Invader

But there was no such clue. He read it a third time simply to absorb the tenor and content, to try to strip out emotional reactions, and to ask himself honestly whether there was any remote, even astronomically remote or conceivable likelihood that Deana was actually right and he was wrong.

That Tabini's true aim in the current crisis was elimination of dissent.

No, dammit, it was notthe purpose of Tabini's actions. It was not the action of the aiji whose answer to rebels in Malguri had generally been understated, as witness Ilisidi's corroboration that things were settled; the aiji whose punitive use of the Guild had been, if at all during his administration, so covert as to be undetected. It was not the action of the aiji who, if reports were true, having perhaps assassinated his own father, at least declined to assassinate his grandmother, who was still in all accounts a very reasonable culprit in the demise of her son.

One added sideways and up and down and power grab didn't describe Tabini in the least.

It didn't describe Tabini's overenthusiastic (by Ilisidi's lights) embrace of things human; or his willingness, in personal argument with common citizens, constantly to push court suit and trial as an enlightened substitute for registered feud; his insistence to push air traffic control as the system countrywide in spite of lordly objections becauseit made sense, even if it sequenced five and six commoner pilots in line ahead of provincial aijiin and their precious purchased numbers in the landing sequence — it also kept aircraft from crashing into each other and raining destruction on urban Shejidan.

It didn't, as Banichi had pointed out, describe the aiji's support among the commons. Elected by the hasdrawad. It was a very enlightening view of whythe Western Association was stable. Human scholars called it economic interdependency, and believed the public good and public content propped Tabini's line in power — which might be the same information; but the economic changes Jago mentioned, bringing real economic power to the trades and the commons — yes, it was the same thing, but it was the atevi side of the looking-glass. And in the concept of man'chi, and atevi electorates — it was an atevi explanation for the peace lasting.

Because the hasdrawad wasn't about to vote against the interests of the commons. Which the hasdrawad hadn't seen as congruent with Ilisidi's passionate opposition to things the hasdrawad wanted, like more gadgets, more trade, more commerce, roads if they could push them, rail if that would move the freight, and to hell with the lords' game reserves: wildlife didn't rank with trains as long as wildlife, the only atevi meat supply, was in good supply in general. He'd heard the arguments in Transportation, in Commerce, in Trade… always the push for the big programs. Which no lord wanted if it wasn't in hisdistrict or his interest — or, contrarily, if it infringed his public lands, meaning the estate he used, and on which he hunted, during his seasons of residency.

He was aware of Banichi and Jago sitting opposite him, across the small service table. He was aware of them watching his face for reactions — and he shot Banichi a sudden, invasive stare.

"You can'thave broken the code in this document," he said to Banichi.

Banichi's face was completely guarded, not completely expressionless. A brow lifted, and the appraising stare came back at him.

One didn't pursue the likes of Banichi through thickets of guesswork and try to pin him down. Banichi wouldn't cooperate with such petty games.

One went, instead, straight ahead.

"You know this is from Hanks to Mospheira. And you know who she's with and what they'll have told her."

"One can certainly make a fair surmise."

"Hence what you just told me. About the election. About the hasdrawad."

"Bren-paidhi, what Tabini-aiji asked us to tell you. Yes."

"Meaning a handful of lords want to restore theirrights at the expense of the commons."

"One could hold that, yes. And, yes, if that is Hanks reporting to Mospheira, and the persons who have her have let her do this, andshe's done it willingly, one does rather well believe that she's at least convinced them she believes them. I take it the report she's made supports their view."

"You take it correctly. She has the opportunity, I'll be frank, to use words that would negate everything she says even if they did have a translator standing over her shoulder. There's no linguistic evidence an atevi dictated it word by word, and I'm not pleased with the content."

"I should have shot this woman," Jago muttered, "on the subway platform. I would have saved the aiji and the Association a great deal of bother."

"I've a question," Bren said, and with their attention: "Ilisidi — has always — to me — supported preservation of the environment, preservation of the culture. Not preservation of privilege."

"But," Jago said, "one must bea lord to assure the preservation of the fortresses, the land holdings, the reserves. A lord on his own can knock down ancient fortifications, rip up forest — it belongs to him. No association of mere citizens can stop him. And, no decree of the hasdrawad can dispossess the lords. The tashrid can veto, with a sufficient majority."

The airport at Wigairiin, he thought. The fourteenth-century fortifications. Knocked down for a runway.

For a lord's private plane. The lord's ancestors built the fortress. The lord inheriting it knocked the wall down, the tourists and posterity be damned.

"Do brickmasons and clericals on holiday… ever tour Wigairiin?" he asked — clearly perplexing Banichi and Jago.

"One doesn't think so," Jago said. "But I could find out this information, if there's some urgency to it."

"Nothing so urgent. One just notes — that such ordinary people do tour Malguri. With the dowager in residence. Whose doing is that?"

"Ultimately," Banichi said, "Tabini's."

"But Ilisidi has made no move to prevent it."

"Hardly prudent," Jago said.

"Nevertheless," he said.

"If some human reason prompts you to justify the dowager," Banichi said, "I would urge you, paidhi-ji, to accept atevi reasons to reserve judgment."

Things were at a bad pass when his atevi security had to remind him where things atevi began and things human ended.

"One respects the advice," he said. "Thank you. Thank you both — for your protection. For your good sense, in the face of my… occasional lapses in judgment — and security."

"Please," Jago said, "stay within our guard at Taiben. Take no chances."

He looked straight at Jago, and imagined, the way he'd imagined Jago avoiding him for the number of hours, that she intended the meeting of the eyes, that she looked at him in a very direct, very intimate way. Which made him flinch and duck.

"Considering all this," he said, trying to recover his train of thought, "in atevi ways the paidhi may be too foreign to reckon — howdid Ilisidi know about Barb the morning after I'd gotten the news? How do you think she knew that fast, if not directly from Damiri's staff? And why should Damiri and Ilisidi associate?"

There was a sober look on both opposing faces.

"Tabini has asked himself that very serious question," Banichi said. "And one does recall where Ilisidi is guesting today."

"Has he asked Damiri about it?" a human couldn't refrain from asking.

"Far too direct," Jago said. "We do lie, nadi-ji. Some of us do it very well. Certain of us even take public offense."

"Do youbelieve Damiri to be honest?"

"One can believe that Damiri-daja is quite honest," Banichi said, "and still know that she might be closer to her uncle's wishes than Tabini would wish. That is honest, paidhi-ji."

The only thing showing under the wings at Taiben was the endless prospect of trees, and at the very last the rail that ran between the airport and the township at Taiben, and the estate of Taiben, at opposite ends of the small rail line, two spurs.

And one was aware, watching that perspective unfold, that other short lines ran up to various townships, villages, hunting lodges and ancestral estates — including those of the Atigeini, and the other three lords of the valley.

The paidhi did have the rash and foolish thought that if, after collecting their luggage, they asked for a train not to Taiben but up to the Atigeini holding, in the north of the valley, they might actually have a civilized reception, a fair luncheon with Ilisidi, an exchange of civilized greetings, and a train ride back again to meet Tabini for supper at Taiben.

That was the way things went when lords met.

When the Guild met — other things resulted, and he wouldn't throw Banichi and Jago up against Cenedi and others of Ilisidi's household, not for any urging and not for any cause that he could prevent. Not that he lacked confidence Banichi and Jago would deal with the situation. And Cenedi. Who would be equally determined, at Ilisidi's order, though they'd fought together, cooperated, shared all the struggle at Malguri. In some ways, he suspected, humans who thought they had a monopoly on sensitivity couldn't imagine the feelings atevi had when some damned fool or some lord's ambition threw them into a conflict they didn't want and weren't going to win — in any personal sense.

So he was quite glad notto find any delegation from Cenedi waiting for them once they were on the ground; he was exceedingly glad that a quick security mate-up with personnel Tabini had had the foresight to send in last night in the dark had already ascertained that there was no bomb, no ambush and no accidental derailment to worry about on their route to Taiben. Everyone worried, at least aloud, about the paidhi's physical comfort, and asked how the flight had been, and the paidhi smiled and said it had been very pleasant.

More pleasant than security, who'd had to dislodge Ilisidi from the premises last night, damned sure; security who'd gotten no sleep whatsoever last night and, looking a little less crisp than the wont of Tabini's personal guard, undoubtedly hoped that they could get some rest very soon, now. So he asked no questions whatsoever of his own and boarded the rail for a rattling, slightly antiquated train ride to the south.

It took a winding long time getting there — no one who came to Taiben was supposed to be in a hurry —

Thinking about the lander, and the drop out of space; and the fact that the trip to push the lander into the atmosphere was actually underway by now, if he remotely understood the distance the station sat from the world, or the speed of the craft shoving the lander into final descent.

Thinking about Deana Hanks, and his having listened to her explanations, and halfway believing her — that was what made him angry: he'd askedfor her help, given her the looseness in contacting atevi sources which she'd probably used to get two good men killed —

He was mad, he was damned mad. And feeling betrayed, in a very personal sense, in his own judgment of another human being — he'd have thought instinct was worth something; and he'd argued with Banichi that she'd been upset at the attack, she'd tried to warn her guards —

One of them was a fool. Again. He'd fallen for her line about searching for him because it was noble, because it was what he'd have done — the search for him was herdamn excuse for contacting what Tabini called unacceptable persons, for going outside the lines; God, she'd had a field day in the atevi opposition, and not a theoretical opposition. She'd dropped FTL into the mix, all right, and maybe that had been a mistake, but she'd also damned near fractured a province and damned near taken out Geigi's influence — Geigi was one of the most scientifically literate lords in the tashrid andin the scientific committees. Geigi had fallen into her arguments, and so had he — refused to maintain his intellectual conviction that she could possibly be the ideologue he'd thought and still do a credible job — he'd held out in the contact they'd had, because at the back of his mind had been the fear of being alone, the need for somebody human to check with, to haveher contrary but human train of thought to consider. He'd needed her.

But right now, if something happened in the landing and the ship concluded atevi weren't civilized enough to deal with directly, that would suit her and her friends on Mospheira andher friends in the tashrid. They wanted something to go wrong. The radicals of both nations had found common cause. And he'd seen it possible — but he'd not seen it coming from the angle it had. He'd counted on Deana slowly gaining an understanding of atevi — God, how did you work that closely with them and still maintain humans had to have absolute dominance?

And how did atevi lords not see what she espoused — if not that it was so damned uniquely human?

He thought about aijiin, and antiquity, and how, yes, humans had studied the Padi Valley origins of the Western Association, but in the way of humans not hardwired for such understandings, humans hadn't known instinctively, as would have been obvious to atevi, that that formerly powerful association would never turn the participants loose, not so long as they retained any territorial holdings here, not so long as they remotely had interests here — The hierarchies would still operate and the rivalries would still exist.

(Mecheiti on the hillside, shoving each other dangerously for position, because there was just one mecheit'aiji, one leader, and there was a rival, and there were almost-rivals — and those far enough down the order of things they didn't contend.)

Humans concentrated on the competitions of economics and never saw the opposition of the tashrid to Tabini as significant. They saw atevi adopting a human pattern, democratization following a rise in the middle class.

Wrong.

Very damn wrong. Democratization had happened beforethe economic rise of the middle class, democratization in order to secure the rise of a middle class, maybe because the first paidhi, in his need to communicate about human decision process, had let slip something to his aiji as disturbing in its day as FTL to Geigi's philosophy.

