Invader

He heard the front door open. He forbore to go out to the foyer. He strayed deeper into the apartments, hearing the to-do he could detect as Deana Hanks, Deana's Tabini-imposed security, Algini laying down the rules of the house. Servants passed him at a fair clip, delaying for the bows that were the rule of this house, on their way to the kitchen.

He'd decreed the lesser dining room, an intimate lunch, a small staff, though he'd been tempted to install Hanks at the opposite end of the state dining table. And, coward that he was, he hoped Saidin's unflappable courtesy could at least take the edge off the woman — his nerves were not at their steadiest, he had too much on his mind to spare attention to a fool's bad behavior, and he thought Hanks might behave herself civilly, at least, without the provocation of his oversight.

So, having walked the length of the hall down to the library and the pleasant view from the windows, he walked the slow course back again, judging by the flow of servants, this time to the lesser dining area, that Hanks had made it that far without destruction of the porcelains and the bouquets.

He walked into the dining room — which forced Hanks, already seated, to rise, in strict atevi etiquette. She sat, which the servants couldn't but remark, her human face and pallid complexion in stark contrast to the whole world he expected to deal with. The dark coat did nothing to diminish the effect; dark coat, dark hair — in the requisite and modest braid.

He bowed. She didn't so much as nod, just sat there, sullen and sober.

"FTL," he said, still standing. "Shall we dispose of that, in Mosphei', and say we've said you made a mistake? Or have you an excuse for that, too?"

"What about it?"

"You mentioned it? Or did Geigi just add figures you gave him?"

Hanks' face remained impassive. "So?"

"So. Is that your excuse? So?"

"I don't have to stay here."

"You can go home in a box if you act the fool much longer. I'm still trying to save your neck."

"From a situation you created."

"I created." A line of servants was piling up at the door, bearing plates. One had to toss the fool into the outer hall or sit down and let the servants do their best to put a social patch on the event. He smiled. He sat. He gathered up all the calm and social grace he had. "Deana, you areamazing. I don't suppose you've devised a universe construct to go with it."

"With what?"

"You can only go so far on bluff, Deana. You're scared. Or you should be. I'd be, if I knew as little as you do. You've not made yourself popular and the servants in this house haven't received a good first impression, so smile." He changed to the atevi language. "Nice weather. Isn't it?"

There was no smile. "I don't have to stay for this."

"No, you can whimper your way home to your apartment." The servants were setting out the plates. "Ah, we've changed seasons today. And the kitchen is doing its best. I amsorry about the phone, Deana. I didn't intend that, but it was my fault."

That only seemed to make her madder. At least the frown deepened. But she stayed put, smiled grimly at the servants who offered her condiments and, the initial flurry of serving out of the room, filled her mouth with the kitchen's not at all bad cooking.

Certainly fancier than the Bu-javid kitchen's fare.

"I wanted actually," he said, "to get a list of persons you've dealt with and what promises you think I should honor. By the way, where's the seal?"

She laid down her utensil, reached into her inside pocket, and pulled out the small metal object. Tossed it at him, on the casted side.

He didn't even try to catch it. He heard it hit the wall. A servant left the doorway to retrieve it, and having looked at it in some dismay, offered it to him.

"Thank you, Madig. It's quite all right. Hanks-paidhi is a little on edge today. Would you deliver that to Algini and tell him what it is?"

"Yes, nand' paidhi," the servant said in a very quiet voice.

"You seem to have quite the life here," Hanks said sweetly.

"Yes," he said, in the atevi mode, unadorned, the sort of thing Jago was wont to do to him. "Quite frankly speaking, Deana, I'm sorry about the phone. I hadn't meant that, but it is my fault. If it were possible for us to ignore the politics that divide us —"

"Mosphei'," she said sharply.

"No, Deana-ji, I don't think our hosts can make sense of us without that critical point of information. I've made it clear we have political differences, I've some hope that after all our interests are the welfare of Mospheira andthe Western Association, and I hope that we can manage to do some work together. As long as you're here, I'd like to offer you the chance to patch up our differences."

"Of course."

"I'm quite serious."

"So am I."

He looked down the table at a very nice human face with a very reserved and inoffensive expression, the sort you practiced along with the language.

"Fine. Doyou know anything about the ship that I don't know?"

"I'm sure I don't."

"Deana."

"Bren, I don't know. I know you're in contact with them."

"Your sources keep you well posted?"

"I've no sources. Just occasional contacts."

"Like hell, Deana. But let's be pleasant. And let me tell you, if you embarrass the people who are dealing with you, you can make very, very serious consequences for them, not to mention yourself."

"Don't talk to me about dealing against regulations."

"I hadn't mentioned regulations. Regulations aren't what's at issue here."

"Damned right youdon't want to talk about regulations. Let me make a proposition to you, Mr. Cameron. You get me contact with Mospheira and we'll see what we can work out. You get the guard taken off my hall. You get me a meeting with Tabini."

"I'd be lying if I said I could get that. You've offended the man, and there's no patching that without action on your part, not mine. I might relay a message of apology."

There was no greater friendliness. There was, however, sober thought.

"Tell him I regret anything that may have offended him. I was afraid he might have done away with you."

"I'm touched."

"Which is the truth, damn you. I didn't know when I came over here whether you were dead, delirious with fever, or held hostage. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I talked to people who might give me other than official information. I triedto get you out of whatever you'd gotten into, in addition to doing your job."

That was at least plausible. Even a reasonable answer. He stared at her, unable to figure if it was something she'd only just thought of or actually the course she'd followed.

"Meaning," he concluded, "you wanted to be a damn hero. The service requires the job, Hanks-paidhi. Just the job, adequately done, nothing flashy."

"So where in hell were you? Malguri? Hunting in the hills with the dowager? Playing the damn hero?"

Nailed him. He didn't flinch from her level stare, but he didn't find anything to say, either, but, "Yes."

"So?"

"Point taken."

A tone of contrition. "I'm terribly sorry I tried to save you."

"I have it coming. Thank you for trying. Now can I persuade you to fly home? I might be able to get you a travel visa."

"I don't think you can, point one. I think the aiji is keeping me in reserve in case things blow up with your negotiations, or in case the next assassin is on target. And, point two, I'm no use there to anyone."

"It's a fairly accurate assessment. I still think I could get you out as a personal favor."

"Don't use up your credit on my account. There's still point two. I'm not going."

In Mosphei': "It's your funeral."

In Ragi: "Funny. Very funny, Cameron."

"If you'd make yourself just halfway useful —"

"Oh, tell me how."

Assign Hanks the mail. Let her affix hername to it, as if she had the office he was bound and determined to see her out of? Not likely. There wasn't damned much else she could touch without being a security risk to Tabini.

"You could write the everlasting reports."

"I could make the television speeches."

"I'm sure you could. But you do have areas of expertise —"

"I write them, you put your own gloss on them and look good."

"You write them, I delete the nonsense and the speculation and if they're useful I may moderate the report I've already sent in on your actions."

"Son of a bitch."

"That's ruder in Ragi than in Mosphei'. You really should watch the cultural contexts."

"You just can't say a pleasant word."

She was quite serious. He had to laugh. The servants took that for a moderately safe cue to refill the teacups.

"I tell you," Hanks said, in Mosphei', after a mouthful of pate and wafer, "high scores and all, I think there's a reason you're such a miracle of linguistic competency. I think you dream in Ragi."

It happened to be true, increasingly so. He found no reason to say so. Hanks was heading for some point of her own choosing.

"Did you know Barbara was going to marry?" Hanks asked in Ragi.

"No. It wasn't one of those things we discussed."

"What did you think? She was going to be there whenever you chanced in, for the rest of her life?"

"Actually, we'd raised the question. But that's Barb's business, not yours."

"I'm just curious."

"I know you are." He had a sip of tea. "You'll have to stay in that condition."

"You know your face doesn't react? Even when you're on Mospheira, you're absolutely deadpan."

"You lose the habit."

A tone of amazement. "You've really adapted, haven't you?"

Nothing Hanks meant was complimentary, he had no doubt. He didn't like this sudden pursuit instead of Parthian retreat, but he had a notion he was about to get an opinion out of Hanks, and maybe an honest one.

"What are you going to do, Bren-nadi? When are you going to come home? Or areyou going to come home?"

"I'll come home once I'm sure some fool isn't going to screw things up, Ms. Hanks."

"How do you define fool?"

"I don't attempt it. I wait for demonstrations. They inevitably surpass my imagination."

"Oh, you've done more than wait." Hanks propped her chin on the heel of her hand and looked at him. "You're just so good. Just so fluent. Just so damned perfect. Look at you. You don't even question your ethics, do you?"

"Continually. As I trust you question yours."

"You're slipping, you know it? Going right over the edge. What happened to you in Malguri? What happened to the arm?"

"It broke."

"Who broke it?"

"A gentleman who didn't like my origins. That's always a danger."

"You'd rather be atevi, hadn't you?"

They were down to what she'd been stalking, he decided that: it was a tactic, it was no more sincere than the rest, but it still worked a little irritation — there were the servants in earshot, the woman's associations were closet bigots from the outset, and he didn't want Saidin or the staff exposed to that human problem.

"Ms. Hanks, you're a guest. Try courtesy. You'll like the result."

"I'm perfectly serious. I'm asking what happened at Malguri. What they did to you."

"Ms. Hanks —" He was exasperated. And halfway began to suspect the woman was serious. "They were courteous, sensible, and generally but not universally careful of our small size. I'm sorry to disappoint your well-intentioned though prurient curiosity, but I enjoyed the hospitality of an atevi estate, I made the acquaintance of a very gracious lady, we had to run like hell when rebels hit the place, and doubtless my fluency and my riding and my grasp of atevi numerical philosophy improved under fire, but I don't view myself as other than conscientiously human, irrevocably dedicated to the same objectives of technological parity that Wilson and paidhiin before me pursued, and thoroughly convinced that parity will through no fault of our planning occur in our lifetimes. Speak to the ship up there about the schedule if you don't like it. It's given us no damned choice but accelerate and given us a damnably difficult balancing act not to disrupt our economy or the atevi economy. I recall you did your thesis on economic dualism, Ms. Hanks. Let's see you do some creative work on real numbers, real provinces, real production figures. I'll give them to you. Plug those into your computer, produce some changes, and let's see if you're as brilliant without Papa's research staff as you are with it."

"I resent that!"

"My God, the woman has a sensitivity."

"Linguistics isn't the whole picture, Mr. Cameron. Give me the contact to getthe figures. Don't hand me your lame assemblage of data and then blame my results."

A phone line in Deana Hanks' reach wouldn't please his security. Or Tabini's. It didn't please him.

But Deana's one solid expertise — which wasn't his — was alleged to be finance.

Inherited it from Papa, some said. Or cribbed it from Papa's staff. He'd always believed she had. But the indignation was moderately persuasive.

Maybe there was actual, uncredited ability. Maybe there was substance.

"All right," he said. "I'll see what I can turn up for you."

"To put your name on!"

"Deana —" They were down to the bitter wafers and tea, and he swallowed one mostly whole and washed it down. "If you can work us out a course that won't shipwreck us, if you can even get a hint of acceptable schedule, nobody in the Department's going to think I did it. It's your chance, Deana. It's what you do that I can't. Points to your side."

"Damn you." Her clenched fist came down on the table, but it came down in prudent quiet, and the language was Mosphei'. "Damn you, you're promising them everything, you're giving away for freeeverything we have to bargain with."

"Naighai maighi-slii, Deana-ji. Urgent meeting. Prepare your damn vocabulary in advance." He kept his voice ever so calm, didn't look at her, and poured his own tea, no servant venturing near. "You give me the economic report out of the numbers I'll give you in such abundance your head will swim — you pull that off and I'll recommend you for an audience with Tabini, a council citation and a civic medal. Use university resources, use anysource you like, atevi or human, that's not hot for profit on the situation, and put your theory on paper. I'll listen."

"I need the phone," she said in a civil tone.

"I'll talk to security." He took a large swallow, and switched, back to atevi. "But if you launch out on this notion, Deana-ji, and if you hold yourself up to the aiji as competent to do this and he extends you the credit and the contacts to try — you risk, should I fall down the stairs and break my neck, becoming the paidhi who couldn't deliver. Shortly thereafter — the ex-paidhi. Possibly the late, dead, deceased paidhi. Does that worry you?"

"No," Hanks said sharply, though there seemed by now a little prudent fear in that tone. "Not your breaking your neck and not my ability, Mr. Cameron. I want the phones to work. This afternoon."

"I'll do what I can. Note, I don't sayI can. On this side of the strait, it's best to hedge one's promises. You should learn that. But you're in it. Good luck." He stood up, having decided that lunch — and his patience — was over. Hanks stood up, and he walked her to the door.

