The servants were waiting on the rustic back porch of the lodge as the train pulled in to the platform. They insisted on snatching his bags and they chattered at him about the accommodations.
And perhaps it was the sight of familiar ground, where, at every visit, only pleasant things had happened; perhaps it was, despite the crowd of female servants, the comfortable recognition of an odd stone in the porch wall, the sight of its unshaped wood, its muted browns and stone grays, the plain character of its timber-and-stone halls — he felt as if he'd shed the Bu-javid at the door, as if, here, the landing itself was finally real, and he could actually do something about the problems it brought with it. He walked from the train depot door, down the hall with its hunting memorabilia and the leather couches and wooden benches, let his baggage find its way to the other wing while he lingered in the formal reception hall with the benches and the fireplace. To his pleasure, the servants or, more likely, Gaimi and Seraso, chief of the permanent, year-round ranger staff, who used Taiben when the family wasn't in residence, had a small fire going to welcome him, mostly of aromatics, the sort of thing the rangers laid by after clearing brush. The room smelled of evergreen and oilwood.
Beyond that was his room. His room, when he stayed at Taiben, a very comfortable room, with country quilts as well as the furs, a bedstead that could have stood in an earthquake, a trio of tables, and a wood-carving of a stand of seven trees that wasn't grand art or anything, but elegantly executed and pleasant.
His bed. A mattress he knew. A bathroom with a propane heater for winter. Shower tiles with wildflowers hand-painted on them. He realized he'd drawn a deep, deep breath, and that something in his chest had unknotted the minute he'd stepped off the train.
Then Tabini's security staff arrived to say they had chosen two rooms next to his for the foreigner paidhiin, if he would care to inspect them, and his mind snapped back to the business of descending landers, terrified spacefarers probably enroute at the very moment.
He viewed the rooms, one after the other; rooms like his own, one with a sling chair made of marvelously shaped driftwood and red leather, one with a human-high carved screen showing a hunting party, and asked himself what they'd think, surrounded by stone and wood and live flame, which was, he was sure, very unlike the station or the ship. But he assured Naidiri's two assistants and the servants that they were magnificent rooms fully proper for foreigner paidhiin — they didn't, he was thinking to himself, have trophy heads on the walls, which was probably just as well.
A senior servant came in with a bouquet of wildflowers of, she assured him, felicitous color and number, and said that such rooms and such a place would surely help assure harmony, as the servant said, "The numbers of the earth run through this house. They can't be infelicitous with the numbers of the heavens."
"One certainly agrees, nadi," he murmured, finding a comfort in the reckoning that wasn't humanly rational — just that atevi thought it worked, atevi arranged things with good will in mind, very simply conceived good will that said they should all be harmonious and fortunate. "I think it's very well done. Very well thought, nadiin. They should feel well taken care of."
He could relax, then, at least enough to leave the servants to install his small amount of clothing in the drawers and the closet and to press what wanted pressing. He went outside to stand on the porch and breathe the free air, looking out over the hillside.
Taiben sat on a gentle slope, its rearmost sections camouflaged in the edge of a hillside forest, its porch shaded by trees. In this season, in the nightly chill of the hills, grasses were just turning from green to gold: a hundred meters on, trees and brush began to give way to meadow-lands which ran on and on, interspersed with trees, to what they called the south range — and the landing site, a good drive distant.
He'd hiked a lot of the grassland. And the south range. Tabini had dragged him here and there around the reserve — an easy matter for Tabini, whose long legs never felt the strain. Which wasn't fair — in a man who spent his life in the Bu-javid and came out here to wear the paidhi to a state of exhaustion.
A lot of dusty hiking about, and firing guns, which the paidhi wasn't supposed to do, and which, not so long ago, the paidhi would have been just as glad to skip in favor of sitting about the fire all day and resting — when he'd come here, he'd usually been on the end of a long, long work schedule. He was now.
But if he'd the choice, he'd like to leave the porch and take a long walk off into the meadow. Which would be about the stupidest thing the paidhi could think of. When atevi security said, Stay in sight, they meant, Stay in sight. They were understandably short-fused, and being very efficient, very polite. He'd no desire to make their job harder.
So he trudged back inside, called for a pot of tea and watched — rare sight — the play of flames in the fireplace for the better part of an hour while servants hurried about their business and security crawled about in places atevi didn't fit, installing security devices, some of which might be lethal: he didn't ask.
Banichi came back with traces of dust and gravel on his knees and said he'd appreciate a pot of tea himself. Which meant, he was sure, Banichi had overtaxed his recent injury and was feeling it.
"Game of darts?" Banichi said when he'd had a chance to catch his breath and sip half a cup of tea. It was one human game atevi had taken to with a passion approaching that for television. He suspected he was going to lose.
Worse, as happened. Banichi offered him a handicap. He refused to take it. Banichi shrugged and still backed up a couple of meters —"Longer arm," Banichi said. "Let's be fair."
It was a slaughter, all the same. Four rounds of it.
"I don't think you can miss," Bren said.
Banichi laughed, and put one in the margin. "There. What do you say? No one's perfect?"
Bren made his best try to put one dead center. Which got him a finger's breadth out. "Well," he said, "some of us miss better than others."
Banichi thought that was funny, and sat down and stretched his legs out on a footstool.
"Sit down," Banichi said. "Enjoy the rest."
He did. He sat down, and without clearly realizing how tired he was, nodded off in the chair. And finally gave way to sleep altogether, a comfortable nap, with Banichi close by him.
"He's quite tired," Banichi said to someone quietly. "Keep the noise down."