There wasn't such a thing as a solitary creature in all the world. The wi'itkitiin perhaps came closest. But even they nested in associations. If there was one — there'd be others. Crawling their way uphill from their brief flights, doggedly, determined in their courses, they got back to their cliffs, those that survived the predators. Damned stubborn. As atevi were. As mecheiti were. They didn't give up on a project. They didn't give up on an effort. Lords didn't give up. It could go thousands of years; they didn't give up, the way, perhaps, wi'itikiin didn't give up their ancestral nests on ancestral relative heights on ancestral cliffs. Atevi wrote downtheir purposes, and told them to their children, so they never damned well forgot.

Very bad enemies, he thought, watching the valley unwind in front of them, watching the distant brown tile roofs of Taiben appear in the distance above the trees.

Humans who didn't know that, didn't know the atevi. Not their good points nor their bad. Deana didn't know what she'd tied into. Deana was still operating — he was willing, in the face of all other misjudgments he'd made, to bet on this one as truth — on the theory that what one saw in atevi now had always been true; that the opposition to Tabini was a political and not a biological impulse; that economics drove atevi to the same extent and in the same way as it drove Mospheiran humans.

Naturally. It was her specialty. What was her paper? Economic determinism?

It wasn't his field, but he knew the premise: that industrial society ultimately produced like social institutions.

No need for Deana to struggle with nuances of the language — atevi would grow more and more like humans. She'd just deal with the atevi that agreed with her position. Her friends in the Heritage Party didn't want to understand atevi — just deal with them. Just the way it was when Wilson was in office.

Right, Deana. No arguing with success.

CHAPTER 21

The servants were waiting on the rustic back porch of the lodge as the train pulled in to the platform. They insisted on snatching his bags and they chattered at him about the accommodations.

And perhaps it was the sight of familiar ground, where, at every visit, only pleasant things had happened; perhaps it was, despite the crowd of female servants, the comfortable recognition of an odd stone in the porch wall, the sight of its unshaped wood, its muted browns and stone grays, the plain character of its timber-and-stone halls — he felt as if he'd shed the Bu-javid at the door, as if, here, the landing itself was finally real, and he could actually do something about the problems it brought with it. He walked from the train depot door, down the hall with its hunting memorabilia and the leather couches and wooden benches, let his baggage find its way to the other wing while he lingered in the formal reception hall with the benches and the fireplace. To his pleasure, the servants or, more likely, Gaimi and Seraso, chief of the permanent, year-round ranger staff, who used Taiben when the family wasn't in residence, had a small fire going to welcome him, mostly of aromatics, the sort of thing the rangers laid by after clearing brush. The room smelled of evergreen and oilwood.

Beyond that was his room. Hisroom, when he stayed at Taiben, a very comfortable room, with country quilts as well as the furs, a bedstead that could have stood in an earthquake, a trio of tables, and a wood-carving of a stand of seven trees that wasn't grand art or anything, but elegantly executed and pleasant.

His bed. A mattress he knew. A bathroom with a propane heater for winter. Shower tiles with wildflowers hand-painted on them. He realized he'd drawn a deep, deep breath, and that something in his chest had unknotted the minute he'd stepped off the train.

Then Tabini's security staff arrived to say they had chosen two rooms next to his for the foreigner paidhiin, if he would care to inspect them, and his mind snapped back to the business of descending landers, terrified spacefarers probably enroute at the very moment.

He viewed the rooms, one after the other; rooms like his own, one with a sling chair made of marvelously shaped driftwood and red leather, one with a human-high carved screen showing a hunting party, and asked himself what they'd think, surrounded by stone and wood and live flame, which was, he was sure, very unlike the station or the ship. But he assured Naidiri's two assistants and the servants that they were magnificent rooms fully proper for foreigner paidhiin — they didn't, he was thinking to himself, have trophy heads on the walls, which was probably just as well.

A senior servant came in with a bouquet of wildflowers of, she assured him, felicitous color and number, and said that such rooms and such a place would surely help assure harmony, as the servant said, "The numbers of the earth run through this house. They can't be infelicitous with the numbers of the heavens."

"One certainly agrees, nadi," he murmured, finding a comfort in the reckoning that wasn't humanly rational — just that atevi thought it worked, atevi arranged things with good will in mind, very simply conceived good will that said they should all be harmonious and fortunate. "I think it's very well done. Very well thought, nadiin. They should feel well taken care of."

He couldrelax, then, at least enough to leave the servants to install his small amount of clothing in the drawers and the closet and to press what wanted pressing. He went outside to stand on the porch and breathe the free air, looking out over the hillside.

Taiben sat on a gentle slope, its rearmost sections camouflaged in the edge of a hillside forest, its porch shaded by trees. In this season, in the nightly chill of the hills, grasses were just turning from green to gold: a hundred meters on, trees and brush began to give way to meadow-lands which ran on and on, interspersed with trees, to what they called the south range — and the landing site, a good drive distant.

He'd hiked a lot of the grassland. And the south range. Tabini had dragged him here and there around the reserve — an easy matter for Tabini, whose long legs never felt the strain. Which wasn't fair — in a man who spent his life in the Bu-javid and came out here to wear the paidhi to a state of exhaustion.

A lot of dusty hiking about, and firing guns, which the paidhi wasn't supposed to do, and which, not so long ago, the paidhi would have been just as glad to skip in favor of sitting about the fire all day and resting — when he'd come here, he'd usually been on the end of a long, long work schedule. He was now.

But if he'd the choice, he'd like to leave the porch and take a long walk off into the meadow. Which would be about the stupidest thing the paidhi could think of. When atevi security said, Stay in sight, they meant, Stay in sight. They were understandably short-fused, and being very efficient, very polite. He'd no desire to make their job harder.

So he trudged back inside, called for a pot of tea and watched — rare sight — the play of flames in the fireplace for the better part of an hour while servants hurried about their business and security crawled about in places atevi didn't fit, installing security devices, some of which might be lethal: he didn't ask.

Banichi came back with traces of dust and gravel on his knees and said he'd appreciate a pot of tea himself. Which meant, he was sure, Banichi had overtaxed his recent injury and was feeling it.

"Game of darts?" Banichi said when he'd had a chance to catch his breath and sip half a cup of tea. It was one human game atevi had taken to with a passion approaching that for television. He suspected he was going to lose.

Worse, as happened. Banichi offered him a handicap. He refused to take it. Banichi shrugged and still backed up a couple of meters —"Longer arm," Banichi said. "Let's be fair."

It was a slaughter, all the same. Four rounds of it.

"I don't think you canmiss," Bren said.

Banichi laughed, and put one in the margin. "There. What do you say? No one's perfect?"

Bren made his best try to put one dead center. Which got him a finger's breadth out. "Well," he said, "some of us miss better than others."

Banichi thought that was funny, and sat down and stretched his legs out on a footstool.

"Sit down," Banichi said. "Enjoy the rest."

He did. He sat down, and without clearly realizing how tired he was, nodded off in the chair. And finally gave way to sleep altogether, a comfortable nap, with Banichi close by him.

"He's quite tired," Banichi said to someone quietly. "Keep the noise down."

People were walking nearby, a lot of people, and the paidhi finally had to pay attention to it. He heard Banichi talking to someone, and rubbed the soreness in his neck, blinked the room into focus and realized by the preparations and the conversations that Tabini was coming in, and with him, he was sure, Tano and Algini. Commotion preceded the aiji like a storm front: running through the sitting room and the kitchens, armed security headed through back halls of Taiben where the discreetly camouflaged rail station had its outlet on the side of the building, a station blasted out of the living stone of the hillside. Tano and Algini in fact came in, carrying their own baggage and a couple of heavy canvas cases that looked to hold electronics.

And if the place had felt homelike in his arrival, it felt far other than that now, with weapons in plain sight, Tabini's personal security with armored vests and heavy rifles — Tano and Algini in similar dress and no longer occupied with the ordinary business of clericals and offices: that was surveillance or communications equipment, he was certain.

If Saidin had — and he was sure that she had — put an Atigeini Guild member in the staff — it wasn't such an obvious presence; it was one of the quietly efficient women in soft, expensive fabrics and soundless soles, who whispered when they spoke among themselves and who had such a hair's breadth sensitivity to a design out of adjustment.

Damiri's. Or even Tatiseigi's.

While Damiri was, he recalled with a jolt, still in the Bu-javid — wasn't she?

In the Bu-javid, where herlife might not be secure if an Atigeini moved against Tabini at Taiben. Atevi didn't take hostages, as such. But you damned well knew when you were in reach, and Damiri was — evidently voluntarily — staying in reach.

So very much went on tacit and unspoken — and the paidhiin one and all had had so little idea until he'd had the crash course at Malguri, and finally, rammed through a stupid human head on the plane, the implications he'd missed by not knowing well enough where the associa-tional lines lay, the sub-associations the paidhiin had always known were there, the potency of which the paidhiin had completely underestimated.

The paidhiin had learned to appreciate atevi television, and machimi plays, in which, so often as to be cliche, the stinger in the situation was atevi not knowing an ally had a more complicated hierarchy of man'chithan even the lord had thought he had. Or the lord, who theoretically lacked man 'chiby reason of being a lord, turning out to have man'chito someone no one accounted for.

God, it was right out there in front of the paidhi; it had been right there in front of the State Department and the FO and the university, if anybody had known remotely how to trace it: the university kept meticulous records of genealogies, the provable indications of man'chi— and he knew who was related to whom, more or less. But that didn't say a thing about what Banichi had talked about, the man 'chiof where mates came from — or why.

Or the man'chiof servants; or the man'chione atevi awarded another — Cenedi had found it necessary to tell him, perhaps as a point of honor he'd pay any deserving person, perhaps just a warning for the dim-witted human, that he couldn't regard any debt of life and limb ahead of his man'chito Ilisidi. Cenedi hadn't needed to say that: he'd understood when he'd put Cenedi in a position humans would call debt that Cenedi would owe him no favors.

Banichi had protested vehemently his announcement he'd attached man'chito him and Jago. He didn't know why they should object — unless —

— of course. He felt his face go hot. Banichi had said, with some bewilderment and force — you're not physically attracted to me, and then added that about Jago. Man'chiwas hierarchical. Except the exception Banichi had hinted at. He'd declared man'chieither reversing the order of hierarchy, the paidhi toward his security —

— or he'd said something exceptionally embarrassing to Banichi, who couldn't even, in what Banichi might know about the incident between him and Jago, entirely swear that that wasn't exactly what a crazy human wasfeeling at the moment —

And the university didn't, couldn't, without more shrewd observations from the paidhiin than they'd ever gotten, trace the hidden lines of obligation, the not-so-obvious lines that evidently came down through generations that couldbe inherited, but that weren't, universally; or that could be acquired through physical or psychological attraction; or that could be forged behind closed doors by alliance of two leaders way up in the ranks of the nobility, and bind or not bind their kinsmen, their followers, their political adherents, according to rules he stilldidn't understand and atevi didn't acknowledge, at least out loud, maybe even in the privacy of their own self-realizations. There might be atevi who really, just like humans, didn't wholly understand the psychological entanglements they'd landed in. For a human, he thought, he was doing remarkably well at figuring out the entanglements of man'chiafter the fact; he'd yet to get ahead of atevi maneuvering — and he'd no assurance even now he was looking in the right direction. He'd asked Jago once where her man'chilay — and Jago'd taken at least nominal offense and told him in so many words to mind his own business: it wasn't something polite people ever asked each other. Banichi likewise.