Jago was there. Jago, who delivered him an absolutely impassive stare and stood aside for him to show Hanks-paidhi to the foyer, into Algini's keeping.

He felt Jago's eyes on his back the entire time. She'd been here again, gone again, and came back, specifically, he suspected, to stand in the hall and listen to the negotiations with Hanks-paidhi, who had not made a good initial impression on Jago, not down in the subway and not by any behavior Jago had just heard.

"Algini-ji," he said to Algini, when he reached the foyer, and the station where Hanks' security, likewise Tabini's, waited. "Hanks-paidhi will go back now. — Good afternoon, Deana."

He offered his hand. He didn't think she'd take it. She surprised him by a light, strong grip and, in Mosphei', "It's Ms. Hanks, Mr. Cameron, thank you very much, I'm not your sister. Try smiling. You look so much nicer that way."

He didn't smile. He didn't appreciate the insulting coquetry, in front of staff, but she escaped with that. He wasn't interested in warfare, now, just the cursed numbers however she came up with them.

And interested in keeping her busy. Giving her a way out with her credibility intact. She had to know that it was an honest offer. It was a critical time, and paidhiin weren't that easy come by: the Foreign Office had years invested in Hanks, and she mightlearn — if she learned fast enough.

Noon had come and gone and he hadn't gotten his call from the ship — which, when he realized it, didn't improve his mood. There were a thousand possible reasons, including procedures aboard the ship, including long debates, including a ship that ran exactly like Mospheira, with no one willing to make a decision.

All the same, he'd hoped for sane and rapid agreement. Tabini had hoped. Doubtless the Space Committee would have hoped, and he had that committee scheduled for this afternoon.

He'd almost rather have Hanks' company instead. And that was going some.

CHAPTER 12

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 nothave 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 becausehe viewed it as casting atevi into a human development pattern destructive of atevi associational 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 whereare 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 bea 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 that 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 thoughtthat 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 alltheir 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 likedthe man. The same recklessness that had gotten Geigi into financial difficulty had evidently moved Geigi to that blunt, public question, and if there was aninfluence 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, ifhe 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'dsent 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-com that might have a sensitive enough mike. Banichi didn't say. But Banichi next spoke to someone on the pocket-com, probably clearing their passage to the lift: security's code was verbal and seemed to change day by day.

"Do nottake 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 theproblem, 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 hadno 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'tgrow 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'tany 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. Someoneat 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 Determinists 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'toften ask atevi. "Well, where did you thinkwe 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 ona 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 thosepeople 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, nadi Bren," Tano reported by phone. " And by the earnest endeavor of the personnel office— twenty-seven discreet and experienced staff, of clearman'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 canget 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'toffend 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 hadtomatos 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 isPhoenix-com. 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 President 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 dohave 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." Anew, 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 isvery 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 ishe?"

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 andBanichi 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.

CHAPTER 13

" I've got a very little of a few languages," Graham said, on the phone patch-through. " I'm as close as we could come. I'm a history hobbyist. That's how I'm elected to the atevi side of this— I've got a background in history. The other of us, going to the human population— she's got all the technical background you want, but no study in languages at all. Nobody has, much. We don't have different languages. I just got into it because I was interested in history, and I got curious. And I teach, too. It was something I thought I ought to know."

"You're a teacher?" Bren asked, and poured a cup of tea from the pot on the office desk, with growing visions of a gentle, professorial young man, politically naive, dropping into political hell.

"Well, computers most of the time, but somebody's got to write the lessons for the kids. I gave them language study. I thought it was good for them. But not too many were interested."

"Know a noun from a verb?"

" Yes, sir. Conjugations, declensions, participles—"

" That'sgoing to be useful. I've prepped another data-load for you this morning, atevi-Mosphei' grammar notes with at least the basics — you're not going to understand half of it. A handful of phrases in the remote case you have to communicate with somebody other than me. We're not dealing with a human grammatical structure, as you'll find out. Good in math?"

"Up to a point, sir. Why?"

"Because you have to do some calculation constantly. The number of persons in a polite sentence isn't by head count, it's by calculations of rank plus real number, and there are forms you use to avoid jinxing somebody when you haveto use an infelicitous number of persons. You'll love it. I'm soglad to have somebody from the ship who's going to understand that this isn't a straightforward matter of word-for-word translation. I've been trying for years to make my department heads understand that answers one time aren't the answers the next time. If I haven't scared you by now, you may do."

"I'm at least daunted."

"Good judgment. Atevi and humans have deep but solvable conceptual differences, moderately significant psychological differences, and I'll tell you, we were just on the verge of important breakthroughs including space missions when you turned up in the sky scaring hell out of the children. Any background in negotiation? Politics?"

" History. Just— history."

He had an academic on his hands. God help them. Or a dilettante.

"Good vocabulary?"

"A pretty good one. Better than some."

"I've asked your captain to give you real authority to negotiate. And stand behind you. Will he?"

" I've heard what you said. He told me just— call if I had a question and I'm supposed to get a thorough briefing before I go down, on what we're going to need, on the lift vehicle and after. I'll need regular communications with the ship. I can get the technical details in download. "

Either the captain was naive — a possibility — or the captain was sending them somebody who didn't know enough to spill anything under,interrogation.

But Jason Graham wasn't stupid. A man who made a hobby out of history and languages wasn't stupid.

A fool, maybe. That was a different matter.

"You have any concept of politics, Graham? How do you make critical decisions up there? What's your procedure?"

"Guild vote, sir. The captains lay out what's to be done, or sometimes the technicians do, and then we all lay out what our choices are— it's not like a whole country, sir, it's a lot more like we've got information, and we've got what we don't know, and we've got to figure."

"How did you decide to come back, for example?"

A silence for a moment. " Well, we were always going to. And we decided it was a good time."

"Why was it a good time?"

"Well, because we've got another station, and linking up the two of them could give us a lot more options where we could go."

"Fueling, you mean."

"And supplies."

"What are you going to trade for?"

Another small silence. " I don't know, sir. I think that's something that's still pretty far off, the way the station looks right now."

Meaning the station needed population, the station needed workers, and the ship —

The ship, as it always had, wanted refueling. The ship wanted provisions. And the world was supposed to provide that, free of charge, one could guess, after one hell of a lot of man-hours of dangerous effort producing what the starship could drink down at one gulp and leave.

But as Jason Graham said, there were things to do first. They were stuck with the ship as a factor. They had a station decaying more rapidly by the year, the ship was a shortcut to saving it — which was worth something, damn sure.

And the ship — couldn't get anything off the planet. By everything he knew — it couldn't get anything that wasn't brought to it in space. That meant the world had leverage.

"Meaning they'll send down their figures as they develop them."

" Essentially, sir, but— can we talk very frankly?"

"Anything you want to talk about. Go ahead."

"I'm volunteering because I want to do something more with my life than push keys, which is the job I've got, but I don't want to get my throat cut, and I don't want to end up somebody's hostage. Neither does Yolanda. It won't work, for one thing. The captain says he won't deal there to get us back. If anything goes wrong we're on our own. So— how safe are we?"

"You'll have the protection of Tabini-aiji. That's very safe. I can't say about your companion, but Mospheira's quiet to the point of tedium under most circumstances. I'll make every effort to meet you when you arrive. Are you coming down at the same time?"

"That's what we plan. If we can get one of us a way to get to the other place."

"Easily. By the next plane."

" Mospheira says— speaking frankly, sir— that atevi can shoot you for no reason. Legally. That somebody just tried to kill you. Twice. That we're much safer landing on the island. You're telling me otherwise."

"I — equally frankly — advise you that landing on Mospheira would create special problems for you. Yes, there are some very different customs here, and assassination is legal, but it's also strictly regulated. The attempts against me were illicit, they were met by the aiji's security and stopped. In fact, if you land on the island, it would make you much less safe: Tabini-aiji has a great stake in your protection if you land where he asks you to, on his invitation — he's given you his personal assurance of safety, that's one thing. For another, he considerably outranks the Mospheiran President, and accepting the Mospheiran invitation over his would be very bad protocol. Atevi would take it for a calculated insult, or collusion and secret arrangements, which would start you off very badly. Please pass that word into your decision-making process."

" I will, sir. — Second question. Mospheira says the situation where you are is chaotic. They say you might not be acting of your own accord. That a woman who was supposed to be replacing you has disappeared."

Maybe not so politically naive. Or at least not incapable of asking questions.

" Can I believeyou, sir, that's the question. The island says you've violated orders and you're giving unauthorized information to the atevi."

"Yes. I have done that. So has the woman they say has disappeared. You'll discover once you get down here that Mospheira moves incredibly slowly on decisions and translators in the field sometimes have to move very fast. Your ship showed in the sky, atevi feared Mospheira was going to abrogate the Treaty and that it was some kind of plot — -damn right I had to take steps to calm things down, among people who didn't feel they had gotten honest information. That necessarily included my explaining what couldn't wait for some committee on Mospheira to approve. Mospheira is sending very contradictory signals. They want me here. They know I'll act. Now State is mad. Fine. If you want the blunt truth, I'd rather offend the President of Mospheira and not have the whole atevi and human relationship blow up over what I could solve, in a situation the facts of which they'd have to rely on my judgment to find out in the first place."

"What about this missing woman?"

"Deana Hanks? She's not missing. I ordered her to go home and she told me she was waiting for formal recall from Mospheira, which Mospheira hasn't sent."

"Why?"

"Because — you want the truth? — she belongs to an opposition party on Mospheira that's trying to get Tabini to accept her credentials; and he won't. She's fine, I had lunch with her yesterday, we argued as usual, but we've agreed to keep it in bounds."

"That's certainly not what we're getting from Mospheira."

"What are you getting from Mospheira?"

"That the situation there is very dangerous, and you might be lying, bluntly put, sir."

"You know where this transmission is coming from?"

"Yes, sir, a station on the coast."

"You think stations of that size are private? Or that it belongs to the atevi government?"

"To the government, I'd say, sir."

"I assure you that's who I'm speaking for, Mr. Graham. I'm the translator, the paidhi, the only human appointed by the Treaty to mediate between atevi and humans. The atevi legislature asked me to perform the same office between you and them, in which capacity I'm now officially functioning. Yes, I work for the Mospheiran government; by the nature of what I do, I also work for the atevi government. That means that it's my job occasionally to say things Mospheira doesn't want to hear. But if I don't say it, it doesn't get said, the situation festers in silence, and we can all end up with real trouble. Plainly, there are Mospheirans that don't like atevi, and they don't like me, either. But that opinion is never going to get atevi to cooperate. Not till hell freezes over, as the saying goes. So tell your captain he can listen to people on Mospheira who either get their information from me or from their own guesswork, or he can ask me firsthand and get the information directly. There's no other choice, because there's no other human authorized to contact the atevi. You're about to become the second. Welcome to the world of politics."

" Are they— easy to get along with? Can you talk to regular atevi? Or are you pretty well guarded?"

"I deal mostly with government people, but not exclusively. Atevi are honest, loyal to their associates, occasionally obscure, and occasionally blunt to the point of embarrassment. I'll be delighted to have another human face besides the one in the mirror, but I don't live a deprived life here. Let me ask a more technical question. What are your landing requirements? What do you need? A runway?"

" Actually— not, sir. I wish we did. We're using one of your pods."

"You're kidding."

"Afraid not. They found a couple in the station, packed up and everything."

"Good God. — Excuse me."

" So we've got no way back up again if somebody doesn't build a return vehicle. Between you and me, sir, in language you wouldn't tell my mother, who's not real happy with this— what risk am I running?"

"I'd sure want to know why those pods didn't get used."

"Mospheira says they were redundancies. There were three last ones. Because the last aboard the station were only six people. And if anything had gone wrong with one, they couldn't have built another. They had a rule about triple redundancy."

"That sounds reasonable. But I can't swear to it."

" So— if we have to build a ship that can get off the planet, how long is it going to take to get us back up again?"

"If we started today, if things went incredibly right, and that was our total objective in the program, we could maybe launch a manned capsule to low orbit inside a year, year and a half, on a rocket that's meant to launch communications satellites. No luxury accommodation, but we could get you up to low orbit and probably down again in one piece."

"But to reach high orbit?"

"Realistically, and I know this part of it, because I'm the technical translator, among my other jobs, if we want a meaningful high-orbit vehicle, we'd be wasting time building a small-scale chemical rocket. I'd much rather negotiate an orbit-and-return technology."

"And how long for that?"

"Depends on a lot of factors. Whether the materials meet design specs. How much cooperation you can get from the atevi. I'd say if you don't want to grow old down here, you'd better land on this side of the water and be damn nice to Tabini-aiji, who can single-handedly determine how fast the materials are going to meet design standard."

" That's— very persuasive, sir."

The whole business of haste — the rush to risk lives — bothered him. "A parachute two hundred years old? The glue on the heat shield —"

"We know. We propose to refit it. They say they can improve on it. Put us down pretty well on the mark. I don't personally like this parachute idea, but I guess it beats infalling without one."

