of the youngest, very earnest, very anxious.
He carefully removed expression from his face. And tried not to feel the acid upset in his stomach. "It's all right, nadi. It's nothing."
"Yes," the servant said, and bowed and went her way.
The paidhi gathered up the nerves he had left and tried to divert his mind back to office budgets and folded space.
The change of season meaning a more palatable meat course, the cook was inspired, to judge by the meticulous arrangement and green-sauce spirals on the appetizers. And the paidhi, the object of so much attention, should have had a ravenous appetite, counting the chasing about he'd done, and the lunch he hadn't but picked over.
But he couldn't take his mind off Toby's informative silences, picked over the appetizers, too, and decided finally he'd rather try to eat than answer cook's hurt feelings.
He wished he hadn't called at all. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't get there. Toby could, but Toby hadn't, which might mean Toby wasn't that worried.
But "Getting some calls." What in hell did that mean? Some random crazy?
A movement touched the edge of his vision. And stopped, which the serving staff hadn't done. He looked toward the door.
"Nandi," he said, seeing Saidin standing, hands folded, expectant of something. With more staff behind her.
With a serving tray.
Probably the season's inaugural dish. It was a very formal house. And he couldn't offend the cook. He gave the event his full attention.
The servants brought the tray in and set out a very large flat bread, with an amazing array of foods atop, all appropriate, all seasonal. But on a green vegetable sauce.
"This is a new dish," he remarked.
And evidently set the staff somewhat aback — when cook herself had come into the hall, and waited — clearly — for his reaction.
"It's quite nice," he said, trying to salve feelings.
"What do you call it?" He tried to learn new words and new things as they presented themselves. It was what the paidhi did in the ordinary course of his job.
"Pizza," the youngest servant blurted out. "Is this not in correct season, nand' paidhi?"
"Of course it is," he said, at once. "Of course, pizza, nadi. I'm just — quite surprised." He could have broken into laughter — if he hadn't control of his face, and his voice. "It's wonderful."
"We hadn't the red sauce," cook said. "We're told it will come, but the plane was delayed by weather."
"One did think," madam Saidin said, clearly part of the conspiracy, "that after dealing with that unpleasant woman this noon it was a good day for a traditional food."
"It smells very good," he said. "Would the staff share? It's traditional to pass it around."
The servants looked excited. Saidin looked dubious, but cook said, "There're eight more in the kitchen. One had provided for the staff, nand' paidhi, by your leave."
"Call Algini. And Jago." The notion of an Occasion made him positively cheerful. "Might we have drinks, nand' Saidin?"
Even Saidin was falling into it. Cook declared that she could whip up more in short order, there was serious question about what the felicitous number of pieces should be for the cutting, and servants were scurrying after various members of the household, awake and asleep — nothing would do but that everybody come in, and flowers be found, and the state table be laid out with the second-best silver.
Jago was nowhere about, but Algini came from the security station — and sampled the dish, and went back again, with plain tea to drink — but several of the staff became quite happy, someone put on music, and in the hallway a couple of the servants began a solemn, hands-behind-the-back line step, which in no wise endangered the fragile tables or the porcelain. He left the dining room to watch, and the servants would happily have taught him, but madam Saidin was scandalized, and advised them the paidhi was much too dignified for that.
The paidhi wasn't, as happened, but one didn't defy madam Saidin's judgments in front of her staff, and the paidhi stood in the doorway sipping a drink he knew was safe. They had tomatos and potatoes, peppers, onions and herbs on Mospheira they didn't allow to cross the strait uncooked, for fear of seeds and starts and the mainland ecology, although atevi who'd tried tomatos found something in tomatos and potatoes and peppers they relished, and there was a seasonal trade; but the ubiquitous green sauce, peppery and sour, went well with the bread and atevi foods piled atop so thickly a single slice was gluttony — and there was plenty of that among the staff.
"What does the dish celebrate?" a servant wanted to know, and the paidhi rapidly searched his mental files and said, shamelessly, "Success in hard work."
That pleased everyone, who congratulated each other, and even Saidin was pleased with herself.
Then Algini came in, in greater haste than Algini's injuries or Algini's habit usually afforded, with:
"Nadi Bren!"
There was a sudden hush, except of the music from the tape system. Security was all but impossible, as Algini said, "A phone call, Bren-paidhi. From Mogari-nai. They say the ship is calling you. They say they'll patch through."
