Invader

"Some said they should go down to the planet and establish a base there."

"Some said all resources should go to the station as a permanent human home in orbit, and that they wouldn't divert resources to a landing or to the ship for any new venture."

"Now there were three factions, and the situation demanded compromise."

"The ship sided with the workers who wanted to maintain the station, because they needed the station for a dock and a source of repair and supply; but taking the ship out into deep space, which was their highest priority, demanded an immense amount of the resources the station wanted for itself. The workers who wanted to land on the planet switched sides and voted with the ship's crew, at least one human scholar suspects, in return for secret assurances the spacefarers wouldn't let the station dwellers block their activities."

"The human community became a nest of intrigue as the new sub-associations pulled each in their own directions. The ship sided with the would-be colonists to get the resources it needed —"

"But, because in this three-way standoff, the pro-Landing people couldn't get funding or resources for advanced landing craft, no one believed they could land, especially since the Pilots' Guild refused to fly the designs they had for a landing craft — or — the Landing faction began to suspect, any design they would ever come up with."

"So — that group built landers with old technology that didn't need Guild pilots. In effect, they fell toward the planet and parachuted in, the petal sails of the old account. Mospheira looked to them to have a lot of vacant land, and they thought if there were trouble, it would be easy to live in the north of the island and make agreements with atevi to the south in what they thought was an island government."

Atevi calm cracked in scattered laughter. Certain members clearly thought it was a joke. It wasfunny, if lives on both sides hadn't paid for it; he was relieved: they were following his logic. They were understanding this very critical point of human behavior.

"It actually got worse, nadiin. The Guild thought the Landing would lose credibility, either operationally, due to crashes, or practically, in atevi unwillingness to allow them on the planet."

"But the first down landed safely. The world seemed perfectly hospitable. Even the station workers and the Guild now believed, since atevi hadn't objected, that all the empty land on the planet was unowned land, where they'd bother no one."

"That, nadiin, was the situation when the ship left. That's the last it knows. It knows nothing about the war, it knows nothing about the Treaty, it knows nothing about the abandonment of the station and it knows nothing about the reasons that bar humans and atevi from dealing directly. You are faced, nadiin, in my estimation, with both marginal good will from the ship and an ignorance equaling the ignorance of my direct ancestors in that year, in that day, in that hourof their departure."

"Nadiin, humans in the early days had no idea how they'd disturbed atevi life — they didn't understand they'd transgressed associations when they'd followed a geographical feature they believed was a boundary. They blundered through association lines, they built roads with no remote thought that they were creating a problem, they brought technology to one association with no remote idea they were altering balances, and, baji-naji, there are humans on Mospheira who stillcan't make that leap out of their own mentality and into atevi understanding, just as there are doubtless atevi who dismiss human behavior as complete insanity."

"But we have that ship up there that left a planet with atevi just developing steam engines. Now it looks down on railroads, cities, airports, power plants alike on Mospheira and the mainland, and sees nothing there to tell it what the agreements are that let this happen peacefully."

"I report to my great regret a hitherto harmless minority of officials in my government, a faction who take the demands of cultural separation in the Treaty agreement as a major item of their belief: we call them separatists, but some of them go much further than mere cultural preservation, and believe that humans should exclude atevi from space, which, along with advanced technology, they view as their exclusive heritage. They may see the ship as a chance for them to recapture the past. They may try to urge the ship's crew that I'm a gullible fool and that they're being threatened by atevi, whom they have always apprehended as seeking to destroy human culture."

"The most serious danger is not the ship. It's in offering a reckless minority of my own people on this world the belief that they have alternatives to negotiation with atevi ifthey can mislead the crew of the ship to their own opinions, and particularly if they can get a presence of their own persuasion brought up to the station."

"I've not completely traced the origins of the human separatist movement, or analyzed its membership: in fact, most won't admit to it. But recall that the station had to be abandoned because of failing systems and lack of resources, that the faction which wanted the station maintained is on this planet with us, and I think likely the pro-space movement among humans logically contains those who wish we'd stayed in space. They in particular may be lured into an association with the separatists because the separatists could offer them a return to the station. It involves conjecture on my part, but I fear an association may suddenly be possible involving these two groups with a human return to space as its unifying purpose. I am utterly, morally, opposed to seeing a handful of Mospheirans go back into space with borrowed technology and entering into agreements that convey political power again on the ship crew. The space program this world develops must be jointly human and atevi, and control of the station must be jointly human and atevi."

"I know that some atevi also ask, Why human presence at all? And, yes, ideally no human would ever have come down to this planet; but since humans haveno other planet in all of space around which to center their activity, and since humans are in orbit around this planet, it's reasonable that the ship, representing many factors of higher technology than any this world can manage right now, is up to activities that will inevitably involve this world on which atevi live. For that reason it becomes imperative that atevi secure a vote in human space activities."

"Nadiin, I do notintend to let a minority of humans put themselves forward as the only voice speaking for this planet. I wish to put forward the Treaty as the operative association of humans and atevi."

"I am willing to translate atevi voices to the ship, in order to see to it that whatever the ship wants or whatever the Mospheiran President or Mospheiran factions of whatever nature may do, the ship will not be conducting business in the same ignorance that led to the War of the Landing."

"I do know humans, nadiin, from the inside. I can assure you as I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that the ship crew won't be nearly as naive about Mospheira's humans as they may be about atevi. It's going to be very hard for any Mospheiran faction to persuade the ship that they're without ulterior motives, and very hard for any faction on Mospheira to persuade the ship to any course, not alone because the ship will suspect factionalism, but because the ship itself may have internal factions whose siding with one faction or the other on Mospheira may absolutely paralyze decision and produce new sub-associations with the potential for truly dangerous compromises."

"For that reason I foresee that the human government on Mospheira will respond to evidence of division among atevi with paralytic inaction on the part of the government, frenetic activity on the part of those out of power, and no rational decision will result."

"I therefore recommend, nadiin, that atevi speak with one voice when they speak to humans on the ship and on Mospheira, that your inner divisions and debates remain strictly secret, and that you treat Mospheira and the ship as two separate entities until they themselves can speak with one voice. I recommend you claim, not demand, claim as a factan equal share in the space station… for a mere beginning."

"I recommend that you speak to the ship directly and soon. I am the paidhi the Treaty appointed to deal between Mospheira and the atevi of the Western Association. I ask the Association to appoint me paidhi also to deal with the ship. This triangular arrangement —" one was never without awareness of the all-important numbers "— places the Western Association on equal footing with Mospheira, who has already delegated spokesmen to deal with the ship."

"The ship knows it must understand Mospheira as well as atevi before it can be confident of its actions. The permutations of advantage and disadvantage in this arrangement are complex, and I am convinced that atevi can secure equal advantage for themselves, particularly by securing agreements with both the elected government of Mospheira andwith the ship's authority. Again, a trilateral stability."

"I hope for your favorable consideration of the matters I've brought before you, my lords of the Association, most honorable representatives of the provinces, aiji-ma. Thank you. I stand for questions."

There it goes, he thought, made the requisite formal bow, and suffered a shortness of breath, a sweating of the palms, and a fleeting recollection, of all things, of Barb on the ski run: Barb laughing, all that white, and the whole world stretching on forever — that time, that chance, that life —

Gone — maybe gone for good, with the moves he was making.

And he had, with that disoriented sense of what now? and where now? a consuming fear that he hadn't been entirely dispassionate in his judgment, when he most, God help him, needed to be.

Slowly, in the way of atevi listeners, a murmur of comment had begun, then:

"Nand' paidhi." It was a distinguished member of the tashrid, rising to question, in the custom of the chambers. "Has your President assigned you this action against human interests in some sense of numeric balances?"

An intercultural minefield. Had the human government found inharmonious numbers for the whole situation or did it wish to create them for atevi? And the gentleman of the tashrid damn well knew humans didn't count numbers: he was playing to rural atevi paranoia and he was playing straight to the television.

So could he.

"Lord Aidin, I by no means see Mospheiran and atevi best interests as conflicting. Consider, too, my government returned me, in a crisis and under medical circumstances which clearly justified my staying on Mospheira for weeks — cooperating because Tabini-aiji requested my return. They know that if there weren't a paidhi, or if the aiji should break off relations with the paidhi-successor, as the aiji has done, no communication at all would be possible between atevi and humans. Had Mospheira wished to hold me hostage and cut off communication they might have done so. My return, literally rushing me from surgery to the airport, signals a very strong human desire to maintain communication with the mainland and their firm acknowledgment that the aiji is the ruler of the Western Association."

Lord Aidin sat down, having planted what he'd chosen to plant, all the same, for minds set on number conspiracies, damn him; but he'd gotten his own little drama in front of the cameras, too.

Then, in the evenhanded alternation of questions, a member of the hasdrawad rose, a woman he didn't know, with an abrupt: "Then who, nadi, sent Hanks-paidhi?"

Nadi, to an official speaker on the platform, was not fully respectful, and it roused a rare stir in the chambers — a sharp look from Tabini.

He answered, nonetheless, to an ateva who might have either been offended by Hanks, or leaned to Hanks as a source and now found herself embarrassed in Hanks' lack of authority:

"By the Treaty, nadi, there is only one paidhi. And, nadi, nadiin, Hanks is my successor-designate, doubtless confused by the rapidity of events. She should have received a recall order, but events have moved perhaps faster than ordinary lines of communication. She has as yet received no such orders, and feels it incumbent on her to stay until she does. I've requested of the aiji to allow her presence temporarily. If you have doubt of the delivery of your messages to the paidhi during this transition, please don't hesitate to resend. No slight is intended, nadi."

So, so quietly posed. It was really the most byzantine atevi warning he'd ever managed to deliver, and he was quite satisfied with his performance — injecting into the atevi consciousness at basement level an insight into human decision-making, and not just the hasdrawad and the tashrid, thanks to the television cameras. He had had the option, being only human, of ducking the after-address questions ordinary for an atevi speaker; but he saw those cameras, and daunting as they'd been at the outset, he'd managed, sure in his own mind it was useful for atevi out in the provinces to see the paidhi and get a sense of his face, his reactions, his nature.

"Nand' paidhi." It was a conservative member of the tashrid, rising to speak in turn. "What do youbelieve the ship is doing up there?"

Old, old, lord Madinais, blunt, and very common-man in his approaches. A respected grandfather, he always thought of the man; but that misapprehended the real power Madinais had, through seniority in a network of sub-associations many of which werecommon-man, broad-based and powerful.

"Lord Madinais, I can only conjecture: I think the ship broke down again. I think they've managed to fix it, get it running, and get back to what they hoped would be a thriving human community. It is thriving — but it's certainly complicated their position."

Dissident interests, not far from lord Madinais, had tried to kill Bren last week. But there was nothing personal in it.

"What about the trade rules?" a member of the hasdrawad shouted out. "What about the negotiations?"

"I don't think there'll be any progress in the trade talks until this ship question is settled, quite frankly, nadi. Although —"

Behind the glare of television lights someone else was on his feet, in the hasdrawad, and that wasn't by the rules.

Nerves twitched, hesitated at alarm — Fall down, his information told him; but, Possibly mistaken, his fore-brain was saying.

At that moment a body hit him like a thunderbolt from the casted side and a shot boomed out and echoed and reechoed in the chambers.

He was on his side, with a sore hip, a bump on the side of his head where he'd hit the podium, and a crushing atevi weight half on him — Tano, he was suddenly aware. He was grateful, was stunned and apprehensive: he didn't see Jago. But he didn't see damn much of anything but the base of the podium and Tano's anxious face looking out toward the chambers. He didn't even protest to Tano that he was in pain, Tano's attention being clearly directed outward for hostile movements — but by the buzz of talk and the tenor of voices in the chamber, he could guess there'd been at least one fatality, and that the crisis was done, meaning the fatality was the person who'd threatened the paidhi.

Confirmed, as Tano began to get to one knee.

The recipient of such devoted guardianship knew he should still keep his head down and better his position only with extreme care. But he hurt. Members and security alike were converging on the podium — Tabini himself among them, which surely meant it was safe to get up, and he began to, first with Tano's help, then with Tabini's, and last with Tabini's security holding his arm and being very careful of his bandages and the cast.

"I'm very sorry," he said, embarrassed, not realizing the microphone was on. It boomed out over the hall and provoked laughter. Provoked, more, the solemn, unison clapping of hands that was the atevi notion of formal applause —

They hadn't been sure he was alive. They were pleased that he was. At least — the majority seemed to be.

Clearly there'd been one vote to the contrary.

The network television clip showed Tano's tackle andtake-down, the sight of which sent repeated shocks through his nerves, and a house camera showed the gunman, who'd put a bullet into a thirteenth-century chandelier when Jago had put a bullet through his head. They ran it, ran it back and ran it again and again in slow motion.

Bren, elbow on the counter, put his knuckle in front of his mouth and tried to be objective. He'd seenshots fired before, he'd seen people hit, he'd felt the ground he was standing on jump to far heavier ordnance, and he told himself he ought to take it in an atevi sort of calm, safe as he was in the security station.

He didn't feel that at all.

The chief of Bu-javid security laid a black-and-white photo on the desk, showing him an older man, a man who ought to have had sense.

"The representative from Eighin," the chief said, "Beiguri, house of the Guisi. Any personal cause with this man or the Guisi?"

"No, nadi." His voice came out faint. He sat up, tried to ignore the pain of bruised ribs. "I know him — as politically opposed to the trade cities. He's never shown any — any such behavior. He's never been impolite ..."

Tabini was out in the chambers, vehemently pressing his point. There was talk of a vote on the paidhi's representation to the ship, a debate on an initiative to Mospheira. The police and Bu-javid security were rounding up Beiguri's aides and office staff.

The tape around the ribs was hell. He hoped Tano hadn't popped stitches, bone, or seams. He hurt. Tano kept hovering, worse than Jago, who hadn't used him for a landing zone; and Jago —

Jago was suffering the aftermath, he thought: the awareness how easily she might have missed that snap shot. She quivered with unspent energy and anger, she hugged it in with arms clenched across her chest, and she wanted, Bren was sure, to be out there scouring the representative's office for what the junior security agents were most likely going to lay all too-casual hands on, in Jago's probably accurate estimation.

Jago wasn't senior in her own team. She was probably also worrying about Banichi's opinion. Or Banichi's whereabouts.

Or knewwhere Banichi was. And still worried.

More investigators came into the security station, reporting that the death office had taken the body away. A respectable and sensible man, a father of children, an elected representative of his province, had died trying to take the paidhi's life.

Bren shivered. Tano set hands on his shoulder and argued with the police that the paidhi would be perfectly safe upstairs in his own bed, and should be there.

"The aiji —" the chief of police began.

"We have the aiji's orders," Jago said shortly, taking her eyes from the constant replay. "And we have the responsibility, nand' Marin. It's been a very long day for him, and yesterday was longer. If the paidhi wishes to go upstairs —"

"The paidhi wishes," Bren said. He put himself on his feet as a way to accelerate matters. He wanted his room, he wanted his bed, he wanted quiet.

And he'd seen enough of the television replays.

He'd not have given anything for his chance of enduring police questions and playback after playback of the event, which assumed a surreal slow motion in his mind.

But after deciding one impossible thing after the other was the order of the hour, he had to do it, that was all. The next walk, Jago assured him, was only down to the lift — the press was excluded from this area, under special order — Tabini-aiji would handle the reporters in a news conference to follow his speech, and upstairs to his room and his bed was the direct order of business.

He made the lift, found himself with Jago and Tano alone in the car, and gratefully collapsed back against the wall. Tano was quiet; Jago was still in a glum, angry mood.

"Thank you," he said to her and Tano. He wasn't certain he hadmanaged somehow to express that.

"My job, nadi," Jago muttered, somewhat curtly, if a human could judge. If a human could judge, Jago was distracted in her own glum thoughts, maybe about Banichi's whereabouts, and the fact she'd had to peg a risky shot clear across, God help them, the halls of government. Maybe she'd gotten a reprimand from senior security, he wasn't sure.

It more than shook him. It whited out his logic about the situation. He realized Jago still had his computer, was still carrying it. Jago didn't make mistakes. Jago had had custody of his computer in the instant she was killing a man — and hadn't lost track of it.

More than the paidhi could say, who'd lingered on his feet analyzing why a man had risen out of turn — stood there, like a fool, and put Jago to making that desperate shot.

The lift let them out on the third level, and they walked the hall of porcelain flowers: ordinary homecoming, quite as if he were coming back from a day at the office, he thought in dazed detachment, standing at the door which Jago had to open with her device-disabling key.

The other side, in the pale, gilt foyer, the soul of atevi propriety, Saidin was there to take his coat.

"Just bed, nand' Saidin," he said. "I'm very tired." He deliberately didn't look at the message bowl. He didn't want to look.

"I think," he said, ticking down that mental list of things he'd reserved as priority, absolute must-dos, "I think I have to return the dowager's message tonight. Maybe we'd better talk very soon."

"You need your rest," Jago said severely.

"The dowager's goodwill is critical," he said. "Tomorrow morning would be a very good time. If there are repercussions — I can't let the dowager interpret my silence and my absence, Jago-ji. Am I mistaken? I believe I understand the woman."

Jago thought about it. Still wasn't pleased. Or was worried. "There is a danger, nadi. You know I can't go there."

"I don't think they're ready for open warfare. Therefore I'm safe."

Jago was not happy. Not at all. "I'll convey your message," she said. So Jago found his logic acceptable, atevi-fashion. And he thought he was right.

But the visible universe had shrunk to the immediate area of the foyer, and his sense of balance was uncertain — maybe relief, maybe just exhaustion. He felt quite shaky, quite short of breath in the constricting bandages.

"I'll go to bed, then," he said. "I think I've had a long day."

"Nand' paidhi," Tano said, and accompanied him.

He'd been amazed at his ability just to cross the speakers' platform without falling on his face.

But the bedroom was close, and he had not only Tano but a handful of female staff helping him, snatching up the laundry and murmuring that they were very glad the paidhi was unharmed. They'd seen the television. They were appalled at the goings-on.

He'd not had a review of his performance. "Nadiin," he said to them, "did you hear the things I said? Did they seem reasonable?"

"Nand' paidhi," one said, clearly taken aback, "it's not for us to offer opinion."

"If the paidhi asked."

"It was a very fine speech," one said. " Baji-naji, nand' paidhi. I don't understand such foreign things."

Another: "It was very risky for your ancestors to come down here."

And a third: "But where is this dangerous place, nand' paidhi? And where is the human earth? And where has the ship been?"

"All of these things, I wish I knew, nadi. The paidhi doesn't know. The wisest people on Mospheira don't know."