"You've got more nerve than I'd have, Mr. Graham. I'll give you that. But our ancestors made it, or we wouldn't be here."

" I hate to ask, but what was the failure rate? Do you have any stats on that?"

"Percentage? Low. I know that one sank in the sea. One hard-landed. Fatally. One lost the heat shield and burned up. They mostly made it, that's all I know. But with all your technology — isn't there some way to take a little time, at least modify that thing into a guided system? Nothing you've got can possibly serve as a landing craft?"

A pause. Then: " Not for atmosphere. The moon— no problem. But that's a deep, deep well, sir."

"Gravity well."

"Yes, sir."

It wasn't just Mospheira versus atevi that had a language gap. He guessed the shortened expression. And out of the expertise the technological translator necessarily gained in his career, other, more critical problems immediately dawned on him.

"Mr. Graham, I hope to hell if they unpack that parachute to check it, they know how to put it back in its housing. There's an exact and certain way those things have to unfold. Otherwise they don't open."

"You're really making me very nervous, sir. But they've got specifications on the lander. That's in the station library, they tell me."

"When are they sending you down here?"

"About five, six days."

"God."

" I wish you'd be more confident."

"Five days is pushing real hard, Mr. Graham. Is there a particular reason to be in a hurry?"

"No reason not to— I mean, we've no problem with ablation surfaces. We can do better in no time. I'm less sure about the parachute, but I have to trust they can tell from records. That's all. I have to trust it. And they'll be done, they tell me, in four days. And they can shoot us out there on a real precise in/all, right down the path. I don't know what more they can do. They say it's no risk. That they've got all the results. When did they lose the three they lost? Early on?"

"I think — early on. They didn't lose any of the last ones." A slight gloss of the truth. But the truth didn't help a man about to fall that far.

" I'll tell you, I'm not looking forward to the experience. I keep telling myself I'm stark raving crazy. I don't know what Yolanda's thinking. But if we just get down—"

"The atevi would say, Trust the numbers. Get fortunate numbers out of the technicians."

" I certainly intend to. — What's that sound?"

"Sound — ?" He was suddenly aware of the outside, of the smell and feel of rain in the air. And anxiety in Graham's voice. "That was thunder. We're having a storm."

"Atmospheric disturbance."

"Rain."

"It must be loud."

"Thunder is. Can be. That was. It's right over us."

"It's not dangerous."

"Lightning is. Not a good idea to be on the phone much longer. But one thing I should mention before I sign off. We've never had much of a disease problem, there's not much we catch from atevi, and we were a pretty clean population when we landed. But on general principles the aiji will insist you undergo the process our ancestors did before they came down."

"We began it last watch. My stomach isn't happy, but that's the least of our worries."

"Sorry about that. I'll relay your assurance to the aiji and I assure you the aiji will be happy you've taken that precaution on your own initiative. You'll impress him as considerate, well-disposed people. I'll also inform him about your companion needing to get to a plane without delay, assuming that will be her wish. I'll fax up a map with the optimum sites marked, with text involving advantages and disadvantages. You can talk to your experts and make a choice, but it's just more convenient to the airports if you can come in on the public lands south of the capital."

"I'll pass that word along. I'd like to talk to you fairly frequently, if you can arrange it. I want to look over this material you're sending up. I'll probably have questions. "

"I'll fax up my meeting schedule. Tomorrow I'm going to be traveling out to an observatory in the mountains. I'll be back by evening. But if something comes up that needs information from me, wherever there are telephones, they can track me down. Even on the plane."

"To an observatory. Why?"

"To talk to a gentleman who may be able to answer some philosophical questions. Your arrival has — well, been pretty visible to anyone in the rural areas. And call it religious implications, as well as political ones. Say that concerned people have asked me questions."

"Is that part of the job?"

"I hope we'll be working together."

" I assure youI hope we II be working together, sir. I'd just as soon they dropped us someplace soft."

He couldn't help but grin, to a featureless phone. "I'll pick you out a soft one, Mr. Graham. My name is Bren. Call me that, please. I've never been 'sir.'"

"I'm Jase. Always been. I really look forward to this. After I'm down there."

"Jase. I'm going to be very depressed if you don't make it. Please have those techs double-check everything. Tell them the world will wait if they're not sure. The aiji will. Under no circumstance would he want you to compromise your safety."

"I'm glad to know that. But I guess we're on that schedule unless they find something. To tell the truth, I'd just as soon be done with that part of it."

"We're on the end of our time." Thunder crashed, shocked the nerves. "That was a loud one. I should sign off now."

"Understood. Talk to you later. Soon as I can, anyway. Thanks."

The tea had cooled. The wind from the open doors was fresh and damp. Toby'd been right, the storm had swept right on past Mospheira and on to them in all its strength. The plane with the requested tomato sauce probably still hadn't made it in, and the paidhi had let his tea cool in that wind, talking on the phone with a man born in space at a star other than the sun.

A star the man still hadn't named for reasons that might not be chance.

Jason Graham claimed twenty-eight as old Earth measured years. The faxed-down information that preceded the call gave his personal record — his and his companion's, Yolanda Mercheson, thirty-one and an engineer trainee. Nice, ordinary-looking woman with what might be freckles: the fax wasn't perfect. Jase had a thin, earnest face, close-clipped dark hair — which was going to have to grow: ateyi would be appalled, and understand, because, different from centuries ago, they understood that foreigners didn't always do things for atevi reasons.

But two people of a disposition to fall miles down onto a planet and be separated from each other by politics, species, and boundaries for reasons common sense said surely weren't all altruism, or naive curiosity — he didn't understand such a mentality; or he thanked God it wasn't part of hisjob. He supposed if they talked very long, very hard —

He still didn't know, and he believed Jason Graham saying he was scared. The ship had come up with its volunteers very quickly. Which might be the habit of looking down on places, and the nerve it took to travel on such a ship — he had no remote knowledge what their lives were like on the ship. It was all theoretical, all primer-school study, all imagination. Atevi occasionally had a very reckless curiosity. But he didn't think that curiosity was all that motivated Jase Graham and his associate: humanly speaking, he couldn't see it, and he couldn't find it in himself to believe someone sounding so disarmingly — friendly. For no reason. No —

— reason such as he had to trust the tea he was drinking. Because the woman who served it had man'chito Damiri… he was relatively sure; and Damiri had, toward Tabini, whatever atevi felt for a lover… he was relatively sure. Above all else…

He supposed the ship folk had their own set of relatively-sures, and were prepared to risk his on his say-so. That that was the case… he was less sure; but it was the best bet, the only bet that led to a tolerable future.

It was just daybreak, and he was sitting in the absent lady's office. He shot his dataload up to the ship. Another war of dictionaries.

Of grammar texts and protocols.

He started, then, to phone down to Hanks, and stopped himself in time, remembering the hour was still godawful, and Hanks would justifiably kill him.

Doubtless Ilisidi was at breakfast, on her balcony below his. She might accept a visitor at this hour. He almost wished he were there. But Ilisidi's was a company too chancy for a man grown suddenly human and vulnerable this morning. He wished for bright sunlight, for the atevi world to take shape around him and make his existence rational again. He couldn't afford the impulses that were running through him now, things like instinctual trust, irrational belief in someone on a set of signals that touched something at a level he no longer trusted existed. Not really. It was safe to believe in some other business.

But not in international politics. Not when there were people, human and atevi, who were very, very good at being credible, whose whole stock-in-trade was sounding so straightforward you couldn't doubt. He wished to hell Jase Graham had affected him otherwise. But the man scared hell out of him — scared him forJase Graham, if he could believe the man, and scared him how ready he was to jump to those instincts, inside. If it was real, he hadn't time to give to another set of human relationships than the ones he had, flawed as they were, and it wasn't fair of fate to hand him a human being he could learn to like, that could waken instincts he couldn't otherwise trust, that could divert his attention from a very vital job —

Ironically — it was something like atevi described, that damned flocking instinct, that biological something that intervened in the machimi plays, and diverted some poor damned fool from the man'chihe'd thought he had to the man 'chihe really had, and the poor damned fool in question stood center stage and agonized over the shattering of his mistaken life and mistaken relationships — before he went on to wreak havoc on everything and everyone that remotely seemed to matter to him.

A human watched the plays, trying to puzzle out that moment of impact. A human studied all the clues and knew there was something there.

A human might have finally found it on his own doorstep, in this unformed dawn, this gray, slow-arriving day, shot through with lightning flashes.

One could see the Bergid, now. One could see the earliest lights in the misting rain.

He hadn't premeditated the invitation to informality, but he'd felt comfortable with Jase Graham, even —

Even knowing now that dawn and sanity were arriving, that he had a daunting task in the man — someone who might — what? Trail years behind him in fluency, have a different cultural bias, a constant matter of explaining, defining, reexplaining, a lifetime of study crammed into — what, a handful of years, after which the ship left and another human link went away, left, went dead.

They might not even get here if the pod failed. The thought upset his stomach, unsettled him at some basic level he wasn't accessing with understanding. It was beyond self-pity this morning, it was all the way to stark terror: he was feeling lonely and cut off from humanity, and that — say it — friendly— voice had shaken his preconceptions, gotten through his defenses. He ought to know better. You wanted something and it never, ever quite —

Matched up to expectations? Hell, he wasn't the first human in the world to marry a job, break off a human relationship. He talked to a human being he marginally responded to and all of a sudden his brain was scrambled and he was facing that parachute drop along with Jase Graham as if he had his own life riding on that chute opening.

All those forbidden things he'd disciplined himself to write off, except Barb, who'd turned out as temporary as he'd planned at the start of their association, and he couldn't fault that in Barb. He was the one who'd gotten too close, broken the rules, come to the end of what he shouldn't have relied on lasting in the first place.

And he was damned close to another dangerous precipice, an expectation of some outcome for what he did. Write that off double-fast: it didn't happen, any more than for the paidhiin before him, that he'd ever look back at the accomplishments of a lifetime and say, We won; let alone, It's all solved. It wasn't that kind of a job: it didn't just happen in one paidhi's lifetime. Atevi in space, humans returned to the station, the whole bispecies world enabled to break down the cultural and psychological barriers and live and work together in some Utopian paradise of understanding —

That was the God complex they warned you about when you embarked on the program and reminded you of it anytime you grew extravagant in your proposals to the committee. They showed you the pictures of the dead and the wounded in the war and they told you that was where too much progress too fast led you, right down the fabled primrose path to the kind of damage atevi and humans could do each other now that atevi and humans had much more advanced weapons — not only because certain ideas could be dangerous, but because change had to reverberate slowly through atevi society, and that it wasn't wise to add another set of vibrations before the first set had dissipated down to harmlessness, or one risked an untoward combination of effects that humans just weren't able to foresee.

Damned sure it wasn't the moment to lose his head and start expecting things were going to work. It was his job constantly to anticipate the worst, and to expect the parachute wasn't going to open. Most of all, baji-naji, the demon in the design: never expect common sense on both sides of the strait at the same time.

He walked out of the office and toward the breakfast room, as servants, some doubtless nursing hangovers, paid rapid bows and hurried off to that communications network they had that assured him if he sat down at the table his breakfast would turn up very soon.

He opened the glass doors onto the balcony and enjoyed the cool, damp wind. He had to brief Tabini, he ought to brief Hanks, he ought to brief Mospheira if he could get a call through to the Foreign Office.

God knew — he really ought to call the presidential staff and explain to George. Take a couple of antacids and see if he could work up the stomach to talk directly to the head of staff on the phone — assuming that Mospheira let the phones work this morning, and that the FO could get him patched through.

But he had a Policy Committee meeting before noon. He had a meeting with Tabini to set up. He had an interview upcoming with network news — a request had been waiting for him with the morning tea, and he'd confirmed it: the news service had found out, one assumed, that the paidhiin were holding conferences, that there were answers, that there was, in fact, another Landing imminent. He had a flight out to the Bergid and back staring him in the face.

He ate breakfast while he ran a voice-to-written copy of the tape, one of the mind-saving as well as finger-saving pieces of software he'd cajoled the censors into allowing across the strait. The program wasn't worth using for dictation; he was far more fluent without thinking about it and the damn thing mistook phonemes with no consistency or logic whatsoever, that he could discover: it took more head work to figure out what word in Mosphei' the thing had distorted than it did to do it in the first place, but on a transcript of a considerable amount of recorded speech it was a help.

Especially if it let the paidhi have breakfast while it ran. And a little fuss with spell-check and a visual once over let him fix the truly inane conversions that had gotten past the software and send it through the second phase translation, that at least gave him a framework to render into atevi script.