He wondered if even the recipients of such man 'chialways knew what was due them, or if that was, among the other logical and perhaps embarrassing causes, also why Banicbi had turned his declaration away with, Not to as, nand' paidhi — in, for Banichi, quite an expression of dismay.

Servants made a last frantic pass about the sitting room, whisking the suspicion of dust off the fireplace stones, tidying the position of a vase so the largest flowers were foremost.

None of which Tabini gave a glance to when he came in — just a brightening of expression, and, "Ah, Bren-ji, I thought you might be resting. Any difficulties?"

"No, aiji-ma, none, absolutely an easy flight."

"Sit down, sit down —" Tabini sat, flung his feet onto a footstool, and glancing at Naidiri said, not so happily, "See to it, Naidi."

One thought it might be time to get out of Tabini's way and retreat to one's room. But Tabini seemed to have disposed of the matter and proposed a round of dice, which, unlike darts, at least evened the odds for a human participant; and named low stakes, pennies on the point, anda glass of something safely potable for the paidhi, on peril of the purveyor's life.

The purveyor being Banichi, the paidhi had no concern at all. And after that it was himself and Tabini and elderly Eidi, and two of the servants, on order of the aiji, the ladies protesting they couldn't, daren't sit with the aiji, and Tabini saying they'd damn well — they needed a five and security was busy.

So they sat, two gentlemen and a pair of nervous young ladies afraid they'd be beyond their betting limit — they sipped appropriate fruit liqueurs, the ladies as well — they bet pennies, and Tabini and he both lost to one of the maids; Tabini because he was distracted in other thoughts, Bren judged, himself because math counted at least a little in the game of revenge they were playing.

"We're up against a counter," Tabini said, to him and to Eidi. "And these ladies have made common cause."

"And you have a human for a handicap. We should rearrange the alliances."

"Never," Tabini said.

Which lost them, collectively, for an hour and a half, twenty and seven, and a bottle of fruit wine.

And he had a fair idea, by the looks that passed between Tabini and the truly lucky gambler of the pair, that Tabini very well knew Saidin's proxy on the staff, and perhaps more than one of them.

It didn't help the paidhi's anxiety about the peace of the evening at all. But the serving staff was on notice, Tabini, who was very prone to notice the ladies in any gathering, was an absolute gentleman, possibly because it was Damiri's staff, and there was no hint that anything at all was different from previous, all-male visits to Taiben — Tabini might have done as in the past, and had only his own security about them; and didn't — which had Damiri's name all over the situation.

Possibly the aiji didn't want to signal distrust of Damiri. Perhaps the aiji wanted to use the paidhi and himself for bait to draw some action from Tatiseigi, who was, as Banichi and Jago had advised him, an easy train ride away.

Not mentioning overland transport, which the rangers certainly had, and which one could well assume the Atigeini estate had.

Tabini at last leaned comfortably in his chair, one arm draped over the chairback, and waved a hand at the table. "The playing field is yours, dajiin. The bottle. The coin. — The honors. Kindly report us well to your house."

"Aiji-ma." There was a profound bow, profound confusion from one as she rose from the table. A smile from the other that could be challenge, could be acknowledgment — the young woman was surrounded by Guild seniors, against which she wouldn't have a chance for her own survival if she even looked like making a move, and she had to know that.

There was no Filing. Which meant blame and consequences flying straight to the Atigeini head of house, which she had to know also.

Bren drew in his breath and found immediate preoccupation with the position of his glass on the table.

"Pretty," was Tabini's comment after they'd withdrawn with the prizes. "Very sharp. The one on the left is Guild. Did you know?"

He looked up. It wasn't the one he'd thought. "I guessed wrong," he said, chagrined.

"I'm not sure of the other one, either," Tabini said. "Certain things even Naidiri won't say. Damiri herself professes not to be sure. But one suspects it's a pair. I understand you'd no idea of Saidin's position."

He didn't breathe but what Tabini had a report of it.

"I'm completely embarrassed. No, aiji-ma. I hadn't."

"Retired, actually," Tabini said, "but an estimable force. If I can trust Naidiri's estimate — and I wouldn't be living with the lovely lady sharing my bed if I hadn't certain assurances passed through the Guild — she answers primarily to Damiri. Only to Damiri, in point of fact."

There were cliffs and precipices in such topics. He drew a breath and went ahead. "What of Damiri? Are you safe, personally safe, aiji-ma? I'm worried for your welfare."

"I take good care," Tabini said, and turned altogether sideways, one long leg folded against the chair arm, booted ankle on the other knee. "Concerned on behalf of the Association, Bren-ji? Or your directives from Mospheira?"

"To hell with Mospheira," he muttered, and got Tabini's attention. "Aiji-ma, I've quite well damned myself, so far as certain elements of my government are concerned."

"I take it that the message was Hanks, that it said unpleasant things, and that it was not under duress."

"It was accusatory of me, of you, as instituting a seizure of others' rights —" He was aware, as he said it, that he placed Hanks in direct danger, if Tabini were even remotely inclined to retaliatory strikes — and that, in atevi politics, Tabini might no longer have the luxury of tolerating Hanks' actions. "I apologize profoundly, aiji-ma — they're my mistakes. I spend my life trying to figure what atevi will do; I misread her. Of my own species. I have no excuse to offer. I'll give you a transcript."

Tabini waved a hand. "At your leisure. Knowing the company she's keeping enables one rather well to know the content."

"Banichi and Jago seemed to have a very good idea of the content."

"She accuses you to your government."

"Yes."

"Will this be taken seriously?"

"It — will be raised officially, I'm fairly sure. Depending on what goes on inthe government, I will or won't be able to go back to Mospheira."

"Without being arrested?"

"Possibly. That Hanks hasn't gotten a recall order — I fear indicates she still has backing."

Tabini said, "May I speak personally?"

"Yes," he said — one could hardly refuse the aiji whatever he wanted to say, and he hoped it entailed no worse mistake than Hanks

"I hear that your fiancee," Tabini said, "has reneged on her agreement."

"With me?"

"With you. I know of no other."

"There wasn't — actually a clear understanding." He'd talked about Barb with Tabini before. They'd discussed physical attractiveness and the concept of romantic love versus — mainaigi, which rather well answered to a young ateva's hormonal foolishness. "No fault on her part. She'd tried, evidently, to discuss it with me. Couldn't catch me on Mospheira long enough."

"Political pressure?" Tabini asked, frowning.

"Personal pressure, perhaps."

"One suggested before… this woman had more virtue."

He'd made claims for Barb, once upon a while. Praised her good sense, her loyalty. A lot of things he'd said to Tabini, when he'd thought better of Barb.

And if he were honest, probably that weeks-ago judgment was more rational and more on target than the one he'd used last night.

"She's stayed by me through a lot," he said. "I suppose —"

Tabini was quiet, waiting. And sometimes translation between the languages required more honesty than he found comfortable: without it, one could wander deep into definitional traps — sound like a fool… or a scoundrel.

"Did political enemies affect this decision?" Tabini asked.

"Certainly my job did. The absences. The — likelihood of further absences. Just the uncertainty."

"Of safety?"

He hesitated to get into that. Finally nodded. "There've been phone calls."

"She has, as you've said, no security?"

"No. It's not — not ordinary."

"Nor prospect of obtaining it."

"No, aiji-ma. Ordinary citizens just — don't. There's the police. But these people are hard to catch."

"A problem also for your relatives."

He had a suspicion about the integrity of his messages. And the pretense that no atevi understood the language well enough, a pretense which was wearing thinner and thinner.

"There is —" Tabini moved his foot, swung his leg over the arm of the chair. "There is the Treaty provision. We've broken it to keep Hanks here. Would Barb-daja consent to break with this new marriage and join you in residence on the mainland?"

He didn't know what to say for a moment — thought of havingBarb with him, and couldn't imagine —

"It seems," Tabini said, "that there is difficulty for your whole household, on Mospheira, which has perhaps inspired this defection. In her lack of official support, one can, perhaps, see Barb-daja's difficulty."

Or perhaps Banichi or Jago had told him a certain amount. It proved nothing absolutely. He hadtalked to Jago. He'd even talked to Ilisidi.

"This is a security risk," Tabini said. "You should not have to abide threats to your household, if a visa or two would relieve their anxiety — and yours. They would be safe here, your relatives, your wife — if you chose to have this."

His heart had gone thump, and seemed to skip a beat, and picked up again while the brain was trying to work and tell him they'd been talking about Hanks, and accusations, and Hanks' fate, and it could signal a decided chill in atevi-human relations — which he had to prevent. Somehow. "Aiji-ma, it's — a very generous gesture." But to save his life — or theirs — he couldn't see it happening — couldn't imagine his mother and Toby and Jill and the —

No. Not them. Barb. Barb might think she wanted to. Barb might even try — there was a side to Barb that wasn't afraid of mountains. He could remember that now: Barb in the snow, Barb in the sunglare… Barb outside the reality of her job, his job, the Department, the independence she had fought out for herself that didn't need a steady presence, just not some damned lunatic isolationist agitator ringing her phone in the dead of night.

"My relatives — wouldn't — couldn't — adapt here. They'd be more tolerant of the threats. — Barb…"

He couldn't say no for her. She had no special protection, no more than his family. But she couldadapt. It was — in a society she'd not feel at home in — a constant taste of the life she'd seemed to love: the parties, the fancy clothes, the glittering halls. Barb would, give her that, try to speak the language. Barb would break her neck to learn it if it got her farther up the social scale, not just the paidhi's woman, but Barb-daja; God — she'd grab it on a bet. Until she figured out it was real, and had demands and limitations of behavior.

Stay with at that point was another question. Adapt to it, was a very serious question. He didn't think so, not in the long term.

More, he didn't want to sleep with her again. It had become a settled issue, Barb's self-interest, Barb's steel-edged self-protection: the very quality that had made her his safe refuge raised very serious questions, with Barb brought into the diplomatic interface, under the stress the life necessarily imposed —

And the constant security. And the fact — they needed each other more than they loved each other. Or loved anyone at all, any longer. They'd damaged each other. Badly.

"So?" Tabini asked him.

"Barb is a question," he said. "Let me think about it, aiji-ma, with my profound gratitude."

"And your household, not?"

"My mother —" He'd spoken to Tabini only in respectful terms of his mother. Of Toby. "She's very human. She's very temperous."

"Ill-omened gods, Bren, I have grandmother. They could amuse each other for hours!"

He had to laugh. "A disaster, aiji-ma. I fear — a disaster. And my brother — if he couldn't have his Friday golf game, I think he'd pine and die."

"Golf." Tabini made a circular motion of the hand. "The game with the little ball."

"Exactly so."

"This is a passion?"

"One gambleson it."

"Ah." To an atevi that explained everything — and restored Tabini's estimate of Toby's sanity.

"My relatives are as they are. Barb — I'll have to think. I fear my mind right now is on the ship. And the business last night. And Hanks-paidhi."

"Forget Hanks-paidhi."

That was ominous. And he resolutely shut his mouth. Protest had already cost two lives.