People were walking nearby, a lot of people, and the paidhi finally had to pay attention to it. He heard Banichi talking to someone, and rubbed the soreness in his neck, blinked the room into focus and realized by the preparations and the conversations that Tabini was coming in, and with him, he was sure, Tano and Algini. Commotion preceded the aiji like a storm front: running through the sitting room and the kitchens, armed security headed through back halls of Taiben where the discreetly camouflaged rail station had its outlet on the side of the building, a station blasted out of the living stone of the hillside. Tano and Algini in fact came in, carrying their own baggage and a couple of heavy canvas cases that looked to hold electronics.
And if the place had felt homelike in his arrival, it felt far other than that now, with weapons in plain sight, Tabini's personal security with armored vests and heavy rifles — Tano and Algini in similar dress and no longer occupied with the ordinary business of clericals and offices: that was surveillance or communications equipment, he was certain.
If Saidin had — and he was sure that she had — put an Atigeini Guild member in the staff — it wasn't such an obvious presence; it was one of the quietly efficient women in soft, expensive fabrics and soundless soles, who whispered when they spoke among themselves and who had such a hair's breadth sensitivity to a design out of adjustment.
Damiri's. Or even Tatiseigi's.
While Damiri was, he recalled with a jolt, still in the Bu-javid — wasn't she?
In the Bu-javid, where her life might not be secure if an Atigeini moved against Tabini at Taiben. Atevi didn't take hostages, as such. But you damned well knew when you were in reach, and Damiri was — evidently voluntarily — staying in reach.
So very much went on tacit and unspoken — and the paidhiin one and all had had so little idea until he'd had the crash course at Malguri, and finally, rammed through a stupid human head on the plane, the implications he'd missed by not knowing well enough where the associa-tional lines lay, the sub-associations the paidhiin had always known were there, the potency of which the paidhiin had completely underestimated.
The paidhiin had learned to appreciate atevi television, and machimi plays, in which, so often as to be cliche, the stinger in the situation was atevi not knowing an ally had a more complicated hierarchy of man'chi than even the lord had thought he had. Or the lord, who theoretically lacked man 'chi by reason of being a lord, turning out to have man'chi to someone no one accounted for.
God, it was right out there in front of the paidhi; it had been right there in front of the State Department and the FO and the university, if anybody had known remotely how to trace it: the university kept meticulous records of genealogies, the provable indications of man'chi — and he knew who was related to whom, more or less. But that didn't say a thing about what Banichi had talked about, the man 'chi of where mates came from — or why.
Or the man'chi of servants; or the man'chi one atevi awarded another — Cenedi had found it necessary to tell him, perhaps as a point of honor he'd pay any deserving person, perhaps just a warning for the dim-witted human, that he couldn't regard any debt of life and limb ahead of his man'chi to Ilisidi. Cenedi hadn't needed to say that: he'd understood when he'd put Cenedi in a position humans would call debt that Cenedi would owe him no favors.
Banichi had protested vehemently his announcement he'd attached man'chi to him and Jago. He didn't know why they should object — unless —
— of course. He felt his face go hot. Banichi had said, with some bewilderment and force — you're not physically attracted to me, and then added that about Jago. Man'chi was hierarchical. Except the exception Banichi had hinted at. He'd declared man'chi either reversing the order of hierarchy, the paidhi toward his security —
— or he'd said something exceptionally embarrassing to Banichi, who couldn't even, in what Banichi might know about the incident between him and Jago, entirely swear that that wasn't exactly what a crazy human was feeling at the moment —
And the university didn't, couldn't, without more shrewd observations from the paidhiin than they'd ever gotten, trace the hidden lines of obligation, the not-so-obvious lines that evidently came down through generations that could be inherited, but that weren't, universally; or that could be acquired through physical or psychological attraction; or that could be forged behind closed doors by alliance of two leaders way up in the ranks of the nobility, and bind or not bind their kinsmen, their followers, their political adherents, according to rules he still didn't understand and atevi didn't acknowledge, at least out loud, maybe even in the privacy of their own self-realizations. There might be atevi who really, just like humans, didn't wholly understand the psychological entanglements they'd landed in. For a human, he thought, he was doing remarkably well at figuring out the entanglements of man'chi after the fact; he'd yet to get ahead of atevi maneuvering — and he'd no assurance even now he was looking in the right direction. He'd asked Jago once where her man'chi lay — and Jago'd taken at least nominal offense and told him in so many words to mind his own business: it wasn't something polite people ever asked each other. Banichi likewise.
He wondered if even the recipients of such man 'chi always knew what was due them, or if that was, among the other logical and perhaps embarrassing causes, also why Banicbi had turned his declaration away with, Not to as, nand' paidhi — in, for Banichi, quite an expression of dismay.
Servants made a last frantic pass about the sitting room, whisking the suspicion of dust off the fireplace stones, tidying the position of a vase so the largest flowers were foremost.
None of which Tabini gave a glance to when he came in — just a brightening of expression, and, "Ah, Bren-ji, I thought you might be resting. Any difficulties?"
"No, aiji-ma, none, absolutely an easy flight."
"Sit down, sit down —" Tabini sat, flung his feet onto a footstool, and glancing at Naidiri said, not so happily, "See to it, Naidi."
One thought it might be time to get out of Tabini's way and retreat to one's room. But Tabini seemed to have disposed of the matter and proposed a round of dice, which, unlike darts, at least evened the odds for a human participant; and named low stakes, pennies on the point, and a glass of something safely potable for the paidhi, on peril of the purveyor's life.
The purveyor being Banichi, the paidhi had no concern at all. And after that it was himself and Tabini and elderly Eidi, and two of the servants, on order of the aiji, the ladies protesting they couldn't, daren't sit with the aiji, and Tabini saying they'd damn well — they needed a five and security was busy.