A servant lifted her hand, encompassing all things overhead. "Can't you find it with telescopes?"

"No. We're far, far, out of sight of where we came from. And there aren't any landmarks up there."

"Would you go there if you could, nand' paidhi?"

He faced a half dozen solemn female faces, dark, tall atevi, some standing, some kneeling, shadows in the light. He was the foreigner. He felt very much the foreigner in these premises.

"I was born on this planet," he said wearily. "I don't think I should be at home there, nadiin."

The faces gave him nothing.

"I regret," he said wearily, "I regret the matter tonight. He was a respectable man, nadiin. I regret — very much — he died. Please," he said, "Nadiin, I'm very tired. I have to go to bed."

There were multiple bows. The servants went away. But one turned back at the door and bowed. "Nand' paidhi," she said, "we hold to your side."

Another lingered and bowed, and in a moment more they were all back in the doorway, all talking at once, how they all wished him well, and how they hoped he would have a good night's sleep.

"Thank you, nadiin," he said, and began to arrange his nest of pillows to prop his arm as they went away into the central hall.

From which, in a moment, he heard a furious whispering about his white skin and his bruises, which he supposed he had more of, and remarking how he'd joked when Tabini had helped him up, and how he had very good composure.

Joked?

He didn't remember he'd done so well as that. He'd been scared as hell. He'd had to have Tano's help to get down the steps. He hadn't been able to walk up the aisle without his knees knocking — knowing — knowing the attempt was not only against him, who could be replaced, but against the entire established order. Atevi knew that. Atevi understood how much that bullet was supposed to destroy —

Hell, he said to himself, exhausted, so exhausted he could melt into the mattress. But, dammit, the mind was threatening to wake up.

He started replaying the speech, the assassination attempt, the police questions, asking himself what they'd suspected and what they'd meant.

He readjusted the lumpy pillows, stuffed more under his arm and fell back in them, asking himself if maybe aspirin would help.

But that gradually became a dimmer thought, and a dimmer one, as the ribs stopped hurting, having found some bracing against the pillows that kept the tape from cutting in. He wasn't sure it was sleep, but the thoughts began to be fewer, and fewer, and he wouldn't move, not while he'd found a place where he actually had no pain.

CHAPTER 7

You couldn't see the orbiting ship in Shejidan. City lights obscured all the dimmer stars — granted a clear sky, which it looked to be, a return of late summer warmth above the city, mountain winds sending a few wisps of dark cloud across a pink-tinged and bruised-looking dawn.

Ilisidi liked fresh air, and ate breakfast on her balcony, here, as at Malguri, and Bren couldn't help but think of Banichi's disapproval of the balcony in lady Damiri's apartment — which, if he looked directly up from the table, he thought must be the balcony above this one.

The venture into hostile territory, as it were, would give a sane man pause, and he'd had more than a twinge of doubt in coming here, but it gave him, too, a strange, fatalistic sense of continuity, things getting back on track, reminding him vividly of Malguri, and now that he was here, the butterflies had gone away and he was glad he'd accepted the invitation. The old ateva sitting across from him was so frail-looking the wind could carry her away — her servants and her security around her; Cenedi, chief of the latter, standing to Ilisidi in the same position Banichi, when he wasn't standing watch over the paidhi, held with Tabini.

Banichi wasn't here. Banichi still hadn't come back; it was Jago who'd delivered him into Cenedi's hands at the door — and Cenedi who'd delivered him to Eisidi's company. Cenedi, who directed every sniper who had a motive to consider the Bu-javid's balconies, and who, if someone transgressed Cenedi's direction, would take it very personally: a Guild assassin, Cenedi was, like Jago, like Banichi. For that reason he felt safe in Cenedi's hands, not at all because Cenedi happened to owe him, personally — which Cenedi did — but precisely because personal debt wouldn't weigh a hair with Cenedi if he were called on — professionally.

So the paidhi sat down with the aiji-dowager, the most immediate arbiter of life and death, possibly in collusion with the man who'd tried to kill him last night, at a table outside on a balcony he was sure was as safe and no safer than his own upstairs. White curtains billowed out of the room beyond them in a dawn wind that lacked the cold edge of Malguri's rain-soaked mornings. The wind carried instead the heavy musk of tropic diossi flowers from somewhere nearby, possibly another balcony.

Potential enemies, they shared tea first.

And small talk.

"Does it hurt much?" the dowager asked.

"Not much, nand' dowager. Not often."

"You seem distracted."

"By thoughts, nand' dowager."

"This fiancee?"

Damnthe woman. There was decidedly a leak somewhere, and there was absolutely nothing chance about Ilisidi's revealing it as an opening gambit: that she did so might be a gesture of goodwill toward the paidhi.

It was definitely a demonstration of her power to reach inside Tabini's intimates' living space.

"Her action is nothing I can complain of, nand' dowager." He took satisfaction in giving not a flicker of emotion to a wicked old campaigner. "She was certainly within her rights."

"No quarrel, then."

"None, nand' dowager. I regard her highly, still. Certainly she would have told me — but business, as you know," (pause for no small irony) "kept me on this side of the strait. That's certainly the heart of her complaints against me."

"The woman's a fool," Ilisidi said. "Such a personable young man."

One couldn't argue opinions with the dowager. And a sparkle of warmth and enjoyment was in Ilisidi's eyes, twice damn her, the smile on thin, creased lips just faintly discernible.

He said graciously, "My mother thinks so, I'm sure, nai-ji. So does Jago. But I fear both are biased."

A servant laid down two plates of food — eggs, and game, in season, to be sure — muffins — the muffins were always safe.

"Human ways and human choices," Ilisidi said. "You have no relationship with this woman they've sent?"

"Deana Hanks."

"This woman, I say."

"I have none such," he said. "Not the remotest interest, I assure the dowager."

"Pity."

"Oh, I don't think so, nand' dowager." He applied cream to a muffin, or tried to. A servant slipped in a little deft help and he abandoned the effort to the servant.

"Such an inconvenience," Ilisidi said.

"Lack of appeal in my professional associate — or the broken arm?"

Ilisidi was amused. A salt-and-pepper brow quirked on an impeccably grave black face. Gold eyes. "The arm, actually. When are you rid of that uncomfortable thing, nadi?"

"I don't know, aiji-ma. They sent me instructions. I confess I haven't read them."

"No interest?"

"No time. I'd quite forgotten to read them." The ice had broken and other topics were permissible. He steered in his own direction. "Your grandson was anxious to have me back."

"My grandson would have traded three lords and an estate to get you back, nand' paidhi. Drive a hard bargain with him."

"The dowager is very kind."

"Oh, let's be practical. We've a damned foreigner ship in our sky, the rural lords are in revolt, someone tried to kill you, the religious see omens in the numbers, and the television tells us absolutely nothing. Fools sit out at night on their rooftops with binoculars, armed with shotguns."

"If you had eyes to see to Mospheira, you'd see the same, aiji-ma. As I said in the joint meeting, opinion as to potential benefits is vastly divided."

Ilisidi's head cocked slightly — she had one better ear, Bren had come to think; and certainly Cenedi lurking at the double doors was taking mental notes on every inflection, every nuance, everything said and not said.

"Nand' paidhi," Ilisidi said, "what you want to say this morning, say to me, straight out. I'm curious."

"It's a request."

"Make it."

"That the dowager use her influence to assure the Association's stability. I know how much that entails. I also know you've weighed the cost more than anyone alive, nand' dowager."

He touched the old woman to the quick. He saw Ilisidi's eyes shadow, saw the darkness of a passing thought, the map of years and choices on her face, the scars of a long, long warfare of atevi conscience.

With two words and the skill of the assassin behind her, this woman could take the Association apart, wreck the peace, topple lords and assure the breakup of everything humans vitally concerned with the peace had to work with.

And she refrained. Atevi lords weren't much on self-denial. They were a great deal on reputation, on being respected. Or feared.

Twice the hasdrawad had passed over Ilisidi's claim to be aiji of the Association that effectively dominated atevi affairs. They'd passed over her as too likely to curtail other lords' ambitions. Too likely to launch unprecedented worries.

Little they'd understood the men they'd installed as (they hoped) more peaceful administrators: first her son and then Tabini aiji in her stead, and oh, how that rankled — her grandson Tabini reputed as the virtuous, the generous, the wise ruler.

Ask 'Sidi-ji to remain a shadow-player to posterity, as well as the past generation?

"I haven't knifed the mayor or salted the wine," Ilisidi muttered. "Tell my grandson I'm watching him, nand' paidhi, for like good behavior." Nothing fazed Ilisidi's appetite. Four eggs had disappeared from her plate. Her knife blade tapped the china, and two more appeared from the quick hand of a servant. "Eggs, nand' paidhi?"

"Thank you, nand' dowager, but I'm still being careful with my stomach."

"Wise." Another tap of the knife blade, this time on the teapot. The empty one was whisked away, another appeared, the cosy removed, the dowager's cup refilled. "Not disturbed about last night."

"I regret the loss of life."

"Fools."

"Most probably."

"Uncertainty breeds such acts. Debate, hell. What elseis there to do but deal with these people? What are they votingon?"

"I'm sure I agree, nand' dowager."

"It's amazing to me, nand' paidhi, at every turn of our affairs, just at our achieving the unity we sought and just at our developing the power for the technology we could have developed for ourselves — lo, here you fall down from the skies and give us, what, television and computer games? And at our secondopportunity to adjust the terms of the association, coincidentally with our efforts toward space — behold, this ship in the heavens, and another moment of crisis. There are damned important atevi issues, nand' paidhi, which have repeatedly been set aside for the sake of unity in the face of human intrusion, issues which have noimport to humans but vast import to atevi. And it's not just because the hasdrawad thinks I'm a bloody-handed tyrant, nand' paidhi, no matter what you may have heard from my, of course, clean-fingered grandson — there are reasons I was passed over for the succession that speak a great deal more to the political climate at the time my son demised and left Tabini and his junior cronies in position to vote us down. So here we are again, nand' paidhi." The knife whacked the plate, commanding attention. "Listen to me. Listento me, paidhi-ji, damn you. You ask forbearance. I ask your full attention."

He'd been paying it. Completely. But he understood her. "All my attention, nand' dowager."

"Remember Malguri. Remember the world as it was. Remember the things that should survive."

"With all my mind, nand' dowager." It was the truth. Malguri wasn't that far away in his mind. He didn't think now it would ever be: the uncompromising cliffs, the fortress, half primitive, half modern, electric wires strung along ancient stones. The wi'itkitiin crying against the wind, gliding down the cliffs.

The towering threat of riders on mecheiti, shadows against the sun.

"Yet one more time," Ilisidi said, "the hasdrawad bids me step aside for progress. I am old, nand' paidhi. My associates are old. How many more years will there be to hear us? How many more years will there be, before everything is television and telephones and satellites, and there's no more room for us?"

"There will be wi'itkitiin, nand' dowager. I swear to you. There will beMalguri. And Taiben. And the other places. I've seen. If a stone-stubborn human like me can be snared by it — how can atevi not?"

For a moment Ilisidi said nothing, her yellow eyes lifeless in thought. Then she nodded slowly as if she'd reached some private decision, and made short work of another egg. "Well," she said then, "well, we do what we can. As we can. And these atevi, these humans sitting on their roofs this dawn, nand' paidhi, what would you say to them?"

It was a question, one without a clear answer. "I'd say they shouldn't panic yet. I'd say no one on this world has an answer, except that wholeheartedly I'll speak as the aiji's translator, nand' dowager, to the humans above and the humans below. And I'll make you personally aware as I can what I'm hearing."

"Oh? Is that Tabini's word on it?"

"I don't know why he didn't stand in the way of my being here."

"Clever man."

Argue with Ilisidi, and you needed only supply the cues. She was amused in spite of herself.

"I willget word to you somehow, nand' dowager. It's a frightening job to be an honest man."

"A dangerous job, among fools."

"But neither you nor Tabini is a fool, nand' dowager. So my life is in your hands."

"You claim no debts, nand' paidhi?"

"I'd be a fool. You're also honest."

"Oh, paidhi-ji. Don't ruin my reputation."

She touched such dangerous and human chords in him.

"The dowager knows exactly what she's doing," he said, "and the world won'tforget her, not if she did nothing more than she's already done. She needs nothing else."

Ilisidi's brows came down in a thunderous scowl. But didn't quite stay that way. "You are reprehensible, nadi. It was a marvelous performance last night, by the way. I don't say brilliant, but the faint was a nice touch."

"I honestly don't remember what I answered the gentleman."

"Damned reckless."

"Not if I went out there to tell the truth — as I did. Too many sides in this, nand' dowager. It's hard enough to track the truth. And if the paidhi once begins to shade the truth at all, the difficulties I can make for myself are absolute hell. Please, nand' dowager, never read anything atevi into my actions. It's very dangerous."

"Wicked, wicked man. You're so very skillful."

"Nand' dowager, in all seriousness, Malguri touches human instincts, so, so deeply."

"What, greed?"

"Respect, nand' dowager. A sense of age, of profound truths. Respect for something hands made, that's stood through storms and wars and time. It persuades us that things we do may last and matter."

"That's the best thing I've ever heard said about humans."

"I assure you it's so, nand' dowager."

"More tea?"

"I've a meeting I shouldn't be late to."

"With my grandson and the Policy Committee?"

"The dowager's intelligence is, as usual, accurate. May I ask a favor?"

"I don't say I'll grant it."

"It's to all our good. Nand' dowager, be frank with me constantly. I value your interests. Give me the benefit of your advice when you see me stray, and I swear I'll always trust the tea at your table."

Ilisidi laughed, a flash of white teeth. "Away with you. Flatterer."

"Aiji-ma." He did have the appointment. Jago had told him. It took effort to get up. He made his awkward bow, and Cenedi showed him toward the door —"Nand' paidhi," Cenedi said, when they reached the front hall, "take care. There are more fools loose."

"Is it a specific threat?"

"I can't name names."

"Forgive me." He didn't know the inner workings of the Guild.

Cenedi shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "My profession allows no debts, nand' paidhi. Understand. Ask Banichi."

"I haven't seen him."

"Not unrelated."

"Guild business?"

"That might be."

"Is he in danger?"

They'd reached the door, and two more of Ilisidi's security were on duty there; men he knew, men he'd hunted with, ridden with.

"Never worry about us," Cenedi said. "I can only say that fools have moved — several are dead fools — and there are voices in our Guild who speak for the paidhi. Contracts have been proposed, and voted down. I've spoken more already than I should. Ask Banichi. Or Jago. They'rewithin your man'chi."

"I'm very grateful for your concern, nand' Cenedi."

"In all matters," Cenedi said, "I take instruction from the aiji-dowager. Understand this. A favor given weighs nothing in my Guild. But if the paidhi were to come to grief in Shejidan notby the dowager's express order, certain of the Guild would sue to take personal contract."

"Nadi, I am vastly moved to think so."

"Do you understand, nand' paidhi, the burden you've placed on 'Sidi-ji?"

"I can't," he said. "I can't possibly, nadi, but I can't refrain from it — because she's essential to the peace. Capable of ruling the Association, I've no doubt. But her place in these events is greater than that. Which you and I both know — and I can't tell her that, nadi. I want to, in so many words. But she'd toss me right out her door. Deservedly — for my impudence."

"'Sidi-ji knows her own measure," Cenedi said. "And her value. She defends herself very well. Come. I'll walk you down to neutral ground, nadi."

"Where," he asked Jago sharply, when Jago picked him up after the committee hearings downstairs, "where, nadi, is Banichi?"

"At the moment?"

"Jago-ji, don't put me off. Cenedi says there's trouble. A matter before the Guild. That I should ask you and Banichi. — Is that where Banichi is?"

"Banichi is involved in Guild business," Jago said, the first that she'd actually admitted.

"About me?"

"It might be."

"Is that reason to worry?"

"It's reason to worry," Jago said.

"So why can't you tell me?"

"Not to worry you, nadi."

"You'll have noticed," he said, "that I amworried. I think I have reason to worry. Is he in danger?"

Jago didn't answer. They'd reached the door, and Jago spoke on the pocket-com to Tano, inside, asking him to open.

Brensaid quietly, standing by Jago's side, "The dowager knew Barb had broken with me."

And, casting that stone into the pool, he gave Jago something of her own to worry about. She did. She cast him a frowning glance.

"How, do you suppose?" he asked as Tano opened the door.

Jago didn't answer. They walked in, and servants wanted to take his coat. "Nadiin," he said to the servants, "I'll just pick up my work. I'm on my way down to my office."

"Nadi," Jago reproved him.

"To my office," he said. He'd never gone against Jago. But he'd never had Jago give him an order not regarding his performance of his job.

"No," Jago said, "nadi. I can't have you do this."

"Where am I supposed to get work done?"

"One has this rather extensive apartment, nand' paidhi, which I might remind the paidhi includes ample rooms and resources."

He was halfway stunned — was dismayed at his situation, Jago making him out an ingrate, or in the wrong, or somehow at odds with reasonable behavior. There was so damned much — so damned much to do: there were papers to write, there were positional statements to prepare…

There were, Cenedi had warned him, serious matters before the Assassins' Guild, in which Jago had warned him Banichi was occupied.

There was a man dead, last night, an otherwise decent man, by all the information he had on the subject; he'd had a long morning, a trying, tedious meeting rehearsing details and eventualities that only meant more letters to write; a towering lot of letters to write and no staff he could rely on for clerical work, the paidhi never having had the need for a staff because very few people had to consult the paidhi — who had been very safe in a minor office in a minor job in the Bu-javid doing very routine things and scanning trade manifests and long-range social concerns, before a human ship decided to pull up at the human station and multiply his mail by a thousandfold and his avenues of contact by the same, with no — no— proportionate increase in his resources. He saw no way over the stack of paper, he'd gotten three new jobs during the meeting with Associational lords who were asking questions all of which he could answer, but not without being sure of the numerical felicities of the situations they described. He was feeling desperate as it was, and all of a sudden he saw his whole job circumscribed by Jago, and Cenedi, and Banichi, and Tano, and assassins and their precautions, and no means to dothe things he needed to do — the mail and the messages alone were stacked up to —

"I am very sorry," Jago said quietly, "and I offer the paidhi all respect, but I cannot permit him in an unsecured area."

He'd done rather well in an unsecured area this morning, he thought. He'd gotten through the breakfast with llisidi with a sense of actual accomplishment, in that he thought he might have made some progress toward reason with the other side of the shadow-government that doubtless inspired his would-be assassins, a power that kept a cohesion of political forces that opposed the aiji scarcely in check — lately in open rebellion, but currently in check. Waiting. Dangerous. But, dammit, he'd drunk the dowager's tea. They got —

— along.