Half an hour's work and he had two sets of copies: of the tape itself, for the Foreign Office, for his records, and for Hanks — With my compliments,' he sent to Deana, expecting a retaliatory note. And, while he had a line to Mospheira, with his mother's number: Drop me a line on the system. I'm worried about you.

Of the translation — a copy first to Tabini, with: Aiji-ma, I find the tone and purpose encouraging. I have undertaken to meet their descent and to find a suitable landing site such as serves for the petal sails. I wonder is the plain below Taiben suitable and reasonable, being public land? To the hasdrawad: nadiin, I present you the transcript of my first conversation with the chosen paidhi from the ship. I find him a personable and reasonable man. And to Ilisidi, with: One has reason to hope, nand' dowager.

To his own security, then, via the house security office: I am encouraged by the tone and content of my initial conversation I have had with this individual. I hope that he and his companion make a safe descent. I look forward to dealing with this gentleman.

"This seems a judgment of feeling," Tabini observed, when they had a chance, over lunch, to talk in Tabini's apartment. "Not of fact. There is no actual undertaking on their part to perform in any significant regard — and they're dealing with Mospheira. One would think they mean to bargain down to the last moment."

Right to the soft spot. Count on Tabini.

"I've tried very analytically to abstract emotion from my judgment," Bren said. "I agree that there's a hazard in my interpretation: I'm apprehensive of my own instinctive reactions to the man I talked to, aiji-ma, and I'm trying to be extraordinarily cautious at each step. I do judge that these are brave people, which makes them valuable to their captain, there's that about them: among humans, their willingness to take risk means either the risk is small, they're sensation-seeking fools — neither of which I think is the case — or they're people with an extraordinary sense of duty above self-interest."

"This man 'chi-like'duty.' To whom?"

"That's always the question, aiji-ma. They're very plain-spoken, very forthcoming with their worries about the descent, their worries about being stranded down here. They asked straightforward questions… well, you'll see when you read the transcript. We discussed landing sites. I did warn them very plainly they should land here rather than Mospheira, and that it was a matter of protocol. I hope I was convincing."

"This choice of Taiben," Tabini said. It was a private lunch, only Eidi to serve them, while Tano waited outside with Tabini's other security. The violence of the morning storms had passed and the daylight was, however gray, far stronger beyond the white gauze of the curtains. "Taiben — is an interesting idea. Among other sites with other advantages. Let's see what the ship people think important. Speed of transport — Taiben certainly has. And with public lands, there's no clearance to obtain."

"The south range is flat," Bren said. "And unwooded. It's a very dangerous thing they're attempting. I've serious doubts they understand this technology very well. There's a knack to stone axes, so I'm told, that makes it no sure thing for moderns to do."

"Why, do you think, they've no better choice?" Tabini asked. "Are these not the lords of technology? The explorers of the bounds of the universe?"

"I find it — though it's only a guess, aiji-ma — very logical that they have no means to go down into an atmosphere. Our ancestors left their home planet to build a station in space, not to land on a world. They certainly had no craft adequate when our ancestors wanted to come down here. The station folk refused to build one then: if they had, all of history would be different. And if the Pilots' Guild had been willing to fly the craft, those who did land might have built better. The landing capsules, the petal sails, were the only alternative my ancestors had, then — and it's ironic that they're all that exist now."

"All this vast knowledge," Tabini said, "and they fling themselves into the world like wi'itkitiin off the cliffs."

"Without even the ability to glide." A thought came to him. "I halfway suspect they don't know how to fly in air. It surely takes different skills. They wouldn't be trained for it. Flaps and rudder. They don't work in space."

"Meaning these lords of the universe can't land? They only exist in space, where you say is no air, no breath at all? They've forgotten how to fly?"

"In storms like this? There aren't any in space, aiji-ma. Other things, other dangers, I'm sure — but weather and air currents have to be very different for them."

"Which means all the pilots that cannavigate the air — are Mospheiran humans and atevi."

"Meaning that, yes, I would suspect so."

One saw the estimation of advantage dawning in Tabini's eyes. Thought, and plan.

"There is, then," Tabini said, "— if one builds this go-and-return craft you talk about — a point at which it is actually an airplane, dependent on air and winds."

"Yes, aiji-ma."

"I likethis notion, nand' paidhi."

Nobody put anything over on Tabini. And one had to count on Tabini understanding exactly where his advantage was.

They talked also about the office expenses. Tano had sent a proposed budget, and Tabini passed it off with, "Household expense. Doesn't the Treaty say we would bear such expenses?"

Household expenses. A member of the tashrid had that kind of staff. A lord of a province. The paidhi was embarrassed — literally — and said, "Thank you, aiji-ma," very quietly, mentioning no more of it.

Tano, meeting him at the door, simply said, "One thought so. The elderly retired gentleman will be very pleased. He's of my clan."

"Ah," Bren said. On Mospheira one called it nepotism. On the mainland, one was simply relieved one understood where man 'chilay, definitively and absolutely. Noelderly retired gentleman would disgrace even a junior member of the Guild. "What is he retired from, actually, Tano-ji?"

"He was Senior Director of External Communications for the Commission on Public Lands, and very skilled at politics," Tano said. "The commission has very many serious disputes and inquiries."

"That seems appropriate," he said. "I'm very grateful, Tano. I'll meet with the people as soon as they've set up the office. Please tell them so. Does one send flowers?"

"It's not strictly required, but a felicitous arrangement and good wishes from the paidhi, also ribbons, if there were time —"

"Can we do it now? Before the press conference?"

"One could. I could find the ribbons. I could work the seal, nadi Bren."

One-handed sealing was a problem. But atevi set great store by cards, ribboned with the colors of office or rank, and stamped with official seals, as keepsakes, mementos of service or meeting.

"We should have them for all the staff, too," he decided. "Those that have served as well as those that will."

"That's a good thought," Tano said.

"I wouldn't offend the security staff if I gave them ribbons?"

Tano looked actually shy, at the moment. "One would treasure such a gift, nand' paidhi."

"You saved my life, Tano-ji. If ribbons would please you — by all means. Or anything else I can do."

"Nand' paidhi," Tano said, and caught-step and bowed as they walked the hall. "If yougive a ribbon, my father will believe I've achieved distinction. Give me one for me to give to him, paidhi-ji, and I'll hear no more of being an engineer."

Such gestures counted. He'd never thought of doing it for the staff, and wished he had. He had a list, by now, of people he should send cards to. Everyone on staff at Malguri. Certainly every man and woman who'd risked his life for the paidhi's.

That had grown, he realized with some dismay, to a very long list.

CHAPTER 14

The reporters had notepads full of questions: having found a chance to have the paidhi-aiji alone to themselves in a room, they'd naturally come armed with very specific and sometimes unanswerable questions, such as, Where does the ship come from, nand' paidhi? And: What does the ship want, nand' paidhi?

The first of which he couldn't answer, and didn't dare try to surmise: he didn't want to touch the topic of stars and suns; he segued desperately to the second question, which he could answer honestly enough on a level anyone not on the ship could possibly know: "Nadiin, by all it's said so far, the ship folk want the station restored to operation. They expected to find things the way they left them. And of course nothing's the same, not even the station they expected to be waiting for them. They're puzzled, and they're trying to find out what's happened to the world since they left."

He didn't mention the ship's desire to get a fair number of workers from the planet up to orbit, and left that to the reporters to ask if they thought of it. But one reporter asked how he viewed the Association's economic outlook, and what the impact was on relations with Mospheira.

To which he answered, "Nadiin, the Treaty was never more important to us or to Mospheira than it is now. Experience shows us how we can moderate the effects of change: history tells us that atevi will, in the long run, profit from this event, and the ones willing to research their investments thoroughly — I stress 'thoroughly' — should fare very well in industry. Space science is not a new proposition in Shejidan. Many companies already have important positions in space-age manufacturing, communications, and commerce."

"I also have a message for all the thousands of children who've written to the paidhi, asking if the machines will come down again or if the station will come down and shoot at people. And the answer is, No, the machines won't come down. No one will shoot at anyone. Tabini-aiji and the ship captain and the President of Mospheira are all talking by radio about how to fix the space station so that people can live there again — as I hope some of you may live there when you're grown. I've talked to a man on the ship who'll come down very soon to live in the Bu-javid, and be paidhi for the ship and the atevi. He's a young man, he's quite pleasant and polite, and he wishes to help atevi and humans to build a ship that will fly back and forth between the station, something like an ordinary airplane. You may see this ship-paidhi soon on television. He's been a teacher, just like your teachers in school, and he's coming to learn about atevi so he can tell his people about you."

"Ask your parents and your teachers about living in space, and what you'd do if you lived there and looked at the world every day from much higher up than an airplane flies. I may not be able to answer each and every letter you send to me, but I do thank you for writing and asking, nadiin-sai, thank you very much for your good questions."

He drew a deep breath. And thought — God help us. Where do you start with the kids? What are they seeing but invasions and battles on television?

He said to the reporters, "Nadiin, please urge your station managers to think carefully what the children see on television, at least until the news is better. The paidhi asks this, on his own advice, no other."

"Bren-paidhi, what isthis news about another paidhi?"

"Two, actually, a man who'll come to Shejidan and a woman who'll go to Mospheira, each invited, each anxious and willing to assure a good relationship with the planet. Our talk was, as I've said to the children, pleasant, informative, and dwelt on the good of both humans and atevi. They've no other way at the moment to descend to the planet but to use the petal-sails our ancestors used. Only two such craft remain, and they'll use one for the two of them to come down — as early as five days from now. It's very dangerous, to my thinking, but perhaps ship folk believe they can moderate the dangers."

"Paidhi-ji, where will they come down?"

"That's under discussion. But they will land by official invitation, and I stress that only two people are landing, in a very fragile and navigationally helpless craft, and they'll be here at the aiji's request, observing all appropriate courtesy and respect of property and authority. That's all I can tell you at the moment. Thank you for your questions, and please request another conference if you see that anything varies from what I've told you. I will hold a formal news conference as soon as I've met with these people, which I hope to do soon. Thank you."

"Paidhi-ma," one said, and several bowed as he concluded the conference, as they would for a person of rank and substance, which the paidhi didn't quite expect — so he thought he'd at least made the necessary point, and maybe satisfied the questions, and maybe calmed some fears. He didn't know. But he returned the courtesies, and felt he'd escaped at least for a little while.

He'd dodged around the one first question, the one that was a disaster waiting to happen — thank God no one had asked, specifically, How far did they come?

But someone eventually would ask, besides lord Geigi. And since even atevi children worked sums in their heads very, very rapidly, once they had asked, as the average person didn't ask, yet — not having much grasp of a larger universe — there was no stopping them.

Not once the average atevi knew that the numbers of that wider universe were impacting their lives. Wait till the number-counters got their hands on those figures.

He was still signing cards, late, still stamping and sealing, after a supper attended only by the servants, until he'd reached those for staff, the staff solemnly coming by fives to receive his formal thanks.

Which seemed appropriate for the evening of a day — -after which, he said to himself, he'd be so engaged in meetings and preparations he wouldn't have time to draw breath. He wanted to acknowledge the staff.

He'd gotten a note from Hanks, which said, Message received. I've sent data to Mospheira and trust the phones will remain available at least from this side.

He received one from the elderly gentleman of Tano's clan, which said, You have prolonged my life as well as my livelihood, nand' paidhi. I hope at all times to render satisfactory service.

One from Ilisidi, saying: The flowers are delightful, but nothing replaces the sight of a young man in my apartment in the morning.

One — he hoped might be a telegram from his mother. But it was another one from Barb, saying, Bren, please call. I have a new number. It's 1-6980-29-82.

He sat through another cup of tea, signing the very last cards, affixing ribbons and seal with the help of a pleasant older servant, a woman to whom he had already given a card, for her help with the messages.

He sat, he signed, he stamped, while Lamiji, which was the woman's name, held the card steady for his one-handed effort; and he delivered the last few thank-you's to junior staff, who expressed themselves as very, very pleased.

It was good, it was more than pleasant, to deliver gratitude to honest people who well deserved it.

He had replied to the dowager with, Please accept my intentions to attend breakfast on the 15th, to which I look forward as the reward of a long work schedule. I would be there every day, but my days break with phone calls and emergencies. I reserve the 15th with determination not to be cheated again of the pleasure I find in your company.

"Is it too forward?" he asked Tano, his arbiter of protocols. "Tell Cenedi to read it and send it back if it won't be well-received. One doesn't know how far I dare go with the dowager. But I esteem her greatly."

And back came the message from Ilisidi herself, saying, If we were more reckless we would cause rumors, nand' paidhi. Come early on the fifteenth. Watch the dawn with me. Let us worry the nosy old woman of the balcony next. I know she suspects the worst.

One could truly adore the old reprobate.

But in the world not of an atevi lord's whimsy, one had to deal with a mother who didn't answer the phone, didn't answer telegrams, didn't answer messages on the island-wide system, and hadn't been in communication with Toby since his message.