So they sat, two gentlemen and a pair of nervous young ladies afraid they'd be beyond their betting limit — they sipped appropriate fruit liqueurs, the ladies as well — they bet pennies, and Tabini and he both lost to one of the maids; Tabini because he was distracted in other thoughts, Bren judged, himself because math counted at least a little in the game of revenge they were playing.
"We're up against a counter," Tabini said, to him and to Eidi. "And these ladies have made common cause."
"And you have a human for a handicap. We should rearrange the alliances."
"Never," Tabini said.
Which lost them, collectively, for an hour and a half, twenty and seven, and a bottle of fruit wine.
And he had a fair idea, by the looks that passed between Tabini and the truly lucky gambler of the pair, that Tabini very well knew Saidin's proxy on the staff, and perhaps more than one of them.
It didn't help the paidhi's anxiety about the peace of the evening at all. But the serving staff was on notice, Tabini, who was very prone to notice the ladies in any gathering, was an absolute gentleman, possibly because it was Damiri's staff, and there was no hint that anything at all was different from previous, all-male visits to Taiben — Tabini might have done as in the past, and had only his own security about them; and didn't — which had Damiri's name all over the situation.
Possibly the aiji didn't want to signal distrust of Damiri. Perhaps the aiji wanted to use the paidhi and himself for bait to draw some action from Tatiseigi, who was, as Banichi and Jago had advised him, an easy train ride away.
Not mentioning overland transport, which the rangers certainly had, and which one could well assume the Atigeini estate had.
Tabini at last leaned comfortably in his chair, one arm draped over the chairback, and waved a hand at the table. "The playing field is yours, dajiin. The bottle. The coin. — The honors. Kindly report us well to your house."
"Aiji-ma." There was a profound bow, profound confusion from one as she rose from the table. A smile from the other that could be challenge, could be acknowledgment — the young woman was surrounded by Guild seniors, against which she wouldn't have a chance for her own survival if she even looked like making a move, and she had to know that.
There was no Filing. Which meant blame and consequences flying straight to the Atigeini head of house, which she had to know also.
Bren drew in his breath and found immediate preoccupation with the position of his glass on the table.
"Pretty," was Tabini's comment after they'd withdrawn with the prizes. "Very sharp. The one on the left is Guild. Did you know?"
He looked up. It wasn't the one he'd thought. "I guessed wrong," he said, chagrined.
"I'm not sure of the other one, either," Tabini said. "Certain things even Naidiri won't say. Damiri herself professes not to be sure. But one suspects it's a pair. I understand you'd no idea of Saidin's position."
He didn't breathe but what Tabini had a report of it.
"I'm completely embarrassed. No, aiji-ma. I hadn't."
"Retired, actually," Tabini said, "but an estimable force. If I can trust Naidiri's estimate — and I wouldn't be living with the lovely lady sharing my bed if I hadn't certain assurances passed through the Guild — she answers primarily to Damiri. Only to Damiri, in point of fact."
There were cliffs and precipices in such topics. He drew a breath and went ahead. "What of Damiri? Are you safe, personally safe, aiji-ma? I'm worried for your welfare."
"I take good care," Tabini said, and turned altogether sideways, one long leg folded against the chair arm, booted ankle on the other knee. "Concerned on behalf of the Association, Bren-ji? Or your directives from Mospheira?"
"To hell with Mospheira," he muttered, and got Tabini's attention. "Aiji-ma, I've quite well damned myself, so far as certain elements of my government are concerned."
"I take it that the message was Hanks, that it said unpleasant things, and that it was not under duress."
"It was accusatory of me, of you, as instituting a seizure of others' rights —" He was aware, as he said it, that he placed Hanks in direct danger, if Tabini were even remotely inclined to retaliatory strikes — and that, in atevi politics, Tabini might no longer have the luxury of tolerating Hanks' actions. "I apologize profoundly, aiji-ma — they're my mistakes. I spend my life trying to figure what atevi will do; I misread her. Of my own species. I have no excuse to offer. I'll give you a transcript."
Tabini waved a hand. "At your leisure. Knowing the company she's keeping enables one rather well to know the content."
"Banichi and Jago seemed to have a very good idea of the content."
"She accuses you to your government."
"Yes.
"Will this be taken seriously?"
"It — will be raised officially, I'm fairly sure. Depending on what goes on in the government, I will or won't be able to go back to Mospheira."
"Without being arrested?"
"Possibly. That Hanks hasn't gotten a recall order — I fear indicates she still has backing."
Tabini said, "May I speak personally?"
"Yes," he said — one could hardly refuse the aiji whatever he wanted to say, and he hoped it entailed no worse mistake than Hanks
"I hear that your fiancee," Tabini said, "has reneged on her agreement."
"With me?"
"With you. I know of no other."
"There wasn't — actually a clear understanding." He'd talked about Barb with Tabini before. They'd discussed physical attractiveness and the concept of romantic love versus — mainaigi, which rather well answered to a young ateva's hormonal foolishness. "No fault on her part. She'd tried, evidently, to discuss" it with me. Couldn't catch me on Mospheira long enough."
"Political pressure?" Tabini asked, frowning.
"Personal pressure, perhaps."
"One suggested before… this woman had more virtue."
He'd made claims for Barb, once upon a while. Praised her good sense, her loyalty. A lot of things he'd said to Tabini, when he'd thought better of Barb.
And if he were honest, probably that weeks-ago judgment was more rational and more on target than the one he'd used last night.
"She's stayed by me through a lot," he said. "I suppose —"
Tabini was quiet, waiting. And sometimes translation between the languages required more honesty than he found comfortable: without it, one could wander deep into definitional traps — sound like a fool… or a scoundrel.
"Did political enemies affect this decision?" Tabini asked.
"Certainly my job did. The absences. The — likelihood of further absences. Just the uncertainty."
"Of safety?"
He hesitated to get into that. Finally nodded. "There've been phone calls."