Human interface again. The emotional trap. Cenedi'd sucked him right into it. He didn't thinkatevi knew what they were doing.

But if any did understand, llisidi and Tabini were the likeliest.

"Forgive me," he said to Jago, and patched thatinterface. But he'd crashed on that reflection, plunged right into that hollow spot that existed in the atevi-human relationship, the one that couldn't ever work, and it took a second, it just took a second not to be angry, or hurt, or desperate, or to feel like a prisoner hemmed in at every turn.

"Bren-ji?"

Tano was standing there, too, not knowing how to read what was going on; Jago was embarrassed, he was sure, and Jago would walk over glass to protect him. Jago would even make him angry to protect him. It was daunting to have that kind of duty attached to you. It was hard, when one was frustrated and desperately afraid one couldn't handle the job, to be worth someone like Jago.

"One's been a fool," he said, calm again. "I know I've resources. I apologize profoundly."

"I was perhaps rude," Jago said.

"No. Jago, just — no."

"All the same…"

"Jago — it comes of likingpeople, that's all."

He surely puzzled Tano. He puzzled Jago, too, in a different way, because Jago had met the human notion of likingas an emotion. Banichi had, too, and still protested he wasn't, as the atevi verb had it, a dinner course.

"Still, one feels betrayed," Jago said. "Is that so, Bren-ji?"

"One feelsbetrayed," he said, "and knows it's damned nonsense. Tano, nadi-ji, you've been through the mail. What's the nature of it? Are there things anyone else can possibly handle?"

"I have a summary," Tano said. "Most are officials, most are anxious, a few angry, a few quite confused. One could, if the paidhi wished, find staff to prepare replies, nand' paidhi. Perhaps even in the household there are such resources. I can, too, go to your office and bring back necessary materials."

He'd embarrassed himself thoroughly. His staff was well ahead of the game, trying their best, and he was, he realized, in pain from the tape about his ribs, from long sitting, from long speeches, impossible demands on his mental capacity, and utter exhaustion. "Tano-ji, please do. My seal, a number of message cylinders. I'm very grateful. I need a phone, a television — Jago, is it possible to have a television without offending the harmony of this historic house?"

"One can arrange such things," Jago said, "I've been advised that the paidhi may bring in whatever he needs, only so long as we protect the walls and woodwork."

A courteous, well-lined gilt-and-tapestry prison. One with his favorite people and every convenience. But at Malguri, equally concerned for the historic walls, they'd let him ride, and hunt, and he'd had fear of the staff, but no anxiety about where their reports of him were going, as he did here — every smiling one of the women either analyzing him, watching him, or holding secret communication, he was sure, with Damiri. And one of whom, Ilisidi had let him know this morning, was feeding information to someone who talked to Tabini's rivals and enemies, among whom one had to count Ilisidi and her staff.

He felt, in the aftermath of that realization this morning, somewhat shaky in returning to the apartment. And lost. Jago and Tano, at least, wouldn't betray him. Last of all, they'd betray his…

Trust. Which didn't, dammit, exist for an outsider among atevi. He wasn't in their man'chi, their group, beyond loyalty, all the way over to identity, except as he was Tabini's…

Property.

He felt a crashing, plummeting depression, then: one of those glum moods that came of too much vaulting back and forth between the cultures.

Or too much medication. He couldn't afford any medications with depressive side effects, not doing what he did, and whenever he was on medication he distrusted such mood swings. God, he didn't need this on top of the workload he'd been handed.

"Nadi, go do those things," Jago said to Tano, and Tano agreed and quietly left, while he unfastened the cuff tab that secured his coat sleeve and began to try to get out of his coat, since he wasn't, after all, going anywhere.

He wanted to go sit down and not think and not deal with his well-meaning guards for a moment. But he ought to be making a couple of critical phone calls.

He oughtto go look at his medical records and find out what he was taking, and make absolutely sure it was only antibiotics. He let Jago help him off with his coat, which she did very carefully.

"I'm terribly embarrassed," he said. Sometimes it seemed to be the only way to make cross-species amends. "Forgive me, Jago-ji. I'm tired. My ribs hurt."

She eased his coat sleeve free. Easy to evade her eyes, easy to glance down when she stood so much taller.

But not when she touched his good shoulder and wanted his attention.

"The distress is ours," Jago said. That plural again. The group. The collective to which he was always biologically external.

He'd been inside at Malguri, briefly. Inside, in all senses, the one glimpse he'd ever had of what he couldn't have, couldn't be. That was what Ilisidi and Cenedi had touched.

Barb had fairly well finished the human attachment he had, but he couldn't replace it with Jago or Banichi.

Certainly not much of an emotional life, he had to admit. Clearly Barb had found it pretty thin fare, enough that Paul Saarinson had looked to her like a far better bet. Barb had gotten the signals: youth ending, the rest of her life starting — at twenty-whatever, five? — and no prospect of his coming home, not only soon, but ever — because he valued the job, he valued things he couldn't talk about to her.

He valued relationships he couldn't have, with atevi he couldn't talk to, either, but at least — at least he was where he could do some good, with knowledge that could do some good, and people who at least wanted to listen to him.

He gave a sigh, that was what his emotional storm was worth, now it had found its real and honest grounds: he hadn't any right to Barb's life, he'd gone into the job with his eyes open, and he was tolerably well armored, once he got his sense of perspective adjusted

So he could ask Jago for his computer and for access to the Bu-javid phone system, and sit down at the security station desk, which had the same relation to this foyer as Tabini's small sitting-room, next door. It was a comfortable little nook, with the phone, and, God, stacks and stacks of little unrolled message scrolls, all flattened with the ornate lead weights atevi kept for such troublesome but traditional duty.

Six stacks of message scrolls, sorted, he imagined glumly, into categories of criticality — assassination threats, suicide threats, committee complaints, school project requests; God, he didn't know, but he felt acutely sorry for his outburst in Tano's vicinity. The man was doing his absolute damnedest on a job he wasn't even trained to do, and without staff. He could explain to Jago, who'd at least gotten used to the paidhi's occasional frayed nerves, and to Banichi, who'd likely ask him what he wanted done about the sky falling; but poor Tano just sat and handled things, and the paidhi thanked his efforts by throwing a fit.

He set up his computer on the desk, with Jago's patient help, made the phone connection and let computers talk to each other for a moment until his call and its authorizations had rung through the Bu-javid board, the provincial board, the Mospheiran entry board, the Capitol board, and all the way to the Foreign Office.

Then:

"This is Bren Cameron," he said, and a voice on the other end said:

"Mr. Cameron, the Foreign Secretary is very anxious to talk to you. Please hold."

Another sigh. Damned right me Foreign Secretary was anxious to talk to him.

"Quite," he said, and hardly a breath later, had the Secretary himself.

"Bren. Bren, this is Shawn. Are you all right?"

"Doing well, thank you." He chose to misunderstand Shawn Tyers' concern as health related. "You may know the situation here's been rather dicey, but we're just fine, with one complication. What's going on with Hanks' visa? She's expired, she's still sitting here, violating Treaty law. Our hosts are extremely miffed, and she's used my seal without my permission. Could we have a clarification of her position?"

"Bren, you may know there's some disturbance in the upstairs Department, both about your address to the legislatures last night and the shooting."

"Not surprised. Very high feelings on the mainland, I assure you. Hanks isn't helping."

"How's business otherwise?"

Right past his question. Meaning was Tabini solidly in power. But definitely ignoring his question. "Thriving. In spite of the weather. Listen, Shawn, other matters aside, can you find me an answer about my redundancy here?"

"That's a wait. You're sawing off limbs, Bren."

As clear a warning as the Secretary could give. So Hanks' presence and continued presence in a critical situation went above the paidhi's office, and went above the Foreign Secretary's office. He knew where, right down to the fancy wood door. Durant was the name, Secretary of State Hampton Durant, possibly Erton's office, possibly higher than that.

"Advisedly," he said to Shawn's warning. "But the tree's overcrowded. Somebody has to. Send me what you can."

" What I can," the Secretary said; and Bren said, the all's-well sign-off, "See you."

But he didn't at the moment think so. Ever. He had a slightly sick-at-the-stomach feeling about that conversation, in which the Foreign Office, hisoffice, couldn't give the paidhi in the field any remote assurance it could get Hanks unassigned, even with all the signals he'd flashed about atevi displeasure.

Freely translated, the State Department, in charge of the Foreign Office, doesn't give a damn what atevi think.

He called through to the Bu-javid telegraph, said, "This is Bren Cameron, nadi, from the third floor. Ring Hanks-paidhi, please, wherever she's lodged."

The phone call went out. And rang. Someone picked up.

"Deana?" he asked.

The receiver slammed down. Bang!

He took several deep breaths. Professional behavior. The dignity of the paidhiin. The appearance of human unity.

He signaled the operator. "This is Bren-paidhi again. Ring again."

"Was this incorrect, nand' paidhi?"

"Just ring."

More rings. And rings.

And rings.

"Nand' paidhi, I have no answer."

"Operator, kindly ring until she answers. One long four shorts two longs. Until she picks up andtalks."

"Yes, nadi."

He sat. And sat. And put the constant ringing on speaker, and sat, and called up the text program and wrote the necessary letter to Foreign Secretary Shawn Tyers, that said, in code, " Hanks has met with dissidents against the government and offered them such unauthorized concepts as FTL, the repercussions of which I will have to handle among the devout of lord Geigi's province. She has made unauthorized and unsubstantiated offers of trade, which may have been apprehended as a bribe. Hanks refuses my phone calls. She refuses my order to withdraw. She has revealed classified information, ignored atevi law, and alienated atevi across completely opposite political lines, endangering her life and mine. I do not know how to characterize her actions except in the strongest terms: not only dangerous to the peace, but incompetent even among atevi whom she would probably wish to have on her side. She is in personal danger. She has offended atevi of very high rank and unlimited resources, and shows no disposition to make amends to them or to listen to advice from me. I urge you to seek clearance for her immediate withdrawal from the field."

He didn't send, however. He stored the damning message to file, and sat, and sat, and waited. And waited.

He heard the line pop again, then bang, with a receiver slammed down.

He shook his head, restraining his own temper, unable to understand — remotely to conceive of — the stupidity of the island-bound, island-educated, culturally insular mentality that ran the Department, that ran so well at its lower levels — unable to conceive of the mentality that abandoned concern so far that political ideologues could toss the job he'dtraded his whole human life for into the hands of an arrant, politically motivated, opinionated, and prejudiced fool.

He didn'tbelieve it. He refused to believe the powers actually in charge, sitting above a university that, most of the time, knew what it was doing and what it was advising, were that damnably ignorant of the critically dangerous differences of atevi culture, atevi life, atevi politics.

But the ones with the power over Mospheira itself didn't give a damn. The people they put in charge of the upper echelons of the State Department didn't give an effectual damn. Theyhad their position, theyhad their power, theyhad their access to the President, theycalled it State Department business when they opened an appliance factory on the North Shore, and theywere wined and dined by the company execs, also in their social set, for the petty approvals and the official stamps and the environmental clearances and the power-brokering that shepherded projects through what in atevi terms ought to be the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Commerce.

But, no, among humans it was the business of the State Department, because some human official just after the war had seen the development of Mospheira as an internationally sensitive matter that had to go through somebodywho presumably understood the impact it was going to have on atevi relations and the window it was going to provide for atevi to figure out (atevi being clever) whathumans had and could deliver to reproduce on the mainland. And somebody else had said they should be appointed by the President.

The result was a Department whose highest officers knew a lot more about political patronage than they knew about factory effluents — whose highest officers rarely exercised their power at operational or foreign office levels, but they sat as a political, contribution-courting roadblock to every railroad, every highway, every item of new commerce and every extrapolation of Mospheiran domestic technology. They knew a damn sight less about atevi policy: they shunted incomprehensible intellectual problems like atevi affairs and atevi grants of technology and atevi cultural and environmental impact studies off to the university Foreign Service Study Program and that far-down-the-hall office of the lowly Foreign Secretary, who didn't contribute to their party's campaign and therefore didn't have to be bothered except occasionally.

Which meant neither the paidhi in the field nor the Foreign Secretary had the easy, routine access to the President that the Secretary of State had.

A Secretary of State with his technocrat cronies who hadn't waked up from fairyland since Tabini came to power, except for his cocktail parties, his influence-trading, his shepherding of special bills through the legislature and his social schedule and his attendance at the soccer nationals and — oh, yes, oh, God, yes — the opening of the Space Research Center, where the Heritage Redevelopment Society, also with an officership populated mostly by wealthy conservatives, consumed enough alcohol to power an airliner into orbit and lamented humanity's losses in the historic war. The HRS annually commemorated the departure of the ship, listened to engineers talk about revitalizing the space station and consistently refused to put speakers from International Studies on the program, even when they wrote papers that directly impacted proposals that the HRS was going to come out with in the next session of the legislature. He'd personally tried, this last spring, being invited by a handful of the Foreign Office and some junior members of the HRS who wanted to get someone of stature to make their point in favor of the trade cities project: the higher echelons of the HRS had politely lost his application and failed to review his paper, which meant he could come and attend, if he could get the time, if he wanted to pay the conference fee, but he wasn't on the agenda.

Deana Hanks had gone to the conference as a guest speaker. Deana Hanks had sat in the meetings and, on personal request of the conference chair who said the conference wanted to acknowledge the paidhi's office, made a polite little speech about human advancement to space and human retention of human cultural heritage.

God, he wanted to kill somebody. Filing Intent on Deana Hanks definitely came to mind. On this side of the strait, total fools didn't last long.

He sat a little longer, then rang the Bu-javid operator again. "This is Bren Cameron. Are we still ringing Hanks-paidhi?"

"One will, Bren-paidhi. Yes."

"Thank you."

He punched in the speaker and heard the repeated ring.

A second time the phone was picked up and slammed down.

"Operator?"

"Nand' paidhi?"

"Do this constantly until I advise you I've had a satisfactory answer. Pass the instruction to the next shift when it comes on. I will have an answer eventually."

"I am so very regretful of the difficulty, nand' paidhi."

"Please account it to human sense of humor, nadi, and thank you so much."

CHAPTER 8

He composed his further messages and answers in the sitting room, while Tano, armed with the paidhi's own message cylinders and seal, answered the simple and the routine.

He expressed the wish for a simple, in-house lunch, and settled down to Tano's summation of the clerical situation: three of Damiri's staff were perfectly competent — more competent, serving in a noble house — at etiquette to answer routine inquiries, with Tano to handle the substance and himself to catch the odd or difficult ones.

A telegram, from a primer-school class in Jackson City, requesting the paidhi to assure them that there wouldn't be a war. No, he said. Atevi are quite as anxious as humans to keep the peace.

Too damn much television.

He asked the staff to scour up a tape of the news coverage. He made a note to send Ilisidi the translation transcripts.

He wrote a note to Tabini that said, Aiji-ma, I am doing well today. Thank you for your kind intervention last night. I hope for your success in all undertakings.

Meaning grandmother hadn't served up the wrong tea, Tano hadn't broken his ribs last night, and he was waiting, hoping for information.

Hanks, meanwhile, hadn't cracked. Wasn't home, contrary to security's expectations. Or had flung herself on security wires rather than listen to the ringing.

He sent his brief message to Tabini; and the one damning Hanks to diplomatic hell to the Foreign Office.

He had his sandwich: the Bu-javid was always kabiu, strictly proper, and the game allowable in the season was by no means his favorite: that left fish and eggs, the allowable alternatives, as his diet until the midpoint of this month, which was, thankfully, almost on them.

The Bu-javid, relatively modern among atevi antiquities, but shared by various atevi philosophical schools, was more meticulously kabiuthan Malguri, in fact, where wise chefs put by a cooked roast or two of this and that. Atevi never shot game out of season, one never trafficked in — unthinkable — domestic meat and never sold meat out of season, but Malguri cannily managed to have leftovers enough to stretch through the less palatable months. A civilized solution, in his reckoning and, one suspected, the original custom of which the strict kabiuof the Bu-javid was the rigid, entrenched rule, probably more to do with early lack of refrigeration than any ceremonial reason — but the paidhi wasn't about to suggest such a solution to the very kabiuAtigeini chef. The paidhi had enough controversy on his hands, thank you, and such a suggestion might set him on the side of some provincial philosophical sect bloodily opposed to some other one critical to the union the Bu-javid represented.

He took to the afternoon reports, wondering now where Jago had gone. She'd just not turned up in the to-do with the office. Add that to Banichi, who wasn't here.

Tano, meanwhile, God help him — coped.

Someone arrived at the door; he hoped it was Jago or Banichi, if only to have the important parts of his household in one place and within his understanding.

But a trip to the door proved it to be another batch of messages — one from the installation at Mogari-nai, which received the transmissions from the ship, which he was anxious to get. That transmissions existed showed, for one thing, that the ship was talking again, and offered a possibility that something might have budged. So he took the tape from Tano, walked back to the study where he had the recorders set up, put it in and set it to play.

The usual chatter of machines talking to machines.

And past that exchange of machine protocols, more chatter, involving, this time, the transmission of documents or images — he wasn't sure, but it was digital, and he was sure the atevi machinery could spit it out, the same as atevi documents ended up intercepted by Mospheira, where there was a listening station: spying on each other was a full-time, well-funded operation, an absolute guarantee of employment for the practitioners.

Tano came in bearing a stack of paper: more correspondence, he thought. But Tano said, quietly:

"I think this must go with the tape, nadi Bren."

It certainly did. He saw that when he opened it, and no wonder the machine-to-machine talk went on and on: Mospheira had elected to go to written transmission, and the transcript…

It was a nonphonetic Mosphei' transcript. On this side of the strait.

It was — he had no trouble recognizing the text — the first chapters of The History of Contact, by Meighan Durna, a work that laid out every action, every mistake of the Landing and the war.

It released a devil of a lot of intimate knowledge about Mospheira and atevi in the process, which he had rather not have had happen on Duma's occasionally incomplete understanding of atevi motivation — but he didn't totally disagree with the decision to transmit the book. It was certainly a way to bring the Phoenixcrew up to speed, or at least as far as most of Mospheira itself knew the truth: every school on Mospheira studied it as foundational to understanding where Mospheirans were and who they were, all three hundred and more pages. He jotted down a background note to the ship, for transmission at the first opportunity: TheHistory, while expressing the origin of the Mospheiran mindset, could not accurately account for atevi behavior and should never be used to predict or explain atevi motivation...