Or if she had, Toby hadn't seen fit to call through. And he generally expected better of Toby.

He went back to the lady Damiri's office and put through a call to his mother's number, which, as he expected, got the same recording.

Then he called the personal-emergency after-hours number at the State Department, which raised a junior assistant, whose answer to his query about threats against his family, specifically against his mother, was, "I really don't know, sir. I don't think I've heard of any trouble." And: "I don't have an authorization to call the city police, sir. I'll give you their number." With the sound of rustling paper.

"I have their number. Put me through to the National Security Agency." He swore a change in procedures in State if he survived long enough in his job. He listened through the clicks and thumps as the call transferred to the agency and got another nighttime junior assistant officer.

"This is an emergency number," that one started off.

"I'm aware it's an emergency number. This is Shejidan calling. This is a senior State Department officer who's advising you of a security problem."

"What's your name again, sir?"

"Bren Cameron. In Shejidan." His tone was more patient, the madder he got. "This is the paidhi. I want you to call a senior officer. I want you to check —"

"Just a second, sir. I need a report form. Is this a complaint or a —"

He was a diplomat. He understood forms and reports. He wasn't in the habit of slamming the phone down on confused juniors.

"Mister — what is your name?"

"Jim."

"Well, Jim, I want you to get me Sonja Podesty. Now."

"Ms. Podesty's at home, sir."

"I know Ms. Podesty's at home. I want you to ring Ms. Podesty right now, and put me through. If I lose you off the phone, I want you to file a report of threatening anonymous calls against my family, namely my mother, possibly my brother, possibly Ms. Barbara Letterman and Mr. Paul Saarinson."

"Would you spell Saarinson, sir?"

"Approximate it. Just ring Podesty."

"Yes, sir." There was a period of ringing. And ringing. And Podesty's answering system. He repeated the names, the message, and lost the NSA off the line.

He thought in fact of calling the civil police, which would get another agency involved in what didn't need publicity. He'd already stretched the point. He wasn't sure threats existed. He wasn't sure about anything he surmised, but it didn't cure the worry.

He called Toby, up on the North Shore, and Toby's message service said he was unavailable. The phone was making that sputtering sound that said there were real, not political, interruptions possible, and that the phones, installed early and not the most modern of Shejidan's modern conveniences, might go down at least temporarily due to weather.

The paidhi on his schedule of meetings, interviews and briefings wasn't having damned much luck making calls to relatives and official agencies at hours when people were in or officials who could do anything were doing business at all. Mospheira's usual emergencies were drunken college students. Its criminals were mostly pilferers, card fraud and divorce cases; its lunatic bigots were legislators and department chairmen who generally kept their rank and file in line.

Except the occasional quiet sort who did try to bomb some legislator's garage with garden chemicals. With moderate, even dangerous success.

He had official numbers left to call. There was one private number for someone who really ought to know what was going on, who at least could take the bus across town and find out for him — if he really, really wanted someone to do something reliably, and wanted to pay the price of such information.

He gave the operator the number. And waited through the relays. And the rings. Six of them.

" Hello?" Barb said, then; and his heart, unreliably informed that things were different, did a rise and crash.

"Hello, Barb. How are you doing? Congratulations."

"Bren, I'm so glad you called. I hope you're not mad at me,"

"No…" Maybe it wasn't the most flattering, most truthful thing he could say. "Paul's a nice fellow. I'm glad you're happy. Sorry I missed the wedding. Congratulations."

"Bren, I — really want to talk. I mean, I just couldn't, we never could talk."

"Yes, well, I know that. Nature of the job, Barb, I never made it out to be anything different than it is."

"Bren — Bren, it's not, I mean, Bren, I don't know, I'm not sure, I'm just not sure anymore."

"Well, it's kind of too late for that, isn't it?"

" I want us to get together, I mean, when you get back. Bren, I just need to think. There're so many things I have to deal with."

"There's no use in talking about it, Barb. There's no 'get back.' There's no dealing with it. The ship doesn't make it any different. It won't be. You made your decision." The bitterness was there, unwished, uncalled-for, and he bit it off, fast. "Which isn't why I called, Barb. I'm not getting anything from Mother. I wondered if you might possibly have been in contact with her."

There was a longer silence than he expected, one of

Barb's mannerisms when she wasn't happy. Then, pure Barb, blithe and light: " Oh, well, I called her a couple of days ago. She was fine."

"Could you get through?"

"Yes…"

"Toby said she was getting weird calls. I get a phone service recording. I hate to ask this. I know I'm imposing. But would you mind calling her tonight, and if you can't get her, would you just take the bus over and check on her?"

Another prolonged silence. " I suppose."

"Barb, level with me. I'm working blind from here. I can't get calls through. Is there any trouble?"

And a third of those small silences. Those silences he knew he was supposed to read, to react to, and then beg her to tell him what was the matter. And dammit, he'd just asked her. He let the silence go on and on, beginning to see it in a different light than he ever had, resenting it more by the second.

" What do you expect there is?" Barb said, then, sharply: phase two, the emotional attack. " You can do anything you want over there, you can go there where you don't have to have the people who confront you in the grocery store, or stand outside your apartment and ring up on the phones and leave you messages on the system because we're in the public directory and they can't get calls to you."

"Has that been happening?"

" Yes, it happens," Barb said. He could hear the anger, the accusatory tone. " It happens, it's always happened. And I'm scared, Bren, I'm really scared."

"It happens to me, Barb, it happens. I get my mail. I get phone calls when I'm home. What's different?"

"You're over there speaking to the legislature and talking to the ship, and we're here taking calls from people who blame us because we're the only people they can get to, and they're getting scary, Bren. There's this guy that calls me at work, and I changed my home number, but I can't change my work number. There are a lot of people who are real scared, and real mad, and they think you're going to betray them, Bren, they don't understand what you're doing."

"Betray them." God, how much did Mospheira know? "What's this, 'Betray them'?"

"The ship always favored the atevi, they always had this protect-the-planet argument when we wanted to land, and now they can deal with the atevi to get what they want and not even have to deal with us."

"That's crazy."

"That's what they're saying, Bren."

"Well, screw what they're saying. — Who's saying? What kind of nonsense is that?"

"It's people they interview on the news, it's Bruno Previn, it's —"

"Bruno Previn, for God's sake, what channel are you listening to?"

"He's on the regular news, now."

"He's a crackpot."

" They keep interviewing him. He has an opinion. Bruno Previn, Dorothy Durer-Dakan, S. Brandt-Topes—"

One had the idea. "Gaylord Hanks?"

"He's been on. He's demanding an investigation of why you were sent back when they threatened his daughter and why she's not back."

"Will you call him for me and tell him the family should have gotten a call from Deana today, and if not, still, don't worry. She's fine. I had lunch with her and she's stillhis daughter."

" Bren, I — don'tlike this."

"Have you talked to my mother?"

" Damn your mother! Bren, listen to me—"

"Have you talked to her, dammit."

"Not directly, no, but you can call the building manager. That's how I found out what's going on."

It was one route he hadn't thought of. "Have you got the building manager's number?"

"Just a second. — It's 1-6587-38-48."

He was writing with the phone stuffed between the cast and his cheek, and trying to make legible numbers. "Thanks, Barb."

"Yeah."

"Barb, I hope you're happy, I really do."

" Bren, I— still want to talk to you. I want to see you when you come back. I want— I don't know."

"I don't think so. I don't think so, Barb."

" I think I made a mistake. I think I made a terrible mistake."

"Barb — I'm not coming there. You understand? It's not going back to what we had. It can't. It's not your doing, it's not mine, it's nothing we can fix. The world's changed and Mospheira's changed. Just — that's the way it is."

" I don't think I love him."

"You should have thought of that beforehand. I can't help you. I can't beyour answer, Barb, I'm sorry. I don't know I can ever be your answer. I never promised to be."

"Dammit, Bren!"

"I know, Barb, I know, but I can't do any more than I've done. It's not my fault, it's not yours, it just is, that's all."

She didn't answer. He didn't find anything else to say. He finally added:

"Barb, I'm sorry. I wish it was better. I wish it could be. But it's not my damn responsibility, Barb. Ican't fix things for you, I never could. You knew that was the way it would be. And you marriedthe man, Barb, be fair to him."

A small silence. Again. " The hell," she said. At least that was the Barb he knew. At least she took care of herself.

Always depend on that. Self-sufficiency — that had been an asset in Barb — took a bent toward self-protection. Against him.

"Good night, Barb."

" Good night," she said. Then: " Bren, I'll look in on your mother. I'll take the bus. All right?"

"Thanks, Barb."

He hung up. There was a lonely feeling in the small office, as if somebody who'd been there with him had gone away. Stupid feeling. But he felt drained by the effort, listless as if he'd landed on some foreign beach, no features around him, no landmarks, nothing that said, This way, Bren.

Nothing he'd care to explore.

The thunder rumbled, a constant complaint above the rooftops, and he walked out of the office and ordered the inevitable within-hail servant that the paidhi wanted —

Not tea. A drink. Which the servant hastened to obtain for him, shibei, dark and bitter, but safe for him. The servant — her name was Caminidi: he was learning them, one by one, and made a point of asking — was one of the number usually in the offices area, the ones who made spent teapots vanish and whisked wafer crumbs off the tables, as happened when a man blinked. Like the magic castle of fairy tales, it was. Things just were. Things just appeared and vanished. There were doors and halls a little less ornate than the ones the residents used, ways by which the likes of Caminidi arrived in one place and transited to another — but the guest didn't use them, no, hardly proper.

Atevi manners. Atevi ways. Atevi didn't go at you on an emotional pitch. Not — without expecting consequences.

He walked, drink in hand, to the more pleasant venue of the breakfast room — a servant appeared out of nowhere and started to put on the lights, but, deprived of a spare hand to signal, he said, "No, nadi, one enjoys the storm tonight."

He had work to do. He was scheduled to fly tomorrow — ordinarily, he'd pack, but it was a day trip, out and back. He ought to read the Industry Committee report, answering his query about companies currently manufacturing components on a long list he'd bet Jase Graham was going to ask about earliest.

One didn't want to tool up and train workers for a one-shot with no follow-up. It wasn't going to be that, if the paidhi had his way. Their strangers from space weren't going to get a gold-plated vehicle to leap from ground to starflight with beverage and dinner service even if they had one in their plans. They were going to get a reliable, no-frills creature well-integrated into the atevi economy. A workhorse. Lift cargo, lift passengers, and bring it back again with no extravagance of industrial development. If it took space-made exotics, make damn certain that atevi were up there on the station doing the manufacture: no dependencies, no humans at the top of the technological food chain and atevi at the bottom.

Not in this paidhi's administration.

He only wished he had a better background in engineering. He had to cultivate both atevi and humans who did have, and ask the right questions and get honest answers from people with nothing to gain politically, provincially, or parochially.

Meaning people who knew real things about real substances.

Meaning a lot more plane flights, now that the barriers seemed down and the paidhi had, for the first time in history, permission to move around the map instead of sit receiving information in Shejidan, behind the walls of the Bu-javid.

It didn't bid to be a life that would let him go back to Mospheira that often. If he wasn't in Shejidan, he might need to be God knew where, looking at plant output figures and talking to plant managers and line workers.

He'd told Barb, dammit, he'd told her from the outset she couldn't make plans around his comings and goings; and now she expected him to fly in, run around with another man's wife, and flit out again while Barb went back to her suburbs and her husband — if Barb thought it was going to be sequins and satin and nightclubs every few months, if Barb had married dull, computer-fixed Paul, as the high-income guy who'd be so immersed in his little world he just wouldn't notice, or care —

No way in hell, Barb.

The upset came back. Anger crept up on him before he knew what he was feeling, and then decided it wasn't fair to feel it. Barb had given him years of waiting around — he'd not cared — well, not asked — who else she spent her time with; it hadn't been his business. And maybe it had been Paul, but he didn't think so. Maybe he ought rationally to ask, at this point, how long that had been going on.

But he sure as hell wasn't going to drop into town, sleep with Paul's wife, and leave again. Even if there weren't kids involved, there might be, someday; at very least it left Paul having to deal with the gossip, no illusions that people wouldn't find out or that Paul wouldn't, and Paul was a wounded sort, the way a human being got to be from too much intellect and not a soul to talk to on any regular basis —

God, didn't that sound familiar?

But he, thank God, wasn't Paul. Yet.

Maybe he didn't remotely want a real life with Barb. He wasn't sure, wasn't likely to find out — though he was missing the ideaof Barb enough to have a lump in his throat and evidently a lot — a lot— of anger; she'd told him at the outset that marriage and the settled life weren't ever going to be an issue for her, and if that had changed, dammit, the least she could have done was tell him.