"I trust," Tabini said then — but Naidiri came in, bowed despite Tabini's casual attitude, and presented a small message roll, at which Tabini groaned.

"It came with a cylinder," Naidiri said. "Considering the source, we decided security was better than formality."

"I certainly prefer it." Tabini opened it and read it. "Ah. Nand' paidhi. Geigi sends his profound respect of your person and assures you his mathematicians find great interest in the proposed solution to the paradox, which they believe to have far-reaching significance. He is distraught and dismayed that his flowers were rejected at the airport, which he believes was due to your justified offense at his doubt. He wishes to travel to Taiben in person to present his respect and regret. The man is determined, nadi."

"What shall I answer this man?" Bren asked. "This is beyond my experience, aiji-ma."

"Say that you take his well-wishes as a desirable foundation for good relations and that you look forward personally to hearing his interpretation of the formulae and the science as soon as you've returned to the capital. Naidi-ji, phrase some such thing. Answer in the paidhi's name before this man buys up all the florists in Shejidan. — You've quite terrified the man, Bren-ji. And quite — quite uncharacteristically so. Geigi is not a timorous man. He's sent me very passionate letters opposing my intentions. What in all reason did you say to him?"

"I don't know, aiji-ma. I never, never wished to alarm him."

"Power. Like it or not." Tabini gave back the message roll, and Naidiri went back, one presumed, to the little staff office Taiben had in the back hall. "On my guess, the man doesn't understand why you went personally to the observatory. He doesn't understand the signal you sent — weknow your impulsive character. But lord Geigi — is completely at a loss."

"I couldn't rely on someone to translate mathematics to me when so much was riding on it. Third-hand never helps on something I can hardly understand myself. — Besides, it was nand' Grigiji's work. Banichi said he baffles his own students."

"That he does," Tabini said. "I've asked what we should do for this man. He professed himself content, and took a nap."

"Did he?"

"The emeritus' students, however, begged the paidhi to give them a chance to write to the university on Mospheira."

Bren drew in a breath and let it go slowly. "Very deep water."

"One believes so."

"Access to atevi computer theory discussions? The university would be interested. It might move the cursed committee."

"Possibly."

He couldn't help it, then. He gave a quiet, rueful laugh. "If Mospheira's speaking to me. I've yet to prove that. And the ship — will change a lot of things."

"Ah. No challenge even for my 'possibly.' So sad."

"I will challenge it. But I won't tell you how in advance, aiji-ma. Leave me my maneuvering room."

Tabini laughed silently. "So. You and I were to go fishing. But I fear there's a business afoot —"

He didn't know how he could drag himself out of the chair. Or, in fact, sleep at night. "One understood back in Shejidan, aiji-ma, that the fish might have to wait."

"You look very tired."

"I can look more enthusiastic. Tell me where and when. Otherwise I'll save it for the landing."

"I think we should have a quiet supper, the two of us. We should talk about the character of our women, share a game of darts, and drink by the fire."

"That sounds like a very good program, aiji-ma."

"The fish can sleep safely this evening, then. Possibly the paidhi will get some rest."

"The paidhi certainly intends to try."

It was, as Tabini promised, a quiet supper. Other people were very busy — Banichi and Jago had gone off duty for the last quarter of the afternoon and, one assumed, fallen facedown and slept like stones, Bren told himself: it had to be rare that they could sleep in the sure knowledge they were absolutely safe, absolutely surrounded by security, and the primary job wasn't theirs.

He certainly didn't begrudge them that.

And after supper, Tabini defeated him soundly at darts — but he won three games of ten, whether by skill or the aiji's courtesy, and they sat, as Tabini had promised, by the fire.

"I'd imagine our visitors are well away by now," Bren said in the contemplation the moment offered. "I'd imagine they'll board the lander at the very last — ride out in whatever craft will take them to the brink, and perform their last-minute checks tomorrow. Everything has to be on schedule, or I'm sure they'd have called."

"These are very brave people," Tabini said.

"Very scared people. It's a very old lander." He took a sip of liquor and stared into the endless patterns of the wood fire. "The world's changing, aiji-ma. Mine is, the mainland will." Tabini had never yet mentioned Ilisidi's presence in the house. "I have a request, aiji-ma, that regard for me should never prompt you to grant against your better judgment. They tell me the dowager was here last night. That she's with the Atigeini. — Which I do not understand. But I would urge —"

Tabini was utterly quiet for the moment. Not looking at him. And he looked back toward the fire.

"In my perhaps mistaken judgment, aiji-ma — the dowager, if she is involved, seems more the partisan of the Preservation Commission than of any political faction. At least regarding ideas expressed to me. Perhaps she was behind the events last night. But I don't think so."

"You don't think so."

"I think if Cenedi had meant to do me harm, he had far subtler means. And they wouldn't guest with the Atigeini if they'd shot up the breakfast room. That's all I'll say this evening on politics. But I want to speak for the dowager, if I have any credit at all."

"Your last candidate for favor was Hanks-paidhi."

"True."

"Well, trust grandmother to find a landing spot. I offered her a plane. Which she declined."

"It's, as I said, Tabini-ma, the limit of my knowledge. I only wish to communicate my impression that she viewed the experience of atevi before humans came as an important legacy to guide the aiji in an age of change and foreign ways. I realize I'm a very poor spokesman for that viewpoint. But even against your displeasure I advance it, as my minimal debt to what I believe to be a wise and farseeing woman."

"Gods inferior and blasphemed, you're so much more collected than Brominandi. That wretch had the effrontery to send me a telegram in support of the rebels, do you know?"

"I hadn't known."

"He should take lessons from you. At telegraph rates he's spent his annual budget."

"But I believe it, aiji-ma. I'd never urge you against what I believe is to the benefit of atevi."

"Grandmother will take no harm of me."

"But Malguri."

"Nor will there be public markets at Malguri. — Which some would urge, you understand. Some see the old places as superfluous, an emblem of opprobrious privilege."

"I see it," he said, "as something atevi can never obtain from human books."

Tabini said nothing in reply to that. Only recrossed his ankles on the footstool, and the two of them stared at the fire a moment.

"Where is man'chi," Tabini asked him, "paidhi-ji?"

"Mine? One thought atevi didn't ask one another such questions."

"An aiji may ask. — Of course —"

A hurried group of security went through the room, and the seniormost, it seemed, stopped. "Aiji-ma, pardon." The man gave Tabini a piece of paper, which Tabini read.

Tabini's leg came down off the chair arm. Tabini sat up, frowning.

"Is it distributed?" Tabini asked.

"Unfortunately so."

"No action against the paper. Do inquire their connections. One wonders if this is accidental."

"Aiji-ma." The security officer left.

And Tabini scowled.

"Trouble?" Superfluous question.

"Oh, a small matter. Merely a notice in the resort society paper that we're here forthe landing."

"Lake society?"

"The lake resort. A thousand tourists. At least. Passed out free to every campsite at the supply store."

"God."

"Invite the whole damned resort, why don't we? They'll be here, with camping gear and cameras andchildren! We've a chance of heavy arms fire! Of bombs, from small aircraft! We've a thousand damned tourists, gods unfortunate!"

Public land. There was no border, no boundary. One thing ran into the other.

" Damnedif this is a mistake," Tabini said. "The publisher knows it's stupid, the publisher knows it won't make a landing easier or safer. Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

Tabini flung himself to his feet. Bren gathered himself up more cautiously, as Tabini drew his coat closed and showed every sign of taking off.

"We can't be butchering tourists in mantraps," Tabini said. "Bren, put yourself to bed. Get some rest. It's clear I won't."

"If I could help in any way —"

"Since none of our problems of tonight speak Mosphei', I fear not. Stay by the phone. Be here in case we receive calls from the heavens that something's gone amiss. Don't wait up."

Property where private was sacrosanct and even tourists respected a security line — but a landing was a world-shattering event. The Landing was the end of the old world as the Treaty was the beginning of the new. Atevi were attracted to momentous events, and believed, in the way of numbers, that having been in the harmony of the moment gave them a special importance in the universe.

There couldn't be an ateva in the whole world, once the news got beyond Taiben and once it hit the lake resort and the airport, who wouldn't phone a relative to say that humans were falling out of the sky again, and they were doing it here, at dawn tomorrow.

It wasn't a prescription for early sleep. Tano and Algini came in briefly to say they'd indeed contacted the rangers, who took the rail over to the lake and personally, on the loudspeakers, advised tourists that it was a dangerous area, that and that they risked the aiji's extreme displeasure.

"One wonders how many have already left," Bren said.

"The rangers are all advised," Algini said.

"But one couldn't tell tourists from Guild members looking for trouble."

"Many of us know each other," Tano said. "Especially in the central region."

"But true," Algini said, "that one has to approach closer than one would like to tell the difference. It's very clever, what they've done."

"Who's done? Does anybody know who's behind this?"

"There's a fairly long list, including neighboring estates."

"But the message. Was it the dowager's doing?"

"One doesn't know. If —"

"Nand' paidhi," a member of Tabini's staff was in the doorway. "A human is calling."

"I'm coming." He was instantly out of the chair, and with Tano and Algini who had come from that wing, which they'd devoted to operations, he followed the man to the nearest phone.

"This is Bren Cameron. Hello?"

" Jase Graham. Got a real small window here. Closer we get…" There was breakup. " Everything on schedule?"

"We're fine. How are you?"

"I lost that. Where are you?"

"Fifty kilometers from the landing site. I'll bethere, do you hear?"

"We're… board the lander. Systems… can you…?"

"Repeat, please."

There was just static. Then: " See you. You copy?"

"Yes! I get that! I'll be there!"

The communication faded out in static, tantalizing in what he didn't know, reassuring in what he could hear.

And what could they say? Watch out for hikers? We hope nobody shoots at the lander?

"They're on schedule," he said. "When are we going out there?"

"One hasn't heard that you were going, nand' paidhi," Tano said.

That was a possibility he hadn't even considered. If he was at Taiben, he'd damn sure be at the landing in the morning. He wasn't leaving two humans to be scared out of their minds or to make some risky misassumption before they reached the lodge.

"Where's Tabini?" he asked. "I need to talk to him."

"Nand' paidhi," Algini said, "we'll make that request."

"No talking through relays. I want to talk to him."

He was being, perhaps, unreasonable. But if the tourist emergency had hauled Tabini off where he couldn't get to Tabini before they arranged details that left him out, he was damned mad, andsurprised, andfrustrated.

"Yes, nand' paidhi," Algini said, and a certain part of Taiben's whole communications diverted itself, probably not operationally wise, probably an obstruction of operations and possibly a dangerous betrayal of the fact Tabini wasn't under Taiben's roof at the moment.

"Don't make noise about it," he said. "Just — I need this straightened out. They could come down in need of medical help. They could need a translator. Or first aid. Which I can give — at least have a good guess. There's a chance of a rough landing. And I don't want a mistake."

"I'll find the aiji," Tano said.

"Thank you, nadi."

Which meant Tano hiking out through the dark himself.

He was sorry about it. But the reasons that came to him were real reasons.

Dammit.

So he went back to the central hall and paced and repositioned bric-a-brac, and waited, in general, until, short of breath, Tano came in with, "Paidhi-ma. Banichi confirms you're to be picked up with the rest, two hours before dawn."