He wanted to get on with the tape. At home, he could have used voice-search. The atevi machine didn't have that luxury. He fast-forwarded and listened to the pitch.

There wasindeed a voice section.

He sat and listened, then turned on his second recorder, the one with a blank tape, and used the directional mike to make a running commentary and quasi-translation for Tabini.

"Mostly operational protocols, discussion of the gap in relays. Schedules of contact."

Then it was something else. Then it was a ship captain asking to speak to the President of Mospheira.

Almost immediately the sign of a break, and probably an interval in which they patched the communications link together.

The President came on.

The captain said, after preliminary well-wishes, " We're very impressed, Mr. President, with the extensive development, on both sides of the water. Peace and prosperity. You're to be congratulated."

" Thank you, Captain," came the answer. The President quite comfortably taking credit for all of it. Leave it to him.

" The condition of the station is such," the captain continued, " that we can with effort bring it up to operational. We'd like to offer you a cooperative agreement. As I understand— you trade with the atevi, technology, raw materials, anything you want."

"There are limits, Captain. Nothing that destabilizes the society or the environment."

Good, Bren thought. The man at least said that.

Then:

" You're preparing," the ship captain said, " a return to space. You are making efforts in that direction."

" Yes. Considerable effort. The circumstances that forced our landing—"

" Yes. I'm aware. On the other hand— we can provide a far shorter route to orbit. We'll provide the design. You provide the manufacturing, build the ground-to-orbit craft and we can put this station back into full-scale operation. . . "

Bren took deep breaths to calm his heart. With what resources? He shaped the words with his lips, willing the answer, hoping it wasn't a package dropped in from space, free of effort.

"We can make secure habitat for five hundred workers to start with; ten thousand in three years, then— then there's no practical limit, Mr. President."

That's labor crews, Mr. President, do you hear it?

" You should know, you're not unique in space. We'vegot another station, near to this star, small operation, but we're growing. This is prosperity, Mr. President. This is the human future we came for."

There was a lump of ice in Bren's chest.

" You're saying," the President answered slowly, " that you've already built another station. Out there. Somewhere."

" A mining and repair operation, self-sustaining food supply. Humanity is inbusiness in this district of space, Mr. President. We're asking you to rejoin the universe. We don't dispute whatever arrangements you've made down there. It clearly works. All we're interested in is the station. "

How nice. How magnanimous. How concernedfor everyone's rights.

" We can restore what we had. We canbuild, Mr. President. All you've got to do is get up here: a share of the station, exactly what the original mission charter calls for, to all the builders and their descendants."

" I have to consult," the President said. " I have to consult with the council and the Departments."

Depend on it. God, the man couldn't executive-order a fire drill.

"That's fine, Mr. President. I'll be here."

So what are you going to do now, Mr. President? Consult about what?

Strangers to our whole way of life are on the station. They're sitting up there in possession of it, and now they want manpower, Mr. President. They want what they wanted from us two hundred years ago, and you don't even know for a fact there's another station, the way they claim. We've got their word for it, don't we, the way we've got their word for everything else in space.

The way we had their word for it they'd let the station-builders and the miners run the station once they finished it, and you know how much say we had over what they did with the ship, and how much say we had over policy on the station. They double-crossed the station-keepers to get fuel for their ship, and now they're mad that the station-keepers couldn't keep the station going?

The good ones in the crew, the heroes — they'd volunteered to go out into the radiation hell of the star we came to after the accident, to get us to a kinder sun. The brightest and the best, they died way young, back when Taylor was captain.

The heroes weren't in charge when the scum that let them do the dying made all the later decisions.

The real heroes in the crew died and left the self-saving sons-of-bitches to run the thing they died for, Mr. President: don't believe these people. What they're dealing for is not just a ticket to fly. The idealists, the dreamers, the engineers and the nose-in-a-data-table scientists, are all in the same basket with thisgeneration of sons-of-bitches who want off the planet, the ones who want their political party up where they control real power — power not to deal with atevi except down the barrel of a gun, a laser, whatever state of the art they've got up there. After that, nobody but them gets up there —

They're still fighting the damn war, Mr. President, but they don't let me on conference programs to call it what it is — they're still nursing a hatred of atevi that has nothing to do with the facts either present or past. They're the ones who write the letters about plots in atevi advances. They don't see anything but war. They think God made them perfect, in His image, and atevi…

Atevi can't love, they have no feelings, the separatists told those willing to listen — they couldn't expound it on television: the censors bleeped them off as inciting to break the peace; but they said it in places where people gathered who wanted to listen — not many people, because Mospheirans weren't political, weren't discontent, didn't give a damn so long as water came from the tap and they could observe their annual cycles of vacation at the shore-sides, winter break for the mountains, total employment, pensioned retirement — the bowling societies, the touring societies, the dance societies, the low and the fashionable nightclubs, and the concern, if they worried about anything, over the weather, their health, their social standing, their vacation schedules, their kids' schools, and their various annual community festivals. Thatwas the public the activists of whatever stripe had to deal with, a public that didn't grow exercised over any situation until it inconvenienced their plans: that was the Mospheiran political reality, in a system without real poverty, real threat, real anxiety, a system where stress was a rainy spell during your harvest celebration. Nobody got involved in politics except the few with an agenda, and lacking sources for funds and door-to-door campaigners, politics became a land of long-term benevolent chair-warmers and occasional agenda-pushers.

You only hoped to get the chair-warmers in office. And the pro-spacers, who were generally idealistic sorts — except this small, this hitherto mostly laughable nest of people who believed atevi were secretly building rockets to hurl at Mospheira — had been a private lunacy, not practiced in public, so the Secretary of State was secretly scared of atevi. It wasn't critical to the operation of the Foreign Office, which was Treaty-mandated, therefore set in concrete, and university-advised, therefore too esoteric to matter to the purveyors of corporate largesse that fed the successive Secretaries of State.

Until now.

There was public ignorance out there — fertile ground for fears.

There were people who'd never bothered to educate themselves about atevi because it wasn't their job to deal with atevi. The public just knew there was a different and far more violent world beyond their shores; the conservative party, which made a career out of viewing-with-alarm and deprecating esoteric scientific advances as costing too much money — those whose whole political bent was to conserve what was or yearn for what they thought had been, feared progress toward any future that didn't fit their imaginary past.

And they played to an undereducated populace with their demands for stronger defense, more secrecy, more money for a launch vehicle to get humans off the planet — which, of course, they could get by spending less for atevi language studies, and nothing at all for trade cities, as giving too much to atevi.

Lately the conservatives had tried to get three perhaps ill-advised university graduate students' grant revoked for teaching atevi philosophy as a cultural immersion experience for human eight-year-olds.

And in the ensuing flap, the more radical conservatives had tried to get all atevi studies professors thrown off the State Department's university advisory committee. Everyone had thought that an extreme reaction. Then. Before the ship.

The list of attempts to nibble away at the edges of intercultural accommodation went on and on, and it all added up in the paidhi's not apolitical mind to a movement that wasn't in any sense a party, wasn't in any sense grassroots, an agenda that only a minute fraction of the population agreed with in total.

But the closer atevi and human cultures drew to each other, the more the radicals, turning up in high places, generated issue after issue after issue — because the majority of humans, while not hating atevi, still had just a little nervousness about their neighbors across the strait, who did shoot each other, who looked strikingly different, who were ruled by a different government, who couldn't speak Mosphei; and people, be they human, be they atevi, always wanted to feel safer than they did, and more in charge of their future than they were.

The fact was, living on an island and hearing for nearly two hundred years of their government turning more and more sophisticated technology over to atevi — and lately knowing that the highest tech humans owned was on the negotiating table, and that within their children's lifetimes, the remaining technogap was going to close — could one wonder that humans who hadn't made atevi studies part of their education were becoming more than a little anxious?

On the atevi side of the strait, an atevi who sincerely believed there were secret human spaceships lurking on the great moon was very likely to be outspoken, to be known throughout the structure of his man 'chias holding those opinions, and notbe appointed to office.

But on Mosphiera nobody had ever asked, when a candidate stood for public office, or stood for appointment, whether that candidate was a separatist. A State Department appointee could believe that atevi were stealing human children to make sausages, for God's sake, and none of that belief could turn up in the legislative review of fitness for office, because it wasn't a belief polite people expressed in public.

From totally insignificant, in the one hourof that ship's arrival, the separatists had come within reach of the kind of power that could keep them, they were sure, safe.

Because up there any human could deal with the Pilots' Guild for political power, for management authority over the station, while hiring the pro-spacers and their own malcontents to go risk their rears doing the real work.

The Pilots' Guild didn't know the situation on the planet, even if it had the best intentions in the world: it had to trust what it was told, and by all the history he knew the Pilots' Guild didn't care that damn much what they dealt with so long as it agreed with their agenda. The number of times the Guild had switched sides back in the debate over the Landing — even double-crossing the station management, then to patch things with the station, double-crossing the Landing faction — damned well ensuredthat the station population would be so bitterly divided and angry at each other that negotiation became impossible: thatwas the state of affairs he'd learned from his professors' unpublished notes. The station's demise had been virtually certain once the ship left, because station management was, in the view of the workers, compromised, untrustable, and lying through their teeth.

Screwed over, screwed up, and now the great holy Ship was back, offering paradise in space and the sun, the moon and the stars to anybody who'd come up there, risk their necks in the service of the all-important ship.

The same damned business all over again.

The same damned lot that had — perhaps not shoved Gaylord Hanks' daughter over here —

But certainly bestirred itself to keep her here. Maybe — they were not even aware as yet the degree of trouble she was stirring up, but just pushing their candidate in place, and pushing. A blow-up in atevi relations might be exactlywhat would put a finish to Bren Cameron's liberal dealings, could render the atevi interface unworkable and, in the minds of the opposition, put everything in theirhands at a time when there was power to be had.

It was too stupid to be a reason. It was too far removed from sanity.

But his political sense kept up a persistent itch that said: A, Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering; B, Crisis always drew insects; and, C, Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it.

He found himself, with this voice-tape, sitting in possession of information that led him places he didn't at all want to go — conclusions that on one level were suspect, though informed: a set of conclusions that — even if they didn't fit present reality — still described its behavior — and the Hanks situation — with disturbingly predictive accuracy.

If he went down, humanity was in for a long, long siege of trouble — and might not win the ensuing civil wars, the breakdown of atevi peaceful tech and the acceleration of weapons development: witness planes in Malguri dropping homemade bombs, when Mospheira had made every design attempt to keep atevi aircraft stall rates where it would discourage that development. Humans neverreckoned on atevi ingenuity, and even the best of the academics kept relying on human history to predict what atevi would logically come up with next.

But atevi ability to solve math problems, applied to design, meant everything you gave atevi mutated before sundown.

And some humans thought you could double-cross atevi, outnumbered in theirsolar system, and keep them planetbound and out of the political question?

That, or there were people with notions of dealing with atevi that the paidhi didn't even want to contemplate.

Departmental policy said: Don't discuss human politics. Don't discuss internal and unresolved debates.

It wasn't the paidhi's business to steer atevi policy to oppose a Mospheiran choice. He didn't have that level of information. He wasn't appointed by any election or process to do that.

But he was elected — and appointed — and trained — and briefed on an executive level on this side of the strait. He didknow atevi on levels that nobody else, even on the university advisory committee, could inform the State Department.

He sat for a while, while the tape ran down to its end, and there was no more information, there were no more bombs, but the one was enough.

It wasn't that the President had chosento accept the offer — it was that the political process of decision had been set into motion, and the process was going to be dirty, full of fast-moving politics a slow-moving government wasn't going to stay on top of. Thanks to that apparently generous offer, very dirty, very destructive elements were going to push an agenda that could, if somebody didn't take fast action, crack Mospheira's insular, safe little world apart.

Meaning issues that didn't have a damned thing to do with reality. Mospheira didn't understand atevi. Mospheira had never needed or wanted to understand atevi. Just the paidhi did. That was why they appointed him. That was what they paid him to do. So they didn't have to.

And he had to talk to Tabini. Before the legislatures formulated policy. Before they took a public position.

He cut off the first recorder and went in search of Saidin, his coat, and Tano.

It was already a trying day: an unscheduled but urgent luncheon briefing in Tabini's own residence that postponed a scheduled agricultural council meeting downstairs in the Blue Hall and probably started a flood of rumors.

And trying through that stressful affair to convey — to a man who could with a word start an interspecies war — some sense of the dynamics at work in the Mospheiran population: the small percentage of the opposition involved, the substantial danger to atevi interests and claims on the space station of letting relations deteriorate, and the need to hold firm and resolved in the face of hysterical or bribe-bearing voices on either side of the strait who could only want to aggravate the tensions.

That meant coming up with an atevi negotiating position that took into account the things humans were going to need: the paidhi could count off on both hands, at least if not more knowledgeably than the President of Mospheira, critical raw materials and some finished goods needful to the space effort that humans didn't have available on the island — and the paidhi knew what humans either on Mospheira or on the ship would be able and willing to trade — namely money, designs, and full atevi participation in space, once human prejudice and patronage had had its say and sober realization set in — in order for the ship to get what they had to have: workers in numbers going up to that station.

Meaning atevi had to be willing to shut down trade and go to unified bargaining with Mospheira or with the ship, depending on which party proved reasonable.

"That doesn't allow Hanks-paidhi to deal with lord Geigi for oil," Tabini instantly pointed out. "Does it?"

"The antithesis, I assure you, of what we want, aiji-ma. Noprovince should make independent deals for anything. Everything in this emergency should go through Shejidan, just as Shejidan approves roads, rail, bridges and dams — trade should go through Shejidan, for the good of all the individual provinces so there isn't, for one thing, undercutting of prices and selling of goods for less than their fair value. Pool all trade, all shipping: establish market value, pay the suppliers, the workers, the shippers on that standard, no exceptions, no profit for the central government, but no getting past it, either. The provincials have to understand they can lose money; and they have to understand the hazard of speaking with more than one voice when they deal with humans, exactly as I said in my speech, aiji-ma. Humans may quarrel among themselves: atevi can't afford to. This is where atevi make up the technological disadvantage: atevi know what they want, they've already voted their consensus, and they can vote, hold fast as a bloc, and be ready to deal while the President of Mospheira is still consulting with committees. Be fast enough and the ship folk may well choose to deal with you rather than Mospheira. At least you can scare Mospheira enough to get a better deal than they'd have given otherwise — and they're still your more natural ally, having dealt with you for two hundred years."

"Interesting," Tabini said. Tabini clearly likedthat notion. The provincial lords wouldn't like it half as well, count on it. The lords of the provinces — and call a province a convenience of the map that only marginally described the real complexity of the arrangement — were always pulling in various directions for their own profit and for their own power if they could manage it.

"The provincial lords," Bren said, "have to find specific advantage for themselves."

"Believe me that I can find such advantages, in ways they will understand."

Meaning — the paidhi hoped — that the aiji would use bribes, fair, historically negotiated division of revenue, and not bullets.

The paidhi was about to pursue that point — when lady Damiri happened in, sat down at the table, set her chin in her hand, and declared that she couldn't help but overhear.

"Daja-ma," Bren said in confusion.

"Perhaps you'll persuade just thisprovincial, nand' paidhi, of the means with which the Atigeini should deal with Mospheira."

"I — can only urge my host that the Atigeini are in the same position as every powerful house in the Association — that if atevi don't deal as a unit, atevi will be at the mercy of the weakest and most desperate lords who willdeal with humans when the aiji would urge —"

"When the aiji would urge," Tabini said, "that the provincial lords not sell to the humans, except at a price we agree, and under conditions we agree — with conditions which above all guarantee us access to the space station."

"What will we do with it?" Damiri asked — notthe feckless question it might seem. "How do we come and go to this possession without this marketplace haggling over transport?"

"Atevi are ready," Bren said, and broke a chain of departmental rules, "for a major leap forward. Atevi are capable of safeguarding their own environment, their own government, and their own future. Atevi will secure access to materials and processes that go far beyond the designs we've already released. Atevi willhave state-of-the-art earth-to-orbit craft, right along with Mospheira, and the paidhi hopes that atevi do better with advanced power systems than drop bombs on each others' heads, nadiin-nai."

"Does your President say so?"

"Aiji-ma, I say so. You have the Mospheiran President hanging on a frayed rope: there's no way for Mospheira to get critical materials without dealing with atevi. The ship could mine the moon, if it had workers to get the materials to build the robots to get the materials, but that's not practical. It needs supply and it needs workers. There's no way that Mospheirans can come and go at will on their own craft and the paidhi allow atevi to remain only passengers. But — a big but, nadiin — we mustrely on computers. We mustfile flight plans. There mustbe air traffic control up there. Or whatever one calls it. There will be changes, in short, in atevi thinking, in atevi concepts. The paidhi can't prevent that."

Tabini was amused. The experienced eye saw it in the minute lift of a brow. An actual smile chased it.

"Weinathi Bridge in the heavens?"

A notorious air crash — which had persuaded even most provincial lords that precedence in the air couldn't rely on rank and that filing flight plans and standing by them no matter what was a very good idea. Especially in urban areas around major airports.

"We have only one station," Bren said. "Humans and atevi must live there. Beyond trade cities — the station is very close living, very close cooperation."

"This place that killed so many humans. That humans couldn't continue to occupy. Should atevi die for it?"

"The station itself is suitable for living. And can be made far safer than it is. This is a possible place, daja-ma. This is a place where atevi and humans can find things in common, and work in peace."

"A place with no air. No earth under one's feet."

"Just like in an airplane, daja-ma, one seals the doors and pumps air in."

"From where?"

"In this case — I suppose we bring it in tanks from the planet. Or plants can create it. Engineers know these things. The paidhi is an interpreter. If you wish to see plans, daja-ma, I can say they'll no longer be restricted."

"And the working of this ship?"

Not a simple curiosity, he thought, and was on guard. "Not the actual numbers and dimensions and techniques, daja-ma. I know liquid and solid-fuel rockets very well. But what powers this ship, what kind of technology we may have to create down here to bring us up to date with that ship — I don't know."

"Can you find out such things?" Tabini asked. "Can you get them from the ship?"

"I can tell you that I'll try. That eventually — yes, we'll find a way."

"Find a way," Damiri said.

"Daja-ma, in all my lifetime I've always been able to look around me on Mospheira and see the next technological step. For the first time — Mospheirans and atevi will be making whatever next step there is together, into a future we both don't know. I can't promise. I don't know. But atevi will have their chance. That's what I can work toward."