Which left him running curious comparisons with what he thought human beings were supposed to feel about a breakup, and the cooler, more analytical emotions he felt when he wasn't actually on the phone with Barb.

Odd how the feelings had just beenthere, on the edge of out-of-control, as long as he was talking to her — emotion had gotten in the way of any sane communication; now that he'd had a moment to calm down, the atevi world closed in again, the sights, the smells, the sounds of his alternate reality. Barb's world grew fainter and farther again, safely fainter and farther.

He supposed part of it was that he'd made an investment in Barb, an investment of energy, and time — and youth. And innocence, in a way. In Malguri, a short week ago, when he'd found himself afraid he'd die, he'd found himself at such a remove from humanity he couldn't reach any regret for the human people he'd leave —

And he couldn't gather it up now. Then it had scared him. Now — now maybe his real fear was not having the free years left to connect with someone else, With all that investment, with no more sense of love, whatever that meant — he wasn't sure, on this interface of atevi and humans, what normal humans felt, who didn't have to analyze what they felt, thought, wanted, did and didn't do. But he did. He had to. He'd become a damn walking laboratory of emotions.

And maybe if you preserved it in acrylic and set it on a shelf, love didn't look quite as colorful or lively or attractive as it did flitting across mountain meadows. Maybe you killed it trying to understand it, attribute it, classify it.

Hell of a way human beings functioned. At least the ones he knew. His mother. Barb. Toby. One could say the paidhiin had generally had trouble with their personal lives. Wilson, God knew, had been a dried-up, tuned-out, turned-off personality, monofocused in his last years on the job. As good as dead when hisaiji died. Say good morning to the man and the face didn't react, the eyes didn't react. Not just atevi-like. Dead.

So what did you do when the human part of your life started atrophying from want of exercise? Hello, Mother, hello, Toby, sorry about the phone calls, sorry you can't go to the store without the chance of being accosted, sorry about all of that, nothing I can do from here — don't know what it's like to go to the store, buy a loaf of bread, catch the bus to the office. Can't imagine taking kids to school, family bike rides, family vacations.

Wish that Mother would move to the North Shore, to a far smaller, less political environment. But one never got Mother these days to do a damned thing she hadn't done before, and Toby'd moved up there, one suspected, to put a little distance between mom and wife.

The wind shifted, that had been carrying a spatter of rain against the glass. He stood in the dark with his drink, in the new quiet. Curtains billowed out at him, white gauze in the dark, touched him, all but wrapped around him.

Childhood memory. Himself in the living room. The wind from the sea. Mom and Dad in the bedroom. When Me was perfect.

He shut the doors, and the draperies deflated.

The air was still. The whole apartment was still, nothing but the soft footsteps of servants — he never needed a thing but that someone was there. Never made a request but that servants hurried to do it. But the silence — the hush about the place tonight oppressed him.

He went back to his room, found his traveling case to put in it what he needed for the run out to the observatory — had servants hovering to see if they could help with that, but he found no need.

It was the first time, the very first time since he'd landed in Shejidan, that he'd had a chance to sit down on the bed and open the medical folder and read it.

"Dammit!" he said. And called, none too moderately, for scissors.

"Nadi?" a servant asked, confused. But he couldn't deal with gentle faces and gentle confusion at the moment.

"Just get me the damn scissors, will you?"

Then he was mad at himself and the world in general, because he'd raised his voice to the servant, and he apologized when she came running back — apologized and worked the point under the thumb-hole in the cast and started working at the layers of bandage.

Gouged his wrist for good and proper.

"Nadi!" Jago said, from the doorway, and clearly meant to stop him; but he didn't mean to be stopped. Didn't want to discuss it. He kept sawing at the bandages, with the blade inserted, his wrist not cut, and with no inclination to give up the angle he'd gotten for Jago's damned well-meaning interference.

But Jago came and caught his hand as the servants hadn't dared do.

And really it ought to be hysterically funny, the misery he'd suffered, when just reading the damn instructions would have set him free — to protect the fusion during the flight, the note said, and then important to maintain good circulationand moderate exercise, by flexing and bending and moderate activity.

Jago tried to take the scissors away, as if she thought the paidhi had completely lost his mind. And maybe he had; but she didn't apply force enough to disengage his fingers and he couldn't half breathe, and didn't want to explain. The constriction around his ribs afflicted him with temperous, claustrophobic frustration — the paidhi wasn't damned well in possession of his faculties, he wasn't damned logical, he wasn't handling the interface well at all at the moment, and he didn't want Jago's damned reasonable calm trying to tell him wait and consult anybody.

"I know what I'm doing," was all he could get out. "I know what I'm doing, dammit, Jago."

"Is there pain, Bren-ji?"

Damned right there was pain. Every breath he drew. Every move he'd made for days. The tape was cutting in, the shoulder had a fixed angle he'd not been able to relieve in days, and the damned Department shoved him overseas with painkillers too strong to take and a briefing from some damn Department-worshiping fool who hadn't told him to read the damn instructions —

He wasn't winning in his struggle with Jago. He wasn't losing either, Jago risking her fingers, his effort getting nowhere, and Jago, unstoppable in her level-headed, insistent sanity, didn't let go.

"It's supposed to come off," he found the coherency to say.

"That's very good, Bren-ji, but perhaps a doctor should do it."

"I don't need a doctor. I'm supposed to have taken the damn thing off, Jago, I don't want a doctor."

"Are you quite sure, nadi?"

"I'm not stupid, Jago." Which all evidence around him seemed to deny.

"One knows that, Bren-ji, but why now —"

"I just read the damn instructions. In the case. It's all right. It's all right, Jago, let me alone to be a fool, all right?"

"You might cut yourself."

"I can handle a damn pair of scissors." He was aware of servants watching from the door and began to be mortally embarrassed. "Just leave me alone, all right, I won't cut myself."

Jago looked in that direction, too. "It's all right, nadiin. I'll manage. Please shut the door."

They might doubt the paidhi was going to be reasonable at all. But they shut the door, then, the first time he'd been that isolated since he'd arrived in Shejidan. It was just him and Jago and the scissors, which was not, at least, a crowd.

"Let me," Jago said, and when he resisted: "Bren-ji, let me. I'll cut it. Just sit still. — You're quite sure."

"I'm quite sure. Jago, dammit, it's all right. I can read!"

"One believes so, nand' paidhi. Please. Sit still. Let me have the scissors."

Small scissors, in Jago's hand. He'd gouged his wrist enough to sting. She set a knee on the bed and worked around where she could get a good, straight cut up the back of his hand, little snips that sliced the bindings of the foam cast as far as the forearm.

"Say if I go too deep," she advised him, and then, "Bren-ji, the shirt must go."

It had to. He unfastened it and Jago laid the scissors on the bedside table and helped him take it off.

"The tape around my ribs," he said. That was the truly maddening stricture.

"Let me do this in good order, Bren-ji. Let's be sure." She'd taken from somewhere about her person a small spring-bladed knife he suspected had more lethal purpose, and delicately sliced along the bindings above the foam cast.

"I'm very sorry," he found the sanity to say, very meekly and very quietly.

"It's no difficulty at all. But are you quite sure? If we take this off —"

"I'm quite sure. I was a fool. I didn't read the things they sent me."

"Then we can do that very easily. I believe I can split the cast right up the top. Let's be sure of the shoulder before we worry about the ribs, nadi."

"Quite all right." He held his breaths to small ones, and held still as Jago sliced delicately along the cast surface, starting with the hand, splitting the foam apart between the knife and the grip of her hand.

It gave. She had to resort to the scissors again, to make the final cut of tape and free his hand from the elastic bandage.

Which ached, freed from confinement; and he could see atevi-sized fingerprints gone purple on his wrist, likewise the marks of cord on his skin, still red, when the marks on the other wrist had begun to fade.

Jago reached the bend of the elbow, and slowly gained ground, up to the chafing spot at the shoulder.

Where she hesitated. "Are you quite certain, nadi?"

"I'm certain. I'm more than certain. I want it off."

Jago put a finger under the cast at the neck and carefully cracked the last. The arm began to ache, the more widely the cast split, and then truly to hurt, as Jago kept going all the way down to the elbow, and to the wrist, by which point he was struggling to breathe easily and not to let on it hurt the way it did — he wanted no delays, and took firm resolve as Jago cracked the cast as far as it would go without cutting the tape on his ribs.

"Nadi?" Jago said, having — while his vision was other than concentrated — turned up a curious object from inside the cast, a piece of paper wrinkled and curled and sweated and conforming to his arm. "What is this?"

What is this? indeed. He supported his elbow on his knee and snatched the paper, perhaps too rudely, too forbiddingly, from his own devoted security. It was a printed sheet, with the Foreign Office header, and a simple:

Do what you can do. I'll stand behind it, long as they leave me here. HD's on my back. I'm using all the credit I've got to get you back to the job. Maintain the Treaty at all costs. Codeword emergency call my line is Trojan 987 865/UY.

HD. Hampton Durant. With Shawn's signature. He had an access code.

Jago clearly understood where it was from and that it didn't belong there. His hand was shaking, but it was only confirmation at this point — only backing what he'd already done: he and Shawn had always been on the same wavelength.

"Silly — silly joke," he said. "Staff. My office. Told me. Do what I've already done. Doesn't do any good now." He let it fall. "Get the damn tape, Jago-ji. I'll regard you highly forever if you cut that damn tape off."

He turned, Jago maneuvered, and got the scissors-point under the edge of the tape on his back, snipping carefully. The split foam cast was still holding the arm braced outward, and Bren took larger and larger breaths, as centimeter by several centimeters he felt the tape give way, Jago peeling it and pulling its mild adhesion away from his ribs.

"Pull," he said, knowing it was going to hurt. "Just pull it, dammit."

Jago pulled. With her greater strength.

Which at once pulled the surface of his skin and jerked the support of the cast from under the arm he had propped on his- knee, all that kept the arm from falling — that and his own quick grab at his elbow as the whole god-awful arrangement parted. Muscles frozen for days in an uncomfortable attitude and a joint that hadn't flexed since the bone was fused — all moved. Ribs lately broken — expanded on the reflexive intake of breath.

He thought he said something — he wasn't sure what; he curled over sideways on the mattress while he cradled the elbow, with spots in front of his eyes. His mouth tasted of copper.

"Nadi?" Jago asked, clearly afraid something wasn't according to meticulous plan.

"No, no, it's — quite all right, Jago, just — it's not used to moving."

"One still thinks —"

"No!" he said, surly and short-fused — holding on to his arm as tightly as he could, as if he could curl the pain inward, spread it out, get it out of the sensitive spots. "No damn doctor."

He thought Jago went away. He hadn't meant to snarl. He really hadn't. But after a time still curled into a ball, he thought she was there again, and immediately after, felt the cold of some kind of salve on his arm — which might not be the best idea with a recent incision, especially given the poisonous character of local medications, but he was out of moral fiber to protest anything and, hell, it was, in a moment more, killing the ache — he was aware finally of the servants in the room, and of, quite improbably to his way of thinking, being lifted bodily up off his face. Jago let him go and steadied him sitting, and he sat up long enough for the arm to find a new sore angle and for the servants to take down the bedcovers.

At that point he didn't need Jago's suggestion he lie down. He rested on his face, trying not to move the joint, and trying to protect it, while Jago's smooth, strong hand worked salve across the sore spots. It stung on the new skin of recent incisions, but it diminished the pain, and he gave up his whole arm to Jago's ministrations, burrowed his face in the crook of the other arm, and relaxed completely, finally, eyes shut, just — comfortable, out of pain, out of discomfort for the first time in days, and sinking into a dark, dark pit.

After which the lights were down, some covering was on his shoulders, and something heavy was weighing down the mattress edge. Which was Jago, sitting on the floor asleep against the edge of the bed.

"Nadi," he said, and worked about to reach out a hand, but she waked at the mere movement, and lifted her face and made a grimace, rubbing a doubtless stiff neck. "You should have gone to bed," he said.

"One worried, nadi."

He reached out to pat her shoulder, and bumped her cheek with the back of his hand, instead, being not quite on his aim, which Jago didn't mind, which led to a more intimate gesture than he'd intended, and a more intimate return on her part, her hand on his.

"Jago-ji," he said, attempting humor, "you shouldn't. I'd hate to offend Banichi."

"In what?"

Translation interface. He tried to wake, wary of wrong words, and the situation. And while he was being apprehensive, and trying, muzzily, to compose a request to go to sleep that wouldn't sound like a rebuff, Jago's fingers laced with his, and in his inaction, wound around his wrist, and wandered up his arm to his back.

After which Jago got up, and sat down on the edge of the bed, took off the towel that was covering his skin, and began to work another dose of salve into his back and down the injured arm, which was enough to make a weary human's bones melt, and his recently wary brain all but disengage.