"She has, as you've said, no security?"
"No. It's not — not ordinary."
"Nor prospect of obtaining it."
"No, aiji-ma. Ordinary citizens just — don't. There's the police. But these people are hard to catch."
"A problem also for your relatives."
He had a suspicion about the integrity of his messages. And the pretense that no atevi understood the language well enough, a pretense which was wearing thinner and thinner.
"There is —" Tabini moved his foot, swung his leg over the arm of the chair. "There is the Treaty provision. We've broken it to keep Hanks here. Would Barb-daja consent to break with this new marriage and join you in residence on the mainland?"
He didn't know what to say for a moment — thought of having Barb with him, and couldn't imagine —
"It seems," Tabini said, "that there is difficulty for your whole household, on Mospheira, which has perhaps inspired this defection. In her lack of official support, one can, perhaps, see Barb-daja's difficulty."
Or perhaps Banichi or Jago had told him a certain amount. It proved nothing absolutely. He had talked to Jago. He'd even talked to Ilisidi.
"This is a security risk," Tabini said. "You should not have to abide threats to your household, if a visa or two would relieve their anxiety — and yours. They would be safe here, your relatives, your wife — if you chose to have this."
His heart had gone thump, and seemed to skip a beat, and picked up again while the brain was trying to work and tell him they'd been talking about Hanks, and accusations, and Hanks' fate, and it could signal a decided chill in atevi-human relations — which he had to prevent. Somehow. "Aiji-ma, it's — a very generous gesture." But to save his life — or theirs — he couldn't see it happening — couldn't imagine his mother and Toby and Jill and the —
No. Not them. Barb. Barb might think she wanted to. Barb might even try — there was a side to Barb that wasn't afraid of mountains. He could remember that now: Barb in the snow, Barb in the sunglare… Barb outside the reality of her job, his job, the Department, the independence she had fought out for herself that didn't need a steady presence, just not some damned lunatic isolationist agitator ringing her phone in the dead of night.
"My relatives — wouldn't — couldn't — adapt here. They'd be more tolerant of the threats. — Barb…"
He couldn't say no for her. She had no special protection, no more than his family. But she could adapt. It was — in a society she'd not feel at home in — a constant taste of the life she'd seemed to love: the parties, the fancy clothes, the glittering halls. Barb would, give her that, try to speak the language. Barb would break her neck to learn it if it got her farther up the social scale, not just the paidhi's woman, but Barb-daja; God — she'd grab it on a bet. Until she figured out it was real, and had demands and limitations of behavior.
Stay with at that point was another question. Adapt to it, was a very serious question. He didn't think so, not in the long term.
More, he didn't want to sleep with her again. It had become a settled issue, Barb's self-interest, Barb's steel-edged self-protection: the very quality that had made her his safe refuge raised very serious questions, with Barb brought into the diplomatic interface, under the stress the life necessarily imposed —
And the constant security. And the fact — they needed each other more than they loved each other. Or loved anyone at all, any longer. They'd damaged each other. Badly.
"So?" Tabini asked him.
"Barb is a question," he said. "Let me think about it, aiji-ma, with my profound gratitude."
"And your household, not?"
"My mother —" He'd spoken to Tabini only in respectful terms of his mother. Of Toby. "She's very human. She's very temperous."
"Ill-omened gods, Bren, I have grandmother. They could amuse each other for hours!"
He had to laugh. "A disaster, aiji-ma. I fear — a disaster. And my brother — if he couldn't have his Friday golf game, I think he'd pine and die."
"Golf." Tabini made a circular motion of the hand. "The game with the little ball."
"Exactly so."
"This is a passion?"
"One gambles on it."
"Ah." To an atevi that explained everything — and restored Tabini's estimate of Toby's sanity.
"My relatives are as they are. Barb — I'll have to think. I fear my mind right now is on the ship. And the business last night. And Hanks-paidhi."
"Forget Hanks-paidhi."
That was ominous. And he resolutely shut his mouth. Protest had already cost two lives.
"I trust," Tabini said then — but Naidiri came in, bowed despite Tabini's casual attitude, and presented a small message roll, at which Tabini groaned.
"It came with a cylinder," Naidiri said. "Considering the source, we decided security was better than formality."
"I certainly prefer it." Tabini opened it and read it. "Ah. Nand' paidhi. Geigi sends his profound respect of your person and assures you his mathematicians find great interest in the proposed solution to the paradox, which they believe to have far-reaching significance. He is distraught and dismayed that his flowers were rejected at the airport, which he believes was due to your justified offense at his doubt. He wishes to travel to Taiben in person to present his respect and regret. The man is determined, nadi."
"What shall I answer this man?" Bren asked. "This is beyond my experience, aiji-ma."
"Say that you take his well-wishes as a desirable foundation for good relations and that you look forward personally to hearing his interpretation of the formulae and the science as soon as you've returned to the capital. Naidi-ji, phrase some such thing. Answer in the paidhi's name before this man buys up all the florists in Shejidan. — You've quite terrified the man, Bren-ji. And quite — quite uncharacteristically so. Geigi is not a timorous man. He's sent me very passionate letters opposing my intentions. What in all reason did you say to him?"
"I don't know, aiji-ma. I never, never wished to alarm him."
"Power. Like it or not." Tabini gave back the message roll, and Naidiri went back, one presumed, to the little staff office Taiben had in the back hall. "On my guess, the man doesn't understand why you went personally to the observatory. He doesn't understand the signal you sent — we know your impulsive character. But lord Geigi — is completely at a loss."
"I couldn't rely on someone to translate mathematics to me when so much was riding on it. Third-hand never helps on something I can hardly understand myself. — Besides, it was nand' Grigiji's work. Banichi said he baffles his own students."