"There is no word," Tabini said, a question, "what this ship wants — beyond maintenance for the station:"

"On a mere guess," Bren said, "the ship's crew is far more interested in the ship and in space than it is in any planet. What they do out there, where they go, what their lives are like — I suppose is very reasonable to them. I suppose it's enough — to them — to have the ship working."

Damiri asked, "Can the ship up there takewhat it wants?"

"I think," Bren said, "daja-ma, that it might possibly, as far as having the power; but what it. wants just isn't so simple as to rob all banks on the planet and go its way. I can't foresee all that it might want, but I can't imagine it taking raw materials and manufacturing things itself. It never did, that I know."

"So what will it want, nadi?"

His hostess neveraccorded him the courtesy of his tide. There was always the imperious edge to the voice; and he glanced at Tabini, ever so briefly, receiving nothing but a straightforward, interested attention.

"Bren-ji," Tabini said, with a casual wave of his fingers. Tabini wasn't unaware. Be patient, that seemed to mean, and he answered the question.

"I think it wants the station to fuel it and repair it if it needs repair."

"Why?"

"So, perhaps, it can leave us for another two hundred years. In the meanwhile — we have the access to the station."

"This is quite mad," Damiri said.

"Bren-ji," Tabini reproved his unadorned answer.

"Daja-ma, the ship puzzles all humans. I can say it would be very much simpler for it to have Mospheirans work for it and not have to deal with atevi. But that would allow Mospheira power that would unbalance everything the Treaty balanced. I completely oppose any such solution. Even if atevi had rather not deal with them — I don't think it wise to take that decision."

"The paidhi ishuman."

"Yes, daja-ma. But most Mospheirans don't want to have their affairs run from space. I can't speak for every official in office, but among ordinary people, and many in office as well, atevi have natural allies. Mospheirans stand to lose their authority over their own lives if certain other Mospheirans, very much like rebel provinces, have their way. To answer your very excellent question, nai-ma — I don't think the ship intends violence. By every evidence, they need the station. They want it the cheapest way possible. We have to prevent some humans from providing it too cheaply, without atevi participation. That's the situation as plainly as I can put it. And we have the leverage to prevent it."

"Bren-ji characterizes the Mospheiran government as indecisive. Incapable of strong decision."

"Is this so?" Damiri turned her golden eyes to Tabini, and back to him. "Then why are they fit allies?"

"Daja-ma," Bren said, "Mospheirans have a long history of opposition to the ship. Second, there's no strong dissent on Mospheira. There never has been, in any numbers that could cause trouble. The government isn't used to dealing with the tactics of opposition — which I feel this time there will be. Shejidan, on the other hand, is used to dissent and rapidly moving situations. The President of Mospheira can't conceive of what to do next, many but not all of his advisors are selfishly motivated, and he urgently needs a proposal on the table to give him a tenable position he can consider — results that he can hold up in public view. Publicity. Television, aiji-ma, that demon box, can draw his opposition into defending against the proposal you make rather than pushing their own program."

Tabini rested his chin on his hand. The two of them were mirror-images, Tabini and the prospective partner in his necessary and several years postponed heir-getting. One had to think of Tabini's lamented father, and the dowager, and breakfast.

And all that atevi talent for intrigue.

"Such a reprehensible, furtive tactic," Tabini said. "Can we not just assassinate the rascals?"

One suspected the aiji was joking. One never dared assume too far. "I think the President believes his alternatives are all human. I think he would welcome a well-worded and enlightening message from Shejidan, particularly one suggesting workable solutions."

"Interesting," Tabini said. And didn't say he had to consult. One had the feeling Tabini's brain was already working on the exact text.

In the next moment, indeed, the forefinger went up, commanding attention: "Say this, Bren-ji. Say to your President, Tabini-aiji has raw materials indispensable to your effort. Say, Tabini-aiji will sell you these materials only if humans and atevi are to sharethe station. Say that to him… in whatever form one speaks to president. Make up words he will understand and will not refuse." The fingers waved. "I leave such details of translation to you."

Tabini said, further, "We'll call the ship this evening, Bren-ji. Be ready."

He almost missed that. And didn't know what to say, but, "Yes, aiji-ma."

CHAPTER 9

Tabini had made up his mind. Tabini was going to move, which notoriously meant a string of moves so rapid he kept his opponents' situation in moment-to-moment flux. It kept his aides in the same condition, unfortunately for the aides, and dealing with Tabini in that steel-trap, no-pretenses mode, trying to think what that chain of actions was logically going to be, always upset his stomach. He wrote out the best wording he could think of for Tabini's message to the island, atevi-style, reasonably simple. Lawyers had a practice, but never dominated the making of agreements — it might be the fact of assassination.

Being ready for whatever came, however, meant not only delivering the message but querying the Foreign Office one more time to catch up to whatever events were proceeding on Mospheira — assuming that the Foreign Office might know by now that the ship had made an offer to Mospheira.

One assumed something consequently might be going on in the halls of government and that Shawn might find a clever way to say so.

But whatever the Foreign Office might know, the Foreign Office wasn't admitting to anything. Shawn… didn't want to come on mike, but Bren kept after it, and asked bluntly,

"Shawn, do you know anything about an offer from the ship?"

"No. Sorry."

"Are you sure? I'm dealing with some specific information."

" We don't have any advisements," was the limp and helpless sum of what Shawn could say, and no, to his subsequent query, the Secretary of State wasn't available and, no, the undersecretary and his secretary's secretary weren't available.

That didn't inspire him to trust what the Foreign Office or the paidhi's office under him was currently being told by the executive; and along with that, anything he was being told by the Foreign Secretary — who wouldn't necessarily lie to him, but he had the feeling Shawn was signaling hard that he wasn't getting information.

He didn't have backup. Now he didn't have advice.

He said, "Shawn, you'd better record this. The ship's been talking, Tabini knows what's going on, and Tabini has a message to deliver to the President to the effect that if trade's going to continue, he has conditions which must include assurances. I'm telling you now in paraphrase in case communications mysteriously go down. Tabini-aiji has a message for the President personally, and if anything happens to the phones can you kindly get somebody on the next flight over here to pick up the aiji's message in writing? I'm going to transmit at the end of this message, and I want you to get somebody to courier it over to the President, in person. This isofficial. There are people on Mospheira who may not want this message to reach the President. Do you read me?"

" I' ll carry it myself."

He sent. It said, Mr. President, a message from Tabini-aiji. The offer from the ship makes no mention of atevi Treaty rights on the station. Tabini-aiji suggests that to accept this offer would negate the Treaty and stop trade of materials needful to carry out any accelerated building program.

On the other hand, Tabini-aiji suggests that the inhabitants of this world, both atevi and Mospheiran human, enter into agreement to withhold our consent and cooperation until our needs are met. Clearly the ship wants workers, and has made an offer which may not be to either your advantage or the advantage of the Association.

Recognizing this political reality, Mr. President, Tabini-aiji is willing to accelerate the pace of atevi technological development in order to promote atevi presence on the station and atevi natural interests in these affairs in the space around our planet and our sun. In short, Mr. President, we suggest a partnership between Mospheira and atevi which may secure the economy, the civil rights, and the political stability of both Mospheira and the Association as a whole. You will have your heavy-launch manned vehicle, and we will bear a half share of the station operation and maintenance.

We have many cultural and biological differences, but we share a concern for a stable economy and the rights of our citizens to live in peace on this planet. If that now means cooperation in orbit above this planet, we trust that atevi and humans can reach a just and rapid accommodation.

The aiji, speaking with the consensus of the hasdrawad and the tashrid, awaits your reply.

He received an acknowledgment from Shawn. But he'd bet — he'd just about bet — the phones between Mospheira and the mainland would go down within half an hour.

He'd stretched the point. A lot. He'd used words nobody could say in an atevi language. He'd played on the concerns he was sure the President felt over shifts in internal politics which could throw him and the majority of politicians on Mospheira out of office.

He had a headache. His stomach was upset from lunch. Or from the thought of what he'd implied in that message.

Or from the knowledge he had to go real-time tonight and talk to the ship himself.

Meanwhile he had a handful of troublesome official letters Tano had pulled from the pile of atevi correspondence, one of which was from the restricted-universe Absolutists, a sect of the Determinists, mostly from Geigi's province, though there were — he consulted his computer file — others from small, traditional schools. They attached moral significance and their interpretation of human and atevi origins to a hierarchy of numbers that didn't admit FTL physics — God save him: if he couldn't find a numerical explanation of FTL, thanks to Hanks, the Determinists were going to rise up and call him a liar and insulting to their intelligence for claiming the ship wasn'ta case of humans lurking on the station for two hundred years in secret and preparing to swoop down with death rays.

Banichi was missing. Jago had gone somewhere. That scared him to death. He had no idea, but he assumed the two absences were connected: Cenedi had hinted at serious trouble in the Assassins' Guild, which could, as far as he knew, threaten Banichi's and Jago's lives as well as his. He hadn't been- able to ask Tabini, especially since Damiri had shown up and sat down — assuming admission to any meeting, any affair going on in the apartment.

He'd had a question in the back of his mind when Damiri had intruded, and in his general haste to get the matter restated for this most influential — and clearly pricklish — of Tabini's private advisors, he'd not found the opportunity to ask Damiri her meanings, her secrets, or her implications; and, damn, he didn't know what it meant, or what rights Tabini had granted her — who wasn't Tabini's social equal, and who had constantly pushed not only at the paidhi's dignity but at Tabini's authority in that interview. Was there some cue he should have taken? Was there something he'd done in the apartment that had set Damiri off?

Cenedi had said there were people trying to file Intent on the paidhi. Which gave no idea on exactly what issue was involved or whether the paidhi was surrogate for Tabini in the atevi politics of assassins and intrigue.

He resolved at least that he was going to take the advice of the security Tabini had provided him, and meant to take no chances with his personal safety.

The bright spot in the entire day thus far was an unexpected ring of the phone from Bu-javid Security, reporting that Tano's wayward partner was actually downstairs in the Bu-javid subway station, and that, lacking specific instruction, Security was double-checking Algini's assignment to the sensitive Bu-javid third floor and questioning a "considerable amount of baggage." That assignment and the baggage apparently needed someone's authorization, and in the absence of Banichi and Jago, Tano evidently not being qualified to recognize his own partner, it had to go all the way up to Tabini himself.

Which Tabini, called out of yet one more committee meeting, was patiently willing to do for the paidhi — resulting, within the hour, in Algini's entry into the foyer with an amazing accompaniment of baggage, a towering pile of responsibility which had Saidin and the household servants whispering together in urgent dismay, as strong Bu-javid security personnel delivered stack after stack of baggage belonging to a broad-shouldered ateva with bandages and plaster patches glaring white on his skin, not in uniform, but in clothes more appropriate for a hike through the hills — small wonder Security downstairs had blinked.

Tano himself was so glad to see his partner that he actually patted Algini on the shoulder — not, Bren sternly reminded himself, that Tano felt the way he would under similar circumstances.

But — but — and but. It was another tantalizing pass of that camaraderie that atevi did have, that Jago and Banichi he would swear had given him: more warmth in all than Tabini was wont to show, although — one had to remind oneself — in assessing atevi emotion, one might be dealing with individual differences.

But he found himself watching Tano and Algini with a certain tightness about the throat and thinking he almost hadsomething like that with Banichi and Jago, whatever it was and whatever it felt like; a level of feeling that at least let a man believe his back was defended under all circumstances and that he wasn't come hell and high water alone in the universe — more emotional attachment of whatever kind and more loyalty than he'd had from humans he could name. More dangerous thoughts, around other humanly, emotionally charged words. He was notdoing well today.

That, after his session with Tabini, calmly laying out for Tabini what he'd heard, what he suspected, what he thought were the only available human choices — in short, treason, of a virtually unprecedented kind so far as the history of the paidhiin. The act had hit a particularly sensitive spot in his nerves, with, in all that trying session, Tabini never showing any emotion but somber thought or amusement, never thanking him or reassuring him of the peaceful, constructive, wise uses to which the information he'd given would be put.

He found himself with very raw, very abraded sensitivities this afternoon, wanting not to feel as alone as he felt, and here Tano and Algini held that lure out in front of him, a demonstration that, yes, there was feeling, yes, it was almost — almost — what a human could access. He'd touched it. He'd tasted it. He'd relied on it for life and sanity in Malguri, and it might be all he could damn well look to for the rest of his life, thanks to choices he was making in these few desperate days.

And it wasn't, wasn't, wasn'treliable emotion. He could play voyeur to the experience of it; he was glad it existed for them. He was very glad for Algini's safety.

And perhaps that was the cold, sensible, atevi thing to feel right now. Perhaps it was all Tabini, for instance, would feel, or that Jago and Banichi would feel, if they were here.

Algini came to him and bowed with a pleasant, even cheerful face, unusual on glum Algini, and declared proudly, "I brought your baggage, nand' paidhi."

My God, was thatthe contents of the pasteboard boxes and cases piled on the antique carpets? All the things he'd left behind in Malguri, literally all he owned in the world, except a few keepsakes he'd left with his mother. He'd thought there was a remote chance of getting some things back, in the regret of a favorite sweater, his best coat, his brush, his traveling kit, the photos of his family — that was his whole damned life sitting in those boxes, and Algini had just brought it back, from his shirts and socks to the rings and the watch that Barb had given him.

"Nadi-ji," he said to Algini. The vocabulary of atevi gratitude was linguistic quicksand. "— I'm very surprised." He still wasn't hitting it. "Much as I value these things, I'd give them all to have you safe. It's very good, very dutiful, very — considerate of you to have brought them."

Which must have hit something. Algini looked astonished, grim and silent as he tended to be, and said, "Nand' paidhi, it's my job," the way Jago would sometimes remind him.

Even Banichi and Jago respected Algini — Tano, who'd taken until after Malguri to show his expressions, had him for a partner — and in this moment Bren saw qualities in Algini that he'd either been blind to, or that Algini hadn't let himsee before; qualities which said this was, in human terms, a man who did his duty because that was what he expected of himself.

And all those boxes. Saidin was observing from the doorway, and he gave the matter into her hands. "Please," he said, "have the staff do the arranging. I have all confidence in your judgment, nand' Saidin. Algini, please rest. Banichi and Jago aren't here. I don't know where they are. But I'm sure they'd say so."

"Nand' paidhi," Algini said quietly, "one would be glad to do that, thank you, yes."

A hell of a household, he said to himself, the lot of them in bandages and patches. Algini was ready to collapse on his face, by all he could figure, but before they could clear the boxes out of the vestibule, the light at the door flashed, the security wire went down, the door opened and Jago came in.

"'Gini-ji," Jago said, in some evident pleasure, and there were more bows, and even more shoulder-slapping than between Algini and Tano. "One is glad. One is very glad."

But straightway Jago looked to have remembered something forgotten, said, "Bren-ji, pardon," and gave him a message cylinder, one with Tabini's seal.

Bren halfway expected it. He stood in the sea of boxes, with his security looking on, with the staff beginning to carry away this item and that, and saw the date and time as this evening and the place as the blue room.

He wasn't ready, not emotionally — maybe not mentally. He hadn't been ready for anything they'd thrown at him yet, except in the conviction, already taken, that he had to try and he couldn't, on the moment's bereaved, deranged thought, do worse than Mospheira's President and experts had done, so far as falling into what the paidhi, the unique individual actually experienced in foreign negotiation, saw as a trap.

The paidhi could be wrong, of course.

The paidhi could be wrong up and down the board.

But he went out at the appointed time with his notes and his computer, and went to the lift in Jago's company. Now, if never before in his career, he had to focus down and have his wits about him.

And he was scared stiff.

He had to think in Mosphei' in a handful of minutes, which required a complete mental turnover — granted they could raise the ship at all, had to go back and forth between the two languages, which required a compartmentalization he didn't like to do real-time.

The official document delivered to him had chased Tabini's note: the formal announcement of decision on his request, a parchment heavy with ribbons and legislative seals, which he was requested to return, and which he carried in his hand. The legislatures had argued their way past midnight last night and concluded a general resolution to see where contact might lead: Would the paidhi, that immense document said in brief, kindly intercede and convey the salutations of the Association to the ship, the aiji willing?

Tabini's note had put it more succinctly, had given him the hour of the meeting and said: The legislature will re-enter session today on a special motion from the eastern provinces. That meant the rebel provinces were raising some issue.

And Tabini's note had continued: By suppertime the whole matter must be fait accompli by way of Bu-javid systems or we will be awash in additional motions.

Chimati sida'ta. The beast under dispute would already be stewed, as the atevi proverb had it: the aiji and the paidhi-aiji had authority granted by the vote last night until some vote today negated it or delayed it for study or did something else creatively pernicious to Tabini's interests. Therefore the haste.

The vote, however, did not convey authority from Mospheira — who had sent no response to his messages, no response to Tabini's message to the President of Mospheira. He hadhoped, he had remotely hoped — and knew he was creating serious trouble not only for himself, but for everyone in the Department who backed him, in proceeding without authority. He regretted that as a personal, calculated and depressingly necessary betrayal.

But the committee that would have to answer him had the nature of committees even on this side of the strait, and possibly throughout the universe: ask it a question and it felt compelled to make a formal ruling, which in the time frame of a Mospheiran committee, far worse than the ones he dealt with here, might arrive next year, once the message had hit — the President's council hardly moved faster.

If They, meaning the senior officials in the State Department, hanged the paidhi for it — at this point, chimati sida'ta, they had to catch him first.

If They wanted to talk to atevi, and he knew that, regardless of public posture, all but a handful of mostly-talk ideologues had no notion in the world of breaking off talk with atevi — again, chimati sida'ta. If Tabini moved fast, They had no choice but to deal with what was, and They still had to talk to Tabini through him, since Tabini wouldn't talk to Hanks, wouldn't talk to Wilson, or anybody else in the Department they could hasten through to promotion. By now, Hanks would have been dead, he greatly feared, if he hadn't specifically asked Tabini not to deal with the affront to his nation atevi-fashion; at any second violation of the Treaty he might not be able to argue Tabini out of a demonstration of atevi impatience with opposition to the paidhi they chose to deal with.

So if even temporarily the more pragmatic and politically savvy separatists in State should fall from grace and the true concrete-for-brains ideologues gain temporary ascendancy, he'd vastly regret the damage he'd have done the foresighted, loyal people at lower levels who backed him. But he had ultimate confidence the rabid ideologues would have short satisfaction, and shorter tenure, when they couldn't get information or cooperation — or raw materials — out of the mainland.