"This is Bren Cameron," he said, still out of breath from reaching the office phone, "Go ahead, Mogari-nai."
"It's going through, nand' paidhi. Stand by."
He was still a couple of drinks to the worse and cursing his bad judgment, because, dammit, he'd known a call from the ship was at least still pending, and he'd assumed — assumed — it wouldn't happen. He took deep slow breaths, trying to pull his scattered wits together.
The next voice was thinner. "Hello?" it said. "This is Phoenix-cww. Bren Cameron, please."
"This is Bren Cameron. Go ahead, Phoenix-com." He could hear the rippling murmur of gossip underway among the servants down the short hall, but the party had quietened, Saidin, at least, being as aware as Algini what was at stake in this phone call.
"Mr. Cameron, this is Ramirez."
"Good evening, sir."
"Good evening. Sorry to miss your 1200 request. We've been sifting through a swarm of material, yours, theirs — I just got off the com with the island, and the President is claiming you haven't any authority to negotiate, I should tell you that first."
Damn, was the thought. He said, he trusted calmly, while juggling the phone receiver on his good shoulder and trying at the same time to reach the record button with the good hand — he punched the button —"The Pres-i ident has no authority to negotiate for atevi, sir, by the
'meaning and intent of the Treaty, the text of which you have. By grant of Tabini-aiji, sir, I do have the authority, and while I don't imagine —" God, the alcohol was making the room too warm, or the tape was cutting off his wind "— while I don't imagine the President is too pleased with that situation, I'm going to continue to provide translation between you and the atevi authority."
"I think we've come around to that point. What's the aiji's position on dealing with us?"
"Entirely open-minded." This wasn't a diplomat he was talking to. He picked up the bluntness and matched it. "The deal's been integrated economies, equal technological levels. Atevi and humans were building launch facilities before you arrived, to share renovation and operation of the station. That's the deal in progress. The aiji sees no cause to change that."
"Is he receiving this?"
"I can arrange it in a matter of minutes."
"No need, if you'll inform him we certainly want a good relationship with his government and we've selected the representative to go down there, at his request, on two conditions: one, our representative gets official status and official protection; and, two, there'll be an immediate application of resources to getting up here. I want an official confirmation from him that this will be the case."
"You'll get an official confirmation of both points, sir, but I can say there'll be no problem with that."
"We're dropping two representatives, one to you, one to Mospheira."
"No problem with that, either, sir."
"Good. We've got the volunteers. — Jason? Jason Graham. Bren Cameron."
"Mr. Cameron." A new, younger-sounding voice. "This is Jason Graham. Glad to make your acquaintance. I gather I'm likely to be seeing you soon."
"Looking forward to that. You've got a landing craft, then?"
"Well — we've got one. I'd like to call tomorrow, your choice of times, and get some feeling about what I'm dropping into."
"Delighted." He was. "Local daybreak's easy to figure. We left your clock when we landed. Tomorrow morning?"
"Daybreak. Dawn. Sunrise. All those words. Tomorrow dawn, it is. Good night. Do you say that?"
"Good night," he said, with the least small unease of realization that those were all dictionary words to the man. Conceptually dead. Three hundred and more years away — and daybreak was conceptually a dead word to him.
He signed off with the technicians at Mogari-nai, snatched the tape out of the machine before anything could happen to it, and phoned Tabini's private phone with, "I just had a brief ship contact, aiji-ma. They've apparently agreed to everything we want. I'll get you the full text."
"This is very good, Bren-ji. This is very good."
"They say they've got a landing capability of some kind and two people are scheduled to come down, one for the mainland, one for Mospheira. I'm going to talk to their representative at the crack of dawn tomorrow and I'll have more detail: the conversation was very brief. They want, they said, good relations with the atevi government. That's about the limit of the conversation, but it was cordial and positive."
"Very good news, Bren-ji. Good to hear. — Bren-ji?"
"Aiji-ma?"
"One hears of celebration over there."
"I'm terribly sorry if I've disturbed you, aiji-ma."
"No, our walls are quite thick. Enjoy the evening, Bren-ji."
"Thank you," he said, bewildered, as Tabini hung up.
Then it slowly came to him that there was something changed, and they might have reason to celebrate — the threat to the world might have taken a turn toward real, productive solution.
He walked out to the dining hall where a hushed assembly of servants stood waiting — hushed until he arrived: then the staff began to ask all at the same time, "Did you speak to the ship, nand' paidhi?" and "Did it go well, nand' paidhi?"