" Thankyou, Tano-ji," he said, and felt foolish, having had Tano run all over the estate, in the dark, but it eased his mind enough he at least lost his urge to pace the floor.

And after that, he decided it might be wise at least to go to bed, get what rest he could without sleeping — he refused to sleep, for fear something would happen and they wouldleave him behind — and be ready to go in the morning.

So he went down the hall into the guest wing, dismissed the servants who were determined to be of help, and began, alone, to lay out the clothes he wanted for what might end up being a hike.

But the jacket he regularly wore for hiking had the brilliant red stripe down the sleeve that warned hunters he wasn't a target — and he wasn't sure, counting the problems with the neighbors, that he wanted to be that conspicuous an object in the brush.

He laid down the plain brown one he was wearing, instead — leather, and comfortable for Taiben's hall, seeing that end-of-season evenings often turned cold, and human bones chilled faster than atevi's.

"Bren-ji? One heard you were questioning arrangements?"

Jago's voice. He turned, stood there with the jacket in his hands — Jago — was different to him. He wasn't seeing her the way he'd always seen her, not a hair different, not a hint of impropriety in her being here, or in her appearance, or his, but suddenly the room was too close, the air was too warm, and a human brain with too much to do was all of a sudden trying to think about details in the circuits left over from a very stupid whiteout in the fore-brain.

"I — uh, I wanted to know what time we were leaving. In the morning." The paidhi, the source of international communications, wasn't doing well. "Tano found my answer."

"There was a phone call?"

"I — uh, yes. There was."

"Bren-ji — is something wrong?"

"I — no. No. Everything's on schedule."

Jago stood there a moment. Then shut the door, shutting them both in.

He felt a sense of panic. And knew it showed. He wasn't about to throw Jago out. Or to request a good friend to leave.

Which wasn'twhat she was, dammit, he wasn't thinking.

"I've made you uneasy," Jago said. "Bren-paidhi, I was stupidly mistaken. I apologize. I most sincerely apologize."

He didn't know what to say. He stood there. And Jago said, with great correctness, "Excuse the intrusion, nand' paidhi," and turned quietly to go.

"I —" he said, in all the fluency he had. "Jago."

"Nand' paidhi?" She had her hand on the latch. He wanted and didn't want. He relied on Banichi and Jago for life and death. But Jago had touched off something — so tangled in his psyche he didn't know what to do with it, didn't know where to take hold of it, even what to call it.

"Jago —"

She was still waiting. He didn't know how many I's he'd started with, but he knew it was far too many for anyone's patience.

"Nothing," he said desperately, "nothing could make me distrust you, in any way. You —" Breath was not coming easily. "You affected me very profoundly — that's all I know how to say. I'm not sure what you think. I'm not sure what I think. I can'tthink at the moment, there's just too much, too much going on. There will be for a while. — Do I make any sense at all? It's not you. It's me. I'm not — just not at my most stable, Jago."

He ran out of words. Jago didn't seem to find any immediately, and the silence went on, so deep he could all but hear his heart beat.

"Have I angered you?" Jago asked then.

"No." A vehement shake of his head. But it wasn't an atevi gesture. "In no way. Most emphatically not."

"Disturbed you?"

"Yes."

Jago bowed her head and seemed to take that for dismissal.

"Jago." He was floundering. Clinical was all he knew how to be, to save them both. "It's the friendbusiness. It's that word. We say we love. Even when we need. When we need, it's something not very productive. It's a lot of human damn wiring, Jago-ji. Expectations. — Like man'chi. How do you stop it logically? — And I can't know — maybe you're just curious. Maybe just — nothing more than that. Maybe a lot more serious than that. I don't know."

"One meant well," Jago said, still with that unbreakable control. "Evidently one was very wrong."

"No. I just — Jago, God, I'm embarrassed as hell. I just want you back. The way things were. For a while. Just that — if that doesn't offend you."

"No," she said.

"No, it can't be the same? Or no, it doesn't offend you?"

"No, nand' paidhi. I am not offended. I find no possible way to be offended."

"Can I say — at least — I'm very attracted?"

She laughed, a jolt, a startlement. "You can say so," she said. "One takes no offense, paidhi-ji."

"Is it always No, from this point? Or maybe someday?"

"What does the paidhi think?"

The paidhi was shaky in the knees. It wasn't his habit. It wasn't his style, not with Barb, not with anybody else. He felt like a total fool. And stood there with the coat in his hands. "The paidhi knows when he can't translate. When he hasn't got a hope of translating. The paidhi thinks he's extremely damn fortunate you're not mad at him."

A shy look he'd rarely seen from Jago. A nervous laugh he never had. "By no means. If you —"

But the damn pocket-com went off at that very moment. Jago pulled it from her belt, held it to her ear, and frowned.

"Fourteen," she said, probably — he'd grown wiser in the ways security communicated — her station number, acknowledging hearing a message.

Then: "If you wish to change clothes," she said, "hurry. We're moving out. Now."

"To the landing site? To there? Or where?"

"We've just been asked to go to the front of the building at moderate speed. This isn't a run, but it doesn't leave you any time, nand' paidhi."

"Damn," he said, and unbuttoned his shirt without a second's further question, was pulling on his sweater when Jago left, which only put him in more hurry to switch trousers and change to heavier socks and heavier-soled boots. He exited the room, still struggling with his coat, to find Jago waiting for him.

"What is the hurry?"

"Perhaps," she said, "that someone is on the way here. That's a guess, nand' paidhi."

"I'll take your guesses over some people's information." He had gloves. He'd put them in the coat pocket. They reached the main hall and joined a small number of the house security moving out toward the doors. The Atigeini servants gathered in alarm and dismay.

"Not everyone is leaving," Banichi was telling them. "There's a shelter in the cellar. House permanent staff has the keys. Extinguish the fire, pull the fuses. That will shut down everything to emergency power. Go below in good order, wait for authorized signals to open the door. You'll be safe." Banichi fell in with them as they went out the open front doors, onto the porch — an open car came around the corner of the east wing, running lights on, no headlights, and Bren's heart jumped, but Banichi and Jago didn't react to the appearance, just hustled him along the length of the porch.

Something heavy was shoved into his coat pocket on Banichi's side, jammed down — he put a hand over the weight to stabilize it, no second guess needed what it was, no guess why Banichi picked now to give it to him and had no time to waste in the paidhi's questions, just —

"Do we have a radio? Do we have communications? We need —"

"No difficulty," Banichi said and, atevi having better night-vision on the average, seized his arm, the weak one, and made sure his feet found the steps downward. The car had pulled up and security opened the door for him, atevi eyes glowing pale gold in the faint light, there, floating disembodied the other side of the car. He had qualms about getting in, he feared that they might send him off somewhere and they might stay behind in defense of Taiben, but that wasn't the indication about the situation. Jago got in ahead of him and Banichi took the seat beside the driver, one more climbed into the back and shut the door — that was Tano, he realized all of a sudden.

"Where's Algini?"

"The car behind, nand' paidhi. With the radio." The car took off with a spin of its tires, then lumbered over tree roots and took the downhill by a series of tilts and bounces — they were on what the estate charitably called the branch road, which had far more of branches than road about it. It went around trees rather than have one cut down, it relied on four-wheel drive and a good suspension, which the staff cars had — along with the bar along the back of the front seat that became a good idea as they veered with the road along the side of the lodge and down again, toward the junction of service roads which the staff used getting equipment to and from the various wells and stations — he knew this road, Tabini'd been easy on his slight-of-stature guest, in the first visit he'd made to Taiben.

Not afterward. Not now.

"What's happening?" he asked, clinging to the safety bar. "Where's Tabini?"

Maybe Tano and Jago didn't know. Banichi turned around, arm on the seat back, head down because of the branches that raked over the windshield. "Somebody leaked the event to the local news — we've got intruders in the woods and we can't tell who're tourists from the lake district and who's not, which is not a tolerable situation for security. We've very good reason to believe this release of information was not a prank."

"Meaning the same people who have Hanks are out there."

"Most likely they are." Banichi turned his head back to the short view of tree trunks and underlit branches as the car jolted its way into a turn.

The driver — probably a ranger — had his hands full: it wasn't every atevi who knew how to drive, and nobody could avoid collision who didn't know this road, not from where he sat — the wheel went this way and that, in furious efforts that exerted atevi strength to keep the wheels on track at all, bouncing over roots and jolting over low spots, the low running lights bouncing wildly, amber lights from a car behind them casting their shadows on the seat backs in front of them and reflecting in the windshield.

"Are they likeliest to move on Taiben itself?" he asked. "Or the landing site? Do they knowexactly where?"

"They may," Tano said. "It wasn't in the news report, but no knowing the other information that's passed."

"They won't waste time on Taiben when they know we've left. They've come in afoot. So far. Now that we've moved — they'll probably have transport come in."

"We're a one-point target," Jago said. "They're diffuse. This is by the nature of a wide border with uncertain neighbors."

The road took a series of jolts that made the handhold a necessity, even for atevi, then smoothed out, and Banichi turned around again, eyes shimmering momentarily in the following running lights. "We've a secure place if we need it," Banichi said, "nadi-ji. We're not in trouble. Yet."

"That lander's going to come down slowly tomorrow."

Bren said. "If they've got any kind of weapons — if they were willing to attack it —"

"We think rather their target is Tabini himself," Banichi said. "Possibly you. We've tried to persuade Tabini to fly back to Shejidan. But the aiji says not. And he extends that decision to you."

Banichi wasn't pleased by that. And the reason for the confused, abrupt exit became more clear: scatter vehicles through the woods, keep the opposition guessing where Tabini was and with what group, or at Taiben — and where the paidhi was. Tabini thumbed his nose at the opposition. Tabini's staff andthe paidhi did, that was the message Tabini was sending, and he understood that, but they had a very vulnerable capsule coming down in a place that wasn't exactly neatly defined — they couldn't set up a specific watch over a specific ten-meter area and trust the capsule might not be a kilometer or so away, exposed to God-knew-what. Bren sat holding the elbow of his sore arm, in the interval he wasn't clutching the bounce-bar, feeling the jolts in his joints and in muscles gone cold and tense.

He wasn't scared, he wasn't scared, this wasn't like Malguri, with the chance of bombs falling on them. They were playing tag through the woods, but keeping ahead of the people trying to shoot at them; they'd dodge and switch through ranger tracks the opposition might have maps of, but it wasn't the same as their driver's evident experience of the roads. They'd out-drive them, out-maneuver them…

They were in open cars, that being what the rangers used for these narrow trails, and probably the only vehicles with a wheelbase that could take them — but they were visible targets, and the landing wasn't in a meadow interspersed with trees, or hillside forest, it was down on the flat, in a grassland split by a couple of rocky patches — profoundly eroded and wooded escarpments that ran eighty, ninety kilometers northwest to southeast, with stands of scrub that gave ambushers plenty of cover.

You could see wheel tracks in the grass. They couldn't get there without leaving a trace that small aircraft could spot well enough. Neither they nor the opposition could maneuver in a sea of grass without a trail someone else could track.

"They won't chase us here," he muttered to Jago and Tano. "They don't need to. They know where we're going. At least — close enough."

"Diffuse versus specific," Jago said. She'd said that. He'd not arrived at the same conclusion until then. But that told him at least his security had thought of it.

Then he had a cold and terrible thought.

"Oh, my God. My computer."