All but — disengage. After the nagging pain subsided, it waked up enough to remind that Jago's reactions of recent days hadn't been impersonal. And he remembered, while Jago's hands were sliding very comfortingly along his backbone, that Banichi had joked about Jago's curiosity from the very start.

The fact that the personal relationship between Banichi and Jago never had been clear to him, and that he was alone, and that the temptation more than intellectually dawning in the forebrain — was already settled and willing in the hind-brain, and beginning to interfere with his capacity to think at all.

"Jago-ji. Please stop." He feared offending her, and he rolled over and propped himself on his good elbow to give an impression, a lie, of a man well awake and sensible, but he was facing a looming shadow against the night-light, that gave human eyes nothing of her expression — such as she might show in a moment of rebuff. He tried to touch Jago's arm, but the arm he wasn't leaning on wouldn't lift all the way, and fell, quite painfully. "Jago, nadi, Banichi might come after me."

"No," Jago said, one of those enigmatic little yes-no's that maddened human instincts. But it was very clear Jago knew what she was doing.

"I just — Jago —" He was awake. He didn't know what reality he'd landed in, but he was aware and awake.

"One need say nothing, Bren-ji. No is sufficient."

"No. It's not. It's not, Jago."

"It seems simple. Yes. No."

"Jago — if it's curiosity, then go ahead, I've no objection. But —" Breath came with difficulty. Sore ribs. A fog coming over the brain, that said, Why not? "But," the negotiator got to the fore, "but if it's more than that, Jago, then — give me room. Let me understand what you're asking. And what's right."

Jago had sat back on her heels at the bedside, elbow on the mattress. A frown was on her face — not, it seemed, an angry frown, but a puzzled one, a thoughtful one.

"Unfair," Jago declared finally.

"Unfair?"

"Words, words, words!"

"I've offended you."

"No. You ask me damned questions." Jago gained her feet in one fluid motion, a shadow in the night-light as she turned, stiff and proper, and walked to the door, her braid the usual ruler-line down her back.

But she stopped there and looked back at him. "Nand' paidhi."

"Nadi?" He was struck with anxiety at the formality.

"One asks — is there danger from Mospheira?"

"Why do you ask that?"

No immediate answer. Jago was a darkness. A near-silhouette against the hall light as she opened the door to leave.

"Jago? Why? That paper? It advised me only of how to contact my office. Of persons not to trust."

He had only her profile now. Which became full face, a second glance back.

"Is Hanks-paidhi a danger?" Jago asked.

"Always a danger," he said, but added, in fear for Hanks' life: "but not the sort that would require your action, Jago-ji. The abstract sort of danger. Political rivalry."

"That, too," Jago said, "I can remedy, nand' paidhi."

"No." She frightened him. He'd thought Jago had lost her ability to do that. But coupled with Banichi's absence, the suddenly skewed relationship, and the atevi difficulty in interpreting human wishes —"No, Jago."

Silence. But Jago didn't move from the doorway.

Then: "You look very tired lately, Bren-ji. Very tired. When you read the letter from Barb-daja, your face showed extreme distress."

He thought of denying it. But it was, from Jago, a probing after honesty. A not-quite professional inquiry.

"We have a proverb," he said. "Burning your bridges behind you. I've done some of that — on Mospheira."

"Cutting one's own rope."

Count on it — mayhem and disaster translated amazingly well.

"Did this woman know you'd do what you've done?"

"Who? Hanks?" Rhetorical question.

"Barb-daja."

Blindsided. Jago'd been upset about Barb, he told himself, now, because Jago didn't understand human relationships, human reactions — didn't above all else understand how a loyalty could fracture. Hers couldn't. Hers came inbuilt. Hardwired. Or almost so.

"Barb's still —" There wasn't a word. "Still an associate of mine. The man she's marrying is an associate. They're good people."

Jago remained unconvinced. He saw it in the stiffness of her back. The lack of body language. And he decided it was good that Barb was on the island, and not here.

She looked back at him, a shadow next to the door. He thought — again — Why not? He was half moved to say so.

But common sense ruled the other half. "Jago. I regard you very highly. Don't be angry at me."

"One isn't angry, Bren-paidhi. Good night."

"Jago. Still — maybe."

A second hesitation, this one with a glance back that caught the night-light, and Jago's eyes reflected gold, one of those little differences that sometimes raised the hairs on a human neck. That and the momentary silence — so much more effective than Barb's. "One hears, Bren-ji."

She was out the door, then, and the door shut.

Damn, he thought. Damn, not knowing what he'd done, or whether he'd upset Jago, or, God, what Banichi might already know — or what a foolish human might have missed, or lost — the brain was sending contrary signals, yes and no, and caution, and the shoulder hurt, dammit, he'd be sorry if he had — as he was sorry he hadn't.

He rolled over on his face and tucked the freed arm up close, in possession of both arms at least.

Say that for the situation.

CHAPTER 15

Tabini had ordered his private plane, for security's sake, and Tano and Algini were the escort, easier, Jago had said, than seeing to his security in the Bu-javid.

That, he found an odd thing to have to say —

But he was more trying to pick up signals from Jago, whether she was upset or angry, and Jago was all business, seeming perfectly fine.

He worried. Which he couldn't afford. He was still worrying as the plane made its takeoff run. Which he doubly couldn't afford, thinking about Banichi, and trying to puzzle out the situation between the two of them, which he still hadn't done — no more than humans in general understood atevi relationships. The machimi, source of hints about politics and loyalties, steered clear of romantic motivations. Or loyalties lacked such motivations. There was a reticence in the machimi, in the other literature, a silence from tasteful and reputable atevi, except that Tabini maintained a liaison with Damiri years before Damiri acknowledged it in public, and marriage as such seemed to wait years and sometimes after the birth of children. Or never happened. He could think of instances. But you didn'task about something atevi looked past and didn't routinely acknowledge as going on — and his talks with Tabini had been more on the moods of established lovers, not on the proprieties of who could be slipping into one's room at night.

He almost was prompted to ask Tano, who would, he thought, talk; but stopped himself short when he realized it wouldn't take Tano two seconds to conclude he wasn't asking an academic question, that it wasn't Deana Hanks, and that the field of serious choice was relatively narrow, not mentioning the household servants who were acceptable liaisons ifone was willing to take them into one's permanent household, which he wasn't, didn't have, and couldn't — Tano and, he suspected, Algini weren't slow to perceive things. But he didn't want to put Tano or Algini in a situation.

And he wasn't sure Banichi was the politic person to ask. He decided — decided, as the plane leveled out at altitude — that the sane person to ask might be Tabini.

But that could get Jago in trouble, if things weren't on the up and up.

Which left Jago herself, who wouldn't lie to him in a thing like that. It might be an opening, at least, for a reasonable discussion.

It was certainly against Departmental regulations. It was certainly foolish. It was compromising of the paidhi's impartiality. It was —

— just damned stupid. The paidhi was supposed to be free of biases, influences and emotional decisions. And if Deana Hanks got wind of what had happened last night —

So what hadhappened last night, beyond the fact the paidhi and a good atevi friend —

Friend. Which Jago wasn't. Was a lot of atevi things, but she wasn't a friend. If he got into a relationship with her — he wasn't going to be in human territory at all, with all it meant. A damned emotional minefield that was a lot safer if he wasn't attached to the ateva in question in ways that created an interface he couldn't decipher.

Damn the timing. Damnthe timing.

Jago at least would give him time. Which she'd agreed to do.

Which didn't give him peace of mind when the paidhi needed it, and dammit, he'd thought he had her on the choice he'd offered: now, with no complications; or later, and then — God help him, he'd ended up saying, Maybe.

The paidhi — whose whole damn careerwas knowing when to keep his mouth shut. And he was upset about Barb. But he was more upset about Jago — he had more regard for Jago, though not in that way.

Which might change the second his feet hit Mospheiran soil — a change he'd begun to find happening to him insidiously for years and critically in the last few weeks, this compartmentalization of his life, his feelings, his thinking. God knew what kind of advice he was qualified to give anyone, and what change it would work in him once the capsule chute spread and he had a regular human presence — Hanks didn't count, he said to himself — to deal with on the mainland.

He didn't think it was going to make a difference. And the moment he said that to himself he knew the situation with Graham wasn't predictable. And he didn't know. From moment to moment any change threatened him, and changes were about to become monumental.

He flipped open his computer and began to compose his specific questions, pull up his specific vocabulary, trying to be as sure of what he was going to imply to scholarly people as he could possibly be.

Universe — basheigi— was right at the top of the list. Was there a better word for it? One hoped the venerable astronomer had explanations. One hoped the profession had come up with words that could at least be trimmed down in the minds of nonexpert hearers to stand for certain difficult concepts.

He pulled up a hundred fifty-eight words and spent the next forty-eight minutes being sure of his contextual and finely shaded meanings, before the plane entered final approach and seemed to be aiming itself at a very impressive wall of rock.

"One hopes the airport is coming soon," he said, and Tano, in all seriousness, offered to ask the crew, but he told Tano and Algini to sit down — the plane was suffering the buffeting a mountain range tended to make, and in a moment they indeed made the requisite turn, slipping down toward a wooded, remote area that argued public lands.

It was a fair-sized airport, and there was a hunting village, such as one found in the public lands, all inhabitants employed by the Association, all engaged, the paidhi was informed, in the maintenance and care of the Caruija Forest Reserve.

And one didn't expect there to be too much in the way of public transport, but a narrow-gauge railroad waited for them at the airport, a quaint little thing that had to date back almost to the war.

Cheaper, in the mountains, for small communities. One didn't have to blast out a large roadbed, and the little diesel engine didn't have to haul much in either direction — in this case, one wooden-seated car with glass windows and a green roof with red eaves. A spur led from the airport to the village; another spur led somewhere he had no idea; a third led up to the mountain: Saigiadi Observatory, a small sign informed them, as, with a small stop for a railway manager to throw a switch, they were off on their rattling way.

His hand worked. He could bend the elbow. He was still entranced with that freedom. He exercised the wrist and elbow as he got the chance — hadn't put the salve on it this morning because the salve had a medicinal smell. He sat, suffering just a little discomfort, enjoying the noisy ride up the mountain, enjoying the smell of wilderness and trees and open air that got past the diesel that powered the engine: the Ministry of Transportation was trying to replace diesel in all trains, for air quality… but electrics wouldn't make thisgrade; he could report that to the minister, with no doubt at all. The train lurched and a vista of empty space hung outside the window.

Then a beige-furred, white-tailed game herd sprinted along the side of the train, keeping pace until it reached a turn. He turned in his seat to watch them left behind.

Pachiikiin, fat and sleek with the summer. He was in a vastly better mood and didn't care if the shoulder ached.

He'd scared Tano and Algini with his sudden reaction to the animals. They tried to settle unobtrusively, but he knew he'd alarmed them — and they'd looked for some agency that might have spooked them, that was the way their minds worked.

"I miss Malguri," he said to them, by way of explanation. He didn't think they justly should miss the place, Algini in particular, with his bandages — and he had to ask himself what Algini could do, slow-moving as he still was, if there was a security problem.

Safer than the Bu-javid, Jago had said. Which was probably true.

And a thirty-minute ride, during which he saw no few examples of mountain wildlife, brought them within sight of the Saigiadi Observatory dome. A handful of minutes more brought them to a debarkation at the small depot that verged — inelegantly but efficiently — on a storeroom.

Students met them, bowing and offering to carry anything that wanted carrying — excited students, thrilled, as the student leader said, that the paidhi came to dignify their school, and offering a — God help him — small presentation copy of the observatory's work, which he was relieved to see consisted not of a recitation but a written report, a history of the place, with photographs, put together in that scrapbook way that very small businesses used to promote their craft, their wares, their trade.

"Please keep it, nand' paidhi," they wished him, and he was quite touched by the trouble they'd gone to, and vowed to look through it and see — he was moved to such extravagance — if the observatory could not be recipient of some of the first data that they derived from the ship's presence —

Which he was very willing to do if only he could get through the ceremony to talk to the venerable astronomer emeritus, who was, the students assured him, quite brilliant, and very willing to talk to him, but who — it developed after a quarter-hour of close questioning — was asleep at the present moment, and the students didn't want to waken the venerable, who waked when he wanted to wake and who, it developed in still more questioning, this time of the senior astronomer who put herself forward to explain the astronomer emeritus, became irritable and difficult if waked out of a thinking sleep.

"The paidhi has come all the way from Shejidan," Tano objected, which was the thought going through the paidhi's mind, too. But on Banichi's warning that the man was elderly and noncommunicative… the paidhi thought it better to be politic.

"When does he usually wake?"

There was embarrassed silence, on the part of the senior astronomer, her staff, and the students.

"We pleaded with him, nand' paidhi. He said he'd thinking to do, he took to his room, and we — can tryto wake him, if the paidhi wishes."

"Against your advice."

"Against our experience, nand' paidhi. Assuring the paidhi that the emeritus by no means intends a slight."