"That he does," Tabini said. "I've asked what we should do for this man. He professed himself content, and took a nap."
"Did he?"
"The emeritus' students, however, begged the paidhi to give them a chance to write to the university on Mospheira."
Bren drew in a breath and let it go slowly. "Very deep water."
"One believes so."
"Access to atevi computer theory discussions? The university would be interested. It might move the cursed committee."
"Possibly." N
He couldn't help it, then. He gave a quiet, rueful laugh. "If Mospheira's speaking to me. I've yet to prove that. And the ship — will change a lot of things."
"Ah. No challenge even for my 'possibly.' So sad."
"I will challenge it. But I won't tell you how in advance, aiji-ma. Leave me my maneuvering room."
Tabini laughed silently. "So. You and I were to go fishing. But I fear there's a business afoot —"
He didn't know how he could drag himself out of the chair. Or, in fact, sleep at night. "One understood back in Shejidan, aiji-ma, that the fish might have to wait."
"You look very tired."
"I can look more enthusiastic. Tell me where and when. Otherwise I'll save it for the landing."
"I think we should have a quiet supper, the two of us. We should talk about the character of our women, share a game of darts, and drink by the fire."
"That sounds like a very good program, aiji-ma."
"The fish can sleep safely this evening, then. Possibly the paidhi will get some rest."
"The paidhi certainly intends to try."
It was, as Tabini promised, a quiet supper. Other people were very busy — Banichi and Jago had gone off duty for the last quarter of the afternoon and, one assumed, fallen facedown and slept like stones, Bren told himself: it had to be rare that they could sleep in the sure knowledge they were absolutely safe, absolutely surrounded by security, and the primary job wasn't theirs.
He certainly didn't begrudge them that.
And after supper, Tabini defeated him soundly at darts — but he won three games of ten, whether by skill or the aiji's courtesy, and they sat, as Tabini had promised, by the fire.
"I'd imagine our visitors are well away by now," Bren said in the contemplation the moment offered. "I'd imagine they'll board the lander at the very last — ride out in whatever craft will take them to the brink, and perform their last-minute checks tomorrow. Everything has to be on schedule, or I'm sure they'd have called."
"These are very brave people," Tabini said.
"Very scared people. It's a very old lander." He took a sip of liquor and stared into the endless patterns of the wood fire. "The world's changing, aiji-ma. Mine is, the mainland will." Tabini had never yet mentioned Ilisidi's presence in the house. "I have a request, aiji-ma, that regard for me should never prompt you to grant against your better judgment. They tell me the dowager was here last night. That she's with the Atigeini. — Which I do not understand. But I would urge —"
Tabini was utterly quiet for the moment. Not looking at him. And he looked back toward the fire.
"In my perhaps mistaken judgment, aiji-ma — the dowager, if she is involved, seems more the partisan of the Preservation Commission than of any political faction. At least regarding ideas expressed to me. Perhaps she was behind the events last night. But I don't think so."
"You don't think so."
"I think if Cenedi had meant to do me harm, he had far subtler means. And they wouldn't guest with the Atigeini if they'd shot up the breakfast room. That's all I'll say this evening on politics. But I want to speak for the dowager, if I have any credit at all."
"Your last candidate for favor was Hanks-paidhi."
"True."
"Well, trust grandmother to find a landing spot. I offered her a plane. Which she declined."
"It's, as I said, Tabini-ma, the limit of my knowledge. I only wish to communicate my impression that she viewed the experience of atevi before humans came as an important legacy to guide the aiji in an age of change and foreign ways. I realize I'm a very poor spokesman for that viewpoint. But even against your displeasure I advance it, as my minimal debt to what I believe to be a wise and farseeing woman."
"Gods inferior and blasphemed, you're so much more collected than Brominandi. That wretch had the effrontery to send me a telegram in support of the rebels, do you know?"
"I hadn't known."
"He should take lessons from you. At telegraph rates he's spent his annual budget."
"But I believe it, aiji-ma. I'd never urge you against what I believe is to the benefit of atevi."
"Grandmother will take no harm of me."
"But Malguri."
"Nor will there be public markets at Malguri. — Which some would urge, you understand. Some see the old places as superfluous, an emblem of opprobrious privilege."
"I see it," he said, "as something atevi can never obtain from human books."
Tabini said nothing in reply to that. Only recrossed his ankles on the footstool, and the two of them stared at the fire a moment.
"Where is man'chi," Tabini asked him, "paidhi-ji?"
"Mine? One thought atevi didn't ask one another such questions."
"An aiji may ask. — Of course —"
A hurried group of security went through the room, and the seniormost, it seemed, stopped. "Aiji-ma, pardon." The man gave Tabini a piece of paper, which Tabini read.
Tabini's leg came down off the chair arm. Tabini sat up, frowning.
"Is it distributed?" Tabini asked.
"Unfortunately so."
"No action against the paper. Do inquire their connections. One wonders if this is accidental."
"Aiji-ma." The security officer left.
And Tabini scowled.
"Trouble?" Superfluous question.
"Oh, a small matter. Merely a notice in the resort society paper that we're here for the landing."
"Lake society?"
"The lake resort. A thousand tourists. At least. Passed out free to every campsite at the supply store."
"God."
"Invite the whole damned resort, why don't we? They'll be here, with camping gear and cameras and children! We've a chance of heavy arms fire! Of bombs, from small aircraft! We've a thousand damned tourists, gods unfortunate!"
Public land. There was no border, no boundary. One thing ran into the other.
"Damned if this is a mistake," Tabini said. "The publisher knows it's stupid, the publisher knows it won't make a landing easier or safer. Dammit, dammit, dammit!"
Tabini flung himself to his feet. Bren gathered himself up more cautiously, as Tabini drew his coat closed and showed every sign of taking off.