Banichi turned around in his seat. Flashed a shimmer of yellow eyes. And a grin. "Right between my feet, paidhi-ji. We didn't forget."

Hormones, he said to himself, his heart settling back to steady work. Damned hormones. Brain fog. A schoolboy mistake. He found himself shivering as the car found a reasonable stretch of meadow grass and ripped along at a reckless bounce. He tried not to nudge against the atevi on either side of him. He didn't want them to feel it.

But he had the hard weight of the gun in his pocket, too, and finally had the wit to ask, "Has anybody got a spare clip of shells?"

He got three, one from Banichi, one from Jago, one from Tano. The driver had his hands occupied, and the paidhi was out of convenient pockets and carrying enough weight.

The rebels had Hanks. "Is there any way —" Figuring to himself that with all of an aiji's resources to draw from, there might be personnel to spare. "— any way —" A pothole. "— Hanks has to be somewhere close." Pothole. "With them. Get into theirterritory. Go get Hanks." Bounce. "Let them worry."

Jago laughed, silent in the growl of the motor and the slap of branches. Grinned, holding on to the side of the car. "Good idea, nand' paidhi."

"You thought of that."

"So will they, unfortunately. I fear they'll move her out."

Damn, he thought. They would. As a strategist he wasn't in the game. "Can't use the airport. Ranger trails, more likely."

"Good, nai-ji."

"A peaceful man hasn't a chance with you," he said, and Tano patted his leg from the other side.

"Paidhi-ji, we listen because you have good ideas. They'd do these things. So are we doing them."

"Then where are we going? Around in circles, to make them crazy?"

"If we can," Jago said. And after a fierce series of bumps and a turn, "There's a classified number of storm shelters, where we can rest about an hour or so, move around again. Tabini's plane's left, or will, very soon now. Just keep them wondering. We hope so, at least."

CHAPTER 22

It was a scary business waiting for two men to find or not find a bomb. Especially when the two were Tano and Algini, who, one came to understand, were good at what they did and had state-of-the-art equipment, at least as good as the potential bomb-placers might have, if someone, however unlikely, had been fast enough to penetrate deep into Taiben Reserve and booby-trap the shelters.

Which no one had, apparently, since Tano and Algini signaled with a double flash of their hand-torch that the way was clear.

So they left the cars, hiked through the brush of the little copse that hid the excavation.

Storm shelters.

Classified storm shelters, with, as they could see when they opened the door, a well-kept interior, electric lights, at least enough to see by, which didn't depend on generators; and some which did.

For legitimate storms, Bren said to himself, not the political ones for which he suspected the aijiin of Shejidan had built such strong concrete bunkers. There were in fact fairly considerable storms, occasionally tornadic, not infrequently with hail, occasionally deep snow, and there were reasons the rangers who served the estate might want to pull in and take shelter, reach medical kits, even take a shower — the place could shelter twenty atevi, had no trouble at all tucking a stray human in. Bren found a quiet corner, pillowed his aching shoulder against a wad of folded blankets, and discovered a degree of comfort that let him shut his eyes and actually sleep a minute or two, to his own mild surprise, perhaps because things werefinally moving in a direction he couldn't do a damned thing about, and people around him werealert, and knew there was harm aimed at them, and were doing everything in their considerable professional skill to stop it.

He'd felt like the only warning and the only fix in the system for so — damned — long. Now everybody knew what he knew, did what they knew how to do, nobody he cared about was going to get caught by surprise, and nothing was going to be his fault if a bomb dropped on them and blew them to hell — he could sleep on that understanding.

But in not long enough there was an alarm, at least enough stir to rouse him out of sleep. He waked with a thump of his heart and an awareness everyone was coming on guard, but Jago patted his arm, saying it was the aiji coming in, go back to sleep.

The eyelids were willing. But nobody slept through Tabini's arrival anywhere. There was a general stirring about, discussion among the Guild, who should go where, and then a decision they should go on, but they should leave the paidhi.

"The paidhi doesn't want to be left," he protested. "Jago?"

"We stay with you," Jago said quietly. "We don't split up"

He felt reassured in that — as the door opened and Tabini and Naidin and his group came in, and all of their group but his own security and the man working communications with Algini went out.

He sat still, wished Tabini a good evening, or morning, or whatever it was in this dim place, and held his shoulder against the ache, wishing he had had the foresight to bring his own first-aid kit.

"Bren-ji," Tabini said, patted him on the ankle in passing his perch on a raised bench.

And then he grew a little uneasy, since Tabini was not as cheerful nor as outgoing as one might look to have him. Tabini was preoccupied and spoke quietly with Naidiri and Banichi, after which Banichi and Naidiri talked with him for some little time, and then went and talked to each other.

"What's wrong?" he asked Jago quietly. "Can you tell?"

Jago got up, apparently wanting that answer herself, squatted down with Banichi and Naidiri, listening, arms on knees, talking with them for no little while.

Then she came back and said, in a low voice, "There's a breakthrough we're relatively sure isn't tourists. We think we have them identified there, but we're betting it's a feint, and that they might have created all this incursion area including the tourists to mask a move more to the south. We're trying to get information from several sources, but we have some feeling that either they weren't totally surprised by a landing at Taiben — or a move against the government has been in preparation for far longer than the Hanks matter."

"How serious?"

"Very. They didn't move after the ship sighting. They had a chance then. Tabini was at Taiben. But they likely expected tight security."

"They can't think it's lighter now!"

"The tourist move was very good. When we first sighted the ship, there was nothing at Taiben to draw citizen interest. But a landing — that's attracted the innocent public. That's drawn ordinary folk to lose their good sense about the proprieties. One doesn'tdrop in on the aiji for tea, Bren-ji, one can't think of it."

"Unless there's a spaceship on the aiji's front porch. With death rays and disintegrator beams. Jago-ji, they're out of their minds!"

"This is the public, nai-ji. You've made them confident of human good will. Here they are."

"My God."

"One could wish we had more time to scour the hills to the south. Banichi asks, as an option, if there's a way to delay the landing a few hours."

He looked at his watch, needed the display light in the faint light. "It's too close. I don't know. I could try right now. Not later. — But if we advise them what's going on — Jago-ji, they'll land on Mospheira. They won't proceed against hazard, I very much fear they won't, and that has its own problems."

Jago's lips pressed to a thin line. "We're not prepared to urge a delay yet. It may not be a good idea to delay. The search just has to move faster."

"We're talking about very little time, Jago. Once they go point-of-no-return, they're falling, and they have no choice."

Jago went back and talked to Banichi and Naidiri, who went and talked to Tabini.

Tabini came back to him, again put a hand on his ankle and said quietly, "Bren-ji. A group is coming in, within a very few moments. They're stopping. We're going on to the site immediately. We're going to make a certain amount of radio noise, in hopes they'll think us one of the patrols. I've a squad or two in the hills that's going to clear an area that has nothing to do with the drop, which we hope will attract attention to that area, and we're going on. We've a bulletproof vest. It's a little large. Please wear it."

"No argument, Tabini-ma. None from me. You're aware, I hope, that that capsule drops quite slowly as it nears the ground. It's not armored. It's tough — but I don't think it can take being shot at."

"We are aware. We're going to have air cover, at a respectful distance, of course. We'll be tracking it." A second pat at his leg. "We believe we know where Hanks is. They've been indiscreet with the phone lines. And the aiji has one advantage. I run the phone company."

He got up, he put on the vest Tano held for him and, worse, the helmet Tabini presented him, which had its advantages, he supposed, if someone were shooting at his head, but disadvantages if he didn't pad it with a folded small towel until he could see where he was going.

But other helmets were going on, and vests under jackets that probably had their own protection. It gave him the advantage, he thought, of looking a little less like a human and more like an atevi kid playing army.

He put his gloves on. There was nothing to do with his face, except, as Jago advised him, keep his head down, which sounded like a good idea to him.

"They're coming," Algini said, listening to his headset, over in the comer, and went on listening.

Banichi passed a woman a cassette. "The aiji's voice. Mine. Naidiri's. Dole that out and it's several hours' worth of our presence here."

"Yes," the woman said cheerfully. "Thank you, 'Nichi-ji."

'Nichi-ji? Bren thought with a second glance, but it didn't seem politic to ask. He gathered up his computer from where Banichi had set it when they came in and he held himself ready as the signals passed at the door.

They were going. Himself, Tabini, their respective security forces — the old gambling game, move the cups that held the stone, fast as they could; or pretend to move — meanwhile both sides were doing the same. For the second time in two weeks he was headed for a situation with atevi shooting at each other, he had his pockets weighted with ammunition clips, the bulletproof vest made his shoulder and ribs sore already, and the helmet kept obscuring half his vision — he wasn't a particularly martial specimen, he thought with a lump in his throat; he'd been shot at enough lately he'd decided he really didn't like it, and right now he wanted to strangle Deana Hanks barehanded for a situation she'd precipitated, if not directly caused.

FTL and stockpiles, hell.

It was dodge and turn in the dark through a confusing maze of small service roads, over hills, through meadows and down and across bridgeless streams in wooded areas — trees grew quite successfully wherever there was water and, increasingly so as they entered the wide south range, only where there was water.

They weren't in the lead: two other cars were in front, and Tabini rode with Naidiri in a car two back from them in the six-vehicle column, security clearly taking care to have them protected in the middle, but not together in the middle. The road ripped along a wooded streamside and out across open grassland for a space and back again into trees. They parked twice, each time in such wooded areas, at places where other roads diverged, and waited for what event wasn't clear, for maybe five minutes. Everyone sat in total silence, listening into the dark, the motors cut off, nothing but the night sounds of the range and the mild whisper of a breeze moving through the branches overhead. Tano relayed Banichi's messages to someone on his pocket-com — Banichi didn't talk, neither did Jago: voices that might be too well-known, Bren thought, especially to the neighbors. Tano said something about section eleven and some incursion and taking the number twenty-one. "Easy," the driver said, and motors were starting ahead and behind them. The lead driver backed a little and nosed off onto the divergence, leading the way onto a rougher, less-traveled road. Brush scraped the undercarriage and escaped out the rear, branches already broken by the first and second vehicle scraped along their sides.

Change of plans, Bren thought and, sandwiched between Jago and Tano in the backseat, cradled his elbow to protect his arm from the weight and irritation of the vest.

But taking it off didn't tempt him in the least.

"Are we still going toward the site?" he asked once, as quietly as he could, after Banichi and the driver had exchanged a couple of casual words.

Then a branch hit their windshield and scraped over their heads, so atevi had to duck and the human in the middle suffered a rain of pungent and bruised leaves.

Three violent bounces over roots, a sharp turn, and they made an uphill climb over a ridge in which the view from the backseat was black sky and then the lumpish, weathered granite that told him for the first time they were on the cross-range ridge. He checked his watch, risking knocking into Jago and Tano.

"Hour before dawn," he said with a nervous flutter of his stomach. "They'll be underway, the lander will —" A fierce bounce, then a break out of the woods: the faintly lit detail of branches gave way to total black interspersed with trees, as the driver made furious efforts with the wheel to keep them up to the speed they'd carried.

Going as fast as they possibly could, he thought.

"We're not far from the junction east, then access to the —"

He heard a thump. Jago and Tano folded over him, shoving him down as a shock of air blossomed all around them in a sound, a pressure, a force that heaved up the road, shoved them and the whole car over, spilled them in a heavy tangle of limbs and stickery brush and lastly pelting earth and stone and wood.