"He does it in classes," a student said, "nand' paidhi."

One began to get the idea.

"Perhaps," he said moderately, "the faculty and staff could work on my answers."

"We have," the senior said, bowing again.

"For two days," the second senior said.

"You have my questions, then," he asked, and, oh, yes, the senior said, on receipt of them — no regard to any secrecy of the aiji's seal, oh, no — they'd posed them to the whole class and they had every reference looked up with all propitious calculations — so far as they had data.

"But the shape of the universe," the senior said, "that persistently eludes speculation, as the paidhi may know, since the imprecision of measurements taken from the earth, together with its deviations — which are negligible in the scale of the earth, and considerable in such precise measurement as one makes of the stars —"

"Together with atmospheric flutter and distortion," the second senior said, and dug among his papers while the senior diverted herself to maintain she had taken that into account in her sample figures —

The paidhi was getting a headache, and the head of astronomical philosophy, nand' Lagonaidi, was handing him sheets and sheets of arguments on cosmological theory — while Algini and Tano sat quietly by the door and perhaps understood one word in ten.

"Actually," the head of Philosophy broke in to say, "the Determinists have taken the imprecisions of earthly measurement as a challenge. But all scientists in astronomical measurement are automatically suspect."

"Because of changing measurement."

"Because, among other things, of eccentricities of position. — Which can be explained, by modern astronomy — — -"

"Mostly," the senior astronomer interjected.

"But," Philosophy reprised, "where does one possibly find smooth transition from the finite to the infinite when the numbers only grow more and more vague? I confess I find it disturbing — but I have moral confidence that such a system will evolve. And necessarily along the way toward such perfection, atevi will quarrel over the branchings of the path only to discover that some paths have woven back together in harmony. There will be gaps in our understanding, not in the order of the universe."

"They have to be perfect numbers," the senior astronomer said. "Numbers to make more than delusory and misleading sense need to be perfect numbers."

"I assure you they're perfect numbers," Bren said, feeling out of his depth, but fearing to let the conversation stray further toward the abstract. "Since stars are definitely there, at a distance and a continual progress of positions relative to our own which is quite specific if one knew it."

"But the wobble in the earth itself —" Philosophy said, which launched another argument on divine creation versus numerical existentialism that left the paidhi simply listening and despairing he could gain anything.

Lunch… was a formal affair involving the head of the village in the valley, the local justice, the chairman of the Caruija Hunt Association, the Caruija Ridge Wildlife Management and Research Organization, the regional head of the Caruija Ridge Rail Association, as well as spouses, cousins, and the legislative representative's husband, the wife being in the hasdrawad, currently in session.

Not to mention the junior poetry champion, who read an original composition praising the region, followed by a local group of children who, with drums, sang a slightly out of unison popular ballad.

The paidhi kept shielding his arm from chance encounters and hoping simply to get through the day. His notes were very little more than he'd arrived knowing, held words the exact meaning of which he was still trying to pin down, and he'd escaped to the academic meeting room where he was due for his next session, with Tano and Algini to hold the door against early arrival.

He had aspirin with him. He dared take nothing stronger. He asked Tano for a cup of water from the nearest source, and sat trying to make his elbow and his shoulder work — his intellectual occupation for the moment.

"I think they're quite mad," Algini confided in him. "I think the faculty has been out in the mountains too long."

"They're a small village," Tano said, bringing him the requested cup of water. "And a truly important visitor and the aiji's personal interest is an event."

"We can only hope," Bren said, "for a felicitous outcome. I do begin to ask myself —"

But the staff was arriving in the room, and the session resumed, with a brief address by the senior astronomer and another by the head of Philosophy, the latter of which was at least contributive of a history of the impact of philosophy on astronomical interpretation, and the formation of major schools of thought. A small and respectful contingent of students sat in on the speech at the back of the room, furiously taking notes; the paidhi took his own, writing, and not recording without formal consultation — he wanted, he made a note to himself, to obtain a copy of the speech. Which he thought might please the elderly gentleman.

"Lately," the gentleman said, "the funding for research into astronomy has sadly declined from the magnificent days of the Foreign Star, in which the science of telescopy was funded by every aiji across the continent, particularly among the Ragi. The estimation that humans have far more exact and secret data, nand' paidhi, has made aijiin and the legislatures certain that such will be handed them on some appropriate day and that funding atevi astronomers is superfluous. Which I do not believe, nand' paidhi. We have dedicated ourselves to the proposition that it is not superfluous to study the heavens in our own way. We hope for the paidhi's consideration of our proposal, for the quick release of human observations of the heavens, and human —"

There was a disturbance at the back of the room. Tano and Algini came to sudden alertness where they stood, at either side of the room, and Bren turned his head, ready to fling himself to the floor.

An elderly ateva had wandered in, in a bathrobe, barefoot, hair in disarray. "The answer," he said, "the answer, to the dilemma of the philosophers: the universe does not consist in straight lines, and therefore the path of light is not economical."

"The emeritus," someone said, and the students rose in respect to the old man. Bren rose more slowly.

"Aha!" the emeritus said, pointing a finger. "The paidhi! Yes, nadi! I have the proof —" The emeritus indeed had a sheaf of papers in his fist and brandished them with enthusiasm. "Proof of the conundrum you pose! Elegant! Most elegant! I thank you, nadi! This is the corrob-oration I've been searching for — I've written it in notation —"

"Tea and wafers," the senior astronomer ordered, and arrived at Bren's elbow to urge, in a hushed tone: "He's quite old. He will notremember to eat!"

"By all means," Bren said, and to the elderly gentleman: "Nand' emeritus, I'm anxious to know your opinions — I fear I'm no mathematician, nor an astronomer, merely the translator — but —"

"It's so simple!" the emeritus declared, and descended on him with his sheaf of papers, which he insisted on giving to Bren, and then, with the students and the astronomers crowding around, began to make huge charcoal notes on the standing lectern pad —

The paidhi sat with notepad in hand and copied furiously. So did the senior astronomer, though, thank God, the charcoaled paper simply flipped over the back, as good as computer storage. And the emeritus began to talk about orders of numbers in terms the paidhi had never quite grasped. There were notations he'd never used. There were symbols he'd never met. But he rendered them as best he could, and rapidly decorated his notes with annotated commentary in as quick a hand as he could manage.

A handful of determined local officials were standing on the tarmac in the plane's lights, a group which faded away into stars as the plane lifted.

Then the paidhi was landing at Malguri Airport, and in the distance his beast wandered over reduced-scale hills, over which other, smaller game fled.

But the subway arrived, a dark figure beckoned and he had to leave his beast; the subway delivered them back to the basement station in the Bu-javid much after supper, and one had to wake the emeritus— to tell him something urgent, and in the dream he said it, but he couldn't himself hear it, or understand the words.

But Banichi was at hand to meet them, with a handful of the Bu-javid officers, and a handful of passes, which lodged the students and nand' Grigiji upstairs, wonder of wonders, in the residence of the dean of the university, who proclaimed himself interested in this theory, and they were holding national meetings on the matter.

He himself couldn't get into the meeting. He'd arrived late, and all the doors were locked. He could see the emeritus standing at the lectern and he could see all the atevi listening, but the paidhi was locked out, able only to see the mathematical notations on the pad, which held symbols that he couldn't make sense of.

Then he tried to go by another stairway to get in by the back entry to the hall— and lost his way. He tried door after door after door in the hall, and they led to more stairs, and other halls, increasingly dark places that he thought were unguessed levels of the Bu-javid. He was supposed to address the assembled scholars, but he couldn't find his way back and he knew that he was the only one that could make the symbols on the notepad make sense to the hasdrawad, which otherwise wouldn't listen to the emeritus.

He wandered into a place with a door that let out into the hall above the lecture hall. But he couldn't find a stairway down. At every turn he found himself isolated.

He found a lift, finally, and pushed the button for 1, or he thought he'd pushed that button. The car's light panel developed numbers and symbols he didn't understand and kept traveling. He knew Banichi and Jago would be angry at him for getting into a car and pushing buttons he didn't understand. But they'd looked fine when he pushed them.

He called on the emergency phone, and Jago answered, but she said she had an appointment this afternoon, would tomorrow be acceptable? And he said, he didn't know why he said, that he couldn't wait, and he was going to get off at the floor where it was going.

Which eventually did come, and let out into a gray and brown haze in which he was totally lost. He called Jago on a phone that turned up, and Jago said, sorry, she would be there tomorrow. He'd have to wait. So he kept walking, certain that sitting still here would never get him to the meeting on time. He came to the turn in the lower hallway.

And became aware that his beast was following him, and that it was the hall outside his bedroom in Malguri. He was out of sandwiches. But the beast was hunting small vermin that ran along the edges of the hallway.

It passed him, snuffling for holes in the masonry, and left him in the dark, looking toward the crack of light that came from under his own bedroom door, beckoning him out of the nightmare and into the warmth of the familiar, if he could only get there. He walked and walked, and there always seemed progress, but he couldn't reach it. The light became the cold light of dawn, and then it was possible, but he had to leave, he had something to do, and couldn't remember what it was…

Thump.

His head jerked up. He blinked, looked about him in confusion.

"We're coming in, nand' paidhi," Tano said.

He looked out the window, at dark, at the lights of Shejidan, unable for a moment to understand how he'd come here. He moved a foot and felt his document case stowed quite safely where he'd put it.

He watched the city lights, the hills and heights and the city spread out like a carpet, all done with numbers. He hadmet such a person as the emeritus and he had a case full of papers — and the lights out there were all numbers.

He drifted off again during landing and was back in that hallway, looking for admittance to what he had to do. It was unjust that no one told him how to get inside. He began to be angry, and he went looking for Tabini to tell him things were badly arranged, and the paidhi needed…

But he couldn't remember what he needed. Things were shredding apart very badly. He was just walking down a hall and the doors were very far apart.

Bump. The wheels were on the ground. He saw the field lights ripping past the window. The paidhi traveled at jet speeds. The paidhi's mind didn't.

But he'd had no time. He'd had to get home.

Blink and he was in Malguri. Blink and the plane was slowing for the turn onto the taxiway. Lights going past one another, blue and white and red.

CHAPTER 16

It was so troubling a dream he couldn't shake it, not even at the aiji-dowager's breakfast table — he sat in the open summer air, with the dawn coming up over the Bergid, applying preserves to a piece of bread and thinking about beasts and bedrooms, astronomers and city lights and mecheiti, until Disidi gave him a curious look, rapped the teacup with her knife, and inquired if he were communing with the ship.

"No," he said quickly. "Your pardon, nand' dowager."

"You're losing weight," Ilisidi said. "Eat. So nice to see you with that clumsy thing off your arm. Get your health back. Exercise. Eat."

He had a bite of the toast. Two. He was hungry this morning. And he hadhad a decent sleep. He had his wits about him, such as they ever served to fend off Ilisidi's razor intellect — even if he had spent the night walking hallways in company with a creature whose whole kind might be extinct. It was a very, very old piece of taxidermy. So he'd assumed in Malguri.

"Young man," Ilisidi said. "Come. Is it business? Or is it another question wandering the paths of intellect?"

"Nand' dowager," he said, "I was wondering last night about the staff's welfare at Malguri. Do you have word on them? Are Djinana and Maigi well?"

"Quite well," Ilisidi said.

"I'm very glad."

"I'll convey your concern to them. Have the fruit. It's quite good."

He remembered Banichi chiding him about salad courses. And Hanks' damn pregnant calendar.

"So why do you ask?" Ilisidi asked him.

"A human concern. A neurotic wish, perhaps, for one's good memories to stay undimmed by future events."

"Or further information?"

"Perhaps."

The dowager always asked more than she answered. He didn't press the matter with her, fearing to lose her interest in him.

"And Nokhada? And Babsidi?"

"Perfectly fine. Why should you ask?"

The gardened and tile-roofed interior of the Bu-javid marched away downhill from the balcony, soft-edged with first light, and there was a muttering of thunder, though the sky was clear as far as the Bergid: it presaged clouds in the west, hidden by the roofs.

He hadn't called Hanks on his return. He wasn't in a charitable mood for Hanks' illusions, or gifted with enough concentration for Hanks' economics report, in any form.

He still couldn't get a call through to his mother. He'd tried, and the notoriously political phone service was having difficulties this morning. Could he possibly wonder that the gremlins manifested only on the link to the mainland?

The note the Foreign Office had slipped him declared nothing helpful, just that his suspicions were correct: nothing was being decided where it had a damn chance to be sane, in the normal course of advisory councils and university personnel who actually knew history and knew atevi; everything wasbeing decided behind closed doors and in secret meetings of people who weren't elected, hadn't the will of the people, and were going to, he'd bet his life on it, maneuver to cast everything into the hands of the ship, the station, and those willing to relocate there.