So even if they made their deals with the ship aloft, they were screwed —

And so was the ship, ultimately, until it dealt with atevi. He didn't like the position he was forced to. He didn't like the responsibility, but circumstances had assured he knew, and Mospheira didn't, and it was a position no conscientious diplomat ever wanted to be put into —

Because he was, dammit, trained to consult, wasloyal to his nation if not the Department; hewas following the course decades of paidhiin and advisory committees had mapped out, step by step, down to what technology could go in at what stages, and why.

Which made him, walking the lower corridor at Jago's side, realize three things: first, that he wasn't altogether alone in his resolve. No matter who was presently in charge of events back home or aloft, he had behind him all the structure and decision of all the past paidhiin-aijiin that had ever served, along with all their advisory committees — predecessors who were being betrayed by present expediency and the present administration.

Second, that to protect the situation they currently had, he had to get Hanks home quietly.

And, third, that he was really going to do it, really going to make a break with the Department as it was presently constituted. He would have to accelerate what his and Tabini's very wise predecessors had determined as the necessary rate of turnover of human technology to atevi far faster in its last stages than the planners had ever remotely envisioned as wise. He would have to push the world toward a more direct and more risky exposure of culture to culture than the exploratory Trade Cities proposal had ever remotely contemplated. The Trade Cities bill had been designed to educate the two populaces on an interpersonal, intercultural level; and to find out what the problems would be in an exposure which the best Foreign Office wisdom held as a very, very difficult interface.

That interface would be far more difficult in orbit— with two very set-in-their-ways cultures trying to adapt to a new environment as well as to each other, difficult even if— and a big if— the crew of the ship up there didn't intend to double-cross the station-builders and station-workers one more time to fuel that ship and leave everyone betrayed and angry. The ship crew might think they could play the same game with new players.

They would think wrong.

If last night his speech before the legislature had provoked an assassination attempt, what he had formed as his intention now might bring out assassins in droves. If last night's speech had turned on every light in the presidential residence, tonight's work was going to keep them burning for weeks.

CHAPTER 10

It wasn't a matter of going out to the installation where the dish was: they would, Tabini's message had said, relay to Bu-javid systems, which meant anywhere convenient, and the meeting room was the same that Tabini had called him to the night he arrived.

Jago preceded him as he maneuvered his casted shoulder past the converse of aides at the door, into a meeting room crowded with technicians, communications equipment, and lords and representatives, two of the senior members of the print media, and a camera crew of uncertain but undoubtedly well-funded affiliation.

"Nand' paidhi," Tabini said, inviting him to the place of prominence, and Tabini's aides hastened to draw back his chair and settle him at Tabini's right, while Jago quietly set his notebook in front of him and his computer beside his chair. Technicians were making last-moment adjustments and set a microphone in front of him. He saw that it was switched off and cast a nervous look at the cameras. "Are they network, Tabini-ma?"

"Legislative," Tabini said. "We want meticulous records, not alone for posterity."

Preservative, he thought, of all their reputations, considering all the rumors that were bound to arise.

And useful in mistakes the paidhi might have to set straight. He felt more at ease with the cameras and the press under that understanding. He decided he wanted them there, rumor tending, as it did, to exaggerate every unaccustomed event. "Have we made technical contact yet?"

"The technicians are working on it. Everyone should understand —" A hush was rapidly settling in the room as lords and representatives strained to overhear them. "This entire evening's effort may be without result. But the contact between us and the ground station is clear. — Are we settled, then?"

There was a murmur from around the table as the last two members quickly assumed their chairs.

"Speak, nand' paidhi. We hope the ship will listen: your microphone will reach the operator at Mogari-nai."

"I'll do what I can, aiji-ma." He drew the mike closer, flipped the switch to On and felt his stomach uneasy. "Mogari-nai, this is Bren-paidhi. Do you hear?"

"Nand' paidhi, we can put you straight onto the dish."

Dreadful syntax. An assault on the language. The traditionalists objected to these enthusiastic technocrats. It likewise jarred the paidhi's nerves.

"Yes. Thank you, Mogari-nai. Am I going through now?"

"You're going through."

" Phoenix-com, this is Bren Cameron, translator for the atevi head of state based in Shejidan. The aiji of the Aishi'ditat has a message for the captains. Please acknowledge. — nadiin-sai, machi arai'si na djima sa dimajin tasu."

Keep playing that until further notice, that was.

He looked at Tabini. "I've asked the ship to answer, aiji-ma. No knowing whether there's a captain immediately available — there's probably more than one — or whether anyone's monitoring the radio. Sleep and waking hours up there aren't necessarily on —"

" This isPhoenix-com," came through the audio, in Mosphei' — or at least a dialect with origins common to his own. " Do you read?"

He'd felt reasonably steady a heartbeat ago. Now his very surroundings looked unreal to him. He moved the microphone closer, and his pulse seemed to shake his bones and preempt his breathing.

"I hear you quite clearly, sir. To whom am I speaking?" " This is Robert Orr, watch officer. Please give your name and identification."

"Mr. Orr, this is Bren Cameron, translator between humans and the Western Association — which isthe largest nation and the only nation with which humanity has regular, treaty-bound contact. As a matter of protocol, as the translator, I can negotiate with you as a ship's officer. The person for whom I translate, on the other hand, the elected head of state of the Western Association, wishes to speak with the seniormost officer on the ship. This is a matter of protocol. The atevi head of state is present, well-disposed, and waiting to speak. Can you advise your senior captain and see if we can put him and the atevi head of state in direct contact during this conversation?"

" Yes, sir. I'll inform him." There was a little quaver of disturbance in the voice, a hasty, apparently afterthought: " Stand by. Someone will be back to you in just a minute. Don't lose contact."

"Thank you." He looked at Tabini. "Aiji-ma. I was speaking with a person of middle rank. I asked him to alert his highest authority. He wishes us to be patient; I believe he's gone in search of someone qualified."

There was absolute silence down the table, not the rustle of a paper.

"How do you judge the reply?"

"This is a respectful, proper answer to the proposition of someone of rank. They've every reason to deal sensibly, and to find someone —"

"Mr. Cameron."

A different voice.

"This is Stani Ramirez, senior captain. I understand you're speaking for a native government. Is this correct?"

"For the elected head of the Western Association — which covers more than three-quarters of the world's largest continent, and all industrialized culture whatsoever. I'm speaking from the capital of Shejidan. Please hold." Language switch. For a moment he suffered mental whiteout. "Tabini-ma. This is Stani, house name Ramirez. He is the highest authority over the ship. He's waiting to speak to you."

"Explain the Treaty. Inform him we consider this the appropriate association with humans."

"Yes, aiji-ma." Switch back. "Captain Ramirez. The aiji wishes me to explain that the Western Association considers that relations between all humans and atevi are governed by a Treaty which the aiji accepts as the appropriately safeguarded conditions of human-atevi interaction. I'm prepared to transmit a copy to you at the end of this conversation. The Western Association asks you to follow its terms as the only mutually agreed means of protecting both human and atevi cultures from misunderstandings."

"We'll have to consider this document."

"Yes, sir, but I believe you know that the first atevi-human contact led to war. The issues are biological, not cultural, and all persons experienced in atevi-human contact will advise you these issues are not resolvable. Atevi are not hostile. They wish to communicate directly with the ship, for protection of their own interests, but communication channels have to be confined to persons educated to interpret what's being said: that's the whole gist of the Treaty."

"Tell him," Tabini interrupted him, lifting a hand, "to appoint a mediator like yourself, Bren-paidhi, whom you will instruct. This translator will deal with you and come down to Shejidan in person as soon as possible."

He froze for what felt like a long, stunned moment. There were sinking instants in which he was sureTabini knew more Mosphei' than Tabini ever admitted to, and then he said to himself that Tabini had done nothing more than take a rational decision in advance. An appropriate decision. A Treaty-suggested decision. The committee heads shifted anxiously in their seats at his delay — perhaps at the dismay that might have gotten to his face. It wasn't for the paidhi to rule on the aiji's decisions, no more than he made policy for Mospheira. He translated. He interpreted. That was all he was supposed to do. It was just —

Tabini had injected a completely unplanned, unknowable variable into his calculations, and with the aiji's powers to dictate first and have the legislature review it later, Tabini had done exactly what he'd suggested Tabini do: act.

"Sir," he said to the captain.

" I read you clear."

"In regard to what I was saying, in your reading of the Treaty, you'll find all translation and mediation between atevi and human authority rests in a single appointed translator. Let me explain: it's a difficult, biologically impacted language interface." One couldn't even assume, he thought on the fly, that ship personnel knew anythingabout languages other than their own. One couldn't assume, over elapsed centuries of restricted, probably small population on that ship, that they even retained the concept, let alone the experience, of different language — let alone had persons able to grapple with the facts of a language with almost no word-by-word congruency with Mosphei'. "The language expresses vast differences in psychological concepts, in basic biology, which we've worked out peacefully and reasonably. The leader of the atevi invites you to appoint a candidate to take instruction from me in necessary protocols as well as language. The aiji requires this representative be sent to the capital at Shejidan as soon as possible."

" You're saying, appoint a protocol officer to be in regular contact with you. To land on the planet."

"Sir, yes: send down a person with authority to make agreements which you may ratify. A diplomat."

"What does Mospheira say to this?"

"Mospheira is a member state of the Western Association. The island is a province among other provinces. It does not speak for atevi or for this planet. It's required to abide by the decisions of the Western Association regarding foreign policy and trade. Such things are easy to set up — there are channels, appropriate routes, that kind of thing. There are abundant agreements attached to the Treaty which handle protocols, shipping points — I understand you're looking for some manufacture and supply that lies on the mainland. A protocol officer could facilitate that — but a real aptitude for language is a must. I can provide short cuts, but there has to be a natural ability."

There was a silence. Damned right there should be a moment of silence. Then: " I have my own council to consult. How will we contact you?"

God, it sounded like Mospheira. One thought the captain of a working ship could make a decision. "The ground-station operators will be aware of my whereabouts. We have one gap in the relays which I imagine you will have noticed: the satellite went down a considerable time ago. The operators are aware of that and can work around it."

"Are these native operators?"

"They are atevi, yes, sir. They won't understand your operators, but the Western Association is linguistically homogeneous and I'm well-known. Use my name and they'll have no doubt that you're looking for contact. I suggest another call tomorrow at local midday. Can we expect that?"

"It may take longer to go through this document. What's your sending mode?"

"Standard to the station. Atevi communications are identical systems to the ones you've been reaching on the island." Yes, Captain, we are receiving what you say to Mospheira, but you don't know at what levels and how legitimate or thorough our penetration of ship communications is, do you? "You'll find the document very brief, in the style of atevi legal documents. The details rest in specific subsequent agreements. If you need me at any hour of the day or night, you can reach me simply by calling the earth station. They can patch me right into the local phone system, wherever I am."

" Mr. Cameron, this may be late to bring up— but what assurance do we have that you're authorized, or even a real official?"

It was at least one thing he'd thought of. in advance. "Sir, if you've located the source of transmission —" and I'll bet you're doing that, sir, and trying to figure what it is "— you'll find it a very large, very official installation which regularly monitors the station's telemetry. In point of fact, there are only three or so humans in the world fluent in the atevi language, there're no atevi fluent in the human language, and there's no other channel appointed by the Treaty for contact except me. Call anywhere on the planet you like: you'll get no answers but from me and Mospheira. The big dish at a site called Mogari-nai is the only place besides Mospheira that can put you in touch with anyone who understands your language." He cast a glance at Tabini, who'd been quite patient. "Aiji-ma, jis asdi parei'manima pag' nand' Stani-captain?"

"Masji sig' triti didamei'shi."

"First atevi word to learn, sir, is aiji. That's the title of the atevi president — more powers than 'president,' but it's the closest translation. His personal name is Tabini: call him Tabini-aiji, and call that name whenever and every time in a conversation you say a sentence to him: it's basic courtesy. He'll await and expect your acceptance of the entire Treaty. Atevi don't understand making exceptions during initial agreement: please consider the Treaty document as a sweeping statement of principle, closer negotiations to follow. Atevi law is based on equity stemming from such broad agreements. — Have you any special word, sir, to the aiji of the Western Association?"

"Tell him we hope for friendly contact and we'll stand by for your document transmission."

"Thank you, sir. I'm concluding now. — Daiti, nadiin tekikin, madighi tritin distitas pas ajiimaisit, das, das, das, magji das."

"Pai sat, paidhi-ma."

He set the computer on the table, with the last-moment help of an aide, flipped up the screen, pulled out the line to the phone connector on the table.

Then he called a file; actuated; and the Treaty document flew, presumably, to the atevi earth station and bounced to the ship.

That simply, that easily, from a phone connection on a desk in the Bu-javid.

Mind-boggling even to the arbiter of technology.

And evidently mind-boggling to the heads of committee at the table. Usually at a meeting there were half-attentive looks and the momentary fidgets or a consultation of notes or aides. Not this time. There was solemn anxiousness, absolute quiet. They might not yet realize what had happened. They certainly didn't know what all that chatter back and forth had been.

"So what did he say?" Tabini asked.

"I asked, aiji-ma, what he would say to the aiji. He said, quote, 'We desire peaceful contact and we'll stand by for the Treaty agreement transmission.' End quote. I sent it. I did substitute one word in that: his 'peaceful' contact carries an expectation of nonwarlike interaction that has no atevi equivalent."

"Does it change the meaning of contact?" the head of Judiciary asked.

"It expresses routine politeness. Sometimes it has a casual and not highly specific application, meaning not-war, or, equally, can mean a real yearning for association. It's that word friend, nadi, the one that always confuses translations."

"A pest of a word," Tabini said.

"Always, aiji-ma. Even another human has to figure out how the other human means it at the moment."

"Intended confusion?"

"It can be." The atevi leap to suspicion was possibly hardwired. It was at least fast. "I could have predicted he'd use it — in a way I find it reassuring that he did use it. But he doesn't realize you won't know its nuances. I suspect there's no one on the ship that's ever met another language. They want to know about the Treaty document — and I can equally well predict they'll ask if they got it all. They won't expect it to be that short. Their own legal documents try to nail down every minute exception and possible eventuality in advance."

"This seems excessive trouble," Tabini muttered.

"Tradition. Law — I'm not sure I know the history behind it. But they try to think of all the problems that could come up."

"Negative thinking. Is this not your expression?"

"But they will almost certainly do it. I confess I'm daunted, nadiin, aiji-ma. I just hadn't realized operationally until I talked with this man how far back I have to start explaining our mutual history of relations. Clearly I'm notdealing with the university on Mospheira: I'm going to have to interpret very heavily. No one on the ship is going to know how to avoid troublesome concepts. I'll have to explain them as I go."

"How accurate can this interpretation be?" Judiciary asked.

"As accurate as the paidhi's recognition there's a difficulty, nandi, which is why I must ask, if you hear something disturbing, please interrupt and object. Context makes a vast difference. So does historical background. I'll advise you of the words I find suspect; and I find the idea of creating a specialist from among them — startling as it was to me — is an excellent notion, aiji-ma. Granting they can find someone with the ability and if I can teach the right ideas to this person — it may be a vast help." He found himself more nervous than if he'd been facing guns and grenades. One didn'tsecond-guess the aiji. Or any other atevi lord. But he had to supply the objection he saw. "But if I detect the person isn't capable or that the interface is getting worse — I request the authority, aiji-ma, nadiin-ma, to shut this person off immediately from information and to reject this contact. If that should be, we may be thrown back on the resources of the university. And we may have to go to them, if I find I can't deal with the translations alone."

"This would have severe implications," Tabini said. "And I would rather you succeeded, paidhi-ji."

"I would most earnestly rather I succeeded, aiji-ma." He'd been more anxious than he knew. A number of conclusions were coming home to roost, one of them a surmise that, since he'd put himself on very shaky ground with the university and the Department, he might still have to deal with Hanks as the representative of Mospheira and himself… God only knew. As Tabini's, he supposed.

It wasn't a situation he wanted. But that little jarring note in the negotiation had rung alarm bells all up and down his nerves: not that he hadn't expected it, but that word friendly, that no regular contact he used would have dared use, advised him of dangerous problems.

Friendlycontact.

The War memorials and the fact that humans lived on an island weren't part of the ship captain's growing up, the captain's constant awareness, the captain's conceptual reality. He didn't know that lives were in danger. Or didn't know that they were in danger for the reasons that they were. Mospheira had transmitted a history of the war. But knowing the details of history wasn't the same as stopping for that minute of silence at 9:16 A.M. every Treaty Day; or seeing that time frozen on the clock in the photos of Alpha Base. He'd been there once. Every paidhi went there once.

"Aiji-ma," he said, "I'll prepare another document for transmission. A handbook of protocols, by your leave. I can assemble it by tomorrow, out of— the dictionary."

"As the paidhi will," Tabini said. "Whatever the paidhi deems necessary."

It was an appalling grant of power. It meant — in atevi terms — he bore direct responsibility, along with that grant of power.

He folded up his computer quietly, thinking, God, he'd put his neck in the noose now. After that it came down to operational details, a handful of answers he needed to give, a confirmation of meeting dates, all of which he had to sit through, but his mind wasn't on committee housekeeping, or even the few questions committee members asked.

It was the moment, in a curious retreat of his mind, in which he really, definitively said good-bye forever to Barb. In which he thought of the letter he'd write to his mother, and Toby.

In which he held himself and his motives and his mental condition entirely suspect. The aftershocks of an irrevocable, previously confident decision were rumbling through the mental landscape, disturbing precarious balance. He felt slightly sick at his stomach. He questioned his motives and his sanity this time from hindsight, not theoretical actions. Reality always put a texture on things, a chaotic topography of imperfections, that imagination had foreseen as smooth and featureless. Now it was all in past-tense conversation between two minds, not one mind reasoning with itself. Now it was interaction with a very potent and distance-wise inscrutable third party, as well as a Department that was going to ask the paidhi what in hellhe thought he was doing.

"Nadiin," Tabini said, "we are adjourned. Nand' paidhi, thank you."

"Aiji-ma," he murmured, and with one aide to help with the chair and another to help with the computer, he gathered himself up, still with that hollow feeling inside, and collected his belongings.

Lord Eigji of the Commerce Committee cleared his path to the door — perhaps in consideration of his small stature and his necessary awkwardness with the outward-braced cast — but such a reversal of ordinary protocols of rank required first the acknowledgment of a bow of the head, then puzzled afterthought, so deep a thought he knocked the doorframe with the cast in leaving and, expecting Jago, didn't look up quite enough: his view was suddenly and entirely black leather and silver metal.

"I have it," Banichi said, and collected the computer from his hand.

"Where have you been, nadi?" was his first unthought question, while they were still blocking atevi lords from the doorway.