He couldn't get his breath for a moment. He braced himself as somebody leaned on him trying to move, then — then the car exploded in a ball of flame, somebody grabbed his vest by the bottom edge and dragged him downhill, shots were going off. He'd lost the helmet, he'd every awareness his most essential job right now was to keep his head down and keep out of the way — he knew Jago and Tano were alive, they'd fallen tangled with him, they'd hauled him back. In a flurry of small-arms fire, he heard car engines whining — in what sounded like fast reverse, cars from behind them getting out the only direction they could; but his ears were ringing from the explosion, and in the glare of fire he couldn't make out anything but the burning vehicle they'd been in, black in the center of the fireball, uphill in front of them. Trees were catching, going up like matches. The whole area was lit in fire.

Then he heard someone shouting, and Banichi — thank God, Banichi — shouting back they couldn't maneuver where they were, don't try to come after them, they'd hold here.

"Stay down!" Banichi yelled, then, and a strong atevi hand shoved him flat as fire spattered chips off the rocks and thumped into the other side of the burning car.

"My computer!" he protested.

"Your head, nadi." Jago kept up the pressure on his back. These was another thump from up the hill, then an explosion that hit beyond them and rained rock and dirt.

Tano said, while his ears were recovering from the shock, "Firetube. I can go up after it."

"No!" Banichi said. "Too damn much light out —"

Another shell hit beyond them, starting a minor landslide. Jago hauled him into a hollow of rocks and Tano joined them, as Banichi fired a rapid series of shots toward the height.

He had his own gun. He pulled it out of his pocket, aware when he rested his weight on the other elbow that he'd strained the shoulder enough to make his eyes water. He wasn't sure what the target was, he wasn't even sure where the attack was coming from, but the blowing smoke was headed down the road and the fire had skipped to brush in that area.

Tano and Jago stretched out in the scant cover they had and began laying down fire at the uphill as well. He tried to find a way to do the same, but he had a rock in his way and tried to get a vantage above it, but Tano jerked him down, none too gently.

"I've extra clips," he said, trying to be useful at something.

Another shell hit. Banichi and another man he thought was the ranger took shelter with them as a tree came down in a welter of branches, right on the front of the car, and caught fire, making a screen of light between them and anything they could possibly aim at.

"Steady firing," Banichi said. "All we can do. We're a roadblock. They're trying to go behind. Keep their heads down. Bren, watch our backs. Hear?"

"Yes," he said, and edged around to do that. Go behind what, he wasn't sure, but he suspected Banichi meant Tabini's group was going behind the hill: they'd backed the cars out of the area, headed in reverse back around the curve of the ridge, the way the car in front of them seemed to have gotten away down the road. He didn't know if there was a plan, if some of them were going to go up and others were going to get Tabini out of there, or if Tabini and his security were going to try the hill; but Banichi and Jago and Tano and the ranger-driver were all firing as if they could see what they were shooting at — and as if they had more ammunition than he thought they had. He had a branch gouging his arm as he'd faced about to the downhill: he took a hitch on one hand to shift to a more long-term position — and saw a movement in the firelit dark downhill.

"Man!" was all that came out of his mouth — he fired, and a blow knocked him back into the rock, his head hit stone, and guns fired on either side of him.

"Bren-ji!" Jago's voice.

"Vest," he managed to say, bruised in the ribs, winded, realizing there'd just been justification for the body armor. He had his gun still in hand; he braced it on his knee, his arm and leg both shaking. "I'm watching! It's all right!"

Guns were going off next to his ears, Banichi and the ranger were still shooting. Tano and Jago turned their attention back toward the hill and he sat there and shook — which tightened the muscles in his ribs, which didn't help him get his breath. Heat was rolling down the slope on gusts of wind, bringing stinging smoke.

At least they weren't landing more of the heavy shells. Their attackers might not have any more. The fire they were sending upslope might be keeping the enemy's heads down.

But they couldn't have that much ammunition left to keep up their own fire, and the attackers on the ridge had sent at least one man below them — surely not just one. His eyes weren't as good as atevi eyes in the dark: he didn't know how they were against the fire-glare, but the pitch of the slope made deep shadows interspersed with firelit branches of trees and rocks, and out beyond, grass, just — grass forever, past this stony hump of a ridge that ran a diagonal across the south range, the one exception in a flat that went on clear to the ocean bluffs —

And that antiquated space capsule was already on its way, committed beyond return: a fast push of a button on his watch and a steadying of his wrist said it wasn't the eternity he'd thought, but it wasn't that much time left, either, and they weren't where they were supposed to be, even if Tabini's people got them clear; they weren't going to make it out of here in any good order; and the question was whether they were goingto make it out, or whether, if Tabini was being his stubborn self up there, they were going to have a government left in another hour to care at all whether there was a paidhi to translate for humans. He felt sick at his stomach, partly the heat, partly the shock of the hit he'd taken, and partly the knowledge this wasn't going to work — —

"Clip, nadi," Jago said with complete calm, and he dug in his pockets with the other hand, gun still braced generally downslope, and reached around to hand her two of the three. "I've got one more, no, two, counting what's in my gun." His voice wasn't entirely reliable. He tried to keep watching where he was supposed to watch.

"Go easy, go easy," Banichi said, and the shots kept coming — Banichi's, Jago's — keeping his ears ringing. "We can't have that damn firetube back in action."

"The grass is catching fire," the ranger said, and Bren threw a glance to the ranger's side: fire hadspread down-slope, not directly below them, but where the burning line of brush had caught down the hill to their left.

It was end of season. The grass was drying. Green-gold in the view from the porch —

All that grass. All that grass, clear to the sea. The capsule coming down in a sea of flame. The heat shield was mostly on the bottom, mostly there — how hot did a grass fire get, when the flames rolled ten meters high and scoured the land black?

Gunfire broke out on the slope above them, a sudden lot of it. He felt a rush of hope and terror, resisting the temptation to turn and look toward what he couldn't hope to see anyway. Gunfire rattled above them, and suddenly a nasal, angry squeal.

Thatdidn't belong at Taiben — he heard a scream cut short, and that godawful squalling snort that, God, anyone hearing a mecheita attack a man would never, ever forget —

Mecheiti were on the ridge. Riders.

He did turn on his hip, striving to try to see through the spreading fire. Leaves on trees just over their heads were catching, a thin flicker of fire, a rain of burning ash, carried on a gust of firestorm wind. Heat was building. The trees near them could go up the way the first had.

"Trees are catching fire!" he said. "We've got to get to the clear — we're going to get caught —"

But the rattle of gunfire that came to them through the roar of the fire had stopped; atevi voices upslope were shouting at each other.

He didn't know what to think. He crouched on his knees with the gun in his good hand and everyone around him equally confused, for the instant. A sapling burst into flame, all the leaves involved at once. He felt a heart-pounding panic, no better excuse. And faintest of all was a thread of a voice from an active pocket-com,

"Hold fire, hold fire, blue, below."

"They've got it," Banichi said. "Stay down!"

"Stay down yourself!" Jago said, the only time Bren had ever seen Jago defy an order. Her arm shot past him to grab Banichi's sleeve. "Your leg, dammit, stay here!"

"The hell," Banichi said, and broke his arm free, but he stayed down.

There was just the roar of the fire, now, no rattle of weapons fire. Nothing seemed to move. There was a reek of gunpowder, of burnt plastic, through the stinging woodsmoke, and Tano edged over, finding cover further away from the fire. They crept over sidelong across the slope, below the edge of the road, while a thin conversation over the pocket-coms continued, directing movement, directing roundup of surrendering rebels.

Then he heard Jago say, "The dowager. Yes, aiji-ma — we're fine. All of us. We're holding fire."

He hoped there hadn't been a carnage up there, that people he cared about were still alive, that there was some means of reaching a peace. He heard names like Dereiso, whom Banichi had named to him as a problem in the region. He heard orders to say they should stay still, and he heard the sound of a small plane overhead, which he didn't like, but Tano said it was theirs.

A motor started up, from around the bend of the ridge, and a second one — in a moment more, cars came down the road, Tabini's end of the convoy coming up behind and around their burning vehicle: ahead, nothing but fire — the downed tree that had buried the front end of their own car in its branches was a burning log, and the wind had carried sparks all over the ridge in that direction.

The third car didn't show, but down from the firelit hill came a ghostly soundless darkness: mecheita and rider. Others followed. Notunder guard. Rangers, Bren thought. He hadn't known there were mecheiti at Taiben. He'd never heard of any. But there they were, fifteen or so riders, coming off the sparsely wooded ridge beyond where the cars were stopped. Riders in metal-studded black, the brief glimpse of one who wasn't — no intimation of threat to the cars or hostility to them: people were out of the cars, Tabini among that body-armored, helmeted group, he hoped.

Banichi stood up, and Tano and Jago did. Bren reached out for a careful grip on a branch, hauled himself up to his feet as he recognized the smallish, plainclothes rider among the others.

Ilisidi.

Cenedi — Ilisidi's bodyguard — and at least fifteen of what she called "her young men," on towering, long-legged shapes with the flash of war-brass about their jaws, short rooting-tusks capped with deadly metal, armed for trouble, the ridden and the unridden — fully ten, eleven more mecheiti shadowing through the brush and rock of the area, catching up with their herd, high-tempered with the fighting and the fire crackling away from already burnt ground.

And definitely Ilisidi, Ilisidi on the redoubtable Babsidi, leaning on Babsidi's withers and surveying their resources as another rider came up — leading —

God, it was —

" Hanks!" he said, and in the same instant recognized the slightly portly ateva leading that rider, an ateva also in plain riding clothes.

Lord Geigi looked straight at him. "Nand' paidhi! One is veryglad to find you in good health."

"Indeed, I — received your messages, lord Geigi. With great appreciation. Hanks?"

"Get me away from these people," Hanks said, in Mosphei'. "Bren, get me loose!"

Hanks' hands were tied. To the pad-rings. "Hanks," he said, "shut up."

"We've the whole damn ridge going up," Tabini said. "We can't get the cars through the fire. We're going to have the whole south range going up if the fire units don't get ahead of it fast. Grandmother's graciously agreed to furnish transportation. Haven't you, 'Sidi-ji?"

"I don't know," she said over the constant quiet give of leather and the clash of harness rings. "Throwing me off the estate. Having your staffthrow me off the estate___"

"Grandmother." Tabini had a rifle in his hands. He rested its butt on his hip and kept the barrel aimed skyward. "One apologizes. One neededthe estate. For business. One knew you'dknow exactly who of the neighbors to go to."

"And your security couldn't figure it out?"

"Not with your persuasive charms involved, no, light of my day. Can we get moving?"

"Lovely morning for a ride. The smell of gunpowder and morning dew."

"Please," Bren said, foreseeing more quarrels, and more delay. "Nandiin. Please. It's descending by now. The fire's spreading —"

An explosive snort from one of the mecheiti, a squalling exchange and a scattering of armed security as a mecheita nosed through an unwilling barrier of its fellows and riders grabbed reins.