"We can't be butchering tourists in mantraps," Tabini said. "Bren, put yourself to bed. Get some rest. It's clear I won't."
"If I could help in any way —"
"Since none of our problems of tonight speak Mosphei', I fear not. Stay by the phone. Be here in case we receive calls from the heavens that something's gone amiss. Don't wait up."
Property where private was sacrosanct and even tourists respected a security line — but a landing was a world-shattering event. The Landing was the end of the old world as the Treaty was the beginning of the new. Atevi were attracted to momentous events, and believed, in the way of numbers, that having been in the harmony of the moment gave them a special importance in the universe.
There couldn't be an ateva in the whole world, once the news got beyond Taiben and once it hit the lake resort and the airport, who wouldn't phone a relative to say that humans were falling out of the sky again, and they were doing it here, at dawn tomorrow.
It wasn't a prescription for early sleep. Tano and Algini came in briefly to say they'd indeed contacted the rangers, who took the rail over to the lake and personally, on the loudspeakers, advised tourists that it was a dangerous area, that and that they risked the aiji's extreme displeasure.
"One wonders how many have already left," Bren said.
"The rangers are all advised," Algini said.
"But one couldn't tell tourists from Guild members looking for trouble."
"Many of us know each other," Tano said. "Especially in the central region."
"But true," Algini said, "that one has to approach closer than one would like to tell the difference. It's very clever, what they've done."
"Who's done? Does anybody know who's behind this?"
"There's a fairly long list, including neighboring estates."
"But the message. Was it the dowager's doing?"
"One doesn't know. If —"
"Nand' paidhi," a member of Tabini's staff was in the doorway. "A human is calling."
"I'm coming." He was instantly out of the chair, and with Tano and Algini who had come from that wing, which they'd devoted to operations, he followed the man to the nearest phone.
"This is Bren Cameron. Hello?"
"Jase Graham. Got a real small window here. Closer we get …" There was breakup. "Everything on schedule?"
"We're fine. How are you?"
"I lost that. Where are you?"
"Fifty kilometers from the landing site. I'll be there, do you hear?"
"We're… board the lander. Systems… can you…?"
"Repeat, please.
There was just static. Then: "See you. You copy?"
"Yes! I get that! I'll be there!"
The communication faded out in static, tantalizing in what he didn't know, reassuring in what he could hear.
And what could they say? Watch out for hikers? We hope nobody shoots at the lander?
"They're on schedule," he said. "When are we going out there?"
"One hasn't heard that you were going, nand' paidhi," Tano said.
That was a possibility he hadn't even considered. If he was at Taiben, he'd damn sure be at the landing in the morning. He wasn't leaving two humans to be scared out of their minds or to make some risky misassumption before they reached the lodge.
"Where's Tabini?" he asked. "I need to talk to him."
"Nand' paidhi," Algini said, "we'll make that request."
"No talking through relays. I want to talk to him."
He was being, perhaps, unreasonable. But if the tourist emergency had hauled Tabini off where he couldn't get to Tabini before they arranged details that left him out, he was damned mad, and surprised, and frustrated.
"Yes, nand' paidhi," Algini said, and a certain part of Taiben's whole communications diverted itself, probably not operationally wise, probably an obstruction of operations and possibly a dangerous betrayal of the fact Tabini wasn't under Taiben's roof at the moment.
"Don't make noise about it," he said. "Just — I need this straightened out. They could come down in need of medical help. They could need a translator. Or first aid. Which I can give — at least have a good guess. There's a chance of a rough landing. And I don't want a mistake."
"I'll find the aiji," Tano said.
"Thank you, nadi."
Which meant Tano hiking out through the dark himself.
He was sorry about it. But the reasons that came to him were real reasons.
Dammit.
So he went back to the central hall and paced and repositioned bric-a-brac, and waited, in general, until, short of breath, Tano came in with, "Paidhi-ma. Banichi confirms you're to be picked up with the rest, two hours before dawn."
"Thank you, Tano-ji," he said, and felt foolish, having had Tano run all over the estate, in the dark, but it eased his mind enough he at least lost his urge to pace the floor.
And after that, he decided it might be wise at least to go to bed, get what rest he could without sleeping — he refused to sleep, for fear something would happen and they would leave him behind — and be ready to go in the morning.
So he went down the hall into the guest wing, dismissed the servants who were determined to be of help, and began, alone, to lay out the clothes he wanted for what might end up being a hike.
But the jacket he regularly wore for hiking had the brilliant red stripe down the sleeve that warned hunters he wasn't a target — and he wasn't sure, counting the problems with the neighbors, that he wanted to be that conspicuous an object in the brush.
He laid down the plain brown one he was wearing, instead — leather, and comfortable for Taiben's hall, seeing that end-of-season evenings often turned cold, and human bones chilled faster than atevi's.
"Bren-ji? One heard you were questioning arrangements?"
Jago's voice. He turned, stood there with the jacket in his hands — Jago — was different to him. He wasn't seeing her the way he'd always seen her, not a hair different, not a hint of impropriety in her being here, or in her appearance, or his, but suddenly the room was too close, the air was too warm, and a human brain with too much to do was all of a sudden trying to think about details in the circuits left over from a very stupid whiteout in the fore-brain.
"I — uh, I wanted to know what time we were leaving. In the morning." The paidhi, the source of international communications, wasn't doing well. "Tano found my answer."
"There was a phone call?"
"I — uh, yes. There was."
"Bren-ji — is something wrong?"
"I — no. No. Everything's on schedule."
Jago stood there a moment. Then shut the door, shutting them both in.
He felt a sense of panic. And knew it showed. He wasn't about to throw Jago out. Or to request a good friend to leave.
Which wasn't what she was, dammit, he wasn't thinking.