Banichi led him aside before saying, "Sleeping, nand' paidhi. One has to, eventually."

It wasn't at all the truth. He gave not-the-truth back to it. "I never was sure you did that."

He amused Banichi. That Banichi could be amused was a reassuring stroke in itself: if Banichi was in good humor then something that was security's concern must have gone right.

One had to wonder, on the other hand, where Jago had gone now, and he wasn't at all sure it was back to the residence, but the recipient of their duty couldn't pursue the question, even in the most security-conscious area of the Bu-javid —

Or especially because they were here, in an area where anxious, life-and-death interests hung close about them.

They walked toward the lift not quite elbow to elbow with the lords of the Association, but possibly within earshot.

"I have to go to my office, if not today, tomorrow," he said, off his balance in this switch of personnel; he'd mapped out how to deal with Jago. And atevi had changed the situation on him again without warning. "I have to find out what's been done there — I need to consult with Hanks."

"I thought you'd declared war on her."

"Not — quite that far. Understand, please, Banichi-ji. I don't want her to come to harm."

"You must be the only one on the mainland," Banichi said, "to say so."

"We can't allow it, Banichi. Can't. Daren't. — Where is Jago?" They'd reached a relatively isolated area by the lift that served the more securitied floors, and he pounced on the first chance for the question. "Algini's back, did you know? You go, Jago goes, you come back, Algini's got the foyer stacked with my luggage —"

"Shush." It was the word one used with a child. "You're due upstairs. Rest, Bren-ji. It is a physical necessity."

"Cenedi said there was trouble going on."

Banichi had pushed the call button. The car had arrived, but Banichi lingered to cast him a curious look. "Cenedi said," Banichi reiterated.

"Cenedi said — he'd stand with you in the Guild, if he had a choice."

" Didhe?"

They had to take the car or lose it. Banichi swept him inside and followed.

With no intent, it seemed, of answering his question, even in general. But he thought Banichi had been at least taken off his guard by that information.

And gave nothing back.

"Banichi, dammit."

Banichi found it convenient to watch the floor indicator. Banichi was dressed fit for a council meeting: official, impervious, unruffled by whatever was going on.

"A man died last night," Bren said sharply.

"One heard." Banichi still didn't look at him.

"Banichi — one could arrange one's affairs ever so much more wisely if one's security told him something! I am nota fool, Banichi, don't treat me as one."

Banichi offered a small, frayed smile. "Bren-ji, it's your task to deal with ships and such. It's ours to see you aren't diverted by extraneous matters."

"The man had a family, Banichi. I can't forget that."

The car stopped. The door opened.

"We can't discuss it here. Not a secure area, Bren-ji."

"What is? Besides the apartment I'm borrowing from —" But the microphones which evidently worried Banichi, which Banichi had equipment to detect, surely all that were in this hall served Tabini, and therefore were accessible to Damiri.

It was that small uncertainty that stopped him.

And why? he said to himself. Whycould there be any question about third-floor security that Banichi couldn't make sure of?

Who was up here, with access to this floor, but staffs that held man'chito Tabini, to —

To the Atigeini woman who'd offered him her hospitality — and whose family opposed Tabini.

Banichi stopped at the door to take out his key, and said, under his breath, "More than one man is dead, Bren-ji. Amateurs. I swear to you, it's amateurs will bring us down. I'm sure it's television. It plants foolish ideas in foolish heads that otherwise couldn't remotely conceive such plans."

"You mean the representative from —"

"One means that the Guild has refused arguments, bribes and coercion to undertake contracts against the paidhi." Banichi opened the door into a foyer miraculously void of boxes. "Jago's aim was accurate. His damaged a historical artifact. That— is the difference, among others. Kindly stay out of crowds, nadi."

The Assassins' Guild operated by strict rules. They accosted you in hallways, they turned up in your bedroom, they met you on the steps outside, but they didn't endanger bystanders, they didn't take out accidental targets, and most of all they required the person who hired them to meet certain criteria of responsibility and to file Intent with the authorities. Who notified you. Formally. In some ways — in their Guild deliberations on what contracts to accept and what to reject — they wereatevi lawyers.

But the paidhi hadn't acquired an assassin of Banichi's and Jago's class; he'd touched off some middle-aged man with a family.

And probably nobody in the world remembered what he'd said last night. They'd just seen a man die, and nobody might even remember the difficult points he'd had to convince them of — the points he'd spent all his credit with his own government to make — and that thought brought a crashing depression — an aftershock, maybe — but with it a sense of being in well over his head.

He walked into the apartment with Banichi and found the message bowl overflowing onto the table. Tano met their arrival; so did madam Saidin: Saidin with grave courtesy, Tano with relief evident.

Which said to him Jago was notsimply napping. And neither had Banichi been. Algini came from inside the security quarters, and Banichi and Algini were quite professional, quite matter-of-fact in their meeting.

The tenor of which said to him that Algini's presence in no way surprised Banichi and that Banichi just might have been at the airport when Algini came in.

"Nand' paidhi," Tano said, meanwhile, "Hanks-paidhi has called. Three times."

Oh, God, he hadn't countermanded the call and recall order. The operator had been ringing Hanks since the afternoon.

"Did she leave any message?"

"She was extremely angry. She said she wanted to speak with you personally."

"I do apologize, Tano."

"My job, nand' paidhi. I'm glad to intercept it. There are telegrams from Mospheira. Three, nand' paidhi. I wouldn't mention any business I could manage without consulting, but —"

He was tired. He was suddenly drained, and shaken, and he couldn't take his own damn coat off himself. The servant had to help him with it — her name was — he'd heard her name —

"I can't," he was forced to admit, and found his voice wobbling. "I can't — Tano, I'm sorry, I can't deal with these things tonight."

"Bren-ji is exhausted," Banichi said as the last of the tape came free of the sleeve and Bren escaped the coat. He just wanted his bed. Just that. Soft pillows. No questions.

But he was scared what might have come in those messages. He hoped one of them was from the President, accepting his position. He hoped it wasn't damning him for a fool and ordering his recall for arrest.

He had at least just to glance through those three and know what they were. He broke the seal on the first one, in his awkward, arm-braced procedure. It was from Barb.

Bren, it said. I didn't know. I feel so bad. Please call me.

He was numb, at first reading. Then he tossed it casually back into the message basket. He was angry — maybe as angry as he'd ever been at anyone in his life.

Or hurt. He couldn't decide. He couldn't ask himself for coherent judgment right now, least of all to judge Barb. He opened the second telegram, which proved to be from his mother. It said, Sorry I missed you at the hospital, but after that, the censors had made lace out of it. Not a damned sentence in the thing was intact but that, and whatever his mother had meant to say — God knew. He couldn't decipher anything from the I's and a's and the's.

Which meant his mother had said things critical to security — and his mother never knew anything critical to security. There was nothing she ever had to say to him that the censors would reasonably block, it just wasn't in her knowledge of the universe.

Something could have happened at home, maybe something they didn't want him to hear right now — but then why did the censors let that one line get through, when they could have stalled the whole letter? They could have sent the telegram down a black hole and he wouldn't have known it and his mother wouldn't have, until they could compare notes — so why worry him, if they were just trying to save him from worry in the first place? He didn't understand what was going on. They hadn't censored Barb, who'd certainly disturbed him, and those personal matters weren't likely secret from Departmental censors. It didn't make sense.

The third was from the State Department. It began, Field Officer Cameron: the title the State Department accorded him, though there was only one field and only one officer; it launched straight into The Department advises you on behalf of the President that it is taking your report under advisement. In the meantime, it orders in the strongest possible terms that you make no further translation of intercepted transmissions…

Oh, well, he thought, that's all. He was too numb to give a damn and too far along the course to damnation to Slink it mattered. He tossed that telegram straight into the wastebasket, to the shock of Tano and bystanders, then gathered up Barb's and his mother's and chucked them after it.

Ilisidi's message cylinder had come back again. He opened that last. It said, An old woman desires your company on any morning you feel inclined. You improve our circulation. And you have such pretty hair.

He read it three times, with a lump in his throat and the illegitimate and fatal satisfaction of believing one living being in the universe enjoyed his company; one lord of the Association didn't want to buy him, kill him, or use him — or wasn't assigned by Tabini to protect him. Very opposite things were the possibility. But, dammit, at least he knew what and why.

He gave that cylinder to Tano. "Nadi, a courteous appreciation to the dowager, with my desire to join her at breakfast sometime very soon. Tell the lady dowager — tell her I treasure her flattery. Please see it delivered tonight. Order a felicitous arrangement of flowers with the message."

He surely shocked Tano, on more than one account.

Then he wandered off, out of the foyer toward his own bed, forgetful until he was in his own doorway that he'd left Banichi without a second look or a word of courtesy — but Banichi probably had his own instructions to give to Tano and Algini, or maybe Banichi just lingered to share a cup of tea with people who didn't ask him unanswerable questions.

At least Banichi was back — and Jago had vanished, if she wasn't in her room asleep, as Banichi had claimed to have been.

Maybe, he thought muzzily, they took waking turns at whatever they were doing, which he knew in his heart of hearts was Tabini's business, and Tabini's security. They'd never left him alone, nor would. He could rely on that. Popular as he was making himself — he had to rely on it.

He'd made Hanks mad. He was too tired to deal with it. Hell, he probably could start by apologizing, but he wasn't interested.

He undressed with the help of a half dozen demure servants, made his requisite nest in his bed, propped his cast with pillows, and only as he lay down realized they'd installed the television he requested, against the far wall, and a turn of his head found not only the requested water glass but a television remote within his reach at the bedside table. His nerves were one long buzz of exhaustion, his senses threatening to blank out on him, which he wished would just happen: he wanted to shut his eyes and let his mind spiral down to the sleep he'd won. But, Please call, Barb said.

Bloody damn hell. Call. Calling might have been in order, all right — for her to call him when he was in town — at least to have called the hospital. She'd probably been off on her honeymoon.

He'd forgiven her — everything but that "Please call," the way she'd always say when they'd disagreed. She knew the hours he kept in a work crisis, she knew she should call in the morning if she wanted to catch him with a personal problem. But, no, he should call her. Tonight. Heshould call her. He should do the negotiating, meaning cajole her into doling out this little reaction and that little reaction until he guessed his way through her crisis and placated her.

For what? For getting married? He wasn't in the mood.

He reached irritably for the television remote, flipped it on to find out what was on the news, and saw himself, sitting at the council table, heard himself, and knew that Mospheira could pick up that broadcast quite nicely — as the mainland regularly picked up whatever Mospheira let hit the airwaves.

There was footage of damage to something somewhere, but that wasn't bomb damage from Malguri; it seemed to be nothing more than a windstorm taking the roof off a local barn. A machimi play was on the next channel, a machimi he knew, a drama of inheritance and skullduggery, the resolution to which lay in two clans deciding they hated a third clan worse than they hated each other — very atevi, very logical. Lots of costumes, lots of battles.

Glassy-eyed and fading, he flipped back to the news, hoping to hear the weather, wishing for a cold front to alleviate what promised to be a still, muggy night.

The news anchor was saying something, this time without footage, about a parliamentary procedure recalling members of the Assassins' Guild to the city, a procedure which a spokesman for the Guild called an administrative election.

The hell, he thought, disquieted. They censored his mother's letter and Banichi was gone for a day and a night on administrative elections, while Cenedi said it was a crisis in the Guild? Jago also had a vote. And might be casting it.

And Banichi had said something about the Guild rejecting contracts on the paidhi. Disturbing thought. By how much, he wondered, had they voted down the contracts? And what would acceptance of those contracts have meant to Tabini's stability in office?

He found no comfort in the news. He could watch the play, which at least had color and movement. But the eyes were going and the mind had already gone or he wouldn't contemplate staying awake at all.

He was aware of dark, then, a suddenly dark room, and he must have slept — the television was showing a faint just-turned-off glow and a large man was standing in front of it.

"Banichi?" he asked faintly.

"One should never acknowledge being awake," Banichi said. "Delay gives one just that much more advantage."

"I have a house full of security," he objected. "And I haven't a gun any longer."

"Look in your dresser," Banichi said.

"You're joking." He wanted to go look, but he hadn't the strength to get up.

"No," Banichi said. "Good night, Bren-ji. Jago's back now, by the way. All's well."

"Can we talk, Banichi?"

"Talk of what, nadi?" Banichi had become a shadow in the doorway, in the dim light from some open door down the hall. But Banichi waited.

"About the election going on in your Guild, about what Cenedi found it his duty to warn me about — about what I suppose I'd better know since I've accepted another of Ilisidi's invitations."

"With suggestive grace, nadi. One issurprised."

"I like the old woman," he said shortly to a silhouette against the doorway, and well knew the word didn't mean likein the humanly emotional sense. "And there, of course, I have information I don't get here."

"Because you think the aiji-dowager is a salad and you value information from those most interested in disinforming you?"

He knew he should laugh. He didn't have it in him. It came out a weak moan, and his voice cracked. "Nadi, I think she's a breath of fresh air, you're a salad, yourself, and I'm collecting everything I can find that tells me how to make humans in the sky not fly down tomorrow morning in satellites and loot the Bu-javid treasures — I'm so damned tired, Banichi. Everybody wants my opinion and nobody wants to tell me a damned thing, how do I know she's disinforming me? Nothing else makes sense."

Banichi came and stood over him, throwing shadow like a blanket over him. "One has tried to protect you from too much distraction, nadi."

"Protect me less. Inform me more. I'm desperate, Banichi. I can't operate in an informational vacuum."

"Jago will take you to the country house at Taiben, at your request. It might be a safer place."

"Is there anything urgently the matter with where I am?"

That provoked a moment of troubling silence.

"Is there, Banichi?"

"Nand' paidhi, Deana Hanks has been sending other messages under your seal."

"Damn. Damn. — Damn." He shut his eyes. He was perilously close to unconsciousness. So tired. So very tired. "I don't mean to accuse, but I thought you had that stopped. What's she up to?"

"Nand' paidhi, she's in regular communication with certain of the tashrid. And we don't know how she got the seal, but she is using it."

He had to redirect his thinking. Three-quarters of the way to sleep, he had to come back, ask himself why Taiben, and where Hanks got a seal.

"Came with it," he said, "a damn forgery. Mospheira could have managed it."

"One hesitated to malign your office. That thought did occur to us. Equally possible, of course, that the forgery was created by our esteemed lords of the tashrid. And I don't say we haven't intercepted these messages before sending them on. They're some of them — quite egregiously misphrased."

"Dangerously?"

"She asked the lord of Korami province for a pregnant calendar."

Pregnant calendar and urgent meeting. He began to laugh, and sanity gave way; he laughed until the tape hurt.

"I take it that's not code?"

"Oh, God, oh, God."

"Are you all right, Bren-ji?"

He gradually caught his breath. "I'm very fine, thank you, Banichi. God, that's wonderful."

"Other mistakes are simply grammatical. And she speaks very bluntly."

"Never would believe you needed the polish." Humor fell away to memories of Deana after the exams, Deana in a sullen temper.

"We are keeping a log. We can do this — since it's our language under assault."

He laughed quietly, reassured in Banichi's good-humored confidences that things couldn't be so bad, that they could still joke across species lines, and he was fading fast, too fast to remember to question Banichi about the weather report, before, between flutters of tired eyelids, he found Banichi had ebbed out of the room, quiet as the rest of the shadows.

He hoped it would rain again and relieve the heat, which seemed excessive this evening, or it was the padding he was obliged to put around him.

Still, he was sleepy, and he didn't want to move — Banichi was all right, Banichi was watching, and if he waited patiently there was, he discovered, a very slight and promising breeze circulating through the apartment, from open windows, he supposed, perfumed with flowers he remembered —

But that was Malguri, was it not? Or his garden.

He shut his eyes again, having found a position that didn't hurt, and when he felt the breeze he saw the hillsides of Malguri, he saw the riders on tall mecheiti.

He felt Nokhada striding under him, saw the rocks passing under them —

The ominous shadow of a plane crossing the mountainside…

"Look out," he thought he said, jerking about to see, and feared falling bombs.

But after that he was riding again, feeling the rhythm of a living, thinking creature under him, feeling the damp cold wind.

He wanted to be there.

In a dream one could go back to that hillside.

In a dream one could find his room again, with the glass-eyed beast staring at him from the wall.

And his lake, of the ghost-passengers and the bells that tolled with no hand touching them.

That was what he wanted to save. That and the cliffs, and the wi'itkitiin — and Nokhada, that wicked creature. He wanted to go out riding again, wanted to be in the hills, just himself and that damn mecheita, who'd knocked him flat, jarred his teeth loose, and several times nearly killed him — wanted to see the obnoxious beast, for reasons of God-knew-what. He even wondered, in this dream, if he'd saved up enough in his bank account, and if he could get the funds converted into atevi draft, and if it was honorable of the aiji-dowager to sell Nokhada away from Malguri.

But then, still in this dream, which turned melancholy and productive of estrangements, he realized the mecheiti had their own order of things, and that he couldn't take Nokhada from the herd, the flock, the — whatever mecheiti had, that atevi also had, among themselves. Nokhada belonged there. A human didn't. Nokhada didn't understand love. Nokhada understood a tidal pull a human didn't, couldn't, wouldn't ever have.

In his dream he almost understood it, as a force pulling him toward association, weak word for the strongest thing atevi felt. In his dream he almost discovered what that was. He was walking in the hills, and he watched the mecheiti travel across the land, watched ancient banners flutter and flap with the color of the old machimi plays, and saw the association of lords as driven by what he could almost feel.

In this dream he saw the land and he felt human emotions toward it. He supposed he couldn't help it. His need to feel what atevi felt was a part of that human emotion, and more than suspect.

In this dream he sat down on a hillside, and his Beast walked up to him, still angry about its murder, but curious about the intrusion on the hill. It wanted part of his lunch, which he'd brought in a paper bag, and he shared it. The Beast, black and surly, heaved itself down with a sigh and ate half a sandwich, which it pinned down with a heavy forepaw and devoured with gusto. He supposed he was in danger from it. But it seemed content to sit by him and snarl at the land in general, as if it had some longstanding grudge, or some long-standing watch to keep over the fortress that sat on its hill below them. The sky was blue, but pale, making you think of heat, or new-blown glass. Anything might come from it. Maybe that was what the Beast watched for.

Wi'itkitiin launched themselves from the rocks. And far, far below, an atevi in black came walking, climbing up among the rocks, alone. He thought it was Jago, but he couldn't prove it from this distance.