He knew when the incomer singled him out — he was sure when a perilously sharp pair of tusks nudged into his protesting hands, but he didn'tshove down On the nose; he let the sensitive lip taste, smell, wander over his gloved fingers —

Nokhada remembered him. Nokhada had reestablished herself, hismecheita. It wasn't love, it was ambition, it was man'chi, it was a fight looking to happen, and a warm gust of mecheita breath and a slightly prehensile lip trying for his ear while he tried to get the single rein off the saddle-rings where it stayed secured, when a mecheita had no rider.

He clipped the rein to the jaw-loop of the bridle, notthe slowest rider to get sorted out. He whacked Nokhada hard and, despite the ache and a breathtaking pain when he hauled, got her to go down, and got himself aboard for the neck-snapping rise back to her feet.

Not the last. Far from the last. Far from the most fuss. He surveyed a burning landscape from a height at which a rider was lord of most everything around him and a threat to the rest, and looked out at a sea of grass below the ridge.

A line of fire was eating away at the edge of that sea. He heard Hanks talking to him, demanding he get her loose.

He said, quietly, to lord Geigi, "Nand' Geigi, would you possibly have an idea where Hanks-paidhi's computer is?"

Geigi patted the case slung from the pad-rings on the left side. "One thought this machine might have some importance."

"Thank you," he said fervently. He saw Algini from his vantage. He'd been searching for him since he'd gotten up, and that was the last of his little household at risk — they were all safe, they'd come through without no more than the smell of smoke.

Ilisidi was vastly pleased with herself. Babsidi was fidgeting about, anxious in the fire, and the last of their party, two of Tabini's security, were still trying to get aboard when Ilisidi set Babsidi at the downward slope, straight out for the threatened grassland.

He looked back, not sure the last two were going to get up at all, but they'd made it, scarcely — drivers were getting back in the cars to pull them out, so far as he could tell, safe from the fires.

But he had the slope in front of him and his hands full — cut off abruptly as Cenedi's mecheita insisted on maintaining second-rank position with Ilisidi's, that being the established order, and Nokhada fought with one thought in her mecheita brain: getting up there and taking a piece out of any mecheita in her way to Babsidi, which he wasn't going to allow, dammit. He thumped her on the shoulder with his foot, held on with a sore arm, and held her back to give precedence to Tabini's beast as they moved out.

It wasn't the way the mecheiti understood the precedence to be, and it necessitated fits of temper, nips, squalls, kicks and threats as they reached a place to spread out.

It wasn't the way Hanks would have had it, either — she yelled after him, until someone must have told her her life was in danger.

Himself, he kept Nokhada back from Ilisidi and Tabini as they rode, Nokhada having ideas of fighting her way up there.

But Cenedi dropped back and rode beside him a moment.

"These were members of an opposition," Cenedi found it incumbent on him to say. "Those that surrendered go home. Tabini's men will see to it. We were aware 'Sidi-ji was under suspicion."

"I knew it wasn't you," he said. "Cenedi-ji, you have far more finesse. You wouldn't have shot up the porcelains."

"The lily," Cenedi said, "the lily that Damiri-daja sent. That was a dire mistake on their part. Not to say we hadn't almost persuaded Tatiseigi." Cenedi's mecheita was starting to fret, wanting to move forward in the column, and Nokhada gave a dangerously close toss of her head, nose much too near the other mecheita's shoulder, but Cenedi was looking back at the moment. "Fire's spreading. Damn, where are those planes?"

"They're sending firefighting equipment?"

"Too much is diverted because of the trouble," Cenedi said. "Which does us no service now. Hope the wind holds to the west."

One devoutly did hope so. Cenedi moved back up with Ilisidi and Tabini, and Bren cast a look back — the stench of smoke was in his nostrils, but that was only what he carried on his clothes. The wind was still in their faces, retarding the fire so far.

But he became aware he could see the leaders — the light had grown that much. The grassland stretched out in front of them, a pale, colorless color, like mist or empty air, through which the foremost mecheiti struck their staying pace. When he looked back, the same no-color was there, too, with the shadows of riders following, but the east was a contrast of dark and a fiery seam across the night that would obscure any dawn behind the ridge.

Banichi overtook him. Jago also did, from the other side, company Nokhada tolerated.

"Algini's all right," was the first thing he thought to tell them. "I saw him."

"We were talking to him, nadi," Banichi said. "Tano was."

He couldn't always tell voices on the pocket-coms. He was relieved, all the same. Hanks had settled down, damned unhappy — his computer was a melted mess, he was sure of it.

Until Jago passed it across to him.

"It took one bullet," Jago said. "I don't know if it works."

It might, at least, be made to. He slung its strap over his head, under his good arm.

He said, "Geigi's got Hanks'. I need it. I'll try just asking."

"One believes the man wants your good will," Banichi said. "A partisan of Geigi's knew where she was. Geigi's security simply walked in last night and took her — having credence with the opposition. And a very good Guild member also on his side."

"Who?" he asked.

"Cenedi," Jago said. "Of course."

"But Ilisidi wasn't responsible." What they said upset his sense of who stood where. "She was on Tabini's side. She is, isn't she?"

"Lords have no man'chi," Jago reminded him — the great 'of course' in any atevi dealing. "The dowager is for her own interests. And fools threatened them. Fools went much too far."

"Fools attacked you," Banichi said, "elevated Hanks, broke Tatiseigi's porcelains and threatened what could be a very advantageous move for Tatiseigi, granted Tabini's desire actually to have an Atigeini in the line. Fools doubted Tatiseigi's commitment and thought, I believe, they might scare him."

"I don't think they did."

"One doesn't think so." Banichi set his knees against the riding-pad and rose up slightly, taking a look behind and skyward.

"Not quite yet," Bren said. "By the time the light is full. Then we can look. These things are very precise."

"I was looking for planes," Banichi said. Then: "The wind's changing. Do you feel it?"

It was. He saw the stillness in the grass around them, which had been bending toward the fire.

"It's not just when the lander comes down," he said, with a rising sense of anxiety. "It's where and when, in the firefront."

"Naidiri's carrying the chart," Banichi said, and put his mecheita to a faster pace, leaving the two of them.

"How fast can it burn?" he asked. He'd seen the grasslands fires on the news. They happened. A front of fire, making its own weather as it went, creating its own wind.

"Not as fast as mecheiti can run," Jago said. "But longer. They try to stop them."

Dumping chemicals from the air.

The planes that hadn't shown up. The cars that had left them had radio. The rangers had to be doing something.

God, they had hikers out. Tourists, out to see the lander parachute down.

The rangers already had their hands full. Picnic parties. Overland trekkers.

The light was growing more and more. The wind was decidedly out of the southeast, now, the grass starting to bend.

The smell of smoke came with it, distinct from that about his clothing. The mecheiti were growing anxious, and the ranks closed up. The seam of fire was very, very evident behind them.

But Disidi, astride Babs, held the lead and kept the pace. No mecheita would pass Babs — pull even, maybe, but not pass.

And the talk up there was…

"You could have said," Tabini was saying. "You could have left a message."

"Pish," Ilisidi said. "Anyone would leave a message. I made no secret where I was going."

"The place I least wanted you, nai-ji. Unfortunate gods, you have a knack for worst places!"

"I could have been aiji, grandson. All it wanted was a little encouragement. And you, damn your impudence, toss me from Taiben in my nightclothes —"

"You could have been dead, grandmother-ji! These are fools! Have you notaste?"

"Well, I certainly was not going to be your stand-in for a target, nadi. I assure you. You sent me Bren-paidhi. Was I not to assume this very handsome gift had meaning?"

"A foot in every damn province!"

"As I should! Who knows when you'll stumble?"

"They regard you no more than they do me. They want the office under their hand. And you'd never do that, grandmother-ji. They'd turn on you as fast as not."

"I'm not so forgiving as you, grandson of mine. Myenemies don't get such chances."

"Oh? And how isTatiseigi?"

"Oh, sitting in Taiben, having breakfast, I imagine — waiting for a civil phone call from a prospective relative."

"I proposed an honorable union in the first place!"

"This is not a man to rush to judgment."

As the wind gusted up their backs. As the light grew in the sky.

"I tell you," Ilisidi said, "this hacking up the land with roads is a pest, and they're never where you want them. I toldyou I was against it. No, follow the precious, nasty roads, won't they, Babs? Scare all the game in the countryside, rattle and clatter, clatter and rattle — game management, do you call it? Look, look there across the land. Thereare herds. I'll warrant you saw none in your clanking about last night."

"Unfortunate gods," Tabini muttered. "Demons and my grandmother. Naidiri! Where are the damned planes? Call again!"

"They say they're loading," Naidiri said.

The herds in question were in general movement, traveling away from the fire, like themselves. Once in recorded history fire had swept clear to the sea, jumped the South Iron River and kept going until all the south range was burned.

The paidhi didn't want to remember that detail.

"Look!" one of the hindmost said. "What's that?"

Pointing up.

Atevi eyes weresharp. He could scarcely see it. He had to bring Nokhada to a stop, and others stopped.

"That's it!" he said. It had a feeling of unreality to him. "That's it! It's coming in!"

Far, far up, and far in the distance and to the south. It wasn'twhere, on the charts, they'd said.

"It loses us time," Banichi said, "southward, in front of the fire."

It was true.

But it was in sight. They could do it. They could make it — please God it came down soft.

CHAPTER 23

There was one stream in kilometers all about, maybe within a day's ride, and the lander found it — landed up to its hatch in water.

Draped all over in blue and red parachute.

And not a sign of life.

"Damn quiet," Tabini said as they rode up on it. "Are they able to open the hatch, Bren-ji?"

"One would think," he said. There was, unremitting, the smell of smoke on the wind. A glance to the side revealed the fires: a long, long line of black darkening the dawn.

They rode up on it, as far as the stream edge. It was pitted and scarred. And quiet. He urged Nokhada with his foot, and Nokhada laid back her ears and didn't want to go until he started to get down — then she moved, waded down into the water.

Atevi weapons came out. All around him.

"Tabini-ma," he said. "Banichi —"

"In case," Tabini said, and Banichi urged his mecheita out, too, into chest-deep, silty water. They reached the side of the lander, mecheiti wading through an entangling billow of parachute.

Not just one chute.

Two.

Banichi leaned down and pounded with his fist on the hatch, the bottom edge of which was underwater.

Something inside thumped back. Twice.

And very slowly the hatch began to loosen its seal.

"Can you hear me?" Bren shouted. He didn't think they could. And where the seal gave, water was surely going in.

A further gap. A flood. And the hatch folded back, dropped to the inside, in a small waterfall of incoming brown water — giving him two sweaty, scared, and very human faces.

Nokhada stuck her nose toward them and he reined her over with a wrench that half-killed his shoulder.

"Hello, there," he said. "Better vacate."

"Don't believe him!" Hanks yelled from the shore.

"That's Hanks," he said. "I'm Bren. This is Banichi." He suddenly realized he was smudged, sooted, and there was smoke on the wind.

The visitors to the world, with water risen over their couches, their stowed gear, and up to their waists, took a fearful look outside — at a dark sky, rolling smoke, and a batch of armed and suspicious riders on brass-tusked mecheiti.

Two mecheiti were still riderless.

"It's perfectly all right," Bren said. "They've got planes coming. They're beginning to put the fire out. They swear to us." He held out his hand, sooty, slightly bloodied, and shaking as it was, and put on his friendliest smile. "Welcome to the world. For the rest, you've got to trust me."

The End