"I've made you uneasy," Jago said. "Bren-paidhi, I was stupidly mistaken. I apologize. I most sincerely apologize."
He didn't know what to say. He stood there. And Jago said, with great correctness, "Excuse the intrusion, nand' paidhi," and turned quietly to go.
"I —" he said, in all the fluency he had. "Jago."
"Nand' paidhi?" She had her hand on the latch. He wanted and didn't want. He relied on Banichi and Jago for life and death. But Jago had touched off something — so tangled in his psyche he didn't know what to do with it, didn't know where to take hold of it, even what to call it.
"Jago —"
She was still waiting. He didn't know how many Fs he'd started with, but he knew it was far too many for anyone's patience.
"Nothing," he said desperately, "nothing could make me distrust you, in any way. You —" Breath was not coming easily. "You affected me very profoundly — that's all I know how to say. I'm not sure what you think. I'm not sure what I think. I can't think at the moment, there's just too much, too much going on. There will be for a while. — Do I make any sense at all? It's not you. It's me. I'm not — just not at my most stable, Jago."
He ran out of words. Jago didn't seem to find any immediately, and the silence went on, so deep he could all but hear his heart beat.
"Have I angered you?" Jago asked then.
"No." A vehement shake of his head. But it wasn't an atevi gesture. "In no way. Most emphatically not."
"Disturbed you?"
"Yes."
Jago bowed her head and seemed to take that for dismissal.
"Jago." He was floundering. Clinical was all he knew how to be, to save them both. "It's the friend business. It's that word. We say we love. Even when we need. When we need, it's something not very productive. It's a lot of human damn wiring, Jago-ji. Expectations. — Like man'chi. How do you stop it logically? — And I can't know — maybe you're just curious. Maybe just — nothing more than that. Maybe a lot more serious than that. I don't know."
"One meant well," Jago said, still with that unbreakable control. "Evidently one was very wrong."
"No. I just — Jago, God, I'm embarrassed as hell. I just want you back. The way things were. For a while. Just that — if that doesn't offend you."
"No," she said.
"No, it can't be the same? Or no, it doesn't offend you?"
"No, nand' paidhi. I am not offended. I find no possible way to be offended."
"Can I say — at least — I'm very attracted?"
She laughed, a jolt, a startlement. "You can say so," she said. "One takes no offense, paidhi-ji."
"Is it always No, from this point? Or maybe someday?"
"What does the paidhi think?"
The paidhi was shaky in the knees. It wasn't his habit. It wasn't his style, not with Barb, not with anybody else. He felt like a total fool. And stood there with the coat in his hands. 'The paidhi knows when he can't translate. When he hasn't got a hope of translating. The paidhi thinks he's extremely damn fortunate you're not mad at him."
A shy look he'd rarely seen from Jago. A nervous laugh he never had. "By no means. If you —"
But the damn pocket-corn went off at that very moment. Jago pulled it from her belt, held it to her ear, and frowned.
"Fourteen," she said, probably — he'd grown wiser in the ways security communicated — her station number, acknowledging hearing a message.
Then: "If you wish to change clothes," she said, "hurry. We're moving out. Now."
"To the landing site? To there? Or where?"
"We've just been asked to go to the front of the building at moderate speed. This isn't a run, but it doesn't leave you any time, nand' paidhi."
"Damn," he said, and unbuttoned his shirt without a second's further question, was pulling on his sweater when Jago left, which only put him in more hurry to switch trousers and change to heavier socks and heavier-soled boots. He exited the room, still struggling with his coat, to find Jago waiting for him.
"What is the hurry?'
"Perhaps," she said, "that someone is on the way here. That's a guess, nand' paidhi."
"I'll take your guesses over some people's information." He had gloves. He'd put them in the coat pocket. They reached the main hall and joined a small number of the house security moving out toward the doors. The Atigeini servants gathered in alarm and dismay.
"Not everyone is leaving," Banichi was telling them. "There's a shelter in the cellar. House permanent staff has the keys. Extinguish the fire, pull the fuses. That will shut down everything to emergency power. Go below in good order, wait for authorized signals to open the door. You'll be safe." Banichi fell in with them as they went out the open front doors, onto the porch — an open car came around the corner of the east wing, running lights on, no headlights, and Bren's heart jumped, but Banichi and
Jago didn't react to the appearance, just hustled him along the length of the porch.
Something heavy was shoved into his coat pocket on Banichi's side, jammed down — he put a hand over the weight to stabilize it, no second guess needed what it was, no guess why Banichi picked now to give it to him and had no time to waste in the paidhi's questions, just —
"Do we have a radio? Do we have communications? We need —"
"No difficulty," Banichi said and, atevi having better night-vision on the average, seized his arm, the weak one, and made sure his feet found the steps downward. The car had pulled up and security opened the door for him, atevi eyes glowing pale gold in the faint light, there, floating disembodied the other side of the car. He had qualms about getting in, he feared that they might send him off somewhere and they might stay behind in defense of Taiben, but that wasn't the indication about the situation. Jago got in ahead of him and Banichi took the seat beside the driver, one more climbed into the back and shut the door — that was Tano, he realized all of a sudden.
"Where's Algini?"
"The car behind, nand' paidhi. With the radio." The car took off with a spin of its tires, then lumbered over tree roots and took the downhill by a series of tilts and bounces — they were on what the estate charitably called the branch road, which had far more of branches than road about it. It went around trees rather than have one cut down, it relied on four-wheel drive and a good suspension, which the staff cars had — along with the bar along the back of the front seat that became a good idea as they veered with the road along the side of the lodge and down again, toward the junction of service roads which the staff used getting equipment to and from the various wells and stations — he knew this road, Tabini'd been easy on his slight-of-stature guest, in the first visit he'd made to Taiben.