The Beast watched, head on paws, snarling now and again, because it would, that was all. And no matter how long the figure below climbed, it came no nearer, and no matter how anxious he became, he was afraid to get up and go down to it, because he knew his Beast would follow and hunt both of them. It was safe while he kept it fed. As long as sandwiches came from that mysterious place in dreams from which all necessities emerged. The figure below was safe as long as it followed the unspoken Rules of this dream, which demanded it make no progress.

So was he. That was what he was doing here. He did a lot of dangerous things. But he wasn't going anywhere. He was stuck on this hillside, overlooking things he couldn't have. And the sky was free to rain havoc. The sun was shining now, but it wouldn't in a few hours. The sun was the only thing that did progress, the only thing that was free to move — except his Beast, and it was waiting.

CHAPTER 11

The last thing he wanted in the morning on waking was a phone call, especially one from Hanks, before he'd so much as sat down to breakfast. Saidin notified him that Tano had notified her, and he asked for tea, went to the phone in the lady's small office, and took the call.

"This is Bren Cameron. Go ahead."

" I take it you're the one playing pranks with the phone, you son of a bitch."

For some things the nerves in the morning wanted preparation. And his weren't steady yet, nor was his diplomatic filter in full function.

"Deana, let me tell you, you've got a choice. You can be civil and get a briefing on what's going on, or you can sit it out until everything's beyond your useful input. Make a career choice."

"I'm not solving your problem for you! I'm here by Departmental mandate, I take everything that's happened including the damn phone as something you know about and something you arranged, and you listen to me, Mr. Cameron. You can hang yourself, you can work yourself in deeper and deeper, or you can listen to somebody."

"I'm listening, Deana." Past a certain point temper gave way to a slow simmer in which he could accept information, and he didn't give a particular damn about his source. "Give me your read on the situation. I'm listening with bated breath."

" Son of a bitch!" They were speaking Mosphei', Deana's choice from the moment he'd picked up the phone. " You're going to hear from more than me, mister. I heard your speech. I heard the whole damned sales job. You go off to the interior and hold secret meetings, you sell out to the atevi overlord that wantedyou back, and threatened my life to get it—"

"Sorry about that. But you weren't invited. You're playing with fire, Deana. This isn't our justice system. The aiji is well within his rights to remove a disturbance of the peace —"

"You —"

"You shut up, Deana, and get it figured this isn'tMospheira, it's not going to be Mospheira, and I don't care what you think your civil rights are on Mospheira, these people know their law, it works for them for reasons we don't have the biological systems to understand, far less come here and criticize. If youdon't know what you're asking for when you go against atevi authority, I assure you, you don't belong here."

"Oh, and you do. You're working real hard at belonging, and damned right they moved heaven and earth to get you back, you'll give them anything they want. I heard your speech, I heard every damned word of it. I get the news. You want a list of the regulations you've broken?"

"I'm fairly well aware of them."

" Our internal politics, our policy disputes, all out waving in the wind— that's not just against policy, Mr. Cameron, that's against the law! You've incited atevi to act against our government—"

"Never against our government. Against your political backers, maybe."

" Don't you talk aboutmy political backers. Let's talk about yours, let's talk about selling out, Mr. Cameron."

It wasn't getting anywhere. "What about lunch?"

"Lunch?"

"Let's have lunch."

" I'm locked in this damn apartment, you rang my phone for twelve hours straight—"

"Sorry about that."

"You've got the nerve to ask me to have lunch?"

"I think it might be productive. We've done rather too much shouting. And I'd like to know where you got the seal you're using."

Silence on the other end.

"You're not in office," he said, if she missed the point. "You're alive because Tabini-aiji is a patient and fortunately powerful man who can afford a nuisance. A less powerful aiji would kill you, Deana, because he'd have no choice. I suggest you have lunch with me, act less like a prisoner and more like an official guest —"

"And be in public with you. And compromise my interests. "

"Thank God you do understand. I'd begun to fear you'd nonotion of subtlety. In private, then."

" I'm not coming to your apartment— which I understand has scandalized the Atigeini as is, speaking of subtlety, Mr. Cameron. I'm not being gossiped about."

"Watch your mouth! There's no swearing there are no atevi that understand you. Edit yourself, for God'ssake, or I can't protect you."

"Protect me, hell! "

"You area fool."

" No." Evidently not quite such a fool. The tone was quieter. "No, I'll meet you for lunch. When?"

"Noon. In this apartment. And you will be courteous to the lady's and my staff or I'll pitch you out on your head, Ms. Hanks. We're not playing games. I'm trying to salvage your reputation and prevent you doing another foolhardy thing that may get you killed. I can't say at the moment I feel overmuch sympathy for the mess you're in, but if you want to continue to watch the news for reports on the situation, you're quite free to rely on that."

At times he shocked himself. Maybe it was atevi court manners that took over his mouth when he suffered whiteouts of temper — court manners with all the vitriol that attended.

" Barb Letterman's married," Hanks said. " Did you know?"

"How kind of you to let me know. Please bring me your seal. Or I'll have your apartment andyour person searched."

The receiver went down. Hard.

Which didn't make him calmer. But he had the phone, he had the moment. He took a sip of tea and called the Bu-javid operator.

"Nadi, this is Bren-paidhi. Please ring the Mospheiran operator."

" Yes," the answer came back; he heard the relays click.

And abort.

" Nand' paidhi," the operator began, " the connection—"

"Is having a difficulty at this hour. Yes. Thank you. Would you give me the telegraph service?"

" Yes, nand' paidhi," the operator said, and a moment later, a new operator came on, with:

"This is the telegraph, nand' paidhi."

"Please send to the following numbers: 1-9878-1-1, and to 20-6755-1-1, and to 1-0079-14-42. Please voice-record for transcription."

"Ready, nand' paidhi, go ahead."

"Beginning message. Am doing fine. Are you all right? Last transmission was garbled. End message."

There was no fighting the phone system. It was part and parcel with the security problem — it went when you most needed it. And it could be retaliatory against him; it could be precautionary; it could be atevi doing. He couldn't know, as long as it was down.

That had gone to his mother in the capital, to Toby on the North Shore, and to his office in the capital. And presumably they'd know to resend. And possibly his mother's message would get past the censors this time, or possibly Toby would phrase things more obliquely. Their mother was not a diplomat.

Barb-Barb could get on with her life. He didn't want to rake over that set of feelings before breakfast. He didn't know how much of what he was feeling was Hanks' meddling and how much was being, still, mad at the way Barb had gone about it, and mad at that edge-of-his-bedtime "Call me."

He sipped the remainder of the tea, decided he wouldn't dress yet, and went off to the breakfast room, advising the staff on his way that the paidhi was ready for his breakfast, thank you, and meant to take his time and, which he didn't mention, to let his headache and his temper settle. It did him no good to wake up his nastier side before breakfast — he started the day in attack condition and he found it hard to escape it. Particularly with the notion of sitting down at a table with Deana Hanks before afternoon.

He hadn't seen Banichi this morning. He hadn't seen Jago. He hoped he had security still in the apartment, and that the mysteries that were going on around him had no truly sinister import.

He had, for one very major point, to requisition materials on Determinism, and try to coax a human brain to handle concepts of physics Deana Hanks herself hadn't remotely understood when she'd lightly tossed off the concept of faster-than-light without Departmental approval.

He didn't know folded-space physics. He was doing damned well to get chemical rocket design down. He didn't understand Determinists.

But he had to before the week was out.

Tea and seasonal fruit, eggs and buttered meal, chased by toast and another pot of tea — with the distant blue vista of the Bergid range floating unattached above the tiled roofs of Shejidan, the curtains blowing in the long-awaited breeze, and the crises seemed suspended, the world peaceful and ordinary.

If one didn't know what was in the heavens demanding attention, and beyond the sunrise demanding attention, and across the water demanding attention. He'd like to go to the library after the cup of tea, spend his entire day looking through the antique books on horticulture, taking advantage of the rare opportunity the apartment and all its history presented.

But on that very thought Tano arrived bearing a tray of letters for, one hoped, mere signature and seal.

"Routine matters," Tano said.

"You've been a vast help," Bren said. "I truly am grateful."

"Thank the lady's staff. These are simple courtesies. There are others the aiji may perhaps lend staff to answer. Tabini-aiji gave us a verbal message that the paidhi should not by any means be obliged to distract himself with schoolchildren."

"The paidhi finds in the schoolchildren the best reason for keeping this job," he muttered without censoring, in the growing confidence that Tano bore no tales and Tabini would understand anyway. "Ask Banichi about salads. Jago isback this morning?"

"Asleep."

"Where's Algini?"

"He had to go —"

"— out? What in hellis going on, Tano?"

"There's a vote in the Guild we must attend."

"Ah." One clear question to the right source. "About assassinating the paidhi?"

"No, nand' paidhi. That's already been defeated."

It didn't even rate a blink. "Then may I ask?"

Tano looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Please ask Banichi, nand' paidhi."

"Forgive the question, Tano-ji. Thank you for what you've told me. Will you wait for these, and share a cup of tea with me, or have you urgent business?"

"Nand' paidhi, I am of junior rank."

"High in my personal regard. Please. Sit with me. — Saidin?"

Saidin always seemed in earshot. "Another cup," he decreed as the head of staff appeared in the doorway, and Saidin departed without a word as Tano settled uneasily into a separate, fragile chair, perched as if for ready escape.

"I intend no improper or unwelcome questions," Bren said, and affixed his seal to one after the other of the documents on his small table. "You looked as if you could stand a round or two of tea. And more mindful courtesy. I'm very abrupt, Tano-ji. When I'm bothered and in a hurry I can become quite preoccupied. I hope you never take it for intended rudeness."

"Nand' paidhi, you are extremely courteous."

"I'm quite glad."

"I assure the paidhi the votes against his detractors were overwhelming."

"Tano, you are not here for me to ask you more improper questions."

"I've no difficulty speaking about a past vote, Bren-paidhi. You have very many supporters. It hurts nothing at all that both Banichi and nand' Cenedi alike spoke for you."

"Cenedi." He wassurprised.

"Nand' paidhi," Tano began, seeming uncertain of himself or his permission. But in that moment the tea and the cup arrived on two trays with two servants to carry them. The tea tray in the corridor, on the cart with all the electrical connections, seemed to maintain hot water at all moments.

And Tano had lost his momentum in the gentle courtesies of tea service. He balanced the fragile porcelain in his hand and looked down as he drank.

"Tano," Bren said, when the servants — one with lingering attention to Tano — had departed, "please don't feel obliged. I only want company this morning, just a voice. Tell me when your leave is coming, tell me what you'll do, tell me where you're from and where you go — talk about your job. I'm interested."

"It's very uninteresting, nand' paidhi."

"It's veryinteresting to me, Tano-ji. I wonder if people have happy lives. I hope they do. I hope they're doing exactly what they want to do, and that I haven't snatched them up out of something they'd rather be doing, or diverted them out of a course they'd rather be following."

"I assure the paidhi not. I'm very content." Something seemed to linger on Tano's tongue, and drown in a sip of tea.

"You would have said?" Bren asked.

"That I only worry about failing. About making some mistake that would cost immensely."

He'd not thought. He'd not measured Tano's steadily increased responsibility. Or the worry the paidhi put on his assigned guards, when he insisted on breakfasts with the aiji-dowager and lunch with Deana Hanks.

"I promise," he said, "I promise, Tano, not to do anything to make your job harder. I've put upon you shamefully. You weren't set here to manage stacks of paper. I've leaned on your support because I felt you had the judgment to discriminate the emergencies — I never meant to let it grow to this size."

"If the paidhi can concern himself with these papers, the paidhi's security can certainly value them."

"But answer them in stacks? Tano-ji, I've misused your courtesy."

"It's all quite instructive, paidhi-ji. I've learned who you contact, I've learned who are your associates and who are petulant and ill-disposed. I've learned that the paidhi considers the letters of ordinary citizens to be answered seriously. — So when I voted in the Guild, I also spoke about that, nand' paidhi. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but I did. Also Algini flew back from Malguri early, so hecould vote in your behalf."

"I'm in his debt. Does the Guild call in absent members — for all proposed contracts?"

"When a contract involves matters so high as this, yes, it does, nand' paidhi: it goes to the total assembly of the Guild, as this had to, once members filed in opposition. I'm not forbidden to say that."

"Then thank you, Tano-ji. And thank Algini."

"You've become very well reputed among the Guild, nand' paidhi."

Some statements deserved wondering about.

But if "well-reputed" involved his staff and the dowager's staff speaking for him, he took it for a compliment. He finished his stack of seal-signatures, and gave it to Tano with the plea to see if, with the transferred funds which the paidhi had in the Bu-javid accounts, he might hire a temporary staff adequate to handle at least the citizen inquiries —

"At least for a few days, Tano. I'm not willing to impose on you further."

"One will inquire," Tano promised him. "But, nand' paidhi, I wonder if the letters will really abate in any number of days. They're holding two sacks of mail down in the post office, and most are from atevi children."

"Two sacks. Children."

"Many say, I saw you on television. The children, nand' paidhi, mostly ask whether you've seen spacemen and whether they'll send down machines to destroy the world."

"God, I've got to answer that. A computer printer. If I give you my answer — God, staff." His mind flew to the island-wide Mospheiran computer boards, the jobs-wanteds and jobs-offereds; but the Bu-javid wasn'tan ordinary office and it wasn't Mospheira, and you couldn't just bring outsiders in. There had to be clearances. "I've never had to have staff before."

"I would suggest, nand' paidhi, if the paidhi hopes to answer sacks of mail, he certainly needs much more than the security post and a handful of household servants, however willing. He needs, I would guess — a staff of well above fifty, all skilled clericals, and a sealing machine. Most of the letters from citizens have subjects in common, fears of the ship, curiosity."

"Threats, probably."

"Some threats, but not many. — You've received two proposals of marriage."

"You're joking."

"One sent a picture. She's not bad looking, nand' paidhi."

"I'll — see if I can transfer sufficient funds. I may have to appeal to the Department." Not a good time to do that, he was thinking, and asked himself if he could secure atevi funding and decided again that such a source of funds wasn't politically neutral and wouldn't be seen as such.

He had, what? — his personal bank account. Which, lavish as it was for a man who couldn't be home to spend his salary and whose meals and lodging were handled by the Bu-javid, couldn't begin to rent and salary an office of fifty people for a month. "Thank you, Tano-ji. I value your advice. I'll find out what I can do. I'll draft a reply for the children."

"Shall I make inquiries about staff?"

"I don't know how I'm to fund it — but we have no choice, the best I can see."

"I'll consult the appropriate agencies. Thank you for the tea, nand' paidhi."

Tano excused himself off to that task. Bren settled to stare out at the mountains, trying to imagine how much it cost to rent an office, hire fifty people, and pay for phones and faxes.

Which he couldn't do. He simply couldn't do it on his own, not if the letters came in sacks.

He had to come up with the statement for the children. That wasn't entirely easy.

He had to come up with a report for the various committee inquiries he was facing, one of which involved lord Geigi, and finding some way to explain FTL for the Determinists, who had to have a universe in unshakeable balance.

He had to have lunch with Hanks at noon — and, God, he'd asked for a call from the ship at the time he'd invited Hanks to lunch. He didn't know how that was going to work. But it might be an escape. Feed Hanks and dive off for a private call.

When he'd, given his leisure, like to go down to the library himself and spend the entire morning looking for astronomy references, until he felt he had some grasp of things he'd never had to wonder about. He was reaching into information he hadn't accessed since primer school — and it might be accurate: he didn't think astronomy had changed that much, but he didn't think a primer-school student's grasp of information was adequate to advise a head of state or argue with atevi number-counters, either.

He was drowning in details, none of which he seemed able to get to because of all the others, all of which argued he should have staff — but even having staff wasn't going to put enough knowledge into the paidhi's head to know where the ship might have been and how far it might have come or how he was going to explain it all to a province ready to erupt in disorder. The failing was in himself. He could usehelp from somebody like Deana Hanks, if Deana weren't an ass — which was an irrefutable condition.

He felt a mild headache becoming worse and called for another pot of tea.

And sent one of the servants, Dathio, on down to the library looking for references. The air didn't stir. Sometimes, in his experience of Shejidan summers, that heralded a hell of a storm.

But the one he expected at noon was sufficient.

Another bout of tape, a shower, a meticulous braiding of the hair — two servants to do that, who spent more time fussing than Tano would do, but Tano was clearly busy — Banichi and Jago the staff alleged to be awake, but both of them were immediately off somewhere about business. Algini was back, sore, stiff, preparing to take over the security station from Tano, who was off, Algini said, seeing about office space — so Algini had the post, and security had to be on duty if strangers were due in: Algini had certain inquiries to make just getting Hanks onto the third floor.

All of which left the paidhi alone and at the mercy of the staff.

If the paidhi had modesty left, at this point, he'd forgotten where he'd put it. He suffered the tape-up at the hands of pleasant and not entirely objective women, he had his shower, and thereafter abandoned himself to a pair of servants who thought his hair a complete novelty and argued over the job of braiding it; then a trio of dressers who, learning he was going to meet Hanks-paidhi, insisted on his best shirt, insisted on a little pin for the collar.

Last of all madam Saidin came to survey the result, disapproved of the pin and installed a larger, more expensive one the provenance of which he had no idea.

"That's not mine, nand' Saidin," he protested, viewing the result in the mirror, asking himself whether that jewelry was Damiri's, or some antique Atigeini motif he was going to catch hell for if someone saw it. He'd no reason to distrust Saidin. He'd reason not to trust all the staff, counting rumors that had drifted out to the dowager's household, but he'd hoped Saidin herself was Damiri's and not serving any other interest.

"It's perfect," Saidin declared with senior authority, and he was left with a feeling of being trapped into Saidin's judgment, once she'd taken a position contravening three others of the staff.

Perhaps he shouldn't be so naive or so accommodating. But it was only Hanks, who wasn't likely to discriminate a pin he owned versus one he'd borrowed illicitly.

So he let it stay and paced the sitting room, waiting for calls from space or an explosion from Hanks, he wasn't sure which. He'd drafted a letter to Mospheira, a letter to the President, which said, in sum, that atevi unease over the appearance in their skies had generated a flood of mail which was being directed to the paidhi, and which consequently required the paidhi to answer, and which the Mospheiran budget should pay for, as otherwise it compromised the Mospheiran nature of the paidhi's office.

The President was going to read that one several times before he figured out it wasn't a joke, and the man who'd just broken Departmental regulations, defied an order from the Department's highest officers, and revealed privileged and sensitive information to the atevi leadership in a nationally televised speech, was asking the Mospheiran government to fund an expansion of his office.