"Hush," Saidin said, scandalized. "Hush! This is by no means our business."
"But it did go well, nand' Saidin," Bren said. "If we can believe what I hear from the ship." He dared not claim to have reached any agreement, although he was sliding giddily toward believing it himself, for reasons that had more to do with where the resources were than any confidence in innate generosity in orbit over their heads. For that, he counted more on Mospheira, and that, very little and in offices not in ultimate authority over anything.
But around him there was growing excitement on faces. Algini was still in the group, and the crowd in the dining room and the hall numbered, he was sure, every servant on staff. Even Saidin and Algini seemed to catch the enthusiasm when he'd said as much as he had said, and someone put a glass in his hand, which accounted for all his ability to hold anything. It smelled at least like the safe variety, a wary touch of the tongue didn't have the queasy rough taste the truly dangerous drink had, and while he was engaged in deciding that, Saidin snatched it from him with an exclamation of dismay and replaced it with another, Saidin berating the glass-giver in the same instant for unwarranted carelessness with the paidhi, who everyone knew had a delicate stomach and a delicate constitution and was, moreover, Saidin's harangue continued, a virtual invalid lately wounded in the service of the Association, beside the hazard to lady Damiri's reputation in their carelessness.
The music had come up again, and cook's cart had arrived, this time with trays of chilled sweetmeats, probably a month's provisions, on which the servants descended and stripped tray after tray. Saidin was nibbling a sweet herself, and Algini had a number of very nice-looking young ladies backing him against the wall and firing questions at him, doubtless on his recent adventures and the reason for the bandages.
Then, ominous, dark and formal in her uniform, Jago arrived in the midst of things, and surveyed the situation without expression.
"Bren-ji," she said, moving up beside him, "one heard, down in Security."
"About the ship? It sounds good so far."
A servant would have given Jago a glass, but she ordered tea; there was still food to be had, and while Jago wouldn't drink, she took down a piece of pizza in short order, and listened to the music, standing by him with a solemn and on-duty stare at the proceedings as dancers, twenty or so of them, this time, wound down the hall.
"It — rather well grew, nadi," Bren said, feeling foolish and completely responsible. "I hate to tell them no, but I fear we're disturbing the peace."
"No," Jago said in her somber way. "Though Cenedi, downstairs, made inquiry for the dowager's sake."
"Oh, damn."
"And Banichi and Tano demand a share saved for them." Jago's tea arrived, with suitable deference, and Jago stood and sipped tea. "They'll be in later. Cook is going to be beset for the recipe. Pieces made their way down to Security, over to Tabini, and down to the dowager. One hopes this contravenes no ceremonial propriety."
"No," he said solemnly. "By no means. God, is nothing safe?"
"The recipe?" Jago said.
"The information. Everything I do —"
"We do watch, Bren-ji. But don't rely on it too far. Banichi says get to bed in good season, don't proposition the servants, and don't break the ancestral porcelains."
"Where is he?"
Jago cast a glance aside, then said, "He's got your plane arranged."
"Plane."
"To the observatory," Jago said, as if, of course, he should have known.
Which he should. The paidhi wasn't tracking as well as he ought. Probably it was the third glass. He was relatively sure it was the third.
"Day after tomorrow," Jago said, and sipped her tea. And hadn't, he realized a moment later, answered his question about Banichi's whereabouts at all.
Dammit, he thought. He got more information out of Cenedi and Tano than he did out of either of the two security personnel he counted closer to him.
But it wasn't the time or the place to insist. Banichi would turn up, probably as Jago disappeared somewhere, as they'd been doing. Jago'd mentioned a security station, and somehow Jago and Tabini and Banichi knew every move he made and every breath he took, which might indicate the nature of the security station they were occupying and the fact that the porcelains might be listening.
Which might indicate that, with a country at risk, or what passed for one in atevi reckoning, Tabini might not find it within his conscience to take him totally on his word.
Or dared not, with the amount of controversy he'd generated, and apparently a major crisis in the Assassins' Guild, leave him unwatched for a second.
Celebration might be in order. But solutions didn't fall into your hands, strangers didn't agree with you for no reason of advantage to themselves, and aijiin, presidents, and likely ship captains as well, when they had constituents at issue, didn't just do the logical, straightforward, economical — or trusting — thing. Not that he'd ever observed.