Not afterward. Not now.
"What's happening?" he asked, clinging to the safety bar. "Where's Tabini?"
Maybe Tano and Jago didn't know. Banichi turned around, arm on the seat back, head down because of the branches that raked over the windshield. "Somebody leaked the event to the local news — we've got intruders in the woods and we can't tell who're tourists from the lake district and who's not, which is not a tolerable situation for security. We've very good reason to believe this release of information was not a prank."
"Meaning the same people who have Hanks are out there."
"Most likely they are." Banichi turned his head back to the short view of tree trunks and underlit branches as the car jolted its way into a turn.
The driver — probably a ranger — had his hands full: it wasn't every atevi who knew how to drive, and nobody could avoid collision who didn't know this road, not from where he sat — the wheel went this way and that, in furious efforts that exerted atevi strength to keep the wheels on track at all, bouncing over roots and jolting over low spots, the low running lights bouncing wildly, amber lights from a car behind them casting their shadows on the seat backs in front of them and reflecting in the windshield.
"Are they likeliest to move on Taiben itself?" he asked. "Or the landing site? Do they know exactly where?"
"They may," Tano said. "It wasn't in the news report, but no knowing the other information that's passed."
'They won't waste time on Taiben when they know we've left. They've come in afoot. So far. Now that we've moved — they'll probably have transport come in."
"We're a one-point target," Jago said. "They're diffuse. This is by the nature of a wide border with uncertain neighbors."
The road took a series of jolts that made the handhold a necessity, even for atevi, then smoothed out, and Banichi turned around again, eyes shimmering momentarily in the following running lights. "We've a secure place if we need it," Banichi said, "nadi-ji. We're not in trouble. Yet."
"That lander's going to come down slowly tomorrow."
Bren said. "If they've got any kind of weapons — if they were willing to attack it —"
"We think rather their target is Tabini himself," Banichi said. "Possibly you. We've tried to persuade Tabini to fly back to Shejidan. But the aiji says not. And he extends that decision to you."
Banichi wasn't pleased by that. And the reason for the confused, abrupt exit became more clear: scatter vehicles through the woods, keep the opposition guessing where Tabini was and with what group, or at Taiben — and where the paidhi was. Tabini thumbed his nose at the opposition. Tabini's staff and the paidhi did, that was the message Tabini was sending, and he understood that, but they had a very vulnerable capsule coming down in a place that wasn't exactly neatly defined — they couldn't set up a specific watch over a specific ten-meter area and trust the capsule might not be a kilometer or so away, exposed to God-knew-what. Bren sat holding the elbow of his sore arm, in the interval he wasn't clutching the bounce-bar, feeling the jolts in his joints and in muscles gone cold and tense.
He wasn't scared, he wasn't scared, this wasn't like Malguri, with the chance of bombs falling on them. They were playing tag through the woods, but keeping ahead of the people trying to shoot at them; they'd dodge and switch through ranger tracks the opposition might have maps of, but it wasn't the same as their driver's evident experience of the roads. They'd out-drive them, out-maneuver them…
They were in open cars, that being what the rangers used for these narrow trails, and probably the only vehicles with a wheelbase that could take them — but they were visible targets, and the landing wasn't in a meadow interspersed with trees, or hillside forest, it was down on the flat, in a grassland split by a couple of rocky patches — profoundly eroded and wooded escarpments that ran eighty, ninety kilometers northwest to southeast, with stands of scrub that gave ambushers plenty of cover.
You could see wheel tracks in the grass. They couldn't get there without leaving a trace that small aircraft could spot well enough. Neither they nor the opposition could maneuver in a sea of grass without a trail someone else could track.
'They won't chase us here," he muttered to Jago and Tano. "They don't need to. They know where we're going. At least — close enough."
"Diffuse versus specific," Jago said. She'd said that. He'd not arrived at the same conclusion until then. But that told him at least his security had thought of it.
Then he had a cold and terrible thought.
"Oh, my God. My computer."
Banichi turned around in his seat. Flashed a shimmer of yellow eyes. And a grin. "Right between my feet, paidhi-ji. We didn't forget."
Hormones, he said to himself, his heart settling back to steady work. Damned hormones. Brain fog. A schoolboy mistake. He found himself shivering as the car found a reasonable stretch of meadow grass and ripped along at a reckless bounce. He tried not to nudge against the atevi on either side of him. He didn't want them to feel it.
But he had the hard weight of the gun in his pocket, too, and finally had the wit to ask, "Has anybody got a spare clip of shells?"
He got three, one from Banichi, one from Jago, one from Tano. The driver had his hands occupied, and the paidhi was out of convenient pockets and carrying enough weight.
The rebels had Hanks. "Is there any way —" Figuring to himself that with all of an aiji's resources to draw from, there might be personnel to spare. "— any way —" A pothole. "— Hanks has to be somewhere close." Pothole. "With them. Get into their territory. Go get Hanks." Bounce. "Let them worry."
Jago laughed, silent in the growl of the motor and the slap of branches. Grinned, holding on to the side of the car. "Good idea, nand' paidhi."
"You thought of that."
"So will they, unfortunately. I fear they'll move her out."
Damn, he thought. They would. As a strategist he wasn't in the game. "Can't use the airport. Ranger trails, more likely."
"Good, nai-ji."
"A peaceful man hasn't a chance with you," he said, and Tano patted his leg from the other side.
"Paidhi-ji, we listen because you have good ideas. They'd do these things. So are we doing them."
"Then where are we going? Around in circles, to make them crazy?"
"If we can," Jago said. And after a fierce series of bumps and a turn, "There's a classified number of storm shelters, where we can rest about an hour or so, move around again. Tabini's plane's left, or will, very soon now. Just keep them wondering. We hope so, at least."